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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 14, 1967] Threat level: High (October Galactoscope)

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by Gideon Marcus

We've got a triple (maybe quadruple) play for you this morning.  Dig in and enjoy the bounty!

Fail-Safe, by Eugene Burdick and Arthur Wheeler

With so many new books coming out, it's not often that we at the Journey can devote inches to older titles.  However, the original Fail-Safe has been staring me in the face for the past four years, and when I finally picked it up, I found I couldn't put it down.  Morever, the events depicted in the book are supposed to take place in 1967, so what better year to review it?

If you've seen the movie, then you know the plot of the book: mechanical malfunction causes a flight of bombers, responding to a false threat, to head irretrievably on an atomic raid of Moscow.  Indeed, the movie is in many ways a shot-for-shot rendition of the print version.  The differences pertain to the medium: we get several mini-biographies of the main characters, including the translator, the war-monger, the self-loathing SAC General, the commander of the Omaha base.  There are also occasional, Marooned-style depictions of the technology involved, in lurid detail.

But the events are the same, the dialogue is largely the same, the agony is the same.  Fail-Safe is the story of breakdown–of huge computerized networks failing for the disruption of tiny components, of people failing when confronted with clashing instructions.  Despite the fundamental tragedy of the story, it is ultimately a hopeful book.  It says that people made this death trap we live in, and only people can get us out of it.  And thankfully, there are still good people left in the positions that matter.

Indeed, the main divergence between the book and movie is that the two national leaders involved are not generic statesmen but real people: Kennedy and Khruschev.  This is a little jarring given that neither outlasted the book's publication by very long.  However, it's also fundamental to the plot.  Burdick and Wheeler ascribe a basic competence and goodness to these particular national leaders, qualities that keep the world from exploding when all factors say it should.

Were the two "K"s given too much credit?  Are LBJ and Kosygin men we can trust to steer us clear from the edge of disaster?  Those are questions that can only be answered by biographers in the first instance, and in the moment for the second.  May summits like the recent one in Glassboro ensure the latter never needs answering.

Four stars.

The Invaders, by Keith Laumer

Have you seen The Invaders?  It's a dopey riff on The Fugitive, instead of Richard Kimball running from the law for a murder he didn't commit, at the same time tracking down the real killer, it's about an architect running from alien invaders, while he also plans a counterattack.

The Fugitive was, itself, a riff on Route 66, about two hunks Kerouac-ing across the country doing odd jobs trying to find themselves.  The Fugitive works because Kimball has a reason to keep moving, but, as a doctor, a moral obligation to help people wherever he goes.  There's a reason the show lasted four years.

The Invaders doesn't work for lots of reasons — being an architect doesn't fundamendally involve protagonist David Vincent in anything.  The aliens are laughably inept, betraying themselves with crooked pinky fingers, and yet Vincent can never really get anyone to believe him.

It's a dumb show.

So, of course it has a tie-in novel.  Keith Laumer probably wrote this one in his sleep and happily pocketed the $2000 royalty to pay for his next trip to London.  It is cliché-ridden and tired, a typical potboiler with a B-movie plot and science decades out of date.

It's still better than the show.

It's better because Laumer's Vincent discovers the aliens through canny investigation rather than stumbling on them at an old diner (tracking several seemingly unrelated factory production orders; once the widgets are assembled, they make a ray gun).  It's better because Laumer is a competent action writer.  It's better because the book is highly divergent from the show, only retaining the name of the hero, the plot of invasion (even the aliens are quite different — their high temperature gives them away), and the William Conrad-esque narration that precedes and succeeds the three vignettes included in this first volume.

Three stars.  Why not?

Belmont Double B50-779

The second Belmont Double, poor imitation of the Ace Double follows a similar format to the first: one old novella combined with a newly commissioned one.

Doomsman, by Harlan Ellison

These days, Harlan's name is associated with avante garde stuff, the cutting edge of the New Wave laden with emotion and impact.

Back in the late '50s, when he was cranking out material for the profusion of SF digests, Harlan's work was of more variable quality.  Doomsman originally came out in the last issue (October 1958) of Imagination as The Assassin, and it is lesser Ellison.

A hundred years from now, the Western Hemisphere is dominated by the AmeriState, a totalitarian regime that ascended in the ashes of an atomic war.  Power is maintained by an assassin's corps, of which one Juanito Montoya, abducted from the Pampas of Argentine in his early manhood, is a typical example.  He can kill in a thousand different ways, endure most any climate, and he lacks even the rudiments of empathy or civilization.

But in one way, he is different from his peers, for he comes to learn that he is the son of Don Eskalyo, a princeling who would topple the AmeriState.  Once in possession of this knowledge, he resolves to stop at nothing to meet Eskalyo and join his forces.  Except, of course, that's just what the AmeriState wants him to do…

Doomsman is a brutal, unpleasant story, rife with torture and grossness.  In particular, I could have done without the introduction of the lone female character, the nude and violated (but still desirable, of course!) imprisoned young woman who proves the linchpin to finding Eskalyo.  Not only did I find her character a sop to the more lewd readers, but though Ellison makes it clear that she endured three months of the worst tortures without cracking, she succumbs to Montoya's techniques immediately.  And we never learn what these techniques are.  Obviously, it's an author's trick to imply how effective and monstrous these methods are, but it just comes off as implausible and a cheat.

The one thing Doomsman's favor is it is never dull.  That's not enough.  2.5 stars.

Telepower, by Lee Hoffman

Lee Hoffman is a name I've heard a lot in the fanzines, but I've never met her because she lives in Chicago.  It's always a delight to see a fan turn into a (filthy) pro, and the main reason I picked up this Double is because of her byline.

Her book takes place in and around the post-atomic ruins of Cleveland, which have settled into a sort of medieval complacency, its inhabitants placid and staid.  The defense of the city is left to the soldiers, an almost robotic breed of human, who live outside the city walls.  The main threat to Cleveland isn't other men–it's waves upon waves of rats.  The story opens up with such an attack, and we are introduced to Beldone, one of the many anonymous drones in the ranks.

Beldone, unlike his companions, develops a spark of curiosity, of individuality.  This terrifies him since such is a sign of illness, and the remedy for illness is execution.  We quickly learn that this spark is externally created: inside the city dwells the beautiful, and bored, Illyna.  In a fit of ennui, she developed the embers of a psychic power, initially telepathic in nature but ultimately controlling.  Beldone was her first contact, and through him, she seeks to learn more about the world she inhabits–and to find a way to control it.

There's a lot of disturbing stuff in this novel.  Folks who are turned off by depictions of violence, depictions of rats, and/or depictions of telepathic mind control may wish to give this piece a miss.  It's also not a happy story, even when it is triumphant.  But it is an interesting, well-written one, and I look forward to more of Hoffman's work.

3.5 stars.



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 4, 1967] Angels and Demons (August 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

The angels of our better nature…

It all started in January with a day of music and speeches called the Human Be-In in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Young people came from all over, and as many as 30,000 people attended. When spring break rolled around, more and more descended on the city’s Haight-Ashbury district and other places around the Bay Area. Alarmed by the growing “hippie problem”, the Mayor and Board of Supervisors tried to stem the tide, but only drew greater attention to the mass migration. The trickle has become a flood, and tens of thousands of “flower children” have come to San Francisco. In response to the city’s inaction, various groups and organizations formed the Council for the Summer of Love, creating a free clinic and helping newcomers to find food and housing.

The official poster created by Bob Schnepf

Music is important to the youth movement, and two events in the Bay Area proved very popular. On June 10th and 11th, radio station KFRC held the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival in the Cushing Memorial Amphitheater on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, with all proceeds going to the Hunter’s Point Child Care Center. Bands from the region and farther afield performed on two stages, while visitors could also wander through the arts and crafts fair in the woods around the theater. Some of the bigger names included Dionne Warwick, the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. The event appears to have gone off without incident.

The festival was delayed one week due to bad weather.

One week later, the Monterey International Pop Festival took place down the coast. Inspired by the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Big Sur Folk Festival, this brainchild of John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) and record producer Lou Adler was put together in just seven weeks. There was some overlap with the Fantasy Fair (Jefferson Airplane and the Byrds, for example), but there were some really big names as well, such as Simon and Garfunkel, the Animals, the Who, and of course the Mamas and the Papas. Sunday afternoon was given over to sitar player Ravi Shankar. The Who and Jimi Hendrix were afraid of being upstaged by the other, so they flipped a coin. Hendrix got to go second on Sunday evening, and after the Who finished their set by smashing their instruments, Hendrix topped them by setting his guitar on fire, smashing it and tossing the pieces into the audience.

This poster is a good example of the new psychedelic art style.

Summer officially begins with the solstice, when the sun reaches its northernmost point. In the pre-dawn hours on the 21st, a thousand or so hippies climbed the Twin Peaks in the heart of San Francisco to greet the sunrise with chants, drums and incense to inaugurate their hoped for Summer of Love. The sun even managed to burn through the fog around 7:00. Whether it really will be a summer of love or another long, hot summer like last year remains to be seen.

Hippie Randall DeLeon greets the sun and makes the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle.

… and the demons of our worst

This month’s IF is full of demons: personal, metaphorical and literal. But first, editor Fred Pohl makes the death of Worlds of Tomorrow official. The problem was distribution. Not enough news stands carried the magazine, and digests (unlike the slicks and their high ad rates) can’t get by on just subscription sales. So some of the features exclusive to Worlds of Tomorrow have been rolled into IF and the price is going up, both of which are reflected on the cover.

That’s not quite how black magic works in the new Blish novel, but it ought to be. Art by Morrow

Faust Aleph-Null (Part 1 of 3), by James Blish

Arms dealer Baines has come to Italy to meet with Theron Ware, a magician specializing in crimes of violence, whose power comes from trafficking with demons. Baines is naturally skeptical and asks Ware to prove his abilities by causing the apparently natural death of Governor Rogan of California. Meanwhile, the monks of Monte Albano, who derive their powers from dealing with angels, have learned through divination that something serious will come of this meeting. In accordance with ancient agreements, they send an observer, Father Domenico. Following the death of Governor Rogan, Fr. Domenico and Baines arrive at Ware’s villa on Christmas Day. To be continued.

Ware has set a demon to follow Baines around, probably until his check clears. Art by Morrow

Interesting. This is our world, but magic works, though not openly. I suspect this may have been inspired by Blish’s research for his novel about Roger Bacon a few years ago. In any case, the writing is sound, much better than The Hour Before Earthrise, although none of the characters – not even the white monks – are terribly pleasant. I’m curious to see where this is going.

A solid three stars.

The Trouble With Vegans, by Roger Deeley

Vegans are inveterate smugglers, aided by their unusual biology. The former Chief Customs Officer of Newyorkport explains how he lost his job.

Here is this month’s new author. It’s not bad for a freshman effort, but it’s also rather contrived. Acceptable, but the author has a lot of room to grow.

Barely three stars.

Clear as Mud, by Keith Laumer

Retief is Vice-consul of the Terran envoy to Slunch, a planet beset by massive mudflows. He has a plan for fixing the problem, but is interrupted by the arrival of a trade mission. Rainsinger, the head of the mission, proceeds to make things much worse.

Retief and Magnan head for the source of the mud. Art by Gaughan

While this is a lesser Retief story, a couple of things do set it apart. For one thing, Retief is barely in it outside of the action scenes. Most of the focus is on his usual immediate superior, Ben Magnan. For another, the high-ranking diplomat recognizes and acknowledges his mistake, apologizes for it, and then helps Retief set things right. Very unusual.

A low three stars.

Fan Into Pro, by Lin Carter

Picking up where he left off last month, Our Man in Fandom talks about fans who have become writers. After name-checking a few older writers like Ray Bradbury and Fred Pohl, he looks at some newer writers to come out of fandom, with people like Ted White, Tom Purdom or Terry Carr. Artists also come out of fandom, like Frazetta and Morrow.

Three stars.

The Winged Helmet, by Fred Saberhagen

On a world where a quirk of physics has humanity fighting the deadly Berserkers across time, the life-hating machines have killed the semi-legendary King Ay. In the present, Time Ops has only a few days to find the keyhole that will let them correct the disaster before the ripples of the change in history catch up to them. The only person who can go back to Ay’s day and not lose his memory is the Stone Age man Matt. Has time operative Derron suggested Matt’s name because that’s the man for the job or because the girl he loves is in love with Matt?

Matt, posing as Ay, fights a “demon”. Art by Wood

This is a direct sequel to Stone Man from the final issue of Worlds of Tomorrow. The main characters here are all from that story, but this reads well enough without knowing the other tale. Saberhagen continues to keep this series fresh, especially because they’re really about the people in them, not the war against the machines. The parts set in the past read like a decent fantasy story, so I wonder if it might not be time for Mr. Saberhagen to branch out and write about something else.

Three stars.

Paint ‘em Green, by Burt K. Filer

Ambrija (America, Britain, Japan) and Russia are locked into a Cold War race to come up with a non-nuclear superweapon. Junk dealer Jack Booth might be able to help engineer Charlie come up with something, but it’s going to be expensive.

Filer’s sophomore outing is slightly better than his debut, but only slightly. The writing is fine, but the story has little internal logic and is hurt by leading to a “humorous” conclusion.

Two stars.

When Women Rule, by Sam Moskowitz

Moving over from Worlds of Tomorrow, Sam Moskowitz takes a look at the long fascination with stories in which women are in charge, with or without the presence of men. He traces those stories from the Greek myths of the Amazons, through the Spanish novel which gave California its name, and on through the Pulp Era to today (his most recent example is Amazon Planet, which I’m not sure he actually understood). As usual, his knowledge is encyclopedic, but he doesn’t do much with it beyond reciting a catalogue. He also fails to engage with the question of why the women are of enormous size in so many of these stories. The best he can do for a conclusion is that society needs both men and women, but he seems content with the status quo.

Barely three stars.

The Felled Star (Part 2 of 2), by Philip José Farmer

On the Riverworld, Samuel Clemens, aided by the ape-man Joe Miller and Lothar von Richtofen, has joined forces with a group of vikings led by Erik Bloodaxe to find a large source of iron. Bloodaxe wants power, Sam wants a steamboat. Having survived the fall of a giant meteor, they’ve landed where they think it fell, but have no luck finding it. One night, Sam is visited by a Mysterious Stranger claiming to be a high-ranking member of the Ethicals, the people responsible for calling humanity back from death. The Stranger is opposed to the goals of his compatriots and is recruiting a group to thwart their aims. He tells Sam where to find the resources he needs and promises to find Sam’s wife Livy. Sam puts the whole thing down to a drug-induced dream, but Joe says he can smell the Stranger and reveals that he encountered people who smell like that in his original life back on Earth. But first, Sam is going to have to betray Bloodaxe before Bloodaxe betrays him.

The Mysterious Stranger sends a fellow by the name of Odysseus to help Sam. Art by Gaughan

There’s a story here, but it’s awfully incomplete. Most of it is Sam wrestling with his inner demons and some exposition about the overarching story of why the Riverworld exists. Farmer drops the bombshell of Joe encountering Ethicals hundreds of thousands of years ago, but its only purpose is to get Sam to believe in the Mysterious Stranger. And the whole thing ends on a huge cliffhanger. There’s obviously much more to come, and I can only hope Farmer gets to it soon. Unfortunately, we all know he has problems with endings.

Still, three stars for this and the serial as a whole (pending a real conclusion).

Summing up

Another stroll through the garden of mediocrity. The new Blish serial certainly looks promising, but he’s not an author I necessarily trust. The Farmer could have been a lot more than it is, if only he’d written the rest of the story. But then, he’s another author I don’t really trust to get things right. I don’t mind middle of the road if there’s also something that really stands out. At this point, I’d take a really bad story, just to enjoy ripping it apart. Better luck next month.

Harl Vincent. Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.




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Magazine

[June 20, 1967] Yours sincerely, wasting away (July 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

When I get older, losing my hair

Age afflicts us all.  I remember once having a beautiful mop of curly hair with a line that was two inches from my brows.  Now, the front is racing toward the back, and my only compsensation is the flourishing stuff coming out my ears.

Of course, people age in different ways.  Robert Preston sang in last year's musical hit, I do! I do!–"Men of forty go to town. Women go to pot," but in my experience, it's quite the opposite. I'd like to think that I'm "entering my prime," but who knows?

Science fiction magazines are going through a midlife crisis, too.  The oldest of them, Amazing, turned 41 this year.  But is it "delightfully witty" and "wise"? Has it "stood the test of time"?  In fact, the magazine that Gernsback built is consistently the lowest rated of the SF digests, packed mostly with cheap reprints.  How about Analog, neé Astounding, rapidly approaching its Jack Benny birthday (he's eternally 39, you see)?  Well, I suppose it depends on whom you ask, but I think it's safe to say that Campbell's mag is definitely in a rut, fossilized into the features it had some fifteen years ago.

Even the newer crop has had a stormy adolescence.  Galaxy is 17.  Once a brilliant child, it is now an often insipid teenager.  If it stays this staid, it may not make it to voting age.  And how about Fantasy and Science Fiction, which just left its minority this year?  The venerable mag, the most literary of its kind, has had an unstable family life, with revolving editors through its teen years.  As a result, the wrinkles are already showing in this 18 year old.

Ed Ferman seems to be aware of his institution's aging.  Indeed, this month's issue, which begins and ends with (and devotes half its words to) the subject of growing old, seems a deliberate acknowledgement of the predicament.


by Jack Gaughan

The Day Before Forever, by Keith Laumer

Steve Dravek, late a denizen of the 20th Century, finds himself on a street near the end of the 21st.  Only shreds of memory remain, enough to give him a sense of identity, but no idea how he arrived in the future (young again, when he had been middle aged) nor why the black uniformed mooks of Eternity Incorporated (ETORP) are after him.

After being beset by "the lowest of the low" in a park, he is apprehended by "Jess", self-proclaimed "highest of the low", for purposes unknown.  Dravek uses force and wit to turn the situation around, making Jess take him to the heart of ETORP's facility on Long Island in pursuit of the truth…and himself.

Forever uses the latest gimmick everyone seems to have latched onto lately: cryonics.  That's the idea that one can be flash frozen before death in the hopes that any malady one is suffering from can be cured in the future.  Fred Pohl, editor of Galaxy and IF has gone into it in a big way, but now it's showing up here, too.

Anyway, there are more twists and turns than a new Los Angeles freeway interchange, and a lot of it gets explained in the end rather than shown as the story goes, but it's a readable potboiler, the kind Laumer can crank out in his sleep.

Three stars.

Balgrummo's Hell, by Russell Kirk

60+ years ago, Laird Balgrummo was sealed in his decaying manor house after committing an unspeakable crime against humanity and nature.  Now the world is waiting for him to shuffle off this mortal coil…save for Horgan, a greedy thief who would rob Balgrummo of his fortune of paintings while he sleeps.

Except Balgrummo sleeps not.  He lurks.

There are no surprises in this story, which reads like something out of Weird Tales' early days.  But the telling is delicious. 

My favorite story of the issue: four stars.

Alter Ego, by Hugo Correa

If you could make an identical new you, one unhindered by all of your life's wrong choices, who would be the better person?  You, or the android duplicate?

More a philosophical piece than science fiction, I found it stayed with me.  Three stars.

Encounter in the Past, by Robert Nathan

On the other hand, Nathan's story of the rediscovery of a Mesozoic human civilization doesn't make a lot of sense.  I reread the short piece a few times, and I still can't make heads or tails of it.

Two stars.

The Master's Thesis, by David Madden

Worse still is this pointless piece about a Professor Swinnard and the young man who insists on afflicting him with his master's thesis.  The story goes 'round in circles as Swinnard is increasingly disarmed and discomfited by the student's rudeness and the haste with which he finishes his project…yet I am at a loss to understand whence stems the horror, nor what the final thesis is actually about.

Am I stupid?  Is the point obvious to anyone else?

One star.

Flight Between Realities, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Buck's poem from the standpoint of an omniscient being sipping her sherry is a bit hard to parse, but seems to be of great moment.

Three stars.

The Sea Monster and the Mayor of New York City, by Gahan Wilson

On the perils to a monster's digestion due to the consumption of a fraught metropolis. 

Frivolous.  Two stars.

Twelve Point Three Six Nine, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor explains the foolishness of associating significance to chance juxtapositions of numbers by creating his own, tying together the relation of the lunar and solar calendars to the Bible.

It's cute, and I found some of the historical bits interesting.  Three stars.

The Vitanuls, by John Brunner

In the early 21st Century, the birthrate has slackened.  But new births are not unknown, and as a kind of medical immortality is introduced, more and more babies are born healthy but vacant.  Void of intellect or animus.  Could there be a connection?

This story has a lot of problems.  Not only is the piece structurally flawed, telegraphing its ending from the beginning but taking forever to get there, but it also doesn't seem to understand how souls work.  Set in India, there is much reference to Hindu reincarnation and such.  But the story suggests that there is a limited number of human souls, and by cheating death, we're robbing the young of life. 

I'd always understood that, per Hinduism, animals and plants and…everything…had souls, all of which could serve in a human form.  Even if that were not the case, I think Brunner's math is off.  Yes, it's true that half of the people who've ever lived are alive today, but if the living outnumber the dead, it won't be because of immortality, but simple birthrate.  And does the store of human souls grow over time, or was it fixed, like the memory store of a mainframe, at a specific number deemed sufficient a million years ago, but now inadequate?

Two stars for this poorly thought out shock tale.

Will you still need me?  Will you still read me?

I understand summer is when magazines put out all their inferior stuff since readership is at its lowest ebbs during the dog days.  Still, if this latest issue (which scores just 2.7 on the Starometer) be any indication of where the magazine is headed, quality-wise, I have distinct concerns that it may never make it to the ripe old age of 64…


by Gahan Wilson



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 2, 1967] Uneasy Alliances (July 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

Persecution and division

It’s rarely discussed, but a major condition of the decolonization of Africa has been that the newly independent nations are expected to retain their old colonial boundaries. The stated reason is to prevent squabbling and even armed conflict over redrawing those boundaries, such as we’ve seen between Pakistan and India. It sounds good on paper; unfortunately, paper is where those boundaries were drawn, often with little regard for people living there and leaving major tribes and ethnic groups split by lines on a map. Add in the tendency of colonial administrations to favor one tribe over others and you have the basis for a lot of unrest.

Nigeria is proving to be a case in point. Economic problems, tensions between the Muslim north and Christian south, government corruption, and an election widely seen as fraudulent all came to a head in an attempted military coup at the beginning of last year. Although the coup failed, the military was left in charge, and military governors were placed in the four states. An attempt to create a more centralized government led to a counter-coup and the near dissolution of Nigeria. Under Western pressure, the new head of the government, Colonel Yakubu Gowon, restored the federal system.

Then pogroms in the north against the Igbo (a largely Christian tribe from Eastern Nigeria) and other eastern groups left as many as 30,000 dead and over a million refugees fled to the east. The strain on the east led to negotiations between Colonel Gowon and Eastern military governor Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu seemed promising, but have fallen apart. On May 27th, Gowon declared that Nigeria would be divided into 12 states (cutting the Igbo off from oil money). The same day Colonel Ojukwu declared the independence of Eastern Nigeria. As we go to press, it has been announced that the new country will be called the Republic of Biafra. Nigeria is unlikely to accept this assertion of independence.

l.: Colonel Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria. r.: Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu of Biafra.

Mediocrity strikes again

Similarly unstable is this month’s IF, full of shaky partnerships, from famous authors and vikings to complicated family politics. Some expect betrayal, others will find themselves surprised.

Joe Miller is the most fearsome warrior these vikings have ever seen. Art by Gaughan

The Felled Star (Part 1 of 2), by Philip José Farmer

Twenty years ago, everyone who ever lived and reached the age of five or so awoke on the Riverworld, brought back to life by someone for mysterious purposes. Samuel Clemens (better known to the world as Mark Twain) is traveling with a band of vikings led by Eric Bloodaxe. Also along is Sam’s best friend, Joe Miller, a “titanthrop” or ape-man with a nose like a proboscis monkey. They’re seeking a source of iron, which is almost non-existent. Bloodaxe carries an iron axe, most likely from meteoric iron, but he wants more for the power it will bring. Sam wants to build a steamboat (and find his beloved wife Livy). They also hope to reach the headwaters of the River, which Joe once visited and saw a mist-shrouded tower and flying boats.

The group is attacked by a settlement of 19th century Germans, equipped with gliders and bombs. The fall of a huge meteor several valleys away smashes everything with a massive wave, but the viking boat manages to ride out the destruction. They fish Lothar von Richthofen (the younger brother of the Red Baron) out of the wreckage, and he gladly joins their quest.

Curse you, Red Baron’s little brother! Art by Gaughan

This brief installment is largely set-up. Mostly, we get everyone’s motivations and witness a possible source of a lot of iron. The most interesting bit here is Joe Miller. His tale of the tower is very well done. The implication that this distant relative of Homo sapiens counts as human for whoever is behind the great resurrection also raises some fascinating questions. We’ll see what Farmer manages to do with all this.

Three stars.

Pelandra’s Husbands, by E. A. Walton

Pelandra is destined to become an immortal and marry the immortal leader of an expedition to a planet circling another star. Along the way, she is expected to marry a series of men selected for their compatibility as spare parts for the immortals. Unfortunately, she has fallen in love with husband Number Three, and he is scheduled for recycling very soon.

Walton is a British fan, making her first professional sale. Very little makes any sense. The whole situation is contrived just to create the problem and obvious ending.

Two stars.

Population Implosion, by Andrew J. Offutt

The oldest people are dropping dead for no apparent reason, and what constitutes oldest is getting younger every day. It turns out that the death rate now corresponds exactly with the birth rate. International efforts try to reduce the birth rate, but somebody’s cheating.

Bob Hope and (presumably) Bing Crosby starring in The Road to Armageddon. Art by Vaughn Bodé

Another story that makes no sense and has more holes than all the cheese in Switzerland. It’s an interesting “what if?”, but Offutt doesn’t do anything with it.

Two stars.

A Ticket to Zenner, by C. C. MacApp

Tom Larrow has worked on the planet Merob for several years, but a revolution means that all non-Merobans must leave. He was attacked and had his passport and ticket for Earth stolen. Lucky for him, since the ship blew up just as it entered space. His assailant also kindly left behind another passport and a ticket to Zenner. With the help of his employer, Tom gets away with a ring of little value and the name of a contact, but someone is still hunting for him.

Tom tries to smuggle himself off the starship. Art by Virgil Finlay

When he’s not writing about Gree or trying to be funny, MacApp is a decent writer. Somebody like Keith Laumer might have made this story (which owes more than a little to North by Northwest) a bit more exciting and tied things up a bit better, but MacApp’s rendition is serviceable.

Three stars.

The Tusk, by L. Sprague de Camp

A very short poem musing on a mammoth tusk in a museum.

Art by Gaughan

I have a poor sense of meter, but the rhythm here feels jarring and inconsistent. The punchline is also facile at best. Not Sprague’s best work.

Two stars.

The Purpose of Fandom, by Lin Carter

It doesn’t have a purpose, says Carter. But here he looks at how science fiction fandom differs from others. Notably, the large number of fans who become pros. This month, it’s those who became publishers and editors, next month will be writers.

Three stars.

Adam’s Eva, by Alan Dirkson

A minor mishap during his activation leaves Adam Pilot more ambitious and more prone to ask questions than most robots. His first day on the job, he meets Eva Hostess, who goes to great lengths to make everything perfect in the hopes that today there will be Passengers. But Passengers never come, and flights are often canceled due to fuel shortages. When Eva disappears, Adam does everything he can to find her, even going down to the Slag Heap, where he makes a big difference to the lives of the unfortunates there and eventually learns why there are never any Passengers.

Adam on the Slag Heap. Art by Virgil Finlay

Here is our second first-time author this month. Line by line, the writing is serviceable, though nothing special. But the whole thing is painfully obvious, and the title really gives away the ending. It’s also a bit long.

A very low three stars, though that might be generous.

Spaceman! (Part 3 of 3), by Keith Laumer

Billy Danger accidentally found himself aboard a spaceship where he committed himself to seeing to the safety of the beautiful Lady Raire. He lost her, found her and lost her again. Now he’s a slave. He befriends a fellow slave, the insect-like Fsha-Fsha, and they plan an escape. Before they can pull it off, Billy is sent to a punishment assignment. He’s rescued by Fsha-Fsha and Srat, whom he thought had betrayed him. Srat is killed, but Billy and Fsha-Fsha gradually work their way toward Raire’s home planet, having several adventures along the way. Eventually, he’ll have to rescue Raire one final time.

Billy became an expert swordsman by… sorting fruit. Laumer almost makes it believable. Art by Castellon

All in all, it’s a decent space adventure, but that’s all it is. Laumer is capable of much better. This also feels like it’s based on his notes for Earthblood and ideas he pitched to Rosel Brown that they didn’t use. It’s a fine novel, but if you have to choose between reading this or Earthblood, choose the latter. However, reading them together will give you a greater appreciation of Brown as an author.

Three stars for this installment and the novel as a whole.

Summing up

A pretty weak issue overall. Some stuff that’s okay and some that fails to reach that level. The Farmer has potential, but we all know he has problems with endings. There’s also a letter from James Blish, talking about his Star Trek book. Apparently, it’s done very well, and both he and the publisher have been deluged with fan mail. There’s a second volume due out towards the end of the year.

Speaking of Blish…




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[May 2, 1967] The Call of Duty (June 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

[L]et us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.
– Abraham Lincoln, Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society

A duty to a higher power

On April 28th, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (whom many papers insist on calling by his former name, Cassius Clay) refused induction into the United States Army. In a matter of hours, the New York State Athletic Commission revoked his boxing license, and the World Boxing Association stripped him of his title. For those paying attention, Ali’s refusal came as no surprise. He had been classified as 1-Y (fit for service only in times of national emergency) due to his poor performance on the qualifying test, but when the army lowered its standards last year, he became subject to reclassification as 1-A. The draft board in Louisville Kentucky did so, and he appealed, seeking exemption as a Muslim minister (often incorrectly reported as conscientious objector status). The board denied the appeal in January, and Ali vowed to go to court. After moving to Houston, Texas, the champ again sought reclassification and was again denied.

Muhammad Ali is escorted from the induction center in Houston, Texas.

When called up, Ali appeared as ordered at the Houston induction center and participated in all the pre-induction activities. But when called to step forward for induction, he refused. He was taken aside and the consequences were explained, but he once again refused. After that, he signed a statement indicating his refusal and was escorted outside. He didn’t address the reporters and television cameras waiting for him, but handed out copies of a four-page statement indicating that he is aware of the penalties he faces, but that accepting induction is inconsistent with his “consciousness as a Muslim minister and [his] own personal convictions.” The case has been referred to the U. S. Attorney. If convicted, Mr. Ali faces a maximum of 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

A sense of duty

Like Muhammad Ali, almost everyone in this month’s IF is motivated by strong beliefs: their duty to king and country, humanity at large, or their own personal beliefs and obligations.

Uncle Martin and Tim (from My Favorite Martian) seem to have had a falling out. Actually, this is supposedly from Spaceman!
Art by Wenzel.

Wizard’s World, by Andre Norton

Hunted for being an Esper, Craike decides death is preferable to capture and hurls himself from a cliff. And finds himself in another world, one where people like him are seen as wizards who maintain order for the feudal lords and will not tolerate unregulated Espers. He soon falls afoul of these Black Hoods by rescuing an attractive young woman who was being punished for being outside of the established system.

Takya and Craike set a trap for the Black Hoods. Art by Gray Morrow

We’ve all read this story a hundred times. Man from our world or one reasonably close finds himself mysteriously transported to another world, where he uses his knowledge and different way of thinking to upset the bad social order and get the girl. From John Carter to Lord Kalvan, the template has few variations. Norton’s typical strong writing lifts this above the usual fare, but she offers us nothing new. And there are bits that bother me. For all her power and maturity, Takya is clearly meant to be a young teen, who spends the whole story clad only in her hair. Then at the end, the wooing she expects from Craike borders on rape, however consensual it may be.

Three stars, strictly for being well-written.

Berserker’s Prey, by Fred Saberhagen

Gilberto Klee was working on a youth farm when he was captured in a berserker raid. Now aboard a human ship converted to berserker use, he meets other prisoners, one of whom is sure he can fly the ship if only they can destroy the berserker brain piloting it. Because human captives are suffering from dietary deficiencies, the berserkers order Gil to grow something to end the problem. He suggests a fast-growing squash, though the others disdain him for aiding their captors. Is Gil trying to be viewed as “goodlife” or is there something else going on?

As fellow Journey writer Victoria Silverwolf recently noted, Saberhagen is able to return to this setting over and over again without repeating himself. Perhaps that’s because most of these stories, like this one, tend to be character pieces with the action secondary to the plot. The tight focus on Gil’s internal thoughts without giving away the ending is extremely well done. The ending is also quite symbolic for the overall struggle against the great killing machines.

A very high three stars.

All True Believers, by Howard L. Morris

Not quite two years after thwarting the invasion of Briden by the Freunch under Naflon (see Not by Sea), Sir Hubert Wulf-Leigh (Wilfly) stumbles upon a new Freunch plot: a simultaneous rising in Cullenland and a landing by the Pantlerist pretender in Celtland. Once again, his brilliant mind – aided by a regrettable lack of wine – is up to the challenge.

A strand-gleaner makes an important discovery. Art by Virgil Finlay

The previous story by this author, though readable, was a little too long and tried much too hard to be funny. Morris has largely corrected those problems, though he’s stuck with the ridiculous place names. This piece is clearly based on British fears during the Napoleonic Wars of an Irish rebellion and an attempt by the Stewart pretender to claim the throne and is really no more plausible here than it was in reality. Also the Finlay art seems to be repurposed from Treasure Island or something and doesn’t fit at all. Still, it's all an improvement.

Three stars.

The N3F and Others, by Lin Carter

After looking at a number of less successful attempts at creating national fan clubs last month, Carter looks first at the strange story of the Cosmic Circle and then the more successful National Fantasy Fan Federation. The N3F has lasted a quarter century at this point, but Carter seems ambivalent. In his opinion, it and its extensive membership list offer a reasonable first step and a way to meet fans near you and around the country, but he feels that the organization doesn’t really do anything in fandom. Nevertheless, it seems to be a good introduction for those without a local club in their vicinity.

Three stars.

The Castaways, by Jack B. Lawson

A handful of people are on their way to Smith’s World in suspended animation aboard an automated spaceship when an unexpected nova sends the ship off course. They’re able to find a habitable world, but it’s one without any other people. Can the end products of 6,000 years of civilization survive in a primitive setting?

While the writing is strong on a line-by-line basis, the story itself is so bleak and pessimistic I can’t bring myself to like it.

A very well-written two stars.

Spaceman! (Part 2 of 3), by Keith Laumer

Seeking shelter from a blizzard, Billy Danger accidentally stowed away on a spaceship, ultimately finding himself marooned with the beautiful Lady Raire and a collie-sized cat named Eureka. Raire was taken away by strange, dwarfish aliens, and Billy had to wait for rescue. Billy then spends a few years working his way up the ladder to Chief Power Engineer and also working his way towards Raire’s home planet near the galactic core. He learns that the aliens who took Raire are known as the H’eeaq. After several (mis)adventures, he finds himself in possession of a stolen spaceship and the assistance of a H’eeaq named Srat.

They begin scouring the scattered worlds of the Galactic Zenith, looking for those who took Raire. On the verge of giving up, he finds Raire enslaved and buys both her and another human. Staggering drunkenly back to his ship after finalizing his purchases, Billy watches as the ship takes off with Raire aboard and then finds himself arrested for illegally manumitting a slave. When he wakes up, he discovers that he has been implanted with a control device. Billy is now a slave. To be concluded.

Billy meets Srat for the first time. Poor Srat. Art by Castellon

This installment reminded me a lot of Earthblood, especially the protagonist rising through the ranks as he travels and moves ever closer to a seemingly impossible goal. While Rosel George Brown’s steadying influence there gave us moments of introspection, Laumer alone is free to indulge in wild adventure and action. He also has a tendency to rely too much on coincidence to move the plot along. It’s still an enjoyable read, though.

Three stars.

Family Loyalty, by Stan Elliott

A series of letters between Joe Seaworthy, who is emigrating off-world, and his cousin and former employee Harry Aimes, who senses a chance to get himself out of a bind.

Here is this month’s new author. The first letter feels very unnatural, although there are reasons for that. Things improve after that, and Elliott does a pretty good job of telling us a lot about the world without direct exposition.

A low three stars.

Driftglass, by Samuel R. Delany

Cal Svenson is an amphiman, someone who has been surgically altered so that they can live and breathe underwater. Eighteen years ago, he was severely injured while trying to lay a power cable in an oceanic trench known as the Slash. Unable to work due to a paralyzed leg and torn swim membranes, he has a pension and a house on the Brazilian coast provided by the company he worked for. He spends his days searching for driftglass (also called sea glass) and chatting with his friend Juao, a local fisherman. Encountering a young amphiman woman, Cal learns that the company is planning to try laying a cable in the Slash again the next day. Juao’s two children, Cal’s godchildren, have been accepted into the amphiman program and must leave for Brasilia the next day as well. Cal has to sort out his feelings about both of these things and their consequences.

Cal is injured. Art by Gaughan

Simple. Beautiful. Subtle. Delany writes with a maturity far beyond his 25 years. This story alone is worth your 50¢.

Five stars.

An example of some sea glass

Summing up

That’s another month in the books. Mostly fair to middlin’, but two of the shorter works stand out. The Saberhagen is very good, even if it doesn’t quite deserve a fourth star, and Driftglass is amazing. I expect to see it on all the awards lists. I’m nominating it for a Galactic Star right now, with not even half the year gone.

This is presumably the Riverworld story promised for Worlds of Tomorrow. The lack of other information suggests that Fred is scrambling to deal with the loss of a magazine.




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[April 4, 1967] Transitions (May 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

A fumbled hand-off

Americans are taught that the true importance of the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1801 is that this was the first peaceful transfer of power between rival politcal parties in history. Whether or not that’s the case, such a transfer is seen in the modern era as an indicator of a successful democracy. Apart from in the white colonial governments in Rhodesia and South Africa, this has yet to occur in sub-Saharan Africa, but for a brief moment it looked as though it was going to happen.

On March 17th in Sierra Leone, the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party lost a close election to the All People’s Congress under Siaka Stevens. Four days later, Governor-General Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston swore Stevens in as the country’s new Prime Minister. Later the same day, Brigadier David Lansana staged a coup, ordering the arrest of Stevens and Boston and declaring martial law. In the wee hours of the 23rd, a counter-coup arrested Lansana and announced that the country would now be ruled by an eight-man National Reformation Council. Initially, they said that the new head of state would be Lt. Colonel Ambrose Genda, who was part of the Sierra Leonean mission to the U. N. He was quite surprised by the news, but as he boarded a plane in London on the 27th, it was announced that the head of the council would be Lt. Colonel Andrew Juxon-Smith, who was on the same flight. Had Stevens taken power and ruled within the constitution, Sierra Leone could have been an example to the rest of post-colonial Africa. Alas, it was not to be.


Siaka Stevens (top left), Governor-General Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston (top right), Brigadier David Lansana (bottom left), Lt. Colonel Andrew Juxon-Smith (bottom right)

Steady state

There's not much variation in the quality of the stories in this month’s IF. It's more of a smooth plane with one small ding in it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but neither is it really good.

What are these robots up to? Art by Gaughan

Spaceman!, by Keith Laumer

Down on his luck and freezing to death, Billy Danger seeks shelter in what he thinks is a grain silo. To his surprise, he has inadvertently stowed away on a spaceship. The obnoxious Lord Desroy would like to shove him out an airlock, but Hunter Sir Orfeo thinks Billy can be trained as a replacement gunbearer. Also aboard is the exotically beautiful Lady Raire. When Desroy gets both himself and Orfeo killed on the planet Gar, Billy and Raire are locked out of the ship. Struggling to survive, they settle in with a tribe of collie-sized house cats. Eventually, they find a way to send a distress signal. The first group to respond kidnaps Raire and leaves Billy for dead. Billy convinces the second group to take him and his favorite cat by showing them Desroy’s ship. To be continued.


Billy wakes to find himself in strange company. Art by Castellon

Last month, I predicted this would be Laumer in semi-comic mode (based on that exclamation point). Instead, it’s more straight adventure, just not as grim as something like The Hounds of Hell.  So far, Billy is not one of Laumer’s usual extremely competent heroes, though he’s not completely hopeless either. My only complaint is that I’m going to be stuck with The Byrds in my head for the next couple of months.

A solid three stars.

The Robots Are Here, by Terry Carr

After wrapping up a major defense project, Charles Barrow discovers a phone number in his handwriting in his wallet. In an attempt to figure out what it’s for, he calls and is rudely informed he has an appointment that evening. Curious, he goes and finds himself in the offices of R.O.B.O.T., where there are no human staff. He eventually reaches the office of the head robot and learns what the robots are up to. If only he can remember.


The head robot interviews Charles Barrow. Art by Gaughan

Carr is a well-known fan who turned out several very promising stories (the Traveler is a big fan), but hasn’t put out much lately. His focus in the last couple of years seems to be more on editing, putting out one or two “Best of” anthologies. This is another strong story, though not his best. The verbal tics of the robots really shone for me, but I wonder if a high-ranking executive in the defense industry could experience what Barrow does without attracting some attention from the FBI.

A high three stars.

SF Superclubs, by Lin Carter

Carter looks at efforts to create fan clubs on the national and international scale. One of the very first was the Scienceers in 1930, whose first president was Black. Alas, Carter doesn’t dig into this interesting fact. Instead, he runs through a large number of failed attempts, the most successful of which was Gernsback’s Science Fiction League. Next month, another failure and a successful attempt.

Three stars

The Youth Addicts, by Charles W. Runyon

Just returned from his third deep-space tour, Bork Craighen learns that he has Silver Syncope. He’s going to lose all sensation and will be dead within two months. Clay, the one friend he’s made over the last seven years, finds him drowning his sorrows and desperately needs his help. Clay’s wife became addicted to memorigraf and has lapsed into a coma. He wants Bork to enter her memories and bring her out. Bork might even find a way to solve his own problem, too.


Bork has received some bad news from his doctor. Art by Bodé

I honestly can’t tell if I liked this better than it deserves or less. It limps badly in places and parts don’t make much sense, and yet I found it a compelling read. Runyon is better known for mysteries and under-the-counter books, but he also has a science fiction background. More from him would not be amiss.

Three stars.

The Long, Slow Orbits, by H. H. Hollis

Gallegher relates how he came by some interesting scars. Cyborgs are illegal on Earth and Mars, but in the asteroids they become chattel slaves. Galleg (as the narrator refers to himself) falls in with Harriet, a young woman dedicated to freeing the cyborgs and leading them in a revolution against “The Sheik”. Before they succeed, they’re trapped, and Gallegher sacrifices himself to help her get away. He’s thrown into a Klein bottle prison with no hope of escape.


Klein bottles are weird. Art by Virgil Finlay

When I saw a Gallegher story, I groaned, but this surpassed all expectations. Apart from the framing story and a weak pun at the end, this is nothing like its predecessors. Gallegher is, dare I say it, noble. He gets involved because of a pretty face, but soon believes in the cause. His escape from the Klein bottle doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but the rest is actually good.

Three very surprised stars.

The Hole, by B. K. Filer

A meteor strike has made it possible to dig over 20 miles into the Earth’s crust, exposing eons of evolutionary history. But someone keeps destroying the brain cases of the many well-preserved fossils going down to the earliest forms of life. Russ figures out who is doing it, but the why isn’t clear.

Here’s our first time author. The geology seems very suspect to me, the paleontology is dead wrong in a few places, and I’m not convinced by the motivation for the destruction. But somehow the whole is a little better than the sum of its parts. The writing itself shows some skill, so there may be hope for Filer if he tries again.

Two stars.

The Road to the Rim (Part 2 of 2), by A. Bertram Chandler

Fresh out of the Academy and on his way to his first posting, Ensign John Grimes has convinced himself to throw in with a merchant captain who’s decided to hunt pirates. A lucky find allows them to learn how the pirates are finding their prey and to set a trap. Grimes’ skills as a gunner destroy one ship, and they set out on a desperate chase to kill a second. We know Grimes will live. The real question is what will happen to his career.


An accident near a running Mannschen drive can be a terrible thing. Art by Gray Morrow

This installment shows off most of Chandler’s strengths. The action is well done, and the character moments are strong. It could have been a few pages longer to do more with the mad engineer’s prophecies and especially for Grimes to better deal with having caused the death of someone for the first time. (Also, I have no desire to spit on the mat or insult the cat’s parentage, no matter how many times I’m told this is Liberty Hall–as the character, Grimes, habitually encourages his guests.) We’ve seen Grimes as both an experienced officer reluctantly retiring and a callow youth. I look forward to seeing him as a mature adult at the peak of his strengths.

A solid three parts for this part and the novel as a whole.

Summing up

Well, that was a pretty middle-of-the-road issue. Only one story below average, and that was more weak than bad, but there’s also no stand-out story. The two novels will ultimately stand or fall on their own, and the rest will probably fade into obscurity. Is it worth your 50 cents? If you’ve got four bits burning a hole in your pocket, it’s a fair way to spend a couple of hours. Otherwise, you’re probably better off saving up for one of the novels if they appeal to you. (I still can’t believe I actually liked a Gallegher story, though.)


A new Delany. That’s more like it.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 10, 1967] Mediocrités, Slayer of Magazines (April 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Not with a Bang

A rising tide floats all boats, but a tidal wave swamps them.  16 years ago, Galaxy magazine was the vanguard of the Silver Age of Science Fiction, along with Fantasy and Science Fiction and Astounding leading a pack of nearly forty monthly/bimonthly/quarterlies.  By the end of the decade, we were down to just six mags, but the quality, by and large, was still there.

Now we're entering a new era.  The number of mags is the same, but the stories are mediocre most of the time.  Even the competently rendered ones feel like rehashes.  In a letter I received last week, the writer said that there are yet too many outlets for the current crop of talent to supply with quality stuff. 

I don't know that I agree, given that the British mags have folded and Amazing and Fantastic are mostly reprints these days.  Plus, Galaxy's sister mag, Worlds of Tomorrow, has gone irregular (and Milk of Magnesia is no cure for this illness).  No, I think there's some kind of general malaise in the genre.  Maybe it's competition from the real world.  Maybe it's higher pay-outs from the slicks.

No matter what the cause, we've got to find some way to get an influx of talent into this field.  The alternative is, well, more magazines like the April 1967 issue of Galaxy.


by Douglas Chaffee

A Vast Wasteland

Thunderhead, Keith Laumer

Editor Fred Pohl saved his best for first.  Laumer is a competent science fiction/adventure writer when he's not writing his increasingly tired satire, and Thunderhead is nothing if not a competent science fiction/adventure.

Lieutenant Carnaby has been more than twenty years in grade, stuck on the most frontierward of planetary outposts.  Indeed, it seems the Navy has forgotten all about him, since it was supposed to pick him up fifteen years ago.  The world he's on has slowly decayed to one dying settlement.  Yet, he remains attached to his duty, to maintain and, in an emergency, activate the beacon that will turn this rim of the galaxy into an effective defense grid.


by Gray Morrow

Said emergency occurs, with the formerly contained enemy Djann breaking out of their containment, the Terran ship Malthusa in hot pursuit.  Carnaby and a young friend begin their ascent of the snowbound peak on which the beacon rests, and the story alternates between the Lieutenant, the Djann crew, and the driving Commodore of the terran cruiser.

The writing is deft, the setup interesting, and the Djann particularly interesting and innovative.  On the other hand, the other characters are caricatures, and the resolution by-the-numbers. 

Thus, a pleasant three stars, but no more.

Fair Test, by Robin Scott

Two aliens land on Earth to resupply with fuel and food.  They are successful despite the efforts of American local law enforcement.  The end of the story is a bit of social commentary as the extraterrestrials note that light meat and dark meat taste the same.

I'd have expected this story in a lesser mag, circa 1954.  Not Galaxy.

Two stars.

For Your Information: The Orbits of the Comets, Willy Ley

It's no exaggeration that, for a long time, Ley's science articles were my favorite part of the magazine.  They have since gotten desultory.  This one, in particular, meanders all over the place and, in one particular table, is nonsensical.  I suspect a misprint.

Anyway, I think this is my first two-star review for Mr Ley.  It is a sad day.

The New Member, Christopher Anvil

It's also a sad day whenever Anvil's name appears in the table of contents.  It has been said that one can smell an Analog reject a mile away, and the stench of this one is profound.  It's about a fictional Third World island country called "Bongolia".  Said nation joins the United Nations and sets about trying to make a living by extorting the richer countries as payment for centuries-old crimes against their state.

There could be a satire here, albeit not in great taste given how recent (and not very well handled) decolonization has been.  Instead, it's just a bunch of unfunny cheap shots.

One star.

The Young Priests of Adytum 199, James McKimmey

Forty young men and women, the last survivors of a nuclear war, live in a coddled paradise in one of the many American shelters.  They do little more than eat and mate, save for the one oddball, Peter the Funny, who prefers the clarinet.  He comes to a sticky end for his noncomformity.

I guess the moral is "Never Trust Anyone Under 30".  Two stars.

The Purpose of Life, Hayden Howard

Could it be?  Have we finally reached the last chapter in the sage of the Esks?

For the past year (or has it been two, already?) we have been following the viewpoint of Dr.  Joe West, an ethnologist sent out in the 1960s to do a survey on Eskimos in the Canadian North.  There he discovered a new race of beings, an unholy hybrid of human and alien.  They look like Eskimos, but their pregnancies last but a month, and their children mature in just a few years.  These "Esks" quickly supplant their human cousins and threaten to outrun their food supply.  Luckily, the bleeding hearts of the world recognize the Esks as fully human and open their doors and purses to succor them. 

West, unable to convince governments of the Esk threat, unsuccessfully tries to sterilize the half-aliens with a disease of his own devise, but only succeeds in killing a few innocent humans.  He is then locked up in a padded cell, then put to sleep for fifteen years.  When he is awoken, he is dispatched to mainland China by the CIA.  Aided by telepathic control devices implanted in his legs, he is emplaced close to the Communist leader, Mao III, whose brain he takes hold over–for purposes unknown to Dr. West.  So begins the latest and longest installement.

This bit takes place on an Earth whose societies are already being rocked by Esk overpopulation.  In China, the few hundred relocated to the barren hillsides two decades ago now number more than a billion.  The vast Communist land is suffering the least ill effects thus far, as the import labor has produced a terrific farm surplus and as yet is not integrated with Chinese society.  In America, however, every household has an Esk slave…er…servant, a situation which cannot last much longer as the subordinate race will soon vastly outnumber the master.  In Canada, civilization has collapsed, and the cities are populated by starving bands of Esks.

None of this seems to bother the Esks, who endure everything with endless patience and joy.  They know that someday, "the Great Bear" will return to take them all back to the sky.  Such is imprinted on their racial memories. 


by Jack Gaughan

In China, Mao III's generals revolt, sealing the invalid leader in a mountain redoubt-cum-tomb along with his controller, Dr. West.  All efforts to curtail the Esk population so as not to outstrip the food supply meet with failure.  Only one option is left — to impress the hybrids into an operation to dig the thousands of feet through solid rock to the surface.

But there is a spark of anticipation in the air.  Will the Great Bear arrive before the Esks liberate themselves from their underground prison?  And if so, what will happen if they arrive at the surface with their brethren all departed?

It's really hard to properly rate this segment, and the series as a whole.  The premise is dumb, the conclusion rather vague and dissatisfying, and for the most part, Dr. West is either ignored or ineffectual, or both.

Yet, damned if I didn't find myself vaguely looking forward to this chapter.  Damned if I didn't read the current installment in one sitting despite having resolved to take a nap instead (I do like my naps). 

And damned if I didn't spend way longer on this review than I'd intended.

Call it 3 stars for this chapter and 2.5 for the whole thing.  I'm not sorry I read it, but I'm glad it's over.

Within the Cloud, Piers Anthony

I think this is the first solo piece by Mr. Anthony.  The premise of this vignette is that the faces we see in the clouds are actually faces, and they have something to say.

Trivial stuff.  Two stars.

Ballenger's People, Kris Neville

An insane fellow, whose fragmented mind is under the delusion that it is a polity of many parts rather than a single entity, becomes homicidal when threatened by "other nations" (i.e. other human individuals).

It started promisingly, but didn't really go anywhere.  Two stars.

You Men of Violence, Harry Harrison

Finally, a tidbit from a fellow whose work I often confuse with Keith Laumer's.  A pacifist on the run from military types figures out how to kill without being the killer.

Rather obvious and somewhat pointless.  Two stars.

Gasping for breath

Wow.  That wasn't very good, was it?  And with one of Pohl's major talents, Mr. Cordwainer Smith, gone to the ages, we really don't have much to look forward to.  At least until Messrs. Niven and/or Vance return. 

Or Pohl finds some new talent.  Maybe there's a large, mostly untapped demographic he could plumb…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 4, 1967] Mediocrities (April 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

Method or madness?

The assassination of President Kennedy a little more than three years ago is a moment engraved on everyone’s hearts and minds. The arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald brought some relief, but his subsequent murder by Jack Ruby denied Americans the catharsis a trial would have provided, with the clear presentation of all the evidence. Ruby’s recent death just before his retrial has denied whatever release that might have offered. As such, Americans have had to make do with the report issued by the Warren Commission on the assassination, and a lot of people aren’t satisfied with its conclusions. Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane calls into question many of the Commission’s findings and has found an audience. The book has spent 25 weeks on the New York Times list of best-selling non-fiction.

On February 17th, the New Orleans States-Item published a story revealing that District Attorney Jim Garrison was investigating the assassination. In a news conference the next day, Garrison announced his office was working on seeking an indictment of “some individuals in New Orleans” for their role in President Kennedy’s death and promised that arrests would be made. On February 22nd, pilot David Ferrie was found dead in his New Orleans home. Garrison has accused Ferrie of being the get-away pilot for the conspirators and had been preparing to take Ferrie into protective custody. In a news conference on the 24th, Garrison dropped a bombshell. Speaking about his office’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination, he declared, “We solved it weeks ago. There remains only the details of evidence, and there is no question about it. We have the names of everyone. We have all the details.”


New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison

Is there anything to this? Garrison seems pretty confident. On the other hand, he has a reputation as a grandstander. He’s overseen numerous vice raids in the French Quarter, resulting in lots of arrests and very few trials. The raids brought him into conflict with local judges and the police, and he’s accused both groups of corruption, but there have been no indictments. He’s even been unanimously censured by both houses of the state legislature for maligning their members. Time will tell if there’s something to this or if it’s just another dog-and-pony show.

Reversion to the mean

Knowing that last month’s spectacular issue was going to be a hard act to follow, I lowered my expectations for this month’s IF. I may not have recalibrated properly. Even some of the decent stuff is pretty forgettable.


This old-fashioned cover bears little relationship to the Chandler story it supposedly illustrates. Art by Gray Morrow

The Road to the Rim (Part 1 of 2), by A. Bertram Chandler

Fresh out of the Academy, Ensign John Grimes has come aboard the Delta Orionis for transport to his first posting. After getting off on the wrong foot with the captain, Grimes spends most of his time with attractive Purser Jane Pentecost, who is suspected of being a recruiter for the Rim Worlds independence movement. When word reaches the ship of a failed pirate attack on a ship bearing the captain’s fiancee, Grimes, with all the rigidity of a newly minted officer, refuses to release the naval stores in the ship’s cargo for hunting the pirates. After spending some time in the brig and a romantic farewell from Jane, he decides to throw away his career and join the captain’s hunt as a gunnery officer. To be continued.


The Mannschen drive in operation; forward in space and backward in time. Art by Gray Morrow

We’ve met John Grimes before, most recently as a Commodore about to retire. That’s not so strange; both C. S. Forester and Poul Anderson have gone back to look at the early career of established characters. However, knowing where Grimes’ career will take him removes a lot of the tension from the story. In terms of story and action, this is fairly typical Chandler (apart from a lack of hopping between universes). But Chandler excels at drawing the character of a raw young officer who doesn’t understand what rules can bend and when, and who sometimes thinks with parts farther south than his brain.

A solid, but not quite high three stars.

The Fantasque, by James McKimmey

Having come into a small inheritance, Homer Bemoth purchases a Fantasque over the objections of his conservative, prudish wife.

This isn’t so different from “The Dream Machine”, which we saw last June. It’s on a more personal level and has something resembling a story, but it also gives us a couple of fairly unpleasant characters.

A high two stars.

Retief, War Criminal, by Keith Laumer

The planet Sulinore is in decline, largely because the dwindling populace has declared most of the planet to be cemeteries and monuments to the dead heroes of the past. The Terran Mission has come for a peace conference sponsored by the Groaci, no doubt to aid their proteges the Blug. Fortunately, Retief is on hand.


Retief to the rescue. Art by Gaughan

It’s fairly typical of the species, but there’s more story here than you usually find in a Retief tale. Only the part where he’s held captive by the Groaci feels like Laumer is just going through the motions. Again, this is probably better if you’re new to Retief, but the inclusion of stronger story elements is a good sign. There may be hope for this series yet.

Three stars.

It’s New York in ‘67!, by Lin Carter

Carter gives us a preview of this year’s Worldcon, to be held in New York City over the Labor Day weekend. There will be both professional and fan Guests of Honor (Lester del Rey and Bob Tucker respectively), and Harlan Ellison will be the toastmaster. Jack Gaughan’s doing a comic book that will be sent out to registered members over the year, and there are a couple of new ideas on the program. One is in-depth interviews with various authors, but the big draw is likely to be the “Dialogues” in which two big names will debate various questions occupying the world of science fiction. The schedule isn’t set, but we are promised two well-known writers debating the “avant garde” and “traditional” styles of science fiction.

Three stars.

The Ethics of Madness, by Larry Niven

Douglas Hooker was born a potential paranoiac, but as long as he takes his medication regularly he will be fine. A freak maintenance problem with his autodoc results in him not getting his medicine, and he descends into paranoia. He steals a starship and ultimately causes the death of his former best friend’s wife. After completing his rehabilitation, he steals another ship and flees the anger of that former friend.


Doug Hooker flees Plateau. Art by Castellon

Another big story from Niven, but with more depth than he usually shows. The story is told largely through flashbacks, and we are able to watch Hooker’s slowly changing mental state. I found it reminiscent of a recent episode of Star Trek, but much the better for not being compressed into a few lines of dialogue. My one quibble is that there ought to have been more safety mechanisms on the autodoc than a single warning light. Otherwise, a very good story. (And if this had run last month, we could have had two forty-mile-high mountains in one issue.)

Four stars.

It Takes All Kinds, by Bruce W. Ronald

Only ten percent of the 59 million twenty-year-olds who have tested for college and the ability to get a job will be accepted. As the numbers come in, Terry Gordon watches his chances steadily decline. What does it mean to rank 5,900,001 when there are 5,900,000 places?

Ronald is clearly trying to say something about education and its value. Terry does a lot of math in his head over the story, but the classes he and the girl he meets talk about are trivialities. It’s not a terrible story, and I want to like it better than I do, but just a day after reading it, I couldn’t remember a single thing about it.

Just barely three stars.

The Accomplice, by Vernor Vinge

Over the last year, someone has stolen more than 70 hours of time on Royce Technology’s 4D5, the most powerful computer in the world. That time is worth close to $4,000,000. Royce and his chief of security, Arnold Su, go looking for the culprit.

Frankly, the story itself isn’t very good, but Vinge’s speculations on how fast computers will improve (the 4D5 is expected to be on the consumer market in just 8 years) and the way they will impact industries you might not expect are well worth the read. Those speculations probably wouldn’t have had the same impact and believability in a fact article.

Three stars, purely for the vision

The Purpose of It All, by W. I. Johnstone

The Snick has come to Earth seeking a new masterhost. It thinks it has found what it’s looking for, but has misunderstood the situation.

Johnstone is this month’s new author, and Fred must be getting desperate for first-timers. The story isn’t very good, and unlike the two stories before it, it has no redeeming features.

Two stars.

The Iron Thorn (Part 4 of 4), by Algis Budrys

Honor Jackson has arrived on Earth. The naked people who greet him are a group of Naturalists, the largest faction of humans, or so the master computer or Comp informs him. After spending some time with them, he stages an Amsir hunt with the help of Comp. This quickly makes him one of the most famous people on Earth, but at a party in his honor he soon becomes disgusted at the decadence of those around him.


Comp creates an Amsir for Jackson to hunt. Art by Gray Morrow

I’ve commented before on the rapid pacing of this story, and based on the author’s recap I’ve come to the conclusion that there must be a lot that was removed for serialization. That said, I don’t think I’ll be looking for the novel if and when it’s released. Budrys has written an engaging story, but it doesn’t appear to be about anything. It’s a hollow shell.

A low three stars for this installment and three for the novel as whole.

Summing up

All in all, a fairly typical issue of IF. I actually revised a couple of my assessments (Ronald and Vinge) upwards as I wrote my review, because I realized they did make me think, even if the stories weren’t much. On the other hand, I’ve grown less and less satisfied with the Budrys serial as it has progressed. It’s all quite a let-down after last month.

Still in all, things could be worse, knock on wood. We'll find out next month if this was an aberration or a return to the mean.


Which Laumer will we get? I’m guessing semi-comedic adventure.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 16, 1967] Off to a Good Start (February 1967 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Happy New Year!


We have to be told twice that it's the Fabulous Flamingo.

Here we go with my first magazine review of 1967. I'm glad to say that the year begins with a bang, as the lead novella in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is a knockout. Will the rest of the stories and articles be anywhere near as good? Let's find out.


Cover art by Gray Morrow.

The Star-Pit, by Samuel R. Delany

Delany has already published several novels, but I believe this is his first appearance in a science fiction magazine. It's certainly an auspicious debut. That's not such a big surprise, as his book Babel-17 won high praise from my esteemed colleague Cora Buhlert, and was the overwhelming choice for the most recent Galactic Stars award for Best Novel.


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

The narrator begins with an account of an incident in his past that puts him in a bad light. While living on a planet with two suns, as part of a group marriage, he destroyed a miniature ecological system built by the family's children, as shown above. (I pictured the thing, which is something like a super-sophisticated ant farm, as quite a bit larger.)


Two of the alien organisms released during the narrator's destruction of the object. I pictured them as much smaller.

Several years later, the narrator is at the edge of the galaxy, working as a mechanic for starships. For a while, it seems as if the opening section of the story has little to do with the rest, but it all ties up at the end.

This is a future time when travel throughout the Milky Way is possible, but not beyond its borders. Attempting to do so results in insanity and death for the unfortunate extragalactic voyager. That is, unless you happen to be one of the rare people known as golden. (The word is used as a noun here, and serves as both the singular and plural form. Delany displays his interest in language in this story just as he did in the novel mentioned above.)

Golden have both hormonal and psychological abnormalities that allow them to travel to other galaxies, bringing back rare and valuable items. They are also mean or stupid, as one character says, prone to foolish actions and sudden violence. As you'd expect, ordinary people resent them, not only for their unpleasant personalities, but out of jealousy for their ability to escape the Milky Way.

The narrator and a young man encounter an unconscious golden. (It seems that a disease brought back from another galaxy causes intermittent blackouts.)


Carrying a golden.

They bring the golden to a woman who is a projective telepath. Let me explain. That means that she causes other people to experience her sensations. She was also born addicted to a hallucinatory drug taken by her mother. Combined with her telepathic ability, the drug allowed her to serve as a psychiatric therapist, helping golden overcome psychic shock caused by their journeys.


The projective telepath. She may be the most fascinating character in the story.

Another incident involving two golden leaves the narrator with a starship designed to travel to other galaxies. The question of what should be done with it leads to multiple complications, both tragic and hopeful. (I haven't even mentioned the narrator's assistant, who plays a major part.)


There's also a dramatic scene involving waldoes.

I have only given you a small taste of a very intricate story. Despite having the depth and complexity of a full-length novel, it is never confusing. The richly imagined future reminds me a bit of Cordwainer Smith, although Delany's narrative style is much more intimate than Smith's mythologizing.

The writing is beautiful, and the author creates living, breathing characters. The plot deals with love, hate, marriage, parenthood, and much more. It will break your heart and bring you much joy.

Five stars.

The Psychiatric Syndrome in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

The indefatigable historian of fantastic fiction offers a look at the use of psychology in the genre. He traces this theme back to Robert Louis Stevenson's famous novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, then talks about a lot of other stories.

A big chunk of the article deals with the works of David H. Keller, a practicing psychiatrist. I'm not convinced that all the Kelleryarns discussed here are really relevant to the topic.

There's also discussion of The Jet Propelled Couch, a chapter from the book The Fifty-Minute Hour by psychologist Robert M. Lindner. (He also wrote the book Rebel Without a Cause, which gave its title, if nothing else, to the famous movie of the same name.) This is the true account of one of Linder's patients, who became obsessed with a fantasy world in which he was the hero of outer space adventures. Although quite interesting, the case has little to do with the subject of psychiatry in science fiction.

The article wanders all over the place, and it is not very well organized. It's not as dull as some of the author's endless listings of old stories, but it's not his best work, either.

Two stars.

The Planet Wreckers, by Keith Laumer


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Our hapless hero is in a crummy hotel room, trying to get some sleep, when he hears noises coming from above. Since he's in a Laumer story, he doesn't just call the front desk. He climbs up the fire escape to see what's going on. What seems at first to be a lovely young woman turns out to be a weird alien being.

She's some kind of outer space law enforcement agent. It seems that other weird aliens plan to cause a series of disasters on Earth, in order to record them as a form of entertainment. (Think of Hollywood spectaculars.) She doesn't care about the fact that huge numbers of human beings will be killed; she just wants to protect the environment.

The alien policewoman and our pajama-clad protagonist go zooming all over the place in her flying machine, trying to stop the catastrophes. It all winds up with the hero inside the alien studio, so to speak, and with another revelation about his female companion.


Can you tell this isn't the most serious story in the world?

Laumer writes a lot of comic adventures, along with serious ones, but I think this may be the silliest yet. There doesn't seem to be any real satire here, although I guess you can interpret it as a dig at the movie industry. It's full of goofy-looking aliens with wacky names, and plenty of slapstick mishaps. If you're looking for a brainless farce, go no further.

Two stars.

Sun Grazers, by Robert S. Richardson

Inspired by the appearance of the comet Ikeya-Seki, which was visible from late 1965 to early 1966, the author discusses comets that pass close to the sun. He also talks about how comet groups form (larger comets breaking up into smaller ones) and whether the paths of comets suggest a tenth planet beyond Pluto (inconclusive.) The article ends with the author's own struggle to view Ikeya-Seki, and how he made a rough guess as to the size of its tail.

The author describes Ikeya-Seki as a disappointment. (The name comes from two Japanese comet hunters who discovered it independently, by the way.) Other accounts of which I am aware state that it was very bright, visible in the daytime. The article is moderately informative, but a little on the dry side. Like the author's experience with the comet, it isn't as spectacular as one might wish.

Two stars.

Station HR972, by Kenneth Bulmer

The superhighways of the future, where vehicles travel two hundred miles per hour and more, require teams of specialists to deal with accidents. This includes transplanting limbs and internal organs. All in a day's work.

There's not really much plot here. It's kind of a slice-of-life story, detailing the activities of the folks who have to deal with the gruesome effects of high speed collisions. I'm reminded of Rick Raphael's story Code Three, which had a very similar theme. Frankly, that one was a lot better.

Two stars.

About 2001, by David A. Kyle

No, this isn't an article about the first year of the next millennium. It's a very brief piece concerning the upcoming movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.


Director Stanley Kubrick (with beard) and writer Arthur C. Clarke (without hair.)

There's not a lot of information here, as the creators are keeping things hush-hush. What we do find out is intriguing. Will the finished product live up to Clarke's prediction that It'll be the greatest science fiction picture ever made? Only time will tell.

I can't really blame the author of this article for frustrating my desire to learn more about the film, as he was obviously prevented from finding out too much. That doesn't keep me from wishing it were a lot longer.

Two stars.

The Shape of Shapes to Come, by Robert Bartlett Riley

An architect imagines what buildings and cities might be like in the future. This involves three areas of prediction. From easiest to most difficult, these are technological changes; what people will choose to do with these techniques; and how this will change society.

Topics discussed include advanced building materials, new forms of lighting, and greater control of interior environments. The author laments the lack of mass-produced housing, similar to the way automobiles are manufactured, which would greatly reduce the price of a home. In the most imaginative section, he dreams of shelters made from force fields rather than physical materials, and of personal Life Packs that would supply one with all the functions of a house.

I found this slightly interesting, but rather vague in its predictions and not very exciting. Despite the discussion of a couple of wild possibilities, the author seems to think that architecture is going to remain conservative for quite some time, avoiding the futuristic visions of science fiction writers.

Two stars.

The Fifth Columbiad, by Richard C. Meredith


Illustrations by Hector Castellon.

Many centuries before the story begins, aliens destroyed all humans on Earth. In what must have been the most embarrassing mistake of all time, they thought the humans were other beings who were their deadly enemies.

The only people to survive were those who happened to be on starships at the time. Now, their descendants make war on the aliens, capturing their starships to add to the human fleets.

The plot involves the captain and crew of one starship. The vessel is badly damaged in battle, just barely managing to escape. The commander and a team of volunteers remain on the derelict vessel, hoping to lure an alien starship into docking with it so they can sneak aboard the enemy vessel and seize it for themselves.


Carnage on the starship.

This yarn reminds me of war stories in which a small team of commandos attacks an enemy installation against overwhelming odds. The Guns of Navarone in space, if you will. You know that some of the volunteers will be killed in action, but that the mission will succeed. I thought there might be some kind of ironic ending, given the mistake that started the war in the first place, but nothing like that happens.

There's some odd, smirking sexual content in this story. At the risk of sounding like a prude, I didn't think it was necessary to point out that the pseudo-reptilian aliens, who have a matriarchal society, have breasts like human women.


Not shown here, for reasons of good taste, I assume.

There's one volunteer who's only there so he can be a hero, thus earning the sexual favors of admiring women. The author tells us the female crew members wear nothing but skirts — no shirts or blouses, apparently — and gives us a fair amount of detail about the heroine's panties. (The excuse is that the interior of the alien ship is hot and humid, so the humans have to strip down to the basics.)

Two stars.

Coming To A Bad End

This issue really went into a nosedive after soaring to the heights of imaginative literature with Delany's novella. Scuttlebutt has it that Worlds of Tomorrow is on its last legs. That's too bad, as the magazine gave readers some very good stuff, along with a lot of not-so-good stuff. Very much a curate's egg, I'm afraid.


Cartoon by Wilkerson, from the May 22, 1895 issue of Judy.


A better known cartoon by George du Maurier, from the November 9, 1895 issue of the better known magazine Punch. Too similar to be a coincidence, I'd say.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 2, 1967] Different perspectives (February 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

We all know the adage about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Trying to see the world through others’ eyes is a good way to understand them, and that can help ease tensions and make it easier to find compromises. Of course, it’s also possible to come up with some pretty ridiculous ideas about the way other people think.

Failures of diplomacy

At the end of 1965, I wrote about the troubles in the British colony of Rhodesia. The white minority government refuses to consider the idea of granting equal rights or a role in government to Black Rhodesians. Early in December, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Rhodesian Prime minister Ian Smith, and ousted Rhodesian Governor General Humphrey Gibbs met aboard the HMS Tiger to try to hash out a solution. Smith left with a proposal he seemed willing to accept, but rejected it out of hand as soon as he returned to Salisbury. In response on December 16th, the United Nations Security Council approved an oil embargo and economic sanctions against Rhodesia 11-0, with France, the Soviet Union, Mali and Bulgaria abstaining. Four days later, Wilson withdrew all offers and announced that the United Kingdom would only accept a Black majority government. On the 22nd, as the trade ban was about to go into effect, Smith declared that the U. N. had forced Rhodesia out of British control and out of the British Commonwealth, making the country an independent republic by default.

Bechuanaland to Rhodesia's south may have peacefully become Botswana last year, but it seems that most of southern Africa is ready to go up in flames. While dealing with the condemnation of the rest of the world, the Smith government is also fighting two Black nationalist movements. Meanwhile, armed resistance is developing against South Africa’s illegal control of South West Africa, and armed independence movements are appearing in the Portuguese overseas provinces of Angola and Mozambique (formerly Portuguese West and East Africa respectively). If any of these embers becomes a conflagration, it’s hard to see how this won’t also spill over into South Africa as well.


Wilson returns with what looked like an acceptable deal, but Smith swiftly vetoed it.

Through alien eyes

John Campbell supposedly said he wanted someone to write an alien that “thinks as well as a man, but not like a man.” At least one author in this month’s IF makes a pretty good attempt at doing so. Others at least offer characters trying to understand how aliens (and in one case a door) think.


At least they aren’t even pretending this illustrates something in the magazine. Art by Wenzel

The Soft Weapon, by Larry Niven

A dozen years after the discovery that the galactic core is exploding, the mad (not because of his manic-depression, but because he’s courageous) puppeteer Nessus has hired Jason and Anne-Marie Papandreou, who operate the passenger ship Court Jester, to take him to see the Outsiders in deep space. While concluding his unspecified business, Nessus has also purchased a stasis box, an item potentially containing a piece of technology from the long-gone Slaver empire. On the way back, Jay decides to make a detour to Beta Lyrae, hoping the sight will snap Nessus out of his funk.

There, they fall into the clutches of the kzinti Chuft-Captain and the crew of the Traitor’s Claw. Among other things, the box proves to contain a strange device which can change its shape. Some of the settings include a rocket booster and a talking computer, but the device also seems capable of converting matter to usable energy with perfect efficiency. It’s up to Jay to use what he thinks the device is in order to escape with his wife and client and keep a dangerous technology from winding up in the hands of kzinti.


Jay discovers a hidden setting. Art by Gaughan

Niven has given us insight into the kzinti mind before and goes into greater detail here. We also get his speculation on what might be valued in a society of sentients descended from herbivores. The action is done fairly well, we have a female character who isn’t just motivation for the protagonist, and the story flows quite well. This might be the best thing Niven has written yet.

A high four stars.

Gods of Dark and Light, by Bruce McAllister

Gregory Shawn is a member of a religious movement which has come to V-Planet-14 to live according to their own rules. Things aren’t going well. Most of the story consists of Gregory’s prayers as the harsh conditions test and shape the group’s faith. These are interspersed with the prayers of one of the native life forms.

There isn’t much to say about this one. I think McAllister has something he’s trying to say, but it’s not entirely clear. The whole thing is very dark.

Two stars.

Forest in the Sky, by Keith Laumer

The Terran Mission to the planet Zoon is having trouble finding the natives. It turns out the Groaci have beaten the CDT to the punch, though they aren’t doing any better. Once again, it’s Retief to the rescue.


The Terran Mission sets off to look for the local government. Art by Castellon

I noted back in October that Laumer seemed to be having fun with Retief again. That still seems to be the case, but while this is more than just going through the motions, it’s still the same old formula. If you’re new to Retief, this is probably a lot of fun. Otherwise it’s palatable, but more of the same.

A low three stars.

The Fan Awards, by Lin Carter

This month, Our Man in Fandom takes a look at the Hugos. Carter traces the development of the award and tells us a bit about who Hugo was. Next month, he promises to talk about some of the Hugo winners and to look at the new Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Three stars.

The Iron Thorn (Part 2 of 4), by Algis Budrys

Hunting his first Amsir, Honor White Jackson learns that his prey is an intelligent being with better technology than his own people have. Eventually, he decides to defect to the Amsir and is taken to their home, a deep bowl filled with dense air and greenery. A vision of his people’s paradise. But paradise it is not. The food of the Amsir is poisonous to humans, and Jackson faces death by starvation. His only hope is to find a way into the Thorn Thing, a short metal tower with a locked door at the top of a ladder. The door instantly destroys any Amsir attempting to go through it after issuing a warning in an unknown language. The only one who can get close is Ahmuls, who is deformed in such a way that he resembles humans more than he does Amsir. If the door likes humans, then presumably there’s something Jackson can eat on the other side. As this installment ends, Jackson convinces the door to open and dives through, followed by Ahmuls and the spears of the Amsir.

To be continued.


Jackson enters the Thorn Thing. Art by Gray Morrow

This story certainly moves fast. Nothing feels as rushed as it did in the first part, but Budrys isn’t wasting any time. I have some suspicions about what’s going on. Much of that will probably be resolved next month, though I have no idea how it will all be wound up.

Three stars.

Confession, by Robert Ray

Father Hume sits on his veranda, waiting for the oppressive heat of an Australian afternoon in the back of beyond to dissipate. He closes his eyes for a moment, but must have nodded off, since there is suddenly a stranger in his back garden. A stranger who would like the Father to hear his confession, but can’t wait until church tomorrow. What Father Hume hears will change his life and, hopefully, the world.

On first reading, this seemed like the sort of story you read, don’t mind and then forget. As I’ve thought about it, though, some other aspects have occurred to me. I can’t really say anything without giving the whole story away and ruining its impact, but it’s a little better than I first credited it.

A solid three stars.

The Evil Ones, by Richard Wilson

Wally Hengsen beat a murder charge with an insanity plea. Now, he’s biding his time until his organization can bust him out. When an alien spaceship lands on the grounds of the rest home, he starts looking for an angle to play, but a reminder of events in New Guinea during the War sets him on a different path.


Hengsen wonders if he really does belong in an asylum. Art by Vaughn Bodé

This is a decent story. It sags in a couple of places, and Hengsen’s change of heart relies so much on a flashback that it feels a little out of place. On the other hand, it does finish strongly, which is probably enough.

Three stars.

The Dangers of Deepspace, by Mather H. Walker

A colonel of the Deepspace service is interviewing a volunteer and seems to be doing his best to discourage the young man from signing up.

Here we have this month’s first-time author. The whole thing is very obvious, doesn’t entirely make sense and isn’t worth your time. The nicest thing I can say is that the prose is serviceable.

Barely two stars.

A Beachhead for Gree, by C. C. MacApp

Steve Duke and friends go behind enemy lines. They make contact with the locals, use a ruse to infiltrate an enemy base and thwart Gree’s plans.


This time the locals are humanoids who can build wings for themselves. Art by Burns.

I’m going to make several carbons of that summary and whenever a Gree story appears, I’ll just cut one out and paste it into my manuscript. Will this interminable series never end?

Two stars.

Summing up

No matter how you look at it, this month’s IF is par for the course. One really good story, some decent stuff and some junk. And as good as it’s been so far, the serial needs to start paying off next month. At least we have the special Hugo edition to look forward to next month. The authors are good, but will they offer up their best stuff?


No mention of Frank Herbert this time. Hmmmm.




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