Tag Archives: science fiction

[June 24, 1966] Increments: World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

June 24, 2021 John Boston 7 Comments

by John Boston

Donald A. Wollheim’s and Terry Carr’s World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966—second in this series—is here, so it’s time for the usual pontificating, hand-wringing, viewing with alarm, etc., as one prefers. This one comes with not one but two blurbs from Judith Merril, their competitor, though the editors say nothing about her anthology series, the next volume of which is due at the end of the year.

The editors have regrettably pulled in their horns a little on the “World” front. There are no translated stories in this volume, unlike the first; the editors claim that they read plenty of them, but them furriners just don’t cut the mustard. More precisely, if not more plausibly, “what they have lacked is the advanced sophistication now to be found in the American and British s-f magazines.” Suffice it to say that there are virtues other than “advanced sophistication” and they may often be found outside one’s own culture.

by Cosimo Scianna

Nor is there anything here from any of the non-specialist markets that have been publishing progressively more SF in recent years. The only item here that did not originate in the US or UK SF magazines is Arthur C. Clarke’s Sunjammer, originally in Boys’ Life but quickly reprinted last year by New Worlds, and then by Amazing early this year.

So it’s a rather insular party. But my main complaint last year was that too much of the material was too pedestrian, and the book excluded writers who are pushing the envelope of the genre, like Lafferty, Zelazny, Ellison, and Cordwainer Smith. The editors seem to have been listening. This year they’ve got Ellison and Lafferty, though they seem to have missed their chance at Smith, and Zelazny is still among the missing. More importantly, the book as a whole is livelier than its predecessor.

This is not to say the pedestrian has been entirely banished. Witness Christopher Anvil’s The Captive Djinn, the only selection from that rotten borough Analog, yet another story about the clever Earthman outwitting cartoonishly stupid aliens. Anvil has written this story so often he could do it in his sleep, and most likely that is exactly what happened.

There is a lot more of the standard used furniture of the genre here, but at least it’s mostly done more cleverly and skillfully than dreamed of by Anvil. In Joseph Green’s The Decision Makers (from Galaxy), Terrestrials covet the watery world Capella G Eight, but it’s already occupied by seal-like amphibians with group intelligence though not much material culture. Is this the sort of intelligence that should ordinarily bar colonization outright? The “Conscience”—a bureaucrat in charge of making these decisions—thinks so, but proposes to split the baby, allowing colonization but providing that the humans will alter the climate to provide more dry land for the amphibians. Of course, behind the bien-pensant speechifying, a still small voice says, “We’re just now starting to get rid of colonialism here, and you want to start it up again?” And another: “Ask the American Indians about the promises of colonists.”

Less weighty thoughts are on offer in James H. Schmitz’s Planet of Forgetting (from Galaxy), involving a fairly standard space war scenario with chase on unknown planet, with the wrinkle that some of the local fauna seem to be able to make people briefly forget where they are and what they are doing. At the end of this smoothly rendered entertainment, suddenly the wrinkle becomes a mountain range.

Similar cleverness-as-usual is displayed in Fred Saberhagen’s Masque of the Red Shift (from If), one of his popular Berserker series, in which a disguised Berserker robot appears and wreaks havoc on a spaceship occupied by the Emperor of the galaxy and his celebrating sycophants. But it is promptly outsmarted and done in by the Emperor’s brother, who is resurrected from suspended animation and lures the Berserker into the clutches of a “hypermass,” which seems to be what scientists are starting to call a “black hole.” (Though on second thought, I’m not sure that “cleverness” is quite le mot juste for a story that falls back on the dreary cliche that a galaxy-spanning human civilization will find no better way to govern itself than an Emperor.) Jonathan Brand’s Vanishing Point (If) is an alien semi-contact story, in which the functionaries of the Galactic Federation have created an artificial habitat, a sort of Earth-like theme park complete with human curator, for the human emissaries to wait in and wonder what is really going on.

Engineering fiction is represented by Clarke’s slightly pedantic Sunjammer (as noted, Boys’ Life by way of New Worlds), concerning a yacht race in space, and by Larry Niven’s livelier Becalmed in Hell (F&SF), whose characters—one of them a brain and spinal column in a box, with vehicle controlled by his nervous system—get stuck on the surface of Venus (updated with current science) and have to improvise a primitive solution to get home.

There are a couple of near-future satires representing very different styles and targets of the sardonic. Ron Goulart’s Calling Dr. Clockwork (Amazing) is a lampoon of the medical system; protagonist visits someone in the hospital, faints at something he sees there, wakes up in a hospital bed himself attended by the eponymous robot doctor, and can’t get out as his diagnosis shifts and things seem to be falling apart in the institution. Fritz Leiber’s The Good New Days (Galaxy) is a more densely populated slice-of-slapstick extrapolating the welfare state, with a family living in futuristic but cheaply made housing (“They don’t build slums like they used to,” complains one character), with the TV on every minute, and Ma trying to avoid the demands of the medical statistician who wants her vitals, and everyone struggling to get and keep multiple make-work jobs (the protagonist just lost his job as a street-smiler), and things are all falling apart here, too, and a lot of the sentences are almost as long as this one. The two stories are about equally amusing, which means above standard for Goulart and a little below standard for Leiber.

So that’s the ordinary, and a higher quality of ordinary than last year.

A few items are unusual if not extraordinary. R.A. Lafferty’s In Our Block (If) is an amusing tall tale about various odd characters with unusual talents residing in the shacks on a neglected dead-end block, like the woman who will type your letters but doesn’t need a typewriter (she makes the sound effects orally), and the man who ships tons of merchandise out of a seven-foot shack without benefit of warehouse. It has lots of slapstick but not much edge, unlike the best by this idiosyncratic writer. Newish writer Lin Carter (two prior appearances in the SF magazines, a lot in the higher reaches of amateur publications), in Uncollected Works (F&SF), extrapolates the old saw about monkeys on typewriters reproducing the works of Shakespeare, in the direction of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God, leading to an unexpected and subtle conclusion.

In Vernor Vinge’s Apartness, from the UK’s New Worlds, the Northern War has destroyed the Northern Hemisphere, and generations later, an expedition from Argentina discovers people encamped in Antarctica, living in primitive conditions, who prove to be the descendants of white South Africans who fled from the uprising that followed the war and eliminated whites from the continent. (Interesting that this American writer didn’t find a market for it at home.) They are not pleased to be discovered by darker-skinned explorers and try to drive them off. The well-sketched background makes this more than an exercise in irony or just revenge.

On to the extraordinary—three of them, not a bad showing. Traveler’s Rest, by David I. Masson, also from New Worlds, depicts a world where time varies with latitude, passing slowly at the North Pole (though subjectively very fast), where a furious—and possibly futile—high-tech war is in progress with an unknown and unseeable enemy. Life proceeds more mundanely in the southern latitudes. Protagonist H is relieved from duty, travels south, reorients himself to current society, establishes a career, marries and procreates over the years. He's known now as Hadolarisondamo, since names are longer in the slower latitudes. Then, middle-aged, he is called back to duty, and arrives 22 minutes after he left. This world’s nightmarish quality is highlighted by the dense mundane detail of the normal life of the lower latitudes; the result is a tour de force of strangeness.

Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin!” said the Ticktockman (from Galaxy) is a sort of dystopian unreduced fraction. In outline, it’s a simple story of a future world where punctuality is all; if you’re late, your life can be docked. One man can’t take it any more and dresses up in a clown suit and goes around disrupting things until he gets caught by the Master Timekeeper (the Ticktockman), brainwashed, and forced to recant publicly—though the end hints that his legacy lives on. In substance, it’s business as usual; in style, it’s a sort of garrulous stand-up routine, and quite a good one. It’s best read as a purposeful affront to the usual plain functional (or worse) prose of the genre (a reading consistent with the story’s theme) and a persuasive argument for opening up the field a bit stylistically.

The other outstanding item here—best in the book to my taste—is Clifford D. Simak’s Over the River and Through the Woods (Amazing), in which a couple of strange kids appear at a farmhouse in 1896 and address the older woman working in the kitchen as their grandma. The gist: Ordinary decent person confronted with the extraordinary responds with ordinary decency. It’s plainly written without a wasted word, deftly developed, asserting its homely credo with quiet restraint—a small masterpiece amounting to a summary of Simak’s career. Simak is one writer who should ignore Ellison’s advice—and vice versa, no doubt.

The upshot: Not bad. Better than not bad. The field is taking small steps away from business as usual, and the usual seems to be getting a little better. The kid may amount to something some day.

[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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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[June 20, 1966] First Impressions Can Be Misleading (Doctor Who: The Savages)

June 20, 2021 Jessica Holmes 2 Comments

By Jessica Holmes

Hello again, my friends, and welcome to another summary and review of the latest serial of Doctor Who. After a disappointing last several stories, I’m pleased to say that for the last few weeks Doctor Who has once again been a highlight of Saturday tea-time in my house. Whom do we have to thank for this turnaround? A new face in the writers’ room, Ian Stuart Black. Black’s story is everything Doctor Who should be: smart, exciting, and most importantly it has something to say. Let’s take a look at The Savages.

Oh, and I haven’t forgotten to fill in the episode names. Apparently we aren’t bothering with them any more.

EPISODE ONE

Arriving in an age of 'peace and prosperity', the Doctor promptly wanders off and attracts the attention of some rather grouchy-looking blokes with clubs.

Men in animal skins wielding clubs doesn’t scream ‘peace and prosperity’ to me. Either the Doctor’s wrong about where they are (as happens…often) or things aren’t quite as they seem. Luckily for the Doctor, a couple of soldiers in silly hats find him before he can have his head bashed in. These are Edal and Exorse, and they’ve come to invite the Doctor to their city. The Elders are expecting him.

Off he trots, leaving behind Steven and Dodo, who also run afoul of the 'savages' (their words, not mine). Luckily, Exorse finds them before Steven gets skewered.

In a contrast to the wilderness, the city of the Elders turns out to be an enlightened utopian paradise, all gleaming architecture and fancy clothes. The Elders have been observing the Doctor’s exploits for some time. They are so honoured to meet him they give him some less-than-groovy new threads.

They’re a bit surprised to see Steven and Dodo, but present them with fancy gifts all the same. Steven gets a knife, and Dodo gets… a hand mirror. Enlightened? Pah! They’re sexist!

Girls like to stab people too, you know.

The leader of the Elders (Jano) offers to have Steven and Dodo shown around while he has a chat with the Doctor. The rest of the city is fabulous and luxurious. The Elders control everything here, even the wind and rain. Steven asks what the secret of their success is. One of their guides tells him that their scientists made one simple discovery, but what is that discovery? Everything seems a little too good to be true, doesn’t it?

While they’re off doing that, the soldiers from earlier go on the hunt, much to the horror of the 'savages'. After a tense game of cat-and-mouse, Exorse captures a young woman, Nanina. He uses a gun that fires a beam of light that freezes the victim in place and allows the user to control them. Remember this, it'll be important later.

Jano explains to the Doctor that they’ve found a more efficient way to gain energy to survive. They have found a way to transfer energy directly from one living being to another.

Right after that little revelation, Dodo spots Exorse bringing Nanina into the city. I think you can guess where this is going.

Exorse takes Nanina into a laboratory where another 'savage' is already lying on a table, very weak. Having no further use for him, the scientists in the lab turn him loose, tossing him out into the tunnels leading out of the city.

While Steven begins to ask questions about the city, and getting no straight answers, Dodo sneaks off to explore. She soon gets lost, coming face to face with the zombified 'savage'…

EPISODE TWO

Dodo has nothing to fear from the stranger, as it turns out. He can’t even stand on his own two feet. She helps him up and to the door, where the other 'savages' are waiting for him, but she doesn't get the chance to talk to them. Hearing Nanina's cries a moment later, Dodo sneaks over to the laboratory to investigate.

Though Steven is beside himself with worry, the Doctor assures him that Dodo is more than capable of taking care of herself.

Dodo gets herself captured in the very next scene.

Edal finds her before the scientists can put her under some sort of procedure, and as he leads her away, the scientists release Nanina in a similar state to the man from earlier. It’s becoming increasingly clear that something is very wrong in this city.

Reunited with his companions, the Doctor bids the Elders a polite farewell, seemingly in a sudden hurry to leave the city. Outside the city they come upon the man Dodo encountered earlier, and the Doctor’s suspicions are confirmed. The Elders are kidnapping the 'savages', draining them of their life force, and transferring it into themselves.

The Doctor sends his companions to get medical supplies from the TARDIS. As he begins tending to the poor man, Edal shows up and callously says that this ‘savage’ should be back on his reserve.

The real-world applicability is hard to miss.

The Doctor, angered at the interference, blasts Edal for his lack of humanity. These ‘savages’ are no different from the Elders, designated as subhuman purely for being born into the 'wrong' group.

Steven and Dodo come back to find the poor sick bloke all alone, and start treating him themselves, learning from him that Edal took the Doctor back to the city. They also meet two more of the man's people, wise old Chal and young hot-headed Tor.

In the city, the Doctor clashes with the Elders, demanding that they put an end to their barbaric practice of draining the 'savages'.

It very strongly feels like a metaphor for… well, a myriad of real-world things: wealth disparity, racism, segregation and colonialism. Basically, any scenario where the ruling class are dehumanising and exploiting a whole group of people.

Faced with the Doctor's condemnation, it seems Jano has no choice… but to have the Doctor taken away and drained.

With considerable trepidation at performing the procedure on a 'higher' being, the lead scientist initiates the procedure, remarking in amazement at the amount of vitality they manage to steal from the Doctor within the first few seconds.

And it seems he’s got plenty left to give…

EPISODE THREE

Jano observes as the scientists finish draining the Doctor, and he insists that he be the first to be infused with the Doctor’s vitality. This is the first experiment of its kind, and so he takes it upon himself to take the risk.

Meanwhile, Chal and Tor, the two men Steven and Dodo met earlier, lead them to the caves where the 'savages' live. To Steven and Dodo's surprise, there is a beautiful temple inside the cave. These people's ancestors were great artists before their traditions and way of life were stolen from them. All that remains to them now is their faith. Again, there is clear real-world applicability, particularly with regard to the suffering of colonised peoples around the world, though many don't even get to keep that much.

Outside, Exorse finds Tor. Under threat of being drained, Tor gives away the location of the time travellers. Gee, that was a smart move, especially given that just a scene ago Tor was vehemently against taking the fugitives in for fear of the Elders invading his home.

With Exorse coming for them Steven asks if there’s another way out. Chal leads Steven and Dodo into the passages at the back of the cave as Exorse barges in and starts threatening the inhabitants.

I must say that although I’m not given any other name for these people, I feel strange calling them ‘savages’. ‘Savage’ is a word long used to dehumanise people considered ‘lesser’. To me it feels uncomfortable to still refer to these people with a slur when it’s evident there is nothing ‘lesser’ about them. It would have been a good touch at this point in the narrative to reveal to the audience what these cave people call themselves.

Exorse pursues Steven, Dodo and Chal into the tunnels, and faced with a dead end Steven gets an idea. Using Dodo’s hand-mirror (I suppose it came in handy after all), he reflects the beam from Exorse’s light-gun back at the soldier, freezing him in place. Steven manages to disarm Exorse and leads him back to the cave, where the others are amazed to see that their oppressors can be defeated.

Leaving the others to guard the prisoner, Steven heads back to the city with Chal and Dodo to find the Doctor. They’ve barely even left before Tor tries to kill Exorse, but Nanina stops him and tends to Exorse’s wound, reasoning that vengeance will do them no good.

Jano emerges from the intransference procedure with a dazed look on his face, but assures the scientist that he’s quite all right… in a voice that isn’t his. The scientist doesn’t seem to notice, but Jano appears to have acquired the Doctor’s voice and a bit of his personality. He slips back and forth between his own voice and the Doctor’s, and something clicks into place for me. Doesn’t Jano sound rather similar to Janus, the two-faced Roman god?

Now that’s what I call an aptronym.

I say it’s the Doctor’s voice but I’m fairly sure that Jano’s actor is just doing an impression. It’s a good impression, but it’s a little too nasal to be Hartnell. Still, he’s got the accent and cadence down pat.

Having snuck into the city, Steven and Dodo find the Doctor wandering the access tunnels, though Dodo frets that it seemed too easy to get in. She’s right. It’s a trap.

The door starts closing behind them, but they can’t get the catatonic Doctor out before it shuts and the corridor begins to fill with gas.

In the lab, Jano watches on a scanner as they begin to choke. The Doctor can’t help them now… or can he?

EPISODE FOUR

Episode Four starts off with a stroke of luck as the door unexpectedly opens behind the travellers, allowing Dodo to usher the Doctor out while Steven fires on Edal and the advancing guards.

Edal accuses Jano of opening the door for them, but of course Jano denies it, speaking with the Doctor's voice again.

He leads a contingent of guards out of the city to hunt the fugitives down. On the run, Steven sends the Doctor, Chal and Dodo ahead to the safety of the caves while he stays behind to hold off the pursuers.

The Doctor and Dodo make it to the cave, and just in time, too. Finding herself as Exorse’s only ally, Nanina defends him from Tor with a spear. It’s only with the arrival of Chal that things don’t end up coming to a point.

With the guards advancing, Steven falls back to the cave, where he intends to lie in wait and snipe Jano as he approaches. However, hearing this the Doctor suddenly becomes lucid and warns him not to, and it's not just his sense of pacifism talking. He thinks that Jano might be the ally they need to destroy the lab.

Jano insists on going into the cave alone, ordering the others back to the city. Edal smells something funny about the situation, so he immediately warns the disbelieving Elders that he believes Jano is about to betray them.

As night falls, Jano enters the cave, and the Doctor turns out to be right once again. In absorbing the Doctor’s life essence, Jano got what he wanted: the Doctor’s intellect. However, in the process he got more than he bargained for. He got the Doctor’s conscience. Even better, he has a plan.

A short time later, Jano swans into the lab with his ‘prisoners’ in tow. Miffed at Edal’s attempts to turn the others against him, he has Edal arrested for treason.

The Elders are relieved to see that Jano is apparently still loyal, until Jano orders the lab sealed and exhorts them to destroy it. They’re not keen.

Well, if you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself. Jano and the ‘prisoners’ start smashing equipment with gleeful abandon. As the Doctor says, there is something very satisfying about destroying something evil.

But what now? The old system is no more, but what will replace it? How will these people learn to live together as equals in peace?

The Doctor would be an obvious choice to mediate between the two peoples, but it’s not in his nature to stick around. What a pickle. Where else are they going to find a good, trustworthy person with leadership skills, who can inspire loyalty, and make judgements based on their conscience?

I’ll be honest, my first thought was Nanina, given her willingness to show compassion even to her enemies.

But apparently Peter Purves wants out, so Steven’s the man for the job. Though initially reluctant, after some encouragement from the Doctor, Chal, Jano and even Tor, he agrees to stay.

Dodo bids Steven a tearful farewell, and Jano thanks the Doctor for his help before departing with the others to await Steven in the council chamber. Once alone, the Doctor admits that he’s very proud of Steven, though he does seem in a rush to get him to go. Has he been leaving smelly socks all over the TARDIS or something?

Steven heads off to start his new life, and the Doctor and Dodo depart through the smouldering remains of the laboratory. They don't look back, but Steven does. I'm not sure he really wants to leave.

The Doctor doesn’t seem as bothered about this as any of the other departures. I suppose he’s fine as long as he has a surrogate grandchild.

It’s quite an abrupt exit all the same, and one that wasn’t really set up in the preceding episodes. In Susan’s final serial, she gradually fell in love, so it made sense for her to decide to stay behind in future London. In the case of Ian and Barbara, going back home was their goal all along. Vicki, too, formed a personal connection to Troilus. It wasn't what you'd call a deep or believable connection, but there was an attempt. However, Steven hasn’t made any ties here that would give him a personal reason to want to stay. I suspect that this wasn’t the original ending of the serial, but instead a fairly last-minute change.

Final Thoughts

I’d love a followup to this story some time in the future. Our Steven’s definitely got his work cut out for him. Jano might have come around, but there’s a whole city of people who need convincing, and they’ve become accustomed to a certain level of luxury. Will they accept the liberation of the 'savages' if it comes at the cost of their lifestyle? How are they going to unlearn untold centuries of prejudice, especially when it tangibly benefited them?

To add onto this, though the Elders no longer have their energy-sucking machine, they still have all the weapons, all the advanced technology, and all the wealth. Are they going to share without being forced ? If it comes to that, how would Steven make them do it? Ask nicely?

I’m not saying it’s doomed to failure, but I don’t fancy his odds.

Still, say that Jano manages to convince his people that they need to change their ways and let the ‘savages’ in. What of the other side of the equation? The ‘savages’ have little trust for the Elders, and plenty of anger, and with good reason. I don’t think tensions between the groups would simply vanish overnight.

I’m going to miss having Steven around, and I wish he could have had a few more stories with Dodo, as the two developed a big brother/little sister dynamic which I found quite sweet. With his charm, often sarcastic wit and sometimes flaring temper, he formed the passionate core of the TARDIS team. It’ll be hard to replace him. Plus, it was nice to have a fellow Northerner in the TARDIS.

Wherever Peter Purves ends up, I’m sure it’ll turn out great.

So, there we have it. That was The Savages, and I hope you’ll agree it turned out to be a cracking story. The build-up to the revelation of what the Elders are doing is well-paced and effective, holding my attention. Hot off the heels of that, the twist of Jano unwittingly absorbing the Doctor's conscience put an interesting wrinkle in things, and it was fun to watch to boot. Deep characterisation is not really Doctor Who's strong suit, but there was enough for me to get invested and create interesting clashes of personality.

And of course, I enjoy it when the Doctor gets on his high horse.

I think it would be genuinely fascinating to get a sequel to this story set a few years down the line and see how Steven got on. After all, it’s not enough to just take the boot off your victim’s throat. You have to help them up off the ground.

4.5 out of 5 stars

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Magazine

[June 16, 1966] Calm Spots (July 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

June 16, 2021 Gideon Marcus 4 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Hot Times

Summer is looming, and it looks like we're in for another riot season. I suppose it only stands to reason given that inequality still runs rampant in a nation ostensibly dedicated to equality. This time, the outrage boiled over in Chicago, and the group involved was of Puerto Rican extraction.

Things started peacefully, even jubilantly: June 12 saw thousands gather for the Puerto Rican pride parade. But after the festivities, the cops shot Cruz Aracelis, 21, and violence erupted. For three days, police cars were overturned, property went up in flames, and people were hurt (and some died). Despite the exhortations of the community's leaders, the rioting continued, and it was not until Mayor Daley promised much-needed reforms that the outbreaks lapsed, on June 15.

Tectonic shifts are rarely gradual. Similarly, we lurch toward progress with the accompanying devastation of an earthquake. Just as we're starting to build for seismic destruction in California, if we want to see riot summers a thing of the past, we'll need to build real systems for equality sooner rather than later.

Eye of the Storm

Chicago may burn, Kansas may be savaged by tornadoes, and Indonesia might be going to hell in a hand basket, but the latest Fantasy and Science Fiction is by comparison pretty mellow stuff. Indeed, it's a pretty unremarkable issue even compared to recent issues of F&SF! Still, there's good reading in here. Take a break from the outside world's madness and join me:

by Chesley Bonestell

Founder's Day, by Keith Laumer

Retief author Keith Laumer departs from comedic satire for a reasonably straight story. In a future borrowed from Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!, the only escape from Earth's 29 billion inhabitants is a five year journey in stasis to Alpha Centauri 3. But what really lies at the end of a grueling journey that includes a savage boot camp and the stripping away of all humanity?

A competent piece, Founder's Day nevertheless is no more than that. This story of friction between colonist and transport crew could have been set in 19th Century Australia as well as space. Laumer doesn't really bring anything new, in concept or execution.

Three stars.

The Plot is the Thing, by Robert Bloch

Psycho author Robert Bloch doesn't do much fantasy these days, but his turns are always slickly done. In this vignette, young heiress Peggy is the portrait of disassociation, abandoning reality for the Late Show, the Late Late Show, and the All Night Show — any program that will give her the horror flicks she craves. But when drastic medical intervention rescues her at the brink of death, is it salvation, or merely the gateway to greater unreality?

No surprises but the usual excellent execution.

Four stars.

by Gahan Wilson

Experiment in Autobiography, by Ron Goulart

The best part of Goulart's latest story is the double-meaning in the title. One gets the impression that the absurd lengths to which the protagonist, a free-lance writer, must go to collect his ghosting fee, is only slightly removed from reality.

Three stars for Goulart fans; knock one off for everyone else.

Brain Bank, by Ardrey Marshall

Sturm is a brilliant mathematician cut down in the prime of his life. Too valuable to be left to molder, Sturm is brought back as a disembodied brain, forced to offer his expertise to all who request it: students, businessmen, colleagues. He is a true slave with no human rights and the fear of being switched off perpetually hanging over him. Especially when an old rival, now a tenured professor who made his reputation by stealing the work of his T.A.s and associates, becomes Sturm's latest client.

In setup, it's not unlike Calvin Demmon's vignette The Switch, which appeared in F&SF last year. But the execution here is breezy, the story more of a potboiler.

I don't know if I buy the premise, but I can easily imagine a much put-upon sentient computer in the same situation. The rather conventional adventure story overlies some thoughtful philosophy.

Three stars.

Man in the Sea, by Theodore L. Thomas

Is oxygenated water the solution to problems posed by deep sea diving? What about direct oxygenization of blood? Some neat ideas that I can't immediately poke holes in for once.

Four stars.

The Age of Invention, by Norman Spinrad

This flip piece posits that our current art culture, and the ease with which it is manipulated, is no new thing at all. Indeed, it's been with us since we've been recognizably human.

Fun fluff. Three stars.

Balancing the Books, by Isaac Asimov

The latest article from The Good Doctor is about conservation of charge and mass in the subatomic particles. I suspect the material could have been covered in a piece as short as Thomas' column. Padded to ten pages, it loses its punch.

Three stars.

Revolt of the Potato Picker, by Herb Lehrman

A spud farmer, one of the last dirt agriculturalists in a time of yeast and lichen hydroponics, buys a sentient tractor to do his harvesting. All is well until the robot's sensitive side comes to the fore. Instead of devoting its (her?) time to picking and peeling, all it (she?) wants to do is pursue artistic interests.

Meant to be a winking, nudging joke of a story, I found it both distasteful and also just kind of stupid.

Two stars.

The Manse of Iucounu, by Jack Vance

At last, the meanderings of Cugel the Clever come to a close. Banished to the ends of the Dying Earth by Iucounu, the mage he was trying to rob, Cugel at last finds a way home with the treasure he was sent to find. The key turns out to be a misadventure with sapient rats and a liaison with a sorcerer liberated from their clutches.

Like the rest of the series, it wobbles between wittily imaginative and routine, too episodic to really engage. If anything, it feels like a modern day, rather adult Oz story. With a thoroughly unpleasant though sometimes entertaining antihero.

Call it four stars for this entry and three and a half for the series as a whole.

Emerging from Solace

There are issues of F&SF that astound, leaving an indelible impression. There have been others (not recently) that are better left to gather dust on the shelf (if not utilized for kindling next winter). The July 1966 issue lies on neither extreme. But if you find yourself wanting a quiet weekend away from the strife of the real world, this issue will be a fine companion.

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Book, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 12, 1966] Which Way to Outer Space? (New Writings In SF 8)

June 12, 2021 Kris Vyas-Myall 1 Comment

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Space has been big news in the British press recently. Not the current struggles of America’s Gemini-9 link-up, but rather the saga of the UK’s presence in the ELDO.

The European Launch Development Organization was formed by a treaty signed in 1962 between Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands for the development of a three-stage rocket launch for satellite use (you can read an excellent report Kaye Dee did on the project two years ago). However, the new British Labour government has been unhappy with the increasing costs and with the fact that Britain was paying around 40% of the cost rather than investing in its own rocket program, like some of the other nations have been.

The issue apparently came to a head when estimates for the Europa 1 launcher had risen to £150m, with no expectation of much practical use before 1969. For the last week negotiations had been happening feverishly to try to come up with a solution, with concerns that Britain would have no involvement in space in the future and the whole Eldo project could end up being scrapped.

ELDO launch brochure — Brochure for the upcoming Europa 1 launches from Woomera

Thankfully, a solution has been found. Britain will still be involved but their share of the cost will be reduced to 27%, whilst other countries shares increasing to meet this shortfall, making the payments between the largest countries more equitable.

New Writings in SF 8

Space is also the main theme of this quarter’s New Writings anthology, with new angles used to look at the familiar subject.

Before we start on the stories, can we address the fact that these Dobson hardbacks are incredibly ugly to look at? They are just the same image and format reproduced in different colors each time. The Corgi paperback editions all have much more attractive covers which are likely to intrigue the reader:

Covers for New Writings anthologies 1, 2 & 3 in paperback from Corgi — The first three New Writings anthologies in paperback from Corgi

Could the publishers please make more effort? Or at least give us some variety after two years of the same dust jacket?

Anyway, on to the stories, let us see what Carnell’s crew comes up with:

The Pen and the Dark by Colin Kapp

We have the return of Kapp’s Unorthodox engineers for a third installment (one in Carnell’s New Worlds and the other in New Writings 3). These stories seem to have fans enough to encourage more tales in this world, although I have personally not been enamored by what has been presented so far.

This time the team go to investigate a strange phenomenon on the planet Ithica. An alien vessel had appeared there, then vanished, leaving a mysterious pillar of darkness. The whole area appears to defy their understanding of physics and so the team must investigate further.

I have read some people find the stilted, unnatural dialogue in this series as a great way to give his world depth. To me it is just irritating, as it does not stray far enough from our own language to read as much other than wooden. This was also compounded for me by the fact that it is filled to the brim with scientific jargon I struggled to understand. I have a suspicion it may have been made up, as they say at the end:

And even if they’d tried to tell us, I doubt our capacity to have understood. Try explain the uses and construction of a Dewar flask to an ant – and see who gets tired first.

However, what I did appreciate was the atmosphere of adventure into the unknown he creates which dragged me along this obscure journey. Perhaps more one for the Niven fans out there?

Three stars

Spacemen Live Forever by Gerald W. Page

Page is a new writer to me but has apparently had a couple of pieces published in the American magazines. Here he produces a very grim take on the long intergalactic voyage.

Torman Graylight is first officer on a ship transporting a sleeping population to a new planet. He is the only person awake apart from second officer Kelly. But when Kelly dies in an accident, Graylight’s loneliness gets the better of him and he decides to wake one of the sleepers. But will this be enough for the two of them to survive the years of travel through the void of space?

Whilst these kinds of grim nihilistic tales are not generally to my taste, I do appreciate the skill with which he presents the atmosphere, giving us a real sense of hopelessness and isolation.

Four Stars

The Final Solution by R. W. Mackelworth

Mackelworth also serves up a grim vignette, this one on the inherent self-destructiveness of fascism. In this future, human racial supremacists (closely modelled on Nazis) encounter another species with similar ideology on The Rose World. They decide to do a series of tests to determine racial hierarchy.

Even though short it is a very poignant and necessary piece on the ease with which militarism and racism can take over a society. The only parts that stop me from giving it a full five stars are that some of the elements (e.g., calling the alien leader Slan) and the ending make the story a little too explicit, but it is still a very strong short.

A high four stars

Computer’s Mate by John Rackham

Captain Sven Soren is piloting the Stellar One through the gaps between atoms as a means of breaching light-speed, with the first attempt to Vega. To achieve this, they need a massive computer to control the ship’s complex mechanisms. Coming with it is Grant Wilson, whose job is to care for the machine and act as the link between crew and computer.

Their first “star-jaunt” is a success, with them finding an Earth style world and its inhabitants. However, the crew are distrustful of Wilson as he himself acts like a computer and are unwilling to heed his warnings of the dangers ahead.

I have decidedly mixed feelings about this piece. Whilst it is nice to see a story about a mentally disabled person (particularly where he gets to be the hero, rather than a victim) the abuse of the rest of the crew because of his differences still feels out of place. There are also large sections which are just philosophizing on the nature of life and humanity, which can be interesting at times but often seem to be used at the expense of the women crew members. And whilst it is nice to see multiple women involved in spaceship operations, they are not really shown to do much that is positive.

I think I will go straight down the middle and give it three stars.

Tryst by John Baxter

On the outer reaches of an Asimov-esque galactic empire, there is a barren, nearly forgotten colonized world called Dismas. their only real link with the central imperium is an annual ship sent to help support the colony and bring back any saleable merchandise.

However, on this shipment all the boxes of equipment sent instead contain boxes of rose petals and the new machines are made from paper and foil. Even the ship in orbit is mysteriously deserted. The young rebellious Nicholas is sent to take the ship back to Centre and find out what has happened.

This is a thoroughly sensory story, beautifully described with a real sense of wonder and melancholy. Unfortunately, the ending was a bit of a disappointment for me and the only thing keeping it from a full five stars.

Four stars

Synth by Keith Roberts

And of course, at last we come to the obligatory Keith Roberts tale! This time making up the final third of the anthology. However, this piece does not seem to have any relation to the space theme of the rest of the book, rather being one of artificial intelligence.

In the twenty-second century, Megan Wingrove is named as a co-respondent in a major divorce case, between famous painter Henry Davenport and his wife Ira Davenport, with it being claimed Megan had an affair with Henry whilst working as their maid and Ira’s companion. What makes this case unusual is that Megan is a synth, a kind of advanced robot with an organic skin and muscle structure.

As well as seeking damages for mental anguish, Ira wants to have Megan destroyed for being dangerous and behaving immorally. We observe the case unfolding as they debate as to whether or not it is possible for a human to have a sexual relationship with a synth and whether a synth can be deemed to be responsible.

I was initially cynical that Keith Roberts would be able to do this kind of tale justice but he manages to produce both a really tense courtroom drama as well as delving into questions of consent and love. This story manages to be applicable to real life (you could see the same questions emerging in a similar situation with a domestic servant) whilst also being distinctly science fictional. He gives more thought to what it would mean for human emotions and longings to hit up against our technological capabilities than I can think of in any similar story.

I am as surprised as anyone to find myself giving a Keith Roberts story a full five stars!

Back to Earth

Readjusting their focus back to traditional science fictional subjects and having a nice mix of new and old talents has really brought out the best in Carnell’s anthology series. Here they put new perspectives on these subjects and come out with a marvelous selection. Even the stories I didn’t like as much I think may have more to do with my personal foibles than the quality of the writing.

Hopefully, this can continue in issue #9 and not regress to the poor state of affairs we saw in the prior collection.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 10, 1966] Summer Reruns (July 1966 Fantastic)

June 10, 2021 Victoria Silverwolf 2 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

Old Series Never Die, They Just Fade Away

Summertime is right around the corner, here in the Northern Hemisphere, and all patriotic Americans know what that means; reruns on television. Not only does this save the production companies money, it allows defunct programs to continue to appear on TV screens long after they're gone, like ghosts haunting a house. (Of course, they're easier to exorcise than traditional specters; just pull the plug.)

Two popular, critically acclaimed, and long-running series recently cast off this mortal coil, ready to enter the monochromatic afterlife of reruns.

Late last month, the courtroom drama Perry Mason slammed down the gavel for the last time with The Case of the Final Fade-Out. The story involved a television studio, so a large number of crew members made cameo appearances, pretty much as themselves. There was also a very special guest star.

That's executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson on the left and Hollywood columnist Norma Lee Browning on the right. The fellow in the middle? That's bestselling author Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, dressed up for his role as a judge in the final episode.

At the start of this month, The Dick Van Dyke Show came to a conclusion with the appropriately titled episode The Last Chapter. Van Dyke's character, television writer Rob Petrie, finishes the book he's been working on for five years, and looks back on his life.

Because The Last Chapter was really just an excuse to reuse sequences from previous episodes, I'm offering you this scene from the penultimate episode, The Gunslinger. Surrounding Van Dyke in this Western parody are cast regulars Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Deacon.

I'm sure that both of these hit series will be reincarnated in American living rooms for quite a while.

Not all summer television programming consists of reruns, to be sure. There are so-called summer replacement series as well. In a week or so, we'll enjoy (or avoid) the first episode of The Dean Martin Summer Show (not to be confused with The Dean Martin Show, which has been going on since last year. Are you still with me?) It will be hosted by the comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin.

Rowan on the left and Martin on the right, in a scene from their 1958 Western spoof Once Upon a Horse. I wonder if they'll have any success as TV hosts.

A Home Run The First Time At Bat

Although it's not unknown for popular songs of yesteryear to return to the charts — auditory reruns, if you will — listeners are usually searching for something original. Newcomer Percy Sledge offers an notable example with his smash hit When a Man Loves a Woman. This passionate, soulful ballad, currently Number One in the USA, is not only the first song recorded by Sledge, it is the first song recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a city famous for its music studios, to reach that position.

Your fans mean it, Mister Sledge.

I've Seen This All Before

The reason I've been talking about reruns, before I get to the contents of the latest issue of Fantastic, isn't just the fact that they've been filling up the magazine with reprints for some time now. As we'll see, many of the old stories in this issue have reappeared several times before. Reruns of reruns, so to speak. Whether fans of imaginative literature will be willing to spend four bits for fiction they may have already read in collections or anthologies remains to be seen.

Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

Predictably, the front cover is also a rerun.

The back cover of the June 1943 issue of Amazing Stories. It looks better in the original version.

Before I get to the reruns, however, let's start with something new.

Just Like a Man, by Chad Oliver

Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Three men are in an aircraft, flying over the surface of an Earth-like planet. A sudden storm forces them to abandon the vehicle, stranding the trio in an area resembling an African savannah. Because the place is full of leonine predators, they hightail it to the relative safety of a nearby rainforest.

Climbing one of the planet's gigantic trees in order to get away from the hungry cats.

They wind up far above the ground, among an unsuspected community of highly intelligent primates. These mysterious creatures help them survive, and even offer the possibility of reaching their home base, located five hundred miles away across uncharted wilderness.

Among the primates, who are not as hostile as shown here.

This is a decent tale of adventure, and the enigmatic primates are interesting. The planet is so similar to Earth — the feline predators are pretty much just lions — that you might forget you're reading a science fiction story. Overall, it's worth reading, if not outstanding in any way.

Three stars.

The Trouble With Ants, by Clifford D. Simak

Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

From the January 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures comes this final story in the author's famous City series. (By the way, the title of this work was changed to The Simple Way when it appeared in book form.)

Illustration by Rod Ruth. From this point on, all the illustrations are reruns from the original appearances of the stories.

In the far future, people are gone from Earth, with the exception of one fellow in suspended animation. Long ago, humans increased the intelligence of dogs, gave them the power of speech, and built robots to serve their needs. The canines, in turn, taught other animals to speak.

Complicating matters is the fact that a man caused ants to develop technology of their own, including robots the size of fleas. Now the ants are constructing a building, for an unknown purpose, which threatens to take over the planet.

An ancient robot returns from humanity's new home in a mysterious fashion. It seeks out the man in suspended animation as part of its quest to understand the ants.

Brought together as a fix-up novel in 1952, the City series won the International Fantasy Award the next year. It is usually considered a classic of science fiction, and has been reprinted many times.

One of the many editions of this work. Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

Highly imaginative, and with a sweeping vision of the immensity of time, Simak's tales also have a gentleness and intimacy that touches the reader's heart. The mood is one of quiet melancholy, and the acceptance of the fact that all things will pass away.

Although SF fans are likely to have read this story before, its quality makes it a welcome repeat. (One can rarely say the same thing about television reruns, or else viewers would stay glued to their screens.)

Five stars.

Where Is Roger Davis?, by David V. Reed

Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

Let's take a break from stuff that has already been reprinted multiple times, and take a look at the first reappearance of this yarn, taken from the yellowing pages of the May 1939 issue of Amazing Stories. (The author is unknown to me, but I have discovered that he also writes for comics, particularly Batman. Apparently a couple of episodes of the new television series are based on his scripts for the comic book.)

Illustrations by Julian S. Krupa.

Two young men working for a New York City tour bus encounter an invisible, telepathic Martian. One of them is seduced by the alien's plot to take over the world, and soon becomes a megalomaniac.

The fact that the Martian makes robbing a bank as easy as pie is another factor in his decision.

The other fellow has to figure out a way to keep the Martians from conquering Earth.

The mood of the story changes drastically from light comedy at the start to grim tragedy by the conclusion. Given the year it was written, I wonder if the dictatorial intentions of the first man were influenced by the rise of Fascism.

The author claims that this story is a true account, sent to him by the second man. There are also bits of imaginary news articles scattered throughout, in an attempt at verisimilitude. These don't work very well, particularly the long one at the end. The only thing I found mildly intriguing, if implausible, was the way the hero manages to plot against beings who can read his mind.

Two stars.

Almost Human, by Tarleton Fiske

Cover art by Harold W. McCauley.

The introductory blurb makes it clear that the author of this story, reprinted from the June 1943 issue of Fantastic Adventures, is really Robert Bloch, using a rather absurd pseudonym. (As is common practice, this was done because he had another story in the same issue under his own name.)

Illustration by Rod Ruth.

A hoodlum makes his way into the secret laboratory of a brilliant scientist. His moll has been working for the guy, so the crook knows the genius has created a robot. The machine is being educated like a child. The gangster teaches it to be an invincible criminal, and to kill without mercy. As you'd expect, things don't work out very well.

This piece reads like hardboiled fiction from a crime pulp. The final scene is particularly gruesome, in typical Bloch style. The author shows a certain knack for the Hammett/Chandler mode, but that's about all I can say for it. Not that great a story, but somebody thought it was worth reviving for an anthology.

Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

Two stars.

Satisfaction Guaranteed, by Isaac Asimov

Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

Speaking of robots, here's one of several stories about the robopsychologist Susan Calvin by the Good Doctor, from the April 1951 issue of Amazing Stories.

Illustration by Enoch Sharp.

Calvin only plays a minor part in this story, which focuses on a rather mousy, insecure housewife. Her husband works for the same robotics firm as Calvin, so he brings home a test model of a new machine. It looks like a handsome young man, and is designed to be helpful around the house in many different ways. The husband goes off on a business trip, leaving his wife alone with the robot.

The housewife is frightened of it at first, but soon learns to accept it. It even helps her with home decorating, clothing, and makeup, so she learns self-confidence. A final, unexpected gesture on the part of the machine, seemingly out of character for a robot, wins her the envy of her snobbish acquaintances. Susan Calvin explains why the machine's action was a perfectly logical way of obeying the famous First Law of Robotics.

Anonymous cover art for a British edition.

The author must be fond of this tale, because he has already included it in two different collections of his work. The one shown above, as the title indicates, includes stories that take place on Earth rather than in space, despite the misleading illustration and blurb. The story also appears in an omnibus that brings together his two robot novels as well as several shorter works.

Cover art by Thomas Chibbaro.

Besides that, it is also included in the same Roger Elwood anthology as Bloch's story. My sources in the television industry tell me that it is being adapted for the British series Out of the Unknown, and should appear late this year. (Will there be American reruns? One can only hope.)

Is it worth all this attention? Well, it's not a bad yarn, if not the greatest robot story Asimov ever wrote. The housewife is something of a stereotype of an overly emotional female, dependent on a man for her happiness. (This is in sharp contrast to the highly intelligent and independent Doctor Susan Calvin.) At some point you may think that the author is violating his own rules about robot behavior, but it's all explained at the end.

Three stars.

A Portfolio – Virgil Finlay

I'm not sure if I should even discuss this tiny collection of illustrations by the great artist, but at least I can share them with you.

For The New Adam (1939) by Stanley G. Weinbaum. The magazine calls it The New Atom, which is an egregious error.

For Mirrors of the Queen (1948) by Richard S. Shaver.

For The Silver Medusa (1948) by Alexander Blade (pseudonym for H. Hickey.)

What can I say? His work is stunning.

Five stars.

Satan Sends Flowers, by Henry Kuttner

Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.

The January/February 1953 issue of Fantastic is the source of this variation on an old theme.

Illustrations by Tom Beecham.

A man sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for immortality. (The premise is similar to that of the Twilight Zone episode Escape Clause, but the twist ending is different.) He ensures that he will remain young, healthy, and all that, so Satan can't play any tricks on him. Obviously, he figures he'll never have to pay up.

The Devil demands surety in the form of certain subconscious memories the fellow possesses. After assuring him that he won't even know he's lost anything, the man agrees. Unafraid of either earthly punishment or damnation, he lives a life of total depravity.

His first crime is the murder of his mother.

Eventually, he persuades the Devil to give him back what he lost, even though Satan warns him that he won't like it. This turns out to be a bad idea.

Like most other stories in this issue, this one has already appeared in a book. (It acquired the new title By These Presents.)

Back and front cover art by Richard Powers.

I should mention that the husband-and-wife team of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore almost always collaborated, even if the resulting story appeared under only one name. Whoever might have been responsible for whatever parts of this work, it's a reasonably engaging tale. I'm not sure I really accept the explanation for what the man's unconscious memories represent, but I was willing to go along with it.

Three stars.

The Way Home, by Theodore Sturgeon

Cover art by Barye Phillips.

This quiet story comes from the April/May 1953 issue of Amazing Stories.

Illustrations by David Stone.

A boy runs away from home. Along the way he meets a wealthy man and his glamourous female companion, in their fancy car; a man with an injured hand who has been all over the world; and a pilot in a beautiful airplane. Without giving too much away, it's clear from the start that these men represent possible future versions of himself.

Is this the road to the future, or to home?

Like Asimov's story, this piece has already appeared in two of the author's collections, but with a slight change in the title.

Cover art by Mel Hunter.

(I'm not sure if I should really count these as two different collections, because all the stories in Thunder and Roses already appeared, along with others, in A Way Home. Such are the vagaries of the publishing industry.)

Cover art by Peter Curl.

In any case, this is a beautifully written little story, subtle and evocative. To say much more would be to ruin the delicate mood it creates.

Five stars.

Worth Tuning In Again?

Cartoon by somebody called Frosty, from the same magazine as Satan Sends Flowers.

I wouldn't call this issue bad at all, although there were a couple of disappointing stories. It's no big surprise that the Simak and the Sturgeon were excellent, and Finlay's art is always a delight. It's enough to make you want to tear yourself away from all those reruns on television and turn to some literary reruns instead.

In the world of cuisine, reruns are known as leftovers.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 6, 1966] The World is Ending (Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison)

June 6, 2021 Jason Sacks 4 Comments

by Jason Sacks

The Earth is starting to collapse.

Smog fills the air of our greatest cities, species are dying throughout the world, and the global population continues to increase geometrically, threatening our very existence as human beings on this planet. Half the people in the world live in extreme poverty while most of the other half worry about falling into poverty. Famine threatens much of the world, even as the world’s arable land decreases due to over-farming.

If things keep going as they have been, we will be facing unparalleled destruction by the end of the century.

Our great thinkers are stepping up to warn us about global destruction. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring is a terrifying description of environmental degradation, while Ralph Nader’s 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed is a timely reminder the government doesn’t always look out for the interests of everyday people. John Kenneth Galbraith stated the roots of the problem well in his 1958 book The Affluent Society, most people are blind to the destruction we’re creating:

The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered, and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wire that should long since have been put underground. They pass into a countryside that has been rendered largely invisible by commercial art… they picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American genius?

Galbraith’s fictional family is all too real, all too likely to overlook the terrible ways we’re destroying our planet. The worst part of his scenario is a sad truth: all these issues are likely to compound, to become worse and worse over time. Eventually these trends will become so powerful, there will be no way to reverse them. If we don't reverse them, our planet is doomed.

Population growth vs the rate of food production, from a Malthusian perspective

Add to those problems the massive impact of the Mathusian theory of population growth, which states (to simplify it dramatically) that population growth is exponential while increases of food, water and other key commodities is linear. Anyone extrapolating out Malthus’s theories will discover our world population is fast outstripping our ability to feed and clothe them. Malthusians believe we’re facing a ticking population bomb – and they also believe too many people are ignoring that bomb.

A new science fiction novel has come around to remind us of that the bomb exists and is ticking.

Make Room! Make Room!

Make Room! Make Room is a major departure for author Harry Harrison. Harrison is probably best known for his Stainless Steel Rat series, which are light and silly action-adventure stories. In this book he shows his versatility with one of the most compelling and downbeat speculative fiction novels I’ve ever read.

Harrison takes the destruction of the planet to its logical conclusion. By 1999, on the edge of the new millennium, Earth is ravaged. Thousands of species of animals have gone extinct. The world’s population has exceeded 7 billion and continues to grow. Meat and vegetables are commodities more precious than gold. All the oil has been mined from the planet and all the trees have been chopped down.

As Make Room! Make Room! begins, we learn New York City is massively overpopulated. Some 35 million people live in the metropolis, and thousands of people living on the streets. Thousands more live in abandoned cars, now made useless by the lack of oil in the world. Police officers are barely paid, and they live in tiny apartments powered by batteries whose generator is a man riding a bicycle.

Only a small wealthy class of people continue to live in the city, residing in air conditioned, spacious apartments, showering with rare and precious clean water and enjoying the occasional cherished strip of black market steak.

In this world we follow police officer Andrew Rusch as he tries to track down the murderer of a rich man who lives in one of those spacious apartments. We watch Rusch fight through his wretched world to find the killer, find a new love, lose an old companion, and fight like hell to acquire even the most basic things he needs to survive. Even the pathetic SoyLentil steaks are a rare, delicious luxury. Harrison puts us in the well-worn shoes of his characters, forcing us to understand their privations and pain on a personal level.

Make Room! Make Room! is a combination cautionary tale and hard-boiled detective novel, as if Raymond Chandler and Rachel Carson had a child who they gave to Philip K. Dick to raise. Like Dick’s brilliant Dr. Bloodmoney (my favorite book from 1965), Make Room! Make Room! takes place in an anti-utopian society which has experienced a profound collapse in every one of its structures. Unlike Dick’s masterpiece, however, there is little or no catharsis or heroism in Harrison’s book. Everything is misery in Make Room! Make Room!.

Every aspect of Harrison's world brings emotional, financial, or physical pain to the people who live there. The mere act of existing in this anti-utopia is pure torture. And the true sadness of this book is that Rusch and his new girlfriend Shirl only sometimes see this world for the hellhole it is. Other times they wander through the world, like goldfish never seeing the water they’re swimming in.

Harrison does a compelling job of extrapolating out the effects of environmental degradation, and he does a masterful job of portraying governmental breakdown. Despite the presence of police, the world seems nearly lawless, with civil servants shown as woefully unable to help in the world and with rebellions cutting off aqueducts into the city. While politicians argue endlessly about stupid things, bureaucrats cut back on food and water rations. Rioting breaks out in the streets and the police are unable to do anything about it. I’m not sure if Harrison is a libertarian, but his portrayal of government here shows a deep distrust of the net the current presidential administration has endeavored to create for all of us.

Another of Harrison’s main ideas is the blindness most people have to the events they’re part of. In one powerful scene late in the book, the government orders a large family to move into the apartment Andy and Shirl are sharing. The family is huge, with ten kids, a couple who have died and a few more on the brink of death. The family are filthy and pathetic, loud, obnoxious and self-involved. They have no class, which bothers Andy and Shirl deeply. But more than class or loudness, the family is horrible to live with because they are representative of the larger, broken society in which they live.

They have too many kids. Those kids get a maximum of three years education. Nobody can find a job. The family live on government rations. They have nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive for, no reason to think things will ever improve for them. Life is misery and eventually you die. If you’re rich and connected, perhaps the police will track down your murderer. If not, you’ll just die like the hundreds who die each day, unloved, unmourned, just another boring statistic in this Malthusian wasteland.

Make Room! Make Room! is a professionally written, powerful novel which took me to a place I don’t want to visit again. Harrison creates a rich and compelling anti-utopia extrapolated from the pages of The New York Times. He shows us a frightful future that seems all too likely to happen. Maybe this book will do a little bit to spur readers to fight for our ecology and to keep population growth low. Malthus would approve.

3.5 stars.

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Serial

[May 31, 1966] Worth Remembering (June 1966 Analog)

May 31, 2021 Gideon Marcus 5 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Decoration Day

First the war, then the licking of wounds. Not all wounds are physical. After the Civil War rent this nation in two, spring became a time for remembering the dead, their blood shed in almost incomprehensible numbers. In 1868, the ritual honoring of fallen veterans became an official holiday known as Decoration Day (for the decoration of graves). Over time, the name changed to Memorial Day, and last month, President Johnson proclaimed the custom's birthplace to be Waterloo, New York, the event first occurring a century ago.

The last Civil War veteran passed away in 1956, but this year's Memorial Day still found us licking our wounds. Indeed, last week marked the bloodiest seven days for American soldiers since Korea: 966 casualties in Vietnam alone, 146 of them fatal. Will next year's day of remembrance be worse?

The Issue at Hand

A cute segue would be in poor taste at this juncture, so I'll simply proceed to the review. The latest issue of Analog drew my attention with its striking astronomical cover. Let's turn the page and see what delights and disappointments Herr Campbell has for us this month.

by Chesley Bonestell

The Ancient Gods (Part 1 of 2), by Poul Anderson

In the letter column, Poul Anderson talks about discovering a beautiful painting by Chesley Bonestell. It depicts a the night sky as seen from a planet perhaps 200,000 light years north of the Milky Way. I would guess that this painting, as well as perhaps a viewing of last year's film, Flight of the Phoenix, provided the inspiration for the author's latest tale.

by John Schoenherr

I shall give nothing else away save that those who know me know I'm a sucker for astronomically correct tales of exploration, and that Flight of the Phoenix got my nomination for the Best Dramatic Hugo.

Four stars so far.

Early Warning, by Robin S. Scott

by Stan Robinson

Lee is a big man, a skilled man, a man whose job is to throw monkey wrenches into supposedly foolproof systems like the D.C./Kremlin Hotline and Pentagon intelligence computers. Is he a double-agent? A mole? Or something more?

There's really not enough to this story to engage; it feels more like a fragment of a Joe Poyer thriller than a complete piece. Just some workmanlike action writing and a smug, Campbell-pleasing sting.

Two stars.

CWACC Strikes Again, by Hank Dempsey

by Gray Morrow

"Hank Dempsey" (I have it on reliable information that this is a pseudonym for Harry Harrison, apparently trying to make the big lucre by pushing all of Campbell's buttons) is back with CWACC: the Committee for Welfare, Administration, and Consumer Control, last seen last year. Pronounced "Quack," the goal of this two-person operation is the support and representation of eccentric inventors. You see, to the scientific community, they're just kooks, but we all know that those industrious garage inventors produce way more of the world's innovation than the anonymous folks in white coats. Right?

Anyway, in this episode, CWACC's administrator teams up with an enemy, the local kook-catching flatfoot, to rescue a CWACCer, whose invention is being used by con artists to sucker in, of all people, the police commissioner. Along the way, "Dempsey" gets some pseudo-scientific shots in, like the assertion that the common cold can be defeated by sufficient vitamins in one's diet.

Vaguely readable garbage. One star. I hope it was worth selling your soul for four cents a word, Harry!

Live Sensors, by Carl A. Larson

This nonfiction article started auspiciously, promising to compare the biological sensors with which animals are naturally equipped to the most refined artificial detectors. The overall package is lacking, however. There are lots of interesting tidbits on the capabilities of creatures, but they are interspersed with larder passages that don't do too much. Never do we find out how we might utilize or at least learn from natural sensing devices.

It would also help if Analog employed subheadings. Three stars.

Stranglehold, by Christopher Anvil

by Kelly Freas

My nephew David rang me the other day (on Sunday, when the rates are lowest) to tell me how much he enjoyed the new Chris Anvil story. This may be a ringing endorsement (ha ha!) but I always take David's recommendations with a grain of salt, especially where Anvil is concerned.

A scout team following up on a lost comrade lands on a planet despite receiving a warning that such would be dangerous. Once planetside, they find themselves subjected to illusion after terrifying illusion, only their unshakeable monitors telling the truth about reality (why wouldn't their perception of the monitors also be changed?)

Turns out the inhabitants have some kind of telepathy and can change their perception of reality and those of others. After the team escapes with their rescued friend, they determine that a race with psychic phenomena cannot develop science since they fudge the results to their liking. Contrarily, a race that chooses a scientific path atrophies psychic phenomena because…well, just because.

Therefore, all races, including humanity, have psychic potential, and it's only because we chose the path of science that spoonbending isn't more prevalent. Q.E.D.

Gee, I wonder how this story got published.

What I really don't understand is what possible advantage the alien trait of mass hallucination affords. If it were real transmutation being employed in this story, there might be something to it, but there isn't. A being that thinks it is having its physical needs met when it is not quickly becomes a sick and/or dead being. Maybe it's more of a reality enhancer, as in the first Cugel the Clever story, which I guess would make more sense.

Anyway, Stranglehold feels like what would happen if Bob Sheckley ever wrote for Campbell.

Two stars.

Escape Felicity, by Frank Herbert

by Kelly Freas

In Frank Herbert's latest, a lone interstellar scout plunges his ship deep into a nebulous cloud. He is determined to fight off the "push" that causes all of his corps to return to Earth after a certain point. But is the compulsion programmed in by BuPurs to keep scouts from going native? Or is there an external agency involved?

I found this one of Herbert's more compelling pieces, though it falls apart a bit at the end. And it feels like the title is a pun in search of a story; I can't figure out its applicability to this one.

Three stars.

Doing the Math

Thus, Analog ends up near the bottom of the pack with a 2.6 star rating, only beating out the mostly-reprint (and consistently lackluster) Amazing 2.5. Ahead of Campbell's mag are New Worlds (3.1), Galaxy (3.1), Impulse (3.0), IF (3.0), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.8).

Worthy material comprised about an issue-and-a-half out of six this month. Women produced 11.25% of the new fiction, at the high end of the usual range.

All told, June 1966 may not be remembered in times to come, particularly as impressive as last month was. But, as noted at the beginning of the article, sometimes having to remember is painful.

Until next month…

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[May 22 1966] O.K.? No Way! (Doctor Who: The Gunfighters)

May 22, 2021 Jessica Holmes 4 Comments

By Jessica Holmes

I love musicals. I love — despite its flaws — this weird little science fiction show: Doctor Who. You’d think if you put the two together you’d end up with something I adore. It didn’t work.

Yes, this is essentially a musical serial– or rather, a serial with musical narration and more than one actual on-screen musical number. It sounds completely bizarre, and that’s because it is.

Rather than the usual incidental music peppering Doctor Who’s serials, this time around the action is interspersed with a ballad written by Tristram Cary and performed by Lynda Baron. Cary has provided music for Doctor Who before, in The Daleks, Marco Polo and The Daleks’ Master Plan. I wish I could say I remembered any of the music in those serials, but I can’t. All the same, I have found that his latest offering has wormed its way into my brain, and I keep catching myself humming the tune… much to my dismay.

This one’s also an alleged historical with more inaccuracies than I can count, so to save us all a lot of time I’ll quickly explain the very basics of what ACTUALLY happened in Tombstone on October 26, 1881.

THE GUNFIGHT NEAR-ISH TO THE O.K. CORRAL

The conflict in Tombstone had been a long time brewing, the result of a long feud between the lawmen of Tombstone and the outlaw Cowboys finally coming to a head. That’s a long story and not really relevant, but it involves exciting things like stagecoach robberies, smuggling, political rivalries, and all that good stuff. What really kicked things off, however, was a drunken argument and a new gun-control law.

The night before the fight, Doc Holliday and Ike Clanton got into an argument, which Town Marshal Virgil Earp put a stop to before things could get out of control. However, Clanton didn’t drop the matter, and threatened both Holliday and the Earp brothers. The town of Tombstone had recently made it illegal to carry a weapon within the town limits (unless you were just passing through), giving Virgil the pretext he needed to pistol-whip and disarm Clanton. Virgil hauled Ike before a judge, who fined him for the offence, and then let him go. Clanton, none too pleased about being disarmed and whacked on the noggin, fetched five of his Cowboy buddies, including his brother Billy and the McLaury brothers.

Having got wind of the Cowboys being in town and apparently armed, Virgil deputised his brothers Morgan and Wyatt. Along with Doc Holliday they went to disarm the outlaws, finding them at an empty lot near the Old Kindersley Corral. It didn’t go well.
It’s not clear who shot first, but when the smoke cleared Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers lay dead, and the only uninjured man on the opposing side was Wyatt Earp. Ike, for his part, had run from the fight.

In the aftermath, Ike brought charges against the Earps and Holliday for killing his brother, and following an investigation and trial, they were found to have acted within the law.

This is all a massive oversimplification of a very complex situation, but I’ve distilled it as best as I can.

And now for Doctor Who’s version of events.

A HOLIDAY FOR THE DOCTOR

Welcome to Tombstone, Arizona. It’s a nice little frontier town, mostly quiet until today. The notorious Clanton brothers (of which there are three: Ike, Billy and Phineas) have ridden into town to settle a score with Doc Holliday, noted gunfighter, gambler, and… dentist.

My American friends, I am so sorry for what you’re about to endure. Much as I often find American attempts at an English accent to be grating, I have to admit we’re much, much worse at yours. Some of these chaps are overshooting America, crossing the Pacific and landing in Australia.

The Doctor and company arrive and soon make the acquaintance of Town Marshal Vir–sorry, WYATT Earp. Virgil won’t be turning up until much later, sorry.

The Clantons discuss their plans to find Doc Holliday with their associate Seth Harper, but they're overheard by the bar singer, Kate. Kate immediately hurries off to warn her lover, Doc.

Doc, for his part, looks like they’ve tried really hard to make him bear a believable resemblance to the Doctor, despite the fact he was only thirty years old at the time of the fight. Kate and Doc get into a contest over who can overact the clumsily-written dialogue the hardest. That scenery must be really delicious.

I have to give credit where it’s due– the set is large and detailed enough to be believable. It’s even big enough to safely gallop a horse through.

Wyatt introduces the Doctor and company to local Sherriff Bat Masterson, and the Doctor claims that they’re a travelling band of players: Steven ‘Regret’, singer, Miss Dodo Dupont, pianist, and he of course is Doctor Caligari. This bit is quite funny, I’ll give them that.

The Doctor finds Doc canoodling with his lady friend in the back room of his parlour, and is not reassured to learn that he’s Doc’s first customer. Meanwhile, Dodo and Stephen try and fail to blend in with the locals as they swagger over to the saloon. It would help if their outfits weren't more fit for a fancy dress party than the Old West.

However, the Cowboys overhear the young pair talking about the Doctor, and under the mistaken assumption that they’re associates of Doc Holliday, confront the pair.

Stephen and Dodo try to protest, but the Cowboys are having none of it. If they're really musicians, why not entertain everyone with a song?

With a couple of handy hostages at the saloon, Seth waylays the Doctor as he emerges from his appointment looking rather the worse for wear. He extends a cordial invitation for a get-together at the saloon, which after some insistence the Doctor accepts.

Having overheard this, Doc insists that the Doctor take his gun. He’s not being charitable, mind you, he just wants to make sure that the Cowboys mistake the Doctor for him.

Back at the bar, the Cowboys confront Stephen and Dodo, who insist they’re really musicians, nothing to do with Doc Holliday. Well, if that’s so, how about a song?

Dodo mimes along to the player piano quite convincingly as Stephen sings the same ballad that’s been narrating all the goings on. He’s not bad, considering he’s being held at gunpoint. His commitment to maintaining a bad American accent isn’t doing him any favours though.

DON’T SHOOT THE PIANIST

The ever-so-heroic Doc Holliday watches as the Doctor heads to the saloon, anticipating that the Clantons will kill him in Doc’s place. However, Kate also heads back to the saloon, much to the relief of Stephen who has been made to sing the same song four times over.

So of course we all want to hear it yet again from her, don’t we?

In comes the Doctor, completely oblivious to the tension in the room until he hears the name Clanton and gets some inkling of the trouble he’s in.

His protestations that he’s not Holliday fall on deaf ears, but luckily for him Holliday had a change of heart. Hiding upstairs, Holiday fires off a few well-placed shots at just the right moment to enable the Doctor, Kate and Stephen to disarm the Cowboys.

Wyatt and Bat turn up, taking the Doctor into custody for his own protection– a fact that seems to be lost on Stephen, who immediately falls in with the Cowboys in the hopes of breaking him out. Of course, the Cowboys are only helping him so that they can get at ‘Doc’, but it takes the poor lad a while to catch on.

As for Dodo, she’s ended up with Doc Holliday, who won’t let her out of her room in case she gives away the ruse. After all, he’ll be safe with Earp.

It is at this point that the musical narration started to wear out its welcome. No, that didn’t take long at all, did it?

The Cowboys coach Stephen on what to do at the jailhouse to break the Doctor out, and Stephen finally realises that he can’t trust them, though he doesn’t let on. He sneaks off to the jailhouse and passes the Doctor a gun through the window of his cell, telling him to bluff his way out and escape before the Clantons come for him.

So what does the Doctor do? He hands the gun over to Wyatt and tells him about the escape plan.

Methinks the Doctor ought to swap his cowboy hat for a dunce cap. It’s also here that I noticed that the Doctor consistently calls Earp ‘Wearp’. Why? The Doctor knows who Earp is, and it’s too consistent to be a line flub, so I don’t really get it.

The Clantons catch Stephen sneaking back from the jailhouse, and poor Stephen finds himself being carted off by an angry mob intent on stringing him up as an associate of Holliday.

Dodo and company spot them heading away, so Doc leaps into action to rescue… his dentist chair. Seth spots him as he comes down the stairs, but Doc is a quicker shot. Leaving Seth dead on the floor, he has Kate saddle up three horses; Dodo will be leaving town with them.

The Clanton-led mob arrives at the jailhouse with an ultimatum: hand over ‘Doc’, or Stephen will swing in his place.

JOHNNY RINGO

Though the Doctor is more than willing to meet the mob’s demands, Earp isn’t about to give in. He sneaks around the back of the mob and knocks out Phineas Clanton, taking him into custody as the barman comes running up to tell everyone that he’s just seen the real Doc Holliday shoot Seth.

With their brother in custody, the other Clantons back off, heading to the saloon to drink it dry. They need a new associate. They need Johnny Ringo.

Because I can’t resist adding in a historical note: Johnny Ringo was a real outlaw, but he wasn’t involved in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but later incidents involving Doc Holliday and the Earps.

Doc, Kate and Dodo take a room in the next town, out of immediate danger but close enough that they can get back to Tombstone at a moment's notice. I say out of danger, but Doc manages to get into a brief offscreen shootout in the two minutes it takes him to scrounge up some supper.

Back in Tombstone, Johnny Ringo rides into town. Rather serendipitous, given that the Clantons didn’t have a way to contact him. It just so happens that he, too, has a score to settle with Holliday. Suspicious that Charlie the barman might warn the Earps about his presence, he shoots him dead.

Just in case we weren’t paying attention, the singing narration reiterates what just happened to Charlie in a desperate attempt to make us feel sad.

Meanwhile, Dodo wants to go back to Tombstone so badly she’s willing to hold Doc at gunpoint. He’s far more amused than threatened, but he does agree to take her back.

The Doctor and Stephen meet Ringo in the saloon and find the dead body of poor Charlie the barman. Seeing as they’re both looking for Holliday, Ringo takes Stephen to search for him. Stephen is apparently fine with teaming up with the very obvious outlaw.

Ringo and Stephen soon arrive in the next town and head for the saloon, figuring that Holliday will be in there gambling. However, they don’t find Holliday, but Kate.

Say, if Holliday and Dodo are on their way back from that town, wouldn’t they have passed Stephen and Ringo on the road?

The narration, long having worn out its welcome, thoroughly gets on my nerves. It is very rare that narration is even necessary in the first place. For an extra helping of lazy writing, the song tells us that Kate and Ringo were once lovers. Apparently there is no other way of conveying that. It’s not as if they could simply ACT as if they have a romantic past. Oh, wait, they do.

And because I’m already annoyed and on my high horse, I want to note that I have been unable to find any evidence of the real Kate and Ringo having ever been involved with one another, romantically or otherwise.

Kate tells Ringo that Doc headed out for New Mexico, hoping to throw him off the trail. However, Ringo has other ideas. He’ll be heading back to Tombstone, and Kate’ll be coming with him.

In the Tombstone jailhouse, Wyatt has left his younger brother Warren to guard the imprisoned Clanton. The other Clantons come by the jailhouse, and poor young Warren is too slow to get the draw on them. Leaving him bleeding on the floor, the Clantons break their brother out of jail.

The music and narration try to make it sad, but you can’t manufacture an emotional response to the death of a character I have absolutely no reason to care about.

Here’s another departure from history. Warren Earp was real, but not only did he have nothing to do with the fight at the O.K. Corral, the Clantons never did a thing to him! He died in 1900, long after this whole incident.

THE OK CORRAL

Someone, anyone, I beg of you. Please shoot the narrator.

At the saloon, Wyatt makes the Doctor a deputy, and his brother Virgil finally turns up to lend a hand. They soon find out what happened to Warren, and the dying man manages to tell them who did this to him before going to the great rodeo in the sky.

A furious Wyatt sends Virgil to tell the Clantons they’ll be waiting for them come sunup.

Ringo tells the Clantons to do as Virgil says. While they’re facing off against the Earps, Ringo can come up from behind and shoot them in the back. Well, that’s hardly sporting, is it?

Virgil gets back to Tombstone and tells the others that although he didn’t see Ringo himself, he saw his horse. So much for secrecy, eh, Ringo?

The Doctor despairs at this development. It seems like they’re hopelessly outgunned. However, he didn’t count on Doc Holliday.

He’s back, and he’s itching for a fight. Now that Doc’s here, the Doctor quite eagerly hands over his badge and gun. He’s not really cut out for all this wild west stuff.

Later that night, the Doctor frets over the coming duel. Shouldn’t the Clantons get a fair trial?

The Sheriff is relieved to hear he’s not the only sane man in town, so he sends the Doctor to try talking to the Clantons. Yes, I’m sure they’ll be perfectly reasonable and this can all be solved over tea and crumpets.

Hold on a minute. Is the Doctor trying to meddle with history? The one thing he always says he cannot and WILL NOT ever do?

All the same, it doesn't amount to much, given he only speaks to the Clantons' Pa, and the brothers have already left.

As the lawmen and the Cowboys assemble for their final standoff, the ballad warbles on, undermining the dramatic framing of the scene.

Doc almost gets caught out by Ringo, but the timely intervention of Dodo saves him. There’s a tense moment as Ringo grabs her and takes her hostage, leaving Doc with no choice but to drop his gun.

However, what self-respecting gun-toting sharp-shooting wild west hero would carry only one gun? Not Doc Holliday, that’s for sure. As Ringo stoops to pick up Doc’s gun, Doc whips out another and shoots him dead. Telling Dodo to get to safety, he joins the firefight.

The half-hearted anti-violence message the Doctor keeps attempting to bring up would be a lot stronger if Doc didn’t look so darn COOL when he’s shooting people.

When the smoke settles, the Clantons are all dead, and the lawmen don’t have a scratch on them. The goodies beat the baddies, and violence solves everything.

The Doctor laments the injustice of it all, but nobody cares. I don’t even think the writer cares. Doc sees them off, giving the Doctor a wanted poster as a souvenir. As for the Earps, they don’t show up again. It’s unclear what will happen to them.

As the travellers leave, they hear Kate off in the saloon, singing that bloody ballad. I’m sure it’s a coincidence that the Doctor starts immediately hurrying the others into the TARDIS.

They depart to parts unknown, landing on an unknown world in the far future. According to the Doctor, this is an age of peace, enlightenment and prosperity. If that’s so, then who is that caveman-looking fellow approaching the TARDIS?

Final Thoughts

I don’t know anyone who actually liked this serial. I don’t really know who it’s for. It’s too ahistorical to appeal to anyone who watches for the history aspect. I can’t imagine many parents were all that pleased with the amount of on-screen violence, though their children might have found it exciting.

The only attempt at a message or moral is that ‘violence is bad’ and I think we’ve seen how thoroughly it undermines itself on that count. As for the musical narration, that’s just baffling.

I get the feeling that this story wants to be a fun, comedic and light-hearted wild-west romp. The problem is that it’s not that fun. Take out the singing and people would probably see it as unusually dark and gritty for Doctor Who. There’s a few funny bits, but not really enough that landed for me to call it a successful comedy.

This feels like an attempt by Donald Cotton to recapture the success of his earlier story, The Mythmakers. It even repeats the plotline of the Doctor being mistaken for someone else. I am not sure what exactly is different here. Did the Mythmakers simply have a funnier script? Better comedic actors? I think a combination of the two is quite possible. Also possible is that it doesn’t have a singing narrator– sorry, I know I keep going on, but the narrator really did annoy me.

Basically, The Gunfighters doesn’t succeed at being anything other than a mildly diverting time-waster.

I do hope that there will be something better in store next time.

2 out of 5 stars

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Magazine

[May 20, 1966] Things to Come and Things that Are(June 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

May 20, 2021 Gideon Marcus 4 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

The Future

Over in England, they're swimming in science fiction anthology-esque shows, from Out of the Unknown to Doctor Who. What have we got Stateside? Lost in Space? My Favorite Martian? Ever since The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone went off the air, TV has been something of an SF wasteland. That may all be changing come Fall.

A new show, called Star Trek is supposed to be kind of an anthology/serial — the same crew every week, but wildly different stories, many by actual science fiction authors. It could end up being like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or Forbidden Planet (i.e. pretty but dumb), or it could be the revolution necessary to bring science fiction to the masses. We won't know for another four months. I'm prepared for disappointment, but I also can't help being a little excited.

The Present

Until then, I've got a pocket full of futures right hear in front of me with this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction. As usual, it's a grab-bag of good and ho-hum, the latter in greater proportion… but whaddaya want for four bits?

Dig it:

by Hector Castellon

This Moment of the Storm, by Roger Zelazny

Zelazny has made a name for himself with his fantastic but punchy prose, sort of an SFNal Hemingway, the vanguard of the American New Wave. For me, he's hit or miss, though his hits are worth waiting for. Storm looked like it was shaping up to be a hit, but I'd say it's a near miss.

Dozens of light years from Earth lies Tierra del Cygnus, a rustic "stopover" colony where folks on decades-long STL interstellar trips can break out of hibernation and stretch their legs before embarking for their final destination. Our protagonist, Godfrey Justin Holmes, is a Hell Cop, responsible for civic peace and weather safety with his 130 floating, autonomous metal eyes. He'd settled on Cygnus after fleeing a tragic personal loss, and on Cygnus, he believes he has found the key to mending his heart.

But in the midst of solving this long term problem, an acute short term one arises: the biggest storm his area of the planet has seen in recorded history is brewing. And for a week, it lashes with unabated fury.

I have the same problem with Storm that I did with Keith Roberts' Lady Anne: I'll be reading right along, enjoying the evocative prose, but after a few pages, I find myself wondering, "What the hell is all this? Get to the point, man!" Pretty writing isn't enough.

Beyond that, Storm feels utterly conventional. Take out the spaceflight trappings, which is easy to do as they are not central to the story, and you've got a thoroughly terrestrial story.

It's not bad, mind you. Zelazny does a masterful job of introducing the world and the relevant considerations in subtle snatches of detail rather than a single burst of exposition. Others might also enjoy the blunt, first person perspective; I eventually found it a little tiresome and too reminiscent of the better …and call me Conrad.

So, a minor work from a major player. Three stars.

The Little Blue Weeds of Spring, by Doris Pitkin Buck

A winged woman commits the horried crime of breeding outside her caste. Her punishment is exile to ground-bound humandom on Earth. But a plucked bird can still find ways to soar…

A nice poetic piece that's perhaps a bit too trivial. Three stars.

Care in Captivity Series: Tyrant Lizards Tyrannosaurus Rex, by Barry Rothman

This is one of those non-fact pieces, in this case, about raising a tyrant lizard what had been frozen for 70 million years. Very slight stuff. Two stars.

The Adjusted, by Kenneth Bulmer

A pair of caretakers mind the last vestiges of humanity, locked in cages, fed porridge, clad in rags, but hypnotized to think they are leading fulfilling lives. It's all part of the computers' plan, you see — a way of dealing with the hordes unemployed and pointless humans. They can't just be killed off, but they also can't be left to their own chaotic devices.

Of course, there's a sting in the story's tale, one that you'll see a mile away. It's not very clever, at first, but there's something compelling about a world of humans under the thrall of machines, all living in a shared fantasy world, slave to some sinister but inscrutable purpose.

It might make an interesting movie someday. Three stars.

Migratory Locusts, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas suggests that since locusts are just grasshoppers that get too crowded together, maybe humans will turn into something else altogether when Indian/Chinese conditions become the worldwide norm. I suppose there's an SF story in there somewhere. In this case, there's not enough here here to provoke much thought.

Two stars.

Memo to Secretary, by Pat de Graw

Pat de Graw offers up an ode to bureacratic paperwork, Stone Age style. Nicely done, particularly the line about the wing/ed/itorial bull.

Four stars.

A Quest for Uplift, by Len Guttridge

A carny agent out looking for freaks in a world where access to health care has largely addressed unwanted deformity follows a tip that leads to a genetic lineage of true levitators.

Unfortunately, elevation turns out to be involuntary — and communicative.

Guttridge's narrator tells the story in an unbroken harangue that will glaze your eyes over by page three. It also manages to be casually and offputtingly offensive several times over.

One star.

Forgive Us Our Debtors, by Jon DeCles

Ah, but then we have a rather sublime tale of an empath whose job is planetary evaluation. On the world of Red Kitra (a fine name), said empath is tasked with attuning to a world's entire ecology to determine if the glimmer of sentience lies therein. He ends up in a literal and metaphorical web of karma, learning the value of life, as well as the meaning of charity, in the process.

I may be a little biased as I happen to be friends with Jon, but I think this is inarguably the best piece of the issue. Four stars.

The Isles of Earth, by Isaac Asimov

Another list article from Dr. A, this time on the size and distribution of Earth's islands. Diverting, I suppose, but nothing you won't find at the beginning of any decent atlas (of which I have about two dozen — I like atlases!)

Three stars.

The Pilgrims, by Jack Vance

We wrap up with the penultimate tale of the ordeals of Cugel the Clever, hapless magical errand boy in the far future setting of The Dying Earth. As related in prior episodes, this is a set of stories that gets less appealing as it goes on, though Vance does mix in some amusing literate ribaldry.

This particular installment doesn't even have a proper ending. Let's hope the series as a whole does.

Three stars.

The Edge of Tomorrow

All told, the latest F&SF merits a drab 2.9 stars, definitely one of the weaker entries of the past year. But every month offers a chance at redemption, and the next issue is only a few weeks away. Will the July issue offer a collection of immortal classics or more of the humdrum same?

The anticipation, waiting to find out, is half the fun!

While you're waiting, tune in to KGJ, our radio station! Nothing but the newest and best hits!

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 18, 1966] What's the Difference? (Two versions of Mindswap by Robert Sheckley)

May 18, 2021 Victoria Silverwolf 6 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

What's The Big Idea?

Science fiction writers often take novellas that have appeared in magazines and turn them into novels, to be published as books. Sometimes this doesn't require any expansion of the original at all, particularly if it's half of an Ace Double.

Case in point, as Rod Serling might say, is The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick, which appeared in the December 1964 issue of Fantastic.

Cover art by Lloyd Birmingham. It's not really a complete short novel, but you'll rarely see the word novella in a magazine.

It showed up as half of Ace Double G-602 without any changes. (In case you're wondering, the other half was something called The Mind Monsters by somebody named Howard L. Cory.)

Cover art by Kelly Freas. It's still not a complete novel.

On the other hand, an author can make use of the big (and profitable) idea of reusing old material by adding new stuff to it. One example is The Whole Man by John Brunner. The first half is original, while the second half makes use of two previously published novellas.

The cover art is anonymous, and deserves to be so, in my opinion.

With that background in mind, let's take a look at a recent example of stretching a novella into a novel.

What's The Story?

I'll start with the magazine version of Mindswap, Robert Sheckley's comic tale of a fellow whose consciousness goes bouncing around the universe from body to body. It appeared in the June 1965 issue of Galaxy.

Cover art by George Schelling. The table of contents calls Mindswap a, you guessed it, complete short novel.

Our Gracious Host didn't care for it, awarding it only two stars. That's a matter of taste of course, as I'll discuss later. For now, let me outline the plot, so we can compare it with the novel.

Marvin Flynn is a fellow who wants to travel to other planets, but who can't afford the extremely high price of space travel. Fortunately, the process of switching bodies with somebody, even over interstellar distances, is a lot cheaper. (Maybe not the most plausible premise in the world, but let's go with it.)

He answers an ad from a Martian who wants to mindswap with an Earthling. The bad news is that the Martian is a crook, who has already sold his body to a previous customer, and who runs off with Marvin's body. Marvin has to mindswap again, in order to avoid dying when he gets kicked out of the criminal's body.

Having no other choice, he winds up in an alien body, working as an egg catcher. These aren't ordinary eggs. They talk, for one thing. In addition to that, the dinosaur-like beings who produce the eggs hunt down those hunting the eggs. Facing a very unpleasant demise in the jaws of one of these creatures, Marvin mindswaps once more.

This time he's in the body of an insectoid alien, and he has a ticking ring in his nose that might be a bomb, ready to go off in the near future.

Things are already complicated enough, but it gets a lot weirder. You see, the act of mindswapping tends to cause the swapper to perceive reality in odd ways. The story turns into a parody of cowboy fiction when Marvin hallucinates that he's in the Old West.

Without going into too much detail about a complex plot, let me just say that Marvin falls in love, loses the woman he adores, searches for her with the help of a peculiar companion, confronts the villain who stole his body, and winds up back on Earth. There's a twist at the end.

What's New?

Mindswap just came out as a hardcover novel from Delacorte Press. Is it worth paying the three dollars and ninety-five cents they're asking at the bookstore? Let's find out. (Or you could just wait for the paperback edition, which should cost just about as much as the magazine did.)

Cover art by James McMullan. By the way, The Game of X isn't science fiction, but a comic spy novel.

At first, there seems to be very little difference between the novella and the novel. That changes at Chapter 24 (out of 33) or, if you prefer, on page 151 (out of 216.) Either way, that means that not quite one-third of the book is new.

In the short version, Marvin runs into the Martian crook a lot quicker. In the long version, there's a major section of the book where he gets involved in a swashbuckling adventure. Reality has completely broken down at this point, so you'll just have to accept the fact that he starts acting and talking like somebody in an Errol Flynn movie. After that, we get the same twist ending as in the magazine.

What's So Funny?

Appreciation of comedy is very much an individual thing; more so, I think, than appreciation of any other form of art. Maybe I like the Marx Brothers and you like the Three Stooges. Each of us would have a difficult time convincing the other of the superiority of our differing preferences. Without arguing for the merits of Sheckley's work, allow me to discuss the various forms of humor he employs.

Slapstick

Maybe we can define this as amusement at another person's woes, as long as they're ludicrous. When Marvin is about to get his head bitten off by a dinosaur, or when he expects to have the bomb in his nose explode, we can laugh at his anxiety.

Parody

I've already mentioned the spoofs of Western and swashbuckling fiction. There's also a section where, for ridiculous reasons, characters start speaking in pseudo-Shakespearean verse. The novel as a whole seems to be a parody of science fiction itself.

Wordplay

This occurs all through the book. Right at the start we hear Marvin and his buddy talk in futuristic slang that borrows from other languages. (Might Sheckley be making fun of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange?)

The author delights in silly names, of which there are dozens, if not hundreds, scattered throughout the novel. Marvin's companion during his search for his lost love alternates speaking in a thick, stereotypical Mexican accent and formal English. During the swashbuckling section, everybody talks in a highfalutin' fashion that you'd only hear in a romantic novel or a Hollywood movie.

Illogic

Reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter, Sheckley's characters often reason in ways that might seem superficially logical, but which expose their inside-out and upside-down thinking.

The Martian detective searching for the criminal (I didn't mention him, did I?) figures that probability is on his side; he's failed to solve 158 cases, so he's bound to solve this one.

The hermit who mindswaps Marvin from the egg hunter's body into the insectoid body (I didn't mention him either, did I?) speaks in verse because he thinks it protects him from the dinosaurs. His proof? That he hasn't been killed yet.

The pseudo-Mexican helping Marvin in his search (I did mention him, didn't I?) has an unusual theory of searching; just go somewhere and wait, so that the searcher becomes the searchee.

Overall, I have to say that the book amused me. It doesn't have quite the same satiric bite as some other Sheckley works, but it made me smile all the way through.

Three and one-half stars.

What's Next?

I'm sure that other writers will continue to turn stories into novels. (The series of linked stories by Robert Silverberg that started with Blue Fire and which recently ended, or so it seems, with Open the Sky cries out to be a novel.)

My sources in the publishing industry tell me that Larry Niven's impressive novella World of Ptavvs has been expanded into a novel, and will appear in a few months. Here's a sneak preview.

Cover art by Norman Adams

And just to prove that authors aren't the only ones to reuse old material, just take a look at this book from 1963.

Look familiar?

All of us should heed the example of writers, artists, and publishers, and reuse whatever we can. It's the patriotic thing to do.

Junior looks like he might be searching through old science fiction magazines.

If you want to hear some great current music, then tune in to KGJ, our radio station! We never reuse the old songs!

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THE GUNFIGHT NEAR-ISH TO THE O.K. CORRAL

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction