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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial, Uncategorized

[July 8, 1967] Family lines (August 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Royal Families

The news always likes to focus on heads of state, especially when they are flashy or glamorous in some way.  From Princess Grace of Monaco to Crown Prince Akihito of Japan, these leaders are instant idols, somehow more compelling for having the reins (and reigns) of nations even though they presumably put their pants/skirts/obis on the same way as the common folk.

This week scored a triplet of spotlights.  For instance, in the island nation of Tonga, Taufaʻahau Tupou IV was crowned monarch in a ceremony that included a feast of 71,000 suckling pigs!  And that, by itself, tells you all you need to know about the current Jewish/Moslem population of Tonga…

Closer to home, El BJ, chief of the United States, has got his first grandson.  Patrick Lyndon Nugent is the newborn child of First Daughter Luci Nugent (neé Johnson).  There is no word, as yet, whether his toddler status will grant him deferment in the lastest draft lottery.

Finally, junta chairman General Nguyen Cao Ky, the flamboyant leader of South Vietnam since 1965, has decided not to run for President in the upcoming democratic (perhaps) September elections.  Premier Thiệu has been backed by the junta for the top role, instead, with Ky getting the Vice Presidential nod.  It's all a lot of musical chairs, anyway. After all, Ky has asserted that the only politician he admires is Hitler, which tells you all you need to know about the state of democracy in that country (and its current Jewish population…)

Watching Big Brother

Fred Pohl, one of the original Futurians and a pillar of the SF community, has had his hands full for nearly a decade.  After he took over the reins of Galaxy and the newly acquired IF from H. L. Gold, rather than sit on his laurels, he looked for new worlds to conquer.  Thus, Worlds of Tomorrow was launched in 1963.  But juggling three mags (plus a few reprint-only titles) was a challenging job, often resulting in uneven quality and occasionally right-out flubs.  For instance, last year's issue of Worlds of Tomorrow where the pages got all mixed up.

One would think, with WoT going out of publication, that things might be less hectic over at the Guinn Co. mags.  But, in fact, this month's issue of Galaxy is even more higgledy-piggledy, making reading a real challenge.


by Sol Dember

Which is a shame, because there's some quite good stuff in here (mixed with some mediocre stuff, to be sure).  Thankfully, you've got me to be your guide.  Just grab your compass, or you might get lost.

Hawksbill Station, by Robert Silverberg


by Virgil Finlay

One-way time travel is developed in the early 21st Century.  Since humanity is deathly afraid of creating paradoxes, the new portals are used by the totalitarian regime for just one purpose: shipping undesirables into the far past, a sort of Paleozoic Botany Bay.

Hawksbill Station is the one reserved for male subversives, established sometime in the late Cambrian (Silverberg repeatedly gives a date of two billion years ago, but of course, the Cambrian went from about 600-500 million B.C.) Our perspective is that of Barrett, the de facto head of the more than 100 settler/prisoners on the coast of what will one day be the Atlantic Ocean.  It is a community slowly decaying as its denizens age along with no greater purpose in life.  That is, until a new young convict arrives from the future, one who appears to be a government spy…

This is more of a travelogue than a story, and the ending comes on a bit abruptly.  But the characterization, the details, the setting are all so gripping that I tore through the novella in no time, despite the labyrinthine page distribution.

Four stars, and if it ever gets expanded into a novel, it could make five.

Angel, Dark Angel, by Roger Zelazny

In another future-set tale, society is maintained by a sort of corporate Angel of Death who, with the help of ten thousand teleporting assistants, brings death to citizens after they have made sufficient contribution to humanity (and are, perhaps, on the verge of being detrimental).

One noteworthy woman has cultivated the aesthetic race of spirules (depicted on the cover) as an antidote to the cold, mechanistic technology of her time.  A subordinate angel is sent to dispatch her, but things prove more complicated.

This is a middlin' Zelazny story, not an empty poetic suit like some, but not a near masterpiece like some of his other works.  Three stars.

We're Coming Through the Window, by K. M. O'donnell

Throwaway vignette about a fellow who keeps duplicating himself due to time travel and needs Fred Pohl's help to get out of it.

Cute.  Three stars.

Ginny Wrapped in the Sun, by R. A. Lafferty

Ginny seems to be a precocious four year old, but in fact, is actually just a baseline human, maturing at age 4 and going on as an upright monkey.  It's the rest of us who are evolutionary aberrations, having five times as many heartbeats that a creature our mass should have.  Inevitably, Lafferty suggests, we'll all go ape.

This tale doesn't really work, and it's a bit more impenetrable than Lafferty's usual fare.  Two stars.

For Your Information: A Pangolin Is a Pangolin, by Willy Ley

Ley's article on the strange mammal that is neither aardvark nor anteater nor armadillo is interesting, but not much more than you might get from a rather good encyclopedia entry.

Three stars.

9-9-99, by Richard Wilson

Two wizened old characters are determined to settle an old score since both have outlived their wagered death dates, the bet having been made back in the 30s.

Whether it is even possible for them to collect given the state of the Earth in the late '90s is another matter…

Good enough, I guess.  Three stars.


by Wally Wood

Travelers Guide to Megahouston, by H. H. Hollis


by Wally Wood

This is a very long, somewhat farcical account of a 21st Century evolution of the Astrodome, in which domes enclose whole cities.

Pretty dull stuff.  Two stars.

The Being in the Tank, by Theodore L. Thomas

An alien being materializes in the heart of a hellish hydrazine factory and demands to speak to the President.  But is he the real deal?

Forgettable, but inoffensive.  A low three stars.

Hide and Seek, by Linda Marlowe

A childhood game is adapted into a method of population control.  It has shock value, but little else.

Two stars.

The Great Stupids, by Miriam Allen deFord

Mad scientist makes everyone under 50 a mental moron, all in service of a rather lame joke at the end.  DeFord was once one of the stars of the genre, but her light has waned over the years.  Here's hoping she's a Cepheid variable and not a dying dwarf.

To Outlive Eternity (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


by Jack Gaughan

It is fitting that the final long piece of the issue is a sort of mirror image of Silverberg's novella in terms of strengths and weaknesses.  As we read in last month's installment, the ramscoop colony ship Leonora Christine suffered damage to its decelerators while traveling at near light speed on the way to Beta Virginis.  The solution: to accelerate to terrific velocities instead, plunging through the heart of the galaxy and out into the comparative emptiness of intergalactic space where repairs might be effected.

In this half, event after event conspires to force the Christine to travel ever faster and faster, ultimately spanning the lifespan of the universe and beyond in a matter of months.  The story is told as a series of problem-solving conversations spread out over the weeks, and each character largely exists solely to have these conversations.  Except for the women, of course, who are almost universally hysterics or hangers-on…except for the First Officer who ultimately whores herself out for the good of the crew.

In short, the setup and ideas are really neat, but its a plot outline, not a novel.  And where Poul Anderson does try to characterize, it's with quick stereotypes, and usually not agreeable ones.  As for setting, there really isn't one.  The crew of the Christine might as well be floating heads in blank spaces for all we really get to experience the ship.

Readable, but badly flawed.  Three stars.

Matrix Goose, by Jack Sharkey

Last up, some very familiar nursery rhymes as they might be rendered by robots–after the demise of humanity.  It's cute.  Three stars.


Perhaps my favorite example, art by Gray Morrow

Cross-eyed Kin

And so, Galaxy ends up a largely enjoyable, but unremarkable read — just under 3 stars in ranking.  Perhaps, with the demise of Worlds of Tomorrow further in the rear-view mirror, Pohl will be able to concentrate on (and concentrate the best stories into) his remaining mags.

On the other hand, perhaps he hasn't learned his lesson.  He's got a new magazine is coming out next month…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 10, 1966] Let's Take A Trip (November 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

The Acid Test

I believe that certain young people — hippies is the term, I think — are using the word trip to refer to something other than hopping on a bus, train, or airplane. In particular, they often mean taking a dose of lysergic acid diethylamide, understandably shortened to LSD, and known informally as acid.


A poster for an event held in Vancouver earlier this year.
Note the name of the festival, and the psychedelic art.
I'll bet lots of attendees took a trip to Canada in order to take a trip elsewhere.

Until this month, this hallucinogenic drug was legal everywhere in the USA. On October 6, it became illegal in the state of California. In response to the new law, on the same day thousands of people showed up for a so-called Love Pageant Rally in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. They enjoyed music from local artists, and many took doses of LSD in defiance of the law.


Some guys calling themselves the Grateful Dead entertain the crowd. There was also a young blues singer from Texas named Janis Joplin.

Way, Way Out

Even if you live in California, you can enjoy a trip deep into your imagination in a perfectly legal manner, simply by opening the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow. Fittingly, almost all the fiction takes place in the far reaches of interstellar space.


Cover art by Sol Dember.

Crown of Stars, by Lin Carter


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

Here's a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek adventure yarn featuring an ultra-competent protagonist. The editor's blurb compares him to James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, but he reminds me more of Derek Flint.


Our hero and his pet dragon.

Mister Quicksilver is a professional, legal thief. (There's some nonsense about how crime is legal and legal activity is outlawed, but forget about that. This isn't the most logical story in the world.) He lives in a castle on an asteroid, hidden among other chunks of rock orbiting a distant star. This method of concealing his location — which doesn't seem to prevent folks from finding him — offers the opportunity for the reader to enjoy the first of several bits of doggerel that present Quicksilver's philosophy in poetic form.


Home Sweet Home.

Three people show up, one at a time, each wanting to hire Quicksilver to steal a jeweled crown, a relic of an ancient, extinct race of reptilian aliens. The prize is guarded by a sect of fanatical cultists. The three clients include a scholar who turns out to be an imposter, an aristocrat, and a government agent. The latter is a woman who is in love with him. For his part, Quicksilver prefers women who (unsuccessfully) resist his charms.

The quest involves a trip to a planet of criminals, to learn the current whereabouts of the only thief who escaped from the cultists with his life. A clue leads Quicksilver to Earth, where the fellow resides. Meanwhile, multiple assassins make attempts on our hero's life.

Eventually, with the help of the government agent, Quicksilver arrives on the planet of the cultists, where a surprise awaits him. Is there any doubt that Quicksilver will prevail, and that the woman will fall into his arms?


The reptilian aliens, who don't actually show up in the story.

The author revels in the clichés of space adventure, offering tons of odd names and exotic details. Although it's not an out-and-out comedy, there are silly jokes along the way. (There's a reference to various folk heroes from the local religion of far future Earth: Abe Lincoln, Mickey Mouse, Fidel Castro, and Joan Blondell.) These quips tend to take the reader out of the story, which is pretty hard to take seriously anyway.

Quicksilver is an arrogant son-of-a-gun, and the way he forces a kiss on the protesting heroine at the end isn't very pleasant. The whole thing is like a great big bowl of whipped cream; tasty at first, maybe, but you'll soon wish for something more substantial.

Two stars.

The 1991 Draftee, by Joseph Wesley

The author has written about the future of the military several times for the magazine. This latest article includes letters from a young guy serving in the army a quarter of a century from now. It's a pretty depressing picture.

The military secretly induces hypnotic suggestions into the minds of its recruits. There's also some discussion of small robotic weapons that crawl like spiders or fly like insects. Nonlethal but debilitating gases fill the battlefield, so the soldiers wear protective, air-conditioned suits.

It's all highly speculative, particularly the idea that young men of the future will want to shave their heads bald, so the army has to give them regulation haircuts by applying hair-growing treatments! (A wry comment on today's fad for long hair on male hippies?)

Two stars.

Frost Planet, by C. C. MacApp


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

With the permission of the bear-like aliens who inhabit the place, humans have set up mining facilities and a colony under the ice of a frozen world. A crisis threatens to upset the uneasy relationship between the two species when a man is found stabbed to death with an alien knife. A military officer investigates the crime.

Things get even worse when small atomic heating devices go missing. It turns out that several of them have been placed in the ice near the human outpost, intended to destroy the colony. Later, an alien is killed by a human rifle, leading to open conflict. Can our hero prevent disaster?


Firing at a mysterious enemy.

This is a pretty decent science fiction suspense story, which develops quite a bit of tension. You may be able to figure out the whodunit aspect of the plot. The aliens are intriguing, but not enough is done with them.


A duel to the death.

I had to wonder why people are here in the first place. The extreme cold (effectively conveyed, by the way) is hardly conducive to human habitation, and we never find out what the mines produce.

As in many SF stories, the assumption seems to be that future folks will inhabit lots and lots of alien worlds, even those with their own native population. In any case, it's a lot better than the author's seemingly endless Gree series.

Three stars.

Report on the Slow Freeze, by R. C. W. Ettinger

From fictional cold to (possibly) factual cold. The magazine has discussed the possibility of freezing people at the time of death and then reviving them in the future a couple of times before. In this current variation on the theme, the author offers a history of the idea, and speculates about why it has failed to catch on.

A lot of this is going over old ground. The most interesting aspect of the article may be that the author seems to believe that appealing to the emotions, rather than the intellect, is the most effective way to promote the technique.

Two stars.

To the War is Gone, by Richard C. Meredith


Illustrations by Burns. I have been unable to discover the artist's first name.

There's a war going on between ordinary humans and those who have become attached to alien symbiotes that give them a single group mind. After a space battle that destroyed both ships, a lone human survivor with a broken leg waits for death, stranded in a detached segment of the vessel. There's an intact lifeboat not too far away, but he has no way to get to it.


The man. That buzz is goofy.

The only living inhabitant of the enemy ship shows up, floating through the void in a spacesuit. She can reach the lifeboat, but can't operate it. The two can communicate through radio, but can they work together to survive? More importantly, can they trust each other?


The woman, apparently producing the buzz.

I was reminded both of Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Puppet Masters (1951) and Tom Godwin's story The Cold Equations (1954) when I read this piece. Unfortunately, although it was compelling at first, it collapsed into melodrama by the end.

One interesting aspect of the story is the fact that the protagonist is a musician, and the text includes excerpts from real folk songs, as well as fictional ones of the future. Less enjoyable was making the other character a member of a group of women noted for their erotic appeal. This makes the man's decision to help her a matter of sheer lust. (Many of his folk songs are pretty bawdy, too.)

Two stars.

Until Armageddon, by Dannie Plachta

As a break from all this deep space stuff, we have a tiny story set on good old Mother Earth. The Pope and the Premier of Israel (sounds like the start of a joke) meet to ask a super-computer how to achieve world peace. The response is unexpected.

I said a joke, and this thing ends with a punch line, but it's not intended to be funny, as far as I can tell. I don't really know what to think about the twist the author throws at me.

One star.

The Jew in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

Starting with an analysis of the 1959 novel A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., the author delves into the way that science fiction has depicted the Chosen People. With a few exceptions, it's a depressing account of virulent antisemitism. The article includes a discussion of the many talented Jewish writers and editors in the field, noting that they have produced hardly any works relating to the topic.

This was much more interesting than the author's previous scholarly but lifeless articles. I suspect this is because he cares passionately for the subject. The conclusion serves as something as an indictment of the supposedly progressive genre of science fiction, which Moskowitz sees as less enlightened than mainstream fiction.

Three stars.

Seventy Light-Years From Sol, by Stephen Hall


Illustrations by Dan Adkins

Back to voyages to faraway worlds. A team of experts explore an Earth-like but very strange planet. The only form of life seems to be plants resembling lettuce covering the ground. While investigating holes in the dirt, they discover what appear to be millstones.

That's weird enough, but things really get odd when big cubes of various colors show up out of nowhere. (They're actually quite a bit larger than shown in the illustrations.)


The team's biologist, surrounded by cubes.

It seems that the cubes are alive, and are able to communicate, to some extent, with the humans telepathically. The millstones are predators of the cubes, spewing out a substance — which turns out to be aspirin! — that dissolves their prey so they can absorb them.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the planet's other continent is inhabited by gray, imperfect cubes, that threaten to invade the land of the perfect, colorful cubes.

As you can see, this is a really nutty plot, almost like something out of one of Lafferty's tall tales. What makes it work reasonably well is the fact that the human characters are a likable bunch, each with their own quirks. I particularly like the fact that the crew includes a painter, an eccentric older woman. She's a refreshing change from the scientists, officers, and technicians aboard the exploratory starship.

Three stars.

Down to Earth

Coming back home after this imaginary voyage to other star systems was something like returning from a disappointing LSD trip. Some of the pieces were moderately diverting, but nothing was outstanding. Maybe it's time to turn to some other form of entertainment.


A recent children's book. It might be a safer way to travel than acid.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 14, 1966] All the Old Familiar Places (October 1966 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Where Men Have Gone Before

Last week saw the debut of the exciting science fiction anthology show Star Trek.  The opening narration describes a five-year mission, going "where no man has gone before."  Indeed, the second pilot of the program bore that very title.  Never mind that in two of the three episodes I've seen thus far (and in the sole episode yet officially aired), the featured space ship Enterprise went places men had gone before; the promise is still there.

This month's Galaxy, on the other hand, treads entirely familiar ground.  Not necessarily in the subject matter or the plots — these are reasonably fresh.  I mean that pretty much every story save the last constitutes the continuation of a prior story or setting.

Magazine editor Fred Pohl once explained that he has a reliable stable of authors for Galaxy.  As Pohl travels the country on various speaking engagements, he hits his writer friends up for new material.  Cordwainer Smith was on that list until his tragic passing last month.  Frank Herbert is (sadly) also on that list.  And so are most of the authors below.  I imagine each conversation with his pet authors eventually wanders around to "when do you think I might see more of…"

This isn't a bad thing, especially if you like the universes that get expanded.  On the other hand, it is the reason there about are twice as many Retief stories as there should be.

So let's see how this series of sequels fares:

Old Stomping Grounds


by Sol Dember

The Palace of Love (Part 1 of 3), by Jack Vance

In Vance's novel The Star King, we were introduced to Kirth Gersen.  Gersen is a vigilante, roaming the galactic space lanes to track down the elusive and nearly omnipotent "Demon Princes" of crime.  His first target, a fellow named Grendel, is defeated in the wild Beyond, the belt of untamed systems that ring the placid inner worlds.

Now, in Palace, Gerson applies the vast wealth of Grendel toward the next Demon Prince on his list, the volatile slaver and crime boss, Viole Falushe.  This time, the trail leads back to the original home of humanity, specifically, the portion of Europe known as Holland.


by Gray Morrow

I like Vance a lot, but this particular universe has never appealed to me.  Indeed, Palace has the exact same issues that plagued Kings.  At first, Vance's detailed setting descriptions and odd dialogue are compelling.  Over time, they just get tiresome.  Moreover, whereas in stories like The Dragon Masters or The Last Castle, Vance creates a rich world almost from nothing, filled with exciting new places and ideas, the far future in which Kirth Gersen resides feels almost unchanged from 20th Century Earth. 

I have a suspicion that the remainder of this book is going to be a slog.  Three stars so far.

How the Heroes Die, by Larry Niven


by Virgil Finlay

Larry Niven returns us to the Mars he set up in this year's short story, Eye of the Octopus.  The initial expedition that discovered evidence of indigenous Martians has been succeeded by a dozen humans in a bubble dome archaeological base.  When the natives prove elusive, tedium and frustration sets in.  One of the members of the all-male crew makes a pass at another.  Enraged, the target of his advances kicks him in the throat and watches him die.

Knowing that the rest of the team won't stand for it, murderous John "Jack" Carter plunges his Mars buggy through the dome in an attempt to release the air and kill his compatriots.  His plan fails, thanks to the fast reactions of the team.  Alf Harness, the party's linguist, heads out in pursuit.

The cat and mouse chase, with each of the two trying to outsmart the other such that only one can come back alive, working within the constraints of their air supply and their equipment at hand, is a pretty tight bit of writing.  I could have, however, done without the several paragraphs Niven devotes to the motivation of the crime: Lieutenant-Major Shute drafts a report to Earth explaining that a bunch of isolated men together always succumb to homosexuality.  Just like in the Navy.  Or boys-only schools.  Or the Third Reich (I'm not making these examples up).  The solution: Earth needs to send women with them, damn the Morality Leagues that frown on co-ed missions. 

This reminds me of stories I read last decade where female crew members were carried along solely for their convenient orifices.  I had hoped tales endorsing such notions were a thing of the past.  As for modern-day temperance leagues, while I recognize that cultures can regress, it seems to me that women have been serving alongside men for decades now.  Why, I recently saw an episode of Gomer Pyle featuring a woman Marine Captain.  I can't imagine that the trend over the next century is toward a reversal of that practice.

At least the characters in Heroes don't endorse the victim's murder.  The characters (and thus the author) seem to be saying that queers are people too, but that they are the sad creations of circumstance.  (Mr. Niven is apparently unacquainted with Dr. Kinsey, or the excellent documentary on homosexuality, The Rejected).

Three stars.

A Recursion in Metastories, by Arthur C. Clarke

Too short to describe.  A literary joke of unlimited scope if limited value.

Three stars.


by Jack Gaughan

The Ship Who Killed, by Anne McCaffrey


by Nodel

Many years ago, in The Magazine of Science Fiction, Anne McCaffrey introduced us to KH-834, the cybernetic spaceship.  The story was called The Ship Who Sang.  It involved the close relationship between the vessel's female resident brain, Helva, and the ambulatory "brawn" component, a man named Jennan. 

Jennan dies in that story, leaving Helva devastated but still spaceworthy.  She is detached from scout duty, instead being used for a sequence of odd job missions.  Her first, in which Helva's passenger is a doctor dispatched to a plague-ravaged world, was detailed in a recent Analog in a story titled The Ship Who Mourned.

And now Killed, appearing in yet another magazine.  This time, Helva is to be a metallic womb, ferrying a hundred thousand frozen fetuses to a world that has suffered a sterilizing catastrophe.  Her passenger is Kira, responsible for obtaining the unborn children from various worlds and taking care of them on their journey.  She has suffered the recent loss of her partner, too, and is expressedly suicidal.  Helva's orders are explicitly to avoid worlds on which suicide is legal.  Unfortunately, not all such worlds are cataloged…

One interesting bit is that Kira is a "Dylanist", part of a sect of cynical singer-songwriters who have almost deified ol' Bob.  She even plays "Blowin' in the Wind" at one point.  It's rather bold to extrapolate such a huge impact from something so recent as a popular singer (is there a rival faction known as "The Beatlers"?) And while it is possible that the former Mr. Zimmerman may go on to be so influential as to spawn religious adherents, McCaffrey fails to account for musical evolution: Kira employs the acoustic guitar in Killed, an instrument Dylan has already abandoned.

Such is the danger of precise prediction!

Anyway, that's just a side note.  The story itself has a reasonably good setup, but McCaffrey's writing style, filled to the brim with adverbs and acid repartee, just isn't doing it for me.  Each story in this series has been less compelling than the last.  This may explain why each one has been published in a new magazine; usually, editors hold onto writers as long as they can.

Two stars.

For Your Information: The Delayed Discovery, by Willy Ley

Willy Ley meanders through the history of atomic chemistry, covering a great many topics shallowly and without a lot of causality.  Asimov usually needs to trim his articles; Ley needed more connective tissue to make this one work.

Two stars.

Too Many Esks, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

We're now four stories into the saga of the Esks, inhuman hybrids of Eskimos and an alien invader, who live above the arctic circle in Canada.  Esks grow to maturity in just five years.  Female Esks gestate and bear a child every month.  This new race has already outgrown its food supply, relying on government handouts to stay alive.

Dr. Joe West has been warning of a Malthusian nightmare for months now.  At last, some folks are starting to listen to him.  But the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, and West is concerned that once the hybrid Esks interbreed with humans (as one did with West), homo sapiens will be displaced by the more fecund breed.  Once this happens, there are signs that the original aliens will return to enslave the Earth.

And so, West hatches a plan to sterilize the Esks through biological warfare.  Like all of West's other endeavors against the Esks, the mission is a dismal and emotionally fraught failure.

These Esk tales oscillate between tedious and mildly engaging, all requiring a healthy dollop of suspension of disbelief.  I've been along for this ride long enough that I'm now kind of curious as to how it will end.

Three stars.

Planet of Fakers, by J. T. McIntosh


by McClane

McIntosh is an author with a long career.  He's written five-star stories, a number of pedestrian pieces, and a few truly awful ones.  Often, his works contain Sexist (or at least anti-feminine) portrayals of women.

So it was that I approached this last piece of the issue with some trepidation (especially given the weird art that suggested a sexual farce).

I am happy to report that I was pleasanty surprised.

Planet starts in medias res.  A tense trio, one man and two women, are subjecting a queue of persons to a test.  Their goal: to prove the humanity of each subject. 

Through adroit exposition, McIntosh slowly clues us in to the situation.  A colony of a few hundred has been besieged by an alien race of body possessors.  The fake humans are in telepathic communion with one another, so while it was once a trivial task to tell humans from sham-people, tests can only be used effectively once.  And the colonists are running out of tests.

While Planet does not take place in a preexisting universe, the bodysnatching genre has been around for decades, including such classics as Campbell's Who Goes There? and Heinlein's The Puppet Masters (and, of course, the 1956 movie which gave the genre its label).  Nevertheless, what McIntosh does with it is so deftly executed, and so neatly contrived, that's it's clear the old subject still has life in it.  At least in the hands of a master.

I'd originally planned to give it four stars, but it has stayed with me such that I think it earns a full five.

Dust Bowl's a comin'

With the exception of the standout final story, the October 1966 Galaxy is pretty mediocre stuff.  I think the lesson I've gotten is that fields can grow fallow, especially ones that weren't very fertile to begin with.

I think Pohl's writers would do themselves well to find some new land to plow.  And maybe Galaxy could use a more diverse set of farmers…

(If you're looking for something new, join us tomorrow at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next episode of Star Trek!)

Here's the invitation!

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Magazine

[March 9, 1964] Deviant from the Norm (April 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

It's Spreading

25 years ago, a group of fen met in New York for the first World's Science Fiction Convention.  Now, conclaves are springing up all over the nation (and internationally, too).  Just this weekend, I attended a small event ambitiously titled San Diego Comic Fest.  It was a kind of "Comics-in," where fans of the funny pages could discuss their peculiar interests: Is Superman better than Batman?  Are the X-Men and the Doom Patrol related?  Is Steve Ditko one of the best comics artists ever?

I was there as an invited guest to speak on the current state of comics and science fiction.  I understand that the proceeding was filmed and may even be broadcast on local television.  When that happens, I shall be sure to give you a heads up.

Slinging my new color camera, I took photos of some of the new friends I made.  There was also excellent space-themed decor, which I had to capture for posterity.  Many thanks to my friends with the private dark room who developed these prints so quickly for publication:


Posters lining the bar at the Lunar Lounge


Mercury meets Sputnik


The Young Traveler (initials L.E.M.) poses with a mock-up of the Apollo LEM


Alvin of the Chipmunks (his name really is Alvin!)


The artist known as Napoleon Doom


The Traveler with a familiar face


A beautiful, newly commissioned drawing of Dr. Martha Dane, the Journey's unofficial mascot

While the con possessed many superlative qualities, I think my fondest memories involved reading the latest issue of Galaxy, sitting in the lobby of the event hotel, listening to one of the fans play an endless medley of classic and new tunes on the piano.  With that, I suppose it's appropriate I tell you about what I read…

The Issue at Hand


Cover by Sol Dember illustrating Final Contact

The Boy Who Bought Old Earth, by Cordwainer Smith

For years, Cordwainer Smith has teased us with views of his future tales of the Instrumentality, the rigid, computer-facilitated government of Old Earth.  We've learned that there are the rich humans, whose every whim is catered to.  Beneath them, literally, are the Underpeople — animals shaped into human guise (a la Dr. Moreau) who live in subterranean cities.  A giant tower, miles high, launches spaceships to the heavens, spreading the Instrumentality to the hundreds of settled stars of the galaxy.  All but one, the setting of Smith's newest book.

Old North Australia stands alone, an island in an Instrumentality-dominated sea of space.  On that grey, dusty world, its inhabitants still pledge fealty to the Queen of the British Commonwealth (she and that confederation dead some 15,000 years).  What enables this world, dubbed "Norstrilia," to stand alone?  Like Frank Herbert's Arrakis, Norstrilia is the sole producer of the longevity drug, stroon.  This has made Norstrilia fantastically wealthy, able to produce the most lethal of defenses (including Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons).

Our viewpoint in Boy is Rod McBan, a protagonist with a problem.  The scion of one of Norstrilia's oldest and richest families, he has been barred from achieving adulthood for his inability to communicate telepathically with his peers.  Four times the boy has lived to the age of sixteen; three times, he has had his memories erased in the hopes that Rod might develop the appropriate mental gifts to participate meaningfully in society.  Failure to do so a fourth time means judgment by tribunal and possible sentence to death.

How Rod escapes this fate and turns around his fortune so entirely (figuratively and literally) such that he becomes possessor of the Manhome, Old Earth itself, is an interesting tale I shan't spoil.  I can, however, share my thoughts on the story's execution.

Smith is one of the more unusual authors out there.  Having been raised in pre-Communist China and then employed by intelligence agencies, Smith has much more experience with non-Western cultures.  This shows up in his writing, with the Instrumentality and its denizens a fair bit further from the norm of SF societal depictions. 

The author is hampered, however, by choosing Norstrilia as his setting.  The planet is prosaic, deliberately so by choice of the inhabitants.  Missing is that lucid dream-like quality Smith has imparted his other Instrumentality stories.

Moreover, the novel is very short, and it ends abruptly just as it's getting interesting.  I suspect the piece has been cut for space.  The result is just two thirds of a story arc.

For these reasons, I give Boy 3.5 stars and hope that a fuller rendition comes out in proper book form.  Perhaps, like Heinlein's Starship Troopers, this will turn a flawed gem into a masterpiece.

Earth Eighteen, by Ernst Mason

After finishing the serious, humorless piece that was Boy, it was quite a jolt to be thrown into this comedy article, a tourguide for aliens visiting a ruined and mostly depopulated Earth.  Thus, it took me a while to slow down and get into the thing, but once I did, I found moments of genuine cleverness.  The Gaughan pictures are cute, too. 

Three stars.

For Your Information, by Willy Ley

The non-fiction article this month deals with statistical bell curves: the phenomenon whereby any set of things (height of people, size of noses, width of beans) falls within boundaries with the most common incidence being right in the middle.  It's not a bad piece, but it's short and ends abruptly. 

Three stars.

The End of the Race, by Albert Bermel

If you've read the recent novel (soon to be movie) Fail-safe, then you know the ending to this story, a farcical piece about negotiated disarmament between the superpowers.  It was better when it wasn't played for laughs, and not very good laughs at that.

Two stars.

Final Encounter, by Harry Harrison

Now here is the real gem of the book, and a real departure from the norm.  Ship's captain Hautamaki, of the race of Men, takes aboard a married pair of more conventionally human anthropologists, Gulyas and Tjond.  Their mission: to make first contact with aliens.  The extraterrestrials have left tantalizing clues of their existence, beacons on various worlds pointing to one star in the galaxy.  Friction quickly erupts amongst the crew.  Tjond, the sole woman, finds Hautamaki's insistence on nudity disturbing.  And she cannot comprehend at all the society of Men, which includes no women, involves marriage, love, and production of children by homosexual union alone. 

Worse yet, Hautamaki insists on jettisoning all weaponry and adopting a completely peaceful posture when approaching the aliens.  His reasoning is that the threat of violence could jeopardize the contact, and if the aliens prove hostile even in the face of no provocation, well, the next mission will be so alerted.

I absolutely loved this story.  It possessed that well-executed strangeness that I'd sort of expected from the Smith.  I appreciated that it was the Man who was the gentle pacifist.  And, as in Evelyn Smith's They Also Serve, a homosexual man is key to a peaceful first contact.  But unlike Smith's story, this is the first instance in SF (aside from Sturgeon's The World Well Lost from 1953) where the homosexuality is explicit — and completely unapologetic.

How times have changed.  Five stars.

At the Feelies, by Jack Sharkey

At the con, I had a discussion with a fellow who mused on the future of movies.  After silent films came talkies.  Then color, 3-D, "Sens-o-rama," and so on.  It was timely, then, that I read this piece right after.  It's a (fictional) review of Gone with the Wind redone such that the audience can feel and smell from the point of view of the actors — a technology with mixed blessings, as you can imagine.

It's cute.  Three stars.

Soft and Soupy Whispers, by Sydney Van Scyoc

Van Scyoc offers up a typically macabre piece about a mentally disturbed man whose insanity is kept under control through the installation of a mental companion.  In essence, the fellow is made sane through schizophrenia.  It's subtle and interesting, but a bit obtuse and more artful than plausible.

Three stars.

The Blasphemers, by Philip José Farmer

Last up is another piece from left field, this one dealing with a race of centaurs that possesses four sexes, all of which are necessary to produce (and capable of bearing) children.  The aliens are an advanced, starfaring race.  Highly religious, they venerate the spirits of their ancestors, holding sacred the statues of their elders.  One iconoclast leads his mated quartet to a shrine and proceeds to make love amongst the monuments.

He is caught and brought before a judge, but instead of being sentenced to immolation, he is congratulated for his heresy and informed that the state religion is bunk, actually a tool to justify the conquest of planets: one of the faith's tenets is that an early ancestor left statues of himself on planets to be colonized by the race; such statues were actually carved recently by advance scouts.

Our protagonist is then made a ship's captain and dispatched to colonize as many worlds as he and his companions can, until common sense prevails over faith and the old order is toppled.

Particularly interesting about this piece is the assertion that religious faith is instilled by nature, not nurture.  Like sexual preference, one can't help one's feelings on the subject, the story says.

Ambitious and laudable as Farmer's goals are in this piece, his execution is workmanlike.  Ted Sturgeon once called Farmer an author who always almost gets it right, and that record continues with The Blasphemers.  I suppose Harrison can't write all the iconoclastic tales.

Three stars.

Summing Up

With just one very short clunker in the mix, and despite the (relative) disappointment of the Smith novel, the April 1964 Galaxy is a welcome departure from the standard.  I'm impressed.  What wonders await us in two months?

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




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