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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.)

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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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Conventions/Performances, Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine

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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[October 2, 1963] Worse than it looks (October 1963 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

[We've just updated KGJ for the Fall.  Check out our line-up of new hits!]

Life is a series of cycles: The seasons change; people are born, have children, die, and their children do the same; the government takes its pound of flesh every April.  And every month, I slog through an increasingly tall pile of science fiction books.  Like the Hydra of Greek legend, any conquest I make is fleeting, for there is always a new set to review.

Of course, my labor is not generally an unpleasant one.  When I get my hands on an exciting new book or a magazine dense with worthy selections, life is grand.  On the other hand, when the reading gets difficult, that's its own kind of hell, particularly when the reading involves magazines.  I can drop an unpromising book without much twinging of conscience, but I am committed to reviewing every issue of every American SFF magazine.  That can be rough.

To wit, the October 1963 Analog is a tedious slog.  While I give many of the individual pieces passable "3-star" ratings, most barely cross that threshold of acceptability, and taken together, they make a kind of mind-numbing sludge.  Aren't you glad I read this issue for you?

The Geodetic Satellite, by Marvin C. Whiting

The first entry in the magazine is the non-fiction article, and it (thankfully) doesn't involve psi or perpetual motion.

Whiting presents a the history of and need for geodesy.  It turns out that geodesy, the science of measuring Earth's exact shape, is essential for navigation — whether nautical, aerial, or ballistic.  Satellites allow measurements of incredibly high accuracy, well beyond any military requirement, which means they're almost good enough for scientists.  A competent, if not scintillating account.  Three stars.

Where I Wasn't Going (Part 1 of 2), by Walt Richmond and Leigh Richmond

A full half of the issue is taken up with the first half of a two-month serial, and thus the trouble starts.  The Richmonds were apparently never taught the old maxim: "Show, don't tell."  Either that, or the message got garbled in transmission.  In any event, while Going is ostensibly about the goings-on in a space station several decades from now, it's really a series of expositional pages that don't even have the virtue of being entertaining. 

I gave up about a quarter of the way in.  It's a pity given the beautiful illustrations Schoenherr produced for the story.  One star.

War Games, by Chris Anvil

About a century ago, the Prussian army invented the wargame, a simulation of battle that afforded a modicum of training for officers without any of that messy fighting business.  In 1954, Charles Roberts invented the board wargame — a commercial product that does much the same thing, though more cheaply and simplistically.

Anvil posits that we will soon have computerized wargames of incredible detail and flexibility.  So good will be these new games that they will replace war as a method of resolving conflicts.

The timing for this piece could not have been better given that I just completed a game of the wargame, Stalingrad.  One has to wonder if Anvil is a fellow counter-pusher.  In any event, while the plot is nothing special, the depiction of the wargame is marvelous, and I find I must give Wargames a four-star rating.  Call it bias.

The Three-Cornered Wheel, by Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson is capable of the most sublime novels as well as the most offensive dreck.  Wheel falls somewhere in-between, a little toward the lower end of his range.  It's a puzzle piece: how can a shipwrecked vessel transport a spare engine across a thousand miles of rough terrain when the planet's inhabitants find the wheel to be taboo? 

Unfortunately, the answer is given away right in the title.  The story is uninspired, for the most part, but there are some nifty bits like when young cadet, David Falkayn, hits upon the solution to his problem while being attacked by natives — a nice juxtaposition of action and cogitating.  I'll charitably give the yarn three stars though, in truth, it's right on the border of two.

A World by the Tale by Seaton McKettrig

Last up, we meet Earth's first interstellar traveler, a fellow who is given the opportunity to spend a year in Galactic society as a zookeeper for exported terran beasties.  His book about his exploits becomes a bestseller throughout the Milky Way, thus providing Earth's first real trade good.

McKettrig (really Randall Garrett in disguise) offers up a reasonably entertaining story, but it's a bit too glib, and the part where the author fails to understand that even a quarter of a percent commission on his book sales will make him a wealthy person indeed, given the size of his market, is implausible.  Three stars.

Running these numbers through my personal IBM computer, I come up with a 2.7 star rating, which feels too high.  It reminds me of the joke about how to compute "wind chill" — if you feel colder than what you're thermometer reports, fudge the chill factor until it looks right.  Anyway, 2.7 is the worst score of the month, being shared by Amazing (interestingly, fellow Traveler John Boston seemed to like his magazine more than the score would seem to warrant).  The normally remarkable Fantastic only garnered 2.9 stars.  Galaxy got 3.1, F&SF earned 3.3, and British mag New Worlds led the pack with an unusually high score of 3.4.

Women wrote 2.5 of the 29 fiction pieces, a slightly worse average than normal.  There was also a paucity of stand-out stories, though Victoria Silverwolf's glowing recommendation of Ballard's The Screen Game warrants attention.

And now it's October, and I have to do this all over again!  Wish me luck…

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[Sep. 1, 1963] How to Fail at Writing by not Really Trying (September 1963 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

A few years ago, I began trying to write fiction.  I'd been reading science fiction regularly for eight years at that point.  I figured if all those other guys and gals could do it, surely I, with hundreds of published pieces under my belt would find the transition an easy one.  So long as I came up with some clever twist, maybe showcased some unique visions of technology, that'd be enough.

I quickly found, as I collected rejection after rejection, that it wasn't.  I started running my stories past my wife and my daughter, both talented and discerning individuals.  It became clear that I was missing the things that make any story good, regardless of genre: pacing, compelling characters, dramatic tension.  A science fiction story must be, first and foremost, a story.

I took that lesson to heart, rewriting all of my salvageable pieces.  The end result?  Last month, I got published, and the future looks bright for my other works.  Now people want to read my stuff.  Heck, even I like my stuff now.


Sadly, this month's issue of Analog, with one notable exception, is chock full of the type of stories I know now not to write.  They are a series of technological travelogues with the barest attempt at fictioneering.  This kind of thing might tickle editor John Campbell's fancy, but it won't win any Hugos.  Moreover, this isn't the first time this has happened.  If this trend keeps up, at some point it's got to impact subscription numbers.  Right?

Take a look and tell me if you agree:



Which Polaris Do You Mean? by Robert S. Richardson

Every planet has got a north pole — that place where you can stand and watch the world rotate counter-clockwise below you.  But do other planets have a "North Star," a bright star like our Polaris that lies directly in line that pole and always points north?  And do Earth and other planets have South Stars?  Robert Richardson offers up an article that answers these questions.  I found it pretty interesting, but astronomy's my bag.  Three stars.

Industrial Revolution, by Winston P. Sanders

A few months back, Sanders wrote a story about planet-divers who plunged into the atmosphere of Jupiter to retrieve valuable industrial gasses.  I don't know how the author managed to turn such an interesting premise into a dull piece, but he did. 

In Revolution, he does it again, butchering the tale of a small venture that tries to turn an asteroid into a profitable fuel trans-shipping concern.  Earth's government sends a battleship out to stop the attempt at space capitalism, but doughty Jimmy Chung (the Chinese guy) and Michael Blades (the Irish guy, and hero) outsmart those evil bureaucrats.

Along the way, we are treated to excruciatingly long explanations of technology, pages of trite dialogue, and that perennial Analog specialty: lousy portrayals of women.  All told in a smug, self-satisfied manner that is also typical of the magazine. 

Those with any knowledge of our genre know that "Winston P. Sanders" is a pen name for old hand, Poul Anderson.  Perhaps he knew that this tale was a stinker and didn't want his name attached to it.  One star.

The Last Straw, by William J. Smith

Months after a deadly plane crash that took the lives of more than seventy passengers, Inspector Kessler still can't give up the investigation.  Was it sabotage?  A drunk passenger?  Or perhaps some kind of conspiracy?  All of the leads come up short…until a final clue puts the mystery in focus.

Straw is just three separate dialogues, and yet, the writing is so deft that we learn everything we need to know just from conversation.  The rule is generally "show, don't tell," but an experienced author can "show by telling" without it feeling expository.  I'm impressed.

As for the story, it's a fine, short "who-dunnit."  Or perhaps "what-dunnit" is a better description.  Four stars.

i>Chrono-Control, by Frank A. Javor

In the future, incorrigible prisoners are stuffed into one-person satellites and subjected to a life of privation and strict time-management.  One such convict decides he can't take it anymore and hatches a plan to break his mechanical warden.  But is Heaven in a pod better than Hell?

Aside from the utter implausibility of the setup, the pages upon pages explaining the prisoner's plot are incomprehensible.  The ending is silly, too.  In other words, Javor commits all of the sins described in my preamble. 

Two stars.

The Thirst Quenchers, by Rick Raphael

A hundred years from now, science has transformed every profession but one — that of the hydrologist.  These intrepid measurers must still manually plant sensors in remote locations to ensure an accurate picture of our water budget.  And in the 21st Century, water is such a precious commodity that no drop can be spared.

A fellow reviewer described this tale as "A cross between a railway timetable and a mail-order catalogue," which I find hard to improve upon.  It reads like an educational film views, and when the "action" starts, half-way through, it is stripped of all excitement. 

Some points that stood out, though:

1.  In the future, won't satellites be able to monitor our water supplies? 

2.  If water is in such short supply, and power so abundant (nuclear fission is ubiquitous, and dams have been abandoned), why aren't there large-scale desalination operations?

3.  Analog is a particularly masculine magazine with few/no female characters or writers.  Sometimes this quality approaches self-satiric levels, as with this sentence spoken by a ranger who is rebuffed when he offers a hydrologist a cup of substandard coffee:

"Man's drink for a real man," the ranger grinned.  "Us forestry men learn to make coffee from pine pitch.  Makes a man outta you."

One star.

Am I Still There?, by James R. Hall

This year saw the first successful lung transplant, easily the most significant organ transfer operation to date.  One can easily foresee a future in which every part of the body can be exchanged, granting a kind of immortality.  But what happens when your brain starts to wear out?  Can a new one be regrown, imprinted with your memories, and implanted?  Are you still you after such an operation?

It's a fascinating concept, but you won't find it well-explored in this story.  After a competent setup, Hall simply leaves the central question unanswered.  Two stars.

We are left with the question: Do Analog's stories stink because the writers can't write, or do Analog's contributors write poorly because that's what Campbell wants?  The fact that Anderson, at least, often turns in good efforts suggests the latter — or at least, they just don't try as hard for Campbell's mag. 

Anyway, here are the numbers for this month: Analog garnered a dismal 2.2 stars, beaten to the bottom only by Amazing, which got 2.1 stars.  F&SF was also a disappointment this month, though its sins tend to go in the opposite direction of Analog.  It got 2.6 stars.  Fantastic rounds out the losers with a 2.9 average.

On the winning side, Worlds of Tomorrow features solid works by Laumer and Dick, though the balance of the issue drags things to just 3 stars.  Experimental IF, which featured two woman authors (F&SF had one, the others, none), clocked in at 3.3 stars and had my favorite story.  And New Worlds scored a surprising 3.4 stars and the top spot, in large part due to its continuing serial by John Brunner.

All in all, August wasn't a great month for science fiction, but as usual, there was enough quality to see us through.  Speaking of which, Worldcon 21 has begun, and we will soon learn what the fans thought was the best of SF published last year.  There will be a full report when it's over…

[Want to discuss the Hugo winners in real-time?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]

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[August 12, 1963] WET BLANKET (the September 1963 Amazing)

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by John Boston

[Want to talk to the Journey crew and fellow fans?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]

Just as I feared, the September 1963 Amazing marks the return, after too short an absence, of Robert F. Young, who in Boarding Party moves on from his twee recapitulations of the Old Testament to, I kid you not, Jack and the [REDACTED] Beanstalk.  Alien space traveler needs to enrich the soil in the on-ship farm, finds an out-of-bounds planet with the right kind of dirt, and lowers a big tube to suck it up; but one of the natives (those protected by the out-of-bounds designation) climbs the tube, and makes off with a “Uterium 5 Snirk Bird, a Toy Friddle-fork, and Two Containers of Yellow Trading Disks,” it says here.  The aliens all have names of four syllables separated by hyphens, and you can fill in the blanks for this one.  One guttering star—a tiny red dwarf at best.

But the issue opens with Poul Anderson’s Homo Aquaticus, illustrated on the cover by a swimmer with a menacing look and a more menacing trident, next to a nicely-rendered fish, in one of artist Lloyd Birmingham’s better moments.  This is one of Anderson’s atmospheric stories, its mood dominated by Anglo-Saxon monosyllables.  No, not those—I mean fate, guilt, doom, that sort of thing.  The story’s tone is set in the first paragraph, in which the protagonist “thought he heard the distant blowing of a horn.  It would begin low, with a pulse that quickened as the notes waxed, until the snarl broke in a brazen scream and sank sobbing away.”

This is rationalized as the wind in the cliffs, but we know better.  The good (space)ship Golden Flyer and its crew have been sentenced to roam the galactic hinterlands after some of their number betrayed other ships of the Kith, a starfaring culture separated from planetary cultures by relativistic time dilation.  Right now they’re looking at what used to be a colony planet, but all they see is ruins, until their encounter with the colony’s descendants, as given away by the title.  In the end, doom and fate are tempered with rationality and mercy.  Three stars, but towards the top of Anderson’s middling range.

After these two short stories, there is only one other piece of fiction in the issue, A. Bertram Chandler’s long novella The Winds of If, an entry in what now seems to be a series about goings-on on the Rim (of the galaxy), with a couple of magazine stories and a novel, The Rim of Space, already published.  The plot: tramp space freighter is about ready for the knackers, or breakers, or whatever, but the crew gets hired by a Commodore Grimes to take an experimental ship on a long flight—a lightjammer, propelled by the pressure of light against large sails. 

Two women, a journalist and an engineer, are added to the crew, which already includes one woman.  Soap opera ensues, and one of the women decides to present her inamorata with a really special gift—genuine faster-than-light travel.  The lightjammer is by now at 0.9 per cent of light speed, so a little push should put it over, right?  Like a bucket of gunpowder detonated at the stern?

I’m really not the one to judge—hey, I’m still a couple of years away from high school physics—but hasn’t Chandler stumbled into a sort of relativistic Fool’s Mate here?  There’s an obvious arithmetical problem; wouldn’t you need a lot more 9s after that decimal point to get close enough to c for such a little push to put you over?  But more importantly, doesn’t matter get more massive the closer you get to c, meaning a corresponding increase in inertia would defeat any attempt to sneak over the line with a little added acceleration?  Where’s Julio Gomez when you need him?

Anyway, in the story it works, and it precipitates the characters into a series of strange experiences which I won’t detail, save to say that the soap opera intensifies and permutates, and we get a good dose of low-level male-chauvinism as the women prove slaves to their emotions.  Aside from that, it’s smoothly written and perfectly readable if you don’t have anything better to do, but that and the cartoon science get it two stars.  Also, the characters smoke cigarettes.  A lot.  On board an enclosed vessel that has only the air it can bring with it or manufacture in flight.  How likely is it that smoking would be tolerated on a long-haul spaceship?  Inquiring minds think that’s about as silly as the gunpowder-bucket FTL drive.

This month’s non-fiction piece is Ben Bova’s article Neutrino Astronomy—reasonably informative but dull, and briefly worse than dull as he unveils the Useless Simile of the Month.  One section of the article is headed The Stellar Pituitary Gland, and it says here: “Neutrinos might well control the aging process in the Sun, much as the pituitary gland is suspected to regulate aging in human beings.” P’tooey!  Two stars.

So, once again, Amazing brightened up for a month, with several excellent stories last month, but now as usual the wet blanket of mediocrity has descended again. 




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