Tag Archives: science fiction

Magazine

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

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!




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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

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!




6 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[May 10, 1966] Rocky Jaunts (June 1966 Galaxy)

14 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Real-life Adventures

Out in the southeast corner of California is a hidden treasure, a beautiful national park known as Joshua Tree, named for the surreal plants that characterize the region.  And in the heart of a tiny, unincorporated community there, resides the place called Space Cowboy Books.

Jean-Paul Garnier, the Space Cowboy, invited us out to see the spring bloom in the wilderness.  We were able to take him up on his offer too late to see the flowers, but we did see some amazing petroglyphs and water/wind eroded facades.  Even better was the absolute quiet of the place, the aural equivalent of a dark sky (which they also have there).

Of course, it was a several hour trip up Highway 395, over Highway 60 to Interstate 10, and then up Highway 62, which terminates at Joshua Tree. 

But we had beautiful scenery, each other for conversation, and a brand new 8-track player in the car for music.

I also had the newest issue of Galaxy, which I was able to read while the Young Traveler drove.  Ah, the luxury of having children!

And so, a tour of the trips I went on while on a trip:

Fictional Adventures


by Gray Morrow

Heisenberg's Eyes (Part 1 of 2), by Frank Herbert


by Dan Adkins

Frank Herbert is back.  Hooray.

Actually, the setup's not too bad: It's the far future, and humanity has complete control of its genetic destiny.  Society is divided between the dronish "Sterries" (sterile humans), the occasional persons who can have potentially viable offspring, and the immortal (but also sterile) Optimen, who run everything, a triumverate's administration lasting a century.

Children cannot be borne the natural way; for an embryo to make it to maturity, a doctor's intervention is required.  So begins Eyes, on the eve of a "cutting" that will turn the artificially united progeny of a Mr. and Mrs. Durant into a human being — perhaps even an Optiman.

But before the horrified gaze of the assigned surgeon, some external force modifies the fertilized ovum, making the modification to immortal perfection impossible.  An expert is called in, who salvages the embryo, but in the process causes it to become that rarest of beasts: a nascent human that can reproduce on its own.  Such a thing is strictly forbidden, yet the expert and his accomplice nurse take pains to ensure that the contraband embryo's nature is hidden from the world.  Or so they think.

This takes up about half of this installment, and so a quarter of the book.  I have to give credit to Herbert's ability to spew a half dozen pages of medical jargon and keep it interesting. 

Things slow down in the second half, when we meet the ruling trio and discover that the plot has wheels within wheels.  It also involves an underground race of Cyborgs, who have been biding their time for tens of thousands of years to regain ascendancy over the planet, though they are as clueless about how the modification of the Durant's child occurred as everyone else.  Part 1 ends with the first shots being fired in a renewed war between the Optimen culture and the Cyborgs.

A couple of issues: Eyes is written in typical Herbertian style, which is to say in this weird third person omniscient viewpoint that switches characters every sentence and overuses italicized depiction of internal monologues.  Perhaps, as one of the oligarchs states in Eyes, "Efficiency is the opposite of Craftsmanship," but I still think the story could have been a lot better at half the length in the hands of someone else.  Like Dune.  Also, no society remains static for tens of thousands of years — not Egypt and not the weird world of Eyes.  And then, of course, there's the pseudo-telepathy the Durants enjoy that involves a code of finger presses.  It reminds me of shows where a paragraph of Morse code can be deduced from four dots and a dash.

Anyway, three stars for now.  Herbert's done worse, and I've yet to see him do much better.

Priceless Possession, by Arthur Porges

In the depths of space, the 23rd Century equivalent of the ambergris-bearing whale is the anenome-like "Star Sailor" or "S-2."  Its micron thin sail, produced over thousands of years, is the most valuable commodity in the universe.  On board a particular merchant ship, an Ensign and a Lieutenant find their cupiditous designs hindered by a captain who believes he is in telepathic communication with the current prey.

It's not a happy story, but it's pretty good.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Brownian Motion, Loschmidt's Number and the Laws of Utter Chaos, by Willy Ley

Beginning with an explanation of the word 'gas' (which is as deliberately coined as 'radar' or 'Kleenex'), Ley goes on a whirlwind trip through the history of fluid dynamics.  It's one of Ley's better pieces, though a little rushed and occasionally following the pattern of the Brownian Motion he ultimately explains.

But then, that's history for you.  Four stars.

The Eskimo Invasion, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Out in the wilds of Canada, an anthropologist has made a terrible discovery: a tribe of "Eskimos" are really something else, the female of their species infinitely appealing…and able to have children every month.  And they worship the Great Bear, a Cthulhu-esque entity that will devour/conquer/lead the world.  Can Dr. West make it back in civilization to warn humanity?

This is a well-written tale, but the premise is so dumb that I found myself irritated with it after a night's contemplation.  Two stars.

Galactic Consumer Report No. 2: Automatic Twin-Tube Wishing Machines, by John Brunner

The second in Brunner's Consumer Report series (the last dealing with budget time machines), this piece offers recommendations for and cautions against various models of "Wishing Machines," which are supposed to be able manufacture anything.  Not as amusing as the last one, but diverting enough.

Three stars.

This piece is followed by Algis Budrys' books column, which I am increasingly enjoying.  I read this latest one, describing Sheckley's Tenth Victim, Wilhelm and Thomas' The Clone, and Brunner's The Squares of the City for its humorous commentary and the illustration of the signs of good and bad editing and publishing.

When I Was Miss Dow, by Sonya Dorman

On a planet of amorphous proteans, a young, sexless being destined to become Warden of its people, takes on a human female form in order to more easily interact with the Terran mission to the planet.  As Miss Martha Dow, said creature falls fake head over custom-built heels with an elderly biologist — and ultimately, the feelings are reciprocated.

I found myself really enjoying this unrestrainedly emotional piece, intertwining human and alien feelings in a vivid manner.  This is the first published piece by Dorman using her full first name (previously, she had simply been "S"), and I'm delighted that she finally feels comfortable enough to use it.  I know I always look forward to her byline!

Four stars.

Open the Sky, by Robert Silverberg


by Gray Morrow

At long last, we come to (what I believe to be) the conclusion of Silverberg's Blue Fire series.  It's been a long trip, with five entries spanning more than a half-century of history.  We've seen the Vorster religion arise, a spiritualist cult of the atom worshiping the blue flame of a cobalt reactor.  We've watched as the cult schismed and the green-robed Harmonists made their sect more overtly religious and converted the colonists of toxic Venus.  Last installment, the Harmonist martyr, Lazarus, was ressurected by Vorst for purposes unknown.

Now we know why: on Venus, the genetically modified human espers have developed faster than light teleportation.  Vorst wants to use them to power the first interstellar starship.  To do this, he needs to reunite the religions — and Lazarus owes him a favor.  Luckily, Vorster knows this will all work out: he is a precog, after all…

The writing of this final installment is as good as ever, and it's nice to see all of the pieces fall into place.  However, the story as a whole suffers from the common failing of all stories involving precognition.  When you know how a story will, nay, must end, the tension is gone.  All that's left is the exposition.

By itself, Open the Sky will be confusing and unengaging to the new reader.  As the capstone to an epic, it serves its purpose adequately but not stunningly. Thus, I award three stars for the section, and four stars for the work as a whole, treating it as the serialization of a novel whose publication is as inevitable as Vorster's trip to the stars.

Journeys' End

All in all, it's been a good weekend, both in the real world and within the world of fiction.  While Pohl's magazine could not quite consistently offer the spectacle that Jean-Paul of Joshua Tree treated us to, nevertheless, it did end up on the positive end of the ledger.

In any event, two trips for the price of one is a good deal!  Why don't you take the June Galaxy along with you on your next jaunt and enjoy the same experience?

And while you're on your journey, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




14 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 8, 1966] A Respite (June 1966 Amazing)

2 Comments


by John Boston

Hope Springs Eternal

. . . but, as Groucho Marx might put it, hope springs can get rusty, too.

The June Amazing on its face presents bad news and good news.  In the first category is the beginning of a new two-part serial by Murray Leinster, generically titled Stopover in Space.  One can only hope (that word again!) that there is more to it than the empty blather of Killer Ship from last year. 


by James B. Settles

All the shorter stories are reprints.  But two of them are by very reputable authors, Arthur C. Clarke and Henry Kuttner, taken from the magazine’s ambitious false spring of 1953-54 (the Renascence), and two others are from the immediately post-Ray Palmer times (the Liminal Period), by writers who later made pretty good names for themselves, Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Kris Neville.  The fifth is the last published story by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, who commendably learned to write after the fiascoes of The Man from the Atom and its sequel.

Of course the Clarke and Kuttner stories are not exactly rediscoveries.  Clarke’s Encounter in the Dawn, retitled Expedition to Earth, was the title story of the first collection of his stories, published by Ballantine in 1953 and pretty widely known.  Kuttner’s Or Else was the lead story in his collection Ahead of Time, also from Ballantine in 1953.  It was anthologized in the UK in Edmund Crispin’s first Best SF volume, and reprinted again in last year’s The Best of Kuttner from the UK’s Mayflower Books.  These stories will probably be familiar to those well read in SF.

The rest of the package is as usual: another inanely self-serving editorial by editor Ross and a few letters mostly praising the reprint policy, though one of the correspondents also says don’t overdo it with the reprints, it’s time for more Robert F. Young and Ensign De Ruyter.  He appears to be serious.  The cover, simultaneously dull and busy, is reprinted from the back cover of the July 1942 Amazing.  It’s called Satellite Space Ship Station, and artist James B. Settles provides a rather pedestrian view of space travel. 

Stopover in Space (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster


by Gray Morrow

As is my habit, I will hold off reading or commenting on the serial until I have both installments.  I am struggling to reserve judgment, but can’t fail to notice that the same egregious padding that so distinguished, or extinguished, last year’s Killer Ship shows up in the first paragraph here: “Scott ran into the situation on a supposedly almost-routine tour of duty on Checkpoint Lambda.  It was to be his first actual independent command as a Space Patrol commissioned officer.  Otherwise the affairs of the galaxy seemed to be proceeding in a completely ordinary fashion.  On a large scale, suns burned in emptiness, novas flamed, and comets went bumbling around their highly elliptical orbits just as usual.”

If This Be Utopia, by Kris Neville

First after the serial is Kris Neville’s If This Be Utopia, from the May 1950 issue, a slightly heavy-handed satire about a regimented future in which everyone is assigned to a job and pressured mercilessly to perform, and those who don’t measure up—or are made examples of by their superiors—get demoted to worse fates.  Our hero is a middle manager who is cracking under the stress and taking it out on his underlings until his superiors take it out on him.  It’s a bit too obvious, but still decently done.  Three stars.

Encounter in the Dawn, by Arthur C. Clarke

Encounter in the Dawn, from the June-July 1953 issue, is fairly typical for Clarke, a sort of lecture-demonstration of the stuff of SF and his understanding of the cosmos, without too much in the way of plot.  But that’s OK.  Clarke’s writing skill and his restrained sentimentality about the vastness of the universe and the depths of time carry the reader along.  He’s the antithesis of Ray Palmer’s policy of “Gimme bang-bang.”

This one begins: “It was in the last days of the Empire,” which is threatened by an unspecified “shadow that lay across civilization.” Three regular guys of the Galactic Survey, continuing their quest for knowledge despite the doom overhanging their homes, arrive at a new solar system and land on what is obviously Earth.  They take a look around and befriend Yaan, a primitive human or proto-human, with gifts of game killed by their robot.  They get the call to come home for the Empire’s last stand, leave Yaan a few high-tech gifts like a flashlight, and take off.  Tragedy looms over them, but life and intelligence will go on.  Three stars.

Or Else, by Henry Kuttner

Kuttner’s Or Else (August-September 1953 issue) is well done also, as one would expect, but there’s not much to it.  A couple of Mexican subsistence farmers are shooting at each other, contesting the ownership of the only source of water in their valley.  An alien drops in by flying saucer, demonstrates various superpowers, says his race has appointed themselves peacekeepers of the solar system, and Miguel and Fernandez have to stop trying to kill each other because violence is wrong.  They agree and shake hands, the alien buzzes off, and they start shooting again because there’s still only one water hole in the valley.


by Dick Francis

Profound, huh?  While SF may occasionally contribute to the global dialogue on war and peace, this one is best described as chewing less than it purports to bite off.  It also relies on cartoony ethnic stereotyping—but then everything in the story is pretty cartoony, and Kuttner at least lends the viewpoint character, Miguel, some shrewdness.  Thinking the alien is really a norteamericano, he says, “First you will bring peace, and then you will take our oil and precious minerals.” Two stars for execution, not much for substance.

Secret of the Death Dome, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s first published SF story, Secret of the Death Dome (January 1951 issue), is another kettle of sweat altogether, the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a magazine whose cover depicts a hairy-chested guy wrestling with a crocodile. 

The Martians have landed, and how: they have plunked down a large and impervious dome in the desert (actually, a couple of feet above it), where they engage in cryptic communication, and snatch anyone who comes too near and vivisect them.  One guy came back without his legs.  The newly wed Barney came back without his genitals, falling off his horse and dying on arrival.  (The Martians are surveilled by the military on horseback.)


by B. Edmund Swiatek

This makes Jerry mad.  Barney was his best friend and Barney’s new wife was Jerry’s old flame.  So Jerry, who can’t sleep, saddles up and heads out, to do . . . what?  He has no idea.  The Martians scare his horse away, and he hears from base that when it came back riderless, Betty—the widowed Mrs. Barney—took it and is on her way.  So he heads toward the dome and crawls under it looking for a way in. 

You can guess the rest.  He’s captured, gets control of the situation through brains and guts, rescues the by then-captured Betty, sowing death and destruction among the Martians all the way, learns why they are here (the secret of the title, including what the Martians wanted with Barney's genitalia), and drives them away forever.  Whew!  The details don’t matter.  At the end, the just-bereaved Betty tells Jerry not to contact her—“. . . for a couple of months, anyway,” the back of her neck flushing as she turns away.

The style is consistent with the content, cynical tough-guy-isms all the way down.  For example, when the colonel gets the call that Barney has returned, he sends Jerry to check things out.  “Jerry was just a sergeant, but there wasn’t any need for brass.  Death is for privates.” And so on.  Two stars for this testosterone-soaked epic.

Elaine’s Tomb, by G. Peyton Wertenbaker

G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s Elaine’s Tomb, from the Winter 1931 Amazing Stories Quarterly, is, in its quaint way, the best of this issue’s short fiction, and a vast improvement over his earlier work.  Alan, the narrator, teaches at a small college and falls in love with Elaine, one of his students.  Of course he doesn’t do anything about it, and hares off to Egypt with his colleague Weber who has a line on some ancient temples hardly anybody else knows about.  He confesses his romantic situation to Weber en route.  In a temple, there’s a preserved ancient Egyptian king, and a carved curse against anybody who molests him.  Alan touches the recumbent body, and shortly comes down with a fever that shows no sign of abating.  But Weber has found the secret of suspended animation, and promises to put Alan under at the moment of death, and revive him when he finds the secret of life, which must be around the temple somewhere, and unite him with Elaine.


by Leo Morey

Alan awakens, and it’s the far future, Wellsian variant, populated by people who have forgotten most of the know-how of civilization; the machines take care of them, and when one breaks down, they just put another one in its place.  They live pleasant lives and some of them even write books.  In one of these, Alan learns of Elaine’s Tomb, up north near what used to be called Chicago, in the frozen barbarian-populated wastes.  Turns out Weber couldn’t revive him, but he could suspend Elaine to wait for him.  Further adventures and reunion (or union, in this case) follow.

The story is archaic in attitude but modern in its plain style, well imagined and visualized without wasted verbiage, with enough plot to sustain its 40-page length, and altogether a pleasure to read.  Am I really going to give this antique four stars, as I did with another of Wertenbaker’s late stories, The Chamber of Life?  Guess so. 

Summing Up

So, hope fulfilled—admittedly, to expectations lowered by experience.  That's because editor Ross this time selected modern stories, plus an older one that is written in a modern style and not centered around the cranky crotchets of bygone decades, unlike some earlier selections I would prefer not to name.  The result is mostly pretty readable, with a couple of stories better than that, and nothing bloody awful.  But the specter of the Leinster serial still looms over the next issue.  We shall proceed with trepidation.

If you want to hear some great modern tunes, then tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[April 30, 1966] Ormazd and Ahriman (May 1966 Analog)

3 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Good News and Bad News

The ancient Persians believed in two roughly co-equal deities: Ormazd, the God of Creation and Light, and Ahriman, the God of Destruction and Darkness.  Unlike, say, the dual concept of the Chinese Yin and Yang, one was decidedly good and the other bad.  Indeed, these twin deities may have inspired the near parity of the Christian God and Satan.

Apparently, these forces hold sway even today.  This month's Analog started off so well, it bid fair to be a contender for best magazine of the month.  Then about half way, the influence of Ahriman took ascendance, and the issue faded away to a truly dreadful ending.  Ah well.  I come not to bury John Campbell but to review him.  At least we start with the good stuff…

Mixed Bag


by John Schoenherr

The Wings of a Bat, by Paul Ash

Anyone who's anyone knows that Paul Ash is really Pauline Ashwell, one of 1958's Hugo nominated Best New Writers — and boy, she's still just great.

Her latest tale stars a middle-aged doctor cum veterinarian stationed at Indication One on the shores of Lake Possible.  Cycads and dinosaurs dominate the landscape, and with good reason: Indication One is based sometime in the Cretaceous!  Against all of his instincts and inclinations, said doctor is tasked with raising a baby pteranadon named Fiona. 

Part country vet story, part mining camp adventure, this tale is by turns and sometimes simultaneously witty and exciting.  I loved it so much, I immediately read it a gain, this time aloud to the family as their bedtime story on two consecutive nights.

If this doesn't get nominated for the Hugo and/or the new SFWA Nebula awards, there's something wrong with the universe.  Five stars!

Call Him Lord, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Kelly Freas

Centuries from now, when Earth is just one of many hundreds of human planets, the crown prince of the Empire is dispatched to humanity's cradle for a tour.  One man is tasked to be his bodyguard, escorting the arrogant man-child as he rides, wenches, and bullies his way across the countryside.  But is this a mere sight-seeing tour…or a test?

While the story is slightly overdrenched in testerone and stoic manliness, Dickson is an excellent writer and his tale compels.  I dug it.  Four stars.

The Meteorite Miners , by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Earth has been the site of countless meteor impacts, many of them secondary strikes of ejecta loosed from prior events.  What we learn from the mineral concentrations at these craters can tell us a lot about the primordial history of our planet…and even the universe.

It's a fascinating topic, and it should have gripped me, but the presentation was a bit too abstruse and disjointed to hold my attention.  It took me several sessions to finish.

Three stars.

Titanium – The Wonder Metal (uncredited, but probably John W. Campbell, jr.

The piece is followed by another non-fiction article, this time a more lay-oriented essay on titanium, what makes it great, and what made it so hard to use economically. 

It's fine.  Three stars.

Two-Way Communication, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

When an inventor develops a universal receiver that allows the owner to transmit right into an announcer's microphone, chaos ensues.  Is it the ultimate democracy or a recipe for anarchy?

In this cute story, Anvil argues the former.  With constant and immediate input (and censure) the vast wastelands of radio and television are made verdant with quality programming.  The author forgets two important factors: 1) most TV and much radio isn't live these days, so interruptions at the source wouldn't have as much effect as depicted — this isn't 1951 after all; 2) people are jerks — interruptions would be constant and annoying.

Still, it was not unpleasant reading.  Call it a low 3 stars.  Ormazd and Ahriman are wrestling, but neither has ascendance.  Yet.

Under the Wide and Starry Sky…, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

In this edge-of-the-future story (indeed, the depicted Gemini 9 mission is scheduled to occur less than three weeks from now), one astronaut is lost during an extravehicular jaunt.  His partner must use all of his wits to rescue him before their oxygen and fuel run out.

Joe Poyer has written a couple of other stories for Analog, both of which showed a fair ability when it came to depicting technology but little talent for characterization or detailed plot.  Starry Sky plays to the author's strengths, presenting a nice little Marooned-esque tale in a vivid fashion.  It ends quickly enough that you don't mind where it's undeveloped.

Three stars.  There are stars of light among the black sky.

The Alchemist, by Charles L. Harness


by Kelly Freas

Ah, here's where it all goes to Hell.  This long, flip, utterly unengaging tale manages to combine alchemy, psionics, making the Russians look stupid, and making scientists look stupid, all in one sure-to-please-the-editor package. 

This is truly an example of Ahrimanic possession as the last story by the author was one I liked very much.  But The Alchemist?  One star.  Feh.

Doing the math


Geraldine "Gerry" Myers, mathematician at the Mission Planning and Analysis Division at the Manned Space Craft Center in Houston

As might be expected from such a violent collision of positive and negative forces, the whole thing ends up about a wash: 3.1 stars.  This puts it above IF and New Worlds (3 stars) as well as Worlds of Tomorrow (2.6)

The May 1966 Analog finishes below Impulse (3.2), Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5), and the astonishing, but mostly reprints, Fantastic (4).  Thus, Analog is the dead median for this month!

Nevertheless, it has contributed two stories to one of the best months for 4 and 5 star material since the Journey began.  You could fill three big magazines with nothing but excellent stuff.

Women did so-so in April, only writing ~6% of new material, though Judy Merril had a good reprint in Impulse.

And so, the battle between good and bad (quality) continues.  Will Ormazd be ascendant next month?  Or will Ahriman have the final laugh?  Stay tuned…

[Don't miss the next (and FINAL) episode of The Journey Show:

1966 and the Law — smut, marriage, voting rights, justice, and more. With Erica Frank and Ethan Marcus! With special musical guest, Nanami!

3 Comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[April 24, 1966] Playtime’s Over (Doctor Who: The Celestial Toymaker)

Leave a comment


By Jessica Holmes

We all have a different idea of the concept of ‘fun’. To me, ‘fun’ is a trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach. I like a good rollercoaster. To others, ‘fun’ is watching a game of cricket. Strange but true. And to one peculiar individual, ‘fun’ is kidnapping people and making them play banal playground games under threat of eternal imprisonment and/or death.

To each one's own, I suppose.

Let’s take a look at The Celestial Toymaker.

THE CELESTIAL TOYROOM

As an aside before we begin, I am going to have to have a good look at my TV antenna. It was on the blink for much of the serial, so there’s every chance there are visual details in the plot that I may have missed.

We pick up where we left off last time: the TARDIS has landed in an uncertain time and place, and the Doctor is nowhere to be seen.

He's not gone walkabout, as you might expect.  We can still hear his voice, but he’s otherwise completely undetectable, both invisible and intangible. Unable to operate his ship, the Doctor decides to leave the TARDIS to investigate. What could have caused this?

Well, I have an idea. Enter the Celestial Toymaker.

Now, this might not be on purpose, but considering he’s dressed in the (rather splendid) garb of an Imperial Chinese bureaucrat, I think it’s worth pointing out the use of the word ‘celestial’. Besides the more obvious meaning, it's also an old term for Chinese people, and not a very polite one either. It originally stemmed from Imperial China being also called the ‘Celestial Empire’, and so people from China who came to other countries were called ‘celestials’. It’s fallen out of fashion in more recent years, and is now considered to be more of a slur. Of course, the writer might not have meant anything by it, but with the Toymaker being dressed the way he is I would think it prudent to have a little more care in choice of words. Or choice of fashion.

It’s not the most egregious bit of language in this serial, but it seemed worth discussing.

The Toymaker does certainly live up to the latter part of his name, his realm littered with a variety of playthings. And that's not all he can do. In an act of sadism against the viewer, he gives his clown dolls the spark of life.

The Doctor suddenly reappears upon exiting the TARDIS, and ignores Dodo’s excellent advice that they should get back in and leave. Then again, if he did the sensible thing, most episodes would finish before they even started.

Steven sees visions of his memories in the chest of a big wind-up toy robot (it makes about as much sense as everything to follow), and the Doctor realises that they’re in the realm of the Celestial Toymaker.

That clears that up.

And now for the fun and games! The Toymaker spirits the Doctor away, leaving the others to get acquainted with the obviously evil clowns. I’m not afraid of clowns but I don’t much care for them in general, and these two seem designed to push my buttons.

The Toymaker is bored, you see, and his guests are his new playmates, willing or no. Steven and Dodo are going to have to complete a series of challenges if they ever want to find the TARDIS again, and they’re going to have to do it before the Doctor completes a 1023-move puzzle. Oh, and if they lose, they’ll be trapped here as a toy… forever.

The Toymaker sets the Doctor off on his puzzle, a 10-piece version of a puzzle more commonly known as the Tower Of Hanoi, but here referred to as the Trilogic Game. How it’s played is not important, but we’re subjected to an explanation anyway.

Meanwhile, the clowns set up an obstacle course for the others. They’re going to have to make their way through without falling down, and they’re going to do it blindfolded.

The clowns go first, the male one (Joey) running the course as the other (Clara) guides him using a buzzer.

The Doctor tries to communicate with his companions and warn them that the Toymaker’s minions are likely to cheat, but the Toymaker cuts him off. As punishment, he dematerialises most of the Doctor's body, except for his hand, which he needs to move the pieces.

Back in the other room, the clowns finish the course, and Steven and Dodo have their turn. It’s hard enough for Dodo to guide Steven using buzzer signals in the first place, but Joey makes it even harder as he moves bits of the course around.

They’re also extremely annoying. I cannot overstate how annoying they are. Clara, for some reason, keeps eggs in her hair. That’s just plain unsanitary. Joey won’t stop tooting his horn (not a euphemism), greatly irritating Steven and also me. Then there’s Clara’s incessant giggling.

I’m just saying if Steven snapped and knocked their heads together, I wouldn’t blame him in the slightest.

I hope they’re not meant to be funny.

Distracted and misled, Steven ends up right back where he started, only for Dodo to discover that Joey’s blindfold is see-through. The clowns cheated! The pair force the clowns to run the course again, determined that they will have a fair game. Joey has a harder time of it this go around, and when he stumbles and falls, Clara slumps lifelessly over the controls, and a police box appears. Alas, it’s not the real TARDIS.

Steven and Dodo find a slip of paper with a riddle, and exit through the rear of the fake TARDIS, the clowns reverting to their original state as they leave.

Before the closing credits roll, the riddle flashes up on screen. I had hoped that this was so viewers could make a note of it and ponder the solution at home, but no. It’s pointless. I spent precious minutes of my life contemplating this, and for what?

Four legs,
No feet,
Of arms no lack,
It carries no burden on its back.
Six deadly sisters,
Seven for choice,
Call the servants without voice.

THE HALL OF DOLLS

The Doctor continues his game, and Steven shows off his problem-solving capabilities when he comes to a door that won’t budge. He tries everything: pushing, shoving, hitting, more pushing. Nothing seems to work.

Dodo tries pulling, and voila! The door opens.

The Doctor tries again to communicate with his companions, so the Toymaker takes his voice. Looks like Mr. Hartnell’s off on his holidays.

Steven and Dodo soon meet their next challengers: the King and Queen of Hearts. How very Lewis Caroll.

With the arrival of the King and Queen comes a pertinent question: are these challengers entirely products of the Toymaker’s imagination, or are they people in the exact same predicament as Steven and Dodo? Steven’s firmly in the former camp, whereas Dodo is in the latter. As for me? Well, I’m still mulling it over.

There’s also a Knave and a Joker but they’re not very important.

The group find two throne rooms, one with four thrones and the other with three. Seven in total. Seven for choice, in fact. They quickly realise that only one of these thrones is safe to sit on, and they have to find it to escape. But how to tell which is safe? Fortunately, there are a few cupboards in which Steven and Dodo find a number of life-sized dolls. The King and Queen catch up to them, and Dodo, seeing them as potential allies rather than rivals, explains that they can use the dolls to test the chairs.

Steven chastises her against talking to the pretend people, which the King and Queen don’t much appreciate. Each taking a doll, the King and Queen go to try the thrones in the other room, deciding to pick a chair to test at random.

And then the King recites Eeny Meeny Miney Mo. Specifically, the old version which unfortunately is still quite popular. For those not in the know, the old version contains an extremely racist word I shall not be repeating here. Suffice to say it begins with the letter N. Sadly, there are many in Britain who wouldn’t think twice about using that word.

I can’t claim to be surprised, as the BBC is no stranger to racist programming. An obvious example of that would be The Black-And-White Minstrel Show, which has been running on the BBC for a good long while now and doesn't seem likely to stop any time soon.

It just saddens me to think that there may be millions of British children out there who have just been told that this is an acceptable word to use. How long before it enters their vocabulary?

Words have power, and when one's words are being broadcast to around eight million viewers, as a writer one has a responsibility to choose them carefully.

That's about all I feel able to say on the matter, so I shall press on.

Picking a throne, the King throws a doll onto the seat, only for it to get its head rattled off.

In the other room, Dodo and Steven are arguing over whether they should be helping the King and Queen, as the royals believe there to be only four dolls, with Steven keeping the knowledge of the other three to himself.

The question of their humanity comes up again, with Steven asserting that they’re tools of the Toymaker, so the pair have to look out for themselves. Normally I would side with Dodo, who thinks they’re innocent victims of the Toymaker, but I am inclined to agree with Steven here. They just don’t strike me as real people. They’re archetypes. They’re a lot like their counterparts from Alice In Wonderland, with the timid, submissive King and the dominant Queen. It's a bit of a sexist dynamic and all.

Dodo and Steven try a couple of chairs with no luck, watched by the Knave. The Knave doesn’t do an awful lot, though he does go back to check up on the King, who (supposedly) jokingly offers him a seat.

The King runs out of dolls to use, so he and the Queen return to Steven and Dodo, where they learn about the additional dolls after trying to force the Fool to be their guinea pig.

Well, even if they are real people, they’re real prats.

Taking the last dolls with them, the King and Queen leave Steven and Dodo with only one chair left in the room, and nothing to test them with.

Dodo sits down… and it’s not the right chair.

There’s a tense moment where it seems that Dodo is about to die by freezing solid, but Steven manages to help her get free, moments from death.

All’s not lost yet, however. Back in the other room, the King and Queen run into difficulties when the Joker refuses to be their guinea pig. Deciding that if they’re going to go, they’ll go together, they choose a seat and both sit down. Nothing happens. It seems they got lucky.

Or not.

Steven and Dodo enter just as the chair collapses under them. Not that lucky.

The Doctor’s companions use the last chair, and another fake TARDIS appears. The Toymaker gives them a ring on the TARDIS phone, and offers them a clue to their next game, and a way out, through a passage lined with life-sized ballerina dolls.

This week’s clue is:

Hunt the key, to fit the door
That leads out on the dancing floor,
Then escape the rhythmic beat,
Or you’ll forever, tap your feet.

I don’t know what annoys me more: the bizarre comma placement or the fact that these aren’t actually riddles that the audience can solve. Well, this isn’t even a riddle really, more rhyming instructions.

Why are they showing these at the end of the episodes?

THE DANCING FLOOR

Past the ballerinas, Steven and Dodo stumble upon a kitchen, where they meet some more of the Toymaker’s playthings, Mrs Wiggs the cook and Sgt. Rugg. These two are supposed to be funny, I think.

Per the rhyming instructions, Steven and Dodo start searching for the key to the dancing floor, which is just next door. The Sgt. and Mrs Wiggs’ antics quickly irritate Steven, who manages to hold his temper at the urging of Dodo. Again, I really can’t blame him. There are few things more annoying than an unfunny ‘comedic’ character.

Of course everything I say is pure comedic gold, so I can speak as an authority on that.

The Doctor keeps trying to slow his progress in the game to buy the others more time, but the Toymaker won’t have it, artificially skipping the game ahead dozens of moves at a time.

With a bit of buttering-up from Dodo, the Sgt. agrees to help the pair out in their search, but quickly runs afoul of the cook, who doesn’t appreciate the destruction he’s wreaking in her kitchen.

Like the previous challenges, this is painfully tiresome to watch.

We’re eventually put out of our misery when Dodo realises they haven’t looked inside the pie on the kitchen table, and plunging a hand into the pastry finds the key.

The pair rush off, leaving the others to get a good scolding from the Toymaker, who orders them to prevent the companions reaching the other end of the dancefloor.

If not, he’ll break them, as easily as smashing a plate.

Steven and Dodo enter a room with a triangular raised dais, on which three ballerinas dance beautifully. The music accompanying them is less than beautiful.

The cook and the Sgt. enter close behind them, and Steven attempts to cross the dancefloor. However, he immediately finds himself caught up in the dance– in fact, he can’t stop.

The dolls spin the group around the dancefloor, holding on with a grip like iron, but with some effort Steven and Dodo manage to dance their way over to yet another fake TARDIS. Will they ever find the real thing?

Dodo wonders if they’ll see the cook and the Sgt. again. Exasperated, Steven reminds her that they’re just figments of the Toymaker’s imagination. But if that’s true, then why do they always lose, and why always by doing something silly and human?

Maybe they really do have minds of their own.

Disgusted with his incompetent minions, the Toymaker offers up a new doll for them to play with, the nastiest apparently. A devil? A monstrous beast? No…it’s a jolly schoolboy.

Schoolboy? He looks at least forty!

I wouldn’t take his sweets if I were you, Dodo. There’s something unsavoury about his manner.

Lady luck
Will show the way,

Win the game
Or here you’ll stay

THE FINAL TEST

So, what’s our next game? Hopscotch. How thrilling. Throw in an electrified floor, however, and the game gets a little more interesting.

The ‘schoolboy’ Cyril seems to be playing fair at first, but keeps adding new rules to the game whenever the companions have the upper hand. With how irritating he is and his love of practical ‘jokes’ like hand-buzzers, some viewers may be reminded of the Billy Bunter character from the Greyfriars School stories. Amusingly, so many apparently noticed this the previous week that after this week’s episode the continuity announcer had to clarify that Cyril is merely a ‘Bunter-like’ character, therefore not infringing any copyrights.

Feeling generous, the Toymaker allows the Doctor the use of his voice again. Welcome back, Mr. Hartnell. Been anywhere nice?

Cyril’s mischief turns nasty in the hopscotch game as he almost knocks Dodo onto the electrified floor. When Steven comes over to scold him, Cyril sends both back to the start, as he had landed on Dodo’s triangle (and according to the rules, the previous occupant of a triangle has to go back to the start if someone else lands on that same triangle. Wow, that was boring to explain), and Steven broke the rules.

Steven tries to just hop over to the TARDIS at the end of the course, but the Toymaker pops up to do jazz hands at him and blocks his way with an invisible barrier. They’re going to have to play by the Toymaker’s rules.

Finding himself frustrated with the Doctor’s continuing reluctance to speak, the Toymaker accelerates the game to spite him. The others are going to have to hurry.

Their bratty opponent pulls an obvious stunt when he pretends to hurt his foot, and Dodo comes to see if he’s all right. He is, of course, and he’s tricked her into breaking the rules, so back to the start she goes. Again.

On Cyril’s next roll, he rolls high enough to win the game. In a shocking turn of events, however, he stumbles and falls. Zap.
It’s a good thing he turned back into a doll, or that would have been quite grisly. There’s an awful lot of smoke.

Steven finds that the tile Cyril slipped on was covered in a slippery powder, which he must have put there to sabotage the companions and forgotten about.

They finally reach the police box as the Doctor makes his penultimate move. Could it be they’ve found the real TARDIS? Yes. Yes they have.

Fully visible once more, the Doctor halts his game and goes to check on his ship, reuniting with his friends.

Their relief doesn’t last long, as the Toymaker shows up to remind them that they still haven’t won. In fact, they can’t win. If the game ends, this whole world will disappear, and them with it. However, they can’t leave until the Doctor finishes his game. It’s quite the Catch-22.

It doesn’t look like they can talk their way out of this…or can they? Ordering Steven to pre-set the TARDIS controls, the Doctor pulls off an uncanny impression of the Toymaker’s voice to order the game to advance to the final move.

The face the Toymaker pulls as his world collapses is absolutely hilarious.

Still, being an immortal the Toymaker will surely be back some day, and he won’t let the Doctor get away with a trick like that again. That’s a way off though, so for now they can celebrate with some sweets.

And the Doctor promptly cracks a tooth on one.

I suppose next week will be the thrilling search for a dentist.

Final Thoughts

That brings us to the end of The Celestial Toymaker. I wanted to like this serial. There is plenty about it that I can appreciate. Micheal Gough’s performance as the Toymaker is a real highlight. He’s a very charismatic and compelling villain, definitely a worthy opponent for the Doctor. In many ways, he’s like a petulant child, almost pitiable, but there’s a real icy malice under it all. He’s a cautionary tale about the downsides of immortality. If you live forever, mortal lives are so short compared to yours they might as well be mayflies. What do morals matter to you when you outlive everyone who remembers your sins?

I’d certainly be open to seeing him make another appearance at some point, sans clowns.

The overall concept is quite fun, but the dull nature of the challenges made the execution quite lacklustre. When talking with friends, some complained that this serial was too fantastical. I disagree. I don’t think it was fantastical enough. We’re in a world entirely created from the imagination of a bored immortal, and the best he can come up with is electric hopscotch? Why not lean into the surrealism, a world that’s at turns both dream and nightmare? I don’t really care how the Toymaker has this level of control over his world, but I do care that he doesn’t use his powers to do much that’s truly interesting.

Something I’m a little surprised wasn’t brought up again at the end was the issue of the Toymaker’s playthings. Over the course of the serial, it’s all but outright stated that all his toys were once people. The Toymaker may have supplanted their wills with his own, but there are hints that there’s still some small part of the original person buried deep down.

Though the Toymaker must survive the destruction of his world, what of the toys? Are they too far removed from their humanity to be worth saving?

That said, they were all extremely annoying and I am not at all sorry to see the back of them.

There’s not much to complain about in terms of production value, with some pretty elaborate sets, effects and costumes. I did rather like the costuming work on the King and Queen of Hearts.

I can’t offer as much praise to the music in this serial, which seemed composed specifically to aggravate me. It’s repetitive, grating, unpleasant and repetitive.

Well, that’s enough griping for today, I think. Join me next time as we take a trip to the Wild West in search of… a dentist. It’s not the weirdest premise for a story I’ve ever heard.

3 out of 5 stars




No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[April 16, 1966] Non-taxing (May 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

3 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Three certainties

They say you can only be sure of two things in life: death and taxes.  I can't offer any personal assurances on the former, but I can say a thing or two about the latter.  Yesterday was, as it has been since my second year on the Journey (1955), tax day.  That special time of the year when Uncle Sam gets his due so that the potholes can be filled, the guns can be loaded, and (more recently and most welcomely) the poor can be relieved.

As you know, LBJ got his predecessor's big tax cut passed a couple of years back, a move that outraged the conservatives.  Of course, the benefits of that have largely passed me by — I make enough from running Journey Press to buy a cup of coffee, second-hand.  (Feel free to help change this state of affairs by buying more of our books!) On the other hand, a penurious existence means I don't have to cough up much dough come April 15.

Nevertheless, I did part with some shekels.  It was fortunate indeed that the latest issue of F&SF was at hand to balm the wound.  As has been the case for several months now, the mag was decidedly non-taxing.  Thank you, Ed Ferman, for giving us a third certainty in our lives!

The Issue at Hand


by Mel Hunter

And Madly Teach, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

With the advent of TV has arisen the notion of educational television, augmenting the classroom with studio-produced classes.  They have the advantage of combining nearly universal reach as well as the possibility of securing the best professionals.

But what if, in the interests both of frugality and inflicting the least bother on children, the traditional classroom is completely eschewed for the new format?  One might get Lloyd Biggle's newest novelette, detailing the culture shift a spinster English teacher from Mars encounters when she tries to adapt to the new Terran ways.

It's about as realistic as Harrison Bergeron and perhaps not as important, but I think there are some good subtle messages layered beneath the obvious ones, and Biggle is a very good writer.

Four stars.

Three for Carnival, by John Shepley

It's carnival time in near-future New York.  Old Mother Gimp (young, clear-eyed Barbara), the Harlequin (henpecked merchant, Saul Cooperman), and Lloyd (just Lloyd) take turns being themselves and someones else through the increasing chaos overtaking the Five Roses.

A difficult, abstract story, and not really science fiction or fantasy, I nevertheless found it engaging.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Colony, by Miriam Allen deFord

Humans found a colony light years from home.  After twenty promising years, they are overrun by rapacious half-men, who abduct a settler and generally make mayhem.  Though the abductee is recovered, the presence of alien intelligence means the colonists must leave, which they do with sadness.  But not before it is learned that the half-men are actually a variety of human.

The kicker?  The events of the story took place 30,000 years ago, and the savages were Neanderthals.

This kind of gotcha story might have flown back in the 40s, but it creaks in the 60s.  Moreover, it doesn't make a lick of sense.  It is, however, decently written.  No one can fault deFord for not knowing her craft; she just needs to take a refresher course in plot ideas.

Two stars.

Breakaway House, by Ron Goulart

Pete Goodwin scratched at his short blond hair and said, "Gretchen exaggerates, Max. We're still on our shakedown cruise with this house and little things are going to show up."

Max watched the sherry in his glass. "Of course, Jillian and I are apartment types so far. But maple syrup in the closets and bobcats in the shower. That stuff sounds unusual, Pete."

"Life is different in the suburbs, Max."

Yes, amateur occult detective Max Kearney is out of retirement for another droll tale of investigation.  This time, he and his new wife, Jillian the witch, are helping out a neighbor in the new tract housing subdivision.  It must be haunted, but Pete seems strangely reluctant to deal with it.  Is he possessed?  Has he made a deal with the Devil?  Or is it really not a very big matter after all?

It wraps up a little quickly, but it's great fun along the way.  Four stars.

Beamed Power, by Theodore L. Thomas

Someday Tesla will be proven right, and we won't need wires to transmit energy.  But will the result be a utopia or a terrorist's playground?  It's a subject worthy of a full-length article, perhaps in Analog.  As is, this is an unsatisfying appertif.

Three stars.

Flattop, by Gregory Benford

New author Benford offers up a Nivenesque tale of first contact between a human astronaut and a mobile Martian bath rug.  Except this creature has explosive capabilities for growth, and a single sample threatens an entire expedition.

Very crunchy stuff.  I liked it.  Four stars.

H. P. Lovecraft: The House and the Shadows, by J. Vernon Shea

Apparently, the Weirdest of the Weird Tales bunch wasn't quite the weirdo his stories would lead us to believe.  Racist and anti-semitic, sure (though he was buddies with Robert Bloch and he married a Jew).  Anti-social, absolutely (and yet generous to a fault despite his poverty; he wrote his fans lavish and helpful letters, even at the expense of his own writing time).  Sexless and haunted?  Arguably, but if one looks for Lovecraft in his stories, they're not going to find him.

I'm neither a lover of Lovecraft not a detractor.  I feel he had three good stories in him, and he kept writing them throughout his career until he got them right.  Along the way, he evaded critical praise but amassed a fandom that really only came to the fore after his death at 47 (ouch! That's my age!)

Shea's biography is interesting, poetic, and enlightening.  Four stars.

The Third Dragon, by Ed M. Clinton, Jr.

A lovely tale of three dragons and a girl that underscores that nice guys can finish first.  Four stars.

Time and Tide, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor offers up a good, if slightly padded, piece on the mechanism of tides with a brief look at tides around the solar system.  Good stuff.  Four stars.

Man of Parts, by H. L. Gold

Lastly, a story you know has to be a reprint since the former editor of Galaxy isn't doing much of anything these days.  In brief: Major Hugh Savold of the Fourth Terran Expedition against Vega, crashes onto the peaceful planet of Dorfel.  With very little salvageable but two arms and much of a brain, he is fused with the similarly mangled Dorfellow Gam Nex Biad.

Now a living rock-borer and legally no longer human, can the Major make it back to his ship and leave the living nightmare he finds himself trapped in?

Pleasant enough, but it shows its age.  Three stars.

Summing Up

Tallying the numbers on my form 1040-GJ, I find the May 1965 F&SF scores a respectable 3.5 stars.  I wouldn't say any of the stories will be up for this year's Galactic Stars, but all of them are readable and several are memorable.

I can almost forget how light my pocketbook has become… at least until the next time I have to buy a month's worth of science fiction!




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 14, 1966] A New & Clear Bombshell (The War Game)

3 Comments


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The War Game

War Game Poster

Not since The Chatterley Trial has there been a piece of media more debated in the UK than Peter Watkins’ The War Game. After being pulled from the air in October I finally managed to see it at the National Film Theatre last night.

Before I get into my review, I think we need to look back at how a 48-minute BBC pseudo-documentary about one of the most discussed contemporary issues became involved in such a storm of controversy. For that we will have to start by travelling back over 300 years to the fields of Culloden.

Culloden

Culloden

After doing a series of well noted amateur short films, Watkins came to general attention with his 1964 BBC documentary\reenactment\drama Culloden. It is extremely hard to define precisely as it is a style I have not seen elsewhere before. Whilst going into a historic event, he presents it as if it is a contemporary documentary on the event, combining narration, action and scripted interviews with various people involved in the battle.

In itself this would be enough of a leap to get it on people’s radars, but Watkins also went further. Firstly, he used an all-amateur cast, in order to get a sense of reality into what we were seeing. Secondly, almost all the shots are done with a handheld camera, getting us further away from the idea we are watching a carefully staged play. Next, he refuses to sanitize the level of violence, both in explaining in the events and showing us the gore of those wounded in both the battle and its aftermath.

Perhaps, most radically of all, he does not give it a comfortable narrative. Among Scottish Nationalists it is often seen as the last flowering of the independent Scotland. Among Unionists it is often seen as the last rebelling of an invasion or major insurrection on British soil. This goes to lengths to show us this was a horrendous situation, where ordinary people were often press ganged into fighting, generals made an awful mess of every decision and so many suffered for pointless reasons.

It is a really affecting piece of television and received both a BAFTA and a British Screenwriters Award. So, it should be no surprise the BBC were interested in getting more work from Mr. Watkins. Though, given the contents of Culloden, they really should not have been surprised at what they got next.

A Political Game?

Peter Watkins in full director mode
Peter Watkins in full director mode

Watkins’ next project was to try to move away from his historical critiques (aside from Culloden, his short films include such subjects as The American Civil War, World War One and The 1956 Hungarian Uprising) to something more contemporary, a realistic account of what would actually happen if Britain were attacked by a nuclear strike, rather than the government propaganda films or SF adventure stories.

Apparently originally designed for the 20th anniversary of Hiroshima, it was then scheduled for an October broadcast, then unceremoniously pulled from our screens. The reasoning being that:

the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting.

This has raised some question as to whether this was legitimately the reason. On the face of it this film is genuinely horrifying and, whilst the BBC has also broadcast material that could be argued to be equally harrowing (e.g., the aforementioned Culloden or their recent documentary on Belsen), there is always a difference between what has happened historically and what could happen to the viewer next week.

However, what else did the BBC expect from a project Peter Watkins would do on nuclear war? Why not demand changes earlier? Or air it in a late-night slot with a warning beforehand that it is not for those of a weak disposition?

Whilst the Prime Minister has fully denied any government involvement in the House of Commons, many people (myself included) fail to believe there is not either some political pressure put on the BBC or self-censorship on the part of Director-General Sir Hugh Carlton Greene.

Either way, some of us have been lucky enough to see the final product, thanks to a limited theatrical release. It is both exactly what you would expect and something even more amazing.

A Different Frontier

Star Man's Son by Andre Norton

In science fiction there has been a tendency to treat the result of nuclear war as a chance for a new kind of western or sword & sorcery tale. Consider, for example Andre Norton’s Star Man’s Son or George Pal’s The Time Machine, where the destruction of civilization allows for a form of old-fashioned adventure not available in contemporary society. Even two of the bleakest post-nuclear films so far fall into this trap.

On The Beach Poster

In On The Beach, the destruction of the rest of the world allows for a kind of morose luxury, as those last survivors expecting to die are allowed to choose how things would end and what they want to do with the remainder of their lives. We never see the effect of the radiation clouds coming on the survivors, instead the film merely cuts from people in the streets of Melbourne to their absence.

Panic In Year Zero Poster

Whilst in Panic In Year Zero the family are already outside of the cities when the bombs fall, manage to eke out a survival in the wilderness and then are able to rejoin society afterwards. You could easily make a few changes to the script and make it about a settler family travelling west in the 19th Century.

Peter Watkin’s The War Game does not allow for any shred of optimism. The situation is that China invades South Vietnam, this in turn results in the US threatening to use nuclear weapons to stop them. In solidarity the East German government blocks off West Berlin. As tensions rise, we follow a town in Kent as they first try to cope with the evacuation of women and children from the cities and then the effect of nuclear attack on the area. It shows the full impact this may have, physically, mentally, and socially before what will probably be their inevitable demise.

In itself this would be harrowing enough, but this goes further to really ram the message home to those watching.

No Comfort, Only Fallout

War Game 7a
Resident of a housing estate being interviewed on the fire from a nuclear attack.

The first elements Watkins uses are the stylistic techniques he used in Culloden. Filming in handheld style and doing interviews with non-actors (both real members of the public being asked questions about the possible impact of nuclear attack and the non-actors being hired to act out scripted sections) there were also great touches to make this feel real for example one woman when told about needing to barrack people in her house asked if they will be “coloured”, showing the level of pessimism that Peter Watkins has for humanity and also giving a sense of realism to the film that we're watching.

Doctor interviewed on the categories of injuries in an overburdened hospital.
Doctor interviewed on the categories of injuries in an overburdened hospital.

It takes great pains to show us that the sources for this production are based in reality, both in terms of predictions, such as NATO mock battles and expert panels, and in historical examples, particularly concentrating on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the firebombing of Dresden. What is more it makes sure to say this is modelling a better case scenario, and that the bombs used could actually be significantly more powerful.

A lorry full of corpses being driven away.
A lorry full of corpses being driven away.

One area where I could understand some of the criticism of the suitability of the viewing of this film on television would be with some of the actual gore that is shown. This is not to say that it is gratuitous, rather it is showing the real impact of nuclear weapons on members of the general public. For example, it does not vary considerably from the images that have been shared on the victims of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

One of the real quotes used between images of nuclear attack.
One of the real quotes used between images of nuclear attack.

It also then works to counterpose this with the standard ways in which ordinary people are used to encountering talk of nuclear war, in order to show how unrealistic and glib they are in comparison to what we see unfolding before us. This is also demonstrated in the choice of Michael Aspel as the narrator, primarily known to the British public for his commentaries on Come Dancing and The Eurovision Song Contest, helping to make someone that would usually be cozy and comforting into something terrifying. For American readers, try to imagine how unsettling it would have been if Panic in Year Zero not only contained teen idol Frankie Avalon, but also had Roger Miller playing the misanthropic father instead of noir star Ray Milland.

“Orphans of the Attack”
“Orphans of the Attack”

All of this combined gives a truly haunting impression that lasts with you long after you have finished watching it. There are so many little moments that burrow into your mind that I could use 2000 words to just list them, and I would still have many sections left to describe. Whether it is the Christmas Church Service at the refugee camp, seagulls squawking as people are shot, or a nurse breaking down as she tries to discuss casualties, it is hard to go away unaffected by the experience.

Critical Targets

An “expert” cut to for further explanations.
An “expert” cut to for further explanations.

There have many criticisms launched at The War Game, so I want to spend some time addressing a few of them.

The first of these is factual. Whilst Watkins and his team have gone to great lengths to ensure a realistic portrayal of a nuclear attack on Britain, there has still been criticism of their predictions. One in particular is that a nuclear attack would not likely take place in such a short space of time, allowing people time to prepare and civil defense authorities to carry out their duties fully.

The response to this is surely to look at the Cuban Missile Crisis a few years ago. Though it is true that it did evolve over some time and we did come perilously close to nuclear war, none of these plans were instituted. As such the preparations will likely only start when it is too late. Further, The War Game goes to great lengths to show that even those able to carry out these plans would not be helped in the long term.

Policemen shooting people with more than 50% burns to alleviate hospital pressure.
Policemen shooting people with more than 50% burns to alleviate hospital pressure.

Another is that narratively it does not have enough impact because of the various tragedies piled on top of each other. For example, it has been argued, that if the sandbag defenses are ineffective, why should we care about the fact that there would be panic buying, scalping and lack of supplies? Or if millions have died, why should it bother us they would have to incinerate piles of corpses in buildings and only identify people via buckets of wedding rings?

I find this critique to be at best facile, and at worst lacking in real humanity. The fact that common human decency also gets lost, and the standard functions of civil society are so lost is what compounds the tragedy of the nuclear death and makes it so terrible. The fact that the extinction of almost all life in Britain is shown to be the inevitable result of what is unfolding does not mean what happens along the way is any less important.

Food control centre used primarily for law enforcement being raided by ordinary people.
Food control centre used primarily for law enforcement being raided by ordinary people.

The final area is political. I am not talking about the criticism from church groups or police about their depiction (criticisms which I do not feel are worth devoting time to) but rather the political impact on the public. The film is so unrelentingly terrifying it could well reduce sentiment in favor of nuclear deterrence on the Western side, whilst it is unlikely to be available in places like the Soviet Union or China.

My response to this is twofold. First, if there is to be a true belief in the value of freedom in the western democracies, it must allow for truth, however unpleasant. Otherwise surely the whole exercise of battling ideologies is nothing more than football teams demanding the loyalty of their local supporters.

But, more importantly, maybe this isn’t a bad idea? If the NATO nations begin to disarm, maybe others will too? Anything that could avert the destruction of humanity is surely a positive step.

End the MADness

Anti-Nuclear march in London, 1961
Anti-Nuclear march in London, 1961

With the war in Vietnam continuing to escalate and more nations developing their own nuclear capability, the scenario outlined in this film becomes more and more likely.

My only worry is that the limited theatrical release will limit the impact this essential piece of cinema could have had. It is one I would want to be shown everywhere, from schools to retirement communities, to both educate and promote debate on where the world is going.

Five Stars and a request that after you have seen it, you share the message with your friends.

We may not have much time to prevent from this becoming a true documentary…




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 8, 1966] Search Parties (May 1966 Fantastic)

1 Comment


by Victoria Silverwolf

Keep Watching the Skies!

The good citizens of Michigan were recently reminded of the warning I've quoted above, from 1951's The Thing from Another World (a loose cinematic adaptation of John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There?).


Father and son describe what they saw.

Folks in Washtenaw County (just look for the city of Ann Arbor on the map, and you're smack dab in the middle of it) reported seeing strange lights in the sky last month. Supposedly, a UFO even landed in a swampy area near the tiny community of Dexter Township.


Looks like a classic flying saucer to me.

About one hundred people witnessed these phenomena. Naturally, the federal government got involved. They sent astronomer J. Allen Hynek to the area to check things out. Reportedly, he thinks at least some of the sightings can be explained as swamp gas. One politician isn't so sure.


Note that the article uses the phrase marsh gas. One person's swamp is another person's marsh, I suppose.

Gerald R. Ford is a United States Congressman from the Grand Rapids district of Michigan, so this situation strikes close to home for him. (He's a Republican, and the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. Maybe this event will make him famous.)

Here's a picture of Representative Ford and wife Betty on a recent fishing trip, so you'll recognize him if his face shows up in the news in times to come.

It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier

While some Americans are tracking down UFO's, others are searching for ways to justify their nation's involvement in the conflict in Vietnam. As a counterpoint to the many demonstrations against the war, a patriotic song celebrating the heroism of the Army Special Forces has been at the top of the charts for several weeks. The Ballad of the Green Berets, sung by Sergeant Barry Sadler, seems to have struck just the right note with many conservative music lovers.


Personally, I prefer the Tom Lehrer song I have alluded to above.

Hunting Through the Pages

Meanwhile, I've been searching for good reading. Take, for example, the latest issue of Fantastic. Fittingly, many of the stories feature characters who are on quests of one kind or another.


Art by Frank R. Paul.

(I might add that I had to search through piles of old pulp magazines to find the original source of the magazine's cover art. It turned out to be the back cover of the September 1944 issue of Amazing Stories.)


Confused? We'll get to an explanation of this weird scene later in the issue.

The Phoenix and the Mirror, by Avram Davidson

Let's begin our journey with a new novella from the former editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

The author's introductory note explains that the ancient Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid, was depicted as a sorcerer in legends of the Middle Ages. (Davidson prefers the spelling Vergil, which I will use for the name of the fictional character in this story. He also prefers nigromancer to necromancer and Renascence to Renaissance, but that's typical erudite eccentricity on his part.) He also notes that this tale is the first part of a series to be called Vergil Magus.

Anyway, we begin in medias res, with Vergil trying to escape from an underground labyrinth full of malevolent manticores. (These are not the lion-scorpions of myth, but something more like large, clever weasels.) He manages to get out, winding up at the palace of an aristocrat with magical powers. She forces him to undertake the extremely difficult quest of creating a very special enchanted mirror, so she can see where in the world her daughter might be. He can't say no, because she steals one of his souls.

You read that right. People in this world have more than one soul, it seems. Losing one isn't fatal, but it seems to be so traumatic an event that Vergil feels compelled to undertake the nearly impossible task. He has to obtain unrefined tin and copper ore from the far ends of the known world, and then form the mirror through a long and laborious process. After many struggles, with the help of his alchemist sidekick, he manages to complete this onerous undertaking.


The mirror in use.

That isn't the end of his troubles, however. After instantly falling in love with the daughter after one glimpse in the mirror, he treks through desert wastelands, with an enigmatic Phoenician at his side, to rescue her from a Cyclops.


The lady and the cyclops.

This isn't the typical brutal, dimwitted Cyclops from mythology, but an intelligent, even sensitive creature. Multiple plot twists follow, and we find out why a phoenix is mentioned in the title.

Davidson keeps his baroque writing style under control here, and the plot is cleverly crafted. The background, which is kind of a mixture of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, with a strong dose of pure fantasy, is unique and interesting. Some readers may be impatient with several pages describing in great detail the exact method of creating the mirror, but I found it fascinating.

My one major complaint is that Vergil's lengthy and dangerous voyage to obtain copper ore is skipped over almost entirely, related in just a few sentences of flashback. I would like to learn more about his adventures there. Maybe Davidson plans to expand this novella into a novel, as authors of science fiction and fantasy often do. Otherwise, I greatly enjoyed this witty and imaginative excursion into a past that never existed.

Four stars.

Seven Came Back, by Clifford D. Simak


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

As usual, the rest of the magazine is filled up with reprints. Let's start with a tale from the pages of the October 1950 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustrations by Arthur Hutah.

The setting is Mars, the favorite world of SF writers. Like many fictional versions of the red planet, this is a place where humans can survive without spacesuits. It's still a very dangerous environment, however, with all sorts of deadly creatures living in the endless desert.

The protagonist is on a quest to find the fabled lost city of the nearly extinct Martians. He hires a couple of tough guys to guide him through the wasteland. As we'll see, this turns out to be a big mistake.

Six Martians show up at their camp. It seems that they're the last of their kind, and they think that the men can lead them to a seventh. The Martians have seven sexes, you see, and this is their last chance to reproduce. (That must certainly make things complicated.)

If the humans help them out, they'll take them to the city, which is supposed to be full of fabulous treasures. The two roughnecks take off on their own, leaving the protagonist alone in the deadly desert.

Things get a lot stranger after this, and I don't want to give too much away. Suffice to say that the main character manages to survive, wins an unexpected ally, and has a mystical experience at the city.


The lost Martian city.

At first, I thought this was more or less a science fiction Western, with the hero heading for a showdown with the no-good polecats who left him to die. I have to admit that the plot went in completely unexpected directions. I'm still pondering the meaning of the ending. The author mixes space adventure with his usual warmth and concern for all living things and a touch of Bradbury's magical Mars.

Four stars.

The Third Guest, by B. Traven

The mysterious author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre offers a fable of life and death that appeared in the March-April 1953 issue of Fantastic.


Cover art by Richard Powers.

Like everything else about the author, the provenance of this story is puzzling. As far as I have been able to determine, it was written under the title The Healer, was first published in German in 1950 as Macario, and somehow wound up with its current title when it showed up in Fantastic.


Illustrations by Tom O'Sullivan.

One of the few facts known about the author is that he — or she? — lives in Mexico, the setting for most of his — or her? — fiction. This tale is no exception. It takes place when the region was still known as New Spain, during the colonial period.

Macario, a dirt-poor woodcutter, barely manages to feed himself, his wife, and their many children. For most of his life, his greatest dream has been to eat an entire roast turkey by himself. Over several years, his wife saves the tiny payments she receives for doing chores for slightly less poverty-stricken folks. She buys a turkey, prepares it exquisitely, and presents it to her husband, telling him to go into the woods and devour it alone.

Before he can enjoy the delicious feast, however, three strange visitors show up. The first is a sinister fellow, richly dressed. He offers Macario enormous wealth for a share of the turkey. Macario refuses.


The first guest.

The second one is poorly dressed, gentle, and saintly. Despite his kindly manner, Macario again refuses to share his meal. The visitor blesses him anyway.


The second guest.

The third guest, as the title suggests, is the one most vital to the plot. Macario knows he cannot refuse this cadaverous figure, so he at least manages to keep half of the turkey for himself. In exchange, the guest gives him an elixir that will cure all ills, but only if the visitor chooses who will live and who will die. The rest of the story follows Macario as he wins a reputation as a great healer. A summons from the Viceroy of New Spain, whose child is dying, leads to a final confrontation with the third guest.

This is a remarkable fantasy, with the simplicity of a folktale but the sophistication of great literature. It appeared in The Best American Short Stories 1954 (edited by Martha Foley), so I'm not alone in my opinion. It was even made into a Mexican movie in 1960, which you might be able to catch at your local arthouse cinema, if you don't mind subtitles.

Five stars.

The Tanner of Kiev, by Wallace West

The last time we met this author, it was with a reprint of the antifeminist dystopia The Last Man, to which my esteemed colleague John Boston awarded one star. Even if we ignore that story's political stance, it's poorly written. Will this tale, from the October 1944 issue of Fantastic Adventures, be any better? It could hardly be worse.


Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

The first thing to keep in mind is that this is a story about World War Two, written and published during the height of the conflict. You have to expect Our Side to be heroic Good Guys, and Their Side to be sadistic Bad Guys. In particular, the Soviets are definitely on the side of the angels here.


Illustrations by Malcolm Smith.

The hero parachutes behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. His mission is to deliver a radio transmitter to the underground resistance. Things get weird pretty quickly, as he runs into an immortal magician from Russian folklore.


The wizard and his pets.

Next thing you know, he's at the chicken-legged hut of the legendary old witch Baba Yaga. None of this supernatural stuff seems to bother him, and soon he's on his way into Kiev. He contacts the Russian guerillas, including the pretty female one with whom he falls in love. With the help of the warlock and witch, as well as a talking squirrel and a were-rat, the brave Soviets overcome the craven Germans.

Given the fact that, inevitably, a wartime story is going to paint things in black and white, this isn't a bad yarn at all. It's pretty well written, and the wild and wooly plot held my interest. The changes in mood from whimsical to romantic to horrific are disconcerting, and the love story is a little sappy, but's it worth a read.

Three stars.

Wolf Pack, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.


Cover art by Leo Summers.

The Second World War is also the background for this story, from the September-October 1953 issue of Fantastic, but this time the battle rages in Italy instead of the Soviet Union.


Illustrations by Bernard Krigstein.

The main character is the pilot of an American bomber who has already flown nearly fifty missions, raining destruction from the skies. He has recurring dreams about a alluring woman he thinks of as La Femme, or just La. It would be easy to dismiss this as a predictable fantasy for a young man deprived of female company for an extended period of time, or as an idealized image of his girlfriend back home. Yet she seems very real, and he appears to be in some kind of telepathic communication with her, even while awake.


The woman known as La.

During his latest bombing run, he nearly aborts the mission, terrified that he might destroy her. The other members of the crew have to physically restrain him to complete their gruesome task.


A bomber's world.

The author was a radio operator and tail gunner during World War Two, participating in as many bombing missions over Italy as the story's protagonist. It's no surprise, then, that the details of life as a bomber pilot are extremely realistic and convincing.   Miller took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino in 1944, which certainly had an influence on the writing of his award-winning novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), already considered a modern classic.

Unlike the previous story, which, understandably, was full of gung-ho patriotic glory (much like Sergeant Sadler's hit song, come to think of it) this is a somber, emotionally powerful account of the way that war turns men into machines, and how the innocent suffer as much as the guilty.

Five stars.

Betelgeuse, in Orion: The Walking Cities of Frank R. Paul, by Anonymous

I wasn't sure if I should even bother discussing this little article, but what the heck. It originally appeared under the slightly different title Stories of the Stars: Betelgeuse in Orion, supposedly by a Sergeant Morris J. Steele in the September 1944 issue of Amazing Stories. This is probably a pseudonym for the magazine's editor, Raymond A. Palmer, but I can't prove that.


Cover art by Julian S. Krupa.

Anyway, after some facts about the giant star, we get wild speculation about the beings who might live there. It's pretty much just a way to fill up some space.

Two stars.

The End of the Search

Well, my search for enjoyable fiction certainly paid off! This was an outstanding issue. Even the worst story was pretty good, and the best were excellent. It makes me ponder my skepticism about reprinting old stuff. After all, I don't complain when an movie from yesteryear shows up on television, as long as it's a good one.


Check your local listings to see if this decade-old classic will be showing in your area any time soon.




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Magazine

[March 31, 1966] Shapes of Things (April 1966 Analog)

7 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Change

Out in the world of music, there's a change brewing. One can hear it in the experimentation of the Beatles' Rubber Soul album or the otherworldly tinge of The Yardbirds' latest hit, Shapes of Things. I've been long planning to write an article on the musical scene, and I'd best get it done quickly before the landscape changes entirely!

My friend and associate, Cora Buhlert, has noted that although the Stones and Beatles are popular in Germany, the number one hit right now is the syrupy Schlager tune by Roy Black, "Ganz in Weiß" (All in white). In other words, even in times of great flux, conservative forces remain steadfast, like stubborn boulders in a stream.

Oh look — it's time to review the latest issue of Analog.

Stagnation


by Kelly Freas

Moon Prospector, by William B. Ellern

It would be hard to find a more emblematic story of the reactionary SF outlet that is Analog than this, the lead story in the April issue. Set early in E.E. Smith's Lensman series, it apparently got the full blessing of "Doc" Smith just a few days before he died! That's pretty remarkable.

The story, however, isn't. A lunar prospector in is semi-sentient "creeper" gets a distress call. Turns out an old buddy has been buried in the aftereffects of a meteor shower, and ol' Pete has to dig him out. But what was the fellow doing out in that quadrant of the Moon to begin with, and does it have anything to do with a centuries-old missile base abandoned around there?


by Kelly Freas

There's no water on the Moon, so I suppose it's appropriate that the story, itself, is dry as a bone. Perhaps it would have been more exciting if I'd had some stake in the universe. Maybe I'd have thrilled at the mention of the Solar Patrol being evolved into a Galactic Patrol. The fact is, I didn't care for Doc Smith's stories much when I was a kid, so they evoke no nostalgia for me now.

Two stars.

Rat Race, by Raymond F. Jones


by Kelly Freas

A century and a half in the future, when a completely computer-planned economy has resulted in plenty for all of humanity, a fellow decides to recreate the hobby of model train running (though not in the destructive manner of the Addams family, more's the pity).

This hobby runs the fellow afoul of the Computer, for when he tries to make his own trains, he is accused of attempting his own production, which will upset the finely balanced economy and lead to scarcity. Our protagonist must find a way to satisfy the human urge to create while not upsetting the economic apple cart. The story ends with the suggestion that do-it-yourselfism will spread and eventually topple the current order.

It's a pleasant-enough story, and I suppose the "stick-it-to-communism" sentiment appealed to editor Campbell. On the other hand, while I appreciate that some folks really like to build things even when they could just be bought (and I have to think that hobbyist building would not break a planned economy), the notion that we've become too centralized and folks should all be able to be self-sufficient, making a living from the land, is unworkable.

The fact is, we've long since populated the Earth beyond its ability to sustain a society of independent farmers. The great island cities, the vast modern nations, they only support their teeming millions through coordinated and interconnected systems. The writer in the air-conditioned apartment, who bangs out a paean to independent living before catching a television show and then popping off to the deli for dinner, is a dreamer, not a visionary.

Three stars.

The Easy Way Out, by Lee Correy


by John Schoenherr

Aliens conduct a survey of planet Earth, evaluating its species for aggressive tendencies. After coming across a grizzly bear and a wolverine, and then the human family that has adopted the latter, they decide Earth is more trouble than it's worth.

Typical Campbellian Earth-firsterism. Two stars.

Drifting Continents, by Robert S. Dietz


by John Holden

If it's a crackpot theory that flies in the face of the scientific establishment, chances are you'll read about it in Analog. But sometimes a theory is crackpot, flies in the face of the scientific establishment, and is probably right. As someone born in earthquake country, I've probably heard more about "continental drift" than many. It's the idea that the continents very slowly move around the globe. It's why the coasts of South America and Africa seem like edges of the same torn newspaper. It explains why there are similar fossils at similar depths across continents that are nowhere near each other…today.

It's a theory I found little reference to in my science books of the 50s, including Rachel Carson's seminal The Sea Around Us. But damned if Dietz doesn't make some very compelling arguments. I would not be surprised if continental drift, as has happened recently with the Big Bang Theory and global warming, did not become thoroughly accepted this decade.

Five stars.

Who Needs Insurance?, by Robin S. Scott


by Kelly Freas

Pete "Lucky Pierre" Albers has always been blessed with good fortune. Twenty years a pilot, he has always managed to avoid even the slightest injury, despite 8500 hours of flying time. He first suspected that his lucky streak was not completely due to chance after a harrowing mission over Ploesti left his B-24 with just one working engine. That tortured device not only held together all the way back to Libya, but it spun with the 800 horsepower needed to keep the plane in the air. After the crash landing, Albers found a little gray box attached to the driveshaft.

Twenty years later, over Vietnam, Colonel Albers was in a bullet-riddled Huey whose engine somehow held together long enough to get him and his charges back to base. Sure enough, a little box was installed on the engine.

Clearly someone, or something, has taken an interest in Albers' survival. It's up to Albers and his closest friends to discover the secret.

I really enjoyed this story, told in narrative fashion. It's a fun mystery, the details are evocative, and I like when a piece includes a competent woman scientist (in this case, Marty the programmer, with her pet 2706).

Four stars.

A Sun Invisible, by Poul Anderson


by Domenic Iaia

With this latest installation in the adventures of David Falkayn, the momentum gained by the magazine comes to a shuddering halt. Anderson's writing is of widely varying quality, and the adventures of this troubleshooting young protogé of Nicholas van Rijn are among the worst.

The plot takes forever to develop, but it's something about a planet of Germanics looking to take on the Polesotechnic League by working with the belligerent Kroaka. The trick is that Falkayn has to figure out where the would-be enemies make their home. By getting the female leader of Neuheim drunk and talkative, Falkayn learns enough astronomical clues to deduce the star around which the insurgents' planet revolves. Falkayn stops the threat and gets the girl.

I do like the astronomy Anderson weaves into these stories and I also appreciated the seamless way he introduced a new pronoun for an alien race with three sexes. Other than that, it's a deadly dull story, and smug to boot. Falkayn is like a boring, Sexist Retief.

Two stars.

Computation

After all that, the conservative reef that is Analog finishes near the bottom of the pack, though that is as much due to the relative excellence of the other mags that came out this month. Campbell's mag clocks in at a reasonable 3 stars, beating out the truly bad, all-reprint Amazing (2.3).

Above Analog, starting at the top, are Impulse (3.5), Galaxy (3.4), IF (3.3), New Worlds (3.1), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1).

It was something of a banner month for SF mags, actually. Enough worthy stuff was printed to fill two full-size mags (and if you take out Amazing, that means a full third of everything printed was four stars and up). Also, women produced 11.5% of the new fiction published this month, the highest proportion I've seen in a long time. We'll see if this trend holds out.

That's it for March! April is a whole new ballgame, starting with the next issue of IF. I'm very keen to see how that magazine does now that the excellent Heinlein serial has ended (I've high hopes for the Laumer/Brown novel.)

Until then, all we can to is keep trying to discern the pattern of Shapes of Things to Come…

Don't miss the next exciting Adventure-themed episode of The Journey Show, taking you to the highest peaks, the deepest wildernesses, the coldest extremes, the vacuum of space, and the depths of the sea. April 3 at 1PM — book your (free) ticket for adventure now!)




7 Comments Leave A Comment