Tag Archives: kris neville

[September 16, 1968] Siriusly? (October 1968 Galaxy)


by Gideon Marcus

Summertime, and the living ain't easy

Our longest, hottest summer began early with the shooting of Bobby Kennedy.  It heated up to the sound of Soviet bullets and tank treads in Czechoslovakia and reached a crescendo with the fiasco of a Democratic Convention in Chicago, shuddering in synchronicity with the quake in eastern Iran that killed 10,000.  Meanwhile, radioactive rain from the French H-bomb test soaks Japan, Pete Seeger's daughter, Mika, has been in a Mexico City jail for two months (for participating in anti-police protests), and the 82 crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo are still locked up in North Korea (for participating in unauthorized offshore fishing exercises).

But, hey, thanks to the war in Vietnam, unemployment is at its lowest rate since Korea.  And America has a new Queen, Miss Judith Ford, formerly Queen of Illinois.

Her "subjects" demonstrated a properly American sentiment toward the coronation.  Spurred by a collective called the New York Radical Women, several hundred protesters tossed "beauty" accoutrements into the "freedom trash can": bras, girdles, high-heeled shoes, fake eyelashes, etc.  So there was a bright spot, of sorts.

I wouldn't sent a knight out on a dog like this…

I apologize for coming off sour.  It's not just the season.  I've got a humdinger of a virus, and the latest issue of Galaxy is only making me feel worse.


by Douglas Chaffee

The Villains from Vega IV, by E. J. Gold and H. L. Gold


by Jack Gaughan

Fred Pohl, editor for Galaxy, likes to talk about how Gold, the founding editor for the magazine, was legendarily zealous with his red pen.  Not a single story made it through the slush pile (or any other) without looking like it had been through a Prussian duel.  Now, one could argue that there was merit to this approach: much of vintage Galaxy is superlative.

However, when Gold first submitted a story for an anthology Pohl was putting together, Fred could not help taking delight in a bit of revenge.  He contrived to mark everything, even innocuous conjunctions and prepositions.  When it was done, there was more red than black and white.  The dedication this must have taken!

Reportedly, Gold called Pohl up, and said something to the effect of, "Fred, you're the editor, and I'll defer to your judgment, of course, but…Jesus!"

In any event, it couldn't be this story to which Fred was referring since Villains was co-written by both Gold and his son, Eugene (but not, as I initially thought from the initials, his wife, Evelyn).  It's the silly story of Robert E. Li, President of Vega IV, who comes to Earth to find his young bride, who has run off to be in pictures.  Andytec, a diffident young android, is dispatched to accompany him as bodyguard and detective.

There are some interesting concepts, like the Vegan tradition of 36 year olds marrying 18 year olds, who themselves find new partners upon reaching 36.  At 54, one is then free to marry whomever one likes.  And there's the Bird of Perdition, a chimerical creature biologically rooted into the heads of former criminals (including, surprisingly, the Vegan President).  Semi-intelligent, they spout Poe-derivative prose when alarmed.

But all in all, the story is not funny enough, nor does it break enough ground (indeed, it feels vaguely like a washed out A Specter is Haunting Texas) to sustain its novelet length.  One good bit, however:

"Turn that bloody thing off!" he shouted at me.

"Off, sir?" I said vacantly.  "You can change channels and make it louder, but you can't turn it off.  With the 3V off, what would there be to do?  And it would be so lonely."

Two stars.

All the Myriad Ways, by Larry Niven


by Joe Wehrle, Jr.

Things look up a bit, as they always do, with Niven's latest.  An L.A. cop is trying to decode the recent rash of murders and suicides, all spontaneous, few logically motivated.  The timing suggests a connection with Crosstime, the company that just began producing vehicles that can transit parallel time tracks.  In addition to bringing back marvels from other histories—worlds where the Confederacy won the Civil War, or where the planet has been bombed into searing radioactivity—it has also discovered a philosophical crisis.  If everything that could ever be does exist somewhen, does anything you do really matter?

And would you kill/die to find out?

As usual, the value of the tale is in Niven's crisp telling.  I particularly liked the revelation that the world our detective inhabits is not our Earth.  There's not quite enough to the story to make it truly memorable.  It's more of an idea-piece (or, per the author, an anti-idea piece; he doesn't buy the idea of parallel universes, nor does he appreciate their implications.  This is the ad absurdum extension of the concept.)

Of course, I think there is a middle ground: probabilities do exist.  Just because there are two options doesn't mean their chance of occurring is 50/50.  Or as I tell folks, if I flip a coin, it's 50% likely it comes up heads or tails.  But it's 100% likely the coin falls down rather than up.

So while there may be an infinity of universes, it would seem they would all remain confined to the possible, and the preponderance tend toward the probable.  I could also see timelines sort of merging back together if they were close enough.

Anyway, a good story, and thought-provoking.  Four stars.

Thyre Planet, by Kris Neville


by Dan Adkins

One day, an alien race called the Thyres all, suddenly, disappeared.  They left behind an inhabitable world and a working, planetary teleportation booth grid.  Of course, humans jumped at the chance to settle the planet.

The hitch: each use of the booth has an infinitesimal but non-zero chance of killing the traveler.  Hundreds die each year.  A Terran scientist is dispatched to solve the problem.  Convinced it is tied to some abstruse physical law, he secures billions in funding to crash-start a Manhattan Project to rewrite cosmic law.  The endeavor takes on a life of its own, ultimately eclipsing the original problem.  Said problem remains unresolved until the end, and it turns out to be caused by something completely different.

I found this a deeply frustrating story.  Is it a satire of scientific institutions?  A cautionary tale advising us to look for simple explanations before complex ones?  A screed against hasty colonization?  it all muddles together without a satisfactory payoff.  Maybe I read it wrong.

Two stars.

Homespinner, by Jack Wodhams


by Joe Wehrle, Jr.

Boy, this was a hard one to rate.  It's about a fellow who lives in a future where houses can be done up in a day, rooms completely redecorated as quickly as one might, today, swap out a picture on the wall.  Said fellow is annoyed that his wife keeps changing his home on a weekly basis.  All he wants is some consistency in his life.  Indeed, you can't help wondering why the couple are together at all, so incompatible they seem.  The husband also seems awfully sexist, expecting his wife to stay at home and do virtually nothing but greet him cheerfully after work.

Of course, you'll figure out what's up with their relationship before it's revealed, and that bit is reasonably clever.  The problem is, the getting there is repetitive and unpleasant.  I get why, but I feel a more skilled author could have put it together better.

For some reason, however, I appreciate it enough to give it three stars.

Criminal in Utopia, by Mack Reynolds


by Brand

In yet another story exploring "People's Capitalism", the American welfare state of the 1980s, a citizen embarks on a crime spree to improve his lot.  After all, in a system where everyone is supposed to be equal, the only way to get ahead is to cheat.

The question is: in an economy where income is strictly tied to each person, and all transactions are electronicized and trackable, can a person get more than he deserves?

As usual for Reynolds, a mildly diverting story and some very interesting technologies.  Three stars.

For Your Information: The Orbit of Explorer-1, by Willy Ley

Despite the sexy subject matter (I dig space stuff), this piece on…well…the orbit of Explorer-1…is pretty dull stuff.  I think Ley's heart just isn't in these articles very often anymore.

Three stars.

I Bring You Hands, by Colin Kapp


by Virgil Finlay

A rather amoral fellow is a Hands merchant.  These are tape-programmable, robotic hands that can do a physical task an infinite number of times.  Perfect for replacing assembly line workers, tailors, cooks, you name it.  Along the way, the salesman has an affair with one of the workers whose job he causes to be roboticized.  The end is not a pleasant one for the Hands dealer.

I had a lot of hopes for this story.  I thought it was going to make some sort of statement about mechanization, the ensuing unemployment, and how society adapts to change.  Instead, it was all thrown away for a cheap, obvious, macabre finish.

Two stars.

A Visit to Cleveland General, by Sydney J. Van Scyoc


by Jack Gaughan

Two brothers were in an air-car accident.  Just one emerged.  So why does Albin have trouble distinguishing himself from the deceased Deon?  Why does he need to take a pill every morning "for memory"?  And what are those aerosols Miss Kling, the nurse at Cleveland General, keeps spraying to affect everyone's mood and recollection?  Particularly in surgery, where body parts are shuffled into various people, muddling the identifies of donor and recipient?

Visit is a decent enough piece, thematically and literally, though you'll guess what's going on very quickly.  Scientifically, it makes no lick of sense.

Three stars.

The Warbots, by Larry S. Todd


by Todd

You'd think I would be quite keen on a fictional history of legged assault vehicles.  This one, however, is both too goofy and far too long to scratch that itch.

Two stars.

Behind the Sandrat Hoax, by Christopher Anvil


by Safrani

My first thought upon reaching this final piece was, "Oh, great—a Chris Anvil epistolary story."

And that thought was justified.

It's about how a prospector on New Venus discovers that eating the raw stomach of a desert rat allows the consumer to digest water from grass, but the proud scientific community doesn't like the way the research is done and impedes progress.  All of the scientists are made of straw, you see.

I was surprised not to find this in Analog—I guess sometimes things are too lousy even for Campbell.  On the other hand, Campbell gets the credit for tainting Anvil so that he's now worthless wherever he publishes.

One star.

Dimmer than a thousand squibs

2.4 stars.  Not only is that dismal, but recall that an issue of Galaxy is half-again as long as a normal mag.

There's a reason I paused for breath halfway to tear through The Weathermonger (and that is a good read!) Anyway, all things pass, and summer's only got five days left to it.  Surely next season will see an improvement, yes?






[January 10, 1968] Saving the Best For Last (Dangerous Visions, Part Three)


by Victoria Silverwolf

Welcome to the last of our three discussions about an anthology of original fantasy and science fiction that's drawing a lot of attention. Love it or hate it, or maybe a little of both, it's impossible to ignore. I showed you the full wraparound cover the the first time, and offered a closer look at the front the second time, so here's the back cover. It gives you a convenient list of the authors.

As before, I'll give each story the usual star rating as well as using the colors of a traffic light to indicate how dangerous it might be.

Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison


Art by Leo and Diane Dillion.

Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird, by Sonya Dorman

A woman desperately tries to escape her pursuers. Flashbacks tell us more about this dystopian world.

Saying anything more would lessen the impact of this intense little story. Ellison's introduction compares it to the work of Shirley Jackson, and that's a fair analogy. It's deceptively quiet and matter-of-fact at times, but full of icy horror at its heart.

Four stars. YELLOW for unrelieved grimness.

The Happy Breed, by John T. Sladek

In the near future, machines take care of all our problems, leaving us to enjoy a life of leisure. Of course, what the machines think is best for us may not agree with our own ideas.

This dark satire on automation isn't exactly subtle. It makes its point clearly enough, and follows it to its logical conclusion. The details of the characters' degeneration make it worth reading.

Three stars. YELLOW for cynicism.

Encounter with a Hick, by Jonathan Brand

Our smart aleck narrator tells us how he met a fellow from a less sophisticated background and what happened when he told the man something about the origin of his planet.

You'll probably figure out the punchline of this extended joke. Despite its predictability, I enjoyed the story's wise guy style. Others may find the narrator annoyingly smug.

Three stars. YELLOW for a wry look at deeply held beliefs.

From the Government Printing Office, by Kris Neville

Set at a near future time when childrearing has changed in an eye-opening way, this yarn is told through the eyes of a kid who is only three and one-half years old. Adults are bewildering creatures indeed!

The quirky choice of viewpoint, with its combination of precocity and naiveté, is what makes this story worth a look. I'm not quite sure what the author is saying about parents and children, but it's provocative.

Three stars. YELLOW for an unflattering portrait of Mom and Dad.

Land of the Great Horses, by R. A. Lafferty

All over the world, people with Romany ancestors feel compelled to return to a place that vanished long ago. But what will disappear next?

This synopsis fails to capture the author's eccentric style and unusual combination of whimsy and oddball speculation. If you like Lafferty, you'll enjoy it. If not, you won't. Like many of his works, it's something of a tall tale and a shaggy dog story. I dug it.

Four stars. GREEN for kookiness.

The Recognition, by J. G. Ballard

The narrator witnesses a woman and a dwarf set up a strange menagerie at night, not far from where a carnival is in progress. The mystery of the cages deepens as visitors show up.

I find this story difficult to describe. It's quite a bit different from the author's jagged, chopped up pieces for New Worlds, and from his decadent tales of Vermillion Sands. It's very subtle, and there seems to be more than meets the eye. The premise evokes thoughts of Ray Bradbury, but only in an extremely subdued way. Maybe haunting is the word I'm looking for.

Four stars. GREEN for intriguing writing.

Judas, by John Brunner

A robot sets itself up as God. One of the people who created it sets out to destroy the false deity.

The plot is simple enough, and the analogy between the worship of the robot and Christianity is made crystal clear. You may predict the twist ending, given the story's title.

Three stars. YELLOW for religious themes.

Test to Destruction, by Keith Laumer

The leader of a group of rebels is captured by the forces of a dictator. They use a gizmo to retrieve information from his brain. Meanwhile, in what has to be the wildest coincidence of all time, aliens approaching Earth also probe his brain, in order to learn how to conquer humanity. The combination is explosive.

Looking at my synopsis, I get the feeling that this isn't the most plausible story in the world. Since it's by Laumer, you know it's a fast-moving adventure yarn. As a matter of fact, it's so lightning-paced that it makes his other stories look slow. The reader is left breathless. There's a serious point made at the end, but mostly it's just a thrill ride.

Three stars. GREEN for action, action, action.

Carcinoma Angels, by Norman Spinrad

The delightfully named Harrison Wintergreen is a guy who has always gotten what he wanted out of life. As a kid, baseball cards. As a young man, women. As an adult, tons of money. Now he's got terminal cancer. Can he triumph over the ultimate challenge?

As Ellison says in his introduction, this is a funny story about cancer. Sick humor, to be sure. Bad taste? Well, maybe, but I think you'll get a kick out of it.

Four stars. YELLOW for black comedy.

Auto-Da-Fé, by Roger Zelazny

Replace a bullfight with a battle between man and car, and you've got this tongue-in-cheek tale. All the details of a traditional corrida del toros are here, transformed to fit the automotive theme.

It's a one idea story, to be sure, but stylish.

Three stars. GREEN for elegant writing.

Aye, and Gomorrah . . ., by Samuel R. Delany

Space explorers are raised from childhood to be absolutely free of sexual characteristics. It's impossible to tell if they started off as female or male; they are completely neuter in every way. People known as frelks are attracted to them.

Amazingly, this is the first short story Delany ever sold, although others have already appeared in magazines. It's superbly written, as you'd expect, and explores sex and gender in completely new, profound ways.

Five stars. RED for unimagined forms of human sexuality.

20 20 Hindsight

Looking back at the book as a whole, it's clear that the level of stories is generally high, with a few clunkers. Not all the stories are dangerous, and they could have been published elsewhere. A few are truly groundbreaking. The Silverberg, Leiber, and Delany are the best. The Sturgeon is the biggest disappointment. The Farmer is going to start the most arguments. Put on your reading glasses, fasten your seat belt, and give it a try.





[November 20, 1967] Fresh Air? (December 1967 Amazing)


by John Boston

A Fresh Heir

We have been harbinged.  When Harry Harrison, recently departed as editor of SF Impulse and suddenly appeared as book reviewer in this magazine that seemed to have eschewed features entirely, I wondered whether it was an omen of a larger change. 

And here that change is, in big letters at the top of the cover of this December Amazing: “HARRY HARRISON New Editor.” Joseph Ross is gone from the masthead and his departure is unheralded elsewhere in the magazine, though Harrison is quite gracious to him in his book review of Ross’s anthology The Best of Amazing.


by Johnny Bruck

Otherwise, the kudos are reserved for the recently-deceased Hugo Gernsback.  Harrison’s editorial is a tribute to him, and Science Fiction That Endures, Gernsback’s own guest editorial from the April 1961 anniversary issue, is reprinted.  Gernsback says among other things that enduring SF stories are those that “have as their wonder ingredient true or prophetic science,” and notes that Jules Verne and H.G. Wells wrote most of their notable SF early in their careers, later succumbing to “science fiction fatigue—the creative science distillate of the mind had been exhausted.” That sounds scientific!

But does this change in masthead mean any actual material change in this too frequently lackluster magazine?

The most visible difference is that the cover and title page have suddenly become more crowded.  Nine items are touted on the cover, five of them touted as “NEW” and others as “SPECIAL” or even “XTRA SPECIAL.” There’s so much puffery going on that the cover illustration, by Johnny Bruck from the German Perry Rhodan periodical, is confined to the bottom third of the cover, though little harm is done, since it’s quite horizontal in orientation, depicting a spaceship traveling very low and being pursued by flying snakes.  Beat that, Frank R. Paul! 

Other aspects of the magazine’s presentation represent both continuity and change.  The proofreading is still terrible; look no farther than the misspelling “Lester del Ray” on the title page of his story.  And curiously, part of the magazine—pages 90 through 125—is in a different, smaller typeface than the rest, though this increase in wordage is not touted on the cover or elsewhere.

As to the contents, the balance is shifted only a little.  Two short stories and the serial installment are original, one story is probably reprinted but this is its first appearance in English, and four short stories are reprinted from earlier issues of Amazing and Fantastic.  And of course we don’t know whether Harrison actually had much of a hand in selecting what went into this first issue of his incumbency.  But the question of reprints versus new material seems to be a continuing sore point.  Note the column on the left side of the cover—five iterations of "NEW"—which musters everything in the magazine that's not a reprint, including the book review column.

So, too early to tell, but promising—it almost has to be, given Amazing’s doldrums of mediocrity to date under Sol Cohen.  As Bob Dylan, the alleged troubadour of my generation, put it:

I wish I was on some Australian mountain range.
I wish I was on some Australian mountain range.
I got no reason to be there, but I imagine it would be some kind of change. 

Santaroga Barrier (Part 2 of 3), by Frank Herbert


by Gray Morrow

First, to the non-reprinted fiction.  The longest piece of fiction here is the second installment of Frank Herbert’s serial Santaroga Barrier, in which the suggestively named Gilbert Dasein tries to unlock the secret of the reclusive town of Santaroga, which seems to involve a psychoactive substance called Jaspers that the locals all consume.  As usual I’ll hold my comments until the story is complete.

The Forest of Zil, by Kris Neville


by Jeff Jones

Kris Neville, who contributed prolifically to the SF magazines during the early 1950s but slowed down considerably thereafter, opens the issue with The Forest of Zil, a cryptic story of space explorers who land on a planet entirely covered in forest and begin to make plans to clear trees to make space for human activities.  The forest begs leave to differ, and its response can be read either as an epic in brief of raising the ante exponentially, like A.E. van Vogt but not as noisy, or as a weary parody of the entire conceptual armamentarium of SF.  Or maybe something else!  How many faces can you find lurking in the coffee shop placemat?  Four stars for this subtly memorable piece.

The Million Year Patent, by Charles L. Harness


by Jeff Jones

Charles L. Harness, a patent lawyer by day, is present with The Million Year Patent, in which the technicalities of patent law collide with those of relativity, not very interestingly to this lay person.  Two stars.

An Unusual Case, by Gennadiy Gor

The “Sensational Story from behind the Iron Curtain” per the cover is Gennadiy Gor’s An Unusual Case, translated from Russian by one Stanley Frye.  Gor, born to a family exiled to Siberia by the Tsar, was apparently part of the avant-garde in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, but survived to write popular science texts as well, and to start writing SF in 1961.  There’s no indication where this story was previously published, if at all.  It’s a first-person account by the creator of an artificial intelligence (apparently at least humanoid; a hand is mentioned) of his rearing of this pseudo-child, which is cut short when representatives of the corporation that financed the project come to take it away, as it protests piteously.  It’s short and poignant, though blunted a bit by not making much sense; the ingenue develops detailed memories of human life that its creator didn’t put there.  Three stars, and I hope we see more of Gor’s work here (or anywhere).

The Smile, by Ray Bradbury


by L. Sterne Stevens

The ”Ray Bradbury Masterpiece” touted on the cover is The Smile, from the Summer 1952 Fantastic, set in what seems like an American town after a nuclear war has mostly destroyed civilization and left everyone who survived destitute.  People of course respond in the only logical way—by destroying or defiling any available relics of the former civilization.  A while back it was smashing an old car with sledgehammers; today everyone is lining up to spit on a fragment of a famous painting (clue: the title).  But young Tom just can’t get with the program.  It’s a bit overdone, but Bradbury’s overdone is better than many writers’ perfectly-baked.  Or something like that.  Three stars.

Stacked Deck, by Lester del Rey

Our Journeyer-in-Chief recently had occasion to mention “the sort of inferior stuff that filled the lesser mags of the ’50s.” Here’s the real article, Lester del Rey’s Stacked Deck from the November 1952 Amazing.  Del Rey is one of SF’s hardy journeyman professionals, in the game since 1937 as writer, first for John Campbell’s Astounding and Unknown, then for everyone in sight during the 1950s’ efflorescence of SF magazines.  In the ‘50s he edited magazines and anthologies and wrote novels as well as stories, including a prodigious ten of them under various pseudonyms for the Winston series of juvenile SF.  Occasionally he excelled, and his work almost always maintained a basic level of competence.

Almost always.  Sometimes a working writer just has to crank it out, inspiration or no, as in this excruciatingly contrived piece.  Before it opens, a man flew to the moon, without enough fuel to get back, expecting to be rescued in time by a later expedition.  (This already makes no sense.) But that rocketeer, inexplicably, showed up again on Earth, talking about entities he encountered on the moon but claiming scrambled memory.  So a better-equipped expedition sets out, only to discover that the Russians are neck and neck with them.  All this is told in an annoyingly jaunty, I’m-just-a-regular-guy first person style, as in the opening sentence: “The bright boys with their pep talks about space and the lack of gravity should try it once!”


by Ed Emshwiller

Upon landing, our heroes find a building with an airlock, and inside, a nice lounge with red leather chairs, a cigarette machine, and plenty of alcohol and food, along with a machine shop and a lot of electronic gear, with signs and manuals in English and Russian—and a vault full of missiles, ready to be armed with warheads.  They surmise the Russians are finding something similar.

So what gives?  All along there have been passing references to gambling, such as the protagonist’s having bought a sweepstakes ticket, and racing magazines lying around, some inside the mysterious building.  Our hero picks up one of the latter and finds a note in it written by the aliens who set up the building, explaining that they are all betting on whether the Earthfolk will blow themselves up in short order, or avoid extermination and come calling on the aliens a bit later.  Narrator ruminates: “I don’t like being the booby prize in a cosmic lottery.  And that’s all the human race is now, I guess.”

And that arid gimmick is the story, with no other redeeming feature.  Del Rey must have been short on the rent that month.  One star. 

Luvver, by Mack Reynolds

Speaking of gimmicks, arid ones that is, Mack Reynolds’s Luvver (Fantastic Adventures, June 1950) is about as contrived as Stacked Deck.  Old Donald Macbride and his flirtatious daughter Patricia are having spaceship problems and make an emergency landing on a handy planet despite the “RESTRICTED ZONE.  LANDING FORBIDDEN” warning that comes over the radio. The local garrison, consisting of Steve and Dave, hustles them off their ship—blindfolded—and into their quarters, warning them not to look around, not to go outside, not to open the windows, without explaining why. 

But Patricia, of course, goes outside, and before Steve can drag her in, she sees a little animal–a luvver.  He knocks her out and the guys shoot her up with “the lethe drug,” since wiping her memory is her only hope.  Steve explains to the old man that all animals have means of defense—speed, size, venom, scent, etc.  The luvvers’ defense is eliciting undying love—“a stronger force than the most vicious narcotic”—in anyone or anything that sees them.  If Patricia retains her memories, she will “die of melancholy” if kept away from them, and if they escaped their world, pandemonium would ensue.

The gimmick is slightly less inane than del Rey’s, and Reynolds writes in a style more facile and natural than del Rey’s artificial and irritating voice, so two stars, barely.

Sub-Satellite, by Charles Cloukey

The gem of the issue, remarkably, is Charles L. Cloukey’s Sub-Satellite, from the March 1928 Amazing.  It recounts a great inventor’s construction of a spaceship and his voyage to the Moon in it, and the attempt on his life there by a disgruntled and demented former employee who has stowed away.  It is well told in an agreeable, slightly stilted but very plain style with a good balance of narration and exposition, reminding me of (my old memories of) Jules Verne.  It too ends with a gimmick—one that has been used in later decades by better-known writers—but there’s much more of a story here than in del Rey’s or Reynolds’s efforts, so it doesn’t detract from the whole.  Four stars.

So who’s this Cloukey?  Never heard of him, though I’m familiar with most of Gernsback’s repeat contributors.  Turns out he died in 1931, at age 19, of typhoid fever, after publishing eight stories, a poem, and a serial novel in Gernsback’s magazines.  Sub-Satellite was his first story, and he was not quite 16 when it was published.  Forget G. Peyton Wertenbaker, whose The Man from the Atom, done when he was 16, was pretty terrible—Cloukey is the real prodigy of the Gernsback years.  Too bad he didn’t last.

Summing Up

So, not a bad issue, with a couple of four-star stories, and some evidence (mainly the cover and table of contents) that the new regime at least wants to make the magazine look a bit livelier.  Whether a sustained improvement is in process of course remains to be seen.






[June 10, 1967] Music To Read By (July 1967 Fantastic)


by Victoria Silverwolf

So May I Introduce To You The Act You've Known For All These Years.

The Beatles, that is.

I know, I know. By now you're a little tired of the Fab Four. Well, the release of their latest album in the USA early this month may change your mind.

(Those lucky folks in the UK got it late last month.)

After evolving from catchy, expertly crafted pop songs into new musical territory with the albums Rubber Soul and Revolver, the Liverpudlians have taken a giant leap.


You could spend hours just studying the cover art.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is extraordinary. It takes rock 'n' roll, mixes it up with other forms of popular music, adds more than a little modern psychedelic surrealism, and comes up with a genuine work of art. I'm afraid I'm going to wear out lots of phonograph needles listening to it over and over.

Because I've already got the songs from this album stuck in my head, let me suggest the ones you might listen to while reading the latest issue of Fantastic.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

The image on the front is stolen from one of the weekly German magazines featuring the adventures of space explorer Perry Rhodan.


Perhaps one of our German Journeyers can supply a translation.

The Narrow Land, by Jack Vance


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

The only new story begins with the birth of our hero, forcing his way out of an egg and fighting off others of his kind. He then grows up swimming in swampy water with other amphibian youngsters.

You can tell he's not a human being, can't you? All of the characters are of his species, but there are different kinds. The number of ridges on their heads indicates what variety they are.

One-ridge folks are the most common, and exist as fully developed males and females. Two-ridge types are sexually neuter. Three-ridge individuals are invariably male. As we'll learn later, there used to be a lot of them, but war with the two-ridge kind left only one alive. There's also one four-ridge being, a monster that preys on the one-ridge children.

Confused? So is our hero, as he tries to understand his world. As the title implies, it's a thin strip of inhabitable land between a region of cold, dark mist and an ocean of constant thunderstorms.

(The editorial blurb states that this is a planet with one side always facing its sun. This is not explicitly stated in the text. It explains why it's always twilight.)


There are also birds, but they are barely mentioned.

We'll get a detailed explanation for the various subtypes of aliens. Suffice to say that the main character leaves the water and is taken in by the two-ridge folks as one of their own. Later, however, he is labeled a freak, and has to escape to the realm of the three-ridge being. He learns a lot more about what's going on from that fellow, and comes up with a plan.

The story's setting and exotic alien biology is fascinating. The author does a good job of seeing things through the eyes of a character very different from a human being. The end comes rather suddenly, suggesting the possibility of a sequel.

Four stars.

(Suggested listening: Fixing a Hole, because the protagonist is trying to fill the gaps in his knowledge of the world.)

The Ship Sails At Midnight, by Fritz Leiber


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

This lovely and sad story comes from the September 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Illustrations by Henry Sharp.

The narrator is one of a quartet of jaded, world-weary intellectuals in a small college town. He's a writer. One is a philosopher, another is studying physics. The only woman in the group is a sculptor. They're all fairly skilled in their various fields, but far from brilliant.

The four meet a strikingly beautiful woman working as a waitress at an all-night diner. She doesn't say much, and reveals almost nothing about herself. Somehow or other, she brings out the best in each of them. They lose their cynicism, and produce works of genius.


She claims her name is Helen, suggestive of the ancient Greek myth of the Trojan War.

It's obvious from the beginning that she's from another world. If the illustration wasn't enough of a clue, the story starts with reports of a meteorite falling to earth and sightings of a UFO.

The narrator falls in love with Helen, and she returns his affection. A strange man shows up, telling her it's time to leave. She chooses to stay. It turns out that the other two men are in love with Helen as well, and had also won her heart. Jealousy rears its ugly head, leading to sudden violence.

(As a side note, it seems to me that the author very subtly suggests that the sculptress is in love with Helen too. This is somewhat disguised by the fact that she is engaged to be married to the physics student. I may be reading too much into this, but I would not be very surprised if Leiber, a sophisticated writer always ahead of his time, meant to offer hints of a lesbian romance.)

This is a beautiful and heartbreaking tale of joy won and lost.

Five stars.

(Suggested listening: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, because Lucy is as transcendent a creation as Helen.)

The Remarkable Flirgleflip, by William Tenn


Cover art by J. J. Blumenfeld.

The May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures supplies this futuristic farce.


Illustration by Leo Summers.

At some unspecified time in the future, human activities are controlled by time travelers from an even more distant future. In particular, they forbid a researcher from inventing time travel, because it's not supposed to be invented until a later time.

(I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Time travel stories are confusing.)

The guy decides to invent it anyway, and to heck with the consequences. He tricks the narrator into getting sent to the Twentieth Century. The fellow just wants to go back to his own time. Complications ensue, partly because people of the future don't wear clothing.

After hiding in a garbage can for a while, he winds up with a wisecracking newspaper reporter. It seems his story makes for hot news, even if nobody really believes him.

This is a silly story, without much of the satiric edge often found in Tenn's sardonic yarns. As you can tell from the title, it's full of goofy invented words. That always annoys me in a science fiction comedy.

Two stars.

(Suggested listening: Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!, because it's the most whimsical song on the album.)

From This Dark Mind, by Rog Phillips


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

The November/December 1953 issue of the magazine is the source of this look at tomorrow's psychiatry.

Using a device that gives a patient a word association test and analyzes it, the headshrinker is able to determine that a woman needs psychological surgery. This consists of altering her memory of an incident in her past.

As a secondary plot, another patient fails to show up for an appointment, and the psychiatrist suspects he's going to kill somebody. This part of the story turns into a kind of mystery, with a twist ending of sorts.

The background assumes that psychiatry is going to take over many of the functions of medical care. An outbreak of influenza among children, for example, is said to be caused by their anxiety over an event in the Little Orphan Annie comic strip!

At that point, I thought the author's intent was satire. As far as I can tell, however, the story is meant to be serious. The premise reminds me of the pseudoscience of Dianetics. (There's even a reference to pre-birth experiences as a source of mental disorders, which sure sounds like part of L. Ron Hubbard's nonsense to me.)

Setting aside my disdain for Dianetics, this isn't a very exciting story. There's some banter between the psychiatrist and his receptionist to fill up space. The two plots never come together, and they're resolved pretty much as you'd expect.

Two stars.

(Suggested listening: A Day In The Life, because the story takes place during one long day and night for the psychiatrist.)

The Man with the Fine Mind, by Kris Neville


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.

This chiller comes from the January/February 1953 issue of the magazine.


Illustration by Leo Summers.

A man is at a party with his fiancée. He's drinking pretty heavily, and he doesn't seem to be too happy. He even thinks about killing her.

(Don't ask me why these two are engaged. They seem like a very unlikely couple indeed.)

She makes some remarks about how it's a shame he has to leave. He insists that he's staying. Things get weird when everybody at the party acts like he's gone. They ignore him completely. Figuring that this is some kind of cruel prank, he gets angrier and drunker. The situation ends badly.

I have to admit that I didn't fully understand this story. I wasn't sure if the guy had actually left, and some kind of unseen doppelganger was left at the party, or the other way around. Despite my confusion, and an unpleasant lead character, it held my interest.

Three stars.

(Suggested listening: With A Little Help From My Friends, because the protagonist was in desperate need of assistance from his acquaintances.)

The Ant with the Human Soul (Part Two of Two), by Bob Olsen


Cover art by Leo Morey.

Here's the conclusion of a novella that appeared (in one part) in the Summer 1932 issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly.


Illustration by Morey also.

Last issue, we met a fellow who attempted suicide because his loss of religious faith led to his girlfriend leaving him. (Oddly, the guy remains a rather jolly, wisecracking sort.) A Mad Scientist rescued him. In return, the man agreed to undergo a bizarre experiment.

Part of his brain went into the body of an ant, so he could experience its sensations. (This involved a lot of shrinking and growing. That's one talented Mad Scientist.)

In this half, the guy's mind goes into several different kinds of ants. We learn about gentle farmers of fungus, aggressive warriors that enslave other ants, herders of aphids that live on the liquid they secrete, and so forth. It all winds up with the fellow regaining his faith in God, based on life among the ants, and going back to his sweetheart.

As in the first part, the main appeal of the conclusion is in the detailed description of the ant colonies. The author must have done a lot of research. Some of this stuff is a little too anthropomorphic, but otherwise it seems very accurate.

The subplot of attempted suicide and loss of faith seems way out of place with the rest of the story. It's not a comedy, but it's very lighthearted. (The man gives whimsical nicknames to the other ants, such as Sherlocka Holmes.) The premise is outrageous, of course, but go along with it and it's not a bad read.

Three stars.

(Suggested listening: When I'm Sixty-Four, because this is the oldest story in the issue, and the song is also a featherweight piece of fluff.)

Mr. Steinway, by Robert Bloch


Cover art by Augusto Marin.

From the April 1954 issue of the magazine we get this bit of dark fantasy.


Illustration by Bill Ashman.

The narrator is a woman who falls in love with a pianist. The musician practices an odd sort of meditation, in which he enters a trance. In this unconscious state, he communicates with everything, including inanimate objects.

In particular, he has a special relationship with his piano. Nicknamed Mr. Steinway, it was a gift from his mother, now deceased. The instrument has its own preferences. It doesn't like certain composers, for example.

As the two lovers grow closer, Mr. Steinway displays signs of jealousy. As you might imagine, this doesn't end well for anybody.

On a superficial level, this is just a spooky yarn about a haunted piano. There's a bit more to it than that, I think. The author does a pretty good job of writing from a woman's point of view, which is not always something you can say about a male writer. What happens to the narrator is more subtle and disturbing than you might expect.

(If they made this into a movie, her fate would be a little more openly violent, I think.)

Three stars.

(Suggested listening: She's Leaving Home, because the narrator is never going home again.)

I've Got To Admit It's Getting Better, A Little Better All The Time.

Well, that was a pretty decent issue, with only a couple of poor pieces, a very good new story, some readable reprints, and one great classic. Not as perfect a masterpiece as the latest Beatles album, but enough to keep smiles on our faces.


Mustaches and band uniforms optional.





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


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…





[November 30, 1966] Marking time (December 1966 Analog)

But first, please read this brief interlude!

As you know, in addition to Galactic Journey, I also run Journey Press, devoted both to republishing classics discovered while on this trek through time, but also to publish new works of science fiction in fantasy that (I hope!) live up to the quality and tradition of the classic works we offer.

If anyone would enjoy these works, we know it will be you.  This holiday season, pick up a title or three from Journey Press!  It's the best present you can give yourself, a loved one…and us!




by Gideon Marcus

Bogged down

With more than half a million American troops in Vietnam now, the South Vietnamese are starting to feel like they're living under occupation.  There's no doubt who's calling the shots these days.  The question is, is this surge of military force going to be enough to drag Ho Chi Minh to the bargaining table?

Despite the flow of optimistic figures from the Pentagon, it doesn't look like peace or even peace overtures will happen any time soon.  The closest we've gotten is securing a pair of holiday ceasefires.  So, expect a long slog and nightly death counts on the evening news for the forseeable future.  Better dead than Red, right?


American soldiers enjoy a Thanksgiving respite before heading off to combat again.  They may end up taking as long getting to Hanoi as it's taking Saunders and Kelly to get to Berlin.

In the trenches

Meanwhile, the December 1966 Analog constitutes a landmark of sorts — it's the last magazine of the year!  And, like Vietnam, it's often been a tedious, dragging affair.  This month is no different, though the magazine starts better than it ends.  Let's get our report from the front, shall we?

A quick note on the inside cover this month.  Yes, the one editor whose editorials I skip every month has bundled his loony screeds together and is offering them in book form. Or as Tom Lehrer put it:

Now there's a charge for what she used to give for free…

He even got Harry Harrison to shill for him.  I have to disagree with Harrison, though: while Campbell indeed may be "idiosyncratic, prejudiced, and annoying", he also is usually quite boring.

Don't fail to miss!

Amazon Planet (Part 1 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

Mack Reynolds once again sets a tale in his loosely knit United Planets.  Humanity has sprawled across hundreds of stars, and one of the primary tenets of this community is that each colony expresses itself as it likes so long as it harms no other world.

As might be deduced from the title, this latest novel features a matriarchy planet, one where the "traditional" (read mid-20th Century) gender roles are reversed.  Well, not so much features, as this first third of the novel takes place not on "Amazonia", but on a freighter headed toward it.  There are only two passengers: Terran Guy Thomas, a deceptively mild trader with plans to open Amazonia up to the niobium trade, and Patricia O' Gara, refugee from the exceedingly puritanical colony of Victoria.

There's not a lot of action in this section.  Mostly crew mates talking about how terribly men are treated on Amazonia, Pat (and later a troop of Amazons) explaining how they're wrong, and Guy acting as something of a catalyst for discussion.  It's all rendered rather broadly, but simply the fact that this subject is even being discussed, and a matriarchy is not being played for laughs, is interesting.

I'm waiting to see where it goes; this could be an awful, sexist piece or it could be an enlightened one.  Only time will tell (though Reynolds has a good track record on this front).

Three stars.

The Weathermakers, by Ben Bova


by Leo Summers

Hurricane season is hotting up, and it's up to Ted, Jerry, Tuli, and Barney (the last a woman) of Project THUNDER to ensure none of these storms hits the Atlantic seaboard.  To accomplish this, they'll use cloud seeding planes and orbital lasers to increase the equilibrium of the systems, smoothing them out before they become rotating furies.

But when these methods prove insufficient, only true weather control on a national scale can save Washington D.C. from a devastating cyclone.

The Weathermakers is actually an excerpt from an upcoming novel, presumably the climax.  It's exciting enough, and the technology is interesting, although I have to wonder if pumping extra heat energy into the Earth's atmosphere isn't ultimately a dangerous thing.

It's all a bit gung ho and simplistic, more what I'd expect from a juvenile.  This is not a bad thing, of course.  We can use more juvenile authors of merit.

Four stars.

Cytoplasmic Inheritance , by Carl A. Larson

The nonfiction article this issue is an extremely abstruse, but not unreadable, piece on the role the cytoplasm plays in genetics.  Apparently, it's not all governed by DNA in the nucleus.

Biology's not my bag, and a lot of it went over my head, but I did read it and found interest in it.

Three stars.

The Blue-Penciled Throop, by L. Edey

It's all downhill from here.  First, we've got another in the epistolary Throop series, basically an excuse for Campbell to tell us how hard his job is as editor having to deal with a bunch of nincompoops.

Two stars.

The Price of Simeryl, by Kris Neville


by Leo Summers

The colony of Elanth has got itself in a bind.  The local government bought too much of the addictive Simeryl drug to pacify the indigenous Elanthians, who both are having trouble meeting their farm quotas and are spending too much time fighting the Coelanths, a vicious species that has enjoyed a recent resurgence.  Third Foreign Secretary Raleigh is sent to the planet to fact-find pending a solution.

Wow, that didn't take me long to write at all.  The story, on the other hand, is presented as a set of interminable interviews with various government officials, none of them pleasant or particularly distinctive from each other.  And in the end, there is no revelation.  The story is perhaps five times longer than it needs to be.  Even at its best, it's pointless.

Also, I'm getting a little tired of putative future governments with nary a woman to be found in them.  From Ann Rosenberg Hoffman to Margaret Chase Smith to Indira Gandhi, we've had many prominent female lawmakers and cabinet leaders.  It's time to feature women in our science fiction at least to the degree they are represented on 1966 Earth, and not just in extreme cases as depicted in the Reynolds this month.

One star.

Under the Dragon's Tail, by Philip Latham


by Leo Summers

Finally, "Philip Latham" (Dr. Robert S. Richardson, who writes great nonfiction), turns in a piece that's basically the day-to-day dreariness of an assistant planetarium manager.  That an asteroid is going to smack down in Griffith Park at the end is a mostly extraneous detail.

Two stars.

Looking Back

Well, that wasn't very good, was it?  Indeed, Analog sets a record of sorts: at 2.5 stars, it is the worst magazine of the month.  Slightly better, though still dismal, was Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6).  Amazingly enough, Amazing beat out both of them with 2.9 stars.

Above the mediocrity line lie siblings Galaxy (3.1) and IF (3.2) The British mags top out the list with Impulse at 3.3 and New Worlds at a whopping 3.6!

There was exactly one story by a woman this month.  I had thought '66 would be better than '65 in this regard, but no dice.  To paraphrase Mrs. Rosenberg Hoffman, Assistant Defense Secretary under Truman, science fiction without women is an industry half-idle.  I hope things get better soon.

I guess we'll continue to mark time until then…



Did you remember to check out Journey Press?

Here's a helpful reminder!





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


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

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

To Impulse first.

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

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

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

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

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

Pavane: Corfe Gate, by Keith Roberts

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

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

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

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

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

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

The OH in Jose by Brian W Aldiss

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

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

The White Monument by Peter Redgrove

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

The Beautiful Man, by Robert Clough

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

Pattern As Set by John Rankine

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

A Hot Summer’s Day by John Bell

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

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

The Report by Russell Parker

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

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

Hurry Down Sunshine by Roger Jones

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

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

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

Summing up Impulse

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

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

The Second Issue At Hand

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

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

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

To the stories!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

In Passage of the Sun, by George Collyn

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

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

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

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

A low 3 out of 5.

The Other, by Katherine Maclean

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

Sanitarium, by Jon DeCles

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


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Way to London Town, by David Redd

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

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

The Outcasts, by Kris Neville

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


Illustration by James Cawthorn

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Failure of Andrew Messiter, by Robert Cheetham

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

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

Book Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

We still have no Letters pages this month.

Summing up New Worlds

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

Summing up overall

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

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

But next month's New Worlds sounds better:

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

(Moment over.)

Until the next…





[May 8, 1966] A Respite (June 1966 Amazing)


by John Boston

Hope Springs Eternal

. . . but, as Groucho Marx might put it, hope springs can get rusty, too.

The June Amazing on its face presents bad news and good news.  In the first category is the beginning of a new two-part serial by Murray Leinster, generically titled Stopover in Space.  One can only hope (that word again!) that there is more to it than the empty blather of Killer Ship from last year. 


by James B. Settles

All the shorter stories are reprints.  But two of them are by very reputable authors, Arthur C. Clarke and Henry Kuttner, taken from the magazine’s ambitious false spring of 1953-54 (the Renascence), and two others are from the immediately post-Ray Palmer times (the Liminal Period), by writers who later made pretty good names for themselves, Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Kris Neville.  The fifth is the last published story by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, who commendably learned to write after the fiascoes of The Man from the Atom and its sequel.

Of course the Clarke and Kuttner stories are not exactly rediscoveries.  Clarke’s Encounter in the Dawn, retitled Expedition to Earth, was the title story of the first collection of his stories, published by Ballantine in 1953 and pretty widely known.  Kuttner’s Or Else was the lead story in his collection Ahead of Time, also from Ballantine in 1953.  It was anthologized in the UK in Edmund Crispin’s first Best SF volume, and reprinted again in last year’s The Best of Kuttner from the UK’s Mayflower Books.  These stories will probably be familiar to those well read in SF.

The rest of the package is as usual: another inanely self-serving editorial by editor Ross and a few letters mostly praising the reprint policy, though one of the correspondents also says don’t overdo it with the reprints, it’s time for more Robert F. Young and Ensign De Ruyter.  He appears to be serious.  The cover, simultaneously dull and busy, is reprinted from the back cover of the July 1942 Amazing.  It’s called Satellite Space Ship Station, and artist James B. Settles provides a rather pedestrian view of space travel. 

Stopover in Space (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster


by Gray Morrow

As is my habit, I will hold off reading or commenting on the serial until I have both installments.  I am struggling to reserve judgment, but can’t fail to notice that the same egregious padding that so distinguished, or extinguished, last year’s Killer Ship shows up in the first paragraph here: “Scott ran into the situation on a supposedly almost-routine tour of duty on Checkpoint Lambda.  It was to be his first actual independent command as a Space Patrol commissioned officer.  Otherwise the affairs of the galaxy seemed to be proceeding in a completely ordinary fashion.  On a large scale, suns burned in emptiness, novas flamed, and comets went bumbling around their highly elliptical orbits just as usual.”

If This Be Utopia, by Kris Neville

First after the serial is Kris Neville’s If This Be Utopia, from the May 1950 issue, a slightly heavy-handed satire about a regimented future in which everyone is assigned to a job and pressured mercilessly to perform, and those who don’t measure up—or are made examples of by their superiors—get demoted to worse fates.  Our hero is a middle manager who is cracking under the stress and taking it out on his underlings until his superiors take it out on him.  It’s a bit too obvious, but still decently done.  Three stars.

Encounter in the Dawn, by Arthur C. Clarke

Encounter in the Dawn, from the June-July 1953 issue, is fairly typical for Clarke, a sort of lecture-demonstration of the stuff of SF and his understanding of the cosmos, without too much in the way of plot.  But that’s OK.  Clarke’s writing skill and his restrained sentimentality about the vastness of the universe and the depths of time carry the reader along.  He’s the antithesis of Ray Palmer’s policy of “Gimme bang-bang.”

This one begins: “It was in the last days of the Empire,” which is threatened by an unspecified “shadow that lay across civilization.” Three regular guys of the Galactic Survey, continuing their quest for knowledge despite the doom overhanging their homes, arrive at a new solar system and land on what is obviously Earth.  They take a look around and befriend Yaan, a primitive human or proto-human, with gifts of game killed by their robot.  They get the call to come home for the Empire’s last stand, leave Yaan a few high-tech gifts like a flashlight, and take off.  Tragedy looms over them, but life and intelligence will go on.  Three stars.

Or Else, by Henry Kuttner

Kuttner’s Or Else (August-September 1953 issue) is well done also, as one would expect, but there’s not much to it.  A couple of Mexican subsistence farmers are shooting at each other, contesting the ownership of the only source of water in their valley.  An alien drops in by flying saucer, demonstrates various superpowers, says his race has appointed themselves peacekeepers of the solar system, and Miguel and Fernandez have to stop trying to kill each other because violence is wrong.  They agree and shake hands, the alien buzzes off, and they start shooting again because there’s still only one water hole in the valley.


by Dick Francis

Profound, huh?  While SF may occasionally contribute to the global dialogue on war and peace, this one is best described as chewing less than it purports to bite off.  It also relies on cartoony ethnic stereotyping—but then everything in the story is pretty cartoony, and Kuttner at least lends the viewpoint character, Miguel, some shrewdness.  Thinking the alien is really a norteamericano, he says, “First you will bring peace, and then you will take our oil and precious minerals.” Two stars for execution, not much for substance.

Secret of the Death Dome, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s first published SF story, Secret of the Death Dome (January 1951 issue), is another kettle of sweat altogether, the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a magazine whose cover depicts a hairy-chested guy wrestling with a crocodile. 

The Martians have landed, and how: they have plunked down a large and impervious dome in the desert (actually, a couple of feet above it), where they engage in cryptic communication, and snatch anyone who comes too near and vivisect them.  One guy came back without his legs.  The newly wed Barney came back without his genitals, falling off his horse and dying on arrival.  (The Martians are surveilled by the military on horseback.)


by B. Edmund Swiatek

This makes Jerry mad.  Barney was his best friend and Barney’s new wife was Jerry’s old flame.  So Jerry, who can’t sleep, saddles up and heads out, to do . . . what?  He has no idea.  The Martians scare his horse away, and he hears from base that when it came back riderless, Betty—the widowed Mrs. Barney—took it and is on her way.  So he heads toward the dome and crawls under it looking for a way in. 

You can guess the rest.  He’s captured, gets control of the situation through brains and guts, rescues the by then-captured Betty, sowing death and destruction among the Martians all the way, learns why they are here (the secret of the title, including what the Martians wanted with Barney's genitalia), and drives them away forever.  Whew!  The details don’t matter.  At the end, the just-bereaved Betty tells Jerry not to contact her—“. . . for a couple of months, anyway,” the back of her neck flushing as she turns away.

The style is consistent with the content, cynical tough-guy-isms all the way down.  For example, when the colonel gets the call that Barney has returned, he sends Jerry to check things out.  “Jerry was just a sergeant, but there wasn’t any need for brass.  Death is for privates.” And so on.  Two stars for this testosterone-soaked epic.

Elaine’s Tomb, by G. Peyton Wertenbaker

G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s Elaine’s Tomb, from the Winter 1931 Amazing Stories Quarterly, is, in its quaint way, the best of this issue’s short fiction, and a vast improvement over his earlier work.  Alan, the narrator, teaches at a small college and falls in love with Elaine, one of his students.  Of course he doesn’t do anything about it, and hares off to Egypt with his colleague Weber who has a line on some ancient temples hardly anybody else knows about.  He confesses his romantic situation to Weber en route.  In a temple, there’s a preserved ancient Egyptian king, and a carved curse against anybody who molests him.  Alan touches the recumbent body, and shortly comes down with a fever that shows no sign of abating.  But Weber has found the secret of suspended animation, and promises to put Alan under at the moment of death, and revive him when he finds the secret of life, which must be around the temple somewhere, and unite him with Elaine.


by Leo Morey

Alan awakens, and it’s the far future, Wellsian variant, populated by people who have forgotten most of the know-how of civilization; the machines take care of them, and when one breaks down, they just put another one in its place.  They live pleasant lives and some of them even write books.  In one of these, Alan learns of Elaine’s Tomb, up north near what used to be called Chicago, in the frozen barbarian-populated wastes.  Turns out Weber couldn’t revive him, but he could suspend Elaine to wait for him.  Further adventures and reunion (or union, in this case) follow.

The story is archaic in attitude but modern in its plain style, well imagined and visualized without wasted verbiage, with enough plot to sustain its 40-page length, and altogether a pleasure to read.  Am I really going to give this antique four stars, as I did with another of Wertenbaker’s late stories, The Chamber of Life?  Guess so. 

Summing Up

So, hope fulfilled—admittedly, to expectations lowered by experience.  That's because editor Ross this time selected modern stories, plus an older one that is written in a modern style and not centered around the cranky crotchets of bygone decades, unlike some earlier selections I would prefer not to name.  The result is mostly pretty readable, with a couple of stories better than that, and nothing bloody awful.  But the specter of the Leinster serial still looms over the next issue.  We shall proceed with trepidation.



If you want to hear some great modern tunes, then tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




[January 8, 1964] A Taste of Homely (February 1964 Galaxy)


by Gideon Marcus

Lost that Zing

It's tough to get out of a rut.  After all, you went through all the trouble of digging the trench in the first place — why expend extra effort getting out of it?

But the fact is, the house that H.L. Gold built in 1950, the superlative Galaxy Science Fiction digest, has gotten pretty stale lately.  Sure, the authors are still household names, but the works aren't their best.  Maybe Editor Pohl, who succeeded Gold a couple of years ago, is starved for material given that he maintains an industry record of three simultanteous mags.  Or perhaps Galaxy just doesn't have the cachet (or the budget to pay authors) of F&SF or Fantastic.

Maybe it's just a slow patch.  Anyway, take a gander at the February 1964 Galaxy and see what I mean:

The Issue at Hand

Grandmother Earth, by J. T. McIntosh

It was just a couple of months ago, in Poul Anderson's Conversation in Arcady, that we last saw the a decadent, paradisical Earth visited by more vigorous colonists.  McIntosh's variation on the theme features a less happy homeworld, one on which humans have given up for lack of challenge, and the sum population of Earth is reduced to a few tens of thousands stretched along France's idyllic Mediterranean coast.  When the last efforts at changing the status quo from within founder, it us up to a pair of extraterrestrial Terrans to come up with a solution.


(I have to wonder if this picture is the main reason the story was accepted…

McIntosh is a pretty good writer, though his best days seem far behind him.  The pacing and execution are engaging even if the plot is hackneyed.  What really tips the balance from four to three stars is the utterly unnecessary exposition at the end.

Hence: Three stars.

A Bad Day for Vermin, by Keith Laumer

A wormlike alien lands in a small Arkansan town, but before it can open discussions with the citizens, a ramshackle exterminator shoots it dead.  A trial ensues to determine whether or not the extraterrestrial counts as a person such that the killer can be tried with murder.  Ultimately, the alien is classified as a person and the exterminator, excluded from the definition, is labeled vermin — and exterminated.

Summarized like that, it sounds like a pretty good story.  It's not.  Unpleasant and preposterous, Laumer must have dashed this one off for a quick buck.  Two stars (if that).

Shamar's War, by Kris Neville

When the completely humanoid inhabitants of a another planet refuse Earth's entreaties to formally ally, humanity sends a spy to foment rebellion and install a more friendly government.  The aliens are under a dictatorship, you see, and Earth deems them ripe for a bit of Democracy.  When efforts to install a formal voting system fail, the aliens come up with a more brute force option: selective boycotting of goods nonessential to life but essential to the economy.

It's hard to believe this piece was written by a veteran author, one who has produced several excellent stories over a career lasting more than a decade.  This piece is filled with short, unncompelling sentences; the characterization is nonexistent; and the exposition is endless.  The aliens aren't at all, and the solution to the story's puzzle is laughably simplistic.  I have to wonder if this wasn't an early piece of work that Neville had stuffed in a desk somewhere and which Pohl accepted out of desperation.

In any event, two stars.

The Early Days of the Metric System, by Willy Ley

Our favorite German rocket scientist had been going through a lackluster period, but this non-fiction article on the origin of standard weights and measures, though in some ways overlapping an old F&SF article by Dr. Asimov, is entertaining and informative.  This is the Willy that compelled me to start my subscription to Galaxy umpteen years ago.  5 stars.

Oh, to Be a Blobel!, by Philip K. Dick

Here's another human-sent-to-spy-on-aliens story, except this one takes place after the espionage.  It features a young man whose physical form was altered to match that of the invading amorphous Blobels.  Though promised to be reconditioned back to human physiognomy, the fellow finds himself reverting to Blobel form half the day, making his life thoroughly miserable.

Luckily for him, the other side had spies, too, and some of them are having similar readjustment trouble.  Our hero marries a young female Blobel spy, and all is well…for a while.  But feelings of inadequacy (she is smarter and more successful than he) and the hybrid nature of their children cause rifts.  Ultimately, the couple must choose between love and individual fortune.

This is a story that shouldn't work, ludicrous as it is in its premise.  But it's Dick, and it does. 

Four stars.

The Awakening, by Jack Sharkey

Imagine being one of hundreds preserved in suspended animation against a global catastrophe, only to wake up countless ages after the planned date.  Your machines are rusted, your elders rotted, and the world you knew has drastically changed.  How would you feel?  What would you do?

This story belongs in the "Color Me Surprised" department.  While the plot of the story is not particularly innovative, the execution is perfect — a sharp increase in quality from Jack Sharkey's usual output.

Four stars.

The Star King, by Jack Vance

In the last installment of The Star King, a fellow named Gersen was tracking down the "Demon Prince," Grendel, one of the Galaxy's most notorious crime bosses.  The trail had led Gersen to a university on the civilized world of Alphanor in search of the patron who had commissioned a survey of an Eden-like world far Beyond the edge of civilization.  For Gersen had every reason to believe that this patron was Grendel, especially after he killed his surveyor for refusing to reveal the location of the planet.

Part 2 opens Gersen facing several obstacles.  Foremost is that Grendel could be any of three professors at the school, all of whom profess ignorance of the murdered surveyor.  Then there are Grendel's three lieutenants, all of whom are deadly assassins who want Gersen out of the way.  Finally, there is the issue of Pallis Atwrode, an employee of the university who is the first to touch Gersen's heart after a life of nothing but revenge-seeking.

The conclusion to this novel ties all the threads together, throwing all of the characters onto one ship where Gersen can declaim the solution to the mystery, Poirot-style.

The Star King's problem isn't the plot, it's the execution.  After a rather gripping first half of the first half, the novel becomes a plodding bore, particularly with the unnecessary encyclopedic inserts every few pages.  Vance did such a good job of building a fresh new world in The Dragon Masters (also a Galaxy novel), but he rather flubs it here.  Moreover, Vance completely missed his opportunity to give us a real surprise ending, instead deciding on Grendel's identity almost at random, it seems.

Two stars, two and a half for the whole thing.

Summing Up

When I transfer the story data to punch card and run it through my Star-o-Vac, I get a roll of tape with the computation: 3 stars.  That doesn't sound so bad, right?  Thoroughly adequate compared to some of the other mags we've suffered through lately.  But it's the cavalcade of blandness that saps the will over time.  It's like a steady diet of matzah.  Sure, it gets you out of Egypt, but where's the milk and honey, man? 

Cordwainer Smith's in the next issue.  Maybe we'll make it to the Holy Land in March…




[July 6, 1963] A new star…  (Gamma — a new science fiction magazine)


by Gideon Marcus

The history of our genre, like that of all things, contains several ups and downs.  From its beginnings in the pulp explosion, to its near-extinction during the second world war, to the resurgence during the digest age starting in the late '40s, and finally, to its decline at the end of the last decade.  At its most recent nadir, the number of science fiction periodicals had dropped to six from a high of forty.  Many predicted the imminent death of the genre, and not without justification.

1963 may well be remembered as the year things turned around.  In February, Worlds of Tomorrow was introduced as a sibling to sister magazines, Galaxy and IF.  To all accounts, it is a successful venture.  And last month, another digest joined the throng.

Back in 1949, the digest boom was kicked off by the birth of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  It was, in many ways, a repudiation of the pulp genre, or perhaps a sign of its maturation.  F&SF set its literary standards bar very high, filling its pages with some of the most articulate works and authors our field has seen (and, with some hiccoughs, continues that tradition to this day).  For fourteen years, it stood unique in SFF.  This is not to say that other magazines did not approach or even surpass it in quality, but the combination of breadth of subject matter and eloquence of presentation made it a creature unto itself.

Until now.

The newest SFF mag is called Gamma, and here's how its editor, Charles E. Fritch, introduces it:

The Dictionary defines GAMMA for us: "…to designate some bright star."  One look at our cover and at the stunning lineup of stellar names for our next issue will confirm that definition.  Indeed, GAMMA is the bright new star of the science fiction/fantasy field, and we intend to see that it continues to light up the heavens.  The dictionary goes on to mention the gamma function — and we'll assure you that the GAMMA function, in our case, is to give our readers the best fiction, by the finest talents in and out of the sf field — fiction of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  GAMMA will unearth classic fantasy from obscure, out-of-print markets, while creating its own classics and memorable stories in each issue.

Ambitious, to be sure.  For those of us who remember the arrival of F&SF, we cannot help note the similarities of the two magazines.  The style and composition of the sole piece of art (and the fact there is just one throughout the whole book) is highly reminiscent of the older digest.  Inside, too, there are sixteen pieces, none longer than twenty pages.  The majority of the listed authors have had work published in F&SF, too.

Just as F&SF has "theme" issues, this "FIRST BIG ISSUE" of Gamma has a clear The Twilight Zone angle.  All five of the anthology show's main authors have a piece in the mag, and Rod Serling gets top (or, I suppose it can be argued, bottom) billing. 

But does this F&SF doppleganger live up to the standards of its predecessors?  You'll have to read it and find out (hint: You won't be disappointed):

Mourning Song, by Charles Beaumont

Beaumont is one of the "Zone's" most prolific guest writers, and his pieces are generally marked with authorial expertise.  He is, in many ways, what Bradbury should be: Emotional without being mawkish; literate without self-indulgence.  Mourning Song, about a sightless old bard who claims to know when death is coming, and the young man who dares to disbelieve, is one of the most poignant things I've seen Beaumont produce.  Five stars.

Crimes Against Passion, by Fritz Leiber

The damned in hell get a chance to re-plead their cases, with the help of a psychiatric public defender and the burgeoning field of Analysis.  It's meant to be a funny piece, but largely fails at comedy (save for one genuinely funny line, when Macbeth shouts irritably at his former adversary, "Lay off, MacDuff!") Lieber's been hit or miss lately, and this is a definite miss.  Two stars.

Time in Thy Flight, by Ray Bradbury

A reprint from the July 1953 Fantastic Universe, this tale of young time travelers from an antiseptic future, and the girl who decides to stay in 1928, is played for every sentimental note.  Brush your teeth afterwards.  Three stars.

The Vengeance of Nitocris, by Tennessee Williams

Now here's an interesting one, the very first sale of arguably the world's greatest living playwright.  This tale of a vengeful Egyptian Empress of the Old Kingdom first appeared in the August 1928 Weird Tales.  It's nothing if not lurid, and the story it tells is a true one (or, at least, attested back to ancient times — I checked the sources cited).  Three stars.

Itself, by A. E. van Vogt

A robotic anti-sub is the star in Van Vogt's aquatic answer to Laumer's sentient tank story, Combat Unit.  Just not as good.  Two stars.

Venus Plus Three, by Charles E. Fritch

A disenchanted wife brings his husband to savage Venus so that man-eating plants can preclude the need for a messy divorce.  An outdated, pulpish tale, but still entertaining.  Three stars.

A Message from Morj, by Ray Russell

The pulsing from the distant world could be none other than a communication — but just what was it trying to say?  This vignette manages to be, by turns, both surprising and predictable.  Three stars.

To Serve the Ship, by William F. Nolan

When your occupation has been to be sole pilot of a starship for eight decades, it can be pretty hard to adapt to retirement.  Author Nolan takes on a subject that both James White (Fast Trip) and Anne McCaffrey (The Ship Who Sang) have handled better.  Three stars.

(And now, you may be thinking, "With the exception of the Beaumont, this doesn't sound like a great magazine."  Fear not.  It's all gravy from here.)

Gamma Interview: Rod Serling, by Rod Serling

Any conversation with one of television's brightest lights is bound to be an engaging one.  The Twilight Zone's creator does not disappoint.  Five stars.

The Freeway, by George Clayton Johnson

Johnson is another Zone regular, and in this tale of the breakdown of an automatic car in the middle of the desert, he highlights the danger of over-reliance on technology.  Could you survive?  Not just the physical peril, but the knowledge of just how ill-equipped we are to deal with nature undiluted?  A solid three stars.

One Night Stand, by Herbert A. Simmons

Horn-blowing misfit finds his groove and love in a gig on the Red Planet.  The first SFF story I've read by a Black man (that I know of), it's a satisfyingly hep read.  Three stars.

As Holy and Enchanted, by Kris Neville

I first fell in love with a fictional character when I was ten.  It was Polychrome, the fairy daughter of the rainbow who first fell to Earth in The Road to Oz, and I wrote several childish tales that detailed our meeting and (innocent) courtship.  This reprint from the April 1953 Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader covers similar ground, but far more beautifully than I ever could have managed.  Four stars.

Shade of Day, by John Tomerlin

A sick salesman whose life zagged when it should have zigged revisits the last happy time of his life, touring the Junior High of his early teens.  Heavy, subtle, effective.  Four stars.

The Girl Who Wasn't There, by Forrest J. Ackerman

If you don't yet know 4E, that legendary SFF fan who helms magazines, anchors conventions, and keeps old magazines in his refrigerator for want of space elsewhere, this tale of a lonely, invisible girl is a good introduction.  Four stars.

Death in Mexico, by Ray Bradbury

I spend much of my time praising Bradbury with faint damns, but this poem is a genuinely worthy piece.  Four stars.

Crescendo, by Richard Matheson

It's never a bad idea to wrap up a magazine with Matheson, possibly the best SFF screenwriter of our age.  Who else could make an electric church organ so plausibly menacing?  Four stars.

Viewed with the dispassionate eye of a statistics collector, GAMMA garners a strong, but not noteworthy, score of 3.4 stars.  Taken as a whole, however, this is a stunning first issue.  For those who like F&SF and wish there were more magazines like it, your prayers have been answered.  Here's looking forward to GAMMA 2, coming out in the fall.