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Book, Magazine

[Apr. 2, 1964] The Joke's on me (the uninspiring April 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

April Fool's

Some days, I just have to wonder.

This month saw sad times across our country.  Last week, a massive earthquake rocked Alaska and devastated the city of Anchorage.

In Jacksonville, Florida, riots broke out in response to segregation and injustice, quickly turning violent and destructive.

Famed character actor, Peter Lorre, died at 59.

Of course, it's not all bad news.  The Civil Rights Bill is steaming through the Senate despite threats of filibuster.

And in genre news, it looks like IF is going monthly.

But in general, it's been kind of a lousy month.  This applies to the science fiction I've read this month, too — take a look at the latest Analog and you'll see what I mean.

The Issue at Hand


Illustration of Sunjammer by Harvey Woolhiser

The Extinction of Species, by Bert Kempers

Our nonfiction article for this month is a bit atypical.  In it, Kempers talks about prominent animal species that have ceased to be due to the existence of humanity.  Whether we hunted them for food or eradicated their habitats, the passenger pigeon, the dodo, the smilodon, the mammoth, etc. are no longer with us.  And other creatures like the American bison and the California condor are on their way out.

Food for thought.  Three stars.

Sunjammer, by Winston P. Sanders

"Winston Sanders," a.k.a. Poul Anderson, is back with another tale of the mid-future.  This time, he's left the recently freed asteroid belt and the gas-miners of Jupiter to give us a yarn about uncrewed solar sailship #128, making a leisurely trip with a cargo of radioactive volatiles.  Thanks to an unexpected solar flare, the vessel is about to explode; if this happens, all of near-Earth space will be contaminated for years.  It is up to the crew of the Merlin to intercept the #128 and somehow keep its cargo hold from popping. 

Like the other stories in this series, Sunjammer is long on technical details and short on character development.  Still, it's mildly entertaining, and the universe "Sanders" plays in is interesting.

Three stars.

Problem Child, by Arthur Porges

I liked this vignette, about a mathematician's "idiot" son who turns out to be far more.  We've had a lot of tales about autistic children of late.  I wondered what triggered the boom.

Three stars.

Shortsite, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

The Richmonds have yet another tiny tale, this one about an inventor with talent for creation but none for marketing, who develops the first room-temperature superconductor.  Editor Campbell loves these tales about lone wolf geniuses who are unappreciated by society.  This one was too clearly written to his tastes.

Two stars.

Counter Foil, by George O. Smith

Goodness, this one goes on.  Its setup is not unlike Lloyd Biggle's All the Colors of Darkness, where teleportation has become the preferred mode of travel.  This time, instead of aliens disrupting our daily commute, it's a pregnant woman who delivers her baby in transit.

This intriguing plot is lost in the endless, needless padding — it's a three page story expanded several fold.  You'll slog through the thing just to get to the problem's resolution, and then you'll feel cheated.

Two stars.

The Spy, by Mario Brand

Ever wonder where cats go when they disappear for the night, only to return bedraggled but satisfied the next morning?  Turns out that they are interstellar spies, zipped from Earth to a million light years away so that their memories can be probed by inquisitive aliens.

It's a great premise, but Brand does nothing with it.

Two stars. 

(great art by John Schoenherr, though, who may well get my vote for Best Artist this year)

Spaceman (Part 2 of 2), by Murray Leinster

Last up is the resolution of Leinster's novel, begun last month.  The Rim Star, an enormous cargo ship designed to transport an entire starship landing facility to a colony, has been taken over by its enlisted crew of six criminals.  Only the skipper and first officer Braden can prevent the destruction of the vessel and its five passengers, a film crew that bought passage hoping to get footage for a space-based movie.

While the mutineers have the advantage in weapons, Braden has the power of position, having seized the central drive station and secreted the passengers inside.  There, through slick cinematography and control of the ship's viewscreens, the team convinces the bad guys that the Rim Star has entered The Other Side of Space, a realm in which the laws of the universe no longer apply, and no escape is possible.  The ruse reduces the spacejackers to terrified catatonia, and the ship safely completes its mission.

Once again, we have a serviceable plot made mediocre thanks to extension.  What could have been a tidy novella, the kind the author is quite good at, is twice as long as it should be.  Leinster repeats what we already know again and again, using short, declarative sentences that dissipate any momentum the story might have built up.  I could also have done without Braden's disdain toward the capable producer, Diane, though that was only a minor irritation.

Upon completion, I was left with the same sense of dismayed regret I feel when I see a dented and spilled can of food at the supermarket: something perfectly good has been ruined and has to be thrown away…

Two stars for this installment, two and a half for the whole serial.

View from a Height

Punching the numbers into Journeyvac, I find that the April 1964 Analog scored just 2.4 stars and had no stand-out stories.  Amazing was a similar disappointment, clocking in at 2.6 (though you may find Phyllis Gottlieb's ongoing serial worth the cover price).  Fantasy and Science Fiction, while it did have Traven's interesting Central American creation myth, got the worst score: 2.3.  Fantastic only got 2.7 stars, but it did contain Ursula K. LeGuin's story, The Rule of Names, which I liked pretty well.  The last (?) issue of New Worlds went out with a muffled pop with a crop of three star stories.  Only Galaxy (3.3 stars) impressed, with what looks to be the first half of a novel by Cordwainer Smith and the excellent Final Encounter by Harry Harrison. 

We had a whopping 4.5 woman-penned stories (out of 38) this month.  But as for outstanding fiction, pickings were slim aside from the pieces described above.

Ha ha.  The joke's on us.  Here's hoping for a happier month ahead.

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




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Book, Magazine

[March 3, 1964] Out and about (March 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Braving My Shadow

Every year on February 2, a groundhog named Punxatawney Phil decides if it's worth vacating his winter hiding place before spring. 

For Galactic Gideon, on the other hand, the end of winter always happens in February.  The annual convention season wraps up around Thanksgiving with the little gathering of Los Angeles Science Fiction Fans called "Loscon."  There is a lull of events in December and January, but well before the vernal equinox, the Journey's dance card is full.  In fact, I've already been to two events in as many weeks, and I've got another one planned next weekend! 

My birthday weekend was spent at a small Los Angeles conclave called Escapade, where we discussed Johnson's tax cut, The Outer Limits vs. The Twilight Zone, and the more peculiar elements of the TV show, Burke's Law.  Unusually for sf-related gatherings, most of the attendees were women.

Last night, I presented at a local pub on the woman pioneers of space, the scientists, engineers, and computers I first wrote about a couple of years ago.  It was a tremendous event, and I am grateful to the folks who crowded the venue to bursting.

The Issue at Hand

In contrast to these past two events, the last magazine of the month is mostly stag.  Nevertheless, the March 1964 Analog is still a pretty good, if not outstanding, read:


Cover by Schoenherr, illustrating Spaceman

Clouds, Bubbles and Sparks, by Edward C. Walterscheid

There are three qualities by which I rate science fact articles: Are they fun to read, do I learn something, and are there bits where I feel compelled to joggle the elbow of the person next to me (usually my wife) and relate to them a neat bit of scientific trivia.

This latest piece, on the detection of subatomic particles, excels in all three.  If you ever wanted to know how a geiger counter works, or what a cloud chamber is for, or what those tubes in our scientific spacecraft do, this is the article for you. 

Five stars.

Spaceman (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster

The dean of Golden Age science fiction returns with yet another entry in his well-developed galactic setting.  In the Leinster-verse, perhaps best represented in his Med Series stories, interstellar travel is a bit like ocean travel in the 19th Century — reliable but not instant.  Colonies are days or weeks apart, and what separates a thriving hub from a backwater is the existence of a magnetic landing grid on which cargo ships can land and trade.

Spaceman is the story of Braden, a ship's mate who seeks passage aboard the Rim Star.  This giant vessel is an experiment — it carries an entire, unassembled landing grid in its hold, and it also possesses the rockets to make a landing on a world without a grid.  Having one ship bring an entire landing grid for installation has never been tried before, but no one is certain that the ship can fulfill this purpose.  Moreover, there are all sorts of bad omens for Braden: he is waylaid by the ship's crew while on his way to his interview; the captain seems negligent to a criminal degree, and the obsequiousness of the ship's steward rings false.  In spite of these alarms, Braden takes the job anyway, feeling it his duty to see the ship through its special mission, and also to protect the six passengers the Rim Star has aboard.

The other shoe drops near the end of this first part of what's promised to be a two-part serial.  The crew is, in fact, up to no good, and the entire ship is imperiled.  Stay tuned.

It's not a bad yarn.  The plot is interesting and the characters reasonably developed.  Where it creaks is the writing.  Leinster has developed an odd sort of plodding and padded style of late, with endless sequences of short sentences and whole paragraphs that repeat information we already know.  Used sparingly, I suppose it's a style that could be effective.  Used excessively, it slows things down.

And then, there's this gem of a line (an internal musing of Braden's) on page 36:

When a man admits that a woman is a better man than he is, he may be honest, but he should be ashamed.

Three stars, barely.  We'll see what happens next month.

The Pie-Duddle Puddle, by Walt and Leigh Richmond

Recently, in Papa needs shorts, the Richmonds showed us how a four-year old child can save the day even with an imperfect understanding of the situation.  The husband-and-wife writing team try it again, this time from an even more exotic viewpoint (which you'll guess pretty quickly).  It's not nearly as effective or plausible a piece.  Two stars.

Outward Bound, by Norman Spinrad

I'm getting a little worried about new author, Norman Spinrad.  He hit it out of the park with his first story, and scored a double with his second.  The latest, about a decades-long relativistic chase across the galaxy in pursuit of the man who has the secret to superluminous travel, is barely a walk to first base.  It's not bad; there's just no mystery to the thing.  Three stars.

Third Alternative, by Robin Wilson

On the other hand, this first story by new author Robin Wilson is rather charming.  It's a time travel piece featuring a fellow who goes back from 2012 to 1904 with naught but what he can cram into his bodily orifices (inorganic matter doesn't transport).  You don't find out his purpose until the end, and it's an engaging, effective piece.  Another three-star story, but at the high end of the range.

Summing up

Reviewing the numbers, it seems like leaving the burrow was worth it.  Least mag of the bunch was Amazing at 2.3 stars and with no four star tales.  Next was IF at 2.4 stars, again with no exceptional pieces.  Fantastic clocked in at 2.7, but it had the excellent The Graveyard Heart by Zelazny; New Worlds, three stars, had Ballard's The Terminal Breach.  At the positive end of the scale were F&SF and Analog at 3.3 stars — their non-fiction articles were the real stand-outs.  Finally, Worlds of Tomorrow was mostly superior, definitely worth the 50 cent cover price.

Women had a banner month, producing 5.5 out of 39 new pieces (14.1%). 

Looks like we'll have a warm spring!

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




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