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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 10, 1969] Low (May 1969 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Here’s the May Amazing, the latest installment of the dreary soap opera that this magazine has become.  The well-qualified Ted White is the new editor, the fourth in ten issues.  Though he’s listed as Managing Editor, and Sol Cohen as Editor and Publisher, White’s editorial makes it clear that he will be running the magazine—within the constraints of Cohen’s policies, of course, most notably the reprint policy.


by Johnny Bruck

As a debut issue, this one does not impress, but that’s probably not a fair judgment.  Given the abrupt departure of White’s predecessor Barry Malzberg, it was likely a scramble to get any issue at all together from available parts.  The fiction contents include an Edmond Hamilton story in a series that has run in Amazing and Fantastic for several years, publication no doubt foreordained; one very short new story; and the usual heavy load of reprints, all from the 1950s consistent with recent practice.  The non-fiction includes, as usual of late, a Laurence Janifer movie review (Barbarella—he likes it!) and a Leon Stover “Science of Man” article.  The only identifiable change is a letter column.  The book review department is missing, one hopes temporarily, since it has been one of the magazine’s brighter aspects.

As for future plans, White provides a rather carefully argued editorial, which starts by analogizing the “New Thing” in science fiction to the ongoing innovations in popular music, noting that despite the “sudden flowering” of rock music, it isn’t forgetting its roots.  After some commentary on the New Thing, sympathetic but cautionary (“One J.G. Ballard can be important, but ten little Ballards?”), White asserts that most of the “New Wave” writers have not neglected their predecessors, citing Zelazny and Delany, noting particularly that Delany has absorbed and transformed old Planet Stories-style space opera plots. “It is my conviction that the science fiction field needs a magazine in which the old and the new can exist side by side, each thriving from its proximity to the other.  And that is what I intend for Amazing: Something of the old (the reprints) and of the new (the best of the new writers). . . .” And he concludes by adding that this issue’s “Star Kings” novelet by Edmond Hamilton exemplifies exploration of the genre’s roots—but next issue we can expect a “new and very different novel by Robert Silverberg.”

It’s all gracefully done, touching the necessary bases with plausible conviction, and starkly contrasting with Harry Harrison’s pandering editorial of February 1968, which made essentially the same substantive points but which struck me as “a disappointingly smarmy exercise in having it both ways.”

The letter column is divided among sober commentary on current SF, the pleasures of letter columns and fanzine reviews, and a quite long letter contesting Stover’s “Science of Man” article War and Peace, which White says he cut down from 14 pages.  Shades of Brass Tacks!  This feature will require some tightening up but White clearly takes it seriously.  As for the reference to fanzine reviews, White promises “fan features” in both Amazing and Fantastic.

And up front—though looking backward—is another cliched cover illustration by Johnny Bruck.  Last issue, fellow Journeyer Cora Buhlert wished that Amazing would use the good Bruck covers rather than the dull ones.  Yes!  If there are any.

The Horror from the Magellanic, by Edmond Hamilton

The lead story is Edmond Hamilton’s “short novel” (33 pages), The Horror from the Magellanic, latest in his series of sequels to his 1947 novel The Star Kings.  I won’t repeat my previous jaundiced comments on the whole enterprise, but will leave it at a couple of samples:

“ ‘Highness, they’ve come out of the Marches.  The Counts’ fleet.  They’re more than twice as strong as we expected . . . and they’re coming full speed toward Fomalhaut!’
“Chapter Two
“Gordon felt a chilling dismay.  The Counts of the Marches were throwing everything they had into this.  And whether their gamble succeeded or not, in the dark background brooded the unguessable purposes and menace of the H’harn.”

And:

“. . . Gordon sat for a long time looking past the moving lights and the uproar and clamorous confusion of the great city, toward the starry sky.  A star kingdom might fall, Narath might realize his ambition and sit on the throne of Fomalhaut, and he, John Gordon, and Lianna might be sent to their deaths.  And that would be a world tragedy as well as tragedy for them.
“But if the H’harn succeeded, that would be tragedy for the whole galaxy, a catastrophe of cosmic dimension.  Thousands of years before they had come from the outer void, bent on conquest, and only the power of the Disruptor, unloosed by Brenn Bir, had driven them back .  Out there in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud they had brooded all this time, never giving up their purpose, filtering back gradually in secret plotting with the Counts, plotting with Narath, making ready some new tremendous stroke.
“Doomsday had come again, after those thousands of years.”


by Dan Adkins

To my taste, this is all an idea whose time has passed.  No disrespect to Hamilton—a working professional writing in a mode he virtually invented—especially since he has shown he can work quite capably in styles other than this bombastic costume drama (see his 1960 novel The Haunted Stars).  Three stars, acknowledging the craft involved, even if I can’t get interested.

Yesterdays, by Ray Russell

The new short story (very short), Ray Russell’s Yesterdays, couples two ancient themes, time running backwards and mad scientists; it’s clever and facile, as one would expect from the long-time fiction editor of Playboy, but no more. Three stars.

The Invaders, by Murray Leinster

The longest story in the issue is Murray Leinster’s The Invaders, from the April/May 1953 issue of Amazing, the first in its short-lived experiment in paying more in order to get better material from more well-known authors.  Leinster shared the contents page with Heinlein, Sturgeon, and Bradbury.  Unfortunately his story begins well but undermines itself, unusually for this professional of decades’ standing.


Uncredited

The scene is set in terms of purest Cold War paranoia.  The protagonist, surveying in Greece, flees an unacknowledged incursion by Bulgarian soldiers, and the author observes:

“It was not the time for full-scale war.  Bulgaria and the other countries in its satellite status were under orders to put a strain upon the outside world.  They were building up border incidents and turmoil for the benefit of their masters.  Turkey was on a war footing, after a number of incidents like this.  Indo-China was at war.  Korea was an old story.  Now Greece.  It always takes more men to guard against criminal actions than to commit them. . .  This was cold war.”

In the midst of this covert crisis, the protagonist discovers powerful evidence of infiltration by extraterrestrials in human guise—but what to do?  Who will believe him?  Leinster builds an atmosphere of suspense and suspicion at first, but it is quickly dissipated by hints that something different and more benign is going on, and by the end there’s no suspense or surprise.  Three stars, barely; it’s at least slickly readable, as usual for Leinster.

King of the Black Sunrise, by Milton Lesser

Milton Lesser’s King of the Black Sunrise is an entirely more rancid kettle of fish.  It’s from Amazing, May 1955, in the midst of the Howard Browne/Paul Fairman era of calculated formulaic mediocrity, and shows it.  It reads like the result of a barroom bet over how many egregious cliches the author could cram into a single story. 

Kent Taggert, fugitive from justice on murder charges (but of course he’s innocent), is tracked down on the obscure planet Argiv by a woman who wants to hire him for a dangerous assignment.  “I looked at her for the first time.  She was beautiful.  So damned beautiful and so damned sure of herself.  I felt like poking her one.” A bit later: “I could smell her perfume, not the kind that slams two sexy fists into your nostrils but the subtle kind, like the girls can buy only on Earth.”


Uncredited

The woman (named Helen, we later learn) discloses that the World Bureau of Investigation is on his trail, and like clockwork, a guy “who was trying too hard not to look like law” shows up at the bar where this conversation is occurring.  Taggert decides he’d better take Helen’s proposition—to guide her party to find and plunder the treasure of the Black Sunrise. 

See, Argiv has three suns—per the natives, the Green God, the Yellow God, and (“greatest of all”) the Purple God.  They all rise and set at different times, but occasionally they are all below the horizon at the same time.  That’s the Black Sunrise, even though it’s really a sunset.  During the Black Sunrise, the barrier to the natives’ treasure cave opens up, and new offerings are deposited to make sure the three Gods come back.  No one who has sought to steal this treasure has emerged alive.

So our freebooters hire some native bearers (“big flabby purple-skinned Argivians”) and march into the jungle (“King Solomon’s Mines, a hundred parsecs out in deep space,” muses Cotton, the hotheaded jerk of the party).  But soon enough the bearers become fearful and desert, and the humans must push on without much of their equipment.

It goes on in similar vein, but recounting it is even more tedious than reading it.  One star.

Wish It Away, by Frank Freeman

Frank Freeman’s Wish It Away (Fantastic, January-February 1954) is a jokey vignette so inane it almost hurts to describe it.  Protagonist Mervin sees a monster every night, psychiatrist tells him to “wish it away,” next night the psychiatrist sees the monster, who says, “Mervin sent me.  I hope it’s all right.” Now nobody else has to read it.  One star.

Race-Zoology and Politics, by Leon E. Stover

The “Science of Man” article by Leon E. Stover suffers the faults of its predecessors, magnified.  Race-Zoology and Politics is an outright polemic, with Stover taking up the cause of Carleton S. Coon, author of The Origin of the Races, who was denounced as a racist a few years ago by the president of the American Anthropological Association.  Stover says Coon “has simply become a ‘non-person’ to the profession,” but: “It is a dead certainty that Coon sometime in the future will be rehabilitated and recognized for the great work he has done, which has been to complete the uncompleted work of Darwin.”

Well, maybe.  Stover proceeds to argue Coon’s case about the evolution of human physical types in his familiar assertively dogmatic fashion.  This one-sided partisan presentation concerning what is apparently a hot ongoing argument in the profession is of little use to the lay reader trying to understand more about the underlying science.  Not rated—it’s just out of place here.

Summing Up

This is the most discouraging issue of Amazing in recent memory.  The magazine continues to limp along under the weight of the reprint policy, and this issue’s batch of them is the worst in some time.  Notably, the original notion of reacquainting the current SF readership with forgotten classics of the field—or at least interesting period pieces—has largely been lost as the reprints have come more frequently from Amazing’s more recent periods of outright mediocrity, mostly ranging from routine to awful.  Will yet another new editor be allowed to make it better?




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 2, 1969] Winners and Losers (March 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

A different civil rights struggle

When Ireland gained independence in 1922, six predominantly Protestant counties in the north of the island opted to remain part of the United Kingdom, forming what is today known as Northern Ireland. In the almost 50 years since the partition, there have been tensions both between the two parts and within Northern Ireland between those who want a unified Ireland—predominantly Irish Catholics—and those who prefer the status quo: predominantly Protestants whose ancestors emigrated from Scotland. There have been riots and armed attacks over the decades, but the last few years have been relatively peaceful.

Irish Catholics in the north face discrimination in housing and employment, their political power is diluted by carefully drawn electoral districts, and they are grossly underrepresented in the police, which are backed by Protestant paramilitary units. In the last few years, a civil rights campaign has developed in an effort to right these wrongs. The first of several civil rights marches took place last August. In October, a march took place in Londonderry (called by its older name of Derry by the Irish) despite being denied permission. Television cameras caught images of police attacking the peaceful marchers, sparking outrage around the world.

Spurred by those images, a group of students at Queen’s University in Belfast formed People’s Democracy. On New Year’s Day, they began a march from Belfast to Derry, in imitation of Dr. King’s Selma to Montgomery marches. Along the way, they were met by counter-protests and occasionally attacked. On the 4th, as they approached a bridge in the village of Burntollet a few miles outside Derry, they were attacked by 200-300 Ulster Loyalists (a group not unlike the Citizens’ Councils in the American South) wielding stones, iron bars, and sticks spiked with nails. Meanwhile, the police stood by and did nothing.

Counter-protesters armed with sticks and iron bars attack civil rights marchers while the police look on

That evening, the police stormed into the Bogside neighborhood, attacking Catholics in and outside their homes. Residents forced the police out and set up barricades. Police were denied any access to “Free Derry,” as it came to be known, for nearly a week. Eventually, the barricades came down and police patrols resumed, but tensions remain high.

At this point, a political solution seems unlikely, certainly not one from the Parliament of Northern Ireland. Proposals thus far have been not enough for the nationalists and too much for the loyalists.

A winning issue

At the 1966 Worldcon, IF won the Hugo for Best Professional Magazine. To celebrate, editor Fred Pohl trumpeted a Hugo winner’s issue. He didn’t quite succeed; Frank Herbert wasn’t able to contribute due to a health issue, and the whole thing was weighed down by an installment of a not very good Algis Budrys serial. IF won again the next year, but there was no comparable issue. Last year, the magazine took its third straight best prozine Hugo, and Fred decided to try again. This time, he got every winner to contribute, and I do mean every. Even the winners in the fan categories are here. Let’s see how it all stacks up.

The Steel General rides again. Art by Best Professional Artist Jack Gaughan

Down in the Black Gang, by Philip José Farmer

Mecca Mike is a member of the black gang, the engine crew for The Ship. (That’s an old term for the coal-engine stokers that now refers to the whole engine crew; the reason it applies to Mike might be a little different.) A shortage of hands means that he gets reassigned to Beverly Hills when a huge thrust potential is discovered there. If he can successfully develop that potential, there’s a promotion in it for him.

The thrust potential is in one of these apartments full of squabbling neighbors. Art by Gaughan

Farmer was co-winner in the Best Novella category for “Riders of the Purple Wage.” He’s dabbling in metaphysics again, which seems to be a favorite topic of his, but much better than he usually does. He even managed to bring the story to a successful ending, something he often has trouble with. Great ideas, incomplete execution, but not this time. This one’s right on the line between three and four stars, but I think I’ll be generous.

Four stars, but probably not a contender for the Galactic Stars.

Phoenix Land, by Harlan Ellison

Red is staggering through the desert on an expedition to find the risen ruins of an ancient civilization. He’s already buried his best friend and is now saddled with an ex-girlfriend and her husband, who financed the expedition. Unfortunately, he cut some corners. Whether or not they survive is an open question.

Harlan came away with two Hugos: Best Short Fiction for “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (which ran in the first Hugo winners issue I mentioned earlier) and Best Dramatic Presentation for “The City on the Edge of Forever” (which he’d probably rather not have). A lot of other winners and nominees also appeared in Dangerous Visions, which he edited. This particular story is full of that trademark Ellison anger, but the bite at the end doesn’t hit the way he wants it to.

A low three stars.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Harlan Ellison

An interesting interview, but for a guy who can write tight, terse stories, he sure does like to run his mouth. Also, Harlan, my friend, you’re getting a little long in the tooth to be an enfant terrible.

Three stars.

Art by Gaughan

The Ship Who Disappeared, by Anne McCaffrey

Best Novella co-winner Anne McCaffrey (for “Weyr Search”) brings us another story about Helva, who is essentially a brain in a box operating a ship that has become her body. This time she’s investigating the disappearance of other brain ships while also dealing with the realization she made a bad choice in her new partner.

Helva has a chat with the bad guy. Art by Brock

Unfortunately, these stories have gotten progressively worse. They started from a very high mark, so they’re still readable, but this one barely makes the grade. Helva spends more time being unhappy about her choice of Brawn than she does worrying about disappearing ships. She succeeds mostly through coincidence and is unconscious for the key action.

Barely three stars.

The Frozen Summer, by David Redd

The centaur-like Senechi have colonized Earth, trapped in a new ice age. Looking for a quick score, two of them are investigating native legends of a valley where it is always summer, full of gold and gems, and guarded by a goddess. To the man she has held captive for centuries, she is simply “the witch.” Who, if any, will manage to escape?

The witch turns the skeletons of those who invade her valley into golden ships. Art by Virgil Finlay

Redd is the only fiction author in this issue not to have won a Hugo. Powerful women in frozen landscapes seems to be a recurring theme with him, and all of his stories, on that theme or not, have a strange beauty to them. This one is no exception.

Four stars.

The Faithful Messenger, by George Scithers

George Scithers is the editor of Amra, which took home the Best Fanzine Hugo. Although he’s had stories printed in various fanzines over the years, this is his first professional sale, making him this month’s IF First author. As I understand it, Amra focuses on sword-and-sorcery tales; they carry a lot of critical articles on Conan and the like. Scithers’ story, on the other hand is more an old-fashioned SF tale of two human scouts encountering a robotic mailman on a distant planet. It’s well-told and nowhere near as hokey as it sounds.

Three stars.

Endfray of the Ofay, by Fritz Leiber

Someone is diverting supplies intended for poor Blacks to the white reservations around North America, always with the message “Courtesy of the Endfray of the Ofay!” When these antics start to interfere in the war “between North America and Africa to Make the World Safe for Black Supremacy,” the Empress in Memphis (the one in Tennessee) demands something be done.

Her Serene Darkness is displeased. Art by Gaughan

Fritz Leiber (Best Novelette for “Gonna Roll the Bones”) offers us another satire in the vein of A Specter is Haunting Texas. For me, this is much less successful. Most of the humor stems from the pun where Pig Latin and Black slang overlap, with very little elsewhere. I’m also not sure a white author should be poking into some of these corners. It’s often hard to tell if he’s mocking or perpetuating some stereotypes.

A low three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

Lester del Rey has never won a Hugo. Of course, he wrote most of his best stuff before the award existed. In any case, this month he looks at the differences between robots in the real world and in science fiction. Those in SF are much more mechanical men than machines. If we ever get machines that actually think, how might that differ from the way we do?

Three stars.

Saboteur, by Ted White

Mark Redwing has developed a method for manipulating public opinion and government policy through things like blackmail, riot, and assassination. It’s not entirely clear what his ultimate goal is. Nor is it clear just who the saboteur of the title might be.

Mark Redwing and his trusted assistant Linda. Art by Best Fan Artist George Barr

Ted White won the Hugo for Best Fan Writer. Even filthy pros still write for the fanzines occasionally. This story is fully in pro mode, and it’s a good one. It should make you think and come back to you when you least expect it.

Four stars.

Creatures of Darkness, by Roger Zelazny

Zelazny (Best Novel for Lord of Light) wraps up the issue and his strange tale of Egyptian gods who are actually human beings in the far future. It’s impossible to say much about this convoluted story in the space available here, but it has that quintessential Zelazny-ness to it. It’s probably best read along with the other two bits, since characters have more than one name, and it’s sometimes hard to remember who is who. There are also clearly pieces missing from a larger whole. I look forward to seeing it all in one place.

Four stars, with the potential for five when it’s complete.

Osiris brings his greatest weapon to bear against Typhon. Art by Reiber

Summing up

There it is, a contribution from every single one of last year’s Hugo winners, fan and pro. One or two feel a bit dashed off or could have benefited from more time for another rewrite, but none are bad. On the whole, it’s a success. If every issue could be this good, IF would be guaranteed to walk off with a fourth Hugo this year in St. Louis.

Has it been long enough since the last Retief story for a new one to feel fresh?




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 12, 1968] (October 1968 Galactoscope)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Although only bi-annual, rather than quarterly, at the moment, Carnell continues to regularly release his anthology series, easily eclipsing Pohl’s Star series and Knight’s Orbit. Will it be lucky #13?

New Writings in S-F 13
Hardback cover for New Writings in SF 13
Carnell notes there is an international flavour to this volume, with four Brits, Two Aussies, One American and One Belgian. Has any English Language SF publication series managed to have a male Belgian author before a woman author of any nationality? I think it may be a first! (International SF had both in its second issue.)

The Divided House by John Rackham
Leaving in 1984 on a ten-year voyage to look for intelligent life, Space-Farer IV now returns (due to time compression) in 2104. They find an Earth divided by genetics between the ruling Croms and their slaves, the Nandys, and the crew are split into the different camps.

I recently saw Judgement at Nuremburg on the BBC and this brought to my mind a scene where a witness on the sterilization procedure says:

My Mother…She was a hardworking woman, and it is not fair what you say. Here. I want to show you. I have here her picture. I would like you to look at it. I would like you to judge. I want that you tell me, was she feeble-minded? My mother! Was she feeble-minded? Was she?

This story addresses the question of eugenics, how we can judge one type of person to be inferior to another and how easy it is for science to be perverted. Important ideas.

And yet, I am not 100% sure I understand the conclusion he is meant to be reaching, nor the way in which it is delivered. I suspect this may be a story Rackham is planning to expand to novel length.

Three Stars for now.

Public Service by Sydney J. Bounds
On a densely populated island city, the fire service are reduced to a policy of containment instead of stopping fires. The poor are crying out for change, but what else can Fire Control do?

Reading this, I wondered if it was inspired by Kowloon Walled City, where the lack of access roads make it impossible for fire vehicles to enter. As such, it felt believable even in its exaggerated fashion, and Bounds put it together with great style. Dark, atmospheric but an all too realistic vision of the future.

Four Stars

The Ferryman on the River by David Kyle
The tower platform is a common site from which people throw themselves to their death. Hector is a salvager who takes away those who jump and offers them a new life. But is he salvation or slaver?

This is very much a stylistic piece, so your opinions will likely depend on how you feel about a regular switch between long run-on sentences full of descriptions and short clipped statements, in other words, how I write. I like it.

Four Stars

Testament by Vincent King
The Exploration Corps travel to 3m2t670, the last unexplored planetary system in the galaxy. Their mission, to determine if any other world has ever evolved life. We hear the record of Officer Dahndehr as his apparent discovery of the remnants of an ancient civilization turns to disaster.

King has tended to specialize in Vancian Medieval Futurism, but he manages to do well here in more common SFnal settings. It is a touch old fashioned, like a combination between Clarke and Ashton Smith, but he adds a unique style to it and has a twist in the tail I did not expect. Well done all round.

Four Stars

The Macbeth Expiation by M. John Harrison
On an unexplored planet an expedition shoots a group of alien beasts. When they return to the site, however, there is no sign of the encounter. Did they fail to hit them? Were they hallucinating in the first place? Or is something stranger going on?

This is described as a psychological thriller, and I would say that is accurate. It is a fairly atmospheric example, which makes us question what is real, albeit an unexceptional one.

A high three stars, probably a fourth for those who really enjoy the subgenre.

Representative by David Rome
Catton is an insurance salesman who is annoyed by his young neighbours, The Brownings. They laugh off his sales attempts and are convinced they will never need it. However, upon discovering a near identical couple have moved in next to his friends, he suspects something stranger is happening.

This is another example of what I term “Exurban Uncanny”, which often turns up in New Writings, unnerving stories about the sterileness of new towns. This is a pretty good story of this type, if rather obvious.

Three Stars

The Beach by John Baxter
People live in the warm embrace of the beach. Swimming, partying and in full contentment. One day Jael suddenly notices that buildings exist beyond the beach and leaves to investigate.

I am not sure what to make of this. Is it meant to be a mockery of surf bums? A stylistic experiment? An exploration of how people cope with trauma?

Whatever it is, Baxter writes it well enough to earn Three Stars.

The City, Dying by Eddy C. Bertin
Written in a sloping up and down fashion: A Thousand separate pieces each crying out for help Then below in big bold letters: Destroying
In breathless and experimental style, Bertin tells of Wade’s attempts to find meaning whilst living in a police state. But, in such a place, what is reality and what is nightmare?

Apparently, this was originally written for a Belgian literary contest, then translated into Dutch and further into English, revised by the author each time. However, you wouldn’t know it. It reads incredibly well and makes use of the kind of typographical experiments en vogue in New Worlds.

Yet, it doesn’t feel like it is doing anything particularly new; rather it is what might happen if Kafka had submitted a piece to Michael Moorcock.

A high three stars

Keep Calm and Carry On
So, overall, this was a pretty solid volume of his series. Nothing that would rise to an all time classic but nothing I did not find interesting to read. Will the series continue its success? Given the British John C. has been editing SF publications for just as long as his American counterpart, I don’t see either of them putting down their red pens any time soon.


by Victoria Silverwolf

Laughing to Keep From Crying?

The latest Ace Double (H-91) contains two short novels (probably novellas, really) with plots that seem comic, at first glance, but are treated mostly in a serious manner. Let's take a look at them.

Murphy's Law

The shorter of the two presents a situation in which anything that could go wrong does go wrong.

Target: Terra, by Laurence M. Janifer and S. J. Treibich


Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

Some folks are inside a space station carrying nuclear weapons to be used against the Enemy should war break out. Our hapless hero, Intelligence Officer Angelo DiStefano, has to deal with artificial gravity that changes from zero to three times Earth normal, and everything in between, at random. His magnetic boots wander around on their own. The food machine produces inedible stuff that looks like weirdly colored snakes.

Bad enough, but when he finds out that the station's weapons are aimed at every major city on Earth, Good Guys or Bad Guys, he's got real problems.

So far, the story seems like a black comedy farce. I was taken by surprise, therefore, when an expository chapter reveals that the majority of Asians died in a plague that didn't harm non-Asians. Not exactly funny. Anyway, that's got something to do with the surviving Asians getting ready to attack the others, which will cause the station's missiles to launch.

(I should mention that the station has run out of sex suppressant, so the only woman aboard has a paranoid fear of being raped. Sorry, I'm not laughing.)

Angelo tries to figure out who's trying to wipe out all life on Earth. Aliens? A mad saboteur? And what can be done to prevent total Armageddon?

There's a lot of quirky characters, from a "midget" electronics genius to a captain who never leaves the bridge. Besides the distasteful content I mentioned above, there's also another armed space station containing Africans. The implication that there's a sort of racial Cold War going on doesn't fit very well with the silly slapstick that starts the story.

Two stars.

Far Out Music

The other, slightly longer, half of the book features a musical group set on going where no one has ever rocked and rolled before.

The Proxima Project, by John Rackham


Cover art by John Schoenherr.

Horace McCool is a rich guy who is obsessed with the band's female singer. The members of the Trippers call themselves Jim, Jem, Johnny, and Yum-Yum. Nobody knows their real names, or anything else about them.

Horace wants to marry Yum-Yum, even though he's never even met her. When he manages to make his way backstage during a concert, she's not interested at all. (Her utter disdain may be best demonstrated by the fact that she casually strips nude in front of him in order to take a shower.) Unable to take a very firm No! for an answer, Howard gives her a gift that has a tracking unit hidden in it. With his loyal secretary, who has her own crush on one of the male members of the group, Horace follows Yum-Yum and the others to a mansion on the Moon, and then much further.

Sounds like a romantic comedy, doesn't it? And yet there's a serious tone to much of the story. The four members of the Trippers are super-geniuses who only started the band so they could raise enough money for their secret project. They're cynical about the rest of the human species, and just want to get away from Earth forever, even if it means a seemingly suicidal one-way voyage.

Horace's mad passion seems way out of character for an otherwise sensible fellow. The climax of the story strained credibility to the breaking point. I suppose the author might be saying something about the worship of celebrities and the Generation Gap, but it's not a profound work in any way.

Two stars.

A is for Anywhere

Next on my reading list is a book that takes its two protagonists on another wild journey, but not into outer space.

Dimension A, by L. P. Davies

The narrator is a teenage boy who gets a message from a buddy of the same age. It seems that the other fellow's uncle disappeared, along with his mysterious helper. Enlisting the aid of a scientist, for whom the narrator works, they try to figure out what happened.

Not much of a mystery, really, because we find out right away that the uncle was working on a way to reach a parallel reality known as (you guessed it) Dimension A. (Does that mean our own universe is Dimension B?)

What with one thing and another, the two kids accidentally land in Dimension A, and don't see a way back. They have to deal with hallucinations created by an unseen entity behind a green mist, as well as primitive humans who somehow manage to have ray guns. Can they find the missing uncle and make their way home?

The novel seems intended for younger readers, mostly because of the age of the two main characters. The language isn't overly simple, and adults of any age can read it without feeling they're being talked down to. The book doesn't try to be anything but an imaginative science fiction adventure story, and it succeeds at that modest goal.

Three stars.

New and Improved?

Two well-known writers recently published expanded versions of earlier works.

Into the Slave Nebula, by John Brunner

This is a revision of one half of an Ace Double from 1960. (D-421, to be exact. The other half was Dr. Futurity by Philip K. Dick.)


Cover art by Ed Emshwiller.

I haven't read it, so I can't compare it with the new version.


Cover art by Kelly Freas.

At some time in the far future, Earth is a place of wealth and leisure. Robots and androids (artificially grown humans, with blue skin to identify them) do the work, while other folks enjoy themselves.

(There's a brief mention of people who have lost their wealth through foolish behavior. They're known as the Dispossessed. Otherwise, poverty doesn't exist.)

During a time of wild celebration, the protagonist stumbles across an android who has been severely beaten and maimed. Another android, knowing his fellow slave can't survive, puts him out of his misery with an injection. The protagonist is horrified by what happened to the dead android, but it's just considered destruction of property instead of murder.

(Given the different skin color of the android and their legal position in society, an analogy with American slavery prior to the Civil War seems likely.)

Adding to the mystery is the discovery of a dead man nearby with a knife in his chest. A police detective comes by, but doesn't seem very interested in solving the case.

The surviving android, noticing that our hero is sympathetic, slips him an item taken from the dead man. It reveals that he was a very important person everywhere but Earth. This sends the protagonist on a journey to several different colonized planets, where he learns the dark secret behind the manufacturing of the androids. Along the way, people keep trying to kill him.

(There's a plot twist that made me want to call the book Blue Like Me, but that seemed too frivolous.)

Not in the same league as the author's groundbreaking masterpiece Stand on Zanzibar, but a competent science fiction novel.

Three stars.

Hawksbill Station, by Robert Silverberg

The novella Hawksbill Station appeared in the August 1967 issue of Galaxy.


Cover art by Sol Dember.

The Noble Editor gave it a positive review when it first appeared. Will the novel be better, worse, or about the same?


Cover art by Pat Steir.

In the twenty-first century, the United States is under a totalitarian (but superficially benign) government. Capital punishment is banned, but political prisoners are sent back in time about one billion years. Since travel to the future is impossible, this is equivalent to a life sentence.

The protagonist is the de facto leader of the exiles. (All male, by the way; there's another prison colony for women millions of years apart from the men. The novel never visits the female prisoners, and that might make for an interesting sequel.) He's more or less sane, unlike many of the other guys. One is trying to make a woman out of mud. Another is trying to use ESP to escape. Yet another attempts to contact aliens.

The situation changes when a new prisoner arrives. He's younger than usual, for one thing. More telling is the fact that he claims to be a economist, but doesn't known a darn thing about economics. What is he doing here?

If you've read the novella, you know that's the same plot. What's been added is a series of flashbacks, showing how the main character became a revolutionary and how he was betrayed and imprisoned. (These sections also feature the novel's only female character. She doesn't show up too much, but her fate adds a certain poignancy.)

The flashbacks make the character and the world in which he lives seem more real, but they're not absolutely necessary. Whether you prefer the leaner novella or the richer novel is a matter of taste. There isn't a big difference in quality, if any.

Four stars.


by Gideon Marcus

The Spawn of the Death Machine, by Ted White

Ted White has done it again…in more ways than one.

Some of you may remember Rosemary Benton's stellar review of Android Avenger, in which she gave five stars to the tale of Bob Tanner, a cyborg and revolutionary in a staid, computer-run future.

In the luridly (but appropriately) titled Spawn of the Death machine, Bob Tanner is back, and so is Ted White in fine form.

First, a little background, from the horse's mouth:

SPAWN was sold originally to Paperback Library, but was not my first submission to them (through my agent). The first book I submitted to them (in outline) was BY FURIES POSSESSED. They said they were looking for an Ace-Book-type book, so I figured, wothell archy, how about the sequel to an Ace Book? Which SPAWN is, being the sequel to ANDROID AVENGER (original title, changed by Don Wollheim, was THE DEATH MACHINE). That they bought.

The cover of the original edition of SPAWN was by Jeff Jones, who showed me the painting before I'd finished the book. The protagonist is holding a knife and defending the girl. So I wrote that into the book as a scene. But the art director decided to "improve" the cover and had the knife repainted (crudely) as a sword, and had shackles added to the girl, twisting her body in an anatomically absurd position. Pissed Jeff off no end, and me too.

Per Ted, Jeff is working on rewriting the rules of conduct for cover artists (keeping original paintings, selling only one-time repro rights). If successful, it will be a boon for all artists.

Anyway, as for the story…

Bob Tanner is wakened inside some sort of vault, naked, amnesiac. The robot brain inside exhorts him to explore the outside world, to spend a year amongst the humans, then report back with what he finds.

It turns out that civilization is long passed. He first arrives at the ruins of New York, the outskirts of which are inhabited by the most primitive of survivors, generations removed from the civilization Tanner only remembers in fragments. He is captured but escapes, taking with him the young Rifka, a captive member of the tribe.

Thus begins a series of adventures including a tangle with a bear, a run-in with a more advanced town with a mayor who doesn't let newcomers leave, a widespread constellation of farming communities at a 19th Century level of technology, and even a super-advanced enclave run by a group of individuals who were once the underdogs of society.

Through it all, Tanner becomes increasingly aware of his non-human nature—his metal bones, his ability to breathe fire, the hyperspeed he is capable of in brief spurts. And, at last, he discovers who he really is and decides what destiny he will forge for himself.

As is typical for Ted's books, I tore through this novel in short order. The man can't write a dull sentence even with a gun to his head. He takes the most cliché of settings and turns it into something fresh, certainly a damnsight better than Zelazny's recent stab at postapocalypse with Damnation Alley.

This may sound silly, but what I really liked about the book is that it's a romance. And not a "superman claims grateful damsel as prize" romance, but a believable progression of a relationship. Rifka is a well-realized character, one imbued with passion and an independent nature and set of priorities. It's not surprising that Ted draws her with such care—she is named after his wife, Robin Postal (Rifka means Robin in Yiddish). But, in general, the author is good with his female characters, surprising not just for the genre, but for the pulpy subgenre and venue.

I also really appreciate that one gets a pretty full picture of Bob Tanner even without having read the first book (in fact, I haven't, though it's on my shelf—it's really tough to find the time to read everything; even stuff you know is good). Honestly, the only real demerit to the book is its structure, really a series of vignettes. In that way, it is reminiscent of Omha Abides, C.C. MacApp's recent After-The-Apocalypse novel. Sure, White writes it better than most anyone else, but it still suffers from the disjointed, episodic nature of it.

Still, 4.5 stars, and I'm sure it'll make the Galactic Stars or at least get honorable mention this year.


by Jason Sacks

Star Well, by Alexei Panshin

I have a new favorite science fiction writer whose work I’m going to track. His name is Alexei Panshin and he’s had a terrific 1968.

Several months ago I reviewed Panshin’s novel Rite of Passage and found it intriguing, with great atmospherics, complex characters and a clever attitude which seemed to tell the story in multiple dimensions. Panshin told his story with a slightly ironic reserve to it, an approach which gave a detached commentary on the events, as if the narrator of the tale was someone looking back fondly at the events which shaped her.

That element is on display again in his newest novel, Star Well, but this time that ironic detached commentary reads like wry takes on the world readers are experiencing in the novel. For instance:

The apparently frightening and hopeless situation may turn out to have a candy-cream interior. That has been the main premise of the happy ending since the return of Ulysses.

Or he brings in a cute, clever meta-commentary about plot elements which gives the reader an aha! kind of feeling:

When managers of illicit traffic meet, their biggest plaint is the employment problem. In a word, henchmen. There are all too few young crooks willing to take training service under older and more accomplished men.

… a commentary which then goes into a detailed explanation of why it’s so dang hard to get good help these days, especially in a star base many light years away from anything important.

In short, these excerpts read like a bit of postmodern commentary on the space opera of Robert Heinlein. And since Panshin has written a monograph about Heinlein (Heinlein in Dimension, available through your local library, I’m sure), that reference has to be intentional.

Mr. Panshin's analysis of Heinlein

The lead character here is one Anthony Villiers, a kind of lazy trust fund baby who’s spending his life just wandering the Nashurite Empire, occasionally drifting when he has cash, occasionally grifting when he doesn’t have cash. He’s aristocratic and hates getting his hands dirty, but he also has a gentlemanly aspect about him which makes Villiers feel charming and kind.

Villiers finds himself at the Star Well, a space port/gambling hall/shopping stopover which has been drilled into an asteroid in an area of space in which “the stars don’t grow”; in other words, a simple stopover for travelers who need a warm bed and maybe a touch of the illicit while on their way to their final destination. As such, it’s a perfect place for illegal smuggling and inept, corrupt bureaucrats who are striving to improve their social position or at least their bank accounts.

A photo of Mr. Panshin from last year.

As you might guess, Villiers can’t help but get involved in the events at the Star Well, becoming quite the reluctant hero as he finds himself in conflict with Godwin, a man of low birth who yearns to be aristocratic, and Godwin’s boss Hisan Bashir Shirabi, a man with a massive inferiority complex who yearns to be like Villiers. Our protagonist also becomes unexpectedly close friends with the fifteen-year-old Louisa Parini, who traveled to Star Well en route to a stuffy finishing school but who craves adventure.

This is all so lightweight and enjoyable, and this whole charming souffle of a novel comes in at a mere 154 very quick pages – just like a Heinlein juvenile. And just like one of the juvies, there’s plenty of hints we’ll see more of Anthony Villiers in the future as he continues his peripatetic wanderings. I hope to spend many years following our besotted aristocrat as he wanders through the Nashurite Empire.

3.5 stars




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Movies, TV

[January 22, 1968] The Magical Mystery Tour (February 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction…plus the Beatles movie!)

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by Gideon Marcus

A small pond

We have exciting tidbits from both sides of The Pond today, so stay tuned for both.  But first up, the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

I got a letter from Ted White the other day.  Seems he's no longer assistant editor over at F&SF, which is a shame.  Apparently, he was once under consideration for editor at Fantastic (and possibly Amazing) back when Celle Goldsmith (Lalli) left!  Boy, would that have been an interesting tenure–certainly more interesting than what we got under Sol Cohen.

Anyway, keep reading, because this isn't the only time Ted's name will come up.


by Ronald Walotsky

The Colonies

Stranger in the House, by Kate Wilhelm

We've been seeing a lot more of Kate Wilhelm, lately, which is generally a good thing.  Stranger seems as if it will be a fairly typical, if sinister, haunted house story.  A middle-aged couple moves into a house in the country, a surprisingly good deal, to escape the hustle and bustle of the city after the husband suffers a heart attack.  Immediately, the wife begins to suffer fainting spells and strange visions.  A little research uncovers that, since 1920, the place has seen an inordinate number of deaths and inexplicable illnesses amongst its ocuppants.

Is it a vengeful spook?  Radon poisoning?  Actually, as we quickly learn, it's an alien in the basement.  Not just any alien: this one was sent on a first contact expedition.  The hope of its race was that they would get to see that transient moment when a species first makes the jump into space.

The problem is, said aliens are hideous, live in a toxic atmosphere, shed acid, and communicate via a telepathy that is about as conducive to human communication as an icepick in the forehead.  How, then, can there be a meeting of the minds?

I love a good "first contact" story, and I appreciate that Wilhelm has created a truly alien being.  What keeps this piece from excellence are a couple of factors.  For one, it is overlong for what it does.  More importantly, much of the story, particularly that told from the alien's point of view, is detached and told in past tense.  This lack of immediacy in a story that deals with turbulent emotions puts a muffling gauze over the proceedings.  I wonder, in fact, if the whole story might have been improved by only including the human viewpoint.

Three stars.

The Lucky People, by Albert E. Cowdrey

Why stay hitched to three channels on the boob tube when you can watch the cannabalistic mutants that prey on your neighbors from the comfort of your own picture window?

Notable for being the first mention of Star Trek I've seen in print science fiction, it is a cute but frivolous tale.

Three stars.

The Stars Know, by Mose Mallette

A young ad exec, graduate of Dr. Ferthumlunger's 40-week handwriting analysis course, is convinced that his boss, the comely Lorna D., is in love with him.  How else to explain "the sex-latent capitals, the rounded n's and m's, the generous o's and a's, and the unmistakably yearning ascenders in late."

Never mind that the note which our hero has examined is an angry exhortation to get his work done on time.

The misunderstanding continues, with Lorna actually becoming infatuated with the exec, but said exec steadfastedly refuses to believe it, analysis of subsequent notes revealing (so he believes) that she isn't interested at all.  Of course, he doesn't actually read the contents of the notes.  He only looks at the handwriting.

What seems a silly story at first is actually, upon further analysis, an indictment of those who miss the forest for the trees: the mystics, numerologists, saucer enthusiasts, and what have you, who ignore the evidence and invent their own patterns to reinforce their beliefs.  It's really quite brilliant satire!

Or…perhaps I'm reading too much meaning into the thing.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Aperture in the Sky, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas' essays are usually not worth the single page they are written on.  This time, however, he's hit on a good'n: artificial satellites designed to occult radio sources for better measurement of their distance.  It sounds rather brilliant to me.

Four stars.

From a Terran Travel Folder, by Walter H. Kerr

Less successful is this one page program, I think advising aliens on the joy of eating people.  I read it a few times and did not find myself enjoying it.

Two stars.

He Kilt It with a Stick, by William F. Nolan

Then we hit the nadir of the issue.  The author of Logan's Run offers up a tale of a man who hates cats and does horrible things to them until they get their inevitable, macabre revenge.

Not only is this story cliché in the extreme, but if I never read another account of cruelty to cats, it'll be too soon.

One star.  For shame.

Wednesday, Noon, by Ted White

Quality returns with this short piece by Ted White.  When the rapture comes, the music may not be heavenly in origin, but it'll be compelling, all the same.  This story took a whopping three and a half years to be printed from the date of submission (latter 1964), but I'm glad it finally made it.  White has a real knack for living in his characters, conveying their sensory experience and internal monologues with visceral effectiveness.  Wilhelm's piece could have used his touch, I think.

It helps that White lives in New York, the setting of the story, and lived through that brutal summer when Martha Reeves' classic first hit the airwaves…

Four stars.

The Locator, by Robert Lory

Gerald Bufus, accountant, is meticulous to the extreme.  He also has a hobby: tracking the visitations of flying saucers to ensure he can one day be present at a landing.  Sadly, his overwhelming addiction to symmetry compells him to greet the alien ship at the exact center of their predicted arrival site.

Three stars.

I Have My Vigil, by Harry Harrison

The three human crewmembers of the first interstellar flight go mad in hyperspace, and presently, none are left alive aboard the vessel except the one robot steward, who mechanically goes through the motions of serving the dead humans.

The twist at the end is ambiguous: has the robot also gone insane?  Or is he actually a fourth crewmember, who has retreated behind a fictional metal shell in his own kind of insanity?

Four stars.

To Hell with the Odds, by Robert L. Fish

I love "deal with the Devil" stories, and this one, about a washed-up golfer who bargains to win this year's Open, is great all the way up to the end…where it flubs the finish.  The problem I have is the clumsy phrasing of his final wish (an attempt to get out of the deal, which of course backfires,) given that he had 18 holes to perfect it.

Three stars.

The Predicted Metal, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor continues his series on the discovery of metals, this time recounting the creation of the Periodic Table.  It's a fine piece, but I feel as if it was recycled from his 1962 book, The Search for the Elements.

Four stars.

The Veiled Feminists of Atlantis, by Booth Tarkington

The last is a 40-year old piece.  Two scholars meet to discuss a legend of Atlantis in which the women not only win equality, but then fight a cataclysmic war with Atlantean men for the right to retain the distinction of their femininity–the veil.

Tarkington wrote the piece to poke a bit of fun at the war between the sexes that was waging in the 20s, whereby women had the temerity not only to demand the vote, but also to engage in male or female fashion and hobbies as they chose, and men were affronted by their cheek.

Interesting as an artifact, I suppose.  Three stars.

Summing up

All in all, a decent but not outstanding magazine this month.  And now onto something in an entirely different vein…


by Fiona Moore

At the outset of The Magical Mystery Tour, which premiered in black and white on Boxing Day but which was released in colour on 5 January this year, we are promised the “trip of a lifetime,” and, later on, we are assured that everyone is “having a lovely time.” Whether or not this includes the viewer is more open to question.

The Mystery Bus attempting to flee its critics.

The movie has the loose framing premise of Ringo Starr taking his Auntie Jessie on a Mystery Bus tour, in the company of the other Beatles, a few swinging hip types, an assortment of British pensioners who seem a little nonplussed by the proceedings, and The Courier, a Number Two figure who leads the tour assisted by Miss Winters and Alf the Driver. What follows is a series of short musical interludes featuring a selection of numbers from the eponymous album, interspersed with sketches that are a cargo-cult cross between At Last The 1948 Show and The Prisoner, which seem to miss the point of either.

There’s a sketch with a sergeant-major drilling the tour participants; a sort of school games’ day and car race around an airfield or test track (featuring Angelo Muscat, the Butler in The The Prisoner); a whirlwind romance between Auntie Jessie and a character named Buster Bloodvessel; a tent in a middle of a field that turns out to be bigger on the inside than on the outside. But no real sense of what all this is supposed to be saying to the audience.

Yes, but why?

The highlights of the film are definitely the musical interludes. “Flying”, when seen in colour, is actually rather beautiful (which is rather lost in the black and white version). There are also short films for “Blue Jay Way,” featuring George Harrison playing on a chalk-drawing piano, and “Fool on the Hill”, with Paul McCartney standing on, well, a hill. Everything really comes together, though, in “I Am the Walrus”, with the surreal costumes of the performers echoing the imagery of the song, and the Beatles all seem to be enjoying themselves. This is far from true of the other sketches, in which John and, in particular, George seem more than a little surly.

Everyone having a lovely time, apparently.

The film hit its nadir, for me, with a rather disgusting dream sequence of Auntie Jessie being served mountains of sloppy spaghetti by John Lennon in a restaurant, while the bus crew sit around half-naked drinking milk. Similarly peculiar was the decision to have a sequence where the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band perform their song “Death Cab for Cutie” in a strip club complete with stripper, watched by George and John. And the movie more or less ends right there, with that sequence going straight into a 1950s Hollywood-musical-style production of “Your Mother Should Know.”

I’d say this is definitely one for Beatles completists more than anything else.

Two out of Five stars.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 16, 1967] Long Distance Travel (December 1967 Galactoscope)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Whilst reading the Times a couple of months I was surprised to see a mention of my favourite SF periodical turn up.

Is New Worlds doomed? 3rd Paragraph: "He part-finances the magazine himself by taking three days off on occasions to write hack adventure novels with titles like The Jade Man, The Jewel in the Skull and Twilight Man. He has written 21. 'They're Tokienesque things I sneak out and hope nobody here notices. They're an embarassment to me.'"
Source: The Times 28th September 1967

As regular readers of the publication will know they have managed to get a new publisher (Stonehart) and are continuing on with only a single month’s break to reorganize. What interested me most was the third paragraph, that there were some more adventure stories he was writing specifically for the US market. I have not come across The Jade Man yet but The Twilight Man actually is the book form of his The Shores of Death already released.

And I was able to discover that The Jewel in the Skull was coming out in America in December.

Now Moorcock’s adventure stories are a mixed bag. For every Elric there is a Michael Kane. But with such an anti-endorsement from the writer himself, how could I not want to read it?

The Jewel in the Skull by Michael Moorcock

In one of my favourite kind of settings, post-apocalyptic fantasy, the world has returned to a state of medieval kingdoms fighting each other, with modern technology treated as ancient sorceries people struggle to understand.

This book is primarily set in the Europe of this future, where the dark empire of the Granbretans is attempting to conquer the continent in the name of its King-Emperor. The powerful kingdom of Kamarg remains independent with Count Brass and his fortress of Castle Brass. Baron Meliadus of Kroiden attempts to gain their support for the empire but is thrown out when he attempts to rape the Count’s daughter Yisselda. Swearing an oath by the Runestaff to control the count and seize his daughter for himself he concocts a plan to do so.

In the dungeons of Londra is the rebellious Duke of Köln, Dorian Hawkmoon. He gives Hawkmoon an offer he can’t refuse, granting him his lands back and his freedom if he goes to Castle Brass, kidnaps Yisselda and brings her back to London. As additional motivation, a black jewel is implanted in his skull. This will allow the Granbretans to monitor him at all times and they can also use it to destroy his mind whenever they choose. And so Hawkmoon rides to Castle Brass on this fraught mission.

When I first opened this book I was worried this was going to be another Barbarians of Mars, with some incredibly overwritten descriptions and cod-Shakesperean dialogue. Thankfully, the style soon settles down and we get something much thicker than the Sub-Tolkien fantasy at first suggested. In fact there are some wonderful choices of imagery, a kind of combination of the gothic and the psychedelic.

As you can probably see from the description, this is not a setup where there are any easy heroes. It is also fascinating to see a tale where the British are explicitly setup as “The Dark Empire”, with people regularly suggesting the entire nation has gone insane and our representative of them a manipulative rapist. Instead, our lead character is a German, the inverse of what you will see whenever you go to the cinema.

This is only the first story in a series, so there is a lot left to be told, but, overall, this is an interesting and entertaining fantasy.

Four stars


by Victoria Silverwolf

Synchronicity

As fate would have it, I recently read two new science fiction novels featuring psychiatrists named Paul. In addition to that, both protagonists are involved with women who have a hard time pronouncing that name. Other than this odd coincidence, the books have little in common, except that they both involve people who have traveled a long distance.

A Far Sunset, by Edmund Cooper


Uncredited photographic cover art.

Split Personalities

The first mental health professional we'll meet is Paul Marlowe. He's a psychiatrist aboard the starship Gloria Mundi. (Given the familiar Latin phrase containing those words, that seems like asking for trouble.)

When the novel opens, he's in prison on an alien world. Two other members of the crew, captured at the same time, are dead. Before all this happened, the nine remaining folks aboard the ill-fated vessel disappeared while exploring the planet. For some reason, the locals have supplied him with a concubine, even in prison. That's the woman who can't pronounce Paul correctly. Her name, by the way, is Mylai Tui.

Meanwhile, Gloria Mundi destroys itself, as it's programmed to do when all the crew is gone for a certain amount of time. Sounds like a design flaw to me, but the idea is to keep it from falling into the hands of hostile aliens.

With no way to return to Earth, Paul Marlowe decides to fit into his new world. He does this by creating a second self, in a way. When acting like one of the locals, he calls himself Poul Mer Lo. This mental exercise allows him to control his emotions when witnessing things like child sacrifice.

(I couldn't help wondering if this was a sly allusion to Poul Anderson, whose first name is famously difficult to pronounce unless you're Scandinavian.)

Paul pretty much accepts Mylai Tui as his wife, although he was already married to one of the missing crew members. The marriage was one of convenience, mostly, although the two were fond of each other. Paul left his true love back on Earth, because he wanted to travel to the stars so badly. Be careful what you wish for!

A parallel to Paul's double identity is found in the local god-king, a young man who often takes on a second persona as a peasant, in order to speak freely with Paul in a way he can't as a divine ruler. Their relationship, in which the god-king is eager to learn Earth ways from Paul, may be the most intriguing part of the book. It also creates some suspense, as the god-king is only allowed to rule for a year, after which he is ritually killed.

The plot really begins when Paul and some local companions make a dangerous journey through enemy territory and deadly jungles to an ice-covered mountain. He makes an extraordinary discovery, learns what happened to the missing crew members, and even finds out why the inhabitants of the planet are very similar to Earthlings but have only four fingers on each hand.

The alien culture is interesting and vividly portrayed. Paul is not a very sympathetic protagonist. He beats Mylai Tui when she struggles to pronounce his name correctly, for one thing. The latter half of the book turns into a quest adventure, which is fine if you like that sort of thing. The revelation at the end of the trek to the mountain strains credibility. Overall, a mixed bag.

Three stars.

Quicksand, by John Brunner


Cover art by Emanuel Schongut.

Physician, Heal Thyself

Our next psychiatrist is Paul Fidler. He works at a mental hospital. You'll get to know him well, because much of the book consists of his interior monologues. They're set off from the rest of the text in the manner I'll demonstrate in the next paragraph.

–I hope the editor likes this article.

Paul has doubts about his career and his marriage. He also has a habit of imagining the way that things might have gone badly in the past. It's kind of the opposite of the wistful thinking we probably all do. You know, something like If only such-and-such had happened. Besides all this, he hides the fact that he had a nervous breakdown some time ago from everyone, even his wife.

After spending some time with this sad fellow, the plot gets going when a badly injured man staggers into a pub. He claims a naked woman attacked him. Could it be one of the inmates at the hospital?

Nope. Paul soon runs into the woman, a tiny little thing, sort of like the diminutive Sister Bertrille. Don't worry, she doesn't fly.

As I've indicated, she has trouble saying Paul correctly. She speaks an unknown language, but manages to indicate that her name is Arrzheen. That gets distorted into Urchin by the folks at the hospital, which fits her pretty well.

Much of the book deals with Paul's attempt to solve the mystery of Urchin. What was she doing naked in the woods on a cold, rainy night? How did such a small woman, who hardly seems out of her teens, severely injure a much bigger man? (We'll find out later it was self defense.) Why can't expert linguists identify her speech or her written language? Why does she seem baffled by ordinary objects?

A strange form of mental illness, or something else? (Hint: this is a science fiction novel.)

Urchin proves to be extraordinarily intelligent, and she picks up English quickly. Paul's marriage falls apart completely. Through the use of hypnosis, he learns more about Urchin. He tries to help her adjust to the outside world.

Let's just say that things go a little too far. After some misleading hints about Urchin, we find out the truth at the very end. Don't expect a happy ending.

As with the Cooper's novel, the protagonist is not always very likable. What he does at the end may disturb you. The book seems almost like introspective mainstream fiction, with a science fiction premise forced into it. It's more to be admired than loved, I think.

Three stars.


by Gideon Marcus

The fourth book for this Galactoscope turns out to be another kind of fourth book: Emil Petaja has written the fourth (and final?) book in his science fiction translation of the Finnish national epic, The Kalevala. It's an unusual novel in that it stars a villain, of sorts. Let's learn more about the…

Tramontane

Kullervo Kasi is a most unlovely man. Born of the chance interaction between a rent in the universe and a random act of sex, he is half human/half evil energy. Physically, he is a gnome-like character, though not without a strong back. Humans instinctively recoil from him. When we first meet him, he is on one of the thousands of colonies of humanity, the race exiled to the stars after their home world had been exhausted. Kullervo is bullied near to death, from which he escapes by a jump into a chasm to (he believes) his doom.

But Louhi the star witch has other plans. She takes Kullervo under her wing, unlocks the intelligence lying dormant in his genes as the reincarnation of the ancient Kalevalan anti-hero, Kullervo, and sends him to the wasted Earth. His mission: to destroy any remnants of humanity–the Vanhat race–that may yet survive on the ruined world.

This is for whom we should be rooting?

Well, yes. It's hard not to feel sorry for Kullervo. He was born with a handicap; his human tormentors have no such excuse. Once he arrives on Earth, and through cunning, endurance, and not a little (if grudging) selflessness, surmounts obstacle after obstacle, one can't help admiring the guy. In the end, if he is not exactly the hero of the story, he certainly is the catalyst for a great good.

Such an unusual protagonist is refreshing, indeed. Plus, Petaja really can spin a quill, offering a neo-pulp adventure with a mythical base. His depictions of the rusting supercities, the floating junk islands, and the recovering crags of Scandinavia have a rich, Burroughsian flavor. I particularly enjoyed Kullervo's adventures with Billyjo, a renegade coast-dweller. Their run-in with the pirates of the roving islands, and Kullervo's short-term subjugation to Queen Fiammante, reminded me somewhat of my favorite Baum book, John Dough and the Cherub. I also found interesting the implication that Kullervo, hideous as he was, had a strange appeal to women–both Fiammante and Louhi make him their lover, and the people who treat Kullervo poorly are invariably men.

Tramontane is not a great book: for one thing, it's not science fiction, but space opera. It's also not consistently written: the middle third is excellent, but the last third lags a touch and is quite literally a deus ex machina situation. Still, it is a thoroughly enjoyable book, and it stands well enough alone (I haven't read any of the other books in the series: Saga of Lost Earths, The Star Mill, or The Stolen Sun.)

Three and a half stars.

(Note: Tramontane comprises one half of Ace Double H-36; the other half is Moorcock's The Wrecks of Time, previously reviewed by Mark Yon. The Ace version has apparently been butchered to fit the format, the greatest casualties being the naughty bits.)


by Cora Buhlert

Sex in the Real World

Poster Helga

The most shocking film of the year is currently playing in West German cinemas. It's called Helga – Vom Werden des menschlichen Lebens (Helga – About the Development of Human Life) and has caused scores of cinema goers to faint.

But what exactly is so shocking about Helga? Well, Helga is a movie about – gasp – sex. The plot is simple. An interviewer asks pedestrians in the street about sex education and birth control. Next we meet the protagonist: Helga (newcomer Ruth Gassmann), a naïve young woman pregnant with her first child. Like many women, Helga knows very little about her body and what is happening inside her womb. Luckily, a kindly gynecologist explains the mechanics of conception and pregnancy to Helga and the viewer. The movie then follows Helga through her pregnancy and also documents the birth of her child. It's this birth scene – shot in full, gory detail – that makes particularly male viewers faint in the cinema… and hopefully think twice before impregnating a woman.

In spite of the frank scenes, Helga is not pornography, but an educational film intended to teach West Germans about human sexuality. Shot in a pseudo-documentary style and interspersed with animations showing the human reproductive system, Helga does what parents and schools all too often fail to do, namely teach young and not so young people about their bodies. The film was produced by West German Secretary of Health Käte Strobe, a sixty-year-old lady from Bavaria and unlikely champion of sex education.

Käte Strobel
West German Secretary of Health and champion of sex education Käte Strobel

But don't take my word for it. Because American International has purchased the distribution rights for Helga, so you can soon see it in a theatre near you.

Sex on an Alien World: Outlaw of Gor by John Norman

Outlaw of Gor by John Norman

I wasn't enamoured with John Norman's debut novel Tarnsman of Gor and didn't plan on reading the sequel. However, December 6 is St. Nicholas Day and since St. Nick was kindly enough to put a copy of Outlaw of Gor into my stocking, I of course felt obliged to read and review it.

When I reviewed Tarnsman of Gor earlier this year, I noted that John Norman was obviously inspired by the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This influence is even more marked in Outlaw of Gor, for while Tarnsman opened with protagonist and first person narrator Tarl Cabot, Outlaw uses a Burroughs type framing device and opens with the statement of an attorney named Harrison Smith, who describes at great length his relationship with Cabot, Cabot's physical appearance, his mysterious disappearance and reappearance.

Years later, Cabot and Smith rekindle their acquaintance. Eventually Cabot hands Smith the manuscript for Tarnsman of Gor and vanishes again. Smith publishes the manuscript, as the law of framing devices demands, as well as the sequel, which he finds waiting for him on his coffee table.

It is helpful to briefly recapitulate the previous book in an ongoing series for the reader, but the statement of Harrison Smith goes on for pages upon pages. Nor does the novel need a framing device, because this is 1967, not 1912, and readers are accustomed to fantastic adventures in alien worlds by now.

A Gorean Travelogue

The story proper finally starts with Tarl Cabot giving us an extended description of the Gorean scenery, customs, flora and fauna. One of my complaints about Tarnsman was that the opening third of the novel was a dull and interminable lump of information, because Norman was an inexperienced writer uncertain how to present information about his world to the reader. I had hoped that Norman's writing skills would have improved by his second book. Sadly, they have not.

After a trek through the wilderness, Tarl Cabot finds his hometown Ko-Ro-Ba destroyed by the Priest-Kings and its people, including Cabot's father and his mate Talena, scattered to the four winds. Cabot himself is now an outlaw and decides to avenge himself on the Priest-Kings. Again, the parallels to Burroughs are notable, because John Carter also found himself separated from his hometown and wife upon his return to Barsoom and forced to deal with overbearing godlike beings in The Gods of Mars back in 1913. Indeed, many things in Tarnsman and Outlaw of Gor only happen to Tarl Cabot because they happened to John Carter first.

Before meeting the Priest-Kings, Cabot pays a visit to the city of Tharna, which is remarkable for two reasons. One, all Goreans, regardless of their origin, are welcome in Tharna. Two, Tharna is ruled by a woman and – unlike the rest of Gor – women are revered in Tharna and not treated as slaves or possessions.

It's a Women's City… or is it?

The position of women and the institution of slavery on Gor played an important role in Tarnsman and crops up again in Outlaw. And indeed, the descriptions of Gorean slave girls seem to be what attracts many readers to these books. As a modern man of the Sixties, Tarl Cabot abhors slavery and the oppression of women in general, though it is not clear, if the author shares these views, since the narrative repeatedly notes that the slave girls are happy with their lot after initial resistance and that the free women of Gor, who are kept locked up and only venture outdoors in heavy veils, comparable to practices in many Muslim countries, which are thankfully modernising, secretly envy the slave girls their relative freedom. These aspects make the Gor books more disturbing than a simple Burroughs pastiche should be.

Compared to other Gorean cities, Tharna is described as a grey and depressing place full of grey and depressed men. Apparently, treating women like human beings tends to make cities grey and men depressed. In general, Cabot seems inordinately concerned with cities and their appearance, at one point comparing the run-down New York City unfavourably to Gorean cities. I wonder if Cabot (and his creator) blames women for the sorry state of New York City, too.

Revenge of the Masked Lesbians

Cabot has only been in Tharna for a few hours, when he is approached with an offer to kidnap the Tatrix Lara, the city's ruler. He refuses, finds himself framed for a crime and condemned to die in the arena for the amusement of the Tatrix and the haughty masked women of Tharna. Cabot also learns the reason why Tharna is uncommonly hospitable towards strangers – because they are enslaved to labour in the fields or mines. What is more, men are viewed as little more than animals in Tharna and the women are forbidden from loving men, though encouraged to love each other.

Cabot manages to escape with the help of his tarn, the giant bird creatures warriors of Gor ride into battle. However, rather than continuing his journey to see the Priest-Kings, Cabot instead decides to liberate Tharna from the haughty masked lesbians. Needless to say he succeeds and decrees that what the masked lesbians of Tharna need is a man and some good old fashioned Gorean slavery to teach them how to love. Reader, I puked.

Honestly, just read Burroughs

Tarnsman of Gor was mildly spicy Burroughs pastiche. But while John Norman's fascination with slavery, whips, hoods and shackles was already evident, I did not sense anything prurient or anti-feminist in Tarnsman.

Outlaw, however, is another matter. Particularly the second half of the novel and its anti-feminist conclusion gave me the same creepy crawly feeling that Piers Anthony's Chthon did. Worse, since Cabot has neither found the Priest-Kings nor his true love Talena by the end, I fear there will be at least one more Gor book. However, I will not read it.

If you like swashbuckling adventures on alien worlds, Edgar Rice Burroughs' entire catalogue is back in print and the excellent planetary adventures of Leigh Brackett are easy enough to find as well. If you like the spicier aspects, there is plenty of sleaze to be found in the paperback spinner racks, some of it – so I am reliably informed – written by genre stalwarts such as Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison under pseudonyms.

However, don't bother with Outlaw of Gor or its predecessor.

One star.

St.Nicholas and his helper Knecht Ruprecht deliver treats and presents to kids in Bremen's historical Schnnor neighbourhood
St.Nicholas and his helper Knecht Ruprecht deliver treats and presents to kids in Bremen's historical Schnnor neighbourhood


by Jason Sacks

 Secret of the Marauder Satellite, by Ted White

There's a new novel out by Ted White, the longtime assistant editor for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Despite its goofy title, the new Secret of the Marauder Satellite is a wonderful quick read with some clever turns of phrase and interesting insights into its lead character.

Our lead is a young man named Paul Williams, recently graduated from "space cadet" school (as he half-dismissedly calls it) and ready for his first major assignment, aboard a satellite orbiting the Earth which also works as a staging site for mankind's further trips through the Solar System.

As you might imagine from a book like this, Paul is a bit of a prodigy in a space suit. He receives a plum assignment, as a roving salvage man assigned to pick up space junk and haul it back to the station for recycling. With resources short on the station, such a job is extremely useful and important. But during his second mission in that role, Paul makes a fateful and surprising discovery which indicates mankind might not have been the first race to orbit Earth's moon.

White separates his prose from his peers with its vividness of description and clever ways he brings common events to life. For instance, he explains why rocket launches require countdowns in the kind of matter-of-fact detail that had me nodding my head, and his explanation of gravitational inertia is as elegant as it is concise.

Mr. White
Mr. White

But the element that really elevates this book is the way White explains Paul's inner life. We learn early on that Paul is an introvert and has trouble talking with people. But White takes pains to show readers Paul's vast intelligence and his completely broken childhood, with Paul's arrogant unfeeling parents seldom giving their small child more than a smidge of attention as they slept and drank their ways through their hedonistic lives. With this background, it becomes clear why Paul was motivated to be a high achieving astronaut, but it also explains why he had trouble with peers and with members of the opposite sex.

Secret of the Marauder Satellite packs a lot into its short length, and every word was necessary. This book teases at the potential for Ted White to deliver a masterpiece, but its brief length does work against the story. The story moves at a breakneck speed but that rapid pace doesn't quite give the reader enough time to consider all the impacts of its events.  Ignore the goofy title and spend an enjoyable couple of hours with Paul White.

3½ stars



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 18, 1967] Highs and Lows (July Galactoscope #2)

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by Gideon Marcus

We've had a bit of a backlog of books here at the editorial desk, and the only remedy was to have two back-to-back Galactoscopes. Luckily, summer is slow season for TV, and thus the schedule opens up a bit. Sometimes, our book review column comprises a clutch of mediocrities. This time around, the disparity in quality was abnormally high–mostly thanks (no thanks!) to the debut novel by one Piers Anthony…

Chthon, by Piers Anthony

Imagine a world where genetic modification has created a monstrous race of humans. The women are near-immortal semi-telepaths, but they suffer from an emotional inversion: they only feel love and joy when men express hate and pain. You can imagine how warped the ensuing society must be, the females doomed to solicit violence from their partners, the men compelled to express their every animalistic whim on them. One woman of this race escapes this planet, but, a slave to her make-up, cannot escape her wretched fate. Thus, she marries a man wracked with guilt from the death of his first wife in childbirth. When his love for the alien woman becomes unalloyed, she must leave, but not before she bears a child.

But the alien woman still requires love, twisted, painful love, to live. So she seduces her own son, thus ensuring his passion for his mother will always be the appropriate mix of pleasure and pain, and they can live happily ever after.

In-between these episodes, the story takes place on Chthon, the hellish underground garnet mine whence the son is sentenced for murder. Naked and toolless, he must devise an escape, resorting to treachery, violence, rapine, and cannibalism. Of course, we know he will escape because author Piers Anthony elected to tell the story in a ping-pong flashback/flashforward style, starting and ending with scenes on Chthon.

This is a terrible book.

The premise, fundamentally implausible, seems tailored to indulge a male id-fantasy. We already have a problem in our current society whereby women are "othered" into a different species: vain, frivolous, subservient, sinister, yet desirable. With Chthon, Anthony comes up with a scientificititious explanation for why his starring woman must be that kind of creature. Not that the other women in the novel fare much better, consisting of a slave and vicious fellow Chthonian prisoners.

I'm sure Anthony would say that the book is unpleasant because it bares the human (i.e. male) soul, revealing the sordid mess underneath we'd rather not acknowledge. That all men desire to possess our mothers, rape our partners. That hate is really the purest kind of love.

Mr. Anthony needs professional help. Chthon is an odious turd, and I suspect its author is, too. One star, and winner of this year's "Queen Bee" award.


by Cora Buhlert

Like our esteemed host, I also had the misfortune of reading Chthon. I spotted the paperback in my friendly local import store and was intrigued enough by the unusual title to pull it out of the spinner rack. And while I have not read much by Piers Anthony – and am now unlikely to ever read more – he is one of Cele Goldsmith Lalli's discoveries and she normally has a good eye for authors. The blurb on the back of the slim paperback – promising a tale of an inescapable space prison and a man sent there for pursuing a forbidden love affair – sealed the deal, because I am a sucker for space prison stories.

The scenes set on Chthon, the hellish prison planet cum garnet mine, are indeed the one redeeming grace of this novel. Genuinely atmospheric and visceral, they immediately drew me in. However, even these scenes are marred by what will become a recurrent problem, namely the fact that every single woman protagonist Aton Five meets wants to have sex with him, while Aton manfully refuses, because there can only be one woman for him: Malice the forbidden minionette (i.e. his mother, though he doesn't know that yet).

Scenes of Aton's life leading up to his incarceration are interspersed with the scenes on Chthon. Again, there are some interesting ideas here, such as hvee flowers which Aton's family cultivates and which can detect true love. And once again, the good ideas are marred by off-putting sex scenes, such as fourteen-year-old Aton trying to have sex with a thirteen-year-old neighbour girl and failing because human girls have anatomy and fluids, unlike his idealized vision of minionettes.

When Aton rapes a woman on Chthon, the book came close to hitting the wall and I only prevailed because I had promised to review it for the Journey. The book did actually hit the wall – and considering how expensive import paperbacks are, that's saying something – once we got to the planet of the minionettes, genetically engineered to be masochists and enjoy pain, and of course the final twist of just why Aton has been so obsessed with Malice since he was seven years old and that their "love" is forbidden for a very good reason.

Honestly, this is a terrible book. The sexual revolution and the New Wave have made it easier for science fiction to address formerly taboo subjects like sexuality. But just because authors can write about sex now, doesn't necessarily mean that they should foist their sexual fantasies upon unsuspecting readers, particularly the kind Piers Anthony appears to harbor.

Zero stars. Stay away!

Belmont Double 5F0-759

Belmont Publishing has decided to take on the Ace Double is a flaccid sort of way by combining two novellas (calling them "two complete novels") in one thin volume. This is the first result.

Peril of the Starmen, by Kris Neville

First up Kris Neville's 1954 story, Peril of the Starmen, which first appeared in the magazine Imagination. You're welcome to give it a read if you like.

The Flame of Iridar, by Lin Carter

Considering how harsh I was on The Star Magicians, I was surprised to find that Lin Carter's The Flame of Iridar, published as an Ace Double knock-off by Belmont together with Peril of the Starmen by Kris Neville, reprinted from the January 1954 issue of Imagination, was the better of the two books I read this month. Not that this is a high bar to clear, considering how utterly terrible Chthon was.

That said, Lin Carter's writing has improved since last year's The Star Magicians. True, his prose is still overly purple – thews are inevitably iron and mighty, blood and pain are inevitably scarlet, and female breasts are inevitably described by inappropriate adjectives – and Carter is still oddly preoccupied with lovingly describing his protagonist's manly physique. However, at least Carter remembers who his protagonist is this time around.

The protagonist is one Chandar of Orm, a deposed prince turned pirate on ancient Mars, when it still had oceans. If this setting seems familiar, that's because it is, borrowed wholesale form Leigh Brackett's much superior 1949 novel Sea-Kings of Mars, better known as The Sword of Rhiannon, the title under which it was published as the very first STF Ace Double back in 1953 together with another excellent fantasy adventure, Conan the Conqueror by Robert E. Howard. And indeed, Carter acknowledges this influence and dedicates The Flame of Iridar to Leigh Brackett and her husband Edmond Hamilton.

Thrilling Wonder Stories, July 1946

Ace Double Conan the Conqueror and Sword of Rhiannon

The opening of the novel finds Chandar of Orm in deep trouble. After a successful career as a pirate, he has been captured by the evil warlord Niamnon (occasionally spelled Niamnor in what I hope is not indicative of the quality of Belmont's copy-editing), the man who slaughtered Chandar's entire family in front the then twelve-year-old boy's eyes, and has been sentenced to die in Niamnon's arena, a fate Chandar himself imagines as follows:

A few more hours of darkness, and then the blinding morning sun on the arena sands… a few moments of scarlet pain… and he would rest… forever.

However, before it can come to that, Chandar and his comrade-in-arms Bram are freed by the enchanter Sarkond of K'thom, advisor to none other than King Niamnon himself. Sarkond also helpfully reveals Niamnon's plans of conquest and promises to take Chandar back to his pirate comrades. And in return, he only asks for a little favour. Use the Axe of Orm, a magical weapon that can only be wielded by a member of Chandar's family, to pierce the enchanted Wall of Ice that surrounds the magical realm of Iophar. What can possibly go wrong?

To no one's surprise, Sarkond double-crosses Chandar as soon as Chandar has fulfilled his purpose and hacked through the Wall of Ice. However, Chandar is saved by Meliander, exiled brother of the villainous King Niamnon.

What follows is an epic clash of the forces of good and evil. Chandar also gets revenge on Niamnon and his throne back. Furthermore, he gets entangled with two women, the witch Mnadis, whose breasts are "high and proud", and Llys, Queen of Iophar, whose breasts are "sweet and virginal". Three guesses with which of the two ladies Chandar ends up.

In many ways, The Flame of Iridar feels like the sort of swashbuckling planetary adventure that might have been found in the pages of Planet Stories or Thrilling Wonder Stories twenty years ago. It's not as good as Leigh Brackett or Edmond Hamilton at their best, but then who is?

An entertaining adventure that feels like a throwback to the pulp era. Three stars.


by Gideon Marcus

And to continue our positive mood (because after Chthon, a double dose is necessary), let's all dig on Ted White's latest novel:

The Jewels of Elsewhen, by Ted White

Arthur Ficarra, an exhausted ex-beat cop-cum-desk-sergeant, just wants his subway ride to end so he can go to sleep after an overlong shift. But when he responds to the death rattle of a fellow passenger, he discovers to his horror that the stricken man, and everyone on the train but one, is just a mannequin, the train a cardboard model. Only Arthur and a young woman named Kim remain human. Indeed, it turns out they are now the only living things in all of New York City.

But this is not the Big Apple they remember. It is subtly changed, freshly painted, with hollow buildings. Almost a model of itself. And it is disintegrating…

Escape takes them on a whirlwind tour of alternate timelines, the common element of which is that the people speak some variety of Italian. There also is the sense of deliberate manufacture, as well as a shepherding of world events by a secret society of cloaked individuals. Arthur and Kim must solve the riddle of these artificial universes before they are captured and dispatched by these caretakers.

I came in without knowing what to expect. Sure, Rose Benton gave White's last book, Android Avenger, a whopping five stars, but I'd never gotten a chance to read it. All I really knew about the author was that he doesn't like Star Trek (per his column in the latest issue of the Yandro fanzine), he helps edit Fantasy and Science Fiction, and he's chair of the NyCon 3 committee.

I really dug this book. It's written in a punchy but understated style well-suited to mainstream fiction; indeed, I have to wonder if White makes most of his money out of the genre. He's certainly good enough. Arthur and Kim are compelling, strong characters, and the divergent timetracks are nicely detailed. I was in recent correspondence with Ted, and I mentioned that the book reminded me a bit of Laumer's Worlds of the Imperium books. He replied that the resemblance was intentional, and that Laumer had a strong influence on him.

If anything, I like White's even better! Four stars.



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Magazine, Serial

[October 18, 1965] Turn, Turn, Turn (November 1965 Fantasy & Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Winds of Change

History is divided into eras: The Stone Age, The Middle Ages, The Renaissance.  There are Golden Ages and Dark Ages.  The Jazz Age.  The Gilded Age.  One is never quite sure of a period's exact delineations, the precise moments of its beginning or end, until the next one is well on its way.  It is possible to tell when one is in an age, however, and also to feel keenly the wistful uncertain sense one gets in the doldrums between epochs.  Who can't have felt that way in the year succeeding President Kennedy's assassination, when his civil rights program, American involvement in Indochina, even the character of government in general hung in the balance.  And who can doubt that, for better or worse, the Johnson era has clearly begun?

I've lived through two sea changes in music.  The first was in 1954, when the overripe swing and schmaltz on the radio was overrun with a wave of rock and roll, particularly if you tuned into the Black stations (luckily, a radio tuner cannot easily be segregated).  By 1963, the winds of change had become muddled.  With folk, pop, motown, surf, and country vying for our eardrums, it was quite impossible to know then where the next two years would take us.  Then the Beatles spearheaded the biggest British invasion since 1812, and a new age was upon us.

Science fiction has its ages, too.  When I got into SF in a big way, the genre was clearly plumb in the middle of one.  It was 1954, four years after Galaxy's editor, Horace Gold, had thrown the gauntlet down at the feet of puerile pulp SF, five years after the new Fantasy and Science Fiction established a literary benchmark for the genre that has yet to be exceeded.  Science fiction primarily came in digest sized magazines, and the market was aflood with them.  Quality ranged from the penny-a-word mags which were little above the pulps that preceded them to stellar new fiction that burst beyond our solar system and ranged deep into our pysches.

As the 60s dawned, the genre had become anemic.  Almost all of the monthly digests had gone out of print.  The old stalwart, Astounding, had changed its name to Analog, but is fiction remained stolidly fixed in an older mode.  Gold retired from Galaxy and Fred Pohl struggled to keep it and its sister mags fresh as its reliable stable of authors left for greener (as in the color of money) pastures.  F&SF's helm passed on to Avram Davidson, whose whimsical style did the magazine few favors.

But the genre seems to have found its feet and is stomping off in a new direction.  Propelled by a "New Wave," again largely based in Britain, the science fiction I've been reading these days no longer feels like retreads of familiar stories.  They have the stamp of a modern era, an indisputable sense of 1960s.  And no single issue of a single magazine has represented this renaissance in SF better than the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

A Fresh Breeze


by Gray Morrow (illustrating the many perils of … And Call Me Conrad (Part 2 of 2)

Come to Venus Melancholy, by Thomas M. Disch

Disch is one of the flagbearers of the new era.  In just three years, this new author has produced more than 20 stories, some of them quite brilliant.  In this one (set on an obviously pre-Mariner Venus), a lonely cyborg staffer of a trading post literally holds you captive while she tells the sad story of how she lost her love.

By turns horrifying and heartbreaking, it's a moving piece.  Four stars.

The Peacock King, by Larry McCombs and Ted White

Less effective though more experimental is this piece on the first successful hyperdrive jaunt.  After four failures, it is determined that the transition to hyperspace bears similarities to drug-induced schizophrenia.  One couple, so in love as to practically share a consciousness, is fed a regimen of psychoactives to prepare them for the trip.

Somewhat roughly written, and perhaps too short, it is nevertheless a fascinatingly "now" story delving into new territory.

Three stars.

Insect Attractant, by Theodore L. Thomas

This usually disappointing column of sf-story ideas masquerading as short science articles starts promisingly, discussing how insect pests could be eradicated through synthesis of female sex pheromones, which could then be sprayed to disrupt their breeding cycles.  A fine alternative to DDT.

But then he goes on to suggest that human females have similar pheromones, and that distillation and application of same could be used by marriage counselors, as if love is purely a matter of chemical compatibility. Perhaps the author has never been in love, let alone gotten married.  Of course, Mr. Thomas may have meant the piece in jest, though I also resented its casually sexist overtones.  Either way, it's not worth the page it occupies.

Two stars — and let's please 86 this column, Mr. Ferman?

… And Call Me Conrad (Part 2 of 2), by Roger Zelazny

When last we left Konstantin Karaghiosis, Minister for Cultural Sites on an atomics-devastated Earth, he was giving a tour of Greece to a blue-skinned Vegan, name of Cort Vishtigo, and his human entourage.  Ostensibly, the alien was on Earth to write a travelogue.  His true purpose is unknown, but the members of the Radpol movement believe Vishtigo's trip is a real estate survey, prelude to the Vegans buying up the planet to plunder.  An assassination attempt is in the offing, and Karaghiosis (virtually immortal and currently going by the name of Conrad) believes that the alien's bodyguard, Hassan, is the likely killer. 

That's the context, but the tale Zelazny weaves reads like a modern interpretation of mythology, with Conrad's party encountering a host of radiation mutated beasts, humans, and everything in-between.  Conrad is a tale of survival, of derring do, of proving worth.  It's also a pretty good mystery with a satisfying, if a touch too pat, ending.

At first, I was leery of Zelazny's style, a first person macho that threatens to become precious.  But there's enough self-deprecatory humor to make it work, and I found the pages flying.  There's enough action to keep it moving, enough depth to keep you thinking.

Four stars for this segment, and the novel as a whole is elevated to this rank as well.

El Numero Uno, by Sasha Gilien

It used to be that Death attended to matters personally.  Now, the business has boomed, and he requires field agents armed with legal contracts instead of scythes.  This particular case involves a harried operative on the sports beat and a particularly recalcitrant matador scheduled for expiration.

Good stuff in the style of Ron Goulart.  Four stars.

Squ-u-u-ush!, by Isaac Asimov

Having previously discussed the shortest measure of time, the largest measures of dimension, the hottest heat, and the coldest cold, the Good Doctor now explores the densest densities, starting with ordinary matter and proceeding the greatest crushes in the universe: the interior of giant stars.

Cutting edge stuff, and it's the first time I learned of neutronium, a state of matter even more compressed than that found inside a white dwarf.

Four stars.

A Few Kindred Spirits, by John Christopher

Last up, the much heralded author of No Blade of Grass offers up a tale combining a queer (in both senses of the word) group of dogs, the concept of reincarnation, and the pursuit of literary laurels.  A character study cum literal shaggy dog story, it's perhaps the most conventional piece of the issue — save for the rather daring (and refreshingly uncondemned) discussion of alternate sexual preferences.

Four stars.

The Sound of Shoes Dropping

It is clear that, after a long many-tacked jaunt in trackless seas, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has set a bold new course.  I have high hopes and more than a little suspicion that this New Wave era has many more exciting years left to it.

After quite a few lean years, I'm finally getting my dessert again!




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 22, 1965] Foul! (September Galactoscope)

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This month's Galactoscope features a mixed bag of mixed bags: one Ace double and one Gamma that barely manages a solitary single…


By Jason Sacks

We, the Venusians, by John Rackham

I picked up the latest Ace Double Novel at my local Woolworth's the other day, and had to share my opinions of the two novels with my fine science fiction friends.

On one side of the double was the deliriously wacky cover shown below, which actually is a scene in John Rackham's meandering but intriguing new novel. By my reckoning, this is at least the third Ace double this prolific author has delivered over the last two years, and though I haven't read either Watch on Peter or Danger from Vega yet, this slim novel – a true Ace double at 137 pages – makes me want to try them out too.

The main character of We, the Venusians is Anthony Taylor, a man who feels himself out of place on a future version of Earth. Though the timing of that future isn't revealed in the novel, it's clear he lives in a bit of a dystopian world. Advertising is pervasive and unavoidable, commerce and greed rule the world, and the arts are trivialized and mocked.

This all matters because Taylor is an accomplished musician and the owner of a small club in which he plays Liszt, Schubert, Bach and the other classical artists to an ever-diminishing tribe of listeners. He is truly a man on the outside of his time. That's why he has a mixed reaction when a strange man wanders into Taylor's club and offers an obscene amount of money to travel to the Terran colony on Venus to play music, Taylor is both intrigued and repulsed by the opportunity.  He is intrigued by chance to get rich quick and the chance to make a new start. Taylor is also repulsed by the idea because he has a secret he fears will be revealed on his new home: though his skin appears human color, he is actually a Greenie, a green-skinned Venusian native.

Through a series of plot machinations, Taylor does end up journeying to Venus along with two other musicians, one of whom, named Martha Merrill, is a beautiful woman who possesses an unbelievable singing voice. They also discover that the human colonists have enslaved thousands of apparently mindless Greenies to do menial labor in order to keep the colony buzzing along. Taylor and Merrill escape the human domes into the native lands, and both performers literally go native – Martha is also secretly a Venusian.

Though Merrill soon dies, Taylor finds his destiny among his own people and ends up becoming a force for revolution among his adopted people against the colonists.

One of the most intriguing elements of the book is the beans which grow on Venus and provide nutrition and energy for the people living there. While the Venusians protect their precious resource carefully, the humans try to exploit the beans and export the incredibly valuable food back to Terra. This element of the plot had an intriguing post-colonial feel to it. It's easy for the reader to substitute tobacco or silk as the exploited resource in our own history. It's a smart choice by Rackham to bring in that idea, as it adds resonance and contrast to the human/greenie struggle.

We, the Venusians is full of interesting ideas, from its resonances to the Civil Rights movement of today to its treatment of Indians in the west to the ways pop music overwhelms classics. Rackham keeps his story focused on character, and that keeps the reader involved in this novel. I enjoyed reading how Anthony Taylor grows and changes as this book goes along, and that growth gives this book a lot of its energy.

That said, the book rambles and wanders a bit too much and seems to frequently lose its focus. I know it's anathema to us fans of Ace doubles, but another 20 pages of meat would have made this book's bones stronger.

3 stars.

The Water of Thought, by Fred Saberhagen

Fred Saberhagen is another science fiction writer who has settled into a journeyman status at this point. He's appeared in a number of the science fiction magazines in recent years, and his "Berserker" stories have started to gain more attention from aficionados. My colleague David Levinson has praised Saberhagen's ability to pull off modern fiction within the framework of space opera, and that skill is well on display in The Water of Thought.

Like We, the Venusians, Saberhagen's novel takes place on an alien planet on which native peoples are in conflict with Terrans. The planet Kappa is a kind of garden of Eden, a paradise and perfect place for rest and relaxation for exhausted Space Force planeteers. It's also the home to native peoples and a type of water which provides amazing changes in people. When a planeteer named Jones samples the water, he goes crazy and disappears from the colony. Planeteer Boris Brazil must follow to investigate.

Jones becomes megalomaniacal under the influence of the "water of thought", and rapidly becomes an addict. Jones is constantly seeking his next drink, like a heroin addict looking for his next fix. When Jones forces Brazil to drink the water, it has a different effect on him. Brazil is nearly paralyzed and loses his free will while in proximity to Jones, but does not become addicted. The battle between the two men, and the story of the humans and natives caught in the middle, is an important part of the book.

Like We the Venusians, this book has a natural resource as a key point of conflict between humans and Kappans as the water is seen by some as a resource to be exploited for personal gain. The human mayor of Kappa sells the water as a drug, trying to earn a neat profit off of a local resource. Meanwhile a human scientist has slightly more noble goals: he believes the water may help the local hominid species gain intelligence and gain their freedom from slavery by the natives.

The Water of Thought is a more complex book than it seems at first glance, and reveals some of the shallowness of Rackham's world. Where Rackham draws a pretty clear line between humans and greenies on Venus, Saberhagen presents Kappa as a more complex world. Kappa is a place where the lines between hero and villain are somewhat unclear, where everybody is exploiting each other in some ways, and in which the precious natural resource has ambiguous effects.

This book adroitly shows Saberhagen's skills at mixing space opera elements with a psychological and philosophical elements. The Water of Thought feels contemporary for our year of 1965, a time in which the smartest people are embracing ideas of the past but providing new approaches to those ideas.

4 stars.

Gamma #5: The Worst Sci-fi Magazine Ever Published?


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Back in the early 1950s, when the market was flooded with magazines, there used to be plenty of forgettable magazines that would crank out terrible stories. Whilst it may be possible my memory is cheating me, I cannot recall a single issue as awful as this issue of Gamma:

Gamma Cover

This terrible issue of Gamma starts as it means to go on with another lurid cover from John Healey. I had hoped the style from the last issue was just due to it being a special edition calling back to the 30s, apparently this is the direction the magazine is going, with it illustrating the lead novella.

John Healey himself is a talented artist apparently working on shows like Johnny Quest, so I more question the editorial choice than his skill.

Now, take a deep breath, and let us all work together to get through this issue:

Nesbit, by Ron Goulart

Taking up nearly half the magazine, the perpetually disappointing Ron Goulart returns as, apparently, the editors simply cannot resist his writing. Once again, I find my eyebrow raised at this assertion.

This novella follows an attempt to shoot a pilot for a “jungle series”. When the Hollywood lot turns out to be in use Tim McCarey goes to visit Vincent Belgraf’s estate, to convince him to let them use his transplanted jungle for the shoot. However, on arriving he cannot get ahold of Mr. Belgraf and the other residents tell him it is not for rent.

Tim believes something else is amiss and finds a gorilla running around the estate in a soldier’s outfit. It turns out that this is Nesbit Belgraf. After being attacked by his own private army he had his brain transplanted into that of a gorilla, so he will be strong enough to become emperor of the United States and battle the unseen forces secretly controlling everyone’s lives.

Whilst Tim does not agree with this fascist conspiracy-minded gorilla and his family, he agrees to help with his propaganda efforts in exchange for being able to use part of the jungle for filming. However, Nesbit is very emotional and has difficulty keeping his cool.

I have trouble working out what Goulart is trying to do with this piece. If it is a satire on fascism and right-wing conspiracy theories, it fails. For, apart from Nesbit being a gorilla, it feels more like a documentary piece, as I am fully aware of the existence of those who believe in Jewish-Communist conspiracies controlling the world. It never does anything to really contradict what the Brelgrafs say, nor even to particularly suggest that their plans to put all non-white people into concentration camps or exterminate them, is as horrific as it really is.

If it is trying to be just an adventure story, it also fails. Intelligent gorilla stories are two-a-penny in comic books but are usually mindlessly enjoyable. This is incredibly dull and padded, full of side details that another might make charming, yet Goulart makes unbelievably tedious.

I could imagine many interesting ways a more skilled writer could have taken this piece, but instead Goulart produces something truly dreadful.

An exceptionally low One Star.

Policy Conference, by Sylvia Dees and Ted White

Peter and The Chief meet in the latter’s office to discuss how they could improve “interregional relations” for their boss Old Nick (I offer no prizes for guessing who that actually is).

Whilst this story is more supernatural than science fictional it weirdly has the same conceit as the previous tale, of someone having to work on PR for a monster. It just helps highlight how unoriginal a concept this is. Mercifully, this one is very short.

One Star

Gamma
We get the return of the unrelated sketches. Depressingly they are better than the actual text.

Auto Suggestion, by Charles Beaumont

Returning from the earlier issues of Gamma (publishing the best story in issue 1) The Twilight Zone writer brings a story of automobiles. Unfortunately, this is definitely not his best work.

Abnar Llewellyn, a nervous driver, suddenly finds his car talking to him and it encourages him to be a more aggressive on the roads. It also starts to interfere in other areas on Abnar’s life, asking out women for him and instructing him on how to commit crimes.

I have gone on record saying I am no lover of cars, and so tales like this generally leave me cold. However, even accounting for that, I felt the story was bad. It is painfully overwritten to the point of being juvenile:

A truck’s air horn began some car lengths away. A frightening sound, a terrible sound, like the scream of a wounded elephant, and it led other smaller cars to renew their anger, shrill now beneath the dump-truck’s might below, shrill and chittering, like arboreal creatures gone mad.

Even Lovecraft would probably tell him he needed to cut out some description!

It also ends up not doing anything particularly interesting, just being a story where the protagonist does unpleasant things and may or may not be insane.

One Star

Welcome to Procyon IV, by Chester H. Carlfi

This is not a new writer to these pages but, rather, another story by longtime editor Charles E. Fritch, contributing his 4th story to the magazine.

In this vignette, Jameson and his wife are the last people left alive on the dead world of Porycon IV, with humans having wiped out the natives and disease killing the rest of the human population. On his ancient radio Jameson hears a human expedition coming but when they come to in to his cabin they discover a terrible truth about Jameson’s wife.

This feels like a pale imitation of Ray Bradbury’s Martian stories. It is more competent than the previous two pieces in the magazine, but a lot remains heavily unexplained. Also including a genocide in one line without any further thought left a bad taste in my mouth.

One and a half stars

Interest, by Richard Matheson

Cathryn is to be married to Gerald Cruickshank, yet find his parents and their house terrifying. However, she cannot work out why that is.

As stated in the introduction, this is a Poe-esque tale, although the purpose of it escapes me. Feels more like a derivative work you would find in a bad fanzine.

One Star

Gamma
Another sketch, holding my interest much more than Matheson’s story did.

Lullaby and Goodnight, by George Clayton Johnson

In the aftermath of a nuclear war, an outpost of shelters is setup outside of an unnamed city. Our narrator (also unnamed) talks about the trouble Sarah Hartman is having with trying to keep her baby Adam alive in the radiation-soaked world.

This vignette marks a short foray into the New Wave from the usually conservative Gamma. It is not the best example, but the melancholic atmosphere raises it above the rest of the stories here.

Three stars

Gamma
An ad for Jack Matcha’s “adult novel”

A Careful Man Dies, by Ray Bradbury

This is a reprint from New Detective Magazine from almost 19 years ago and, unfortunately, it shows.

It narrates the story of a haemophiliac author, named Rob, who keeps being sent sharp objects in the mail, in an attempt to stop his book from being published.

I know Bradbury is popular right now, but do we have to reprint everything he did in his early days? The truth is he has evolved as a writer and most of his work before 1950 is simply not that good!

This is not really a science fiction or fantasy piece, but I suppose it could be classified as uncanny horror. Unfortunately, it lacks anything interesting, it seems more like a sequence of unusual events, like reading someone’s disconnected nightmare.

The story is written in a pale imitation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled style along with a second person narration. Whilst I do like experimentation this one fails for me.

Two stars

The Late Mr. Adams, by Steve Allen

Another reprint, this time from the publisher’s own collection, Fourteen for Tonight. This is my first experience with Mr. Adams' writings myself, although I hear he is big television personality in the United States.

This is a very silly life-story of a man who is always late. Really, that is all there is to it.

One Star

Wet Season, by Dennis Etchison

Etchison is generally a middling new writer. Shows promise but I am still waiting for a story that astounds me. Unfortunately, this is not it.

In a town there have been an unusually high number of drownings and the women seem to be acting strangely. At the same time rainfall levels are apparently increasing. After Madden’s daughter dies his Brother Bart comes to tell him of his suspicions.

Etchison really seems to like his Puppet Masters style stories and this is another one in that mold. I am willing to concede that it has a good atmosphere but that is all I am going to give.

A low two stars

Gamma Image 5
I love this illustration. Why couldn’t this have been one of the pieces inside?

Summing Up

This issue of the magazine is truly terrible. Some stories are not as bad as the others, but it would be a stretch to say anything is actually good.

I am beginning to feel foolish that I took out a subscription from issue 2, as I have already paid for more of these. However, if the quality continues like this, I find it hard to imagine this magazine continuing much beyond that.

That's all for today, folks! Join us next month for another exciting Galactoscope!

and…

Our next Journey Show: At the Movies, is going to be a blast!

DON'T MISS IT!




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Book

[July 12, 1965] A pair of Aces (July 1965 Galactoscope)

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by Rosemary Benton

A happy duo

The newest Ace Double is an absolute blast. On the one side is veteran writer John Brunner's new novel The Altar of Asconel, which was previously covered in serialization by David Levinson.  On the other side is the first solo project of science fiction fandom superstar – Ted White. Android Avenger! The very title of this book sings with promise of action and adventure, and while it certainly delivers I would say that it goes well beyond a short fun read.

Out of Place in Plain Sight

The story takes place in a future on Earth where maintaining sanity has become the objective of the human race. There is an orderly mundanity to everything, and deviation from this norm in any form, from rebellious fashion choices to antisocial tendencies, is punishable by death. Such executions are merged into the daily lives of the citizens of the metropolitan areas. Just like jury duty, anyone of legal age can be called upon to be part of the assembly that collectively pushes the button on the condemned's electric chairs.

Living his own mundane life is Bob Tanner, a resident of Manhattan who, oddly shaken and distracted after attending to his Citizen's duty as an executioner, has a mishap and gets his leg mangled in one of the city's moving walkways. Upon waking up to find that he is entirely healed from such a grievous injury, he overhears some disturbing information about the results of the scans that were run on him while he was unconscious – his bones are made of metal and he may not be entirely human.

Since extreme physical deviancy is also considered an unacceptable trait, Bob realizes that he must run for his life. Planning on journeying out into the countryside where there are fewer police and mental scanners, Bob manages to escape the hospital. Unfortunately his plans quickly careen off course when control of his body is seized from him. Piloted by unknown individuals for unknown reasons, Bob is made into the murderous pawn of one of the best kept secret societies in the city.

Ultimately our protagonist is put in the precarious position of balancing his human identity with the purpose for which an automaton such as himself was created. The story ends on a relatively upbeat note with Bob successfully regaining his autonomy, accepting his mission as an android, and still maintaining a precious, personal human identity. But after reading White’s book and thinking on it, one is still left wondering if technology unknowingly guiding humanity is such a good thing after all. 

A Little Background

Ted White is an extremely active member of the fandom community. He is a regular contributor, editor and a fanzine founder. He’s also got an impressive number of letters and essays reviewing, dissecting, and speculating on the numerous subgenres and authors out there.

Currently White is the assistant editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. To date this opinionated author has four professional writing credits to his name: three collaborative stories (two with Terry Carr and one with Marion Zimmer Bradley) and of course, Android Avenger. With such a passion for the genre, it was only a matter of time before White began releasing his own lengthier original works of science fiction.

Breaking Down the Components

First and foremost, Ted White is to be congratulated on telling a compelling story of android self-realization mixed with a heavy dose of noir elements. The intensity of Bob Tanner's character as he struggles with his body betraying societal norms, his self doubt when he begins to question his own mind and consequently his basic sense of self – all of this speaks to the fatalism and moral ambiguity of noir. Yet it is encased in a science fiction paperback. 

This blend of genres in turn segues nicely into White's talent for writing action sequences that are clean cut and descriptive without being too wordy. The events of this book are fast paced. So much so that the reader, like the protagonist himself, might feel thrown and unable to get their feet under them before they are swept up in another scene. It’s destabilizing without being disruptive to the flow of the novel. It’s just enough to keep us guessing at what will happen next right there alongside Bob.

Finally, White is to be commended on the excellent job he does writing the protagonist's first person narrative. Successfully accomplishing this type of narration is no small feat for a writer. It's very easy for the tension to be sucked from a book if the storyteller is untrue to their inner voice, specifically in terms of their changing perspective and the information they are aware of at any given point in the story.

But in Android Avenger the reader is never given too little to work with, and even when the events get pretty surreal it's all brought back down to Earth with well written dialogue and succinct descriptions. It may not be the deepest intellectual exploration of humanity and technology, but judged on sheer enjoyability this book is well worth a five star rating.

That puts it well above what my colleague, David, rated Altar, but ACE Double M-123 is still well worth picking up!

Ace Books: Pirate Publisher?

Photo of Erica Frank
by Erica Frank

In addition to its usual science fiction double, this month, Ace is releasing the second and third books of Tolkien's famous Lord of the Rings trilogy. The first, Fellowship of the Ring, has been selling amazingly well at its new low price of 75¢, a scant fraction of the former hardcover price. Ratatosk 12 had a brief review of Fellowship:

I am not all that crazy about Jack Gaughan's cover (tho other, less critical Tolkienists have expressed satisfaction with it), and there is no mention that the title illo is borrowed from the d/w of the American edition b*u*t: illos are not a book, and the fact that the volume is now available at less than 1/6 of the original U.S. price is a Very Good Deal. The typography is clear, and I have as yet found no typos to stumble over in reading.

While professor Tolkien was adamant that his works not be published in so "degenerate a form" as paperback, it appears that Houghton Mifflin, the publisher of the U.S. hardcover editions, failed to properly copyright them — and so the works are in the public domain here.

Three book covers: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King

Feast your eyes upon either a stealth mission to evade the enforcers of a corrupt empire, or a dastardly attack against the rightful rulers of the text. You decide.
Photo by Gwydion M. Williams

Fanzine Focal Point 8 mentions a few of the details:

Houghton Mifflin, the hardbound publishers of the Ring Trilogy in the United States, was either too cheap or too stupid to have the finest fantasy epic of our century copyrighted in the United States; they ran, instead, a notice that the book was copyrighted in England, which only protected the work until it was published in the United States.

The way copyright law works, in this case: Nations that have joined the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, agree to honor the copyrights of member states' works as if they had been published in their own country. So: a work copyrighted in the UK, is protected in the US; a publisher can't just grab a book and publish it here. However… once it's published here, it's subject to normal US copyright law, not the UCC. By publishing it in the US without a proper copyright notice, the work falls into the public domain. (Or so the claim goes. I am not a copyright lawyer. Don't quote me in court.)

So Wollheim gave up on trying to arrange licensing with Tokien and decided to meet the demand of the fannish readers, and all's well in the world of epic tales of elven adventures, yes?

…Perhaps not. Tolkien has protested the publication, claiming it is an infringement of his author's rights, and his publishers in the UK and the US are working to print a new authorized edition while he investigates his legal options.

So for now… buy quickly; these editions may not stick around for long.




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Magazine

[February 6, 1963] Up and Coming (March 1963 IF Science Fiction)

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[If you live in Southern California, you can see the Journey LIVE at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego, 2 p.m. on February 17!]


by Gideon Marcus

I've complained from time to time about the general decline in quality of some of the science fiction digests, namely Analog and Fantasy and Science Fiction.  On the other hand, Cele Goldsmith's mags, Amazing and (particularly) Fantastic have become pretty good reads.  And IF is often a delight.  Witness the March 1963 issue.  Not only does it have a lot of excellent stories, but the new color titles and illustrations really pop. 

Speaking of which, Virgil Finlay provides most of the pictures in this issue.  While I think he's one of the most talented artists in our genre (I gave him a Galactic Star last year), I find his subject matter increasingly dated.  His pieces would better fit a magazine from the 40s. 

The Time-Tombs, by J. G. Ballard

The Egyptians entombed their notables such that they might enjoy a rich and comfortable afterlife.  But what if they had preserved them with the intention of eventual resurrection?  Ballard's tale features a trio of grave robbers — pirate-archaeologists who plunder tombs containing the digitized remains of the long-dead.  Each has their own motivations: scholarship, profit, romance.  Taken too far, they lead to ruin.  Ballard's tales tend to be heavy, even plodding.  There's no question but that he's popular these days, and his stuff is worth reading.  It's just not strictly to my taste.  Three stars.

Saline Solution, by Keith Laumer

My correspondence with the Laumer clan (currently based in London) continues, but I'd enjoy his work regardless.  The cleverly titled Saline Solution is one of my favorite stories involving Retief, that incredibly talented yet much put-upon diplomat/superspy of the future.  It's also the first one that takes place in the Solar System.  Four stars.

The Abandoned of Yan, by Donald F. Daley

Daley's first publication stars an abandoned wife on an autocratic world.  It's a bleak situation in a dark setting, and I wasn't sure if I liked it when I was done.  But it stayed with me, and that's worth something.  Three stars.

The Wishbooks, by Theodore Sturgeon

Sturgeon's non-fiction piece this month is essentially a better, shorter version of the article on technical ads in last month's Analog.  Three stars.

The Ten-Point Princess, by J. T. McIntosh

A conquered people deprived of their weapons still find clever ways to resist.  When a Terran soldier kills his superior over an indigenous girl, is it justifiable homicide?  Self defense?  Or something much more subtle?  It's up to an Earthborn military lawyer to find the truth.  This is a script right out of Perry Mason with lots of twists and turns.  Four stars (and I could see someone giving it five).

Countdown, by Julian F. Grow

Someday, our nuclear arsenals will be refined to computerized precision and hair-trigger accuracy.  When that happens, will our humanity be sufficient to stop worldwide destruction?  The beauty of this story is in the presentation.  I read it twice.  Four stars.

Podkayne of Mars (Part 3 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein

At last, Heinlein's serial has come to an end.  It only took five months and three issues.  Sadly, the plot was saved for the last third, and it wasn't worth waiting for.  Turns out Poddy's trip to Venus wasn't a pleasure cruise, but rather served as cover for her Uncle's ambassadorial trip.  Two unnamed factions don't want this trip to happen, and they pull out all the stops to foil his mission.  Overwritten, somewhat unpleasant, and just not particularly interesting.  Two stars for this segment, and 2.67 for the aggregate. 

Between this and Stranger in a Strange Land, has the master stumbled?

I, Executioner, by Ted White and Terry Carr

Last up is a haunting piece involving a mass…but intensely personal execution.  Justice in the future combines juror and deathdealer into one role.  Excellent development in this short tale.  Four stars (and, again, perhaps worthy of five).

That comes out to eight pieces, one of which is kind of a dud, and four of which are fine.  I know I plan to keep my subscription up.

Speaking of subscriptions, drift your eyes to the upper right of this article and note that KGJ is now broadcasting.  Playing the latest pop, rock, mo-town, country, jazz, folk, and surf — and with not a single advertisement — I expect it to be a big hit from Coast to Coast… and beyond.  Tune in!

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Your ballot should have arrived by now…]




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