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Magazine, Serial

[January 22, 1965] With Apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein (February 1965 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf


The guy on the right doesn't seem too happy about all this.

The long-anticipated movie version of the smash hit stage musical The Sound of Music had sneak previews in Minneapolis and Tulsa this month, and is scheduled to show up in theaters across the nation in March. This sugary-sweet confection, very loosely based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers, isn't really my cup of tea, but I thought I would pay tribute to the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II by stealing the titles of some of the ditties that appear in it.

Caution: May cause diabetes.

Climb Ev'ry Mountain

Just a couple of days ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States for his first full term.


Chief Justice Earl Warren administers the oath of office.

The inaugural address was a short one. In the space of twenty minutes or so, he raised the issues of poverty, health care, literacy, and much more. A phrase about American lives lost in countries we barely know is surely a reference to the conflict in Vietnam. He even threw in a nod to the space program, mentioning the rocket that is heading toward Mars.

Those are a lot of steep, difficult mountains to conquer for any politician, so let's wish the President well.

Do Re Mi

I've complained before about some of the syrupy ballads that reach the top, so I was pleased to see two tunes more to my liking jump to Number One this month. Both are courtesy of the UK, so pip pip and cheerio to our friends across the pond!

Earlier this month, the Beatles made a big comeback on the American charts with their upbeat rock 'n' roll number I Feel Fine.


The big advantage of buying a record instead of going to a Beatles concert is that you can actually hear the song instead of screaming.

Even as I type this, the news reaches me that British songbird Petula Clark is now Number One in the USA, belting out a nifty tribute to the pleasures of big city living called Downtown.


Baby, it's her, as far as music fans go.

My Favorite Things

Like the rest of you, I'm a big fan of science fiction and fantasy stories, at least when they're done reasonably well. Let's take a look at the latest issue of Fantastic and hope for the best.


Cover art by Heidi Coquette.

A Fortnight of Miracles, by Randall Garrett

A magician, who is also handy with a quarterstaff, travels around with his familiar, a goblin. (In this world, that means an earth elemental.) They run into — literally! — a most unusual knight. Although he can talk and fight and do all kinds of knightly things, he's just an empty suit of armor. After a brief period of misunderstanding, the sorcerer and the goblin agree to help him find the wizard who put a curse on him.

Fortunately, all users of magic have to travel to a convention once per century or lose their powers, and it's going on right now. The knight also has to triumph at a jousting tournament, which is hard to do when you're just a suit of armor that doesn't weigh very much. Add in a lovesick wood nymph, the King of Faerie, and some Bad Guys, and you got a lighthearted fantasy adventure. It provides some amusement, although it's hardly profound.

Three stars.

Passage to Dilfar, by Roger Zelazny

If you studied Homer in school, you're familiar with the term in medias res. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, this brief tale begins in the middle of things.

Our hero, Dilvish the Damned, is riding his talking metal horse, for which he sold part of his soul, from the site of a lost battle, in order to carry the news to a city threatened by the advancing enemy. Along the way lots of foes try to stop him, but he escapes them all. A final encounter with a a knight wearing invulnerable armor tests the skills of Dilvish and his steed.

This lightning-paced tale is very well written, but it reads like a few pages torn out of a much longer story. I hope the author eventually tells us more about the Damned fellow.

Three stars.

The Repairmen of Cyclops (Part Two of Two), by John Brunner


Illustration by George Schelling.

As you may recall from the previous installment, the Corps Galactica finds evidence that the ruling class of the planet Cyclops is somehow restoring body parts for those lost by the wealthy; a thing which should be beyond their level of medical technology. As strongly hinted at last time, that's because they're buying them from some sinister folks who exploit the population of a planet unknown to the Corps.

The Bad Guys convince their victims that they're suffering from a terminal illness, take them away, and pay their families, pretending to be a sort of hospice. Of course, they really murder them in cold blood, and sell them to the physician on Cyclops who takes care of the elite.

In the concluding half of this short novel, the Corps figures out what's going on and tries to stop it. Complicating matters is the fact that the woman who is the de facto ruler of Cyclops orders the Corps to abandon their base on the planet, even though this will cause great economic hardship for her world. She has her own motive, which involves the physician and one of the innocent inhabitants of the secret planet. It all leads up to a daring raid on the evil doctor's lair by the heroine, a highly skilled and experienced agent of the Corps.

That makes the plot sound melodramatic, and, indeed, the climax resembles something from a James Bond novel. However, the characters are believable, the background is complex, and the combination of violent action and political intrigue always held my interest.

Four stars.

Winterness, by Ron Goulart


Also by George Schelling. I like the white-on-black effect.

Set in the early part of the Twentieth Century, this tongue-in-cheek yarn involves a spiritualist and a married couple, both of whom are novelists. The woman believes in the medium's powers, the man does not. At a seance for a newspaper editor and his mistress, the skeptic falls into danger, and dark secrets are revealed.

I've made the story sound a lot more serious than it is. Although the plot isn't a funny one, the characters, the dialogue, and the narrative style are all good for some laughs. I particularly liked a bit of satire on the writing game of years gone by, with the woman producing sentimental novels with titles like Venetia; or Led Where Love Compels and the man turning out muckraking works like Soil and Steam.

Three stars.

The Vamp, by Thomas M. Disch

The narrator is an old-time movie actor, going back to the silent days, who is now the host of a TV kiddie show. He sees his ex-wife on the street, acting like a flirtatious 1920's flapper to the men who pass by, who don't seem interested. That's not a big surprise, since she's more than sixty years old, with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, dead white skin, ruby lips, sharp teeth . . .

OK, you know where this is going, from the title if nothing else. The narrator never figures it out, so he invites her home for a very rare — in fact, bloody — steak. That leads to the story's joke ending.

The whole thing is just a trifle, but I liked it well enough. Maybe that's because the idea of turning a silent-screen star into a you-know-what tickled me. Or maybe because the story reminded me of the great old movie Sunset Boulevard. (I can definitely see a similarity between the Vamp and Norma Desmond.)

Three stars.

So Long, Farewell

Before I say goodbye, let me sum up my thoughts on this issue. Overall, it was pretty decent. No bad stories, although many of them were definitely minor works. That's a lot better than a magazine full of lousy fiction, so I won't complain when I read something good.

[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

[September 2, 1964] Taking on The Man (September 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Tarnished Gold

I am an avid fan of science fiction magazines.  It would not be going too far to say that Galactic Journey's original purpose was to document these delightful digests as they came out (since then, our scope has crept quite a bit, even as far as the opening of a publishing company!)

If you've been following my column, you know that I view some magazine editors more favorably than others.  For instance, I have a great deal of respect for Fred Pohl, who helms Galaxy, IF AND Worlds of Tomorrow, all of them quite good reads.  Then there's Cele Goldsmith (now Lalli) who took on both Amazing and Fantastic, and while neither are unalloyed excellence, they are improved over where they were before she came on, and there's usually something excellent in at least one of the mags every month. 

My relationship with Fantasy and Science Fiction's Avram Davidson is more complicated; I understand he's moved to Berkeley and is retiring from the editorship of that magazine to devote himself to writing.  I think that's probably better for everyone involved.  Still, there have been some good issues under Davidson, and I can't let curses go without some grudging admiration.

And then there's John W. Campbell.

Look.  I recognize that his Astounding kicked off the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and that, for a while, his magazine (and its sister, Unknown) were the best games in town, by far.  But Campbell went off the deep end long, long ago, with his pseudo-science, his reactionary politics, his heavy-handed editorial policy that ensures that White Male Terrans are usually the stars (and writers) of his stories, and his inflammatory editorials that I gave up reading a while ago.

Asimov's long-since turned his back on him.  Even I've rattled sabers with him.  But the most poignant declaration against Campbell is a recent one, given by prominent writer Jeannette Ng at a local conference.  She minced no words, denouncing his male-chauvinism, his racism, his authoritarianism, and urged that the genre be freed from the overlong shadow he casts. 


Jeannette Ng, iconoclast

While Campbell's influence in SF is somewhat on the wane, Analog still has double the circulation of the next biggest competitor, four times that of F&SF, where the majority of the women SF writers publish.  It's people like Ms. Ng, pointing at the naked Emperor and noting the ugliness, who will advance the New Wave, the post-Campbellian era.

All I have to say is "bravo". 

The Issue at Hand

The ironic thing is that the current issue of Analog is actually pretty good (full disclosure: I didn't read the editorial, which is probably awful).  Just the cover, illustrating the latest Lord D'Arcy story is worth the price of admission.


by John Schoenherr

Opening up the pages, things are pretty good inside, too.  At least until the end. 

the risk takers, by Carolyn Meyer

This article on the use of mannequins in aeronautical and medical science is lively, much more Asimovian than most of the non-fiction Campbell has subjected us to recently.  And, it's the first time a woman author has graced the science column of Analog.  While the piece is comparatively brief and perhaps aimed at a more general (dare I say "younger") audience than the average Analog reader, I enjoyed it.

Four stars.

A Case of Identity, Randall Garrett

Randall Garrett is possibly the author I've savaged the most during my tenure running the Journey, but even I have to admit that the fellow's latest series is a winner.  Lord D'Arcy is a magical detective hailing from an alternate 1964.  In this installment, the Marquis of Cherbourg is missing, and coincidentally, an exact double has just been found dead and naked near the docks.  There's witchcraft afoot, and the good Lord, along with his sorcerer assistant, Master Sean O Lochlainn, are on the case.


by John Schoenherr

This story doesn't flow quite as smoothly as the first one, spending many inches on the historical background of this brand-new world.  It's still a superlative tale, however.

Four strong stars.

The Machmen, James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

An interstellar survey group is overpowered by a group of ambitious cyborgs.  The goal of these so-called "Machmen" (presumably pronounced "Mash-men"?) is to forcibly convert the captured team of eggheads into brainwashed cybernetic comrades and start a colony.  But one the scientists has gotten loose, and he has a risky plan to thwart the nefarious scheme that just…might…work.

It's not a bad piece.  In fact it moves quite nicely, far more readily than the author's latest (and disappointing) Telzey Amberdon story.  But on the other hand, it reads like it might have come out in the 1930s.  I wonder if it's been hiding in a desk from the early days of Schmitz' career.

Three stars.

Sheol, Piers Anthony and H. James Hotaling


by John Schoenherr

This is an odd piece about the Government postman who delivers parcels to the oddballs who live in the suburbs.  It's quite deftly written, but there's weird social commentary that, while not offensive, feels Campbellian.  Tailor made for John, or doctored after the fact?  There's no way to tell.

Three stars.

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


by Kelly Freas

Last up, we have the conclusion to Sleeping Planet.  What started out as a promising novel about the sudden subjugation of the Earth has ended up exactly as predicted.  The few unsleeping humans, along with their robotic allies (abruptly introduced near the end of the last installment), put on a movie show that convinces the invaders that the dead spirits of Earth are taking out their revenge.  This confusion facilitates the final gambit of the Terrans: to infiltrate and revive one of the planetary defense stations in El Paso.  After that, it's all over but the shouting.

There are several problems with this last part.  First off, it's essentially unnecessary.  There are no surprises, the human plan pretty much going as discussed in the last part.  That's the big picture.  Smaller picture issues include:

  • Why were Earth's defense centers even vulnerable to the sleeping dust in the first place?  Wouldn't it make sense for them to have their own air supplies against chemical/biological attack?
  • The amazingly human-like aliens (another Campbellian feature) are always played for suckers.  I was almost rooting for them to win at the end, so arrogant and annoying were the humans.
  • At the end, Earth's leaders make light of the attack, calling it a brief nap (but a warning as to what might happen NEXT TIME).  I understand this is largely to quell panic and outrage.  At the same time, though, it is mentioned numerous times that hundreds, maybe thousands of women were revived and rendered stupefied so that the might "service" the alien troops.  That this mass rape goes unaddressed and essentially laughed off really bothered me.  Honestly, even including this element was disgusting and unnecessary, especially in a story that mostly kept a light tone.

Two stars for this segment, two-and-a-half for the book as a whole.  We'll see if it gets picked up for separate print.

Summing Up

Thus ends another edition of the magazine that Campbell built, representative of the best and worst of the man.  This time, the positive aspects have won out, resulting in a 3.2 star issue.  This is surpassed this month only by Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4).  There was no IF this month due to a problem at the printers, the result of shifting from bimonthly to monthly.  That leaves the new New Worlds (3.1), Amazing (2.7), and Fantastic (2.6) scoring below Analog and F&SF.  An unusual month, indeed.

Women wrote 6 of 38 pieces (1 of 4 science articles, 5 of 34 fiction pieces), a fairly average month.  Despite the paucity of magazines, there was enough high quality material to make a decently sized issue.  Now that I'm in the anthology business, perhaps I'll do just that…

SPEAKING OF WHICH:

We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!  Not only will you find it excellent reading, but it will support our efforts and allow us to make more of the material you enjoy!  Thank you for your support!




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Magazine

[May 10, 1964] STUCK IN THE MIDDLE (the June 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Regression to the Mean

The June Amazing is . . . middling — a relief compared to some past performances—with nothing outstanding, nothing appalling, and much of it at least mildly interesting.


by Alex Schomburg

Tin Lizzie, by Randall Garrett

Like the previous issue, this one starts off with a hardware opera, but a much more agreeable one than last month’s.  Randall Garrett’s Tin Lizzie is a conscious throwback to older SF, say the late ‘30s just after John Campbell took over at Astounding but before any great transformation took hold, with the writers soberly exploring the engineering challenges of space travel to the inner planets.  No doubt it was too old hat for present-day Campbell, accounting for its appearance here at the bottom of the market rather than in Analog, Garrett’s most regular abode.  Nowadays you’re more likely to find this sort of thing in Boy’s Life than in the SF magazines, or by revisiting the older Winston juveniles you took out of the library years ago.


by Virgil Finlay

Our heroes are piloting a tugship back from Jupiter towing a big bag of a nitrogen compound, mined from Jupiter’s atmosphere and destined for the factories of Luna, when they get a Mayday call from Mars.  Turns out there’s a scientific expedition stranded on the surface in a damaged spaceship and needing help fast.  But the tugship can’t land there because it has no landing gear and its cupro-aluminum hull won’t stand up to an atmosphere anyway, especially the dinitrogen trioxide of the Martian atmosphere.  (Read that aloud in front of a mirror and practice looking authoritative.)

But!  On Phobos are a couple of abandoned “space taxis,” 80-year-old rocket-powered vehicles made for nothing but landing and taking off.  Only problem is that in this day of gravito-inertial engines, nobody knows how to fly a rocket any more . . . except for the centenarian General Challenger, about the only surviving rocket pilot, who is pleased to instruct the boys long-distance from the Moon so they can rescue the stranded scientists.  There’s an added fillip at the end about the primitive Martian life forms.

The story is very capably done, full of technical lectures which I am not competent to assess but which are slickly rendered for the lay person.  This sort of thing would get tiresome quickly if the magazines were full of it, but they aren’t, so it makes for a refreshing change from the usual more sophisticated (or pseudo-) fare.  It’s a moldy fig, but reasonably tasty.  Three stars.

Condition of Survival, by Barry P. Miller


by George Schelling

Garrett's is followed by a considerably longer novelet by Barry P. Miller.  Who?  A Barry P. Miller had a couple of stories in Ray Palmer’s Other Worlds Science Stories in 1956-57, just before the end—not an auspicious sign, if it’s the same guy. 

He certainly knows the drill; the story begins: “For a Greenwich Month, the BuGalEx ship, Wotan’s Beard, had maintained an observation orbit three hundred kilometers above the fourth planet of a G2 class sun near the base of the galactic limb of which Sol was a part.” And, on further exploration, it’s a pretty ambitious story, if ham-handedly rendered.

The BuGalEx folks have landed now and discovered small humanoids, whom they call the Elves.  Their attempts to establish communication with the Elves aren’t going well, so it’s time for Hillier, the Transferman, to do his stuff.  He has his consciousness projected into that of an Elf to figure out what’s going on, and meets a sort of demigod of the Elves’ consciousness, which transforms itself into his heart’s desire and tries to recruit him to help it (or, as he perceives, her) fend off the grasping Terrestrials.

Meanwhile, Hillier’s girlfriend, Linguist Betty Lee, has been fending off her ex, who tries to lure her back with a means of converting aural sensation to tactile sensation, i.e., to have sex somehow melded with or choreographed by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, because on Earth these days, sexual prowess, born or made, is apparently all anybody cares about.  But Betty is really an old-fashioned girl looking for Mr. Right, whom she sees in Hillier, the naive guy from a colony planet, who seems to want more or less what she does, though it takes a while for them to figure it out.

Miller tries to integrate these two plots, with less success than one would like, partly because he is a glib but clumsy writer whose scenes of interpersonal interaction are nothing short of soap-operatic.  One longs to shout “Rewrite!” and get somebody in who could handle this material more coherently and with more plausible affect.  Theodore Sturgeon?  Sorry, he’s busy.  Anyway, three stars for a nice try and an interesting one, even if the author can’t quite bring it off.

The Pirokin Effect, by Larry Eisenberg

From the attempted sublime to the accomplished vaudevillesque: Larry Eisenberg, who perhaps has been reading too much Robert F. Young, proposes in The Pirokin Effect that the Lost Tribes of Israel ended up on Mars and are communicating by impulses detectable in restaurant kitchens in New York and Philadelphia.  It’s amusing enough and has the virtue of brevity, and is told with a strong ethnic flavor.  Three stars, or maybe the author would prefer three bagels with a schmear.

The Sphinx, by Robert F. Young


by George Schelling

And here is Robert F. Young himself with another silly Robert F. Young story, The Sphinx, which the editor introduces: “Continuing his series of up-dating Terran mythology and folklore. . . .” No brevity here—it’s almost 30 pages.  Protagonist Hall is scouting the area before a big space battle between the Earth and Uvelian space fleets, loses control to something unknown and crashes on a planet.  He reconnoiters and finds a Sphinx and several pyramids.  This Sphinx is alive and explains that she contrived the creation of the Sphinx and pyramids of Earth thousands of years ago, and her sister did the same for the Uvelians, and because this is Young there’s also an Egyptian girl (sic) whom the protagonist decides is (of course) the most beautiful he has ever seen. 

The space battle, which threatens to destroy the planet, starts, but then stops—that’s the Sphinxes’ contrivance too.  Etc., etc.  The best that can be said for this . . . well, contrivance really is the word . . .  is that it is less annoying than Young’s usual, told straightforwardly and not in the overtly arch, coy, cloying, or precious manner that we have come to expect from him.  He is a competent writer at the word-and-sentence level whatever one thinks of what he does with his competence.  I guess that’s why he is published so prolifically; can’t think of any other reason.  Two stars, barely.

SF Profile: John Wyndham, by Sam Moskowitz

Sam Moskowitz is back with another SF Profile, this one of John Wyndham, which as usual presents implausible praise and detailed plot summaries of his pulp stories of the 1930s.  It does give more attention than usual to his more sophisticated work of the 1950s, then reverts to form with two sentences about his most recent novel, Trouble with Lichen.  This one is lighter on interesting biographical detail than many of its predecessors.  Two stars. 

Statistical analysis

So: the issue is a good enough time-passer for those who have time they need to pass.  For anyone else, its attraction may be limited… 

[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

[January 2, 1964] All's well that ends well (January 1964 Analog science fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Auld Lang Syne

Greetings from 1964!  Given the challenges we faced in the latter part of last year, it was proper and cathartic to wrap up 1963 with a bang.  Here are some snapshots from our gala (and weren't we lucky to find a film developer willing to work on New Year's Day?)

Speaking of wrapping up, the last magazine of the old year, though dated January 1964, was the January 1964 Analog.  This is usually among the lesser science fiction magazines I read, but this time around, I was pleasantly surprised.  Come take a look!

Ending Well

Secondary Meteorites (Part 1 of 2), by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Could that black chunk of meteorite actually be from Mars?  There is an increasing body of evidence that the meteorites that hit the Earth were, themselves, bits of other planets blasted away by their own meteor strikes.  The subject matter is fascinating, but Dr. Hall manages to make it nigh incomprehensible.  It's too technical and presented all out of order (even Dr. Asimov learned early in his career that you have to define your terms first).  And this is only PART ONE!

Two stars.

The Eyes Have It, by Randall Garrett

My disdain for Mr. Garrett has been a constant of the Journey, ever since the offensive and just plain bad Queen Bee.  Over time, he has occasionally written decent stuff, and when he teams up with others, his rough edges get smoothed a bit.  Still, his name in the Table of Contents has always made me less eager to read a magazine.

Well, never let it be said that I can't keep an open mind.  Garrett's latest work is a tour de force.  If Asimov perfected the science fiction mystery with The Caves of Steel, Garrett has created the genre of magical mystery with The Eyes Have It.

The year is 1963, the place, France.  But this is no France we know.  Instead, it appears to be in a timeline that diverged nine centuries prior, one in which the Angevin Empire remained ascendant…and in which the use of magic developed. 

Lord D'Arcy is Chief Criminal Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, summoned to investigate the murder of the fantastically lecherous Count D'Evraux.  With the aid of his assistants, Sorcerer Sean O Lachlainn and chirurgeon Dr. Pately, he must find out how and at whose hand the Count met his untimely demise, and he has just twenty four hours to do it.

The attention to detail, the world-building, the characterization, the writing — all are top notch.  This is the sort of work I'd expect from Poul Anderson (and only when at the top of his game).  For Garrett to pull this off is nothing short of miraculous.

Dammit, Randy.  It's going to be hard to keep hating you.

Five stars.

Poppa Needs Shorts, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

The last piece by the Richmonds was an utterly unreadable book-length serial.  This one, on the other hand, is a cute vignette convincingly told from the view of a 4-year old child who just wants to know about "shorts."  Leigh and Walt have a pretty good idea how kids learn, I think.

Three stars.

Subjectivity, by Norman Spinrad

The pages of our scientific journals offer a wealth of ideas that can be turned into SF stories.  New author Norman Spinrad seizes on Dr. Timothy Leary's paean to LSD in technical clothing, Psychedelic Review as inspiration for his second story:

Though humanity has invented an engine that will propel spaceships at half the speed of light, the heavens remain out of reach.  It's not the endurance of the ships that's the problem — it is that of the crew.  No matter how well-adjusted they are, all of them go crazy in less than half the time it takes to get to Alpha Centauri.  After twelve failed attempts, the powers that be assemble a crew of misfits with a twenty-year supply of hallucinogenics to keep them sane (if potted) and open up the stars.

Mission #13 succeeds…but not in a way anyone could have predicted.  A fun, slightly acid (no pun intended) little piece.  Four stars.

See What I Mean!, by John Brunner

In this disappointing outing from Brunner, a deadlock in negotiations between East and West is resolved when the four foreign ministers involved are psychoanalyzed, and it turns out the British and Russian officials have more in common with each other than with their ideological partners (from the U.S. and China, respectively).

Not much here.  Two stars.

Dune World (Part 2 of 3), by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert's epic in the desert, a kind of Lawrence of Arabia in space, continues.  After the assassination attempt on his son, and with warnings that he has a traitor in his midst, Duke Leto of the House of Atreides attempts to shore up his position on Arrakis, sole source of life-extending "spice".  The planetology and culture bits are pretty interesting, particularly the depiction of the forbidding dune world of Arrakis and the spice-mining operations thereon.  I continue to get the impression, though, that Herbert is still too raw for this project.  The viewpoint jumps from line to line, much is conveyed through exposition, and the incessant use of italics is really trying to read.

Three stars again.

Crunching the numbers

So how did the first batch of magazines dated with the new year fare?  There are definitely some surprises.

  • Analog, came in first with a respectable 3.4 star rating.  Moreover, Randall Garrett of all people had the best story.  These must be the end times.
  • Fantastic came in a close second at 3.3.  New World tread water at 3.  IF got 2.8.  F&SF scored a disappointing 2.5.  Amazing dragged through the muck at a miserable 1.9.
  • All in all, there were nearly 200 pages of good-to-excellent stories.  Not a bad haul.
  • Women only wrote one and a half of the 31 fiction pieces this month, and theirs were short ones.  No surprises there.

Next up: the first book of the new year!

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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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[January 30, 1963] Escape Velocity (February 1963 Analog)

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[If you live in Southern California, you can see the Journey LIVE at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego, 2 p.m. on February 17!]


by Gideon Marcus

The latter half of January was filled with fanac (Fan Activity), and oh what a joy it was.  The third weekend in January, the Journey once again attended ConDor, San Diego's SFF convention.  And once again, we were guests, presenting on the state of current science fiction both Saturday and Sunday.  It was a chance to meet up with old friends and make new ones.  ConDor is always a fun event.

The highlight of that weekend, however, was a Saturday night trip up to San Juan Capistrano to watch Dick Dale and his Del-Tones perform.  If you're not familiar with the King of the Surf Guitar by now, he is easily the most exciting instrumental musician these days.  He puts on a hell of a show.

If the January's fanac was superlative, the February 1963 Analog, though beautifully illustrated by Schoenherr, was anything but.  Not that the stories were bad, mind you.  They just all had some significant flaw that kept them from being truly good. 

Code Three, by Rick Raphael

For those not in the know, "Code Three" is police-speak for a high speed chase.  It's an appropriate title for this Highway Patrol tale of the future, when North America is criss-crossed by mile-wide superhighways whose cars zoom at speeds of up to 400 miles per hour.  Raphael writes in a lovingly technical fashion that is oddly compelling but gives short shrift to its three human characters, who are so much cardboard.  I don't find Raphael's futuristic freeways particularly plausible, either, but they are fun to read about.  Three stars.

Hilifter, by Gordon R. Dickson

This is five sixths of a great yarn about a futuristic spaceship hijacker, who relies on daring and ingenuity to pull off a caper against all odds.  Dickson portrays his protagonist deftly and with subtlety, but the ending… hoo boy.  I'm not sure if Dickson wrote the expositional fatuity for editor Campbell, of if the editor sliced the original ending to bits, but it is the mustache on the Mona Lisa.  Three stars.

Something Will Turn Up, by David Mason

Stories with a lot of Beat jargon can often fall flat, but Mason does a good job of writing a poet/TV-repairman who pits forces against a hexed idiot box.  Cute.  Three stars.

"The Sound of Gasping", by Mel Sturgis

If you read (as I do) Aviation Week, then you're familiar with technical advertising.  It's made with the slick standards of any Madison Avenue product, but the subject matter is abstruse engineering.  Sturgis' piece is presumably on the growth and importance of technical advertising, as well as his experiences observing same at the recent convention, WestCon.  But if you get anything out of this article, you're doing better than me.  One star. 

(The title is an obscure reference indeed — a riff on Isaac Asimov's article The Sound of Panting in the June 1955 Astounding (that being this magazine's name before it became Analog).  The article was on the difficulty of keeping up with current technical literature.)

The Topper, by Arthur Porges

Cockroaches made sentient by radiation?  It must be a joke… right?  Well, probably.  A bit of improbable fluff, just long enough to entertain rather than annoy.  Three stars.

With No Strings Attached, by David Gordon (Randall Garrett)

A fellow markets an amazing new power source as a battery (it isn't, and you should know what it is right off) to prevent poaching and ensure exclusivity.  I've been around long enough to recognize most of Randy Garrett's pseudonyms, so I cracked into "David Gordon's" latest with trepidation.  Turns out Strings isn't bad (just devoid of women, like most Garrett stories).  Three stars.

Space Viking (Part 4 of 4), by H. Beam Piper

This last installment of Piper's latest is arguably the best of the bunch.  It contains the payoff of Prince Trask of Tanith's quest to forge a civilized empire out of the wreckage of the Old Federation.  Though Trask started as a Space Viking, plundering half-civilized planets, by the end of the book, his league of planets has surpassed the feudal Sword Worlds whence he came and is a local power center.

As I've stated in prior reviews, the problem with Viking is its sketchiness.  We hardly get to know any of the characters, interesting episodes are glossed over, giant spans of time are leaped without transition.  This is an epic series of books compressed to a novel-length outline.  I hope Piper gets a chance to expand on this genuinely interesting saga at some point, or perhaps open up his universe to collaborative efforts (has that ever been done before?)

As is, this is a four-star installment of a 3.25-star book.

Now it's time for the best part of the month, where we get to add up the numbers!  Galaxy is a clear winner at 3.3 stars, followed by F&SF with 3.1.  All of the other mags fell below the 3-star mark with Fantastic at 2.9, Analog at 2.8, Amazing at 2.4, and New Worlds at 2.3. 

But all of the magazines, with the exception of New Worlds, had at least one four-star story.  In fact, if you collected all the four and five-star stories, you could almost fill two magazines — twice as much material as last month. 

Finally, women wrote 3.5 of 37 fiction pieces.  Not a good showing, but again — better than last month.

Speaking of showings, next week I'll let you know if The Twilight Zone is worth watching in its new format (hint: so far, not so good…)

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Check your mail for instructions…]




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[December 24, 1962] The Year 2 A.D. (After Davidson – the January 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

Trends are tricky things.  They require multiple data points to become apparent, and even then, careful analysis may be required to draw a proper conclusion.

I think I can safely say, however, that one-plus year into Avram Davidson's tenure as editor of F&SF, the magazine's quality has trended sharply and consistently downward.  Stories tend toward the obtuse, the purple, the (and this surprises me) hackneyed.  It's just not the sublime lyric beauty it used to be.

Why is this?  Let's explore some possible explanations:

1) F&SF can't get good writers anymore.

This clearly isn't true.  The Table of Contents of any given issue reads like a who's who of the genre.

2) Nobody is writing good sf anymore.

Demonstrably false.  Just look at the other mags.

3) The good writers save their best stuff for other magazines

This could be true, but given that F&SF pays some of the best rates (for science fiction anyway – three or four cents a word), I'd can't image F&SF is a second-resort mag.

4) Davidson's editorial preferences are driving the direction of F&SF.

A ha.  Davidson has been a writer of sf for many a year, and the trend in his writing has been toward the obscure and the prolix.  It shouldn't be a surprise to see the Davidson style creep into his magazine.  One trend I find particularly disturbing is the disappearance of women from F&SF's pages.  This magazine used to be the stand-out leader in publishing of woman authors, and its pages were better for it.  Now, female writers been conspicuously absent for two issues, and there had been fewer than normal in the months prior.  Nor can one argue that women are leaving the genre — F&SF's loss is the gain for the other digests.

The inevitable destination of this downward trend, the limit of quality as the time of Davidson's tenure goes to infinity, as it were, appears to be zero stars.  Sure, there are still stand-out issues, but they come fewer and farther between.  And the January 1963 F&SF isn't one of them…

The Golden Brick, P. M. Hubbard

The issue starts off well enough with this story of a Cornish ghost ship, imprisoned in which is a four hundred year old mad Alchemist with the Midas touch.  The tale is nicely crafted and atmospheric, but stories like this have been a dime a dozen in this mag.  Competent writing and imagery aren't enough.  Three stars.

Zap! and La Difference, Randall Garrett

Ugh.  Go away, Randy.

Dragon Hunt, L. Sprague de Camp

De Camp's life is the stuff of legends, as shows this essay on the globetrotting he undertook to familiarize himself with the locales of his recent historical fiction.  The piece contains tidbits of genuine interest, but the presentation is somehow lackluster.  Three stars.

Myths My Great-Granddaughter Taught Me, Fritz Leiber

In which the author's precocious descendant notes the frightening parallels between the Cold War of the 1980s and Ragnarok of Norse Myth.  This is the best story of the magazine, but again, we're treading familiar ground.  A minor piece from a major author.  Three stars.  (Happy 52nd birthday, by the way, Fritz.)

He's Not My Type!, Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor's non-fiction articles always get read first, but I was disappointed this time around.  Perhaps it's because I felt Asimov explained blood types better in his recent book, The Living River, or maybe Davidson's too-barbed introduction put me in a bad mood (I must stop reading those first).  In any event, it is readable, which is the worst Asimov ever gets.  Three stars.

Way-Station, Henry Slesar

Imagine Zenna Henderson wrote a The People story, but rather than have it end in poignance, instead wrote a stock "horror" ending that one could see a mile away.  That's what scriptwriter Slesar offers up.  Where is Henderson, anyway?  Two stars.

Punch, Frederik Pohl

Pohl is a busy boy – not only does he edit two mags (three, come early next year), but he finds time to be published in all of them and Davidson's.  In Punch, it turns out that the many technological gifts of the newly encountered galaxy-spanning aliens have a sinister motivation.  It would have made a decent, if typical, episode of The Twilight Zone.  Three stars.

Speakeasy, Mack Reynolds

Last up is a short novel from a fellow who is typically featured in Analog.  Speakeasy depicts a future in which society has been stultified by success, a meritocracy that has calcified thanks to nepotism and inertia.  Only a few revolutionaries remain to shock life into the decaying culture of the Technocracy. 

Reynolds can do very good political thriller, viz. Mercenary from last year's Analog.  Unfortunately, Speakeasy is a rambling, naive mess that jumps the tracks about halfway through and runs headlong into a wall near the end.  I wonder if Analog's editor Campbell rejected it.  If so, I wonder why Davidson accepted it.  It doesn't really fit F&SF, either the current or past iterations of the magazine.  Two stars.

—

So there you have it, an issue that clocks in at a miserable 2.3 stars.  Even Davidson seems to agree that his stuff hasn't been very good – check out the scathing letter at the end of the mag (which may or may not have come from Davidson's pen, itself).  No more "purple cows," indeed.

Ah well.  That's enough kvetching for this season.  It's Christmas Eve, as well as the fourth night of Hannukah.  Go light a candle, illuminate a tree, drink some eggnog.  Or as a recent fancard admonishes, let there be "Goodwill to mellow fen."

[P.S. If you want the chance to nominate Galactic Journey for Best Fanzine next year, you need to register for WorldCon before the end of the year! (or have registered last year… but then you can only nominate, not vote.) The Journey will be at next year's WorldCon, so don't miss your chance to meet us and please help put us on the ballot for Best Fanzine!]




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[October 27, 1962] Calm in the Storm (the November 1962 Analog)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

What the papers are now calling the Cuban Missile Crisis is a blister ready to burst.  An American pilot has been shot down.  There are rumors of confrontations between American and Soviet warships.  Bomber take-offs have rattled windows in towns near Air Force bases around the nation.  Kennedy, Khruschev, and U Thant are all offering proposals to turn this thing off, but so far, there are no takers.

I find almost jarring the contrast between the lurid and constant news reports and the rather bland offerings found in the last American science fiction magazine I'm reviewing this month, namely the November 1962 Analog.  Perhaps you'll find its relative drabness a comfort. 

Space Viking (Part 1 of 4), by H. Beam Piper

Piper has written many stories set in what appears to be a coherent future history.  There are consistent references to planets such as Tanith and the Sword Worlds.  A Terran Imperium spans much of the galaxy.  Space Viking is both familiar and a departure, set as it is centuries after that Empire has collapsed.  Society and technology are on the regress, and the now-independent Sword Worlds have reverted to a kind of planetary feudalism.  These worlds grow rich on plundering the decaying carcass of the Empire; space piracy and raiding on a planetary scale are now respected endeavors.

This latest of Piper's works follows a noble of one of the Sword Worlds who contracts a famed but currently shipless captain to skipper a newly commissioned ship.  The mission of the cruiser Nemesis is not piracy, but revenge against a most egregious of pirates.

It's an interesting read, and planethopping tales are among my favorites.  I lament the lack of any real female characters though, particularly from the author who gave this column its avatar (Dr. Martha Dane of Omnilingual).  Three stars thus far.

Untechnological Employment, by E. M. Clinton, Jr.

An exceedingly short, juvenile piece.  I did note, however, the unorthodox use of the new term "Native American" for those typically called "Indians."  Two stars.

Solomon's Orbit, by William Carroll

Old coot shows up all those highfalutin eggheads by inventing an orbital drive out of space junk while all those rocket scientists can barely make a missile go.  A word of wisdom to the new author desperate to be published: this is the kind of tale Campbell loves.  Not me, though.  Two stars.

The Servant Problem, by Robert F. Young

At first, one is led to believe that this will be another story about an eccentric non-scientist coming up with the invention of the ages.  Instead, as the canny reader will pick up on, it's far more.  That said, it's not a great story, and the end is as expositional as they come.  Nevertheless, Young is always readable, even when he's not brilliant.  Three stars.

The Educated Flatworms, by John Eric Holmes

Well, here's a welcome surprise.  Normally, the slick pages devoted to non-fiction end up ruined by the monthly pseudo-science Campbell favors (psionics, reactionless drives, etc.) This time around, we have an absolutely fascinating piece on the training of flatworms, the common ancestor to most animals.  Not only can you teach these squishy creatures, but they pass on their knowledge to others in most surprising ways.

Normally, I'd expect stuff like this to be typical Analog bunk, but I've looked up the researchers in question, and their results appear to be legitimate.  The article's only fault is a less than rigorous conveying of test scores; it's not exactly clear what the significance of some of the numbers is.  Four stars.

Anchorite, by Johnathan Blake MacKenzie

The harsh living of the mining Belter, securing asteroids for precious metals and oxygen, makes for a hardy, reliable breed.  But is the resulting culture of rugged individualism a designed-for result or a happy side effect?  MacKenzie gives us both sides of the story, from the points of view of the rock-dwellers and a pair of Earthers.  Not an entirely unbiased view — there is more than a little condescension in the space-dwellers' take, but there is also naivete, which I appreciated.

This should be a good story, but it's not.  For one thing, "MacKenzie," with his lurid descriptions of asteroids, flat attempts at puns, utter lack of women, and his begging the question like a highway mendicant, can be none other than Randall Garrett.  This is not a selling point (though, under his true identity, he has been doing the rather better, asteroid-based Ship Named MacGuire series.)

For another, the scenes of asteroid mining are tedious, and what passes for dialogue even more so.  This could have been a fascinating tale if told by, I don't know… Piper or Leinster or Reynolds.  In Garrett's hands, it's limp stuff.  Two stars.

Crucial Experiment #2, by Joseph F. Goodavage

Good gravy — Campbell had to include a three-page astrological weather forecast.  I guess we'll have to see if there be any accuracy to it next month.  My money's on "No."

—

And so ends another readable but not outstanding issue of Analog.  I'm sure its intended audience would give it more stars than I do, and I wasn't bored for much of it, but it's only fair to middlin' stuff right now.  Stay tuned for the last magazine of the month, this one from the other side of the Pond!

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[Sep. 25, 1962] Peaks and Valleys (October 1962 Analog)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

There are two poles when it comes to how science fiction magazines like to fill their pages.  The Fantasy and Science Fiction approach involves lots of short stories — it makes for an impressive Table of Contents and a lot of bite-sized pieces.  Analog tends toward the other extreme: its stories tend to be novellas and serials, and you only get 4-5 piece of fiction each issue.  As a result, the average quality of any given issue relies on a very few pieces.  With Analog, if you don't like several of the authors, you're pretty much out of luck (and 50 cents). 

The October 1962 Analog is, fortunately, not that bad, but a wide swath of it is taken up with a pretty lousy novella.  If I'd started with it, I don't know if I'd have made it to the rest of the magazine.  It's a good thing I read from the back first…

Ethical Quotient, by John T. Phillifent

You've probably run into the British author, Mr. Phillifent, under his more common pseudonym, "John Rackham."  Quotient takes up the most real estate of any piece in the issue, and it's a shame.  The set-up is pure Campbell, with a Terran science-historian winning a trip aboard Earth's first starship to meet the superior, psionically endowed humanoids of the Galactic Federation.  To ensure his safety, the historian is surgically equipped with a psychic transmitter that mimics the native powers of the aliens. 

In short order, the Earther is beset by murderers, whom he dispatches with his uncommon athletic ability.  A beautiful princess, daughter of the noble whose cabin was hastily vacated to give the historian passage on the starship, also gets involved. 

As to what happens next?  Well…I can't tell you.  You see, I made several attempts to finish this story, and I found myself continually foundering on the shoals of page 20 (of 55!) Somehow, I kept finding the newspaper, or The Andy Griffith Show, or this month's excellent issue of Fantastic more worthy of my attention.

I give up.  One star.  Let me know what I missed.

… After a Few Words …, by Seaton McKettrig

I've never head of McKettrig.  He's either new or (more likely with Analog) someone writing pseudonymously.  The title of this piece gives the gimmick away of this short tale of the First Crusade, but it's not bad, and the idea of the "televicarion" is an interesting one.  Three stars.

Gadget vs. Trend, by Christopher Anvil

Sometimes the transformative effects of a technology on society are subtle and slow; other times, they are dramatic and quick.  For instance, the creation of linen-based "rag" paper provided a welcome improvement over parchment, but it was the development of Gutenberg's printing press (which used the fine paper) that caused a revolution.

Anvil's Gadget explores the latter kind of invention, a "quasi-electron" barrier developed in the 1970s that leads to complete societal chaos.  Short, punchy, and pleasantly satirical, it's one of the better stories Anvil has produced for Analog.  Three stars.

Hypergolicity, by Edward C. Walterscheid

I generally anticipate Analog's science fact articles with a sense of dread.  They are often not worth the slick paper they are printed on (in an attempt to add respectability to his magazine, editor Campbell has included about 20 pages of magazine-quality paper for a couple of years now.) Walterscheid takes on a genuinely interesting and current topic: the use of spontaneously igniting fuel and oxidizer mixes for rockets.  These combinations are frightfully dangerous, but also convenient, for no spark or fuse is required to set them off, and rockets that employ hypergolics can stop and restart their engines.

It's technical and not as adeptly written as Asimov's or Ley's stuff, but I found it highly informative.  Three stars.

A Life for the Stars (Part 2 of 2), by James Blish

Since my report on the first half of Blish's newest novel, I have learned that the "Oakie" setting, featuring nomadic Earth cities powered by faster-than-light "spindizzy" drives, has been around at least since 1950, when Bindlestiff was published.  If the other entries in this universe are as good as A Life for the Stars, then I have some catching up to do.

When we last left our hero, Crispin deFord, an impressed resident of the spacefaring city of Scranton, he had been exchanged for food to the much larger community of New York.  As a promising citizen-candidate, guaranteed immortality should he be granted the franchise, Chris is force-fed a torrent of computer-inscribed education so that his true calling might be made evident by his 18th birthday.

But space is a dangerous place, and the potential for planetside treachery, shipboard revolution, or even inter-city conflict is high.  Suffice it to say that Chris has several adventures in store for him before he can become a full-fledged New Yorker…and that outcome is far from certain.

The pacing, writing, and characterization are all excellent, and if it occasionally feels as though history and society have stood still for the Oakie universe since 1960, it can be forgiven for all the novel inventions Blish presents.  Aside from the flying communities, there are also the "City Fathers," benevolent computers that guide, but don't run, the cities; beamed power that wirelessly runs the electronics; the powered military armor reminiscent of, but presumably predating, Heinelin's Starship Troopers; and more.  Five stars, and I'm betting it'll be on 1963's Hugo shortlist. 

Buy this issue for, if nothing else, the Blish. 




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