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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 12, 1969] A New Venture (May 1969 Venture)

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by David Levinson

History lesson

Way back in 1956, Joseph Ferman was the owner of Mercury Publishing, which produced several magazines, including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He believed there was a place in the crowded SF market for a new magazine. The genre was changing; space opera was out, problem stories and stories with a narrower focus were in. The closure of Planet Stories the previous year meant no one was running SF with a hint of adventure and excitement. Joe decided to fill that gap, and a new magazine was born.

The first issue of Venture Science Fiction was dated January 1957 (which means it hit the stands in November or December of 1956). The editor was Robert P. Mills, who was the managing editor over at F&SF under Tony Boucher, with Boucher listed as the advisory editor. The cover by Ed Emshwiller went to a Poul Anderson Psychotechnic League story, Virgin Planet, later expanded to a novel of the same name. Other stories included a science fiction mystery by Isaac Asimov (The Dust of Death) and a controversial Ted Sturgeon tale (The Girl Had Guts), which allegedly made some readers physically ill.

The issue also had a note from the publisher, explaining what he hoped the magazine would be. Every story would have to be well told, and every story had to have “pace, power, and excitement.” But those things also wouldn’t take the place of character and sense.

Venture came out regularly every other month for 10 issues, but it never stood out in a crowded market. There were plenty of big-name authors, and you might recognize a story or two, but none were big stories that will be remembered as classics. This is where Asimov’s science essays ran before moving to F&SF. The magazine may be best remembered as the place that Sturgeon’s Law was first proposed in full: “Ninety percent of everything is crud,” along with its two corollaries.

The first and last covers for the first run of Venture. Art in both by Ed Emshwiller

What happened? It’s hard to say, but it has been suggested some of the content was too much for the times. There was more gore and sex than was considered acceptable, but which would fit right in today. As a result, new readers may have been put off, and old readers may have decided to go elsewhere. The chaos in the magazine market following the collapse of American News Distribution, which held a near monopoly on magazine distribution, in mid-1957 can’t have helped matters. In any case, the final issue was dated July 1958.

“Wait,” I hear our British and Australian readers say, “wasn’t there a magazine by that name in the early ’60s?” There was! The British version of Venture ran from September 1963 to December 1965. It carried reprints from the American edition of F&SF, even though that magazine also had a British version. The Australian edition was identical, just dated two months later, folding in February 1966.

Another try at the brass ring

The Fermans père et fils have decided to give Venture another try. Maybe they should have told someone. Galaxy Publishing has launched a few new magazines in the last few years, and they always made a big deal of it in their other mags several months in advance. Beyond a very small notice in last month’s F&SF, I haven’t heard a thing about it. Seems like a questionable marketing strategy.

Ed Ferman will be editing Venture as well as F&SF, but since it’s going to be quarterly, it shouldn’t be too much extra work. Along with stories, there’s a book review column by Ron Goulart. A particularly biting review column; Ron doesn’t seem to like much. Presumably, this will be a regular feature.

Another apparent recurring feature (it is, at least, listed as a “department” along with the book reviews) is the return of Ferdinand Feghoot. Feghoots, for the uninitiated, are very short – usually around half a page – stories ending in a pun. They ran in F&SF for a time, up until a few years ago, and the Traveler generally left them out of his reviews. Since puns may be the most subjective form of humor and it will be nearly impossible to cover them without giving away the joke, I will maintain this policy. Should they disappear, I will mention it. At the very least, they tend to be considerably better than the atrocious Benedict Breadfruit stories that appeared in Amazing several years ago.

Let’s take a look at this maiden issue.

This singularly unattractive cover is by Bert Tanner.

Before we get to the stories, we need to talk about this cover. At first glance, I thought this was a coffin and a bat, so I assumed it was a horror mag and moved on. It was only when I went back a second time that I realized it was what I was looking for. Cover art should grab the eye and make you want to pick it up. That’s especially true for a new magazine that’s had essentially no advertising. This does none of that. I do like the logo, though.

Hour of the Horde, by Gordon R. Dickson

One day, the sun turns red, and a spaceship the size of Rhode Island appears in orbit around the Earth. Two apparently human beings appear, claiming to be from the center of the galaxy. They bear warning of the approach of a threat which will wipe the galaxy almost clean of life. Earth will be allowed to provide one person to aid in the defense against the threat. The person they choose is graduate art student Miles Vander.

Vander is searching for the creative equivalent of “hysterical strength,” the sort of thing that allows a small woman to lift a car to rescue her trapped child. He is changed by the aliens so that he can draw on the rest of humanity for a poorly explained resource and perhaps pass it on to the Center Aliens. What he finds when he reaches the Battle Line is less than encouraging.

I have no idea what’s going on here, but it’s almost the only art in the issue. Art by Bert Tanner

If I’d been handed this without a byline, I’d have said it was by Dickson once I got to the military stuff, so if you’re familiar with his work, you should have some idea what you’ll think of this. Much as in the recent Wolfling, the story goes on too long after the climax in order for Dickson to wax philosophic for a while. Otherwise, it was pretty good.

According to my sources, this “complete novel” has actually been condensed. It hasn’t suffered too much from the Reader’s Digest treatment. A few things might make a bit more sense, but they’re not really necessary to enjoy the story.

Three stars.

July 24, 1970, by K.M. O’Donnell

It’s no secret that K.M. O’Donnell is Barry Malzberg, who was briefly the editor of Amazing and Fantastic. This story was probably inspired by his time there. It’s in the form of a letter from an editor to a writer, gently trying to dissuade the author from submitting the story without rejecting it outright. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, which the story actually calls attention to, and doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s told pretty well.

Three stars.

The New Science, by Don Thompson

Four grad students attempt to use the university computer to tease out the valid aspects of witchcraft, in the same way that alchemy led to chemistry. There are unintended consequences. Like the previous story, there’s nothing new here, but it’s told reasonably well.

Three stars.

Troubling of a Star, by Bryce Walton

After searching 10,000 worlds without finding a trace of life, an expedition plans to go home. The captain is reluctant, but has little choice. With the rest of the crew already in suspended animation, he makes a discovery.

This story is far too long and is overwrought. I have no idea what the author wanted to say, and much of it doesn’t make sense.

Two stars.

The Topic for the Evening, by Daphne Castell

A married couple discuss local events and some of the women in town. The husband oversteps his bounds.

Yet another tale covering well-trod ground, but told well enough. I liked this better, though, when it was Gladys’s Gregory or Conjure Wife.

A low three stars.

Nine P.M., Pacific Daylight Time, by Ronald S. Bonn

Maybe the reason no time traveler has ever appeared is that no one has built a receiver. A “Mad Scientist” has now done so and invites a prominent science writer to be there when he powers it up. He may not have thought this through all the way.

Old ground again, but quite well told.

A high three stars.

Hold Your Fire!, by Larry Eisenberg

Eisenberg came up with brilliant and obnoxious chemist Emmett Duckworth back in 1967 and probably should have left him there. But with a story both here and in Galaxy this month, it looks like we’re in for more not very funny stories. In this one, Duckworth is annoyed by the sounds of a rifle competition on campus.

Two stars.

Summing up

Is there room for another SF magazine in the current market? Maybe, though the failure of Worlds of Tomorrow and the intermittent at best appearances of International Science Fiction and Worlds of Fantasy argue against it. If Venture is going to be successful in its second incarnation, it’s going to need a couple of things.

The first is promotion. An easily missed, three line announcement in F&SF isn’t going to cut it. The three magazines I mentioned in the previous paragraph were all heavily promoted in IF and Galaxy in both editorials and half-page ads for several months before they hit the newsstands. Another aspect of promotion is an eye-catching cover. The art on this issue is terrible. As I said, I was looking for this magazine and almost missed it. F&SF doesn’t have interior illustrations, but the covers are usually quite good.

The other important aspect is standing out. Especially for a quarterly, you need people talking about your magazine. Running a (condensed) novel might work if it’s really good. Hour of the Horde is decent, but it’s not going to generate word of mouth. A really outstanding story (or a really controversial one) would also work. The retreads in this issue, no matter how well-told, don’t cut the mustard.

We’ll see how things look this summer when the next issue is due.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 10, 1969] Speed (April 1969 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

High Velocity

Vehicles travelling very rapidly were in the news this month, both in a good way and in a bad way.

On March 2, the French/British supersonic airplane Concorde made its first test flight in Toulouse, France.  At the controls was test pilot
André Édouard Turcat.


Up, up, and away!

The plane reached a speed of 225 miles per hour (far below the speed of sound) and stayed in the air for twenty-seven minutes.  Just a test, but expect a lot of sonic booms in the near future.

The same day, tragedy struck the Yellow River drag racing strip in Covington, Georgia.  Racer Huston Platt was at the wheel of a car nicknamed Dixie Twister when it smashed through a chain link fence and hurdled into the crowd at 180 miles per hour.


Image of the disaster from a home movie taken by a spectator.

Eleven people were killed instantly.  One later died in the hospital.  More than forty were injured.

All this rushing around is likely to induce vertigo.  Appropriately, the Number One song in the USA this month is Dizzy by Tommy Roe, a catchy little number that captures the feeling perfectly.


Even the cover art makes my head spin.

Speed Reading

With no less than thirteen stories in the latest issue of Fantastic, it's obvious that several of them are going to be quite short, resulting in quick reading. 

The new stories slightly outnumber the reprints, at seven to six, but the old stuff takes up more than twice as many pages.  Apparently today's writers like to finish their works at a quicker pace than their predecessors.  Or maybe it's just a lot cheaper to buy tiny new works and fill up the rest of the magazine with longer reprints.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

As usual, the cover is also a reprint.  It appeared on the German magazine Perry Rhodan a few years ago.


Also as usual, the original looks better.

Characterization in Science Fiction, by Robert Silverberg

This brief essay by the Associate Editor promotes more depth of character in the genre, and praises new authors Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delany, and Thomas Disch for their skill in that area of writing.  Can't argue with that.

No rating.

In a Saucer Down for B-Day, by David R. Bunch


Illustration by Dan Adkins.

The magazine's most controversial writer returns with a tale that is closer to traditional science fiction than most of his works.  The narrator is an Earthman who is returning to his home planet with an alien.  He wants to show the extraterrestrial Earth's big annual celebration.

The author makes a point about a current social problem, maybe a little too obviously.  Even if this had been published anonymously, it would be easy to tell it's by Bunch from the style.  (Just the fact that the narrator says YES! more than once is a strong clue.) More readable than other stuff from his pen.

Three stars.

The Dodgers, by Arthur Sellings

A sad introduction tells us the author died last September.  This posthumous work features an engineer and a physician who land on a planet where many of the alien inhabitants are suffering from weakness and green blotches on their skin.  As soon as the humans arrive, a bag full of gifts for the extraterrestrials vanishes.  The mystery involves an unusual ability of the aliens.

I hate to speak ill of the dead, but this isn't a very good story.  The premise strains credibility, to say the least, and the ending is rushed.

Two stars.

The Monster, by John Sladek


Illustration by Bruce Eliot Jones

A fellow eager to be a space explorer replaces a guy who's been the only person on a distant planet for a long time.  The world turns out to be a dreary, boring place.  The environment is so bad that our protagonist can't go outside for more than a moment.  His only company is a robot in the form of a woman. 

The author makes his point clearly enough.  You're likely to see it coming a mile away.  Still, it's not a bad little yarn.

Three stars.

Visit, by Leon E. Stover

The Science Editor for Fantastic and Amazing (which must be an easy job; do they ever have any science articles?) gives us this account of aliens landing in Japan.  The American military officers present consult with a science fiction writer and a cultural anthropologist.  After a lot of discussion, the aliens finally come out of their spaceship.

For a story in which not much happens this sure goes on for a while.  Much of the text consists of references to other SF stories.  The ending is anticlimactic.  It left me thinking So what?

Two stars.

Ascension, by K. M. O'Donnell

The introduction reveals that O'Donnell is a pseudonym for the editor.

But which editor?

Glancing at the table of contents, you see that the Editor and Publisher is Sol Cohen, and the Managing Editor is Ted White.  Cohen or White?

Trick question!  It's actually Barry N. Malzberg, who was very briefly editor for Fantastic and Amazing.  (My esteemed colleague John Boston goes into detail about the situation in his article about the March issue of Amazing.)

Obviously this issue was assembled under the auspices of Malzberg.  Nobody ever said the publishing industry was fast.

Anyway, this is a New Wave yarn about a future President of the United States.  (The 46th, which I guess puts the story somewhere around the year 2024 or so.) Civil liberties are thrown out, the President has an advisor killed, he gets kicked out by the opposition and shot, the cycle goes on.  Something like that.

You can tell it's New Wave (with an acknowledged nod to J. G. Ballard) because sections of the text are in ALL CAPITALS and it ends in the middle of a sentence.  I suppose it's some kind of commentary on American politics.

Two stars.

The Brain Surgeon, by Robin Schaefer

Guess what?  This is yet another pseudonym for Malzberg.  Must have had trouble filling up the issue.  (No surprise, given the miserly budget.)

A man sends away for a home brain surgery kit that he saw advertised on a matchbook cover.  He gets the instruments and an explanatory pamphlet in the mail.  But what can he do with it?

Something about this brief bit of weirdness appealed to me more than it should.  There's not much to it, really, but what there is tickled my fancy.

Three stars.

How Now Purple Cow, by Bill Pronzini

A farmer sees a (you guessed it) purple cow in his field.  There's some talk of UFOs in the area.  Then there's a twist at the end.

Very short, without much point to it.  A shaggy dog (cow?) story.  A joke without a punchline. 

One star.

On to the reprints!

The Book of Worlds, by Dr. Miles J. Breuer

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear with this pre-Campbellian work of scientifiction from the pages of the July 1929 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Hugh Mackay.

A scientist discovers a way to view the fourth dimension.  This allows him to see a enormous number of worlds similar to our own Earth, at stages of development from the first stirrings of life to the future of humanity.  What he perceives has a profound effect on him.


Illustration by Frank R. Paul.

I have to confess that I wasn't expecting very much out of a story from the very early days of modern science fiction.  This was a pleasant surprise.  The author clearly has a point to make, and makes it powerfully.  What happens to the scientist at the end may strike you as either poignant or silly.  Take your pick.

Three stars.

The Will, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

The January/February 1954 issue of the magazine supplies this moving tale.


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

The narrator's teenage foster son is dying of leukemia.  The boy is obsessed with a television program about a time travelling hero called Captain Chronos.

(No doubt this was inspired by the author's work on the TV show Captain Video not long before the story was first published.)


Illustration by Jay Landau.

The boy has a plan, involving his collection of stamps and autographs.  But does he have enough time left?

Just from this brief description, you probably already have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen.  Despite the fact that the plot is a little predictable, however. this is a fine story.  The emotion is genuine rather than sentimental.  The ending is both joyful and sad.

Four stars.

Elementals of Jedar, by Geoff St. Reynard

Hiding behind that very British pseudonym is American writer Robert W. Krepps.  This pulpy yarn comes from the May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by H. J. Blumenfeld.

A spaceship captain with the manly name of Ken Ripper and his motley crew of aliens from various worlds are in big trouble.  Forced to land on a planet said to be inhabited by living force fields of pure malevolence, they have to figure out a way to escape with their lives.


Illustration by Rod Ruth.

Boy, this is really corny stuff.  I have to wonder if it's a parody of old-time space opera.  When the hero curses by saying Jove and bounding jackrabbits!, it makes me think the author is pulling my leg. The fact that one of the aliens on the spaceship is a humanoid twelve inches tall makes me giggle, too.  Even if it's tongue-in-cheek, a little of this goes a long way.

Two stars.

The Naked People, by Winston Marks

This story comes from the September 1954 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Ralph Castenir.

The combination of a sore ear and a fight in a tavern sends the narrator to the hospital with a brain infection.  When he comes out of his coma, he is able to see the ethereal figure of a unclothed man.  The lecherous fellow is able to solidify himself sufficiently to have his way with a pretty nurse while she's unconscious and under his control.


Illustration uncredited.

Then a female ghostly being shows up, with an obvious interest in our hero.  It seems that these folks have been hanging around, unperceived by normal people, since the dawn of humanity.  They materialize enough to steal food and, to put it delicately, act as incubi and succubi.

I get the feeling that the author didn't quite know how to end the story.  The hero fends off the advances of the lustful female being and saves the pretty nurse from the male one.  He even marries her.  But the naked people are still around, with all that implies.

An unsatisfying conclusion and a slightly distasteful premise make for a less than enjoyable reading experience.

Two stars.

And the Monsters Walk, by John Jakes

This two-fisted tale comes from the July 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures. 


Cover art by Walter Popp.

The narrator starts off aboard a ship bound for England from the Orient.  Burning with curiosity, he investigates the secret cargo hold, although the captain warned the crew this was punishable by death.  He finds boxes containing humanoid creatures.

Barely escaping with his life, he makes his way to shore.  Mysterious figures are out to kill him.  On the other hand, a Tibetan mystic and a beautiful young woman try to help him.  In return, they want his aid in combating a conspiracy to destroy Western civilization by using demons to slaughter world leaders.


Illustration by David Stone.

John Jakes is best known around here for his tales of Brak the Barbarian.  Those stories proved that he had studied the adventures of Conan carefully.  This yarn convinces me that he is also very familiar with the pulp magazines of the 1930's.

I'll give him credit for not being boring, anyway.  The action never stops, although you won't believe a minute of it.  The author's intense, almost frenzied style keeps you reading.

Three stars.

I, Gardener by Allen Kim Lang

Our last story comes from the December 1959 issue of the magazine.


Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

The narrator pays a visit to a prolific writer.  He speaks to a very strange gardener, who proves to be something other than what he seems.

I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to give away too much about the simple plot.  You may be able to figure out who the model for the writer is, given the title of the story and the fact that the character's name is Doctor Axel Ozoneff.  (The introduction to the story makes it obvious, so I'd advise not looking at it.)

Not a great story.

Two stars.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Alexei Panshin

Leiber looks at novels by E. R. Eddison, and Panshin has kind words to say about The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.

No rating.

Quickly Summing Up

Another average-to-poor issue, with only Miller's story rising above that level.  At least most of the pieces make for fast reading, although a couple of the worst ones may make you furious at their lack of quality.  You may be tempted to watch an old movie on TV instead.


From 1954, so it should show up on the Late, Late Show sometime soon.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 8, 1969] Young Punks and Old Fogies (February 1969 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

I Heard It Through The Grapevine

I trust that singer Martin Gaye will forgive me for stealing the title of his current smash hit, which has been at the top of the American pop music charts since last month, and shows no signs of disappearing soon. (Gladys Knight and the Pips had a big hit with it not much more than a year ago, too.)


He's what's happening.

The reason for my musical theft is that certain information about the authors of the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic reached me through informal channels.

Open your ears, for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?
— Henry IV, Part 2

I'll explain when the time comes. Meanwhile, let's take a look at a very mixed bag indeed.

Catch A Wave

(OK, I'll apologize to the Beach Boys as well.)


Cover art by William Baker.

Wow! A new piece of art on the cover. The grapevine tells me editor Barry N. Malzberg is shaking things up at Fantastic.

The editorial by Robert Silverberg, the magazine's new associate editor (so long, former-editor-turned-associate-editor Harry Harrison), makes the case that there's plenty of room in the world of imaginative fiction for both Old Wave and New Wave. Hear, hear.

This issue, which contains ten new stories as well as four reprints, should prove an excellent test case for his thesis. We've got old-fashioned yarns as well as experimental works.

First of all is a new tale from an author who bridges the gap between the opposing Waves. (Don't try to tell me his 1950 story Coming Attraction isn't a Dangerous Vision!)

Richmond, Late September, by Fritz Leiber


Illustration by Bill Baker.

Near the end of his life, Edgar Allan Poe encounters a mysterious, beautiful woman with whom he becomes obsessed. Their conversation suggests that Poe has a premonition of the coming American Civil War. The conclusion hints at the woman's true identity.

As you'd expect, this is elegantly written. Leiber obviously knows and loves the works of fellow fantasist Poe. The story is full of references to Poe's tales and poems. (Some might say too many.) The denouement is nicely subtle.

It's not a major piece (calling it Fritz Leiber's Greatest Short Story in the table of contents is hardly accurate) but well worth reading. High three stars or low four stars? I'm prejudiced in favor of both Poe and Leiber, so let's go on the high end.

Four stars.

Any Heads at Home?, by David R. Bunch

Hollywood used to call actor/director Erich von Stroheim The Man You Love To Hate, because of his many villainous screen roles. The controversial works of David R. Bunch, back when the magazine was edited by Cele Goldsmith (later Cele Lalli), made him The Writer You Love To Hate in the eyes of many conservative readers. He's back in form here.

The insane narrator (shades of Poe!) relates how he took the head of his dead, filthy rich boss out of his grave so he could kick it around. A visit from the police isn't the only thing he should worry about.

The bare bones (pun intended) of the plot make it sound like an ordinary horror story. What makes it unusual is the author's unique style. His familiar quirks are here. Certain words are printed in ALL CAPITALS, often with EXCLAMATION POINTS! Bunch uses hyphens to create new words like leather-cloppy and stone-feather. The whole thing seems to be written in a frenzy.

Whether you like this stuff or not is a matter of taste. I think it's fairly effective.

Three stars.

Bathe Your Bearings in Blood!, by Clifford D. Simak

After that bit of New Wave, we go back to the Old. This story from one of the greats comes from the December 1950 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by James B. Settles.

A newspaper man finds out his alarm clock and watch are both an hour fast. Just an odd coincidence? Maybe, but then there's the guy who calls the newspaper to report a sewing machine moving down the street by itself. Not to mention the rat-like machines hiding in the newspaper office, and the fact that the protagonist's typewriter prints out messages to him.


Illustration by Leo Summers.

The grapevine tells me this story has already been reprinted quite a few times, under the less melodramatic title Skirmish. The premise may remind you of the Twilight Zone episode A Thing About Machines. It's not bad, but it stops right at a dramatic moment, leaving things unresolved.

Three stars.

Back we go to new stuff; no less than half a dozen brief yarns before it's reprint time again. (Note that these six stories lack any illustrations. Maybe most of the art budget was blown on the cover.)

All in the Game, by Edward Y. Breese

An unscrupulous fellow finds himself in an extremely luxurious afterlife. His every desire is satisfied. There's a twist.

Sound familiar? Then you've seen another episode of Twilight Zone, namely A Nice Place to Visit. At least Simak has the excuse that he came first!

Two stars.

The Castle on the Crag, by P. G. Wyal

The previous story was new, but very traditionally narrated. This one is not. It starts like a satiric fairy tale (we're told that a princess is a White Liberal, and thus values poverty above all else) but then it jumps forward multiple centuries at a time, in several brief sections of text. A tree grows out of the dead body of the princess, an abbey is built on the ruins of her castle, etc. It builds up to a modern horror.

The point seems to be that nothing is permanent. This is a strange, dark story with a couple of remarks about religion that may raise some eyebrows. Not exactly pleasant reading, but interesting.

Three stars.

The Major Incitement to Riot, by K. M. O'Donnell

The grapevine tells me K. M. O'Donnell is actually editor Barry N. Malzberg. This surreal yarn consists of multiple conflicting versions of what caused violence to break out during the display of the gigantic death mask of a deceased official.

Weird stuff. Don't ask me what it means. The image of the huge mask is haunting, if nothing else.

Two stars.

The Life of the Stripe, by Piers Anthony

The army is running out of the stripes they use to designate rank. A sergeant is busted down to buck private so his can be reused. After his death, everybody who wears the stripe comes to a bad end. Is there a way to end the curse?

Not much to this beyond the premise. As military satire, it's not exactly Catch-22.

Two stars.

Slice of Universe, by James R. Sallis

As far as I can tell, this story involves a couple of aliens who speak in a complicated, song-like manner because they have multiple tongues. Their starship is operated, in some manner or other, by self-pitying, homesick birds. They explore the universe to its very end.

That's a very poor synopsis, because this piece is more of a dream-like prose poem than anything else. As such, I found it intriguing, if a little confusing. The aliens are really alien, that's for sure.

Three stars.

Reason for Honor, by Robert Hoskins

After World War Three, a couple of soldiers are the only ones left out of their unit. They see enemy troops approach. The encounter leads to an ironic conclusion.

Pretty grim stuff. Effective enough for what it is.

Three stars.

The Closed Door, by Kendall Foster Crossen

Back to reprints. This one comes from the August/September issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Gaylord Walker.

The grapevine tells me that the author's first name, despite the way it is spelled in the original magazine and in this reprint, is actually supposed to be Kendell. Gotta watch those vowels.


Illustrations uncredited.

Anyway, what we have here is a futuristic locked room mystery. The detective even mentions Gideon Fell, a fictional solver of such mysteries created by author John Dickson Carr.


Whodunit?

A humanoid alien is murdered in his hotel room, despite the fact that the door can only be locked or unlocked by his hand. Does a torn piece of paper bearing the letters COO hold the key to the crime?

Boy, this is a lousy story. It fails as science fiction and as a mystery. The solution depends on things the reader can't possibly know. Give me Lije Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw any day in the week.

One star.

The Origin of Species, by Jody Scott Wood

We interrupt our reprints for a couple of new pieces. (Again, no illustrations.)

Less than a page long, this one takes the form of a tirade by a tree-dwelling ape against those radicals who are walking on the ground and doing other outrageous stuff.

A satire about the previous generation (Old Wave?) complaining about those darn kids nowadays (New Wave?), I suppose. Whatever.

Two stars.

Grounds for Divorce, by Robert S. Phillips

A man goes to a lawyer asking to divorce his wife. It seems the fellow isn't satisfied with his sex life, compared to the images he sees of the old days.

You'll probably see the twist coming a mile away. A mildly Dangerous Vision.

Two stars.

This Planet for Sale, by Ralph Sholto

The pages of the July 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures supply this space opera.


Cover art by Walter Popp.

A couple of guys are in their spaceship, smuggling valuable cargo. Meanwhile, a father and daughter are in another spaceship. The two vessels run into an invisible planet that made its way into the solar system.


Illustration by Ernie Barth.

The daughter (in true science fiction fashion, this young adult woman is always called a girl) gets captured by the bad guy. The smuggler-turned-hero rescues her.

It all has something to do with the bad guy's plan to wipe out the indigenous population of the invisible planet and transport it somewhere else, in order to sell it to aliens. The bad guy also wants to do the same thing to Earth.

Pretty bad stuff. Nonsensical science, thud-and-blunder action. The nature of the smuggled cargo (kept concealed from the reader) solves everybody's problems (expect the bad guy, of course.)

One star.

The Day After Eternity, by Lawrence Chandler.

Another action/adventure yarn, this time from the February 1955 issue of the magazine.


Cover art by Henry Sharp.

The grapevine tells me that Lawrence Chandler was a house name (pseudonym shared by more than one writer.) Might be Howard Browne, might be Henry Slesar, might be somebody else. The grapevine doesn't know everything.


Illustration by Paul Lundy.

Another wandering planet comes into the solar system. This one seems to be stealing Earth's water. (Forget that. It has nothing to do with the plot.) Our manly hero and his manly buddies, plus a whole bunch of cannon fodder from other planets, set out to defeat the thing.

A telepathic psychiatrist comes along, because she's figured out that the planet is actually stealing minds. The cover illustration, for which the story was probably written, depicts a scene in which one of the buddies, who loves old cars, gets tricked by an illusion and blown up.

(At this point, I was reminded of Ray Bradbury's 1948 story Mars is Heaven!, which is much better.)

Everybody gets killed except the hero and the (ahem) girl. They bicker at first, but of course they wind up in love.

Two rotten old stories in a row. This one adds insult to injury by emphasizing the fact that the psychiatrist is old-fashioned because she doesn't expose her breasts.

One star.

Sour Grapes

There were some real stinkers in this issue, particularly the reprints from lesser known writers. Not all the new stuff was worthy either.

The grapevine tells me that Malzberg isn't happy with the magazine's reprint policy. Did he deliberately choose losers to make his point? The rumor mill also suggests that he won't be around long.

There were some decent stories here — it's hard to throw fourteen darts and not hit the target sometimes — but you might want to spend some time watching an old movie on TV instead.


This one is pretty good.




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Magazine, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 22, 1968] What wonders await? (January 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Where'd you get those peepers?

Few things excite the imagination more than adventures in space.  In particular, we love to hear about doings in the cosmos that can't be done on Earth.  And one of the main things we can't do on Earth is see the sky.

Oh sure, when you look out at the starry night, you think you're witnessing infinity.  In fact, your eyes barely apprehend a tiny fraction of the electro-magnetic spectrum.  We are blind to radio waves, to ultra violet, to X-rays, to infrared.  Our sophisticated telescopes are similarly handicapped.  Even the mighty 200 inch telescope on Mount Palomar can't see in most of light's wavelengths, for they are blocked by the Earth's atmosphere.  In the X-ray, ultraviolet, infrared, and cosmic ray bands, the glass seeing-eye tubes are as sightless as we are.

Which is why the launch of the Orbiting Astronomy Observatory (OAO) on December 7, 1968, was such an exciting event.  Dubbed "Stargazer", it is the very first space telescope.

Well, technically, it's the second.  The first one went up on April 8, 1966, but its power supply short circuited shortly after launch, and it never returned any data.  This is a shame, as there were some nifty experiments on board, including a gamma ray experiment similar to the one carried on Explorer 11, another gamma ray counter supplied by NASA's Goddard center, and a Lockheed-made X-ray counter.  But, the main experiment, a set of seven telescopes designed to look in the ultraviolet spectrum, provided by the University of Wisconsin, was duplicated for OAO-2.

This telescope cluster will be used for long-term observation of individual stars, something that only recently became possible with the perfection of star tracking technology.  In addition, the Smithsonian has provided an additional package of four telescopes for the investigation of large masses of stars, up to 700 per day, to get an overall UV map of the sky.

Think of how revolutionary it was when the first radio observatories began mapping the heavens.  We learned about the existence of quasars and weird storms on Jupiter and also a lot more about the stars we had been observing visually for centuries.  Stargazer is about to give us a whole new view of the universe.

That's exciting—truly science fiction made fact!

Jeepers Creepers

While we wait to see what excitement OAO 2 returns from the heavens, let's turn to the latest F&SF to see what terrestrial treasures await us this month.


by Gahan Wilson

A Meeting of Minds, by Anne McCaffrey

We return to the world of "The Lady in the Tower", one of my favorite McCaffrey stories, for the lead story this issue.

Damia, the daughter of that first story's protagonist, is 20 and humanity's strongest telepath.  As tempestuous as she is beautiful and brilliant, she has refused the attentions of men, holding out for something…better.

That's when she meets Sodan, an alien inexorably approaching the Terran sphere from far, intragalactic space. Thus ensues a completely mental courtship, and Damia becomes infatuated with the foreign entity.  But Afra, an experienced mentalist, who has been secretly in love with Damia for ages, is suspicious.  What if the being is simply manipulating Damia so that Earth's greatest defense will be neutralized?

The stage is set for a cosmic battle, and a realignment of Damia's priorities.

I really wanted to like this story.  I was anticipating an "Is There in Truth no Beauty?" romance where two beings find love despite fundamental physical differences.  Instead, the viewpoint shifts from Damia's to Afra's early on, and all we get is his certainty that Sodan is up to no good, which is vindicated.  Then, after the battle, Damia realizes the worthy that's been under her nose this entire time and, of course, gives him her love.

Of late, there has been a shallowness to the emotion displayed in McCaffrey's writing that just puts me off.  Also, a sort of petty volatility.  All of her characters snipe at each other constantly.  But the real nadir of the story comes at the end:

Shyly, her fingers plucking nervously at her blanket, Damia was unable to look away from an Afra who had altered disturbingly. Damia tried to contemplate the startling change. Unable to resort to a mental touch, she saw Afra for the first time with only physical sight. And he was suddenly a very different man. A man! That was it. He was so excessively masculine.

How could she have blundered around so, looking for a mind that was superior to hers, completely overlooking the fact that a woman's primary function in life begins with physical submission?

I feel like if Piers Anthony had written that, we'd have given him the Queen Bee.  Two stars.

A Brook in Vermont, by L. Sprague de Camp

De Camp muses poetically on the Carboniferous, and what future beings, millions of years hence, will burn the coal being formed today.

I think the author missed a real opportunity to imply that we would be the anthracite mined in the far future, suggesting that we run the very real risk of leaving nothing to the ages but our combustibility.

Three stars as is.


by Gahan Wilson

Black Snowstorm, by D. F. Jones

This is nothing more, nothing less, than an extremely well-told story of a plague of locusts. There's no satire, no metaphor, no literary experiments. Both shoes drop simultaneously, though slowly, gradually, rivetingly.

Five stars.

Unidentified Fallen Object, by Sydney Van Scyoc

One day, a small UFO falls with the snow, and a precocious teen boy picks it up to examine.  As he handles the small craft, flakes of it come off, perhaps sliding into his very pores.  Soon, he begins to radiate a frightful miasma, inciting hatred in all approach him.

Including his teacher, who has also touched the fell ship…

"Object" is a chilling, effectively written little horror.  It's not particularly to my taste, and it's a bit one-note, so it's just a three-star story for me.  Others may find more to like (for those who enjoy a sense of dread).

How I Take Their Measure , by K. M. O'Donnell

In the future, everybody's on relief…or administering it.  This is a little slice-of-life story about a sadistic relief worker, who gets off on the tenterhooks he hangs his relief applicants on.  No Brock, George C. Scott's kindhearted social worker from East-Side, West-Side; this guy is a real bastard.

This is my favorite story about terminal unemployment that I've read since one in IF a decade ago (the one about the guy who gets a job tightening all the screws on the buildings in the cities—which have been systematically unscrewed by some other schnook the night before…).

Four stars.

Santa Claus vs. S. P. I. D. E. R., by Harlan Ellison

Here's St. Nick like you've never seen him before.  In the style of Ian Fleming's James Bond series (though not Edward S. Aaron's Sam Durrell, Harlan offers up Agent Kris Kringle, a hard-stomached, oversexed, lean killer whose red suit is filled with every lethal device known to Elfkind.  His nemesis is S.P.I.D.E.R., an international organization devoted to evil.  This time, their nefarious scheme involves mind control: they have brainwashed LBJ, HHH, Nixon, Daley, Reagan, and Wallace into doing the most horrid deeds, and only the jolly agent from the North Pole can defeat them.

Okay, it's a bunch of silly fluff, probably written between bonafide adventure yarns Ellison probably writes under another name like "Rod Richards" or "Length Peters".  I did appreciate how every cruddy thing in the world is ultimately attributable to S.P.I.D.E.R.—humanity is basically good and cuddly.  Only the nefarious "them" subvert our goodness.

I've often noted that comic books and spy novels offer an easy way out for readers.  It's tough to deal with everyday problems, with economic malaise, with systemic issues that cause crime and misery.  How much easier to topple the goon of the week to get our cathartic kicks.  Ellison lets us know he understands the flavor of his own cheek with the subtlety within the broadness.

That said, it's a one-note joke, and once you've gotten the punchline, I don't think the story bears much rereading, especially since it is so very much of a very specific moment in our history (as Judith Merril notes in her book column, August 1968 already feels like an age ago).

Three stars.

The Dance of the Satellites, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor continues his examination (see last month's piece) of what the Galilean moons of Jupiter might look like from the innermost moon, Amalthea.  This time, he focuses on eclipses, the appearance of the moons in Jupiter-shine, and more.

Interesting cosmic data, of use to writers and laymen alike.  Four stars.

The Legend and the Chemistry, by Arthur Sellings

The 3607th (or was it 3608th) interstellar exploration mission from Earth seems like it will be yet another humdrum operation.  In all the expeditions, though many aliens have been found (most humanoid), all have been planetbound, none of them having reached our space traveling level of technology.

This latest planet is no exception, its humaniform denizens possessing a primitive tribal culture.  But they have no less pride than any other race.  What happens when the very existence of far superior beings constitutes an unpardonable affront?  And who is responsible for the catastrophe that ensues?

A decent, moralistic yarn from the late, great Arthur Sellers.  This may well be his last work published (unless he has a posthumous career like Richard McKenna) as he died recently.  While Legend is not the best thing he's ever written, it has its own kind of power.

Three stars.

Wild ride

There are a lot of vicissitudes in this first F&SF of the year.  The strong points cancel the weak points, and the magazine ends in positive territory, but because the lack of consistency makes things a bit sloggish.

Well, that's why I do this, right?  To be your guide to ensure you only get the highlights!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 14, 1968] Half a Loaf is Better Than None (October 1968 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

You don't have to be a sociologist to realize that the past few years have been one of cultural upheaval. The hippies, the struggle for civil rights, protests against the war in Vietnam; I could go on and on.

An example happened one week ago, when hundreds of women protested at the Miss America pageant. They asked to be treated as human beings, not as stereotyped images of artificial standards of beauty.


Members of the emerging Women's Liberation movement toss things like stiletto heels, makeup, and copies of Playboy magazine into a symbolic garbage can.

A recurring theme of these social changes is the desire for freedom. It can even be seen in popular culture. For nearly a month, for example, the number one song in the USA has been People Got to be Free by the Rascals.


They seem very serious about it.

This is a laudable goal, of course, and there's a long way to go before we can truly say that oppressed groups are liberated. An optimist might say we're halfway there.

Speaking of halfway . . .

Four of One, Half an Octad of the Other

I've been griping for quite a while about Fantastic filling its pages with reprints, along with one or two new stories per issue. Maybe somebody at the magazine heard me. Of the eight stories in the latest issue, only half are reprinted. That's progress!


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

You can see the cover screaming New at you. Ironically, the cover art is old. It served as the back cover of the March 1945 issue of Amazing Stories.


As you can see, they reversed it, covered up a pretty big part of it, and just generally made it look worse.

Did I say halfway? The four new stories take up somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the magazine. They're all clustered together at the front.

The Sound of Space, by Ross Rocklynne

A spaceman returns from a two-year voyage to Alpha Centauri. He shows up at Triton, a moon of Neptune, where his fiancée is waiting for him.


Illustration by Jeff Jones.

She's upset because he hasn't aged at all. (This is supposedly an effect of weightlessness, which seems unlikely to me.) She also doesn't like the fact that space travelers are notorious for being irreligious. She takes him to church, and tells him that she's going to marry the pastor unless he goes back to Earth and ages in its gravity. The spaceman comes up with a wild scheme to show the woman and the pastor what deep space is really like.

The premise of gravity being the cause of aging isn't exactly plausible, to say the least. The story is written in an odd style, with verbal quirks. The woman inserts a fair amount of French into her speech. People often talk in flowery language that doesn't sound like anything anybody would really say. Folks are often referred to as Sir So-and-So (such as Sir Preacher); the spaceman even calls mortality Sir Death.

Two stars.

The Dragons of Telsa, by Arthur Porges

As an example of the care with which the magazine is put together, the cover and the table of contents call this yarn The Dragons of Tesla (note the change in spelling.)

Anyway, this is the latest in a series of science lessons disguised as fiction featuring the clever Ensign De Ruyter. In this tale, he and his captain explore the planet Telsa (not Tesla). It's hot and has an atmosphere without oxygen. There are a huge number of dangerous reptilian predators around.

(Herds of hundreds and hundreds of predators? That seems unlikely, given the typical predator-to-prey ratio you'd expect.)

After wiping out a whole bunch of the beasts with their ray guns, the unlucky pair run out of the energy that powers their weapons. They go hide in a cave, which just happens to have exactly the stuff that De Ruyter needs to save the day.

As I may have suggested above, the plot depends on a pretty outrageous coincidence. (Gosh, the cave has a pool of liquid rubidium and an object that's shaped like a shallow bowl! Just what we need to play Mister Wizard!)

It's like minor league Hal Clement.

Two stars.

Oaten, by K. M. O'Donnell

It's not a big secret that K. M. O'Donnell is actually Barry Malzberg, the magazine's new assistant editor. He's had a few New Wave stories published here and there.

This epistolary tale relates the misadventures of a sort of social psychologist, for lack of a better term, among aliens. He goes through a ritual, not understanding what's going on, leading to a bizarre climax.

I've supplied a pretty bad synopsis, because it's not easy to figure out what's going on. The nature of the so-called Oaten, for example, is particularly puzzling. Then there's that ending . . .

I really don't know what to make of this thing.

Two stars.

Where Is Mrs. Malcolmn?, by Susan A. Lewin

The magazine proudly announces that this is a first publication. That's not always a good sign. In another example of careful editing, the table of contents spells the character's name Malcolm, which looks more normal to me. The text makes it clear that it's really the less likely Malcolmn.


Uncredited photograph, one of three accompanying the story that pretty much all show the same thing.

A woman recovering from a heart attack investigates what she thinks is a water tower that appears out of nowhere. If you've ever read any science fiction before, you'll know exactly what happens.

There's not really much to say about this extremely predictable first story. Was it written just to go with the photographs? Lots of room for improvement, I suppose.

One star.

So much for new stuff. On to the reprints.

Lords of the Underworld, by L. Taylor Hansen

The April 1941 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this yarn.


Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

Three guys are fooling around in the California desert, doing archeological stuff. One of them very casually mentions that he's built a time machine. The main character (the other two disappear from the story quickly) sends himself back thousands of years.


Illustration by St. John also.

This leads to a rip-roaring adventure, as the hero defeats an evil empire nearly by himself. There's a beautiful princess to help him, a sinister cultist to destroy, vampire bats, a saber-toothed tiger, and, yes, a dinosaur. Lots of stuff goes on.

It's all nonsense, of course. There are some nice descriptions, but the whole thing is pretty darn goofy. The open-ended conclusion suggests a sequel, but I don't think there was one.

Two stars.

Between Two Worlds, by Milton Lesser

The December 1955 issue of the magazine is the source of this fantasy story.


Cover art by Edward Valigursky.

A meek fellow has dreams about being Jason from mythology. Of course, he really is living as the legendary hero. He falls in love with the warrior maiden Atalanta, fights with Hercules, wins the golden fleece, and so forth. If you've seen the nifty movie Jason and the Argonauts, you know what to expect. There's a surprise ending that's not surprising.


Illustration by Louis Priscilla.

This piece comes from a brief, odd period in the history of Fantastic when it was dedicated to wish fulfillment stories. Or, as you can tell from the cover, male fantasies. It's not as openly voyeuristic as the other stories seem to be, judging by their descriptions, although Atalanta is stark naked at one point.

As a retelling of an old story, it's OK. Otherwise, there's not much to it.

Two stars.

Bandits of Time, by Ray Cummings

This wild and wooly adventure comes from the December 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Rod Ruth.

A mysterious fellow approaches a reporter and his blind girlfriend. He promises them a wonderful life if they'll meet him at a certain place in the middle of the night. He also says he'll restore the woman's sight.


Illustration by Ruth as well.

Understandably, the reporter is suspicious. He takes his girlfriend home and shows up at the designated place with a fellow newsman, hoping for a big story. Instead, he discovers that the woman has been kidnapped. She and the two reporters are sent two million years into the future.

The weird man who approached them has a mad scheme to set up his own private empire in a distant future when humanity has devolved to a primitive state. He takes along male criminals from all periods of history, as well as kidnapped women to mate with them.

Can the two heroes escape being executed by the insane dictator? Will the woman regain her sight? Will the seductive would-be empress prove to be an enemy or a friend?

Two time travel yarns from 1941, both of them full of nonstop action. This one isn't quite as wacky as the first one, although there's a revelation about the madman's identity that comes out of nowhere.

Two stars.

The Monument, by Henry Slesar

We finish up with a mood piece from the July 1956 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

A small group of tourists are on a spaceship headed for the Moon. A couple of them complain a lot. The captain opens the observation window to show them something.


Illustration by William Llewellyn.

The plot is very simple. The story accomplishes what it sets out to do. Maybe that's enough.

Three stars.

Half Empty or Half Full?

Either I'm in a bad mood or this was a very weak issue. Maybe I should have given out some three star ratings to some of the stories, maybe not. My time might have been better spent making a sandwich.


A full loaf of diet bread counts as half a loaf of regular bread, doesn't it?




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 22, 1968] Shades and Shadows (August 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Hail to the Chief

I mentioned a few months back that Tony Boucher, one of the original editors for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction had passed away.  Because of the vagaries of publication, it took this long for F&SF to solicit eulogies for Tony and get them in print.  But a finer tribute, I can't imagine.

Some of SF's greatest luminaries pay their respects: Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Randall Garrett, Philip K. Dick, Avram Davidson…but what impressed me even more was how many prominent women authors appear, too–Judith Merril, Mildred Clingerman, Margaret St. Clair, Miriam Allen DeFord.  It is fitting that so many of the fond rememberers are women; F&SF, particularly in the Boucher years, was by far the biggest SF publisher of woman-penned SFF.

Those were great days, the Boucher reign, when virtually every issue was a winner (sort of like the Gold days at Galaxy).  And half the stories we picked for our anthology of SF by women from 1953-57, some of the very best science fiction of the time, came from the pages of F&SF.

It is a shame that the appearance of these names from yesteryear evoke a pang of loss perhaps greater than the passing of Mr. Boucher.  Except for a few notable rallies, F&SF has been on a slow, inexorable downward trend since 1959, it's last superlative year.  This issue is no exception.  While it is not crammed with wholly unworthy material, nor is it anywhere near the standards it used to maintain.

Let me show you…


by Gahan Wilson

The House that Tony Built

The Devil and Jake O'Hara, by Brian Cleeve

I was less than enthusiastic about Brian's last story about Old Nick, in which Satan is cast out of hell along with a lowly sidekick when the souls of Hell unionize and go on strike.  This one is a step downward.

All Lucifer needs to break the strike is one measly member of the damned who will cross the picket lines and turn the power back on in the underworld.  He sets his eyes on an Irish lush who sells his soul for a bottle of quality whiskey.  His daughter adds a few amendments to the deal, but it doesn't really matter.  Ultimately, the sot goes to Hell, though the result is not what the Prince of Darkness wants.

There's just too much affected dialect, meandering, and oh-so-cleverisms.  What could be a workable premise is, instead, tedious.  And this is from someone who likes Deal-with-the-Devil stories.

Two stars.

Sos the Rope (Part 2 of 3), by Piers Anthony

[As with last time, Brian has graciously offered to stand in so I don't have to suffer through Anthony's latest "masterpiece"…]


by Brian Collins

To show once again that democracy is a flawed system, Piers Anthony is now a Hugo nominee! I can scarcely fathom some people’s enthusiasm for his debut novel Chthon getting nominated for Best Novel. His second novel, Sos the Rope, may redeem itself by the final installment, but the chances of it recovering are not high. There is one positive that can be said of this middle installment immediately: it’s short.

Not much happens here, and at only about 25 pages there isn’t much opportunity for Anthony to bless us with his worst habits, all involving women. To recap, it’s America a good century after a nuclear catastrophe, and two rogues, Sos and Sol, agree to a one-year partnership while the latter builds a tribe, one combatant at a time. The two are good friends and respect each other as warriors, but Sos is weaponless while Sol is unable to beget children of his own. Their friendship is complicated when Sol’s wife in name only, Sola, takes a strong liking to Sos and the two eventually have sex behind Sol’s back, leaving Sola pregnant with Sos’s child. This is unfortunate for everyone, including the reader. But by now the one-year contract has run out and Sos and Sol agree to part ways, with Sos returning to a crazy-run hospital where he grew up and where he learned to read.

Another positive thing I can say is that since Sola is virtually absent in this installment, and since Sol only appears at the beginning and end, we’re taken away from the plot to be given more of an explanation as to the workings of this post-apocalyptic world. It’s during his time away from Sol’s tribe that Sos finally decides to take on another weapon—this one the long heavy rope of the title. It’s about halfway through the novel that we finally get the weapon that would become part of the hero’s name. I still cannot properly describe how much I object to the naming system Anthony concocted here. It only gets more aggravating when Sos eventually returns to the tribe and finds that Sol now has a daughter named—wait for it—Soli. Sos and Sola still want each other but the latter refuses to give up Sol’s name and Sol himself refuses to give up his adoptive daughter. A fight in the battle circle, possibly to the death, ensues!

Anthony still cannot write compelling action scenes, and he still cannot write women above the level of depicting them as instigators of doom. A recurring implication here is that Sos and Sol would turn out fine, at worst going down different paths amicably, if not for Sola’s meddling. At the same time I was not offended so much this time.

If I turn my head on its side I might be able to stretch this installment to 3 stars, because it is a relatively painless experience and even mildly enjoyable in a few places, but that implies a tepid recommendation and I can’t lie to readers like that. Strong 2 out of 5 stars.


by Gideon Marcus

The Twelfth Bed, by Dean R. Koontz


by Gahan Wilson

This one takes place in a futuristic rest home, where the aged are confined in their last years under the beneficent but iron care of robot wards.  One day, a young accountant is checked into the home by mistake.  Try as he might, he can't get out…until he brews a revolt.

Koontz is a writer with a lot of promise, and he did manage a 4-star tale last month, but most of his stories have some kind of issue.  For this one, it's that the setup is a bit too contrived to really engage sympathy.  Maybe it's supposed to be satire, but again, it plays things to straight if that's the case.  Moreover, I read a similar (and better) story in Fantastic three years ago (Terminal, by Ron Goulart).

Anyway, three stars, and keep trying Dean!

2001: A Space Odyssey, by Samuel R. Delany and Ed Emshwiller

Two of my more favorite people provide reviews of Kubrick/Clarke's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.  They are interesting perspectives, one from a vivid fictioneer, and one from a gifted illustrator and artist. 

Chip (Delany) actually favored the original three-hour version that was cut within a week of its premiere, asserting that the irony of the HAL segment is sharper, and the disorientation of the weightlessness scenes settle in more viscerally.  I don't know if that kind of glacial pacing would have been an improvement, but on the other hand, the only time I felt even slightly restless when I watched the film was during the transit scene near the end, so maybe I missed out.

Emsh praises the effects and spends most of his time discussing them rather than the story, which he seems to find serviceable, if not stellar.

It's a better pair of reviews than, say, Robert Bloch's blistering affair (in which Bob calls the monolith a "cylinder" for some reason–sadly, I can't remember where I saw it.  A fanzine, I think.)

Four stars.

Death to the Keeper, by K.M. O'Donnell

This piece is book-ended by the protestations of a producer of a television program, disclaiming all responsibility for what ensued on his show, Investigations.  It seems he hired a has-been actor to re-enact the recent assassination of a public figure (presumably, echoing the murder of JFK).  The actor went meshuginnah and actually assured that he actually got killed in a sort of expiation of public sins.  We know this from the interminable, raving diary the actor left behind explaining his motivations.

I really don't know what to make of this story.  While I'm not the biggest fan of J.G. Ballard, I found his utlization of the Kennedy assassination (and other cultural touchstones) to be more effective.  Certainly more readable, despite the outré nature of his composition.  O'Donnell just seems like he's trying too hard.

And as with his earlier story satirizing war, it's clear he believes in writing ten words when two would suffice.

One star. 

A Sense of Beauty, by Robert Taylor

It is the last night of a short-lived affair, for the male half is leaving.  And not just away from his lover, but from Earth.  You see, he is an alien, sort of, a member of an extraterrestrial race of humans, and Earth is doomed to soon be consumed in a natural nova.  He was sent to our world to gather our finest art treasures, these to form a legacy of our lost race.

The tale is reasonably well executed, but its effectiveness is reduced both by the mawkishness of the scenario and that of its participants (the woman is hysterical, the man poor at communicating), as well as the fact that, again, this feels like a story I've read before, one that was done better.  I just can't remember which one it was…

Maybe Taylor, who is a novice, will realize his potential with a more original story next time out.  For now, three stars.

The Terrible Lizards, by Isaac Asimov

I was just thinking that I wanted a nice survey on what we know about dinosaurs in 1968, and the good Doctor has presented one.  As a bonus, he tell us some horrible things about Sir Richard Owens, a preeminent dino-hunter in the last century.

I enjoyed learning the greek roots of the various dinosaur names as well as the relationship between dinosaurs, mammals, birds, crocodiles, and turtles.

Four stars.

Soldier Key, by Sterling E. Lanier

Lanier is another newcomer, but this is his second story, and he seems to have found his footing very quickly.  This is the tale of a British Brigadier, the sort with decades of experiences and a knack for storytelling.  Apparently, Lanier has a whole treasure chest of stories that the Brigadier will tell, which we'll get to see as F&SF publishes them.

This particular piece involves the time the Brigadier went Caribbean island-hopping in a small boat with his friend, Joe, and two local seamen, Maxton and Oswald.  They learn of Soldier Key, a little spit of land inhabited by the queerest of ex-Britishers, dedicated to an unholy church and with an unhealthy adoration for giant hermit crabs.

The plot is Lovecraftian, but without the undercurrent of racism (indeed, the story is quite anti-racist).  I found it engaging, thrilling, and also satisfying.  Not just horror for horror's sake, but threaded with light–the light provided by decent human beings remaining human in the face of inhumanity.

Four stars.

Urban blight

Well, that wasn't all bad, thankfully.  Still, 2.4 is a pretty dismal aggregate.  Compare that to the 3.3 average for 1959.  Also, for all the female participation in the eulogizing, there are no fiction stories from women this issue.  In fact, there have been only six stories by women this entire year.

We could stand to go back to the '50s in more ways than one…


Tony Boucher, with friend, in 1954




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 20, 1968] Missed opportunities (April 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

A week is a long time in politics

The British Prime Minister Harold Wilson is fond of noting that a lot can change in just seven days.  In American politics, the last seven days have witnessed a lifetime of tumult.

It was just last year that President Johnson was polling in the 70s.  When Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, stand-offish, brainy, tepid in his commitment, took to the field last November, few took his insurgent, Anti-Vietnam-War campaign seriously.  Least of all, President Johnson, who did not even apply to be on the ballot in New Hampshire's primary, scheduled for March 12.

Then the Tet Offensive happened, giving lie to the idea of slow but steady progress in Southeast Asia.  The Credibility Gap between the populace and the President became a canyon, and when the dust had settled, Senator McCarthy had garnered just 230 votes less than LBJ in the year's first Democratic primary.

Just a few days latter, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who had last year demurred from running, referring anti-war supplicants in McCarthy's direction, decided to throw his hat in the ring.  The Democratic insurgency has become a full-on party civil war.

Johnson's complacence reminds me of Georges Ernest Boulanger, who in January 1889 was elected deputy for Paris and seemed on the verge of leading a personal coup against the Third Republic.  But on the fateful day of January 27, when the crowds roamed the streets and chanted his name, the would-be despot was nowhere to be found.  Turned out he had missed his moment, lost in the arms of his mistress rather than under arms with his supporters.

Who knows where all this is headed?  It just goes to show that even the most promising candidate can fail for lack of sufficient focus on the goal.  And this leads me into discussion of this month's issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.


by Bert Tanner

Burned batch

Have you ever been careless in the kitchen, not so much as to ruin dinner, but to render it far less palatable than it could have been?  All of the stories this month are missing something.  Their imperfection lies in missing some quality, or in some cases, an overcooking of sorts.  The result is a handful of ideas that could have been good in others' hands, or perhaps with more expert editing, or more time and care in production.

Flight of Fancy, by Daniel F. Galouye

After a long hiatus, the author of the brilliant Dark Universe returns to the pages of science fiction with this, probably the best piece of the issue.

Frank Proctor is an ad man, miserable in his career and his life, shackled to a beautiful woman who insists on tormenting him with affair after affair.  But he stubbornly refuses to divorce her, knowing it means financial ruin.  His only solace is his recurrent dreams in which he has the ability to fly.  He knows it is a stress reaction, but at least it is a moment's surcease.

A greater balm arises: at a company beach party, Frank falls asleep by the shore and immediately begins to soar in his dream.  While apparently still in slumber, he meets a lovely young lady, who also possesses the ability to fly.  Happily, she is still there when he wakes, and he assumes he must have been sleeping with his eyes open for her to infiltrate his sleep.

Of course, romance is inevitable.  But what of his Frank's scheming wife, and will the pictures she took of him and his new love put him over a barrel?  The ending is ultimately a happy one, if a bit pat.

This is a well-crafted and vivid story.  My only real issue is it feels a bit like wish-fulfillment, and I have to wonder if Galouye just went through a messy divorce.

Four stars.

Dead to Rights, by R. C. FitzPatrick

Crime boss Angelo Amadeo is rubbed out by his second.  When the instrument of Angelo's death turns stoolie, the second's devotees enlist a surgeon to recall Angelo to life, reasoning that if Angelo is not dead anymore, then he never could have been murdered.

The problem is, Angelo's body is brought back to life, but the soul inside is most definitely not his.  Instead, the reborn inhabitant preaches love of fellow man and everlasting life in the adoration of God.

You can see where this is going.

Too much effort is made to make this a "funny" piece, and the conclusion is obvious from the start.  Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Without a Doubt Dream, by Bruce McAllister

Antonio and his lovely wife, Alba, wake up one day to find their pine-ensconced villa suddenly surrounded by endless desert.  Worse, the insinuating sands are slowly creeping in, destroying all that they touch.  Antonio reasons that only his psychic ability is shielding them, but his doubt in the same talent is causing him to lose the battle.

McAllister describes this all in an earnest, somber tone, and he successfully captures the feeling of a pair of foreign protagonists.  However, the piece ends rather abruptly, and without a great deal of evolution of the story.  Moreover, the tone is a bit too one-dimensional.

Thus, for this third piece by this promising, 19-year old author, I give three stars.

Demon, by Larry Brody

Pinchok, a simple blue-collar worker who happens to be the denizen of another plane, is summoned to Earth in a pentagram by a would-be three-wisher.  When Pinchok turns out to be rather useless as a genie, the summoner decides maybe Pinchok should devote his talents to crime…for the benefit of the human, of course.

The concept of demons just being aliens in another dimension, and the art of demonology more a kind of kidnapping (with the implication that it might work the other direction, too, with humans becoming the demons) is an intriguing premise.

This tale, while pleasant enough, just doesn't do enough with it, however.  Three stars.

The Superior Sex, by Miriam Allen deFord

William, an astronaut, finds himself the newest member of an all-male harem, subject to an imperious and beautiful mistress.  He cannot recall how he got there, but he can recall being from a world dedicated to the principle (if not the assiduous practice) of equality between the sexes.  Thus, he rankles at his new role, and in an interview with his mistress, exclaims that he would rather die than live subjugated.

Of course, the truth of his situation is more complex than it first seems.

This is almost a great story.  DeFord, an ardent women's libber before the phrase was coined, has a promising message in this piece that is then muddled by its ending.  Too bad.

Three stars.

The Time of His Life, by Larry Eisenberg

One of science fiction's few writer/scientists offers up this tale of a middle-aged scientist resentful of forever being in the shadow of his Nobel-winning father, who covets his son's wastrel youth.  Said elder has now invented a kind of time travel, but it ages or youthens the traveler rather than sending him elsewhen.  In the end, both father and son get what they want.

A decent Twilight Zone-esque piece.  Three stars.

The Dance of the Sun, by Isaac Asimov

This month, the good Doctor discusses the phases of the inner planets with respect to the Earth.  He also notes that Dr. Richardson had done a similar piece for Analog a few months back.  Frankly, I was more impressed with Richardson's; I found Asimov's dry and difficult to follow.  And astronomy was my major!

Two stars.

Muscadine, by Ron Goulart

Mr. Muscadine is an android programmed to produce great books.  The secret to his success is the idiosyncrasies fundamentally coded into his electronic brain.  But as his eccentricities spin out of control, his agent finds himself conspiring with the android's programmer toward a drastic solution.

Goulart can write well, and he can also write funny.  He does neither here.  Two stars.

Final War, by K. M. O'Donnell

Finally, an anti-war piece in the vein of Heller's Catch 22.  It features a Private Hastings, a war-addled First Sergeant, and an indecisive Captain, whose unit spends three days a week capturing a forest, three days a week being driven from the forest, and Mondays resting.  What follows is the usual silliness of war, including friendly fire, endless red tape, and general insanity.

Harrison did it MUCH better in his Starsloggers.  This one meanders for way too long in a singular vein.  Two stars.

Expected results

With a limp offering like this, it's no surprise that this issue ends up on the wrong side of three stars.  It's a shame.  Joe/Ed Ferman's mag is often one of the frontrunners in the field.  But with a month like this, I suspect Mercury Publishing is going to have an upset when compared against its competitors for April 1968.

Luckily, science fiction is an endless primary, and a month is a very very long time.




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[July 8, 1967] Family lines (August 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Royal Families

The news always likes to focus on heads of state, especially when they are flashy or glamorous in some way.  From Princess Grace of Monaco to Crown Prince Akihito of Japan, these leaders are instant idols, somehow more compelling for having the reins (and reigns) of nations even though they presumably put their pants/skirts/obis on the same way as the common folk.

This week scored a triplet of spotlights.  For instance, in the island nation of Tonga, Taufaʻahau Tupou IV was crowned monarch in a ceremony that included a feast of 71,000 suckling pigs!  And that, by itself, tells you all you need to know about the current Jewish/Moslem population of Tonga…

Closer to home, El BJ, chief of the United States, has got his first grandson.  Patrick Lyndon Nugent is the newborn child of First Daughter Luci Nugent (neé Johnson).  There is no word, as yet, whether his toddler status will grant him deferment in the lastest draft lottery.

Finally, junta chairman General Nguyen Cao Ky, the flamboyant leader of South Vietnam since 1965, has decided not to run for President in the upcoming democratic (perhaps) September elections.  Premier Thiệu has been backed by the junta for the top role, instead, with Ky getting the Vice Presidential nod.  It's all a lot of musical chairs, anyway. After all, Ky has asserted that the only politician he admires is Hitler, which tells you all you need to know about the state of democracy in that country (and its current Jewish population…)

Watching Big Brother

Fred Pohl, one of the original Futurians and a pillar of the SF community, has had his hands full for nearly a decade.  After he took over the reins of Galaxy and the newly acquired IF from H. L. Gold, rather than sit on his laurels, he looked for new worlds to conquer.  Thus, Worlds of Tomorrow was launched in 1963.  But juggling three mags (plus a few reprint-only titles) was a challenging job, often resulting in uneven quality and occasionally right-out flubs.  For instance, last year's issue of Worlds of Tomorrow where the pages got all mixed up.

One would think, with WoT going out of publication, that things might be less hectic over at the Guinn Co. mags.  But, in fact, this month's issue of Galaxy is even more higgledy-piggledy, making reading a real challenge.


by Sol Dember

Which is a shame, because there's some quite good stuff in here (mixed with some mediocre stuff, to be sure).  Thankfully, you've got me to be your guide.  Just grab your compass, or you might get lost.

Hawksbill Station, by Robert Silverberg


by Virgil Finlay

One-way time travel is developed in the early 21st Century.  Since humanity is deathly afraid of creating paradoxes, the new portals are used by the totalitarian regime for just one purpose: shipping undesirables into the far past, a sort of Paleozoic Botany Bay.

Hawksbill Station is the one reserved for male subversives, established sometime in the late Cambrian (Silverberg repeatedly gives a date of two billion years ago, but of course, the Cambrian went from about 600-500 million B.C.) Our perspective is that of Barrett, the de facto head of the more than 100 settler/prisoners on the coast of what will one day be the Atlantic Ocean.  It is a community slowly decaying as its denizens age along with no greater purpose in life.  That is, until a new young convict arrives from the future, one who appears to be a government spy…

This is more of a travelogue than a story, and the ending comes on a bit abruptly.  But the characterization, the details, the setting are all so gripping that I tore through the novella in no time, despite the labyrinthine page distribution.

Four stars, and if it ever gets expanded into a novel, it could make five.

Angel, Dark Angel, by Roger Zelazny

In another future-set tale, society is maintained by a sort of corporate Angel of Death who, with the help of ten thousand teleporting assistants, brings death to citizens after they have made sufficient contribution to humanity (and are, perhaps, on the verge of being detrimental).

One noteworthy woman has cultivated the aesthetic race of spirules (depicted on the cover) as an antidote to the cold, mechanistic technology of her time.  A subordinate angel is sent to dispatch her, but things prove more complicated.

This is a middlin' Zelazny story, not an empty poetic suit like some, but not a near masterpiece like some of his other works.  Three stars.

We're Coming Through the Window, by K. M. O'donnell

Throwaway vignette about a fellow who keeps duplicating himself due to time travel and needs Fred Pohl's help to get out of it.

Cute.  Three stars.

Ginny Wrapped in the Sun, by R. A. Lafferty

Ginny seems to be a precocious four year old, but in fact, is actually just a baseline human, maturing at age 4 and going on as an upright monkey.  It's the rest of us who are evolutionary aberrations, having five times as many heartbeats that a creature our mass should have.  Inevitably, Lafferty suggests, we'll all go ape.

This tale doesn't really work, and it's a bit more impenetrable than Lafferty's usual fare.  Two stars.

For Your Information: A Pangolin Is a Pangolin, by Willy Ley

Ley's article on the strange mammal that is neither aardvark nor anteater nor armadillo is interesting, but not much more than you might get from a rather good encyclopedia entry.

Three stars.

9-9-99, by Richard Wilson

Two wizened old characters are determined to settle an old score since both have outlived their wagered death dates, the bet having been made back in the 30s.

Whether it is even possible for them to collect given the state of the Earth in the late '90s is another matter…

Good enough, I guess.  Three stars.


by Wally Wood

Travelers Guide to Megahouston, by H. H. Hollis


by Wally Wood

This is a very long, somewhat farcical account of a 21st Century evolution of the Astrodome, in which domes enclose whole cities.

Pretty dull stuff.  Two stars.

The Being in the Tank, by Theodore L. Thomas

An alien being materializes in the heart of a hellish hydrazine factory and demands to speak to the President.  But is he the real deal?

Forgettable, but inoffensive.  A low three stars.

Hide and Seek, by Linda Marlowe

A childhood game is adapted into a method of population control.  It has shock value, but little else.

Two stars.

The Great Stupids, by Miriam Allen deFord

Mad scientist makes everyone under 50 a mental moron, all in service of a rather lame joke at the end.  DeFord was once one of the stars of the genre, but her light has waned over the years.  Here's hoping she's a Cepheid variable and not a dying dwarf.

To Outlive Eternity (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


by Jack Gaughan

It is fitting that the final long piece of the issue is a sort of mirror image of Silverberg's novella in terms of strengths and weaknesses.  As we read in last month's installment, the ramscoop colony ship Leonora Christine suffered damage to its decelerators while traveling at near light speed on the way to Beta Virginis.  The solution: to accelerate to terrific velocities instead, plunging through the heart of the galaxy and out into the comparative emptiness of intergalactic space where repairs might be effected.

In this half, event after event conspires to force the Christine to travel ever faster and faster, ultimately spanning the lifespan of the universe and beyond in a matter of months.  The story is told as a series of problem-solving conversations spread out over the weeks, and each character largely exists solely to have these conversations.  Except for the women, of course, who are almost universally hysterics or hangers-on…except for the First Officer who ultimately whores herself out for the good of the crew.

In short, the setup and ideas are really neat, but its a plot outline, not a novel.  And where Poul Anderson does try to characterize, it's with quick stereotypes, and usually not agreeable ones.  As for setting, there really isn't one.  The crew of the Christine might as well be floating heads in blank spaces for all we really get to experience the ship.

Readable, but badly flawed.  Three stars.

Matrix Goose, by Jack Sharkey

Last up, some very familiar nursery rhymes as they might be rendered by robots–after the demise of humanity.  It's cute.  Three stars.


Perhaps my favorite example, art by Gray Morrow

Cross-eyed Kin

And so, Galaxy ends up a largely enjoyable, but unremarkable read — just under 3 stars in ranking.  Perhaps, with the demise of Worlds of Tomorrow further in the rear-view mirror, Pohl will be able to concentrate on (and concentrate the best stories into) his remaining mags.

On the other hand, perhaps he hasn't learned his lesson.  He's got a new magazine is coming out next month…



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