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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 31, 1968] Too much and too little (February 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Too much

Last week, we watched the evening news with mounting dread and anxiety as President Johnson ordered 15,000 reservists into action in response to the seizure of the U.S.S. Pueblo by North Korea.  The U.S.S. Enterprise was already in the Sea of Japan ready to initiate a retaliatory strike.  It looked like the Cuban Missile Crisis all over again.  Lorelei turned to me and worried that things couldn't possibly get any worse.

Then the North Vietnamese launched an all-out assault on seven provincial capitals in South Vietnam.  Fighting reached the streets of Saigon, and the America embassy itself was overrun for six hours.  The conflict is still raging.  So much for the Tet holiday week of peace.  So much for armistice overtures.

So, 1968 is already shaping up to be a scary year in the mundane world.  Let's see how we're doing in the SFNal realm.  The latest issue of Analog starts off strong, from its Kelly Freas cover, to Harrison's name on the masthead.  But does it deliver on its promises?

Too little


by Kelly Freas

The Horse Barbarians (Part 1 of 3), by Harry Harrison

Don't let the title or the cover throw you–this latest serial is, in fact, the third installment in Harrison's Deathworld series.  In the brilliant first story, we are introduced to Jason dinAlt, a psychically adept gambler and roustabout who comes to Pyrrus, the most hostile planet in the galaxy.  Using his ESP talents, as well as his fine brain, he deduces that the reason the world is so antagonistic to humans is due to a kind of psychic positive feedback loop: as the colonists came to regard the planet as their enemy, the planet's flora and fauna responded in kind.  The key to living at peace with the world is a change in mindset, to work with the planet rather than try to conquer it.  It was a lovely ecological message, predating Silent Spring by two years.

The second dinAlt story, The Ethical Engineer is a Deathworld story only in name, with dinAlt captured and taken to another world in Chapter One.  This novel, more than any other, caused me to confuse Harry Harrison for Keith Laumer (as dinAlt and Retief are rather similar in nature and tone) everafter.

This third piece is a little more closely bound to the original.  The premise: all of the city-dwellers of Pyrrus who could make peace with the planet have already left the original settlement for the countryside.  What's left is the hard-core who cannot change their mindset.  Eventually, the planet must defeat them.

Jason has a proposal that may appeal to this remainder.  The planet Felicity has resisted all attempts at establishment of a mining colony.  Specifically, the northern half of the planet's sole continent is peopled by savage horse barbarians who steadfastedly resist any attempt at civilization.  dinAlt suggests that the Pyrrans form a planetary exploration and pacification company; after all, who in the galaxy could be tougher than a Pyrran?  About 400 city-dwellers agree to the plan.

Upon landing on Felicity, Jason is immediately konked on the head and made a captive of Temuchin, leader of the dominant barbarian tribe.  This chief has slowly gained the vassalage of all of the other tribes, cementing his control over the windswept northern steppes.  dinAlt manages to escape, making a trek across the barren wastes.  But the trip back to his ship, the Pugnacious, is only the beginning of his worries.  In order to topple Temujin, Jason and his fellow Pyrrans will have to playact at being a new barbarian tribe, and subvert the chieftain from within…

The tone flipflops between light and deadly serious, and the horse barbarians are a thinly disguised retread of the Mongols (look in your encyclopedia for the birth name of Genghis Khan), though made redheads for some reason.  That said, I read the whole thing in two quick sittings, and I'm enjoying it more than Engineer so far.

Four stars for this installment.

To Make a "Star Trek" by G. Harry Stine

You know our favorite TV SF show has made the big time when Analog makes it the topic of the nonfiction science article!  Stine, a model rocket enthusiast, offers up a fascinating bit of background on the program, including praises of its implementation of technology, and some behind-the-scenes information that must have come straight from show-runner Roddenberry (indeed, this schematic of the Enterprise has been reprinted in current Trekzines.

Four stars, and a must read for Kirk/Spock buffs.

"If the Sabot Fits … " by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond


by Kelly Freas

The psychic man-and-wife author team returns with this mildly diverting piece.  A series of catastrophic computer failures in a Midwest town coincides with a particular broadcast at a public education station.  Could there be a connection?

I'm not sure if the science is sound, but it might be–Walt is an electrical engineer (Leigh, reportedly, just types his mental emanations, but I suspect she is actually the storytelling talent of the pair).

It's not bad.  Three stars.

Peek! I See You! by Poul Anderson


by John H. Sanchez

A freelance helicopter pilot spots a flying saucer out in the southwest desert.  The aliens, who have already made contact with a local population, do their best to avoid widening their diplomatic contacts.

I appreciate the idea of alien relations with individual nations/groups as opposed to with planets as a whole.  Science fiction writers tend to forget that planets are big places, and they can house more than one embassy/colony/climate.

But.

The story is twice as long as it needs to be, and Poul really doesn't do "light and funny" competently, certainly not in the same league as Laumer, Harrison, or Sheckley.

Two stars.

Dowsers Detect Enemy's Tunnels, by Hanson W. Baldwin

"American soldiers find tunnels in Vietnam, a country riddled with underground passageways.  ONLY DOWSERS CAN BE THE REASON!"

Seriously, John?  One star.

The God Pedlars, by Jack Wodhams


by Kelly Freas

The ugh continues.  An interstellar corporation is selling computers to primitive tribesmen.  The pitch: they are actually idols representing a great and wise god.  These "gods" tell the indigenes how to live their lives, build technology, etc.  Of course, it's all for the good of the natives.

In addition to being a rather specious premise, this isn't really a story.  It's a mouthpiece and a straw man having a conversation such that the point is beaten into the reader with a mallet.

Editor Campbell would give this story five stars.  I give it one.

Optimum Pass, by W. Macfarlane


by Leo Summers

Last up, a sequel to Free Vacation, in which Layard and his fat partner (he never gets a name, but his girth is an important aspect of his character) manage to get themselves thrown in the pokey again such that they can get another free trip to an alien world.  Their official mission is to tough out 30 days to determine the suitability of the planet for colonization.  Their personal mission to look for evidence of "The Prodromals", the original galactic civilization.

More light fun, albeit a bit less coherent than the last tale.  Still, three stars.

Unbalanced scale

Despite the auspicious beginning, this month's issue of Analog finished at 2.7 stars, making it the least of the February 1968 magazines.  Even Amazing scored slightly higher (still 2.7 when rounded), followed by IF (2.8), Fantasy & Science Fiction (3.1), New Worlds (3.3), and Galaxy (a slightly higher 3.3)

It was actually a good month for good fiction: out of six magazines released, one could fill two, possibly three with exceptional (four and five star) stuff.  Women, on the other hand, continue to be underrepresented, with just 7% of published new fiction.

So, while Analog was a mixed blessing this month, all in all, the pages of the digests made for much more pleasant reading than the newspapers.  Would that we could have good news in both.  I guess we'll see how February fares.  It is my birthday month; surely that counts for something!

If you want to see more of my beautiful face (made for radio!) tune in for the latest edition of KGJ news!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 31, 1967] Surprise, surprise!  (January 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Evitability

There are some things you can count on in life: death, taxes, the North Vietnamese violating their own Christmas truce more than a hundred times.

But sometimes, life deals you surprises.  For instance, who knew that Hubert Humphrey was still alive?  Yet he must be kicking for he is currently in Africa on a goodwill tour of the continent.


And, as a fellow exclaimed when I gave him a preview of my thoughts on this month's issue of Analog, "A five star story in Analog?  Really?"

Well, it's true.  Read on and find out how it happened!

Expect the unexpected

The Bugs That Live at -423°, by Joseph Green and Fuller C. Jones

First off, a very long article on the teething troubles faced by the developers of the Centaur rocket.  This powerful second stage is used atop Atlas and Titan missiles to send big payloads to Earth's orbit and beyond.  To do so, it uses liquid hydrogen as a fuel, which entails a whole host of problems.

There is a lot of good information in here, but as is often the case in Analog science articles, its presentation is confusing.  There are no section breaks, so the whole thing runs together such that even I, a professional space historian, found my eyes glazing over.

I've no idea if "Joseph Green" is the same one who writes science fiction for UK magazines.  Probably not.

Anyway, three stars.

There is a Tide, by R. C. FitzPatrick and Leigh Richmond


by Kelly Freas

A couple of years ago, R. C. FitzPatrick started a series of stories about a surgeon who has perfected the technique of human brain transplants.  The first story was mildly interesting but prolonged, and the second veered heavily into the uncomfortable zone of eugenics.  After all, the transplant of a healthy brain requires a donor body…and it's hard to find ones that aren't inhabited, and don't even the feeble minded have the right to their own corpus?

Tide is the third story in the series, and by far the best.  There are two parallel, intersecting plots.  One involves a brilliant young physicist with inoperable cancer, who comes to the surgeon's sanatorium to wait for a suitable "transplant" candidate.  The second pertains to a self-styled "Duke" of organized crime.  Intelligent, ruthless, and aging, the mob boss wants a healthy body to get a new lease on life.  Surprisingly, the surgeon is willing to take the Duke's case, even before the mafioso breaks out the threats.

There are some important distinguishing characteristics between Tide and its predecessors.  For one, it is now stressed that only the truly brain-dead are eligible "donors".  It's not a matter of finding more value in a smart brain and a moronic one; only a virtually untenanted body is acceptable.  The writing is far more compelling in this piece, too, with lots of interesting asides that flesh out the characters and the world they inhabit.

But most importantly, the ethical issue is confronted head on.  It doesn't matter if the AMA or politicians or ethicists oppose the technology of brain transplants.  Once that genie is out of the bottle, someone will take advantage of it–if not the scrupulous, then the unscrupulous.  As the first (somewhat) successful human heart transplants of this month have shown, this technology is no longer a pipe dream.  We will someday have to face this issue.  I felt this story did a better job of addressing this problem than Niven's (still pretty good) The Jigsaw Man, which came out a couple of months ago.

So how did FitzPatrick manage to write such a good story when his others were middling or worse?  You'll notice the second name in the byline.  I have a strong suspicion that Leigh Richmond is responsible for most of this piece.  Certainly, she's the new variable.

Five stars.

… And Cauldron Bubble, by Bruce Daniels


by Kelly Freas

Of course, what goes up…

Bubble is a piece in epistolary form about a near future in which the United States has scientifically developed dowsing and other hocus pocus into a full cabinet department.  This would be a frivolous but diverting piece in F&SF, but knowing as I do that Analog's editor, John Campbell, actually believes in the efficacy of dowsing, well, it reads like propaganda.

Two stars.

The System, by Ben Bova

Bova offers up this two-page cautionary tale about the dangers of overdirection of scientific development.  It kind of steps on its own toes to make its message, though.

Two stars.

Such Stuff As Dreams …, by Sterling E. Lanier


by Kelly Freas

A dashing young space navy commander signs up to join a top secret spy organization that has the real power in the galaxy.  He is subjected to a number of tests, mostly to try his patience, before being given the final exam: a test of survival on an alien world.  The dangers are of monstrous, almost unbelievable proportion, and the candidate wonders why.

Of course, the title of the piece gives it away.

Competent but forgettable.  Three stars.

Dragonrider (Part 2 of 2), by Anne McCaffrey


by Kelly Freas

Lastly, the conclusion to what will likely be a three-part fixup novel.  The planet of Pern is faced with deadly peril: the Red Star approacheth, and with it, onslaughts of deadly rhysome "threads" that despoil all living things that they touch.  The only defense is fire-breathing, telepathic dragons flown by specially selected riders.  The problem is only one of the six dragonrider weyrs is still in operation, and that one is woefully understaffed.

F'lar, the head rider, thought he had a solution to this problem when he learned that Lessa, the rider of the dragon queen Ramoth, discovered the ability to ride her mount through time.  Last installment, the weyrleader sent his brother and a team back in time ten years to raise a new crop of dragons.  Unfortunately, living more than once in the same time is detrimental to one's health, and the endeavor was largely a failure.  Now, the only hope lies in the past, and an historical ballad about the wholesale departure of five weyrs some four hundred years ago–to destinations unknown…

There are the bones of an interesting novel here, although the gratuitous use of time travel as a plot point usually creates more problems than it solves.  Also, By His Bootstraps stories tend to be dull since you already know what's going to happen.

But the biggest problem here is that McCaffrey just isn't quite up to the story she's trying to tell.  A fine teller of short stories (The Woman in the Tower and The Ship Who Sang being standout examples), she struggles with the longer format.  Her characters are shallow and unpleasant.  The "romantic" relationship between Lessa and F'lar is disturbing when it isn't annoying.  Lessa's theme song might well be, "He Shook Me, and It Felt Like a Kiss", and the only ones privy to F'lar's love for Lessa are the readers since the weyrleader is determined never to show affection for his lady.  Ugh.

The doggerel that prefaces each chapter completes the mask of mediocrity on this promising tale.  Perhaps a combo of Jack Vance and Rosel George Brown (R.I.P.) could have done Dragonrider justice.  And maybe, as my colleague David suggests, a story between the first and second parts could have smoothed the transition (something to be fixed pending novelization?)

It really is a shame since it's rare to get a sweeping epic from the perspective of a woman, and the first part made me hopeful.  As is, this last segment, and the three-part story as a whole get three stars.

Doing the math

When you put it all together, the January 1968 issue of Analog ends up at 3.1 stars, just on the positive end of the ledger.  That actually puts it at the #2 spot for the month, just edging out IF (3.1), and losing to Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3).  The rest of this month's mags finished below the middling mark, with Fantastic at 2.9, New Writings at 2.8, and the abysmal new Beyond Infinity garnering just 1.5.  As a result, though six magazines were released, you could fill just two of them with four and five star stories.

The big surprise, though, is the resurgence in feminine participation.  Women contributed 13% of the new short fiction produced this month.  While still a low number, it is comparatively enormous.  And more surprisingly, the bulk of the woman-penned work (at least by pages) was published in Analog.

If even fuddy duddy Campbell can produce a progressive mag, I think we've got good times in store as the calendar turns to 1968!  Happy New Year indeed…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 31, 1967] Canceling waves (August 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Phase shift

Every science fiction magazine has a stable of regular contributors.  Maybe there just aren't enough good writers to fill a magazine otherwise.  Perhaps it's a reflection of the conservative tendency to stick with what works.  Occasionally, you'll see a mag make an effort to recruit new talent, with mixed results.  Others, like Analog are famously steady.

Thus, it is usually with a heavy sigh that I open each new issue of John Campbell's mag.  It's not that his stable is bad per se.  But reading the same authors, month in and month out can get monotonous.  Also, because they are guaranteed spots, quality can be somewhat, shall we say, variable.

On the other hand, that variability means that it's rare that any single issue of Analog is all bad (or all good).  August 1967 Analog is no exception, with the bad turns being more than counteracted by the good ones.  Throw in an excellent science fact article from a newcomer, and this issue is one of the better mags of the month.

Interference pattern


by Chesley Bonestell

Starfog, by Poul Anderson

The latest Poul Anderson story inspired by a lovely Chesley Bonestell painting (this one of a planet around a red supergiant), is pretty neat.  The Makt, an incredibly primitive hyperdrive ship, makes planetfall at the farflung human colony of Serieve.  The crew are human, though of a somewhat radical type, far more resistant to radiation than baseline homo sapiens, and with a taste for arsenic salt.  More remarkable, they claim that their homeworld, Kirkasant, lives in another universe.  This universe is just a few hundred light years across, and jam packed with bright young stars.

Ranger Daven Laure and his sapient ship, Jaccavrie, are dispatched to Serieve to deduce just where Kirkasant is, and, if possible, to get the crew of the Makt home.  Easier said than done — how does one go looking for a pocket universe?  And if it posssess the properties described, then navigation in that electromagnetic hell would be virtually impossible.


by John Schoenherr

This is one of those highly technical stories that Anderson likes, but done with sufficient characterization that it doesn't require the Winston P. Sanders (Winnie the Pooh) alias that Anderson's lesser works go under.  Laure's solution to finding Kirkasant requires a bit too much overt hiding from the audience, but it is pretty clever, at least in a society of libertarian worlds motivated by little more than personal profit (a society that does make sense, in the context portrayed).

Four stars.

Babel II, by Christopher Anvil


by Rudolph Palais

Chris Anvil, on the other hand, is at a low ebb.  This piece is less of a story than a series of examples of how technical speak makes advanced technology all but inaccessible to anyone but the most arcane experts.  I suppose this is a point to be made, but I disagree with the conclusion that a user of technology must know everything about the technology.  That is, after all, the whole point of the new programming language, BASIC.  One can avail themselves of the nearest Big Iron computer and make sophisticated calculations without having the first clue how to IPL an operating system from a DASD.

Two stars.

The Misers, by William T. Powers

This month's science article is unusually excellent.  It's about the latest advances in digital imaging for astronomy, and how it might someday supplant the astronomical photograph.  Chatty and engaging, but not dumbed down, its only sin is length.  To be fair, there is a lot to cover.

Five stars.  An invaluable resource.

The Featherbedders, by Frank Herbert


by Leo Summers

Here's a real surprise: a Frank Herbert story I unreservedly like!

The Slorin are shapeshifters bent on infiltrating Earth's society for possibly sinister, but mostly benign purpose.  When a scattership breaks up before it can safely land, two members of the crew, Smeg and his son, Rick, go off looking for a rogue comrade who has gone native.

And how.  Using his mind control powers, this renegade has taken up residence in a small Southern town as a sheriff, maintaining order with an iron fist, thought control, and the use of hostages.  But when Smeg finally confronts the sheriff, he encounters an even deeper secret — one that threatens the entire Slorin operation.

Aside from the final twist, which I found a little superfluous, the only other off-putting issue is the use of the exact same poem that ends this month's F&SF story, Bugs.  One wonders if the poem was prominently featured a few months ago or something.

But all of Herbert's typical tics, including copious italics and ever-shifting viewpoints, are completely absent from the piece.  It's light rather than ponderous, but not overly frivolous.  I'd not have been surprised to find it in the pages of Galaxy in the first half of the last decade (when that magazine was at its zenith).

Four stars.

Cows Can't Eat Grass, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond


by Kelly Freas

Galactic Surveryor Harry Gideon (great surname, by the way) is marooned on a planet that should have killed him.  Somehow, he has managed to find sufficient edible foods to sustain himself until relief arrives.  But all of their tests show the alien life to be completely toxic.  What's Gideon's secret?

The Richmond combo has produced some of the worst stuff Analog's printed, but they've gotten better of late (and I quite enjoyed their first book, Shockwave.  This latest piece is on the good end of things.

Three stars.

Depression or Bust, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

Reynolds, on the other hand, offers up another one of his history lessons wrapped in a throwaway story.  When Marvin and Phoebe Sellers decide to return their brand new freezer, it starts a chain that results in a national depression.  The only way to fix it is by reversing the trigger.

This is not only a rather pointless piece, it is so clumsily exaggerated, the characters made of straw (the President has never heard of the Depression, and it must be explained to him by an adviser).  And Reynolds can't help making a dig at Indians.  Reynolds has an issue with Indians.

One star.

Plugging in the oscilloscope

What have we got?  Two clunkers, one decent piece, and two good long ones, not to mention a great article.  That puts us at 3.2 on the star-o-meter.  Not bad at all! That barely beats out Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.2) and roundly trounces Galaxy (2.9), IF (2.8), Famous Science Fiction #1 (2.7), Famous Science Fiction #2 (2.4), and Amazing (2.4).

Only New Worlds (3.3) and Famous Science Fiction #3 (3.4) score higher.

For those keeping score, women wrote 9% of the new fiction pieces this month (including all the back issues of Famous). 

Last week, I wondered if a copy of a copy could be better than the original.  Thus far, it looks like the answer is no.  Keep it up, Analog!



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 18, 1967] Six!  Count them — Six! (February Galactoscope)

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by Gideon Marcus

Failing Fair

Three titles for you today across two books (reminds me of the old astronomical saw: "Three out of every two stars is a binary"). None of them are great, but one of them is surprisingly decent given the source.

Twin Planets, by Philip E. High

"Fast-paced, readable fun," pretty much describes everything Mr. High has written of late, and perhaps ever (my records only go back to 1961). His latest effort, Twin Planets, (from Paperback Library) does not break the mold.

It starts promisingly enough: A fellow named Denning is driving his car when it suddenly becomes very cold, the policemen are dressed quite oddly, and the sun is now a sullen orange orb on the horizon. Has he traveled to the future? Into another dimension?

Turns out, the answer is both. Earth has an analog that the natives call "Firma", with a slightly different history. Centuries ago, aliens appeared and froze the planet's rotation (with attendant momentum-related catastrophe). The world is now divided into a temperate zone, a hot zone, and a frigid region (where Denning had been transported).

Denning has a twin on Firma, name of Liston. Possessed of insatiable sexual desire that couples with his intelligence and strength, he is banished to one of the inhospitable zones early in the book, to be recruited by the resistance. Said resistance also taps Denning, who comes into his own superhuman powers–as well as a raging libido and attractiveness to women.

Turns out Denning and Liston are biological constructs, originally to be linchpins of the resistance, but by the end of the book free agents with a hankering to topple the aliens who run Earth from the shadows. Lots of running around, killing people, implied sexual exploits, and a happy ending.

This is a very old style of book. And while some of the ideas are quite interesting, for the most part, they are set aside for the action. Also, the competent women characters suffer for being hapless victims of their hormones, unable to resist the pheromones of their superhero companions. I raced through the first quarter of the book, but the last quarter took me several days, despite the novel's brevity.

Two and a half stars.

Envoy to the Dog Star, by Frederick L. Shaw, Jr.

Next up is Ace Double #G-614. Ace is known more for publishing "fast-paced, readable fun" than "thought-provoking classics" but you never know. After all, Tom Purdom's I Want the Stars and Terry Carr's Warlord of Kor both came out as halves of Ace Doubles.

Not so this first novel, I'm afraid. Mr. Shaw, whose name is completely unknown to me, starts off with a bang. If Anne McCaffrey wrote The Ship Who Sang, this book is the tale of "The Ship Who Barked". On board the inventively named "Spaceship-One" (presumably, Mr. Shaw is English) is a lone crewmember: a disembodied dog's brain. His mission is to scout out the Sirius system, which has been identified as a likely target to possess planets. Indeed, it has four planets, all identical copies. Only one of them is inhabited, by a Eloi-ish race of humans with Greek/Italian-esque names and blonde hair, who live symbiotically with a race of prehensile-handed dogs. Turns out the canines are the real power behind the throne (with truly groan-worthy names like "Chienandros" and "Perralto." Our hero, who calls himself "Ishmael", must work with them to secure colonizing rights while also delivering a message of warning to war-ravaged and overpopulated Earth.

There are things I liked about this book. Ishmael is a fun narrator, reminding me of Hank "The Beast" McCoy from Marvel's X-Men comic. The opening forty pages or so, before the ship gets to Sirius, are quite fun, indeed. The ship uses time travel as a space drive (letting the universe move underneath, as it were), which I've only seen once before, in Wallace West's The River of Time.

But the science is about thirty years out of date (planets formed by stellar collision, indeed), every gizmo is detailed for the pulp fans, and the setting and characters have as much subtlety as brutalist architecture.

Three stars for some vapid fun.

Shockwave, by Walt and Leigh Richmond

This is the one I was really worried about. The Richmonds, a married couple that (reportedly) collaborates telepathically, have heretofore been Analog exclusives. The best they've managed thus far are a pair of passable three-star shorts, the rest being bad to dreadful. And in contrast to the other three tales, it's the beginning that's discouraging. Terry Ferman ("Terran Freeman?") is an electrical engineering student who, upon twiddling with a certain radio transmitter, finds himself on a faraway planet. He is now a captive of a computerized jailer, who refers to him as a basic galactic citizen and impresses upon him a rudimentary knowledge of the star-spanning polity he is supposedly a member of. Terry is also given a set of nifty tools including a ray gun, X-Ray glasses, a pocket translator, and a compass. At this point, I was sure this was going to be some kind of interstellar spy story, thinly cloaked wish fulfillment for boys.

But as the book goes on, Terry's situation becomes more complex. He meets Grontag, a dinosaur-like alien, also a student of electricity, who was similarly summoned unwillingly. They befriend "Tinkan", a robot that has become independent of the computer and developed a will of its own. It becomes clear that some sort of catastrophe has befallen the galactic civilization, and the marooned team must figure out what happened, why, and who might be responsible.

It's a very technical story, with lots of doodads created by someone who clearly has a background in electrical engineering. The pacing is excellent, however, with each section more interesting than the last. The Richmonds also have interesting things to say about repressive civil relationships like slavery and marriage. After the slow start, I finished the book in just two sessions, which is saying something.

Three and a half stars.

Five out of Two


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

One of the little curiosities of the ease of getting American science fiction novels in Britain depends on whether they have a UK edition coming out.

If there is no UK publisher on the horizon it is a little harder to get hold of, but no one worries if a bookseller imports them. You may not be able to pick them up at WH Smith’s or your local library but most good booksellers with an interest in SF will probably be able to help you find a copy.

On the other hand, if it has a UK edition coming out, you will really struggle to get hold of an overseas version and have to wait for the local version to be produced. This is the case with both the books I am reviewing, and whilst I had a contact send me an early copy of The Einstein Intersection, I had to wait for The Revolving Boy:

The Revolving Boy, by Gertrude Friedberg

The Revolving Boy by Gertrude Friedberg

Thankfully, it is well worth the wait.

At the start of this book there is not much to suggest this is going to be science fiction. Yes, this is set very slightly in the future, but it is simply a slightly more conservative United States of the 1970s, not something requiring much imagination given signs of backlash like Republican gains in US midterms or Mary Whitehouse’s crusades over here. At first sight it appears to be about a good relationship between a mother and a child with autistic tendencies. The common depiction of autism in science fiction is often very negative.

Take, as an example, this passage from Disch’s recent Mankind Under Leash:

The nuts – in this whole cellblock you won’t find anything else. And these, I should point out, are only the worst, the most hopeless cases. ‘Autism’ is the technical word that the psychologists use to describe their condition.

Whilst in The Revolving Boy young Derv feels the need to spin around on occasion. His mother is willing to accept this as something he does. She only interferes when he is spinning on the stairs and so works for a compromise:

She told Derv in an offhand way that he must not spin on the stairs and why.
‘But what if I have to?’
Although she knew he thought of it this way, in terms of coercive psychological need, she was a little taken aback by the straightforward way he put it.
‘How many do you have to take?’
‘Just two on the stairs. I take another when I get outside.’
‘Then suppose you take the three when you get outside.’
‘All right,’ he said
It was as easy as that.

It shows such a mature and well-reasoned approach to a child with autistic tendencies. No suggestion it is caused by a ‘refrigerator mother’, not showing a complete inability to communicate with the outside world, but a child with a different perception and how you can work with them in a loving way to allow them to function in a world where most people do not have these tendencies. As someone who appears to have a lot of these tendencies, I was very heartened by this.

At the same time he makes friends with Prin, who is quiet and has perfect pitch. Together they are able to form a bond that allows them to connect in a world that can be hard for those that do not fall into patterns expected by wider society.

The source of science fictional content comes from the fact that Derv turns out to have been the first child born in space. When he was weightless and away from other signals he seems to have become connected to an electromagnetic signal from another solar system. As he gets older he finds himself leaning towards this signal whenever he is awake. This comes to the attention of Project Ozma who believe he may be the key to discovering extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Despite the concept of a child being able to point the direction for our radio telescopes, the whole story goes to great pains to appear realistic and make it seem less fantastical than most of what you would read in Analog or If.

But at its heart it is also a character story, the tale of him and Prin growing up. It is heart warming, clever and a real delight to read.

Five Stars

The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany

The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany

All of us here at Galactic Journey see Delany as one of the brightest talents currently writing science fiction, so it is with great anticipation we wait for his next novel. He began with writing his tales of a fantasy-tinged future Earth with The Jewels of Aptor and the Toron novels, but more recently has moved to outer space tales such as Babel-17. He seems now to have come back down to Earth but is also attempting to do something more ambitious than before.

Greek myths have been a regular source of inspiration for writers of the fantastic. The tale of Theseus and the Minotaur itself has been retold by authors as different as Jack Williamson and Thomas Burnett Swann. Here Delany blends in a number of Greek myths into this tale, but adds a kind of Ballardian spin to it, where our popular culture is seen just as much of a myth to these folks. With The Beatles being seen as a later example of the Orpheus myth and advertising slogans used as nuggets of wisdom at the start of chapters.

The Orpheus myth is probably the most central of the tales here, for Lo Lobey himself is a musician and his driving force is to save his beloved Friza from Kid Death. However, the way legends are treated in this book is fascinating, that there is not really a distinction between truth and fiction, and it is entirely possible for one to imitate the other. I can’t help but wonder if Delany has some familiarity with the ideas of C. S. Lewis but is choosing to apply them in a non-Christian context.

In this future, humans have all left the Earth and others are inhabiting it in the remains of humanity. We are introduced to this concept so casually I almost missed it when it is stated by PHAEDRA (a computer with the kind of silly reverse acronym people are fond of these days). It is an interesting concept that manages to at once be central to the story but also you could enjoy without knowing. For this is what Delany does, carefully layering understanding so it can be read in multiple ways, just like the myths that are being imitated.

For there is so much more in here than I have space to elucidate. Among others it touches on areas such as racism, gender, ESP, colonialism, the nature of truth and more besides.

I have seen Delany’s earlier works compared with the late great Cordwainer Smith’s writing. The Einstein Intersection, I would posit, is much more reminiscent of Zelazny. As such it is less accessible than The Ballad of Beta-2 but also more ambitious and thankfully succeeds.

Delany continues to be one of the brightest new lights of science fiction writing and this continues to reveal new depths to his talents.

Five Stars


by Jason Sacks

Sometimes Too Much Plot is Too Much

One of the things I love about Philip K. Dick’s novels is how they always seem to be about one thing but usually end up being about something very different. Usually his fake-out strategy works brilliantly, but in his latest novel, Dick seems to believe his own fake-out.

Counter-Clock World by Philip K. Dick

Counter-Clock World starts with an idea which could inspire a full novel just in its implications: What if time, somehow, started rolling backwards? How would living in a counter-clock world affect human relationships, our relationship with history, families, the economy, society? Would rebirth be a horror or pleasure? How would those who mourned the dead, maybe even moved beyond their mourning, handle the change? What would be the implications to a society if a specific person was reborn, a person who might be especially evil or especially good or just especially controversial?

These are all tantalizing questions, and Dick does explore most of them in this fascinating book. Of course, Dick being Dick, he explores many of them obliquely, in veiled allusions and small asides in dialogue. Far from making his ideas feel weaker, though, this commonplace element gives the book a naturalistic feel (as outlandish ideas often do in Dick novels) while also feeling profoundly strange.

I gotta say, there are also plenty of ridiculous ideas in this book, like how he shows cigarettes are smoked from stub to full cigarette (with the odor diffusing as the cigarette grows), or the idea that food is regurgitated and reconstituted into its source foods (okay, rather a disgusting idea), or how eventually everyone reverts to baby age and then has to crawl back into a womb and be absorbed into a body (a surprisingly moving scene in the book).

But there are also plenty of eerie moments in Counter-Clock.  As the book begins, Officer Joseph Tinbane is cruising past a cemetery when he hears a voice beckoning him from a grave. Landing, he discovers an old woman has woken up in her coffin and is begging for help escaping her home six feet underground. Dick quickly establishes this as a normal part of Tinbane’s job, as Dick relates this event often becomes an all-night ritual which requires enlisting the services of something called a Vitarium.

Thankfully, the officer knows a man named Sebastian Hermes, reborn himself and the owner of The Flask of Hermes Vitarium.

This being a Dick novel, rebirth hasn’t been an ideal experience for Hermes. Sebastian is even more neurotic than he was when alive, haunted by nightmares of his awakening in his grave and stuck in a complicated marriage with someone who doesn’t quite understand him. Hermes sort of dreams of emigrating from California to Mars, but he’s literally grounded on Earth, digging up the bodies of those who died, more or less systemically since the Hobart Effect struck and changed everything.

So I’ve given you an idea of this book, and its world, and yeah, you say, I’m in. I'll buy the book because this all sounds fascinating.

Hold off for a second before running to the paperback stands at your local Korvettes, because all my setup is kind of prologue.

A rare photo of Mr. Dick, his wife and child

What if I told you Dick’s main topic for this issue is the idea of what happens if a popular religious prophet is reborn, and the prophet is in opposition to an evil Library?

Yep, it’s a Philip K. Dick novel, so you gotta be ready for a swerve.

See, Dick’s attention is really on the recently resurrected body of the Anarch Thomas Peak, dead prophet and founder of the Udi cult. The Anarch is articulate, philosophizing from the likes of Plotinus, Plato, Kant, Leibnitz, and Spinoza.  Naturally, a group of fascist librarians hate the Azarch, and somehow the book descends into being a crazy oddball escape heist which involves LSD bombs, the slowing down of time, nuclear weapons striking a library, and the odd paradox of what happens when you kill someone who was already dead.

Yeah, Counter Clock World is more than a little crazy, which is no surprise really. What is surprising, though, is how Dick never quite gives this book the usual foundation in humanity most of his novels contain. This book lacks the warmth of Dr. Bloodmoney, or the existential horror of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer or the deep empathy of Martian Time-Slip. Instead we get an inelegant jumble which never quite lives up to the considerable potential of its amazing premise.

Three Stars

 



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Magazine, Serial

[August 2, 1965] Expansion and Contraction (September 1965 IF)

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by David Levinson

It seems like the world gets a little smaller every day. Jet planes are gradually replacing larger propeller-driven planes in the passenger market, reducing the time it takes to get from one place to another. As they become more ubiquitous even the middle class may be able to travel like the jet set. Communications satellites are making it possible for news to spread faster, and we can even see some events on television as they happen on the other side of the world.

On the other hand, the world seems to be getting bigger, too. We hear constantly about remote places where this conflict or that independence is taking place. The wealth of human knowledge is growing so fast, it’s almost impossible to keep up. Growing, shrinking, let’s look at some things that have done one or the other lately.

A long shortcut

France and Italy are now closer. Not diplomatically, and it’s not conclusive proof of continental drift, but the time to travel between them has shrunk thanks to the opening of a tunnel underneath Mont Blanc. The two countries agreed on building the tunnel in 1949, but excavation didn’t begin until a full decade later, with a company from each country drilling from their own side. The excavations met on August 4th, 1962, with an axis variation of a mere 5 inches. The tunnel was inaugurated at a ceremony on July 16th, attended by French President Charles de Gaulle and Italian President Giuseppe Saragat, and opened to traffic three days later.

At 8,140 feet below the surface, the two-lane highway tunnel is the deepest operational tunnel in the world, and at 7.2 miles, it is also the longest highway tunnel, some three times longer than the previous record holder, the Honshu-Kyushu tunnel in Japan. The travel distance from France to Turin is now 30 miles shorter, and the distance to Milan is 60 miles shorter.


Presidents de Gaulle and Saragat in front of the Mont Blanc tunnel connecting Chamonix to Courmayeur during the official inauguration

Flash!

Kodak made a big splash when they introduced the Instamatic camera two years ago. Like the venerable Brownie, the Instamatic makes it easy for amateurs to take snapshots. There’s even a model with a built-in flashgun that takes so-called peanut bulbs. The problem with those is that bulbs have to be removed before you can take another shot with the flash, and they get very, very hot. Kodak, working together with Sylvania Electronics, has come up with a solution: the flashcube.

As the name suggests, it’s a cube with a mount that connects to the camera on the bottom, and four flashbulbs around the sides. Trigger the shutter, the flash goes off, the cube rotates 90° and it’s ready for another picture immediately. Plus, by the time you’ve taken the fourth picture, parts of the cube should be cool enough to touch, so you can replace it right away. This should mean lots more candid snaps and a lot less dragging everybody outside to squint into the sun at family gatherings. A big innovation in a very small package.


$100 is a little pricey, but there are less expensive models, and we are talking about a lifetime of memories

An electrifying performance

The folk world had their horizons expanded last week, perhaps to their dismay. Despite his bad boy antics off stage last year, Bob Dylan was the most eagerly anticipated act at this year’s Newport Folk Festival, but his performance was met with a chorus of boos. It seems young Mr. Dylan felt that Alan Lomax was rather condescending when introducing the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at a workshop on Saturday the 24th and decided he would play electric to prove to the organizers they couldn’t keep it out. He hastily assembled a band from a couple of members of the Butterfield Band and some others and spent Sunday afternoon rehearsing. The crowd was shocked at the sight of Dylan accompanied by an electric band, and the short set of “Maggie’s Farm”, “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Phantom Engineer” was met with both boos and cheers. MC Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary) dragged Dylan out for a quick acoustic encore of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. The crowd exploded and begged for another encore.

So why the booing? Ask three different people and you’ll get four different answers. Some say it was folkies mortally offended at the mere presence of electric instruments or a rock sound, others that fans were upset at the shortness of the set and the fact that the band used most of their allotted 15 minutes for tuning and switching instruments and/or poor sound quality. Some will tell you it was definitely the fans booing, others blame the press or even the organizers. We may never know the truth of the matter, but there’s no question that Bob Dylan has made another big impact on music.

Dylan with electric guitar and harmonica. Completely different from his usual acoustic guitar and harmonica. (Band not shown)

The Mysterious Doctor X

If you drop by your local library and take a look at the Sunday New York Times for July 25th (assuming they carry it and it has already come in) and flip to the list of best sellers, you’ll see a new title, Intern by Doctor X. It is, by all reports, a rather harrowing account of a young doctor’s period of interning at a hospital a few years ago, taken from his daily journal. The names, as Jack Webb would say, have been changed to protect the innocent, and the doctor has chosen a pseudonym to further protect confidentiality. “What has that got to do with science fiction,” you ask. Well, a little bird told me that Doctor X is in fact a reasonably well-known science fiction writer. Since he has good reasons for concealing his identity, I won’t give it away, but I will say that I once thought he was a pseudonym for Andre Norton and that his last name closely resembles a different medical profession mostly practiced by women.

Another hint: It’s not Murray Leinster or James White

It’s bigger, but is it better?

As promised last month, IF is now 32 pages longer, making it the same size as its bi-monthly sister publication Worlds of Tomorrow. Fred Pohl claimed that’s enough for two more novelettes, four or five short stories, a complete short novel, or an extra serial installment. How well did the editorial team make use of that extra room this month? Let’s take a look.


A deadly duel begins. Art by McKenna

Under Two Moons, by Frederik Pohl

We open in medias res in a seedy corner of Marsport. Secret agent Johan Gull is tied to a pillar in a room full of gunpowder as a beautiful woman sticks a lit matchcord in his mouth and then declares her love for him. After escaping, he goes for a shave and retrieves a jacket not his own, but which holds a key that lets him access headquarters behind the barber shop. A seemingly reasonable bit of spycraft, until he has to go for a shave every time he needs to go to a different department. He meets with .5, the head of the agency, who speaks only through his personal secretary. His new assignment is to go to Syrtis Major and investigate a couple of prospectors who claim to have been granted powers by beings from a flying saucer. Are the Black Hats behind it, or something more?

Aboard the submarine taking him to his destination, he once again meets the mysterious woman. She helps him escape from the submarine when it is sabotaged, and together they struggle through the Martian desert. They’re saved by the appearance of Tars Tarkas riding a thoat. It seems they’ve stumbled into Barsoomland, and Tars is a robot. Eventually, they make their way to Heliopolis. Further spy shenanigans take place, culminating in a big showdown in a casino.


I love you Meestah Gull. I expect you to die. Art by Wallace Wood

It’s quite the zany – at times bordering on insane – send-up of James Bond, more so the movies than the books. Gull is a drunk, a womanizer, and unbelievably stupid. Only a few hours pass between the first scene and the woman’s appearance on the submarine, yet he has no idea who she is, and she has to remind him several times throughout the story.

While it isn’t bad, the humor really isn’t to my taste. There’s a sort of overly arch cleverness to it that grates. Worse, the first thing we get with 32 extra pages is a 32 page story by the editor. Admittedly, Fred has a problem in that the best market for the kind of thing he writes is the trio of magazines he oversees, and I’m sure there’s a process for deciding whether or not to buy one of the boss’s stories, but it’s not a good look. It might have been better to wait a couple of months before running this one. The flying saucer aspects of the story probably also prompted the longish editorial. Three stars, at the low end for me, maybe higher for you.

Moon Duel, by Fritz Leiber

On the rim of Gioja crater, the unnamed narrator and his partner Pete are setting up a miniradar when Pete is killed by a sniper on the other side of the crater. The killer is a “crusoe”, one the many aliens marooned on Earth’s moon, all of whom fight and kill each other and the growing number of humans for the scarce resources that allow them to survive. The narrator manages to get off a few quick shots and a mayday signal. What follows is a deadly game of cat and mouse for the hours it will take for help to arrive. But at one point the antagonists begin an attempt at communication.

This is a very atypical story for Fritz Leiber. Even though I tend to think of him primarily as a writer of fantasy and horror, he’s no stranger to science fiction. “A Pail of Air” is one of my favorite stories. But the science comes on very strongly here, often shouldering aside character, which is Leiber’s real strength. It’s also shoehorned in at times, such as the clumsy footnote about the muzzle velocity of the narrator’s weapon. The climax also shares a factor with the rather poor Men of Good Will by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis, although Leiber is far more scientifically rigorous. Still, I’m not sure Leiber can write a bad sentence, and there is some genuine tension. To be honest, I probably would have liked this more if someone else’s name had been on it and I’d come in with a different set of expectations. Three stars.

The Planet Player, by E. Clayton McCarty

Archaeologist Charles Maxwell has joined the expedition to planet S-60 to investigate signs of a lost civilization. He gets off to a poor start with Litzanov, the expedition’s director. The director is a prickly authoritarian, who as it turns out is completely tone deaf and greatly annoyed by “sound in a measured tempo”. Maxwell, on the other hand, had dreams of being a concert pianist, has brought his guitar along, and reacts badly to being pushed around. Early in the journey, a stowaway is discovered, a fifteen-year-old deaf-mute known to the crew as Binky, the son of an early space scout. Bothered by the way the crew handles the boy, Maxwell takes him under his wing.

When they arrive at the planet, Litzanov proves to be a glory-hound. All photographic and video records are carefully rehearsed and staged to put him front and center, depicted as a wise man of science. The team also discovers massive structures made of a crystalline material which resonates to slight touches, though not to hard blows. At the heart of the alien complex, they find a theater with the remains of the dead in every seat. Spot checks all around the world find evidence that every single inhabitant of the planet died at the same instant, utterly without warning. The team probes the mystery, and as we are warned at the beginning, not everyone will survive.

Talk about a dead audience. Art by David A. Kyle

What a beautiful story. It’s not without its flaws; the reader figures out what destroyed this civilization and what is going to happen to the expedition fairly quickly, and the rather quick and easy decoding of the written language is highly improbable. But that all gets washed away by the ending, especially the final paragraph. This is McCarty’s second story. His first, Small One, was overly long and lacked subtlety, though Gideon rather liked it. This one however is excellent. A solid four stars.

M’Lord Is the Shepherd, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

From Moonbase One, M’Lord oversees the development of the people of Alterra. Although they are 50,000 to 100,000 years from being ready to be contacted by the Galactics, M'Lord has received orders to get them to that stage within 200. The Korm’aans are predicted to sweep through that spiral arm of the galaxy and the Galactics need an ally. That sort of forced stimulation usually destroys those subjected to it, but while a weak ally is preferable, a planet that can be used without interference from a native race is acceptable.

M’Lord decides that electric current is the ideal way to carry out his orders. First, he introduces the battery. After 75 years have passed, he sends his chief teslar down to the planet to get them to use 60 cycle alternating current. The results are astonishing. After only a few decades, the Alterrans are reclassified from “Sheep” to “Predator”. In fact, they represent a greater threat than Korm’aan. The solution is to fill the atmosphere with ultra-high frequency, ultra-short wave broadcasts. This attempt fails and he is ordered to apply hypnotic stupidifiers. This too fails, and the Alterrans are predicted to take over the galaxy within 500 years. The Galactics and Korm’aans have made common cause, and M’Lord must now act as ambassador and plead for no retribution.

Great Ghu, the Richmonds have escaped from Analog! The whole thing is ridiculously obvious, with the possible exception of the teslar. Unless you’ve read up on the early days of electricity, remember some of the articles Hugo Gernsback wrote back in the 1910s and 1920s, or have some reason to measure magnetic flux, you’ve likely not heard of Nikola Tesla. In any case, the question is why Campbell didn’t want this one. I mean, it has humans as the biggest, meanest, fiercest thing the galaxy has ever seen. Maybe he was put off by the scientific advancement of the last century or so coming from aliens rather than the natural superiority of northwestern Europeans. I should also note that it was only during the writing of this review that I realized the M’Lord is not a contraction such as one would use to address an English judge, but rather an alien name with obligatory apostrophe. A very low 2 stars.

Giant Killer, by Keith Laumer

On the planet Rockamorra, the CDT mission under Ambassador Splitwhistle is about to become the first formally credentialed embassy on the planet – a veritable coup over the Groaci – when Retief arrives late and tries to persuade the ambassador not to go through with it. He fails, but Splitwhistle really should have listened. It seems he has committed himself and his people (except Retief, who refused to go through the ceremony) to slaying a dragon. After the ambassador gets everybody thrown in jail by refusing to carry out his duly appointed task, it’s up to Retief, with a slight assist from Ben Magnan, to save the day.


The ambassador is supposed to kill it with a sword. Retief has a different plan. Art by Gaughan

I said last month that Retief’s shtick is getting stale. All the usual beats are here: the mission gets in trouble because no one listens to Retief, Retief enlists the aid of a slick talking local, Ben Magnan blunders about and accidentally helps, Retief saves the day. The only thing missing is a pulchritudinous female to offer her affections as a reward. Laumer seems to just be going through the motions in order to turn out one of these every month. I suppose it’s an easy, guaranteed sale. We’re promised the start of a Retief novel next month. We’ll see if the extra room for development of plot and character is a good thing or not. A low three stars, but probably a firm three if you’re new to the series.

Alien Artifact, by Dannie Plachta

A billion miles beyond the orbit of Pluto, the patrol ship Solar Sea picks up a large object on radar. It proves to be a giant ship, the alien artifact of the title. The crew explores and makes a shocking discovery.

Dannie Plachta is this month’s new writer. This short tale is afflicted with the desire for a Twilight Zone shock ending. While not a poor representative of the form, it’s not all that shocking either. And even at 2 and a half pages, the story is a bit long for what’s in it. On the other hand, it’s a decent freshman effort. I vacillated between two and three stars. The writing isn’t bad, and I wouldn’t immediately roll my eyes on seeing Plachta’s name again in the table of contents. Plus, it’s short. So, three stars, I guess.

Gree’s Damned Ones, by C. C. MacApp

Steve Duke has been infiltrated into a Gree punishment detail. The others aboard the transport have sinned against Gree, but are being given a chance to redeem themselves. Steve is here to find out why Gree and its slaves are showing great interest in a planet near the center of the galaxy.

Placed in charge of a large unit, Steve is ordered to make his way to an enormous cliff in some distant mountains and find a way to report back. The first night out, he finally activates the device that will give him his orders from the Birds of Effogus. Unfortunately, he left the device containing the means to let the Birds know exactly where he is so they can null in back in camp. He’ll just have to complete his mission and get back.

After a long and dangerous journey, Steve’s group meets up with another, under the leadership of Fazool, the B’Lant Steve befriended and betrayed in the first Gree story. Fortunately, Fazool was brain-burned and doesn’t recognize Steve, though in moments of distraction he does call him Jen. Ultimately, the two of them are the only ones to penetrate to the final mystery of the planet.


Steve and one of the B’Lants under his command encounter some dangerous plant life. Art by Giunta

I’m getting tired of these Gree stories. After a couple of dismal outings, the last couple have been better, but it’s time for MacApp to wrap this saga up. This one offers some interesting mysteries, and most of it is taken up by a sort of Arthur C. Clarke travelogue melded with a pulp jungle adventure. The end is rather perfunctory and raises as many questions as it answers, while seeming to move the war against Gree at least to the end of the mid-game. Still, it’s readable for the most part. A low three stars.

Skylark DuQuesne (Part 4 of 5), by E. E. Smith

The revolution on Ray-See-Nee in the Chloran galaxy is a success, but the locals whom Dick Seaton has put in power are worried about their first report back to the Chloran headquarters. The daily report shouldn’t be a problem, but the change in government will be closely scrutinized, and the reporter will likely die or have his mind shattered and will certainly give the game away. Fortunately, Seaton once went frontal lobe to frontal lobe against the Supreme Great One of the Chlorans and won. (Ignore the fact that that was halfway across the universe. Chlorans are Chlorans everywhere.) So Seaton makes the call and successfully dupes the bad guys. That taken care of, the Skylarkers head off to more familiar regions to repair the Valeron and come up with a way to improve coordination and reaction times on a planet-sized vessel.

Cut to the Jelmi. After some friendly political maneuvering, Mergon is now in charge. He picks out an uninhabited Tellus-type planet, and the Jelmi set about created an armed and well-defended base. Contact is made with the Llurdi, and after the Jelmi demand independence, the Llurdi throw everything they have at their former slaves. Holding out by the skin of their teeth, the Jelmi then contact the Llurdi, give them the teleporter, and restate their desire to live in peaceful independence. Being supremely logical, the Llurdi agree.

Meanwhile, repairs to the Valeron are complete, but Seaton is extremely fidgety. He only calms down once they start heading back to their new friends in the Chloran galaxy. It seems the woman who aided him in the revolution and her mother are witches, and they put a spell on him to summon him back. The new government is trying to weed out corruption, but are facing a lot of resistance from corrupt elements that are left over and new corrupt elements who want a piece of the graft. There’s a big shoot-out and the problem is resolved.

The Fenachrone are withering in Llurdi captivity. On his deathbed, their leader sends out a mental distress signal and makes contact with DuQuesne. The latter offers to help them and teleports their leader and a couple of others to his ship. He then heads for the Llurdi galaxy, as are the Skylarkers, who have figured out how DuQuesne tricked them and where the Jelmi must have come from. The leader of the Llurdi detects the Valeron (the DQ is shielded to the point of invisibility) and sends out a powerful mental probe. The Skylarkers read the probe as an attack and throw up their shields. The Llurdi decide they must attack and so throw everything at the Valeron. Seaton counterattacks and as the two forces are nearing mutual destruction, Seaton is mentally contacted by Mergon of the Jelmi. To be concluded.


Dick Seaton takes a call. Art by Morrow

Only one more installment to go. I must admit there is a certain crude vigor here that… well, it hasn’t grown on me, but I’m less offended by it than I was. It still doesn’t make a lot of sense, it’s still badly plotted, Smith still starts paragraphs with “wherefore”, but I guess I can see the nostalgic appeal if you first read Smith at an impressionable and less discerning age. Two stars.

Summing up

Before wrapping this up, let’s talk about the art. At least since I took on reviewing IF the interior art has been provided by a steady stable of four: Gray Morrow, Norman Nodel, Jack Gaughan and John Giunta. For me, Morrow is far and away the best of them, but he’s been tied up with Skylark for four issues now. I’m also not a big fan of Nodel’s smudgy look or Gaughan’s abstract elements. Still, all four are good, but there’s been a lack of freshness. This month saw two new additions. Wally Wood, of course, is primarily a comic artist (and former studio partner of Harry Harrison), but he’s done some illo work for IF’s sister publications, although we haven’t seen him for a couple of years. David Kyle is a long-time fan (he’s the man who got his fellow Futurians banned from the first Worldcon), occasional artist and rarely author. While there’s really nothing stylistically all that different, both artists have injected enough of a difference to seem fresh.

So, has IF made good use of its expanded space? It’s hard to say. Skylark DuQuesne continues to weigh the magazine down, and I think we’ll have to wait a couple of months to see what Fred Pohl does once it’s gone. As I noted above, no matter what you might think of the story, running a piece written by the editor which is exactly as long as number of new pages is not really the best way to start. On the other hand, we have eight titles this month, which increases the chances of there being something for everybody. And next month, Pohl is trying out another innovation. As one serial ends, we’ll also start another. If the typical serial is three parts, that’s an increase from four a year to six. That also raises the chances of more good work. Only time will tell.




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Book, Magazine

[November 29, 1964] All-star (December 1964 Analog)

8 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

The Big Guns

Thanksgiving is over, and the holiday season will officially begin tonight with the lighting of the first of the Hannukah candles.  After that, it's just a short skip and a jump to that more widely celebrated holiday.

I am, of course, referring to the Winter Solstice.

It is an appropriate season, then, for science fiction's most-read magazine, Analog, to finish its year of publication with a bang.  Fantasy and Science Fiction is fond of issuing "All-Star" magazines, in which the majority of the authors are big names.  The December 1964 Analog isn't so dubbed, but nevertheless, it's chock full of heavy hitters.  Let's take a look!

Armed Assault


by Robert Swanson

Tempestuous Moon, by Joseph H. Jackson

It has been the subject of wives' tales and farmers' almanacs that the phases of the Moon have an effect on the weather.  In particular (they maintain), some points in the lunar cycle are likelier to be rainy than others.  And now Analog has got a breathless article confirming the folk wisdom.  Take that, doubting eggheads!

It's true that (editor) Campbell is notorious for printing the worst pseudoscience pieces, and Jackson's article is mostly blather.  However, if his data be accurate, they are compelling.  While the phases of the Moon should have no effect on the Earth, per se, they do correspond to geometries between the Sun and the Moon with respect to the Earth.  And both of those bodies do have a profound effect on our planet every day in the form of tides.  I can conceive that a strong tide, for instance when the Sun and Moon's forces combine to cause Spring Tides, might create lower atmospheric pressures, reducing the amount of moisture the air can hold, causing rains.  Neap Tides would have the opposite effect.

Or it could all be garbage.  Are there any pieces in reputable journals?

Plague on Kryder II, by Murray Leinster

Calhoun the interstellar Med Service man and his adorable pet/assisant, Murgatroyd, are back.  This time, they are investigating an impossible plague, one which seems to suppress the immune system rather than directly infecting the body.  Worse, this disease kills tormals, the monkey-like race that Murgatroyd belongs to.  Since this latter is an impossibility, tormals being immune to all diseases, Calhoun suspects foul play.


by Kelly Freas

I love the Med Service stories.  Sadly, they are suffering from the same malaise that has infected all of Leinster's writing to date.  It causes him to write only in short, declarative statements, often repeating himself for no reason.  Also, this tale's solution is given mostly in exposition, which kills the fun of the mystery.

Still, even substandard Calhoun and Murgatroyd is pretty fun, and the picture of the sick tormal is too cute for words.  Three stars.

Shortstack, by Leigh and Walt Richmond


by Kelly Freas

The latest vignette by the Richmonds is an odd one, more a dramatized advertisement for a unique power generator.  It uses the heat differential between the top and bottom of a plastic cylinder to drive an engine and also to distill water.

Harmless, kind of interesting.  Three stars.

Contrast, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

A man trapped out in a wilderness that would give Deathworld a run for its money gets buzzed by an obnoxious tourist.  When said sightseer falls out, the hermit takes his skimmer and rides to safety.  The moral of the story: don't take what you have for granted, and a stint in the muck might do you good.

Enjoyable, despite the smugness of the ending.  Three stars.

Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes (Part 3 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


by Robert Swanson

We return to the world of the early 21st Century, where society has stratified into stagnancy: in both East and West, the top 1% rule everything, the bottom 90% are jobless and tranquilized, and only the middle 9% have any real agency.  Last time, Estruscan professor and gladiator-extreme, Denny Land, had just won a tripartite contest over custody of a Belgian scientist who had invented anti-missile missiles, something with the potential to destabilize the world.

But when the Americans go to pick up the scientist, he has disappeared!  And rather than express disconcertment, Land's boss, Joe Mauser seems almost unsurprised…

Land goes back to his old school with a promotion and bump in caste, but he can't hide his frustration and disenchantment.  Reenter Bette Yarborough, who recruits Land into the Sons of Liberty to try to upend the whole rotten world order.  And then comes an even unlikelier ally in the cause — former foe and Sov-world agent, Yuri Malshev.  Together, can the three create a revolution?

And what if the revolution has already happened, and nobody knows?

This installment was the most engaging, well-paced and thoughtful, though there may have been one too many wheels within the wheels.  Perhaps a Part IV would not have been amiss.  I was grateful that Bette turned out not to just be a love interest (though more than one female in the universe would have been nice).  If anything, Denny and Yuri had more chemistry…

Anyway, four stars for this segment.  Call it three and a half for the novel as a whole.  I appreciate that Reynolds is willing to make "if this goes on" predictions.  I wonder how right he will prove to be…

Rescue Operation, by Harry Harrison


by Adolph Brotman

An alien astronaut crash lands on the shore of an Adriatic village.  Injured and barely conscious, he is taken to a local scientist for help.  But can an effective treatment be developed in time?

This simple story is given depth and emotion by the unusually talented Harrison, who will probably get my nomination for one of the year's best authors.  Four stars.

The Equalizer, by Norman Spinrad


by Adolph Brotman

In Israeli's Negev desert, a scientist wrestles with his conscience — and his superior — over the the new bomb he's invented.  On the one hand, it will give the little Jewish state inordinate power; on the other hand, power never remains exclusively owned for long. 

An interesting think piece whose title has a double meaning.  Three stars.

High Marks

Well, color me surprised!  Analog, normally a disappointing performer, scored a respectable 3.2 stars — second only this month to the superlative Galaxy (3.6).  Science Fantasy and Worlds of Tomorrow both scored an even 3 stars, largely thanks to better-than-average long pieces balancing out less impressive small ones.

And on the negative side of the ledger, we have a lackluster IF (2.8), a still-Davidson weighted Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6), and Cele G. Lalli's mags did worst of all: Fantastic got just 2.3 stars, and Amazing broke the two barrier, scoring a jaw-dropping 1.9.  What happened?

Women published just 5 and a half of all the stories in magazines this month, all of them very short.  Betty Friedan would be rolling in her grave, and she's not even dead!

Ah well.  1965 approaches, a chance to wipe the slate and start anew.  But before then, you will want to see our Galactic Stars awards when they come out in a few short weeks!  Then you won't have to wade through the dross to get the gems — we'll have done the work for you.

Happy Holidays!

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[October 30, 1964] The Deadly Barrier (November 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Trapped on the wrong side

In the 1940s, the sound barrier was as mighty a wall as the Maginot line.  Planes approaching Mach One lost control of their wings, heat built up and melted vital components — the demon living in this wall refused to let any pass.

It wasn't until 1947, when Captain Chuck Yeager took to the skies in his rocket-propelled X-1, that the barrier was first breached.

Our genre has its own deadly wall. If left unpierced, it leaves a reader like those poor, challenging planes and pilots of yore: broken and dispirited. It is the Three Star barrier, the divide between fine and feh — and this month, five of the six science fiction magazines that came out in the English-speaking world failed to break through it.

Sure, some issues made brave attempts.  Both New Worlds and IF came right to the edge, the latter with some memorable stories, and the former maintaining bog-standard mediocrity down the line. 

But timidity breaks no records.  Playing it safe pierces no barriers.

Cele Goldsmith's mags, Amazing and Fantastic, both fell well short of the mark, managing only 2.6 stars.  Perhaps if she'd lassoed the best parts of both of this month's issues together, she might have managed a breach.

And the less said about the struggling Fantasy and Science Fiction (also 2.6 stars), the better.  Pour one out for a faded glory, folks.

An Analog to failure

That leaves the November 1964 Analog.  Can Campbell's mag, once the undisputed leader of the genre, succeed where all its compatriots have failed?  Read on…


by John Schoenherr

Invasion by Washing Water, by D.R. Barber

But, first, this message.

Are you a British astronomer?  Are you tired of having your photographic negatives eaten by bacteria?  Do you want to know why your shots of celestial bodies get ruined periodically by fuzz and rot?  Well never fear!  D.R. Barber has the answer:

Invaders from Venus.

Yes, Mr. Barber has determined that, when the Earth and Venus are aligned just right, and a major geomagnetic storm is raging, that the conditions are perfect for Venusian microbes to land in England to destroy our film.  Of course, this only seems to happen in England because of vagaries of our atmospheric currents.  And it's impossible for there to be a terrestrial origin for the bugs.  Oh no.

Sigh.  Only in Analog.  One star.

Gunpowder God, by H. Beam Piper


by John Schoenherr

Our first attempt to break the Three Star barrier involves a sideways leap.  Veteran SFictioneer Piper writes of Calvin Morrison, Corporal in the Pennsylvania State Police of Earth — our Earth. Through a freak accident, caused by careless activities of the universe-traveling Paratime authority, Morrison is warped to another Earth.

In this timeline, Indo-Europeans went east instead of west, crossing the Siberian land bridge, and colonizing the Americas.  Come this world's 1964, the eastern seaboard is a patchwork of feudal kingdoms on the brink of a gunpowder revolution.  Calvin Morrison, a Korean war veteran and all-around man of action, is perfectly placed to become a big wheel, the titular "Gunpowder God".  Very soon, he is "Kalvan", organizing the troops of Hostigos against the Nostori Hordes and their tepid allies, the Principality of Sask. 

But the agents of the Level One timeline, sole possessors of the secret of timeline travel, are rushing to stop Kalvan before he gives away Paratime's game…

Piper has basically recycled the plot to L. Sprague de Camp's lovely Lest Darkness Fall, in which a 20th Century man goes back to 6th Century Rome to save it from the Byzantines.  And what Piper does well, he does quite well.  There are fine tactics, good war depictions, the bones of an interesting plot.

But only the bones.  I was expecting a novel; instead I got a short novella.  Everything suffers as a result.  Kalvan is welcomed all too eagerly and learns the local lingo (akin to Greek, it seems) in no time.  His romance with Skylla, a princess who dresses and is treated as a man, is perfunctory — to say nothing of the wasted opportunity to develop such an interesting character!

Plus, there's this weird assumption that Aryans are the catalyst of culture, even though the geography and environment of North America are wildly different from that of Europe — and Europe's technological preeminence was never assured (and largely based on developments in other parts of the world!)

So Gunpowder God skates to the edge of the Three Star barrier but progresses no further.  Strike One.

Gallagher's Glacier, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond


by Kelly Freas

In the future, corporations have a stranglehold on the solar system's shipping lanes.  One crazy man hatches a plan to install a fusion drive into an ice asteroid and become the first independent trader.  But since the corporations have the monopoly on drive-making equipment, no one can join him in his independence…unless some plucky captain is willing to take his company ship and defect.

Wow.  As written, that sounds like a pretty good yarn!  But when the Richmond's tell it, they give you nothing more than the above paragraph and a lot of padding. 

Glacier barely hits Star Two, much less Three.  And that's Strike Two.

Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes (Part 2 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


by Robert Swanson

Our third attempt comes with the second installment of Mack Reynold's latest serial.  When last we left Denny Land, erstwhile Professor of Etruscan Studies and now national gladiatorial champion, he was headed to Spain.  His top secret mission: to meet up with Auguste Bazaine, inventor of the anti-anti-missile technology that could destabilize the world, plunging it into atomic fire.  But though he does manage to find Bazaine at a cocktail party, Denny is sapped on the neck, and Bazaine is kidnapped.  The Sov-world, the West-world, and Common Europe all blame each other.

There is only one resolution: trial by combat.  All three regions will send a three-man team into a one-hectare arena.  Whomever comes out alive will be privy to the anti-anti-missile secrets…if Bazaine is ever found.

I find it ironic that the characters spend so much time lambasting the gladiatorial games, the reliance on bread and circuses of the world's idle masses. Yet this series of books is really just an excuse for some riproaring modern fight fiction.  Is this a subtle message?

Less subtle is the writing, which is competent, but not up to what Reynolds can deliver when he tries.  Bette Yardborough, "the girl" on Denny's spy team, gets the worst of it.  To wit, this immortal dialogue:

Bette said softly, "Between your accomplishments as a scholar, and a . . . a man of violence, I would assume you have had little time for women, Dennis Land."

Was she joshing him?  Denny shot a quick scowl at her.  He growled, "I'm no eunuch."

She laughed again, even as she turned away to go below.  "After seeing you dispatch those two trained Security lads, I'm sure you're not, Dennis."

Sweet Dreams is never going to break the Three Star Barrier with this kind of stuff, even if the fighting scenes and the world Reynolds' created are pretty interesting.  And I don't have high hopes for the conclusion next month, either.

Strike Three!  Oh wait.  The umpire has run onto the field and called FOUL BALL.  Apparently, we can't count an unfinished serial.  All right.  Onwards and…someway-wards.

Guttersnipe, by Rick Raphael


by John Schoenherr

Here's an oddly technical story involving sanitation and water workers… OF THE FUTURE!  Their tremendously complex operation is threatened when radioactivity is found seeping into the drinking supply of one of the cities.  After many loving descriptions of apparatus and mechanisms, the source is found and eliminated.

If anyone could have broken the Three Star Barrier, it'd be the fellow who brought us 400 mph cars in the Code Three series.  Sadly, the piece reads like a science article on water reclamation rather than an sf story.

Mind you, I like articles on water reclamation, but I don't buy Analog to read them.

And so, Rafael's piece falls short of the barrier, somewhere beyond the Star Two line. 

Strike Thr… Oh.  Another foul against the line.  Apparently science factish stories don't count either.  Fine.  One more piece to go.

Bill for Delivery, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

About a decade ago, Bob Sheckley wrote a great little story called Milk Run.  It's about the AAA Ace duo trying to form a livestock shipping company.  Each of the animals on board their one transport had its own foibles, and dealing with one species exacerbated things with the others. 

Chris Anvil's piece is much the same plot except less interesting and more saddening.

Another Star Two piece and (looks around for the umpire) STEEEERIIIIIIKE THREEEEE!

You're Out

In the end, I can't imagine Analog's dismal 2.2 star ranking really surprises anyone.  Still, it would have been nice for at least one of this month's mags to break the Three Star Barrier.  I tell you, it's times like these that I wonder about turning in my quill.

On the other hand, if I may mix my metaphors further, no single panning returns a nugget.  The quest for gold is a diligent process that accumulates the stuff grain by grain.  As bad as this month was in aggregate, it still gave us a decent number of good stories. 

And that's why we keep doing this.  Because without us, you'd be stuck slogging through all the dreck.  Now, you can enjoy the gold without dealing with the dross.

You're welcome.  I need a drink…

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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 2, 1964] June Gloom (June 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Open Your Golden Gate

This weekend, the family and I took a trip to San Francisco for a small pre-Pacificon fan gathering. Well, not so small. By the end, attendance was measured well into the hundreds, and the informally dubbed "Baycon" boasted much the same schedule as any normal convention: panels, parties, even an exhibit hall and art show!

Of course, yours truly and co. were drafted to give a State of the Union on fandom as of May 1964. We were pleased to accept, and the resulting show was one of our best (we think). See for yourself!


The event by the Bay was the highlight of an otherwise dreary month, sfnally. Indeed, June 1964 (by cover date) may well be the worst month in the history of SF mags. Read on to understand why…

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

John W. Campbell's Analog, once the clear flagship of the SF mag fleet, has become a rusted shell of itself.  From a distance, it still retains the proud lines of the S.S.Astounding (as it was once known), but up close, one can see the degradation of years of neglect.  Though many of the crewmen are the same, their uniforms are shabby and their work lackluster.  It's a depressing thing.  Witness this month's issue.

Plowshare Today, by Edward C. Walterscheid

The one truly bright spot of this issue is the nonfiction article.  Usually, the value of these pages is directly proportional to their absorbency.  This time is different — Walterscheid has given us quite an informative piece on the where we are in regard to using nuclear weapons for "peaceful" purposes.  Earth moving, isotope making, Fourth of July demonstrations…that sort of thing.

I learned a lot.  I also know not to expect this project to come to fruition any time soon.  Four stars.

Stuck, by John Berryman


by Steven Verenicin

Exactly one year ago, Berryman wrote a nifty piece called The Trouble with Telstar, a hyper-realistic tale of satellite repair in the near future.  Stuck is a sequel, in which our intrepid space repairman is contracted to catch an enemy spy satellite as it whips past the Earth in a hyperbolic orbit.

The situation is mildly interesting, but the characters aren't, and the writing is workmanlike.  It's a shame — I was looking forward to this one.

Three stars.

Dolphin's Way, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Leo Summers

From the movie, Flipper, to the recent Clarke novel, Dolphin Island, our friends, the littlelest of whales, have been quite the sensation lately.  In Dickson's tale, humanity is on the verge of a communications breakthrough with dolphins.  This attempt becomes time sensitive as budgets are threatened.  Moreover, the principal investigator on the project has a sneaking suspicion that success will be the linchpin to acceptance into a galactic community.

Not bad, though I could have done without all the googoo eyes the scientist has for the journalist who arrives to cover his efforts.  Three stars.

Snap Judgment, by J. T. McIntosh


by Leo Summers

And then we hit the bottom.

The premise isn't bad: aliens come to Earth hoping to have us join their stellar Federation so that we'll vote for them in a pending referendum.  Through various contrivances, they never actually see humans — they only know of us from radio advertisements and from the luggage of a single space traveller.  From these scanty clues, they must craft a pitch that will win over all of humanity.

The thing is, the BEMs salvage a woman's luggage and, thus, deduce all the wrong things about humanity.  That we're frivolous, easily flattered, desperate for a protector.  The radio commercials only reinforce this view since they're aimed at the consumers of society.  You know.  Women. 

Their pitch falls flat when the MEN, who thankfully are in charge of society, are turned off by the aliens' appeal and respond in a way that maximizes Earth's gain over that of the extraterrestrials.

Lest you think I'm being touchy, and that McIntosh was not impugning all womankind, let me read you this tidbit from the end of the story:

"Why," Doreen said, "did women react one way and men another?"
Barker grinned.  "Because of you.  The Grillans only had time for a snap judgment.  they picked your ship and made a quick guess about us based on what they found onboard."
"What they found?"
"Feminine things.  The only personal things in the ship.  The only clues about the human race they had.  And what a mistake that was."
"Why?"
"However women may holler about sex equality, men will always decide things like what to do when contact with an alien race is made.  Right?"
Doreen shrugged.  "I guess so.  Women have other things to think about."
"As you say.  As you said — 'Nobody asks me when big things are decided.  I never expected they would.'  Women's goals are more personal.  More Earthbound."

It goes on from there.  It could not be more offensive if McIntosh had written the BEMs finding a Jew's suitcase and determining that humanity was grasping and miserly.  Or deducing from a Black person's luggage that humans just really love to be enslaved.

One star and 1964's winner of the Queen Bee Award.

Undercurrents (Part 2 of 2), by James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

I left Part 1 of this story none too enthused about where the novella was going, and all of my suspicions were confirmed.  To sum up, 15 year-old Telzey Amberdon is a psionically adept young woman sent off-planet to college.  Her roommate, Gonwil, is about to come into control of great wealth as a result of her reaching majority.  When Telzey makes telepathic contact with Gonwil's giant dog guardian, Chomir, she discovers a plot to kill Gonwil.

Two things made this promising story an utter disappointment.  For one, it was obvious that the dog was going to be the tool of Gonwil's attempted assassination.  But worse still was the writing.  We hardly see Telzey do anything.  There are just endless pages of exposition, introducing and then disposing of plot points, or even just irrelevant information.  It's like Schmitz wrote an outline and then neglected to fill it in with a story.

Two stars, and what a shame.  I haven't been this let down since Podkayne of Mars.  Two stars.

Mustn't Touch, by Poul Anderson


by Michael Arndt

The first hyperdrive test is recovered from the orbit of Neptune after just 60 seconds of operation.  Unfortunately, all the biological specimens on board are dead or dying.  What caused this lethal event, and what does it mean for humanity?

Poul Anderson tends to vacillate between genius and garbage.  This piece falls smack dab in between, featuring some nice writing and a lot of good ideas, but failing to land any punches.  He's got a novel's worth of concepts in here: sentient robots, hyperspace, genetic manipulation.  But with only ten pages to get his point across, it all becomes a muddle.

Three stars. 

I, BEM, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond


by Michael Arndt

Finally, the Richmond twins (I kid, they're probably married — of course, they could also still be twins) offer up yet another turgid short, this one on how robots will ultimately make all humans unemployed — but what happens when the robots have their work done for them?

Written like that, I actually kind of like the concept, but it's not very well done.  Two stars.

Doing the Math

Analog clocks in this month at an unimpressive 2.6 stars, tied with Amazing and beating out Fantastic (2.4).  But even the mags that beat Analog didn't do so by much: Galaxy scored 2.7 and F&SF got 2.8.  In fact, the best parts of the magazines were the nonfiction articles this month.  Only Kit Reed's Cynosure (in F&SF) and Harlan Ellison's Paingod (in Fantastic) merit much attention besides.

Of the 34 new fiction pieces, only two of them were penned (in whole or part) by women. 

Now, to be fair, I have not yet read the June 1964 issue of Gamma, but that's only because the magazine has such spotty distribution that I didn't get a copy until recently.  So it'll get lumped in with July's stuff.  I can only imagine that will be for the good!

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Book, Magazine

[Apr. 2, 1964] The Joke's on me (the uninspiring April 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

April Fool's

Some days, I just have to wonder.

This month saw sad times across our country.  Last week, a massive earthquake rocked Alaska and devastated the city of Anchorage.

In Jacksonville, Florida, riots broke out in response to segregation and injustice, quickly turning violent and destructive.

Famed character actor, Peter Lorre, died at 59.

Of course, it's not all bad news.  The Civil Rights Bill is steaming through the Senate despite threats of filibuster.

And in genre news, it looks like IF is going monthly.

But in general, it's been kind of a lousy month.  This applies to the science fiction I've read this month, too — take a look at the latest Analog and you'll see what I mean.

The Issue at Hand


Illustration of Sunjammer by Harvey Woolhiser

The Extinction of Species, by Bert Kempers

Our nonfiction article for this month is a bit atypical.  In it, Kempers talks about prominent animal species that have ceased to be due to the existence of humanity.  Whether we hunted them for food or eradicated their habitats, the passenger pigeon, the dodo, the smilodon, the mammoth, etc. are no longer with us.  And other creatures like the American bison and the California condor are on their way out.

Food for thought.  Three stars.

Sunjammer, by Winston P. Sanders

"Winston Sanders," a.k.a. Poul Anderson, is back with another tale of the mid-future.  This time, he's left the recently freed asteroid belt and the gas-miners of Jupiter to give us a yarn about uncrewed solar sailship #128, making a leisurely trip with a cargo of radioactive volatiles.  Thanks to an unexpected solar flare, the vessel is about to explode; if this happens, all of near-Earth space will be contaminated for years.  It is up to the crew of the Merlin to intercept the #128 and somehow keep its cargo hold from popping. 

Like the other stories in this series, Sunjammer is long on technical details and short on character development.  Still, it's mildly entertaining, and the universe "Sanders" plays in is interesting.

Three stars.

Problem Child, by Arthur Porges

I liked this vignette, about a mathematician's "idiot" son who turns out to be far more.  We've had a lot of tales about autistic children of late.  I wondered what triggered the boom.

Three stars.

Shortsite, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

The Richmonds have yet another tiny tale, this one about an inventor with talent for creation but none for marketing, who develops the first room-temperature superconductor.  Editor Campbell loves these tales about lone wolf geniuses who are unappreciated by society.  This one was too clearly written to his tastes.

Two stars.

Counter Foil, by George O. Smith

Goodness, this one goes on.  Its setup is not unlike Lloyd Biggle's All the Colors of Darkness, where teleportation has become the preferred mode of travel.  This time, instead of aliens disrupting our daily commute, it's a pregnant woman who delivers her baby in transit.

This intriguing plot is lost in the endless, needless padding — it's a three page story expanded several fold.  You'll slog through the thing just to get to the problem's resolution, and then you'll feel cheated.

Two stars.

The Spy, by Mario Brand

Ever wonder where cats go when they disappear for the night, only to return bedraggled but satisfied the next morning?  Turns out that they are interstellar spies, zipped from Earth to a million light years away so that their memories can be probed by inquisitive aliens.

It's a great premise, but Brand does nothing with it.

Two stars. 

(great art by John Schoenherr, though, who may well get my vote for Best Artist this year)

Spaceman (Part 2 of 2), by Murray Leinster

Last up is the resolution of Leinster's novel, begun last month.  The Rim Star, an enormous cargo ship designed to transport an entire starship landing facility to a colony, has been taken over by its enlisted crew of six criminals.  Only the skipper and first officer Braden can prevent the destruction of the vessel and its five passengers, a film crew that bought passage hoping to get footage for a space-based movie.

While the mutineers have the advantage in weapons, Braden has the power of position, having seized the central drive station and secreted the passengers inside.  There, through slick cinematography and control of the ship's viewscreens, the team convinces the bad guys that the Rim Star has entered The Other Side of Space, a realm in which the laws of the universe no longer apply, and no escape is possible.  The ruse reduces the spacejackers to terrified catatonia, and the ship safely completes its mission.

Once again, we have a serviceable plot made mediocre thanks to extension.  What could have been a tidy novella, the kind the author is quite good at, is twice as long as it should be.  Leinster repeats what we already know again and again, using short, declarative sentences that dissipate any momentum the story might have built up.  I could also have done without Braden's disdain toward the capable producer, Diane, though that was only a minor irritation.

Upon completion, I was left with the same sense of dismayed regret I feel when I see a dented and spilled can of food at the supermarket: something perfectly good has been ruined and has to be thrown away…

Two stars for this installment, two and a half for the whole serial.

View from a Height

Punching the numbers into Journeyvac, I find that the April 1964 Analog scored just 2.4 stars and had no stand-out stories.  Amazing was a similar disappointment, clocking in at 2.6 (though you may find Phyllis Gottlieb's ongoing serial worth the cover price).  Fantasy and Science Fiction, while it did have Traven's interesting Central American creation myth, got the worst score: 2.3.  Fantastic only got 2.7 stars, but it did contain Ursula K. LeGuin's story, The Rule of Names, which I liked pretty well.  The last (?) issue of New Worlds went out with a muffled pop with a crop of three star stories.  Only Galaxy (3.3 stars) impressed, with what looks to be the first half of a novel by Cordwainer Smith and the excellent Final Encounter by Harry Harrison. 

We had a whopping 4.5 woman-penned stories (out of 38) this month.  But as for outstanding fiction, pickings were slim aside from the pieces described above.

Ha ha.  The joke's on us.  Here's hoping for a happier month ahead.

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Book, Magazine

[March 3, 1964] Out and about (March 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Braving My Shadow

Every year on February 2, a groundhog named Punxatawney Phil decides if it's worth vacating his winter hiding place before spring. 

For Galactic Gideon, on the other hand, the end of winter always happens in February.  The annual convention season wraps up around Thanksgiving with the little gathering of Los Angeles Science Fiction Fans called "Loscon."  There is a lull of events in December and January, but well before the vernal equinox, the Journey's dance card is full.  In fact, I've already been to two events in as many weeks, and I've got another one planned next weekend! 

My birthday weekend was spent at a small Los Angeles conclave called Escapade, where we discussed Johnson's tax cut, The Outer Limits vs. The Twilight Zone, and the more peculiar elements of the TV show, Burke's Law.  Unusually for sf-related gatherings, most of the attendees were women.

Last night, I presented at a local pub on the woman pioneers of space, the scientists, engineers, and computers I first wrote about a couple of years ago.  It was a tremendous event, and I am grateful to the folks who crowded the venue to bursting.

The Issue at Hand

In contrast to these past two events, the last magazine of the month is mostly stag.  Nevertheless, the March 1964 Analog is still a pretty good, if not outstanding, read:


Cover by Schoenherr, illustrating Spaceman

Clouds, Bubbles and Sparks, by Edward C. Walterscheid

There are three qualities by which I rate science fact articles: Are they fun to read, do I learn something, and are there bits where I feel compelled to joggle the elbow of the person next to me (usually my wife) and relate to them a neat bit of scientific trivia.

This latest piece, on the detection of subatomic particles, excels in all three.  If you ever wanted to know how a geiger counter works, or what a cloud chamber is for, or what those tubes in our scientific spacecraft do, this is the article for you. 

Five stars.

Spaceman (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster

The dean of Golden Age science fiction returns with yet another entry in his well-developed galactic setting.  In the Leinster-verse, perhaps best represented in his Med Series stories, interstellar travel is a bit like ocean travel in the 19th Century — reliable but not instant.  Colonies are days or weeks apart, and what separates a thriving hub from a backwater is the existence of a magnetic landing grid on which cargo ships can land and trade.

Spaceman is the story of Braden, a ship's mate who seeks passage aboard the Rim Star.  This giant vessel is an experiment — it carries an entire, unassembled landing grid in its hold, and it also possesses the rockets to make a landing on a world without a grid.  Having one ship bring an entire landing grid for installation has never been tried before, but no one is certain that the ship can fulfill this purpose.  Moreover, there are all sorts of bad omens for Braden: he is waylaid by the ship's crew while on his way to his interview; the captain seems negligent to a criminal degree, and the obsequiousness of the ship's steward rings false.  In spite of these alarms, Braden takes the job anyway, feeling it his duty to see the ship through its special mission, and also to protect the six passengers the Rim Star has aboard.

The other shoe drops near the end of this first part of what's promised to be a two-part serial.  The crew is, in fact, up to no good, and the entire ship is imperiled.  Stay tuned.

It's not a bad yarn.  The plot is interesting and the characters reasonably developed.  Where it creaks is the writing.  Leinster has developed an odd sort of plodding and padded style of late, with endless sequences of short sentences and whole paragraphs that repeat information we already know.  Used sparingly, I suppose it's a style that could be effective.  Used excessively, it slows things down.

And then, there's this gem of a line (an internal musing of Braden's) on page 36:

When a man admits that a woman is a better man than he is, he may be honest, but he should be ashamed.

Three stars, barely.  We'll see what happens next month.

The Pie-Duddle Puddle, by Walt and Leigh Richmond

Recently, in Papa needs shorts, the Richmonds showed us how a four-year old child can save the day even with an imperfect understanding of the situation.  The husband-and-wife writing team try it again, this time from an even more exotic viewpoint (which you'll guess pretty quickly).  It's not nearly as effective or plausible a piece.  Two stars.

Outward Bound, by Norman Spinrad

I'm getting a little worried about new author, Norman Spinrad.  He hit it out of the park with his first story, and scored a double with his second.  The latest, about a decades-long relativistic chase across the galaxy in pursuit of the man who has the secret to superluminous travel, is barely a walk to first base.  It's not bad; there's just no mystery to the thing.  Three stars.

Third Alternative, by Robin Wilson

On the other hand, this first story by new author Robin Wilson is rather charming.  It's a time travel piece featuring a fellow who goes back from 2012 to 1904 with naught but what he can cram into his bodily orifices (inorganic matter doesn't transport).  You don't find out his purpose until the end, and it's an engaging, effective piece.  Another three-star story, but at the high end of the range.

Summing up

Reviewing the numbers, it seems like leaving the burrow was worth it.  Least mag of the bunch was Amazing at 2.3 stars and with no four star tales.  Next was IF at 2.4 stars, again with no exceptional pieces.  Fantastic clocked in at 2.7, but it had the excellent The Graveyard Heart by Zelazny; New Worlds, three stars, had Ballard's The Terminal Breach.  At the positive end of the scale were F&SF and Analog at 3.3 stars — their non-fiction articles were the real stand-outs.  Finally, Worlds of Tomorrow was mostly superior, definitely worth the 50 cent cover price.

Women had a banner month, producing 5.5 out of 39 new pieces (14.1%). 

Looks like we'll have a warm spring!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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