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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 12, 1965] Doldrumming (December 1965 Amazing)

November 12, 2020 John Boston 5 Comments

by John Boston

Off Days

The December Amazing, boasting Cordwainer Smith, Murray Leinster, Edmond Hamilton, Robert Sheckley, and Chad Oliver, looks promising despite the hideous front cover by Hector Castellon. Unfortunately, the unifying theme of the issue is Off Days of Big Names.

by Hector Castellon

But first, let’s survey the terrain. The Smith and Leinster stories are new, and informed rumor has it they are the first purchases of the new editor after the exhaustion of Cele Lalli’s leavings. They are long, so the three reprints make up a smaller proportion of the magazine than in the previous issue, less than half of the total page count. Almost all the the issue’s contents are fiction. The editorial is one page, as is the letter column, and that’s it: no article, no book reviews.

The editorial by Joseph Ross cocks a fairly vapid snook at outside critics of SF, most recent example being Kurt Vonnegut, who isn’t entirely outside, and the letter column—both the letters and the editor’s responses—are calculated to cheer on the magazine and celebrate the true pulp quill, with a sideswipe at the previous editor’s attempts at something a little more elevated.

Killer Ship (Part 2 of 2), by Murray Leinster

The longest item is the conclusion of Murray Leinster’s serial Killer Ship, which inhabits the subgenre of Reactionary Science Fiction. This is not a political designation, but a description of stories that suggest—nay, insist—that the future will, conveniently for the lazy reader and writer, not be much different from the past. This one began last issue with: “He came of a long line of ship-captains, which probably explains the whole matter.”

by Norman Nodel

There follows a genealogy of the protagonist Captain Trent’s space- and sea-faring ancestors back to the eighteenth century, followed by several paragraphs about the similarity between the dangers of space travel and those of eighteenth-century sea voyaging, complete with Trent’s ancestor sailing into port with the hanged bodies of pirates swinging from the yardarms. There’s no indication of what Trent knows or how he has been influenced by these ancestors’ doings, so how his lineage “explains the whole matter” is a bit murky.

A couple of pages later, after it is disclosed that the ship-owners who have hired Captain Trent for a trading voyage in pirate-infested waters, er, space, would be just as happy if he gets pirated so they can collect the insurance: “It didn’t bother him. He came of a long line of ship-captains, and others had accepted similar commands in their time.”

Six pages further on, when it appears Trent’s ship has spotted a lurking pirate: “The report of a reading on the drive-detector was equivalent to a bellowed ‘Sail ho!’ from a sailing brig’s crosstrees. Trent’s painstaking use of signal-analysis instruments was equal to his ancestor’s going aloft to use his telescope on a minute speck at the horizon. What might follow could continue to duplicate in utterly changed conditions what had happened in simpler times, in sailing-ship days.”

Later still: “The arrival of the Yarrow in port on Sira was not too much unlike the arrival of a much earlier Captain Trent at a seaport on Earth in the eighteenth century.” I will spare you the extensive elaboration. And I can’t resist one more, towards the end as the Captain and his men are mustering for the final battle: “When they gathered, crowding, to get into the Yarrow’s spaceboats, the feel of things was curiously like a forgotten incident in the life of a Captain Trent of the late eighteenth century.” (Again, spare the details.) There is no suggestion that the current Captain Trent is in any way aware of this incident. Hey, the author just said it’s forgotten!

At this point it is tempting to ask, Why bother? Why not just swing by the library and pick up a stack of old C.S. Forester novels, and take your eighteenth century straight?

Another conspicuous feature is its pervasive verbosity. Consider the following passage, right after the discovery that there’s another spaceship lying low very close. Trent throws a switch that turns on the signal-analyzing instruments and goes to work. Now:

“There was silence save for that small assortment of noises any ship makes while it is driving. It means that the ship is going somewhere, hence that it will eventually arrive somewhere. A ship in port with all operating devices cut off seems gruesomely dead. Few spacemen will stay aboard-ship in a spaceport. It is too still. The silence is too oppressive. They go aground and will do anything at all rather than loaf on a really silent ship. But there were all sorts of tiny noises assuring that the Yarrow was alive. The air apparatus hummed faintly. The temperature-control made small, unrelated sounds. Somewhere somebody off-watch had a tiny microtape player on, the Aldonian music too soft to be heard unless one listened especially for it.”

Next: “The signal-analyzer clicked.” Intermission over! Story starts up again!

And here’s another one, short but telling. Captain Trent and the captain of a pirate-bashed ship whose crew Trent has rescued are about to travel from one ship to the other. “The Yarrow’s bulk loomed up not forty feet away, but beneath and between the ships lay an unthinkable abyss. Stars shown up from between their feet. One could fall for millions of years and never cease to plummet through nothingness.” Then they snap on lines and are hauled across the 40 feet, sans plummeting or any actual risk or fear of it.

A little later (we’re up to page 29 of the October issue), there is a long description of the pirates repairing the damage to their ship that Captain Trent inflicted by ramming them. This is actually a nice vivid word-picture. But then:

“While this highly necessary work went on, the stars watched abstractedly. They were not interested. They were suns, with families of planets of their own; besides, some of them had comets and meteoric streams and asteroid belts to take up their attention. There was nothing really novel in mere mechanical repair-work some thousands of millions of miles away from even the nearest of them.”

And it goes on, and on, appearing everywhere like water seeping up through the floorboards of a flooding house. It’s enough to make a body wonder if paying by the word is really such a good policy.

Oh, yes, there is also a story here, fitfully visible through the padding and the constant eruptions of the eighteenth century. Trent takes on a job carrying a cargo through pirate territory, partly to make some money and party because he hates pirates. He has an encounter with some pirates, captures some of their crew, and rescues the boss’s daughter (boss meaning owner of the pirated spaceship, and also a planetary president). She thinks he’s the cat’s meow for rescuing her, and he sort of likes her too, but duty calls. Then everybody foolishly thinks it’s safe to travel again because Trent defeated this lot of pirates. The boss’s daughter gets kidnapped by pirates again. Trent cleverly figures out where she and the other hostages must be, goes there with his crew, confronts the pirates in their lair, rescues boss’s daughter again, wedding bells clearly to follow.

There are some clever plot twists along the hackneyed way, as one would expect from a guy who’s been at this for well over four decades. There are also characters, sort of. Captain Trent is the strong laconic guy who may have inner turmoil but keeps it to himself. Everybody else is essentially a cartoon, notably Trent’s crew, who play a big part in his success, and who are essentially a bunch of roughnecks the Captain has recruited from barroom brawls and who follow him because he’s a pretty good brawler too. Finally, there is the definitive happy ending: “This novel will be published in the winter by Ace Books under the title ‘SPACE CAPTAIN.’ ”

One star for both parts. That’s the average of two stars for smooth professionalism, and zero stars for polished vacuity; life’s too short to waste time on this.

On the Sand Planet, by Cordwainer Smith

All right, Henry, wheel that one out and release it to the next of kin. Who’s on the next slab? Oh, Cordwainer Smith. Sounds promising. Except . . .

On the Sand Planet seems to be the last in the Instrumentality series featuring one Casher O’Neill that began with On the Gem Planet and On the Storm Planet, with Three to a Given Star tangentially related. They were all published in Galaxy, to considerable praise from the Traveler. But . . . if the others appeared in Galaxy, what is this one doing here at the bottom of the market? Unfortunately, suspicions confirmed.

by Jack Gaughan

Casher O’Neill has been on a mission to relieve his home planet Mizzer of the tyrant Wedder, and to that end has circuitously toured the galaxy and has obtained various superpowers, apparently courtesy of T’ruth, an Underperson derived from a turtle. That’s all before this story opens. Now, he’s landing on Mizzer again, walks into town and into Wedder’s citadel, and using his superpowers, rearranges Wedder’s head and portions of his supporting anatomy, turning him into a pussycat. Metaphorically, I mean. While he’s at it, Casher restores the intelligence of an idiot child.

Now that Casher is done with his life’s work, he drops in on his mother, who has mixed feelings about him, and his daughter, who has her own life and would just as soon he went away. So he decides to go to the Ninth Nile (this city Kazeer is at the confluence of a whole lot of Niles, it seems), though he is warned he will need iron shoes for the volcanic glass.

At the Ninth Nile, Casher meets D’alma, an elderly dog-underperson and an old acquaintance, who accompanies him, first to the gaudy City of Hopeless Hope, where everyone seems to be engaged in the practice of one religion or another, and D’alma warns that they are “the ones who are so sure that they are right that they never will be right.” Then, to the place of the Jwinds, “the perfect ones,” who destroy intruders who don’t meet their high standards. But Casher, who contains multitudes in his enhanced cranium, is too much for them. On to Mortoval, where a gatekeeper lets them pass when Casher again musters his superpowers to invoke “old multitudes of crying throngs.” The gatekeeper asks, “How can I cope with you?”

“ ‘Make us us,’ said Casher firmly.
“ ‘Make you you,’ replied the machine. ‘Make you you. How can I make you you when I do not know who you are, when you flit like ghosts and you confuse my computers?’ ”

On to Kermesse Dorgueil, where D’alma warns “here we may lose our way because this is the place where all the happy things of this world come together, but where the man and the two pieces of wood never filter through,” and a guy named Howard explains, “We live well here, and we have a nice life, not like those two places across the river that stay away from life,” and they make no claim to perfection.

Here Casher encounters a woman, Celalta, who is dancing and singing, having resigned as a lady of the Instrumentality, and Casher recruits her as traveling companion by grabbing her wrist and not letting go. Also he introduces himself by telepathy-dump, including “the two pieces of wood, the image of a man in pain,” and tells her it’s “the call of the First Forbidden One and the Second Forbidden One and the Third Forbidden One.” The Trinity, like you’ve never seen them (or it) before! I guess.

Onward, past the Deep Dry Lake of the Damned Irene, resisting the temptation to lie down with the skeletons and die, to “the final source and the mystery, the Quel of the Thirteenth Nile,” where there are trees and caves, and fruits, melons, and grain growing, and evidence that other people used to live there, and also some surviving chickens running around. Celalta declares, “We’re Adam and Eve in a way. It’s not up to us to be given a god or to be given a faith. It’s up to us to find the power, and this is the quietest and last of the searching places.” Et cetera. Celalta says she’ll start the fire if O’Neill will go catch some chickens.

Well, this is pretty ridiculous. It’s obviously some sort of religious allegory, reminding me a little of my ill-fated glancing encounter with The Pilgrim’s Progress, told in an often sonorous style but a plain vocabulary, like a negotiation between the King James Bible and Fun with Dick and Jane (that’s not a complaint). But the point is a little elusive. I get that at least one of the two is thinking about Adam and Eve, since she says it straight out. But then what? Mr. Smith owes us one more story in the series, catching up with Casher and Celalta and their inevitable children after ten years or so in isolation, living on feral chickens roasted in a cave. But you know it won’t happen.

Two stars for this shaggy God epic. As exasperating follies go, it’s at least readable and amusing.

The Comet Doom, by Edmond Hamilton

The reprints are an exceedingly mixed bag. Surprisingly, the best is also the most archaic, Edmond Hamilton’s The Comet Doom, from the January 1928 Amazing. There’s a big green comet passing by, and it turns out it’s inhabited by atomic-powered metal beings with tentacles who used to have organic bodies but gave them up. These folks have about used up the comet’s resources and want to replenish their stores by carrying off a handy planet, ours to be precise. In fact they have just yanked the Earth out of its orbit. To further their scheme, they land on a lake island and snatch our heroes, Coburn and Hanley, and offer them metal bodies and immortality if they will help out in the liquidation of their species.

Hanley goes for it, Coburn escapes. About this time, Marlin—the story’s narrator—is passing by the island in a boat which is half-destroyed by the comet, swims to shore, and encounters Coburn, who recruits him to the human cause. They attack the cometeers and Coburn is killed, but the already-transplanted Hanley, in a final moment of human loyalty, destroys the machine that is steering Earth towards the comet, along with the comet-people present. Doom is foiled.

This one is reasonably readable, mostly done in a style that reflects close attention to H.G. Wells, with echoes of both The Star and The War of the Worlds, despite the pulpish plot. Two stars by today’s standards, probably a standout by those of its time.

Restricted Area, by Robert Sheckley

The other reprints are from the brief high-budget, and relatively high-brow, flowering of the Ziff-Davis magazines during 1952 and 1953, immediately after the magazine went from pulp size to digest size. Robert Sheckley’s Restricted Area, from the June-July 1953 Amazing, is one of the slick but empty and cartoony pieces he produced in quantity at the beginning of his career, along with the more incisive ones.

by Greisha Dotzenko

Space explorers land on a paradisical planet–wonderful climate, no germs, no rocks, lots of colorful friendly animals ready to hang out and play, and a giant steel shaft ascending to the clouds. But after a while, the animals start to slow down and keel over. Connect the dots. Glib and facile, and the author knows it—this one hasn’t been in any of Sheckley’s multiple collections to date. Two stars, barely.

Final Exam, by Chad Oliver

by Ashman

Final Exam by the sometimes redoubtable Chad Oliver, from the November/December 1952 Fantastic, is also from what we might call the Intermission, or Respite, between the Ziff-Davis magazines’ last gasp as pulps and their monotonous and purposely formulaic low-budget era of the mid- and late 1950s. Like much of Oliver’s work, it reflects his anthropological bent (actually, a pretty straight-line bent—he’s become an anthropology professor at the University of Texas), but strikes an unusually sour note. Professor La Farge’s class in Advanced Martian History is on a field trip to see and condescend to some of the colorful and primitive surviving Martians, but the time for the Martians to turn the tables has arrived in this heavy-handed satire. Two stars, barely.

Summing Up

Well, a couple more hours we’ll never get back, and not much to show for it, except an eccentric misfire from a sometimes brilliant writer, and a tolerable relic of a bygone era. Next?

[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, Serial

[September 12, 1965] So Far . . . Well, Fair (October 1965 Amazing)

September 12, 2020 John Boston 4 Comments

by John Boston

Amazing, A.L. (after Lalli)

The shape of the post-Ziff-Davis Amazing and the new publisher’s reprint policy become much clearer in this October issue. There are seven items of fiction here, and five of them are reprints, comprising about 55% of the magazine’s page count. If this issue is typical, Amazing is drastically shrinking as a significant market for original fiction.

The two new fiction items are the first part of a two-part serial by Murray Leinster, whose future seems mostly to have been behind him for some years now, and yet another Ensign De Ruyter short story by Arthur Porges. There is also another in the series of scientific hoax articles by Robert Silverberg.

There’s an editorial, this time by managing editor Joseph Ross, rather than by Sol Cohen, “editor and publisher” on the masthead. Ross shows himself to be as boring a writer as Cohen in his paean to Murray Leinster, the Dean of Science Fiction. The letter column, now just called Letters, reappears, with one very long letter praising the new Amazing by someone who has bought the first Cohen issue, but hasn’t actually read it. The point is elusive. The mediocre cover is by Frank Kelly Freas, probably bought at a rummage sale or something; Freas has never appeared on Amazing’s cover before.

by Frank Kelly Freas

With all these inauspicious signs, it’s a bit surprising that the contents of the issue are a considerable improvement over the previous one, the first of the Cohen/Ross regime.

Killer Ship (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster

by Nodel

As is my practice, I’ll withhold comment on Killer Ship, the Leinster serial, until it’s finished, pausing only to note that Leinster seems to have taken up a hoary theme: space pirates! And he begins on a determinedly vintage note: “He came of a long line of ship-captains, which probably explains the whole matter.” Hope struggles with trepidation.

The Eternal Eve, by John Wyndham

John Wyndham’s The Eternal Eve, from the September 1950 Amazing, begins as the protagonist Amanda sees a man approaching the cave she is living in and shoots him with her rifle. She then pushes his body over the nearby cliff to be eaten by the giant crabs that live on the beach below, this being Venus. From there, a flashback: Amanda has come to Venus for an 18-month job assisting an anthropological expedition. But Earth blows up, leaving nobody alive but the modest colony on Venus and those humans who were on Mars or in space at the time.

by Rod Ruth

Order starts to erode in the obvious ways, one of which is pressure for Amanda to pair off with one of the men. She’s not interested, and creates a diversion allowing her to slip off with her rifle and some supplies and set up housekeeping on her own, with the help of the childlike Venusian griffa. Eventually she realizes she can’t live happily completely outside human society, so she gives in and comes back, facilitated by the appearance of Mr. Right, but not before she shoots him too. Not fatally, though: think of it as romantic comedy, cordite replacing the flowers.

I’ve made this story sound a bit reactionary; not so. Wyndham is actually pretty sensitive to the dilemmas posed for independent-minded women by the demands of male-dominated society, even if he doesn’t solve them in this story. He's continued to chew on this theme in his later work, most notably the novella Consider Her Ways from the mid-1950s. He is also a much more capable writer at the word and sentence level than most Amazing contributors, new or old, making this story a pleasure to read. Am I really saying four stars? Guess so.

Chrysalis, by Ray Bradbury

by McClish

Ray Bradbury’s Chrysalis, from the July 1946 issue, is much better than the execrable Final Victim from the last issue, though considerably cruder than the stories he puts in his collections. Man here (Smith) has turned green and his skin has become a hard shell; also his metabolism has slowed almost to nothing. He is being watched over by Dr. Rockwell (the sensible and inquiring one), Dr. Hartley (the near-hysterical one), and Dr. McGuire (the nebbish of the bunch). Young Mr. Bradbury seems to have been spending a bit too much time at the movies, or else he’s aspiring to work for them, since the story proceeds mainly through scenes of these characters swapping reasonably sharp dialogue, while Smith continues being green and seemingly unconscious as strange transformations continue underneath the green shell. Dr. Rockwell broaches the possibility of superman, or super-something, and shortly, the story’s title is enacted, unfortunately a bit anticlimactically. The story is a bit too long, but the author moves it along capably. Three stars.

The Metal Man, by Jack Williamson

Jack Williamson’s first published story, The Metal Man, from the December 1928 issue, has not worn well. There’s a very lifelike metal statue of a man standing in the Tyburn College Museum—lifelike because it used to be Professor Kelvin of Geology, who got rich prospecting for radium. Now he has been delivered in his statuesque form to his old friend, the narrator, in a wooden chest, along (of course) with his manuscript. This recounts the Prof’s journey to El Rio de la Sangre, the River of Blood, which is highly radioactive. He’s looking for the source, resorting to a small airplane whose parts he assembles on-site when he gets as far as a boat will take him.

by Frank R. Paul

He winds up in a strange, colorful lost world. Very colorful. The river is like a red snake, and it goes underground and emerges in a mountain crater that holds a pool of green fire, extending to the black ramparts of the other side of the crater, while “the snow-capped summits about were brilliant argent crowns, dyed with crimson, tinged with purple and gold, tinted with strange and incredible hues.” A silver mist begins to descend. The green lake rises up to a shining peak, and from it emerges—“a gigantic sphere of deep red, marked with four huge oval spots of dull black,” its surface “thickly studded with great spikes that seemed of yellow fire”!

This is all in the space of a few paragraphs. After a brief respite, Prof. Kelvin finds his plane and himself covered with a pale blue luminosity, he is drawn down into the green (gaseous) lake to land, stumbles around and trips over a bird that has turned to metal, foreshadowing his own fate. He has more adventures (also very colorful, but enough of that) as he blunders around in this strange world created by lots of radioactivity, becoming more metallic as he goes. Unfortunately there’s not much more to the story than this parade of menacing wonders, made possible by the fact that back then nobody really knew that much about the effects of radioactivity. Two stars.

It should be noted that Williamson went on to produce The Green Girl, Through the Purple Cloud, The Stone from the Green Star, Red Slag of Mars, In the Scarlet Star, and Golden Blood, all within the next five years. The visible spectrum seems to have been a good career move for him.

The Time Jumpers, by Philip Francis Nowlan

by Leo Morey

Philip Francis Nowlan, perpetrator of the Buck Rogers Yellow Peril epics, is here in a lighter mood with The Time Jumpers (February 1934 Amazing), a mildly amusing period piece (albeit with certain period attitudes) about a guy who invents a time car and, with his platonic girlfriend, first narrowly escapes from marauding Vikings, possibly Leif Ericson’s outfit, then makes a longer foray into the Colonial period, narrowly escaping from marauding Indians, briefly meeting the young not-yet-General Washington, and then narrowly escaping from a French officer and his marauding Indians. Two stars.

Dusty Answer, by Arthur Porges

Dusty Answer is yet another of Arthur Porges’s tales of Ensign De Ruyter, notable chiefly for the excruciating tedium they achieve in relatively few pages. Their formula is clever Earthmen outwitting stupid and primitive aliens through elementary science tricks, this time the ignition of dust suspended in air. One star, if that.

The Kensington Stone, by Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg’s scientific hoax article, The Kensington Stone, concerns the finding and subsequent career of an inscription found in Minnesota which purported to show that the Norse Vinland settlement of Leif Erikson (yeah, him again, spelled a little differently) had sent an expedition as far as Minnesota. This one is just as well written as its predecessors, suffering by comparison only because the underlying story is less captivating, with no picturesque fraudster at its center. Three stars.

Summing Up

So: whatever one thinks about the new reprint policy at Amazing and Fantastic, new editor Ross has managed this month (or bi-month) to put together a decently readable issue. Question is how long he can keep it up.

[Speaking of books, Journey Press now has three excellent titles for your reading pleasure! Why not pick up a copy or three? Not only will you enjoy them all — you'll be helping out the Journey!]

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 11, 1964] December Galactoscope

December 11, 2019 Cora Buhlert 4 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

The season of giving is upon us. For women, perfumes like the classic scent Tosca are the most popular gifts, while men tend to find ties, socks and underwear under the tree.

Personally, I think that books are the best gifts. And so I gave myself Margaret St. Clair's latest, when I spotted it in the spinner rack at my local import bookstore, since I enjoyed last year's Sign of the Labrys a lot. Even better, this book is an Ace Double, which means I get two new tales for the price of one. Or rather, I get six, because one half is a collection of five short stories.

Message from the Eocene by Margaret St. Clair (Ace Double M-105)

An alien in trouble

The first half is a brand-new science fiction novel called Message from the Eocene. The protagonist, a being named Tharg, is tasked with transporting a cosmic guidebook across hostile territory. The reader learns in the first paragraph that Tharg is not human, because he has a triple heartbeat. Tharg lives on Earth, but the Earth of billions of years ago (long before the Eocene, so the title is a misnomer), a world of volcanos and methane snow, devoid of oxygen. Tharg "breathes" via microorganisms inside his body that break down metallic oxides to oxygenate his blood and has extrasensory perception.

Tharg is in trouble, for a mysterious enemy is trying to thwart his mission. This enemy turns out to be the Vaeaa, a legendary alien race, who are believed to have deposited Tharg's people on Earth in the first place.

Tharg is taken is taken prisoner, but not before he manages to hide the book inside a volcano (it has a protective casing). Under interrogation, Tharg has an out-of-body experience. As a result, his consciousness remains, when his body dies during an escape attempt, to witness the extinction of both his people and the Vaeaa, though the Vaeaa manage to set up a projector on Pluto to keep out further cosmic guidebooks first.

Over billions of years, Tharg's spirit observes life arise and evolve on Earth. Tharg realises that the book might help with his condition, but he has no way to retrieve it. So Tharg decides to ask the Earth's new inhabitants for help. But how to make himself known, considering that Tharg is a bodyless spirit being and never was human in the first place?

Misadventures and miscommunications

The rest of the novel chronicles Tharg's attempts to communicate. Tharg's first attempt targets the Proctors, a Quaker family in 19th century England. This goes disastrously wrong, because not only do the Proctors come to believe that their house is haunted – no, Tharg also gets trapped in the house. Taken on its own, the Proctor segment feels like a Victorian ghost story, except that the ghost is a desperate disembodied alien. The insights into the lives of 19th century Quakers are fascinating, but then Margaret St. Clair is a member of the Society of Friends.

Tharg's next attempt targets Denise, who lives with her husband Pierre in a French colony in the South Pacific. Denise has extrasensory perception, making her the ideal subject. But once again Tharg only succeeds in giving Denise nightmares and causing hauntings in the mine Pierre oversees. Worse, the superstitious miners blame Denise for the hauntings. They kidnap the couple and give Denise hallucinogenic herbs to increase her abilities. Now Denise is able to communicate with Tharg long enough to realise that he wants them to recover the book.

So Pierre uses his mining job to blast a hole into a mountain at the very spot where Denise insists the book is hidden. After some trouble with Vietnamese workers – an incident St. Clair uses to explain that oppression during colonial times has left the Vietnamese angry and frustrated, which leads to violence, a lesson that is highly relevant to the situation in Vietnam today – Denise and Pierre manage to retrieve the book. Alas, once they open the protective casing, the book bursts into flame and is destroyed.

Tharg now sets his sights on the projector the Vaeaa installed on Pluto to keep future cosmic guidebooks away from Earth. For if another book were to arrive, Tharg might finally be able to escape his condition.

Sacrifices and success

There is another time jump to 1974, when strange things happen. An experiment detects a purely theoretical particle, a sea captain sees a mermaid, Canadians dance under the Northern lights and a Tibetan monk has a vision. Tharg views these events as signs that another guidebook is on the way. But due to the projector on Pluto, it will never reach Earth.

In order to shut down the projector long enough to let the book through, Tharg has to dissolve himself in the collective consciousness of humanity, which will also mean his annihilation. So Tharg sacrifices himself and the book is picked up by an expedition to Venus. The novel ends with Tharg waking on the astral plane in a replica of his original body, just as the US-Soviet crew of the spaceship to Venus is about to open the book.

This is a strange and disjointed, but fascinating novel. Though Tharg is one of the rare truly alien aliens of science fiction, he is nonetheless a likeable protagonist and the reader sympathises with his plight. Tharg is also an unlikely messiah, sacrificing himself to assure the future of humanity.

Humanity being uplifted and our minds and bodies evolving is a common theme in our genre. However, Message from the Eocene offers a very different variation on this theme compared to what you'd find in the pages of Analog, even if psychic abilities are involved. The enlightenment offered by the book is reminiscent of both Buddhism and various occult traditions, while its arrival alludes to the so-called Age of Aquarius that astrologers believe will arrive soon.

In a genre that is still all too often peopled solely by white American men, the humans Tharg encounters are of all genders, races, nationalities and religions and all are portrayed sympathetically. For if the alien Tharg does not discriminate based on superficial criteria, then maybe neither should we. It is also notable that even before they receive the book, St. Clair's near future Earth is a more peaceful place than our world, where China has withdrawn from Tibet and the US and USSR cooperate in space.

Message from the Eocene is a story of failed communication, but also a story of evolution and enlightenment and overcoming one's limitations. Given the state of the world today, this may be just the message humanity needs.

Four and a half stars.

Three World of Futurity by Margaret St. Clair

Three Worlds and five stories

Three Worlds of Futurity, the other half of this Ace Double, is a collection of five short stories originally published between 1949 and 1962. The three worlds in question are Mars, Venus and Earth.

In "The Everlasting Food", Earthman Richard Dekker finds that his Venusian wife Issa has changed after lifesaving surgery. One night, Issa announces that she is immortal now, that she no longer needs to eat and that energy sustains her. Soon thereafter, she leaves, taking their young son with her. Richard takes off after her to get his son back, Issa's human foster sister Megan in tow. After many trials and tribulations, they finally find Issa – only for Richard to lose his wife and son for good. But while Richard is heartbroken, he has also fallen in love with Megan.

"The Everlasting Food" is a curious mix of domestic science fiction in the vein of Zenna Henderson and Mildred Clingerman and planetary adventure in the vein of Leigh Brackett, and never quite gels. I did like Megan, who is described as dark-skinned, by the way, but Issa is hard to connect to and Richard, though well meaning, falls for Megan a little too quickly. Furthermore, the villain feels like an afterthought who comes out of nowhere.

"Idris' Pig" opens on a spaceship to Mars. George Baker is the ship's resident psychologist. His cousin Bill is a courier and passenger aboard the same ship. When Bill falls ill, it's up to George to deliver the object Bill was supposed to deliver, a blue-skinned sacred pig. However, Bill can only give George very vague instructions about where to deliver the pig and so the pig is promptly stolen. And so George has to retrieve it with the help of Blixa, a young Martian woman. As a result, George gets mixed up with drug dealers and Martian cults, involved in an interplanetary incident and lands in jail. He also completely forgets about the woman he has been trying very hard not to think about and falls in love with Blixa.

This is an utterly charming story, a science fiction screwball comedy reminiscent of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby. A hidden gem and true delight.

"The Rages" is set in an overmedicated Earth of the future. Harvey has a perfect life and a perfect, though sexless marriage. However, he has a problem because his monthly ration of euphoria pills has run out. And without euphoria pills, Harvey fears the oncoming of the rages, attacks of uncontrollable anger, which eventually lead to a final rage from which one never emerges. The story follows Harvey through his day as he meets several people and tries to get more pills. Gradually, it dawns upon both Harvey and the reader that the pills may be causing the very rages they are supposed to suppress. The story ends with Harvey throwing all of his and his wife's pills away.

This is a dystopian tale in the vein of Brave New World and Fahrenheit 541. The future world St. Clair has built is fascinating, if horrifying, and I would have liked to see more of it. However, Harvey is a thoroughly unlikeable character, who almost rapes two women in the course of a single novelette. Maybe Harvey could have rediscovered his messy humanity without resorting to sexual violence.

"Roberta" is the shortest and most recent story, first published in Galaxy in October 1962, reviewed by our editor Gideon Marcus here. Roberta is a confused young woman with the unfortunate tendency to kill men. Robert is the phantom who won't leave her alone. Eventually, it is revealed that Roberta had a sex change operation and that "Robert" represents her former self, as do the men she kills.

Transsexualism is a subject that science fiction almost never addresses, even though our genre is ideal for it. After all, there are transsexuals living in our world right now and science offers possibilities to make it much easier for them to live the lives they want to. So I applaud Margaret St. Clair for tackling what is sadly still a taboo topic (and for having her heroine utter another taboo word, "abortion"), though I am troubled that science fiction's only transsexual heroine (so far) is also a multiple murderer.

In "The Island of the Hands", Dirk dreams about his wife Joan who died in a plane crash at sea. He hires a plane to check out the coordinates from his dream and crashes on an invisible island. Dirk finds Joan's plane and a dead body and also meets Miranda, a young woman who suspiciously resembles Joan. He is on the Island of the Hands, Miranda informs them, where everybody can shape their heart's desire from mythical mist. Dirk tries to shape Joan, but fails. He spends the night with Miranda, who confesses that Joan is still alive, but trapped in the mist. Dirk goes after her and rescues Joan, only to learn that there is a very good reason why Miranda looks so much like an idealised version of Joan.

It's no surprise that this story was first published in Weird Tales, since it has the otherworldly quality typical for that magazine. "The Island of the Hands" reminded me of the 1948 Leigh Brackett story "The Moon That Vanished", where another heartbroken widower finds himself faced with a magical mist that shapes one's heart's desire.

All in all, this is an excellent collection. Not every story is perfect (though "Idris' Pig" pretty much is), but they are all fascinating and make me want to read more of Margaret St. Clair's work.

Four stars for the collection.

[But wait! There's more!]

by Gideon Marcus

False Finishes

After such a remarkable pair of books, I hate to sully this edition with less than stellar reviews. But the year is almost up, and there are a lot of books to get through. So, here is a trio of novels that start promisingly and then fizzle out.

The Greks Bring Gifts, by Murray Leinster

If you can get past the punny title, Gifts grabs your interest from the first. In the near future, the humanoid Greks land in a miles-long spaceship. They were just sailing by, training a class of Aladarian engineers, and thought they'd pop in to give humanity a myriad of technological gifts. The aliens are welcomed with riotous joy — after all, soon no one will have to work more than one day a week, and all the comforts of the world will be evenly distributed.

But one fellow, Jim Hackett, is suspicious. Despite being a brilliant young physicist, he was rejected as a candidate to learn Grek science after failing to comprehend it. Was he just not bright enough? Or were the Greks feeding us gobbledegook to keep us ignorant? And then, why did the Greks abruptly leave after six months, just as desire for the fruits of their wondrous technology was peaking, but the ability to sate said desire was lacking? Finally, after the Grek ship had left, why did an archaeologist party find the bones of Aldorians in the ship's waste ejecta? And worse yet, those of humans?

So Hackett and his fiancee, the capable Dr. Lucy Thale, work together to reverse engineer the Grek technology so that, when they return to a world whose populace is fairly begging for them to come back, Earth can stand against them and provide for its own.

What begins as a fascinating mystery quickly proves overlong. Leinster is much better with short stories, before his Hemmingway-esque style can wear thin. The endless repetition of certain phrases and epithets brings to mind the devices Homer used to make The Illiad easier to recite from memory, but they don't do a reader any favors. As for characterization, Leinster might as well have named the characters A, B, and C for all the color they possess. A shorter story would have made that issue stand out less.

Anyway, it's an interesting storyline; it would make a good movie, but as is, it's a mediocre novel. Three stars.

Arsenal of Miracles (ACE Double F-299), by Gardner F. Fox

From the notable pen of comics writer and, now, SF author Gardner Fox, we have a brand new ACE novel. And this one isn't a short 120-pager. No, this time we've got 157 pages devoted to the adventures of Bran Magannon, formerly an Admiral of a Terran space fleet, vanquisher of the invading Lyanir, and now a discredited exile, wandering across the known and unknown galaxy. Arsenal starts off beautifully, like a space age Fritz Leiber fantasy. A nearly penniless Bran arrives on the desolate world of Makkador to make traveling funds through gambling. There, he throws dice against, and loses to, the lovely Peganna, queen of the Lyanir. And then we learn Bran's tragic past: how he divined how to defeat the seemingly invincible Lyanir ships; how he negotiated for the Lyanir to be given a sanctuary world within the Terran Cluster of stars. How Bran was betrayed by an ambitious subordinate, who sabotaged the talks, discredited Bran, and condemned the Lyanir to inhabit a radioactive wasteland of a planet.

But now Bran has an ace up his sleeve — he has discovered the ancient portal network of the Crenn Lir, a precursor race that once inhabited countless worlds. If Bran and Peganna can find the Crenn Lir arsenal before they are caught by Terran and Lyranir agents, they might be able to negotiate with the Terrans as equals and secure a sanctuary for the weary aliens.

I tore through the first third of this book, but things slowed halfway through. I grew irritated that there was exactly one female character in the book, though I did appreciate the natural and loving relationship Peganna and Bran shared. What promises to be a galaxy-trotting adventure with big scope and ideas ends up a rather conventional story on a very few settings. Things pick up a bit in the final third, but I found myself comparing the endeavor unfavorably to Terry Carr's Warlord of Kor, a somewhat similarly themed Ace novel from last year.

Three and a half stars.

Endless Shadow (ACE Double F-299), by John Brunner

With the Fox taking up so much space in the Ace Double, the second title must needs be short. Luckily, John Brunner's Bridge to Azazel, which came out in February's issue of Amazing, fit nicely. Both lengthwise and thematically: Endless Shadow also features teleportation across the stars, in this case involving a Terra reestablishing contact with farflung space colonies.

The general consensus among the Journey's various readers is that this was a premise with a lot of potential, but that Brunner failed to deliver satisfactorily. Ratings ranged from two to three and a half stars. Call it an even three.

Books to Come

These days, there are almost more books coming out than a fellow (or even a band of fellows) can read! So, to make sure we cover all of the important books of 1964, there will be a second Galactoscope in a couple of days. May they be more akin to the stellar St. Clairs than the disappointing Leinster/Fox/Brunner.

[Holiday season is upon us, and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), containing some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age, makes a great gift! Think of it as a gift to friends…and the Journey!

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Book, Magazine

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

November 29, 2019 Gideon Marcus 8 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

The Big Guns

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

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

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

Armed Assault

by Robert Swanson

Tempestuous Moon, by Joseph H. Jackson

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

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

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

Plague on Kryder II, by Murray Leinster

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

by Kelly Freas

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

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

Shortstack, by Leigh and Walt Richmond

by Kelly Freas

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

Harmless, kind of interesting. Three stars.

Contrast, by Christopher Anvil

by Kelly Freas

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

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

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

by Robert Swanson

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rescue Operation, by Harry Harrison

by Adolph Brotman

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

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

The Equalizer, by Norman Spinrad

by Adolph Brotman

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

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

High Marks

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

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

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

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

Happy Holidays!

[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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Book

[July 18, 1964] Dog Day Crop (July's Galactoscope)

July 18, 2019 Gideon Marcus 3 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Thank you for joining this month's edition of Galactoscope, where we plow through all the books that came out this most recent month of June/July 1964! Don't thank us; it's all part of the job…

(and if you found us at San Diego Comic-Con and can't figure out why we seem to be 55 years behind you, this should clear things up!)

Times Two

Time Travel has been a staple of the genre since before the genre had been formalized. H. G. Wells' The Time Machine is still a classic, and it was written last century. In the Journey's short tenure, we have encountered at least a dozen tales involving chronological trips, with notable books including John Brunner's Times without Number and Wallace West's River of Time, not to mention the stand-out tales, All you Zombies!, by Robert Heinlein (and his less stand-out tale, By His Bootstraps) and The Deaths of Ben Baxter, by Robert Sheckley.

This month, we have two variations on the theme, both invoking time in their title:

Time Tunnel, by Murray Leinster

As the specter of nuclear war threatens to manifest, a post-graduate student named Harrison is summering in Paris, waiting for school to resume. By chance, he runs across Pepe, a fiery Spaniard (are there any other kinds in books?) and fellow former student who reunites Harrison with Professor Carroll, late of the archaeology department of Harrison and Pepe's alma mater. It turns out that Carroll has made a tremendous discovery: he as learned how to bridge the gulf between eras. No special machine is required; one must simply find a sizeable hunk of cast metal that has been left alone since the time of its forger.

Carroll's private time tunnel goes back exactly 160 years to the France of Napoleon's time. Thus far, the professor has made little use of it, save to satisfy his wife's pecuniary avarice. She has enlisted her brother to start a little shop that sells perfectly preserved antiques pinched from 1804. But when the Harrison learns that someone from 1964 is undertaking to sell secrets of the future to the scientists of the past, he and his compatriots must stop the interference before history changes for good. In addition, they must complete their mission before rising international tensions instigate a nuclear war in the present, sealing off (and perhaps destroying) the time tunnel.

It's a great setup! We've seen fixed tunnels to the past, as recently as in River in Time, but they aren't common in the genre. I find them particularly compelling as they make points in the past more tangible destinations. One can't pick historical highlights at random; they have to soak in the local atmosphere one second at a time, just like the natives. I've even toyed with the idea of making a fanzine with that conceit, perhaps with a time shift of (to pick a length at random) 55 years. That would put me in 1909 with plenty of time to capture the pulp era as it happens.

Something to think about.

The problem with Tunnel is the same problem that has bedeviled most of his latest stuff — it's too long. Indeed, Tunnel is about three times longer than the story calls for, in large part because the author repeats everything he says several times throughout the book. Heck, Harrison's party doesn't even get to old France until halfway through the book, and then it mostly stays to the back roads and farms that have not significantly changed in "nearly two centuries" as Leinster insists on calling about a century-and-a-half.

It's too bad. There's an exciting novella here under all the chaff.

Three stars.

The Time Twisters, by J. Hunter Holly

The newest book by Ms. (the J. stands for Joan) Holly has the opposite problem: the writing is quite compelling, but the story doesn't work.

The time is present day, the protagonists the Garrison family — Rick, Lynn, and six year-old daughter Tina. We start with the family already ill at ease. A neighborhood boy has gone missing, and shortly before, a big brown patch appeared in his yard. Then, while touring an amusement park to distract themselves, a cluster of bright lights appear in the sky, eerie and menacing.

Over the course of the next few days, more children disappear. Tina longs to be allowed outside, affected by a sirensong the adults cannot hear. A monster appears on the block, terrifying the neighborhood. The Army appears and sets up camp around the small Great Lakes town. Throughout it all, Rick is suspicious of his new boarder, Marcus Jantz. That is, until Marcus helps defeat the monster, which turns out to be a tin-plated prop. Obviously, the alien invasion shtick is a ruse, a cover for something else. But what?

It turns out (as has been teased since the beginning, but it takes Rick a while to learn) that Marcus is actually an agent from the future. In this future, aliens have appeared, demanding millions of their children. But humanity of the future is near-sterile, thanks to an overabundance of nuclear energy. Their only source for children is the past, hence a series of raids throughout history. Indeed, the Pied Piper legend has roots in truth, a kidnapping strike from a century long distant. In the end, Rick follows the last child to be abducted, his own, into the future, where he makes a desperate plea to Marcus to let their children go.

The Time Twisters is a very quick read by a talented author (who, like Andre Norton, stays out of the genre magazines). The characters are nicely drawn, the situations nicely tense. Unfortunately, the plot is absurd. Any people with time travel have already won any war they might face. Moreover, surely the indiscriminate removal of ancestors must destroy countless future generations.

Still, I was entertained on my latest trip to Japan, and thus, I give this very flawed piece a full three stars.

And now, I turn things over to Mark Yon, who contributes the second half of this month's column…

Ace Double F-275: No Truce with Terra, by Philip E. High; and The Duplicators, by Murray Leinster

by Mark Yon

My latest read is one that I had delivered to me from my friends in the States. As it is an Ace Double, and being someone never to knowingly avoid a cliché, I must say that it is a book of two halves (although The Duplicators is a little longer than the other story): as befits a double book, they are quite different in tone and style.

No Truce with Terra

No Truce with Terra examines the premise of what might happen if Earth was invaded — not by the traditional all-guns-blazing War of the Worlds style invasion but instead by stealth. Written by Brit Philip E. High, it begins quite normally but soon becomes strange. Scientist Lipscombe goes home from work one evening to find that his fibroplastic home will not allow him entrance. All attempts to break-in are thwarted.

Furthermore, over the next few days the house changes shape and unusual objects appear to grow around the outside of the house. There’s some electric blue grass and a plant that gives those who touch it a near-lethal electric shock, for example. Impressions are that they are alien, a means of colonising the planet before taking overall control, a bridgehead before the full-blown invasion.

Michael Lipscombe and his colleague Peter Collard become part of the scientific observation group. Then the “house” is surrounded by the British Army and attacked, the house retaliates – “they have set the dog on us” is the summary from Lipscombe.

Lipscombe and Collard are evacuated to a research centre in the North of Scotland as the alien threat spreads. With their mentor Stanley Dyson, obviously “one of the greatest names in science”, they determine that the invading force is a form of “natural electronic life” which has evolved naturally on another planet.

The scientists create a contraption that warps the fabric of space time and allows the humans to be granted access to the alien world. They do so, believing that such an action would create an escape route for humans and also allow them to create a secret base that can organise retaliatory actions.

All of this is basically World War Two re-written, of course. It’s interesting, if a little predictable, beginning with lots of stoic scientists discussing things and then frantic battles between the military and the aliens.

What we also get is the alien perspective, that they are willing to discuss terms of future contact through Collard, who they select as an emissary between the two races. The aliens are odd but not the unholy terrors that other stories would have you believe, and it is this aspect that makes this fast-paced story readable.

Three stars.

The Duplicators, by Murray Leinster

The second story is longer (an expansion, in fact, of Lord of the Uffts), but I found it less enjoyable. This time around it is the humans doing the invading, in a faux- Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court kind of way. The Duplicators tells us of Link Denham, a non-too-scrupulous gadabout who, when he drunkenly signs himself up as an astrogator on the not-so-good ship Glamorgan under the equally drunk Captain Thistlethwaite, finds himself on the way to the mysterious planet Sord III. Thistlethwaite claims there are riches beyond compare there, which he is willing to share with Denham in return for his help.

On arriving at the planet, they meet two types of extraterrestrials. Firstly there are the rather sarcastic and oppressed pig-like aliens known as Uffts, who claim their ship on its landing, and secondly there are the humans, led by Harl, who live in Households and run the planet’s society using the Uffts as servants. Their response to Thistlethwaite’s arrival is to arrest him and agree to execute him for spreading sedition – for in offering to pay to send a message to his seller Old Man Addison he has caused great offense. Doing business, except with Uffts, is a major insult on Sord III.

Link’s attempt at rescuing Thistlethwaite – for how else is he going to escape the planet? – leads to Link also being arrested by Harl’s Household. Instead of being grateful, the non-too-stable Thistlethwaite seems annoyed, even betrayed, by Link for abandoning their spaceship.

By offering their spaceship and cargo as a guest-gift to Harl, Link manages to persuade the Householder to avoid hanging them, but the rather unpredictable Thistlethwaite, still determined to make a business deal and participate in the socially abhorrent activity of business, believes that Link has betrayed him.

To complicate things further, there’s a revolution brewing from the down-trodden Uffts. A deal is made by Thistlethwaite with the Uffts to arrange his escape and take advantage of the unrest felt by the enslaved group. Link is ‘fired’ by Thistlethwaite.

On a more positive note Link also meets Thana, Harl’s sister. She reveals the reason for Thistlethwaite’s interest in the planet, that the aliens of Sord III have the technology to duplicate objects with dupliers, something that Thistlethwaite believes would be worth a great deal. Harl disagrees, his reasoning being that such an invention would lead to the collapse of civilisation as societies become too lazy to bother working.

Thistlethwaite’s escape leads to a chase to try and recapture him before he makes a deal with Old Man Addison for dupliers. The dilemma of the novel then becomes how Link can manage to keep the dupliers a secret whilst not allowing Thistlethwaite to exploit the aliens on Sord III. It may not be a surprise that Link’s ingenuity saves the day, avoids an Ufftian Revolution, keep Thistlethwaite pleased and ends things happily ever after for Link and Thana.

The Duplicators is one of those heartily humorous tales, a story of manners and misunderstandings that is all about the behaviour of “strangers in a strange land”. It seems to be meant to be a lighter counterpoint tale to the Philip High story, a parody of politics and behaviour that is clearly meant to strike the reader as amusing but for me really wasn’t. In fact, at times there are places where it all becomes a bit silly. On the positive side, it’s well written, if predictable, but Animal Farm it isn’t. 2.5 stars.

Together these tales do what Ace Doubles tend to do – put on display deliberately different aspects of the genre. Whilst the two stories are undeniably entertaining, in the bigger scheme of things they are really minor league stuff. They are not the best Double I’ve ever read, but not the worst either and frankly neither story is the best work I’ve read from either author. File under “OK but not essential.”

Summing Up

I suppose one can't expect more from an average month than a bunch of average books. But, boy… it'd sure be nice!

We'll just have to wait for the next Galactoscope to see if our fortunes change (hopefully for the better…)

[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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Book, Magazine

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

April 2, 2019 Gideon Marcus 2 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

April Fool's

Some days, I just have to wonder.

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

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

Famed character actor, Peter Lorre, died at 59.

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

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

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

The Issue at Hand

Illustration of Sunjammer by Harvey Woolhiser

The Extinction of Species, by Bert Kempers

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

Food for thought. Three stars.

Sunjammer, by Winston P. Sanders

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

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

Three stars.

Problem Child, by Arthur Porges

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

Three stars.

Shortsite, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

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

Two stars.

Counter Foil, by George O. Smith

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

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

Two stars.

The Spy, by Mario Brand

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

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

Two stars.

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

Spaceman (Part 2 of 2), by Murray Leinster

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

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

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

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

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

View from a Height

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

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

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

[Come commiserate with 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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Book, Magazine

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

March 3, 2019 Gideon Marcus 5 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Braving My Shadow

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

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

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

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

The Issue at Hand

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

Cover by Schoenherr, illustrating Spaceman

Clouds, Bubbles and Sparks, by Edward C. Walterscheid

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

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

Five stars.

Spaceman (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pie-Duddle Puddle, by Walt and Leigh Richmond

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

Outward Bound, by Norman Spinrad

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

Third Alternative, by Robin Wilson

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

Summing up

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

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

Looks like we'll have a warm spring!

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

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[December 17, 1963] The Ink-and-Paper Zoo (February 1964 Worlds of Tomorrow)

December 17, 2018 Victoria Silverwolf 1 Comment

by Victoria Silverwolf

I suppose it's appropriate that a magazine about the future should bear a cover date from a year that hasn't arrived yet. While the rest of us count the days until the end of 1963, editor Frederik Pohl peers into his crystal ball and discovers what 1964 has in store. According to the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, it's a very mixed picture indeed. With so many different kinds of science fiction stories inside its pages, the magazine is something of a Noah's Ark of imaginative literature. Let's go for a ride, shall we?

Lord of the Uffts, by Murray Leinster

This novella, from an author who has written science fiction for more than four decades, takes up half the magazine. It begins with a man having just returned from a deadly planet where he collected precious gems. He celebrates his good luck in the time-honored way of getting roaring drunk. When he wakes up, he finds himself aboard a rickety spaceship bound for parts unknown. It seems that, while in his cups, he agreed to serve as navigator for the man who owns the vessel. He also got into a fight with the police. His new employer hasn't paid his bills, so they both take off in a hurry to escape the authorities.

The master of the spaceship claims to have a plan to win a vast fortune by journeying to a certain planet. Humans from another world settled it long ago. They have since degenerated into a pre-industrial society. Also inhabiting the planet are sentient aliens who look exactly like pigs. The humans hire them for various odd jobs, in exchange for beer. Despite this arrangement, which benefits both species, the pigs have nothing but contempt for the humans, openly insulting them at every opportunity.

The owner of the spaceship violates a serious taboo by offering to do business with the humans. They consider paying a person for goods or services an unforgivable insult. In their eyes, such things are fit only for the pigs. So serious a breach of etiquette is this that they sentence the man to death by hanging. The protagonist faces a similar fate, when he inadvertently offends his host by speaking words of flattery to the pigs. Complications ensue. The hero eventually finds out why the humans have lost their advanced technological skills, possess only shoddy goods, and depend on the pigs for labor. He eventually manipulates both species into a new way of life, and lives happily ever after with the love of his life.

This is a tongue-in-cheek tale of adventure, with touches of comedy and satire. Despite threats to his life, the protagonist never seems to be in any real danger. The explanation for the ways the humans live is predictable, given a strong hint early in the story. Although it provides some amusement, the story goes on too long to sustain its lighthearted tone.

Two stars.

The Provenance of Swift, by Lyle G. Boyd

This is a mock article claiming to provide evidence that Jonathan Swift was a Martian. Readers of Gulliver's Travels will not be surprised to learn that it is based on the odd coincidence that the great satirist wrote about Mars having two moons long before they were discovered. Well aware that this has been pointed out many times before, the author provides other so-called proofs. Incidents in the life of Swift are interpreted in outrageous ways. Even if this is intended as a spoof of misguided scholarship, it's a one-joke parody. If nothing else, the reader learns quite a bit about a gifted writer. (Swift, that is, not Boyd.)

Two stars.

Alpha, Beta, Love…, by Bill Doede

A man and a woman land on a planet in order to find out if it is suitable for colonization. It is inhabited by two disembodied beings in the form of glowing spheres, able to teleport at will, and to manipulate the minds and bodies of the humans. One of the globes, who used to be male, is more-or-less friendly. The other, who once inhabited a female body, is so resentful of never having had a love life that she attempts to kill the humans. The human man figures out a way to block the aliens' telepathic powers through a technological trick which is not very convincing.

They next encounter a furry humanoid creature with sticky pads on its digits, like those of a gecko. This meeting turns out to have more to do with the spheres than expected. Other strange things happen, but what is really at stake is whether the woman will fall in love with the man or not.

This is an odd story. The author has an active imagination, but the plot never hangs together.

Two stars.

When the Stars Answer, by T. K. Brown III

This tale of first contact begins with a history of radio astronomy, leading up to Project Ozma. The fictional part begins when a spaceship arrives from the star 61 Cygni, in response to signals from Earth. The sole passenger appears human, but has vastly superior intelligence. There's a clever twist in the plot that should have ended the story. Unfortunately, one final paragraph turns the whole thing into a silly farce.

Two stars.

A Message from Loki, by James Blish

A writer better known for fiction offers an article about Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Based on the behavior of high winds on the surface of the Earth, he suggests that it might lie above a gigantic plateau. Since we don't even know if Jupiter has a solid surface at all, this is highly speculative.

Two stars.

The Transcendent Tigers, by R. A. Lafferty

A seven-year-old girl receives a red cap, along with other small gifts, on her birthday. This gives her the power to do incredible things, from turning a hollow ball inside out without tearing it to solving an impossible wire puzzle. Disaster soon follows. Very few writers can pull off this strange kind of apocalyptic whimsy as well as Lafferty. His use of unusual names, bizarre words, deadpan dialogue and narration, and quotes from fictional journals makes this tale of worldwide catastrophe charming.

Four stars.

Little Dog Gone, by Robert F. Young

The magazine ends almost the same way it began, with a man waking up from a drunken spree to find himself far off in space. In this case, the fellow is an actor, who destroyed his career with his drinking. He winds up on a frontier colony planet. The first creature he meets looks very much like an ordinary dog, but has the power to teleport. The friendly little animal accompanies him into town. There he meets a woman who used to play a sort of female Tarzan on interplanetary television. Down on her luck, she now works at the local bar. Together the three form a space-going medicine show, making use of the dog's ability. Success leads the man to confront his past, and to make a decision about his future. Readers familiar with the author's works will not be surprised to learn that this is a sentimental love story. Nevertheless, although it wears its heart on its sleeve, it never becomes overly emotional.

Four stars.

Summing up

From pigs to tigers to dogs, this issue provides a menagerie of science fiction. Although not all the specimens on display are equally interesting, it's worth walking by their cages to see what weird creatures are looking back at you.

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[September 9, 1963] Great Expectations (October 1963 Galaxy)

September 9, 2018 Gideon Marcus 3 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a time of renewal and new beginnings. This year, it falls on September 18, and it can't be coincidence that the Fall TV season starts around then. After all, this year is going to see a bumper crop of science fiction television, including the debuts of the anthology show The Outer Limits, My Favorite Martian, and the Japanese import Astro Boy.

In fact, the first episode of the last show premiered just the day before yesterday and, to all accounts, it'll be a big hit. That was certainly the reaction I observed at the preview showing during this year's Worldcon. Look out for an article on Astro Boy next month!

In the meantime, you've got plenty of good stuff to occupy your attention. For instance, Margaret St. Clair has an exciting new book out called Sign of the Labrys — expect a review soon. There is also the October 1963 issue of Galaxy, an extra-thick pile of fiction that'll give you good company for a day or two. I've just finished the mag, so let's take a look, shall we?

The Men in the Walls, by William Tenn

Imagine an alien conquest so terrible and comprehensive that humanity is reduced to living in the walls of the extraterrestrials' homes like rats. Civilization shattered back to the Stone Age, forced to survive on the leavings of the aliens. The world before has disappeared into legend, and artifacts from the before-time are like magic, their original purpose unknown.

This is the setting veteran author, William Tenn, gives us in the short novel, The Men in the Walls. Our protagonist is "Eric the Only," a youth on the edge of manhood, who embarks on his first Theft in alien territory. Originally intending to play it safe and just steal food, he is persuaded by his ambitious uncle to try for the hardest of targets: alien technology.

The components may sound familiar: Tenn's creation shares a great deal of feel with Galouye's Dark Universe (burrow-dwelling humans turned savage) as well as Aldiss' Hot House (humans are tiny in comparative scale, and they commonly give birth to "litters" rather than individuals.) Nevertheless, Tenn delivers his story in a fresh, page-turning manner, and it's a worthy read.

That said, The Men in the Walls is only half a story, ending just as it gets really interesting. One has to wonder if a sequel or an expanded novel is planned. Moreover, the writing gets a little repetitive in points; the story could probably have been ten pages shorter.

Three and a half stars.

For Your Information: King of the Rats

Willy Ley brings us a discussion of the Rat King, a near-mythical phenomenon in which a dozen or more rats are found with their tails spontaneously fused. It's a weird topic and an oddly short piece. I wonder if Willy's getting tired of doing these. Three stars.

On the Gem Planet, by Cordwainer Smith

On a world composed solely of precious stones, a lone horse wanders masterless through a crystal valley. The Dictator of the planet and his beautiful heir entreat a young visitor, a crusading exile whose sole goal is to regain the throne of his home planet, for an explanation of how the horse came to his current condition.

Nothing more need be said of this piece save that it is another tale of the Instrumentality by the inimitable Smith, and it does not injure the reputation of the series or its writer. Four stars.

A Day on Death Highway, by Chandler Elliott

On the other hand, Elliott's would-be whimsical tale of bad drivers in the future is a clunker. Rendering a piece in artificial slang is always a dicey prospect, and there isn't enough of interest in this story to make it worth the slog. One star.

Sweet Tooth, by Robert F. Young

Two giant aliens, all head and no body (or all body and no head) terrorize a rural part of the country with their insatiable taste for chrome-plated automobiles. Are they the vanguard of an invasion…or just a couple of kids in the candy shop?

Robert F. Young has produced some of the most sublime pieces of fiction as well as some of the worst pieces of hackneyed crud I've ever read. This tale is neither. Three stars.

Med Ship Man, by Murray Leinster

Calhoun, intrepid healer to the stars, encounters an ominously empty colony. Why did the entire population flee their homes in a mad rush, often mid-meal? And is there a connection with the coincident arrival of Allison, a ruthless businessman from the cattle planet of Texia?

I was trepidatious about this story because the previous Med Ship story had been a disappointment. Thankfully, Leinster is back to form. Sure, he still writes in that slightly plodding, repetitive fashion that shouldn't work, but it does as the voice of Calhoun, a man I perceive to be fastidious, peevish, and utterly competent. Four stars.

In short, this month's Galaxy gives you plenty to look forward to. Take in the Tenn, the Leinster, and especially, the Smith. And then pick up the St. Clair. That should hold you through to the new year!

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[August 8, 1963] Great Escapes (September 1963 IF)

August 8, 2018 Gideon Marcus 8 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

In the United States, the Fourth of July is perhaps our biggest holiday, celebrating our declaration of independence from our former motherland, Great Britain. It was our escape from taxation without representation, from capricious colonial government, and from forced tea-drinking.

This latest Independence Day saw the premiere of one of the biggest and best summer blockbusters ever made, the appropriately themed The Great Escape. Directed by John Sturges, and starring James Garner, Richard Attenborough, and Steve McQueen, it is the vaguely true-to-life story of a prison break from a Nazi Stalag. Exciting, moving, and beautifully done, it's sure to be a contender for an Oscar or three. Watch it.

The September 1963 Worlds of IF Science Fiction continues the escape motif. Not just in the normal sense in that it provides an escape from reality, but rather, each of its stories involves an escape of some kind.

Was this a deliberate editorial choice by Fred Pohl or simply a happy circumstance? Either way, it makes for an enjoyable issue that is better than the sum of its parts.

The Expendables, by A. E. van Vogt

Van Vogt, one of space opera's most prominent lights, has been away from the SF scene for fourteen years. So it's quite a scoop for Pohl to have gotten this latest piece, depicting the final stages of a generation ship's journey. A mutiny against the authoritarian captaincy is brewing as the ship nears its destination, and when it turns out the planet intended for colonization is already inhabited, all-out rebellion ensues.

This is a tale that combines two of my favorite topics, first contact and generation ships, and I'm a big fan of Van Vogt. However, I am disappointed to report that Expendables just doesn't hang well together. The science is shaky, the dialogue rather implausible, and the characters a bit too gullible. There is also a queer, slapdash quality to the writing. I suspect this was written in a hurry; a do-over could turn it into a fine story, indeed. Two stars as is.

The Time of Cold, by Mary Carlson

Curt, a spacewrecked man trapped without water on a parched world has little hope of surviving long enough to be rescued. Xen is an amorphous hot-blooded being, native to the planet, desperate for more warmth. Both are menaced by liquid scorpions, beasts who kill in an instant and don't care what world you come from. Are the two aliens the key to each other's survival?

There is an art to telling a story from alternating perspectives such that each scene moves the story forward without repetition. Mary Carlson, a young lady from South Dakota, mastered that art in her first published piece. It's a beautiful, uplifting tale. Bravo. Five stars.

Manners and Customs of the Thrid, by Murray Leinster

In Thrid culture, the Governor can never be wrong, and woe be to one who disputes him. Jorgenson, a representative of the Rim Star Trading Corp., dares to stand up for his native business partner, Ganti, whose wife the Governor would have for his own. Both are exiled for life to a barren rock in the middle of the ocean, escape from which would daunt even the fellows who broke out of Alcatraz.

But, escape they do, and the method is quite ingenious — and logical given the central tenet of Thrid society. Writing-wise, it's a rather workmanlike piece, but the thrilling bits more than compensate. Three stars.

Science on a Shoestring – Or Less , by Theodore Sturgeon

In this month's science column, Sturgeon extols the merits of UNESCO's book, Sourcebook for Science Teaching. I love Ted Sturgeon, don't get me wrong, but sometimes his article topics just don't merit the space they take up. Two stars.

The Reefs of Space (Part 2 of 3), by Jack Williamson, and Frederik Pohl

In the future, Earth is a dystopia under the stifling computerized control of the Machine and its inscrutable Plan. Those who resist the Plan, or for whom the Machine can make no use, are condemned to the Body Bank for reclamation. The last installment, in which state criminal Steve Ryeland was forced by the Machine to develop a reactionless drive, only mentioned the Body Banks in passing. Part 2 deals almost exclusively with them.

In the midst of his work, Ryeland, accused of plotting a wave of disasters around the world, is exiled to Cuba. The tropical paradise has been turned into a kind of leper colony, except limbs and organs are not lost to disease, but instead, according to the demands of the citizens for whom parts are harvested. Over time, the residents lose more and more of themselves until there is not enough to sustain life. One might survive as long as six years, if you can call a limbless, mouthless existence survival. Of course, the tranquilizing drugs they put in the food and water keep you from minding too much…

Fred Pohl already proved he could write compelling horror in A Plague of Pythons. This latest installment of The Reefs of Space would do fine as a stand-alone story (and I have to wonder if it was originally intended as such). The tale of Ryeland's attempt to escape an escape-proof prison is gripping, even if the trappings of the greater story aren't so much. Four stars.

The Course of Logic, by Lester del Rey

A mated pair of parasitic aliens, who use other creatures as their hosts, have been trapped on a bleak world for eons. Their home galaxy has been destroyed, and the only compatible beasts they've found lack the fine motor skills to construct spaceships for escape — or any other kind of technology. So they are delighted when they come across a pair of humans, for our form is absolutely perfect for their needs. Will these puppet masters, once ensconced in our guise, escape their planetary prison and become unstoppable conquerors?

Lester has been too long from our ranks, but it looks like he's back to stay, given his recent record of publication. This is a grim piece but with a splendid sting in its tail. I also particularly enjoyed this bit of evolutionary teleology, said by the dominant female to her mate:

"The larger, stronger and more intelligent form is always female. How else could it care for its young? It needs ability for a whole family, while the male needs only enough for itself. The laws of evolution are logical or we wouldn't have evolved at all."

And before you scoff, recall the hyenas and the bees. Four stars.

The Customs Lounge, by E. A. Proulx

This vignette appears to be a Tale from the White Hart, but it's really a story of human cleverness under alien domination. It is apparently the first piece by Proulx, "a folk singing star-gazing man from upstate New York," and while it's nothing special, it's also not bad. Three stars.

Threlkeld's Daughter, by James Bell

Last up, we have a tale not of escape, but of entrapment. A six-legged, tailed tree-creature from Alpha Centauri takes on comely human female form and travels to Earth to secure a male homo sapiens specimen for study. But with the human body comes human hormones and emotions, and love creates its own entrapments.

It's a cute little piece, more like something I'd find in F&SF. Three stars.

Thus ends a fine issue of an improving magazine. If you ever find yourself imprisoned, in gaol real or virtual, one of these stories might give you the inspiration to break out. Or, at the very least, make a few hours of your sentence more pleasant.

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Message from the Eocene by Margaret St. Clair (Ace Double M-105)

Three World of Futurity by Margaret St. Clair

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction