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[July 26, 1962] The Long and Short of It (August 1962 Fantastic)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

July isn't quite over yet, and already I feel overwhelmed by all that's been going on in the world:

Two new nations, Rwanda and Burundi, have been created from the Belgian territory of Ruanda-Urundi.  Similarly, France has recognized the independence of its former colony Algeria.

Despite protests, the United States continues to test atomic weapons.  The USA also detonated a hydrogen bomb in outer space, hundreds of miles above a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.  The explosion created a spectacular light show visible from Hawaii, more than seven hundred miles away.  It also disrupted electronics in the island state.  An underground nuclear explosion created a gigantic crater in the Nevada desert and may have exposed millions of people to radioactive fallout.

AT&T launched Telstar, the first commercial communications satellite (which we'll be covering in the next article!)

The world of literature suffered a major loss with the death of Nobel Prize winning author William Faulkner.

In Los Angeles, young artist Andy Warhol exhibited a work consisting of thirty-two paintings of cans of Campbell's Soup.

The Washington Post published an article revealing how Doctor Frances Oldham Kelsey, a medical officer for the Food and Drug Administration, kept thalidomide, a drug now known to cause severe birth defects, off the market in the United States.

Even popular music seems to be going through radical changes lately.  Early in the month the charts were dominated by David Rose's raucous jazz instrumental The Stripper.  It would be difficult to think of a less similar work than Bobby Vinton's sentimental ballad Roses are Red (My Love), which has replaced it as Number One.

It seems appropriate that the latest issue of Fantastic offers no less than nine stories, one long and eight short, to go along with these busy days:

Sword of Flowers by Larry M. Harris

Vernon Kramer's cover art for the lead story captures something of the mysterious mood of this mythical tale.  The setting is a strange world where the climate is so gentle that the inhabitants have no need for shelter.  They also have the ability to create whatever they imagine.  However, because their lives are so simple and happy, they rarely use this power.  An exception is a man, twisted in mind and body, who comes up with the concepts of royalty and servitude, so that another man in love with a beautiful woman can become her slave.  It all leads to tragedy, and an ending directed at the reader.  It's a compelling legend written in poetic language.  Five stars.

The Titan by P. Schuyler Miller

This issue's Fantasy Classic has a complex history.  Serialized in part in the 1930's, although never published in full until revised for the author's 1952 collection, this is its first complete magazine appearance.  The story takes place on a dying planet where the decadent upper class takes blood from the healthy lower class.  The plebeian hero follows the patrician heroine above ground and falls in love.  They become involved in a plot to violently overthrow the rulers and confront a huge, dangerous creature known as a Star Beast.  Most readers will be able to figure out what planet is involved and the true nature of the Star Beast.  Although said to be daring for the 1930's, it's pretty tame for the 1960's.  Unfortunately, this is the longest story in the issue.  Two stars.

Behind the Door by Jack Sharkey

A woman who seeks out dangerous experiences encounters a mysterious man whom she believes will provide the ultimate thrill.  He turns out to be something other than expected.  A fairly effective horror story.  Three stars.

The Mynah Matter by Lawrence Eisenberg

A man determined to purchase a talking bird deals with a pet store owner who refuses to sell any of his animals.  It seems that they are all reincarnations of famous people.  This is a slight, whimsical comedy, but somehow likable.  Three stars.

And a Tooth by Rosel George Brown

A woman whose husband and children die in an accident goes into a coma from the shock.  Experimental brain surgery restores her to consciousness, but gives her two separate minds.  The author does a good job of narrating from both points of view, and the effect is chilling.  Four stars.

A Devil of a Day by Arthur Porges

This is yet another variation on the old deal with Satan theme.  A man sells his soul for the chance to have absolute power over the city of Rome at a certain time during the Sixteenth Century.  Readers familiar with a specific historical event will be able to predict why this is a very bad bargain.  Two stars.

Continuity by Albert Teichner

A precocious student raises a peculiar question that haunts a physics teacher.  If our universe consists of matter that we can sense and forces that we cannot sense, could the reverse be true in another universe?  The result is unexpected.  This is an odd, philosophical story, intriguing but not always clear.  Three stars.

Horseman! by Roger Zelazny

A new writer, who also appears in this month's issue of Amazing, offers a brief prose poem.  A mysterious rider appears in a village asking after others of his kind.  What happens when he finds them is surprising.  The story is beautifully written, and one hopes that the author will go on to produce longer works.  Four stars.

Victim of the Year by Robert F. Young

A man down on his luck receives a note from a woman at the unemployment office.  She claims to be an apprentice witch with the assignment to cast spells to make his life miserable.  She repents of her actions, and together they must face the wrath of her coven.  The story reads something like a less elegant version of a Fritz Leiber fantasy.  Three stars.

The best stories in this issue are short ones, proving once again that good things come in small packages.  Speaking of which, stay tuned for an article on the series of small packages circling the Earth that are making an outsized impact on their mother planet…

(P.S. Don't miss the second Galactic Journey Tele-Conference, July 29th at 11 a.m.!  A chance to discuss Soviet and American space shots…and maybe win a prize!)

—

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[April 20, 1962] Boot Camp (May 1962 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Science fiction magazines are not created equal.

Every editor brings her/his own slant to their magazine's theme.  For instance, Cele Goldsmith strikes an old-fashioned chord, reviving classics from the Pulp Era in Amazing and Fantastic.  Fred Pohl keeps things reliable (if not exceptional) in Galaxy, but showcases new and innovative works in IF.  Before it went under, Fantastic Universe devoted much ink to flying saucer stories and articles.

And as you will soon see, Analog is preoccupied with psychic powers and pseudo-scientific quackery (a redundant phrase?).  Viz, the May 1962 issue:

Anything You Can Do! (Part 1 of 2), by Darrell T. Langart

As you might have guessed, Mr. "Langart"'s name is really an anagram for Analog perennial, Randall Garrett (this is another way magazines are differentiated – they each have a stable of regular authors).  Generally, when Garrett uses a pseudonym, it means he's got another piece in the magazine; more on that later.

Anything is a surprisingly (for Garrett) capable story about a single alien invader, and the man who is recruited and intensively trained to stop the extraterrestrial's acts of violence and theft.  It's the second time one of his stories has featured gifted identical twins, one of whom has a disability which turns out to be an asset (see The Foreign Hand-Tie.  It is also a story that very well could take place in the same universe as the recent "Ship Named MacGuire" series.  So far, it's shaping up to be a good short novel.  Four stars.

The Next Logical Step, by Ben Bova

Recent author Ben Bova (who prefers to describe a genius as "a regular Galileo" rather than "a regular Einstein") hasn't turned in anything particularly impressive to date.  Step is about a military wargaming computer that delivers a full-sensory experience, one that almost inevitably depicts even small brushfire wars ending in global conflagration.  Simulated Mutually Assured Destruction.  Nice concept, but heavy handed and perfunctorily executed.  Two stars.

Nor Iron Bars a Cage…, by Johnathan Blake MacKenzie

I'm not sure that this piece of crime fiction, in which an American and British team of detectives track down a child molester, really belongs here.  It starts promisingly enough, but then just sort of degenerates into mediocrity, particularly the eight pages of psychological exposition at the end.  I also did not appreciate the lumping of child rapists and gay people – according to the recent eye-opening television special on homosexuals, The Rejected, perhaps as much as 40% of the population is queer to some degree, and all of them are human beings with a normal distribution of traits (negative and positive).  Two stars.

By the way, I'm pretty sure Mr. "MacKenzie" is Randall Garrett in disguise.  The story has his fingerprints on it, and he's already appeared pseudonymously earlier in the issue.

The Fourth Law of Motion, by Dr. William O. Davis

Editor Campbell is always trying to prove that the "Dean Drive," a purportedly reactionless engine that would overturn the laws of physics as we know them, is a legitimate invention.  To that end, he's enlisted the aid of a Dr. Davis, the head of a Connecticut paper company.  At first, I dismissed the article as hot air, but I think it does make some interesting points (even if they probably don't support the efficacy of Dean's Drive).

Davis suggests that Newton's famous equation, F=ma, needs to be modified to reflect that, when an object is accelerated, it doesn't do so all at once.  The force pushes on the object's nearest components first, and the impact then ripples along the object in a wave until the whole thing is in motion.  Basically, physical bodies can respond to forces "out of phase" with each other.  This is not a revolutionary concept – there's even a name for it: "starting transient." 

That this jerk or change in acceleration could have other effects is interesting, and I'd like to know more about them.  But my college training was in physics.  For the rest of you, I suspect this dry explication on the third derivative of position will be must-skip material.  Two stars.

Sight Gag, by Larry M. Harris

Mr. Harris is really Laurence M. Janifer, who is not only a regular at Analog, but frequently writes in collaboration with Mr. Garrett.  I've liked some of his stuff very much, but this gimmick story about a vengeful fellow who goes after a psionic G-Man reads like something out of the early 50s.  Three stars, since it's decently told.  No more, because of the hoary format.

Look Before You Leap, by Donald E. Westlake

This one opens so well, with a terrified Air Force boot teleporting from a particularly harrowing episode of Basic Training and then, in equal fright, zapping right back.  He is the latest result (victim) of a controlled stress test conducted by a certain Colonel.  The officer's goal is to sieve out the psionically gifted by monitoring the most difficult situation a human can face this side of the battlefield.

Sadly, by about halfway through, the story ends up twice as padded as it needs to be, and the compounding of indignity and torture upon the recruit in an attempt to make him duplicate his initial feat is both unpleasant and unrealistically shrugged off at the story's end.  Two stars.

***

2.6 stars and a grinding slog.  I feel like I've just spent a week in Basic.  Well, there's always next month…

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[September 18, 1961] Balancing Act (October 1961 Analog)

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Science fiction digests are a balancing act.  An editor has to fill a set number of pages every month relying solely on the stories s/he's got at her/his disposal.  Not to mention the restrictions imposed if one wants to publish an "all-star" or otherwise themed issue. 

Analog has got the problem worst of all of the Big Three mags.  Galaxy is a larger digest, so it has more room to play with.  F&SF tends to publish shorter stories, which are more modular.  But Analog usually includes a serialized novel and several standard columns leaving only 100 pages or so in which to fit a few bigger stories.  If the motto of The New York Times is "All the news that's fit to print," then Analog's could well be, "All the stories that fit, we print."

How else to explain the unevenness of the October 1961 Analog?  The lead novella, Lion Loose, by James Schmitz, is 60 pages of unreadability.  It's a shame since Schmitz has written some fine work before, but I simply unable to finish this tale of space piracy and teleporting animals.  Your mileage may vary.  One star.

Gordie Dickson's Love Me True fares better, though it is a bit Twilight Zone-esque.  Space explorer risks all to bring a cute fuzzy-wuzzy back from Alpha Centauri as a pet.  In the end, it turns out the bonds of domestication run the other way.  Nicely written, but the idea is two decades behind the times.  Three stars.

The Asses of Balaam is Randall Garrett's contribution, under the pseudonym "David Gordon" used by many Analog writers.  It's the best piece in the book (didn't expect that from Garrett!), a first contact story told from the point of view of some all-too human aliens.  I particularly appreciated the imaginative setting, the priority placed on ecological conservation, and the cute (if not unpredictable) twist at the end.  I must say – Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics have become axiomatic to all science fiction.  Four stars. 


by Schoenherr

Now, the science fact column of Analog is the worst of those included in the Big Three mags, usually filled with the crankiest of crank hypotheses.  I have to give credit to editor Campbell's printing of Report on the Electric Field Rocket, by model rocketeer, G. Harry Stine.  This report is, in fact, an experimental refutation of H.C. Dudley's dubious proposal to use the Earth's electric field to help launch rockets.  Actual science!  Three stars.

Harry Harrison's Sense of Obligation continues, to be completed next issue.  It's reminiscent of Harrison's excellent Deathworld in that it features a man made superhero by virtue of having grown up on a hostile planet.  Sense is not as good as Deathworld, though.  Full rating when it finishes.

That leaves The Man Who Played to Lose, another disappointing outing from a normally good author, in this case, Laurence Janifer (writing as "Larry M. Harris).  Interstellar Super Spy is sent to a planet in the throes of civil war.  His job is to stop the insurrection – by making it too successful!  A smug, implausible story, with far too much preaching at its tail.  Two stars.

This all adds up to a sub-par score of 2.6 stars out of 5.  This is not the worst Analog has gotten, but it's not all that unusual, either.  This is why it usually takes me the longest to get through an issue of Campbell's magazine.

Next up… a special article from a surprising source!

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[July 15, 1961] Saving Grace (The August 1961 Analog)

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Recently, I told you about Campbell's lousy editorial in the August 1961 Analog that masqueraded as a "science-fact" column.  That should have been the low point of the issue.  Sadly, with one stunning exception, the magazine didn't get much better.

For instance, almost half the issue is taken up by Mack Reynold's novella, Status Quo.  It's another of his future cold-war pieces, most of which have been pretty good.  This one, about a revolutionary group of "weirds," who plan to topple an increasingly conformist American government by destroying all of our computerized records, isn't.  It's too preachy to entertain; its protagonist, an FBI agent, is too unintelligent to enjoy (even if his dullness is intentional); the tale is too long for its pay-off.  Two stars.

That said, there are some interesting ideas in there.  The speculation that we will soon become over-reliant on social titles rather than individual merit, while Campbellian in its libertarian sentiment, is plausible.  There is already an "old boy's club" and it matters what degrees you have and from which school you got them.  It doesn't take much to imagine a future where the meritocracy is dead and nepotism rules.

And, while it's hard to imagine a paperless society, should we ever get to the point where the majority of our records only exist within the core memories of a few computers, a few revolutionaries hacking away at our central repositories of knowledge could have quite an impact, indeed! 

Flamedown, by H.B. Fyfe is a forgettable short piece about a spaceman who crashes onto the surface of a Barsoomian Mars and is trailed by a lynch mob of angry Martians.  There is a twist at the end, but it's a limp one.  Two stars.

I don't know who Walter B. Gibson is, but his impassioned defense of psionics in our legal system, The Unwanted Evidence, is wretched.  It reads like a series of newspaper clippings from the back page of the newspaper, or maybe one of those sensational books on UFOs and mystic events that are in vogue.  One star.

Analog perennial Randall Garrett, an author I tend to dislike (yet one of Campbell's favored sons) gives us Hanging by a Thread, about an interplanetary ship holed by a meteor.  It could have been engaging, but the smug, detached tone, and the overly technical and uninteresting solution make this a dreary read.  Perhaps even Garrett knew he could do better; maybe that's why he penned this one under the name "David Gordon."  Two stars.


by Douglas

Laurence Janifer also appears a lot in Analog, often paired with Garrett (either as a true duet, or just side by side).  He's usually the better of the two, but Lost in Translation is a typical lousy "clever Terrans beat aliens" story, not worth your time.  Again, it's pseudonymous (Larry M. Harris), perhaps on purpose.  Two stars.

This is a pretty damning litany, isn't it?  A series of 2-star stories and a pair of 1-star "science fact" articles.  Is there any reason I don't just toss this issue into the kindling box?

There is.

Cyril Kornbluth shuffled off this mortal coil far too soon, some three years ago.  He wrote a lot, both by himself and with partners.  Perhaps his most famous partnership was with Fred Pohl, who now runs Galaxy and IF magazines.  The Pohl/Kornbluth pair is best known for their novels, including the acclaimed The Space Merchants, but they also produced a plethora of short stories.  Interestingly, many have only reached print after Kornbluth's death.  I can only imagine these were skeletal affairs that Pohl has recently completed.

The Quaker Cannon, their latest piece, is very good.  It's the story of First Lieutenant Kramer, a veteran of a war fought in the 1970s, between East and West.  In this war, he had been captured by the Communists and subjected to complete sensory deprivation as a torture and interrogation technique.  Unlike most of his captured compatriots, he neither went incurably mad nor held out until death.  He simply resisted as long as he could, then he cracked and gave up what he knew.  He was later repatriated.

Now 38 and still a First Lieutenant despite years of service, blacklisted from any significant role, he is suddenly recruited into Project Ripsaw: a new attempt to invade Asia.  As the commanding general's aide-de-camp, he oversees Ripsaw's growth from a cadre of three to an organization of hundreds of thousands, privy to all of the unit's secrets and plans. 

As the vast force prepares to invade, Kramer learns of "The Quaker Cannon," a parallel invasion unit that exists only on paper.  Its purpose is to serve as a blind to confuse the enemy as to the real plan.  The Soviets call this kind of deception maskirova, and it's worked time and time again.

Just prior to D-Day, Kramer is betrayed to the enemy.  In short order, the Lieutenant is back in the "Blank Tank," all of his senses completely deadened.  Hours pass by in seconds, each a drag on his sanity.  Though Kramer's defiance is admirable, his ultimate submission, as before, is only a matter of time.  He, of course, divulges the Ripsaw plan in its entirety.  When Kramer returns to coherence, he is back home.  Rather than being punished for his lapse, he is given a high honor.

Ripsaw was the ghost.  "The Quaker Cannon" was the real invasion.  Kramer's confession was all part of the plan.  The story ends with that reveal.

In the hands of Randall Garrett, or even Mack Reynolds, the focus would have been on the gimmick, to the detriment of the story.  Pohl and Kornbluth let Kramer be the narrator, albeit in a third person fashion.  They paint a vivid portrait of a battle-fatigued soldier, almost numb to life (as though he never left the Blank Tank) until Ripsaw gives him purpose again.  We are made to feel his anxiety at the thought and ultimately the reality of returning to the Blank Tank.  We feel disgust at his being used as a tool, yet we also fundamentally understand why.  Cannon is not a triumphant story.  It is a beautifully told, weary story of a weary man, not only capturing the psyche of a battered soldier, but also the perversity of the military structure and mentality.

Hard stuff, but it deserves five stars. 

So, as a whole, the issue gets just 2.2 stars.  Nevertheless, thanks to that half-posthumous pair, the August 1961 Analog will be reserved a place on my shelf, not in the garbage. 

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[Jan. 15, 1961] Greater than the sum (Mark Phillips' Occasion for Disaster)

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Illustrated by Van Dongen

Sometimes one plus one is greater than two, and sometimes, two authors produce a substantially better product than either of them might individually.

Take Randall Garrett and Robert Silverberg, for instance.  Here are a couple of fellows whose personal output tends toward the uninspiring, at best, and the downright offensive, at worst.  Yet, together, they wrote the Nidor series, which was solid reading all the way through.  Now, Laurence Janifer, on the other hand, writes some pretty good stuff on his own, so perhaps he is not helped by his pairing with Randy.  On the third hand, Randy sure as heck writes better stuff when working with Larry (under the pen name of Mark Phillips)!

Case in point: A couple of years ago, the two teamed up to produce a serial novel in Astounding (now Analog) called That Sweet Little Old Lady.  It followed the travails of FBI Agent Ken Malone as he tracked down a gaggle of insane telepaths in the early 1970s.  His main partner, aside from the Garrett stand-in, Agent Boyd, is a charming grandmotherly telepath whose primary quirk is that she believes herself to be Queen Bess, herself.  Not a reincarnation, mind you–the real deal.

The G-Man and Her Majesty teamed up again for another serial, Out Like a Light, where the subject of interest was a gang of teleporting juvenile car thieves.  By the end of this novel, Malone has picked up some psychic skills of his own, including a sense of precognition and the ability to teleport.

Three months ago, installment one of the latest Mark Phillips novel debuted in Analog.  This one is aptly titled Occasion for Disaster, and it is Malone's most ambitious outing to date.  In fact, I think it makes it rather difficult to write any more in the series given the extremely conclusive nature of its ending.  Not that I'll tell you about the ending.

I will tell you about the beginning, however.  It is two years after Malone's first introduction, and the FBI is in a tizzy.  Society seems to be going to hell in slow motion, the rate of errors, accidents, and just plain-dumb decisions having recently risen above the statistical.  Of course, psionics is the suspected culprit. 

Follow Malone's meandering course as he first determines what's happening, then who is causing it, and finally why it's being done.  It's a good mystery, as fun as the rest of the series, and Queen Elizabeth (i.e. Rose Thompson) is always a hoot. 

Three stars.

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[Oct. 20, 1960] Fiction > Non-fiction… sometimes (the November 1960 Analog)

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Each month, I lament what's become of the magazine that John Campbell built.  Analog's slow decline has been marked by the editor's increased erratic and pseudo-scientific boosting behavior.  Well, I just don't have the heart to kick a dog today, and besides, the fiction is pretty good in this month's (November 1960) issue.  So let's get right to it, shall we?

"Mark Phillips" (Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer) have a new four-part serial in their Malone series.  Set in the 1970s, the series details the adventures of a couple of federal agents, who are helped in their cases by a telepath who believes herself (and may actually be) Queen Elizabeth I.  I won't spoil the details of this one, Occasion for Disaster, but I've liked the previous novels, so I suspect Occasion will also be pleasant reading.

Heading off the magazine's short stories is a fun piece by Theodore L. Thomas, half of the pseudonymous duo that previously brought us a fascinating study into the world of copyright, The Professional Touch.  Crackpot continues in that vein, featuring a brilliant old scientist (Prof. Singlestone… get it?!) who convinces the world that he's gone senile.  His aim?  To make his work so disreputable that no government agency will want it, so that no university will employ him, so that he can for the first time in his life enjoy working as a truly free agent.  So that when his invention proves to be utterly unignorable, he will be the master of its fate.  Cute stuff.  Three stars.

Next up is E.C. Tubb's The Piebald Horse.  It starts out well enough with a Terran spy trying to escape a repressive alien world with his brain full of sensitive knowledge.  The jig seems up for him when the aliens employ telepaths as mind-screen agents, but they are foiled when the protagonist pickles himself continuously until he can depart the planet.  I'm pretty sure I just saw this tactic in Fred Pohl's Drunkard's Walk.  2 stars.

These two stories are followed by a pair of execrable "non-fiction" articles.  Captain, MSC, US Navy H.C. Dudley, PhD (he must be authoritative–look at all the titles!) has the first: The Electric Field Rocket.  He maintains that the Earth's electrostatic field can be used to assist rocket launches; he implies that the Soviet's lead in the Space Race is attributable to their taking advantage of said phenomenon.  Not only is the article unreadable, but I suspect the science is bunk.  Time will tell.  1 star.

Speaking of which, Editor Campbell contributes the second article: Instrumentation for the Dean Drive.  I'm not even going to dignify with a review this next piece in an endless series on Dean's magical inertialess engine.  He needs to knock it off already.  1 star.

Blessedly, the rest of the issue is quite good.  The reliable Hal Clement is back with Sunspot, an exciting, if highly technical, account of a group of spacemen who ride a comet around the Sun.  What better shielding exists for a close encounter with a star than billions of cubic tons of ice?  Four stars.

At last, we come to H. Beam Piper's Oomphel in the Sky.  The set-up is great: a Terran colony world in a binary star system courts disaster when the planet makes a close approach to the usually far-away sun.  This triggers unrest amongst the natives, threatening Terran and native interests alike.  I'm an unabashed fan of Piper, and this is a good tale, although he does get a little patronizing toward the do-gooder but ineffective Terran government.  I like the strong anthropological bent, and I appreciate the respect with which he treats the natives and their interests.  Four stars.

In sum, the November 1960 Analog (I almost typed "Astounding") is quite decent, fiction-wise.  Campbell needs to do what Galaxy's Gold has done and hire a ghost editor, and a real non-fiction author.  I can't believe there isn't another budding Asimov or Ley out there champing at the bit to be published…

The fourth and last Kennedy/Nixon debate is tomorrow night!  I hope you'll all watch it with me, but if you can't bring yourself to sit through another hour of sparring, I'll give you the full details the following day.

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[May 20, 1960] Three for Four (June 1960 Astounding)

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Astounding, the venerable science fiction digest, has often been my monthly whipping boy.  Today's article is going to be a bit different because, apart from one noteworthy, execrable exception, the June 1960 Astounding was actually quite good.

Much of the magazine is taken up by Part 3 of the enjoyable "Mark Phillips" effort, Out Like a Light.  There are only three other fiction entries in this issue, all novelette/novella-sized.

Chris Anvil's Star Tiger leads the pack.  A colony is wiped out completely by an invisible enemy.  Is it an alien invasion?  An incorporeal monster?  Or some new permutation of biology?  The mystery is the best part of this story. 

Anvil is an author who started out mired in mediocrity, and who seems to be improving with effort.  However, despite some good description and atmosphere throughout much of this tale, he still ends it with that sort of droll, wrapped-in-a-bow fashion that feels perfunctory.  A story should be more than just the "gimmick."  Not bad, though.

Charley de Milo is a minor masterpiece by Laurence Janifer (who co-wrote Out Like a Light).  It features a man born without arms, who has learned to use his feet with tremendous dexterity: comb his hair, light cigarettes, etc.  He makes a comfortable and enjoyable living as bally performer for a carnival freak show.  But when a friend creates a cure for lost limbs, his audience drops off precipitously.  Charley is faced with the hard choice: continue as a low-rent freak or be "cured" and start off from scratch as a normal person–at age 41.

This story raises a lot of poignant questions.  If one is handicapped and comfortable with one's disability, is a cure always desirable?  If one can be cured, will society have less tolerance for the voluntarily crippled, be less supporting of those who refuse to be cured?  I have a minor disability, myself: I am somewhat color-blind.  It has never been much of a hindrance; in fact, I often find it amusing.  But, imagine if, someday, a set of glasses were invented that would enable me to see as "normal" people do.  Would I take the opportunity?  I'm actually not all that sure.  I am physically different from most people, and it has shaped my world.  It is part of my identity.  I don't know that I want to lose that. 

I've always maintained that the measure of a story is the extent to which it makes you think about the points raised afterwards.  By that standard, this is definitely a 4-star tale.

Last of the three is John Berryman's Vigorish, though he wrote it as Walter Bupp, same name as the story's protagonist.  Interestingly, the lead is also a handicapped person.  His right arm is essentially useless, and its lack of functionality contributes to his ability to wield telekinesis with a fine degree of control.  He is employed, practically enough, to watchdog casinos when it looks like someone is using psionics to bend the odds her/his way.

There are a lot of stories featuring psi powers in Astounding, but this one is done better than most.  Give it a try.

Now, for those wondering about my comment in the first paragraph, it's time for that other shoe to drop.  I've observed before that Astounding's science fact column is the lousiest among the Big Three digests.  Not surprising given that the competition is Isaac Asimov and Willy Ley (and when the Astounding column is any good, it's usually written by a pinch-hitter named… Isaac Asimov).

This month, Campbell has put it upon himself to write his own column.  It's a long, whiny screed in defense of the (deservedly) much maligned Norman Dean, inventor of the "Dean Drive" that, purportedly, converts rotational acceleration to linear acceleration thus creating a reactionless drive.

Well, no one's seen it work.  Even Campbell hasn't seen it work.  But Campbell blames the lack of government and private interest in Dean's engine on bureaucratic myopia… or perhaps something more sinister and collusionary.

I recognize and respect Campbell's contributions to the genre, but he's the embarrassing half-senile old uncle of our community.

Happy 57th birthday (tomorrow) to pulp icon Manly Wade Wellman.  He has not written much as late, so the Journey has only covered one of his stories, but it was a good one.

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[May 13, 1960] Second Lightning Strike (Out Like a Light)

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by Freas

I poke a lot of fun at John Campbell's magazine, Astounding for its overfeaturing of psionics and Randall Garrett, two things of which I've gotten very tired–so imagine my surprise when I found myself enjoying a serial that intimately involves both!

For the last three months, Astounding's serial has been Out Like a Light, the sequel to the actually-not-bad That Sweet Little Old Lady.  Both stories were co-written by the team of Randall Garrett (who seems to be getting better these days, at least prose-wise) and Laurence Janifer (who may be the real talent behind the operation).  Together, they go by the monicker of "Mark Phillips." 

Lady introduced two investigating agents of the FBI in the nearish future, Malone and Boyd, who are stand-ins for the authors.  I think.  Boyd certainly shares Garrett's physical similarity to Henry VIII as well as his penchant for girl-chasing.  And Janifer, if he cut his hair into a Mohican, would look a bit like Malone.  Their first misadventure involves tracking down a gaggle of psychics and enlisting their aid to fix a security leak in the government.  The sanest of the bunch or telepaths, despite believing herself to be the not-so-late ex-Monarch, Elizabeth I, ends up being the lynchpin to the agents' success.  As the title suggests, she really is a sweet little old lady.  Who can read minds.

Out Like a Light is essentially a solo adventure, with Malone sleuthing around after a spate of carjackings.  All of the cars are red Cadillacs, and the investigating officers tend to get nasty bumps on the side of the head.  Yet, no trace of the perpetrators is ever seen.  Of course, psionics are involved, and Her Majesty serves an important supporting role in solving the mystery. 

It's about 10% too long in the droll recounting of things, but it moves swiftly and entertainingly, features a couple of strong female characters (shock!) and is a reasonably executed "how-dunnit."  I say "how" since the "who" is determined fairly early on. 


by Freas

I found myself actively looking forward, each month, to reading more of the story.  It's not literature for the ages, but it is genuinely amusing.  If my meter allowed for half increments for individual stories, I would give it three and a half stars.  Since it doesn't, I suppose I'll be generous and give it four. 

Astounding can use the charity, especially after the non-fiction "article" featured in this month's issue… but more on that later.

Pick up a copy, and enjoy!

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Magazine

[March 31, 1960] What goes up… (May 1960 Astounding)

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Every science fiction digest has a flavor.  Part of it is due to the whimsy of the editor, part of it is the niche the magazine is trying to fill, and part of it is luck of the draw.

Astounding can be summed up in just a few words: psionic, smug, workmanlike, crackpot, inbred.

Not necessarily in that order.

You see, every editor has an agenda.  For F&SF's Tony Boucher, and his successor, Paul Mills, it's to have as literary a magazine as possible.  For Galaxy and IF's H. L. Gold, it's to present solid science fiction without resorting to hackneyed clichés of the pulp era.

For Astounding's John Campbell, the motivation might once have been to mentor young writers so that they could create the best science fiction of the day.  Certainly, Campbell's magazine pioneered the field in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s.  But these days, Campbell seems determined to be the strongest champion of psychic phenomena and other silliness. 

For instance: perpetual motion.  Campbell promises to fully educate us on the "Dean Drive" next month, a flop of a device (so I understand) that supposedly turns rotational energy into linear energy for propulsion purposes. 

For instance: psychic paper.  The "Heironymous Machine," a meaningless circuit that is just as effective (so its creator and defenders claim) whether it be made out of electronic components or simply drawn on a sheet.

For instance: virtually every story that appears in Astounding must feature psychic powers and/or some reference to one of Campbell's pet projects.

It reminds me of how Fantastic Universe catered to the UFO crowd during its sunset years, much good it did them. 

The result of this editorial policy, and the over-reliance on just a few of the field's less exceptional authors, is a magazine that usually ranks lowest of the Big Three (combining Galaxy and IF).  Last month was a striking exception to this rule.  This month, we may not be so lucky.

The May 1960 Astounding only has five pieces apart from the second part of the "Mark Phillips" serial, Out like a Light.  I won't review the serial until its completion next month.

Astounding perennial Randall Garrett contributes the lead novella, the promising but ultimately flawed Damned if you Don't.  In 1981, an enterprising scientist develops a perfect, tiny energy source that threatens to throw the entire planet's economy into chaos.  Everyone is out to stop him, from the power company to the government.  The first half is pleasant reading, with some reasonably good characterization and suspense as to who's actually after the powerful "Converter" machines.  There's another nod to Murray Leinster by name.  At one point, there is a description of a computer small enough to have been knocked over by a single person, which is an interesting extrapolation of miniaturization trends.

But then the story gets talky.  There is a meaningless aside describing a lukewarm Middle Eastern and European war in the late '60s that leads to a clamp down on private scientific investigations.  It is meaningless not only for its implausibility but also for the fact that it doesn't really have any bearing on the story.  Then there are pages of discussion on how release of the device will destroy the world as we know it.  These are capped off with the realization that the device has been stolen, and it's all a moot point.  So much for that story.

Then we have John Cory's three-pager Egocentric Orbit.  Twice before, astronauts have been launched into space and refused to come down.  In this story, following the third orbital astronaut, we find out why. 

Laurence Janifer, one half of the pair that is Mark Phillips (the other being Randall Garrett) has a decent story under the pseudonym "Larry M. Harris."  It's a period piece set in 1605 called Wizard, and it involves a brotherhood of telepaths attempting to thwart the inquisition, which threatens to wipe their breed from the Earth.

The final fiction entry is Mack Reynold's pedestrian Revolution, which entertains a number of ridiculous propositions.  Item: the Soviet Union will surpass the United States in production in just seven years.  Item: a revolution is easy to incite so long as you throw lots of money at the problem.  Item: if you think the USSR is productive now, wait until bright-eyed Syndicalist Technocrats take over!

Much like Garrett's opening story, the latter half is composed mostly of speeches justifying the plot line, and the ending features the revolution's catalyst, a western agent, suggesting that the revolution be aborted lest the USSR someday truly trounce the West.  Pretty bad stuff.

On the other hand, Dr. Asimov is back with a nice long piece (The March of the Phyla) on the various animal groups and the successive adaptations that allowed them to increasingly become masters of their environment rather passive creatures vulnerable to the caprice of Mother Nature.  It's a bit teleological in its presentation, but quite informative. 

I just have to wonder when Asimov will supplant Ley at Galaxy and monopolize all of the digests.  Nice racket if you can get it…

So, there you have it.  A magazine largely written by just two authors (Garrett and Janifer), suffused with smugness, even the non-fiction, featuring psionics and super-inventions, none of it terribly well-written.  Campbell's got to find some new blood, or Astounding is going to founder, I fear.  Perhaps Harry Harrison offers some hope—his Deathworld was the overwhelming favorite of the fans, per the Analytical Laboratory (the magazine's reader survey) for January and February.  More like that would help.

There's an exciting launch coming tomorrow.  If it's successful, I'll see you on the 2nd with an update on… TIROS.

—




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Magazine, Serial

The Worst (September 1959 Astounding; 8-20-1959)

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People seem to enjoy extremes.  The first to do this.  The best at doing that.  The most exciting.  The brightest.  The darkest.

If you're wondering why I failed to write on schedule, day-before-yesterday, it's because I was wrestling with the worst.  Specifically, the worst magazine I've had to trudge through since I began this project in 1954.  Let me tell you: there was nothing to enjoy about it.

I speak of the September 1959 issue of Astounding.  Not only are the stories (at least those I've thus far read) thoroughly dull, but they have that sharp stamp of Campbellian editing, or pandering, which causes them to have the same tedious, nonsensical elements.

Take That Sweet Little Old Lady, by "Mark Phillips," a pseudonym so phoney, I knew Randall Garrett had to be involved.  Sure enough, Mark Phillips is Randy and a fellow named Laurence F. Janifer.  It's a drab, unamusingly droll stream-of-consciousness story about a detective and his quest to find a psionic spy.  In the course of his investigations, he meets a dotty esper convinced that she is an immortal Queen Elizabeth.  Joy of joys, this is only the first of a two-part serial.

As for the Campbellian twist, much reference is made to psionic devices that are part electronic and part symbolic.  This is a nod to Campbell's obsession with "Heironymous Machines," devices that measure "non-electromagnetic radiation," using electric circuits that appear to have no function and could, it is boasted, be replaced by pen-and-ink diagrams of those same circuits without affecting the ability of the machine.

Well, I can't disagree with that.

Chris Anvil continues to make solid 2-star stories that fill blank spots in the pages of Astounding.  Captive Leaven is about the effect an interstellar traveler had on a primitive civilization, uplifting it to a very specialized sophistication so that it could produce parts to repair the traveler's spaceship.  Not a bad idea, I suppose, but executed in so dull a fashion that I fairly had to reread the whole tale to remember the plot.

Finally, even Murray Leinster disappoints with his A Matter of Importance, in which Leinster's characteristic employment of short sentences annoys to distraction.  Ostensibly a story about an interstellar police rescue mission, it's really an opportunity to point out that the human form is the most natural of forms for intelligent creatures, that the Solar System is the most typical of planetary systems, and the predictions of a canny protagonist always come out to be correct. 

Fatuous determinism.  You can have it.

I'm dreading the rest of this issue, and the next one, to be honest.  I'll read them, because I feel I've a contract with you, my good readers, but I can't promise not to skim.

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