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[April 10, 1969] Low (May 1969 Amazing)

April 10, 2024 John Boston 3 Comments

by John Boston

Here’s the May Amazing, the latest installment of the dreary soap opera that this magazine has become. The well-qualified Ted White is the new editor, the fourth in ten issues. Though he’s listed as Managing Editor, and Sol Cohen as Editor and Publisher, White’s editorial makes it clear that he will be running the magazine—within the constraints of Cohen’s policies, of course, most notably the reprint policy.

by Johnny Bruck

As a debut issue, this one does not impress, but that’s probably not a fair judgment. Given the abrupt departure of White’s predecessor Barry Malzberg, it was likely a scramble to get any issue at all together from available parts. The fiction contents include an Edmond Hamilton story in a series that has run in Amazing and Fantastic for several years, publication no doubt foreordained; one very short new story; and the usual heavy load of reprints, all from the 1950s consistent with recent practice. The non-fiction includes, as usual of late, a Laurence Janifer movie review (Barbarella—he likes it!) and a Leon Stover “Science of Man” article. The only identifiable change is a letter column. The book review department is missing, one hopes temporarily, since it has been one of the magazine’s brighter aspects.

As for future plans, White provides a rather carefully argued editorial, which starts by analogizing the “New Thing” in science fiction to the ongoing innovations in popular music, noting that despite the “sudden flowering” of rock music, it isn’t forgetting its roots. After some commentary on the New Thing, sympathetic but cautionary (“One J.G. Ballard can be important, but ten little Ballards?”), White asserts that most of the “New Wave” writers have not neglected their predecessors, citing Zelazny and Delany, noting particularly that Delany has absorbed and transformed old Planet Stories-style space opera plots. “It is my conviction that the science fiction field needs a magazine in which the old and the new can exist side by side, each thriving from its proximity to the other. And that is what I intend for Amazing: Something of the old (the reprints) and of the new (the best of the new writers). . . .” And he concludes by adding that this issue’s “Star Kings” novelet by Edmond Hamilton exemplifies exploration of the genre’s roots—but next issue we can expect a “new and very different novel by Robert Silverberg.”

It’s all gracefully done, touching the necessary bases with plausible conviction, and starkly contrasting with Harry Harrison’s pandering editorial of February 1968, which made essentially the same substantive points but which struck me as “a disappointingly smarmy exercise in having it both ways.”

The letter column is divided among sober commentary on current SF, the pleasures of letter columns and fanzine reviews, and a quite long letter contesting Stover’s “Science of Man” article War and Peace, which White says he cut down from 14 pages. Shades of Brass Tacks! This feature will require some tightening up but White clearly takes it seriously. As for the reference to fanzine reviews, White promises “fan features” in both Amazing and Fantastic.

And up front—though looking backward—is another cliched cover illustration by Johnny Bruck. Last issue, fellow Journeyer Cora Buhlert wished that Amazing would use the good Bruck covers rather than the dull ones. Yes! If there are any.

The Horror from the Magellanic, by Edmond Hamilton

The lead story is Edmond Hamilton’s “short novel” (33 pages), The Horror from the Magellanic, latest in his series of sequels to his 1947 novel The Star Kings. I won’t repeat my previous jaundiced comments on the whole enterprise, but will leave it at a couple of samples:

“ ‘Highness, they’ve come out of the Marches. The Counts’ fleet. They’re more than twice as strong as we expected . . . and they’re coming full speed toward Fomalhaut!’
“Chapter Two
“Gordon felt a chilling dismay. The Counts of the Marches were throwing everything they had into this. And whether their gamble succeeded or not, in the dark background brooded the unguessable purposes and menace of the H’harn.”

And:

“. . . Gordon sat for a long time looking past the moving lights and the uproar and clamorous confusion of the great city, toward the starry sky. A star kingdom might fall, Narath might realize his ambition and sit on the throne of Fomalhaut, and he, John Gordon, and Lianna might be sent to their deaths. And that would be a world tragedy as well as tragedy for them.
“But if the H’harn succeeded, that would be tragedy for the whole galaxy, a catastrophe of cosmic dimension. Thousands of years before they had come from the outer void, bent on conquest, and only the power of the Disruptor, unloosed by Brenn Bir, had driven them back . Out there in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud they had brooded all this time, never giving up their purpose, filtering back gradually in secret plotting with the Counts, plotting with Narath, making ready some new tremendous stroke.
“Doomsday had come again, after those thousands of years.”

by Dan Adkins

To my taste, this is all an idea whose time has passed. No disrespect to Hamilton—a working professional writing in a mode he virtually invented—especially since he has shown he can work quite capably in styles other than this bombastic costume drama (see his 1960 novel The Haunted Stars). Three stars, acknowledging the craft involved, even if I can’t get interested.

Yesterdays, by Ray Russell

The new short story (very short), Ray Russell’s Yesterdays, couples two ancient themes, time running backwards and mad scientists; it’s clever and facile, as one would expect from the long-time fiction editor of Playboy, but no more. Three stars.

The Invaders, by Murray Leinster

The longest story in the issue is Murray Leinster’s The Invaders, from the April/May 1953 issue of Amazing, the first in its short-lived experiment in paying more in order to get better material from more well-known authors. Leinster shared the contents page with Heinlein, Sturgeon, and Bradbury. Unfortunately his story begins well but undermines itself, unusually for this professional of decades’ standing.

Uncredited

The scene is set in terms of purest Cold War paranoia. The protagonist, surveying in Greece, flees an unacknowledged incursion by Bulgarian soldiers, and the author observes:

“It was not the time for full-scale war. Bulgaria and the other countries in its satellite status were under orders to put a strain upon the outside world. They were building up border incidents and turmoil for the benefit of their masters. Turkey was on a war footing, after a number of incidents like this. Indo-China was at war. Korea was an old story. Now Greece. It always takes more men to guard against criminal actions than to commit them. . . This was cold war.”

In the midst of this covert crisis, the protagonist discovers powerful evidence of infiltration by extraterrestrials in human guise—but what to do? Who will believe him? Leinster builds an atmosphere of suspense and suspicion at first, but it is quickly dissipated by hints that something different and more benign is going on, and by the end there’s no suspense or surprise. Three stars, barely; it’s at least slickly readable, as usual for Leinster.

King of the Black Sunrise, by Milton Lesser

Milton Lesser’s King of the Black Sunrise is an entirely more rancid kettle of fish. It’s from Amazing, May 1955, in the midst of the Howard Browne/Paul Fairman era of calculated formulaic mediocrity, and shows it. It reads like the result of a barroom bet over how many egregious cliches the author could cram into a single story.

Kent Taggert, fugitive from justice on murder charges (but of course he’s innocent), is tracked down on the obscure planet Argiv by a woman who wants to hire him for a dangerous assignment. “I looked at her for the first time. She was beautiful. So damned beautiful and so damned sure of herself. I felt like poking her one.” A bit later: “I could smell her perfume, not the kind that slams two sexy fists into your nostrils but the subtle kind, like the girls can buy only on Earth.”

Uncredited

The woman (named Helen, we later learn) discloses that the World Bureau of Investigation is on his trail, and like clockwork, a guy “who was trying too hard not to look like law” shows up at the bar where this conversation is occurring. Taggert decides he’d better take Helen’s proposition—to guide her party to find and plunder the treasure of the Black Sunrise.

See, Argiv has three suns—per the natives, the Green God, the Yellow God, and (“greatest of all”) the Purple God. They all rise and set at different times, but occasionally they are all below the horizon at the same time. That’s the Black Sunrise, even though it’s really a sunset. During the Black Sunrise, the barrier to the natives’ treasure cave opens up, and new offerings are deposited to make sure the three Gods come back. No one who has sought to steal this treasure has emerged alive.

So our freebooters hire some native bearers (“big flabby purple-skinned Argivians”) and march into the jungle (“King Solomon’s Mines, a hundred parsecs out in deep space,” muses Cotton, the hotheaded jerk of the party). But soon enough the bearers become fearful and desert, and the humans must push on without much of their equipment.

It goes on in similar vein, but recounting it is even more tedious than reading it. One star.

Wish It Away, by Frank Freeman

Frank Freeman’s Wish It Away (Fantastic, January-February 1954) is a jokey vignette so inane it almost hurts to describe it. Protagonist Mervin sees a monster every night, psychiatrist tells him to “wish it away,” next night the psychiatrist sees the monster, who says, “Mervin sent me. I hope it’s all right.” Now nobody else has to read it. One star.

Race-Zoology and Politics, by Leon E. Stover

The “Science of Man” article by Leon E. Stover suffers the faults of its predecessors, magnified. Race-Zoology and Politics is an outright polemic, with Stover taking up the cause of Carleton S. Coon, author of The Origin of the Races, who was denounced as a racist a few years ago by the president of the American Anthropological Association. Stover says Coon “has simply become a ‘non-person’ to the profession,” but: “It is a dead certainty that Coon sometime in the future will be rehabilitated and recognized for the great work he has done, which has been to complete the uncompleted work of Darwin.”

Well, maybe. Stover proceeds to argue Coon’s case about the evolution of human physical types in his familiar assertively dogmatic fashion. This one-sided partisan presentation concerning what is apparently a hot ongoing argument in the profession is of little use to the lay reader trying to understand more about the underlying science. Not rated—it’s just out of place here.

Summing Up

This is the most discouraging issue of Amazing in recent memory. The magazine continues to limp along under the weight of the reprint policy, and this issue’s batch of them is the worst in some time. Notably, the original notion of reacquainting the current SF readership with forgotten classics of the field—or at least interesting period pieces—has largely been lost as the reprints have come more frequently from Amazing’s more recent periods of outright mediocrity, mostly ranging from routine to awful. Will yet another new editor be allowed to make it better?

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 8, 1968] Hippies and Robots (July-December 1968 Playboy)

December 8, 2023 Erica Frank 8 Comments

by Erica Frank

I have once again dipped into the magazine of "entertainment for men" who want to feel intellectually superior while they browse photos of mostly-naked women they like to imagine are sexually available to them.

There are some good stories. Some good political commentary. Some funny cartoons. And a whole lot of self-aggrandizing pontification, and a lot of wealthy white men insisting they know what's best for everyone, especially women.

The Fully Automated Love Life of Henry Keanridge by Stan Dryer (July)

Our protagonist, Henry Keanridge, has a wife, a mistress, and two girlfriends; he manages the scheduling for this complex arrangement of obligations and secret-keeping via a computer. That's our science fiction aspect. He works at a trucking company, and he has fed his own name into the system as a truck, and the four women as "stops" on his route, and it manages his schedule, reminds him of birthdays and holidays, and so on.

Hyman Roth's art led me to believe this story had more substance than it does.

Here's a quote: "Before their affair, Dee had been a girl of impeccable virtue. She would no more have thought of having a love affair than of, say, not wearing a hat to church." That tells you everything you need to know about both Dee and Henry.

As a story: Two stars, providing you can tolerate Henry's male chauvinist perspective on life.
As science fiction: One. I read it so you don't have to.

Masks by Damon Knight (July)
This one, unlike many of Playboy's stories, is unquestionably science fiction. Medical technology, full-body prosthesis, what happens to a human when you put his brain in a robot body? They can't get the robot to look fully human, can't give it a full range of facial expressions–that's okay, though; he can wear a mask.

But the project's funding is uncertain, so our protagonist–unnamed for the first half of the story–may have to justify his right to "two hundred million a year" in medical expenses, when normal full disability support is $30,000.

Two stars. Probably would've been three if it weren't for the sudden gratuitously violent twist.

Silverstein Among the Hippies by Shel Silverstein (July)
Shel Silverstein comments on the Hashbury community, mostly by drawing cartoons of hippies. They're clever and often insightful.

Why indeed? Headlines include: Detroit Burning, Kill 720 Viet Cong, Sniper Kills Six, Self, New Fallout Danger Warned, Girl Raped, Alabama Riot, War in Sinai…

The Trouble with Machines by Ron Goulart (August)
Maximo is a machine, a robot designed to hunt and kill the reporter who keeps criticizing technology companies. Maximo is disguised as a refrigerator which will be delivered to the reporter's house. …Maximo has, or acquires, some interests of its own, and runs off before it reaches its assigned destination.

This one had a plot twist I didn't see coming (wow, the sexy lady is actually a person! She is part of the plot!) and a story resolution that, while not groundbreaking, doesn't leave confusing loose ends.

A solid three stars.

More Silverstein Among the Hippies by Shel Silverstein (August)
He's back! Or maybe he just hasn't managed to escape yet.

"It was supposed to say 'LEGALIZE DRUGS'… but E is out trying to score, A and I are on an acid trip, the other E just got busted, and U was simply too strung out to show up!"

Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrik (September)
This is not just an interview; it begins with a few pages of biography and background information showing how Kubrick got his start in film: "He quit his job at Look, raised $20,000–mostly from his father and his uncle–and began shooting 'Fear and Desire'… Though rejected by all major distributors, 'Fear and Desire' toured the art-house circuit and eventually broke even."

On the one hand: It's got some solid information about how his career led up to 2001. On the other: Four pages in all-italics is hard on the eyes. Next time, Playboy, consider using a scene divider of some sort and leaving the introduction more readable.

For the actual interview, Kubrick is very full of himself. 2001: A Space Odyssey showcases his VISION!!! It has a MESSAGE!!!… which he is not going to explain, of course, because he is an artist–would we better appreciate La Gioconda (that's "the Mona Lisa" to us plebes) if Leonardo had explained why she was smiling? (I wish that were a made-up example. It is not; he directly compared his film to the Mona Lisa.)

Some words and phrases he throws around in the interview: Cosmos, man's destiny, the lumpen literati (he's not fond of his critics), grandeur of space, chrysalis of matter, tendrils of their consciousness… he does like to talk about his grand ideas. Much of the interview is him saying "What if…?" and the interviewer politely feeding him the next question. He did manage to say a few things I agreed with, including, "Why should a vastly superior race bother to harm or destroy us?"

Two and a half stars. I am neither a film buff nor an arts buff, so much of this is tedious to me. If you like rich guys with an interest in science fiction showing off their education, there's 16 pages of it here.

Fortitude by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
This is a story in teleplay script format, beginning with a discussion between the esteemed Dr. Norbert Frankenstein and his guest, Dr. Little. Frankenstein's assistant, Tom Swift, occasionally comments with details. His patient, Sylvia Lovejoy, is now only a head attached to a machine–apparently a popular concept in Playboy these days; new writers should consider submitting stories with similar themes as it seems like they're buying.

Sylvia's every mood is controlled by complex machinery, except occasionally a small spark of her former self begs to be allowed to die. Dr. Frankenstein has foreseen this desire, and has programmed her robot arms to be unable to point a gun at herself or bring poison to her lips.

Four stars; the reader is left wondering if Sylvia has any possible route to escape, even after the circumstances of her vigil have changed.

Here Comes John Henry! by Ray Russell (September)
John Henry is the first man on the moon–or rather, the first man to land on the moon and come back. The first lunar landing mission is a Black man teamed up with a Russian as a show of international cooperation. The media have a field day making corny slogans about the duo, often playing on tacky racial slurs. John Henry is not bothered by tacky media coverage; he's just thrilled to be going to the moon.

The two guys have a lot in common, it turns out, starting with their names. The other fellow is Ivan "Vanya" Genrikhovich–"John, son of Henry" in Russian. Both are from Georgia, just from different parts of the globe. Both are from the capital city. Both are descendants of slaves. ("My father's father was a serf," Vanya says.) They are becoming great friends, bonding over their shared joy of space, taking pictures on the moon… until they notice that their fuel measurement is a bit low.

Not a lot low. Not low enough that the ship can't make it back. It just… can't carry both of them back. They quickly realize they have been set up: this mission has been calculated down to the last ounce, the last paperclip's worth of mass. Someone decided that only one of them should come home, and didn't bother to tell either of the pilots.

I won't spoil the solution they find, because it's worth reading; it's so much better than the one proposed in Godwin's "The Cold Equations." Five stars.

Mr. Swift and His Remarkable Thing by Jeremiah McMahon (October)
Two modern hippies, Mommababy and Daddybaby, have settled down to suburban life after the unplanned arrival of Frankenbaby five years ago. They try to be properly hip and permissive, but Mommababy does not like their neighbor, Mr. Smith, who is making some kind of sculpture-thing in his back yard. It's ugly, and Mr. Smith is always walking around muttering things like "Is the missing factor X?"

She doesn't want Frankenbaby playing in Mr. Smith's yard. Frankenbaby, however, has his freedom: after he's sent to his room, his parents spend the evening focusing on the "good things–flowers, beards, sideburns and beads." Mommababy considers checking on Frankie at bedtime, but Daddybaby warns her against being overprotective, so Frankie manages to slip out of the house. They discover him missing after the great explosive blasts from next door rock the house.

It turns out the weird sculpture was a rocket ship, and Mr. Smith and Frankenbaby have blasted off. It's unclear if they have a destination or are just going on a joyride.

Another solid three stars: This is an enjoyable read; it just doesn't really have a point—much like Mommababy and Daddybaby.

What's Your SQ (Sexual Quotient)? (October)
"A man's love life—whether he be single or married—is intimately related to his business career, to his social pastimes and even to the car he drives."

This is a 54-question personality quiz; each question has 3 options, with a key provided at the end for interpreting the results. It tells readers that, if none of the answers seems to apply, just pick the one that seems least unlikely.

It is, of course, expecting all participants to be heterosexual men of reasonable wealth in 1968 America. "You" own a car, have a job, have an active sex life with women (which will usually be called "girls"), and so on. These biases are visible throughout the quiz.

Moreover, it is assumed that you perceive sex as something you do for personal reasons only, not a shared activity of mutual pleasure.

You are not, of course, concerned with whether your partner is enjoying herself.

The end result: Men's personalities can be sorted into three categories, although most men will have a blend of all three. Type A: "a Don Juan or a 'phallic narcissist'; a ladykiller." Type B: "his sense of security is strongly dependent upon being loved, cared for, and emotionally supported by others; he feels unworthy of this attention." Type C: "dedicated to fighting intemperance and immorality in all its forms; inflexible in both body and mind."

I can't figure out how to give this stars. I can say: If you're not a heterosexual man with the common mundane biases of current late-1960s America, the "analysis" after the quiz isn't going to be useful to you.

Colorless in Limestone Caverns by Allan Seager (November)
Our protagonist, Reinhart, is a dislikeable sort of fellow who tortures animals in the name of science and gets himself acclaim and tenure for it. He orders some blind cave fish on a whim, planning on researching their feeding habits, but instead, a change comes over him: From the first day he acquires them, he spends all day in the lab staring at them, and he becomes quiet and unresponsive at home. He feels a great kinship with the fish.

His wife worries. His mother worries. He thinks about fish. His wife and mother call in psychiatrists. He snaps out of his lethargic funk, speaks blithely of the research he's going to do, apologizes about worrying his family, and goes back to normal.

Two stars. I kept waiting for the story to start, and then it was over.

Scrutable Japanese Fare by Thomas Mario (November)
This article has nothing remotely science-fictional about it, and it is not related to the new-trending cultural shifts of which I am so fond. It's about dining in Japan, and since Gideon visits there occasionally, I thought I'd read it. It's one page of actual article followed by 10 recipes.

It mentions sukiyaki, shabu shabu–which it claims is a great food for dinner parties; host and guests share preparation activities–and tempura with random ingredients, "gleefully scattered over the tray in no fixed pattern." It talks about Japanese steakhouses that cook on a metal slab at the dining table, and describes how to prepare warm rice wine for best enjoyment.

It includes several recipes: Broccoli salad with golden dressing, cabbage salad with soy dressing, sesame dipping sauce, scallion dipping sauce, chicken yakitori, shrimp tempura, (which it insists should be eaten hot rather than prepared in advance; "One device for party service is to hire a domestic geisha who will fry and deliver it in large batches"), tempura batter & sauce, Japanese steak dinner and the shabu shabu the article begins by praising.

I found myself mildly disappointed by the lack of pictures of any of the food, and that the recipes aren't clear about how many servings they make–the "Japanese steak dinner" wants 4 lbs of steak, cut into ¾" cubes! That's not dinner for two or even for a family–that's the whole dinner party's meal. The recipes also don't list which cooking implements they need; that's folded into the narrative instructions.

Not rating for stars. It's a pleasant enough read, and the recipes are nice, although they lack a few details from being well-made.

Coming soon to a theatre near you! Finally, you can see the actual scenes from the pictorial review earlier this year.

The Mind of the Machine by Arthur C. Clarke (December)
Clarke discusses whether computers can be said to truly think (…no, despite a few radical fanatics here and there), and what it might mean to society if they could, or they gain the ability in the future. He takes it as a foregone conclusion that they will:

…[T]he fact that today's computers are very obviously not "intellectually superior" has given a false sense of security—like that felt by the 1900 buggy-whip manufacturer every time he saw a broken-down automobile by the wayside."

He also has a very narrow view of how the future needs to play out:

The problem that has to be tackled within the next 50 years is to bring the entire human race, without exception, up to the level of semiliteracy of the average college graduate. This represents what may be called the minimum survival level; only if we reach it will we have a sporting chance of seeing the year 2200.

Although there's some obvious pandering to those who believe themselves the intellectual elite, he does cover a lot of the current trends in computer development, and a reasonable amount of speculation about possible future ones, albeit with, like the SQ test above, a lot of unmentioned biases.

Three stars; a nice review of the current state of scientific development and good suggestions about what might come next.

Wealth versus Money, by Alan Watts (December)

Alan Watts is neither a science fiction writer nor a scientist; he is a philosopher and zen buddhist guru. However, his article begins with an emphatic statement that the United States of America will cease to exist by the year 2000–which puts it firmly in the realm of fantastic speculation, as much as any of the stories I've reviewed.

He points out that a nation has two definitions: One, its geography, biology, and acknowledged physical boundaries; the other, its culture and sovereignty as recognized by its people and others. He points out that this second aspect of the USA is on the verge of destroying the first, and that much of this problem is caused by the conflation of money and wealth.

Money is assigned by the government. It is a deliberately limited resource. Wealth is a matter of valuable resources that has nothing to do with numbers written on slips of paper. Money is a measurement—purportedly of wealth, but as with any measurement, it can be applied in multiple ways.

"[T]rue wealth is the sum of energy, technical intelligence, and raw materials," he says. And he continues to point out that mankind is not separate from the world around us, but part of it—"like a whirlpool is to a river"—we cannot "conquer" or "invade" our own home, and our best chance of survival in the future is to recognize the value of leisure and enjoy the wealth that surrounds us.

Four stars (although I am likely biased in this rating); I have a great fondness for anything that can make Playboy—an overtly libertarian, capitalistic publication—recognize other approaches to life.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 6, 1968] Treading Water (September 1968 Amazing)

August 6, 2023 John Boston 4 Comments

by John Boston

The beat goes on at Amazing, after the brief syncopation that pushed its schedule back a month. This September issue, as usual these days, boasts on the cover of all the new (non-reprint) stories inside—four short stories, 35 pages in all, less than a fourth of the magazine. The rest of the fiction, three novelets, is reprints. So is the cover—Frank R. Paul’s Great Nebula in Andromeda (“Andromida,” as this barely-proofread magazine has it). It’s from the back cover of the October 1945 Fantastic Adventures, significantly cropped, and generally pretty cheesy-looking. By then, Paul’s future was behind him, in more senses than one.

by Frank R. Paul

There is the usual collection of features, ranging from a startlingly inane editorial by editor Harrison, through another “Science of Man” article by Leon E. Stover (see below) and a Sao Paulo Letter by Walter Martins about SFnal doings around Brazil, to what has become the usual lively book review column. Though this month it’s a little incestuous. William Atheling, Jr., who is James Blish, reviews Brian Aldiss’s new novel, while Blish’s own byline appears on a review of Harrison and Aldiss’s Best SF 1967. Alexei Panshin reviews John Wyndham’s new novel, while Leroy Tanner, who is Harrison, reviews Panshin’s book on Heinlein, and Harrison under his own name reviews William Tenn’s new novel Of Men and Monsters. What is this? The New York Review of Books?

And—speaking of “What is this?”—there’s a telltale development in the fine print at the bottom of the contents page. Right under “Sol Cohen, Publisher” and “Harry Harrison, Editor,” is a new line: “Barry N. Malzberg, Associate Editor.” Based on past history (Harrison first sneaked into Amazing as a book reviewer before being named as editor), maybe there’s another change in the works. That might account for the rather detached and phoned-in quality of Harrison’s editorial this month. Mr. Malzberg is a recent arrival on the SF scene, having published several stories under the name “K.M. O’Donnell,” which might be said to be notable for their vehemence. That could be just what this frequently uninspired magazine needs.

Where's Horatius?, by Mack Reynolds

by Jeff Jones

The issue begins with Mack Reynolds’s Where’s Horatius?, on the now-familiar premise of making movies of the past. Our time-traveling rogues’ gallery of heroes is trying to film the action in 509 B.C., when the Etruscan king Lars Posena marched with his army on Rome. Reynolds makes the most of his research into the events and the military technology and technique of the age, and generally seems to be having a better time than usual, in a slightly cartoonish way, without the often leaden style and dense didactics of some of his Analog work. The ending is gimmicky and reads like a chunk of text got dropped somewhere in the last few paragraphs, but it’s readable and amusing nonetheless. Three stars.

Manhattan Dome, by Ben Bova

Ben Bova’s Manhattan Dome is a perplexing story, sort of an idiot plot writ large. (For those unfamiliar with the jargon, an idiot plot is one in which there is a story only because the characters act like idiots.) A dome has been constructed over Manhattan to keep out the air pollution wafting over from New Jersey. However, the part of the proposal that would ban cars and cigarettes from Manhattan was blocked by the City Council after the auto, oil, tobacco, and advertising lobbyists got to work, so the air under the dome is worse than the outside air.

To top it off, when Ed, the Chief Dome Engineer, encounters his girlfriend’s cranky old father, he is ranting about how the lack of rain under the Dome has ruined his garden. It’s a disaster, and “Washington” (specified only as the “Public Health people”) has just announced that it’s tearing the Dome down. All is lost! But suddenly the light bulb goes on over Ed’s head, and back in the office, he starts turning on the fire sprinklers that are part of the Dome’s construction. “Rains scrub the air, wash away the aerosols and float them down the sewers. Air always feels clean after a rain, doesn’t it?” All is saved!

by Dan Adkins

What's wrong with this picture? Let us count the ways. Even an entity like the New York City Council (which has been described publicly as having the I.Q. of a cucumber) would probably not be so stupid as to allow the Dome while blocking the measures to keep the air clean under it. And it’s equally hard to imagine that nobody would have thought about making rain with the sprinklers until long after the Dome was in operation, and about to be torn down. (Ed says there’s plenty of water available. I’d like to see the calculations.) And it’s also hard to credit that artificial rain alone would cure the air pollution problem in a giant city, since there are a lot of cities around the world that have terrible air pollution despite being exposed to the rain—notably New York.

Maybe there will be a sequel in which Bova will sell us the Brooklyn Bridge. But there is one more thing in this story which bears mention. In the lobby of Dome HQ, the chairman of the Greater New York Evolutionary Society and someone from the American Longevity Society get into it, the former supporting the Dome, the latter opposing it. The Evolutionary guy is described as “a massive specimen, with an insistent voice and a craggy face topped by a bristling shock of straight white hair. He had a Roosevelt-type cigaret [sic] holder clamped in his teeth. . . .” They argue, and Mr. Evolutionary declares at his peak:

“I know it’s rough on some individuals. But evolution isn’t worried about the individual. This Dome will foster the development of a superior race, able to breathe pure carbon monoxide, impervious to germs! Magnificent!”

This is an obvious lampoon of Analog editor John W. Campbell and of his views in general, and in particular his opinion that smoking cigarettes is not a serious health hazard, but a boon. (See his editorial in the September 1964 Analog.) This is interesting, since Bova has made a number of appearances in Analog in recent years. We’ll see if that continues. But back to the story: mildly amusing, depending on how high you can suspend your disbelief. Two stars.

Idiot’s Mate, by Robert Taylor

Bova is followed by Robert Taylor (who, you ask? He had a story in last month’s F&SF), with Idiot’s Mate, on the familiar theme of staged violence as mass entertainment. This one features the Chess Tournament, held on the Moon, in which people in spacesuits are assigned to teams and given the names of chess pieces, and apparently given powers to match, though that idea is not well developed. Mostly everyone just plays hide-and-seek and shoots explosive bullets. Protagonist Rodgers, imprisoned on trumped-up treason charges, volunteers for the Tournament and is made king of a team. Needless to say, matters end badly, though the story is not bad; it is a bit overwritten, but capably so, and moves fast. Three stars.

Time Bomb, by Ray Russell

Ray Russell’s Time Bomb is a time-travel joke, deftly rendered, worth about the two pages it takes up. Three stars, allowing for its limited ambition.

The Patty-Cake Mutiny, by Winston Marks

The reprints begin with The Patty-Cake Mutiny (Fantastic, February 1955), by Winston Marks, that monstrously prolific contributor to the mid-‘50s SF magazines, to remind us that they sure published a lot of crap in between the undying classics we all remember.

The Patty-Cake Mutiny is a story of space exploration featuring crew members Slappy Kansas, Conkie Morton, Butch Bagley, Pokey Gannet, Sniffer Smith, and Balls Murphy. Slappy is unofficial foreman because of his skill in slapping people around. Sniffer is greatly talented olfactorily. Conkie conks out under anything more than a gee and a half of acceleration. Balls—calm down now—is so named because of the “pendulous little knobs of flesh” on his face, each of which contains “a submicroscopic parasite that had baffled Earth doctors” (but it’s OK, they’re not contagious). Et cetera. Their mission is to find and mine the incredibly valuable radioactive kegnite. There is tension among the crew because Balls has won at craps their shares of any profit from the voyage.

by Tom Beecham

This motley crew lands on a planet with a resilient surface and tall grass-like stalks as far as they can see. Balls goes out exploring and gets into trouble, and is retrieved in a state of “infantile regression”—literally—so they have to put him in a diaper and take turns keeping the baby occupied (hence patty-cake; the mutiny is separate despite the title). But back to work: they cut into the surface and a red fluid—guess what?—gushes out. Before the end, they are hacking steaks out of the giant organism they have landed on—Hairy Joe, as they call it. And it goes on, ending with a fist fight (Slapper lives up to his name) and the explanation of Balls’s regression, which is as silly as the rest of the story. It’s all too ridiculous and tiresome to be borne. I’m demanding a raise. One star.

"Labyrinth", by Neil R. Jones

Neil R. Jones’s Labyrinth (from Amazing, April 1936) is another in his seemingly endless series (22 of them!) about Professor Jameson, revived from his orbiting tomb by the Zoromes (from Zor, of course), and installed like them in a metal body. Now they all go roaming around the universe looking for entertainment, though of course the author doesn’t put it that way. The few of these I’ve read were mostly benignly tedious, but this one is a little more dynamic.

The Prof and the Z’s land on a planet and investigate a city, which at first seems abandoned, but proves to be inhabited by strange beings with four legs and a dozen arms, who flee when our heroes approach.

“ ‘We must seize one of them!’ Professor Jameson exclaimed. ‘They seem intelligent enough for questioning.’ ” Of course! (So much for the respectful fellowship of sentient beings.) Once they’ve got a couple in hand, they conclude that their intelligence is “somewhat below the level of an Australian bushboy, an earthly type which lay in the professor’s memory, yet well above the mentality of the beasts he had known.” (So much for . . . oh, never mind.)

The Queegs, as they call themselves, are quite affable once reassured that they won’t be harmed. They didn’t build the city but say they’ve “always” lived there. They survive by hunting creatures called ohbs, using wooden weapons, even though they can work metal. Why? Metal doesn’t last very long, they say—which seems odd.

So the metal folks tag along on a hunting expedition to a seemingly barren area. The ohbs prove to be giant gray slug-like creatures who apparently subsist on something in the ground. A Zorome comes into contact with an ohb, which starts to radiate light and grabs the Zorome. Another ohb joins in. What’s going on?

“ ‘It is eating me!’ cried 47B-97. ‘It is eating my metal body!’”

by Leo Morey

And now—“coming from every direction a vast legion of hurrying ohbs, their antennae quivering, slight radiations of anticipation suffusing their leaping-crawling bodies. They were being called to the feast, a feast of virgin metal which the gluttonous appetites of their two companions had involuntarily revealed.” The author continues, waxing rhapsodic:

“With as much disregard for self-preservation as they had shown when hunted by the Queegs, the ohbs, fully half as large as the cubed body of a Zorome, seemed possessed of but one unquenchable desire, and that was to glut themselves on pure, refined metal, free of all impurities and unmixed with rock and other foreign material, such as they found regularly in their daily diet. Nothing less than death stopped their mad charge.”

And a little later, a Zorome cries: “22MM392! 744U-21! We are helpless! They are all around us! Wet, clammy juices they exude from their bodies are turning our metal parts to a fluid which they absorb! If our metal heads are eaten through, we are doomed!’”

Electrifying! But the rest of the story is a little anticlimactic, with the Zoromes fleeing into a tunnel mouth, which leads to the labyrinth of the title. Soon enough they are lost, wandering aimlessly between dangerous encounters with ohbs, until they follow an underground river and are rescued, to resume their peregrinations around the galaxy. Three corroded stars.

Paradox, by Charles Cloukey

The precocious Charles Cloukey (1912-1931) is back, or re-resurrected (see Sub-Satellite), with Paradox (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1929), another assuredly executed story, published when he was 17. It’s a frame story in which the author is a guest at a club where a couple of members are arguing about the possibility of time travel, and the mysterious Raymond Cannes introduces himself as a time traveler and tells his tale.

by Wally Wallit

Hawkinson, a scientist and old college chum, has received plans for a strange machine, done in Cannes’s handwriting, but Cannes didn’t write them and wouldn’t have been capable of it. Later, Hawkinson builds the machine—a time machine—and invites Cannes over, and of course (in the usual manner of ‘20s and ‘30s SF), Cannes goes for it and travels a thousand years into the future. After various adventures he flees home at a cliff-hanging moment to find that Hawkinson is dead and his laboratory burned. Cannes throws his time-traveling gear into the river, destroying all corroborating evidence (also as usual for this period’s SF).

The story runs facilely through several now-familiar time paradox themes that were new to the genre when this was written. Unfortunately some of the plot developments I have passed over are fairly hackneyed, and Cloukey’s stilted style, though well turned, gets a bit wearing over the length of the story, keeping it to three stars.

Science of Man: Naked Ape or Hairless Monkey, by Leon E. Stover

Leon E. Stover’s article, Naked Ape or Hairless Monkey, invoking at least the title of Desmond Morris’s best-selling book, takes on the question whether, evolutionarily speaking, humans are naked apes or hairless monkeys. Stover follows human ancestry backwards to conclude . . . nobody knows. A key sentence: “The game seems to be, how much can we learn from the least evidence.” But he thinks he’s got a good guess: an apparently hypothetical animal that he calls Propriopithecus. Conclusion: “So man is neither a naked ape nor a hairless monkey. His line of ancestry evolved apart from the monkeys and apes. He is not simply a depilitated version of either one of them. Man is what he is—a nudist who made it on his own.”

I am reminded of the form letter that H.L. Mencken reputedly kept handy to respond to some of his more imaginative correspondents: “Dear sir or madam: You may be right!” And so may Stover. In any case, it’s reasonably interesting and informative if inconclusive, but also pretty dense reading. Three stars.

Summing Up

Amazing continues to tread water, capably enough this month. Almost everything here is perfectly readable, with one shameful exception. The new stories are pretty lively within their limitations. But we wait in vain for something outstanding, and we’re not likely to get it when only 25% of the magazine is open to new fiction.

[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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[July 6, 1963] A new star… (Gamma — a new science fiction magazine)

July 6, 2018 Gideon Marcus 9 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

The history of our genre, like that of all things, contains several ups and downs. From its beginnings in the pulp explosion, to its near-extinction during the second world war, to the resurgence during the digest age starting in the late '40s, and finally, to its decline at the end of the last decade. At its most recent nadir, the number of science fiction periodicals had dropped to six from a high of forty. Many predicted the imminent death of the genre, and not without justification.

1963 may well be remembered as the year things turned around. In February, Worlds of Tomorrow was introduced as a sibling to sister magazines, Galaxy and IF. To all accounts, it is a successful venture. And last month, another digest joined the throng.

Back in 1949, the digest boom was kicked off by the birth of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was, in many ways, a repudiation of the pulp genre, or perhaps a sign of its maturation. F&SF set its literary standards bar very high, filling its pages with some of the most articulate works and authors our field has seen (and, with some hiccoughs, continues that tradition to this day). For fourteen years, it stood unique in SFF. This is not to say that other magazines did not approach or even surpass it in quality, but the combination of breadth of subject matter and eloquence of presentation made it a creature unto itself.

Until now.

The newest SFF mag is called Gamma, and here's how its editor, Charles E. Fritch, introduces it:

The Dictionary defines GAMMA for us: "…to designate some bright star." One look at our cover and at the stunning lineup of stellar names for our next issue will confirm that definition. Indeed, GAMMA is the bright new star of the science fiction/fantasy field, and we intend to see that it continues to light up the heavens. The dictionary goes on to mention the gamma function — and we'll assure you that the GAMMA function, in our case, is to give our readers the best fiction, by the finest talents in and out of the sf field — fiction of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. GAMMA will unearth classic fantasy from obscure, out-of-print markets, while creating its own classics and memorable stories in each issue.

Ambitious, to be sure. For those of us who remember the arrival of F&SF, we cannot help note the similarities of the two magazines. The style and composition of the sole piece of art (and the fact there is just one throughout the whole book) is highly reminiscent of the older digest. Inside, too, there are sixteen pieces, none longer than twenty pages. The majority of the listed authors have had work published in F&SF, too.

Just as F&SF has "theme" issues, this "FIRST BIG ISSUE" of Gamma has a clear The Twilight Zone angle. All five of the anthology show's main authors have a piece in the mag, and Rod Serling gets top (or, I suppose it can be argued, bottom) billing.

But does this F&SF doppleganger live up to the standards of its predecessors? You'll have to read it and find out (hint: You won't be disappointed):

Mourning Song, by Charles Beaumont

Beaumont is one of the "Zone's" most prolific guest writers, and his pieces are generally marked with authorial expertise. He is, in many ways, what Bradbury should be: Emotional without being mawkish; literate without self-indulgence. Mourning Song, about a sightless old bard who claims to know when death is coming, and the young man who dares to disbelieve, is one of the most poignant things I've seen Beaumont produce. Five stars.

Crimes Against Passion, by Fritz Leiber

The damned in hell get a chance to re-plead their cases, with the help of a psychiatric public defender and the burgeoning field of Analysis. It's meant to be a funny piece, but largely fails at comedy (save for one genuinely funny line, when Macbeth shouts irritably at his former adversary, "Lay off, MacDuff!") Lieber's been hit or miss lately, and this is a definite miss. Two stars.

Time in Thy Flight, by Ray Bradbury

A reprint from the July 1953 Fantastic Universe, this tale of young time travelers from an antiseptic future, and the girl who decides to stay in 1928, is played for every sentimental note. Brush your teeth afterwards. Three stars.

The Vengeance of Nitocris, by Tennessee Williams

Now here's an interesting one, the very first sale of arguably the world's greatest living playwright. This tale of a vengeful Egyptian Empress of the Old Kingdom first appeared in the August 1928 Weird Tales. It's nothing if not lurid, and the story it tells is a true one (or, at least, attested back to ancient times — I checked the sources cited). Three stars.

Itself, by A. E. van Vogt

A robotic anti-sub is the star in Van Vogt's aquatic answer to Laumer's sentient tank story, Combat Unit. Just not as good. Two stars.

Venus Plus Three, by Charles E. Fritch

A disenchanted wife brings his husband to savage Venus so that man-eating plants can preclude the need for a messy divorce. An outdated, pulpish tale, but still entertaining. Three stars.

A Message from Morj, by Ray Russell

The pulsing from the distant world could be none other than a communication — but just what was it trying to say? This vignette manages to be, by turns, both surprising and predictable. Three stars.

To Serve the Ship, by William F. Nolan

When your occupation has been to be sole pilot of a starship for eight decades, it can be pretty hard to adapt to retirement. Author Nolan takes on a subject that both James White (Fast Trip) and Anne McCaffrey (The Ship Who Sang) have handled better. Three stars.

(And now, you may be thinking, "With the exception of the Beaumont, this doesn't sound like a great magazine." Fear not. It's all gravy from here.)

Gamma Interview: Rod Serling, by Rod Serling

Any conversation with one of television's brightest lights is bound to be an engaging one. The Twilight Zone's creator does not disappoint. Five stars.

The Freeway, by George Clayton Johnson

Johnson is another Zone regular, and in this tale of the breakdown of an automatic car in the middle of the desert, he highlights the danger of over-reliance on technology. Could you survive? Not just the physical peril, but the knowledge of just how ill-equipped we are to deal with nature undiluted? A solid three stars.

One Night Stand, by Herbert A. Simmons

Horn-blowing misfit finds his groove and love in a gig on the Red Planet. The first SFF story I've read by a Black man (that I know of), it's a satisfyingly hep read. Three stars.

As Holy and Enchanted, by Kris Neville

I first fell in love with a fictional character when I was ten. It was Polychrome, the fairy daughter of the rainbow who first fell to Earth in The Road to Oz, and I wrote several childish tales that detailed our meeting and (innocent) courtship. This reprint from the April 1953 Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader covers similar ground, but far more beautifully than I ever could have managed. Four stars.

Shade of Day, by John Tomerlin

A sick salesman whose life zagged when it should have zigged revisits the last happy time of his life, touring the Junior High of his early teens. Heavy, subtle, effective. Four stars.

The Girl Who Wasn't There, by Forrest J. Ackerman

If you don't yet know 4E, that legendary SFF fan who helms magazines, anchors conventions, and keeps old magazines in his refrigerator for want of space elsewhere, this tale of a lonely, invisible girl is a good introduction. Four stars.

Death in Mexico, by Ray Bradbury

I spend much of my time praising Bradbury with faint damns, but this poem is a genuinely worthy piece. Four stars.

Crescendo, by Richard Matheson

It's never a bad idea to wrap up a magazine with Matheson, possibly the best SFF screenwriter of our age. Who else could make an electric church organ so plausibly menacing? Four stars.

Viewed with the dispassionate eye of a statistics collector, GAMMA garners a strong, but not noteworthy, score of 3.4 stars. Taken as a whole, however, this is a stunning first issue. For those who like F&SF and wish there were more magazines like it, your prayers have been answered. Here's looking forward to GAMMA 2, coming out in the fall.

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[March 1, 1960] The Slow Sibling (March 1960 IF)

March 1, 2015 Gideon Marcus 2 Comments

It is March Oneth, as my father would say, and it's time to review the last of the March 1960 science fiction digests.

Last on my plate was IF Science Fiction, which in 1959 had proven a slightly erratic but worthy sibling to Galaxy Science Fiction, also edited by Horace Gold. Sadly, this current issue reminds me more of the inferior issues of Imagination or Amazing. It's not all bad, just rather weak.

It has been said of Clifford Simak that when he's good, he's very good, and when he's not, he's forgettable. It appears he used up all of his energy on his masterpiece appearing in this month's F&SF, because his lead novella for IF, The Gleaners, is mediocre. It's a story about a fellow who coordinates a for-profit time travel agency that sends agents back in time to observe, but not to meddle. It's a tough job: the agent defection rate is high, and there is much pressure to verify the historical assertions of the various world faiths. It sounds like it would be a great read, but it doesn't do much interesting development. Perhaps Cliff should start over and try making a novel on the concept.

Raymond Banks has a short story called to be continued about colonists marooned on a tiny island hundreds of light years from Earth for centuries. The beginning and ending are a bit slipshod, but the meat of the story is pretty good, and I particularly like that the story features a starship crewed by a pair of women.

In The Upside-Down Captain, by Jim Harmon, an ethnologist joins the crew of a starship to seek out truly unusual planets. The ship is aided in its endeavor with the help of a cybernetic brain—but is the robot really being much help? It's oddly paced and written, weakening what might have been a strong story.

There are a couple of very short vignettes that I shan't spoil other than to give their titles and authors since any description would give away most of their game. They seem to be written by unknowns, either amateur auteurs or pseudonymic regulars. They are Old Shag, by Bob Farnham, and Monument, by R.W. Major; neither are good, but nor are they long.

Ray Russell has something of a career writing for Playboy. His Father's House is an story about an heir forced to inhabit his deceased father's home, bullied by ghostly holograms of his abusive parent, for five years in order to collect an inheritance. The protagonist seemingly has two choices—be a penniless but satisfied writer and husband or endure a lonely, unfulfilling life in the hopes of inheriting a fortune. In the end, he comes up with a third path with no down sides.

Ignatz, by Ron Goulart, is a cute story about a fellow who leads a one-man crusade against the fad of "Applied Lycanthropy," whereby the citizens of his sleepy town transform into cats for fun and relaxation. The fellow hates cats, you see; they make him feel "crawly." It's cute, though I can't imagine what anyone could have against felines, of whom I am far more fond than dogs.

The magazine ends rather strongly with Daniel Galouye's satirical Gravy Train, in which a retired couple on a remote planetoid gets mistaken for an important Third-World state and finds itself the recipient of a torrent of aid from both the Capitalist and Communist intergalactic empires.

All in all, it's not so much a bad issue as a merely weak one. Most of the stories end rather abruptly with a decidedly last-decade sci-fi slammer, and the writing has a slapdash feeling about it. Perhaps it's just a temporary lull.

In any event, I've got a whole new crop of magazines for this month that I'm looking forward to sharing with you. See you soon!

—

Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns. While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!

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The Bomb, the Clock, and the Devil (August 1959 Fantasy and Science Fiction; 7-02-1959)

July 2, 2014 Gideon Marcus Leave a comment

In this month’s F&SF editorial, editor Doug Mills reports that he’s gotten a number of complaints regarding the oversaturation of stories in the post-apocalyptic, time travel, and deal-with-the-Devil genre. Mr. Mills’ response was that any genre can be oversaturated, but quality will always be quality, and F&SF will publish quality stories in whatever genre it pleases. In fact, there are stories dealing with all three of the "oversaturated" genres in this issue.

What do you think? I have to agree with Mr. Mills. Personally, I can never get enough of After the Bomb stories, time travel is often a hoot, and the Devil features in relatively few tales these days, in my experience. But I’d like your opinion on the matter.
I had not realized that Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol story had taken up so much of the current issue; there isn’t much left to review. There is some goodness, however:

Rosebud, by Ray Russell, is teleological nonsense in a single-pager. Damon Knight’s book review column deals with horror, and is interesting, as usual. I wish he were still helming IF (come to think of it, I just received this month’s copy… I wonder who’s in charge.)

Kit Reed’s Empty Nest is well nigh unreadable, but I think it’s a horror about being eaten by anthropoid birds.

Obituary, by Isaac Asimov, is actually quite good, and one of his few stories from the viewpoint of a woman. It involves domestic abuse, a truly evil (yet in a plausible and everyday sort of way) villain, and a satisfactory, grisly come-uppance. I hope the good doctor is not writing from experience in this one…

Finally, we’ve got Pact, by Poul Anderson (under his pseudonym, Winston P. Sanders). This is the aforementioned Devilish Deal story, and it is my favorite story of the issue. I hear you gasp–an Anderson story is my favorite? Yes! It's clever all the way through, this story of a demon summoning a human in the hopes of consumating a contract. Fine stuff.

My apologies for the shortness of this installment. I'll make it up next time. Perhaps.

P.S. One of the reasons I enjoy science fiction so much is the clever gadgets. In Asimov's story, the villain uses a "desktop computer" with some sort of typewriter keys attached. Boy, would that be a fine tool to have, and I've never seen the like in a story before. Something to look forward to in a decade or two?

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction