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[March 28, 1967] At last, a drop to drink (April 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Back to Basics

Our family recently went to the movies to see the latest war epic, Tobruk.  It's the story of a British commando unit teamed with a company of German Jews charading as a unit of the Afrika Korps.  Their goal: to destroy the supply depot at Tobruk and stop Rommel in his tracks.

The first half was decent, but the second devolved into Hollywood schlock.  Particularly when one knows one's history: there was such a raid, but it ended in abject failure.  Tobruk is not so mind-numbingly mediocre as TV's Rat Patrol, but they are in the same genus.

How to get the taste out of my mouth?  As it turned out, local channel 9 was airing the old Bogart movie, Sahara, filmed in 1943 as the war was going on.  I'd seen it when it first premiered, and so I knew to circle the listing and bake the popcorn so my family and friends could enjoy it with me.  If you haven't had the pleasure of this amazing saga of a lone M3 tank in the African desert, and its ragtag crew it collects from nearly a dozen different nations, well, give it a watch next time it airs.

Old Standby

Just as I found the antidote to modern bloat in a classic production of the '40s, this month, the answer to the rather lackluster science fiction being turned out of late was found not in a magazine of the '40s, but in one that, for many, peaked in that "Golden Age."  Indeed, the April 1967 Analog was one of the finest examples of Campbell's editorial output in a long time.


by John Schoenherr

To Love Another, by James Blish and Norman L. Knight

First, a case of eating words.  Please pass the mustard.

James Blish and Norman L. Knight have composed a number of novellas in a particular setting.  A few centuries from now, humanity is bursting at the seams, shoulder to shoulder on a severely overcrowded planet.  The science of tectogenetics has created a new race of humans, the Tritons, one perfectly at home in the oceans.  Against this backdrop, the asteroid "Flavia" is on a collision course with Earth, threatening tremendous damage when it hits.  Efforts are being made to minimize its impact (pardon the pun).

Two stories have been set in this timeline: The Shipwrecked Hotel and The Piper of Dis.  I rated both of them two stars.  They were dull, plodding tales, and after the last one, I stated, "I hope this is the last piece in the series."

I take it back.


by Kelly Freas

To Love Another is a vivid tale of love between Dorthy Sumter, head of Submarine Products Corporation, and her lieutenant, the Triton Tioru.  It's hard to describe it as having a plot, in the strictest sense of the word.  Rather, it is a pair of viewpoints at a particular juncture in humanity's history, one of its most momentous.  It is a gentle adventure that runs from the depths of the ocean, to the hive of a Habitat '67-type city, to… well, to the place In-Between.


Habitat '67 in Montreal

Not quite five stars, but excellent stuff.

The Enemy Within, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

What's a mother to do when her eager little boy winds up locked inside a psuedo-intelligent spacecraft, and all her efforts seem only to make the problem worse?

This is an effective, well-drawn tale by Mr. Reynolds, though if there is anything to be taken away from it, it's that spanking is an outdated punishment that ultimately does more harm than good.

Three stars.

The Feckless Conqueror, by Carl A. Larson

If humans are to settle other planets, they will either have to adapt to new environments or adapt their enivronments.  Larson examines the adaptibility of the human species, noting our tolerance to oxygen pressure, heat, cold, gravity, and magnetic fields.

It's pretty good.  Three stars.

To Change Their Ways, by Joseph P. Martino

On the planet of New Eden, where the men grow wheat and the women…turn it into bread and noodles…famine threatens.  Seems the hardheaded farmers refuse to give up their tailored grain, which cannot tolerate the seasonal cooling that is gradually chilling the planet (seasons last decades on this long-orbit world).  A sector administrator is sent to help out the planetary coordinator, mostly to harangue him about being tougher with the recalcitrants.

If ever there was a story with no drama, no plot beats, no there, it's this one.  Two stars.

The Time-Machined Saga (Part 2 of 3), by Harry Harrison


by John Schoenherr

Last month, I was a little hard on Harrison's newest serial, in which a time machine is put to work for cheap on location shooting in the 11th Century.  It's better this time around, as the production of the film goes underway.  The beefcake hack of a star gets a broken leg and refuses to work.  Luckily, Ottar, the native Viking, is more than willing to work for a bottle of whiskey a day and a silver mark a month.  And he's a natural for the part!

But while the scenes filmed in Norway and the Orkneys go well enough, a wrinkle is introduced when it is discovered that there are no colonies in Vinland–not in the 11th Century or ever.  Only one solution for that: found Vinland (with cameras rolling, of course).

It's rollicking fun with a lot of good encyclopaedic data.  My only quibble is that the timeline of Harrison's book is clearly all of a piece; the first installment had the film crew seeing themselves from a "later" time trip in the past.  But if the timeline exists with all travels baked in, why didn't they find themselves filming the landing at Vinland?  Perhaps this will be explained next chapter.

Either way, it's still worth four stars.

Ambassador to Verdammt, by Colin Kapp


by Kelly Freas

Imagine a race of aliens so bizarre that the human mind can barely register their existence, let alone make meaningful contact.  The science team on Verdammt knows the Unbekannt are intelligent beings, but prolonged interchange leads to a psychotic break.  It will take a very special kind of ambassador to bridge the species gap.

This is a story that would have fared better in the hands of a true master, a Delany or a Cordwainer Smith.  As it is, there's a bit too much artificial delaying of shoe-drops to heighten drama.  The scenes from the perspective of the character meeting the Unbekannt lack the lyricism to really make them shine. 

That said, it is a neat idea, it is at least competently rendered, and it made me think. That's what an stf story's supposed to do, right?

So, a solid three stars.

Compare and Contrast

For the second time this year, Analog has topped the pack of magazine (and magazine-ish) offerings, clocking in at 3.2 stars.  Thus, it beats out New Worlds (3.1), IF (3), Path into the Unknown (2.6), Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.5), Galaxy (2.3), New Writings #10 (2.2), and Amazing (2.1).

It was a pretty peaked month, in general, with the best thing outside this issue probably a fourteen-year old reprint by Judith Merril (which was, in fact, the only piece published by a woman this entire month).

Still, it's nice to know that oases can still sometimes be found, even this often bleak desert of a modern magazine era.  Here's hoping it the hot spring doesn't turn into a mirage next month…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 26, 1967] Changes Coming New Worlds and SF Impulse, April 1967

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

So I’m now having to get used to receiving just one issue of the British magazines a month. The deal made with the Arts Council last month means that I was guaranteed this issue, which I understand will be the last in this paperback format. It is less but is it a case of "less means more"? Let’s go to the issue!

Editor Mike Moorcock is clearly busy this month, and as a result we have a Guest Editorial from the much-plaudit-ed Samuel R. Delany, who I know is making quite an impact in the US with his novels (Babel 17, amongst others).

Though it is well written, it’s another editorial discussing the future of science fiction. Editors Moorcock, Harrison and Bonfiglioli have all covered this in various issues in the past few years, and this isn’t really anything new. It may, however, be for new readers. It is unsurprisingly positive and embraces the change that we’ve seen in recent years.

To the New Worlds/SF Impulse stories.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

Daughters of Earth by Judith Merril

Judith Merril is currently writing reviews for the Magazine of Fantasy & SF and editing The Year’s Best SF anthology. In between her work on those, she also found the time to revise one of her pieces from December, 1952.

Allowing for the fact that it's a reprint, Daughters of Earth is a cracker in that it takes a lot of old-fashioned science fiction ideas but gives them a modern, different twist. It is the story of future human space exploration but instead of the usual future being determined by men, this is told through successions of generations of women in one family. It is a deliberate subversion of the usual science fiction cliches.

To emphasise this, the story begins in an almost-Old Testament style: “Martha begat Joan, and Joan begat Ariadne. Ariadne lived and died at home on Pluto, but her daughter, Emma, took the long trip out to a distant planet of an alien sun. Emma begat Leah, and Leah begat Carla, who was the first to make her bridal voyage through sub-space, a long journey faster than the speed of light itself”. We go from the Earth to the Moon with Joan, from the Moon to Pluto with Ariadne and from Pluto with Emma to Ullern, a planet reached on the spaceship Newhope through FTL travel. There the colonists meet aliens.

It is an epistolary story, initially told through letters written for Carla, a future descendant, and for future generations on Ullern.

This may sound like a typical space-exploration story as humans expand their influence to the stars. However, it is different in that although it is clearly writing a history, it shows the female of the species in a more positive and pro-active light than usual, even when at times it regresses to soap-opera. With that in mind, the story is perhaps proto-feminist and shows that the future is not just male heroism and gung-ho histrionics, but also about love, family, and personal sacrifice, as well as coming to grips with the fear created by travel into the unknown.

Pleasingly refreshing, this makes me think that this is the sort of story that Heinlein would like to write, but can’t quite reach. It is an example of how traditional science fiction can be given a modern update. 4 out of 5.

Aid to Nothing by P. F. Woods

And then a step down, from the author also known as Barrington J. Bayley. A story of conflict when a Martian tribe, the Sussorr, meets colonising humans. The Sussorr are receiving telepathic vibes from their neighbours the Tuaranth. The beginning reminds me of A. E. van Vogt’s The Black Destroyer, but it soon degenerates into a story where other parts read like a cut-rate Edgar Rice Burroughs. The sympathy is clearly with the peaceful Martians, emphasised by the cartoonish war-loving humans, led by a man annoyingly named Bungleton. 2 out of 5.

Three Short Stories by Thomas M. Disch

The return of Mr Disch, who recently exploded into the British magazines (and was perhaps most recently noted by our Noble Editor for his expletive-laden story in this month’s Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction), started well and yet recently has had stories published that to me felt like his writing is running out of steam.

The title tells it all – there are three stories. The first is a story told by a man to another about a girl he knew before she committed suicide. The storyteller is shot by a secret agent once he has told the story. In the second part, Thadeus and Diane are looking to move into a dilapidated New York apartment, where they discuss life and love before leaving. In the third piece, Mrs. Neary is on a ship that is sinking.

Lots of metaphor and clearly sentences that are meant to mean something, but the point of the stories seem to have passed me by. I’m sure that the stories means something to somebody, and that the three stories are connected in some way, but if they are it is all a bit beyond me. Disch can write – but this is still a bemusingly metaphorical disappointment.3 out of 5.

Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Key of the Door by Arthur Sellings

Arthur is an author much liked by Moorcock, so the return of this writer to New Worlds is not entirely a surprise. His last story was That Evening Sun Go Down in the September 1966 issue of New Worlds.

I had better just check, though. Are you aware in the US what the phrase “Key in the Door” means to us Brits? Just in case you’re not (and apologies if you are!) here it’s a turn of phrase to describe the rite of passage, reached at the mighty age of twenty-one, when according to the adage, the person is symbolically given the key of the door to a property. It really means that they are now an adult, with the freedom to do what they want in their future. Here such matters are turned into a light-hearted time-travel story that’s moderately humorous and not to be taken too seriously.

Victorian Godfrey is discovered to be using his father’s time machine, travelling to 1985 and 2035. There he saw his father dancing with a young lady, but is reluctant to tell his father this. To his father’s horror, Godfrey’s travelling has changed things in the future. As you may know, humour is very divisive and usually for me doesn’t do too well. This one is… fair. It provides a bit of lighter counterbalance to the rest of the issue. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews

I’m pleased to see the return of a book review column, even if it is for only one book! Guest reviewer Brian Aldiss reviews I. F. Clarke’s (no, not that one!) book, Voices Prophesying War 1763 – 1984. Brian goes through the book in some detail, pointing out the (mostly) positives and negatives of the book. It rather sounds like the sort of thing Olaf Stapledon was doing with First and Last Men – quite dry, but full of science-fictional ideas. Might be worth a look.

Summing up New Worlds / SF Impulse

Really this is a holding issue, in that it is the last before we get the new New Worlds in its new form, whatever that is. Whilst it is not quite the same as the “What do we have left?” issue of last month, it is still a little underwhelming. As you might expect, the Merril short novel dominates the issue at about 70 pages and is as good as I had hoped for, but it is a (revised?) reprint. The rest of the issue is lesser material. Even the Disch felt like sub-standard work.

And as is clearly explained in the beginning, that’s that.  Goodbye SF Impulse, hello New New Worlds!

It looks like Mr. Disch may be important. I’m hoping that this new material may be better than his recent efforts, good though they can be.

Until the next – whenever that is!



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Magazine, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 20, 1967] Vistas near and far (April 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

I see you!

We have now entered a phase of the Space Race where there's enough stuff in orbit that other stuff in orbit can take pictures of it.  Not just deliberate rendeszvous' like dual missions of Gemini 6 and 7, but snapshots of opportunity, like Gemini 11's photo of the Soviet Proton 3.

Last week, NASA released perhaps the most extraordinary example of this nature: the first snapshot of a spacecraft sent to the Moon…by a spacecraft sent to the Moon!  Lunar Orbiter 3, launched early last month, has been busily mapping our celestial neighbor, searching for the choicest landing spots for Apollo (whose first manned mission, I've just learned, has been delayed until next year due to the Apollo 1 fire.) In the course of its surveying, Lunar Orbiter 3 caught a glimpse of Surveyor 1, the first American soft-lander.  It all makes the Moon feel that much closer.

While the newspaper brings us tales of science fiction-made-fact, the stf mags continue to provide the visions of science-to-be.  The latest edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction offers several visions of the future: some poetic, some bleak, and some not really worth reading.  Good thing I'm here to tell you which is which, huh?

A pail of tomorrows


by Gray Morrow

Dawn, by Roger Zelazny

Lord Siddhartha, the Buddha, arrives as the capital for a bit of revelry.  There, he is greeted with honors, for he is a prince of this land, redolent with the smells of spice, the bustle of medieval commerce, the prayers of the devoted.  At first glance, Dawn seems as if it will be a pure fantasy in a richly drawn world.  But there are signs that underneath the veneer of ancient India lies a strictly scientific core.

Indeed, we learn quite soon that Siddhartha is actually Sam, one of the original colonists on this world, a planet whose technology has been deliberately restrained by the cabal of the Firsts and their lackeys, the Masters.  Their firm grip lies in their stranglehold on immortality, facilitated by their ability to transmigrate souls from body to body at will.

Sam wants to bring progress to the world.  Can he and his band of rebels undo the work of centuries?

Zelazny's latest novella is reportedly the first part of a longer work, to be titled "Lord of Light".  If it is as expertly rendered as this fine start, then it'll be a good read, indeed!

Four stars.

The Two Lives of Ben Coulter, by Larry Eisenberg

"The greatest disappointment of Ben Coulter's life was his inability to play the violin well."

So begins the tale of a fellow who turned instead to engineering for the purpose, failing to find it there until he co-developed a technique for the remote control of a living being.  Perhaps, at last, he could program mastery into himself.

Most science fiction authors take inspiration from the science news of the day.  Some, like Doc Smith, are actually scientists.  Larry Eisenberg is perhaps unique in the SF community for extrapolating a scientifiction application of his own invention, the remote controlled pacemaker.

His story, if not quite as personally affecting as his crowning scientific achievement, is a pleasant little piece, nonetheless.

Three stars.

Cloud Seeding, by Theodore L. Thomas

In this fictionless vignette, Thomas suggests combining cloud seeding with chemical distribution.  After all, if you're putting stuff in the sky to make rain, why not use fertilizer or poison of what have you.

Thomas forgets that the seeds for the raindrops are necessarily uselessly tiny.  I almost feel as though these little exercises are not to present interesting ideas, but are puzzles for the reader: spot the fallacy and win a hundred dollars!

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Problems of Creativeness, by Thomas M. Disch

The 21st Century is an overcrowded, socialist paradise.  Everyone is on the childless dole, unless they can prove themselves exceptional, finish college, or join the guerrila forces.  Birdie Ludd, the least exceptional of young men, doesn't want to do any of these things.  But for the love of Milly, pretty enough almost to be a movie star, he was willing to endure almost anything.

Less a story and more a slice-of-life from the perspective of an indolent youth, Problems relies mostly on a vivid stream-of-consciousness style and copious use of the first profanity I've read within F&SF's pages.

Three stars, I guess.

The Sword of Pell the Idiot, by Julian F. Grow

Farquhar Orpington-Pell, late a subaltern in Her Majesty's Own Midlothian Dragoons, falls in with a Western doctor on the late 19th Century range.  Their crooked path takes them to a subterranean complex inhabited by aliens.  Things Happen.  Supposed-to-be-funny-but-just-tedious things, capped off by the rather insulting punchline that the transpirings inspired a much better, well known set of books.

Feh.  One star.

"Virtue. 'Tis A Fugue!", by Patrick Meadows

An advanced world refuses the entreaties of humanity to join a terran federation.  Professor Thomas Gunn, a musicologist, provides the key to reaching the hearts of the aliens.  Their language is the culmination of tonality, you see, each sentence its own song.  Our hyper-efficient, sound-codified speak was too declassé to appeal.

It's all a lot of "mun, mun" to me, and in any event, the revelation came out of nowhere.  Indeed, Gunn's story and that of the contact team are completely unrelated until he suddenly appears on the planet in the story's last scenes.

Two stars.

A Matter of Scale, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor goes way out with his latest article.  You know those "the sun is a beachball, and the planets are various small fruit several hundred feet away" models you read in all the science books for kids?  He's decided to go one better, substituting atomic analogs so the distances can be more relatable.

I'm sure it was a fun exercise for him.

Three stars.

Randy's Syndrome, by Brian W. Aldiss

Lastly, another tale of the next, shoulder-to-shoulder, anti-utopian 21st Century.  The foetuses of the world go on strike, refusing to be born into such an awful place.  But is it really a mass strike of the unborn, happy in their womb world of racial memory and distorted, second-hand sensory inputs?  Or is it some kind of planetary neurosis of the mothers?

Whatever it is, it's not science fiction, more a modern myth.  Some might find it clever.

Two stars.

Under the Moon

After such a bright beginning, the April 1967 F&SF stumbles to a finish.  I recognize that science fiction is cautionary as well as aspirational, but I feel one needs to say more than "this future we're heading toward is gonna stink..and by the way, the future is now." 

The Zelazny is worth your time, however.

And, hey, at least the newspaper brings us pretty pictures!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 14, 1967] Family Matters (April 1967 Amazing)

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Today is the LAST day you can nominate for the Hugos.  Please consider voting for Galactic Journey for Best Fanzine.  And here are all the other categories we and our associates are eligible for this year!


by John Boston

The April Amazing splashes an impressive array of marquee names on the cover: Hugo winners Frank Herbert and Philip K. Dick, the well-remembered sardonic satirist William Tenn, and Richard Matheson and Jerome Bixby, famous not only from the printed page but from celebrated Twilight Zone episodes made from their stories.  The once prominent David H. Keller, M.D., is relegated to the inside of the magazine.


by Frank R. Paul

This blaze of celebrity serves to distract from the cover itself, which looks like it emerged from one of Frank R. Paul’s off days, though that is partly the fault of the present editorial regime; the picture is drastically cropped from its first appearance on the back cover of the July 1946 Fantastic Adventures, where it was considerably more impressive, though still far from the artist’s best.

This is one of the magazine’s accidental theme issues; I can’t speak for the serial yet, but the majority of the short fiction is at least partly preoccupied with domesticity, its meaning and its travails.

The Heaven Makers (Part 1 of 2), by Frank Herbert


by Gray Morrow

Frank Herbert’s The Heaven Makers is a two-part serial, and as usual I will wait for the end before commenting.  The blurb says it “offers the chilling hypothesis that all the world really is a stage with each of us . . . its players.” How many times have we read that one?  To be fair, new ideas are scarce these days, and treatment is all; it’s not the meat, it’s the motion, as a salacious old blues song has it.  A quick glance at the first page reveals the dense and turgid writing for which Herbert has become known.  To be fair (again), his virtues sometimes take longer to announce themselves than his faults.

The Last Bounce, by William Tenn


by Henry Sharp

William Tenn’s The Last Bounce, from the September 1950 Fantastic Adventures, is a remarkably bad story for the writer who at the time was several years past the classic Child’s Play and whose almost as well-known Null-P was a few months away.  It’s a tale of stellar exploration, complete with mystery planet, deadly monsters, scientific mumbo-jumbo, and clichéd characters and dialogue.  There’s even an embarrassing spacemen’s anthem, which shows up more than once.  And domesticity (or its absence) rears its head!  There is considerable musing about Why Men Risk All to Brave the Unknown and Why Their Women Put Up With It and Wait for Them.  It would be nice to be able to read this as satire, but I can’t convince myself.  More likely, Tenn made a barroom bet that he could write the most hackneyed piece of tripe he was capable of and some editor would buy it.  You win!  One star.

A Biological Experiment, by David H. Keller, M.D.

David H. Keller, M.D., is here with A Biological Experiment, from Amazing, June 1928—his third published story.  The blurb says, correctly, that it anticipates 1932’s Brave New World.  (You know the one about tragedy and farce?  Here it’s the other way around.) Here is a veritable epic of domestic relations.  Like Keller’s first story, Revolt of the Pedestrians, this one posits an extreme departure from our natural (well, familiar) social arrangements followed by a drastic reaction and restoration of the traditional.  Unfortunately there’s entirely too much talk here, and the action that follows it is cartoonish.


by Frank R. Paul

In the far future everyone is sterilized at an appropriate age; marriage is “companionate,” easily terminable, and babies are made in factories and provided to couples who apply for and obtain the necessary permit.  But Leuson and Elizabeth, a couple of young rebels, want to go back to the old ways.  Why?  Because no one is happy!  Love has disappeared from the world! 

So says Leuson, towards the end of a seven-page monologue.  (Elizabeth says, midway through: “Tell me again why they are not happy.  I have heard you tell it before but tell me again.  I want to hear it out here in the wilderness where we are alone—together.”) Leuson has stolen some books from the Library of Congress, where he works, to learn the history and how to survive the old-fashioned way.  The happy couple elopes (a word Leuson discovered in his research) to live happily in a mountain cave, along the way capturing a goat to milk.  Unfortunately, far from modern medicine, Elizabeth dies in childbirth (good idea, that goat).  Along the way it has been revealed that this was a covertly sponsored rebellion; the couple’s parents have subtly nudged them along towards this destiny.

And now, the plan’s consummation, at the annual meeting in Washington of the National Society of Federated Women!  “Five thousand leaders of their sex had gathered for the meeting and every woman in the nation was listening to the proceedings over the radio.” Leuson appears, carrying a basket, and reprises his seven-page lecture.  “On and on he talked and as he talked there arose in the hearts of the women who listened a strange unrest and hunger for something that had once been their heritage.”

And at the end of this spiel . . . “He reached down into the basket and, picking up his daughter, held the baby high above the heads of the five thousand women and showed them a baby, born of the love of a man and a woman in a home.” The finale: “And as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, the women of the nation cried in unison: ‘Give us back our homes, our husbands, and our babies!’” Fade to black.

Whew!  Two overripe stars, barely.

Little Girl Lost, by Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson’s Little Girl Lost (Amazing, October/November 1953) is a capable potboiler, efficiently recycling with stock characters a stock plot of the 1940s and ‘50s—domesticity upended by the weird and threatening.  Young Tina disappears in her living room; her parents Chris and Ruth can hear her but not see her or figure out where she is.  What to do in the wee hours with an invisible child but call Chris’s friend Bill, “an engineering man, CalTech, top man with Lockheed over in the valley.” Bill quickly susses it out: “I think she’s in another dimension.” (Later, he adds, “probably the fourth.”) Meanwhile, in the spirit of the times, Ruth is more or less continuously hysterical.


by Ray Houlihan

And so is the dog, but to better effect.  He’s whining and scratching to be let in, and when he is admitted—to keep from waking the neighbors—he runs straight to the dimensional hole the people can’t see, and now little Tina has company.  Soon enough, Chris blunders partly into the hole, grabs kid and dog, and Bill pulls him out by his legs, which are protruding into our dimension.  Domestic tranquility is restored, and they switch the couch and the TV so if anything goes through again it will be Arthur Godfrey.  It’s facile and economical, and perfectly fashioned for TV; it made one of the better Twilight Zone episodes five years or so ago.  Three stars.

Small Town, by Philip K. Dick


by Bernard Krigstein

Philip K. Dick’s Small Town (Amazing, May 1954) is equally domestic, but not quite as domesticated, as the Matheson story.  Here, the strains of a bad marriage exacerbated by an oppressive job burst out into the larger world.  Verne Haskel doesn’t get along with his wife, hates his job, and finds comfort only in his basement, where, starting with an electric train layout, he has built a scale model of the entire town and tinkers with it constantly.  As his frustrations build, he begins tearing things out of his faithful representation and remaking the model town, culminating in ripping out Larson’s Pump & Valve, the site of his torment, stomping it to pieces, and replacing it with a mortuary.  And, of course, it turns out reality (or “reality”—this is after all PKD) now conforms to the fruits of Haskel’s tantrum—and things end with a suggestion (this is after all PKD) that there’s a higher power than Haskel keeping an eye on things.

Three stars, more lustrous than Matheson’s to my taste.

Angels in the Jets, by Jerome Bixby


by Paul Lundy

The issue winds up with Jerome Bixby’s Angels in the Jets (Fantastic, Fall 1952).  At least one person likes this story; Frederik Pohl anthologized it in his 1954 anthology Assignment in Tomorrow.  I disliked it when I read that book, and it hasn’t improved much since.  Intrepid space explorers land on an inviting planet; one crew member is inadvertently directly exposed to its atmosphere, which renders her psychotic; she contrives to expose everyone else; and the protagonist, who has been out exploring while all this was going on, returns to the prospect of living in isolation as long as his bottled air holds out, or giving up, joining the crowd, and becoming psychotic right away.  (Not much domesticity here, except for the hints of the deranged social order, or disorder, emerging among the psychotics.) A story that starts out at a dead end and consists of reaffirmations that it’s a dead end is not much of a story to my taste.  But at least it’s well written.  Two stars.

Summing Up

Hey, it's been worse in this bottom-of-the-market magazine.  We have pretty readable and competent stories by Dick and Matheson and an amusing bad period piece by Keller, balanced against lackluster pieces by Tenn and Bixby; and the brooding prospect of Frank Herbert at length looms over it all as final judgment is postponed.  Redemption?  Maybe. To paraphrase generations of disgruntled baseball fans: Wait till next issue.

[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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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

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

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by Gideon Marcus

Not with a Bang

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

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

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

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


by Douglas Chaffee

A Vast Wasteland

Thunderhead, Keith Laumer

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

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


by Gray Morrow

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

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

Thus, a pleasant three stars, but no more.

Fair Test, by Robin Scott

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

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

Two stars.

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

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

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

The New Member, Christopher Anvil

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

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

One star.

The Young Priests of Adytum 199, James McKimmey

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

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

The Purpose of Life, Hayden Howard

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

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

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

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

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


by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

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

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

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

Within the Cloud, Piers Anthony

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

Trivial stuff.  Two stars.

Ballenger's People, Kris Neville

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

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

You Men of Violence, Harry Harrison

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

Rather obvious and somewhat pointless.  Two stars.

Gasping for breath

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

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



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

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

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by David Levinson

Method or madness?

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

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


New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison

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

Reversion to the mean

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


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

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

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


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

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

A solid, but not quite high three stars.

The Fantasque, by James McKimmey

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

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

A high two stars.

Retief, War Criminal, by Keith Laumer

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


Retief to the rescue. Art by Gaughan

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

Three stars.

It’s New York in ‘67!, by Lin Carter

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

Three stars.

The Ethics of Madness, by Larry Niven

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


Doug Hooker flees Plateau. Art by Castellon

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

Four stars.

It Takes All Kinds, by Bruce W. Ronald

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

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

Just barely three stars.

The Accomplice, by Vernor Vinge

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

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

Three stars, purely for the vision

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

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

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

Two stars.

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

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


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

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

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

Summing up

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

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


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




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 28, 1967] The Big Stall (March 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Big Push

After a year of build-up, air raids, and smaller actions, the United States and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam have opened up the largest offensive of the war.  Operation Junction Central involves some 50,000 troops pouring into the logistical heart of VC-controlled South Vietnam west of Saigon.  Their goal: to find the communist equivalent of the "Pentagon".  It's a classic hammer and anvil style operation, with nearly a thousand paratroopers forming the brunt of the anvil behind enemy lines.  The push is accompanied by the biggest logistical bombing raid we've seen in weeks.

Whether this colossal effort will bear fruit remains to be seen.  The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army have only seemed to grow despite constant combat.  More and more often, the fights occur on even, conventional terms rather than as furtive guerrila efforts.

But with half a million soldiers "in country", I suppose it was time to do something.  Perhaps the momentum of operations will switch to the allied forces.

Business as Usual

Analog editor John Campbell seems unaware that institutional decay has set in.  And with no great competitors from without, he is unwilling to change a formula for his magazine that has remained for the past two decades.  I suppose that, as long as he sells more than everyone else, he doesn't need to.

On the other hand, I read that Analog's monthly distribution is down from the 200K+ it enjoyed early in the decade.  Maybe the wolves at the door will instigate a sea change.  Or a palace coup…

In any event, until that happen (note the subjunctive mood), we can expect more issues like the one for March 1967.  Dull.  Uninspiring.


by John Schoenherr

The Time-Machined Saga (Part 1 of 3), by Harry Harrison

Harrison once again displays his near interchangibility with Keith Laumer, at least when he writes "funny" stuff (his dramatic prose is a notch above Laumer's, I think).  This serial involves a film company on the verge of bankruptcy.  Salvation appears in the form of a time machine.  Said "vremeatron" will not be used to alter history, purloin lost treasures from the past, or other, potentially lucrative (but old hat) endeavors.  No, instead, the movie house is going to travel back to A.D. 1000 to film the True Story of Leif Erickson…Hollywood style.

Said on-location filming will cut costs dramatically: no need to hire extras, no unions, and best of all, since the time machine can come back to the moment after it departed, no time involved!  (the production company still gets paid for the time it spends in the past, though).  What could go wrong?

I suspect we'll get the answer to that question next installment.

A tepid three stars thus far.  I could take it or leave it.

Radical Center, by Mack Reynolds


by John Schoenherr

In a piece designed for Campbell's reactionary heart, Reynolds writes about a time in the not-too-distant future when the trends of apathy, crime, and downright down-on-Americanism have reached a zenith.  A hack journalist, badly in need of a story, posits an imaginary illuminati bringing this malaise upon us intentionally.

Little does he know how right he is.

I can't help but deplore the sentiment behind and suffused into this piece.  Next, we'll have stories about how long hair is Ruining Society.  On the other hand, I feel Reynolds has something when suggests that unscrupulous forces will utilize apathy of the masses to allow their comparatively small blocs to sway policy.  Also, I really liked the line, regarding a clown of a politician, "He was laughed into office."

So two stars and a wrinkled nose.

Countdown for Surveyor, by Joseph Green

My eyes lit up at the title of this one.  I love pieces on the Space Race, and this inside dope promised to be exciting.

It wasn't.  It's as dull as reciting a checklist, and three times as long.

Two stars.

In the Shadow, by Michael Karageorge


by Kelly Freas

After a short piece (probably by Campbell) about ball lightning and free-floating plasma (interesting so far as it goes), we have the latest story by Michael Karageorge, whoever he is.

The space ship Shikari is exploring a new gravitational source zooming through our solar system.  It emits no light, but it has the mass of a star.  Is it a cold "black dwarf"?  A rogue neutron star?  Or something else entirely?

The characterization in this one can be reduced to a set of 3×5" index cards each with two or three words on them.  Things like "irritable, downtrodden genius".  "Absent-minded professor."  "Weeping woman."  "Comforting woman." 

On the other hand, the science is pretty neat, even if I don't buy it for a minute. 

I didn't hate it.  It's not as good as Karageorge's first story, though.  Three stars.

The Uninvited Guest, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

A shiny ellipsoid appears on a launch pad and starts to take nibbles out of everything: walls, roads, machinery, people.  It appears invulnerable to attack, but it also seems to be of failing vitality.  The problem, it is deduced, is that if the thing dies entirely, it will explode with the power of an atom bomb.

Can the alien visitor be thwarted or succored before time runs out?

For an Anvil story, it's not bad.  Which means a high two or a low three.  I'm feeling charitable today.

The Compleat All-American, by R. C. FitzPatrick


by Kelly Freas

A young man, good at anything he wants to be, is dragooned by his father into playing football.  His remarkable abilities, largely consisting of not getting hurt and performing miracles with the pigskin when under pressure, catch the eye of two government investigators.

After fifteen pages of shaggy dog fluff, we learn that said All-American is invulnerable and unstoppable.  He also, luckily, has no ambition.  Three more shaggy pages of dog fluff follow this revelation.

I guess this is what's under the barrel.  One star.

What's the score?

Half way around the world, forces clash in a titanic struggle between Democracy and Communism.  Or maybe it's pitched fight between a downtrodden people and the venal imperialists and their running dog lackeys.  However you characterize it, Something Big is Happening.

But here on the pages of Campbell's mag, not much of interest is happening at all.  Analog finishes at just 2.3 stars, by far the worst mag of the month.  Above it are Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6), Fantastic (3.2), New Worlds (3.25), and IF (3.3). 

Things are actually worse than it seems.  Only the last of these mags was really outstanding (Fantastic is mostly reprints, New Worlds was basically an Aldiss novel with a few vignettes for ballast).

Adding insult to injury, just one woman-penned story came out this month, and there were only 25 pieces of fiction in all the magazines, period. 

Something's gotta change soon.  This can't go on forever…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 24, 1967] Changes Coming (New Worlds and SF Impulse, March 1967)

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

In the world of British SF magazines, things have moved since last time we spoke. In the comments on my review of SF Impulse last month, my colleague Kris here at Galactic Journey gave me the news from the BSFA magazine Vector that despite the publishers going bankrupt, Brian Aldiss has managed to secure a deal with the British Arts Council for funds. This has propped up New Worlds for a while. But notice – the funding is just for New Worlds.

So something has had to give. As a result, the two magazines have merged from this issue, hence the new banner heading (even if sf impulse is in much smaller type – expect to see that disappear soon!)

To be fair, though, I have noticed over the last few months that the magazines have become very similar to each other anyway – both have had book reviews, letters pages and even the same roster of writers flitting between the two magazines. It almost makes me wonder if the editors Mike Moorcock and Keith Roberts (with a helping hand from Harry Harrison) had an inkling…

Anyway, all of this is explained in Moorcock’s editorial, entitled “Changes Coming”. Understandably, lots of praise for Aldiss and all of those who fought for New Worlds with the Arts Council. It looks like the magazine may have survived (again) – at least for a while.

To the New Worlds/SF Impulse issue.


Report on Probability A by Brian W. Aldiss

And after the praise already heaped upon Brian, here’s some more.

According to Moorcock’s Editorial, Brian has donated his story to the magazine. Knowing that funds are tight (ie: non-existent) Brian, like all of the other contributors this month, have given this complete novel of over 100 pages for free (or at least a minimal amount.)

That’s the plus-point. Readers may be less happy knowing that, like last month’s Just Passing Through in SF Impulse, this is Brian in experimental mode. Anyone expecting a humourous Aldiss story or a more-straightforward science fiction story may be disappointed.

Mr and Mrs Mary are being observed from three different perspectives by ex-employees of Mr and Mrs Mary, which make up this report. G is a gardener who watches Mr and Mrs Mary from a summerhouse. S is an ex-secretary who does the same from an outhouse in the back garden. C, the ex-chauffeur, is in the loft of the garage close to the Mary’s house. We have a story divided up into different perspectives and written in three different sections (The number three seems important here!) It is a story of surveillance, about observation and effect of being observed. Therefore, lots of meticulous descriptions of what the observers and Mr and Mrs Mary are doing follows.

The reason for this observation slowly becomes apparent when we realise that the observers and the observed are being watched themselves by Domoladossa and Midlakemela, aliens who think that this observation of “Probability A” is important. (It seems that the universe has a number of probabilities, of which this is just one.)

And then we get to the point that Domoladossa and Midlakemela, who are watching the observers watching Mr. and Mrs. Mary, are being watched themselves by The Distinguishers, who are in turn being watched…. confused yet?

It is easy in some ways to see why not a lot happens – although that seems to be the point. The dialogue reminded me a little of Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter in its stylistic brevity and manner – something that with Aldiss’s literary bent I am sure is no coincidence. It is also weirdly voyeuristic – much of what is described seems mundane and of little consequence, yet I found myself wanting to keep reading.

I guess that the reason for these descriptions of the obvious, whilst they may seem very boring to me/us, is that the world of the Mary’s and their observers is being described for those who have never seen it before. It shows us our world as others see us. Together these viewpoints create a mosaic of often rather mundane events – lots of talk of processed fish, factory strikes, the weather (especially rain.) It’s all rather British and summarises perhaps how others see us.

Interestingly, the constant watching and the events observed makes the whole thing feel claustrophobic and unsettling. Have you ever felt you’ve been watched? Here you are!

There are a lot of unanswered questions. Whilst we are told that ‘it’ may be important, what is the purpose of the surveillance? Is it just to observe? And why is it the Mary family that are being observed? Mrs. Mary is described at one point to perhaps being “the key to everything”, although we are not always clear what “everything” is. Is it something creepy or even malicious?

This may not be to everyone’s tastes – despite Moorcock pointing out on the back cover that it is “perhaps his most brilliant work to date”, the lack of a plot makes it rather against the usual grain. I suppose that it is this that has made the novel a hard sell – I understand that this story has been around a while before being published – but it is one that kept me thinking. Does feel a tad too long, though. Nevertheless, it has stayed with me since reading, a sign that the story has made an impact. 4 out of 5.

The Ersatz Wine by Chris Priest

A story of multiple narratives all chopped up into a jumbled tale. A story of nothing turned into a confusing nothing that plays with form but is probably a story where the form is more important than the narrative. 3 out of 5.

The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race by J. G. Ballard

Ah – the now predictable scenario of J. G. using contemporary people and elements to tell his downbeat cut-up tale. Before we’ve seen included JFK, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe amongst others. However, I’m not sure about this one where the events of the assassination are turned into a motor race. For example, Oswald starts the race by firing his gun, Kennedy is disqualified at the hospital for taking a turn for the worse, Johnson takes the lead and wins the race.

Although it happened a good 18 months ago, Kennedy’s assassination still feels quite recent to me, and perhaps too recent to become something of amusement. It feels wrong, like making a joke about the poor Apollo astronauts recently would be. Is the use of JFK here to shock, to be controversial? Possibly. As satire, I guess it can be seen to be puncturing the balloon of pretentiousness that often surrounds public figures. Does it work? Not sure… despite the description on the back cover (see below) about it being witty and filled with deeply-considered comment, I really get the impression Ballard finds this all very funny, but if it is, to me it’s a one-trick joke stretched too far. 3 out of 5.

Hunger’s End by Robert Cheetham

Another recently emerged writer in these pages. An odd allegorical tale that deals with expense, perfection and beauty and how a hunger for what you desire may be more important than mere functionality. Well, that and a sea sponge that bites a woman’s finger off. 2 out of 5.

No Book reviews or letters pages this month.

Summing up New Worlds / SF Impulse

As the back cover shows, there’s clearly a need to advertise the magazine this month. Obviously, I am pleased to see anything from New Worlds / SF Impulse. There was a point where I didn’t expect anything. With all of that stuff going on in the background it is rather difficult to judge the magazine purely on its written material. Brian’s novel is oddly memorable, but I’m not entirely sure that it works. Praise should be given in that it epitomises the brave new world of the New Wave, but like most of that work I suspect that it will receive as much criticism as praise. The Ballard is typical Ballard, but – dare I say it – not perhaps his best. Priest still underwhelms and Cheetham’s story, by comparison with the Aldiss and Ballard, is very much a lesser item in the issue.

But I guess we should be grateful to read ANYTHING this month. As we will be next month.

Until the next!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 20, 1967] To Ashes (March Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Kaye Dee

Tasmania’s Black Tuesday

The poet Miss Dorothea Mackellar refers to Australia as a “sunburnt” country, but the recent devastation in Tasmania reminds us that Australia is also very much a “sun-burned” country.
Bushfire disasters are nothing new in Australia, but the horrific catastrophe of 7 February, which has already been dubbed “Black Tuesday”, ranks as one of the worst this country has experienced. In less than a day, 62 people were killed (the second largest number in the nation’s bushfire history) and more than 900 injured. Almost 1300 homes are believed lost and over 1700 other buildings destroyed. It has been estimated that at least 62,000 farm animals have also perished.

After a long dry spell, it seems that an unfortunately “ideal” combination of weather factors on the 7th led to the disaster. Across southern Tasmania, the island state that lies to the south of the Australian mainland, there were already extremely high temperatures (the maximum was 102 °F!) and very low humidity when intense winds from the northwest fanned a number of bushfires burning in remote areas into raging infernos.

110 separate fire fronts burned through around 652,000 acres in the space of just five hours! Within a forty mile radius around Hobart, the state capital, many towns and rural properties have experienced significant damage: twelve towns have been completely destroyed. Even Hobart itself has not escaped unscathed, with hundreds of homes and businesses razed, including the famous Cascade Brewery. With most communications and services cut, thousands were evacuated to Hobart at the height of the emergency, and it is believed that up to 7000 people are now homeless. The total damage bill is already being estimated at a staggering $40,000,000 Australian dollar values! But recovery efforts are underway and help is pouring into the “Apple Isle” from all over Australia. Southern Tasmania will rise from the ashes, but recovery will be a long process that will take many years.


by Gideon Marcus

Literal tragedy

Kaye's tragedy is heartbreaking, the sort of thing one for which one flees into fiction.  Sadly, the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction offers little in the way of solace.

Sooty pages


by Jack Gaughan (these folks don't actually appear this issue…)

The Sea Change, by Jean Cox

The editors Ferman have saved perhaps their best for first.  A young failure, son of a brilliant marine biologist who committed suicide at the height of his career, attempts one final emulation of his father.  In a poignant scene, he doffs his clothes, dives into the water, and drowns.

But rather than die, he finds himself kept alive via a biological symbiote on his back.  He is welcomed into an underwater commune of sorts, a living socialism of sea creatures for which his hands and intellect are desired additional traits.  Recruited to dispose of their failed attempts to create humans underwater, he is faced with a choice: a blissful existence as part of a hive mind underwater, or a sorrowful existence as an independent failure on dry land.

In a way, this tale is the opposite of Bob Sheckley's Pusher, one of my very favorite stories.  Sea Change is beautifully written, but I found the end unconvincing, and the decision disappointing.

It teeters on the edge of four stars, but just misses, I think.

The Investor, Bruce Jay Friedman

Odd piece about a stock broker whose pulse becomes directly tied to the share price of one of his investments.  I think it's supposed to be satire?

Two stars.

Zoomen, Fred Hoyle

On a trip in the Scottish Highlands, a fellow is scooped up by aliens and imprisoned on a ship with eight other humans of many backgrounds, four men and four women.  Our hero believes that they are destined to be seeding stock for an interstellar menagerie.  Clues include the even gender make-up, their indifferent treatment, and their rough conditioning (made to be nauseated as a goad). 

This tale is nicely written, a bit reminiscent of the beginning of Hoyle's October the First is Too Late, which also started with a Scottish trek.  Like that novel, but even more so, the ending is a let down, and without any of the attendant philosophical interest.

Three stars.

The Long Night, Larry Niven

A momentary uptick with this bagatelle, a variation on the deal with the devil theme.  A student of magic decides to cap his doctoral thesis by summoning a demon.  Of course, now his soul is forfeit, unless he asks for the right gift–and uses it to its fullest.

It's fun, and apparently utilizes the author's B.S. in Mathematics.

Four stars.

Relic, Mack Reynolds

Like all mountains, once one reaches the summit, it's all downhill from there.  In this tale, we meet an octogenarian Lord Greystoke, now mostly insane and very violent.  The slightest affront sends him into a murderous rage, and he soon builds up a trail of bodies, punctuating each kill with an ululating bull gorilla roar.

Another "funny" piece.  I din't like it.

Two stars.

Crowded!, by Isaac Asimov

It's been nearly a decade since Dr. A started this column, and of late, he's been running out of ideas.  He's back to geographic lists, taking a hodgepodge of mildly interesting facts from almanacs and atlases.  This time, it's a list of "great cities" (over a million residents) and their world distribution.

I've got an atlas, too, Isaac.  A couple of 'em.

Three stars.

The Little People, by John Christopher

Which leaves us with the much-anticipated conclusion of the serial.  In the first installment, we were introduced to Bridget, heir to a dilapidated Irish hostel…and a secret.  After her first group of neurotic guests have been assembled, they find hints that the place is inhabited by Little People. 

In Part 2, we find that they are not of magical provenance at all, but are actually tiny Jews, forced into diminution and then tortured by an exiled Nazi scientist.  Much brouhaha is made regarding their disposition.  I assumed Part 3 would resolve the outstanding threads.

It does not.  Instead, each of the lodgers has some sort of vision, mostly unpleasant.  A good forty pages is taken up with these nightmares in which the eponymous tiny ones make no appearance whatsoever.  In the end, the episodes are explained as some kind of ESP-as-torment, and the manor is abandoned.

It's the worst of cop-outs, redolent with sex.  I'm afraid no amount of attempts to titilate can cover the fact that there's no there there.

Two stars for this segment, and two and a half for the serial as a whole.  I prefer consistent mediocrity to an undelivered promise.

Scorched Earth

And that's that!  A disappointing 2.7 star issue with only one unalloyed success, and that one very short.  In the latest Yandro, Don & Maggie Thompson maintained that F&SF is the best of the SF mags.  That may have been true a decade ago.  It hasn't been true in a while.

Just as Tasmania may rebuild, so F&SF could return to greatness.  I just hope I live long enough to see it…


by Gahan Wilson (by way of Mack Reynolds, it seems…)



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 12, 1967] All's Fair in Love and War (March 1967 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Peace on Earth? No. Peace Above Earth? Maybe.

With the conflict in Vietnam growing ever more bloody, and tensions building between the Soviet Union and China, it seems that war is here to stay on this sad little planet. Dare we look to the skies for a way to escape this endless chaos?

Although humanity is just starting to take its first baby steps into the cosmos, some folks are trying to make sure that it will be filled with plowshares instead of swords. Late last month, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union signed the so-called Outer Space Treaty.


President Lyndon Baines Johnson shakes hands with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin at the signing ceremony. Barely visible between them are British ambassador Sir Patrick Dean and American ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg. I think that's American Secretary of State Dean Rusk at the podium. Don't ask me who the other folks are.

The agreement is formally known as The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. That's quite a mouthful, but what does it mean?

In brief, it bans nuclear weapons in space; limits use of the Moon and other extraterrestrial bodies to peaceful purposes; and prevents any nation from claiming sovereignty over any region of space or any celestial body. Of course, only three countries have signed it so far, and any treaty is only a piece of paper, so we'll have to wait to see what really happens outside the atmosphere. Hope for the best.

Monkeying Around With My Heart

Let's turn our backs on war and look for romance. Love songs are always popular, and the current Number One hit in the USA is no exception. The upbeat number I'm a Believer by the Monkees has been at the top of the charts since early January, and shows no signs of fading away.


And all this time I thought they were just a fictional band created for a television situation comedy.

Tales of Mars and Venus

The latest issue of Fantastic is full of stories involving wars, both large and small, as well as amorous relationships between women and men. Sometimes both themes show up in the same yarn.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

This issue, unsurprisingly, features one new story and a bunch of reprints. The cover illustration is also from an old magazine.


The May 1939 issue of Fantastic Adventures, to be exact.

Happiness Squad, by Charles W. Runyon


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

A personal war meets love gone very bad in the opening of the only original story in the magazine. A man places a timebomb in his wife's flying car, so it will explode during her flight to visit her mother. After this stark beginning, we learn something about this future world, and the man's place in it.

In the tradition of Aldous Huxley's famous novel Brave New World, this is a society bent on eliminating unhappiness through the use of drugs. It has also nearly wiped out the ability of human beings to perform acts of violence on each other, in a way reminiscent of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange.

In addition to that, it also manipulates memories, in such a way that it can give people completely new identities. The uxoricidal protagonist accidentally discovers that he was once a brilliant plastic surgeon, who transformed an unattractive woman into a raving beauty. The woman, with the help of the man's rival, then altered his memory so that he imagines himself to be her loving husband.

Because of his programmed aversion to violence, the man sabotages all his attempts to kill the woman he blames for ruining his life. (Besides everything else, he also lost the woman he really loves, who had her memory altered in such a way that she now works in a brothel.) Unable to perform the murder himself, he hires one of the very few people who avoided the programming to do the dirty work. (This fellow was one of the rare folks born on Mars who survived a failed colony and escaped to Earth.)


The killer, the victim, and the man who hired him.

There's a twist ending that changes everything we thought we knew. Without giving too much away, I interpret the conclusion as implying yet another reversal, which the author leaves unwritten. I may be reading too much into this, but what remains unsaid is just as powerful as what is made explicit, I believe.

I have a hard time giving a fair rating to this very disturbing story. It's not exactly pleasant to read, but it held my attention from the beginning to the (incomplete?) end. It's nearly impossible to sympathize with any of the characters, even if they're not really responsible for the kind of people they've been manipulated into becoming. The subtle implications of the conclusion may just be in my imagination. In short, I think I like this story more than I should, if that makes any sense at all.

Four stars.

Shifting Seas, by Stanley G. Weinbaum

The April 1937 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this apocalyptic work from the pen of a pioneering author who died much too young.


Cover art by Leo Morey.

Gigantic volcanic explosions and earthquakes rip apart the isthmus of Central America, driving most of the land under the sea. Besides the immediate deaths of millions, this changes the flow of the Gulf Stream, so that much of Europe becomes much colder. The crisis alters political alliances. In particular, war between the United States and a desperate Europe, led by the sea power of the United Kingdom, seems imminent.


Illustration also by Leo Morey.

Besides war, we also have love. The protagonist is an American man engaged to a British woman. The impending conflict threatens to destroy their relationship, until the man comes up with a way to solve the problem without a clash of arms.

The premise is an interesting one, and I liked the way the author considered the political implications of a major change in world climate. The resolution may be a little too simple, and the narrative style a bit old-fashioned, but the story creates a decent sense of wonder.

Three stars.

Judson's Annihilator, by John Beynon

An author now better known as John Wyndham supplies this war story, which first appeared in a British publication under the title Beyond the Screen.


Cover art by Serge Drigin. This issue, number one of only three ever published, is dated 1938, without specifying the month.

It was quickly reprinted in the October 1939 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

In true Astounding/Analog style, a lone genius invents gizmos producing fields that make anything inside them disappear. When combined German and Italian forces send a huge number of planes to attack England, the devices cause the aircraft to vanish.


Illustration also by Robert Fuqua.

The inventor's sister falls into the field produced by one of the machines and disappears. The hero, in love with her, follows her into it. As the reader suspects by this point, the invention doesn't really destroy what passes through the field, but sends it somewhere else. The place turns out to be an England inhabited by a small number of people living in a primitive way. With the help of a local woman, the hero and his beloved escape from the clutches of the Germans who went through the field.

There's a nice little twist about where they've wound up that is mentioned in passing, but nothing much comes of it. The plot is pretty straightforward once the hero enters the field. I found the imaginary version of World War Two the most interesting part of the story. Other than that, it's a pretty typical science fiction adventure.

Three stars.

Battle in the Dawn, by Manly Wade Wellman

From the January 1939 issue of Amazing Stories comes this vision of the remote past.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua again.

Apparently, this is the first of a series of stories about a caveman named Hok. In this tale, his tribe is moving to better hunting grounds when they run into Neanderthals. Contrary to what modern anthropologists think, these are bestial creatures, who attack the group of Homo sapiens and even kill a baby and eat it. Obviously, a war between the two species begins.


Illustrations also by the ubiquitous Robert Fuqua.

After an initial triumph over the subhumans, Hok steals a woman from a rival tribe of Homo Sapiens, in order to make her his mate. She objects, going so far as to threaten to kill herself if he doesn't let her go. Eventually, the first kiss in history makes the woman fall in love with her captor, and the two tribes unite against the Neanderthals.


Not to mention other challenges.

With nearly three decades of hindsight, it's easy to dismiss this story as a very inaccurate portrait of prehistory. It might better be thought of as a sword-and-sorcery yarn, without swords and without sorcery. The Neanderthals are monsters, the hero is a brave warrior with a beautiful woman to win, and so forth. As such, it's a fair example of the form.

Three stars.

The Draw, by Jerome Bixby

The March 1954 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this tale of the Old West, where war often consisted of one man against another.


Cover art by Clarence Doore.

You may have already seen it in a paperback collection of the author's stories that came out a few years ago.


Cover art by Ralph Brillhart.

An onery teenager — we'd call him a juvenile delinquent these days — is an excellent marksman, but not good at all when it comes to pulling his pistol from his holster. This is the only factor that keeps him from becoming an infamous killer.


Illustrations by William Ashman.

Through sheer force of will, he develops the telekinetic ability to instantaneously transport his gun to his hand, making him the deadliest gunman around. After terrorizing the local townsfolk, he challenges the sheriff to a gunfight. As you'd expect, things don't go well for him.


A scene from Gunsmoke?

I don't have a lot to say about this story. The ending is somewhat anticlimactic, but there's nothing particularly wrong with it. The usual Western clichés are present, which may be inevitable.

Three stars.

Masters of Fantasy: A. Merritt Illustrated, by Anonymous

The magazine ends with a few drawings by Frank R. Paul that accompanied a reprint of Abraham Merritt's 1919 fantasy novel The Moon Pool, which was serialized in Amazing Stories in the May, June, and July 1927 issues.


I guess this is the Moon Pool.


All cover art by Frank R. Paul as well.


I didn't notice the frog people at first.


I'm guessing this is a scene from The Moon Pool.


Is she doing the Twist?


Caution! Mad Scientist at Work!

What can I say? Three stars.

Fighting for Something to Love

In this magazine full of love and war, the stories were fair. Not that great, not that bad. I predict that Runyon's new novelette is going to produce strong reactions, both positive and negative. The reprints are likely to be less controversial.

As for the choice between the two great themes I've noted, it seems like an easy one.


Somebody came up with this catchy slogan a couple of years ago, and now you can get it on a poster.

 



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