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[February 13, 1964] Deafening (the March 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston


Cover by EMSH

The March 1964 Amazing fairly shouts mediocrity, or worse, before one reads a word of the fiction.  The cover, illustrating Robert F. Young’s story Arena of Decisions, portrays a guy working some sort of keyboard in front of video screens displaying . . . a young woman, a lady as some would have it, and a tiger.  Can it be that Young, having rehashed the Old Testament and moved on to Jack and the Beanstalk, is now recapitulating that silly old Frank Stockton story, The Lady or the Tiger, which so many of us were forced to read in junior high?  And just for lagniappe, the editorial says in passing, “For the female of the sf species who may not be quite sure of her facts, billiards is played with balls and a cue on a flat rectangular table with pockets in each corner and at the middle of the two longer sides.” Always glad to help you ignorant . . . ladies . . . out!

Arena of Decisions, by Robert F. Young

That leads us to page 7, where the Young story begins, and yep, the blurb cops to the Frank Stockton replay right up front.  For anyone who hasn’t read or been told the original story, it involves a criminal justice system (if that’s the right word) in which those accused of serious crimes are forced to choose one of two doors to open.  Behind one of them is a hungry tiger; behind the other, a woman whom the no-longer-accused is required to marry.  The story ends just before the fatal choice, with an element of possible skulduggery added. 

Young does not entirely recapitulate Stockton’s plot, but the gimmick is the same, with extra chicanery added, set on a cartoonish colony planet, all told in a style of arch jocularity that mainly conveys the message “I know I’m wasting your time with this facile and vacant crap—let’s see how long I can keep you going.”

I’m about as tired of slagging Young month after month as I am of reading him.  I didn’t think he was always this bad, so I reread a couple of his early stories in anthologies: Jungle Doctor from Startling Stories in 1955 and The Garden in the Forest from Astounding in 1953.  He wasn’t this bad.  These are not great stories—his weaknesses for cliche and sentimentality are evident—but they are reasonably intelligent and capable, if less polished than his current output, with some interesting substance to them rather than the cynical vacuity of Arena of Decisions and its ilk.  I would never have called Young mighty, but . . . how the respectable have fallen.  One star.

Now Is Forever, by Dobbin Thorpe

Like a breath of fresh breeze in a fetid dungeon, or a slug of Pepto-Bismol to the dyspeptic stomach, comes Now Is Forever by Dobbin Thorpe, reliably reported to be Thomas M. Disch.  Intentionally or not, Forever is a rejoinder to Ralph Williams’s clever but facile Business as Usual, During Alterations, which appeared in Astounding in 1958.  In Williams’s story, portable matter duplicators suddenly appear on Earth, planted no doubt by aliens bent on conquest by destroying our economy, and the heroic store manager instantly sorts out the new economy: starting now, everything is done on credit, but everybody can have credit.  Nothing up my sleeve!  Everybody wins!

Disch starts with the same notion but is of course less sanguine.  He asks what people will live for when the getting-and-spending basis of their lives is suddenly yanked from under them.  The answer is the old and established will cling fiercely and futilely to their old habits, and young people will seek thrills—including death, which is no big deal as long as you duplicate yourself beforehand.  This sharply written and well visualized story just misses excellence by being a little too long and rambling for its point.  Three stars.

Jam for Christmas, Vance Simonds

It’s back downhill with Vance Simonds’s Jam for Christmas, the second story about Everett O’Toole, the “telempathist,” who with the aid of a mutant mongoose and a worldwide psionic network of other humans and animals, can scan the world to see how people are feeling about things.  In this case the world is the Moon, where the now-amalgamated capitalist nations are about to broadcast to Earth the equivalent of a USO show, and the now-amalgamated commies want to jam this display of the vitality of capitalism.  (The commies haven’t quite got the know-how to do their own broadcasts.)

Like its predecessor Telempathy, from last June’s issue, the story is swaddled in layers of satirical performance, much of it focusing on O’Toole’s excessive weight and alcohol consumption, the physical attributes of the show’s star, this year’s Miss Heavenly Body, and other cheap targets.  Some of it is actually pretty funny—while the telempathists are scanning their own area for communist spies, they come upon a covert fascist whose attitude is concisely lampooned—but it mainly serves to pad out what is ultimately a pretty thin and humdrum story.  Two stars.

Sunburst (Part 1 of 3), by Phyllis Gotlieb

That’s all the fiction that is complete in this issue.  The longest item is the first installment of Sunburst, a serial by Phyllis Gotlieb, who has had a handful of stories in these Ziff-Davis magazines and in If.  I usually hold off on serials until all the parts are in, but in my weary quest for something more to redeem this lackluster issue, I read this installment.  The set-up is interesting: in a small midwestern town, a nuclear reactor explosion has resulted in the birth of a cohort of psi-talented mutants, who come into their powers as children and wreck a good part of the town and its police force.  These uncontrollably dangerous tykes are isolated in the “Dump” behind a psi-impervious field whipped up by a handy Nobelist in physics.  Now it’s a decade later; what to do with them? 

It’s a bit amateurish; Gotlieb doesn’t do much to sketch in the background of what living in this now-quarantined town is like or how the quarantine works, and the dialogue and interactions among the characters are pretty unconvincing.  But it gives the sense that she’s getting at something of interest, however clumsily, so I look forward to the rest of it.  No rating, though, until the end.

The Time of Great Dying

Ben Bova departs from his usual cosmological beat for The Time of Great Dying, canvassing the various theories purporting to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs and the ascendancy of mammals at the end of the Mesozoic, including such winners as “racial senescence,” though Bova doesn’t give that one much respect.  He puts his money, or at least his mouth, on the growing prevalence of grasses, for which dinosaurs’ teeth were poorly adapted, though it’s a little unclear why they didn’t evolve more useful teeth over the same time period that the mammals did.  The subject is a little more interesting than usual, but overall it’s about as dull as usual.  Two stars.

The Spectroscope

Book reviewer S.E. Cotts has been replaced by Lester del Rey, to no great effect: there are virtues to having a professional writer as a reviewer, but he contributes no profound insights and is more verbose about it than Cotts.

Loud and Clear

So, overall, the promised mediocrity is delivered, with Mr. Disch again showing flashes of something better, and Gotlieb’s serial extending some hope.  Beyond those two, the wasteland beckons, or fails to.




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[November 13, 1963] Good Cop (the December 1963 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Amazing is starting to resemble a good cop/bad cop routine, and this December 1963 issue is brought to us by the good cop. 

The cover story is To Plant a Seed, a longish novelet by Neal Barrett, Jr., in which this still fairly new writer earnestly wrestles with one of the more familiar plots in SF’s cupboard: Earthfolks go starfaring, encounter colorful primitive aliens, usually highly religious; observe them under a strict rule of noninterference; then the aliens start doing really strange stuff.  After the mystery is milked for a while, the revelation: typically, the aliens aren’t so primitive after all, or at least they are the remnants of something greater. 

Here the aliens are the barely humanoid Kahrii, who cultivate the Shari, plants which are the only other life form here on the extremely hot and otherwise barren Sahara III (and how likely is that ecology?).  The Shari provide their food, clothing, and everything else they have.  So why have they suddenly cut down their entire crop and begun using the pieces to build something in this desert that looks like a boat, which they could never have seen?  And should the human observers break the command against interfering to stop this racial suicide?  Barrett wrings a decent amount of suspense out of these questions; one knows generally what is going to happen, but why and how remain interesting enough. 

As for the human observers: these are Gito, the assigned observer (male of course), and Arilee, whose job title is Mistress, the latest of several in Gito’s career.  But she’s pretty smart for a Mistress—a Nine, in fact, on some completely unexplained social ranking scale—and Gito has allowed her to wander around the tunnels of the Kahrii and make her own observations.  Despite her formal designation as a male plaything, she is a significant actor in the story, and she ultimately saves Gito’s bacon.  And in fact that’s part of Barrett’s point, that she transcends the condescending role she occupies.  But it’s still frustrating and annoying to see a reasonably capable SF writer displaying more imagination in devising a completely alien society than in thinking about the likely future of his own.  Aside from that, this is a pretty solid performance on a well-established theme.  Three stars, towards the top of the range.

The other novelet is The Days of Perky Pat by Philip K. Dick, who has now had stories in three consecutive issues.  This one is far better than the others, which I described as resembling rambling stand-up routines.  Here he reverts to his long-standing preoccupation with life after catastrophe, in this case, as in many others, a nuclear war.  The characters, called “flukers” because it’s only by a fluke that they survived, live underground in the old fallout shelters, kept alive by the grace of the “careboys,” mollusk-like Martians who drop food and other goods to sustain the flukers’ lives. 

The adult humans are completely preoccupied with Perky Pat, a blonde plastic doll that comes with various accessories including boyfriend, which the flukers have supplemented with various improvised objects in their “layouts,” which seem to be sort of like a Monopoly board and sort of like a particularly elaborate model train setup.  On these layouts, they obsessively play a competitive game, running Perky Pat and her boyfriend through the routines of life before the war, while their kids run around unsupervised on the dust- and rock-covered surface chasing down mutant animals with knives.

Obviously the author has had an encounter with a Barbie doll complete with accessories, and didn’t much care for it.  This is as grotesque a black comedy as you’ll find, with plot developments reminiscent of Robert Sheckley, but not at all played for yocks.  Some years ago Anthony Boucher reviewed one of Dick’s books and used the phrase “the chilling symbolism of absolute nightmare.” Here it’s mixed with over-the-top satire and is still pretty chilling.  Four stars.

F.A. Javor’s Killjoy is a rather short story on another familiar theme: Earthfolk starfaring to find exotic alien fauna and hunt and kill it, with a twist that will probably be morally satisfying to many.  But the whole thing is hyper-contrived.  Two stars.

The oddest item in the issue is The God on the 36th Floor by Herbert D. Kastle, who has had a scattered handful of stories in the SF magazines (many more in other genres), but also edited the last two issues of Startling Stories, for what that may be worth.  His main credentials, though, are contemporary novels, mostly original paperbacks, with titles like One Thing On My Mind and Bachelor Summer.  So it’s not surprising that this story doesn’t read much like what you’d find in an SF magazine; it’s more like something adapted from a script for The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. 

Protagonist Der (a nickname) works in Public Relations in a big company, but he’s had some sort of breakdown and can’t actually function any more.  Through happenstance he’s managed to stay on, collecting his salary and pretending to do a nonexistent job.  But a new man, Tzadi, shows up and seems to know a lot about him, and everybody else too.

Further interaction with the mysterious Tzadi suggests that Der is at even more risk than he feared; and things keep moving until we are in the territory of such paranoia epics as Heinlein’s They and Dick’s Time Out of Joint.  So it’s another familiar idea, but nicely developed through dialogue and visualization, not to mention unobtrusively slick writing.  Three stars, again near the top of the range. 

The issue’s biggest surprise is H.B. Fyfe’s The Klygha, which features more spacefaring Earth explorers (I refuse to say Terrans like the author; nobody but SF writers will ever use that word), lobster-like inhabitants of the planet they are exploring, another spacefaring explorer from somewhere else entirely (the Klygha), a cat, lots of telepathy, and some hidden motives. 

I am not saying more because the author has juggled these absolutely stock elements from the back pages of the last decade’s SF magazines into an extremely clever construction, and much of the pleasure of it initially is just figuring out what’s going on, in a way a little reminiscent of Bester’s Fondly Fahrenheit. It’s not quite on that level, but it’s certainly a little tour de force, much better than the other Fyfe stories I’ve read, mostly in Astounding and Analog, which are clever enough but entirely too gimmicky and superficial.  Four stars.

Sam Moskowitz is back with another “SF Profile,” Fritz Leiber: Destiny x 3, one of his better efforts: he doesn’t say anything overtly wrong or ridiculous, there are no gross offenses against the English language that cannot be attributed to Amazing’s proofreading, and (unlike his usual practice) he gives as much attention to Leiber’s recent work as to that of the ‘30s and ‘40s.  Indeed he goes so far as to describe Leiber’s latest novel, called The Wanderer, which has not even been published yet.  The title refers to the fact that Leiber has had two significant hiatuses in SF writing and thus has started his career three times, and also to an early novella titled Destiny Times Three, which deserves neither its present obscurity nor Moskowitz’s over-praise.  While Moskowitz skips over some of Leiber’s more significant work, that probably has as much to do with space limitations as his preference.  Three stars.

And just to put a cap on it, I read The Spectroscope, the book review column by S.E. Cotts, who generally gets little respect . . . and it’s not bad!  These are fairly perceptive reviews despite Cotts’ slightly stuffy manner.  No stars, since we don’t ordinarily comment on these things at all, but another pleasant surprise.

So: this is certainly the best issue of Amazing this year; in fact, you have to go back to March and April 1962 to find anything comparable.  But the bad cop, as always, lurks outside the interrogation room, slapping his blackjack into his palm.  Next month, we are promised more Edgar Rice Burroughs.

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[December 22, 1962] The More Things Change . . . (January 1963 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
(The more it changes, the more it's the same thing.)
Jean-Baptiste Alphose Karr, Les Guêpes, January 1849

Those famous words of the noted French journalist of the previous century are worth pondering at this time, when we look forward to a new year.  Thanks to the peculiarities of the publishing industry, we can already see the prophetic words January 1963 on every newsstand, and if there's one thing we can safely predict, it is that the breakneck pace of technological headlines will not slacken.

Earlier this month, the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) offered another glimpse into the future.  The Atlas computer, the most powerful in the world, began operating on December 7.  Said to be equivalent to four IBM 7094 devices, it operates at a speed approaching one million instructions per second.

The American spacecraft Mariner 2, so ably discussed by our host in a previous article, flew by Venus on December 14.  The data from the probe seem to indicate an atmospheric temperature of nine hundred degrees Fahrenheit.  So much for oceans and dinosaurs!

Just one day before this historic encounter, the Relay 1 satellite soared into orbit atop a Delta B rocket.  Designed to study the Earth's radiation belts, it will also serve as a communications satellite, similar to Telstar 1.  If it, works, that is.  Due to a battery leak, the new spacecraft isn't likely to change our knowledge of the universe…or that of goings-on in other continents.

Speaking of that renowned spacecraft, the instrumental number of the same name by the Tornados, already a smash hit in the United Kingdom, reached Number One in the USA today, much to my delight.  After suffering through five weeks of Big Girls Don't Cry by the inexplicably popular Four Seasons at the top of the charts, this sprightly tribute to the Space Age is a refreshing change of pace.  Keeping in mind the wise words of Monsieur Karr, however, we can expect this charming import to be an anomaly, and not the sign of a British invasion of the American airwaves.

The latest issue of Fantastic also bears the hallmarks of change, breaking with tradition by including a nonfiction article and a book review.  Nevertheless, at its core, it remains the old magazine we know and love, continuing to provide entertainment for the reader of fantasy and science fiction.

The first item of note, before moving on to the contents proper, is that all five letters printed in the According to you . . . section of the magazine offer high praise for Fritz Leiber's story The Unholy Grail, which appeared in the October 1962 issue.  Such universal acclamation is rare among fantasy fans, notorious for their contrary opinions.  (Just note the continuing debate over David R. Bunch in the same letter column.)

Neither Stairs Nor Door, by Robert F. Young

An author who often combines science fiction with romance makes use of a familiar legend in this simple but charming tale.  In medieval times, an unhappily married woman witnesses a handsome, beautifully dressed man emerge from a tower that appears from nowhere.  The reader already knows that he's really an alien come to Earth in a shuttlecraft from the mothership.  You'll probably predict which fairy tale this story parallels, but it's enjoyable enough.  Three stars.

In the Days of King Arsgrat, by John Jakes

A boy who has lived alone in the wilderness since early childhood arrives at a village and is adopted by a childless couple.  At first, the setting seems to be a fantasy world.  We soon find out that the story takes place centuries after a disaster destroyed civilization.  The descendants of the survivors are awed by the few artifacts left behind by their remote ancestors, whom they think of as gods.  They go on raids to destroy the hated Green Crabs, and live in fear of the unseen King Arsgrat, to whom the most desirable of the young women in the village go when they come of age.  The hero, in love with a girl doomed to this fate, determines to confront King Arsgrat.  What he discovers changes his former skepticism about the gods.  This is a compelling, thoughtful adventure story with a subtle touch of satire.  The nature of the Green Crabs, and the true identity of King Arsgrat, are surprising, and make the reader think about the things our modern society considers important.  Four stars.

Ghost and Ghoul, by T. C. Lethbridge

This excerpt from the book of the same name is the first nonfiction article I've seen in Fantastic.  The author attempts to explain paranormal phenomenon by hypothesizing that the human brain filters out most information before it reaches the mind.  Only gifted psychics can perceive such things.  The author presents no evidence for his theory and is unlikely to convince any skeptics.  One star.

The Leech, by Jack Sharkey

An officer of the law goes to arrest a man for practicing medicine without a license.  The fellow only wants to help people, using a bizarre method to remove cancer from the patient's body.  He makes a deal with the officer, with unexpected consequences.  This is a fairly effective horror story with a gruesome climax.  Three stars.

Three Tales for the Horrid at Heart, by Brad Steiger

As the title implies, this piece consists of a trio of very short stories with grim, ironic endings.  In the first, a man has his ESP tested under rigorous conditions.  In the second, a police detective tries to expose a spiritualist.  In the third, two persons await battle with the one who threatens their existence.  How much you enjoy them may depend on your fondness for bagatelles.  Two stars.

The Man Next Door, by Paul Ernst

This month's Fantasy Classic first appeared in the March 4, 1939 issue of Argosy.  A mental patient who made a hobby of astronomy during his rational moments disappears from an insane asylum.  At the same time, a mysterious fellow purchases the empty house next to the narrator's home.  A series of strange deaths is involved.  The solution to the mystery isn't surprising, even if you don't bother to read the introduction by SF historian Sam Moskowitz, who always reveals the plot gimmicks of these reprints.  The story comes to a very sudden, unsatisfactory end.  Two stars.

The Forelife Myth, by Albert Teichner

Ghosts debate the existence of people.  The author creates an imaginative setting, where the spirits of the dead have no idea why they suddenly appear, at any age from newborn to elderly, in what seems to them to be the only real world.  Although the plot is extremely simple, the background is constructed with great care.  Three stars.

3rd Sister, by Arthur Porges

As a young girl, the narrator faces the impending death of her mother.  In a desperate effort to save her life, she goes to a house inhabited by three elderly sisters rumored to be evil.  The plot involves a familiar myth, which the author uses with good effect.  Four stars.
(I might also mention that the above two stories are greatly enhanced by the chilling art of Lee Brown Coye.)

On the Road to Splenoba, by Roger Zelazny

I believe this is the longest work yet from a new writer who specializes in very short stories.  A Communist official traveling in a remote area behind the Iron Curtain has to stay the night at the castle of a Baron.  If you've ever seen an old horror movie on Shock Theater, you won't be too surprised at what kind of being the Baron turns out to be.  Not as poetically written as the author's miniature tales, this story does feature an interesting twist at the end.  Three stars.

Fantasy Books, by S. E. Cotts

To my knowledge, this is only the second time that the magazine has printed a book review.  The subject is Ray Bradbury's new novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes.  I have read and enjoyed this nostalgic fantasy of an evil carnival and the effect it has on two young boys in a small town.  I recommend it to those who enjoy Bradbury, although you may want to wait until it comes out in paperback.  (The hardcover costs almost five dollars!) The reviewer is not so enthusiastic.  The main objection is that the book never comes together as a whole, and is more like a series of beautifully written sketches.  Whether or not you agree with this assessment, the review is thoughtful and persuasive.

With so many changes, both welcome and unwelcome, going on in the world these days, it's good to know that some things, like the eternal movement of time through the years, or the fact that any issue of a fiction magazine is going to have both gems and dross, never change.  Have a good 1963!

[P.S. If you want the chance to nominate Galactic Journey for Best Fanzine next year, you need to register for WorldCon before the end of the year! (or have registered last year… but then you can only nominate, not vote.) The Journey will be at next year's WorldCon, so don't miss your chance to meet us and please help put us on the ballot for Best Fanzine!]




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