Sometimes war is a crackling thing, a coiled spring of conflict that sees an enemy pouncing on and through a hapless foe. Such a campaign marked the German invasion of France through the "impassable" Ardennes forest in May 1940; a similar campaign occurred in December 1944 by the same combatants at the same spot.
They say, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me," and indeed the Americans and British soldiers in France should have known better than to pooh pooh the idea of a Wehrmacht onslaught at exactly the same location they'd used four years prior. Nevertheless, it happened, the Nazis made a big indentation in the Allied lines, and so "The Battle of the Bulge" forever got its name.
There's little surprise that Avalon Hill has made a game out of the battle. It's a fight with a lot of appeal (odious ideologies aside): As the Germans, there's the hope that enough momentum will push the tide of your forces to the coast, splitting the Allies irrevocably. As the Allies, there's the desperate holding action while you wait for reinforcements to gird the lines and throw back the Hun horde.
This year, a new war epic debuted on the 21st anniversary of the start of the battle simply called The Battle of the Bulge. Of course, we drove up to Los Angeles on the new interstate to see it. Verdict: not bad, though it's always a little disorienting to see American tanks play the role of German panzers.
To truly mark the occasion, we also started another game of Battle of the Bulge, this time switching sides. We're playing it out day by day, exactly matching the turns of the game to the days they represented. This time-shifted experience is actually a lot of fun. I wonder if I can find other opportunities to do it…
Sitzkrieg
If The Battle of the Bulge represents the essence of the blitzkrieg, this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction is a recreation of World War 1 — overlong, with little movement, ultimately pointless. Such a sad contrast to last month's issue, which was the best in years. Ah, such are the vicissitudes of war. Come slog along with me, would you?
by Jack Gaughan
L'Arc De Jeanne, by Robert F. Young
We start with the story illustrated on the front cover, sort of a cross between Young's science fiction-tinged fables and actual SF. The rapacious O'Riordan the Reorganizer, a would-be tyrant of the Terran Empire, invades the world of Ciel Bleu only to be thwarted by a young virgin with a bow and arrow named Jeanne. Her arrows, by the way, create torrential thunderstorms.
Rather than continue a hopeless fight, O'Riordan retreats his forces, instead dispatching a handsome young fellow to seduce and capture the Maiden of New New Orleans before she can fully rally the planet's defenses.
Like most Young stories, it is a bit rambling and sentimental, but it avoids the over-saccharine nature of his worst works (while missing the sublime levels of his best). It also takes a while to get going, but I enjoyed it well enough by the end.
Three stars.
by Gahan Wilson
Beaulieu, by Margaret St. Clair
A young man on the edge of a losing battle with a fatal disease is picked up by an enigmatic woman. Will she be able to drive him down the wind in the road that leads to an alternate universe where things have gone right instead of tragically wrong?
A nice psychological piece. Three stars.
Books, by Judith Merril
I don't usually review the reviews, but Merril's column is especially good this month, describing fandom and publishing in the United Kingdom, as well as devoting inches to Aldiss and Ballard. Worth a read (Mark Yon, are you reading?)
To the Rescue, by Ron Goulart
Space private dick wrestles with his sentient car companion, which is suffering a progressive nervous breakdown. Is the detective just unlucky? Or is his dissatisfaction with his chosen profession unlocking his psychic abilities?
Perhaps better suited to Analog, it's the kind of frivolous story I had to keep revisiting to remember just what had happened.
Two stars.
The Most Wonderful News, by Len Guttridge
A Welshman with a hospital-bound wife is desperate for news, any news, which he can relate to her on this week's visit. When all the usual sources dry up, he is left with one tidbit that is certifiably out of this world.
This story just goes on and on, and you won't be at all surprised by the ending. Two stars.
Smog, by Theodore L. Thomas
After a nice summary of what smog is, Thomas suggests using additives to combat automotive emissions rather than filters or oxidizers. I'm not sure how this makes any sense; oxidizers are additives. Moreover, I'm not sure one could make an emission less harmful than the carbon dioxide and water a catalytic converter produces (in the short term — in the long term, of course, we could see an accelerated global greenhouse effect).
So two stars, and learn some chemistry, Ted.
Survey of the Third Planet, by Keith Roberts
Greedy aliens arrive on Earth to add it to their collection of worlds only to be repulsed by the doughty primitives. The gimmick to the story is the revelation of who the primitives actually are.
Here's a fun article about how big Archimedes thought the universe was, how big the universe actually is, and why the proton is the smallest meaningful unit of volume.
There is also a brief plug for the Steady State model of the universe, which is unfortunate given that, between the article's writing and its publication, the Big Bang model has garnered overwhelming favor.
Four stars.
Representative From Earth, by Gregory Benford
A Jovian skydiver from Earth is scooped up by aliens and given a series of tasks to complete to prove his worthiness. All of them have some element of physical prowess and intellectual cunning involved. In the end, we find out just whom he's trying to impress.
It is a story at once too overwrought and too sketchy to please, all of it in service to an off color joke.
Two stars.
Apology to Inky, by Robert M. Green, Jr.
Haunted by an incident from his past he can only vaguely remember, but which tore apart his one true love, experimental musician Walton Ulster finds himself living in several times at once: 1930, 1944, and 1965. At the intersection of these three eras is a double-murder and, perhaps, true love.
At half the length, and in more capable hands, this interminable novelette could have been something special. As is, it wavers between interest and boredom, settling in for the latter by the end.
Two stars.
Casualties of War
I suppose after last month's all-star issue, it was a matter of course that the follow up would be dismal. Part of the issue is the abundance of new/newish writers (Green, Benford, Guttridge). Ah well. I'm inclined to take the long view.
After all — one battle does not a war make!
The holidays are coming! Looking for the perfect gift for a niece, nephew, or other young relative? Kitra is the hopeful, found family novel that they've been waiting for. Buy a copy for them today…and perhaps one for yourself!
I picked up the latest Ace Double Novel at my local Woolworth's the other day, and had to share my opinions of the two novels with my fine science fiction friends.
On one side of the double was the deliriously wacky cover shown below, which actually is a scene in John Rackham's meandering but intriguing new novel. By my reckoning, this is at least the third Ace double this prolific author has delivered over the last two years, and though I haven't read either Watch on Peter or Danger from Vega yet, this slim novel – a true Ace double at 137 pages – makes me want to try them out too.
The main character of We, the Venusians is Anthony Taylor, a man who feels himself out of place on a future version of Earth. Though the timing of that future isn't revealed in the novel, it's clear he lives in a bit of a dystopian world. Advertising is pervasive and unavoidable, commerce and greed rule the world, and the arts are trivialized and mocked.
This all matters because Taylor is an accomplished musician and the owner of a small club in which he plays Liszt, Schubert, Bach and the other classical artists to an ever-diminishing tribe of listeners. He is truly a man on the outside of his time. That's why he has a mixed reaction when a strange man wanders into Taylor's club and offers an obscene amount of money to travel to the Terran colony on Venus to play music, Taylor is both intrigued and repulsed by the opportunity. He is intrigued by chance to get rich quick and the chance to make a new start. Taylor is also repulsed by the idea because he has a secret he fears will be revealed on his new home: though his skin appears human color, he is actually a Greenie, a green-skinned Venusian native.
Through a series of plot machinations, Taylor does end up journeying to Venus along with two other musicians, one of whom, named Martha Merrill, is a beautiful woman who possesses an unbelievable singing voice. They also discover that the human colonists have enslaved thousands of apparently mindless Greenies to do menial labor in order to keep the colony buzzing along. Taylor and Merrill escape the human domes into the native lands, and both performers literally go native – Martha is also secretly a Venusian.
Though Merrill soon dies, Taylor finds his destiny among his own people and ends up becoming a force for revolution among his adopted people against the colonists.
One of the most intriguing elements of the book is the beans which grow on Venus and provide nutrition and energy for the people living there. While the Venusians protect their precious resource carefully, the humans try to exploit the beans and export the incredibly valuable food back to Terra. This element of the plot had an intriguing post-colonial feel to it. It's easy for the reader to substitute tobacco or silk as the exploited resource in our own history. It's a smart choice by Rackham to bring in that idea, as it adds resonance and contrast to the human/greenie struggle.
We, the Venusians is full of interesting ideas, from its resonances to the Civil Rights movement of today to its treatment of Indians in the west to the ways pop music overwhelms classics. Rackham keeps his story focused on character, and that keeps the reader involved in this novel. I enjoyed reading how Anthony Taylor grows and changes as this book goes along, and that growth gives this book a lot of its energy.
That said, the book rambles and wanders a bit too much and seems to frequently lose its focus. I know it's anathema to us fans of Ace doubles, but another 20 pages of meat would have made this book's bones stronger.
Fred Saberhagen is another science fiction writer who has settled into a journeyman status at this point. He's appeared in a number of the science fiction magazines in recent years, and his "Berserker" stories have started to gain more attention from aficionados. My colleague David Levinson has praised Saberhagen's ability to pull off modern fiction within the framework of space opera, and that skill is well on display in The Water of Thought.
Like We, the Venusians, Saberhagen's novel takes place on an alien planet on which native peoples are in conflict with Terrans. The planet Kappa is a kind of garden of Eden, a paradise and perfect place for rest and relaxation for exhausted Space Force planeteers. It's also the home to native peoples and a type of water which provides amazing changes in people. When a planeteer named Jones samples the water, he goes crazy and disappears from the colony. Planeteer Boris Brazil must follow to investigate.
Jones becomes megalomaniacal under the influence of the "water of thought", and rapidly becomes an addict. Jones is constantly seeking his next drink, like a heroin addict looking for his next fix. When Jones forces Brazil to drink the water, it has a different effect on him. Brazil is nearly paralyzed and loses his free will while in proximity to Jones, but does not become addicted. The battle between the two men, and the story of the humans and natives caught in the middle, is an important part of the book.
Like We theVenusians, this book has a natural resource as a key point of conflict between humans and Kappans as the water is seen by some as a resource to be exploited for personal gain. The human mayor of Kappa sells the water as a drug, trying to earn a neat profit off of a local resource. Meanwhile a human scientist has slightly more noble goals: he believes the water may help the local hominid species gain intelligence and gain their freedom from slavery by the natives.
The Water of Thought is a more complex book than it seems at first glance, and reveals some of the shallowness of Rackham's world. Where Rackham draws a pretty clear line between humans and greenies on Venus, Saberhagen presents Kappa as a more complex world. Kappa is a place where the lines between hero and villain are somewhat unclear, where everybody is exploiting each other in some ways, and in which the precious natural resource has ambiguous effects.
This book adroitly shows Saberhagen's skills at mixing space opera elements with a psychological and philosophical elements. The Water of Thought feels contemporary for our year of 1965, a time in which the smartest people are embracing ideas of the past but providing new approaches to those ideas.
4 stars.
Gamma #5: The Worst Sci-fi Magazine Ever Published?
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
Back in the early 1950s, when the market was flooded with magazines, there used to be plenty of forgettable magazines that would crank out terrible stories. Whilst it may be possible my memory is cheating me, I cannot recall a single issue as awful as this issue of Gamma:
This terrible issue of Gamma starts as it means to go on with another lurid cover from John Healey. I had hoped the style from the last issue was just due to it being a special edition calling back to the 30s, apparently this is the direction the magazine is going, with it illustrating the lead novella.
John Healey himself is a talented artist apparently working on shows like Johnny Quest, so I more question the editorial choice than his skill.
Now, take a deep breath, and let us all work together to get through this issue:
Nesbit, by Ron Goulart
Taking up nearly half the magazine, the perpetually disappointing Ron Goulart returns as, apparently, the editors simply cannot resist his writing. Once again, I find my eyebrow raised at this assertion.
This novella follows an attempt to shoot a pilot for a “jungle series”. When the Hollywood lot turns out to be in use Tim McCarey goes to visit Vincent Belgraf’s estate, to convince him to let them use his transplanted jungle for the shoot. However, on arriving he cannot get ahold of Mr. Belgraf and the other residents tell him it is not for rent.
Tim believes something else is amiss and finds a gorilla running around the estate in a soldier’s outfit. It turns out that this is Nesbit Belgraf. After being attacked by his own private army he had his brain transplanted into that of a gorilla, so he will be strong enough to become emperor of the United States and battle the unseen forces secretly controlling everyone’s lives.
Whilst Tim does not agree with this fascist conspiracy-minded gorilla and his family, he agrees to help with his propaganda efforts in exchange for being able to use part of the jungle for filming. However, Nesbit is very emotional and has difficulty keeping his cool.
I have trouble working out what Goulart is trying to do with this piece. If it is a satire on fascism and right-wing conspiracy theories, it fails. For, apart from Nesbit being a gorilla, it feels more like a documentary piece, as I am fully aware of the existence of those who believe in Jewish-Communist conspiracies controlling the world. It never does anything to really contradict what the Brelgrafs say, nor even to particularly suggest that their plans to put all non-white people into concentration camps or exterminate them, is as horrific as it really is.
If it is trying to be just an adventure story, it also fails. Intelligent gorilla stories are two-a-penny in comic books but are usually mindlessly enjoyable. This is incredibly dull and padded, full of side details that another might make charming, yet Goulart makes unbelievably tedious.
I could imagine many interesting ways a more skilled writer could have taken this piece, but instead Goulart produces something truly dreadful.
An exceptionally low One Star.
Policy Conference, by Sylvia Dees and Ted White
Peter and The Chief meet in the latter’s office to discuss how they could improve “interregional relations” for their boss Old Nick (I offer no prizes for guessing who that actually is).
Whilst this story is more supernatural than science fictional it weirdly has the same conceit as the previous tale, of someone having to work on PR for a monster. It just helps highlight how unoriginal a concept this is. Mercifully, this one is very short.
One Star
We get the return of the unrelated sketches. Depressingly they are better than the actual text.
Auto Suggestion, by Charles Beaumont
Returning from the earlier issues of Gamma (publishing the best story in issue 1) The Twilight Zone writer brings a story of automobiles. Unfortunately, this is definitely not his best work.
Abnar Llewellyn, a nervous driver, suddenly finds his car talking to him and it encourages him to be a more aggressive on the roads. It also starts to interfere in other areas on Abnar’s life, asking out women for him and instructing him on how to commit crimes.
I have gone on record saying I am no lover of cars, and so tales like this generally leave me cold. However, even accounting for that, I felt the story was bad. It is painfully overwritten to the point of being juvenile:
A truck’s air horn began some car lengths away. A frightening sound, a terrible sound, like the scream of a wounded elephant, and it led other smaller cars to renew their anger, shrill now beneath the dump-truck’s might below, shrill and chittering, like arboreal creatures gone mad.
Even Lovecraft would probably tell him he needed to cut out some description!
It also ends up not doing anything particularly interesting, just being a story where the protagonist does unpleasant things and may or may not be insane.
One Star
Welcome to Procyon IV, by Chester H. Carlfi
This is not a new writer to these pages but, rather, another story by longtime editor Charles E. Fritch, contributing his 4th story to the magazine.
In this vignette, Jameson and his wife are the last people left alive on the dead world of Porycon IV, with humans having wiped out the natives and disease killing the rest of the human population. On his ancient radio Jameson hears a human expedition coming but when they come to in to his cabin they discover a terrible truth about Jameson’s wife.
This feels like a pale imitation of Ray Bradbury’s Martian stories. It is more competent than the previous two pieces in the magazine, but a lot remains heavily unexplained. Also including a genocide in one line without any further thought left a bad taste in my mouth.
One and a half stars
Interest, by Richard Matheson
Cathryn is to be married to Gerald Cruickshank, yet find his parents and their house terrifying. However, she cannot work out why that is.
As stated in the introduction, this is a Poe-esque tale, although the purpose of it escapes me. Feels more like a derivative work you would find in a bad fanzine.
One Star
Another sketch, holding my interest much more than Matheson’s story did.
Lullaby and Goodnight, by George Clayton Johnson
In the aftermath of a nuclear war, an outpost of shelters is setup outside of an unnamed city. Our narrator (also unnamed) talks about the trouble Sarah Hartman is having with trying to keep her baby Adam alive in the radiation-soaked world.
This vignette marks a short foray into the New Wave from the usually conservative Gamma. It is not the best example, but the melancholic atmosphere raises it above the rest of the stories here.
This is a reprint from New Detective Magazine from almost 19 years ago and, unfortunately, it shows.
It narrates the story of a haemophiliac author, named Rob, who keeps being sent sharp objects in the mail, in an attempt to stop his book from being published.
I know Bradbury is popular right now, but do we have to reprint everything he did in his early days? The truth is he has evolved as a writer and most of his work before 1950 is simply not that good!
This is not really a science fiction or fantasy piece, but I suppose it could be classified as uncanny horror. Unfortunately, it lacks anything interesting, it seems more like a sequence of unusual events, like reading someone’s disconnected nightmare.
The story is written in a pale imitation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled style along with a second person narration. Whilst I do like experimentation this one fails for me.
Two stars
The Late Mr. Adams, by Steve Allen
Another reprint, this time from the publisher’s own collection, Fourteen for Tonight. This is my first experience with Mr. Adams' writings myself, although I hear he is big television personality in the United States.
This is a very silly life-story of a man who is always late. Really, that is all there is to it.
One Star
Wet Season, by Dennis Etchison
Etchison is generally a middling new writer. Shows promise but I am still waiting for a story that astounds me. Unfortunately, this is not it.
In a town there have been an unusually high number of drownings and the women seem to be acting strangely. At the same time rainfall levels are apparently increasing. After Madden’s daughter dies his Brother Bart comes to tell him of his suspicions.
Etchison really seems to like his Puppet Masters style stories and this is another one in that mold. I am willing to concede that it has a good atmosphere but that is all I am going to give.
A low two stars
I love this illustration. Why couldn’t this have been one of the pieces inside?
Summing Up
This issue of the magazine is truly terrible. Some stories are not as bad as the others, but it would be a stretch to say anything is actually good.
I am beginning to feel foolish that I took out a subscription from issue 2, as I have already paid for more of these. However, if the quality continues like this, I find it hard to imagine this magazine continuing much beyond that.
That's all for today, folks! Join us next month for another exciting Galactoscope!
and…
Our next Journey Show: At the Movies, is going to be a blast!
Science fiction is changing, with no clearer evidence than the fact that our current era has been dubbed "The New Wave." Indeed, there are those within fandom who assert that only what's coming out today has any relevance, and that there is little to enjoy in (and less to learn from) the "classics" of a half century or more ago.
Having grown up on Burroughs, Wells, Verne, and Baum, I can't agree with this position. On the other hand, the role of the Journey, covering the newest SF as it comes out, means we tend to focus on the newer.
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction makes no bones about having it both ways. Not only will they occasionally reprint worthy material, they are also most often the clearing house for British New Wavers like Brian Aldiss and J.G. Ballard. The latest issue is particularly interesting in that the lead novella, by Brian Aldiss, is deliberately written in a Wellsean style (and, in fact, features the author of War of the Worlds to some degree).
A flash in the sky followed by a splash, and a pond on a rural farm in East Mercia is now home to an extraterrestrial spaceship. Young polymath Gregory Rolles is a Romantic in all senses of the word, and upon hearing the news, visits the fields owned by the Grendon family (which includes, of course, a fetching farmer's daughter).
At first, the alien visitors, who are completely invisible, seem harmless – even beneficial. As Spring arrives, all of the animals in the area, from tadpoles to cattle, reproduce with prodigious fecundity. Such bounty even extends to the human residents, Mrs. Grendon giving birth to some nine children at once.
But it is quickly ascertained that the newborn animals have an odd flavor to them rendering them inedible. To humans, that is; the aliens take great delight in raiding their makeshift larder, biting into their prey with venomous fangs, liquefying the animal's insides, and slurping it out. Only a dessicated skin is left.
And when the milk from the tainted cows starts to taste good to the Grendon family, Gregory realizes with horror that the humans are next on the menu…
It's all very evocative of the late Victorian age in style and subject, and in the end, is explicitly supposed to influence the work of young Wells, who is a penpal of Gregory's. Aldiss carries it off well, this fun, occasionally horrific homage to yesteryear.
Four stars.
the latest comic piece from Gahan Wilson
Kearny's Last Case, by Ron Goulart
Less successful is Goulart's latest (last?) entry in the Max Kearny, Occult Detective, stories. It's facile enough, this case of a secretary suffering an abusive workplace run by two sorcerers. But while the setup is fun, the actual action of the story lasts about a page and a half and is resolved with little ado. Most dissatisfying.
So, a low three stars.
The Great Cosmic Donut of Life, by Ray Nelson
Things slide further down in this Beat piece about a futuristic musician/computerist who unsuccessfuly tries to resurrect Charlie Parker's music electronically. Things happen, there's a Martian terrier called a Globly, the story ends happily, but it's all inconsequential, unengaging fluff.
Two stars.
Lunar Landing, by Theodore L. Thomas
Thomas' "article" puts forward the desirability of sending pilots to the Moon on a one-way trip to truly determine the survivability of soft-landing. This might have made sense (as a joke) thirty years ago. The state of science has advanced since World War 2.
One star.
Hog-Belly Honey, by R. A. Lafferty
Joe Spade, rough and gutteral self-described intellectual, teams up with the more refined Maurice Maltrevers to produce a self-guiding Nullifier. Said computer-brained machine can disintegrate anything it deeps as unnecessary. What a great boon for society! Garbage, useless files, out-of-date clothing, insincere love letters, all go POOF with a single request. Of course, one person's trash is another person's treasure…and sometimes their spouse.
If this sounds whimsical, well, what did you expect given the author? The most engaging part of Honey is the characterization of Joe, whose absolute doltishness is expressed to great comic effect in the unaware 1st person perspective. This isn't a great story, but it is kind of fun.
Three stars.
Turning Point, by Arthur Porges
After The Bomb, rats take over the Earth. Humanity is enslaved and our population kept at 10,000 to prevent a resurgence. Malcontents in this new order are not destroyed; rather, we are merely sterilized and sent to the Amazon, a place the rats find uninhabitable.
All of this is offered up in exposition, like a mildly interesting encyclopedia article. The "story" involves a few pages of dialogue, and the way in which a human couple heading into exile outsmarts the rats, transporting a fertile child to South America.
The solution is more "shocking" than clever, and the whole thing has the feel of a "ha ha; aliens are stoopud, humans r smart!" story of the kind Campbell enjoys at Analog.
Two stars.
Death in the Laboratory, by Isaac Asimov
For the first time in a while, Dr. A offers up a truly interesting and technical article about the discovery and isolation of fluorine. After reading this, you may include scientists in the same derring-do category of folk as Doc Savage and Tarzan.
Five stars.
Sea Bright, by Hal R. Moore
Kellie is an 11-year old girl in love with the sea. But her world is shattered when an acquaintance brings a sinister shell to the beach one day, and a sense of dread causes her to steal said conch before it can harm her friend. The remainder of the story deals with her attempts to keep it out of the hands of others.
Sea, the first piece by Moore, starts promisingly and has some vivid writing. I also appreciate the nonstandard protagonist. However, it bogs down in repetition; if the second act had been a little different from the first, it would have helped.
Still, three stars.
…and back again
So, does this brew of past, present, and (cutting edge of) future mix well or does it resolve into an immiscible layer cake cocktail? I'd say the former. There are several pieces which don't quite work, and some besides that fail further, but I still found the issue satisfying. In particular, Aldiss shows he can turn an antiquated style into an asset.
Does the future hold more visions inspired by the past? Only time will tell…
[Don't miss the next episode of The Journey Show, featuring a panel of amazing artists who will be doodling to YOUR specification!]
Cast your memories back to the distant past — about four years. Remember when Bobby Vee exploded on the scene with his first hit, Rubber Ball.
It's a song about a fellow who should know better than to stick with an untrue love but, like a rubber ball, keeps coming back to her anyhow. The tune came to my mind more than once as I read this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction, a magazine that has plumbed depths often enough to tempt me to cancel my subscription, but on occasion (like this one) produces such an excellent issue that I remember the good times of the 1950s, and love is rekindled.
Is it the doing of new editor Joe Ferman? Statistical variation? Either way, it was a pleasure to read. Come join me and see why:
We begin with an ending of sorts, the conclusion to the exploits of Gunnar Heim, late of the Federation Navy, now a privateer savaging the Aleriona patch of stars known as The Phoenix. His goal, to prosecute an undeclared war to liberate the conquered human world of New Europe before its inhabitants run out of Vitamin C, is about to come to fruition. But how can one ship achieve victory against a starfaring empire? More personally, will an old flame of Heim's be waiting for him planetside when all is said and done?
Admiralty is Anderson near the top of his form, which, like a sine wave, has definite positive and negative amplitudes. What makes the piece frustrating is its incompleteness. This novella and the other two that have recently appeared in F&SF are about to be compiled into a book called The Star Fox, and I strongly suspect that there will be expansions above and beyond what has appeared in the magazines. Indeed, some of the most exciting episodes in Admiralty, like the capture of the Aleriona prize, Meroeth, are dispatched in a paragraph or two of exposition. What remains is something of a Readers Digest abridged version — entertaining but dissatisfying.
Also, I wish Anderson wouldn't assume that we all speak French; there are paragraphs and paragraphs of the stuff that go largely untranslated. I'm going to start sending him letters in Japanese…
Anyway, four stars, for this and the whole sequence, and I suspect the book will be even better. Certainly Hugo material.
Dooley Hanks, a clarinetist of modest talent but tremendous desire, scours the world looking (listening?) for The Sound. When he finds it, in an obscure town in Germany, the temptation to claim it for his own becomes overpowering…and hazardous.
A powerful story, evocative and beautifully told, it's the kind of reworked fable Robert F. Young wishes he could write.
Five stars.
by Gahan Wilson — better than his previous ones
Books, by Judith Merril
Normally, I don't give inches to the book column, but Ms. Merril is cutting and insightful in a way I can only hope to approximate. Don't miss her take on the latest SF to cross her desk (many of which have been covered by the Journey).
Rake, by Ron Goulart
Ben Jolson, shape-changing agent of the Chameleon Corps, is back for another adventure. This time, in the guise of a student, he's investigating the development of a super-weapon by an academic ensconced at a public college.
This tale is far more obviously slapstick than his previous one, which I had quite liked. Rake is just too silly, too random to be very good, and there's no reason for such a short piece to begin in medias res followed by a flashback to How It All Began.
Two stars.
Phoenix (the Science Springboard), by Theodore L. Thomas
Normally, Thomas' non-fiction vignettes, more story seed than article, aren't worth the two pages they're printed on. This time, I quite liked his postulation that at the center of every gas giant lies a terrestrial core. I don't know if it's accurate; I don't know how we could verify the accuracy, but it is an exciting idea that the planets of the solar system all started out as roughly similar planetoids that grew atmospheres as time went on. Only the inner ones lost theirs because it was too warm so close to the Sun.
Of course, it's easy to make models that fit the one set of data we have.
Four stars, anyway.
The Ancient Last, by Herb Lehrman
The first of two reader-submitted stories fulfilling the call for tales involving Univac and Unicorns. This is the more poetic of the pair. Interestingly, its poignant ending is somewhat marred by two additional paragraphs; because the offending superfluity occurs on a following page, I didn't originally see them, and I thought the ending was stronger than it ended up being.
Funny enough, I was recently rejected by F&SF, whose editor suggested I trim out my terminal line to give the ending more punch. I did. We'll see how it does.
Stand-In, by Greg Benford
Another first from a fellow San Diego native. This Univac/Unicorn story is more swinging and fun, but not particularly consequential.
I give three stars to both. I'm glad the authors got their breaks and I hope this sets them on their way to stardom.
Story of a Curse, by Doris Pitkin Buck
Earth spacers are forever restless in search of change, intolerant of stagnation. But when Earth, itself, has changed, the astronauts see the folly of their wanderlust.
Long on emotion, short on coherence, Story is more prose-poem than science fiction. I liked it well enough, though. Three stars.
Nabonidus, by L. Sprague de Camp
Archaeologist meets a ghostly colleague of ancient vintage. This poem has a strange meter, but again, it's appealing. Three stars.
Future? Tense!, by Isaac Asimov
In a surprise disappointment, the science column is probably my least favorite piece of the issue. The Good Doctor begins by relating how on-the-spot he feels when asked to predict the future, then says he'll do it anyway, and then doesn't really do it at all.
At a recent bookstore interview, I was asked if a science fiction story's value is based on its predictive accuracy. I felt that the answer I gave ("No — its value is in how well it entertains; science fiction can't predict the future; it can only extrapolate current trends.") was better and more succinct than the one Dr. A offers.
The Last Man of Earth meets the Last Man of Mars; unfortunately, time is not on the side of humanity.
Zelazny increasingly makes his stories more affectedly "literate." It may get his stories sold, but it's getting tedious. Two stars. (Your hue and cry tells me I'm a too-harsh boor. I do not disagree.)
Jabez O'Brien and Davy Jones' Locker, by Robert Arthur
Lastly, here is the tale of a young New England fisherman who seeks to win fame, fortune, wisdom and happiness through the capture of a mermaid. Instead, he winds up…well, best not to spoil this gem of a story.
It's an absolutely charming work, the best I've seen from Mr. Arthur, and made all the better for my imagining it being narrated by Fractured Fairy Tale's Edward Everett Horton (now you'll have his voice in your head, too!)
Five stars.
My heartstrings, they just snap
In the end, even this issue bounces around like a rubber ball, but the pages of quality far outnumber the momentary lapses. The June 1965 issue of F&SF is a stand-out…and my love is rekindled.
Don't break my heart, Joe!
Don't forget to register for our show on May 23 at 1PM DT! We really want to see you there and hear your questions.
Our last two Journey shows were a gas! You can watch the kinescope reruns here).
You don't want to miss the next episode of The Journey Show, April 25 (tomorrow) at 1PM PDT featuring professional flautist Acacia Weber as the special musical guest serving up some groovy period tunes.
Sports history was made this month, with the first major league baseball game played indoors. It took place inside the newly completed Harris County Domed Stadium, located in Houston, Texas. The exhibition game between the Houston Astros and the New York Yankees took place before nearly fifty thousand fans, including the President of the United States. Fortunately for LBJ and other native sons of the Lone Star State, the home team won, two to one, after an exciting game lasting twelve innings.
There's something futuristic about a baseball diamond under a dome, isn't there?
So what's the fly in this athletic ointment? Well, the game was played at night, which disguised a serious flaw in the design of the stadium. During daylight hours, if the sun isn't blocked by clouds, the transparent panels covering the dome cause a lot of glare. Fielders can't see fly balls, leading to a whole bunch of errors. Oops.
Is This Music Or Comedy?
In yet another invasion of the American music charts by a British band, a bunch of fellows calling themselves Freddie and the Dreamers reached Number One with a cheerful, if undistinguished, pop song called I'm Telling You Now.
If you think they look a little silly here, wait until you see their act.
This superficial ditty would quickly fade from the memory of anybody listening to it on AM radio, or on a 45, I think. However, if you happen to catch the Dreamers performing live or on TV, I doubt if you'll forget the antics of Freddie, doing a bizarre dance that looks like something they made you do in PE class. The combination of the sound of the Beatles and the look of Jerry Lewis is disconcerting, to say the least.
Situation Normal; All Fouled Up
Given these missteps in the worlds of sports and music, it seems appropriate that many of the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic features situations that go from bad to worse. One of the paradoxes of literature is that misfortune can often make for enjoyable fiction. That's not always true, of course, so let's take a look and judge each effort on its merits.
Cover art by Gray Morrow. I hope you like it, because there are no interior illustrations at all.
Speaking of foul-ups, the magazine starts off right away with a mistake. It's obvious that the last name of the creator of this gruesome horror story should be Pendragon, not Pendragan. How do I know? Well, for one thing, that version of the name appeared with a very similar tale in the April 1964 issue. For another, anyone familiar with the myths of Camelot knows that Pendragon is the correct spelling of King Arthur's surname. I don't know who's hiding behind this royal pseudonym, but he or she has more in common with H. P Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe than the Once and Future King.
New England, 1924. In the suggestively named town of Sabbathday, a doctor visits the mentally tortured inhabitant of an isolated mansion. (His role should be played by Vincent Price.) Since the death of his spinster sister, he's been charged with (dramatic pause) the Guardianship. It seems that his late father's second wife, named Ligea (an apparent allusion to Poe's short story Ligeia — another change in spelling!) was a witch. Just before her death, she gave birth to a deformed creature, kept locked up in the mansion. Ghastly events follow.
There aren't many surprises in this chiller. The reader is ready for the monster to appear long before it steps onto the stage. After a slow start, the action builds to a frenzied climax. The resemblance to a horror movie that I've hinted at above grows stronger at the ambiguous last scene, when there should be one of those The End (?) final credits that you get at the conclusion of some scare flicks.
We return to the dystopian world of Moderan, where things have gone badly many times before. In this disturbing future of endless automated warfare and people who have replaced most of their bodies with metal, a little girl receives a robot playmate. Her barely human father has other uses for it.
There's not really much plot to this grim little tale, other than the basic premise. The author's unique style, and what seems to be a sardonic look at the thin line between humans and machines, make up for this lack, to some extent.
Three stars.
The Other Side of Time (Part Two of Three), by Keith Laumer
It would be tedious for me to try to provide an accurate summary of the dizzying array of events that occurred in the first third of this novel. (Besides, I'm lazy.) Suffice to say that the narrator, after a ton of wild adventures in multiple alternate realities, is now in exile in yet another world, with much of his memory erased.
This is a place where Napoleon was triumphant, so the planet is dominated by the French Empire. Technology is at the level of steam engines and the early use of electricity, without the gizmo that allows folks to journey between different realities. Even though the narrator manages to regain his memory, with the help of a hypnotist who disguises herself as an old crone, it seems impossible for him to return to his home.
Or is it? In a desperate attempt to recreate the device he needs, the narrator and the hypnotist, now a loyal companion, travel to Rome, in search of this world's version of the scientist who invented it. After much effort, some of it on the comic side, he succeeds.
Or does he? It's out of the frying pan and into the fire, because now he's in a prehistoric world, full of dangerous beasts. Only the very end of this installment offers a hint as to how the narrator is going to get out of this mess.
After the breakneck pace of the first segment, this portion comes as something of a relief. A touch of comedy, when the narrator uses his wits rather his fists to get what he wants, is most welcome. The hypnotist is a very appealing character. She's intelligent, capable, and brave. There's a hint of romance between the two, but since the narrator is happily married in his own world, I assume this isn't going to continue. In any case, I liked this third a little better than the first one.
Four stars.
Terminal, by Ron Goulart
A writer better known for slapstick farce offers a much darker vision of the future than usual. A man finds himself in a home for the elderly run by robots. He's not old, so he knows he doesn't belong there, but parts of his memory are gone (just like in the Laumer.) The inefficient robots aren't any help at all, and things go very badly indeed.
Much of the story deals with the fellow's interactions with the other inhabitants of this hellish institution. These characters are sketched quickly, in effective and poignant ways. I was particularly taken with the man who just quotes poetry at random. The whole thing is a powerful, bitter satire of society's treatment of the elderly.
The time is the American Civil War. The place is Georgia, during Sherman's March to the Sea. A Union officer loses the rest of his outfit. Knocked unconscious when he falls from his horse, he wakes up in the plantation home of a woman whose husband was killed by the Yankees. She holds him prisoner, taunting him with the point of a saber and offering him poisoned wine. The officer sees strange, frightening apparitions, and learns the terrifying truth about the woman.
This is a fairly effective ghost story, with a convincing portrayal of the time and place. The author shows a gift for historical fiction, and he may not need supernatural elements to succeed in that genre.
Three stars.
Red Carpet Treatment, by Robert Lipsyte
There's not a lot to say about this two-page oddity. Passengers on an airplane hear an announcement that they're on their way to Heaven. The folks aboard the plane — a priest, a child and his mother, a young married couple, a rich man and his girlfriend, and so on — react in various ways. There's a slight, predictable twist at the end.
I suppose it's about the way we deal with the awareness of death. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a joke or not.
Two stars.
Junkman, by Harold Stevens
Things are also going very wrong in this story, but this time the intent is strictly humorous. A series of brief vignettes throughout time show stuff getting all mixed up. There's a bowling ball in prehistoric times, a typewriter in the Dark Ages, etc. Eventually we figure out that a super-genius invented a time machine, and caused all the chaos. Since this is a time travel story, we've got a paradox at the end. I found it overlong and not very amusing.
One star.
I Think They Love Me, by Walter F. Moudy
At first, this seems to be a war story, as we witness a scarred veteran, too old for active service at the advanced age of twenty-four, lecture young recruits on the dangers they face. Pretty soon we figure out that these guys are the members of a rock 'n' roll band, and that the enemy consists of hordes of screaming teenage girls. As in just about every other story in this issue, things don't work out well.
I like this mordant satire of Beatlemania more than it deserves, maybe. Sure, the premise is silly, and mocking teen idols isn't the most original thing in the world. Yet somehow I found its mad logic compelling enough to go along with it.
Three stars.
Light At The End Of The Tunnel?
After reading about all these fictional mishaps and disasters, it may be tempting to be a little fatalistic about the state of fantastic fiction these days. On the other hand, although this issue has a couple of losers, there's also some decent reading to be had. I suppose it all depends on how you look at it.
A recent ad for what may be one of the late JFK's most important legacies.
The news recently has been dominated by battles between the old-guard conservative and the new liberal voices in the matter of race relations.
In the USA President Johnson has urged passage of a Voting Rights Act at the same time as another Johnson (a judge this time) has agreed to let a civil rights march in Alabama continue, in spite of fierce opposition.
In the UK, Rhodesian ministers have been touring trying to drum up support for their declaration of independence under white minority rule to resolve the stalemate between Ian Smith and Harold Wilson. Given the Rhodesian argument seems to primarily be that they have real experience of governing and the black people of Rhodesia are uncivilized, I don’t think they are going to win too many friends.
At the same time we have continued debates over Commonwealth immigration into the UK. Firstly whether the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act is being circumvented illegally and how widely, secondly if those citizens should be deported and, thirdly, if further controls need to be placed on immigration. I am personally in agreement with the late leader of the opposition, Hugh Gaitskell, who stated that it was cruel and brutal, and as such I am not surprised there are some people trying to get around it.
Then there are the inflammatory statements made by Sir David Renton MP that certain communities do not wish to integrate and that we have too much of our farmland been taken up by urban sprawl. On my personal experience, Indian and Pakistani communities in the UK are doing a much better job of integration into British life than most British people living in India seemed to have done. Whilst most of the increasing land-use over the last ten years seems not to have come from immigration but from those formally in the cities moving out to areas with more space. If they are really worried about this I would contend wider availability of birth control, legalization of abortion and a proper investment into inner city renewal.
A Quiet Town
Closer to home in Bedford, however, we have long had a thriving immigrant population and I have yet to hear any complaint about it. In fact the biggest grumbling locally is the that TV signal continues to be poor and plans for a nearby relay station continue to be delayed.
Thankfully we have many other entertainments around here. We have a number of local picture houses, with The Empire continuing to show a range of excellent films for the SFF enthusiast. On Sunday they are having both Vincent Price and Boris Karloff films I hope to sync my teeth into.
As well as the national charts, we get local charts. I approve of the top 3 going into this weekend (which I definitely contributed to myself).
And, of course, plenty of reading material, including two long awaited pieces. The Fourth issue of Gamma, which is looking backwards, and City of A Thousand Suns, which has an eye on the future.
Gamma: A Long-Expected Magazine
by John Healey
First thing, we have to start with is the cover. Gone now are beautiful space pictures and instead is a lurid cover right out of the pulp era. I have to wonder if this is the influence of the new co-editor, Jack Matcha, who has made a career writing Pulp Sleaze novels for Kozy Books and has the forthcoming novel A Rogue’s Guide to Europe whose content, I have heard, is just what you would expect from the title.
An example of Matcha's work for Kozy
The editorial confirms we are now going straight back to the pulp era. I personally was not yearning for the days:
…when Jayne Mansfield who invariably wore a space suit apparently constructed by a bikini manufacturer and every Bug-Eyed Monster attacked her for reasons known (if at all) only to himself (itself)?
We are definitely a far cry from the literary attempts to include imaginative fiction of all types, and the issue feels much the lesser for it.
H. B. Fyfe was first published in Astounding back in 1940 and was prolific during the 50s although he has been appearing in print less often of late.
Neil Bryson and a dietician named Carole Leland (who acts as his secretary), are sent on a mission by the Galactic Federation to assess a recently admitted planet that has seen a marked population boom that is alarming the other members of the federation. They are to investigate what is being done to get this down. On this planet we meet different groups with different responses to this directive.
One reason why I like to return on occasion to pulpy space adventures is they are fun and easy to read. This, on the other hand, is like reading through treacle with over-description, pointless diversions and regular stating of Bryson’s own thought process.
And yet the actual story within is quite fascinating. At first it seems like it is going to be a colonialist parable about “stupid natives” overpopulating themselves and not accepting the tenants of “superior people”. However it quickly gets messy as the Galactic directive has completely changed the various societies on this planet in unprecedent ways and we are led to wonder if the federation itself was at fault to start with.
So a very interesting piece brought down by poor execution. Three stars.
The Towers of Kagasi, by William P. Miller
William P. Miller is apparently a well-known and respected mystery writer, but I believe this is his first foray into science fiction. In this story, a team of astronauts investigate the titular planet from where a ray was sent to Earth, killing the entire population of four major cities.
At times it felt like what you used to get in Thrilling Wonder Stories, but it lacks any of the enjoyment and is a story that comes across to me as meanspirited, misogynistic and gross.
One star
Food, by Ray Nelson
Our first story by Ray Nelson since he got Four- and Five-star reviews for his pieces at F&SF in 1963 and is apparently now working on a novel with Philip K. Dick. He continues to show here why he is one to watch.
Ben is the last crewman alive on a planet where numerous creatures seem to be trying to kill him. This does not feel like a pulp era story at all, rather like the kinds of atmospheric vignettes we get in New Worlds.
Four stars
Hans Off in Free Pfall to The Moon, by E. A. Poe
This is a significant abridgement of Edgar Allen Poe’s Hans Pfall (about one fifth of the original length) done by cutting out his verbosity and digressions and instead sticking to the core of the tale, one of a man attempting to travel to the moon in a balloon.
Though I am not a fan of the original full-length work and do think Poe will use ten words where one can suffice, it feels like a lot is lost by making such a change. For example a section observing the Earth from above and pondering its appearance becomes a note about checking altitude on a barometer.
One star for a rather pointless exercise.
The Gamma Interview: Forrest J. Ackerman
I am a bit disappointed overall not just by the brevity of this interview but also the shallowness of it. It starts off interestingly, talking about the early history of monster movies but quickly descends into Ackerman bemoaning how terrible they all are. Also I am surprised that no real attention is given to how Hammer and Toho have really revived the monster film in recent years. He claims he watches every monster film that comes out but you would think from his description everything today was like The Creature From The Haunted Sea. You are much better off checking out Fritz Lieber’s editorial in the recent Fantastic instead.
Two stars
Open Season, by John Tanner
John Tanner is not a medical student as claimed but another alias for new co-editor Jack Matcha (and his second story for Gamma). In this tale, Ditmar is travelling to Venus to try to find out what happened to his wife, who disappeared previously on the same route. While there, the ship gets boarded and crew taken to the asteroid Zara, this being the exclusive property of Cyrus Blake, one of the wealthiest men on Earth
The story seems to be trying to be a tense mystery but I was just getting impatient. The twist itself is pretty expected for anyone who has encountered The Most Dangerous Game (and given how widely reprinted, taught, filmed and copied it is, that is probably 90% of the readership) and the whole thing feels like a very tired exercise.
One star
The Woman Astronaut, by Robert Katz
Katz is another new writer to science fiction from outside the field; if this vignette is anything to go by I hope he never comes back!
A comedic (and I use the term very loosely), dramatic telling of the first American Woman in space, this anonymous Mrs. Smith spends her time worrying about her appearance, is confused that communist China isn’t actually red from space and is generally befuddled by the whole experience.
It has been over a year since the first woman went into space on Vostok 6 and these kind of prejudiced attitudes are insulting, disgusting and probably do continued damage to any hope for progress on this front from NASA.
Unfunny, uninteresting and insulting. One star, only because I cannot give anything lower.
Happily Ever After, by William F. Nolan
The former managing editor of Gamma returns to try to raise the magazine out of the doldrums with this little tale. Donald Spencer buys an asteroid to live on with his wife, on the basis that land value increases will mean it is a sound investment in the long term. It turns out not enough was known about the asteroid and they might be destined for a different kind of happily ever after.
Not that strong, but it hums along and is at least a slight improvement on the last few pieces. Two and a half stars
Don’t Touch Me I’m Sensitive, by James Stamers
Huckelberry Waterstone Smith arrives on a heavily populated Earth controlled by various corporations (the zone he is in being the City G.L.C. Services inc.) wanting to be a space warden, but he lacks the mathematical skill and is illiterate. However, he has the unusual ability to leave behind him images of himself wherever he goes.
I have forced myself to read through this story three times now and I have no idea what is meant to be about. It seems to be written as a joke or satire but I am not convinced it really works as being about anything. Add to that the terrible prose style and it only gets one star from me.
The Hand of Dr. Insidious, by Ron Goulart
With Dr. Fu Manchu set to be brought back to life in the cinema later this year, it seems appropriate that Goulart, a skilled writer of silly satires, would do his take on the famous villain. In this version Dr. Insidious is attempting to create a talent agency and take control of Hollywood. When the 00 agents have been killed in their attempts to stop him it is up to crack spy Ian Naismith and Hollywood’s top plastic surgeon Dr. Maxwell Phoebus Jr. to take him down.
A fun and silly piece as you would expect from Goulart but it doesn’t really get at or examine the myriad problems with the Fu Manchu stories. In fact reads more as another silly version of the Spy-Fi genre.
Two Stars and a recommendation to instead check out the Goon Show stories of Fred Fu-Manchu.
A Messy Melee
Overall, a really disappointing turn for the once great magazine. My subscription is paid up until issue 7 and with the new bi-monthly schedule (assuming this one actually sticks) I should be reading up until September. However, if this is the new direction I certainly will not be renewing.
Thankfully, the other work is a significant improvement:
And so we now come to the conclusion of Delany’s Toron trilogy, which (at least for myself) has been the most anticipated book for a decade. The first two books showed that Delany was a writer of immense skill and did an amazing job of setting up this fantastical future and the stakes of the conflict. Now he has a full length novel, rather than half of an Ace Double, to conclude this tale.
This book jumps between two main focuses. Firstly, we have agents from numerous different species in the city of the Triple Entity. Here we learn of the war with The Lord of The Flames and the previous efforts to combat him. The Lord of Flames cannot experience concepts like war or compassion as those in our universe can so he has been trying to understand them first hand. The final result of the war will depend on which side has ownership of three manuscripts of the most sensitive minds of Earth and it is up to the Triple Entity’s agents, without outside aid, to bring them.
Back on Earth, the focus is on Jon and Alter. Now back in Toron (the centre of the Toromon empire), they have discovered mysterious words scrawled on walls everywhere. Following this trail leads them to the final resolution to the many conflicts we have seen throughout the series.
This is one that I think is going to get sharp reactions from the science fiction community, this is probably the toughest novel in an incredibly experimental series. It is a philosophical work touching on religion, communication, the morality of war, class conflict, racism and free will. Through it all we have a wide range of characters and concepts across a massive scope.
To start with the positive, there is absolutely no faulting Delany’s imagination and ambition. What would take entire novellas for another writer constitute a passing reference for him. To take one example:
…one of the attendants was an attractive woman with wide hazel eyes. But a minute examination would have shown her slim almond-nailed fingers, her cream and honey skin to be a bizarre cosmic coincidence. Internal examination and genetic analysis would prove her a bisexual species of moss.
This character never becomes important to the narrative and this description could be entirely exorcised without any confusion. Yet what it does do is display the multiplicity of life in this universe and the vast difference in beings we will be encountering.
Also, in spite of how complex the story he is trying to tell is he handles the action beats and flow incredibly well. It is easy to get lost in the world Delany has created, the tribulation of the characters and feel the tension grow as the remaining pages count down.
Yet, as with the previous books, keeping all the characters and situations in my head can be a real struggle. I don’t think this is a personal thing; I like Tolkien and Tolstoy and find their enormous casts just fine to understand. What I think is the major issue with these books is that Delany is attempting to paint on such an enormous scale with an incredibly finite canvas. There is no reason these books could not be expanded to the length of The Lord of The Rings without the need for significant plot alterations.
That is not to say it is not a great work that shows a talent that seems destined to become one of the most important in the field. But I do wonder if this kind of writing might not be better off trying a mainstream publisher or a long magazine serialization than the slim paperbacks Ace produces.
Rating: Four and a half stars
By the way, Galactic Journey will be doing a special presentation of our "Come Time Travel with Me" panel, the one we normally do at conventions, on March 27 at 6PM PDT. Come register to join us! It's free and fun…and you might win a prize!
This March issue opens with Frank Herbert’s novelet Greenslaves, a rather startling, if not entirely amazing, performance. In the future, Brazil and other countries are making war against insect life, since it’s a disgusting reservoir of disease and a source of damage to crops. (The U.S. is an exception, owing to the influence of the radical Carsonists; the reference is presumably to Rachel, not Kit or Johnny.) But the campaign seems to be backfiring, with insects mutating, and epidemics. The events of the plot are cheerfully bizarre, but the message is similar to that of the more ponderous Dune epic: attend to ecology. Things work together and if you mess with the balance, you may harm yourselves.
by Gray Morrow
Unlike the more dense and turgid Dune serials, though, this story is crisply told and moves along quickly and vividly to its point. It also recalls Wells’s story The Empire of the Ants—not a follow-up or a rejoinder, but a very different angle on the premise of that classic story. Four stars for this striking departure both from Herbert’s and from Amazing’s ordinary course.
The ground gained by Herbert is quickly given up by Christopher Anvil’s The Plateau, which if it were an LP would have to be called Chris Anvil’s Greatest Dull Thuds. Actually, my first thought was that it should be retitled The Abyss, but then I realized it is over 50 pages long. Maybe—following our host’s example in discussing Analog—it should instead be called The Endless Desert. It’s yet another story about stupid and comically rigid aliens bested by clever humans, which no doubt came back from Analog with a rejection slip reading “You’ve sold me this story six times already and it gets worse every time!”
by Robert Adragna
The premise: “Earth was conquered. . . . At no place on the globe was there a well-equipped body of human combat troops larger than a platoon.” Except these platoons seem to have an ample supply of mini-hydrogen bombs and reliable communications among numerous redoubts at least around the US, as they bamboozle the aliens in multiple ways, including a cover of one of Eric Frank Russell’s greatest hits: making the aliens believe the humans have powerful unseen allies on their side. The whole is rambling, hackneyed, and sloppy (late in the story there are several references to the aliens as “Bugs,” though they are apparently humanoid, and then that usage disappears for the rest of the story). Towards the end, a sort-of-interesting idea about the nature of the aliens’ stupidity emerges, leading to a moderately clever end, though it’s hardly worth the slog to get there: it’s the same sort of schematic thinking that Anvil typically accomplishes in Analog at a fifth the length or less. So, barely, two stars.
Be Yourself, by Robert Rohrer
Robert Rohrer’s Be Yourself is a little hackneyed, too, but at six pages is much more neatly turned and much less exasperating and wearying than the Anvil story. Alien invaders have figured out how to duplicate us precisely; how do we know which Joe Blow is the real one? No one who has read SF for more than a week will be surprised by the twists, but one can admire their execution. Three stars.
Ron Goulart’s Calling Dr. Clockwork is business as usual for him, an outrageous lampoon, this time of hospitals and the medical profession. The protagonist goes to visit someone in the hospital, faints when he sees a patient in bad condition, and wakes up in a hospital bed, attended by various caricatures including the eponymous and dysfunctional robot doctor, and it looks like he’s never going to get out. Three stars for an amusing farce, no longer than it needs to be.
Wheeler Dealer, by Arthur Porges
The difference between an amusing farce and a tedious one is limned to perfection by Arthur Porges’s Wheeler Dealer, in which his series character Ensign De Ruyter and company are stranded on a nearly airless planet inhabited by quasi-Buddhist humanoids with giant lungs who can’t spare time to help the Earthfolk mine the beryllium they need to repair their ship before they run out of air. Why no help? Because the locals are too busy spinning their prayer wheels. So De Ruyter shows them how to make the wheels spin on their own and thereby gets the mining labor they need. Porges, unlike Goulart, is, tragically, not funny. The story (like the previous De Ruyter item, Urned Reprieve in last October’s issue) is essentially a jumped-up version of a squib on Fascinating Scientific Facts that you might find as filler at the bottom of a column in another sort of magazine. It does not help that the plot amounts to the simple-minded offspring of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God. Two stars.
The Man Who Discovered Atlantis, by Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg provides another smoothly readable and informative entry in his Scientific Hoaxes series, The Man Who Discovered Atlantis, about Paul Schliemann, grandson of Heinrich Schliemann, discoverer of the buried city (cities) of Troy. The younger Schliemann wasn’t able to accomplish much on his own, so he exploited the fame of his grandfather to perpetrate a hoax about the discovery of Atlantis, or at least of its location and confirmation of its existence. Silverberg succinctly recounts the origin and history of the Atlantis myth as well as the charlatanry over it that preceded Paul Schliemann’s, and suggests that had Plato known what would come of his references to Atlantis, he probably wouldn’t have brought it up. Four stars.
Summing Up
So . . . two pretty decent issues of this magazine in a row! One very good story, two acceptable ones, and quite a good article, and the other contents are merely inadequate and not affirmatively noxious. Do we have a trend? One hopes so, but . . . promised for next month is another of Edmond Hamilton’s nostalgia operas about the Star Kings. We shall see.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
Back when the Young Traveler and I were watching The Twilight Zone, we accidentally picked the wrong time to turn on the set and ended up getting introduced to Mr. Ed, Supercar, and The Andy Griffith Show, in that order. It made for an amusing night, and we learned a lot about the prime-time schedule for that season.
Recently, we once again fell down the rabbit hole, though not quite by accident.
It all started with an amazing new import form England. You may have seen the American rebroadcast of Danger Man back in the summer of '61. It was a smart spy show starring NATO agent, John Drake, played by Patrick McGoohan. Well, he's back, and this time his episodes are a full hour rather than just half. It's gripping stuff, albeit a bit heavier and more cynical than the first run. Realistic, idealistic, and respectful of women, it's a delightful contrast to the buffoonish Bond franchise.
So gripping was the show that we ended up somehow unable to change the channel when Password came on. This game show is sort of a verbal version of Charades where a contestant tries to get their partner to say a word using single-word clues. Play goes back and forth until one team gets it right.
It's kind of a dumb show for the viewer because we already know the answer. On the other hand, the contestants always include celebrities, and it's fun to watch them struggle through the rounds.
Gene Kelly looked like he wanted to kill his partner. The whole time!
Juliet Prowse, on the other hand, was adorable and funny.
After half an hour of that, we had summoned enough energy to reach toward the television remote…until we heard the bugle strains heralding the arrival of Rocky and Bullwinkle (and friends). It had been my understanding that the show had completed its five year run, but it has apparently gone into reruns without missing a beat. Since we had missed the first couple of years, well, we couldn't turn off the television now!
The only thing that saved us was the subsequent airing of Bonanza, a show I am only too happy to turn off. Who knows how long we'd have cruised The Vast Wasteland otherwise. Of course, now we're stuck watching all three shows every week (homework permitting).
Print Analog
Science fiction magazines are kind of like blocks of TV shows. They happen regularly, their quality is somewhat reliable, but their content varies with each new issue. This month's Worlds of IF Science Fiction defined the phrase "much of a muchness". Each (for the most part) was acceptable, even enjoyable, but either they were flawed jewels, or they simply never went beyond workmanlike. Read on, and you'll see what I mean:
This rather goofy cover courtesy of McKenna, illustrating Small One
Steve Maitlin is an ornery SOB, a Marine veteran of Korea who knows the world is all SNAFU, especially the moronic generals who run the show. Not only does this attitude make life miserable for those around him, but it also brings the Earth to the brink of interstellar war. It turns out that the alien BEM Maitlin shoots one day on the road to work is just one of an infinite number of bodies for an IT, and the replacement body ends up with Maitlin's cussedness as part of its basic personality.
Said IT also has the ability to replicate any weapon the humans throw against it, but magnified. Shoot at it? It builds a big-size rifle. Bomb it? It comes back with an extra-jumbo jet and a bigger nuke. In the end, Maitlin is the only one who can stop the thing, which makes karmic sense. But can the vet change his nature in time to meet minds with the alien?
by Gray Morrow
This story doesn't make a lot of sense, but Van Vogt is good at keeping you engaged with pulpish momentum. Three stars.
Reporter at Large, by Ron Goulart
In a future where mob bosses have replaced politicians (or perhaps the politicians have just more nakedly advertised their criminal nature!) power is entrenched and hereditary. Only an honest journalist can bring about a revolution, but when any person has his price, only an android editor's got the scruples to speak truth to power.
Ron Goulart writes good, funny stories. Unfortunately, while I see that he tried, he failed at accomplishing either this time out. Two stars, and the worst piece of the mag.
Small One, by E. Clayton McCarty
A young alien has exiled himself as part of its first stage of five on the journey toward maturity. Its isolation is disturbed when a tiny bipedal creature lands in a spaceship nearby and finds itself trapped in a cave. The child-being establishes telepathic contact with the intruder (obviously a human) and an eventual rapport is established. But everything falls apart when the Terran's rapacious teammates land and fall into conflict with the alien's infinitely more powerful family…
by Jack Gaughan
I am a sucker for first contact stories, especially when told from the alien viewpoint. This one is good, but it suffers from a certain lack of subtlety, a kind of hamfisted presentation of the kind I normally see from new writers. That makes sense; this is his (her?) first story.
Three stars, and my favorite piece of the magazine.
Blind Alley, by Basil Wells
A year after settling the planet of Croft, the human colonists and their livestock all become afflicted with blindness. Against the odds, they survive, shaping their lives around the change. But can their society take the shock when a new arrival, generations later, brings back the promise of sight?
Blind Alley treads much of the same ground as Daniel Galouye's excellent Dark Universe from a few years back. The question is worth asking: when is a "disability" simply a different way to be able? That said, Wells is not as skilled as Galouye, and the story merits three stars as a result.
Gree's Commandos, by C. C. MacApp
by Nodel
On a thick-atmosphered planet, Colonel Steve Duke assists a race of Stone Age flying elephants against the interstellar aggressors, the Gree, and their mercentary cohorts. It's a straight adventure piece with virtually no development, either of the characters or the larger setting. Somewhat similar to Keith Laumer's latest novel (The Hounds of Hell, also appearing in IF), it doesn't do anything to make you care. Sufficiently developed, it could have been good.
Two stars.
Zombie, by J. L. Frye
Here is the second story by a brand new author…and it shows. In the future, it becomes possible to transplant a personality in the short term to a physically perfect body. Said transfers are used almost exclusively for espionage and sabotage — it's not much fun living in a shell of a form that can't really feel or enjoy anything other than the satisfaction of a job well done. Indeed, the only people willing to endure the hell of personality transfer (back and forth) are the profoundly crippled.
This story of a particularly hairy mission has its moments of poignance, but again, Frye is not quite up to the challenge of a difficult topic. Plus, he needs more adjectives in his quiver; I count seven times he used "beautiful" to describe the sole female character. Even Homer varied between calling Athena "grey-eyed" and "owl-eyed".
Three stars.
Starchild (Part 2 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson
Last up is the second installment of three (that number again!) in this serialized sequel to The Reefs of Space. It's a short one, barely long enough to cover the harsh interrogation of Bowsie Gann. Gann was the loyal spy servant of The Plan, returned to Earth at the same time the star-reef-dwelling Starchild began to turn off the local suns to scare Earth's machine-run government.
by Nodel
It's a most unpleasant set of pages, with lots of torture and cruelty (something Fred Pohl does effectively; viz. A Plague of Pythons). That said, Pohl and Williamson can write, and I am looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up.
Three stars.
Stay Tuned
Like much of the Idiot Box's offerings, IF continues to deliver stuff that's just good enough to keep my subscription current. I'd like editor Fred Pohl to tip the magazine in one direction or another so I can either stop buying it or enjoy it more…
Until then, I guess my knob stays tuned to this channel!
[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine! We work for egoboo…]
The guy on the right doesn't seem too happy about all this.
The long-anticipated movie version of the smash hit stage musical The Sound of Music had sneak previews in Minneapolis and Tulsa this month, and is scheduled to show up in theaters across the nation in March. This sugary-sweet confection, very loosely based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers, isn't really my cup of tea, but I thought I would pay tribute to the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II by stealing the titles of some of the ditties that appear in it.
Just a couple of days ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States for his first full term.
Chief Justice Earl Warren administers the oath of office.
The inaugural address was a short one. In the space of twenty minutes or so, he raised the issues of poverty, health care, literacy, and much more. A phrase about American lives lost in countries we barely know is surely a reference to the conflict in Vietnam. He even threw in a nod to the space program, mentioning the rocket that is heading toward Mars.
Those are a lot of steep, difficult mountains to conquer for any politician, so let's wish the President well.
I've complained before about some of the syrupy ballads that reach the top, so I was pleased to see two tunes more to my liking jump to Number One this month. Both are courtesy of the UK, so pip pip and cheerio to our friends across the pond!
Earlier this month, the Beatles made a big comeback on the American charts with their upbeat rock 'n' roll number I Feel Fine.
The big advantage of buying a record instead of going to a Beatles concert is that you can actually hear the song instead of screaming.
Even as I type this, the news reaches me that British songbird Petula Clark is now Number One in the USA, belting out a nifty tribute to the pleasures of big city living called Downtown.
Like the rest of you, I'm a big fan of science fiction and fantasy stories, at least when they're done reasonably well. Let's take a look at the latest issue of Fantastic and hope for the best.
A magician, who is also handy with a quarterstaff, travels around with his familiar, a goblin. (In this world, that means an earth elemental.) They run into — literally! — a most unusual knight. Although he can talk and fight and do all kinds of knightly things, he's just an empty suit of armor. After a brief period of misunderstanding, the sorcerer and the goblin agree to help him find the wizard who put a curse on him.
Fortunately, all users of magic have to travel to a convention once per century or lose their powers, and it's going on right now. The knight also has to triumph at a jousting tournament, which is hard to do when you're just a suit of armor that doesn't weigh very much. Add in a lovesick wood nymph, the King of Faerie, and some Bad Guys, and you got a lighthearted fantasy adventure. It provides some amusement, although it's hardly profound.
If you studied Homer in school, you're familiar with the term in medias res. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, this brief tale begins in the middle of things.
Our hero, Dilvish the Damned, is riding his talking metal horse, for which he sold part of his soul, from the site of a lost battle, in order to carry the news to a city threatened by the advancing enemy. Along the way lots of foes try to stop him, but he escapes them all. A final encounter with a a knight wearing invulnerable armor tests the skills of Dilvish and his steed.
This lightning-paced tale is very well written, but it reads like a few pages torn out of a much longer story. I hope the author eventually tells us more about the Damned fellow.
As you may recall from the previous installment, the Corps Galactica finds evidence that the ruling class of the planet Cyclops is somehow restoring body parts for those lost by the wealthy; a thing which should be beyond their level of medical technology. As strongly hinted at last time, that's because they're buying them from some sinister folks who exploit the population of a planet unknown to the Corps.
The Bad Guys convince their victims that they're suffering from a terminal illness, take them away, and pay their families, pretending to be a sort of hospice. Of course, they really murder them in cold blood, and sell them to the physician on Cyclops who takes care of the elite.
In the concluding half of this short novel, the Corps figures out what's going on and tries to stop it. Complicating matters is the fact that the woman who is the de facto ruler of Cyclops orders the Corps to abandon their base on the planet, even though this will cause great economic hardship for her world. She has her own motive, which involves the physician and one of the innocent inhabitants of the secret planet. It all leads up to a daring raid on the evil doctor's lair by the heroine, a highly skilled and experienced agent of the Corps.
That makes the plot sound melodramatic, and, indeed, the climax resembles something from a James Bond novel. However, the characters are believable, the background is complex, and the combination of violent action and political intrigue always held my interest.
Four stars.
Winterness, by Ron Goulart
Also by George Schelling. I like the white-on-black effect.
Set in the early part of the Twentieth Century, this tongue-in-cheek yarn involves a spiritualist and a married couple, both of whom are novelists. The woman believes in the medium's powers, the man does not. At a seance for a newspaper editor and his mistress, the skeptic falls into danger, and dark secrets are revealed.
I've made the story sound a lot more serious than it is. Although the plot isn't a funny one, the characters, the dialogue, and the narrative style are all good for some laughs. I particularly liked a bit of satire on the writing game of years gone by, with the woman producing sentimental novels with titles like Venetia; or Led Where Love Compels and the man turning out muckraking works like Soil and Steam.
Three stars.
The Vamp, by Thomas M. Disch
The narrator is an old-time movie actor, going back to the silent days, who is now the host of a TV kiddie show. He sees his ex-wife on the street, acting like a flirtatious 1920's flapper to the men who pass by, who don't seem interested. That's not a big surprise, since she's more than sixty years old, with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, dead white skin, ruby lips, sharp teeth . . .
OK, you know where this is going, from the title if nothing else. The narrator never figures it out, so he invites her home for a very rare — in fact, bloody — steak. That leads to the story's joke ending.
The whole thing is just a trifle, but I liked it well enough. Maybe that's because the idea of turning a silent-screen star into a you-know-what tickled me. Or maybe because the story reminded me of the great old movie Sunset Boulevard. (I can definitely see a similarity between the Vamp and Norma Desmond.)
Before I say goodbye, let me sum up my thoughts on this issue. Overall, it was pretty decent. No bad stories, although many of them were definitely minor works. That's a lot better than a magazine full of lousy fiction, so I won't complain when I read something good.
[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine! We work for egoboo…]
Science fiction writers often have to deal with things on a very large scale. Whether they take readers across vast reaches of space, or into unimaginably far futures, they frequently look at time and the universe through giant telescopes of imagination, enhancing their vision beyond ordinary concerns of here and now.
(This is not to say anything against more intimate kinds of imaginative fiction, in which the everyday world reveals something extraordinary. A microscope can be a useful tool for examining dreams as well.)
A fine example of the kind of tale that paints a portrait of an enormous universe, with a chronology reaching back for eons, appears in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, from the pen of a new, young writer.
Our story begins about two billion years ago. The character shown above is a member of a telepathic species with the power to enslave other sentient beings with their minds.
An example of a slave species that doesn't play much part in the story.
This slave species, on the other hand, has a big impact on what happens to its masters.
Kzanol the Thrint has a problem. On his way to the homeworld in his starship, the engine that allows it to make long-distance voyages explodes. The rest of the ship is unharmed, but Kzanol is stranded. Fortunately, he has a suit that slows time down to a crawl for the wearer. He can't reach his native planet with the power his ship has left, but he can crash into an uninhabited planet, where yeast is grown to feed slaves, after a couple of centuries. He stashes some valuables into a spare suit, puts on the other one, programs the ship for the slow journey, and goes into stasis, expecting to be rescued once enough time has gone by.
Kzanol in the stasis suit.
Cut to Earth, in a future of flying cars and interstellar travel. Larry Greenberg (now where have I seen that first name before?) is a telepath. Compared to an average Thrint, he has hardly any ability at all; but it's enough to get him a job communicating mentally with dolphins. This is really just a stepping stone to a real career of reaching the minds of aliens discovered on the planet humans call Jinx.
Scientists who have just invented a time-slowing device — sound familiar? — realize that the so-called Sea Statue, an ancient object found at the bottom of the ocean, is really an alien inside a similar stasis field. By placing it inside their own gizmo, they can deactivate it. Larry is along to pick up the thoughts of the alien. This works much too well.
Kzanol's mind takes over Larry's body. Although he still has human memories, he thinks he is really a Thrint, lost on a world of ptavvs (beings without telepathic powers.) He also believes that he is trapped in the body of a ptavv himself, because he is unable to control the inhabitants of the planet with his mind.
One of several genetically engineered species Larry/Kzanol remembers, adding greatly to the feeling of a richly imagined background. These are giant plants that use solar power as a defense mechanism.
These are dinosaur-sized, single-celled animals the Thrint use for food, feeding them on yeast. There turns out to be much more to them than meets the eye.
Racing animals, like horses or greyhounds on Earth.
The interiors of these trees act as rocket fuel.
At the same time, the real Kzanol escapes from his stasis suit. This leads to a wild chase across the solar system, as both Kzanol and Larry/Kzanol race to find the other stasis suit, which contains a telepathy-enhancing device that would allow the wearer to control all the minds on Earth. Both Earth-dwellers and the colonists who inhabit the asteroid belt head out after the pair. There's an economic cold war going on between Earthers and Belters, adding to the tension.
Kzanol thinks the other suit is on Neptune, but it turns out to be on Pluto, which used to be a moon of Neptune a couple of billion years ago.
This is a fast-moving, complex story with a richly imagined background. The author clearly did a lot of work creating his fictional universe and populating it with a wide variety of organisms. There are so many concepts thrown out that some readers may feel overwhelmed. Certain elements are not fully explored. (The slave that Kzanol throws into his spare suit seems to have no relevance to the plot. And what's going to happen to the colonists on Jinx? Maybe a sequel?) Overall, however, it's a fine novella, indicative of an important new talent.
Four stars.
Undersea Weapons Tomorrow, by Joseph Wesley
The first of a pair of nonfiction articles in this issue imagines naval warfare two decades from now. The scenario is similar to the Cuban situation, heated up quite a bit. The Good Guys set up a blockade of an unfriendly island. The Bad Guys use submarines to attack Good Guy shipping. The author considers the balance of wins and losses in this aquatic battle. (For example, how many ships do you need to sink to make up for the number of submarines lost in the process?)
He also discusses locating the enemy via spy satellites, very slow seagoing bases for aircraft, and porpoises as allies. It's a rather dry piece, with some interesting aspects.
Two stars.
Scarfe's World, by Brian W. Aldiss
Illustration by Gray Morrow
This starts like one of those corny old movies where cave people and dinosaurs live at the same time. There are a couple of odd things about this primitive world, however. Sometimes people just dissolve, and the male protagonist doesn't really understand why he wants to be near the female protagonist.
We soon find out that the humans and dinosaurs are miniature forms of artificial life, created for study. The process sometimes breaks down, explaining the dissolving, and the organisms don't reproduce, explaining the caveman's confused feelings.
There really isn't much to this story other than its basic concept. The last third returns to the point of view of the caveman, which pretty much rehashes what went on in the first third.
Two stars.
Phobos: Moon or Artifact?, by R. S. Richardson
Our second science article answers the question posed in its title right away. The author considers a Russian article from 1959 that suggested that Phobos is hollow, rejects it, and tells us why. The reasoning is highly technical. If I understand things correctly, when a moon is slowed in its orbit by something or other, it approaches the planet. Thus, although its velocity was decreased at first, it actually increases later.
Apparently Phobos increased its velocity due to this effect, but Deimos did not. One explanation for the observed effect would be if Phobos had an extremely low mass for its size; as if it were a hollow artificial satellite, for example. The author points out that there are several other explanations for the phenomenon, and that it really isn't that well established anyway. The whole thing will probably be of more interest to experts in orbital mechanics than the general reader.
Two stars.
By Way of Mars, by Ron Goulart
A guy falls for a girl, but she keeps standing him up at their dates. The Government Lovelorn Bureau tells him to forget her, but he doesn't give up that easily. Things rapidly get way out of hand, as the fellow gets in trouble with the cops, is shanghaied to Venus, escapes to Mars, and becomes the leader of a rebellion on the red planet.
I found the author's satiric portrait of a near future Earth, with suicide clubs and sex book plotters, more effective than the protagonist's interplanetary misadventures. The intent seems to be comic, although nothing particularly funny happens.
Two stars.
Pariah Planet, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
Illustrations by John Giunta
A spaceman kills a man in a bar fight on a planet with an odd system of justice. Although it was self-defense, he is convicted of murder, and transported to a prison planet. The underground society of this world is ordinary enough, with a couple of exceptions.
There are two groups of citizens. Type A people wear all different kinds of clothing, but Type B people must wear black at all times. Type B citizens are also required to repeat the crimes for which they were convicted, with the Type A citizens as victims. The protagonist, for example, is told to murder one Type A person each week.
The Type A people aren't really bald, as shown here, but the illustration sort of clues the reader in on what's going on.
This leads to a crisis of conscience, as the unspecified consequences of failing to commit one's assigned crime are said to be very serious indeed. As time goes by, the main character grows more and more fearful of what fate awaits him, and finds himself tempted to kill one of the Type A people, who seem like perfect victims.
The protagonist in a brooding mood.
The contrived situation reminds me of the sort of thing that used to show up a lot in Galaxy in the old days, with some aspect of society reflected in a funhouse mirror. Here, of course, it's crime and punishment. You'll probably figure out the nature of the Type A people, and how this eccentric system of justice is supposed to work, long before the end.
Two stars.
That's About the Size of It
After a big start, the second half of the magazine shrinks into a collection of disappointing little stories and articles. Maybe it's just the contrast between Niven's wide-ranging imagination and much shorter, less ambitious pieces. In any case, the publication is large enough to accommodate losers as well as winners. What do you expect for half a buck, anyway?
A big coin for a big magazine.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
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