A bit of a grab bag today as I finish off the odds and ends before the new (diminishing) crop of magazines comes in.
Firstly, the sad news regarding Vanguard II has been confirmed: the wobbly little beachball has got the orbitum tremens and is unable to focus its cameras on Mother Earth. So much for our first weather satellite.
Secondly, the sad news regarding the April 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction. Yes, Poul Anderson does have a story in it. The Martian Crown Jewels is a science fiction Sherlock Holmes pastiche. As a mystery and as a story, it is fairly unremarkable. Still, Doyle-philes may enjoy it. As can be expected, both for the genre and for the author, the only women's names are to be found gracing ships, not characters.
There are a couple of oddball pieces in this issue. One is a translated Anton Checkhov parody of a Jules Verne story called The Flying Islands. Perhaps it's better in the original Russian.
There is also a chapter of Aldous Huxley's new book, Brave New World Revisited, comparing the myriad of mind-altering substances available today to the simple and perfectly effective soma that appeared in the original Brave New World. It is an interesting contrast of prediction versus reality. It is also a great shopping list for some of us.
As I mentioned earlier, Damon Knight is out of an editorial job after just three issues at the helm of IF. F&SF has found him a new place to hang his reviewer's hat–as the new writer for the magazine's book column. Good news if you like damonknight.
Jane Roberts, an F&SF regular, contributes a two-page mood piece called Nightmare. It's another two-minutes-to-midnight fright.
But the real gem of the latter portion of the magazine is Fred Pohl's To see another Mountain about a nonagenarian supergenius being treated for a mental illness… but is he really sick? Interestingly, I never liked it when Pohl and Kornbluth teamed up, but Pohl by himself has been reliably excellent. This story is no exception.
Where does that leave us in the standings? There isn't a bad piece in the bunch (the Anderson and Chekhov being the least remarkable). Let's say "four", maybe "four-and-a-half" given the greatness of the lead story.
Two days to Asimov!
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Happy (day after) Thanksgiving from sunny San Diego! Sorry for the delay, but the travails of travel put a crimp in my bi-daily update schedule. I am now happily back at the typewriter and ready to tell you all about….
The January 1959 Astounding was particularly lackluster. Filled with turgid tales of men running world governments with smug omnipotence, it was quite the slog. Some details:
“To Run the Rim,” was the stand-out exception, as described earlier this week. Sadly, it simply set the bar higher for the subsequent stories, which did not even try to clear the hurdle.
Gordy Dickson's “By New House Fires,” wasn't bad so much as inconsequential. In this story, humanity has made the planet unlivable for any but humans, animals being found solely in preserves. I've seen this concept before, and I never buy it. I have no trouble believing that humans will run pretty roughshod over planet Earth, and many thousands if not millions of species will be the casualties. We may pollute the world into a stinking mess and/or incinerate the surface in atomic hellfire, but we'll never reduce its inhabitants to people and food-yeast. Of course, Dickson's set-up is necessary for the tale: the story of the world's last dog, and the master he adopts.
Oh look! The next story is a Poul Anderson, surprise, surprise. In premise, “Robin Hood's Barn,” is not unlike Piper's story in the last Astounding following the leader of a decadent Empire. In this case, the Empire is solely terrestrial, only one inhabitable extrasolar world having yet been discovered. This is the story that predicated my recent rant on the dearth of women in science fiction. Though it takes place far in the future, all government is run by men, and worse still, it is one of those smug stories where the person in charge has perfect Machiavellian control of the various competing factions beneath him.
I suppose I must sound hypocritical. After all, I gave Piper's story a pass (and even a favorable grade). I think the difference is two-fold: Piper's story was meant to be somewhat fanciful. Moreover, I've seen Piper write strong women. Anderson's never tried (except that isn't quite true—he managed five years ago in Brainwave, his one excellent book). Maybe Piper is just as bad, but Anderson was the straw that broke my back.
“Seedling,” by Charles V. de Vet (he worked with Katherine MacClean in Astounding earlier this year) is a pleasant, albeit brief, interlude about the drastic steps one might take to establish relations with an alien race. The twist is nice, too.
All too soon, we're plunged back into another top-level womanless depiction of world government: “Deadlock,” by Robert and Barbara Silverberg. This is one of those old-fashioned stories in which a problem is introduced and the solution comes as a gotcha at the last second. What's particularly frustrating is the Silverbergs spend 40 pages on what should have been a 10-page tale.
Here's the set-up: It is a hundred years from now, and humanity is on the eve of settling Mars. The Americans want to terraform the planet; the Chinese want to biologically engineer humans to settle the planet as is. One intrepid U.N. representative is tasked with finding a suitable compromise. This set-up is described over and over again in several slightly varying ways (newspaper clippings, interviews with officials on both sides) until the inevitable and unclever solution is presented. It would be fine as backdrop to characterization, or as bookends to a novel, but it just can't bear the weight of a novella.
One has to wonder if John Campbell simply needed to fill space and asked the Silverbergs to pad their submission out. Since authors are paid by the word, I can imagine there was little resistance to the idea.
Now, I do have some praise for the story. I am impressed with anyone willing to throw her or his hat over the fence and make a timeline of future history, especially when it makes assumptions that few others do. For instance, in this world, the Soviet Union collapses in the early 21st century not from American success in a Third World War, but from economic inadequacy. An economically revitalized (but probably still Communist) China takes its place as a superpower. The U.N.'s power is enhanced after an abortive and politically fraught Space Race. While this makes for a more peaceful Earth, preventing large-scale conflicts, it also means that any plan to settle other planets requires a consensus of most of the Earth's countries. Hence, the presented dilemma. It's a plausible set-up, they just don't do much with it.
I am also impressed with how far science fiction (and science) have come. Just 16 years ago, Heinlein was writing about transforming humanity at glacial speed through selective breeding a la Mendel. Genetic engineering reduces the process time to a single generation. I look forward to seeing more stories with this development as a component.
There's more, but I find myself in danger of over-writing this column, so I'll save it for next time.
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Writing good science fiction is hard. Writing good anything is hard, but science fiction multiplies the complexity. Science fiction requires a writer to project the effect that a scientific development will have on society. Moreover, the writer must portray this future society plausibly, which means distinguishing it from our current culture by extrapolating/inventing new mores and activities. I think this is why so many authors, even quite good ones, come up with brilliant technical ideas, but their visions of the future look uncannily like our world of the late 1950s.
Take smoking, for example. Smoking is practically ubiquitous in our current society, but there is now a small but vocal movement by doctors and scientists to alert us to the potential dangers of tobacco. They include a variety of respiratory ailments and even cancer. Yet, smoking is just as commonplace in the future worlds of science fiction. You would think someone would portray a smokeless future.
Another example is the portrayal of women. For centuries, women have struggled for and obtained the rights and privileges of men. The trend has historically been in their favor. They fought for and got the vote—quite recently, in fact. In the last war, they “manned” our factories and flew our planes. There seems to be a backlash against this these days; between soap operas and nuclear families, women are expected to stay at home and be seen and not heard. Still, on a long time-scale, this seems to be an anomalous blip. You would think a future in which women are portrayed as leaders and scientists and businessmen would be more common. Yet you can go through an entire issue of Astounding and find just one female character in ten, and odds are that woman will be a wife with little agency of her own. It is a man's future, if you read science fiction—a smoking man's future.
It could be argued that this is not all the fault of the writer. Even the greatest virtuoso must play to his or her audience, which in this case includes both the readers and editors. This audience is usually forgiving of one or two deviations from the norm. We call them “hand-waves.” For instance, so far as we currently know, it is impossible to go faster than light. Yet, science fiction is full of stories featuring vessels that do just that. That's a hand-wave. Psionic powers are another hand-wave. People only have two hands; too many extrapolations results in an alien world that may be too unfamiliar to its audience.
Maybe. I'd like to think we science fiction fans are a more sophisticated lot than the average person on the street. Also, Heinlein certainly doesn't have a problem dreaming up new ideas by the baker's dozen and incorporating them into his worlds. The few standout female characters (e.g. Asimov's Susan Calvin, Piper's Martha Dane, the protagonists of Zenna Henderson's The People series) have not driven fans away in droves.
But in the end, science fiction writers start out wearing the same cultural blinders as everyone else. And so the Randall Garretts, Poul Andersons and Bob Silverbergs write their stories filled with chain-smoking men because they can't imagine a different world. Someday, perhaps, they will read the few great, truly visionary stories of their peers, and light will shine through their blinders.
If you're wondering what triggered this screed, stay tuned for my next piece. I promise I'll get back to reviewing the latest magazines.
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I'm willing to concede that we (currently) live in a “man's world.” Men make up most of the protagonists and characters in science fiction, and the vast majority of science fiction authors are men. This month's Astounding does not buck this trend–virtually every story has no, or at best a token, female presence. I suppose I should be grateful for this, however, as I would rather have no women in my stories than see them horribly mistreated and poorly portrayed, as I saw happen rather gratuitously in the second half of the magazine.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Poul Anderson's “Bicycle Built for Brew” ended as it started with a fine premise, an interesting if whimsical storyline, and horrible execution. The resourceful engineer of the Mercury Girl managed to escape from the occupied planet by fashioning a ship from a sealed crate and several barrels of beer (providing the reaction mass for propulsion). The national and gender stereotypes were tired by page 2 of the last installment, and they don't get better here. All's well that ends, and I was happy to see this story finish.
Miller's pre-book-review column focused on UFOs, which are still popular. I remember reading in an Asimov or Ley article that the number of UFO sightings climbed sharply in the late '40s coincident with the testing of new jets and sounding rockets. At the same time, the number of reported demonic encounters dropped dramatically. You may draw your own conclusions from this.
“Seller's Market,” by Chris Anvil, is another inconsequential but readable story of the type that has characterized his writing since he started. It depicts a small military force on a harsh planet as it struggles against a nominally superior but fatally flawed foe.
And now, I can put it off no longer. The story that ruined my morning and my impression of Randall Garrett, and by extension, Astounding magazine: “Queen Bee.”
I don't think misogyny can adequately convey the sentiment in this story. “Hatred of women,” may get closer to the mark. The setting of the story was interesting-enough: Four men and three women marooned on a wild planet for life. However, the story begins with the viewpoint character hitting a woman (she was hysterical, of course), and it goes downhill from there.
It is decided, pursuant to codified law (!) that the males and females must breed constantly and switch partners each time such that a colony with a maximum of genetic diversity can be produced. One of the women, the only married one, seems fine with this, much to the consternation of her old-fashioned husband. The other two women resist the idea for some reason. One of them is diagnosed by the resident doctor as a “man-hater,” and the other is a Taming of the Shrew Kate-type character. That's all right–the male characters beat sense into them, quite literally. The man-hater, after being walloped a good one realizes the error of her ways and becomes pregnant shortly thereafter.
But the other hold-out won't budge despite several clouts and a full course of spanking (!!) Eventually, she kills the other two women so that she, as the only woman, can enjoy an indispensable (and perhaps beating-free) status. Given the circumstances, I'm not sure that I find her actions unreasonable. Of course, the men are horrified, and they exact a horrible revenge… er… mete out appropriate justice. They hold a trial and find her not guilty by reason of insanity.
And then they lobotomize her, turning her into a mindless child-bearing factory.
What is so maddening about this story is its contrast with Judith Merril's story in this month's F&SF. The set-up is quite similar, except the women don't have to resort to constant brutality to keep the men-folk in line. One could argue that the arrangement in Merril's story was consensual and thus a whole different matter. This only emphasizes the horror of Garrett's scenario: the women in his story didn't sign up to be mothers of a colony. They certainly never agreed to be dominated and brutalized by their fellow castaways.
Perhaps, if the story had been meant as satire, I could have taken it. But I think Randy Garrett's premises, that men should automatically be in charge, that a woman's duty is to bear children, and violence against women is the best method to keep them in line, must ring natural and true to Mr. Garrett, to Mr. Campbell, and if the readers of Astounding do not subscribe to them, I imagine they do not generally find them egregious.
Well, I did. This is worse than the story that turned me off of Venture ("Eve and the Twenty-Three Adams" by Robert Silverberg; the set-up was similar–in that one, all starships came equipped with a ship's whore, and when the story's ship's whore wouldn't perform, the Captain drugged her up so that she could fulfill her role while unconscious). Garrett's lost me as a fan, and I am sending a copy of this article straight to Mr. Campbell.
Sorry to end this piece on a down note. I will hopefully have cheerier things to discuss next time around. The final score: 4 stars for the first half, 1.5 stars for the second, 2.25 for the whole magazine.
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I usually save Astounding for last among my subscriptions. I have mixed feelings about this magazine. On the one hand, it is physically of the lowest quality compared to its competitors (F&SF being easily the highest). Editor John Campbell, with his ravings about psionics, perpetual motion and Hieronymous machines, as well as his blatant human-chauvinism, is tough to take. But he has a fine stable of authors, and some of the best stories come out of his magazine.
This issue's headliner, Poul Anderson's short novel, “Bicycle Built for Brew,” does not look like it will be among them. It is the first half of a two-parter set some time in the next century in the Asteroid Belt. The setting is interesting, and so is the set-up: a renegade faction of an Irish-colonized nation of asteroids has taken over Grendel, a small asteroid under the sovereignty of the "Anglians," and the crew of the trader, Mercury Girl is stranded until it can find a way out.
Unfortunately, this is one of those “funny” stories, the kind of which Bob Sheckley is a master and Poul Anderson is not. Moreover, Anderson phonetically transcribes the exaggerated accents of his multinational cast of characters, which quickly becomes a slog to read. I had high hopes for Anderson after “Brainwave” (1953), but everything since then has been generally (though not entirely) mediocre to turgid. It's all very male-chauvinistic stuff, too. More so than most contemporary authors.
"Goliath and the Beanstalk," by Chris Anvil is forgettable, like all of Anvil's stuff I've read to date. He and Robert Silverberg are much alike: prolifically generating serviceable, uninspired space-filler.
The next story is by a fellow named Andrew Salmond, a name so unfamiliar to me, that I suspect it is a pseudonym for one of the regular contributors [But it's not! Andrew Salmond is a fan from Glasgow, who served a stint in the RAF during the War (Ed. (12-6-63)]. "Stimulus" is a mildly interesting yarn about Earth being the one planet in the universe made of contra-terrene matter (also known as anti-matter), and the effect this has on spaceflight and humanity's future in general. The gotcha is that the situation was recently imposed upon the Earth–right before our first moon launch, in fact. Can you guess how the Earth figured out what had happened? I (he said smugly) did quite early on.
By the end of the story, humanity is the most powerful race in the galaxy and rather insufferable about it, too. I'm sure this appealed to Editor Campbell, given his taste (editorial requirement?) for stories where humans are better than everyone else.
Gordy Dickson's "Gifts…" is not science fiction at all, and it reads like a screenplay for a short television episode. It is about a man given the opportunity to wish for whatever he wants, and his decision whether or not to use the power. Slight stuff.
Katherine MacLean's “Unhuman Sacrifice” is reason enough to buy this issue. I had not read much of MacLean's stuff before, but I will be on the look-out for her stories from now on. Her tale of a spaceship crew's encounter with an alien species with a singular life cycle, told from the viewpoint of both the humans and the aliens, is fascinating and haunting. I won't spoil it by telling you anything more.
Asimov's new science column continues. This time, it attempts to answer why, in a galaxy filled with billions of suns, Earth has yet to be contacted by alien civilizations. He ultimately concludes that galactic civilizations are likely to form in the center, where stars are densest, and may well avoid the backward edges, where we live. He further opines that we may well have been discovered by vastly superior races (for any race that could find us must be far beyond us, at least technologically) and are being left alone so as not to disturb our development. It's a cute idea, but it is also indistinguishable from our being undiscovered. Until the flying saucers announce themselves outside of the deep Ozarks, we have to assume We Really Are Alone.
P. Schuyler Miller's book review column remains the most comprehensive available. His comparing and contrasting of Bradbury with Sheckley, Matheson and Beaumont is interesting and arch. The rest is good, too.
The issue wraps up, as always, with Campbell's letter column, Brass Tacks. I skipped it, as always. Campbell may fill his magazine with fine stories, but I find the quality of his own opinions (like the quality of Astounding's paper) to be lacking.
New magazines come out on the 26th. Stay tuned!
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