China's got the Bomb, but have no fears—they can't wipe us out for at least five years…
So sang satirist Tom Lehrer in 1965 for the television show That Was the Week that Was. Well, here we are, about five years later, and the Chinese have graduated to the big time. 18 months ago, they tested their first H-Bomb, the big firecracker that involves nuclear fusion rather than fission, with a damage yield equal to more than 100 times that of the Hiroshima A-Bomb. A try at #2 last year was a dud, but one detonated less than a fortnight ago went off just fine, creating a 3 megaton blast.
Radio Peking announced the blast on December 29th, but the Atomic Energy Commission had detected the blast the day before. It was apparently timed in celebration of Mao Tse Tung's 75th birthday. (In China, if you go carrying pictures of the Chairman, you will make it with someone…)
The bright…uh…positive side to this is that China's missiles, if there be any, are probably mostly pointed at the Soviet Union. Apparently, the Russians have beefed up their border divisions, and inter-Communist relations are sub-frosty.
So perhaps we have another five years…
Bigger than a half-dozen magazines
On the homefront, the latest issue of Galaxy, the magazine with half again as much content as all the others, offers some boffo entertainment as well as a few duds.
by John Pederson Jr.
To Jorslem, by Robert Silverberg
The ever-productive Silverbob offers up what may (but may not) be the final installment in his vivid Nightwings series. I'm sure we'll see a fix-up soon, a la To Open the Sky. According to Bob, this is his modus operandi—sell novellas to Galaxy editor Pohl, and then corral them into a novel.
by Jack Gaughan
Following directly on the heels of the last story, the invaders have fully Vichy-ized the Earth. Tomis, formerly a star-surveying Watcher, and then an historian of the caste Rememberers, is now a Pilgrim. Accompanied by the haughty Olmayne, cast out of the Rememberers for her slaying of her husband to be with the (now dead) former prince of Roum, the two make their way toward the holy city of Jorslem. Tomis is burdened not only with Olmayne's company but also the knowledge that he has sold out humanity, giving the invaders records of the Terran subjugation of the aliens' ancestors—thus justifying the invasion.
The story is something of a travelogue, something of a search for redemption, and it's written absolutely beautifully. It's not New Wave, exactly, but it's qualitatively different from what filled Galaxy last decade (or, indeed, what continues to fill Analog). Maybe Silverberg is leading a one-man revolution.
"Jorslem" does not quite achieve five stars, however. The plot is thin, even as (and perhaps especially as) a climax to the series. The happy endings come too suddenly and a bit implausibly. Female characters exist to be lovers or harpies.
Nevertheless, the world is so beautifully rendered, and the prose so masterfully done, that you'll enjoy the journey regardless.
Four stars.
Now Hear the Word of the Lord, by Algis Budrys
An alien race has controlled the world since 1958, secretly and tirelessly infiltrating every level of our society. One lone voice, a representative of the World Language League, finds a member of this cabal and threatens to kill him in order to learn the true extent of the invasion. The truth is shocking enough to blow your circuits.
A humdrum plot, but excellent, sensual telling. Four stars.
Another aliens-among-us story. This time, the baddies are the Fnools, who perfectly ape members of a given profession—realtors, minor cabinet officials, what have you. Only one thing gives them away: they are all only two feet tall.
But what if there was an easily accessible way for them to grow to human height? All hope would be lost!
This is a silly story, and most of the goodwill it earns is thrown away by the rather tasteless ending.
Two stars.
Golden Quicksand, by J. R. Klugh
by Jack Gaughan
The ferret ship H.L.S. Solsmyga is running for its life from two Grakevi raiders at thousands of times the speed of light. Its crew are protected from the tremendous accelerations involved only by the use of liquid-filled, individual pods, linked by the computerized Shipmind. If only the Solsmyga could use its superior maneuverability to ditch its pursuers; but in fact, Commander Yuri Hammlin's mission is to lead the raiders into a trap.
The running battle is competently presented, with lush, pseudotechnical detail, and Gaughan peppers the story with pretty, albeit superfluous, pictures. Ultimately, though, it's just a combat story. There is an attempted stingy tail, but it's more of an appendix.
Three stars.
Our Binary Brothers, by James Blish
by Brock
A driven man achieves everlasting success on Earth, but that's not enough. Repelled by humanity's technological quagmire, he longs for a simpler, cleaner world. And he finds one orbiting a hitherto undiscovered dwarf star just a fifth of a lightyear away. There, he sets himself up as a God and slowly leads the unwashed masses there toward a better civilization.
But planets comprise multiple populations, and not all are as backward as the hill people first encountered by the Terran…
A well-written but one-note vignette. Three stars.
For Your Information: The Island of Brazil, by Willy Ley
This is a fascinating piece on a variety of Atlantic land masses that never were. It's a nice complement to his piece on Atlantis.
Five stars.
Kendy's World, by Hayden Howard
by Reese
Kennedy Olson was born to high hopes just before the National Emergency turned the United States into an increasingly autocratic police state. After the death of his hippie, goodnik father, the boy coasted through life on his athletic skills and his winning smile. Come his junior year in high school, "Kendy" had more than a dozen scholarship offers, but the most persuasive came from the small California campus of National University. Seemingly too good to be true, the old-fashioned college offered a well-rounded education, sports opportunities, and a chance to make a difference.
Except that NU is really a training ground for spies, and the big bad isn't the Soviets, but the unspeakable, top secret horror they found when they tried to land on Phobos…
From the author that brought us The Eskimo Invasion, this story appears to be the setup for another serialized novel. The writing is strictly amateur, and there's not much story here—just a series of unpleasant events. I am curious about the alien menace, though, if it ever be developed.
Two stars.
Finish with a bust
As promised, there's lots of good stuff, and a fair bit of mediocrity in this first Galaxy of 1969. Ending with the weakest tale probably makes sense, but it does leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Nevertheless, the issue finishes on the positive side of the three-star divide, and that's a good enough New Year baby for me!
How about two of them, with Dick Martin from Laugh-In…
Last month marked the 20th anniversary of the founding of the UK’s National Health Service. There are many issues with it, patients often wait for hours to see a GP, doctors trained by the service are regularly leaving for better paid work overseas, and many of the hospitals taken over from the private sector are in disrepair and not fit for the modern era.
Long hospital queues. A perennial issue
Many of the major issues come down to spending choices. There are continually new innovations coming out that are expensive to use. For example, would it be better to spend the money on the new dialysis machines, rebuilding hospitals or reducing staff to patient ratios? All are important but they cannot all be achieved.
Is it better to invest in new technology or more staff?
However, in spite of this, it has already become a beloved institution. There are few that want to go back to the system of voluntary hospitals and medical aid societies, and the principle of a health service free at the point of use is hugely popular.
Both of the publications I am reviewing this month are similar to the NHS in this manner. They may be relatively recent and not without their flaws but are still loved for what they do.
Orbit 3
Cover by Jack Lehr
Much like its British equivalent New Writings in S-F, Damon Knight seems to have a stable set of writers to draw from, with 4 of the 9 authors in this issue having appeared in a prior volume.
Mother To The World by Richard Wilson
Martin Rolfe and Cecelia “Siss” Beamer appear to be the last survivors of biological attack on the US by China. Whilst Siss is devoted to Rolfe, she also has an intellectual handicap, and he grows increasingly depressed about his situation.
Yes, this is yet another “Last Man” story, the twist being that the lead here is an unpleasant creep. Maybe others want to read about domestic abuse and incest. I do not. Add on to that statements about being surprised that a “backward country” like China could develop powerful weapons (the same country that built a hydrogen bomb last year) and I found myself annoyed at the entire thing.
One star
Bramble Bush by Richard McKenna
We are told that McKenna’s back catalogue has finally been exhausted so this is the last of him we will see in Orbit, and it is his most baffling tale.
In a future where man has explored much of the galaxy, a team is dispatched to Proteus. This planet, in Alpha Centauri, has never been landed on, as every prior mission has mysteriously had to abort before arriving. After making landfall they encounter what appear to be primitive humans who they are unable to communicate with. But after these Proteans perform a ceremony, the world gets a lot stranger for the crew.
We are told this story “…deals with one of the most perplexing questions in relativity…If all four spacetime dimensions are equivalent, how is it we perceive one so differently to the rest? [Mckenna gives a] solution which involved the anatomy of the nervous system, symbology, anthropology, the psychology of perception and magic."
It is possible that is what the story is about. I was honestly utterly confused throughout.
Two Stars, I guess?
The Barbarian by Joanna Russ
Continuing the adventures of Alyx in this fourth installment of her tales. She is now 35 and back in the ancient world (I presume after the novel Picnic on Paradise as there is a reference to her disappearance) when she is approached by a mysterious powerful figure who offers her anything she wants for just one deed. To kill a future dictator who is currently only six months old.
Russ continues to impress with these adventures, finding ways to expand the world and offer new situations for Alyx to grapple with. Here the tables are turned on her somewhat, as she is now dealing with someone more powerful who looks down on her. How she navigates the situation is fascinating and reveals much more about her. Whilst I wouldn’t rate this quite as highly as the prior installments, it is still very good.
Four Stars
The Changeling by Gene Wolfe
A Korean war veteran returns to his hometown in the US. Everything seems much the same except for young Peter Palmieri, who has not aged. What is more, no one else remembers Peter as being alive back then. Is our narrator suffering from Gross Stress Reaction? Or is something stranger going on?
I found this a well-told story but also fairly obvious and not doing anything I hadn’t seen before.
Three Stars
Why They Mobbed the White House by Doris Pitkin Buck
Hubert is a veteran who has become frustrated with the growing complexity of completing his tax return, so he leads a movement to have them done by supercomputers. But will the machines be any happier with this state of affairs?
As I come from outside the US, the complexity of filling out their tax returns is such a mystery to me. Not only could I not relate, I found this silly and dull.
A low two stars
The Planners by Kate Wilhelm
In a large research facility, monkeys are being given pills to test if it will increase their intelligence, along with the intellectually handicapped and prisoners. Do they have the right to do this? And is this all that is going on?
This is another of the kind of story popularized by Flowers For Algernon. It has some interesting touches, but I don’t think it rises significantly above the crowd.
Three Stars
Don't Wash the Carats by Philip Jose Farmer
In this experimental vignette, surgeons find a diamond inside a person.
A couple of years ago I considered Farmer to be one of the best people writing SF, but he has recently gone off the rails. This is described as “a ‘polytropic paramyth’ – a sort of literary Rorschach test”. Well what I see is pretentious nonsense.
One Star
Letter To A Young Poet by James Sallis
In this epistolary tale, Samthar Smith writes to another young poet back on Earth about his life and works.
This is a pleasant little piece where a writer looks back on his life and ponders about it. There is not a huge amount to say about it, but it is enjoyable.
Three Stars
Here Is Thy Sting by John Jakes
It all starts when Cassius Andrews, middling journalist, goes to pick up his brother’s corpse and finds it missing. This sends him on a surreal journey involving an old WBI agent, a superstar singer and a mad scientist.
I found it fitting that this is the longest piece in the anthology but has the shortest introduction. It rambles on for pages without much there and I found the conclusion to be rather odd. I don’t see that if we could remove the fear of the act of death (not the ceasing to be, but the momentary pain) everyone would become melancholy and cease to have a purpose. If anything would that not make people more willing to take bigger risks? The one thing I will say for it is Jakes is able to spin a yarn well enough to keep me reading to the end.
Two stars…just.
Famous Science Fiction #7
This quarter’s cover is a detail of the cover from August 1929’s Science Wonder Stories by Frank R. Paul.
I have to say I find this Famous version much less effective. In a short article on the subject, it states that it is the first time a space station was illustrated on a magazine cover but adds some criticism for it seeming old fashioned, due to the lack of technical articles available to work from in the period. Interesting enough for what it is.
Men of the Dark Comet by Festus Pragnell
This story and the next are from the summer issues of Science Wonder Stories in 1933.
In a far distant solar system, a planet’s natural satellite had been set loose in order to escape a disaster from their sun. This “Dark Comet”, as it becomes nicknamed because it absorbs all light, eventually enters Earth’s system.
Heathcoate, the commander of the spaceship Aristotle, is rendered unconscious by the application of the Martian drug Borga. He wakes up on an out of control ship, his cargo gone and the only person left on board being a prisoner, the drug addict Boddington. Boddington is able to deduce Martian pirates were behind this, working with the native authorities to secretly build up their own space fleet.
Crossing paths with the comet, they manage to effect a landing. Inside they find themselves among a species of alien “Plant-Men”, Boddington hopes to stay and learn more, Heathcote wants to return to Earth to warn of a potential Martian invasion.
Art by Frank R. Paul
Whilst I am not opposed to slow starts in fiction, this novella is glacial. So much irrelevant detail is included it is hard to get a grip on the central plot for some time. It includes some interesting elements, such as Martians having three sexes for reproduction and an interplanetary drug trade, but mostly it is irritating. At the same time, the Martian invasion plot feels cliched.
What is interesting enough to raise it up are the attempts to communicate with the plant creatures. Pragnell does a good job of making them seem truly alien, with contact taking place via the electro magnetic spectrum.
A very low three stars
The Elixir by Laurence Manning
We now come to the conclusion of the five part Man Who Awoke saga. To quickly recap for the unfamiliar, Norman Winters developed the means of putting himself to sleep for thousands of years and has been waking up further and further in Earth’s future. At the end of the last story we learnt that Winters has set his device to wake him up in the year 25,000, but that Bengue has also decided to duplicate his process and follow him.
After awakening and traversing the wilderness, Winters finds himself in the laboratory of Ponceon. As luck would have it Ponceon has been developing an elixir of immortality. Now he is able to travel into the future without sleep, instead he can live through the millenia himself.
These advancements are possible due to the development of voluntary social contracts across mankind, stating they will not force any person against their will and to never refuse anyone help. Colonies now exist on Mars and Venus, machines can convert any raw material into products and currency has been abolished, with workers simply sharing new inventions for the common good.
Now able to use the process to explore the universe, humanity spreads away from the Solar System. Winters joins the disciples of Calcedon, who live on a far-off planet searching for the meaning of life. There they work on trying to use the Temples of Thought to understand the nature of creation.
Art by Frank R. Paul
This is a more sedate story. Any moments of conflict are solved quickly, instead we are simply meant to explore this utopian world we find ourselves in, and hop between locations and philosophical musings. However, it manages to avoid being dull.
Bengue’s appearance is an odd one. A big point is made of it in the prior story but here he turns up for a single paragraph where we are merely told:
…he had awakened a few months after Winters had left Earth and had actively been engaged on some breeding experiments ever since. The two spent a year and a half together and finding they had nothing of real interest in common, separated by mutual consent.
I can’t help but wonder if something was cut or if there was another story that was never published.
Not as strong as some of the other parts but a satisfying conclusion.
Four Stars
Why Bother With Criticism by R. W. Lowdnes
Another of Lowdnes’ editorial essays, this time looking at reading for fun vs art and looking at how criticism can be mind-expanding. It is an incredibly kind and well thought out section, with some standout parts such as:
When someone proclaims that something you have enjoyed is inferior…you will want to defend it. Because if something you enjoyed…is proclaimed inferior or bad, then there is an implication that you are a person who enjoys the inferior, enjoys trash – so there must be something wrong with you. If you are secure enough in your own estimation of your worth as a person so that you can shrug off such implications…then you might even acknowledge that a particular story is not great art…and let it go at that. Or others might be wrong, but your own security will not require you to produce defensive reactions. It is the insecure person, who has serious doubts about himself who has to be excessively defensive…under such conditions.
Advice I wish I was able to follow more often. Highly recommended for every reader.
Five Stars
Away From The Daily Grind by Gerald W. Page
In the first new story in this issue, Mr. Federer wants a way to hide away from civilisation and is put in contact with Mr. Parkhurst, but what does the deal entail?
Unlike the rest of this issue, I found I would completely forget this story after finishing it. It is not badly written but inconsequential and built around a bad pun.
Two Stars
The Fires Die Down by Robert Silverberg
This is a bit of a rarity. Not a new piece but one from Silverberg’s absurdly prolific period in the 50s, previously published in Britain in the much missed Nebula magazine.
The Thanians, a multi-galactic civilisation, have come to colonise Earth. Finding a low technology civilisation on a sparsely populated planet they expect to be worshipped as Gods. To their surprise humanity has given up this kind of imperialism millenia ago and are simply unbothered by their visitors. What could have happened?
What a wonderful surprise, I do recall some of Silverberg’s efforts in the British magazines but this one was not in my collection. It goes counter to so many of the clichés of science fiction and critiques the idea of expansionist space operas that dominate the genre (and thereby colonialism itself), instead showcasing a form of rural anarchistic utopianism. A story that still feels fresh now and I would easily call it the best work of Silverberg’s I have ever read.
Five Stars
Not By Its Cover by Philip K. Dick
We finish off with the other new piece, possibly by the most Famous author to grace these pages.
A publisher creates a series of special editions of famous books coated in the rare indestructible Martian wub-fur. However, the Wub’s consciousness lives on in the pelt and has opinions on the books it is coating.
It is easy to forget that sometimes Dick can be very funny when he wants to be, elevating what could have been a forgettable vignette to something better.
A high three stars
Imperfect Pieces
Advert for the NHS from 1948
As you can see, the quality varies considerably in both publications, some good, some bad, but I am glad that we have them here.
Are they to remain around for 20 years like the NHS has? Or are they destined to be experiments cast by the way-side, like Gamma or Star Science Fiction before them? Only time will tell.
When Androids are created to look and behave indistinguishably from humans, this question bears even greater importance.
The setting: Earth. The time: not too far from now. Rick Deckard is a man whose job is to “retire” escaped androids, using an empathy test to determine who is human and who is not. Most questions revolve around treatment of animals and only complete revulsion at the thought of eating meat or using leather made from an animal’s hide would allow someone to pass.
Ironic, given that I would not pass this test, and you, Dear Reader, probably wouldn’t either.
But these attitudes make sense in the context of Deckard’s world.
Survivors are few and far between on a nuclear-war destroyed Earth. Most humans have emigrated to a terraformed Mars. Animals no longer exist in the wild and what few creatures have evaded extinction are kept as pets and used as a sign of social status. Rick Deckard’s sheep shamefully died years ago, and since not owning an animal at all would mark him as inhuman, Deckard secretly replaced his animal with an ersatz electric sheep. Most of his motivation in this story is to acquire a new live animal to replace his fake one, and it’s this social pressure that leads him to taking on one last job before he leaves retiring androids behind him.
While hunting a dangerous group of runaway androids, Deckard is seduced by an android he meets earlier in the story – Rachael. Rachael so happens to share the same model as one of the targets and attempts to seduce him so that he will feel conflicted about killing his target.
I enjoy when sexuality is explored in science fiction, but the scene that follows was greatly uncomfortable for me to read. Don’t mistake me for being a prude, but Rachael’s body is described as pre-pubescent. Perhaps Dick meant to relay that she is lacking in shape or body hair, but I read it to be girlishly young. I believe the author’s intent might have been to relay to readers that this relationship is immoral, in which case, I think he succeeded.
While Deckard’s weakness towards androids is rooted in his sexual attraction towards them, there is another notable character who empathizes with the androids, but for a drastically different reason.
Because he scored too low on an IQ test, Isidore has been marked as “special,” meaning he isn’t allowed to emigrate to Mars or even procreate and overall is regarded as “lesser.” When the group of runaways Deckard is hunting hides out in Isidore’s otherwise abandoned building, he quickly allies with them, out of perhaps a mix of loneliness but also kinship.
I found Isidore to be the most compelling character in the book. Through him, Dick creates a strong irony. Humans feel superior over androids, priding themselves on the one thing they have that androids don’t – the ability to empathize – yet it’s ironic that Isidore, a human being, is actually treated worse than animals for his supposed lack of intelligence, while androids are most notable for being incredibly intelligent.
Author: Philip K. Dick
So what defines humanity? Dick offers no clear answers, but instead evokes several interesting discussion points that I am sure will stick with me for years to come. 5 Stars.
by Jason Sacks
I’ve raved about Philip K. Dick several times in these pages, full of praise for his kitchen-sink imagination and his unprecedented ability to build up worlds. The estimable Mr. Dick has done some astoundingly great work in the past, but his latest novel, which has the brilliantly odd title Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is his best work so far.
The most pervasive theme in Dick’s writing is the idea that technology can't lift us up to a higher place. In fact, no matter how greatly our technology improves, humanity can never escape its own inner pathos. People will always be people, with all our multifaceted flaws, and we can never escape our basest motives.
Do Androids Dream is set in an Earth which is living with the aftereffects of World War Terminus, a nuclear event which nobody quite knows who started, but which has caused utter devastation on our planet. Earth has mostly been deserted – most people have been killed by the war and its radiation, and those who weren’t killed or sterilized by the resulting fallout were transported off-planet to various planets, where a new civilization has emerged with andy (android) servants of “as many types as there were cars in the 1950s," a nice Dickian touch of verisimilitude.
It's also a nice Dickian touch for there to be so much uncertainty who started the War, and for nobody much to care about its origins. As he nearly always does, Dick concentrates on the ordinary people affected by the event and on their sad little lives of quiet desperation.
Our main character is a poor schlub named Rick Deckard, who we immediately learn is married to a woman who seems indifferent to him. Iran Deckard loves her Penfield Mood Organ, a device she uses to dial her mood to a six-hour self-accusatory depression (or an awareness of the manifold opportunities open to her in the future, to help her break out of the depression). Rick and Iran bicker and fight, about her love for the Penfield, about Rick’s love for his animal, and about why the couple couldn’t emigrate from Earth. Iran is a pretty typical wife in a Dick novel – we’ve seen him write shrewish women since his nongenre novels of the 1940s – but this wife has some agency about her, some inner life which shows an emotional complexity beyond some of the more impulsive women Dick has written in previous works.
Like most of the people who live in this devastated San Francisco, Deckard is captivated by the idea of owning an animal. In a world devastated by war, an animal is a precious commodity. But Deckard can’t find an actual living animal to buy, at least not anything he wants to buy or remotely in his price range.
So Deckard has to buy an artificial animal, a robotic sheep, to take place of his sad living sheep who died of tetanus. Deckard is obsessed with the pathetic nature of his robotic animal, desperate to own a real living animal as a status symbol to make his life more fulfilling. If he earns enough credits on his job, Deckard might be able to buy a bovine creature, perhaps a cow, if he can pick up a well-paying job.
Deckard works as a kind of android hunter, in fact. See, andys from the colonies have returned to the Earth, and Deckard is paid a commission to hunt down and bag the andys. But it can be hard to tell the difference between the andys and the real people. The only easy way to tell the difference is through an understanding of empathy. The Voight-Kampff scale tests empathy; when Deckard’s predecessor tried to use the scale on an andy, he was brutally killed for his efforts. Thus, taking on this bounty hunter case is a test for Deckard in a truly existential way – both his sense of his own humanity and his very life are under threat.
Humans exist in a constant cloud of empathy. Deckard feels things, often too deeply. He lives in a world of envy and object lust, of self-pity and pathos.
He’s even part of a fascinating pseudo-religion called Mercerism whose practices are based all around the creation of a kind of empathy in its followers. Followers of Mercerism connect themselves to a kind of universal shared device which allows them to psychically feel each other as well as feeling empathy for all of Mercer’s struggles as be battles his way up a hill while being pelted with rocks from some unknown force. There’s an element of the passion of the Christ in Mercer's struggles, as this near universal connection and sacrifice connects all the believers to each other in a transcendent way.
Mr. Dick, in a recent photo
Opposing Mercer is Buster Friendly, the always-on, always smirking TV personality who has an unbreakable influence on everybody on both Earth and the colonies. Buster interrupts his endless blather with a diatribe against Mercer – and the way that whole storyline plays out is tremendously interesting.
Our secondary protagonist here, John Isidore (see Robin's article above for her insightful views of him), is a major follower of Mercerism, and the way this religion spans class and intelligence is a fascinating element of Dick's tale. In the future, it seems culture is monololithic and controlled by unseeing, unknown people for reasons scarcely pondered – a fascinating black hole in this most complex novel.
And, wow, there’s just so much else here that’s rich and intriguing. The book touches deeply on the concept of entropy, with Deckard acting as a kind of force that continually unmakes the world around him. Crucial to the ideas of the book is the idea of kipple, the slow entropy and destruction of everything mankind made. Deckard is a kind of human version of kipple, causing the dissolution of all of mankind’s aspirations.
There are nods to the arts, and to real human love, and there are some beautiful passages about human loneliness and this is all written in such lovely, simple, precise prose.
And the ending does so much to cast the entirety of this rich, complex world in a different light. The ending of this novel has a profound effect on what happened previously and leaves a powerful aftertaste for the reader.
Do Android Dream brings so many thematic lines to the surface in so many ways, with so many different approaches, that the writing approaches true profundity.
What does it mean to be human when your emotions are regulated, when your passions are sublimated into hobbies, when you’re mistreated by others, when even the very basic nature of humanity is nullified by the concept of artificial beings indistinguishable from real people? Is it inherent in being a human being to feel base emotions but to also seek the kind of transcendence that Mercerism provides? Is it really our empathy that makes us human? Does it decrease our humanity to have to dial up emotions or does it enhance that same humanity? Are all our petty goals and aspirations unimportant when our shared sacrifice for Mercer makes individuality feel almost subversive? In the end, what does it mean to be human at all?
And all of this brilliant philosophy is delivered in a beautifully written novel of a mere 170 compulsively readable pages.
This is Philip K. Dick’s finest work so far. 5 stars, and a clear contender for a Galactic Star of 1968.
There's a new anthology of original science fiction and fantasy stories in bookstores this month. It's certain to be the topic of a lot of discussion among SF buffs, and maybe even some arguments.
It's also big; more than five hundred pages, and it'll set you back a whopping seven bucks. It's so big, in fact, that Galactic Journey is going to slice it into three pieces and discuss it in a trio of articles. (Why three? Because it's got thirty-three stories in it, and eleven articles would be silly.)
Let's dig into the first part of this mammoth collection and see if it's destined to be the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of speculative fiction, or just another dud.
Wraparound cover art by the husband-and-wife team of Leo and Diane Dillon, who also provide an interior illustration for each story.
Before we get to the nitty-gritty of fiction, we've got no less than two forewords by Isaac Asimov and a lengthy introduction by the editor.
In The Second Revolution, the Good Doctor outlines the history of modern science fiction from Gernsback through Campbell, and into the New Wave. Astounding was the first revolution, you see, and now we're in the second one. That may be a little simplistic, but it gets the point across.
Harlan and I, on the other hand, is a personal essay about Asimov's relationship with the editor, ending with a teasing anecdote. Ellison adds a long footnote offering a different version of their first encounter.
More substantial is Thirty-Two Soothsayers, the editor's longwinded but endlessly entertaining and informative account of what this book is supposed to accomplish, and how it came to be. Ellison wanders all over the place in this piece, and it's a fun ride. In brief, the stories he chose are supposed to be both enjoyable and provocative, with new ideas that might not appear in the usual SF markets. We'll see.
(If you're wondering why thirty-two and not thirty-three, it's because one writer supplies two stories; but that's for another time.)
I should mention that each story comes with an introduction by the editor and an afterword by the author, except for the one case when those roles are reversed. You'll see what I mean in a while.
I'm going to do something a little different here. I'll rate the quality of each story with the usual one to five stars, but I'll also add an indication for how dangerous each one is. This will be determined by sexual content, violence, profanity, experimental narrative style, taboo subject matter, etc. GREEN = safe to proceed, YELLOW = caution indicated, RED = hazardous conditions.
An unnamed character flees through the universe in an attempt to escape those who have overthrown his reign. To say anything else would give away the point of the story, which is an allegory.
Three stars. YELLOW for questioning the deeply held beliefs of some readers.
In a premise similar to his excellent novel Thorns, the author presents a severely injured astronaut who has been put back together by aliens. In this case, however, his body has been restored to normal, but his mind has been made more sensitive to the emotions of others. That doesn't work out well.
Silverberg has become a fine writer, one of the best now working. Like Thorns, this is an uncompromising look at human suffering.
Five stars. YELLOW for scenes of extreme cruelty.
The Day After the Day the Martians Came, by Frederik Pohl
Set in the very near future, this tale deals with humanity's reaction to the discovery of ugly, semi-intelligent lifeforms on the red planet. Mostly, people make nasty jokes about them. The intent of the story is to expose human prejudices, in a way that's about as subtle as a brick thrown through a window.
Three stars. YELLOW for dealing with a major social problem in the USA today.
This is, by far, the longest story in the book. It is also incredibly dense and fast-paced, so any attempt to describe the plot would be a miserable failure. That said, I'll just mention that it takes place in a very strange future, involves an artist and his tax-dodging ancestor, and contains a ton of wordplay. There are scenes of slapstick violence that are simultaneously hilarious and offensive. It's a wild rollercoaster ride, so keep your seatbelt tightly secured.
Five stars. RED for a Joycean narrative style and Rabelaisian humor.
The Malley System, by Miriam Allen deFord
In the future, the worst criminals receive a very unusual punishment. This is a grim story, that doesn't shy away from the horrors perpetuated by human monsters.
In a decadent future, a man uses the only time machine in existence to kidnap people from the past, in order to satisfy the whims of his sadistic granddaughter. He picks the wrong potential victim. This is a spine-chilling little science fiction horror story with a twist in its tail.
This is a direct sequel to the previous story, with an introduction by Bloch and an afterword by Ellison. An infamous murderer finds himself in the far future, where the inhabitants enter his mind in order to enjoy his sensations as he kills.
Written in an experimental, almost cinematic style, this is an unrelenting look at the evil that lurks inside all of us. Not for weak stomachs.
People get so-called time gas supplied to their homes through pipes. It allows them to enjoy better times in the past. As with any form of technology, things can go wrong. This is a light comedy with a unique premise.
Three stars. GREEN for whimsy.
The Man Who Went to the Moon – Twice, by Howard Rodman
A young boy takes a trip to the Moon by holding on to a balloon, becoming a local celebrity. Many years later, as a very old man, his only claim to fame is not as valued as it once was. Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, this is a gentle, quietly melancholy tale.
The Communist East has won a hot war with the Capitalist West. The protagonist is a bureaucrat given the task to determine which of two term papers truly represents the Party line. Meanwhile, a seemingly harmless substance allows him to perceive what appear to be multiple and contradictory truths about the Mao-like Party leader.
That's a vague synopsis, because this is one of the author's stories in which you've never quite sure what is real and what is illusory. Ellison strongly hints that it was written under the influence of hallucinatory drugs. Be that as it may, it's a provocative and disturbing look at the possible nature of reality.
Four stars. YELLOW for politics, drug use, and existential terror.
A man is sentenced to death for his crime. His organs will be harvested for transplant. Through a series of unusual circumstances, he manages to escape from prison, but his troubles aren't over yet.
The full impact of this story doesn't hit the reader until the very end, when we find out the nature of the man's offense. Other than that, it's an ordinary enough science fiction action/suspense story.
Three stars. GREEN for futuristic adventure.
One Down, Two To Go
So far, this is a fine collection of stories, without a bad one in the bunch. Sensitive readers might want to stay away from the more dangerous ones, but most mature SF fans will enjoy it.
Philip K. Dick has a new novel out. And guess what, it’s very strange. Are you shocked?
The Ganymede Takeover, by Philip K. Dick & Ray Nelson
The space slugs have taken over the Earth.
Those slugs come from the distant planet Ganymede. Earth is their first invasion target ever. But they have ambitions. The Ganymedeans have managed to conquer and occupy our planet. However, the slugs are failing at their third objective: to absorb the people of Earth as their servants.
Resistance is strong in at least one area of the planet: the Bale of Tennessee. There, he will have to fight the Neegs, who are led by a violent revolutionary named Percy X. The dreaded assignment of conquering that area goes to Mekkis, an insecure slug whose fortune bodes poorly.
Mekkis and his fellow conquerors have one great weapon at hand they can use to defeat the humans. A human, the neurotic Dr. Baldani, condemned as quisling, has developed a reality distortion bomb, which can destroy all of humanity. But will he allow that weapon to be used?
The Ganymede Invasion, a rare collaboration between Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, is dense as hell and weird as hell. Dick and Nelson make a pretty good team. Nelson smooths out Dick while Dick makes Nelson weird. Their San Francisco writers’ workshop friends must love the stories the pair creates
The esteemed Mr. Nelson
Truth be told, I missed Dick’s wild randomness at times; I was genuinely shocked that nearly all the elements introduced in the first chapter resolve by the end! Meanwhile, Nelson pushed Dick to go even further with his usual psychedelia, with references to supermarket carts with submachine guns and to vorpal meat cleavers, among many other stunning images. It’s the Summer of Love and this book came from the San Francisco area, so how can you ask for anything timelier?
The Black Panthers at the California state capitol, earlier this year
Percy X is the most intriguing character in the novel. Percy can be seen as an analog to Malcolm X, which would make the Neegs the equivalent of the Black Panther Party. Or he can be seen as a reflection of Perseus, the Greek legend who slayed monsters and came to found the republic of Mycenae. Either interpretation would fit this story. Percy is a crusader, a fighter against the literal monsters of the Ganymedeans and is a true hero. Heck, the name Ganymede implies a reference to Medea.
Philip K. Dick, Nancy Dick, and Robert Silverberg conversing in lobby, Baycon
I haven’t discussed the sentient hotel rooms or talking, neurotic taxi cabs or even a key Quisling type character in the book. There’s just too much to cover in a review like this and I want you to be surprised by what you read.
The Ganymede Invasion isn’t great Dick, but it is hugely entertaining. And like nearly every novel by PKD, Ganymede is a short quick read. I recommend this oddball collaboration.
The third collection of Ellison stories contains the now-typical set of introductions which folks often like as much as the stories they precede. It's a thin volume, with just seven pieces, and it suffers for being less tonally nuanced than the prior two collections. The subject is pain, Harlan's personal pain, and while I'm sure the tales were cathartic to write for him, by the end, they all start to sound like Harlan kvetching to us over a Shirley Temple at around 3am.
Not that they're bad–Harlan is a gifted author–but they are somewhat one-note and unsubtle. To wit:
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: The last five humans are trapped in the bowels of the sapient computer who hates and torments them. This is the unexpurgated version of the story that appeared in IF a few months prior, with less veiled references to homosexuality and genitalia.
It's a raw, powerful piece. Four stars.
Big Sam was My Friend: An interstellar carnival makes a stop on a planet with a tradition of human sacrifice. Big Sam, the circus strong man, can't let them go through with it…with disastrous results. Interesting more for the detail than the events.
Three stars.
Eyes of Dust: On a world devoted to and obsessed with personal beauty, can deformity be tolerated? Be careful – perfection may need imperfection to exist!
Another passionate story, but somehow forgettable. Three stars.
World of the Myth: Three astronauts are stranded on a planet: a cruel but charismatic man, the woman who loves him, and the nice fellow who loves the woman. They meet a race of telepathic ants, conversation with whom reveals the true nature of the parties communicating. Can the astronauts stand that knowledge?
It's a neat setup, but a rather prosaic story. Three stars.
Lonelyache: A widower is tormented by dreams in which he is hounded by assassins, forced to dispatch them in the most brutal of fashions. Gradually, the man becomes aware that there is an inchoate…something…sharing his apartment, feeding on his unhappiness. Can he escape its thrall before it's too late?
The story with the most Harlan-esque voice. Three stars.
Delusion for a Dragon Slayer: To all respects, Warren Glazer Griffin was the milquetoastiest of milquetoasts. But when he died in a freak accident, he was allowed to live an afterlife fantasy in which he indulged all of his suppressed depravities. The result isn't pretty.
Three stars.
Pretty Maggie Moneyes: Inspired by a true encounter (and with the best introduction of the collection), this is the tale of the woman who sold her soul for comfort, lost it permanently to a slot machine, and resorted to desperate measures to get free.
An amnesiac narrator on a planet of liars. Le Guin takes us far into Earth’s future where humanity has regressed under the domination of a group of aliens called the Shing.
Our main character is Falk, who looks almost human except for his slitted yellow eyes. He wakes up in the forest with no memory of where he came from and mentally reduced back to the mind of a baby. Falk is taken in by a family and rehabilitated, all the while learning their culture, which fears the Shing who now control Earth and hinder civilization from developing to be any larger than scattered small groups of people across the planet. The Shing are most notable for being liars, something Falk is warned about throughout the book. However, in order to reclaim the answers that were stolen from him, Falk must leave the family and seek out the Shing.
The book drags during the first 80 pages as Falk travels alone through nature. This part serves well to relay the isolation of his journey and to show the effect the Shing’s presence has on Earth’s development. However, overall nothing of great significance happens in this part of the book.
Once Falk gets captured by a hostile group of humans, he meets a slave woman named Strella with whom he plots his escape in exchange for her guiding him to the Shing. Here the book becomes interesting, particularly when something Strella says suggests that the reason Falk has been stripped of his memory might be because that is how the Shing punish criminals. It made me wonder if Falk is really the good guy after all.
However, it isn’t until Falk reaches the City of Illusion that the story reaches its full potential and lives up to its name, as deceptions are uncovered and more information is revealed to Falk, who doesn't know what is true and what is false – including everything he has experienced up until this point. He’s unable to trust the Shing and unsure if they have ulterior motives. I had a lot of fun reading these chapters. Something would be revealed only to be quickly disproved and it made for an exciting read where I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next because I barely knew what the truth was – much like the hero.
The end chapters redeem the slow beginning. For a small world, Le Guin well establishes Earth as something distant and foreign to a modern reader. The plot exercises the brain and leaves the reader in suspense. However, this book is far longer than it needed to be. For 160 pages long, the first 80 pages are particularly empty and I think Le Guin could have achieved the same story by cutting out half the words.
I enjoyed this book, but it failed to impress. 3 stars.
The Strength to Dream
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
The Young Philosopher himself
There have been many surprising entries into SF writing, but perhaps none more so than Colin Wilson taking on H. P. Lovecraft.
Best known as a philosopher, Colin Wilson received great acclaim for his first book The Outsider and continues to be successful in this arena, including last year’s Introduction to The New Existentialism.
He has also attempted to express some of his ideas in popular crime fiction, such as Ritual in the Dark and The Glass Cage.
Neither of these avenues lead directly to science fiction, let alone Lovecraft. So how did it happen?
Apparently, Wilson is a fan of the concepts of Lovecraft and had written an essay saying so but expressing distaste for his actual prose. August Derleth saw this and wrote to Wilson suggesting he write his own book on these themes.
The result is The Mind Parasites, what could be described as Post-Lovecraftian. An optimistic existentialist new-wave cosmic horror, which is likely to either impress or appall the reader!
The story starts in 1997, with Dr. Austin learning of the suicide of his friend and colleague Dr. Weissman. The news unsettles him, but the world suicide rate has been increasing over the decades and is in fact a major concern of many people. Delving into his papers, Austin discovers Weissman had been experimenting with ways of expanding his consciousness but became fearful of an evil presence.
At the same time Dr. Austin is working on a dig in Turkey. They discover a remarkable Proto-Hattian settlement where the inhabitants worship “Aboth the Unclean” and have massive blocks of stone which should have been impossible to move in 10000 BC. The site becomes a sensation when an elderly August Derleth notes how much this mirrors the stories of writer H. P. Lovecraft.
These two facts come together to form a startling discovery: for centuries mankind has had its progress impeded by a force that feeds on our despair. The Mind Parasites!
Whilst the concepts and themes are definitely of the cosmic horror seen in 30s Weird Tales, it is also most clearly something different.
Firstly, its writing is more academic than purple prose. This story is said to be compiled from a variety of papers in the early 21st century, explaining the unusual world events in the early 1990s. The fact that it is being told from the future provides an explanation for the style and shows the author giving real consideration to the context.
Secondly, in keeping with Wilson’s “New Existentialist” ideals, the characters are not simply the victims of ideas too big to grasp. Instead this is an ode to the limitless potential of the human mind. Rather than nihilistic, the ending is optimistic and the revelation about the true nature of the titular creatures was a fascinating surprise to me.
Thirdly, and what is likely to repel some readers, is that large passages are devoted to discussion of various theories of the mind and man’s place in the universe. These sections read more like Huxley’s Heaven and Hell than an Ashton Smith fantasy. That is not to say there is not plenty of action, with scenes involving wars, ESP and space flight. But your tolerance for exploration of Wilson’s pet theories is likely to dictate your enjoyment.
Grading this on a standard scale is tough as it is so strange and experimental. So I am giving it a – very subjective – five stars!
And because we have so many books to review, we'll be having another Galactoscope in just two days! Stay tuned…
Is something stirring at Amazing? After several issues devoid of non-fiction features, this one starts a book review column by Harry Harrison, whose brief stint as nominal editor of the British magazine SF Impulse ended a few months ago. Is a remake in order? A change of guard in the wind? There’s no hint.
by Johnny Bruck
The cover itself is also a change, not having been looted from the back files of Amazing or Fantastic Adventures. The pleasantly lurid image of space-suited men watching or fleeing a battle of spacecraft is not credited, but other sources attribute it to a 1964 issue of Perry Rhodan, Germany’s long-running weekly paperback novella series, artist’s name Johnny Bruck. I wonder if the publisher is paying him, or anyone.
Also perplexing is the shift in presentation on the cover. Last issue, the display of big names was ostentatious. Here, the only thing prominently displayed is “Winston K. Marks Outstanding New Story Cold Comfort,” sic without apostrophe. Marks is one of the legion who filled the mid-1950s’ proliferation of SF magazines with competent and forgettable copy. After a couple of stories in the early ‘40s, he reappeared with a few in 1953, contributed a staggering 25 stories in 1954 and 20 in 1955, and trailed off thereafter; he hasn’t been seen in these parts since mid-1959. But here he is, name in lights, while Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and Philip K. Dick are relegated to small type over the title. Odd, and probably counter-productive, to say the least.
Frank Herbert’s serial The Heaven Makers concludes in this issue. Imagine an SF novel oriented to the reference points of Charles Fort, Richard Shaver, and soap opera. And then imagine—this is the hard part—that it’s nonetheless pretty readable.
First, we are property! Just like Charles Fort said. You may think you understand human history, but everything you know is wrong! Earth is secretly dominated by the Chem, a species of very short, bandy-legged, silver-skinned alien humanoids who have been made immortal, and also connected tele-empathically, by a discovery of one of their ancient savants—Tiggywaugh’s web (definitely sic). Only problem is . . . they’re bored. Eternity weighs heavily on them. They must be entertained and distracted!
So, the Chem send Storyships around the galaxy, though Earth’s is the only one we see. This ship rests on the bottom of the ocean, from which vantage the Chem shape history in large and small ways both by direct intervention and by remote manipulation and heightening of human emotional states. The result: wars that might be settled quickly at the conference table can be prolonged and intensified, and susceptible individuals can be driven as far as murder. These events are recorded, processed, spiced up with their own emotional track, and broadcast to pique the jaded souls of the Chem.
One of the stars of this industry is Fraffin, proprietor of Earth’s Storyship, but he’s suspected of letting hints drop to Earthfolk about what’s going on, a major crime among the Chem. Kelexel, posing as a visitor, has been sent by the authorities to get to the bottom of things, after four previous investigators have found nothing and, suspiciously, resigned. But Kelexel is quickly corrupted himself. Fraffin shows him a “pantovive” of a man manipulated by the Chem into murdering his wife, which Kelexel finds quite gripping. He also becomes obsessed with the woman’s daughter, Ruth (the Chem are quite captivated by the physiques of humans, and can interbreed with them). Fraffin, having found Kelexel’s vulnerability, sets out to procure her for him. So three dwarfish figures show up at her back door, immobilize her with some sort of ray, and carry her away to be mind-controlled and ravished by Kelexel.
At this point, the nagging sense of familiarity I was feeling came into focus. Herbert has reinvented Richard Shaver’s Deros! Shaver, a former psychiatric patient, wrote up his delusions of sadistic cave-dwelling degenerates tormenting normal people, which (with much reworking by editor Ray Palmer) boosted Amazing’s mid-1940s circulation to unheard-of levels, until the publisher put an end to the disreputable spectacle a few years later. Now Herbert has gussied up the “Shaver Mystery” for prime time! The distorted physical appearance . . . check. The mind control rays . . . check. The underground caverns . . . not exactly, these characters are underwater instead. But that’s a minor detail.
by Gray Morrow
Oh, yes, the soap opera part. Up on dry land, Andy Thurlow, a court psychologist, is Ruth’s old boyfriend; she threw him over for someone else, who turned out to be a low-life. Andy’s never gotten over it. Her father, holed up after his Chem-driven murder of her mother, won’t surrender to anybody but Andy. Meanwhile, Andy, who is wearing polarized glasses as a result of an eye injury, has started to see what prove to be manifestations of Chem activity, invisible to anyone else. Andy also gets back with Ruth, who has moved out on her husband; he takes her back to the marital house and waits so she can pick up some possessions. But the Chem snatch her as described, and her husband falls through a glass door and dies.
Back at the Chems’ submarine hideout, Kelexel is having his way with the pacified Ruth, who, when he’s not using her, studies the Chem via the pantovive machine, learning more and more, while Kelexel harbors growing misgivings about the whole Chem enterprise. Andy, up on land, is trying to persuade Ruth’s father the murderer to cooperate with an insanity defense while wondering if the strange manifestations he has seen account for Ruth’s disappearance. The plot lines are eventually resolved in confrontations among Kelexel, Fraffin, Ruth, and Andy with dialogue that is more reminiscent of daytime TV than Herbert’s turgid usual. In the end, Herbert actually makes a readable story out of this sensational and largely ridiculous material. Three stars.
Cold Comfort, by Winston K. Marks
by Gray Morrow
Winston Marks’s "Outstanding New Story" Cold Comfort is an amusing first-person rant by the first man to be cryogenically frozen for medical reasons and revived when his problem can be cured. He’s pleased enough with his new kidneys, but isn’t impressed by this brave new world in which corporations now overtly dominate the world, there’s a nine-million-soldier garrison in East Asia, etc. etc. E.g. , “I am only now recovering from my first exposure to your local art gallery. Who the hell invented quivering pigments?” It’s at best a black-humorous comedy routine, but well enough done. Three stars.
The Mad Scientist, by Robert Bloch
by Virgil Finlay
After Marks it is downhill, or over a cliff. The Mad Scientist by Robert Bloch, from Fantastic Adventures, September 1947, is a deeply unfunny farce about an over-the-hill scientist who works with fungi, who has a young and beautiful wife with whom the protagonist is having an affair. They want to get rid of the scientist with an extract of poisonous mushrooms, but he outsmarts them, and what a silly bore. The fact that the protagonist is a science fiction writer and the story begins with some blather about how dangerous such people are does not enhance its interest at all. One star.
Atomic Fire, by Raymond Z. Gallun
by Leo Morey
Raymond Z. Gallun’s Atomic Fire (Amazing, April 1931) is a period piece, Gallun’s third published story, in which far-future scientists Aggar Ho and Sark Ahar (with huge chests to breathe the thin atmosphere, spindly and attenuated limbs, large ears, a coat of polar fur—evolution!) have discovered that the Black Nebula is about to swallow up the sun and kill all life on Earth. The solution? Atomic power, obviously, to be tested off Earth for safety (the spaceship has just been delivered). Unfortunately, their experiments first fail, then succeed all too well; but Sark Ahar’s quick thinking turns disaster into salvation! As the blurb might have read. Gallun had an imagination from the beginning, but the stilted writing makes this one hard to appreciate in these modern days of the 1960s. Two stars.
Project Nightmare, by Robert Heinlein
by William Ashman
In Robert Heinlein’s Project Nightmare, from the April/May 1953 Amazing, the Russians deliver an ultimatum demanding surrender, since they’ve mined American cities with nuclear bombs. The only hope is a colorful and miscellaneous bunch of clairvoyants to locate the bombs before they go off. It’s a fast-moving but superficial, wisecracking story, a considerable regression for the author. Some years ago he published an essay titled On the Writing of Speculative Fiction, and presented five rules for the aspiring writer. I think this story must illustrate the last two: “4. You must put it on the market. 5. You must keep it on the market until sold.” I suspect Heinlein intended this one for the slicks, and when none of them would have it, started down the ranks of the SF mags until it finally came to rest in Amazing, which, compounding the indignity, managed to lose his customary middle initial. Two stars.
Philip K. Dick’s The Builder (Amazing, December 1953/January 1954) is from his early Prolific Period—he published 31 stories in the SF magazines in 1953 and 28 in 1954, handily beating Winston K. Marks’s peak. How? With a certain number of tossed-off ephemerae like this one, in which an ordinary guy is obsessed for no reason he can articulate with building a giant boat in his backyard. A rather peculiar boat too, with no sails or motor or oars. And then: “It was not until the first great black drops of rain began to splash about him that he understood.” That’s it. Two stars for this shaggy-God story which is unfortunately not shaggy enough.
Summing Up
Well, that was pretty dreary. The issue’s only distinction is the unexpected readability of Herbert’s novel, which is the best, or least bad, of the serials this publisher has run. The most one can say about the reprint policy is that it has its ups and downs, and this issue is definitely the latter.
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by John Boston
The April Amazing splashes an impressive array of marquee names on the cover: Hugo winners Frank Herbert and Philip K. Dick, the well-remembered sardonic satirist William Tenn, and Richard Matheson and Jerome Bixby, famous not only from the printed page but from celebrated Twilight Zone episodes made from their stories. The once prominent David H. Keller, M.D., is relegated to the inside of the magazine.
by Frank R. Paul
This blaze of celebrity serves to distract from the cover itself, which looks like it emerged from one of Frank R. Paul’s off days, though that is partly the fault of the present editorial regime; the picture is drastically cropped from its first appearance on the back cover of the July 1946 Fantastic Adventures, where it was considerably more impressive, though still far from the artist’s best.
This is one of the magazine’s accidental theme issues; I can’t speak for the serial yet, but the majority of the short fiction is at least partly preoccupied with domesticity, its meaning and its travails.
Frank Herbert’s The Heaven Makers is a two-part serial, and as usual I will wait for the end before commenting. The blurb says it “offers the chilling hypothesis that all the world really is a stage with each of us . . . its players.” How many times have we read that one? To be fair, new ideas are scarce these days, and treatment is all; it’s not the meat, it’s the motion, as a salacious old blues song has it. A quick glance at the first page reveals the dense and turgid writing for which Herbert has become known. To be fair (again), his virtues sometimes take longer to announce themselves than his faults.
William Tenn’s The Last Bounce, from the September 1950 Fantastic Adventures, is a remarkably bad story for the writer who at the time was several years past the classic Child’s Play and whose almost as well-known Null-P was a few months away. It’s a tale of stellar exploration, complete with mystery planet, deadly monsters, scientific mumbo-jumbo, and clichéd characters and dialogue. There’s even an embarrassing spacemen’s anthem, which shows up more than once. And domesticity (or its absence) rears its head! There is considerable musing about Why Men Risk All to Brave the Unknown and Why Their Women Put Up With It and Wait for Them. It would be nice to be able to read this as satire, but I can’t convince myself. More likely, Tenn made a barroom bet that he could write the most hackneyed piece of tripe he was capable of and some editor would buy it. You win! One star.
David H. Keller, M.D., is here with A Biological Experiment, from Amazing, June 1928—his third published story. The blurb says, correctly, that it anticipates 1932’s Brave New World. (You know the one about tragedy and farce? Here it’s the other way around.) Here is a veritable epic of domestic relations. Like Keller’s first story, Revolt of the Pedestrians, this one posits an extreme departure from our natural (well, familiar) social arrangements followed by a drastic reaction and restoration of the traditional. Unfortunately there’s entirely too much talk here, and the action that follows it is cartoonish.
by Frank R. Paul
In the far future everyone is sterilized at an appropriate age; marriage is “companionate,” easily terminable, and babies are made in factories and provided to couples who apply for and obtain the necessary permit. But Leuson and Elizabeth, a couple of young rebels, want to go back to the old ways. Why? Because no one is happy! Love has disappeared from the world!
So says Leuson, towards the end of a seven-page monologue. (Elizabeth says, midway through: “Tell me again why they are not happy. I have heard you tell it before but tell me again. I want to hear it out here in the wilderness where we are alone—together.”) Leuson has stolen some books from the Library of Congress, where he works, to learn the history and how to survive the old-fashioned way. The happy couple elopes (a word Leuson discovered in his research) to live happily in a mountain cave, along the way capturing a goat to milk. Unfortunately, far from modern medicine, Elizabeth dies in childbirth (good idea, that goat). Along the way it has been revealed that this was a covertly sponsored rebellion; the couple’s parents have subtly nudged them along towards this destiny.
And now, the plan’s consummation, at the annual meeting in Washington of the National Society of Federated Women! “Five thousand leaders of their sex had gathered for the meeting and every woman in the nation was listening to the proceedings over the radio.” Leuson appears, carrying a basket, and reprises his seven-page lecture. “On and on he talked and as he talked there arose in the hearts of the women who listened a strange unrest and hunger for something that had once been their heritage.”
And at the end of this spiel . . . “He reached down into the basket and, picking up his daughter, held the baby high above the heads of the five thousand women and showed them a baby, born of the love of a man and a woman in a home.” The finale: “And as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, the women of the nation cried in unison: ‘Give us back our homes, our husbands, and our babies!’” Fade to black.
Richard Matheson’s Little Girl Lost (Amazing, October/November 1953) is a capable potboiler, efficiently recycling with stock characters a stock plot of the 1940s and ‘50s—domesticity upended by the weird and threatening. Young Tina disappears in her living room; her parents Chris and Ruth can hear her but not see her or figure out where she is. What to do in the wee hours with an invisible child but call Chris’s friend Bill, “an engineering man, CalTech, top man with Lockheed over in the valley.” Bill quickly susses it out: “I think she’s in another dimension.” (Later, he adds, “probably the fourth.”) Meanwhile, in the spirit of the times, Ruth is more or less continuously hysterical.
by Ray Houlihan
And so is the dog, but to better effect. He’s whining and scratching to be let in, and when he is admitted—to keep from waking the neighbors—he runs straight to the dimensional hole the people can’t see, and now little Tina has company. Soon enough, Chris blunders partly into the hole, grabs kid and dog, and Bill pulls him out by his legs, which are protruding into our dimension. Domestic tranquility is restored, and they switch the couch and the TV so if anything goes through again it will be Arthur Godfrey. It’s facile and economical, and perfectly fashioned for TV; it made one of the better Twilight Zone episodes five years or so ago. Three stars.
Philip K. Dick’s Small Town (Amazing, May 1954) is equally domestic, but not quite as domesticated, as the Matheson story. Here, the strains of a bad marriage exacerbated by an oppressive job burst out into the larger world. Verne Haskel doesn’t get along with his wife, hates his job, and finds comfort only in his basement, where, starting with an electric train layout, he has built a scale model of the entire town and tinkers with it constantly. As his frustrations build, he begins tearing things out of his faithful representation and remaking the model town, culminating in ripping out Larson’s Pump & Valve, the site of his torment, stomping it to pieces, and replacing it with a mortuary. And, of course, it turns out reality (or “reality”—this is after all PKD) now conforms to the fruits of Haskel’s tantrum—and things end with a suggestion (this is after all PKD) that there’s a higher power than Haskel keeping an eye on things.
Three stars, more lustrous than Matheson’s to my taste.
The issue winds up with Jerome Bixby’s Angels in the Jets (Fantastic, Fall 1952). At least one person likes this story; Frederik Pohl anthologized it in his 1954 anthology Assignment in Tomorrow. I disliked it when I read that book, and it hasn’t improved much since. Intrepid space explorers land on an inviting planet; one crew member is inadvertently directly exposed to its atmosphere, which renders her psychotic; she contrives to expose everyone else; and the protagonist, who has been out exploring while all this was going on, returns to the prospect of living in isolation as long as his bottled air holds out, or giving up, joining the crowd, and becoming psychotic right away. (Not much domesticity here, except for the hints of the deranged social order, or disorder, emerging among the psychotics.) A story that starts out at a dead end and consists of reaffirmations that it’s a dead end is not much of a story to my taste. But at least it’s well written. Two stars.
Summing Up
Hey, it's been worse in this bottom-of-the-market magazine. We have pretty readable and competent stories by Dick and Matheson and an amusing bad period piece by Keller, balanced against lackluster pieces by Tenn and Bixby; and the brooding prospect of Frank Herbert at length looms over it all as final judgment is postponed. Redemption? Maybe. To paraphrase generations of disgruntled baseball fans: Wait till next issue.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
Three titles for you today across two books (reminds me of the old astronomical saw: "Three out of every two stars is a binary"). None of them are great, but one of them is surprisingly decent given the source.
"Fast-paced, readable fun," pretty much describes everything Mr. High has written of late, and perhaps ever (my records only go back to 1961). His latest effort, Twin Planets, (from Paperback Library) does not break the mold.
It starts promisingly enough: A fellow named Denning is driving his car when it suddenly becomes very cold, the policemen are dressed quite oddly, and the sun is now a sullen orange orb on the horizon. Has he traveled to the future? Into another dimension?
Turns out, the answer is both. Earth has an analog that the natives call "Firma", with a slightly different history. Centuries ago, aliens appeared and froze the planet's rotation (with attendant momentum-related catastrophe). The world is now divided into a temperate zone, a hot zone, and a frigid region (where Denning had been transported).
Denning has a twin on Firma, name of Liston. Possessed of insatiable sexual desire that couples with his intelligence and strength, he is banished to one of the inhospitable zones early in the book, to be recruited by the resistance. Said resistance also taps Denning, who comes into his own superhuman powers–as well as a raging libido and attractiveness to women.
Turns out Denning and Liston are biological constructs, originally to be linchpins of the resistance, but by the end of the book free agents with a hankering to topple the aliens who run Earth from the shadows. Lots of running around, killing people, implied sexual exploits, and a happy ending.
This is a very old style of book. And while some of the ideas are quite interesting, for the most part, they are set aside for the action. Also, the competent women characters suffer for being hapless victims of their hormones, unable to resist the pheromones of their superhero companions. I raced through the first quarter of the book, but the last quarter took me several days, despite the novel's brevity.
Next up is Ace Double #G-614. Ace is known more for publishing "fast-paced, readable fun" than "thought-provoking classics" but you never know. After all, Tom Purdom's I Want the Stars and Terry Carr's Warlord of Kor both came out as halves of Ace Doubles.
Not so this first novel, I'm afraid. Mr. Shaw, whose name is completely unknown to me, starts off with a bang. If Anne McCaffrey wrote The Ship Who Sang, this book is the tale of "The Ship Who Barked". On board the inventively named "Spaceship-One" (presumably, Mr. Shaw is English) is a lone crewmember: a disembodied dog's brain. His mission is to scout out the Sirius system, which has been identified as a likely target to possess planets. Indeed, it has four planets, all identical copies. Only one of them is inhabited, by a Eloi-ish race of humans with Greek/Italian-esque names and blonde hair, who live symbiotically with a race of prehensile-handed dogs. Turns out the canines are the real power behind the throne (with truly groan-worthy names like "Chienandros" and "Perralto." Our hero, who calls himself "Ishmael", must work with them to secure colonizing rights while also delivering a message of warning to war-ravaged and overpopulated Earth.
There are things I liked about this book. Ishmael is a fun narrator, reminding me of Hank "The Beast" McCoy from Marvel's X-Men comic. The opening forty pages or so, before the ship gets to Sirius, are quite fun, indeed. The ship uses time travel as a space drive (letting the universe move underneath, as it were), which I've only seen once before, in Wallace West's The River of Time.
But the science is about thirty years out of date (planets formed by stellar collision, indeed), every gizmo is detailed for the pulp fans, and the setting and characters have as much subtlety as brutalist architecture.
This is the one I was really worried about. The Richmonds, a married couple that (reportedly) collaborates telepathically, have heretofore been Analog exclusives. The best they've managed thus far are a pair of passable three-star shorts, the rest being bad to dreadful. And in contrast to the other three tales, it's the beginning that's discouraging. Terry Ferman ("Terran Freeman?") is an electrical engineering student who, upon twiddling with a certain radio transmitter, finds himself on a faraway planet. He is now a captive of a computerized jailer, who refers to him as a basic galactic citizen and impresses upon him a rudimentary knowledge of the star-spanning polity he is supposedly a member of. Terry is also given a set of nifty tools including a ray gun, X-Ray glasses, a pocket translator, and a compass. At this point, I was sure this was going to be some kind of interstellar spy story, thinly cloaked wish fulfillment for boys.
But as the book goes on, Terry's situation becomes more complex. He meets Grontag, a dinosaur-like alien, also a student of electricity, who was similarly summoned unwillingly. They befriend "Tinkan", a robot that has become independent of the computer and developed a will of its own. It becomes clear that some sort of catastrophe has befallen the galactic civilization, and the marooned team must figure out what happened, why, and who might be responsible.
It's a very technical story, with lots of doodads created by someone who clearly has a background in electrical engineering. The pacing is excellent, however, with each section more interesting than the last. The Richmonds also have interesting things to say about repressive civil relationships like slavery and marriage. After the slow start, I finished the book in just two sessions, which is saying something.
Three and a half stars.
Five out of Two
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
One of the little curiosities of the ease of getting American science fiction novels in Britain depends on whether they have a UK edition coming out.
If there is no UK publisher on the horizon it is a little harder to get hold of, but no one worries if a bookseller imports them. You may not be able to pick them up at WH Smith’s or your local library but most good booksellers with an interest in SF will probably be able to help you find a copy.
On the other hand, if it has a UK edition coming out, you will really struggle to get hold of an overseas version and have to wait for the local version to be produced. This is the case with both the books I am reviewing, and whilst I had a contact send me an early copy of The Einstein Intersection, I had to wait for The Revolving Boy:
At the start of this book there is not much to suggest this is going to be science fiction. Yes, this is set very slightly in the future, but it is simply a slightly more conservative United States of the 1970s, not something requiring much imagination given signs of backlash like Republican gains in US midterms or Mary Whitehouse’s crusades over here. At first sight it appears to be about a good relationship between a mother and a child with autistic tendencies. The common depiction of autism in science fiction is often very negative.
Take, as an example, this passage from Disch’s recent Mankind Under Leash:
The nuts – in this whole cellblock you won’t find anything else. And these, I should point out, are only the worst, the most hopeless cases. ‘Autism’ is the technical word that the psychologists use to describe their condition.
Whilst in The Revolving Boy young Derv feels the need to spin around on occasion. His mother is willing to accept this as something he does. She only interferes when he is spinning on the stairs and so works for a compromise:
She told Derv in an offhand way that he must not spin on the stairs and why.
‘But what if I have to?’
Although she knew he thought of it this way, in terms of coercive psychological need, she was a little taken aback by the straightforward way he put it.
‘How many do you have to take?’
‘Just two on the stairs. I take another when I get outside.’
‘Then suppose you take the three when you get outside.’
‘All right,’ he said
It was as easy as that.
It shows such a mature and well-reasoned approach to a child with autistic tendencies. No suggestion it is caused by a ‘refrigerator mother’, not showing a complete inability to communicate with the outside world, but a child with a different perception and how you can work with them in a loving way to allow them to function in a world where most people do not have these tendencies. As someone who appears to have a lot of these tendencies, I was very heartened by this.
At the same time he makes friends with Prin, who is quiet and has perfect pitch. Together they are able to form a bond that allows them to connect in a world that can be hard for those that do not fall into patterns expected by wider society.
The source of science fictional content comes from the fact that Derv turns out to have been the first child born in space. When he was weightless and away from other signals he seems to have become connected to an electromagnetic signal from another solar system. As he gets older he finds himself leaning towards this signal whenever he is awake. This comes to the attention of Project Ozma who believe he may be the key to discovering extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Despite the concept of a child being able to point the direction for our radio telescopes, the whole story goes to great pains to appear realistic and make it seem less fantastical than most of what you would read in Analog or If.
But at its heart it is also a character story, the tale of him and Prin growing up. It is heart warming, clever and a real delight to read.
All of us here at Galactic Journey see Delany as one of the brightest talents currently writing science fiction, so it is with great anticipation we wait for his next novel. He began with writing his tales of a fantasy-tinged future Earth with The Jewels of Aptor and the Toron novels, but more recently has moved to outer space tales such as Babel-17. He seems now to have come back down to Earth but is also attempting to do something more ambitious than before.
Greek myths have been a regular source of inspiration for writers of the fantastic. The tale of Theseus and the Minotaur itself has been retold by authors as different as Jack Williamson and Thomas Burnett Swann. Here Delany blends in a number of Greek myths into this tale, but adds a kind of Ballardian spin to it, where our popular culture is seen just as much of a myth to these folks. With The Beatles being seen as a later example of the Orpheus myth and advertising slogans used as nuggets of wisdom at the start of chapters.
The Orpheus myth is probably the most central of the tales here, for Lo Lobey himself is a musician and his driving force is to save his beloved Friza from Kid Death. However, the way legends are treated in this book is fascinating, that there is not really a distinction between truth and fiction, and it is entirely possible for one to imitate the other. I can’t help but wonder if Delany has some familiarity with the ideas of C. S. Lewis but is choosing to apply them in a non-Christian context.
In this future, humans have all left the Earth and others are inhabiting it in the remains of humanity. We are introduced to this concept so casually I almost missed it when it is stated by PHAEDRA (a computer with the kind of silly reverse acronym people are fond of these days). It is an interesting concept that manages to at once be central to the story but also you could enjoy without knowing. For this is what Delany does, carefully layering understanding so it can be read in multiple ways, just like the myths that are being imitated.
For there is so much more in here than I have space to elucidate. Among others it touches on areas such as racism, gender, ESP, colonialism, the nature of truth and more besides.
I have seen Delany’s earlier works compared with the late great Cordwainer Smith’s writing. The Einstein Intersection, I would posit, is much more reminiscent of Zelazny. As such it is less accessible than The Ballad of Beta-2 but also more ambitious and thankfully succeeds.
Delany continues to be one of the brightest new lights of science fiction writing and this continues to reveal new depths to his talents.
Five Stars
by Jason Sacks
Sometimes Too Much Plot is Too Much
One of the things I love about Philip K. Dick’s novels is how they always seem to be about one thing but usually end up being about something very different. Usually his fake-out strategy works brilliantly, but in his latest novel, Dick seems to believe his own fake-out.
Counter-Clock World starts with an idea which could inspire a full novel just in its implications: What if time, somehow, started rolling backwards? How would living in a counter-clock world affect human relationships, our relationship with history, families, the economy, society? Would rebirth be a horror or pleasure? How would those who mourned the dead, maybe even moved beyond their mourning, handle the change? What would be the implications to a society if a specific person was reborn, a person who might be especially evil or especially good or just especially controversial?
These are all tantalizing questions, and Dick does explore most of them in this fascinating book. Of course, Dick being Dick, he explores many of them obliquely, in veiled allusions and small asides in dialogue. Far from making his ideas feel weaker, though, this commonplace element gives the book a naturalistic feel (as outlandish ideas often do in Dick novels) while also feeling profoundly strange.
I gotta say, there are also plenty of ridiculous ideas in this book, like how he shows cigarettes are smoked from stub to full cigarette (with the odor diffusing as the cigarette grows), or the idea that food is regurgitated and reconstituted into its source foods (okay, rather a disgusting idea), or how eventually everyone reverts to baby age and then has to crawl back into a womb and be absorbed into a body (a surprisingly moving scene in the book).
But there are also plenty of eerie moments in Counter-Clock. As the book begins, Officer Joseph Tinbane is cruising past a cemetery when he hears a voice beckoning him from a grave. Landing, he discovers an old woman has woken up in her coffin and is begging for help escaping her home six feet underground. Dick quickly establishes this as a normal part of Tinbane’s job, as Dick relates this event often becomes an all-night ritual which requires enlisting the services of something called a Vitarium.
Thankfully, the officer knows a man named Sebastian Hermes, reborn himself and the owner of The Flask of Hermes Vitarium.
This being a Dick novel, rebirth hasn’t been an ideal experience for Hermes. Sebastian is even more neurotic than he was when alive, haunted by nightmares of his awakening in his grave and stuck in a complicated marriage with someone who doesn’t quite understand him. Hermes sort of dreams of emigrating from California to Mars, but he’s literally grounded on Earth, digging up the bodies of those who died, more or less systemically since the Hobart Effect struck and changed everything.
So I’ve given you an idea of this book, and its world, and yeah, you say, I’m in. I'll buy the book because this all sounds fascinating.
Hold off for a second before running to the paperback stands at your local Korvettes, because all my setup is kind of prologue.
A rare photo of Mr. Dick, his wife and child
What if I told you Dick’s main topic for this issue is the idea of what happens if a popular religious prophet is reborn, and the prophet is in opposition to an evil Library?
Yep, it’s a Philip K. Dick novel, so you gotta be ready for a swerve.
See, Dick’s attention is really on the recently resurrected body of the Anarch Thomas Peak, dead prophet and founder of the Udi cult. The Anarch is articulate, philosophizing from the likes of Plotinus, Plato, Kant, Leibnitz, and Spinoza. Naturally, a group of fascist librarians hate the Azarch, and somehow the book descends into being a crazy oddball escape heist which involves LSD bombs, the slowing down of time, nuclear weapons striking a library, and the odd paradox of what happens when you kill someone who was already dead.
Yeah, Counter Clock World is more than a little crazy, which is no surprise really. What is surprising, though, is how Dick never quite gives this book the usual foundation in humanity most of his novels contain. This book lacks the warmth of Dr. Bloodmoney, or the existential horror of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer or the deep empathy of Martian Time-Slip. Instead we get an inelegant jumble which never quite lives up to the considerable potential of its amazing premise.
The December Amazing, all business, with the editorial and letter column seemingly dropped permanently , makes a nice-looking package, with a cover by Frank R. Paul shamelessly dominated by near-fire engine red. It’s taken from the back cover of the January 1942 Amazing, where it was titled “Glass City of Europa.” The caption there says "Transparent and opaque plastics make this a wonder city of ersatz science. Transportation is by means of giant, domesticated insects."
by Frank R. Paul
Interestingly, this cover is not only cropped from the original, as is usual, but altered: someone has airbrushed Jupiter from the upper left-hand corner! There’s nothing in its place but more red. Now that’s editing! Of a sort.
The featured fiction on the cover is the beginning of John Brunner’s two-part serial Born Under Mars. As usual I will withhold comment (and reading) until both parts are available. A quick inspection suggests that this one represents Brunner the capable post-pulp storyteller and not the author in his highly variable philosophical mode, the poles represented by his worthy The Whole Man and his unfortunate mess The Bridge to Azrael.
by Gray Morrow
Vanguard of the Lost, by John D. Macdonald
John D. Macdonald is best known for crime fiction—a lot of it. Since 1950 he has published 40-odd crime novels, most if not all original paperbacks. His current project is a series of novels about a private eye named Travis McGee—eight of them in three years. In all this criminous fecundity it’s easily forgotten that Macdonald was once an up-and-coming SF writer, and pretty prolific at that too. From 1948 to 1952 he published almost 50 stories in the SF magazines, in addition to a number in the borderline-SF pulp Doc Savage, all the while maniacially generating crime stories as well. He used multiple pseudonyms and sometimes had multiple stories in the same magazine issue. In his spare time he cranked out two decently-received SF novels, Wine of the Dreamers and Ballroom of the Skies. A lot of his work was excellent, too; highlights include A Child Is Crying, Flaw, Game for Blondes, and my own favorite, the compact and nasty Spectator Sport, all of them promptly anthologized.
by Julian S. Krupa
Then it all stopped. He had one last story in 1953 in Fantasy and Science Fiction, and since then it’s been all crime, almost all the time. He did appear in the Merril annual “best SF” volume a couple of years ago with a weak fantasy from Cosmopolitan, The Legend of Joe Lee, and in 1962 published The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything, a crime novel (rather, a farce with some crime and attempted crime in it) with an SF premise: the time-slowing gimmick of Wells’s The New Accelerator and its numerous successors, including Macdonald’s own Half-Past Eternity, a novella for the pulp Super Science Stories in 1950.
Crime, it appears, paid—at least better than SF. And in fact the SF market of the 1950s could never have accommodated the number of novels he produced. His post-1952 short fiction, meanwhile, was split between the crime fiction magazines and the more lucrative likes of Cosmopolitan, Collier’s, and the Saturday Evening Post.
After that buildup, it’s unfortunate that Macdonald’s Vanguard of the Lost, from the May 1950 Fantastic Adventures, doesn’t amount to more. Aliens have landed! Well, not landed yet, but their fleet of ships is traversing the globe. Larry Graim, statistician by day and SF writer by night, goes up to his building’s roof to check them out, and meets there Alice, a feisty young woman who proves to be the one who denounces Graim’s work relentlessly in the SF magazine letter columns (“the poor man’s Kuttner and the cretin’s van Vogt”).
Graim is disoriented by the fact that these aliens’ rather beat-up-looking, uncommunicative spaceships first seem to be mapping the earth, and then land and release large machines that start building things with no visible sentient direction. It’s completely different from the plots he’s familiar with from the SF magazines, so he and Alice go try to figure out what’s behind the seemingly mindless display. En route there is much mild satire of Everyman reacting to the unprecedented. The denouement is uninspiring and ends on a note of slapstick, to be followed by wedding bells to complete the meet-cute plot. It’s readable and vaguely amusing. Three stars.
The second novelet in the issue is David H. Keller’s first, and probably most famous, story, The Revolt of the Pedestrians (Amazing, Feb. 1928). In the future, everybody is on wheels, all the time. The mania for speed has overtaken everything else; the roadways are progressively more dominated by automobiles; pedestrians first become fair game and then are banned altogether, and hounded out of existence—or so it is thought. By the time of the story, the legs of the ordinary citizen have atrophied, and everyone gets around the house and the office in miniature personal cars. But . . . hidden in the wilderness, a remnant population of pedestrians is thriving, and scheming, and perfecting their science, and soon they shall declare themselves and their demands.
by Frank R. Paul
This of course is all quite ridiculous. But aside from that minor problem, this story is actually pretty good. It’s well paced in a rambling sort of way, very smoothly written, with engaging central characters, with Keller’s soon-to-be-characteristic expositional chunks going down smoothly, and without the cranky and rancorous ideological overtones of some of his later stories. And bear in mind that the absurd extrapolations here are a cruder version of the satirical method that later served Galaxy so well (compare Pohl’s The Midas Plague). Three stars—four if one compares it only to other works of its time.
I pinned Fletcher Pratt long ago as one of the more tedious SF writers going (actually, gone: 1897-1956). I remember as a child trying to force my way through his Double Jeopardy, thinking that if Doubleday published it and it was reprinted as a Galaxy Novel, there must be something to it. Then I encountered Invaders from Rigel, in which elephantine extraterrestrials turn humans into metal by manipulating radiation, and realized the futility of persevering with it, or with him. (In fairness, Pratt’s outright fantasy, both his collaborations with L. Sprague de Camp and his unaccompanied work, was much superior.)
The Pratt-fall du jour is Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitarium, from the May 1934 Amazing. Our hero John Doherty is sent to the sanitarium by his employer for a rest after his courageous thwarting of a train robbery, which left him with some psychological difficulty. It soon becomes apparent that Dr. Grimshaw is a sinister character and there’s something funny going on. He’s turning people into midgets! Soon enough the Doctor gets wise to Doherty and his friends and really gives them the midget treatment, so they end up having to survive in the grass, which is now apparently taller than they are, and subsist on insects that they manage to kill with makeshift weapons (reportedly, June bugs are reasonably tasty but houseflies are disgusting). But now the end is near! Grimshaw’s got a cat, and all is lost. Two stars, barely.
by Leo Morey
Interestingly (sort of), when editors Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend solicited self-nominations for an anthology to be titled My Best Science Fiction Story, published in 1949, Pratt submitted this one, though he did acknowledge rewriting it for a more modern audience. I did not investigate the revision.
The Flame from Nowhere, by Eando Binder
by Julian S. Krupa
Eando Binder’s The Flame from Nowhere (Amazing, April 1939) is a routine period adventure story: forest fire proves impossible to stop, turns out it’s really an atomic fire, must have atomic fire-fighting methods, our hero quickly whips them up in a flurry of mumbo-jumbo, making the penultimate sacrifice, two stars. Next!
Philip K. Dick’s The Commuter, from the August/September 1953 Amazing, during the magazine’s brief flirtation with high pay rates and a stab at higher quality, is one of many facilely clever stories from his early period of prolific glibness. It starts with a small man asking a railroad clerk for a ticket book to Macon Heights, being told there is no Macon Heights, and disappearing. It happens again. A railroad official takes the train and finds it does stop at Macon Heights, which research shows was a proposed development that was rejected by the authorities years ago. So what’s happening to reality? The story, which foreshadows more substantial work by Dick on the same theme, is a trifle with a barb; it effectively conveys the official’s fear for his familiar world and life. Three stars.
He Took It with Him, by Clark Collins
The issue concludes with He Took It With Him, by Clark Collins, actually a pseudonym of Mack Reynolds, who mostly used it for articles in men’s magazines, such as Beat’s Guide to Paris, in French Frills for October-December of this year (Beat? In 1966? What a square.) and Guide to Fallen Women in Sir Knight in 1961. This story is from the April 1950 Fantastic Adventures. Bentley, a selfish rich guy with cancer who’s got a year to live, buys a noted scientist with a promise to build the research institute the scientist dreams of if he will only figure out how to preserve Bentley until such time as he can be revived and cured. The new Institute will be charged with keeping him safe, and also hiding his money, converted to gold and diamonds, until he is awakened to (of course) a nasty surprise that’s not too obvious to the reader. Readable, modestly clever, three stars.
by H. W. MacCauley
Summing Up
So, a middling reading experience—nothing too terrible, most of it at least agreeably readable, one surprise from the unlikely source of Dr. Keller, and the prospect of the Brunner serial pending.
(For an excellent experience, you don't want to miss Part 2 of "The Menagerie", the next episode of Star Trek — join us tonight at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings)!!)
by Victoria Silverwolf
with apologies to Roy Orbison
Solitary Confinement
To be a citizen of a nation inside another nation must be a very lonely feeling. Italy contains two of these countries, the tiny nations of San Marino and Vatican City. A third member of that exclusive club came into existence on October 4, when the former British colony of Basutoland won full independence, changing its name to the Kingdom of Lesotho. Lesotho is completely surrounded by the nation of South Africa.
King Moshoehoe II, constitutional monarch of Lesotho.
A Song for the Sorrowful
You don't have to be living in any of those three countries to feel lonely, of course. People experiencing that painful emotion might obtain some solace from the current Number One song on the American popular music charts. The Four Tops have a smash hit with their powerful ballad Reach Out (I'll Be There), with lyrics that are clearly aimed at a lonesome listener.
They seem to be reaching out to the record buyer.
Fiction for the Forlorn
Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic is full of stories featuring characters who are literally, or metaphorically, isolated.
Cover art by Bob Hilbreth, stolen from the December 1946 issue of Amazing Stories.
The original, illustrating a story that was part of the infamous Shaver Mystery.
Broken Image, by Thomas N. Scortia
Illustrations by Gray Morrow.
The only new story in this issue features a protagonist who feels himself estranged from those around him, human or not.
His name is Baldur, and he has been surgically altered to resemble one of the humanoid aliens inhabiting a planet for which Earthlings have plans. It seems that humanity has evolved beyond sectarianism and violence, and seeks to bring the blessings of peace to other worlds.
(If I sound a little sarcastic, that's because the story's view of humanity is somewhat ambiguous. Baldur is completely loyal to the idea of Man as a perfect being, but his vision of the species is, as we'll see, a little distorted.)
One group of aliens oppresses another, going so far as to execute rebels in a particularly gruesome way.
Such as this.
The plan is to have Baldur act as a messiah for the lower class. Highly advanced technology allows him to perform healings and other miracles.
(At this point, you've probably figured out that Baldur is intended as a Christ figure. The oppressors are kind of like the Romans, the lower class is sort of like the Judeans, and so on. Given that analogy, some of what happens won't surprise you. The character's name also suggests an allusion to myths about the Norse god Baldr, sometimes spelled Balder or — a ha! — Baldur.)
There's a human woman, also in disguise, to help Baldur in his role as the savior of the oppressed. However, it turns out that she's hiding something from him, and that the folks in the starship orbiting the planet have schemes of which he is not aware.
This is a pretty good story, which held my interest all the way through. The Christian metaphor might be too blatant, and there's a twist ending that made me scratch my head. It explains why Baldur thinks of humanity as superior to other species, but I'm not sure if it really works.
(One interesting thing is that Baldur is not only physically changed, but mentally as well. His memories seem to be slightly distorted. Since we see everything from his point of view, although the story is told in third person, he serves as what some literary critics are starting to call an unreliable narrator. This all goes along with the twist ending.)
Three stars.
You're All Alone, by Fritz Leiber
Illustrations by Henry Sharp.
There's a title that suggests loneliness, for sure.
Before I get into the story itself, let me go over the rather complex history of the text. It seems that Leiber intended it to appear in Unknown, the fantasy magazine edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. as a companion to Astounding. Unknown died before the story could be published.
Leiber expanded the work from about forty thousand words to approximately seventy-five thousand, hoping to have a book publisher accept it as part of their fantasy line. The company stopped publishing fantasy before it sold.
Back to the drawing board! Leiber next sent it to Fantastic Adventures, who agreed to buy it if — guess what? — it was cut back to forty thousand words. It finally appeared in the July 1950 issue. That's the version that's been reprinted in the current issue of Fantastic.
Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.
We're not done yet! The seventy-five thousand word version wound up as one half of a double paperback, under the name The Sinful Ones. The publisher came up with the suggestive new title, altered the text slightly to make it racier, and added sexy chapter titles like The Strip Tease and Blonde Prostitute, trying to convince the reader that it was hot stuff.
Anonymous cover art. The companion novel, about a lady bullfighter, looks . . . interesting.
Back to the story itself. (At forty thousand words, it actually justifies, if just barely, its label by the magazine as a Complete Novel.)
Carr Mackay works at an employment agency in Chicago. A frightened young woman comes into his office, followed by a big blonde woman. The younger woman is obviously terrified of the blonde, but tries to ignore her. She talks to Carr, pretending to have a job interview, and asking him if he's one of them.
By the way, the blonde woman has a big, vicious, scary pet dog, but it's not anywhere near as large as shown in this illustration, or the cover of Fantastic Adventures!
Before leaving, she scribbles a note warning him to watch out for the blonde and her two male companions, and leaving a cryptic message to meet her at a certain location if he wants to learn more.
Of course, this all sounds like the paranoid ravings of a lunatic. Things get weirder when the blonde slaps the young woman across the face, and she forces herself not to react. Then a co-worker shows up, acting as if he's introducing Carr to somebody, but there's nobody there. Some kind of practical joke?
It's hard to deny that something strange is going on when Carr shows up at his girlfriend's place, and she goes through the motions of greeting and kissing him, but he's not where she apparently thinks he is. She ignores the real Carr, and continues to interact with an imaginary one.
She should really be smooching the empty air instead of a ghostly figure, but that's artistic license for you.
Although he's reluctant to accept the truth, Carr realizes that almost all humans are mindless automatons, just going through the motions like wind-up toys. Only a very few, like the young woman, the blonde and her companions, and himself, are conscious beings. He meets with the woman, leading to dangerous encounters with sinister folks and wild adventures in a world full of clockwork people and those who take advantage of the situation.
A moment of happiness in a public library after hours. I like the subtle hint that the light above their heads is an eye watching them.
The premise is a fascinating one, and the author conveys it in a convincing manner. There's some philosophical depth to the idea, too. Who among us hasn't felt like a cog in a big machine? It moves very quickly, almost like a Keith Laumer novel. (Maybe the longer version allows for more exploration of the concept.)
I could quibble that not everything about the plot is completely logical. Inanimate objects sometimes act as if they're part of the mindless mechanism of life, and sometimes don't. The conscious people are able to knock off the hats of the automatons, for example, and steal their drinks, but the keys of a piano move by themselves when the person supposed to be playing them isn't there.
The floating hands are more artistic license.
Despite this tiny flaw, and the fact that the ending seems rushed, it's an enjoyable short novel. As you'd expect from Leiber, it's well-written. As a bonus, it provides a vivid portrait of the city of Chicago, in all its bright and dark aspects.
From the July 1954 issue of Amazing Stories comes this tale of a family isolated from their own time.
Anonymous illustration.
Mom, Dad, and three kids are enjoying a typical morning at home, although there's some kind of fog or smoke outside, and the radio isn't working. The lone boy heads off for school, but quickly comes back. There are soldiers everywhere blocking his way.
It turns out that their home is now seven years in the future. The Cold War has heated up, leading to a dystopian society. (Apparently a bomb caused the time travel effect.) The soldiers are stunned to see a woman and children out in the open, and are even more amazed at the food available in the house.
A political officer (another sign that the United States government has become authoritarian, along with the casually mentioned book burning) suggests that they wait for another bomb to send them back to their own time.
Although the plot is simple enough for an episode of Twilight Zone, this is a powerful story, sending a clear warning of the dangers of escalating world conflicts. (The theme seems even more relevant today, with the situation in Vietnam, than it did just after the Korean War.)
Four stars.
Scream at Sea, by Algis Budrys
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
The January-February 1954 issue of the magazine provides this example of extreme loneliness.
Illustrations by Ernie Barth.
A man survives an explosion that destroys his ship. He manages to hang on to a piece of the vessel that's got some canned ham and water, so it serves him as a sort of raft. The ship's cat happens to escape the disaster as well.
The only other character in the story.
The author manages to create a true sense of isolation and desperation. It's not a bad piece, but there isn't a trace of science fiction or fantasy at all! There's a twist in the tail that would have been more appropriate for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine than Fantastic.
(By the way, the editor's blurbs for the last two stories are backwards! I guess that's a sign of how little the publisher cares for these poorly funded magazines full of unpaid reprints.)
Three stars.
Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Artists Behind Him, by Anonymous
Serving as a coda is this portfolio of illustrations for stories by ERB that appeared in Amazing years ago.
For The Land That Time Forgot (1918, reprinted 1927), illustration by Frank R. Paul.
Same credits as above.
For The City of the Mummies (1941), illustration by J. Allen St. John.
For Black Pirates of Barsoom, same year, same artist.
For Goddess of Fire, same year, same artist.
I don't have much to say about these old-fashioned pictures. They're OK.
Three stars.
Some Solace For Solitude
If you're feeling lonesome, picking up a copy of this issue might provide some relief for a few hours. All the stories are worth reading, and a couple of them are better than average. If that doesn't raise your spirits sufficiently, visiting your neighbors might do the trick.
That astronaut won't be lonely. Cartoon by Frosty from the same issue as the Budrys story.
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![[May 6, 1967] Stirred? Shaken? (June 1967 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/amz-0667-cover.png?resize=504%2C372)
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