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[January 26, 1965] Down the Rabbit Hole…Again (February 1965 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

TV Triplets

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

The Replicators, by A. E. van Vogt

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!

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Magazine, Serial

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

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by Victoria Silverwolf


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

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

Caution: May cause diabetes.

Climb Ev'ry Mountain

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


Chief Justice Earl Warren administers the oath of office.

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

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

Do Re Mi

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

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


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

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


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

My Favorite Things

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


Cover art by Heidi Coquette.

A Fortnight of Miracles, by Randall Garrett

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

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

Three stars.

Passage to Dilfar, by Roger Zelazny

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

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

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

Three stars.

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


Illustration by George Schelling.

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

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

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

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

Four stars.

Winterness, by Ron Goulart


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

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

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

Three stars.

The Vamp, by Thomas M. Disch

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

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

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

Three stars.

So Long, Farewell

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

[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine! We work for egoboo…]




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Magazine

[January 14, 1965] The Big Picture (March 1965 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

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.


Cover art by George Schelling

World of Ptavvs, by Larry Niven


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan

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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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine

[August 21, 1964] The Good News (September 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Reversing the trend

The United States is the richest country in the world.  By any reckoning, we measure in superlatives: biggest economy, strongest military, most movies, coolest cars.  But there is one outsized statistic we shouldn't bury in gloss — 19% of Americans live in poverty.

Several months back, newly installed President Johnson took an unscheduled trip through Appalachia, the poorest part of our country.  This region, between the Eastern seaboard and the Plains states, north of the agrarian South and the Industrial North, has traditionally been an economic backwater.  Shocked by what he found, LBJ promptly declared a War on Poverty, seeking to continue the efforts of President Roosevelt to bring up the nation and, in particular, Appalachia.

Yesterday saw a great step forward taken in that direction.  President Johnson signed into law the Economic Opportunity Act, designed to help the poorest families find their way out of their economic quagmire.  This will be achieved a number of ways, largely through the creation of new task forces and funding of groups whose goal is poverty relief. 

For instance, the newly created Job Corps and Neighborhood Youth Corps will provide work and training for the underskilled and underemployed.  Work Study college grants and Adult Basic Education will ensure that the poor are not barred from employment by illiteracy or lack of education.  There are also loan and grant programs for individuals and agencies. 

It's a smart system, not a simple redistribution of wealth but an investment in the next generation of Americans.  I have a lot of confidence that it will be successful — provided, of course, that the money gets put to good use.  Time will tell.

Big and small scale

Just as the White House has endeavored to improve the lot of Americans, so has Fantasy and Science Fiction's editor worked to address a disturbing trend.  In fact, this month's issue is easily the best one of the magazine that I've read in a while, and it's not even an "All-Star Issue".  It's just good.

So for those of you who came to hear me flog F&SF, you're going to be disappointed…

Mel Hunter's cover shows a post-Mariner 2 Venus, a cloudy inferno.  It's a beautiful piece, though it pertains to no story in this issue and is, perhaps, a better fit for Analog. 

The stories, on the other hand, are pure F&SF:

Chameleon, by Ron Goulart

Ron Goulart writes these flip, droll little pieces, with deft skill (if not great consequence).  This particular one stars Ben Jolson, member of a corps of secret agents whose special talent is shapeshifting.  People, animals, furniture, these superspies transform instantly and apparently without regard for mass considerations.  Jolson is a particularly adept, if eccentric, agent, grudgingly tasked with getting the prime minister of Barafunda to make a proclamation against the practice of using soulless, mass-produced people as slave labor.  By any means necessary: becoming a trusted adviser, inciting violence, even becoming the PM herself.

Goulart keeps things real enough to avoid farce, light enough to avoid melodrama.  If you like Laumer's Retief or Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat stories, this will be right up your alley. 

Four stars.

A Miracle Too Many, by Alan E. Nourse and Philip H. Smith

Dr. Stephen Olie discovers that being able to miraculously cure with a touch is a curse as well as a blessing.  Both Nourse and Smith are physicians, so it's no surprise that this piece involves the medical profession.  I liked everything but the ending, which felt a bit lazy.

Three stars. 

Slips Take Over, by Miriam Allen deFord

Ms. deFord, who is 76 today (Many Happy Returns!) offers up a tale of a man who slips between parallel timelines as easily and inadvertently as we might get lost on the streets of an unfamiliar city.  It's a neat idea, with the kind of great creepy atmosphere deFord is good at, but she doesn't do much with the story.  Plus, there are inconsistencies regarding what items do and do not travel with the hapless universe-crosser.

Three stars.

Olsen and the Gull, by Eric St. Clair

Eric, the husband of famed author Margaret St. Clair, is an author in his own right.  This is his first story not to be written for children and involving SFF elements.  In this case, it's a shipwrecked lout of a sailor whose only entertainment is to crush the eggs of the multitudinous seagulls while chanting "tromp tromp tromp."  One enterprising bird undertakes to distract Olsen the sailor by teaching him the art of summoning… with amusing and unfortunate results.

Four stars.

Carbonaceous Chondrites, by Theodore L. Thomas

Even Thomas' little column, usually sophomoric in the extreme, isn't bad this month.  He posits that the carbon compounds being found in certain meteorites are evidence of extraterrestrial life — but not the way you think!

Three stars.

Four Brands of Impossible, by Norman Kagan

The longest piece of the issue is by a new writer, a student at New York City College.  As befits a novice, the story, about a mathematician tapped to develop an illogical logic, is somewhat unfocused.  Moreover, when it's all done, I'm not exactly sure that anything of importance has happened.

On the other hand, there are bits in the story that are quite compelling, about space research, the value of an automated presidency, the folly of racism, etc., and I will remember the novelette for these if nothing else.

Thus, three stars.

The New Encyclopaedist-II, by Stephen Becker

A mock encyclopaedia article, about Jacob Porphyry, who reversed the trend toward malaprop and literary inanity by making his books hard to read.

It's cute once you get into it.  Three stars.

Theoretical Progress, by Karen Anderson

This first of two poems by Karen Anderson (Poul's other half), is a modern-day send-up of Antigonish. 

I liked it.  Four stars.

Investigation of Galactic Ethnology, by Karen Anderson

On the other hand, the second poem, a limerick, is barely worth a pained smirk. 

Still, that's the appropriate reaction to a well-delivered pun.  Three stars.

Elementary, by Laurence M. Janifer and Michael Kurland

Raise your hand if you want to murder your agent.  Goodness, there are a lot of you!  I shouldn't be surprised…I'm not even convinced that they're a necessary evil these days.  Anyway, this story is about a pair of authors who decide to put paid to their 10% bloodsucker only to find their efforts repeatedly thwarted.

This is another piece with a great beginning and middle, but the ending didn't quite work for me.  Perhaps you'll feel differently.

Three stars.

The Haste-Makers, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor's non-fiction article is on catalysts this time around.  I learned a great deal, but then chemistry has never been my bag.  The big revelation I got out of the piece was that catalysts aren't magic but merely a side effect of our living in an oxygen-filled environment (just like airplanes no longer boggle the brain when you realize that they don't fly on nothing — air just happens to be invisible).

Four stars.

The Deepest Blue in the World, by S. Dorman

When the stars become a battlefield, the men will go off to fight and die, and women will be brought to the Wedding Bench to conceive and rear the next batch of soldiers.  If they resist their breeding lot in life, it's prison and the mines for them.

A chilling story by an author with an uncanny vision of female subjugation.  A strong four stars.

Inconceivably Yours, by Willard Marsh

A bachelor worries that the failure of a contraceptive will end his bachelor days, but one God's curse is another man's blessing.  A fair story with a delicious title.

Three stars.

The Star Party, by Robert Lory

The astrologers presume to know a lot about people.  Unfortunately, master star-teller Isvara picked the wrong two Madison Avenue party attenders to cast readings on.  It's a nice little tale, though the astronomical inaccuracy at the end was unfortunate.

Three stars.

A Crown of Rank Fumiter, by Vance Aandahl

Last up, we have young Vance Aandahl, who started out strong and has been delivering weak tea indeed for several years.  This piece, about a recluse who, in the midst of death finds his humanity, is a refreshing change of direction — and thus a perfect capper for a surprisingly strong issue.

Four stars.

Summing up

I don't know that any of these stories hit it out of the park for me, but there were plenty of good pieces and no clunkers in the lot.  Even Davidson's introductions were entertaining.  This issue will certainly be a contender for best magazine this month.

More good news: F&SF has several foreign editions.  They've just started a Spanish edition, Minotauro, the first issue of which arrived by mail the other day.  My daughter, who is learning the language in high school, is currently working her way through Damon Knight's What Rough Beast and enjoying it, even translated.  So, if you speak Spanish, and you want a "best-of" issue of the magazine, you could do worse than to pick up a copy!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Magazine

[June 30, 1964] A big Delta (June 1964 Gamma)

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by Gideon Marcus

Heading South

After four lovely days in the Japanese capital, we hopped the train for points southwest, toward the center of the country.  Sadly, we were just a few months too early to take the new "bullet train" which will be debuted in October in time for the Olympics.  The trip thus took many hours, but the scenery was nice (this year's "rainy season" hasn't been very) and I got a lot of reading done.

Nagoya is Japan's "fourth" city, after Tokyo/Yokohama, Osaka, and Fukuoka.  A drab, gray and brown place, it nevertheless was a must-stay location for us given its proximity to so many of our friends: A husband-and-wife couple teach at the local university, our dear friend Hideko (now recently married!) lives in Osaka, and a friend I met when she visited America, Juuri, lives in nearby Shizuoka.

And, of course, there is the super-energetic Nanami, who teaches schoolchildren in Nagoya.

Dan and Jen, whose nieces were visiting at the time, took us up to old Inuyama castle.  This is one of the few original castles still intact.  It gave us a commanding view of the area.

We also explored the nearby town of Oobu, and we were welcomed into a local home.  Here's the bedroom of a little boy who lived there.

The bustling, brash city of Osaka was as smoky and wild as ever.  Western culture has thoroughly soaked the place: clothing, music, and food.

The Issue at Hand

Somehow in the midst of all this, I found time to read and review the latest Gamma, a new magazine whose first two issues had greatly impressed me.  Sadly, it seems that the stock of great fiction the editors had accumulated prior to launch has been exhausted, and what's left is so much trunk work, the substandard stories by big names that hadn't sold elsewhere.  Pity.


by Morris Scott Dollens

The Girl of Paradise Planet, by Robert Turner

The first story illustrates my point well.  Here is a piece by a veteran, with a thousand stories to his credit, and it's just mediocre.  A fellow on vacation on a pleasure planet goes SCUBA-diving and encounters a young girl under the waves.  She's not a mermaid — she has a full complement of human limbs, yet she can breathe underwater.  The vacationer quickly falls in love, to the annoyance of his shrewish wife, and spends endless hours with his newfound paramour. 

Said romance feels solipsistic, like something a fourteen-year-old might come up with, including plenty of the protagonist's thoughts and precious few of the object of his intention.  In fact, near the end, we are led to doubt that the encounter was real at all, which would have made a lot more sense given the sketchiness of the girl's character, who prefers not to talk but rather mostly perform aquatic acrobatics.  And smooch.

Alas, it turns out the girl is real.  Joy for our hero, disappointment for us.  A weak three stars.


by Luan Meatheringham

(speaking of illustrations, Gamma has employed young Luan Meatheringham to produce drawings.  While the pieces are nice, in a fanzine-ish way, they don't relate to any of the stories, and I'm not sure why they're here, taking space.)

The Feather Bed, by Shelly Lowenkopf

Shelly (a man, despite the name) Lowenkopf writes of a future where, upon the expiration of copyright after 56 years, literary works are destroyed to a copy, and replacements commissioned as a kind of artistic welfare.  When a writer refuses to finish his assignment to rewrite King Lear he is fired, eventually becoming a plumber — an industry in which pipes are torn out and replaced every three years.

I like stories about a future with rampant unemployment and the need for makework, but this one doesn't make a lot of sense, even by its own rules (no good argument is made against creating new works) and the piece doesn't work as satire, either, because I'm not sure what it's supposed to be satirizing. 

Two stars.

Angel Levine, by Bernard Malamud

A down-on-his-luck tailor is visited by a shabby, black Jewish angel, who (eventually) eases the man's pain.

Not much to say about this one.  Three stars for atmosphere and dialect.


by Luan Meatheringham

The (In)visible Man, by Edward W. Ludwig

Here's a piece about a man who is such a nonentity that the world completely ignores him, and he is able to lead a life of crime.  That is, until the fellow finds love and confidence, causing him to become visible again.

I might have enjoyed this story more had Ellison not done it so much better in The Forces that Crush six years ago.

Three stars.

Inside Story, by Miriam Allen deFord

From the pen of one of the genre's most venerable creators comes the tale of a sentient world and the tsuris of a cold given it by a four-being scount team from the Galactic Federation.

Cute, but this is the sort of thing Bob Sheckley used to do, and much better.

Three stars.

The Birth, by George Clayton Johnson

We've seen a lot of Johnson on TV, particularly us fans of The Twilight Zone.  This forgettable piece, a first person account of the creation of Frankenstein's Monster, does not even have a Serlingesque twist to redeem it.

Three stars for competent writing.


by Luan Meatheringham

The Gamma Interview: Soviet Science Fiction

The most worthy piece of the issue is an interview with "Ivan Kirov", editor of a Moscow publishing house that produces science fiction.  It is worth picking this issue up just for this piece, even though it has an unfortunate ediorial accident that omits a crucial line.

Five stars.

Buttons, by Raymond E. Banks

Along similar lines, Banks offers up the story of a dying spaceman who transfers his consciousness to a set of computerized buttons until such time as his persona might be restored to a human body.  Said spaceman decides he likes being a disembodied being better.

It's well-written, but like the rest of the pieces in this magazine, it doesn't really go anywhere.

Three stars.


by Luan Meatheringham

Society for the Prevention, by Ron Goulart

Goulart is known for writing humorous pieces, so this light-hearted tale of the fortunate intersection of an interstellar merchant, his shipment of alien pots which are actually extraterrestrial invaders, and some rabid anti-capitalists is right up the author's alley.

Entertaining, though frivolous.  Three stars.

The Snail Watcher, by Patricia Highsmith

Finally, mystery writer Highsmith presents the tale of a man whose love for snails ultimately proves his undoing.  The moral: molluscs are for eating, not voyeuring.

Yet another atmospheric piece that doesn't do much.  Three stars.


by Luan Meatheringham

Summing Up

Thus ends one of the most mediocre collections of digest-sized pages I've ever read.  I have to wonder if this is a momentary blip, or if Gamma is doomed to be short-lived.  Only time will tell.

And now, off to Hiroshima!  See you in two days…

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Magazine

[January 18, 1964] Pig's Lipstick (February 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

President McKinley once famously observed around the Turn of the Century that everything that could be invented had been invented.  He was not entirely correct, as it turned out.  However, if one were to read the stultifying pages of F&SF these days, one might be convinced that all the SF that could be written had been written.  The February 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction is a double-handful of cliches with a thin veneer of literary writing to make them "worthy."  It's no wonder editor Avram Davidson has moved to Mexico; he is probably fleeing his outraged readers — whomever's left of them, anyway.

The House by the Crab Apple Tree, by S. S. Johnson

The bad ship S. S. Johnson leads the issue with possibly the most offensive piece I've read since Garrett's Queen Bee.  It's an After The Bomb piece told from the point of view of one the world's last women, who is shacked up with her wretch of a husband and their fourteen year old daughter.  Barely sentient, our protagonist spends most of the story wondering which of the marauding male savages who terrorize her home would make the best husband for her kid.  After all, a woman needs a man.

Bad as it was, I read the whole story (for it it is passably well written) hoping to be pleasantly surprised.  I wasn't.  Mr. Johnson's protagonist shows no initiative at all (and, in fact, each of her episodes is characterized, even precipitated by her inaction), the daughter is violated in the end, and Davidson, in the height of tactlessness, chose to illustrate the gawdam cover of the magazine with a scene of the torture of said little girl.

One star and a new bottom for the magazine.  Shame, Mr. Davidson.  I hope the mail and telegrams stop service to your new home so you can do no more damage.

[And please see the letter sent in by Mr. Jonathan Edelstein, appended below.  It expresses what's fundamentally wrong with this story.  Thank you, Jonathan. (Ed.)]

The Shepherd of Esdon Pen, by P. M. Hubbard

Here's a stunner.  After spending half the vignette telling us about a Scottish shepherd of legend, a modern shepherd departs into a freak snowstorm, searching for his lost flock, and stumbles across the tomb of none other than the aforementioned herder. When he gets back, his sheep are safe.  WAS IT THE SHEPHERD OF EDSON PEN?!?

An ineptly told ghost story that earns two spectrally thin stars.

Ms Found in a Bottle Washed up on the Sands of Time, by Harry Harrison

A pointless bit of doggerel about a fellow intent on disproving the Grandfather's Paradox by doing away with his grandfather — only the old man has quicker draw.

Two stars.

Nobody Starves, by Ron Goulart

A satirical piece (or something) about a dystopian future for whose denizens everything is hunky dory until they stop being useful to society.  No one starves, in theory, but it's damned hard to get a bite to eat when you can't work for your supper.

There's probably a point or two buried under the glibness, but my eyes were too dizzy from rolling to find them.  Two stars.

One Hundred Days from Home, by Dean McLaughlin

The first ship to return from Mars is met halfway by a new ship zipping around at a good percentage of light speed.  The kid driving the speedster guffaws at the old men and their primitive junker, offering them a quick ride home.  Indignant, they refuse. 

Would NASA really send astronauts to Mars and back and not tell them about a huge breakthrough in space travel?  Do these fellows not even have radios?  Editor Davidson says he can't get any spaceship yarns these days, so he was happy to get this one.  With "science fiction" like this, who needs fantasy?

Two stars.

The Slowly Moving Finger, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor has always done a decent job of making abstruse concepts accessible to the layperson.  But this non-fiction piece, about the maximum ages of various animals, is too simple and could have been paraphrased as one sentence: Every mammal but humans lives for one billion heart beats; people get four times that.

Three stars.

Little Gregory, by Evelyn E. Smith

An odd, vaguely SF tale about a woman employed as a governess by a robot for an alien child who turns out to be the vanguard of an extraterrestrial invasion.  It works insofar as it fulfills Smith's goal of telling a 21st Century story with 19th Century style, but I'm not sure why the thing was written at all.

Three stars, I guess.

Burning Spear, by Kit Denton

Pointless mood piece about a kid who can capture and wield sunlight, and the folks who die when they demand proof.

Two stars.

In the Bag, by Laurence M. Janifer

An obvious vignette probably inspired by a trip to the local laundry.  Blink and you'll miss it.  Three stars.  Maybe two.  Who cares?

The Fan: Myth and Reality, by Wilson Tucker

The first of a three-part series on fandom, this one is an historical essay (next month's by Robert Bloch will cover conventions).  I'm a big fan of Bob Tucker, as readers well know, but this is a superficial, perfunctory piece.  It's over quickly, though.  Three stars?  [Note: I forgot to cover this piece in the original printing — thanks to those who pointed out the omission! Ed.]

Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Welcome to the overpopulated world of 2061, where the national parks on the Moon have a long waiting list, the domes open to let the air in only on rare occasion, and citizens take hallucinogenic pills to stay sane.  Still, despite the hoariness of the subject matter, it's not a bad read.  Welcome to the ranks of the prose writers, Ms. Buck.  Now go beyond the well-trodden path.

Three stars.

I'm sounding more and more like John Boston every day.  My wife likes it when I write snippy, but boy am I tired of having things to be snippy about.

Could we please get Tony Boucher or Robert Mills back in the editorial saddle again? 

— — —

(Need something to cleanse your palate?  See all the neat things the Journey did last year!)




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Magazine

[August 25, 1963] Hope Springs Eternal (September 1963 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all – — Emily Dickinson

There are reasons to be hopeful this month. 

The United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water.  The ceremony took place on August 5 at the Kremlin.  Representing the United States was Secretary of State Dean Rusk.  Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko signed for the Soviet Union, and Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home for the United Kingdom.  The treaty doesn't ban underground testing, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.


United States Senators William Fulbright and Hubert Humphrey, United Nations Secretary General U Thant, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschchev join in the celebration

James Meredith, whose enrollment at the University of Mississippi led to a violent riot, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science on August 18.  The ceremony took place without incident.  Perhaps this is a sign that the attitude of some segregationists is changing.


James Meredith receives his diploma from Chancellor John Davis Williams

Proof that hope can triumph over adversity appears at the top of the American popular music charts this month.  The number one position is held by Fingertips Pt. 2 by the musical prodigy Little Stevie Wonder.  Blind since infancy, this talented young man does not allow his handicap to interfere with his art.

Recorded more than a year ago at the Regal Theater in Chicago, this is the first live, non-studio recording to reach Number One since Johnny Standley's comic monologue It's in the Book held that position in 1952.

Appropriately, the lead story in the latest issue of Fantastic deals with hope lost and found.

The cover illustration marks the debut of artist Paula McLane.  It manages to be macabre and peaceful at the same time.  I particularly like the use of color in this dream-like painting.  I hope to see more of her work soon.

The House That Time Forgot, by Robert F. Young

An elderly woman sits in her decaying house.  She hears the flapping of wings, and welcomes it as a sign of her approaching death.  After this eerie opening scene, the author provides a long history of the house and the woman's ancestors.  As a girl, she was shy, withdrawing into the world of books and poetry.  (The character's name is Elizabeth Dickenson [sic], and her personality resembles that of poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson.) Her only chance at romance vanishes when she discovers the man she loves in a compromising position.  She stays alone in her house for many years, ignoring the outside world.  (So much time goes by that the story becomes science fiction, set in the twenty-first century, when both men and women dye their hair unnatural colors.) Although she has abandoned all hope for a happy life, strange changes in time and reality provide a second chance.

This romantic fantasy appeals much more to the heart than the head.  The author provides a penetrating look into a lonely soul.  What happens to her may not be very logical, but is emotionally powerful.  The reader must be patient during the lengthy detailing of the protagonist's forebears, as this proves to be relevant to the plot.  Four stars.

The Sudden Afternoon, by J. G. Ballard

A man has vivid memories of a life that is not his own.  He remembers being a boy in India, although he has never been there.  He recalls being a physician, although he is actually a chemist.  Soon his false memories become more real to him than his true life.  The explanation for this strange experience quickly becomes clear to the reader, but the story has a final sting in its tail.

Besides the twist ending, in the style of The Twilight Zone, the plot is straightforward.  The author writes very well, and the story is vivid and interesting.  Three stars.

The Singing Sands of Prester John, by H. Benford-Jones

This month's reprint comes from the pen of a prolific writer of pulp fiction.  First published in Blue Book in February of 1939, it is one of a series of tales involving a device which allows one to see and hear the past.  (It even translates speech and writing into English!) In this story, it provides a vision of the twelfth century.  A European soldier seeks Prester John, the legendary Christian ruler of an Asian kingdom.  The man finds love, danger, and a strange phenomenon that proves to have a rational explanation.

The science fiction gimmick is merely an excuse for a work of adventure fiction set many centuries ago.  The setting is depicted in a convincing way, although I doubt it's an entirely accurate portrait of history.  Two stars.

Vanity, Thy Name Is, by Ron Goulart

This is the third in a series of stories about a man from the 1960's who is brought to the 1890's by an occult detective.  While he waits to return to his own time, he does most of the work for the investigator.  In this tale, the mismatched pair face a triple threat.  A fighter vanishes during an illegal boxing match.  A ghost seems to be responsible for a series of robberies.  A poltergeist smashes objects and throws them at people.  The events turn out to be related, and justice is served.

This is a very light comedy.  The mystery is solved quickly, and there is little suspense.  The main appeal comes from humorous remarks made by the characters.  Three stars.

The Demon of the North, by C. C. MacApp

This story takes place in the remote past.  The Ice Age is ending.  Mammoths roam the land.  Contradicting all that we know about prehistory, the people of this time are able to work bronze and iron, make bows and arrows, and use mammoths as beasts of burden.  A particularly advanced nation has magnetic compasses.  An envoy from this land joins a party assembled by a king to seek out and destroy a strange being.  The expedition includes warriors from Africa and the far eastern reaches of Asia.  After a long and difficult journey, they discover the truth about the so-called demon.

The author creates an unusual setting in striking detail.  The explanation for the change in the Earth's climate, and the exact nature of the entity responsible for it, are confusing.  Three stars.

Adjustment, by Wilton G. Beggs

Aliens very similar to human beings conquer the Earth.  The survivors of the invasion live in squalor.  The aliens kidnap attractive young women for their harems and brothels.  Some men who are willing to co-operate with the aliens live in luxury with them.  They have their youth and health restored.  One such man returns to Earth to visit his two daughters.  Although he appears to be very young, the women are old hags.  His haughty alien lover, disdainful of the daughters and all other humans who have not joined her kind, accompanies him.  The two women have a surprise for the proud pair.

This is a gruesome horror story.  Despite the science fiction elements, it reads more like a dark tale of fantasy.  It's clear as soon as the two visitors arrive that they are in for a bad fate.  The only suspense created is wondering what form it will take.  Two stars.

Until next time, just remember what Frank Sinatra and little Eddie Hodges told us in the 1959 movie A Hole in the Head, and have High Hopes.

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Science / Space Race

[June 24, 1963] First Ladies (July 1963 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

The most inspiring news this month, at least for anyone interested in humanity's first tiny steps away from our home planet, was the fact that Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova became the first woman in space.  She orbited the Earth forty-eight times aboard Vostok 6, landing safely after nearly three days inside the tiny spacecraft.

This was certainly a welcome distraction from the continuing battle in the United States over civil rights.  On June 11, Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in an attempt to block desegregation of the school.  Only after the National Guard arrived to remove Wallace did he step aside.

The next day, in Jackson, Mississippi, NAACP activist Medgar Evers was murdered, shot to death in his driveway.

The same day, President Kennedy addressed the nation on the subject of civil rights.

It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.

Let us hope that all Americans take these words to heart.

Those of us wishing to escape from this distressing conflict can go out to a movie theater and spend four hours watching Cleopatra, said to be the most expensive film ever made.

We can also enjoy the novelty of listening to Japanese crooner Kyu Sakamoto singing Ue o Muite Arukou (I look up as I walk).  Despite having been given the inappropriate English title Sukiyaki, this lovely, gently melancholy tune has reached number one on the US music charts.

And in the vein of literary distractions, one can do worse than a science fiction magazine.  Given Tereshkova's recent achievement, it's appropriate that the latest issue of Fantastic features a pair of firsts from women.

Artist Jacquelyn Blair, who has previously done interior illustrations for editor Cele Goldsmith's magazines, provides the cover art.  Not only is this the first time she has moved from the inside.  This is also the first time she has received credit under her full name.  Earlier issues simply listed her as Blair.  This seems to be standard practice for interior artists, so I don't think it was an attempt to hide her sex. 

Blair is not the first woman in her field.  Perhaps the most famous female illustrator of fantastic fiction is Margaret Brundage, who provided many covers for Weird Tales.  In any case, Blair's cartoonish cover properly matches the mood of the magazine's lead story…

The Trouble with Tweenity, by Jack Sharkey

A scientist discovers that an infinite number of worlds exist between normal matter and antimatter.  To solve the near future's extreme traffic congestion, the President of the United States uses devices that allow people to travel to these worlds.  All sorts of problems result.  Attempts to solve these dilemmas lead to further complications.

Typical for the author, this is a silly farce.  The science is complete nonsense, even for a comedy.  Much of the story is pure exposition.  One or two jokes provide mild amusement.  Two stars.

He That Hath Wings, by Edmond Hamilton

This month's reprint comes from the July 1938 issue of Weird Tales.  A baby is born to a woman who dies in childbirth.  She and the infant's father, already dead, were exposed to radiation in an electrical explosion.  The child has hollow bones and special muscles to control the wings he develops.  He grows into a man who can fly.  He falls in love with a woman who returns his affection, but cannot allow herself to marry someone the world thinks of as a freak.  The man must choose between flight and romance.  Sacrifice and tragedy follow.

Although this story begins in the old-fashioned style of pulp fiction, it soon becomes poetic.  The author's descriptions of the joy of flying are particularly effective.  A minor quibble is that the scientific explanation for the man's mutation is not convincing.  This emotionally powerful tale would have been even better as pure fantasy.  Four stars.

A Hoax in Time (Part 2 of 3), by Keith Laumer

In the first part of this serial, our three protagonists – a wealthy idler, a carnival performer, and a robot in the form of a beautiful young woman, created by a super-computer – wound up in the remote past.  The idler and the robot escaped.  In this installment, they return to rescue the performer, only to find that thirty years have gone by.  While waiting for the others, he helped the savage people of the past progress into healthy, self-reliant individuals.  When the three go back to their own time, they find that his efforts have changed the present.  In particular, the super-computer no longer exists, leaving them unable to journey through time again and put things back the way they were.

This part of the novel is less comic than the first.  It also has less action and more talk.  The author creates an interesting alternate version of reality.  Although the world he depicts has its flaws, it seems intended as a functioning libertarian society.  The author's philosophy also comes through in the final section of this installment, when the idler goes through an intense training program of self-discipline in order to become a valuable member of his new home.  The story is never boring, even when it becomes nothing more than a discussion of ideas.  The performer's ability to bring technology to the prehistoric people, in the manner of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, strains credibility.  Three stars.

The Recurrent Suitor, by Ron Goulart

This is a sequel to last month's story Plumrose.  The narrator, a man of 1961, is still stuck in 1897.  The occult detective Plumrose brought him there with a time ray.  He serves as the detective's reluctant assistant until Plumrose can repair the time ray.  In this story, the mismatched pair help a young man rescue his fiancée from a family curse.  As with the previous story, this is a light comedy, poking fun at old-fashioned Gothic fiction.  Three stars.

A Contract in Karasthan, by Phyllis MacLennan

This is the first published story by the author, and one hopes that it will not be the last.  A man journeys around the world in search of the magical place for which he yearns.  When he finds it, he must decide whether to remain or return to mundane reality.  This is a delicate, moody, dream-like fantasy.  It has the flavor of a myth.  The author's elegant style casts a spell over the reader.  Five stars.

Final Audit, by Thomas M. Disch

In the Nineteenth Century, a clerk has a peculiar form of precognition.  Although he fills out a book of postal expenses one month after the actual transactions, he can see one month ahead.  In other words, he knows what he is going to write in the book one month in the future, dealing with the expenses made on the day he sees them.  This strange ability seems useless, since it deals with such trivial matters.  Over many years, the clerk tries various ways to turn this to his advantage, without luck.

This is an unusual story, written in a deliberately old-fashioned style.  Although it is not a comedy, one can't help feeling that the author has his tongue firmly in his cheek.  Although the ending is predictable, the portrait of a life wasted in pursuit of an impossible goal is effective.  Three stars.

All in all, it has been a banner month for women in science and science fiction.  Let's hope that Tereshkova, Goldsmith, Blair, and MacLennan continue to serve as role models for other pioneering women, in the far reaches of outer space or deep within the human imagination.

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Magazine

[June 18, 1963] Eastbound for Adventure! (July 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Galactic Journey approaches the completion of its fifth year in publication, and we delight in the increasing variety of travels we've been able to share with you.  We started with science fiction digests and real-life space shots, expanded our coverage to movies and television, and then dove whole-hog into all aspects of culture, including music, politics, and fashion.  We even broadened our geographic scope, with British correspondents Ashley Pollard and Mark Yon, and our newest teammember, Cora Buhlert from West Germany.

One constant throughout, dating back to our third article, is the coverage of physical journeys of the Traveler family.  And so we tread familiar ground in two respects as the Journey reports for its fourth time from the near-mythical land of Wa, the country of Japan.

We touched down the afternoon of June 10 after a long but thoroughly pleasant trip across the Pacific in first class.  Leigh Brackett was my traveling companion, though the conversation was strictly one-way.

The next day, we took a quick flight from Tokyo to the industrial city of Nagoya, third biggest in the nation.  Renowned for its drab ugliness, nevertheless we like it, not for the least reason the presence of three good friends — one native and two transplants. 

After a delicious lunch, we all gathered in the hotel room and performed music together (Nanami and the Young Traveler are both accomplished ukelele-players). 

We had just one full day after that in Nagoya, and we used the time to good advantage, exploring the many shopping and dining options.  Despite June being monsoon month in Japan, rain was sparse and the temperature reasonable (though the humidity rivaled that of pre-Mariner Venus…)

For the last five days, we have been back in the nation's capital.  Tokyo is a city in transition, busily preparing for the Olympics next year.  In addition to the remodeling of the Shibuya district, work is being completed on the new bullet train that will reduce the trip from Osaka to Tokyo (about the same distance as Los Angeles to San Francisco) to just three hours.  Would have been nice on our trip this time around…

My primary destination this time around was Jimbouchou — Bookseller's Row — where dozens of bookstores crowd a cluster of avenues.  I've never seen so many volumes crowded together in one place!  However, the subject matter tended to be rather dry and abstruse at most of the places, and I made most of my scavenging finds at the second-hand shops around the various universities. 

As for the rest of the time, we shopped, we dined, and we walked…endlessly.  More than five miles every day. 

One "highlight" of the trip was the chance to watch King Kong vs. Godzilla in the cinema.  There will be a report.

I also found time to enjoy to enjoy the July 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction, the fourth issue of this venerable magazine I've read in Japan.  How did this set of excursions compare to the real-life adventure I am currently enjoying?  Read on and find out!

Glory Road (Part 1 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein

Most of the issue is taken up by the first half of Heinlein's latest novel.  Evelyn Cyril "Oscar" Gordon is a remarkable young man plagued by hard luck: a skilled athlete saddled with a losing team; an abortive engineering student sent to fight (and grievously wounded) in Vietnam; a winner of the Irish Derby sweepstakes whose ticket turns out to be counterfeit.  Things look up when he answers this classified ad, tailor-made for him:

"ARE YOU A COWARD? This is not for you. We badly need a brave man. He must be 23 to 25 years old, in perfect health, at least six feet tall, weigh about 190 pounds, fluent English, with some French, proficient in all weapons, some knowledge of engineering and mathematics essential, willing to travel, no family or emotional ties, indomitably courageous and handsome of face and figure. Permanent employment, very high pay, glorious adventure, great danger. You must apply in person, rue Dante, Nice, 2me étage, apt. D."

Gordon's employer is the unearthily beautiful "Star," part Amazon, part Fae.  Along with her aged but capable assistant, Rufo, the trio head off into a fantastic dimension on an errand whose purpose is known only to the mysterious magical lady.  There, they run into golems, explosive swamps, easily offended hosts, and many other dangers.

Glory Road is Heinlein's answer to Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, and the closesness with which it hews to the predecessor only highlights its inferiority.  Anderson's tale was fun and subtle, his characters well-realized.  Heinlein, as we saw in his last book, Podkayne of Mars, can't seem to portray anyone but Heinlein these days.  When Oscar and Star start mooning at each other, it's like watching old Bob seduce himself. 

I did enjoy the first 30 pages or so, detailing Gordon's pre-adventure life, however, and there are moments of interest along the way.  But if you're looking for the next Starship Troopers or The Menace from Earth, this likely won't be it.  Three stars.

Success, by Fritz Leiber

The creator of Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser offers up this fantasy vignette, a distillation of the genre in four pages.  Is it satire?  Parody?  Or the only fantastic story you'll ever need to read?  Vividly written but inconsequential.  Three stars.

The Respondents, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Pretty words from one of F&SF's resident poets.  Three stars.

With These Hands, by Kenneth Smith

The first SF publication by this college freshman, this is a tale of an artless alien (both descriptors used literally) unable to contribute to Earth's cultural beauty despite his desperate admiration.  It starts off strong, but the ending is a bit talkie and mawkish.  Nevertheless, three stars, and let's see some more!

The Isaac Winners, by Isaac Asimov

A rather lackluster piece this month, just a list of the top 72 scientists in human history.  The best part of the article is Asimov's justification for the trophy's name (after Newton, of course!) Three stars.

As Long as You're Here, by Will Stanton

F&SF perennial, Stanton, gives us a both charming and chilling tale about a couple that digs a deep shelter to avoid the hell of nuclear annihilation only to find Old Nick digging upwards to expand his domain in similar anticipation.  It stayed with me.  Four stars.

McNamara's Fish, by Ron Goulart

Max Kearny, spiritual private eye, is consulted individually by both members of a married couple, who both fear the other partner is being unfaithful.  Is something fishy going on?  Yes!  Indeed, in this case, the troubles stem from the meddling of a venal water elemental.  Goulart's Kearny tales are always glib and enjoyable, though this one is less substantial than most.  Three stars.

Thus ends a pleasant but not superlative issue of F&SF, an issue more notable for the environs in which it was read (on a rock under a waterfall near a shrine; in the lounge of a fancy Nagoya hotel; on a train traveling in the shadow of Mt. Fuji) than its contents. 

See you in two days when I discuss the most amazing events happening just a few hundred miles over our heads as we speak…

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Magazine

[June 13, 1963] THUD (the July 1963 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Jack Sharkey’s serialized novella The Programmed People, which concludes in this July 1963 Amazing, describes a tight arc from mediocre to appalling and lands with a thud.  It opens with our hero Lloyd queuing up with everybody else in the Hive in front of the Proposition Screens in order to Vote before the Count.  Yes, it’s another stilted dystopia (a small isolated world run by a big computer, the Brain) in which all the horrors get capital letters.  Also, Voting is mandatory, and there isn’t enough time for everyone to Vote, and Lloyd can’t afford to miss the cut-off because he’s already missed two Votes this quarter out of an allowable Three, excuse me, three.  On the next page, Sharkey has apparently lost count; now he says Lloyd will have to be hospitalized for Readjustment if he misses this Vote.  Lloyd gets the young woman in front of him to let him jump the line, only to discover that she is the pariah they’ve been warned against who has refused to submit to Hospitalization.  He pities her and lends her his girlfriend’s Voteplate (don’t ask) so she can get out of the Temple unrecognized, and then hides her in his room.  She tells him that Hospitalization is a ruse for disposal of anyone who is sick or injured, in order to keep the population steady. 

There are a lot more busy plot mechanics not worth recounting; it’s reminiscent of a TV sitcom, and the characters act and talk like sitcom characters too.  Sharkey has clearly not thought through just what it would be like to live in a state of constant surveillance, fear, and enforced ignorance.  At the end of Part I Lloyd has gone to the Brain that controls everything and asked it “Why is the Hive?” Part II has the answer, in a flashback that starts with the 1972 presidential election and goes on for 19 pages, covering more than 50 years of political history, becoming more absurd as it goes on.  Then there’s another 15 pages of silly melodrama and thankfully we’re done.  One star is too much.

Onward, with trepidation, to the rest of the issue.  The cover story is Robert F. Young’s long novelet Redemption, in which space freighter pilot Drake, en route to Mars, is alone on his ship when there’s a knock on the door.  It’s a girl!  She’s wearing the uniform of the Army of the Church of the Emancipation, but even so, she is, as the author puts it, stacked.  Also, she’s named Annabelle Leigh, an allusion the author does nothing with.  She has stowed away and wants him to drop her off at the planet Iago Iago in time for the expected resurrection of a saint.  He declines and locks her in a storeroom, then his ship runs into a Lambda-Xi field (say what?), which destroys the part of the ship with her in it, and renders the rest of it, and him and his cargo, translucent.  When he gets to Mars, he makes inquiries and learns that Annabelle was a saint. 

He then sets off on a quest both to sell his damaged cargo and to trace her history, hoping to find evidence that she wasn’t so saintly all the time and thereby make himself feel less guilty about accidentally killing her.  He does, sort of, and also learns that this Lambda-Xi field was even more puissant than he realized, capable of generating any contrivance the author needs, including time travel, two varieties of it, the sum of which, overlaid with Young’s characteristic sentimentality, ends up like something A.E. van Vogt might have written for a Hallmark Cards promotion (or maybe vice versa).  There are also further strong hints that Young has a few screws loose on the subjects of women and sex—not surprisingly in light of such previous efforts as Santa Clause and Storm over Sodom in F&SF.  Maybe somebody else can find something to appreciate here, but it leaves me cold, and annoyed as usual with this all too prolific author.  The cover blurb says “A Story You Will Never Forget!” I hope it’s wrong.  One star.

After such Redemption, what redemption?  Some, at least.  Neal Barrett, Jr.’s shorter novelet The Game—his fifth appearance in the SF magazines—is a somewhat crude but grimly effective horror story of Earth colonists who encounter an incomprehensible alien entity that just wants to play a game, with devastating consequences for the humans.  It’s refreshingly straightforward after the metaphysically baroque Young story.  Four stars.

Now, the crumbs at the bottom of the box.  Ron Goulart’s The Yes Men of Venus is a parody of a certain famous pulpster, heavily disguised here as Arthur Wright Beemis, which seems both pitch-perfect and, therefore, almost superfluous.  But it’s short enough to be amusing.  Three stars for trivia well executed.

Arthur Porges’s The Formula is another contrived and arid gimmick story, involving a highly artificial psi experiment undertaken on a bet.  The story turns on appreciating some specialized information that is disclosed in passing about the surroundings.  It’s like a grossly expanded version of a filler item in a science magazine.  Two stars, generously.

Well, that was depressing.  The Barrett story is the sole bright spot in this mostly abysmal issue—and not bright enough by half to redeem (excuse the expression) the disaster of the two lead stories.

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