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[May 22, 1969] News / Beginnings (Review of Ubik) / My Book (Preview)

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by Victoria Lucas

!NEWS BULLETIN!

Since those of you reading this might not be familiar with events in Berkeley, California, I thought I should report here the death of James Rector, a 25-year-old man shot by a sheriff deputy while on a roof watching the protest against the destruction of community improvements to a vacant lot belonging to the University of California, otherwise known as "People's Park."

Shot on May 15, he died on the 19th after several surgical attempts to repair vital abdominal organs damaged by the load of buckshot. A similar volley blinded another man, Alan Blanchard, on the same roof on the same day. If you have an urge to climb onto a roof to view a protest, suppress it. Law enforcement authorities do not recognize buckshot as lethal and are allergic to perceived threats from above. (I am quite opinionated about events like this. You may wish to seek other reports to obtain other views of the same events.) Below is a poem printed as a flyer, circulating on the streets now.


Michael McClure, "For James Rector"

We now return you to your regularly scheduled article


Cover of Ubik by Philip K. Dick

A Marathon Start

Beginning to read Philip K. Dick’s new book Ubik (1969, Doubleday) is like starting a marathon in the middle. Seeing other runners rushing by, you try to keep up, faster and faster, fearing to trip up. Not only does the book start in the middle of a crisis in what appears to be an important US company, but it also has a vocabulary full of made up words of which the meaning can only be inferred: “psis,” “teeps,” “bichannel circuits”; and the dead (if their relatives can afford it) are kept in “moratoriums” instead of crematoria or cemetaries. How can you keep up with things you can’t understand in a future you can only glimpse as felt by unfamiliar characters?


Author Philip K. Dick

Wondering if all Dick’s books are like this, I picked up library copies of his Eye in the Sky and The Cosmic Puppets (both 1957). The latter begins with a quiet, bucolic scene of children playing beside a porch. No rush. The former begins with an accident that causes injury, involving something called a “bevatron” and a “proton beam deflector.” No rush even there. For the most part, the vocabulary is ordinary in at least the beginning of these two. A little research turns up the fact that Dick first used the word “teep” (for telepath), for instance, in his story “The Hood Maker,” said to have been written in 1953, published in 1955, a year in which he used the same invented abbreviation in Solar Lottery.

Why is Ubik so different from other s-f books, even his own? Well, I had to persist to find out, and maybe you will too. I bet you’ll never guess where I found this book. I did not buy it. I found myself in a hand made hippie pad in the woods, dropped off by my husband Mel while he and one of the owners of the place went off to (I think) get wood for the winter. The other owner left with them or for some other errand, and I was alone in their kerosene-smelling dwelling, without anything to do. Wandering upstairs, I found bedding and pillows, and this book.


Not the actual house, but close

Since I hadn’t finished it by the time they returned, I borrowed it. This was the first really “science-fictiony” book I ever read. (I don’t count Flowers for Algernon, which I reviewed here on January 28, 1966, because that book has no assumptions out of the ordinary save one: that an experimental drug exists that can increase intelligence—no rocket ships, no bug-eyed monsters, no “vidphones.”)

Maybe Science Fiction Is Experimental Writing?

Anyway, persisting, I find myself in a future in which all the paranormal phenomena we humans have imagined are real and the foundation of industrial espionage and security, and the dead have a “half-life,” their brains wired into "consultation rooms" as their frozen bodies stand in caskets in a “moratorium," as above. The head of Runciter Associates, the company in crisis as above, must consult his dead wife Ella about the crisis. The “half-life” phenomenon, it is stated, “was real and it had made theologians out of” everyone. The citizens of this future are understandably prone to panic, to anxiety, to uncertainty.

Epigraphs for each chapter appear to be advertising for Ubik, which is variously represented as a “silent, electric” vehicle, a beer, a type of coffee, a salad dressing, a plastic wrap, etc. What is Ubik and where does it come from? No one knows. (Read the last epigraph in which it reveals its own nature to the extent it can.) Soon Runciter’s employees run into Pat, an “anti-precog.” It seems that she is an unusual practitioner of anti-precog[nition] in that she neither time-travels nor appears to do anything at all. But she changes the present and future by changing the past, leaving the affected people with little but (only sometimes) a trace memory of any previous present they have just experienced. Is all that strange enough for you? Wait! There's more.

There's Jory, dead at 15 years of age, who is on the wrong side of the struggle in the book between light, intelligence, and kindness, and greed, ignorance, and darkness. Keep an eye on him. His parents pay to keep his casket in the same areas as other "half-lifers," although his strong "hetero-psychic infusion" is clearly disturbing Ella Runciter and others.


Science-fiction satire?

Also keep in mind that in the previous year Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater was published with a helmeted pig riding a unicycle on the cover and has been described as satire. Satire is seldom funny-ha-ha, but it is often funny. This book is occasionally funny-ha-ha, especially in the ridiculous clothing that appears to be popular in this dystopian future (1992).

For instance take this passage, in which an important space mogul enters wearing ”fuscia pedal-pushers, pink yakfur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair.” OK, maybe that isn’t so far from what you might see now on Haight Street. But if this book were made into a movie, retaining Dick’s careful costuming would ensure it would be laughed off the screen.

The Cryonics Connections


Robert Ettinger in World War II uniform

Also notice that in 1967 the first person had been frozen, Professor James Bedford, preceded in 1962 by Robert Ettinger's book The Prospect of Immortality, in which he introduces the idea of cryonic suspension. Attempted cryopreservation of human beings was a real thing from then on. Which is part of what suggests that this book is satire as well as science fiction. And compare the plot of this book with that of Robert A. Heinlein's A Door into Summer, serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in October, November, and December of 1956 (published as a book a year later). In Heinlein's book a company executive is outmaneuvered and winds up in "cold sleep," waking up in the year 2000.

Mum's the Word

But anything more I write about the plot beyond what I’ve already written could well give away the plot. I can give you this hint, though, asked by the above-mentioned anti-precog (Pat) after most of the characters have experienced a bomb blast on Earth's moon: “Are we dead, or aren’t we?” And this one: the book makes it clear that human beings are so constituted that we can only know what our brains tell us (and, by the way, who is "us"?), which interpret what our senses (or in this book also our extra senses) send to it.

Oh, and one more thing. Oddly enough the last sentence in the book does not give anything away: "This was just the beginning." In any case I give it 5 stars out of 5 and recommend that you at least peek into it and see if it makes you crazy.

And Now for Something Completely Different

I'm going to tell you the truth about why my husband Mel and I spend so much time commuting between Humboldt County and San Francisco/Berkeley. It's The Book.


Good thing I've got a Selectric

The Book is dominating my life right now. I've spent many nights, holidays, any days I'm not working as a temp for Humboldt County, transcribing and writing as well as interviewing. For perhaps a year now I have been working with John Jefferson Poland, Jr., otherwise known (by his preference) as "F**k" Poland (or "Jeff"). After founding a sexual freedom "league" in New York City, he moved to Berkeley and founded similar groups there and in San Francisco, but insisting that a woman take up the cause and run the San Francisco group.

He wanted to produce a book on women in the sexual freedom movement–every variety from those who were brought all unwary to an SFL ("Sexual Freedom League") meeting or party to those who were/are leaders and spokeswomen for the cause.

I had done both interviewing and transcribing (the latter for a living), so it was mainly a matter of pointing me in the right direction and saying something like "go to it!" Jeff has been present at some of the interviews, in some cases commanded to be quiet so the women could speak for themselves.

"Meetings" are informational affairs in which leaders of the movement talk about the politics behind the parties and how they are conducted. "Parties" are what might be called orgies, with cheap red wine, a raised thermostat, and mattresses almost covering the floor of a Berkeley house. No man or men who seek entry without female companion(s) are admitted. It's heterosexual couples or single women only allowed. (Gays are excluded because two men could couple up and then only reveal themselves as straight predators of women when they are inside in the semi-dark and difficult to roust.)

And then there's me with my tape recorder, microphone, notebook, and voice, talking with women, making dates for interviews elsewhere and elsewhen. Real names are not used, except for one leader of the movement, Ina Saslow, who was arrested with Jeff during a nude demonstration on a public beach, then jailed, has her own chapter in her own words.


Empty theater, full stage

One night in San Francisco recently there was a party in an empty auditorium. The only celebrity attending was Paul Krassner, and he must have come with a woman, given the rules. Did he come with me? I'm so tired and busy right now I can't pull up the full memory. I mainly recollect standing with him behind a phalanx of mostly empty seats and watching the stage, on which were at least a dozen writhing couples. We agreed that it was an extraordinary sight. Oddly, I do not remember specifically whether he or I was wearing a full set of clothes at the time, but I think we were.

The Book is still in process. I will report progress when there is any, if desired. By the way, the book bears Jeff's name and my pseudonym as authors and is due to be published by The Olympia Press, Inc. (New York). Initial plans are to publish a hardback book with pictures of both authors/editors. Who wants to review my book when it comes out?

Ubik – A Second View


by Jason Sacks

Our dear editor has asked me to tack on a small response to Vicki’s review of Ubik, because I’m a huge fan of Mr. Dick’s work. I’ve read nearly everything he has written, and I feel that Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney and especially Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are some of the finest science fiction novels of the '60s thus far.

On display in Ubik are all the elements which make Dick's work so transcendent and meaningful for me. We get miserable lead characters and subjective takes on reality; we get petulant children and time shifts and a weird, uncanny type of emotional resonance which only PKD can deliver.

I’m not going to dwell on the plot here, partially because my brilliant colleague has already done a great job summarizing this singular novel. And I’m also not going to dwell on plot because, well, this book has a plot, yeah it has a plot, but Ubik also has many plots, or no plots, or subtle plots, or infinitely recursive plots, or just some plotting that’s very particularly Phil Dick.

Am I making sense? I don't think I’m making sense….

And my lack of real coherence at this point is kind of appropriate, too. Because, like so many of Dick’s novels, Ubik has an incredible density of story; he presents layers and layers of events which build character and environment and plot and perceptions and problems, all tumbling and cascading upon itself in a kind of shambolic construction which constantly threatens to fall down upon itself. But all the while, as he seemingly casually is creating these seeming arbitrary events and twists, Dick gives readers these incredible moments, these flashes of insight, which reveal he has been managing his story well all along, until we amble to an ending which feels tremendously satisfying.

Ubik has a lot to do with psychics and psychic warfare between corporations who all aim to dominate each other. An attentive reader of Dick is well aware of his passion for both psychics and bizarre faceless corporations, but in Ubik he has created an elaborate, complex idea structure around the psychics – there are scales of precogs, and people who can cancel out precogs, and the literal rewriting of reality based on the work of the precogs, and a constant sense that nothing, absolutely nothing we see, is real — at the same time all of it is real.

Image from the back cover of the new hardback.

Again Mr. Dick’s writings always make me sound like a madman when I try to describe them. The reviewer’s dilemma!

But that’s the transcendent mindset the author puts you in with Ubik. He grounds readers in reality and then just as quickly yanks reality away from readers. One minute he’s depicting home appliances which demand dimes to open a fridge and 50 cents to use the bathroom faucet. The next he’s describing a prosaic journey to the moon, no big deal just a regular day at the office. The next minute we are following the results of a human-shaped bomb and tracking survival, and we suddenly start seeing entropy appearing everywhere, and the whole thing just moves at the speed of an SST, though perhaps the pilot of the plane is going from New York to London by way of Shanghai.

Is this review vague enough? I apologize, reader. As Vicki points out, I could be more specific, but seriously, if this sounds at all up your alley, Ubik will be a tremendously memorable read for you.

Which leaves the very tough question of a rating for this book. If Androids Dream is the absolute apex of science fiction (and I think it is), this book is one rung slightly below that level – if only because no character is quite as vivid as that book’s complicated and completely memorable Rick Deckard. That is a five star book, which means I give Ubik…

4½ stars

 




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 12, 1968] The Pioneer and the Gorilla: Heinlein in Dimension, by Alexei Panshin

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by John Boston

A few years ago, when I was reading a lot of fanzines, I came upon an article impudently titled Heinlein: By His Jockstrap, concerning attitudes towards sex in the works of Robert Heinlein.  Wow!  This SF fandom is pretty racy!  Or so I thought. Not everyone appreciated that article, though, starting with Mr. Heinlein.


Alexei Panshin

The article’s author, Alexei Panshin, was a budding SF writer himself, having a few months earlier published the impressive Down to the Worlds of Men in If.  Since then he has published more stories of varying merit, and a just-published novel, Rite of Passage, which on a first and superficial reading seems quite impressive—and, not at all ironically, quite Heinleinesque.  He also published more articles about Heinlein in fanzines.  You’d think the guy was working on a book.

And of course he was.  But it’s more complicated than that.

The Pioneer by Invitation

According to Panshin, in another fanzine article, this one in the April 1965 Yandro, he was solicited by Advent: Publishers in 1964 to write a critical study of Heinlein’s fiction.  Advent publishes books about SF, such as Damon Knight’s In Search of Wonder, James Blish’s The Issue at Hand, and the symposium The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism.  The proposed book would be the first book-length study of any writer from within the SF ghetto.  Panshin accepted and got to work.  He wrote to Heinlein, introducing himself, stating he was planning to write a book better than the “Jockstrap” article, and asking some questions about his life and work.  There was no response—to Panshin, anyway. 

Panshin also wrote to a number of others about Heinlein, later learning that Heinlein had been angered by these letters, and had seemingly discouraged the recipients from responding.  In any case he got few responses.  One who did respond was the widow of Sergeant A.G. Smith—the dedicatee of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers—who offered to let Panshin see Smith’s correspondence with Heinlein. 

The 800-Pound Gorilla

Heinlein was furious, and ultimately wrote Advent a letter, which Panshin has seen and which he describes as attacking his qualifications to write the book, accusing him of employing ungentlemanly, unethical, and in part dishonorable and illegal means of gathering material, and forbidding Advent to quote from Heinlein’s copyrighted works, use his name or picture, or do anything else requiring his permission.  He refused Advent’s offer to review the manuscript pre-publication, and reserved the right to sue or bring criminal action as appropriate if the book were published. 

Advent, successfully intimidated, then backed out and sent Panshin a $50 kill fee, leaving him with a completed book and nowhere to go with it.  His efforts to find a way to smooth things over were futile.  Panshin concluded his Yandro article by quoting the man himself:

“FARNHAM’S FREEHOLD, page 88: ‘ . . . a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man.  Book burners—to rape a defenseless friendly book.’ ”

So, what to do?  What Panshin did do was to break out portions of his book manuscript (some with substantial revisions) and submit them for publication in various fanzines, mostly the solemn and prestigious Riverside Quarterly.  Not surprisingly, after having all this impressive material published in a short period of time, Panshin last year received the first Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer.

Meanwhile, Advent had a change of heart.  After Panshin’s award, and also after it reorganized from a partnership to a corporation (thereby protecting the former partners, now owners, from personal liability), it would publish Panshin’s book after all.  And now we have it.

The Book


by Alex Eisenstein

So what exactly do we have?  It’s impressive within its (self-imposed) limits.  It is a work of genre criticism, explicitly in the vein of Knight’s In Search of Wonder, which is cited repeatedly.  It makes no effort to connect with the wider (some might say narrower) world of mainstream literary criticism.  Panshin obliquely justifies his genre focus by conceding that SF is “minor,” but “not because it is essentially trivial, like the endless number of locked-room mysteries, not because it is bound forever to repeat a single form, like the sonnet or Greek drama, and not even because most of its practitioners are second-rate or worse, though most of them are.

“Even the best science fiction is minor to the extent that most people are not prepared intellectually or emotionally to accept it.”

So there!  Fans are slans!  But seriously, this proposition provides at least a fig leaf of a basis for treating SF as its own discrete literary territory, though no one is required to agree.

Panshin then proceeds, year by year and story by story, to summarize and comment on all of Heinlein’s SF, and some non-fiction items, from the beginning through The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.  This material is divided into “The Period of Influence” (1940-42), “The Period of Success” (1947-58), and “The Period of Alienation” (1959-67).  These take up over half the book. 

It sounds deadly, but it is not; the length of the comments is proportional to the interest of the works and what Panshin has to say about them.  They get longer as he gets closer to the present, appropriately, since as he demonstrates, there’s a lot more wrong with the more recent books than many of the older ones.  Panshin is a plain and succinct enough writer that this long exercise mostly retains its interest and does not become wearying, at least to my taste.

Some of Panshin’s judgments are initially startling.  He says of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress—widely welcomed, after several weak books, with cries of “Heinlein is back!”—that it “has its interest, but it is not as a novel.  It is as a dramatized lecture.” To start, he concedes: “Line-by-line, it is fascinating reading” and “less flawed by sermons and constructional weakness” than his other recent books.  But he goes on to nail the book’s sentimentality, lapses of logic, and deficiencies of style (Panshin knows Russian and doesn’t think much of the “babu-Russian” in which the narrator thinks and speaks).  If (like me) you have reread this book and found it less captivating the second time around, Panshin tells you why, if you haven’t figured it out yourself.

Among many other judgments, Panshin thinks Beyond This Horizon and Have Space Suit—Will Travel are Heinlein’s best works, a view I suspect doesn’t command a majority among Heinlein readers.  (“Only a misanthrope could dislike Have Space Suit—Will Travel,” he says.  Calling Dorothy Parker!)

Panshin uncontroversially thinks Heinlein’s best work was done during his middle period, when “he was in solid control of his writing tools and nearly everything he did was first rate.” However, his pick for the five best books of this period are all juveniles, while he dismisses the Hugo-winning Double Star as “good light entertainment, but no more than that,” since Heinlein doesn’t provide a more detailed account of the workings of the political system in which his protagonist is working.  He says the generally well-regarded By His Bootstraps is “tightly constructed, as intricate as a bit of musical comedy choreography, and arrives at a destination”; but it lacks “anything to get your teeth into”; and, later on, he describes it as “neatly composed, if completely empty.” Continuing the latter theme: “Delilah and the Space-Rigger . . . is a smoothly-written but empty little bit of nothing about women breaking into previously all-male space jobs.” I hope Betty Friedan is not a Heinlein reader.  But whatever you think of Panshin’s opinions, he has his reasons and generally shows his work (the “Delilah” comment is an exception).

After slicing Heinlein’s work horizontally by time, Panshin slices it vertically by substance and method, with chapters labelled Construction, Execution, and Content.  (There’s also a short chapter on Heinlein’s non-fiction—if you were curious about Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?, here’s your chance.) In these chapters he makes a number of observations about Heinlein’s modus operandi, of which some are quite acute while others seem a bit wandering and/or pointless. 

For example of the latter, under the subhead Attitude is a several-page digression-filled discussion of whether Heinlein’s works are realistic or romantic (realism wins, mostly).  The discussions of Context and Characterization are more fruitful.  Panshin says, “Characterizing situations has always been one of Heinlein’s strongest points, and I think it is safe to say that he has always done better with developing his societies than he has with developing individual characters.” Further: “Heinlein in general has preferred to show how things work in such consistent detail that his societies speak for themselves; they don’t need to be explained or justified.” He illustrates this point with an extensive discussion of the building of The Menace from Earth, in what is likely the most sustained attention that story has ever received.  He concludes: “Heinlein has by and large been able to build complex, consistent societies, the complexity coming from individual elements that fit together at the same time that they are used to further the story action,” this time taking Beyond This Horizon as his text and making a good case for its merits, at least in that regard. 

Concerning characterization, he says: “Heinlein’s characterization has not shown the variety that his contexts have, but in a way this makes very good sense.  Basically, Heinlein has used the same general characters in story after story, and has kept these characters limited ones.” And here we arrive at territory that most Heinlein readers will find familiar.  “There is one unique and vivid human Heinlein character, but he is a composite of Joe-Jim Gregory, Harriman, Waldo, Lazarus Long, Mr. Kiku, and many others, rather than any one individual.  I call the composite the Heinlein Individual.  . . .  It is a single personality that appears in three different stages and is repeated in every Heinlein book in one form or another.

“The earliest stage is that of the competent but naïve youngster. . . .  The second stage is the competent man in full glory, the man who knows how things work. . . .  The last stage is the wise old man who not only knows how things work, but why they work, too.” Other characters are barely individualized.  “Their most striking feature is their competence, reflecting that of the Heinlein Individual.” “After this small circle, Heinlein ordinarily relies on caricature, and he has a number of set pieces which he produces as needed.  One is that of Whining, Useless, Middle-Aged Mama. . . .  Matching this is the Pompous Male Blowhard. . . .  A third is the Nasty Young Weasel. . . .  Further caricatures could be named, but let’s stay with those.”

Fair cop!  But, says Panshin, this is all fine.  “Heinlein’s characters, it seems to me, are clear if not striking, and for his purposes this is probably enough. . . .  Heinlein has concentrated on developing unfamiliar contexts for his stories; if he were to populate these contexts with wild characters, the result might seem chaotic.” Note the similarity to C.S. Lewis’s observation, in his 1955 lecture On Science Fiction, recently published in his Of Other Worlds, that “[t]o tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too much. . . .”

There is much more about the what and how of Heinlein’s work, of varying interest and cogency, but you should read it yourselves; you will anyway, later if not now. 

Panshin sums up in the chapter titled “The Future of Heinlein”—not what Heinlein will do, but how he will be regarded, based on his work to date.  Here, however critical Panshin has been, his bottom line is unequivocal: “It is clear right now that even if his career were to be over, Heinlein would retain a historical place in company with Wells and Stapledon.” That’s because, first, of “the storytelling techniques that Heinlein developed and that have been generally copied within the field”—mainly the shift he exemplified from the basically speculative to the basically extrapolative, which by the way is what killed off the “sense of wonder” mourned by some.  “Heinlein’s insistence in talking clearly, knowledgeably, and dramatically about the real world destroyed forever the sweet, pure, wonderful innocence that science fiction once had. . . .  In a sense, Heinlein may be said to have offered science fiction a road to adulthood.”

Second, Panshin says, SF has mostly “concentrated almost as a matter of course on the atypical situation, the abnormal, the extraordinary.  It has never been willing to stand still and examine the ordinary person functioning normally in a strange context. . . .  We want variety in our fiction, to be sure, but the future is already strange.” Heinlein, says Panshin, “is the one science fiction writer who has regularly dealt with the strange-but-normal.” That’s a considerable exaggeration, but the more-than-a-grain of truth is that Heinlein has paid more consistent non-satirical attention than almost anyone else to the mundane details of life in his future and extraterrestrial settings, and it’s one of the more attractive and influential aspects of his work.

Panshin says he wouldn’t be surprised if Heinlein’s reputation is ultimately similar to Kipling’s.  Maybe so.  My own suspicion is that Heinlein’s reputation will diminish over the years, especially if he continues moving in the direction of his most recent works.  Panshin is right to predict that SF is “likely to receive increasing amounts of serious critical attention and regard” going forward, but I suspect that it is the growing sophistication and competence of its practitioners by the standards of general literature that will drive such a change.  It is those newer writers who will garner the broader recognition, and those they have learned from, like Heinlein, will be largely forgotten except by the remaining hard-core genre enthusiasts.

Summing Up

Heinlein in Dimension is not a great book, but it is a pioneering one, with much of interest and value, and is well worth reading, shortcomings and all.  Four stars.




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 6, 1967] Stirred?  Shaken? (June 1967 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Is something stirring at Amazing?  After several issues devoid of non-fiction features, this one starts a book review column by Harry Harrison, whose brief stint as nominal editor of the British magazine SF Impulse ended a few months ago.  Is a remake in order?  A change of guard in the wind?  There’s no hint.


by Johnny Bruck

The cover itself is also a change, not having been looted from the back files of Amazing or Fantastic Adventures.  The pleasantly lurid image of space-suited men watching or fleeing a battle of spacecraft is not credited, but other sources attribute it to a 1964 issue of Perry Rhodan, Germany’s long-running weekly paperback novella series, artist’s name Johnny Bruck.  I wonder if the publisher is paying him, or anyone.

Also perplexing is the shift in presentation on the cover.  Last issue, the display of big names was ostentatious.  Here, the only thing prominently displayed is “Winston K. Marks Outstanding New Story Cold Comfort,” sic without apostrophe.  Marks is one of the legion who filled the mid-1950s’ proliferation of SF magazines with competent and forgettable copy.  After a couple of stories in the early ‘40s, he reappeared with a few in 1953, contributed a staggering 25 stories in 1954 and 20 in 1955, and trailed off thereafter; he hasn’t been seen in these parts since mid-1959.  But here he is, name in lights, while Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and Philip K. Dick are relegated to small type over the title.  Odd, and probably counter-productive, to say the least.

The Heaven Makers (Part 2 of 2), by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert’s serial The Heaven Makers concludes in this issue.  Imagine an SF novel oriented to the reference points of Charles Fort, Richard Shaver, and soap opera.  And then imagine—this is the hard part—that it’s nonetheless pretty readable.

First, we are property!  Just like Charles Fort said.  You may think you understand human history, but everything you know is wrong!  Earth is secretly dominated by the Chem, a species of very short, bandy-legged, silver-skinned alien humanoids who have been made immortal, and also connected tele-empathically, by a discovery of one of their ancient savants—Tiggywaugh’s web (definitely sic).  Only problem is . . . they’re bored.  Eternity weighs heavily on them.  They must be entertained and distracted!

So, the Chem send Storyships around the galaxy, though Earth’s is the only one we see.  This ship rests on the bottom of the ocean, from which vantage the Chem shape history in large and small ways both by direct intervention and by remote manipulation and heightening of human emotional states.  The result: wars that might be settled quickly at the conference table can be prolonged and intensified, and susceptible individuals can be driven as far as murder.  These events are recorded, processed, spiced up with their own emotional track, and broadcast to pique the jaded souls of the Chem. 

One of the stars of this industry is Fraffin, proprietor of Earth’s Storyship, but he’s suspected of letting hints drop to Earthfolk about what’s going on, a major crime among the Chem.  Kelexel, posing as a visitor, has been sent by the authorities to get to the bottom of things, after four previous investigators have found nothing and, suspiciously, resigned.  But Kelexel is quickly corrupted himself.  Fraffin shows him a “pantovive” of a man manipulated by the Chem into murdering his wife, which Kelexel finds quite gripping.  He also becomes obsessed with the woman’s daughter, Ruth (the Chem are quite captivated by the physiques of humans, and can interbreed with them).  Fraffin, having found Kelexel’s vulnerability, sets out to procure her for him.  So three dwarfish figures show up at her back door, immobilize her with some sort of ray, and carry her away to be mind-controlled and ravished by Kelexel.

At this point, the nagging sense of familiarity I was feeling came into focus.  Herbert has reinvented Richard Shaver’s Deros!  Shaver, a former psychiatric patient, wrote up his delusions of sadistic cave-dwelling degenerates tormenting normal people, which (with much reworking by editor Ray Palmer) boosted Amazing’s mid-1940s circulation to unheard-of levels, until the publisher put an end to the disreputable spectacle a few years later.  Now Herbert has gussied up the “Shaver Mystery” for prime time!  The distorted physical appearance . . . check.  The mind control rays . . . check.  The underground caverns . . . not exactly, these characters are underwater instead.  But that’s a minor detail.


by Gray Morrow

Oh, yes, the soap opera part.  Up on dry land, Andy Thurlow, a court psychologist, is Ruth’s old boyfriend; she threw him over for someone else, who turned out to be a low-life.  Andy’s never gotten over it.  Her father, holed up after his Chem-driven murder of her mother, won’t surrender to anybody but Andy.  Meanwhile, Andy, who is wearing polarized glasses as a result of an eye injury, has started to see what prove to be manifestations of Chem activity, invisible to anyone else.  Andy also gets back with Ruth, who has moved out on her husband; he takes her back to the marital house and waits so she can pick up some possessions.  But the Chem snatch her as described, and her husband falls through a glass door and dies. 

Back at the Chems’ submarine hideout, Kelexel is having his way with the pacified Ruth, who, when he’s not using her, studies the Chem via the pantovive machine, learning more and more, while Kelexel harbors growing misgivings about the whole Chem enterprise.  Andy, up on land, is trying to persuade Ruth’s father the murderer to cooperate with an insanity defense while wondering if the strange manifestations he has seen account for Ruth’s disappearance.  The plot lines are eventually resolved in confrontations among Kelexel, Fraffin, Ruth, and Andy with dialogue that is more reminiscent of daytime TV than Herbert’s turgid usual.  In the end, Herbert actually makes a readable story out of this sensational and largely ridiculous material.  Three stars.

Cold Comfort, by Winston K. Marks


by Gray Morrow

Winston Marks’s "Outstanding New Story" Cold Comfort is an amusing first-person rant by the first man to be cryogenically frozen for medical reasons and revived when his problem can be cured.  He’s pleased enough with his new kidneys, but isn’t impressed by this brave new world in which corporations now overtly dominate the world, there’s a nine-million-soldier garrison in East Asia, etc. etc. E.g. , “I am only now recovering from my first exposure to your local art gallery.  Who the hell invented quivering pigments?” It’s at best a black-humorous comedy routine, but well enough done.  Three stars.

The Mad Scientist, by Robert Bloch


by Virgil Finlay

After Marks it is downhill, or over a cliff.  The Mad Scientist by Robert Bloch, from Fantastic Adventures, September 1947, is a deeply unfunny farce about an over-the-hill scientist who works with fungi, who has a young and beautiful wife with whom the protagonist is having an affair. They want to get rid of the scientist with an extract of poisonous mushrooms, but he outsmarts them, and what a silly bore.  The fact that the protagonist is a science fiction writer and the story begins with some blather about how dangerous such people are does not enhance its interest at all.  One star.

Atomic Fire, by Raymond Z. Gallun


by Leo Morey

Raymond Z. Gallun’s Atomic Fire (Amazing, April 1931) is a period piece, Gallun’s third published story, in which far-future scientists Aggar Ho and Sark Ahar (with huge chests to breathe the thin atmosphere, spindly and attenuated limbs, large ears, a coat of polar fur—evolution!) have discovered that the Black Nebula is about to swallow up the sun and kill all life on Earth. The solution?  Atomic power, obviously, to be tested off Earth for safety (the spaceship has just been delivered).  Unfortunately, their experiments first fail, then succeed all too well; but Sark Ahar’s quick thinking turns disaster into salvation!  As the blurb might have read.  Gallun had an imagination from the beginning, but the stilted writing makes this one hard to appreciate in these modern days of the 1960s.  Two stars.

Project Nightmare, by Robert Heinlein


by William Ashman

In Robert Heinlein’s Project Nightmare, from the April/May 1953 Amazing, the Russians deliver an ultimatum demanding surrender, since they’ve mined American cities with nuclear bombs.  The only hope is a colorful and miscellaneous bunch of clairvoyants to locate the bombs before they go off.  It’s a fast-moving but superficial, wisecracking story, a considerable regression for the author.  Some years ago he published an essay titled On the Writing of Speculative Fiction, and presented five rules for the aspiring writer.  I think this story must illustrate the last two: “4.  You must put it on the market.  5.  You must keep it on the market until sold.” I suspect Heinlein intended this one for the slicks, and when none of them would have it, started down the ranks of the SF mags until it finally came to rest in Amazing, which, compounding the indignity, managed to lose his customary middle initial.  Two stars.

The Builder, by Philip K. Dick


by Ed Emshwiller

Philip K. Dick’s The Builder (Amazing, December 1953/January 1954) is from his early Prolific Period—he published 31 stories in the SF magazines in 1953 and 28 in 1954, handily beating Winston K. Marks’s peak.  How?  With a certain number of tossed-off ephemerae like this one, in which an ordinary guy is obsessed for no reason he can articulate with building a giant boat in his backyard.  A rather peculiar boat too, with no sails or motor or oars.  And then: “It was not until the first great black drops of rain began to splash about him that he understood.” That’s it.  Two stars for this shaggy-God story which is unfortunately not shaggy enough.

Summing Up

Well, that was pretty dreary.  The issue’s only distinction is the unexpected readability of Herbert’s novel, which is the best, or least bad, of the serials this publisher has run.  The most one can say about the reprint policy is that it has its ups and downs, and this issue is definitely the latter.

[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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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 2, 1966] Words and Pictures (April 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

For a lot of people, February tops the list as their least favorite month. In the northern hemisphere, it’s cold and dark, and spring seems a long way off. The only things to break up the monotony are Valentine’s Day, which isn’t for everybody, and (most of the time) Carneval or Mardi Gras, which in the United States only matters if you’re near New Orleans and for lots of practicing Christians is immediately followed by giving up something nice for Lent.

As I look over my notes of newsworthy events for the last month, I see the usual things – coups, politics and power plays – but nothing that really catches my interest. Oh, there’s a couple of things that might develop into something, but they need time to come to fruition. Fortunately for my purposes, Fred Pohl has accidentally given us a little artistic puzzle to talk about, but let’s save that for the end.

The Words

In this month’s IF, the big Heinlein serial draws to a close and a brand-new serial begins. As does a new non-fiction series on fandom. Plus a new Saberhagen story. It’s a lot to whet a reader’s appetite, even if the cover is a bit mediocre. But that’s where our art mystery begins.


Roan’s first day on the job isn’t turning out well. Art attributed to Morrow

Earthblood, by Keith Laumer and Rosel George Brown

Millennia before our story starts, humanity went to the stars and found all other intelligent species still planet-bound. They formed a vast interstellar empire and ruled half the galaxy until the Niss came, shattered the human empire and ultimately blockaded humanity on Earth. Now the only humans at large in the galaxy are at the bottom of the socio-economic scale and most are heavily adapted to the planets they live on, with very few resembling the original terrestrial strain.

As the story opens, Raff Cornay, a human, and his wife Bella, a Yill, have come to Tambool to purchase an embryo to raise as their son. At great sacrifice, they wind up with a pure Terran stock human intended for the personal service of a recently toppled high official. What follows is a series of vignettes as Roan grows up, largely among the avian gracyl. At the age of 16, he tries to sneak into a circus, but is caught. In the ensuing fracas, his father is killed and Roan is dragooned into joining the Grand Vorplisch Extravaganzoo as a roustabout, sideshow attraction and high-wire walker. He meets and is befriended by the beautiful Stellaraire, seemingly a pure Terran human like him, but according to her a throwback and a sterile mule. It turns out the ship is a former Terran battleship. I’m sure that will be important later. At the end of the episode, Roan saves Stellaraire’s life and she asks him to take her back to her tent. To be continued.


Tarzan… er, Roan learns to fly. He’s supposed to be 10. Art attributed to Nodel

I’m very much of two minds about this story. On the one hand, it’s a decent, if slightly pulpy, science fiction Bildungsroman. Beyond the names of some alien species (I recognized both Niss and Soetti) and maybe some of the action, I don’t see a lot of Laumer here. The writing and the plotting feel like they’re mostly from Rosel Brown. In general, that’s a good thing.

On the other hand, Roan gets a lot of stuff about human superiority pounded into him as he’s growing up. It’s uncomfortable language that we hear all too often in real life as an argument against civil rights and equality. It’s certainly possible that Roan will eventually come to see that every species has something to offer galactic society. Unfortunately, most of the aliens seem more like intelligent animals than sentient beings. They rely as much on instinct as they do intellect. Roan’s boss in the circus is confused by his need to practice; either he can do something or he can’t. That seems to be saying that humans really are superior.

Three stars for now.

Castles in Space, by Alma Hill

Aboard the Star Ship Sazerac, King Gurton Redbeard of Sazerac and King Karl of Ship Avlon are meeting over a game of chess, hoping to agree to a protocol which will allow them both to mine the asteroid swarm they are in without fighting over it. They are served by Redbeard’s daughter Kafri, and he offers her to Karl’s son in marriage to form a political alliance. As she wanders the ship late at night, trying to come to terms with her role as a bargaining chip, Kafri discovers that her father’s plan is not as it seems. Now she must make a decision as to which side she will support.

Long-time Boston fan Alma Hill was last seen with her rather disappointing ”Answering Service” in January of last year. This story, however, is quite good. Kafri is no mere political pawn, and this is very much her story. She’s decisive, active and drives the plot. Hill also took the story in a slightly different direction than I thought she was going, based on the ship name Avlon. A very solid three stars.

Our Man in Fandom, by Lin Carter

The first in a series intended, according to the introductory blurb, to teach casual readers “about fandom – what it is – and why”. Both F&SF and Amazing have gone down this road in some form or other in recent years. Here Carter traces one branch of fandom from the letter columns of the 20s and 30s to the fanzines of today. It’s a bit overly breezy and glib at points, but perhaps slightly less superficial than some of its predecessors. Once he gets through with the history and starts talking about current zines like Yandro and Amra, Carter offers a decent read. We’ll see how he does with other contemporary matters. Three stars.

In the Temple of Mars, by Fred Saberhagen

The Nirvana II, the new flagship for High Lord Felipe Nogara, is being brought to him beyond the edge of the galaxy. Aboard it, a prisoner named Jor is being brainwashed by the head of the Esteeler secret police to kill someone. Admiral Hemphill is the acting captain, and there are some other familiar faces. There are plots within plots. One faction hopes to rescue Johann Karlsen from his doomed orbit around a hypermassive star, while another has taken to worshipping the Berserkers, possibly in the hope of being declared goodlife. Everything comes to a head long before the ship reaches its destination.


Jor trains for gladiatorial combat to please the High Lord. And for something else. Art by Gaughan

This is a direct sequel to The Masque of the Red Shift and also features characters from Stone Place. No knowledge of those stories is needed to enjoy this one, but it would give this more weight. Another solid outing in the Berserker saga, with a couple of weaknesses. The extensive quoting from The Knight’s Tale, sometimes in the original Chaucerian English, feels a bit overdone. It was clearly part of Saberhagen’s inspiration and I applaud him not assuming we’ll all remember it from high school, but some cuts would help. And though the story comes to a definite conclusion, there is clearly more to tell. I suspect a fix-up novel in the not too distant future. Three stars.

The Pretend Kind, by E. Clayton McCarty

Little Tommy Wilson says he had a long chat with God in the woods down by the river. Despite efforts by his parents to get him to admit it’s just a story, he sticks to his guns. A neighbor and friend who is also a child psychologist is brought in to delve into this delusion. Things are not as they seem.

A generally forgettable story with an ending that can be seen from miles away. The biggest problem is that nobody actually listens to Tommy (not that it would have changed anything). The parents can be forgiven. They’re worried about their son either clinging tightly to a lie or going off to the woods with a stranger. But a psychologist, child or otherwise, should be listening to what his patient is telling him, and that doesn’t happen. Not good, not bad. A low three stars.

To Conquer Earth, by Garrett Brown

The Glom have arrived on Earth and they expect us to aid them in their galactic war. Landing for some inexplicable reason in Tierra del Fuego, the commander, Captain Crunch, eventually makes his way to President Hubert H. Hubris. Things do not go at all as expected.

Garrett Brown is this month’s first time author. I’d say his biggest influence here is Philip K. Dick, though this is nothing like a Dick story. It’s just the way most of the characters act. The concept isn’t terrible and in the hands of Ron Goulart or Keith Laumer, or better still Robert Scheckley this could have been really good. Alas, it is not. Two stars.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Part 5 of 5), by Robert A. Heinlein

As the last episode ended, Earth forces had landed on the Moon to put down the Lunar rebellion. The fight is intense, but not overly long, since the Earth troops are ill-prepared for low gravity. There are a number of casualties, among them Adam Selene. Mike has decided it’s time for Adam to become a martyr to the cause. Now it’s time for Luna to retaliate with rocks hurled from the cargo catapult. Mike and Prof have established a grid of targets all around the planet, designed to strike uninhabited areas (with the exception of the NORAD base at Cheyenne Mountain). The bombardment goes on for days and Earth strikes back again. In the end, Manny is alone at the secondary catapult, cut off from Mike, Prof and Wyoh. The fate of the revolution is in his hands.


The pressure begins to wear on Manny. Art by Morrow

Oh my, what a finish. I have something to point out here and I’ll be circumspect, but I don’t want to lessen the impact of the ending. If you haven’t finished the story, skip down to the next paragraph. I don’t really think of Heinlein as a writer who evokes a lot of emotion apart from maybe a firm-jawed sense of justice or a manly swell of pride. But here, oh here, I’m not ashamed to admit the ending made me choke up. If only he could have dropped the last two paragraphs.

All right, safe for the uninitiated to read on. The novel shows Heinlein’s strengths and weaknesses to great effect. His ability to make the reader want to keep turning the page is here in full force, but it does get a little talky and some of the ways he presents women are questionable. Nevertheless, I’d say the strengths far outweigh the weaknesses. Plain and simple, this is the best thing Heinlein has written since Double Star, maybe ever. This could be his masterpiece. Five stars for this part and for the novel as a whole.

The Pictures

I promised you a bit of an art mystery. You may have noticed that under the cover and the illustration for Earthblood I said that the art is “attributed to” rather than “by”. Let’s start with the cover, said to be by Gray Morrow. But it really doesn’t look like his work. He favors strong, clear lines, rather than the slightly fuzzy work we see here. Frankly, it looks more like the work of Norman Nodel.

Interestingly, Nodel is given as the artist for the interior illustrations, yet this looks nothing like Nodel’s usual work. Indeed, it looks a bit more like Morrow’s work. It’s tempting to say they just swapped the artist names. But this also doesn’t look like Morrow’s work to me. The lines are there, but it’s sloppy in ways Morrow usually isn’t. The illo I included is supposed to show a ten-year-old boy, not a full-grown man. And look at these two excerpts.


Art attributed to Nodel

These are supposed to be the same character at the same age. That age is supposed to be 16. Ricky Nelson there on the left might be 16, but Superman there on the right is 40 if he’s a day. If it’s not Morrow, then who? The other two artists in Fred Pohl’s main stable are Jack Gaughan and John Giunta, but both their styles are different. Right now, my best guess is Wallace Wood. Hopefully, we’ll find out next month, since the serials are given to a single artist.

Summing Up

All in all, a pretty good issue. There’s only one real stinker and while some of the others aren’t quite as good as they could be, they could also be a lot worse. The Heinlein serial has been the high point since it began and has outshone everything else alongside it. It does again this month, but this time it’s a diamond set in silver, not the tin that has mostly surrounded it.


I fear next month may be something of a downturn.




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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 8, 1966] Feeling A Draft (March 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

Dodging the issue

Conscription has been part of American military planning for a little over a century, and it’s never been popular. From the draft riots of the Civil War to young men burning their draft cards today, there has always been resistance. During the Civil War, wealthy men could hire substitutes to go in their stead, and during the First World War, selection was done by local draft boards, which were subject to local pressure and tended to draft the poor. The interwar period saw the introduction of the lottery system in an effort to overcome the inequities of the past, and, with a brief return to local draft boards during World War Two, it has persisted to today.

On January 6th, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee became the first Black civil rights organization to come out against the draft, citing the lack of freedom at home for so many and the fact that Blacks are over-represented. This statement gave the Georgia House of Representatives an excuse to refuse seating the newly elected Julian Bond. Mr. Bond is one of the founders of the SNCC and endorsed the statement issued by the group. He is probably also the most visible of the eleven Black men recently elected to the Georgia House. The claim was that by endorsing the opposition to the war and the draft, he could not swear to uphold the constitution of the United States.


Julian Bond outside the Georgia House. What possible objection could they have to him?

A long tradition

It is timely that, amid the draft protest furor, January 27th saw the death of Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, once known as America’s most notorious draft dodger (or 'slacker' as they were called during and after WWI). The scion of a wealthy Philadelphia brewing family, he enjoyed a playboy lifestyle before the war. He drove race cars and was one of the first people to learn to fly, even owning a Wright Model B. He registered for the draft, but failed to appear for a physical and was declared a deserter. He managed to stay on the run for two years, but was finally arrested in 1920 in his family home, with his mother waving a gun and threatening the authorities. Sentenced to five years, Bergdoll was released under guard to recover an alleged cache of gold, but he escaped and eventually made his way to Germany. There were two attempts to kidnap him, both ending disastrously for the would-be kidnappers. He married a German woman and settled down, though he made two extended trips back to America. He returned to the States for good with his family in 1939. Sentenced to serve the rest of his original term and an additional three years, he left prison in 1944 and moved to Virginia. He died of pneumonia, aged 72. He is survived by his ex-wife and eight children.


Bergdoll’s original wanted poster.

The issue at hand

In the theme of this heightened era of military involvement (and lack thereof) this month’s IF plays host to several seasoned veterans, as well as the monthly new recruit. The stories range in quality from 1-A to not quite 4-F. The cover is even given to a story about a draft dodger, though one not one tenth as interesting as Grover Bergdoll.


A drab cover for a drab story. Art by Hector Castellon

The Long Way to Earth, by John Brunner

Kynance Foy has a problem. Armed with a degree in qua-space physics and an encyclopedic knowledge of interstellar commerce and law, she left Earth for the outer worlds to make her fortune. But the farther out she has gone, the harder it is for a Terran to find employment, and now she can’t even scrape up the price of a ticket home. Which is why the prospect of a job that pays nearly five times the going annual wage and offers repatriation at the end of the contract it too good to pass up. The catch is that she has to spend a year as the only person on a remote planet.

The man in charge of the project is only too happy to give her the job after she rebuffs his crude advances. It’s only on arrival that she discovers just how easy it is to breach her contract and be denied so much as passage off the planet, as has happened to every other person to hold the job. When a handful of her predecessors turn up, she knows that so much as acknowledging their existence will terminate her contract, but Kynance has a plan.


Executive Shuster is about to get the surprise of his life. Art by Adkins

This is a solid story: Brunner at his best writing a more traditional tale. Which is not quite as good as Brunner at his best when writing a more modern tale, but still good. Kudos for a woman protagonist who, while beautiful, gets by on her brains and is an active, driving force of the narrative. Three stars.

Ouled Nail, by H. H. Hollis

Our unnamed narrator runs into rocket jockey Gallegher in a New York bar. Galllegher works the Earth-Mars run, where a man spends months alone between planets and can go more than a little stir-crazy. He launches into a long tale of his friend Pick Pratt, who seems to have come up with a way to help spacers get over their stress.

Hollis is this month’s first time writer. This is something of a stereotypical science fiction bar tale, but I can’t say I enjoyed it much. Gallegher is an obnoxious narrator and the conclusion has holes you could fly a fleet of spaceships through. The Ouled Nail of the title are an Algerian tribe known for sending out their women to work as dancers and courtesans in the oases and towns near where they live. I had not heard of them before, so the best thing I can say for this story is that it sent me to the library to learn something. Two stars.

Dam Nuisance, by Keith Laumer

Retief is back. This time out, the CDT is supporting South Skweem, while the Groaci are backing North Skweem. Ambassador Treadwater is trying to come up with a grand public works project, but policy says it can’t be useful. Meanwhile, the Groaci are building a dam for North Skweem, one which is causing a drought in half of South Skweem and flooding the other half. To top things off Ben Magnan has disappeared while paying a courtesy call to the Groaci mission. As usual, it’s up to Retief to put everything to rights.


The differences are apparent to any right-thinking diplomat. Art by Gaughan

Even I am beginning to grow weary of Retief. Like a song that plays every single time you turn on the radio, it doesn’t matter how good it might be, it’s getting old. The worst part is the wasted opportunity. Laumer is clearly drawing on the situation in South-east Asia, with a bit of the Aswan Dam thrown in. That’s a set-up for biting satire – which we know he’s capable of writing – but instead we get a retread. Someone who’s never read a Retief story might enjoy this, but regular readers can only sigh over what might have been. A very low three stars.

Draft Dodger, by Kenneth Bulmer

Hugo Lack has received his call-up notice to the Terran Space Navy. Desperate to avoid serving, he visits draft-dodging facilitator Jerky Jones, but about the only thing he can afford is an irreversible lobotomy. Lack is soon scooped up by the Navy and enters a dream-like, almost fugue state that sees him through boot camp and deployment. He winds up in the quartermaster corps in an out-of-the-way base, but one day the war comes to him.

What a dull, dull story. It’s not terribly engaging to begin with, but when Hugo enters his sleepwalking state, the narrative voice follows him. Bulmer is trying to say something about the way the military creates heroes and the ungrateful people back home, but mostly he perpetuates the idea that the only reason someone might not want to “do his duty” is cowardice. Two stars.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Part 4 of 5), by Robert A. Heinlein

Revolution has come to the Moon, and now it’s time for someone to travel to Earth and make the case for independence. After a harrowing journey in a cargo pod, Mannie and Prof arrive in India. They spend some time appearing before a supposedly new UN committee, but which is actually the committee overseeing the Lunar Authority. During an extended break, they go on a whirlwind tour of the Earth, with Mannie using ploys developed by Mike and Prof to drive wedges between various factions. Returning to India, they are presented a plan from the committee to turn all free Loonies (some 90% of the population) into client-employees. If they don’t like it, they can be repatriated to Earth, where most of them have never been and none can live comfortably.

As the situation turns bad, Mannie and Prof make their escape, assisted by Stu and return to the Moon. The events of the trip make excellent propaganda to fire up the people, and there is now a duly elected government in place. With a bit of manipulation, Prof winds up as Prime Minister and Secretary of State, Wyoh is Speaker pro tem and Mannie is Minister of Defense. An embargo is imposed on the shipment of grain Earthside and a grain pod is fired at an unpopulated part of the Sahara to show that the Moon can defend itself. And then Earth invades. Troop ships sent on long orbits come in from the back of the Moon where Mike can’t see them. War has come to the Moon. To be concluded.


The Earth strikes back! Art by Morrow

Heinlein continues to excel. We get what is probably the most action we’ve seen, with the promise of more next time, but most of the story is committee meetings, back-room deals and political wrangling. And it’s still compelling! We do get one bit of pure Heinleinian didacticism when Prof trots out a parable of a man whose job is polishing the brass cannon on the courthouse lawn and one day quits his job, sells everything he has and buys his own cannon to go into business for himself. I understand Heinlein wanted to call this book The Brass Cannon. Fortunately, he was talked out of it. Anyway, four stars and I eagerly await the conclusion.

Summing Up

Once again, Heinlein shines out brightly. A couple of Journey writers have noted that there are two John Brunners: the exciting New Wave writer and the conventional writer for the American market. He’s managed to bridge the gap slightly this time, though he's still much closer to the second Brunner than the first. After that, it’s Laumer going through the motions and some sub-par filler. I have to say, that doesn’t fill me with a lot of confidence about what happens once the current serial ends.


This seems like an unusual pairing, but it’s nice to see the return of Rosel Brown.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 4, 1966] Keep Watching the Skies (February 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

I’m sure many of the Journey’s readers will remember the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, which featured Marshal Dillon himself, James Arness, as an alien super-carrot. Based loosely on John Campbell’s novella Who Goes There?, it’s a fine piece of Red Scare paranoia, though not quite as good as Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Once the heroes have defeated the alien menace, reporter Ned “Scotty” Scott broadcasts a warning to the world to “Keep watching the skies!”

Great Balls of Fire

1965 has been a good year for watching the skies. From the return of American astronauts to space after a hiatus to the brilliant display of Comet Ikeya-Seki. The year wrapped up spectacularly in December. As my colleague Victoria Silverwolf reported, a brilliant fireball shot through the heavens over Ontario, Michigan and Ohio before crashing near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Despite rumors, no sign has been found of Russian satellites or little green men. Then on Christmas Eve, a meteor exploded over the village of Barwell, England. This time numerous pieces made their way to Earth. No one was injured, but there was some property damage. Pieces have been found, confirming the object was a stony meteorite of the sort known as a chondrite.


Meteorite hunters descend on Barwell.

Death from above and below

There’s plenty of menace from the skies in this month’s IF. Actually, the threat is mostly humans attacking other humans, but not always. Sometimes it’s humans attacking aliens.


A triphib attacks. The story isn’t as Burroughs-esque as you might think. Art by Pederson.

Prisoners of the Sky, by C. C. MacApp

Six hundred years before the story begins, a colony ship from Earth reached the planet Durrent. The planet is low in metals and has a very dense atmosphere. Humans can live comfortably atop the numerous mesas, while the heavy air and vicious wildlife make the lower elevations dangerous. Mesa Mederlink is out to conquer the world, and Mesa Lowry is under siege, unable to get the guano they need for fertilizer.

Altern Raab Garan is under a cloud. The fleet led by his father several years ago was wiped out by Mederlink and there is suspicion of treason. Raab has proposed a lightning raid by a single airship out to the guano islands in the hopes of obtaining the fertilizer the mesa needs to continue holding out. He’s been given a chance, but the ship is old and poorly armed, the crew is largely civilian volunteers, one of his officers hates him and there may be a traitor on board.


This minor incident doesn’t cover even a full page, but it seems to have caught the imagination of both artists. Art by Morrow

This is actually a rather good story. MacApp has borrowed a lot from various submarine films and has done a good job of getting the tension of those films on the page. It’s nowhere near as pulpy as the art might make you think. My biggest complaint is that the author forgot about the extremely dense atmosphere and the climax mostly takes place at sea level. The story ends on a cliffhanger, so we can probably expect more. A solid three stars.

Build We Must, by Dannie Plachta

Inspired by the theory that the moons of Mars are actually space stations, the unnamed narrator became an astronaut. On the first mission to Mars, the crew is met by Martians and the narrator is chosen to make first contact.

Plachta’s sophomore effort is a joke story. In fact, it’s basically his first story retold with the shocker reframed as a punchline. At least it’s mercifully short. Plachta does seem to have some skill, but it’s time for him to put it to better use. Two stars.

The Kettle Black, by Steve Buchanan

Xenologist Stade is on his deathbed, waiting on a visit from Witten. As he waits, he reflects on the mission they were on together only a year earlier. Along with the third member of the team, Skinner – a cyborg whose only organic parts are his brain and spinal column – they discovered a planet with a civilization just short of space travel. Initially, things go well, and Stade makes excellent progress in establishing relations with the natives and learning their language. When he is invited to attend a ceremony, Skinner overrules him and goes in his place. The natives attempt to kill Skinner and the humans wage a three-man war to return to their ship.


Human-native relations take a turn for the worse. Art by Nodel

Buchanan is one of two first time authors in this issue. I’m not terribly impressed. The story plods, even during the action, and I had a very hard time keeping the characters straight. It is apparent from the ending that the author thinks he has made an important point about modern race relations, but I certainly can’t tell what it might be. Two stars.

Nine Hundred Grandmothers, by R. A. Lafferty

Ceran Swicegood is a Special Aspects Man. Unlike his fellows, he refuses to take on a manly name like Manbreaker Crag or George Blood. The expedition he’s on is investigating the large asteroid Proavitus. Ceran is interested in the native claim that they never die and is eager to meet some of the eldest of the race to find out how they came to be.

Lafferty is Lafferty, and you either like his stuff or you don’t. There’s no middle ground. This isn’t really one of his better pieces, lacking a lot of that quality of oddness which is his trademark. Even Homer nods, and mediocre Lafferty is still worth a read. Three stars.

Not by Sea, by Howard L. Morris

In an alternate timeline, Sir Hubert Wulf-Leigh is a decadent drunkard who works a few hours a day as a Confidential Clerk to the Board of Lord High Admirals. Through a rather brilliant bit of intelligence work, he determines that Naflon the Usurper, King Elective of Fraunce, is planning to invade England using hot air balloons. Not believed at first, when he’s proven right Hubert is put in charge of the defense of Plymness, where the Freunch do indeed attempt their landing.


I’m not even going to try to come up with a better caption. Art by Gaughan

Morris is the second newcomer this month. The story is light and largely comedic. Its greatest flaw is that the author goes far too often to the well of the English tendency to pronounce names oddly. Wulf-Leigh is pronounced Wilfly, Mountcourtenay is Munkertny and so on. The joke gets old fast and there’s a tendency to repeat it several times for the same character. It’s also a little long. That said, it does read easily. A low three stars.

The Peak Lords, by Miriam Allen deFord

A young man claiming to be the son of a Peak Lord who was kidnapped and left Below among the mutants is making his statement in court. From him, we learn how a few powerful individuals fled growing pollution by retreating to ever higher altitudes, eventually warring over the limited space and taking on retainers, while the rest of humanity was slowly mutated by the foul air and water. Eventually, we learn the truth of his kidnapping.

The best thing I can say for this story, is that deFord has perfectly captured the voice of an arrogant, entitled young man. Unfortunately, that makes for a very unpleasant narrator. On top of that, most of his statement is the worst sort of “As you know, Bob” rehashing the history of his people with no point other than to inform the reader. Worst of all, the story relies on a typographical trick at the end to achieve its impact. If only it were as simple as some screaming italics and an excess of exclamation points. Two stars.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Part 3 of 5), by Robert A. Heinlein

In the previous installment, preparations for the Lunar revolution were proceeding apace. Companies created by computer intelligence Mike were financing recruitment and the construction of a secret orbital launcher for throwing rocks at Earth if necessary. As we left our heroes. Mannie dropped in to visit a friend who works as a judge. An event which would have a great effect on the course of the revolution.

A group of youngsters have dragged in a tourist who got a little too friendly with the girl at the core of their group. They want to stuff him out an airlock, but feel the need to go through proper procedures first. Since the judge is off drinking his lunch, Mannie agrees to hear the case. He succeeds in resolving the situation peacefully, teaching a lesson to both the tourist and the stilyagi who dragged him to court. Said tourist proves to be one Stuart Rene LaJoie, Poet – Traveler – Soldier of Fortune, a wealthy Earthman who will become the revolution’s chief lobbyist and advocate back home.

Stu gives Mannie a chance to expound on the role of women in Lunar society, the economics of the Moon and much more. At long last, we finally find out the meaning of TAANSTAFL, seen on the cover of the issue with the first installment: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. There is always a hidden cost to something claimed to be free.

Before the revolutionaries are really ready, the balloon goes up. A group of Peace Guards rape and kill a young woman, and the Loonies explode. Mannie, Mike and the Prof are able to direct the flood of rage, and Lunar Authority goes down easily. The hard part is yet to come when Earth responds. They attempt to keep the lid on, with Mike faking normal communications Earthside, but a group of Earth scientists manage to get a message back home. Meanwhile, Prof gets a sort of ad hoc congress to issue a declaration of independence, largely cribbed from the American Declaration, on July 4th, 2076. Finally, Mannie and Prof are preparing to be smuggled down to Earth in a grain shipment, and the night before they leave Wyoh is brought into Mannie’s family.


This won’t actually happen until next time, but the other illustrations aren’t very good. Art by Morrow

Once again, Heinlein take what should be a dry recitation of people sitting around talking about politics and sociology and grabs readers’ attention and keeps them turning the page. It’s a remarkable skill and one he’s shown too little of in recent works. The events of the revolution are exciting, too, but we see them at a bit of remove. Our protagonists are too important to be involved in the fighting, though Mannie does see some of it from the sidelines. The only real complaint for me is that Wyoh largely moves into the background. Four stars.

The Warriors, by Larry Niven

In deep space, a kzinti warship has discovered a strange vessel. Alien Technologies can detect no weapons, and Telepath reports the beings aboard are peaceful. Captain is delighted, sensing the opportunity to bring in a new slave world and earn himself a name. He orders the use of inductors to raise temperatures on the alien ship to kill everyone aboard, so that the kzinti can learn as much as possible about their prey.

Aboard the Angel’s Pencil, the human crew are puzzled by their inability to communicate with the alien ship. They assume it must be a question of technology. There hasn’t been a war among humans in over three centuries, and there hasn’t been a murder in well over a century and a half. In fact, most people never even learn about war and the less pleasant aspects of history. Hostility is the furthest thing from the crew’s minds.

Another solid outing by Niven. His kzinti are a pretty good answer to John Campbell’s challenge to write aliens who think as well as a man, but not like a man. These catlike people are predators through and through, and Niven does a good job of telling us things about their society without excess exposition or characters talking about things they all know. He’s a little less successful at that when telling us about the peaceful human society. It’s a good story that could, perhaps, have used a final bit of polish to really make it shine. A solid three stars.

Summing Up

There we have it. Another base of not very good stuff with a smattering of decent, if nothing special, stories. Only the Heinlein really stands out. That alone might be worth your 50¢. I recently heard a rumor that Fred Pohl uses IF for stories from name authors they can’t sell elsewhere in the hope they’ll also sell him their good stuff. I’m not sure that’s the way to run a successful magazine.


Hope springs eternal.




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Magazine, Serial

[December 2, 1965] Superiority Complex (January 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

Some people are objectively better at some things than everybody else. Sandy Koufax can pitch a baseball better than almost anybody, and Muhammad Ali is arguably the best boxer we’ve seen in his weight class in a long time.


The problem arises when that excellence in a specialized area leads to an assumption of excellence in other, unrelated areas. I certainly wouldn’t turn to either of the aforementioned men for suggestions on nuclear policy or to bring peace to South-east Asia. Worse still is when whole groups assume superiority over others based solely on an accident of birth.

Heart of Darkness

Last month, I discussed the difficulties faced by the United Kingdom in handing over power to the locals in Rhodesia due to an unwillingness on the part of the white government under Ian Smith and the Rhodesian Front to share power with Black Rhodesians. Alas, the situation has now collapsed completely. On November 5th, the colonial governor declared a state of emergency, blaming Smith and two African nationalist organizations, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union and the Zimbabwe African National Union.


Ian Smith signs the Unilateral Declaration of Independence

On the 11th, the Smith government unilaterally declared independence. Within hours, the United Nations Security Council condemned the action 10-0 with France abstaining. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson has been granted the authority to rule Rhodesia by decree, though what good that might do is hard to see. Wilson steadfastly refuses a military solution and expects economic embargoes to force Smith to capitulate. But with two neighboring nations, South Africa and the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, more than willing to ignore any embargoes, it is likely to be a long time before we see a resolution to this situation.

Conflicts Great and Small

Fittingly, there’s plenty of superiority, assumed and otherwise, in this month’s IF. Let’s get to it.


This art for “Cindy-Me” bears absolutely no relation to the story. Art by Morrow

Moonrakers, by Poul Anderson

At some point in the past, a terraformed Mars broke away from Incorporated Earth. The asteroids were colonized from there, and now, while the larger asteroids like Ceres and Pallas remain loyal to Mars, the smaller bodies are seeking their independence. The asterites are pirating Martian shipping to Jupiter with the tacit support of Earth. Because Mars has privatized most government functions, the Interplanetary Shippers’ Association has hired private investigator James Church to solve the piracy problem. His solution proves to be rather unorthodox.


An asterite salvager makes a big score. Art by John Giunta

Initially, I wondered why this story didn’t appear under Anderson’s Winston Sanders by-line, but the differences soon became apparent. Most notably, he seems to pointing out several of the flaws in his noble asterite society in that series. Earth is also somewhat less awful.

Just as a fix-up novel consists of several short pieces cobbled together to make a book, one could argue this is a fix-up novelette cobbled together from several vaguely connected vignettes without the benefit of any connecting material. We jump from incident to incident with few clues as to how we got there or how it all hangs together. This might work better fleshed out to full novel length. On the whole, it’s not objectively terrible, but I expect better from Poul Anderson. Just barely three stars.

Cindy-Me, by Don F. Briggs

Cindy and her twin brother, our unnamed narrator, are on the run from Old Ralph and trying to get to Aunt Ag. They have incredible psychic powers, but even that might not be enough to evade Ralph and his Watchers.

Briggs is this month’s first-time author. I’m not terribly impressed. The pieces don’t really fit together very well, and the tone shifts a few times. Some of that is due to the author’s attempt to play with the reader’s expectations, but he doesn’t quite achieve his aim. The title and references in the story make the twins sound like a gestalt being, but they come off as two individuals. They also grow increasingly unpleasant, which is part of the point, but they’re hard to take. Two stars.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Part 2 of 5), by Robert A. Heinlein

Last time around, Heinlein introduced us to the Moon of 2075, a penal colony on the edge of a revolution. At the end of the installment, Mannie, a computer technician, is dragooned into leading said revolution by his tutor, Professor de la Paz, a subversive from Hong Kong Luna named Wyoming Knott, and an intelligent computer nicknamed Mycroft.

Begin Part Two:

Mannie, Wyoh and Prof discuss political philosophy for a while, and then Mike is brought into the conspiracy. He predicts food riots in seven years and cannibalism in less than ten. He also calculates that a rebellion has about a one in seven chance of success and is a bit puzzled when his friends find those odds acceptable. Loonies are gamblers by nature.

What follows is a summary of eleven months of revolutionary organization and planning. Mike creates the persona of Adam Selene to head the revolution. They set up a few fake companies with the purpose of funding the revolution and building a secret electromagnetic cannon, because Mike says they will need to “throw rocks” at Earth. Also of note is the recruitment of eleven-year-old red-head Hazel Meade to oversee the children being used to distribute subversive literature and follow guards. Mannie, Wyoh and Prof start wearing heavy weights, since Mike predicts that at least one of them will need to visit Earth at some point. As the installment ends, Mannie drops in to visit a friend who acts as a judge. This will apparently have a great effect on the course of the revolution.


Our four protagonists. Art by Morrow

There’s not much to say about this one, since it’s just Heinlein setting the final pieces on the board. With any luck, the action will get under way next time. As a standalone, the installment suffers, though it’s actually enjoyable. I’m sure when it’s all together between two covers you won’t even notice.

But that does give me a chance to talk about Mannie’s voice. The Loonie patois is composed of American and Australian vernacular (Mike is a “dinkum thinkum”) and a few Russian loan words along with some Russian grammar, like the lack of definite articles. It works very well and is much easier to read than the Nadsat of A Clockwork Orange. Mannie is one of Heinlein’s best narrators in a long time.

Of final note is young Hazel Meade. I’m pretty sure we’ve met her before. At least, I can think of another Hazel with a family of red-heads and a granddaughter named Meade. She also says her name is on the monument to the revolution back on Luna. Yes, I’m fairly sure this is Grandma Hazel from Heinlein’s The Rolling Stones.

As noted, not much happens, but it has that Heinlein readability. Three stars.

Mr. Jester, by Fred Saberhagen

A severely damaged Berserker has its brain placed in a new ship. This flips a switch installed by the Builders during the testing phase of their destructive creations. A switch that renders the Berserker harmless. Meanwhile on Planet A, which has been cut off from contact with the rest of the human galaxy for a while, a man is accused of making jokes. As punishment, he is sent to an observation post on the edge of the system, where he encounters the harmless Berserker. Together they return to Planet A.


Oh, that’s not creepy at all. Art by Gaughan

This story bears a lot of similarities to Harlan Ellison’s Repent, Harlequin. Indeed, had they come out a year apart, rather than a month, I’d suspect one of inspiring the other. Maybe Fred Pohl suggested the same story seed to both authors. I’ve regularly praised Saberhagen for bringing something fresh to this series every time. The story is still fresh, but for me it doesn’t quite work. It’s not something I can really pin down, but this is the least of the Berserker stories, and I prefer Harlan’s take on the concept. Just barely three stars.

A Planet Like Heaven, by Murray Leinster

On the planet Dorade, the Dorade Corporation harvests kamun logs from a deadly, mobile tree using animal workers. As usual, the Home Office sends new instructions with the regular ship and only delivers them just before departure to keep the local managers from objecting. Headquarters is demanding a doubling of production and has instructions on how to achieve this. Orders which appall local manager Chalmers and head overseer of the workers Burke. Neither man feels he can defy orders, since that would mean quitting and then they’d have to pay for their passage back home, which would bankrupt them. The next ship brings no less than the president of the corporation, who takes charge of the operation, disgusted by the local men’s failures.


Chalmers and one of his best workers. Art by Adkins

Murray Leinster has been off his game lately. Here, he returns to form at long last. This is a good story that makes its point clearly and reasonably consicely. Alas, while it’s obvious from the text, it’s never explicitly stated until the final line that the workers are elephants. The illustration gives that away and detracts somewhat from the punch of the ending. A pity, but still a solid three stars.

The Smallness Beyond Thought, by Robert Moore Williams

Two scouts are hiking a desert canyon, collecting rocks. Finding an interesting piece of quartz, they pull out an odd device to test it. After this, we are given the history of the strange hermit who has lived here for decades beyond memory and built a number of strange structures and walkways that go nowhere. He also seems to be friends with the local rattlesnakes. Finally, we meet Ed Quimby, the number two man at the nearby observatory, who befriends the hermit after a fashion, and unwittingly gets involved when an outsider seems to be after the hermit.


Someone approaches the smallness beyond thought. Art by Gaughan

Williams presents us with a number of mysteries and resolves none of them. We learn nothing about the hermit, the (possibly two groups of) people after him or why they want him. We do learn the function of the odd structures, but nothing of their purpose. On top of that, the hermit has an incredibly annoying accent. And this all goes on and on for over thirty pages, leaving us none the wiser as to what has happened. A very low two stars.

Summing Up

Well, the stories this month are certainly full of people exerting an assumed superiority over others, from government goons to corporate heavyweights. And just like in real life, they’re frequently very wrong. Unfortunately, this time out the stories produced aren’t all that great. Let’s put this one in the books and hope for better efforts (and some actual action from Heinlein) next month.


At least it doesn’t seem to be a Gree story.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 2, 1965] Revolution! (December 1965 IF)

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by David Levinson

Americans have an odd relationship with revolution. They’re quite proud of their own, but extremely leery of anyone else’s. But revolution seems to be the natural order of things in the 20th century. Not all of them have been violent, nor have all of them been political. And no doubt we will see many more – political, scientific, economic, social and even sexual – before the decade, let alone the century is out.

Revolution turned upside-down

Since the end of the War, the major colonial powers of the 19th century have been gradually handing over control of their colonies to the native people. It hasn’t always been voluntary, nor has it always been smooth. But the British seem to be doing better than the others at handing over power. Most transitions have gone smoothly, though not perfectly. Until now.

Negotiations have been ongoing with Rhodesia since last year. The sticking point has been an improvement in the status of Black Rhodesians and an end to racial discrimination, insisted on by the United Kingdom. The white Rhodesian government led by Prime Minister Ian Smith is vigorously opposed the idea of equality for Blacks.

Talks broke down on October 8th over the issue of majority rule. With rumors circulating that Rhodesia will declare independence, the U. N. General Assembly voted 107-2 to call on the United Kingdom to use military force to prevent such an event. Ten days later, the Organization of African Unity passed a similar declaration. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson has gone to Rhodesia to continue negotiations, apparently without success. On the 30th, Wilson gave a press conference before returning home in which he stated that a unilateral declaration of independence would be treason, but that the United Kingdom would rely on trade sanctions and ruled out the use of military force against “kith and kin”. A peaceful resolution does not seem to be at hand.


Harold Wilson (l.) and Ian Smith (r.)

Revolutions start to finish

Americans may not like the idea of revolution in the real world, but as part of their national mythology it turns up frequently in fiction. This month’s IF is filled with revolution, both political and otherwise.


There’s no clue what this odd revolutionary slogan means. Fred Pohl promises an answer next month. Art by Morrow

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Part 1 of 5), by Robert A. Heinlein

In 2075, the Moon has been a penal colony for nearly a century. A prison without walls or guards, because there’s nowhere to run, and after just a few months, permanent physiological changes caused by the low gravity mean no one can go back to Earth. That means that many people living there are free men and women descended from former prisoners, but still subject to the Lunar Authority.

One such is Manuel Garcia O’Kelly-Davis. Mannie, who lost his left arm in a mining accident and has several interesting prosthetics, is a computer repairman. One of his jobs is maintaining the Lunar Authority’s central computer, a High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluation Supervisor, Mark IV – a HOLMES FOUR. Somewhere along the way, so many different modules were added to the computer it gained consciousness. Only Mannie has noticed and dubbed this new “person” Mycroft, Mike for short, after Sherlock Holmes’s smarter brother. Mike is quite the joker, with a fondness for practical jokes and puns, but he’s lonely, since everyone else is too stupid to have figured out that he’s alive.

At Mike’s request, Mannie attends a political meeting where he is introduced to Wyoming Knott, a rabble-rouser from Hong Kong Luna, and runs into his old teacher, Professor Bernardo de la Paz. After Wyoh (as she prefers to be called) gives a stirring speech encouraging revolution against the Authority and the Prof agrees with her goals but pokes holes in her methods, the meeting is broken up by the Warden’s goons and turns deadly.

Mannie helps Wyoh escape and, while they’re hiding out, introduces her to Mike, who eventually creates a feminine personality called Michelle to talk to Wyoh. The next day, they meet with the Prof and have a discussion about revolution. Mannie and Wyoh exchange a knowing look when the Prof points out the importance of communications; that’s one of Mike’s bailiwicks. After the Prof expounds on the idea of revolutionary cells, Mannie suggests a few improvements and suddenly finds himself nominated to head the revolution. To be continued.


Mannie wearing his Number Three arm. Art by Morrow

All but the most rabid Heinlein fans will agree that his last few novels have been uneven at best. But this is Heinlein at his best. We have the standard Heinlein characters here: Mannie, the competent man who mostly goes along to get along until pushed to do more by circumstance; Wyoh, the strong, beautiful, brilliant woman who does the pushing (though not a love interest so far); and the Prof, the older man who loves teaching and the sound of his own voice. Mike is a bit different. He obviously has a role to play, but we need to see more.

Not much really happens in these 50 pages, but Heinlein keeps you reading, even through long discussions of Lunar marriage customs and revolutionary organization. And once again, Heinlein has slipped a minority protagonist into his work. Mannie is not only Latin as his name suggests, but he probably counts as Black, with a grandfather deported from South Africa. When he first sees her, Mannie notes that pale, blonde Wyoh is clearly first generation since the genes tend to get all mixed up pretty quickly, so most of the people we meet are probably of mixed race.

Four stars and I’m eager to see more.

Security Syndrome, by Gerald Pearce

Professor James Brown has arrived at the regional headquarters of the Society to report someone as politically unreliable: himself. Despite his double-A rating, he feels that his sensitive position and his exposure to older texts full of “unescoism” have rendered him unfit. To say more would give the whole story away.

The United States has clearly undergone a revolution prior to the time of this story. The unnamed Society merely advises the government on the political reliability of citizens, and we hear of a second Bill of Rights, which includes a guarantee of “freedom from seditious, false and heretical doctrines”. It also seems that Brown’s actions are going to trigger another revolution.

This is a good story, though not without problems. I had some difficulty keeping the various Society members straight, and the story sagged in places. Still, a solid three stars.

Toys for Debbie, by David A. Kyle

Six-year-old Debbie Curtis likes to play with toys for both girls and boys, but she does have a tendency to break them. Insurance salesman Mr. Black has offered her father some excellent terms and occasionally drops by with a present for Debbie. What could be the harm?

I often complain that an author has attempted a “Twilight Zone ending”, an ironic twist that hasn’t really been set up. Long-time fan David Kyle (who most recently appeared in these pages as an artist) has written what would be an excellent episode of The Twilight Zone. It’s easy to imagine Rod Serling popping up at the end to offer a terse epilogue. Every moment is earned, and it ends not with a twist, but a shudder. Three stars.

St. George and the Dragonmotive, by Robert F. Young

Lieutenant George St. George of the International Pastpolice has gone to sixth century England to investigate an anachronism. There he meets a few knights, including one from Camelot, hunting for a dragon which has devoured a fair maiden and several peasants, who miraculously remain “on live”. The dragon proves to be a train, resembling the Stourbridge Lion, driven by a young woman he dubs Cassiana Jones. Train-lover George must work his way into her favor to track down the source of this industrial revolution.


An unusual comic style for Gray Morrow, but the best thing about this story. Art by Morrow

Typically for Young, the protagonist is an addlepated twerp. Worse, though he falls in love with the engineer, it’s clear he’s more in love with the idea of driving a train. Worse than that, she doesn’t get a name in her own right until the very end. It’s also far too long for such a thin story. Two stars.

The Girls on USSF 193, by Stephen Goldin

Astronauts are coming back from their tours of duty in space with weakened hearts, because they won’t do the cardiac exercises prescribed by the National Space Agency. Director Jess Hawkins came up with a plan that is dubious to say the least, morally questionable and probably illegal.

You sometimes hear the phrase “sexual revolution” about changing attitudes towards sex. In the past it’s sometimes meant being open about what people are doing anyway, and sometimes it’s about real changes in sexual attitudes. This story dabbles in the latter, but is highly implausible. It hinges on a career bureaucrat making a move that puts his job on the line, a job he knows others are gunning for.

Goldin is this month’s first time author. The writing here is decent, despite the implausible plot, but the attitudes towards women are deeply questionable. Two stars.

LONCON II or Through a Monocle? Darkly, by Robert Bloch

Bloch’s report on this year’s Worldcon was allegedly written on a hotel typewriter between the end of the con and his departure for home. I believe it. This rambling nonsense reads like it was written by a man short of sleep with his brain in a different time zone. You’ll learn much more about the con from our colleague Kris Vyas-Myall’s report. One star.

Mercury, by J. M. McFadden

Mercury is an alien predator with an unusual hunting style. She is captured by an expedition and brought to an Earth zoo. There will be consequences.

The story is quite obvious and depends on some rather stupid behavior, but it’s short and not a bad read despite all that. This is McFadden’s second sale, and I’m not averse to seeing more from him. Three stars.

Retief’s War (Part 3 of 3), by Keith Laumer

Retief continues his search for Fifi. Unable to find his army, he joins forces with the remaining Terries and prepares for a last stand against the Voion hordes. Rescue arrives at the last minute in the form of the Federated Quoppina army led by Fifi, who is none other than Retief’s cousin Princess Fianna Glorian Deliciosa Hermione Arianne de Retief et du Lille. A typical Retief plan is put together to save the rest of the CDT mission, knock Ikk and his Voions out of power, quash Groaci schemes and get Retief mostly out of trouble.


Tief-Tief rides to the rescue. Art by Gaughan

What a disappointing ending. A number of things happen that make little or no sense, but happen to move plot forward. Back in the first part, I noted that there was more room for things to develop, but Laumer seems to have run out of room anyway and it all rushes to a slam-bang ending. Two stars for this part and a very low three for the novel as a whole.

Summing up

There’s lots of revolution in these pages, political, industrial and sexual. But there’s nothing revolutionary. IF is by no means mired in the past like Analog and the outward forms often acknowledge the changes happening to the genre, but the bones are still those of a decade ago or more. IF is still worth reading, and Fred Pohl has never struck me as averse to change, but he really needs to pick one of his three magazines to at least experiment with bringing them into the 1960s and beyond.


Nothing here looks terribly new either.




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 18, 1964] Split Personality (October 1964 IF)

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[Don't miss your chance to get your copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age.  If you like the Journey, you'll love this book (and you'll be helping us out, too!)


by Gideon Marcus

Which one is it?

It's election season, and the commercials are already out in force.  Maybe it's just my neighborhood, but it seems that LBJ is crowding the airwaves a lot more than Barry Goldwater at this point.  One effective ad notes several times the GOP candidate has made mutually contradictory statements and asks "How is a Republican supposed to note on his ballot which Barry he's voting for?"

This piece is a pretty low blow.  Make no mistake — there's no way I'm voting for a reactionary this November, but if there's one thing one can say for Barry, he's consistent.  I'd rather see some positive messaging.  Lord knows LBJ has plenty of successes to run on.

But while Goldwater's split personality may all be a Madison Avenue construct, the schizophrenic nature of IF, Worlds of Science Fiction magazine is very real.  IF has always been Galaxy's experimental little sister, the place where the more offbeat stories, the lesser known writers are featured.  As a result, it is the more variable mag, with higher highs and lower lows, often within the same issue. 

This dual nature is perfectly represented in microcosm with the latest October 1964 issue:


by Paul E. Wenzel (note the obscured "September 1964")

The first thing you might notice is that the issue was clearly intended to have a September date.  IF went to a monthly schedule in August (after years as a bi-monthly), but there was trouble at the printers, and things got delayed.

When the issue finally came, it was very much a mixed bag, with trouble appearing right from the start:

The Castle of Light, by Keith Laumer


by Jack Gaughan

Within the pages of IF, Keith Laumer's name is inextricably linked with that of his creation, Retief, that sardonic super-spy in diplomat's clothing.  What began as a more tongue-in-cheek version of Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" is becoming a tired series of retreads.  This particular story involves an invasion by the squamous Groaci, who take legal possession of a planet by landing 50,000 troops in cities abandoned by the native populace during a global religious ceremony.  The piece rambles, and the jokes — like the characters — are flatter than usual.

Two stars.

Mad Man, by R. A. Lafferty

The ever-whimsical Lafferty offers up a piece about androids who only attain genius capability when given their daily dose of anger enzyme.  Said extraction is provided by a group of human individuals kept thoroughly miserable through poor working conditions and constant aggravation by paid actors.  But when one android develops a kinship for her donor, the formerly angry man's heart melts, and his biochemistry becomes useless.  Can a replacement be found?

I imagine some will like this story.  I found it contrived, cruel, and rather pointless.

Two stars.

Gremmie's Reef, by Hayden Howard


by Virgil Finlay

In which a teenage surfer is delighted to find a perfect wave break on a formerly unpromising beach, thanks to a new reef.  Turns out the reef is an alien biological probe, and as might be expected, it's not a friendly one.

The surfing scenes are nicely rendered, but the third-person omniscient viewpoint, the shrieky characters, and the Twilight Zone ending all suggested a young novice of a writer.  Imagine my surprise when I checked my notes and found that Hayden Howard has been writing for more than a decade, and I've even covered one of his stories before!

Nice try, but it's another two.

Rescue Mission, by Kit Reed

Science teacher goes on sabbatical to the mountains and finds his cottage besieged with bugs.  Turns out they are the servants of Mavna, the alien beauty who resides one cottage over, and she is using the crawlies to send the prof a message: (paraphrased) "Help me fend off these three oafs I'm staying with so I can sacrifice myself for the operation of our interstellar matter transmitter!"

Reed, an author I'm quite fond of, has written exclusively for F&SF since she started half a decade ago.  This rather silly piece would fit better in that magazine.  That it wasn't published there is not surprising — it's probably the weakest story Reed has produced.

Two stars.

Monster Tracks, by Robert E. Margroff

The last piece of short fiction in the issue is by a genuinely new author, about a boy raised in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by aliens.  They came in "peace", disguised as tourists, bringing gifts and cute pets, but it was all a ploy.  Their gifts were bombs, their luggage was guns, and their pets are poison.  Our young protagonist is almost taken in by a cute rabbit-like creature before being saved by his savvy uncle.

Not much to this one.  Two stars.

Farnham's Freehold (Part 3 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

"Where's the split?" I hear you ask.  So far, this issue has been a solid disappointment — how could it be a mixed bag?

Well, editor Fred Pohl got a ringer.

Robert Heinlein is one of the masters of the field with dozens of classic titles to his name.  To be sure, his record has been tarnished a bit lately by such substandard works as Stranger in a Strange Land and Podkayne of Mars.  Moreover, the first installment of his latest serial, Farnham's Freehold, got off to a stultifying start.

But then it got better.  In Part 1, Hubert Farnham and his family (including his house-servant and his side-girlfriend) are whisked thousands of years into the future thanks to a new Russkie bomb.  That first bit reads like a cross between a libertarian screed and the Boy Scout Handbook.  But in Part 2, we meet the inheritors of the atomically ravaged Earth, the dark-skinned peoples of Africa and India.  Hugh and co. are made privileged slaves — except for Joseph, Hugh's servant.  His Black skin makes him a de facto member of the ruling caste, and he is afforded the privileges thereof.  We learn a lot about the new society, and this section is genuinely interesting.

Part 3 more-or-less sticks the landing.  It is all about Hugh's attempt to escape his gilded cage along with mistress Barbara and their newly born twin sons.  While his first attempts end in failure (and this part is not unlike the middle section of Have Spacesuit Will Travel — thrilling but ultimately pointless), Hugh's kindly master ends up sending him and his family back in time to just before the Bomb goes off, and they have a second chance at life.

It's a thrilling page-turner, and I liked the central message: decadence and depravity have nothing to do with color or national origin.  It all boils down to Lord Acton's dictum, "Power corrupts".  I especially appreciated that the story recognized the unequal status of Joseph, and does not condemn him for throwing his lot in with America's new rulers.  Whatever loyalty Joe had to Hugh, he has found his Earthly paradise — unfair to others, perhaps, but wasn't that just after a lifetime of discrimination?  Hugh is dismayed, but not surprised.  After all, whatever his libertarian aspirations, he was part of the problem.

I'd give this last part five stars except that the ending is awfully abrupt.  All told, I think the novel earns an aggregate of 3.75 stars and, if you can get through the beginning, suggests a return to form of the author.

Making Whole

This latest issue of IF reminds me of Analog a few years back, when the serials were generally good and the other material sub-par (I note with bemusement that while Heinlein's Farnham would fit stylistically in Analog, the editor of said mag would never allow a storyline where the Whites are slaves…) When all is computed, the magazine actually scores above the 3-star middle, which tells you how good the second half is compared to the first.

In any event, the vice of a split-personality magazine is also its virtue: if one can always count on one or more stories not being very good, one can also expect at least one nugget of gold. 

And wasn't my entire state founded on the search for such nuggets?

[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

[July 6, 1964] Busy Schedule (August 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

SFlying Eastward

Today saw the Journey in the wilds of Utah, attending a small science fiction conclave out in the lovely summer desert of Deseret.  What could have impelled us to make another plane trek less than a week after having returned from a long sojourn in Japan?

Well, we were invited.  The things one does for egoboo…

Nevertheless, duty continues, and so I find myself pounding the typewriter keys early in the morning (to the chagrin of the folks in the neighboring rooms, no doubt) so you can read all about the first SF digest of the month, the August 1964 IF.

The Issue at Hand


by Fetterly

The big news is that IF is a monthly now after years and years as a bimonthly.  Lord knows where editor Fred Pohl is getting the material for this increased frequency, especially given that he also helms the sister books, Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow. Let's see how the new mag holds up under the compressed schedule:

The Slaves of Gree, by C. C. MacApp


by Gray Morrow

Young Jen wakes up spluttering in a pounding sea, his memories forgotten, with the trace of a foreign name in the back of his mind.  Who is "Steve Duke" and what is his relation to Jen?  The hapless jetsam of a man is rescued by his own kind, fellow slaves to the great Gree.  Jen soon gets back his memories, remembering that he belongs to the happy, harmonious Hive, a burgeoning galactic power. 

Or does he?

Turns out Jen is a double-agent, quite literally.  He has two personalities, which swap as needed.  One is one of the Hive's most promising subalterns, a puissant veteran of the space corps.  The other is Major Steve Duke, a rather unsavory Terran sent to topple the Hive from within.

There are the makings of a great story here, but it needs a lot of polish.  So much of the tale is told mechanically.  At one point, I counted ten sentences in a row beginning with "He [verbed]…"  Plus, I kept expecting a twist at the end, but instead, it's just a straight adventure story with (I felt) the wrong personality winning. 

Two stars, just shy of three.

A as in Android, by Frances T. Hall

A middle aged rebel against the system encounters an android with his face and imprinted with his memories – memories he'd sold for some quick cash a decade and a half before.  Has the robot, who was exiled to the hell planet called Cauldron, come for revenge or something else?

Frances Hall's first SF story (to my knowledge) is a solid triple.  Four stars.

The Prince and the Pirate, by Keith Laumer


by Nodel

The latest Retief story sees our favorite interstellar diplomat/super spy thwarting the topple of a monarchy.  Neither the best nor the worst of the stories in the series, it entertains reasonably.  Three stars.

The Life Hater, by Fred Saberhagen

How do you convince a machine that biological life is superior?  And in the parley between human and sentient, life-hating battleship, who is playing who?

Fred Saberhagen continues to impress with his excellent tales of the Berserkers — sentient dreadnoughts who scour the galaxy, ridding it of biological infestations.

Four stars.

Farnham's Freehold (Part 2 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

Last up is the latest installment of Heinlein's most recent novel.  Last time, Hugh Farnham, a libertarian, nudist cat-lover (no resemblance whatsoever to his creator!) ducked into a bomb shelter with his family when the Russkies started to nuke America.  Instead of dying in the holocaust, however, Farnham et. al. found themselves transported to a virgin version of their world, one in which people had never existed.  Or so they thought.

At the beginning of this month's narrative, other people show up — technologically advanced black men who enslave the Farnhams (except for their house servant, Joe, who is black) and bring them to the Summer Palace of Ponse, Lord Protector of the region.  It turns out that this isn't an alternate universe, but rather some two thousand years in the future.  Descendants of the Africans now rule the world in a static society in which the whites are slaves.  Hugh must use his wits to carve a place for himself in this society before he is eliminated (or worse!) for trespassing.

This second part holds up a lot better than the first.  Near the end, we learn that there are still free savages hiding in the Rocky Mountains, an Part 3 will likely feature some kind of Farnhem-led insurrection.  All very patriotic and appropriate for Independence Day.

Four stars.

Summing Up

Truth to tell, I'd been dreading the Heinlein and leery of the rest of the issue.  In the end, though, Pohl managed to put together a readable (if not stellar) 132 pages of SF.  I will definitely be keeping my subscription!

Let's just hope that he…and I… can keep up this busy schedule.

[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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