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Magazine, Serial

[May 12, 1965] Da Capo (June 1965 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Changing of the Guard

So here we are at the end of the Ziff-Davis Amazing and the editorship of Cele Lalli.  What’s next?  The magazine doesn’t say.  “Coming Next Month” is conspicuous by its absence, as are interior illustrations.  But the story is being told elsewhere.  The banner headline on Science Fiction Times for last month—if “banner” is the word for large crude mimeographed lettering—says “ ‘AMAZING’ AND ‘FANTASTIC’ GO BI-MONTHLY & ADD 32 PAGES,” just above “DON FORD IS DEAD!”

The first post-Z-D issue will be the August Amazing, and thereafter the magazines will be published in alternate months as the new owner and editor try to build circulation, by leaving each issue on sale for a longer time, in preparation for a return to monthly publication.  The new publisher, as previously disclosed, will be Sol Cohen, and now it is announced that the managing editor—presumably, the guy who picks the stories—will be Joseph Ross, actual name Joseph Wrzos, but he is showing mercy to native English spellers.

Part of the plan for the new Amazing (and the new Fantastic too) is to use reprints as part of the contents, along with the original illustrations, a policy the SF Times describes as a “well-liked” recent feature of the Ziff-Davis Amazing.  Well-liked by some, no doubt, but most of the stories seemed to me to have only historical interest. 

Worse, even partial reliance on reprints from Amazing is a bad bet at least for any long term, since Amazing has been pretty mediocre through most of its history.  During the 1930s it fell progressively further behind the limited competition of the day, both in circulation and in interest, and then was purchased by Ziff-Davis and put in the charge of the notorious Ray Palmer, whose instruction to writers is said to have been “Gimme bang-bang.” From 1938 to 1949 Palmer filled the magazine with formulaic and juvenile adventure fiction, much of it produced by a coterie of local Chicago writers who mostly published little or nothing elsewhere, with much of their output in Amazing appearing under “house names” (pseudonyms maintained by the publisher for work by multiple writers).

The magazine enjoyed a brief renaissance (well, maybe a nascence) starting in 1953 when it switched from pulp to digest size and, more importantly, raised its pay rates, attracting bigger names and better material.  But it didn’t last; the rates were cut, and the magazine reverted by late 1954 to calculated mediocrity: mostly formulaic contents written by a new stable of regulars, though they kept some of the old house names, such as the durable Alexander Blade, a byline that flourished from 1940 to 1958.  Little improvement was visible until about 1959, when new editor Cele Goldsmith began her salvage operation.

So the past of Amazing is a barrel whose bottom will be scraped quickly, full of fish mostly not worth shooting.  One hopes for something more forward-looking as well from the new regime.

The Issue at Hand


by Gray Morrow

This final Ziff-Davis issue exemplifies the decidedly mixed bag of the Cele Goldsmith/Lalli regime: a potboiler of a serial from a prominent writer, an exercise in the higher self-parody by one of her best-known discoveries, a brief inconsequential story by a completely unknown new writer . . . the inescapable nemesis Robert F. Young . . . and David R. Bunch, the writer the readers loved to hate.  Not only is his story flagged and illustrated on the cover, but Bunch is also profiled and quoted extensively in the final editorial.  (Usually they’re by Lobsenz, but this one isn’t signed.  Lalli, maybe, at last?) This celebration of Bunch might be viewed as a final gesture of defiance from the editorial team, especially given the cover illustration of a robot waving two sledge hammers in fury.  But . . . probably not.  After all, Lalli is sticking around Ziff-Davis to edit Modern Bride.

The Corridors of Time (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson

The largest fiction item is the conclusion of Poul Anderson’s perfectly adequate but neither inspired nor inspiring serial The Corridors of Time, the title of which is unfortunately literal.  Our hero Lockridge has been hired by the beautiful, enigmatic, and imperious Storm Dalloway to help her find some buried treasure in Jutland, but what she’s really about is a time war.  Turns out there are two contending factions, the Wardens and the Rangers, the former (Storm’s side) supporting a relaxed social philosophy consonant with matriarchal religion and traditional knowledge, the latter supporting a more regimented view consonant with science and patriarchal religion (to oversimplify grossly—and it is a bit of a set-up on Anderson’s part). 

So how does this time war work?  Well, there’s the rub, or lack of one.  Unlike its predecessors—Leiber’s Change War series, Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Time, Anderson’s own Time Patrol stories—in this one, you can’t change history.  So . . . what’s the point?  Well, as the synopsis (presumably written by Anderson) puts it, an agent can “become part of it, setting the mark of his own civilization on a culture and thus building up reserves for a final showdown.” That’s not changing history?  Maybe just a little?

This makes no sense at all, and undermines the story.  The time travel mechanism doesn’t help either.  The Corridors of Time are just that, long corridors buried in the earth at various places, with access to various times over spans of a few thousand years; just walk or ride down the corridor, and you go 35 days per foot, and you take the exit you want for the time you want, and also you can have chases and shootouts up and down the corridor, as happens within the first few pages.  As icons of the imagination go, this is pretty unimaginative.

On the plus side, Anderson gets to chase his characters around various historical eras, which Anderson seems to know well and in most cases to prefer to the present, and Lockridge reluctantly finds himself with an appealing Neolithic girlfriend (setting up an . . . unusual . . . triangle with Miss Dalloway), and ultimately Lockridge decides not to go back to the Twentieth Century, in a final affirmation of the barbarian virtues.  Overall, perfectly readable product, but below standard for a writer who has done much better.  Three stars, barely.  There’s a note indicating an expanded version is to come from Doubleday later.

The Furies, by Roger Zelazny

Roger Zelazny’s novelet The Furies is ridiculous—purposefully so, it seems.  The author spends the first six pages in exposition, introducing us to Sandor Sandor, catastrophically disabled, but also a non-idiot savant with encyclopedic knowledge and memory of places all around the galaxy; Benedick Benedict, who upon shaking hands with another person, becomes privy to all that person’s most shameful secrets, which he proceeds to gossip about—and his talents extend to inanimate objects and animals; Lynx Links, who “looked like a beachball with a beard” but by calling is the galaxy’s most accomplished assassin; and (former) Captain Victor Corgo, “the man without a heart” (literally, replaced by a machine), formerly “a terror to brigands and ugly aliens, a threat to Code-breakers, and a thorn in the sides of evil-doers everywhere,” but now gone wrong.

The first three of these are the Furies, so-called by the author after the ancient Greeks’ “chthonic goddesses of vengeance” (says the Britannica), here retained by the authorities to chase down Corgo, a sort of Captain Nemo figure who has turned against humanity based on outrages we need not recount.  The story is rendered throughout in extravagant language and stylized dialogue.  A mid-range sample of the former:

“One time the Wallaby [Corgo’s spaceship] was a proud Guardship, an ebony toadstool studded with the jewel-like warts of fast-phase projectors.  One time the Wallaby skipped proud about the frontier worlds of Interstel, meting out the unique justice of the Uniform Galactic Code—in those places where there was no other law.  One time the proud Wallaby, under the command of Captain Victor Corgo of the Guard, had ranged deep space and time and become a legend under legendary skies.”

So what we have here is midway between a technical exercise and a barroom bet.  Zelazny has taken about the most hackneyed materials available and tried to render them publishable by pure force of his considerable writing skill, no doubt enhanced by his theatrical background, and he has succeeded.  That is, he has dazzled enough rubes to get this into print, and has considerably amused me.  If the young Shakespeare had started out in comic books (the names and talents of the Furies certainly suggest comic-book superheroes), the result might have been similar.  Four stars, but watch it, guy: you can’t get away with this more than once.  Or can you?

The Walking Talking I-Don't-Care Man, by David R. Bunch

As for Bunch (and speaking of extravagant language) the latest Moderan tale The Walking Talking I-Don’t-Care Man is made of that, though it’s more straightforward and lucid than some of its predecessors.  The titular Man has had himself entirely replaced with metal, unlike Bunch’s protagonist in his Stronghold who still hangs on to his flesh-strips.  The Man purports to have resolved the great philosophical dilemma of human existence by giving up humanity . . . but he still wouldn’t mind finding God and going after it with his sledge hammers. 

One could conclude that this meditation, or harangue, on last things might be the end of the Moderan series . . . except the point seems to be that last things really aren’t last.  But hey, four stars, at least in the spirit of “best of breed,” which I’d say this is for Bunch.  Note to future bibliographers: the commas in the title on the cover do not appear inside the magazine.

Rumpelstiltskinski, by Robert F. Young

And now comes the inexorable reckoning: Robert F. Young, square athwart the road, and no shoulder to slip by on.  First the bad news: Rumplestiltskinski is another of Young’s affected fairy tale rehashes, beginning “Once there was a miller who was car-poor but who had a luscious dish of a daughter named Ada.” The good news: it’s quite short and ostentatiously pointless, a sort of shaggy fairy story, perhaps signifying that Young is getting tired of himself.  Let me encourage him in that.  One star.

Satyr, by Judith E. Schrier

Finally, and almost imperceptibly, we have Satyr, a (very) short story by Judith E. Schrier.  Who?  Precisely—no one else has heard of her either, at least according to the available indexes.  An unmarried older woman works the night shift as a computer operator and the computer professes its love, she realizes how masculine it is, etc. etc. to the obvious end. Slickly written, at least.  Two stars, barely.

Lo! The Poor Forteans, by Sam Moskowitz

Sam Moskowitz plays out his season (rumor having it that he won’t be part of the new Amazing) with Lo! The Poor Forteans, a moderately interesting biographical sketch of Charles Fort and history of the Fortean movement, such as it is or was.  There is also some rambling and mostly perfunctory discussion of the Fortean influence in science fiction, much of which we know about because the authors (like Edmond Hamiliton and Eric Frank Russell) have commented on it, but much of which is questionable (The Children’s Hour by Lawrence O’Donnell a/k/a C.L. Moore?  I doubt it).  Moskowitz has also omitted some other fairly obvious candidates like Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters.  Moskowitz also tediously belabors his own disdain for Forteanism.  But still, three stars, chiefly for the history and not the commentary.

Summing Up

The Ziff-Davis Amazing under Lalli was always full of promise but never managed to deliver on it for more than a month or two at a time.  It winds down on a respectable note, with above-average stories from two of its most characteristic authors, plus a competent middle-of-the-road serial.  Quo nunc vadis Amazing?

Speaking of changed circumstances at publishing houses, please read this — it's important!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 12, 1965] Not Long Before the End (May 1965 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Still Bleeding

Another month, another civil rights murder.  Viola Liuzzo lived in Detroit and participated in civil rights activities there.  Horrified by the carnage of the “Bloody Sunday” attack on civil rights marchers on March 7, she went to Alabama, where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference put her to work on administrative and logistical tasks, including driving volunteers and marchers from place to place as needed.

On March 25, Liuzzo drove some marchers and volunteers from Montgomery back to Selma.  On her way back to Montgomery, with a Negro associate in the car, she was passed by a car full of Ku Klux Klansmen, who fatally shot her in the head.

This murder was well publicized, even in remote places like my small town in Kentucky, where it was briefly a major subject of conversation.  The consensus: “She should have stayed home with her kids.” The notion that Americans should be able to travel safely in America and that people shouldn't murder other people seems somehow to have been forgotten.

Of course she was not the only one killed by the anti-civil rights forces, though her killing received more publicity than most.  The Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston, was beaten with clubs by segregationists on March 9 and died of his injuries in a hospital.  In February, Jimmie Lee Jackson was beaten and shot by state troopers who attacked civil rights marchers and then pursued marchers who took refuge from the violence in a cafe.  His death prompted the Selma-Montgomery march.

Looks like there’s a long way to go.

The Issue at Hand


by Gray Morrow

The end is much nearer for the departing regime at Amazing.  This next to last Ziff-Davis issue is fronted by one of the more ill-considered covers to appear on the magazine.  It features what looks like a theatrical mask, with several items of disconnected clockwork behind it, against a sort of green starscape.  Well, the colors are nice.  It illustrates or represents in some fashion Poul Anderson’s two-part serial The Corridors of Time, which begins in this issue (though there’s no corridor to be seen on the cover; probably just as well).

The Corridors of Time (Part 1 of 2), by Poul Anderson


by Gray Morrow

I will await the end of the Anderson serial before commenting, as is my practice.  A quick look indicates that it is a time war or time policing story, in the general territory of Asimov’s The End of Eternity and Leiber’s The Big Time, not to mention Anderson’s own Time Patrol stories, and the protagonist is dispatched to Northern Europe around 1200 B.C.  More next month.

The Survivor, by Walter F. Moudy


by Virgil Finlay

Walter F. Moudy, who has published a novel but whose first magazine story appeared only last month, contributes the novelet The Survivor, another in the growing genre of future violence-as-entertainment.  That roster includes last month’s lampoon by John Jakes, There’s No Vinism Like Chau-Vinism, a couple of Robert Sheckley stories, Charles V. De Vet’s energetic Special Feature from Astounding in 1958, and no doubt others.  In the future, Moudy proposes, the US and Russia are still antagonists, but now they channel their rivalry into the Olympic War Games: each side puts 100 armed soldiers into an arena 3000 meters long and 1000 meters wide, and they fight it out until one side is eliminated, and the viewers out in TV-land see every drop of blood.

The author alternates between a fairly naturalistic account of the thoughts and experiences of the clueless Private Richard Starbuck as he fights, wonders why he is doing it, is grievously wounded, and nearly dies, and the performances of the commentators and their special guests, which treat the event just like the sporting matches we are all familiar with.  This is 99% of a pretty good story, with the TV commentary close to pitch-perfect, and the effects on the protagonist of immersion in pointless and terrifying violence are well rendered. 

Unfortunately Moudy trips over his feet in the last paragraph with a gross departure from Show Don’t Tell, beating the reader over the head with his message rather than letting events speak (or scream) for themselves. This is the sort of rookie mistake that editors are there to save writers from, and they didn’t.  This provides at least a scintilla of support for the charge by Science Fiction Times that the editors seemed to have lost interest.  Three stars, unfortunately; it was on its way to four.

The Man from Party Ten, by Robert Rohrer

Robert Rohrer embraces cynicism unreservedly in The Man from Party Ten, a characteristically well-turned, quite short story about factional warfare in the ruins of an extraterrestrial Earth colony, as brutal within its shorter compass as Moudy’s longer story, though also more obviously contrived.  Nonetheless, well done.  Three stars.

Over the River and Through the Woods, by Clifford D. Simak

Relief from brutality arrives in the issue’s last story, Clifford D. Simak’s Over the River and Through the Woods, an unassuming small masterpiece.  A couple of strange kids appear at a farmhouse in 1896 and address the older woman working in the kitchen as their grandma.  It is quintessential Simak: Ordinary decent person confronted with the extraordinary responds with ordinary decency.  It’s plainly written without a wasted word, deftly developed, asserting its homely credo with quiet restraint, all in eight pages.  Wish I could do that.  Wish more writers would do that.  Five stars.

Yardsticks in Space, by Ben Bova

This month’s nonfiction piece is Ben Bova’s Yardsticks in Space, about the measurement of stellar distances. It's typical fare from this writer: reasonably interesting material rendered in a fairly humdrum style under a humdrum title.  Perfectly readable but a far cry from the better efforts of Isaac Asimov and Willy Ley.  Two stars.

Summing Up

So, not bad: one excellent story, one that’s quite good until the very end, and one capable story, plus a reasonably promising-looking serial by a prominent if uneven author, and no Robert F. Young or Ensign De Ruyter!  Maybe Goldsmith and Lobsenz will go out on a relatively high note.

We had so much success with our first episode of The Journey Show (you can watch the kinescope rerun; check local listings for details) that we're going to have another one on April 11 at 1PM PDT with The Young Traveler as the special musical guest.  As the kids say, be there or be square!




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Magazine, Serial

[January 18, 1965] Doors also open (February 1965 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Eulogy for One

I opened this month's Fantasy & Science Fiction to the sad news that author Richard McKenna had passed away.  He was quite an excellent author, one who (like me) started writing fiction late in life.  That he was only to devote eight years to a career he'd hoped to last for sixty is a tragedy for all concerned.  Here's his obituary in full.

It is perhaps the fittest balm that the February 1965 issue of F&SF is the first really good one in a long time.  New editor Joe Ferman may have finally exhausted the dreck his predecessor, Avram Davidson, had assembled.  Aside from the improvement in quality and the inclusion of an honest-to-goodness science fiction story, I note there is only one piece in what I'd call the "joke" category, and there are four entries by women.  F&SF has traditionally published the most women per capita, but under Davidson's reign, that distinction had been surrendered.

So let's welcome back this return to form (long may it last).  Come take look:

The Issue at Hand


by Jack Gaughan

Marque and Reprisal, by Poul Anderson

Perhaps a hundred years from now, Earth's World Federation, beginning to settle the stars, runs into the humanoid Aleriona in the disputed Phoenix sector.  A misunderstanding ensues, and after Alerion ships slaughter the human population of New Europe with nuclear missiles, they occupy the planet.

Accidents happen.  Surely the decimation of half a million people is not worth risking interstellar war over, especially on the eve of establishing formal trade relations between Earth and Alerion.  Except, as we learn early on, most of those 500,000 colonists aren't dead.  They are holed up in New Europe's mountains, hoping for a rescue effort that the Federation is unwilling to mount.  Thus, the information is suppressed, its purveyors ostracized.

This all sits poorly with Gunnar Heim, a former space cruiser captain.  If not the Federation as a whole, surely at least one nation will stand up for New Europe.  And indeed, France would do so — if it had its own navy, which it does not in this future enlightened time.

But the Federation was never a signatory to the 1856 Declaration of Paris, which outlawed Letters of Marque…

This story takes a little while to get going, and it has a little bit too much of the protagonist talking to himself, which is one of Poul Anderson's idiosyncrasies.  It also lacks a single woman character.  On the other hand, it has many things going for it.  It is a space story, something the magazine has been sorely lacking for a long time.  It is an interesting story (ditto).  And it derails itself halfway through with a completely unexpected plot twist; I always appreciate it when an author can pull this off.

I'm giving it four stars even though it ends on a cliffhanger.  If there isn't a sequel, I'll eat my hat.

The Sin of Edna Schuster, by Willard Marsh

Mrs. Schuster engages in a tryst with a passionate, mysterious man named Raoul, an expatriate from some Latin country.  It becomes quite clear at the end that he is not quite of this world.

I am going to refrain from rating this one.  It's quite well written, but I fail to recognize the fable/myth it references at the end, so I cannot tell how effective it is at what it's trying to do.

Please enlighten me?

Mrs. Pribley's Underdog, by Sue Sanford

Aging widow Pribley discovers and becomes quite fond of an alien she finds on her lawn, one best described as a looking like an organic vacuum cleaner.  But if this is the extraterrestrial her scientist brother has been in mental communication with, why is it that it is suddenly incapable of anything more than the most rudimentary thoughts?

It's cute, the "joke" story I mentioned.  Three stars.

Time and the Sphinx, by Leah Bodine Drake

Here's a lovely piece about Time as personified aspect, and the Egyptian goddess-in-stone he comes to loathe.  Can he defeat her with his withering powers?  And will he be pleased with the outcome?

Four stars.

Harmony in Heaven, by Isaac Asimov

In which the Good Doctor discovers Kepler's Third Law and proceeds to draw up a number of tables.  It's exciting as it sounds (although, to be fair, Dr. A. is never bad).

Three stars.

The Switch, by Calvin Demmon

The Professor has been dead for a century, but his soul lives on in a box as gray as he was when he passed.  Every few months, he is switched on by some 21st Century student who wants first-hand knowledge of life in the 20th. 

Is this immortality?  Or a kind of hell?  Either way, I found it poignant.  Four stars.

Look Up, by Karen Anderson

The subject of this poem is the Tomorrowland that is space.  The quality is not up to Karen's usual snuff.  Two stars.

The Absolutely Perfect Murder, by Miriam Allen deFord

How best to eliminate a pesky spouse?  Kill their father before the spouse can be born, of course!  But, as is always the case with stories, there's an unforeseen wrinkle.

Nothing new with this piece, but neither is there anything offensive.  A low three stars.

The Placebo Effect, by Theodore L. Thomas

Our science springboardist suggests that the Placebo Effect, which is real, could be developed into a perfect cure, if only we could find the perfect placebo for every malady.

You'll quickly spot the logical fallacy, but as satire, it's kind of fun.

Three stars.

The Deadeye Dick Syndrome, by Robert M. Green, Jr.

Against the admonitions of a crackpot occultist, Tom Fish heads out to the desert.  And in the pre-dawn dark, he comes face to face with the "vast black thing, poised like a crow over the moon."  Suffused with a thrilling energy, he returns to his town only to find he is now utterly despised by all — liked Deadeye Dick from H.M.S. Pinafore.  Only the fruitcake can save Fish from an imminent lynching.

It starts excitingly, ends confusingly, and there is entirely too much quoting and name-dropping of Charles Fort and Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan, but I hesitate to give it lower than three stars just because I am largely ignorant of the work of those three men.

Dialogue in a Twenty-First Century Dining Room, by Robert F. Young

Last up is a short piece in script form detailing how a scrupulously average couple in a deliberately average society manage to beat the wondrous Bartlett's quoting rowk bird into insipid inanity.

Good for what it is.  Three stars.

Celebration for All

And so, we say good-bye to a bright star, but we see the rosy-fingered dawn of a reborn F&SF.  Sadness and hope in equal measures.  Things could be worse.  I'll drink to both.


by "Moonman82"

[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine! We work for egoboo…]




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Book, Magazine

[July 2, 1964] Completing the Tour (July 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Last Days

After three lovely weeks, our trip to Japan is sadly drawing to a close.  Someday, I can see relocating here for months out of the year — after all, my job really only requires a typewriter and access to a good postal service.  That's for the future, though, when the Young Traveler has finished school and left the nest. 

After Nagoya, we took a train to Hiroshima, the city made famous on August 6, 1945.

It has been nineteen years since the first atomic blast on Japan leveled a square mile of city and killed tens of thousands in an instant.  Hiroshima, a port city on the west end of the island of Honshu, has largely recovered since then, but the scars of that day still bear mute witness to the attack.

It is a sobering thing to visit a place of such megadeath, not dissimilar to the eerie feelings I experienced walking down "Bloody Lane" at Antietam, where thousands died in a few hours just miles away from where my wife's mother now lives.

Yet, life goes on.  Hiroshima is a vibrant city, peaceful and productive.  They're building a new train station that will further stimulate the local economy.  We like the people and the feeling here; this may well be come a standard stop for us in the future.

After several days in Hiroshima, we headed further south to our final stop, the island of Kyusuhu and the metropolis of Fukuoka.

Our main reason for stopping here was to visit our adoptive family, the Fujiis.  Just after the war, the Fujii family sent their teenaged daughter, Miwako, to the States for a few weeks as part of a student exchange.  The next year, my wife's little sister spent a year studying in Kyoto, where the Fujii's lived.  They accepted her into their family, even including her in the annual family photo.  Since then, Miwako, her sister Hideko, and their parents, Yuko and Yukio, have essentially become beloved in-laws, and we try to see them whenever possible.

Yukio, a former policeman, retired to his home town of Amagi, a little farm community a couple of hours from Fukuoka. He and Yuko reside in an ancient house there, a relic that dates back to before Commodore Perry sailed his black ships into Tokyo Harbor.

It's a beautiful, peaceful residence, and as luck would have it, Miwako, who had gotten married and moved to San Francisco, was also there for a visit.  With her adorable handful, Jin.

We all took turns playing with the tyke until he, in the way of small children everywhere, wore himself out and fell asleep in his grandfather's arms.

The Issue at Hand

It is appropriate that the end of our trip coincides with the wrap-up of the science fiction magazines for this month.  As always, the last magazine to be reviewed is this month's Analog.  So how did this oversized slick of a mag do this time?


by Kelly Freas

Origin of the Solar System, by William F. Dawson and Ben Bova

Opening up the issue is an informative piece on a rather unusual suggestion for how the planets came to be.  It lies somewhere between the Catastrophism of the stellar collision theory (which would make our solar system almost unique in the universe) and the Uniformitarianism of the "disk theory" which postulates that virtually all stars should be born with planets.  The hypothesis advanced by Bova and Dawson is that solar systems result in binary systems in which the second star is not of sufficient size to ignite and thus breaks up into a bunch of smaller worlds.

I don't know if I buy it, but since the article does a good job of presenting both this concept and more traditional ones, it's a decent read. 

Three stars.

Sleeping Planet (Part 1 of 3), by William R. Burkett, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

This new serial, written by a fellow I've never heard of, is a Mack Reynoldsy piece about an extraterrestrial attack on the Earth in the 26th Century.  The aliens use some kind of sleeping powder that puts all of humanity, save for a few immune holdouts, into a state of suspended animation.  Planet is the story of our resistance against the invaders.

I have to applaud Burkett for being willing to jump into the deep end on his first effort, turning in a novel-sized endeavor.  He's a good writer, too, with the first half of the installment quite vivid and engaging.  The aliens are just a bit too stupid, though (a big piece of the plot involves one of the survivors convincing the ETs that his dead grandfather will wreak vengeance on the invaders from beyond the grave…and they believe it!) and the light-hearted portions jar with the gritty ones.

Three stars so far, with a suspicion that this piece will end with a whimper, not a bang.

The Sea-Water Papers, by Raymond E. Banks


by John Schoenherr

An eccentric genius dies before he can explain how his desalination tablets work — is it the invention or the ingestion?

This is another too-cute piece starring clever garage-based scientists, the kind Analog editor, Campbell, loves.  The kind that champion dowsing, perpetual motion machines, and reactionless drives.

Two stars.

A Day in the Life of Kelvin Throop, by R. A. J. Phillips


by John Schoenherr

In this one, Mr. Throop, late of the Canadian Northern Territories Public Relations Division, tells the citizens what he really thinks of their letters.

Not particularly entertaining nor remotely science fiction. 

Two stars.

The Master Key, by Poul Anderson

Last up, we have the latest Let the Spacemen Beware.  This one is really Van Rijn's story, in which he tells of a frozen world that seemed ideal for trade, but the not-quite-human (or perhaps too-human) aliens become inexplicably hostile upon learning of our fealty to a God, ending the affair in tragedy.

With this piece, Anderson, who had been slacking of late, returns to form.  While the premise is a tad contrived, mainly so the reason for the aliens' change of heart can be explained neatly at the end, the telling is vintage Poul.

Four stars.

Doing the Math

On the whole, it's been a good month for SF.  Analog finished at 2.9 stars, just on the disappointing side of good, but that's more an artifact of the scoring system.  It's a decent issue, all things considered.  Decidedly worse were F&SF and Worlds of Tomorrow, both clocking in at 2.3 stars.

All the other mags were better, from the disappointing by comparison but still 3.1 stars earning Gamma, to the decent Amazing and IF (3.2 stars) up to the well worth reading New Worlds and Fantastic (3.5 stars).

It's enough to make me eager to go back home and collect my accumulated subscriptions for August! 

(Note: for those keeping track, women wrote 7 out of the 49 new fiction pieces published this month.  Not great, but not as bad as it has been previously.)

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




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 2, 1964] June Gloom (June 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Open Your Golden Gate

This weekend, the family and I took a trip to San Francisco for a small pre-Pacificon fan gathering. Well, not so small. By the end, attendance was measured well into the hundreds, and the informally dubbed "Baycon" boasted much the same schedule as any normal convention: panels, parties, even an exhibit hall and art show!

Of course, yours truly and co. were drafted to give a State of the Union on fandom as of May 1964. We were pleased to accept, and the resulting show was one of our best (we think). See for yourself!


The event by the Bay was the highlight of an otherwise dreary month, sfnally. Indeed, June 1964 (by cover date) may well be the worst month in the history of SF mags. Read on to understand why…

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

John W. Campbell's Analog, once the clear flagship of the SF mag fleet, has become a rusted shell of itself.  From a distance, it still retains the proud lines of the S.S.Astounding (as it was once known), but up close, one can see the degradation of years of neglect.  Though many of the crewmen are the same, their uniforms are shabby and their work lackluster.  It's a depressing thing.  Witness this month's issue.

Plowshare Today, by Edward C. Walterscheid

The one truly bright spot of this issue is the nonfiction article.  Usually, the value of these pages is directly proportional to their absorbency.  This time is different — Walterscheid has given us quite an informative piece on the where we are in regard to using nuclear weapons for "peaceful" purposes.  Earth moving, isotope making, Fourth of July demonstrations…that sort of thing.

I learned a lot.  I also know not to expect this project to come to fruition any time soon.  Four stars.

Stuck, by John Berryman


by Steven Verenicin

Exactly one year ago, Berryman wrote a nifty piece called The Trouble with Telstar, a hyper-realistic tale of satellite repair in the near future.  Stuck is a sequel, in which our intrepid space repairman is contracted to catch an enemy spy satellite as it whips past the Earth in a hyperbolic orbit.

The situation is mildly interesting, but the characters aren't, and the writing is workmanlike.  It's a shame — I was looking forward to this one.

Three stars.

Dolphin's Way, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Leo Summers

From the movie, Flipper, to the recent Clarke novel, Dolphin Island, our friends, the littlelest of whales, have been quite the sensation lately.  In Dickson's tale, humanity is on the verge of a communications breakthrough with dolphins.  This attempt becomes time sensitive as budgets are threatened.  Moreover, the principal investigator on the project has a sneaking suspicion that success will be the linchpin to acceptance into a galactic community.

Not bad, though I could have done without all the googoo eyes the scientist has for the journalist who arrives to cover his efforts.  Three stars.

Snap Judgment, by J. T. McIntosh


by Leo Summers

And then we hit the bottom.

The premise isn't bad: aliens come to Earth hoping to have us join their stellar Federation so that we'll vote for them in a pending referendum.  Through various contrivances, they never actually see humans — they only know of us from radio advertisements and from the luggage of a single space traveller.  From these scanty clues, they must craft a pitch that will win over all of humanity.

The thing is, the BEMs salvage a woman's luggage and, thus, deduce all the wrong things about humanity.  That we're frivolous, easily flattered, desperate for a protector.  The radio commercials only reinforce this view since they're aimed at the consumers of society.  You know.  Women. 

Their pitch falls flat when the MEN, who thankfully are in charge of society, are turned off by the aliens' appeal and respond in a way that maximizes Earth's gain over that of the extraterrestrials.

Lest you think I'm being touchy, and that McIntosh was not impugning all womankind, let me read you this tidbit from the end of the story:

"Why," Doreen said, "did women react one way and men another?"
Barker grinned.  "Because of you.  The Grillans only had time for a snap judgment.  they picked your ship and made a quick guess about us based on what they found onboard."
"What they found?"
"Feminine things.  The only personal things in the ship.  The only clues about the human race they had.  And what a mistake that was."
"Why?"
"However women may holler about sex equality, men will always decide things like what to do when contact with an alien race is made.  Right?"
Doreen shrugged.  "I guess so.  Women have other things to think about."
"As you say.  As you said — 'Nobody asks me when big things are decided.  I never expected they would.'  Women's goals are more personal.  More Earthbound."

It goes on from there.  It could not be more offensive if McIntosh had written the BEMs finding a Jew's suitcase and determining that humanity was grasping and miserly.  Or deducing from a Black person's luggage that humans just really love to be enslaved.

One star and 1964's winner of the Queen Bee Award.

Undercurrents (Part 2 of 2), by James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

I left Part 1 of this story none too enthused about where the novella was going, and all of my suspicions were confirmed.  To sum up, 15 year-old Telzey Amberdon is a psionically adept young woman sent off-planet to college.  Her roommate, Gonwil, is about to come into control of great wealth as a result of her reaching majority.  When Telzey makes telepathic contact with Gonwil's giant dog guardian, Chomir, she discovers a plot to kill Gonwil.

Two things made this promising story an utter disappointment.  For one, it was obvious that the dog was going to be the tool of Gonwil's attempted assassination.  But worse still was the writing.  We hardly see Telzey do anything.  There are just endless pages of exposition, introducing and then disposing of plot points, or even just irrelevant information.  It's like Schmitz wrote an outline and then neglected to fill it in with a story.

Two stars, and what a shame.  I haven't been this let down since Podkayne of Mars.  Two stars.

Mustn't Touch, by Poul Anderson


by Michael Arndt

The first hyperdrive test is recovered from the orbit of Neptune after just 60 seconds of operation.  Unfortunately, all the biological specimens on board are dead or dying.  What caused this lethal event, and what does it mean for humanity?

Poul Anderson tends to vacillate between genius and garbage.  This piece falls smack dab in between, featuring some nice writing and a lot of good ideas, but failing to land any punches.  He's got a novel's worth of concepts in here: sentient robots, hyperspace, genetic manipulation.  But with only ten pages to get his point across, it all becomes a muddle.

Three stars. 

I, BEM, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond


by Michael Arndt

Finally, the Richmond twins (I kid, they're probably married — of course, they could also still be twins) offer up yet another turgid short, this one on how robots will ultimately make all humans unemployed — but what happens when the robots have their work done for them?

Written like that, I actually kind of like the concept, but it's not very well done.  Two stars.

Doing the Math

Analog clocks in this month at an unimpressive 2.6 stars, tied with Amazing and beating out Fantastic (2.4).  But even the mags that beat Analog didn't do so by much: Galaxy scored 2.7 and F&SF got 2.8.  In fact, the best parts of the magazines were the nonfiction articles this month.  Only Kit Reed's Cynosure (in F&SF) and Harlan Ellison's Paingod (in Fantastic) merit much attention besides.

Of the 34 new fiction pieces, only two of them were penned (in whole or part) by women. 

Now, to be fair, I have not yet read the June 1964 issue of Gamma, but that's only because the magazine has such spotty distribution that I didn't get a copy until recently.  So it'll get lumped in with July's stuff.  I can only imagine that will be for the good!

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Magazine

[May 8, 1964] Rough Patch (June 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

I think I've got a bad case of sibling rivalry.  When Victoria Silverwolf came onto the Journey, she took on the task of reviewing Fantastic, a magazine that was just pulling itself out of the doldrums.  My bailiwick consisted of Analog, Fantasy and Science Fiction, IF, and Galaxy, which constituted The Best that SF had to offer.

Ah for those halcyon days.  Now Fantastic is showcasing fabulous Leiber, Moorcock, and Le Guin.  Moreover, Vic has added the superlative Worlds of Tomorrow to her beat.  What have I got?  Analog is drab and dry, Avram Davidson has careened F&SF to the ground, IF is inconsistent, and Galaxy…ah, my poor, once beloved Galaxy…

The Issue at Hand


cover by McKenna

To Build a World, by Poul Anderson


by Morrow

Wham!  Kaboom!  A giant drilling machine is sabotaged while releasing the gasses pent up under the Moon's surface.  A man dies, and the lunar terraforming project is thrown into jeopardy.  It is up to the drill team's foreman, Venusian Don Sevigny, to go to Earth and sniff out the plot…before his life is snuffed out!

Sixty pages of stilted exposition punctuated by standard action scenes ensue.  Moreover, overcrowded Earth has exactly one woman on it (at least that we ever see), and though she turns out to be a villain, she's far too good-looking to remain one.  Sigh.

Poul Anderson vacillates between brilliance and boredom, and To Build a World is a swing of the pendulum hard toward the latter extreme. 

Let's hope the thing doesn't get stuck there.  Two stars.

The King of the Beasts, by Philip José Farmer

Twenty years ago, this utterly predictable vignette might have made acceptable filler in Astounding.  Here and now, it's an embarrassing waste of space.

One star.

The Man from Earth, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Giunta

On the crossroads planet of Duhnbar, the Samarkand of the stars, a visiting human trader fails to observe a minor religious rite.  Duhnbar's all-powerful Director decides to make an example of the man, imposing a long-lapsed death penalty.  In a futile act of defiance, the man preserves his pride, if not his life.

This is a nicely written piece, and the setup is genuinely interesting, but the ending is a let down.  Three stars.

The Well-Trained Heroes, by Arthur Sellings


by Jack Gaughan (and not one of his best)

People often have the misapprehension that colonization reduced population pressure.  It doesn't; it increases it.  Colonies always fill up.  Passage is expensive.  Inevitably, home remains as crowded as ever, but the folks living there are all the more disgruntled for being stuck there.

In Heroes, Earth's citizens yearn to go to space, but barely one in a million make the cut to join the astronaut corps.  Tension builds, and town after town goes into unrest.  It is up to a pair of astronauts to defuse would-be rioters by convincing them that space isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Kind of a neat story, if a little meandering.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Anyone Else for Space?, by Willy Ley

After months of desultory articles, Willy Ley is back in form.  This month's column is nearly twice as long as it has been recently, and it's chock full of the latest news on rocket development outside the Big Two.  Having been to Japan's nascent launch facilities recently, it was exciting to hear about their latest developments (as well as those of the Europeans, the Israelis, the Egyptians, and the Indians!)

Five stars

Collector's Fever, by Roger Zelazny

Rock collecting is a fine hobby, provided the specimens aren't sentient and ready to deeble!  A slight, amusing piece that gets extra points for being told almost entirely in dialogue.

Three stars.

The Many Dooms, by Harry Harrison


by Nodel

On expeditions to hostile worlds, there is no margin of error.  When a cocky geologist's sloppiness threatens the lives of his crew-mates, fate (perhaps with a little push from human hands) deals with the problem.

I liked the writing on this one, and the subject matter is up my alley, but I found the ending both too straightforward and, quite frankly, disturbing.

Three stars.

An Ancient Madness, by Damon Knight


by John Giunta

On an island where breeding is artificial and strictly regimented, and romantic pairings are unheard of, one sixteen year old girl longs for a dramatic love.

A lot.  Loudly and repeatedly.  For twenty angst-infused, plot-stationary pages.  Then, in the final two paragraphs, she runs off with the Doctor to live happily ever after.

I'm not sure why this story was written.  I'm even less certain how I made it through the thing.

Two stars.

Men of Good Will, by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis

In the near future, the Cold War has spread to near-Earth space, occasionally sparking into moments of heat.  For some reason, however, the Moon seems to be a zone of armistice.  The Norwegian UN ambassador heads to the Earth's companion to find out the secret.

The secret (read no further if you wish to remain unspoilt): The Yanks and the Ruskies did shoot it out — once.  Those bullets achieved orbital velocity, and every 27 days, their orbit intersects with the bases, peppering them with new holes.  It's simply too dangerous to keep up the fight.

It's a cute premise, but of course, it makes absolutely no sense.  The periapsis of the bullets only intersects with the bases once out of 24 x 27 orbits; the rest of the time, the bullets should be hitting lunar hills.  They should have been stopped after the first grounding.

C'mon, Ben!  You're a science writer fer cryin' out loud.  Two stars.

The Sincerest Form, by J. W. Groves


by Cowles

Last up, we have a tale told from the point of view of imitative aliens, spore-like things that have no consciousnesses of their own, but which can become replicas of the beings they devour.  The process is imperfect, and the thought processes get a bit garbled.  In fact, it takes a while for the reader to figure out what's going on; it is only when the imitators encounter bonafide humans that things become clear.

I have to give Groves credit for an interesting concept, but the very trickiness of the idea meant that proper execution lay slightly beyond the author's ability.  Still, if he doesn't quite stick the landing, Groves does leave you with something to think about.

Three stars.

Summing Up

So, on the one hand, I am left grousing at my fate, stuck with a 2.7 star issue while Vic reviews the good stuff.  On the other hand, I'm not John Boston, resigned to review bottom-of-the-pack Amazing every month.  Plus, is that a new issue of Gamma I see peeking out from under the stack of bills?

I suppose I do have blessings to count!

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Book, Magazine

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

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by Gideon Marcus

April Fool's

Some days, I just have to wonder.

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

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

Famed character actor, Peter Lorre, died at 59.

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

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

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

The Issue at Hand


Illustration of Sunjammer by Harvey Woolhiser

The Extinction of Species, by Bert Kempers

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

Food for thought.  Three stars.

Sunjammer, by Winston P. Sanders

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

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

Three stars.

Problem Child, by Arthur Porges

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

Three stars.

Shortsite, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

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

Two stars.

Counter Foil, by George O. Smith

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

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

Two stars.

The Spy, by Mario Brand

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

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

Two stars. 

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

Spaceman (Part 2 of 2), by Murray Leinster

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

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

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

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

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

View from a Height

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

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

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

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Book, Magazine

[February 9, 1964] Bargain Basement (March 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

Value Shopping

The price of science fiction digests has steadily gone up over the years.  In the early 50s, the standard cost was 35 cents.  I think the last hold-out at that price point was Fantastic.  Now Galaxy and Analog cost four bits, and the cheapest mags go for 40 cents.  Still, that latter price is a steal when the fiction is all good. 

IF is one of the lower rent mags, but whether or not the March 1964 IF gives you value for your money…well, you'll have to read on to find out:

The Issue at Hand


Cover by Norman Nodel

In Saturn's Rings, by Robert F. Young

Every author has their own quality curve.  Some, like Daniel Keyes, explode onto the scene with a masterpiece and then spend the rest of their career trying to live up to it.  Others start off-key but only improve over time (perhaps Rosel George Brown fits this category, though I've not read her very earliest stories.  Randy Garrett and Bob Silverberg might fit, too.) Still others oscillate between greatness and crap (viz. Poul Anderson). 

Robert F. Young is yet another kind of author.  He started decent, rose to stunning heights with pieces like To Fell a Tree, and then descended into mediocrity, mostly recycling fairy tales and myths. 

Take Rings, for example.  A old man named Matthew North comes back from a far planet, his hold full of the waters of the fountain of youth.  His employer, Zeus Christopolous IX, has built an Attic Greek themed Elysium on the Saturnian moon, Hyperion, populated by robots who look like Alexander the Great, Pindar, Helen of Troy, etc.  Zeus is absent when North returns, but his wife, Hera, demands receipt of the cargo.  She undertakes to threaten, cajole, and seduce the elixir out of Matthew.  She almost succeeds, but then Matthew finds that Hera has done away with her husband, Clytemnestra-style, and he calls the cops instead.


Nice illo by Lawrence, though

It's all very moody and metaphorical, but I never got much out of it — and there are few folks who dig the classics like I do.  Two stars, and a chorus of "Woe!  Woe!  Woe!"

Guardian, by Jerome Bixby

This short story is depicted by this month's striking cover.  In brief, an archaeologist and his assistant land on Mars and discover the robotic guardian that defeated the armies of two invading worlds.  If I didn't know better, I'd say this was a deliberate send-up of pulp style and themes, up to and including a Mars with a breathable atmosphere and degenerate post-civilized natives, a "Planet X" that exploded into the Asteroid Belt, and even the use of the word "cyclopean" (although Bixby uses it to mean "one-eyed" rather than "really big"). 

Send-up or not, it doesn't really belong in the pages of a modern magazine.  Two stars.

Almost Eden, by Jo Friday

This month's new author wrote about a planet whose dominant life form has been pressured by evolution to live as four different creatures simultaneously.  Each is specialized for a particular purpose — hunting, digestion, food storage, and…well, you'll figure it out soon enough. 

It's good, though a little rough around the edges, and I can't shake the feeling I've seen this gimmick before.  Help me out?

Three stars.

The City That Grew in the Sea, by Keith Laumer


Some typically Gaughan work — looks like something out of Clarke's The Sea People

I find myself no longer looking forward to Laumer's stories of Retief, the super-spy who works for the ineffectual Terran Confederation.  This one's not bad, really, about a couple of acquisitive agents and their plan to commit genocide on a water-dwelling race to get access to their gold.  And I appreciated that the adversary race, the Groaci, are not universally bad guys.  But I'm just getting tired of the schtick.  I feel like Retief now hamstrings Laumer as opposed to enabling him.

Three stars.

What Crooch Did, by Jesse Friedlander

Crooch was a promoter who revived the increasingly staged art of "professional" wrestling and evolved (devolved?) it into gladiatorial combat.  This is his story.  All four pages' worth.

Two stars.

Miracle on Michigan and How to Have a Hiroshima, by Theodore Sturgeon

There's nary a peep from editor Fred Pohl this bi-month.  He's probably passed out from having to edit Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow as well as this mag.  Instead, we've got a pair of short observations from Ted Sturgeon.  The first is a paean to the twin Marina Towers in Chicago, perhaps a preview of the arcologies of the future. 

The second is a prediction that the next big scientific breakthrough that will revolutionize the world will come in the field of psychology, maybe something to do with hypnotism.

Your guess is as good as his.  Three stars.

Three Worlds to Conquer (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


McKenna's stuff is serviceable, if not exciting

Finally, we get the second half of Anderson's latest book.  There are two parallel threads that run through it.  Firstly, we have a renegade Naval fleet that has seized control of the Jovian system of moons.  At the same time, down on the surface of Jupiter, the evil Ulunt-Khuzul people have besieged the territory of the peaceful Nyarrans.  Each beleaguered group has its champion: the Ganymedans have a middle-aged man named Fraser; the Nyarrans have a plucky resister called Theor.  And, thanks to the neutrino radio link between them, they are the key to each other's success.

Part 2 was better than Part 1, which was turgid and unreadable.  I still found the depiction of Jovian life both unrealistic as well as overly conventional.  Fraser's story is interesting, but the interactions between him and his partner, the turncoat (but not really!) Lorraine, are hackneyed in the extreme.  This was really brought home to me when my daughter, the Young Traveler, showed me a story she'd just written.  Her characters were better drawn than Fraser and Lorraine — and she's only 14!

Anderson can do better, has done much better.  That's what makes churned out stuff like this so disappointing.

Two stars for this installment, one and a half for the whole thing.

Summing up

Was this month's IF worth 40 cents?  I mean, you get what you pay for, right?  I suppose I'm happy for the introduction to Jo Friday, and I'm glad the Anderson didn't end terribly.  But Fred Pohl really needs to start saving the good stuff for the neglected sister of his trio…

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December 9, 1963 Indifferent to it all (January 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

Picking up the pieces

It's been two weeks since President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, and the country is slowly returning to normal (whatever normal is these days).  Jackie has taken the family out of the White House, President Johnson is advancing the first legislation of his social welfare plan, the "Great Society," and all around the nation, streets, parks, and buildings are being renamed in the slain President's honor.  In fact, Cape Canaveral, launching site for all crewed flights, is being christened "Cape Kennedy."

We're still trying to make sense of the events surrounding Kennedy's death.  Within an hour of the shooting, there were two divergent theories as to who shot the President.  CBS reported on the trail that led to Marine-turned-defector, Lee Harvey Oswald.  NBC, on the other hand, interviewed a woman who saw a shooter on a grassy knoll overlooking Dealey Plaza.  On December 5, the FBI determined that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, did the deed.  Of course, Jack Ruby ensured that Oswald would never speak in his own defense.  The seven member "Warren Commission," headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, has begun a more thorough investigation.  We may never know who shot Kennedy or why.

A eulogy for Kennedy

Yesterday, I appeared at a local venue to present a eulogy for Kennedy and enlighten the audience as to the youthful President's numerous accomplishments.  In the end, we all drank a toast to Jack.  We taped the performance so you can view it even if you couldn't make the event.

Meanwhile, the science fiction magazines continued as if nothing unusual had happened.  This makes sense given the vagaries of production schedules and the need to have work to press months in advance.  Still, it is an eerie feeling to have the world turned upside down and yet see no evidence of turmoil in one's reading material.

Maybe that's a good thing.  One can use stability in crazy times.

In any event, the January 1964 issue of IF, Worlds of Science Fiction was the first sf digest of the new year.  As usual, it contained a mixture of diverting and lousy stories.  Let's take a look:

The January 1964 IF

Three Worlds to Conquer (Part 1 of 2), by Poul Anderson

On the Jovian moon of Ganymede, American colonists warily greet the arrival of the U.S.S. Vega, a battleship out from Earth.  Thanks to a recent civil war in the USA, it is uncertain where the loyalties of the ship's crew lie.  Meanwhile, tens of thousands of miles below, the inhabitants of Jupiter's surface are also preparing for a war of their own.  The common thread to the two stories is the neutrino beam link set up by the human protagonist who makes his home on Jupiter's biggest moon.

It's an interesting set up, but it utterly fails in its execution.  Poul Anderson is the patron saint of unreliability.  On the one hand, he produced some of last year's gratest works, including Let the Spacemen Beware and No Truce with Kings.  On the other, he produced drek like this piece.

Some examples: Anderson likes to wax poetic on technical details.  He spends a full two pages describing what could have been handled with this sentence: "I used a neutrino beam to contact the Jovians; nothing else could penetrate their giant planet's hellish radiation belts or the tens of thousands of thick atmosphere."

Two.  Pages.

Worse, while I applaud Anderson's attempt to depict a Jovian race, he fails in two directions.  Firstly, it's highly doubtful anything could live on the solid surface of Jupiter, if the planet even has one.  If there is a rocky core, its surface gravity must be around 7gs, and the air pressure would be more crushing than the bottom of the Earth's ocean.  Assuming life could stand those conditions, it would have to be something akin to the well-drawn creatures portrayed in Hal Clement's Close to Critical (in the May 1958 Analog).  Instead, Anderson gives us centaurs with quite human characterization and motivation.

The dialogue is stilted.  The writing is uninspired.  And there's enough padding to comfortably sleep on.

One star.  And, oh boy, a whole 'nother part to read in two months.

Mack, by R. J. Butler

Dolphin stories are big right now, from Clarke's People of the Sea to Flipper.  New author, R. J. Butler, gives us another one.  Something about the thwarting of an alien invasion of fish people.  Pleasant enough but it won't stay with you.  A very low three stars.

Personal Monuments, by Theodore Sturgeon

IF's non-fictionalist tells us about six science fiction authors he believes deserve more credit than they get.  He's probably right.  Three stars.

Science-Fantasy Crossword Puzzle, by Jack Sharkey

A welcome feature that is as long as it needs to be (two pages for the game and half a page for the answer).  Three stars.

The Competitors, by Jack B. Lawson

Here is the jewel of the piece.  Humans and androids have evolved in their own directions, each with a stellar sphere of influence.  When humanity comes across an alien race, whose close ties with their own robots make them more than a match for our species, a crotchety old man and a powerful (but subdued) android take on the enemy.

The interactions between human and humanoid robot are priceless and illuminating.  Neither can stand the other, but both see the value in their cooperation.  In the course of their quest, our human protagonist learns the pros and cons of too close integration of humanity and machinery.

Excellent stuff that packs a wallop: Four stars.

The Car Pool, by Frank Banta

Car Pool is a cute little joke in which a gaggle of human petty criminals turns a run-in with the Martian law into a profitable venture for all concerned.  Three stars.

Waterspider, by Philip K. Dick

There is a sub-genre of science fiction known as "fan fiction."  It is written by SF fans (of course) and involves said fans going on wild and fantastic adventures.  Laureled SF author, Philip K. Dick, offers up the fannest of fan fiction in which a pair of folks from the 21st Century employ a time machine to visit a gathering of "pre-cogs" in 1954 to get help with some thorny spaceflight issues.

The gathering is the 1954 World Science Fiction convention in San Francisco, and the pre-cog the Futurians seek is none other than Poul Anderson.  He is kidnapped back to the future, where he runs into mischief before making it back home (with the notes for a story, of course — probably this one).  Along the way, we get an alien's eye view of the various personages who attended SFCon, including A. E. Van Vogt ("so tall, so spiritual"), Ray Bradbury ("a round, pleasant face but his eyes were intense"), and Margaret St. Clair, whom the aliens anachronistically revere for The Scarlet Hexapod, which she hadn't written yet.

It's a bit of silly, self-indulgent fluff saved from banality by the talents of Mr. Dick; I don't know that it merits a quarter of IF's pages.  Three stars.

Summing up

So, yes, it certainly looks like IF will remain steady and true through any crisis.  This means some bad stories, occasional winners, and a lot of filling. 

Things could be worse.

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Conventions/Performances, Magazine, Science / Space Race

December 1, 1963 Last stop (December 1963 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

LosCon in Los Angeles!

It's been an exciting November for the Journey.  After a sad interlude on the East Coast, which saw the untimely death of our President, we flew back to Los Angeles for a small science fiction convention put on by the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society.  It was great fun, a real class act.  Not only did we get to put on a show (in which the assassination, of course, featured prominently), but we also met Laura Freas, wife of Kelly Freas, the illustrator who painted Dr. Martha Dane.  As y'all know, Dr. Dane graced our masthead until very recently, and she remains the Journey's avatar.

And for those of you who missed the performance, we got it on video-tape.

At last, success for NASA

I read an article in Aviation Weekly that noted that 1963 just hasn't been a great year for NASA space shots.  There have only been eight successful missions thus far.  Unlike in the old days (you know, five years ago), when satellites didn't fly because of balky rockets, now missions are more likely to be delayed for lack of funding on the ground or for thorny technical issues as mechanisms get more complicated.

But successes do happen, and on November 27, Explorer 18 soared into orbit.  Also known as the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP), it is essentially a deep space explorer.  At the closest point in its orbit, it zooms at an atmosphere-scraping 160 kilometers in altitude, but at its furthest, it flies up to a quarter million kilometers out — more than halfway to the moon.

IMP is the first of seven satellites that will monitor the sun's output over a long period of time, measuring its ups and downs over the course of its 11 year activity cycle.  It will also measure interplanetary magnetic fields, the speed and composition of the solar wind, and the strength of the cosmic rays that shower the solar system from intergalactic space.

In many ways, Explorer 18 continues the missions of Explorers 10 and 12, spacecraft that made incredible discoveries about our local space environment.  What makes IMP so special is its size and endurance: it will be in space much longer than its predecessors, and its more advanced instruments are capable of more refined measurements. 

It is also hoped that IMP will be for interplanetary space what TIROS is for Earth — a weather satellite providing up to date information on the environment "up there."  Thus, Explorer 18 will not only expand our knowledge of interplanetary physics, it will also be an early warning system, alerting astronauts as to upcoming solar flares and other potentially dangerous events. 

Pretty neat!

Last magazine of the year

Every month, the Journey does its level best to review every science fiction magazine that gets published.  As far as I can tell, we cover all the regular American ones plus the British New Worlds (only Science Fantasy, also British, escapes our coverage).  By tradition, Analog is the covered last, and thus, the December 1963 Analog is the last magazine of the year.  Once this one is reviewed, we can finally get down to the fun business of determining the stats: which mag had the best stories, the most consistent quality, the most women published, and so on.  Call it SFnal baseball.

So how was this last issue?  Read on!

The Nature of the Electric Field, by John W. Campbell

In addition to a nonsensical editorial, Editor Campbell wastes several oversized pages with the reprint of a century-old treatise on electricity.  I guess it's to show how times change, and therefore, we shouldn't be so quick to denounce things like Dianetics, reactionless drives, psionics, dowsing, and other pseudo-sciences.

One star.

Cracking the Code, by Carl A. Larson

Larson's article is on DNA and scientists' attempts to understand how a sequence of amino acids can be the blueprint for all of life's manifestations.  It's a subject that would have been better handled by Asimov…or really, anyone else.  On the other hand, some of Larson's poetical turns of phrase are cute, like analogizing cells to an alien race whose environment is so utterly foreign to our ken, and that's why it's taken so long to decipher their language.

Two stars, I guess.

Dune World (Part 1 of 3), by Frank Herbert

I was mistaken when I called this new serial Herbert's first novel.  He had a serial back in 1956 called Under Pressure that I must have read some seven years ago, but I couldn't tell you what it was about if you put a gun to my head.

Anyway, this new one seems to be generating a lot of buzz, and I can see why.  It features Paul, 15 year-old scion to House of Atreides, whose father, the Duke of Atreides, has been granted the fiefdom of Arrakis.  Arrakis — desert planet — Dune.  This barren wasteland, where water is worth its weight in platinum, offers but one export: Melange, the geriatric spice that affords immortality, cures ailments, and tastes really good, too.  As Arrakis is the only source of melange, control of the planet is a sought plum, indeed.

Except, the Duke knows it is a trap set by the planet's former masters, the Barony of Harkonnen.  In collusion with the Padishar Emperor, Harkonnen has hatched a complicated plan to humiliate and discredit (and probably kill) the Duke, a scheme which whose intricacy might even give Machiaveli pause.

There is a lot to admire in this new work.  It's a fresh universe, highly developed, with a lot of attention to detail and inclusion of many foreign cultural influences.  Women play a prominent role, with the genders being apparently somewhat segregated, each having their own spheres of power.  There are at least two important female characters, something I'm always delighted to find in my science fiction.

One of the aspects of Herbert's world is the conscious disdain for, and even ban on, the use of computers.  Instead, human "mentats" have been bred for the ability of calculation.  This not only creates an interesting new class of person, it neatly relieves the author of predicting the development of electronic brains.

Dune Planet is not, however, an unalloyed success.  In the hands of Cordwainer Smith or even Mack Reynolds, folks who have a deep grounding in other cultures as well as the writing chops to convey them, it would be a masterpiece.  Herbert, on the other hand, is a pretty raw writer.  His stuff can be creaky and dull, the viewpoint shifts from paragraph to paragraph, and his use of ellipses dots is…exuberant (they say we hate most in others what we dislike about ourselves; Herbert writes a bit like I did not long ago before certain editors whipped me into shape).

So, three stars so far, but I'm still reading and look forward to more.

Conversation in Arcady, by Poul Anderson

In George Pal's The Time Machine, Rod Taylor arrives at the far future and discovers humanity living under (seemingly) idyllic circumstances.  They no longer need toil for food, shelter, or clothing.  They do not fight each other nor feel the need to rule.  At first impressed, the time traveler is dismayed to find that the desire to advance, the struggle to improve has been lost.  In perhaps the most effective scene of the movie (at least, it was for me), Taylor finds shelves of books that crumble to dust at the slightest touch.

Poul Anderson's latest is a note for note copy of this scene with the exceptions that 1) Anderson's Eloi are not so simple and childlike, 2) there are no Morlocks fattening up people for supper, and 3) the time traveler can see nothing positive about the situation whatsoever.

I think Anderson is trying to say something poignant, that our race is nothing without the need to better itself.  Or perhaps he's striving for a subtler point — that those who only find meaning in struggle can never find peace, and maybe peace isn't a bad thing.  Or maybe he's saying both things at the same time.

I think he was going for just the first, though.  Three stars.

The Right Time, by Walter Bupp (John Berryman)

John Berryman's series is set in the current world but where psionics are common (but secret).  It's a perfect fit for Analog what with Editor Campbell's peculiar pseudo-scientific beliefs, yet somehow Berryman's stories manage to be good.  This one, about a telekinetic precog with the ability to predict and potentially heal a fellow's heart attack, is my favorite yet.  Four stars.

Thin Edge, by Johnathan Blake MacKenzie

Author Randy Garrett is back under the pseudonym he prefers when he writes about life in the asteroid belt.  This latest piece is about a Belter who is killed by Earthers for the secret of the super strong cording used for rock towing, and about the other Belter who comes to Earth looking for revenge.

It's written with some facility, but the Belters are always too clever and the Earthers too dumb.  A low three or a high two, depending on your mood.

All right!  It's time to tabulate the data for December!

Analog finished in the middle of the pack with 2.8 stars, above F&SF (2.1) and Fantastic (2.2), but below Galaxy (3.2), Amazing (3.2), and New Worlds (3.2), not to mention last month's issue of Gamma, which I didn't get to until this month (3.3).

There were 44 pieces of fiction between the seven magazines, four of which were written by women.  9% is fairly standard these days, sadly.  I'm not sure what's causing the decline, though the numbers were never that much better.

Next up, we'll be covering the UK's newest SF TV show, and beyond that, 1963's Galactic Stars!

Stay tuned.

[The party's still going on at Portal 55.  Come join us for real-time conversation!]

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