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Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 30, 1968] (Partial) success stories (May 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Chertona Dyuzhina (Baker's Dozen)

Luna 14 is the Soviet Union's latest space success story.  Launched April 7, it slipped into lunar orbit a couple of days later and began relaying data.  Per TASS, the spacecraft is still working fine, returning space weather reports and mapping the moon's hidden contours through the wobbling of its path due to lunar gravity.

No pictures have been returned, nor has there been any mention of an onboard camera.  However, since Luna 12 (launched October '66) did have one, it is generally believed that Luna 14 has one too–and it broke.  We'll probably never know.

Campbell's Seven

The latest issue of Analog is also not an unmixed bag.  However, it's still the best issue of the mag by a long shot since January.  That's something worth celebrating!


by Chesley Bonestell

Satan's World (Part 1 of 4), by Poul Anderson

David Falkayn is back!  The fair-haired protoge of Polesotechnic League magnate Nicholas van Rijn has been sent to Earth to find untold fortune.  More specifically, to inquire at Serendipity Inc., storehouse of all the universe's lore, for the quickest route between Point A (Falkayn) and Point B (wealth).  It's amazing what can be done with computers in the Mumblethieth Century!


by Kelly Freas

To do so, he puts himself at the mercy of the board of Serendipity, becoming a guest on their lunar estate.  His crewmates, Adzel the monastic saurian who talks like Beast from The X-Men, and Chee, who talks like Nick Fury from Sgt. Fury, stay behind…and worry.

With good reason, for Falkayn has been shanghaied, purportedly in love with one of the Serendipity board, but probably brainwashed or something.  Van Rijn gives Adzel and Chee the green light to investigate.

Falkayn stories are always somewhere in the lower middle for Anderson–serviceable but unexciting.  Once again, the author utilizes some cheap tricks to move things along, even calling them out in text in an attempt to excuse them (the long explanation of Serendipity's modus operandi; the sudden coincidence of a call by a critical character, etc.) None of the characters is particularly interesting, perhaps because of the extremely broad brush with which they're described, particularly Van Rijn.

Nevertheless, mediocre is pretty good for a Falkayn story, and I'm kind of interested.  Plus, Anderson's astronomy is always pretty good.

Three stars so far.

Exile to Hell, by Isaac Asimov


by Kelly Freas

This story is remarkable for being the first time Isaac has appeared in Analog (the magazine was Astounding when wrote for Campbell).  It is otherwise unremarkable–this vignette is written in '40s style, with a hoary "twist" ending, which was already incorporated as one of many elements in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Two stars.

Conquest by Default, by Vernor Vinge


by Kelly Freas

This one surprised me: alien anarchists, who by their law are forbidden to have polities larger than 10,000 people, take over a recovering post-nuclear Earth.  The Terrans are worried that they will suffer a fate similar to that of the Cherokees–annihilation, assimilation, relocation, or a combination of all three. 

Told from the point of view of one the conquerers, it very much seems like this will be one of those fatuous Campbellian tales where it turns out that free enterprise and libertarianism are the superior forces, and that the solution to "the aboriginal problem" has a neat and obvious solution.

But the story has a sting in its tail.

I had not expected to find an anti-capitalist, anti-libertarian screed in the pages of Analog, much less an acknowledgement of the American genocide…yet there it is!  And because the viewpoint character is an alien (and a comparatively sympathetic one, at that), the full impact of the story is saved for the end.

Four stars.

His Master's Vice, by Verge Foray


by Kelly Freas

Prox(y)ad(miral) Elmo Ixton lands his patrol ship, the sentient craft, Rollo, on the planet of Roseate on the trail of a rebel proxad who has gone to ground and recruited a network of criminal accomplices.  The agoraphobic and irritable Ixton ingratiates himself with very few people, but he does get his man…in time for the tables to be turned when the renegade takes over his ship.

Luckily, Rollo is not about to become an unwitting accomplice.

Not bad.  I didn't much like the Gestapo methods with which the "good guys" extracted the truth from suspects, though.

Three stars.

Fear Hound, by Katherine MacLean


by Kelly Freas

In late 20th Century New York, the city seethes with a despair so palpable, it almost seems the echoes of one person's broadcast pain.  Indeed, that is exactly what it is.  And the Rescue Squad, a corps of intellectual empaths, are on the case to find the source before s/he perishes in anguish, and in the process, telepathically pushes hundreds, maybe thousands more, to the brink of insanity or even death.

There's a lot of neat stuff in this one.  Obviously, you have to buy telepathy as plausible (something Campbell obviously does).  Given that, the idea of a group of people tracking down injured folk by their subtle telepathic emanations, and the unconscious mass effects these have on others, is pretty innovative. MacLean writes in the deft, immediate style that has made her one of SF's leading lights for two decades; the dreamy, choppy execution fits the circumstances of the story.

On the other hand, the bits about smart people essentially providing the brain for dozens of sub-average IQ types through unconscious telepathic links was something I found distasteful. There are also a few, lengthy explainy bits that could have been better worked in, I think.

A high three stars.

Project Island Bounce, by Lawrence A. Perkins


by Kelly Freas

The alien Ysterii arrive on an Earth not unlike that depicted in Conquest by Default.  Here, the crisis is that the blobby amphibians prefer the archipelagos of Asianesia to the dry expanses of Eurica.  This is causing a trade imbalance that will ultimately not only destabilize the world, but potentially lead to a cut-off of peaceful relations with the galaxy altogether.

Perkins doesn't tell the story very well, especially compared to Vinge's writing, and the "solution" is dumb. Two stars.

Skysign, by James Blish


by Leo Summers

Carl Wade, a Berkeley radical type finds himself trapped on an alien vessel floating above San Francisco.  As memory returns to his headachey brain, he recalls the he was the one "lay volunteer" among dozens of men and women chosen as ambassadors for their various technical expertise.

Now, Carl and a hundred-odd humans are prisoners in the gilded cage of the ship, offered all manner of food and a fair bit of recreation.  But they are nevertheless under the control of the alien crew, humanoids in skintight suits, with the ability to teleport and put the human captives to sleep at any time.

That is, until Carl, with the help of the Jeanette Hilbert, a brilliant meteorologist, figure out how to wrest control of the whole system from the aliens.  That's only half the story, since Carl and Jeanette have differing ideas on what to do with absolute power.

I liked this story, and Blish does a good job of putting us in the boots of a not-entirely savory character.  I find it particularly interesting that our radical protagonist is something of a jerk; I originally thought that this might be a subtle, anti-leftist dig, but Blish is an outspoken peacenik, so I think he just wanted to create a nuanced character.

Four stars.

Batting Average

Analog thus ends up at a reasonable 3.1 stars–not stellar, but certainly worth the 60 cents you pay for it (less if you have the subscription, of course).  That puts it at the bottom of the new mags (vs. IF and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5), but better than the reprints (Fantastic (2.7) and Amazing (2.0)).  The magazine average for the month was 3.1.

All told, if you took the four and five star stories of this month and squished them into one mag…well, you'd need one and a half. That amounts to about 40% of all new fiction this month. Again, not bad.

The sad news is only one story this month was woman-penned, making up for 4.3% of the newly published works.  And that one was MacLean's, meaning Analog wins this month's pink ribbon in a mass forfeit.

Well, I suppose you take your victories where you find them.  At least we ended up on the positive side of the ledger this month…




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 14, 1968] As Is (February 1968 Amazing)

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by John Boston

The February 1968 Amazing, the second under Harry Harrison’s editorship, displays two themes on its face, both noted last issue.  The first is puffery: this issue says WORLD’S LEADING SCIENCE-FICTION MAGAZINE at the top of the cover, which also boasts “Katherine MacLean’s outstanding new novelet,” and the table of contents lists this “New Outstanding Novelet,” a “Classic Novelet,” and a “Special Novelet.” The second theme is protesting-too-much discomfort with the mostly-reprint fiction policy, evidenced by the prominent display of “New” on the cover: MacLean’s “Outstanding New Novelet,” “New Features,” “New Article,” “New Frank Herbert Novel.”


by Johnny Bruck

But there’s a third, more substantive theme: commendable initiative in the small amount of space left open by the reprint policy.  The “New Features” listed on the contents page include the first of a promised series of articles on the “Science of Man,” by Leon E. Stover, an anthropologist now at the Illinois Institute of Technology.  The book review column features a long and interesting essay-review by Fritz Leiber of a translation of a book by French author Claude Seignoll, with comments about the state of Gothic fiction generally.  (See below concerning both of these.) There is also the London Letter, said to be the first of a series to include a Milan Letter, a Munich Letter, etc.  This one is by Harrison’s pal Brian Aldiss, and it amounts to an extemporaneous stand-up routine which probably took Aldiss 20 minutes to write.  Parts of it are amusing.

These items are all touted by Harrison in his editorial, but they are not his main matter; the editorial is titled Amazing and the New Wave, and its first half amounts to a disappointingly smarmy exercise in having it both ways:

“There is no New Wave in science fiction.  Or, to put it another way, Amazing is the New Wave. . . .  Science fiction is the new wave that washed into existence in 1926 with the first issue of the magazine. . . .

“To me there are only two kinds of science fiction: the good and the bad. . . .  It is exactly what it says it is, and it is what I happen to be pointing to when I say the magic words ‘science fiction.’ And that is all the definition you are going to get out of me.

“The present New Wave is therefore two things: it is bad SF and it is good SF.  When bad it should be consigned to the nether cellars of our building with the rest of the cobwebbed debris of the years.  When it is good there are plenty of rooms it can slip into and feel comfortable.”

So Harrison spends a page on a subject of current controversy while ostentatiously saying nothing of substance about it.  This banal babble from an otherwise obviously intelligent editor is presumably his way of trying to ingratiate himself and the magazine with everyone while offending no one—a bad idea that will fool nobody and which one hopes is not repeated.

Meanwhile, the actual fiction content of the magazine, except for the above-average serial, is more or less what it has been since the departure of Cele Lalli and the advent of Sol Cohen.

Santaroga Barrier (Part 3 of 3), by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert’s serial Santaroga Barrier, begun under the previous editor, concludes in this issue, and exits honorably.  To begin, the protagonist Gilbert Dasein, who teaches psychology at Berkeley, is driving to the isolated and reclusive California town Santaroga, hired by an investment company wanting to know why their chain stores were forced out of town.  In Santaroga, there is no reported juvenile delinquency or mental illness.  Cigarettes are purchased only by transients.  Nobody moves away; servicemen always return there upon discharge; and outsiders find no houses for rent or sale.  Jenny, Dasein’s not-so-old flame, moved back to Santaroga when she finished at Berkeley, telling him she couldn’t live anywhere else.  (The profs fooling around with the students?  Shocking!) There’s a dominant local industry, the Jaspers Cheese Cooperative, but it doesn’t produce for the outside market—the stuff “doesn’t travel.” Also, Dasein is the third investigator sent to Santaroga, the two predecessors having sustained accidental deaths.


by Gray Morrow

These cards dealt, Dasein arrives at the town’s sole inn, where he tries to call his handler in Berkeley, but the line goes out, and stays out afterwards.  He is then overcome in his room by a leak from an old gas jet, and rescued just in time.  Jenny, alerted to his presence, and seemingly very happy about it, shows up with breakfast.  It turns out she never received the letters he sent her after her return.

Dasein quickly learns that everyone seems to know who he is.  He encounters new manifestations of the town’s insularity.  Nobody has TV, except for a hidden room full of people whose job it is to monitor it.  There’s a local newspaper, but it’s subscription only, and its concept of reporting the news is unusual: “Those nuts are still killing each other in Southeast Asia.” All commerce appears to be local.  Dasein also learns that Jaspers is not just a brand name, but a substance, one which is near-omnipresent in food and drink.  And he notices a “vitality and a happy freedom” in the movements of people on the streets.

Meanwhile, the Jaspers (which is referred to later as “consciousness fuel”) is having an effect on him (“he had never felt more vital himself”), which he doesn’t entirely grasp.  He’s getting a little deranged, though hardly without cause, since he also keeps having near-fatal accidents—tripping over a carpet and being narrowly saved from a three-floor fall; a kid absent-mindedly loosing an arrow that barely misses him; a garage car lift collapsing; a waitress unknowingly poisoning his coffee; and more.  As for his derangement, shortly after the carpet incident, still suffering from a sprained shoulder, he takes a dangerous nighttime climb down into the Jaspers factory, clambering down and through its ventilation shafts despite his injury. Eventually he is questioning his own sanity.

It becomes apparent that consumption of Jaspers has created some sort of shared consciousness among the Santarogans, though Herbert remains vague about exactly how it works.  The people responsible for his “accidents” (poisoning his food, shooting an arrow at him) seem not to have consciously intended harm, but to have unknowingly acted out the hostility and fear of the Jaspers collectivity.  (Monsters from the id!) Jenny hysterically acknowledges that phenomenon: “Stay away from me! I love you!  Stay away!”

Dasein also begins to see some less attractive features of the Jaspers-permeated community.  On his first visit to the Jaspers factory, he finds that Jenny—trained as a clinical psychologist—works on the inspection line. Leaving, he sees through a door left open a line of people with their legs in stocks doing menial work, “oddly dull-eyed, slow in their actions.” He later learns these are the people who flunked the Jaspers initiation—about one in 500.  After wondering where all the children are, he finds them working in the greenhouses, marching and chanting.  Dr. Piaget, the designated spokesperson for the Santaroga way, says: “We must push back at the surface of childhood. . . .  It’s a brutal, animate thing.  But there’s food growing. . . .  There’s educating.  There’s useful energy.  Waste not; want not.”

At this point, Herbert’s thriller has become a philosophical novel, or at least a novel about philosophies.  Dr. Piaget elaborates on Santaroga’s child rearing practices, which reflect Santaroga’s departure from the usual human understandings about everything: “We take off the binding element.  Couple that with the brutality of childhood?  No!  We would have violence, chaos. . . .  We must superimpose a limiting order on the innate patterns of our nervous systems.” Hence, child labor; got to get 'em disciplined early."

Dr. Piaget continues: “We know the civilization culture-society outside is dying.  They do die, you know.  When this is about to happen, pieces break off from the parent body.  Pieces cut themselves free, Dasein.” And Dasein acknowledges the obvious: “Dasein knew then why he’d been sent here.  No mere market report had prompted this. . . .  He was here to break this up, smash it.” Piaget again: “Contending is too soft a word, Dasein.  There is a power struggle going on over control of the human consciousness.  We are a cell of health surrounded by plague. . . .  This isn’t a struggle over a market area. . . .  This is a struggle over what’s to be judged valuable in our universe.”

There is more denunciation of “outside” (another character says, with elaboration, “it’s all TV out there”), and much ambivalence on Dasein’s part about both outside and Santaroga, resolved in a final confrontation when the man who sent him to Santaroga comes looking for him.

This is a pretty solid SF novel, much better than Herbert's previous serial The Heaven Makers, with an interesting if somewhat vague idea capably revealed through a plot dense with incident, though there are minor points where things don’t hang together well.  Though talky, it’s much less of a turgid slog than some of his other work (Ahem, Dune).  The hive-mind idea is not entirely original, but Herbert takes a different angle and asks different questions than some of his predecessors.  In fact, the novel can be viewed almost as the anti-More Than Human—do you really want to give up your individuality and privacy for the comfort of such close and inescapable community?  Especially when you might end up acting violently without even realizing it?  Four stars, with a couple of planetoids thrown in.

Note the portentousness of some of the names in this novel.  An SF fan’s first thought about Gilbert Dasein is likely that it’s homage or satirical swipe at Gilbert Gosseyn, protagonist of van Vogt’s The World of Null-A.  But that’s probably wrong.  “Dasein” is German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s term for existence, as it is experienced by human beings.  Karl Jaspers is another German philosopher.  Jean Piaget is a Swiss psychologist famous for his studies of child development, some of whose work looks as much like philosophy as psychology.  A student of philosophy, which I am not, might make something of these names, but I’d suggest that the novel works well enough without that kind of gloss.

The Trouble with You Earth People, by Katherine MacLean


by Jeff Jones

Katherine MacLean contributed a number of incisive stories to the SF magazines from 1949 into the early ’50s (Defense Mechanism, —And Be Merry, Incommunicado, Contagion, etc.), and a few since then (mainly Unhuman Sacrifice).  Her novelet The Trouble with You Earth People isn’t on that level; it’s an amusing and mildly bawdy story of cultural misunderstanding between doggish alien visitors, whose understanding of humanity is based on watching television, and an easily scandalized elderly scientist.  It reads like it could have used another draft.  Three stars.

Remote Control, by Walter Kateley

To the reprints.  Walter Kateley’s Remote Control (from Amazing, April 1930), opens with the narrator’s friend Kingston showing him around a large construction project.  It is being carried out by animals—whales and sharks carrying heavy freight, apes and elephants unloading it, and as for the typing and computation required for such a project: “The machines were being operated at lightning speed, not by lady typists, as one might expect, but by bushy-tailed gray squirrels!”


by Hans Wessolowski

The author now flashes back to an earlier time, when Kingston has joined the narrator on his family farm, and assists with his observations of ants.  The two are puzzled by the ants’ efficiency in carrying out cooperative tasks without anything much resembling a brain and with no indication of how their activities are coordinated.  Then an accidental mixture of buttermilk and cedar oil gets on one of their lenses, and—revelation!  Now they can see tiny bright lines of energy leading from the ants back into the nest, which when followed to their source reveal a tiny brain that is apparently coordinating all their activity.  The possibilities are obvious, and it’s a short hop from these naturally manipulated ants to whales and elephants working construction, with squirrels on typewriters in the office, and human puppet masters somewhere off premises.

This one is amusing at first, but quickly gets tedious, since the story consists mostly of Kingston and narrator lecturing each other, with the narrator at one point reading aloud a passage from his favorite entomology text.  Fortunately this “novelet” runs only 18 pages of large print and is over quickly.  Two stars.

"You'll Die Yesterday!", by Rog Phillips

Rog Phillips’s “You’ll Die Yesterday!” (from the March 1951 Amazing) is a piece of yard goods by one of Ray Palmer’s stable of hacks—but a pretty capable one.  Phillips published some 44 stories in a little over six years before this one, mostly in Amazing and Fantastic Adventures, and clearly has the knack to meet Palmer’s famous editorial demand to “gimme bang-bang.” Protagonist Stevens, author of a successful book, is giving a lecture; an audience member asks a question but is shot before Stevens can answer; the killer runs out of the auditorium but inexplicably disappears.  Before the cops arrive, Stevens swipes some papers carried by the decedent, Fred Stone, and shows by home carbon-dating that they are from the future.  Also, Stone was carrying a “T.T.” permit (figure it out) and a printed copy of Stevens’s speech, which was extemporaneous, so it could only have been prepared later from a transcript.  Next day, Stevens’s girlfriend sees Stone, alive, on the street.  Turns out his body is missing from the morgue.


by Julian S. Krupa

More developments come thick and fast and there’s a revelation at the end which actually doesn’t resolve much, but might seem to if the reader wasn’t paying close attention, as I suspect was the case with much of the Palmer Amazing’s readership.  So it’s a clever if insubstantial riff on the time paradox theme.  Three stars for good workmanship.

The Great Invasion of 1955, by David Reid

The Great Invasion of 1955, by David Reid, from the October 1932 Amazing, is another tedious old story in which the Japanese are invading the United States and are vanquished by new technology based on now out-of-date science.  It may be of interest to those interested in speculative helicopter design.  Otherwise, one star.

Turnover Point, by Alfred Coppel

Alfred Coppel, author of Turnover Point (Amazing, April-May 1953), helped fill the SF pulps and lower-echelon digests with mostly forgettable material from the late ‘40s until the mid-‘50s, when he disappeared from the genre, briefly reappearing in 1960 with the well-received post-nuclear war novel Dark December.  This story is a bucket of cliches—a Bat Durston, i.e. a displaced Western—which is a surprise, since it appeared in the first issue of the magazine’s brief flirtation with high pay rates and higher quality content.  But here it is, alongside Heinlein, Sturgeon, and Bradbury.  A sample:

“The Patrol was on Kane’s trail and the blaster in his hand was still warm when he shoved it up against Pop Ganlon’s ribs and made his proposition.

“He wanted to get off Mars—out to Callisto.  To Blackwater, to Ley’s Landing, it didn’t matter too much.  Just off Mars, and quickly.  His eyes had a metallic glitter and his hand was rock-steady.  Pop knew he meant what he said when he told him life was cheap.  Someone else’s, not Kane’s.”


by Ed Emshwiller

The bad guy hiring Pop’s battered old spaceship turns out to be the one who killed Pop’s son, a Patrol officer who “was blasted to a cinder in a back alley in Lower Marsport.” Pop knows Kane is going to kill him after “turnover point”—the point at which the spaceship is turned around (a maneuver accomplished with a flywheel) so its business end faces the destination for deceleration and landing.  But Pop has the last laugh—he didn’t turn the ship around to decelerate for landing, but made a full 360 degree turn, so it continues on towards the outer reaches of the solar system, where Kane can starve, suffocate, and go crazy after it is too late to do anything about it.  Whoopee!  Two stars, barely, since it’s at least capably written for what it is.

Science of Man: Neanderthals, Rickets and Modern Technology, by Leon E. Stover

Prof. Leon Stover’s article suggests that the Neanderthals died out because they wore clothes, shielding themselves from sunlight and therefore from vitamin D.  Vitamin D deficiency causes rickets, which has serious enough consequences to affect evolutionary success.  Clothing was the Neanderthals’ technological solution to the glaciation of their habitat; what saved them then killed them off.  Vitamin D absorption, or lack of it, also accounts for the distribution of races: dark skin absorbs less than light skin, so dark-skinned peoples flourish in the tropics where there’s a surfeit of sunlight, while light-skinned people dominate at higher latitudes.  The moral: people must assess the consequences of their technological development, as the Neanderthals failed to, and we need a lot more technically trained people than we’ve got.

It all seems plausible and is lucidly enough written.  Is he right?  Beats me.  Three stars.

The Future in Books

Ordinarily I don’t rate the book review columns, but this one is unusual, containing Fritz Leiber’s review of French writer Claude Seignolle’s The Accursed: Two Diabolical Tales.  Leiber traces the current revival of “Gothic” fiction, recognizable by the paperback covers depicting an anxious-looking woman, with a large house in the background displaying a single lighted window, and notes the less formulaic older books being reprinted under cover of this new wave (excuse the expression) of yard goods. 

This brings us to Leiber’s typology of “the true Gothic or supernatural-horror story,” of which there are two flavors: “Can such things be?” and “Such things are!  So let’s go whole hog!” He continues: “The first type of story aims to make a sensitive, intelligent reader question for a deliciously scary moment the stable, science-proved foundations of the world in which he trusts.  The second provides a feast of grue for those who relish such banquets.” Seignolle’s two novellas (one featuring a young pyrotic, the other a young lycanthrope) are firmly in the second camp, as Leiber shows by judicious description and quotation.

This is all lively and informative, above and beyond the usual book review, though Leiber disappointingly fails to describe where Seignolle’s work fits into the fantastic tradition (or lack of it) in his native France.  Also, the book is introduced by Lawrence Durrell, a rather large noise in contemporary literature after his Alexandria Quartet; Leiber does not mention what Durrell has to say about the book, or about Seignolle generally.  So, three stars; a good piece that should have been better.  (And this rating in no way reflects the other review here, a distasteful hit job on Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light bylined “Leroy Tanner,” well known as a pseudonym of Harrison’s.)

Summing Up

So, a good novel (though one begun under the previous regime), a decent new story, the usual uneven bunch of reprints, and some stirrings of life in the non-fiction departments.  I’m not sure that adds up to “promising”—more like “steady as she goes”—so we’ll have to leave it with a version of the baseball fans’ lament: “wait till next issue.”




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 28, 1966] Scapegoats, Revolution and Summer Impulse and New Worlds, July 1966

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

This month I am trying to be more optimistic about the British magazines. Now that the sun is out, why wouldn’t I be? But to be honest, the last couple of issues have rather underwhelmed on the whole. That’s not to say that there haven’t been great moments but much of the material has seemed – well, predictable.

To Impulse first.

An interesting cover this month, with polymath and Associate Editor Mr. Keith Roberts illustrating the last part of his Pavane series. Where does he find the time?

After a month off, Kyril’s Editorial this month continues his recent ruminating that he doesn’t know what to write about as an Editor. It’s a sadly oft-repeated theme, and makes me think that Kyril really has lost interest in the job. The only thing of note here is that Harry Harrison’s latest novel, Make Room! Make Room! (recently reviewed by my colleague Jason HERE for Galactic Journey) will appear here from next month, which I am looking forward to.

Of more interest, the Editorial is followed by an essay by the “Guest Editorial” writer from last month, Harry Harrison. With that in mind, it shouldn’t be too surprising that the “Critique” (as it is called) rather reads as if it should be the Editorial rather than an essay. It is the first of a regular monthly essay, in which (as Kyril puts it) “…untrammelled by fear or favour, he will praise the best, trounce the worst, review current science / fantasy / fiction and cope with any reader’s letter which strikes a spark in his great soul.”

In other words, Harry is doing what an editor should do. As to be expected, the article, once again, makes good points about the state of British sf and the need to grow up, but it is nothing new. I like the fact that Harry has asked for definitions of sf, with the winner being offered a year’s free subscription. (This, of course, assumes that Impulse will last for at least a year!)

Let’s move on. To this month’s actual stories.

Pavane: Corfe Gate, by Keith Roberts

The fifth story from Roberts’ alternate History takes us back to a place we visited last month – Corfe Castle, which last time was the home of Robert, Lord of Purbeck and where Robert took Anne Strange. This time the hints of change made before, suggesting that we may be on the way to revolution, seem to have come true.

Several decades in the future, Corfe Gate continues this story of rebellion and change by telling the story of Lady Eleanor, who refuses to pay the tithe demanded by the Roman Catholic Church because the people of Corfe Castle would starve in order to do so. As King Charles is away in the New World, this leads to Lord Henry of Rye and Deal turning up on her doorstop ready to fight on behalf of Pope John of Rome. Eleanor refuses to yield, believing that King Charles would never allow his people to suffer. The revolution spreads, until King Charles arrives at Corfe Castle and the matter is resolved.

Around this story, much of the narrative tells us about Eleanor’s life and how she got to this point.

As the final part of this series, this is where the different elements seen so far come together. Corfe Gate is really the story of Eleanor, the daughter of Robert and Anne Strange, who were in the last story. In Corfe Gate we see the power wielded by Parliament and the Roman Catholic Church, of whom we found out about in the second story, with the semaphore system of the Royal Signallers who we found out about in the first story also playing a part. We even have the brief return of the Lady Anne, the steam tractor of the second part.

But most of all we read of a young woman in a patriarchal world determined to do their best for her people, against the forces of conservatism and inertia equally determined to crush her rebellion before it becomes something bigger.

It is a story where we are undoubtedly meant to feel for Eleanor, and it is to the writer’s credit that I did. Corfe Gate is a powerful story that caps the series wonderfully. 4 out of 5.

The OH in Jose by Brian W Aldiss

Once again, where Harry Harrison goes, Brian Aldiss follows – not the first time the two have appeared in the same issue of New Worlds or Impulse/Science Fantasy. Can we be sure they are not the same person? Nevertheless, the story is a typical piece of Aldiss whimsy – that is to say, on the mildly humorous side but with a point to make.

A number of travellers make up wildly different stories about the origin of the word “Jose” carved into a rock, before the truth is revealed. A much-needed lighter story after the darkness of Roberts’s Pavane. Another that has already been published, however. 3 out of 5.

The White Monument by Peter Redgrove

A new author. This one is subtitled “A Monologue” and is the tale of a man who, annoyed by the sound coming from his house’s chimney, creates a monument for his wife who is entombed by his efforts to fill the noisy chimney with concrete. Lyrical and experimental yet as silly as it sounds. Another story that has appeared elsewhere before – this time as a radio play on the BBC’s Light Programme. 2 out of 5.

The Beautiful Man, by Robert Clough

Another new author. Three goatherders discover skeletons in a cave, and a crucifix. A twist in the tale story that suggests that this is a post-apocalyptic world. Pretty predictable. 3 out of 5.

Pattern As Set by John Rankine

The return of an author last seen in the May 1966 issue, with the rather underwhelming story of The Seventh Moon. This time I was slightly more impressed – perhaps the shorter length plays more to John’s strengths. Mark Bowden is a pilot on the Cyborax, a spaceship on a hundred-years-long journey, where one at a time members of the crew are unfrozen to do their duty. Borden spends most of the beginning of the story lusting after teammate Dena. The story becomes more interesting when Bowden tries to defrost the next crew member to find that they have died. The end is a disappointment, in the manner of “so…it was all a dream!” 3 out of 5.

A Hot Summer’s Day by John Bell

What's this? A story about Summer, published in Summer? We’ll be getting Christmas stories in December next!

A new author, but this is a satisfactory enough tale of a day in a future London, where getting to work via private or public transport is a significant challenge. It begins with descriptions where traffic is at a standstill, riots on the London Underground are common, people are invariably late for work and the resulting stress levels make London a miserable place to be. As if this wasn’t enough, the story then piles on descriptions of overcrowded sweatiness and grumpy employers, to the point where the story ends with parts of London being razed to the ground by rioters. Seems a little extreme, but rather inevitable as the story ramps things up to its ending. It was fun to read of Tube stations being places of chaos and disorder. One for the commuters, I guess. 3 out of 5.

The Report by Russell Parker

Another new author, but a story of little consequence. Written in the form of a report, it tells of a post war world where thirteen months ago nations released nuclear weapons on each other and wiped out most cities. So far, so predictable.

The point of the story seems to be that the war seems to have started by accident – not with an attack on cities like London (if there’s any of London left after the previous story, of course!) but with a meteor strike on Norfolk! (For non-British readers, Norfolk is an area of flat, mainly rural countryside which I’m tempted to describe as a British equivalent of the Florida Everglades, if cooler.) 3 out of 5.

Hurry Down Sunshine by Roger Jones

By contrast to the chaos of A Hot Summer’s Day, Hurry Down Sunshine is a story of a supremely organised future, from another new author. In this future, the clinically clean world feels deliberately Kafka-esque, and is not helped by the point that the efficient government is run from the sidelines by the rather Dr. Strangelove-like Dr. Holzhacker, who sacrifices everything in the name of efficiency.

Towards these ends, in order to reduce mental instability in a country free of crime, Smith is promoted from anonymous office drone to be the nation’s scapegoat (an Official National Criminal), upon whom all grievances can be laid. Said scapegoat is placed on the much-maligned and mostly unused national railways, the last in existence in the world. In this manner, Smith not only fulfills his duty in comparative safety (for no one rides the train to vent their frustrations on the scapegoat) and the railways get an extra lease on life — after all, they can't be shut down while they have such an important customer on board. Our randomly selected stooge rides the rails for eighteen months, during which a Report is produced which includes Smith’s unpublished letters to The Times newspaper. This becomes a bestseller. As Smith pulls into a station, a mob of angry citizens arrived determined to make Smith pay for his ‘crimes’. But they assail the wrong train, and Smith, rather hurt at not being able to fulfill his scapegoat duty, is whisked to Bletchley.

Subdivided into sections like a J. G. Ballard story, this is another satire, like Ernest Hill’s story Sub-liminal in last month’s New Worlds – but better. It is good fun, although still rather silly. 3 out of 5.

Summing up Impulse

Well, I’m pleased to type that I generally enjoyed this one – more than last month’s anyway. Admittedly, it’s not perfect. Whilst I’m pleased to see new writers given their moment in the sun alongside the big-hitters, some of the material (again) shows inexperience and banality or even extreme and bizarre mood changes. They lack the subtlety of quality writing, although they are good efforts overall. With the exception of Corfe Gate, there’s nothing really memorable here, although they’re all entertaining enough.

And with that, onto issue 164 of New Worlds, hoping that it is better.

The Second Issue At Hand

Like last month’s Impulse, the Editorial in New Worlds is a Guest Editorial. Instead of Moorcock this month, we get his friend J. G. Ballard making another appearance. (Is it Editor’s Holiday time, I wonder? What is going on?)

Ballard being Ballard, this is not an Editorial as such but a review of a film – La Jetee, directed by Chris Marker. (Why this couldn’t be later in the issue as a review, rather than as the Editorial is a mystery.) Anyway, Ballard loved it – unsurprisingly, as it appears to be a film tailored to Ballard’s own interests. It is entirely made up of black-and-white photographs but put on film. The film is bold and experimental – and even has an sf theme.

Might be worth a look, but not for everyone – rather like Ballard's own writing!

To the stories!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

In Passage of the Sun, by George Collyn

George is a regular contributor to the magazines, both as a writer and as a critic/reviewer. This has an intriguing first line – “You can have no idea of what it was like in those last days of Earth.” – before settling into post-apocalyptic Space Opera shenanigans. Our ‘hero’ is taken from the overcrowded domes of Earth in the ongoing war between humans and the lizard-like Throngians, and is then put into a war not only between the humans and the Throngians but also a political battle between the King and other factions.

In some ways In Passage Of The Sun was old-school, old style Space Opera, in that it is really old ideas rehashed into something not terribly new.

The main difference I guess is where an old story of this type would try to show Humanity succeeding against all the odds, this one suggests little but backstabbing, meaningless slaughter and misery. The first part of the story seems to revel in grime, sweat and dead bodies – a typically British dystopian story! It did get a little better after that, but as the lead story of an issue, it is wildly uneven. I felt that it really wasn’t cover story material.

Which rather makes me worry about the quality of the rest of the issue. Are we scraping the barrel a bit, here?

A low 3 out of 5.

The Other, by Katherine Maclean

The return of an author who has had stories steadily published from the 1950’s. The Other is the story of Joey, who we discover is an artificially constructed being, and “The Other”, a voice inside Joey’s head. After a psychiatric meeting with Doctor Armstrong and Joey we find that The Other may be more than we at first expected. As expected from a veteran writer, the story is short but memorable, even if it feels like only part of a bigger story. It’s not Maclean’s best but it stands out in this issue. 4 out of 5.

Sanitarium, by Jon DeCles

A newcomer to me, though I understand he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction before. A strange story about a strange future, where even sexual satisfaction is provided by the State. It is mainly about people in the Sanitarium, who are generally unpleasant. Nearly three-hundred-year-old Romf Brigham is invited by his strange neighbours to a party to celebrate Mrs. Christopher Carson’s absence for six months and becomes involved in the investigation. The story loses momentum though as we are told from the start where she is. An attempt at satire in a decadent future, which seems to celebrate decadent excess and languor. I found it pretty unpleasant. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Way to London Town, by David Redd

Nancy arrives in Sacaradown, observes the people there and meets Walther, who collects “strange people”, who Nancy seems to be. He becomes obsessed with finding out more about eleven-year-old Nancy, and Nancy says that she wants to collect enough money to visit places earlier in time, like London before the war that destroyed it. It’s a clumsy plot device to allow the writer to fill in background. We discover that Nancy is a mutant who can travel through time at will.

I suspect that this will be the first of a series, rather like Keith Roberts’ Anita was. This shares some similarities to those stories – an unusual outsider, seemingly innocent, for example. But whereas Anita was often charming, in places this unsubtle story comes across as creepy and odd. It gets better towards the end, but by then the damage is done. 2 out of 5.

The Outcasts, by Kris Neville

One of those lyrical, allegorical stories that Moorcock loves. This one is about a Los Angeles, full of pushers and strange women. No real story to it, the writer seems to be more interested in writing interesting prose and create vivid imagery rather than have the narrative go somewhere. Not for me, I’m afraid. 2 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The God Killers (Part 2 of 2) by John Baxter
I said last month that I thought that John Baxter’s story was too provocatively titled, but that I enjoyed it. I was even more interested to read further when last month’s New Worlds heralded this part of John Baxter’s story as “bizarre”.

A quick reminder – we were told last issue of the planet of Merryland, where the people actively worship Satanism. Young David Bonython finds in his farm’s attic forbidden technology – a matter transmitter from a heretic age whose storage threatens death or torture for David, his friends and family.

Through this arrived Hemskir, a rogue Proctor wanted for offences against Federal law.

The story finished last time with David spending the night with his stepsister Samantha Padgett at some kind of Christian ritualistic orgy. When David returned to the Padgett farm the next day, he found Hemskir dead and the farm on fire.

The farm has been set ablaze by the Examiners, the local justice force who have been tipped off by Elton Penn, the leader of the Christian group. David rescues Samantha at the farm, who goes with him, albeit reluctantly, to the city of New Harbour. There they are captured by Penn, but escape. David realises that Penn is searching for the place of origin of the green crystal that is so rare, but by looking at a map he and Samantha, now lovers, sail to a research station where they find a lake of the stuff. The green crystal is malleable to their will – basically if they can think it, the crystal will turn into it – solid, liquid or gas. Penn has followed them there in a spaceship and there is the inevitable showdown.

There’s some nice descriptions of the world in decay here and some nice ideas of ancient forbidden technology that I liked, but to counterbalance this there’s also some honking howlers in prose – try “She began to cry, savagely, as if forcing grief out of her like vomit”, or even “Love and the water turned them into beautiful animals…” All in all, despite the attempts to make it worth my reading, The Godkillers is not very surprising if you’ve read Ballard’s Crystal World, nor actually very good. Disappointing. A low 3 out of 5.

The Failure of Andrew Messiter, by Robert Cheetham

Cheetham’s first story here since A Mind of My Own in December 1965. It’s another fairly predictable story of scientific experiments in inner space. Dr. Messiter and his team of Wendy Lardner and Bill Maine conduct an experiment where, in order to prove that paranormal powers such as telekinesis exist, Messiter agrees to become what is basically a brain in a body, not connected to any of the traditional five senses. This is so that the latent powers without the usual senses working can then be goaded into action and show themselves.

Over the next year, whilst love blooms between Lardner and Maine, there are no signs of life in Messiter. Maine decides to do what he and Messiter agreed they would do if there was no activity and injects a poison into the body, leaving the couple to go and pursue their affair further. The twist in the story is that Messiter is alive and aware and only just beginning to show the means of contact they wanted before he dies. It’s readable, but not without flaws, such as the awfully awkward romance. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews

A lot of reviews again this month. As ever, the reviews are colourful and entertainin,. prompted by the proliferation of new material, anthologies and reprints. As well as his Editorial/review earlier in the issue, J.G. Ballard contributes reviews of two books, Surrealism by Patrick Waldberg and The History of Surrealist Painting by Marcel Jean. As they clearly echo some of Ballard’s own ideas in his version of sf, they are, unsurprisingly, both liked.

Equally predictably, James Colvin (aka Mike Moorcock) then positively reviews in some detail J. G. Ballard’s The Crystal World, which I’ve already mentioned this month but was also serialised here a while back.

Hilary Bailey (Mrs. Moorcock to you and me) tackles the briefer reviews, covering Harry Harrison’s Plague From Space, also recently serialised in New Worlds (she likes it more than I did), Rick Raphael’s Code Three, William Tenn’s collection Time in Advance and The Eighth Galaxy Reader, all of which get generally positively reviews. However, she finds Poul Anderson’s Three Worlds to Conquer impossible to finish and dislikes his Virgin Planet enormously.

R. M. Bennett writes an essay on satirical sf, which seems to echo my own view that it is hard to write and rarely successful. Nevertheless, there are suggestions there for the reader to try.

Bill Barclay writes of new titles by a publisher admittedly unknown to me, Ronald Whiting and Wheaton. Whilst the article can come across as little more than an advertisement, there are books mentioned there that whet my appetite, including work by James White and a A Science Fiction Anthology written to commemorate the sadly-departed Cyril Kornbluth.

We still have no Letters pages this month.

Summing up New Worlds

I’m not sure why, but this month’s issue feels slightly different than usual, in its choice of content and its general tone. Is this an attempt to be different, or is it because it feels like New Worlds has had a different hand on the helm? Whilst James Colvin has made an appearance, the magazine itself seems filled with unmemorable material or stories that are just not worth shouting about. The Collyn is rather uneven, the Maclean good but not one of her best and even the John Baxter novel ends disappointingly. Has Moorcock taken his hand off the wheel? It does feel a little bit like it.

Summing up overall

So: despite my hopes, more disappointing issues this month. Not just one but both issues rather feel like there is no one at the rudder, and that the willing but exhausted subordinates have taken much of the strain. Again, they’re not bad, but there’s little that is memorable in either issue.

A tough choice then in choosing “the best”. In the end I’ve opted for Impulse again as my favourite, simply for Roberts’s Corfe Gate which is by far the best thing I’ve read this month. However neither magazine should be showered with glory this month.

But next month's New Worlds sounds better:

As I type this, we are about to begin a World Cup soccer tournament, with England being the host nation. Although football is not something I have much of an interest in, I feel that it would be wrong of me not to exhibit some sort of nationalistic pride on this global event. So – come on, England, etc etc.

(Moment over.)

Until the next…



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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 11, 1961] Spotlighting Women (The Second Sex in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Part 3)

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Here's a question I've gotten more than once: what is the point in spotlighting woman writers?  Shouldn't I simply point out the good stories as I find them, and if they happen to be written by women, bully for them?  Why should I create an artificial distinction?

Those are actually fine questions, about which I've given much thought.  I make no claims to being an expert, or even someone whose opinion should matter much to you.  All I have is my taste, my gut and (lucky for me) my own column in which to voice my opinions.  So take my words as strictly my viewpoint.

We live in a particular kind of world.  Men are the default: the default heroes, the default writers, even the default pronoun.  Open a history book, and it will be filled with the names of great men.  Women are a seeming afterthought.  You may not even have thought twice about it.  It seems "natural" that movies should star men, that books should star men, that men should be the generals, the presidents.

But, there is a change a brewing.  Black men universally won the right to vote in 1865.  Women secure duniversal suffrage in 1920, fully three generations after the least privileged men.  The gap is narrowing.  This year, a Black man became skipper of a U.S. Naval vessel.  1961 also marks the year a woman became a shipboard U.S. Naval officer for the first time.  Women are now just one generation behind the least advantaged of the men.  Someday, we may be on a level playing field, all races of men and women.

Science fiction is supposed to be forward-looking, yet socially it seems stuck in the present, or even the past.  One almost never reads about woman starship captains or woman presidents or woman…well… anything.  I don't think this is the result of deliberate collusion by the science fiction writing community.  It's just that society is the air we breathe.  We are unconsciously bound by its rules and traditions.  Unless something shakes up our viewpoints, we'll stick in our ruts and continue to accept this male-dominated paradigm as the natural order of things.

So when I spot something unusual that I think should be universal, I note it.  I encourage it.  I enjoy it.

Without further ado, part #3 of my encyclopedic catalog of the woman writers active as of this year of 1961:

Zenna Henderson: It should come as no surprise to any regular reader of my column that I love Zenna Henderson.  While her The People stories do not comprise all of her work, they are representative — unabashedly personal tales, bittersweet and feminine, utterly unlike anything else.  Henderson's science fiction career began early last decade and is one of the most vivid hallmarks of the divide between the digest and pulp eras.  I strongly recommend Rosemary Benton's recent article as a introduction to his brilliant author and her work.

Katherine MacLean: One rarely forgets first impressions, and MacLean made a significant one on me with Unhuman Sacrifice, single-handedly saving the November 1958 Astounding, the first magazine I ever reviewed for this column.

This was actually a sort of a rediscovery — she has been publishing stories since the late '40s, many of which I read in Galaxy.  I wonder if she's now near the end of her career.  Once a prolific writer, her pace slackened after 1953, and I've only seen one of her stories since Sacrifice, the good Interbalance.  Perhaps she's just busy with other things, or maybe she publishes in the few remaining magazines I don't cover on a regular basis.  In any-wise, Ms. MacLean is highly regarded, both by me and the general community.  Check her out, and don't miss her early work published under the name of her former husband, Charles Dye.

Anne McCaffrey: Speaking of first impressions, one of the fun aspects of my job as surveyor of our genre is spotting new authors as they arrive.  Ms. McCaffrey hit the ground running with her 1959 story, The Lday in the Tower.  She topped herself with the recent The Ship who Sang.  Two points make a line; if we continue the trend, it is clear that Ms. McCaffrey is destined to produce some pretty spectacular stuff.  I can't wait!

Judith Merril: There once was a SF club in New York City.  It was called the Futurians, it only lasted 8 years (ending around the same time as WW2), and it had an outsized impact on the genre.  The 1st WorldCon was a Futurian event, for instance, and its members included future famous personages such as Isaac Asimov and Fred Pohl. 

And Judith Merril (who was Mrs. Pohl for a little while).  She has been a pillar of the community ever since, both as a writer and a prolific anthologizer; she has produced a series of "Best of" books since 1956, and her taste is sharp.  My experience with her own writing has been mixed.  They comprise just two stories and a novel.  The stories were good, the novel was terrible (though Fred Pohl and P. Schuyler Miller liked it; what do I know>).  I suspect Judy will be around for a long time, so I imagine I'll have more on which to evaluate her by the next time I do one of these.

C.L. Moore: I may be stretching a point in calling Ms. Moore a current writer.  A veteran of the pulp era, Ms. Moore wrote most prolifically in partnership with her late husband, Henry Kuttner (who I knew best as Lewis Padgett).  He died in 1958, and I've not seen hide nor hair of her since.  For this reason, the Journey has covered none of her works, and while I'm sure I must have read some of Moore (psuedonymously, collaboratively, or solitarily), I couldn't tell you about any of those stories off the top of my head (though I do own the Galaxy Novel, Shambleau; perhaps I shall try it out.)

Andre Norton: Despite the name, Andre Norton is a woman, and she has enjoyed a burgeoning career since her debut a little over a decade ago.  She is given to florid, adventury prose, filled with strapping folks and derring-do.  In a recent review of one of Ms. Norton's latest books, Alfred Bester opined dismissively that perhaps women just can't write action.  Well, he's wrong.  Now, mind you, I haven't yet read much Norton.  I started Stargate, which failed to grab my interest, and I finished Crossroads of Time, which I quite enjoyed.  She's got a new one coming out this Summer, which I'll call the tie-breaker. 

Meanwhile, Bester hasn't published a story since 1959.  Maybe men just can't write science fiction anymore…

I'll have the fourth (and final) installment in this series sometime next month.  Cheer-i-o!

(Part one is here!)

(Part two is here!)

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Magazine

[Sep. 18, 1960] Keeping things even (October 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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I've said before that there seems to be a conservation of quality in science fiction.  It ensures that, no matter how bad the reading might be in one of my magazines, the stories in another will make up for it.  Galaxy was pretty unimpressive this month, so it follows that Fantasy and Science Fiction would be excellent.  I am happy to say that the October 1960 F&SF truly is, as it says on the cover, an "all star issue."


from here

"After-the-Bomb" stories always appeal to me.  I like stories about starting with a clean slate, rebuilding, and pushing onward.  Thus, James Blish's The Oath, this month's lead novelette, starts with an advantage that it, thankfully, never gives up.  In this story, an atomic apocalypse has decimated humanity, which has reverted to subsistence farming.  Specialization is virtually impossible, in part because most of the specialists were slaughtered early on by a resentful populace.  But everyone needs a doctor, and in one remote part of the former U.S.A., an erstwhile copywriter becomes an amateur pharmacologist.

In doing so, he attracts the attention of a real doctor, a recruiter for one of the few bastions of civilization left standing.  The resulting dialogue is a compelling one that gives the reader much to think about.  What is a doctor without the Hippocratic Oath?  Is it better to be a demigod among savages than an intern amongst professionals?  What is more important: fulfillment of personal dreams or serving a larger community?  Excellent stuff, if a bit speechy.  Four stars.

Something, in which an elderly antiquities curator comes face to face with an ancient evil presence, is brought to us by Allen Drury.  He won the Pulitzer this year for his novel, Advise and Consent.  Atmospheric, it's a mood piece more than a story piece.  Three stars.

Arthur C. Clarke, the hybrid who stands precisely in the gap between scientist and fictioneer, brings us the rather archaic-seeming Inside the Comet.  The crew of the Challenger, dispatched to investigate a comet, become trapped in its coma when the ship's computer breaks down.  Without the machine to compute orbital calculations, the ship might never get home.  Until, that is, a canny crewman teaches his shipmates to use abaci.  The description of the comet feels quite current, scientifically, and I like the idea of humans being able to rely on low technology solutions when the advanced options have failed.  It's just a bit dated in its structure and with its gimmick ending.  Three stars.

The least of the issue's stories is Poul Anderson's Welcome, featuring a fellow who time travels from modern day to five centuries in the future.  He is received as an honored guest, which is why it takes him so long to realize the crushing poverty in which most of the world lives.  The kicker at the end is the reveal that the future's elite literally dine on the poor.  Readable satire treading ground long since flattened by Swift and Wells.  Three stars (barely).

But then we have From Shadowed Places from that master, Richard Matheson.  The premise is simple: an adventurer in Africa offends a witch doctor and is hexed with a fatal curse.  Only the help of a woman anthropologist / part-time ju ju practitioner can save him.  It's a perfect blend of horror, suspense, social commentary, and erotica–the kind that made Matheson's The Incredible Shrinking Man a book for the ages.  Extra praise is earned for having a strong Black woman as the focal (if not the viewpoint) character.  This story definitely pushes the envelope in many ways.  Five stars.

I'm happy, as always, to see Katherine MacLean in print.  Interbalance, her first tale in F&SF, is a meet cute set in Puerto Rico some twenty years after the Bomb has wiped out most of the world.  More is at stake than simple romance, however–it is a clash between the straightlaced mores of the old world and the liberated, survival-minded culture of the new.  Delightfully suspenseful.  Four stars.

A quick dip in quality accompanies Howard Fast's tale, The Sight of Eden, in which Earth's first interstellar travelers find themselves barred from a park-like pleasure planet.  It seems that humans are unbiquitous in the Galaxy, but only Earthlings are nasty and violent.  The planet's caretaker offers no words of advice to cure the peculiar ailments of our species; he just sends the Terrans packing.  Fast tells the story well enough…I just don't like what he has to say.  Three stars.

Asimov has a good article this month, Stepping Stones to the Stars, about the halo of icy objects in our solar system orbiting so far out that it takes a year for the light of the Sun to reach it!  Too dim to see, we only know about these little planets because, every so often, one gets nudged out of its orbit such that it careens into the inner solar system.  As it approaches the sun, its volatile contents sublime, creating a dramatic glowing tail.  And so, these inconspicuous bodies become comets.  If one thinks of this cloud of comets-to-be as the edge of our solar system, and if we presume that our nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, hosts a similar cloud, then our systems are probably less than two light years from each other.  It's a fascinating revelation, and it makes me feel similarly to when I discovered that the Soviet Union and the United States are just twenty miles apart…by way of Alaska.

By the way, both James Blish and the good Doctor have come to the conclusion that Pluto has no moon of significant size.  They thus urge people to save their good underworld-related names for the 10th and 11th planets, should they ever be discovered.

Back to fiction, writing duo Robert Wade and William Miller, writing as Wade Miller, offer up How Lucky We Met.  We've all heard of were-wolves, but what happens when the condition is more subtle and constant than the traditional malady?  Four stars.

Finally, Philip Jose Farmer once again has the concluding novella.  A Few Miles is the fourth in a series detailing the life of ex-con and current-monk, John Carmody.  Carmody and Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" have a lot in common.  They are both canny former criminals for whom the transition to law-abiding citizen is not 100% complete.  In this story, the good Brer John is given orders to sojourn to the planet "Wildenwoolly," presumably to demonstrate his worthiness for ascension to the priesthood.  He does not even make it halfway through his hometown of Fourth of July, Arizona, thwarted by a series of increasingly difficult obstacles. 

I imagine Farmer will compile all of these stories into a book someday.  It will be a good one.  Four stars.

All told, this has been the best issue of F&SF of the year, with a needle quivering solidly above the 3.5 mark.  A good way to end this month's digest reading.  Stay tuned for a review of Ted Sturgeon's new book, Venus Plus X!

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Magazine, Serial

Astounding Science Fiction, November 1958 (10-24-1958)

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And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: An actual review of an actual science fiction magazine! 

NOVEMBER 1958, ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION

I usually save Astounding for last among my subscriptions.  I have mixed feelings about this magazine.  On the one hand, it is physically of the lowest quality compared to its competitors (F&SF being easily the highest).  Editor John Campbell, with his ravings about psionics, perpetual motion and Hieronymous machines, as well as his blatant human-chauvinism, is tough to take.  But he has a fine stable of authors, and some of the best stories come out of his magazine.

This issue's headliner, Poul Anderson's short novel, “Bicycle Built for Brew,” does not look like it will be among them.  It is the first half of a two-parter set some time in the next century in the Asteroid Belt.  The setting is interesting, and so is the set-up: a renegade faction of an Irish-colonized nation of asteroids has taken over Grendel, a small asteroid under the sovereignty of the "Anglians," and the crew of the trader, Mercury Girl is stranded until it can find a way out. 

Unfortunately, this is one of those “funny” stories, the kind of which Bob Sheckley is a master and Poul Anderson is not.  Moreover, Anderson phonetically transcribes the exaggerated accents of his multinational cast of characters, which quickly becomes a slog to read.  I had high hopes for Anderson after “Brainwave” (1953), but everything since then has been generally (though not entirely) mediocre to turgid.  It's all very male-chauvinistic stuff, too.  More so than most contemporary authors.

"Goliath and the Beanstalk," by Chris Anvil is forgettable, like all of Anvil's stuff I've read to date.  He and Robert Silverberg are much alike: prolifically generating serviceable, uninspired space-filler.

The next story is by a fellow named Andrew Salmond, a name so unfamiliar to me, that I suspect it is a pseudonym for one of the regular contributors [But it's not!  Andrew Salmond is a fan from Glasgow, who served a stint in the RAF during the War (Ed. (12-6-63)].  "Stimulus" is a mildly interesting yarn about Earth being the one planet in the universe made of contra-terrene matter (also known as anti-matter), and the effect this has on spaceflight and humanity's future in general.  The gotcha is that the situation was recently imposed upon the Earth–right before our first moon launch, in fact.  Can you guess how the Earth figured out what had happened?  I (he said smugly) did quite early on. 

By the end of the story, humanity is the most powerful race in the galaxy and rather insufferable about it, too.  I'm sure this appealed to Editor Campbell, given his taste (editorial requirement?) for stories where humans are better than everyone else. 

Gordy Dickson's "Gifts…" is not science fiction at all, and it reads like a screenplay for a short television episode.  It is about a man given the opportunity to wish for whatever he wants, and his decision whether or not to use the power.  Slight stuff.

Katherine MacLean's “Unhuman Sacrifice” is reason enough to buy this issue.  I had not read much of MacLean's stuff before, but I will be on the look-out for her stories from now on.  Her tale of a spaceship crew's encounter with an alien species with a singular life cycle, told from the viewpoint of both the humans and the aliens, is fascinating and haunting.  I won't spoil it by telling you anything more. 

Asimov's new science column continues.  This time, it attempts to answer why, in a galaxy filled with billions of suns, Earth has yet to be contacted by alien civilizations.  He ultimately concludes that galactic civilizations are likely to form in the center, where stars are densest, and may well avoid the backward edges, where we live.  He further opines that we may well have been discovered by vastly superior races (for any race that could find us must be far beyond us, at least technologically) and are being left alone so as not to disturb our development.  It's a cute idea, but it is also indistinguishable from our being undiscovered.  Until the flying saucers announce themselves outside of the deep Ozarks, we have to assume We Really Are Alone.

P. Schuyler Miller's book review column remains the most comprehensive available.  His comparing and contrasting of Bradbury with Sheckley, Matheson and Beaumont is interesting and arch.  The rest is good, too.

The issue wraps up, as always, with Campbell's letter column, Brass Tacks.  I skipped it, as always.  Campbell may fill his magazine with fine stories, but I find the quality of his own opinions (like the quality of Astounding's paper) to be lacking. 

New magazines come out on the 26th.  Stay tuned!

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