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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 10, 1968] Back in the Saddle Again (August 1968 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Not F-UN

Bjo Trimble, a superfan from the wayback, put together a fan shindig in Los Angeles last weekend.  Called F-UN Con, it is not only an SF convention, but it's also the first Star Trek convention, with a whole day of programming dedicated to the show.

This article is not about F-UN Con.

Why did we fly to the Bay Area this past weekend rather than trundling up to L.A., which is closer?  Well, we know the gang in 'Frisco, and they've been putting together informal conclaves every year.  We couldn't very well shuck tradition just for a new event, even if it's nominally in our back yard.

It was a good decision.  For one thing, they had a bit of Star Trek up there–this lovely reproduction of the captain's chair.

And now that The Prisoner is showing in the States, we're getting some lovely costumage, too!

Speaking of traditions that are worth upholding, the latest issue of Galaxy feels like a return to the quality of yore.  Usually, magazines pack their summer issues with their least impressive offerings, but such was not the case this time around.  Take a trip with me!


by Vaughn Bodé

Among the Bad Baboons, by Mack Reynolds


by Vaughn Bodé

Mack Reynolds continues his stories of life under "People's Capitalism" in the '80s, this time focusing on the last of the Bohemians, living in the decaying ruins of Greenwich Village.  With most of the country now on the dole, and white flight having been taken to its logical extreme, the cities are now all but abandoned, save for the "babboons"–lawless squatters–and the "hunters", who go downtown to shoot for thrills.

This story is more a vehicle for philosophical discussion than plot, and I found the end a bit distasteful.  That said, there are some fascinating suppositions in this tale.  One is that the current regime, in which prospective authors send their manuscripts to editors, who then publish them through traditional channels, will be supplanted by a revolutionary new process.  In the '80s, any author can take their novel (or story, or artwork) to a computer and have it stored for infinite reproduction.  These reproductions can then be read on a tv-phone (or in the case of art, facsimile duplicated).

This means that anyone can be a writer or an artist, and anyone can appreciate any work, any time.  And since everyone is on the dole anyway, why not be an artist or a writer?  Well, it does mean there's a lot more competition, and it's harder to become a phenomenon, but on the other hand, there's no barrier to entry.

Now, Reynolds assumes most people won't want to be artists, and they will be content to watch 24 hours of television a day while tranked up on cheap drugs.  Maybe he's right.  But as someone who already publishes nontraditionally (what is Galactic Journey and The Fantasy Amateur Press Association if not decentralized publishing), it's an exciting prospect.

Three stars, for the ideas, if anything.

Going Down Smooth, by Robert Silverberg


by Brock

Silverbob puts on his best Ellison impression with this tale of a therapist computer gone nuts listening to neurotic patients all day.

It's not bad, but it doesn't go anywhere.  I'd stick with the original.

Three stars.

A Specter is Haunting Texas (Part 2 of 3), by Fritz Leiber


by Jack Gaughan

I really had not been looking forward to this second installment of Leiber's tale.  Last time, as you recall, a spaceman-actor had landed in post-apocalyptic Texas (now ruler of all North America save the two Black republics in the southwest and southeast) to 1) perform in a short tour and 2) make good on a pitchblende claim in the Yukon.  The eight-foot tall, cadaverous, cybernetic thespian was recruited in a hit on the current President of Texas, whereupon he escaped to join causes with the revolutionary Mexican underclass.

It was all a bit silly, and while I appreciated what Leiber was doing, it didn't quite resonate with me.  This time, however, the needle fell into the groove.  As Chris Crockett La Cruz assumed the role of La Muerta, spurring the downtrodden Mexicans with promises of Vengeance and Death, Leiber's writing took on sublime proportions. The way he navigates the line between satire and seriousness so deftly, with such beautiful language and characterization, even as the characters are all caricatures, is an accomplishment for the ages.

Five stars for ths installment.

For Your Information: In Australia, the Rain …, by Willy Ley

The topic for this month's non-fiction piece is an interesting one: the artificial lakes, rivers, and resulting hydropower systems of Australia.  The presentation, however, leaves much to be desired.  I want to know the impact of these developments, both on settlement and on the environment, not be given pages of details of their precise geographical location.

Three stars.

The Time Trawlers, by Burt K. Filer


by Dan Adkins

A thousand years from now, humans will fish the future just as they now fish the seas.  As the solar system's population grows to number into the quadrillions, our race must pluck planets from 30 billion A.D. to plunder them for their resources.  An 18-year old fisherman with "the knack" for finding rich worlds, decides he doesn't want to do it anymore after seeing what the process does to already-inhabited planets.  He embarks on a one-man crusade against the practice, hatching a novel scheme to bring it to an end.

Never mind the silliness of the premise, or the fact that culture looks pretty much like 20th Century Earth in the tale.  It's a good story, well-told.  Sure, it feels a bit like early vintage Galaxy, but I like that era!

Four stars.

The Star Below, by Damon Knight


by Jack Gaughan

Thorinn, that diminutive traveler introduced in The World and Thorinn and later in The Garden of Ease, has returned.  This time, he has stumbled across an enormous warehouse filled with all manner of wondrous items.  From rich garments to strange engines to a talking box, all are marvels to the medieval-minded explorer.

Of course, it's at this point that our suspicions are confirmed that the myriad of worlds Thorinn passes through are all parts of a giant generation ship, this being the cargo hold.  What makes this segment so compelling is the description of these (to us) more-or-less familiar items to a man with no conception of technology.  The interactions between Thorinn and the little computer, particularly the way the box learns English, feel very natural.  I only wish Thorinn could have taken the box with him; it'd make an interesting companion.

Four stars.

HEMEAC, by E. G. Von Wald


by Joe Wehrle

Long ago, the robots took over the human power plants, and they also claimed a number of human hostages, who they began to educate in their own, logical images.  But the robots are breaking down, and the "renegade" humans are pounding at the gates.

What is HEMEAC, a teenaged robot-trained youth supposed to think when his teachers all start behaving erratically and the wild people defile the sacred halls of cybernia?

This is another tale with a classic (i.e. '50s) sense to it.  I particularly enjoyed the rendering of the robots, and HEMEAC's not-entirely-successful attempts to make rigid his thought processes.

Four stars.

Missed it by THAT much

Put it all together, and you get an issue that soars almost to four stars in quality–surely to contend for the best magazine of the month.  It's reads like this that keep me going, and also cause me to commend editor Pohl for keeping the proud publication on an even keel.  I know some disagree with his lambasting of the New Wave (and, indeed, Pohl is not averse to printing examples of it), but I think there is value to the continued production of novel, interesting, but also conventional SF prose.

I can't wait for next month!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 6, 1968] The Stalemate Continues (July 1968 Amazing)

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by John Boston

This July Amazing—wait, what?  You thought Amazing appeared in even-numbered months?  No more.  The mis-dating of the April issue as June means that what was to be the June issue has been pushed back—or at least the cover date has been—to avoid the confusion and likely loss of display time and sales had the publisher released a second issue dated June.  And Fantastic is pushed from July to August to keep these bimonthly magazines in alternate months rather than in direct competition. 

This issue looks a little better than the last.  There’s a new and seemingly higher grade of paper; the pages look less pulpy and the magazine is a bit thinner.  The cover, by Johnny Bruck, is lighter and more attractive than his usual; even though there’s a line of guys waving ray guns, for the foreground he’s borrowed another sort of cliché from Ed Emshwiller—guy with firm jaw, determined expression, and clenched fist staring out towards the viewer, like he just stepped off an Ace Double.  Relatively speaking, it’s a relief.


by Johnny Bruck

Once more, all but one item of fiction are reprints, though this issue’s exception is more considerable than some: House A-Fire, by Samuel R. Delany, described as a short novel (at 33 pages!) on the cover and contents page, though editor Harrison acknowledges in the letter column that it is actually an excerpt from Delany’s new novel Nova, forthcoming from Doubleday.  Delany’s name is misspelled on the cover and contents page and in Harrison’s editorial, spelled correctly on the story’s title page and in the letter column.  Are you getting tired of all this nit-picking?  So am I.  But the persistent sloppiness of this magazine continues to irritate.

Editor Harrison, clearly chafing under the reprint regime, continues to tout the non-fiction contents (seemingly the only part of the magazine that he actually controls) on the cover—“New Feature by HARRY HARRISON” (an editorial) and “New Article by ROBERT SILVERBERG POUL ANDERSON and LEROY TANNER” (the book review column).” There are also a new “Science of Man” article by Leon Stover (see below) and a London and Oslo Letter by Brian Aldiss, recounting his travels in Scandinavia.  The book review column includes Robert Silverberg’s thoughtful review of Brunner’s new novel Quicksand, Poul Anderson’s slightly celebrity-struck review of Asimov’s Mysteries, and two reviews by “Leroy Tanner,” a Harrison pseudonym.  One is a perfectly reasonable review of James Blish and Norman L. Knight’s A Torrent of Faces.  The other, of Algis Budrys’s The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn, spends more space (about a page!) denouncing Budrys for his review in another magazine of a book Harrison co-edited than it does on Budrys’s book.  This is distasteful to read and represents notably bad judgment on the editor’s part.

Harrison’s editorial, titled The Future of the Future, picks up where last issue’s mistakenly truncated editorial left off, reiterating his division of the world into SF-1, SF-2, and SF-3, and proceeding mostly to a series of platitudes.  (“SF-3.  This is wide open now and there are no rules. No one school is SF-3 and no one particular style or clique is any more important than the others.”) He does amusingly recount that he asked J.G. Ballard to tell him what inner space is, and he was about to answer, but just then someone interrupted them and the answer never came.  The letter column, with its traditional title Or So You Say, is back as well, for those who care.

House A-Fire, by Samuel R. Delany

Delany’s excerpt House A-Fire is about a bunch of overprivileged kids who are seemingly able to gallivant around the galaxy at whim.  We first meet Lorq von Ray, son of a mining magnate in the Pleaides Federation (Earth is in Draco), as a child.  Lorq’s parents are big shots in local politics.  They vacation (or something) on an off-the-map world called Brazillia where things are a little primitive; one of the local amusements is a variation on cockfighting.  There, he meets two other children, Prince Red and his sister Ruby Red; their father, Aaron Red, is a hyper-wealthy spaceship mogul from Earth, proprietor of Red-shift Ltd. (I guess Acme was taken.) Prince has an artificial right arm and is belligerently sensitive about it. 


by Gray Morrow

Young Lorq is of course brilliant and among other things, when he’s a little older, has his own spaceship, which he races in the New Ark regatta, coming in second, before heading off to a party thrown by Prince on Earth—in Paris, at the Ile St. Louis.  (“Caliban can make Earth in three days.”) He and his crew arrive and Prince immediately recruits them to rescue Che-ong, “the psychodrama star,” and her hangers-on, who have gotten stuck in a snowstorm in the Himalayas and upon rescue, prove to be a bunch of stereotypically air-headed teenagers.

At the party, everyone must have masks, and Prince has prepared an elaborate pirate mask for Lorq.  Delany has hinted to the reader, but kept Lorq in the dark, about Lorq’s father being involved in piracy.  A bit later, Lorq encounters Ruby Red, who has gotten pretty grown up since last seen, and who lets him in on the joke.  Prince shows up and tells Lorq to get away from his sister, they have a fight, and Prince lays Lorq out and messes up his face with his prosthetic fist.  Lorq’s crew carries him away and Ruby shows up on the river in her skimmer-boat and takes them all to the spaceport.  Later, in a final scene, we see Lorq, now back home, rich, and scarred, and contemplating his future.

This all sounds in summary like an overripe pulp space opera, but it is framed in some striking visualization and writing, as one would expect from Delany.  Like Lorq’s first glimpse of the mature Ruby Red:

“Then there was this: her eyes were smashed disks of blue jade, her cheek bones angled high over the white hollows of her wide face.  Her chin was wide, her mouth thin, red, and wider.  Her nose fell straight from her forehead to flare at the nostrils (she breathed in the wind—and watching her, he became aware of the river’s odor, the Paris night, the city wind); these features were too austere and violent on the face of a young woman.  But the authority with which they set together would make him look again, he knew, once he looked away; make him remember, once he had gone away.  Her face compelled in the way that makes the merely beautiful sick with jealousy.”

Yeah, a bit hokey, but it’s good hokum, suitable to our modern age.  And keep in mind that this is obviously all stage-setting for what one can hope are more substantial doings in the novel it is mined from.  Four stars, optimistically.

Locked Worlds, by Edmond Hamilton

Next up, straight from the September 1929 Amazing Stories Quarterly, is Edmond Hamilton’s Locked Worlds, all 50 pages of it.  It’s a sort of mad scientist story.  Dr. Adams, head of Physics at Northeastern University (a real place!), brilliant but widely disliked, discovers that the seemingly loose electrons sometimes found in atoms are really evidence that matter partakes of two worlds; our world’s electrons going around in one direction, the other world’s going in opposite directions.  Room for everybody! 

The rest of the profession isn’t having it and mocks Adams, who is determined to show them and get his own back.  Shortly he disappears, leaving his apparatus and a pile of bluish clay behind.  His assistant Rawlins comes to narrator Harker with an awful suspicion—and the newspaper clippings to prove it, sort of—that Adams has fled to the other world and that he’s planning his revenge there (the clippings refer to large and small piles of blue clay found at various places around the Earth).  So what to do for Rawlins and Harker but reconstruct Adams’s apparatus, follow him into whatever world he’s gone to, and thwart him?

And so they do, finding themselves on a mostly barren world with a blazing white sun overhead and blue clay under their feet.  And then—the giant spiders attack! 


by Frank R. Paul

Now Hamilton does not seem just to be trading on arachnophobia here.  Going forward, he refers to these giant spiders as spider-men, and shows them with a fairly advanced civilization.  But still, they signify that a cliched plot is about to take off, featuring captivity, aerial escape, pursuit, return in force with Earth’s new allies the bird-men (the birds and spiders engage in a dogfight), confrontation with the mad Dr. Adams, some literal cliff-hanging, and the ultimate triumph of good over evil.

Well, that was tedious.  It’s not for lack of enthusiasm on Hamilton’s part.  A sample, as our heroes escape the spiders with Nor-Kan, the bird-man, in the latter’s aircraft:

“He whirled to the craft’s controls, opened its speed lever to the last notch, and sent the air-boat racing on toward the south in a burst of added speed.  The great flying-platforms swiftly leapt after us, hurtling through the air at immense speed and slowly drawing ever closer toward us moving obliquely toward our own course.  Closer they came, and closer, air-boat and flying-platforms cleaving the air at a velocity unthinkable; now we saw from the foremost of the platforms behind us a shaft of brilliant orange light that burned toward us at the same moment.  Nor-Kan swerved the air-boat to avoid it.  He turned toward us, motioned swiftly toward the long tube-like projector mounted on a swivel at the stern of our own air-boat, and which I had already noticed.

“ ‘The static-gun!’ he cried.  ‘There are a few charges left in it—try to stop them with it!’ ”

Back in 1929 that would have been enough to get everyone’s blood up.  But in this decadent age, hot pursuit by ray-bearing airborne spiders just doesn’t seem to make it any more.  Or maybe it would take Delany to bring the spider-men to life.  Two stars.

The Genius, by Ivar Jorgensen


Uncredited

The other reprints in this issue are all from the 1950s, which is not necessarily good news.  Ivar Jorgensen is present with The Genius, from the September 1955 Amazing, except that Mr. Jorgensen is not really present because he doesn’t exist, being a house name used variously by Howard Browne, Harlan Ellison, Paul W. Fairman, Randall Garrett, Robert Silverberg, and Henry Slesar.  It is alleged in some circles that Randall Garrett is the mystery guest this time.  The story is a caveman epic, about old Zalu, who is trying to prove he’s still worth feeding so his grandson Cabo won’t bash his head in to get rid of him.  His plan doesn’t work, but Zalu does something rather significant en route to getting his head bashed in.  It’s short, readable, and mildly amusing.  Three stars.

The Impossible Weapon, by Milton Lesser


by Julian S. Krupa

None of the above can be said about Milton Lesser’s The Impossible Weapon (Amazing, January 1952), which is the kind of silly finger-exercise fluff that filled the back pages of the lower-level SF magazines in the 1950s.  Earth is losing a war to the League (League of what?  I forget), and our hero Stokes has figured out how to counter their super-weapon, but no one will listen to him, so in cahoots with a spaceman he meets in the wake of a barroom brawl, he commandeers a spaceship and takes off and proves he can do it.  Yeah, that oversimplifies a bit, but mercifully.  Stokes’s invention is silly, as is the supposed scientific rationale for it, as are all the other events from the beginning of the story to the end, so much so that I can’t bear to recount them.  Read the damn thing yourself if you must.  One star, too generously.

This Is My Son, by Paul W. Fairman


by Tom Beecham

Paul W. Fairman’s This Is My Son is from Fantastic for October 1955, during his two-year absence from the editorial masthead of that magazine.  It too is pretty dreadful.  Protagonist Temple, a young physicist with a fixation on getting a son, and his new wife are trying to reproduce, without success.  Temple has a great career opportunity and signs a contract taking him to South America for five years.  Jill is not pleased.  She wires him four months later that his son is due in five months.  But he can’t go back under his contract and if he breaks it he’ll be blacklisted.  After the five years he heads home to meet his son, and everybody’s happy, until he finds the manufacturer’s receipt for the android child, and reacts xenophobically.  Jill slaps him across the chops and then leaves after telling him, double-edgedly, that the child is as human as he is.  So he’s miserable for years, finally begins to see the error of his ways and sends the kid a gift.  Then the kid lands in the hospital after saving a couple of other kids from a fire.  Temple beats it to the hospital, the kid’s on the brink, so he offers an “old-fashioned blood transfusion” instead of the bottled plasma the nurse is about to give him.  Curtain, music swells, everything’s going to be fine.  It’s ridiculously contrived, sentimental, and manipulative, but at least demonstrates a little more craft than The Impossible Weapon.  Grading on the curve, barely two stars. 

Killer Apes—Not Guilty! , by Leon E. Stover

After the last two I am definitely in the mood for the contentious Dr. Stover, whose “Science of Man” article, Killer Apes—Not Guilty!, is suitably abrasive.  He takes on Robert Ardrey’s best-selling African Genesis from a few years ago, and he clearly has been waiting for his chance.  Ardrey attributed the bloody-minded and -handed character of homo sapiens to the apes from whom we descended.  Not so, says Stover; the apes were peaceful vegetarians (though not averse to the occasional grub or worm mixed in with their roughage), and the next step up (homo erectus) were carnivorous browsers, not carnivorous hunters.  We sapiens achieved our predatory status all on our own. 

Along the way Stover asserts with confidence a great deal about such subjects as the effect of domesticating fire on prehistoric social life, though without much explanation of how the dots were connected.  But he is also happy to patronize those of a different view, such as Ardrey’s favorite, the distinguished Professor Raymond Dart, late of the University of Witwatersrand: “Everybody is more than willing to let the old gentleman play with his pet theory that Australopithecus stood up to adult baboons and clouted them with humerus bones taken from antelopes.  Few take it seriously.” Good times!  Three stars.

Summing Up

Once more, business as usual at Amazing: signs of editorial vitality struggling to be seen beneath the clammy wet blanket of the publisher’s reprint policy, against the backdrop of negligent or indifferent production.  The stalemate continues.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 18, 1968] Four Out of Six Ain't Bad (May 1968 Galactoscope)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Stranger in a Strange Time

I was greatly impressed by Robert Silverberg's recent novel Thorns. It seemed to mark a new direction for a prolific author of competent, if undistinguished, science fiction. Will his new book reach the same level of quality? Let's find out.

The Masks of Time, by Robert Silverberg


Cover art by Robert Foster.

Christmas Day, 1998. A naked man appears out of nowhere, floating down from the sky. This fellow calls himself Vornan-19, and he claims to come from the year 2999.

With the year 2000 approaching, members of a worldwide apocalyptic cult fill the streets with wild orgies of sex and destruction. As you'd expect, the arrival of Vornan-19 changes things. Is he a fraud? A sign of the impending end of the world? Or proof that Earth will survive for many years to come?

Let's slow down a bit, in the same way the novel does at this point, and introduce some important characters.

The narrator is Leo, a physicist. He's working on time reversal. So far, all he's been able to do is transform a particle into an antiparticle, sending it backwards in time, but also causing it to be instantly destroyed. He's convinced that honest-to-gosh time travel is impossible, and therefore he thinks Vornan-19 is a phony.

Jack is a brilliant graduate student. He's been working on the theory of obtaining all energy from an atom (without the pesky side effect of a nuclear explosion), but he's not interested in any practical applications. For unclear reasons, he drops out and goes to live with his stunningly beautiful wife Shirley in a remote part of the Arizona desert.

The United States government sends Leo and a few other scientists to act as tour guides for Vornan-19, of a sort. They really want these geniuses to figure out if he's truly from the future. (Even if he isn't, he could be useful in convincing the cultists that the world isn't going to end in the year 2000.)

What follows is an episodic account of Vornan-19's encounters with people of the twentieth century. He causes chaos at a billionaire's party, in a mansion that keeps changing shape. He seduces men and women. Vornan-19 remains a mystery, revealing very little about himself or the world one thousand years from now. He becomes an object of religious devotion, leading to the book's dramatic but enigmatic conclusion.

After the intensity of Thorns, this is a surprisingly leisurely book. (I believe it is also the author's longest novel, at about two hundred and fifty pages.) We spend a lot of time with Leo, Jack, and Shirley before the narrator goes off with Vornan-19.

There's also quite a bit of sex. Jack and Shirley are nudists, and pretty soon Leo joins in. The group of scientists following Vornan-19 around includes both women and men, and we get to learn who's sleeping with whom, and who wants to sleep with whom, and who isn't sleeping with whom. Leo spends time with two prostitutes, one supplied by a grateful U.S. government, the other working at a legal, automated brothel.

(I've heard that Silverberg writes a lot of so-called adult novels under various pseudonyms, so maybe he's gotten into the habit of including this sort of thing.)

There's even a sex scene that serves as the book's climax. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the obvious pun.) We also find out why Jack ended his research, and what that has to do with Vornan-19.

This is an elegantly written novel that held my attention throughout. As I've indicated, it's hardly a thriller; the reader needs to be patient to fully appreciate it. There's a touch of satire and some interesting speculation about the technology of the near future.

Four stars.


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The Programmed Man by Jeff and Jean Sutton

Programmed Man 1968 book cover

I sometimes like to read books by authors I know nothing about, in the hope of getting a nice surprise. Well, this one certainly is not nice!

What is there to like about this?
The plot? No, dull plodding sub-Reynolds spy nonsense.
The characters? Paper-thin, laden with racist stereotypes.
The style? Long run-on sentences and expository dialogue which are about as exciting as drying paint.

Feel free to miss out on such writing as:

"Are you talking about the Alphans or spacemen in general?"

"Spacemen in general." The Doctor lifted his eyes. "I'll have to admit, I often think the Alphans are more complicated than others."

"In what way?" asked York.

"They're rather inscrutable," Bendbow explained. "As a psychomedician, I realize they don't wear their emotions or thoughts as transparently as most of us. But that's a racial characteristic."

Don’t buy it. Don’t read it. Don’t even acknowledge it. See it coming down the street, run the other way.

Save yourself!

Indeed, so bad, so offensive is this book, with enough off-handed bigotry to make even John Campbell blush to publish it, that with the blessing of the Journey staff, we've inaugurated a brand new award for badness. If the Queen Bee is bestowed for conspicuous sexism (thank goodness we have a word for the phenomenon now!) then there is only one name for the "honor" The Programmed Man deserves:

The Grand Wizard.

Close up face from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
You have been warned.


by Robin Rose Graves

The Reproductive System by John Sladek


Is it an anatomical textbook? No, it's the debut novel of John Sladek.

Scientists want to create a self-replicating machine. Why? To get a government funded grant of course.

Quickly this invention gets out of hand, with robots consuming large quantities of metal and electricity, multiplying and converting other machines into robots, displacing humans from their homes, and even killing them.

The story follows a large cast of characters, ranging from scientists to soldiers, love interests, foreign spies, reporters, et cetera. At times, it’s difficult to follow, particularly in one fast paced section of the book where nearly every paragraph hops to another character’s perspective. With a number of names to follow, characters are best distinguished by their quirks, and while sometimes they feel more like caricatures than characters, it makes for a funny read.

The tone of this book reminds me of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 or Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Speaking of the latter, I can’t help but think this is a also response to the creation of the atomic bomb. The plot revolves around the negligent nature of scientific discovery without consideration of the consequences. Much like the atomic bomb, the reproductive system might solve a more immediate problem, but the lasting effects continue to hurt civilians who had nothing to do with the creation or any say in whether something like that should exist.

Possibly this is a response to Karel Capek’s play "R.U.R." a work that is referenced in the story. To spoil a forty year old play, the fatal flaw in the robot’s revolution is their dependency on humans to make more robots. I can see this being the inspiration for Sladek’s main conflict.

Author John Sladek

Though an American writer, Mr. Sladek is currently publishing overseas, and were it not for the hilarious title, my sister probably would not have bought this book as joke on her latest trip abroad. Hopefully it will come to the states soon.

I enjoyed reading this and it earned quite a few laughs from me. While lighter on the science side, The Reproductive System clearly comes from a love of science fiction, referencing many works that came before it. The ending is perhaps appropriately happy, though a bit too convenient for my taste, but I think that was intentional on Sladek’s part, ending on one last humorous critique of the genre.

I look forward to what Sladek will write next.

4 stars.


by Gideon Marcus

After Some Tomorrow, by Mack Reynolds

Are you a Mack Reynolds fan? Then you'll like this book because it is the essence of Mack Reynolds from top to bottom, incorporating all of his strengths and few of his weaknesses.

In brief: The time is the late 20th Century. The setting is the United American States. If you've read Reynolds' Joe Mauser stories, then you know this future Earth is both a utopia and a dead end. The Cold War still simmers, but the People's Capitalism of the UAS and the Communism of the SovWorld are now two sides of the same coin: automation has put most people out of work, and wealth is concentrated with the elite while everyone else is stuck in fairly rigid castes, most living on the dole and watching telly while tranked up on free drugs. Common Europe and the few neutral countries aren't much better off.

Mick Grant and Anna Enesco are scholarship students, awarded their grant from the Joshua Porsenna endowment for a very specific reason–both seem to have the talent of precognition. The plot thickens when the mysterious and (in most places) illegal Monad Foundation also offers both of them exorbitant grants. All the Monads want is for the two to study socio-economic texts, from Anarchism to Zapata, Communism to Technocracy. Throw in the involvement of both military and government intelligence, and you've got the makings for quite an exciting time! But Reynolds manages to throw in yet another twist before finishing this slim novel, revealing the identity of the mysterious Porsenna.

The pacing for this book is excellent. Not a single chapter concluded that didn't tempt me to move on to the next. The setting is fascinating and also disturbingly plausible, and the motivation of the Monadians makes a depressing amount of sense. Of course, this being Reynolds, the book is peppered with historical essays with subjects like the anarchist Bakunin and the Greek colony of Cumae. Somehow, Reynolds makes it work. Maybe it's because the subject material was germane or simply well-presented, but it never turned me off.

The only real disappointment I had was the Anna Enesco's evolution into a caricature. She is at first played for frigid but independent. Over time, she falls for Mick, but there's never really a pay-off scene that sells the attraction. It's just accepted as having happened. By the end, her dialogue is stilted in the extreme.

I think dialogue has always been Reynolds' weak point. The man has traveled the world and has a broad knowledge of things. He knows how to plot, how to pace, how to build a world, but his characters are simply pieces in that world (though Mick isn't badly drawn, if a bit dense).

Unfortunately, this book came out November of last year; I only got to it now. As a result, though I'm giving it four stars, it's too late to make last year's Galactic Stars. Still, I recommend it.


by Blue Cathey-Thiele

Ace Double H-59

The Time Mercenaries, by Phillip E. High

Captain Randall and his crew have been preserved inside their submarine for over a thousand years. When an alien species refuses all compromise and sets out to destroy human life to make space for their own ever-growing population, these men are revived. They find humanity has genetically suppressed aggression and can't fight back, even in self defense against the Nerne.

Randall is physically outmatched, but future technology defends against future threats, and using old tricks and weapons they are able to sneak attacks under the radar. He is assigned eager robots who join his crew. After one of his men accidentally discovers how to unlock aggression – in one of my least favorite segments, when he hits a woman who insults him after they have sex, after which they… fall in love immediately and decide to get married – Randall recruits more humans. An unanticipated ally comes in the Revain, who have been fending off the Nerne for centuries. These alien allies bring their advanced tech, ships, and pills that work just as well to unlock aggression.

In the end, what ends the war isn't overwhelming force or superior firepower – it's social disruption. Using the computing of the robots, and the methods of the past, they undermine the highest ranking Nerne and cause the population to question the waves of existing lives sacrificed for potential future life.

The Nerne aren't alone in upheaval. Humans have also had a shift. With aggression, passion was also suppressed. Visible violence was removed, but other insidious forms remained – the crew had been used as a sort of nearly-alive wax museum for years before revival as a grim reminder, the government overruled the people's say, sent political opponents to become aggressive "deviants", and tasked robots – who were capable of feeling – with fighting and "dying" for them. Randall is disgusted by modern humanity's hands-off approach that still puts others in the line of fire and at the callous disregard of life by the Nerne. He doesn't delight in war, but recognizes when violence is called for to stop more death.

High makes clever use of the change in times and thinking. They didn't swoop in and do more damage, they were simply unexpected. How did they make humans violent again? Punching them in the face! It sounds absurd, and it is! But in a society without aggression, no one would be able to take that first swing.

While the whole book is set in a theater of war it explores what it means to be peaceable and how that can, and can't be achieved. It also makes a compelling case for contraceptives, and against eugenics.

4 1/2 stars

Anthropol, by Louis Trimble

Anthropol member Vernay is sent on an undercover assignment to a planet that his organization recently made and lost contact with when their scout team was killed. He is conditioned to fit in with the people, once from Earth, who live on Ujvila. It's a society strictly ordered by sex and rank, with men as subservient. He joins up with resistance fighters, helping facilitate change through the planet's own people and systems. Vernay must work around the Galactic Military (Gal-Mil) who have the same end goal but use force. He is captured and tortured, then meets the political and spiritual leader, the Kalauz. She confirms the existence of an alien presence that Anthropol had previously thought only metaphorical. These small aliens operated replicated human-forms but are no longer a threat as planetary defense scans for them.

Lori, the Captain of the Gal-Mil presence, is captured and sent to a "joy-labor camp" where prisoners rarely live past two years. Vernay volunteers himself to the camp to break her out or die trying. They escape with rebel help.

Vernay puts together odd hints he has noticed through his time on the planet, and brings it to a head when he calls to see Rosid, a resistance leader. Many of the rebels are, in fact, Ngign aliens posing as Ujvilans. Trisk, an Ujvilan rebel and cousin to the Kalauz, is horrified to discover that her people's minds were destroyed to create duplicates for the aliens. Vernay finds the one weak spot on the constructed body, the Ngignians dying in moments without a means to filter the atmosphere. They reach the Kalauz, but she too has been replaced. Trisk destroys her body, and takes over as Kalauz, starting social reform.

The epilogue calls Vernay and Lori back to the planet, as Trisk had spent four years improving the world, only to regress it to the original state, spurring new revolutionaries.

Anthropol went from a political revolution plot to an alien takeover in the last moments of the book. Although clues lead up to it, the plot turned so many times in the final chapters that it seemed there was another book's worth of material that hadn't been fully incorporated. Since so much time was spent exploring alternative methods, having the ultimate defeat come by physically attacking and killing the aliens instead of using Anthropol tactics was a let down. Also, Trimble recreated a female/male style system among the women, with feminine, "pretty" women as leaders, and masculine women given the roles usually assigned to men. As a commentary on the treatment of the sexes, it fell short.

3 stars




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[April 2, 1968] Asking the big questions (May 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

A spring thaw?

Change appears to be coming to Czechoslovakia. Faced with growing dissatisfaction last year, First Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party Antonín Novatný invited Leonid Brezhnev to visit Prague last December in the hope of shoring up his position. Instead, Brezhnev was shocked by Novatný’s unpopularity and pushed him to resign as Party Secretary (he remained President).

Alexander Dubček was elected as the new First Secretary on January 5th and soon began on a course of reforms. On February 22nd, in the presence of Brezhnev, Dubček announced that steps would be taken to bring about “the widest possible democratization of the entire socio-political system.” A few days later, the Party adopted the first draft of an action program which allows greater freedom of speech (much of the resistance to Novatný came from the Writer’s Union) and more autonomy for Slovakia (the Czech Novatný had tried to curb Slovakian culture and language; Dubček is Slovakian). February ended with the release of the first uncensored magazine by the Writer’s Union.

Alexander Dubček addresses the nation after taking office.

On March 4th, the Party Presidium voted to dismantle press censorship, and by the end of the week the papers were calling for Novatný to step down as President. On the 14th, the Party voted to politically rehabilitate party members who had been purged in the 1950s. By the 22nd, the pressure was too much for Novatný and he reluctantly resigned as President. He will be replaced by Ludvík Svoboda, who had been purged, but rehabilitated at the request of Khrushchev.

The reaction in the East Bloc has been as might be expected. A Warsaw Pact meeting was hastily called for the 23rd in Dresden. The Poles, in particular, seemed unhappy with Dubček’s reforms. They may be nervous due to the student protests in Warsaw and elsewhere in the country. The word “counterrevolution” was mentioned and the specter of Hungary was raised. Dubček seems to have calmed fears for now.

Can Dubček keep the Soviets at arm’s length and bring about his reforms? Tito managed it, but Yugoslavia isn’t in the Warsaw Pact and doesn’t have a border with the Soviet Union. Only time will tell.

Seeking answers

The stories in this month’s IF grapple with deep questions. Some are big, such as expedience versus morality or the meaning of bravery and sacrifice; others are more personal. And Poul Anderson calls everything we think about the future into question.

Supposedly for Dismal Light, which doesn’t even have two male characters. Generic art by Pederson

Limiting Factor, by Poul Anderson

In a guest editorial, Anderson starts off looking at the limits of extrapolation as a tool for science fiction and winds up warning us about the limits of growth. Not population growth, as you might expect, but rather technological growth. A conservative estimate says that industry in North America alone will raise the average temperature of the Earth by 3°C. He warns, “You needn’t extrapolate far before you see the polar icecaps melting and the continental shores flooded. A little farther, and the entire planet swelters… A little farther, and life is threatened.”

Three stars.

Where the Subbs Go, by C. C. MacApp

When humanity discovered a faster-than-light drive, the Eje appeared with the Beam, allowing even faster travel across the galaxy, and established an outpost on Pluto. They also offer medical care for those injured in space. Those injured seriously enough are given substitute bodies, all identical with tremendous healing ability. These people are known as Subbs and are generally looked down on. Ralse Bukanan is one of the richest men in the galaxy; unknown to all but his closest business partners, he is also a Subb.

When Ralse’s son is kidnapped, he has to push his company to the brink of collapse and take some huge risks to rescue the young man. Add in some stolen Eje weapons, and the stakes get even higher.

Ralse questions one of the last people to see his son. Art by Jeff Jones

This is pretty good. MacApp can write good adventure when puts his mind to it, and he handles the more philosophical parts with equal skill. What we learn about the motives of the Eje turns everything upside-down and forces Ralse to change a lot of his priorities. The story is a little long, though. It’s right on the line between three and four stars, but probably good enough to go high.

A low four stars.

New Currents in Fandom, by Lin Carter

Our Man in Fandom takes a look at some new trends among fans. He starts off with the giving of fan awards at the latest Worldcon. He does try slightly to defend calling the awards Pongs, but I do share his hope that fan awards will continue to be given. After a quick look at some adjacent fandoms—which he’s covered before—Carter tells about an effort to print a portfolio of the late Hannes Bok’s work. Finally, he mentions a group of medieval reenactors known as The Society for Contemporary Anachronisms (sic; it’s Creative Anachronism). They’ll be holding a tournament at the Worldcon in Oakland on the afternoon of Labor Day.

Three stars.

Dismal Light, by Roger Zelazny

At the behest of Earth, Francis Sandow turned a bare hunk of rock orbiting Betelgeuse into the barely livable world Dismal, which Earth turned into a prison. The unnamed narrator stuck around after his sentence was up to keep working on a project to figure out the secret of a strain of extremely fast-growing rice. When an evacuation is announced because Betelgeuse is about to go nova, he drags his feet, saying he hopes to answer the question plaguing him. It may be more personal than rice.

One of the dangers faced by the narrator. Art by Brock

Zelazny gives us another of his smart-mouthed narrators. It’s starting to become a key feature of his work that he ought to use a little less frequently. The story is told with all the usual skill we expect from this author, but it fell a little short for me. That may be because the deeply personal question the narrator is struggling with didn’t resonate with me.

A very high three stars, but others may well give it a fourth.

Past Touch-the-Sky Mountain, by Barry Alan Weissman

Sommerfield, John is a merchant in the Chinese empire. On his way from his home base on the west coast of the New World (discovered by Marco Polo) to the British territory of Standish, his trip is interrupted by a police officer who has never heard of such nonsense.

Weissman is this month’s first-time author. Although forgettable, the story is well-written and has enough of a twist at the end to make it enjoyable.

Three stars.

Cenotaph, by D. M. Melton

As the shuttle bringing passengers down to Mora II swings past the Cenotaph Satellite, Steve Mendes reflects on the events that took the lives of the three people memorialized there, saving the lives of a full ship of colonists. Deservedly or not, he carries a lot of guilt.

Passing the Cenotaph when possible is tradition. Art by Eddie Jones

Melton’s output thus far has been a consistent low three stars. He’s taken a big step forward here. The events that took the lives of some of the forward team may not be terribly believable, but the characterization and internal monologue of the narrator are very well done.

A very low four stars.

The Creatures of Man, by Verge Foray

Hard-shelled, metal-spitting creatures have come to the world. After discussing things with a spider, a butterfly decides it is time to summon Man.

The butterfly and spider discuss the new creatures. Art by Wehrle

There’s a dreamlike quality to the narrative that, I suppose, reflects the different thought processes of the insect characters. However, the story was painfully obvious, too long, and the butterfly’s knowing of the “now-moment” didn’t really make any sense to me.

A low three stars, others may like this better.

The Man in the Maze (Part 2 of 2), by Robert Silverberg

Richard Muller was one of Earth’s top diplomats when he was sent to make contact with the first aliens humanity had discovered. On his return, he discovered that no one could stand to be around him for more than a few minutes, because the emotions of his deep subconscious radiate from him. In disgust, he retreated to the desolate planet Lemnos and the heart of a million-year-old city surrounded by deadly traps. Now his services are needed again. Charles Boardman, the man who sent Muller on the mission that gave him his affliction, and Ned Rawlins, the son of Muller’s late best friend, have come to recruit him.

Ned gradually gains Muller’s trust, feeding him the lies carefully constructed by Boardman. Eventually, he is overcome with guilt at the deception and reveals all to Muller. This was definitely not in Boardman’s plans. Is it possible to convince Muller to undertake this vital mission? If he goes, will he be healed? Can he rejoin humanity?

Ned may have gone too far to gain Muller’s trust. Art by Gaughan

Silverberg wraps up his retelling of Philoctetes strongly, though not as strongly as I had hoped. The final chapter, which focuses on Ned, is very, very good; it’s just that getting there wasn’t entirely satisfying. The whole thing is still excellent, and I’ll be putting it on my shelves when the novel comes out.

A high four stars for this segment and a very high four for the novel as a whole.

Summing up

At the beginning of the year, editor Fred Pohl promised a number of new features would be coming. So far, all we’ve seen is the introduction of the SF Calendar. Now for the first time since the October 1965 issue brought us the end of Skylark DuQuesne and the beginning of Retief’s War, the end of one serial hasn’t shared the issue with the start of a new. I’m not sure I’d call that a positive innovation, but I suppose Galaxy going monthly means Fred now has two vehicles for serials.

In any case, this is another strong issue for IF. Fred’s probably worked through the dross he’d already bought before the demise of Worlds of Tomorrow and now doesn’t need to buy filler. I hope having more pages to fill every month with 50% more Galaxy doesn’t change that.

Oh, dear. Are we going back to The Reefs of Space? Well, new Delany and Chandler is good.




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[March 2, 1968] Rules and Regulations (April 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

New rules

Readers don’t need to be reminded that the Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France came to a close just two weeks ago. Of course, most of the attention has gone to French skier Jean-Claude Killy, who took all three gold medals in the Men’s Alpine events, and American Peggy Fleming’s absolutely dominating performance in the Ladies’ Figure Skating competition. But the Games also saw many firsts. Norway took the most medals with 14, taking the top spot from the Soviet Union for the first time since the latter began participating. Morocco fielded a team for the first time (believe it or not, there’s decent skiing in the Atlas Mountains), and East and West Germany participated as separate countries for the first time. This was also the first time the Winter Games were broadcast in color.

There were also some new rules. There has been growing concern over the last few years about athletes taking various drugs to improve their performance, commonly called doping. In 1967, the International Olympic Committee finally joined most other sport associations in instituting a ban on the practice. A total of 86 athletes were tested for various substances, and all tests came back negative. The IOC also began performing sex tests on female athletes this year in order to prevent intersex persons from competing in women’s competition. None were found, but after the policy was announced last year, several Eastern European athletes announced their retirement, which prompted a great deal of speculation.

The stars of the show. (l.) Jean-Claude Killy sporting his medals. (r.) Peggy Fleming in her spectacular performance.

Rules that bend, rules that break

Sometimes rules may be onerous, wrong, or perhaps just inconvenient. Maybe you need to bend them a little, maybe you need to break them and replace them with something better. The stories in this month’s IF offer several cases in point.

The Advanced Guard prepare to study the fauna of Chryseis. Art by Vaughn Bodé

The Man in the Maze, by Robert Silverberg

Richard Muller was one of Earth’s top diplomats when he was sent to make contact with the first aliens humanity had discovered. On his return, he discovered that no one could stand to be around him for more than a few minutes, for reasons that are not yet explained. In disgust, he retreated to the desolate planet Lemnos and the heart of a million-year-old city surrounded by deadly traps. Now his services are needed again. Charles Boardman, the man who sent Muller on the mission that gave him his affliction, and Ned Rawlins, the son of Muller’s late best friend, have come to recruit him. With the aid of robots to plan a safe route through the maze, they make their way deep into the city. As the installment ends, young Ned is about to find Muller. To be continued.

A robot seeks the next lethal trap. Art by Gaughan

If this sounds familiar, that’s because Silverberg is working with the myth of Philoctetes, the heir to the bow of Hercules whose festering wound caused the Greeks to maroon him on the way to Troy, but who is needed for their victory. More specifically, he’s using the play by Sophocles with a bit of Algis Budrys’s Rogue Moon thrown in for excitement. Muller is Philoctetes, Boardman is wily Odysseus, and Rawlins is the naive and honorable Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. This is all set-up, with Muller’s past revealed in flashbacks as the viewpoint shifts among the three main characters. It’s very good, but the meat will come in the next installment.

A very high four stars, with a probable five for the whole thing.

The Edward Salant Letters, by Jerry Juhl

A series of letters between a customer having trouble with his Phonotyper and the computerized service department of American Business Equipment.

Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. Art uncredited

Jerry Juhl is this month’s new author. More interestingly, he is a writer and puppeteer for the Muppets, which American readers may have seen on The Tonight Show, The Mike Douglas Show, or in commercials. Readers outside the U. S. are probably out of luck, but keep your eyes open for them. They’re very, very funny. As for the story, we’ve seen this a hundred times, but this one has an unusual twist that makes it fresh. I certainly didn’t see it coming.

A high three stars.

The Rim Gods, by A. Bertram Chandler

A group of Neo Calvinists from the planet Francisco has stopped at Lorn on their way to Kinsolving’s Planet. Around a century ago, a Stone Age man, an artist who made animals appear by making cave paintings of them, appeared there. He eventually found his way to Francisco and joined the Neo Calvinists. Also with them is the cave artist’s great-granddaughter, one of Francisco’s Blossom People, who practice a sort of hedonistic Zen. The Neo Calvinists believe she has inherited her ancestor’s power and want to use her to bring the Lord to Kinsolving’s Planet and make it a New Sinai. To his great dismay, Commodore John Grimes has been ordered to accompany them as an observer.

They look like fun. Art by Morrow

John Grimes is a man who enjoys his pipe and likes a good tipple. He’s the last person who should be locked in a small ship with this straitlaced bunch. Of course, that’s where this story gets its humor and most of its tension. It’s an enjoyable read if you’ve liked some of Grimes’ earlier adventures, but the ending is a bit confused and rushed.

Three stars.

Meanwhile, Back at the Worldcon…, by Lin Carter

Carter wraps up his report on last year’s Worldcon. It’s mostly more name-dropping, a brief mention of the costume ball, and an enumeration of the Hugo Awards. As I said last month, you're better off reading the Journey’s con report.

A low three stars.

The Product of the Masses, by John Brunner

An Advanced Guard unit under Commander Jeff Hook has been dispatched to the planet Chryseis to assist Dr. Leila Kunje and her team of biologists in studying the local fauna. Unfortunately, the loose, non-hierarchical style of the Advanced Guard are at odds with the extremely repressed (or uptight as the kids are saying these days) attitude of Dr. Kunje. An attitude so repressed it blinds her to some obvious facts, causing problems for everyone.

The local fauna to be studied. These are the smaller males. Art by Vaughn Bodé

They say John Brunner is two authors: the literary New Wave writer who sells to the British market and the outdated hack who writes for the American market. This is work even the hack ought to be ashamed of. Dr. Kunje is a character type that only British male authors seem to write: deeply, angrily sexually repressed to the point of denying the existence of sex, love or even affection. I’m reminded of the journalist in Arthur C. Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust who suffers from “impacted virginity.” No zoologist who is unable to see the glaringly obvious facts in this story would ever have risen to the level that would allow her to be chosen for this mission. It’s a pity, because this could have been a fun, if inconsequential adventure story.

Barely two stars, based only on Brunner being able to string together entertaining sentences.

Slowboat Cargo (Part 3 of 3), by Larry Niven

On the planet Plateau, Matt Keller has become involved with the Sons of Earth, who hope to overthrow the rule of the crew and become more than a labor force and source of organs. When the group was arrested, Matt managed to escape thanks to his strange ability to make people forget he exists. Meanwhile, a mysterious new technology has arrived from Earth via unmanned ramjet. Matt rescued the leadership of the Sons of Earth, and a bit of coincidence brought them into contact with planetary leader Millard Parlette. Together, they start work on a compromise that will put an end to the unjust treatment of the colonists and one day lead to the end of the organ banks. Unbeknownst to them, Matt and another rebel have entered the Hospital again on slightly different rescue missions.

Matt quickly learns to control his power and discovers a corollary power as well. He rescues the girl he fell for back in the first installment, but she proves either to have been driven insane by torture or to have been a fanatic all along. Meanwhile, the politicians come to the realization that there are more factions than just crew and colonist. Talk will have to be backed up by action.

And as the story ends, an Earth ramrobot bound for We Made It catches the attention of the space-dwelling alien merchants known as the Outsiders.

Matt takes a dive. Art by Adkins

Once again, the more interesting bits are people sitting around talking politics. The action verges on the repetitive, and while the actions of the young woman Matt rescues result in the main antagonist getting his just deserts, they felt unjustified by the story. Of course, we barely got to know her at all, so that could be part of the problem. Nevertheless it’s an enjoyable read. It’s also a reminder that the real work begins once the revolution ends. Plateau has a long way to go to become the equitable and just society we saw in The Ethics of Madness.

Three stars for this installment, but I think the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and might be worth four stars.

Summing up

When I finished the magazine, I thought it was the best issue of IF in over a year. After all, when the worst story is by John Brunner, it’s got to be pretty good, right? Unfortunately, that Brunner story really brings down the average. Still, it does hold the end of pretty good novel, the start of a novel that may be very, very good, and a couple of decent stories. I think I’d be happy if IF was this enjoyable every month.

Looks like MacApp may be investigating another alien society, and new Zelazny. Fingers crossed!

I have no idea what to make of tonight's episode of Star Trek

Come join us and help us figure it out!




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[November 8, 1967] Four to go (December 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

The New Frontier

Tomorrow, history will be made: the first Saturn V, largest rocket in the history of the world, will take off.  If successful, Project Apollo's launch vehicle will be "man-rated", and one hurdle between humanity and the moon will have been cleared.

Of course, we'll have full coverage of the event after it happens, but this sneak preview makes a dandy segue.  For today's article is on a literary type of explorer: Galaxy magazine.  Unlike Apollo, Galaxy, which started in 1950, is a tried, tested, and even somewhat tired entity.  Back in 1959, Galaxy moved to a larger, but bimonthly, format.  This has not been an entirely successful endeavor, and in few issues are the problems more glaring than in this one.  For if an editor needs to fill up 196 pages every other month (not to mention the 164 pages of one or two sister magazines), that editor's standards must sometimes slip…

The Old Frontier


by Gray Morrow

Outpost of Empire, by Poul Anderson

Out on the edge of space lies the mineral-poor planet of Freehold. Thinly settled by humans, and then also by the alien Arulians, it lies just outside the Empire.  A growing insurgency threatens to topple the existing order, and Ridenour, an imperial troubleshooter, is sent in to monitor the situation.


by Gray Morrow

Sounds pretty nifty, but it's not.  The first twenty pages of this seventy-page piece are nothing but characters explaining the story to each other.  Skimming the rest of the tale, I determined that it's all more of the same.  Moreover, Poul doesn't even try to disguise what he's doing.  He spotlights it by having his endlessly explaining protagonist marvel at what a pedant he's being–and when other characters do the same thing, he inwardly notes how much a pedant they're being.

As Kris notes:

Rule 1 of writing: If your characters are finding what you are doing contrived, so will the reader.

The whole thing is written in that archaic style Poul reverts to when given the chance, though there's no reason to do so in this book.  He also can't resist being a bit sexist, even in a story that takes place thousands of years from now.  Dig this gem:

"But in the parks, roses and Jasmine were abloom; and elsewhere the taverns brawled with merriment.  The male citizens were happily acquiring the money that the Imperialists brought with them; the females were still more happily helping spend it."

Because in the future, women don't work; they are parasites on the real producers–the men.

Feh.  One star.

That already gets us nearly halfway through the book.  Things do not immediately improve…

The South Waterford Rumple Club, by Richard Wilson


by Jack Gaughan

Aliens drop bags of counterfeit money on a small American town.  Economic collapse ensues, facilitating an extraterrestrial takeover.

I was about to write that Wilson was an unknown name to me, but looking through the archives, I see he's made several appearances in science fiction magazines over the past two years.  He's just eminently forgettable.  This story does not change the trend.  For one, he spends a couple of pages giving a history lesson as to why an influx of fake currency is such a deadly weapon–akin to anthrax and mustard gas.  And then we get a tedious demonstration of such an attack, followed by a couple of pages of (not well thought out) aftermath.

This is the sort of inferior stuff that filled the lesser mags of the '50s.  It doesn't belong here.

Two stars.

Thank goodness for Silverbob.  From here on, out, the issue is quite good.  But you have to make it to page 96!  (or simply skip the dross)

King of the Golden World, by Robert Silverberg

Elena, a human, has married Haugan, chief of a tribe of aliens that lives on an island dominated by twin volcanic mounts.  Theirs is a genuine love, despite their divergent evolutions, but full understanding still eludes the Earth woman.  Though the mountain on which the village is sited is clearly about to erupt, Haugan seems in no hurry to evacuate his people.  It is only on the eve of disaster that Elena learns the true, alien nature of Haugan's people.  Will she embrace it or be repelled?

This is really quite a sensitive story, timeless and nuanced.  I suspect it was influenced by Silverberg's recent nonfiction histories of the original American inhabitants (collectively referred to as "Indians").

Four stars.

For Your Information: Astronautics International, by Willy Ley

Ten years ago, it was enough to keep up with the Soviets and the Americans if you wanted to know what was up in space.  These days, Earth's orbit has become a truly international province, and this month's article focuses on the efforts of the non-superpowers, of which there are many.

As a space buff, articles on satellites always score extra marks with me, so I hope our tastes are aligned.  Four stars.

Black Corridor, by Fritz Leiber

A man awakens, naked, without memories, inside a featureless corridor.  Ahead of him lie two doors: one is labeled "Water", the other "Air".  Behind him a wall moves toward him implacably.  Choose…or die.

But beyond the first pair of doors is another, and another.  Is this a test?  Will the test end?  And what is its purpose?

Less a science fiction story and more a metaphor for life itself, this piece's worth depends solely on the execution.  Thankfully, Leiber is up to the task.

Four stars.

The Red Euphoric Bands, by Philip Latham

A comet is heading straight for an Earth on the brink of atomic war.  Is it our doom…or our salvation?

On the one hand, the storytelling and the science are quite excellent.  On the other, the conclusion is silly.  Moreover, there is a fundamental fault in this otherwise accurate piece: a comet with a two light year orbit would have a period of around six billion years–too high to serve the purposes of the story.

Thus, three stars.

Galactic Consumer Report No. 3: A Survey of the Membership, by John Brunner

The first galactic survey, conducted by Good Buy magazine, turned out to be something of a fiasco–too many beings responded, and they were just too variegated to provide anything like a profile of "an average consumer".  Yet, you couldn't call the exercise less than successful…

This series tends to be silly and throw-away, but this installment I liked a lot.  Why?  Because it's almost like a Theodore Thomas article from his F&SF column–a couple dozen story seeds all in one piece.  So many stories feature aliens that are little more than humans in costume.  This one presents some real aliens.  It also made me laugh a few times.

So, four stars.

Handicap, by Larry Niven


by Jack Gaughan

On the former Kzin world of Down, orbiting a feeble red dwarf, humans have established an agricultural colony.  In addition to its colorful history, Down offers another attraction: the Grogs.  These are comical-looking, human-sized creatures that have two phases in life.  At first, they are four-legged creatures with a dog-like intelligence.  In this form, they rove the deserts of Down, hunting and mating.  Eventually, the females anchor themselves to a rock, where they stay the rest of their lives.

And yet, these creatures have enormous brains, suggesting a great intelligence.  Why did they evolve them, and what can they do with them?  Garvey, an entrepreneur whose line is making prosthetics for "Handicapped" species, ones without manipulative organs of their own (e.g. dolphins, the enormous Bandersnatchi of planet Jinx), smells an opportunity.

Handicap, like last year's A Relic of Empire, expands what is becoming a sweeping common universe, tying in the Kzinti of The Warriors, the Thrintun of World of Ptavvs, and the hyperdrive era of Beowulf Shaeffer.  What I really like about Niven is that he isn't in a hurry to tell his story.  There are asides and subplots, weaving a meandering course through entertaining vignettes, before tying everything together at the end.  Niven's universe feels lived in, and all of its facets are interesting.  That there's a nifty story at the heart of Handicap is a bonus…though my eyebrows were raised a bit by this exchange:

Garvey: "For as long as we expand to other stars we're going to meet more and more handless, toolless, helpless civilizations.  Sometimes we won't even recognize them.  What are we going to do about them?"

Jilson (a guide): "Build Dolphin's Hands for them."

Garvey: "Well, yes, but we can't just give them away.  Once one species starts depending on another, they become parasites."

This feels a bit like an indictment of welfare, foreign aid…or assistance to the handicapped.  I would not jump to concluding that Garvey's views necessarily represent Niven's views, but I also would not be surprised, as he is a hereditary millionaire, and the plutocracy often thinks ill of public demands on their wealth.  I will simply note that I think Garvey is being short-sighted.  Isn't it worth the investment of a little charity to create an entirely new potential market of both imports and exports?  If you give away limbs to the crippled, schools to the poor, food to the starving, will they really just sit on their duffs?  Or will they simply now be unencumbered members of society, ready to participate fully?  I submit that equalization of opportunity through government assistance and charity actually serves capitalism rather than subverts it.

Well, that's a tiny quibble, and again, just because Garvey thinks this way doesn't mean the author does.  If anything, I'm glad he gave me something to think about–along with a good story!

Four stars.

The Fairly Civil Service, by Harry Harrison


by Jack Gaughan

A day in the life of the postal clerk of the future.  A particularly bad, seemingly endless day.  The kind that tries a person's soul…or tests one's abilities.

Harrison is reliably good.  He does not disappoint here.  Four stars.

To the Black Beyond

Having trudged through a barren literary landscape for half the span of a magazine, it was comforting to have solid ground to trod for the latter half.  But now that the Galaxy is done, I am once again adrift.  Who knows what lies in store within the covers of the next magazine or paperback that will cross my desk?  Like the expanses of space, it's all an unknown adventure.

Luckily, there are still enough treasures waiting to be found to make the journey worth it!



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[October 10, 1967] Jack the Ripper and Company (Dangerous Visions,Part One)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

There's a new anthology of original science fiction and fantasy stories in bookstores this month. It's certain to be the topic of a lot of discussion among SF buffs, and maybe even some arguments.

It's also big; more than five hundred pages, and it'll set you back a whopping seven bucks. It's so big, in fact, that Galactic Journey is going to slice it into three pieces and discuss it in a trio of articles. (Why three? Because it's got thirty-three stories in it, and eleven articles would be silly.)

Let's dig into the first part of this mammoth collection and see if it's destined to be the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of speculative fiction, or just another dud.

Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison


Wraparound cover art by the husband-and-wife team of Leo and Diane Dillon, who also provide an interior illustration for each story.

Before we get to the nitty-gritty of fiction, we've got no less than two forewords by Isaac Asimov and a lengthy introduction by the editor.

In The Second Revolution, the Good Doctor outlines the history of modern science fiction from Gernsback through Campbell, and into the New Wave. Astounding was the first revolution, you see, and now we're in the second one. That may be a little simplistic, but it gets the point across.

Harlan and I, on the other hand, is a personal essay about Asimov's relationship with the editor, ending with a teasing anecdote. Ellison adds a long footnote offering a different version of their first encounter.

More substantial is Thirty-Two Soothsayers, the editor's longwinded but endlessly entertaining and informative account of what this book is supposed to accomplish, and how it came to be. Ellison wanders all over the place in this piece, and it's a fun ride. In brief, the stories he chose are supposed to be both enjoyable and provocative, with new ideas that might not appear in the usual SF markets. We'll see.

(If you're wondering why thirty-two and not thirty-three, it's because one writer supplies two stories; but that's for another time.)

I should mention that each story comes with an introduction by the editor and an afterword by the author, except for the one case when those roles are reversed. You'll see what I mean in a while.

I'm going to do something a little different here. I'll rate the quality of each story with the usual one to five stars, but I'll also add an indication for how dangerous each one is. This will be determined by sexual content, violence, profanity, experimental narrative style, taboo subject matter, etc. GREEN = safe to proceed, YELLOW = caution indicated, RED = hazardous conditions.

Let's begin.

Evensong, by Lester del Rey

An unnamed character flees through the universe in an attempt to escape those who have overthrown his reign. To say anything else would give away the point of the story, which is an allegory.

Three stars. YELLOW for questioning the deeply held beliefs of some readers.

Flies, by Robert Silverberg

In a premise similar to his excellent novel Thorns, the author presents a severely injured astronaut who has been put back together by aliens. In this case, however, his body has been restored to normal, but his mind has been made more sensitive to the emotions of others. That doesn't work out well.

Silverberg has become a fine writer, one of the best now working. Like Thorns, this is an uncompromising look at human suffering.

Five stars. YELLOW for scenes of extreme cruelty.

The Day After the Day the Martians Came, by Frederik Pohl

Set in the very near future, this tale deals with humanity's reaction to the discovery of ugly, semi-intelligent lifeforms on the red planet. Mostly, people make nasty jokes about them. The intent of the story is to expose human prejudices, in a way that's about as subtle as a brick thrown through a window.

Three stars. YELLOW for dealing with a major social problem in the USA today.

Riders of the Purple Wage, by Philip Jose Farmer

This is, by far, the longest story in the book. It is also incredibly dense and fast-paced, so any attempt to describe the plot would be a miserable failure. That said, I'll just mention that it takes place in a very strange future, involves an artist and his tax-dodging ancestor, and contains a ton of wordplay. There are scenes of slapstick violence that are simultaneously hilarious and offensive. It's a wild rollercoaster ride, so keep your seatbelt tightly secured.

Five stars. RED for a Joycean narrative style and Rabelaisian humor.

The Malley System, by Miriam Allen deFord

In the future, the worst criminals receive a very unusual punishment. This is a grim story, that doesn't shy away from the horrors perpetuated by human monsters.

Three stars. YELLOW for violence.

A Toy for Juliette, by Robert Bloch

In a decadent future, a man uses the only time machine in existence to kidnap people from the past, in order to satisfy the whims of his sadistic granddaughter. He picks the wrong potential victim. This is a spine-chilling little science fiction horror story with a twist in its tail.

Three stars. YELLOW for sex, torture, and murder.

The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World, by Harlan Ellison

This is a direct sequel to the previous story, with an introduction by Bloch and an afterword by Ellison. An infamous murderer finds himself in the far future, where the inhabitants enter his mind in order to enjoy his sensations as he kills.

Written in an experimental, almost cinematic style, this is an unrelenting look at the evil that lurks inside all of us. Not for weak stomachs.

Four stars. RED for explicit violence.

The Night That All Time Broke Out, by Brian W. Aldiss

People get so-called time gas supplied to their homes through pipes. It allows them to enjoy better times in the past. As with any form of technology, things can go wrong. This is a light comedy with a unique premise.

Three stars. GREEN for whimsy.

The Man Who Went to the Moon – Twice, by Howard Rodman

A young boy takes a trip to the Moon by holding on to a balloon, becoming a local celebrity. Many years later, as a very old man, his only claim to fame is not as valued as it once was. Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, this is a gentle, quietly melancholy tale.

Three stars. GREEN for wistful nostalgia.

Faith of Our Fathers, by Philip K. Dick

The Communist East has won a hot war with the Capitalist West. The protagonist is a bureaucrat given the task to determine which of two term papers truly represents the Party line. Meanwhile, a seemingly harmless substance allows him to perceive what appear to be multiple and contradictory truths about the Mao-like Party leader.

That's a vague synopsis, because this is one of the author's stories in which you've never quite sure what is real and what is illusory. Ellison strongly hints that it was written under the influence of hallucinatory drugs. Be that as it may, it's a provocative and disturbing look at the possible nature of reality.

Four stars. YELLOW for politics, drug use, and existential terror.

The Jigsaw Man, by Larry Niven

A man is sentenced to death for his crime. His organs will be harvested for transplant. Through a series of unusual circumstances, he manages to escape from prison, but his troubles aren't over yet.

The full impact of this story doesn't hit the reader until the very end, when we find out the nature of the man's offense.  Other than that, it's an ordinary enough science fiction action/suspense story.

Three stars.  GREEN for futuristic adventure.

One Down, Two To Go

So far, this is a fine collection of stories, without a bad one in the bunch.  Sensitive readers might want to stay away from the more dangerous ones, but most mature SF fans will enjoy it.




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[August 12, 1967] Planetary Adventures (August 1967 Galactoscope)

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by Gideon Marcus

Five against Arlane, by Tom Purdom

As you may know, I am a big fan of Tom Purdom.  He's a very nice fellow, and his first book, I Want the Stars, was a stand-out.  Thus, I was quite excited to see that the new Ace Double at the local bookstore featured my writer friend.

The first two chapters do not disappoint.  We are thrown into the action as Migel Lassamba (explicitly of African descent; no lily-white casts in Tom's books) holds up a rich man and his personal doctor.  His goal: to get an artificial heart for his companion and love, Anata.  Why doesn't he just get one for free from the government hospitals?  Because Migel, Anata, and three others are rebels whose goal is to topple Jammett, dictator of the planet Arlane.  Five against Arlane, you see?

Thus ensues a ever-widening conflict between the outnumbered but canny rebel troops and Jammett, who resorts to increasingly draconian methods to retain control.  His biggest ace in the hole is his ability to slap mind-control devices onto citizens.  These "controllees" are fully conscious, but their bodies belong to the dictator, obeying his every whim.  As Migel's cadre begins to turn the tide against Arlane's leader, the abuse of the controllees gets pretty grim.

There's a lot to like about this book.  Arlane is a nicely drawn world, mostly tidally locked so its days last forever and only the pole is inhabitable.  The descriptions of technology and society are largely timeless.  Purdom is excellent at conveying material that will not be dated in a decade.  As in Tom's other stories, we have intimations of free love and even polygamy/andry, and there is no real distinction between sex or race.

Sadly, where the book falls down is the execution.  After those exciting first chapters, the chess-like contest between the rebels and Jammett feels perfunctorily written, as if Tom had to get from A to C, and he wasn't particularly interested in writing B.  It almost reads like a chronicle of a homebrew wargame (ah, what a wargame this novel would make!) If I'd been the editor, I'd have sent it back and asked for…more.  More emotion.  More characterization.  More reason to feel invested.  And a more fleshed out ending (but perhaps that was a fault of the editing, not the writing).

I noted that the weakest parts of I Want the Stars and Tom's latest short story, Reduction in Arms, were the curiously detached combat scenes.  Where Tom excels is the thinky bits.  I suggest he either work harder on the fighting pits, or stick to thinky bit stories (like his excellent Courting Time).

Three stars.

Lord of the Green Planet, by Emil Petaja

Emil Petaja is a new writer perhaps best known for his science fiction sagas based on the Karevala, the Finnish body of mythological work.  Now, Petaja plumbs Irish myth for this truly strange, but also rather conventional science fantasy.

Diarmid Patrick O'Dowd (a fine Jewish name) is a scout captain for X-Plor, Magellanic Division.  His flights of exploration frequently take him close to a mysterious, green-shrouded object.  Finally unable to resist, he becomes the first of his corps to pierce the viridian veil.  His ship crashes and disintegrates, leaving him stranded in a Celtic nightmare.  On one side, the towers of the islands, inhabited by Irish lords whose beautiful works are created on the backs and tears of countless generations of peasants.  On the other, the fetid swamps of the Snae–froglike magicians who seem to predate the human colonists.  And up in the tower of T'yeer-Na-N-Oge resides the Deel, Himself, who rules over the world with a song whose lyrics none can deviate from, enforced by a panoply of beasts, flying, swimming, and creeping.

Of course, there is a personal element as well.  The beautiful but utterly rotten-hearted Lord Flann plans to unite the islands and lead a crusade against the Nords.  But first, he would marry his fair and kind cousin, Fianna.  Fianna, on the other hand, has other designs.  After rescuing Diarmid upon his arrival, she falls for the fellow, teaches him swordplay, and helps him fulfill his geassa to save the planet from the domination of the Deel.  Along the way, there is plenty of swashbuckling, mellifluously articulate sentences, weird foes, and a twist.

It's pure fantasy, more akin to Three Hearts and Three Lions than anything else.  But it's fun.  And it has warcat steeds (Purdom's book has watchcats–I guess oversized felines are in this year).

Three and a half stars — and I'll wager Cora and/or Kris would give it four.

Triads


by Victoria Silverwolf

Two new science fiction novels deal with the relationships among three characters. As we'll see, in one of these the trio is very intimately connected. First of all, however, let's take a look at the latest book from an author known for prolificity.

Thorns, by Robert Silverberg


Cover art by Robert Foster.

The novel begins and ends with the same words, spoken by two very different characters and having different implications.

Pain is instructive.

In this way, the author announces his theme from the very start. Thorns is all about suffering. Physical pain, to some extent, but, more importantly, emotional pain.

Duncan Chalk is a grotesquely obese, incredibly rich man who controls just about all forms of entertainment throughout the solar system. Secretly, he is also a kind of psychic vampire, feeding off the misery of others.

Minner Burris is a space explorer who, against his will, was surgically transformed by aliens. His two companions died during the procedure and he barely survived, monstrously changed outside and in. As a result, he is a loner, seen as a freak by other people.

Lona Kelvin is a teenage girl who had a large number of her ova removed and fertilized outside her body. The resulting babies were developed inside other women, or in artificial wombs. Although her physical appearance remains unchanged, the resulting publicity made her as much of an outsider as Minner.

Duncan's plan is to bring these two miserable people together, both as a form of voyeuristic entertainment for an audience of millions and to feed on their suffering. To win their cooperation, he promises to give Minner a new body and to allow Lona to raise two of the infants produced from her eggs as her own children.

At first, the pair simply share their mutual pain, sympathizing with each other. As Duncan sends them on a luxurious vacation to all the pleasure spots in the solar system, they become lovers. As he predicted, however, their differences soon lead to ferocious arguments. Minner sees Lona as an ignorant child, and Lona comes to hate Minner's bitterness and anger. Can they escape from Duncan's scheme, and find some kind of peace?

Reading this book is an intense, almost overpowering experience. It is the most uncompromising work of science fiction dealing with human suffering since Harlan Ellison's story Paingod. Although set in a semi-utopian future, the settings — a cactus garden, Antarctica, the Moon, Saturn's satellite Titan — are almost all stark and bleak. There are other characters I have not mentioned — an idiot savant, abused by his family; the widow of one of Minner's fellow astronauts, obsessed with him in a masochistic way — who offer more examples of the varieties of pain.

In addition to offering a vividly described, detailed future, Silverberg writes in a highly polished style, full of metaphors and literary allusions. I believe this is his finest work since the outstanding story To See the Invisible Man. With this novel, and his highly praised novella Hawksbill Station, I think we're seeing a new Silverberg, adding greater sophistication and more serious themes to his inarguable ability to produce an unending stream of fiction.

Five stars.

The Werewolf Principle, by Clifford D. Simak


Cover art by Richard Powers.

Andrew Blake is a man with a problem. First of all, that's not even his real name. He picked it at random.

You see, Andrew (as we'll call him in this review) was discovered in deep space, after having been in suspended animation for a couple of centuries. He has no memory of his past, although he is familiar with Earth the way it was two hundred years ago.

In order to discuss this novel at all, I need to talk about something that the author reveals about one-third of the way into the book. I don't think that gives too much away, but if you'd rather dive into it without knowing anything about the plot you should stop reading here.

Still with me? Good.

Andrew is actually an android, an artificially grown human being with a mind taken from another person. He was designed to copy the mental and physical forms of aliens he encountered while exploring other star systems. The idea is that he would record this information, then revert to his previous condition. It didn't quite work out that way.

Andrew shares his mind with two other beings. One is a wolf-like alien, although it has arms that allow it to carry things and manipulate objects. The other is a sort of biological computer, a relentlessly logical entity that often takes the form of a pyramid.

Andrew's body changes shape, depending on which mind has control. After a brief period of confusion, during which these alterations happen at random, Andrew recovers some of his memory. The three minds and bodies work together, evading the folks who think he's some kind of monster.

There's a lot more to this book than the basic plot. Simak throws in a lot of futuristic details. Notable among these are talking, flying houses, and aliens who are essentially the same as the brownies of folklore.

Not all of these concepts mesh together smoothly, although they provide proof of a great deal of imagination. The overly solicitous robot house offers some comic relief, and the so-called brownies may seem too whimsical for some readers. Otherwise, the novel is quite serious, even offering a mystical vision of the unity of all life in the universe.

My major complaint is a plot twist late in the book, revealing the true nature of a character I haven't even mentioned. It comes out of nowhere, depends on a wild coincidence, and creates an artificial happy ending.

Despite these serious reservations, I actually liked the novel quite a bit. It's not a classic, but it's well worth reading.

Three and one-half stars.




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[August 2, 1967] The Bounds of Good Taste (September 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

A diplomatic incident

In the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the Seven Years War, France abandoned her claims to territory in what is today Canada (among others) in order to keep richer colonies in the Caribbean. Britain allowed her new subjects in Quebec to keep their language and religion, likely to keep them from making common cause with the fractious colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. Since then, there has been a strong undercurrent of nationalism among the French-speaking Québécois. Enter French President Charles de Gaulle.

Canada has extended an open invitation to representatives of countries exhibiting at the Expo 67 world’s fair. Last month, de Gaulle came to visit. The Canadian government was a little concerned. France hadn’t sent a representative to the funeral of Governor General Georges Vanier, who had been a personal friend of de Gaulle, or to the 50th anniversary ceremonies commemorating the Canadian victory at Vimy in the Great War. Rather than flying in to the Canadian capital Ottawa, de Gaulle arrived directly in Quebec City aboard a French naval vessel and went on to Montreal from there, with crowds cheering him along the way. He arrived on July 24th, and delivered an unscheduled speech from the balcony of the Montreal City Hall. He concluded by shouting “Vive le Québec libre!” (“Long live free Québec!”) and the crowd roared in approval.

President de Gaulle with foot firmly in mouth.

The next day, Prime Minister Lester Pearson issued an official rebuke, declaring that “Canadians do not need to be liberated” and pointing out that many Canadians died in the liberation of France. Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau wondered what the French reaction would be to the Canadian Prime Minister shouting “Brittany to the Bretons!” Even the French papers were critical. Meanwhile, de Gaulle visited the Expo and hosted a banquet at the French pavilion. The following day, he boarded a French military jet and flew home rather than making his scheduled visit to Ottawa. Whether this was deliberate interference in another country’s domestic affairs or just de Gaulle being de Gaulle, we’ll have to wait to see what the fallout may be.

Walking the line

Apropos of today's lede, at least one story in this month’s IF is about crossing or challenging the lines of what is in good taste. A couple more do that themselves.

This alien dude ranch has become a popular honeymoon spot. Art by Gray Morrow

The Fortunes of Peace, by C. C. MacApp

“Taintless” Wend, Earthborn but now stateless, is a trader operating just past the edge of human space. He’s been captured by the Kyshan pirate Junnabl, who has a plan to get his hands on an abandoned Terran Space Force cache. Wend doesn’t expect Junnabl to let him go with his share, but he has a few connections that might help.

Wend is in trouble, but ready for Junnabl’s men. Art by Virgil Finlay

When he’s not writing about Gree or trying to be funny, MacApp is a decent writer. This is basically an adventure story, but there’s some science-fictional stuff with a monstrous gravity well caused by the “bone” of a dead star, and the protagonist is more of an antihero. It’s not a story that will stick with you, but it’s a good read.

Three stars.

Bride Ninety-One, by Robert Silverberg

In Silverberg's newest piece, contract marriages are the norm, and marriages with aliens are the fad, so Paul Clay has entered a six-month marriage to Landy, a Suvornese. They’ve agreed to follow Terran mores, which leads to more than a few misunderstandings.

This silly piece of fluff seems to exist solely for its mildly suggestive “humorous” ending. The accepted Terran mores feel like they’re from a decade or more ago, not the far future. Some of that may be due to Landy using bad sources, since Paul is often confused by her, but even his attitudes feel a bit old-fashioned. Well-written but pointless.

A low three stars.

To Serve the Masters, by Perry A. Chapdelaine

'Genetic' (the character's name–people are known only by their function) is the end product of over 200 generations of selective breeding by the Masters. We follow his career from childhood to being taken to the Masters’ homeworld for the fulfillment of his millennia of breeding. Maybe the Masters should have couched their request more carefully.

Genetic receives the high honor of conferring directly with a Master. Art by Gaughan

Here is this month’s offering from a new author. It’s not bad, though it is overly long. We could have done with less detail about the alien genetics that inspire our protagonist, and I’m not sure I can really accept most of the premise. But Chapdelaine shows promise and more from him would not be amiss.

A very low three stars.

Venus Smiles, by J. G. Ballard

The community of Vermilion Sands has commissioned a sonic sculpture from a local artist. Unfortunately, everyone hates it; it’s ugly and plays eastern-style quarter tones nobody likes. A member of the Fine Arts Committee moves it to his garden, where it eventually starts playing late Romantic composers. But then it starts to grow.

As I understand it, this is largely a rewrite of Ballard’s “Mobile”, which appeared in Science Fantasy a decade ago, moving the action to Vermilion Sands and maybe adding some other things. By Ballard’s standards, this is a much more conventional story than he tends to produce these days, with only the unexplained growth of the statue being truly weird. I’m not a fan of Ballard, but others may get more out of this than I did.

Three stars.

Friday at the Fanoclasts, by Lin Carter

Our Man in Fandom takes us to a “typical” meeting of his club, though it sounds more like a party. There’s a lot of namedropping, though I was interested to hear that Alexei Panshin is looking for a publisher for a critical study of the works of Robert Heinlein. Carter also tells us that the Fanoclasts aren’t big on organization and structure. Given they’re the ones putting on this year’s Worldcon, I’m not sure that bodes well.

Three stars.

A Bowl Bigger Than Earth, by Philip José Farmer

Awakening from his deathbed, Morfiks finds himself in a hairless, sexless body sliding down the frictionless slope of a gigantic brass bowl. He is flung out the other side and lands in a river, from which he is fished out and taken to a city of brass. There, no one has a name, all are equal, and all are punished for any infraction unless the wrongdoer confesses. Everyone also studiously avoids mentioning just where it is they are.

A typical Gaughan abstract for a typical Farmer story. Art by Gaughan

As usual, Farmer gives us an interesting set-up and no real pay-off. I found the ending unpleasant and rather tasteless. In my review of Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, I noted that Harlan didn’t wallow in the ugliness he showed us. Farmer wallows.

Two stars.

Faust Aleph-Null (Part 2 of 3), by James Blish

Weapons manufacturer Baines has contracted the services of black magician Theron Ware. Following the successful death of Governor Rogan of California, Baines has arrived at Ware’s Italian villa at Christmas time, along with his executive assistant Jack Ginsberg and company scientist Adolph Hess. Also present is Father Domenico of the white monks of Monte Albano, sent by his superiors as an observer in accordance with the Grand Covenant.

Baines’ next target is scientist Albert Stockhausen. Because Stockhausen is a good man, his death will require greater magic than Rogan’s. Ware enlists Baines and his two companions to aid in the summoning of the demon Marchosias. Once the scientist is dead, Baines reveals his true goal: he wants all the demons of Hell released to walk the Earth for 24 hours. That’s more than Ware can manage, but he should be able to produce 50 or so. However, he will need the help not only of Baines and his men, but also Fr. Domenico. The date of the experiment is set for Easter. To be concluded.

Marchosias appears in the first of several forms. Art by Gray Morrow.

Not much happens here. There’s a subplot about Ginsberg and a succubus, but apart from the summoning, this installment consists of more people sitting around talking than a Heinlein novel. And while a lot of it is interesting, I’m not sure it’s necessary. The first two installments could easily have been condensed to a medium-length story. Much of the rest feels like Blish showing off the depth of his research.

Three stars.

Invader, by Harl Vincent

Chuck Radford awakens to the sensation of something attaching itself to the back of his neck. Meanwhile on Tau Ceti II, the mind of Princess Arla has fled, and Prince Bor’s mind must be sent after her. Chuck and his partner receive an unexpected windfall and decide on sudden vacations, with Chuck uncharacteristically picking Las Vegas as his destination. After an incredible run of luck, he wins just enough to pay off the debts of the troubled Jan Jones, whom he then rescues from a mysterious gunman.

Chuck’s most amazing skill is the ability to deliver a roundhouse kick in an elevator. Art by Vaughn Bodé

Harl Vincent was a pretty big name before the War, big enough to be chosen to do a round-robin story with the likes of Murray Leinster, Doc Smith and Stanley Weinbaum. As you can tell from the recap, the bones of this story are pretty pulpy. The writing, on the other hand, feels more modern; nothing special, just not the heavy slog of something from 30 years ago. If I have a real complaint, it’s that the gunman is never adequately explained. It was otherwise an enjoyable trifle.

Three stars.

Summing up

Another C to C- issue. There’s some forgettable fun and some stuff that’s sure to upset Mrs. Grundy and maybe even those less easily offended. (I certainly didn’t expect to find a term for an artificial phallus in IF, and I’m not sure that’s what Blish meant.) I miss the heady days of the March issue or wish for at least one stand-out story.

An oceanic theme from Clement. I wonder if this is related to Raindrop or The Mechanic.




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[July 8, 1967] Family lines (August 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Royal Families

The news always likes to focus on heads of state, especially when they are flashy or glamorous in some way.  From Princess Grace of Monaco to Crown Prince Akihito of Japan, these leaders are instant idols, somehow more compelling for having the reins (and reigns) of nations even though they presumably put their pants/skirts/obis on the same way as the common folk.

This week scored a triplet of spotlights.  For instance, in the island nation of Tonga, Taufaʻahau Tupou IV was crowned monarch in a ceremony that included a feast of 71,000 suckling pigs!  And that, by itself, tells you all you need to know about the current Jewish/Moslem population of Tonga…

Closer to home, El BJ, chief of the United States, has got his first grandson.  Patrick Lyndon Nugent is the newborn child of First Daughter Luci Nugent (neé Johnson).  There is no word, as yet, whether his toddler status will grant him deferment in the lastest draft lottery.

Finally, junta chairman General Nguyen Cao Ky, the flamboyant leader of South Vietnam since 1965, has decided not to run for President in the upcoming democratic (perhaps) September elections.  Premier Thiệu has been backed by the junta for the top role, instead, with Ky getting the Vice Presidential nod.  It's all a lot of musical chairs, anyway. After all, Ky has asserted that the only politician he admires is Hitler, which tells you all you need to know about the state of democracy in that country (and its current Jewish population…)

Watching Big Brother

Fred Pohl, one of the original Futurians and a pillar of the SF community, has had his hands full for nearly a decade.  After he took over the reins of Galaxy and the newly acquired IF from H. L. Gold, rather than sit on his laurels, he looked for new worlds to conquer.  Thus, Worlds of Tomorrow was launched in 1963.  But juggling three mags (plus a few reprint-only titles) was a challenging job, often resulting in uneven quality and occasionally right-out flubs.  For instance, last year's issue of Worlds of Tomorrow where the pages got all mixed up.

One would think, with WoT going out of publication, that things might be less hectic over at the Guinn Co. mags.  But, in fact, this month's issue of Galaxy is even more higgledy-piggledy, making reading a real challenge.


by Sol Dember

Which is a shame, because there's some quite good stuff in here (mixed with some mediocre stuff, to be sure).  Thankfully, you've got me to be your guide.  Just grab your compass, or you might get lost.

Hawksbill Station, by Robert Silverberg


by Virgil Finlay

One-way time travel is developed in the early 21st Century.  Since humanity is deathly afraid of creating paradoxes, the new portals are used by the totalitarian regime for just one purpose: shipping undesirables into the far past, a sort of Paleozoic Botany Bay.

Hawksbill Station is the one reserved for male subversives, established sometime in the late Cambrian (Silverberg repeatedly gives a date of two billion years ago, but of course, the Cambrian went from about 600-500 million B.C.) Our perspective is that of Barrett, the de facto head of the more than 100 settler/prisoners on the coast of what will one day be the Atlantic Ocean.  It is a community slowly decaying as its denizens age along with no greater purpose in life.  That is, until a new young convict arrives from the future, one who appears to be a government spy…

This is more of a travelogue than a story, and the ending comes on a bit abruptly.  But the characterization, the details, the setting are all so gripping that I tore through the novella in no time, despite the labyrinthine page distribution.

Four stars, and if it ever gets expanded into a novel, it could make five.

Angel, Dark Angel, by Roger Zelazny

In another future-set tale, society is maintained by a sort of corporate Angel of Death who, with the help of ten thousand teleporting assistants, brings death to citizens after they have made sufficient contribution to humanity (and are, perhaps, on the verge of being detrimental).

One noteworthy woman has cultivated the aesthetic race of spirules (depicted on the cover) as an antidote to the cold, mechanistic technology of her time.  A subordinate angel is sent to dispatch her, but things prove more complicated.

This is a middlin' Zelazny story, not an empty poetic suit like some, but not a near masterpiece like some of his other works.  Three stars.

We're Coming Through the Window, by K. M. O'donnell

Throwaway vignette about a fellow who keeps duplicating himself due to time travel and needs Fred Pohl's help to get out of it.

Cute.  Three stars.

Ginny Wrapped in the Sun, by R. A. Lafferty

Ginny seems to be a precocious four year old, but in fact, is actually just a baseline human, maturing at age 4 and going on as an upright monkey.  It's the rest of us who are evolutionary aberrations, having five times as many heartbeats that a creature our mass should have.  Inevitably, Lafferty suggests, we'll all go ape.

This tale doesn't really work, and it's a bit more impenetrable than Lafferty's usual fare.  Two stars.

For Your Information: A Pangolin Is a Pangolin, by Willy Ley

Ley's article on the strange mammal that is neither aardvark nor anteater nor armadillo is interesting, but not much more than you might get from a rather good encyclopedia entry.

Three stars.

9-9-99, by Richard Wilson

Two wizened old characters are determined to settle an old score since both have outlived their wagered death dates, the bet having been made back in the 30s.

Whether it is even possible for them to collect given the state of the Earth in the late '90s is another matter…

Good enough, I guess.  Three stars.


by Wally Wood

Travelers Guide to Megahouston, by H. H. Hollis


by Wally Wood

This is a very long, somewhat farcical account of a 21st Century evolution of the Astrodome, in which domes enclose whole cities.

Pretty dull stuff.  Two stars.

The Being in the Tank, by Theodore L. Thomas

An alien being materializes in the heart of a hellish hydrazine factory and demands to speak to the President.  But is he the real deal?

Forgettable, but inoffensive.  A low three stars.

Hide and Seek, by Linda Marlowe

A childhood game is adapted into a method of population control.  It has shock value, but little else.

Two stars.

The Great Stupids, by Miriam Allen deFord

Mad scientist makes everyone under 50 a mental moron, all in service of a rather lame joke at the end.  DeFord was once one of the stars of the genre, but her light has waned over the years.  Here's hoping she's a Cepheid variable and not a dying dwarf.

To Outlive Eternity (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


by Jack Gaughan

It is fitting that the final long piece of the issue is a sort of mirror image of Silverberg's novella in terms of strengths and weaknesses.  As we read in last month's installment, the ramscoop colony ship Leonora Christine suffered damage to its decelerators while traveling at near light speed on the way to Beta Virginis.  The solution: to accelerate to terrific velocities instead, plunging through the heart of the galaxy and out into the comparative emptiness of intergalactic space where repairs might be effected.

In this half, event after event conspires to force the Christine to travel ever faster and faster, ultimately spanning the lifespan of the universe and beyond in a matter of months.  The story is told as a series of problem-solving conversations spread out over the weeks, and each character largely exists solely to have these conversations.  Except for the women, of course, who are almost universally hysterics or hangers-on…except for the First Officer who ultimately whores herself out for the good of the crew.

In short, the setup and ideas are really neat, but its a plot outline, not a novel.  And where Poul Anderson does try to characterize, it's with quick stereotypes, and usually not agreeable ones.  As for setting, there really isn't one.  The crew of the Christine might as well be floating heads in blank spaces for all we really get to experience the ship.

Readable, but badly flawed.  Three stars.

Matrix Goose, by Jack Sharkey

Last up, some very familiar nursery rhymes as they might be rendered by robots–after the demise of humanity.  It's cute.  Three stars.


Perhaps my favorite example, art by Gray Morrow

Cross-eyed Kin

And so, Galaxy ends up a largely enjoyable, but unremarkable read — just under 3 stars in ranking.  Perhaps, with the demise of Worlds of Tomorrow further in the rear-view mirror, Pohl will be able to concentrate on (and concentrate the best stories into) his remaining mags.

On the other hand, perhaps he hasn't learned his lesson.  He's got a new magazine is coming out next month…



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