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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 30, 1966] Return to Base (October 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Comfort of Old Friends

One of the brilliant things about the new show, Star Trek, is that it combines the storytelling breadth of a science fiction anthology show (a la The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits with the anchoring of a returning ensemble cast.  This has never really been done before (at least in the United States — the UK has Doctor Who and the various marionette shows).  In addition to the exciting new situations that arise every week, we can also enjoy watching our favorite characters grow over time.

Many science fiction magazines are like the older anthology shows, offering a brand new cast of characters and new ideas with every montly set of stories.  Others, like Analog, and in particular this month's issue, are like Star Trek, bringing us back to familiar territory for further explorations of a known universe.

I think both are valid formats, particularly if the established properties are successful.  Analog did a pretty good job this month.  Let's dive in…

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

Strangers to Paradise, by Christopher Anvil

Chris Anvil is an author who has occasionally shown flashes of promise — but always in other magazines.  In Analog, he has dug himself a rut with an anvil-weighted plow and happily buried himself in it.


by John Schoenherr

Strangers is yet another story that takes place in his galactic trade universe.  This one involves a ship whose gravitor has broken down, and whose crew has made planetfall to seek repairs.  Unfortunately, though the Michelin guide said there was a Class II repair facility on the colony world, it was never actually built.  Instead, the colonists proved so unruly that the computer running the outpost established draconian control.  The technicians who could override the machine exiled themselves rather than deal with either the colonists or the computer!

To fix their ship, the traders need help from the city dwellers.  But to get the help, they need the technicians back.  How do they repair the impasse?

I thought this might be setting up a Deathworld scenario, where the immigrants are the key to restoring harmony.  But this is Chris Anvil in Campbell's mag.  Instead, they accidentally develop a psychic projector, able to instill any emotion into any human at any range.  Over the course of many pages, they manipulate the entire planetary population in a haphazard fashion, ultimately getting what they need.  In the end, they consider dismantling the device as an unethical abomination…but decide to keep it.  Just too useful to destroy, you know.

I found this story quite distasteful.  Less glib than Anvil's other tales, but callous in a way that suggests support rather than condemnation for the actions of the shipwrecked crew.

Two stars.

The Sons of Prometheus, by Alexei Panshin


by Leo Summers

Sons sees the return of a fine new author who you've not only seen before, but who has even written a guest article for the Journey!  (the line between fan and pro in the 'zines is a blurry one.) This new tale appears to be set in the compelling timeline set up in What Size are Giants? and the amazing Down to the Worlds of Men.

The premise: on the brink of atomic self-destruction, Earth sends out more than a hundred colonies.  Fifteen years later, Earth is a radiated wasteland.  The only humans left live either in struggling settlements or rather comfortably as crew and passengers on starships.  This sets up a haves and have-nots situation.  The planeteers are primitive, suspicious folks.  The ship dwellers have limited resources to assist.

This particular tale involves a fellow named Tansman, who embeds himself on a plague-infested colony to conduct anthropological research.  His ultimate dilemma: does he offer what limited medicine he can to save a few, revealing himself, putting his mission and possibly his person in danger?  Or does he watch as the colonists die in droves?

It's a vivid story, though I feel it doesn't do quite enough with the setup.  It also stacks the deck a bit toward a certain outcome.  I also could have done without the extremely graphic, drawn out scene in which Tansman puts a suffering colonist out of his misery (warning: it's in the last third of the tale).

So, three stars, but I wouldn't mind seeing more in this setting.

Challenge: The Insurgent vs. the Counterinsurgent (Part 2), by Joe Poyer

With the non-fiction column, we return to last month's topic — namely counterinsurgency.  Poyer notes the great strides that have been made in tracking insurgents, using infrared, electronic bugs, even scent.  He correlates this increase in counterinsurgency effectiveness with the decline in successful insurgencies since 1956.  He makes the hopeful prediction that the golden age of guerrilas may be at an end.

The problem, of course, is that better counterinsurgents only addresses one prong of the problem.  As even Poyer notes, until the populace's needs are addressed, insurgency will thrive.  Moreover, I was reading in the latest diplomatic journals that few expect the United States to be successful in Vietnam, our latest counterinsurgent operation.  That is because the issue is an Asian problem, and the US has limited ability to project force and influence in another continent.  Vietnam is not a colony.  It is a sovereign country riven with civil war.  One way or another, they're going to have to solve their own issues.  Our presence is an ephemeral condition, and it is arguable that it is making the situation any better.

Three stars for an interesting read and lots of pretty charts, but I doubt the author's conclusion.

Romp, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

Back to the world of Joe Mauser, where the Earth of the 1980s is divided into four camps: the free countries of Latin America and Africa, Common Europe, the somewhat democratic SovWorld, and the "People's Capitalism" of the West.  The United States has calcified into economic castes, and upward mobility is virtually impossible.

Enter Rosy Porras, born into the long-dead job of pretzel twister.  He has figured out how to live a life of crime in an ostensibly crimeless world.  When his latest "romp" goes sour, he has to make a run for the border.  Can he make it in time?

I find the Mauser setting fascinating if based on increasingly unlikely premises.  This story is a bit too pat, but it's a competent thriller.  Three stars.

Too Many Magicians (Part 3 of 4), by Randall Garrett


by John Schoenherr

And now we return to the world of Lord Darcy, a timeline in which magic has displaced science, the Angevin Empire is squared against the Polish Confederation, and a Holmes analog is tasked with solving two murders.  We learned in the last installment that both were secret agents in the employ of HRM, and that their deaths are connected with a super secret magical confusion ray.

What we don't know is how one succumbed in a locked room, how Demoiselle Tia Einzig (accused of dealing in the Black Arts) of a southern slavic state was involved, or how certain was the loyalty of the murdered agents.

This continues to be a fun novel, and the setting is positively lavish.  If there's just one thing that's mildly unconvincing, it's the development of modern-style military ranks, as well as English colloquialisms, in a timeline that diverged from ours nearly a millennium ago.

Also, it can be a little tough to keep track of an intricate mystery spread out over four months of reading.  Nevertheless, four stars for another fine installment, and high hopes for a satistfying ending in October!

Reading the Results

It's a shame about the Anvil, as it drags the issue down to a straight 3 stars.  The issue feels better than that because it improves as it goes along.  Ah well. 3 still puts Analog alongside Alien Worlds (3.0) and just below Galaxy (rounds to 3 but was slightly above).

This makes Campbell's mag better than New Writings #9 (2.9),
Amazing (2.5), and IF (2.5) this month, and not as good as Impulse (3.2), New Worlds (3.3), or Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3).

Worthy stuff (four and five stars) could easily fill two magazine's worth, but women wrote just 7.5% of the new fiction this month.  So much for the renaissance I predicted last month.

That wraps up the October 1966 magazines.  In two days, the November crop comes in!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 31, 1966] Flights of Fancy (September 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Nonstandard Deviation

Mr. Campbell of the good ship Analog is an interesting character.  Known for his strident, occasionally downright offensive editorials, his fetish for pseudoscience, and his increasingly inconsistent (one might say half-hearted) story selection, he is both much-loved and much-maligned.

But, as Galactic Journey's editor likes to say, people contain multitudes.  Or more simply, he and his magazine aren't all bad.  If Analog sometimes hits disappointing lows, it also still reaches highs reminiscent of Analog's golden days (when it was called Astounding).  His story sets are not monolithic.  Sometimes they're downright surprising.

As Exhibit A, I submit the September 1966 Analog, a most unusual issue:

Charting new terrain


by John Schoenherr

The Mechanic, by Hal Clement

Hal Clement is best known for his nuts-and-bolts science fiction, as crunchy as unmilked cereal — and often as dry.  This piece tells the tale of a near-future hydrofoil dispatched to the Arctic to determine what's causing the extinction of zeowhales.  These cybernetic creatures have metal bodies but psuedoliving flesh, and some disease is dissolving them from the inside out.

Of course, the hydrofoil is also metallic, and bad things happen to a disintegrating ship zooming along at hundreds of miles per hour.


by Kelly Freas

Slow to start and very very explanatory, but the ideas are interesting and the latter half riveting if gruesome.

Three stars.

A Matter of Reality, by Carole E. Scott


by Leo Summers

A common charge leveled at Campbell is that he doesn't like to publish women.  I don't think that's fair.  The industry as a whole has an unfortunate shortage of woman-penned stories.  If Analog tends to be mostly a stag mag, it's just at one end of the bell curve, not a true outlier.  Indeed, Campbell discovered Pauline Ashwell and Katherine Maclean, two of the field's brightest lights.

Women not only write for Analog, they read it, too: A Matter of Reality came off the slush pile, submitted by Ms. Scott, a self-proclaimed admirer of Campbell and his mag for nearly two decades. 

Her first story contains none of the Campbellian touchstones: no psionics, no smugly superior Terrans, etc.  Instead, it's an interesting piece about an old man's final act, a literal embodiment of the phrase, "All the world's a stage."

I'd expect to find such a fantastic piece in Galaxy or F&SF, but Scott likes Analog the best, and her story makes for a nice change of pace in Campbell's mag.

Three stars, and I look forward to her next piece.

… Not a Prison Make, by Joseph P. Martino


by John Schoenherr

With the Vietnam war escalating and the President calling for double the troops (600,000 — this proposal just rejected by Congress), it's not surprising that the situation is finding echoes in our science fiction.

Martino offers up a proxy war between the Terrans and the Kreg on a third-party planet peopled by primitives.  The humans are subject to the most debilitating hit and run raids by the indigenes, who possess the powers of teleportation and limited clairvoyance.

Two viewpoints are espoused in the story: the military leader opines that the raiders are bandits, and the best bandit is a dead one.  The civilian expert believes that the hearts and minds of the populace must be won or the insurgency will have infinite longevity. 

Some clever defenses are built up against the natives, but they only constitute delaying actions.  The paradigm must be radically altered if success is to be had.

This story really had potential, but it ended just as it was getting interesting, and with none of the more profound points addressed.  Of course, no one really knows how to end a guerilla insurgency (predicting its death by the close of this century seems optimistic), but I'm dissatisfied with a story that concludes essentially with "then we won!"  I did appreciate that the characters were all South/Southeast Asian (from what I know of surnames).

Three stars.

Challenge, by Joe Poyer

The fictional piece is followed by an in-depth analysis of insurgency and counter-insurgency.  The author suggests that until the counter-insurgents learn to fight the insurgent game, and better than the insurgents, they won't win.  Interestingly, the latest plan for Vietnam is to field division-sized battlefield units, not just to quell the VC, but also to engage in peaceful, nation-building activities.  I'm not hopeful.

Anyway, Challenge is not a bad piece, though I don't know that it qualifies as "science."  Also, I would not classify the Watts riots as an insurrection.

I miss Robert S. Richardson's astronomy articles.  Three stars.

Symbols, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

The river has frozen a month early, and the Gurt are under attack.  The Ghisrans are pouring across the ice now, threatening a precious mine that is vital to the Terran Navy.  If a handful of agents with an unarmed spaceboat are unable to stop them, the sector may fall.

I'm not sure what's more offensive: the portrayal of the lone female character as "hysterical" or the padding of this vignette to double size with Campbell-pleasing folderol about symbolic logic. 

Definitely the most reactionary of this month's pieces.  Two stars.

Too Many Magicians (Part 2 of 4), by Randall Garrett


by John Schoenherr

Ahh, but all that is washed away with the latest installment of the adventures of Lord Darcy, investigator in an alternate 1966 where thaumaturgy has trumped science.  As we saw last time, there had been two murders by unknown assailants, both by similar knives.  One of the victims was an Imperial double agent, killed while trying to ferret out a traitorous Anglo-Frenchman.  The other was an exalted state wizard.

The bombshell of this installment is that the two murders are connected, tightly.

A lot of great detective work in this one, as well as a tour to magical London's equivalent of a World Expo.  Garrett channels Doyle more and more these days, but so far it's working.

Four stars!

Charting a New Course

This experimental issue of Analog doesn't break any records, finishing dead-averagely at 3 stars.  Nevertheless, I applaud Campbell's willingness to experiment, and I enjoyed the issue.  Finishing above it were the superlative New Worlds (3.8 stars), the fine Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5 stars), and the decent (but mostly because of a reprint) SF Impulse (3.2 stars).

Analog barely edged out IF (3 stars) and decidedly beat Fantastic (2.7 stars).

It was a good month overall for reading.  If one took all the magazine stories/serials that got 4 or 5 stars, they could potentially fill three magazines!  Also, women were responsible for 15.6% of all new fiction, a high water mark for sure.

On this triumphant note, I am off to Cleveland for this year's Worldcon.  Who will win the Hugos?  We'll have to wait a week to find out!  Rest assured, you'll be able to read all about it here long before the next edition of Ratatosk or Focal Point (or Skyrack, for my British friends) hits your mailbox.

And if you are in Cleveland next weekend, be certain to join us for the showing of the first Star Trek pilot at 7pm Eastern (4pm Pacific!).




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Magazine, Serial

[July 31, 1966] Dimmed lights (August 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Blackout

This morning, Janice noted sparks coming from the socket by her typewriter desk.  With great swiftness, she unplugged the lamp and radio.  There was a respite, but only briefly, and soon the wall was spurting flame again. 

I heard her calm bellow, "Gideon, hit the circuit breaker.  Now."  You never saw someone descend a flight of stairs so fast (at least in control of their feet).  She called an electrician – fortunately the phone company have a separate power supply – and we went out for breakfast until the fellow could arrive.

That afternoon, we got a stern lecture on overloading our poor house's circuits.  We thanked and paid the fellow and were back to work by 1 pm.

Whereupon the entire neighborhood's power went out.

And that, dear readers, is why this article was typed by the light of the window rather than artificial incandescence!

Flicker, flicker

It was fitting that we should be failed by the men and women of our investor-owned, business-managed electric light and power company just as I turned to write about this month's Analog.  It's not that the stories were horrible, but I've definitely seen better in these pages.


by John Schoenherr

Too Many Magicians (Part 1 of 4), by Randall Garrett

To date, the Lord d'Arcy stories, set in an alternate 1960s with Victorian technology but replete with magic, have all been novellas or shorter.  This latest piece is the first full length novel.

A naval courier has been killed, perhaps while bearing crucial intelligence.  The Anglo-French Empire's most renowned magical detective is contracted to get to the bottom of the case.  Meanwhile, Sean O'Lochlainn, d'Arcy's sorcerer assistant, is thrown in the Tower after witnessing a second death at a wizards' conference; this locked-room murder has a similar murder weapon to the first.

And so, the setup for a magical who/howdunnit.  As with the rest of the series, Garrett's tale compels (though none engage so thoroughly as the excellent first d'Arcy adventure.) If I have a complaint, it's that Garrett is starting to rely a bit too much on pastiche: d'Arcy gets more like Holmes with every installment.  Indeed, his cousin, the Marquis, is Mycroft in all but name.  I half-expect our hero will take up the violin and acquire a cocaine habit.

Four stars so far, but we'll see.

Spirits of '76, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

A representative from the UN pays a visit to a lunar squatter, who has illegally laid claim to a piece of the Moon's surface and established a distillery.  After a great many homebrewed drinks, the agent decides that free enterprise and private ownership are actually just fine.

I suspect maintaining an independent habitation on our airless neighbor will be a lot harder than this story would have us believe.  Still, the libertarian spirit of the piece surely tickled Campbell's capitalist heart.

It'll go in one eye and out the other, but it's harmless, at least.  Three stars?

One MOL Step Forward , by Lyle R. Hamilton

Hamilton opens up this non-fiction article with a promise to explain how the X-20 "Dynasoar" spaceplane was killed by paperwork.  Instead, he offers up a meandering piece, told largely in contractor interviews and press releases, which culminates in a description of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.  This budget space station, serviced by an Air Force Gemini, is the current DoD space project of size.

I suppose there's useful information in the piece, but not much point.  I've gotten much better insight from my subscription to Aviation Week and Space Technology.

Two stars.

Psychoceramic, by John W. Campbell, Jr.

The fearless editor follows Hamilton with a shorter piece on a ceramic that can apparently extract pure oxygen and produce power at the same time.  Typical Campbellian kookery, or is he onto something?  I guess only time will tell.

Two stars for the unnecessary smugness and having cried wolf too many times.

By the Book, by Frank Herbert


by Kelly Freas

An aged troubleshooter is summoned from retirement to fix a big beam.  It's some kind of launching laser that propels seed packets (vegetable and human) toward colony worlds.  Problem is, it keeps killing technicians trying to service it.

I had many problems with this story, the biggest of which was the devotion of so many words to setting up a technical problem whose resolution I had no interest in.  A real snoozefest of gizmo-speak.

One star.

Technicality, by Norman Spinrad

The MPs have arrived, fearsome conquering aliens whose greatest strength is their ability to vanquish whole armies without firing a shot.  But does their nonviolent rapaciousness hide an Achilles Heel?

While the gimmick falls a little flat, Spinrad tells this no-blood-or-guts tale with fine detail and not a little subtle satire.

Three stars.

Light of Other Days, by Bob Shaw


by Kelly Freas

A quarreling married couple touring the Scottish Highlands come across a purveyor of "slow glass."  This remarkable substance passes light so slowly that, after ten years of absorption, will replay the scene that played across it for the next decade.  Thus, a city dweller might install one of these wonder panes and enjoy ten years of a view of the rugged north of Scotland rather than local squalor.

The technical bits felt a little overdone, but Shaw tells the story with a light, domestic touch that reminds me of Cliff Simak.

Three stars, and eagerness to see him tackle a longer subject.

Something to Say, by John Berryman


by Leo Summers

Last up, the fellow who gave us the Walter Bupp psychic stories gives us, instead, one of his more nuts-and-bolts tales.  The Earth Federation (apparently an evolution of the UN) has reason to believe that Soviet-aligned agents have infiltrated a primitive world to poison the natives against the West.  Said planet has a breathable atmosphere some six times as dense as Earth's.  This affords a far more airborne ecology, and even the indigenes have Bronze Age flying machines.

A troubleshooter is dispatched to thwart the Soviet plot, but is overpowered by a Communist.  The two crash land and are taken prisoner.  The Sovworld agent seems to have the leg up, as she is fluent in the indigenous tongue, but our plucky hero has an ace up his sleeve: an encylopedic knowledge of gliders.

There is a good story lurking in here, with a great setting and a decent setup.  It is hampered by its truly insufferable and two-dimensional characters.  As well, Berryman seems to have forgotten much that he's learned about pacing.

An uneven three stars.

After the lights go out…

2.7 stars is not a great score, though it's actually the median for this year's crop of Analogs.  And also for the month.  Coming in below it are IF (2.6), Galaxy (2.5), Worlds of Tomorrow (2.2), and Amazing (1.9).  Note that three of those four are Fred Pohl's triplets.

Ahead of Analog are Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1), New Worlds (3.2), and Impulse (3.4)

There was exactly one woman-penned new story this month, and four/five-star stories would have barely filled two slim magazines (and one of them is a reprint of Make Room, Make Room!).

Ah well.  At least there's only one more month of summer, after which, ironically, things should get brighter!

Have you gotten your copy of Rosel George Brown's new hit novel, Sibyl Sue Blue?  If not, get down to your local newsstand and pick it up!




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Magazine

[May 28, 1965] Heavyweight's Burden (June 1965 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

How the Mighty have Fallen

Since 1953, Sonny Liston has been a big name in boxing.  Liston's spectacular career, marred by a prison hitch and rumored connections with organized crime, reached its pinnacle when he defeated Floyd Patterson in 1962 to become the world heavyweight champ.

He kept the title for two years, losing it in an upset to newcomer Cassius Clay.  In last week's rematch, Clay, now named Muhammad Ali, beat Liston even more handily.  Ali looks like he'll be keeping his title for a long time.

John W. Campbell Jr.'s Astounding was the heavyweight champion of science fiction magazines in the late 1930s, standing head and shoulders above its pulp competition.  It retained this title all through the Golden Age of SF, which lasted through the 1940s.

For the last fifteen years, Astounding (now called Analog) has maintained the highest circulation numbers, by far, of the science fiction digests.  It survived the mass extinctions of the late 1950s.  Campbell is still at the tiller.

But there are signs that the old champion could become easy pickings for a scrappy newcomer.  A recent flirtation with the "slick" format and dimensions was a dismal failure. The contents of the once-proud magazine have been staid for a long time.  Then, of course, there's Campbell's personal weirdness, his obsession with fringe sciences, his odious opinions on race relations.

That's not to say Analog is an unworthy magazine, but it's got its problems.  Exhibit A of Analog's vulnerability: the latest issue.

Handicapping the Reigning Champion


Did Campbell forget his is a science fiction magazine?

If I were a gambling house, I'd want to give my champion a thorough vetting, analyzing all of its strengths and weaknesses, and coming up with odds of victory accordingly.  Let's imagine the June 1965 issue as a kind of exhibition bout and see how it does.

The Muddle of the Woad, by Randall Garrett


by John Schoenherr

The bell rings, and our champion is looking good.  Randall Garrett is back with his third Lord Darcy story, a magical mystery series set in an alternate 20th Century in which England and France are united, Poland is the big adversary, and sorcery exists alongside technology.  The Lord Detective, along with his tubby Irish spell-casting sidekick, Sean, solve the murders of the Empire's most prestigious citizens.

In the deliciously pun-titled case, Lord Camberton of Kent is found dead in a coffin intended for someone else, his body dyed blue with woad.  Suspicion immediately falls on the Albion Society, a group of druids who reject Christianity.  But is this a red herring?  As with any good mystery, the cast of suspects is limited, and the ending involves the classic summoning of all to a room for a final deduction of the culprit.

Good stuff, as always.  A fine story and a rich universe.  Four stars.

Glimpses of the Moon, by Wallace West


by John Schoenherr

Oh, but now the champion is faltering.  Wallace West, who wrote the rather delightful River of Time offers up a clunker of a tale.  It is the late 1960s, and a three-way race to the Moon between American, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain has ended in something of a tie.  While the representative of the U.S.A. clearly landed first, the Soviets claim that the Moon is the property of whichever country whose skies it happens to be in at any given time.  Thus, ownership cycles with every day.  In the end, it turns out that a fourth power has a much earlier claim on the body.

It's all very silly, but not in a particularly fun way.  Two stars.

Hydrogen Fusion Reactor, by Edward C. Walterscheid

Last month, there was an article on magnetohydrodynamics — the use of magnetic bottles to contain thermonuclear reactions.  This month, the science fact article is exclusively on nuclear fusion.  Indeed, so proud is Campbell of this piece that he gave it the cover.

I was eager to learn about the state of development of this promising power source. Sadly, Walterscheid has not yet learned how to subdivide his points. Or write interesting prose. The result is an impenetrable wall.

Hmmm.  Perhaps the article could be repurposed to line the walls of tomorrow's fusion reactor…

Two stars.  Folks, the champion is staggering!

The GM Effect, by Frank Herbert


by Robert Swanson

Oh boy. Dune author Frank Herbert is back, and with another talking head story.  Unlike his last one, which involved a congressional hearing on a widely distributed superweapon, The GM Effect is about a drug that allows takes to experience former lives.  When it is discovered that this reveals all sorts of unsavory and forgotten tidbits of history (including that a Southern senator is one-quarter black), the drug's developers decide to cancel production.  Then the military comes in, shoots the drug creators, and appropriates their creation.

Not only is the story rather pointless, it's distasteful.  Herbert seems to be gleeful that Lincoln was personally no great lover of black Americans, and when the murdering general describes the erstwhile scientists as "N*gg*r lovers," I get less the sense that the utterer is supposed to be the bad guy and more that the author was delighted to be able to squeeze the word into a story.

One star…and our champion is down, folks!  He's down!

Duel to the Death, by Christopher Anvil


by John Schoenherr

Nearly 30 years ago, Analog's editor wrote Who Goes There.  One of the genre's seminal stories, it details the infiltration of an Antarctic base by a body-snatching alien, one that spreads via touch.  The result is that one cannot tell friend from foe anymore.  It's a chilling premise that has since been used to great effect, for instance by Robert Heinlein in The Puppet Masters..

Duel is a fairly straight entry in the genre.  A spacer on a new planet has his suit punctured by some sort of dart, and he quickly succumbs to alien control.  The purloined body becomes Ground Zero of an alien invasion that quickly takes over a nearby space fleet.  Thus ensues a race against time: can the Terran Navy defeat this scourge before it absorbs the whole of humanity?

Most of this story is quite good, with some very interesting story-telling, often from the point of view of inanimate objects: the space suit of the first victim, the ship's sensors of the investigating fleet, the communications devices employed by the humans.

But, to distinguish Duel from its predecessors, the author ends the piece with a twist that doesn't quite work.  I understand it, I think, but I don't quite buy it.

Three stars — good enough to bring our champion back to his feet, but flawed enough that he leaves the ring dazed.

Summing Up

Running our champion's performance through the Star-O-Vac, we come up with a rating of just 2.5.  That's pretty bad.  In a head-to-head against the other magazines of this month (and there was a bumper crop), how would Analog have fared?

Not well, it turns out.  Partly, it's because the competition was quite strong: Fantasy and Science Fiction ended up on top with an impressive 3.5 rating.  Worlds of Tomorrow garnered 3.2 stars and Galaxy got 3.1.  Both Amazing and New Worlds got three stars, while Fantastic and Science Fantasy finished at a sub-par 2.8.

Only If ranked lower than Analog, meriting just 2.2 stars (sorry David!)

So, a disappointing performance by Campbell's mag augurs poorly for it. Will there be a Muhammad Ali of science fiction publications?

(P.S. Women wrote six of the 55 fiction pieces this month; none appeared in Analog — connection?)




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Book, Magazine

[September 2, 1964] Taking on The Man (September 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Tarnished Gold

I am an avid fan of science fiction magazines.  It would not be going too far to say that Galactic Journey's original purpose was to document these delightful digests as they came out (since then, our scope has crept quite a bit, even as far as the opening of a publishing company!)

If you've been following my column, you know that I view some magazine editors more favorably than others.  For instance, I have a great deal of respect for Fred Pohl, who helms Galaxy, IF AND Worlds of Tomorrow, all of them quite good reads.  Then there's Cele Goldsmith (now Lalli) who took on both Amazing and Fantastic, and while neither are unalloyed excellence, they are improved over where they were before she came on, and there's usually something excellent in at least one of the mags every month. 

My relationship with Fantasy and Science Fiction's Avram Davidson is more complicated; I understand he's moved to Berkeley and is retiring from the editorship of that magazine to devote himself to writing.  I think that's probably better for everyone involved.  Still, there have been some good issues under Davidson, and I can't let curses go without some grudging admiration.

And then there's John W. Campbell.

Look.  I recognize that his Astounding kicked off the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and that, for a while, his magazine (and its sister, Unknown) were the best games in town, by far.  But Campbell went off the deep end long, long ago, with his pseudo-science, his reactionary politics, his heavy-handed editorial policy that ensures that White Male Terrans are usually the stars (and writers) of his stories, and his inflammatory editorials that I gave up reading a while ago.

Asimov's long-since turned his back on him.  Even I've rattled sabers with him.  But the most poignant declaration against Campbell is a recent one, given by prominent writer Jeannette Ng at a local conference.  She minced no words, denouncing his male-chauvinism, his racism, his authoritarianism, and urged that the genre be freed from the overlong shadow he casts. 


Jeannette Ng, iconoclast

While Campbell's influence in SF is somewhat on the wane, Analog still has double the circulation of the next biggest competitor, four times that of F&SF, where the majority of the women SF writers publish.  It's people like Ms. Ng, pointing at the naked Emperor and noting the ugliness, who will advance the New Wave, the post-Campbellian era.

All I have to say is "bravo". 

The Issue at Hand

The ironic thing is that the current issue of Analog is actually pretty good (full disclosure: I didn't read the editorial, which is probably awful).  Just the cover, illustrating the latest Lord D'Arcy story is worth the price of admission.


by John Schoenherr

Opening up the pages, things are pretty good inside, too.  At least until the end. 

the risk takers, by Carolyn Meyer

This article on the use of mannequins in aeronautical and medical science is lively, much more Asimovian than most of the non-fiction Campbell has subjected us to recently.  And, it's the first time a woman author has graced the science column of Analog.  While the piece is comparatively brief and perhaps aimed at a more general (dare I say "younger") audience than the average Analog reader, I enjoyed it.

Four stars.

A Case of Identity, Randall Garrett

Randall Garrett is possibly the author I've savaged the most during my tenure running the Journey, but even I have to admit that the fellow's latest series is a winner.  Lord D'Arcy is a magical detective hailing from an alternate 1964.  In this installment, the Marquis of Cherbourg is missing, and coincidentally, an exact double has just been found dead and naked near the docks.  There's witchcraft afoot, and the good Lord, along with his sorcerer assistant, Master Sean O Lochlainn, are on the case.


by John Schoenherr

This story doesn't flow quite as smoothly as the first one, spending many inches on the historical background of this brand-new world.  It's still a superlative tale, however.

Four strong stars.

The Machmen, James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

An interstellar survey group is overpowered by a group of ambitious cyborgs.  The goal of these so-called "Machmen" (presumably pronounced "Mash-men"?) is to forcibly convert the captured team of eggheads into brainwashed cybernetic comrades and start a colony.  But one the scientists has gotten loose, and he has a risky plan to thwart the nefarious scheme that just…might…work.

It's not a bad piece.  In fact it moves quite nicely, far more readily than the author's latest (and disappointing) Telzey Amberdon story.  But on the other hand, it reads like it might have come out in the 1930s.  I wonder if it's been hiding in a desk from the early days of Schmitz' career.

Three stars.

Sheol, Piers Anthony and H. James Hotaling


by John Schoenherr

This is an odd piece about the Government postman who delivers parcels to the oddballs who live in the suburbs.  It's quite deftly written, but there's weird social commentary that, while not offensive, feels Campbellian.  Tailor made for John, or doctored after the fact?  There's no way to tell.

Three stars.

Sleeping Planet (Part 3 of 3), William R. Burkett, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

Last up, we have the conclusion to Sleeping Planet.  What started out as a promising novel about the sudden subjugation of the Earth has ended up exactly as predicted.  The few unsleeping humans, along with their robotic allies (abruptly introduced near the end of the last installment), put on a movie show that convinces the invaders that the dead spirits of Earth are taking out their revenge.  This confusion facilitates the final gambit of the Terrans: to infiltrate and revive one of the planetary defense stations in El Paso.  After that, it's all over but the shouting.

There are several problems with this last part.  First off, it's essentially unnecessary.  There are no surprises, the human plan pretty much going as discussed in the last part.  That's the big picture.  Smaller picture issues include:

  • Why were Earth's defense centers even vulnerable to the sleeping dust in the first place?  Wouldn't it make sense for them to have their own air supplies against chemical/biological attack?
  • The amazingly human-like aliens (another Campbellian feature) are always played for suckers.  I was almost rooting for them to win at the end, so arrogant and annoying were the humans.
  • At the end, Earth's leaders make light of the attack, calling it a brief nap (but a warning as to what might happen NEXT TIME).  I understand this is largely to quell panic and outrage.  At the same time, though, it is mentioned numerous times that hundreds, maybe thousands of women were revived and rendered stupefied so that the might "service" the alien troops.  That this mass rape goes unaddressed and essentially laughed off really bothered me.  Honestly, even including this element was disgusting and unnecessary, especially in a story that mostly kept a light tone.

Two stars for this segment, two-and-a-half for the book as a whole.  We'll see if it gets picked up for separate print.

Summing Up

Thus ends another edition of the magazine that Campbell built, representative of the best and worst of the man.  This time, the positive aspects have won out, resulting in a 3.2 star issue.  This is surpassed this month only by Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4).  There was no IF this month due to a problem at the printers, the result of shifting from bimonthly to monthly.  That leaves the new New Worlds (3.1), Amazing (2.7), and Fantastic (2.6) scoring below Analog and F&SF.  An unusual month, indeed.

Women wrote 6 of 38 pieces (1 of 4 science articles, 5 of 34 fiction pieces), a fairly average month.  Despite the paucity of magazines, there was enough high quality material to make a decently sized issue.  Now that I'm in the anthology business, perhaps I'll do just that…

SPEAKING OF WHICH:

We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!  Not only will you find it excellent reading, but it will support our efforts and allow us to make more of the material you enjoy!  Thank you for your support!




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[January 2, 1964] All's well that ends well (January 1964 Analog science fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Auld Lang Syne

Greetings from 1964!  Given the challenges we faced in the latter part of last year, it was proper and cathartic to wrap up 1963 with a bang.  Here are some snapshots from our gala (and weren't we lucky to find a film developer willing to work on New Year's Day?)

Speaking of wrapping up, the last magazine of the old year, though dated January 1964, was the January 1964 Analog.  This is usually among the lesser science fiction magazines I read, but this time around, I was pleasantly surprised.  Come take a look!

Ending Well

Secondary Meteorites (Part 1 of 2), by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Could that black chunk of meteorite actually be from Mars?  There is an increasing body of evidence that the meteorites that hit the Earth were, themselves, bits of other planets blasted away by their own meteor strikes.  The subject matter is fascinating, but Dr. Hall manages to make it nigh incomprehensible.  It's too technical and presented all out of order (even Dr. Asimov learned early in his career that you have to define your terms first).  And this is only PART ONE!

Two stars.

The Eyes Have It, by Randall Garrett

My disdain for Mr. Garrett has been a constant of the Journey, ever since the offensive and just plain bad Queen Bee.  Over time, he has occasionally written decent stuff, and when he teams up with others, his rough edges get smoothed a bit.  Still, his name in the Table of Contents has always made me less eager to read a magazine.

Well, never let it be said that I can't keep an open mind.  Garrett's latest work is a tour de force.  If Asimov perfected the science fiction mystery with The Caves of Steel, Garrett has created the genre of magical mystery with The Eyes Have It.

The year is 1963, the place, France.  But this is no France we know.  Instead, it appears to be in a timeline that diverged nine centuries prior, one in which the Angevin Empire remained ascendant…and in which the use of magic developed. 

Lord D'Arcy is Chief Criminal Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, summoned to investigate the murder of the fantastically lecherous Count D'Evraux.  With the aid of his assistants, Sorcerer Sean O Lachlainn and chirurgeon Dr. Pately, he must find out how and at whose hand the Count met his untimely demise, and he has just twenty four hours to do it.

The attention to detail, the world-building, the characterization, the writing — all are top notch.  This is the sort of work I'd expect from Poul Anderson (and only when at the top of his game).  For Garrett to pull this off is nothing short of miraculous.

Dammit, Randy.  It's going to be hard to keep hating you.

Five stars.

Poppa Needs Shorts, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

The last piece by the Richmonds was an utterly unreadable book-length serial.  This one, on the other hand, is a cute vignette convincingly told from the view of a 4-year old child who just wants to know about "shorts."  Leigh and Walt have a pretty good idea how kids learn, I think.

Three stars.

Subjectivity, by Norman Spinrad

The pages of our scientific journals offer a wealth of ideas that can be turned into SF stories.  New author Norman Spinrad seizes on Dr. Timothy Leary's paean to LSD in technical clothing, Psychedelic Review as inspiration for his second story:

Though humanity has invented an engine that will propel spaceships at half the speed of light, the heavens remain out of reach.  It's not the endurance of the ships that's the problem — it is that of the crew.  No matter how well-adjusted they are, all of them go crazy in less than half the time it takes to get to Alpha Centauri.  After twelve failed attempts, the powers that be assemble a crew of misfits with a twenty-year supply of hallucinogenics to keep them sane (if potted) and open up the stars.

Mission #13 succeeds…but not in a way anyone could have predicted.  A fun, slightly acid (no pun intended) little piece.  Four stars.

See What I Mean!, by John Brunner

In this disappointing outing from Brunner, a deadlock in negotiations between East and West is resolved when the four foreign ministers involved are psychoanalyzed, and it turns out the British and Russian officials have more in common with each other than with their ideological partners (from the U.S. and China, respectively).

Not much here.  Two stars.

Dune World (Part 2 of 3), by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert's epic in the desert, a kind of Lawrence of Arabia in space, continues.  After the assassination attempt on his son, and with warnings that he has a traitor in his midst, Duke Leto of the House of Atreides attempts to shore up his position on Arrakis, sole source of life-extending "spice".  The planetology and culture bits are pretty interesting, particularly the depiction of the forbidding dune world of Arrakis and the spice-mining operations thereon.  I continue to get the impression, though, that Herbert is still too raw for this project.  The viewpoint jumps from line to line, much is conveyed through exposition, and the incessant use of italics is really trying to read.

Three stars again.

Crunching the numbers

So how did the first batch of magazines dated with the new year fare?  There are definitely some surprises.

  • Analog, came in first with a respectable 3.4 star rating.  Moreover, Randall Garrett of all people had the best story.  These must be the end times.
  • Fantastic came in a close second at 3.3.  New World tread water at 3.  IF got 2.8.  F&SF scored a disappointing 2.5.  Amazing dragged through the muck at a miserable 1.9.
  • All in all, there were nearly 200 pages of good-to-excellent stories.  Not a bad haul.
  • Women only wrote one and a half of the 31 fiction pieces this month, and theirs were short ones.  No surprises there.

Next up: the first book of the new year!

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