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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 2, 1967] The Bounds of Good Taste (September 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

A diplomatic incident

In the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the Seven Years War, France abandoned her claims to territory in what is today Canada (among others) in order to keep richer colonies in the Caribbean. Britain allowed her new subjects in Quebec to keep their language and religion, likely to keep them from making common cause with the fractious colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. Since then, there has been a strong undercurrent of nationalism among the French-speaking Québécois. Enter French President Charles de Gaulle.

Canada has extended an open invitation to representatives of countries exhibiting at the Expo 67 world’s fair. Last month, de Gaulle came to visit. The Canadian government was a little concerned. France hadn’t sent a representative to the funeral of Governor General Georges Vanier, who had been a personal friend of de Gaulle, or to the 50th anniversary ceremonies commemorating the Canadian victory at Vimy in the Great War. Rather than flying in to the Canadian capital Ottawa, de Gaulle arrived directly in Quebec City aboard a French naval vessel and went on to Montreal from there, with crowds cheering him along the way. He arrived on July 24th, and delivered an unscheduled speech from the balcony of the Montreal City Hall. He concluded by shouting “Vive le Québec libre!” (“Long live free Québec!”) and the crowd roared in approval.

President de Gaulle with foot firmly in mouth.

The next day, Prime Minister Lester Pearson issued an official rebuke, declaring that “Canadians do not need to be liberated” and pointing out that many Canadians died in the liberation of France. Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau wondered what the French reaction would be to the Canadian Prime Minister shouting “Brittany to the Bretons!” Even the French papers were critical. Meanwhile, de Gaulle visited the Expo and hosted a banquet at the French pavilion. The following day, he boarded a French military jet and flew home rather than making his scheduled visit to Ottawa. Whether this was deliberate interference in another country’s domestic affairs or just de Gaulle being de Gaulle, we’ll have to wait to see what the fallout may be.

Walking the line

Apropos of today's lede, at least one story in this month’s IF is about crossing or challenging the lines of what is in good taste. A couple more do that themselves.

This alien dude ranch has become a popular honeymoon spot. Art by Gray Morrow

The Fortunes of Peace, by C. C. MacApp

“Taintless” Wend, Earthborn but now stateless, is a trader operating just past the edge of human space. He’s been captured by the Kyshan pirate Junnabl, who has a plan to get his hands on an abandoned Terran Space Force cache. Wend doesn’t expect Junnabl to let him go with his share, but he has a few connections that might help.

Wend is in trouble, but ready for Junnabl’s men. Art by Virgil Finlay

When he’s not writing about Gree or trying to be funny, MacApp is a decent writer. This is basically an adventure story, but there’s some science-fictional stuff with a monstrous gravity well caused by the “bone” of a dead star, and the protagonist is more of an antihero. It’s not a story that will stick with you, but it’s a good read.

Three stars.

Bride Ninety-One, by Robert Silverberg

In Silverberg's newest piece, contract marriages are the norm, and marriages with aliens are the fad, so Paul Clay has entered a six-month marriage to Landy, a Suvornese. They’ve agreed to follow Terran mores, which leads to more than a few misunderstandings.

This silly piece of fluff seems to exist solely for its mildly suggestive “humorous” ending. The accepted Terran mores feel like they’re from a decade or more ago, not the far future. Some of that may be due to Landy using bad sources, since Paul is often confused by her, but even his attitudes feel a bit old-fashioned. Well-written but pointless.

A low three stars.

To Serve the Masters, by Perry A. Chapdelaine

'Genetic' (the character's name–people are known only by their function) is the end product of over 200 generations of selective breeding by the Masters. We follow his career from childhood to being taken to the Masters’ homeworld for the fulfillment of his millennia of breeding. Maybe the Masters should have couched their request more carefully.

Genetic receives the high honor of conferring directly with a Master. Art by Gaughan

Here is this month’s offering from a new author. It’s not bad, though it is overly long. We could have done with less detail about the alien genetics that inspire our protagonist, and I’m not sure I can really accept most of the premise. But Chapdelaine shows promise and more from him would not be amiss.

A very low three stars.

Venus Smiles, by J. G. Ballard

The community of Vermilion Sands has commissioned a sonic sculpture from a local artist. Unfortunately, everyone hates it; it’s ugly and plays eastern-style quarter tones nobody likes. A member of the Fine Arts Committee moves it to his garden, where it eventually starts playing late Romantic composers. But then it starts to grow.

As I understand it, this is largely a rewrite of Ballard’s “Mobile”, which appeared in Science Fantasy a decade ago, moving the action to Vermilion Sands and maybe adding some other things. By Ballard’s standards, this is a much more conventional story than he tends to produce these days, with only the unexplained growth of the statue being truly weird. I’m not a fan of Ballard, but others may get more out of this than I did.

Three stars.

Friday at the Fanoclasts, by Lin Carter

Our Man in Fandom takes us to a “typical” meeting of his club, though it sounds more like a party. There’s a lot of namedropping, though I was interested to hear that Alexei Panshin is looking for a publisher for a critical study of the works of Robert Heinlein. Carter also tells us that the Fanoclasts aren’t big on organization and structure. Given they’re the ones putting on this year’s Worldcon, I’m not sure that bodes well.

Three stars.

A Bowl Bigger Than Earth, by Philip José Farmer

Awakening from his deathbed, Morfiks finds himself in a hairless, sexless body sliding down the frictionless slope of a gigantic brass bowl. He is flung out the other side and lands in a river, from which he is fished out and taken to a city of brass. There, no one has a name, all are equal, and all are punished for any infraction unless the wrongdoer confesses. Everyone also studiously avoids mentioning just where it is they are.

A typical Gaughan abstract for a typical Farmer story. Art by Gaughan

As usual, Farmer gives us an interesting set-up and no real pay-off. I found the ending unpleasant and rather tasteless. In my review of Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, I noted that Harlan didn’t wallow in the ugliness he showed us. Farmer wallows.

Two stars.

Faust Aleph-Null (Part 2 of 3), by James Blish

Weapons manufacturer Baines has contracted the services of black magician Theron Ware. Following the successful death of Governor Rogan of California, Baines has arrived at Ware’s Italian villa at Christmas time, along with his executive assistant Jack Ginsberg and company scientist Adolph Hess. Also present is Father Domenico of the white monks of Monte Albano, sent by his superiors as an observer in accordance with the Grand Covenant.

Baines’ next target is scientist Albert Stockhausen. Because Stockhausen is a good man, his death will require greater magic than Rogan’s. Ware enlists Baines and his two companions to aid in the summoning of the demon Marchosias. Once the scientist is dead, Baines reveals his true goal: he wants all the demons of Hell released to walk the Earth for 24 hours. That’s more than Ware can manage, but he should be able to produce 50 or so. However, he will need the help not only of Baines and his men, but also Fr. Domenico. The date of the experiment is set for Easter. To be concluded.

Marchosias appears in the first of several forms. Art by Gray Morrow.

Not much happens here. There’s a subplot about Ginsberg and a succubus, but apart from the summoning, this installment consists of more people sitting around talking than a Heinlein novel. And while a lot of it is interesting, I’m not sure it’s necessary. The first two installments could easily have been condensed to a medium-length story. Much of the rest feels like Blish showing off the depth of his research.

Three stars.

Invader, by Harl Vincent

Chuck Radford awakens to the sensation of something attaching itself to the back of his neck. Meanwhile on Tau Ceti II, the mind of Princess Arla has fled, and Prince Bor’s mind must be sent after her. Chuck and his partner receive an unexpected windfall and decide on sudden vacations, with Chuck uncharacteristically picking Las Vegas as his destination. After an incredible run of luck, he wins just enough to pay off the debts of the troubled Jan Jones, whom he then rescues from a mysterious gunman.

Chuck’s most amazing skill is the ability to deliver a roundhouse kick in an elevator. Art by Vaughn Bodé

Harl Vincent was a pretty big name before the War, big enough to be chosen to do a round-robin story with the likes of Murray Leinster, Doc Smith and Stanley Weinbaum. As you can tell from the recap, the bones of this story are pretty pulpy. The writing, on the other hand, feels more modern; nothing special, just not the heavy slog of something from 30 years ago. If I have a real complaint, it’s that the gunman is never adequately explained. It was otherwise an enjoyable trifle.

Three stars.

Summing up

Another C to C- issue. There’s some forgettable fun and some stuff that’s sure to upset Mrs. Grundy and maybe even those less easily offended. (I certainly didn’t expect to find a term for an artificial phallus in IF, and I’m not sure that’s what Blish meant.) I miss the heady days of the March issue or wish for at least one stand-out story.

An oceanic theme from Clement. I wonder if this is related to Raindrop or The Mechanic.




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[June 23, 1962] Only the Lonely (July 1962 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

In this age of Cold War tensions, it's a little disconcerting to discover that the United States made two failed attempts this month to detonate a nuclear warhead in space.  The project, whimsically known as Operation Fishbowl, launched Thor missiles from Johnston Island, a tiny atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean under the command of the US Air Force.  The missiles launched on June 2 (Bluegill) and June 19 (Starfish) had to be destroyed in flight due to technical problems.  (Radar lost track of Bluegill, and the Starfish rocket engine stopped prematurely.) Some of the debris from Starfish landed on Johnston Island, potentially contaminating persons stationed on the atoll with radioactive material.

If that weren't scary enough, the three inmates who escaped from Alcatraz a couple of weeks ago are still at large.  It's probable that they drowned in San Francisco Bay, but I'd advise those of you who live in the area to keep your doors locked.

Raising the alarm in these troubling times are two newly published documents drawing attention to the problems we face.  The left-wing organization Students for a Democratic Society released a manifesto entitled The Port Huron Statement a week ago, promoting universal disarmament and other social and political reforms through non-violent civil disobedience. 

(It's interesting to note the cover price is the same as that of the magazine I'll eventually get around to reviewing.)

At the same time, The New Yorker (which costs ten cents less than Fantastic or The Port Huron Statement) published an excerpt from Silent Spring, an upcoming book from marine biologist Rachel Carson which discusses the danger posed to the environment by chemical pesticides.

With all of this depressing news, it's not surprising that a melancholy ballad of loneliness and lost love has been at the top of the charts for the entire month.  Ray Charles isn't the first musician to have a hit with Don Gibson's 1958 country song I Can't Stop Loving You — besides Gibson himself, Kitty Wells released a popular version the same year, as did Roy Orbison in 1961 — but his version is by far the most successful.  It seems likely that this unique combination of rhythm and blues with country-western will have a powerful impact on popular music.

In keeping with this mood, it's appropriate that many of the stories in the current issue of Fantastic feature characters haunted by loneliness, isolation, and lost love.

The great Emsh provides the cover art for The Singing Statues by British author J. G. Ballard.  It takes place in the futuristic resort community of Vermilion Sands, which has already appeared in a handful of Ballard's stories.  The narrator is an artist who creates sculptures that produce sound in response to those who view them.  (There are also indications that these works of art are somehow grown in the surreal landscape of Vermillion Sands, with its copper beaches and dry sea beds.) A beautiful, wealthy, and reclusive young woman purchases one of his works, believing that it sings to her in a way which perfectly reflects her soul.  Unbeknownst to her, however, the artist has actually placed an electronically distorted recording of his own voice inside it.  When the recording runs out, he goes to her luxurious home under the pretext of making repairs to the statue, actually placing new recordings within it.  His deception leads to unexpected revelations.  Ballard writes with a fine sense for imagery.  His tales of the decadent inhabitants of Vermillion Sands may not be for all tastes, but they are skillfully rendered works of art.  Four stars.

This month's Fantasy Classic is The Dragon of Iskander by Nat Schachner, from the pages of the April, 1934 issue of Top-Notch, a magazine which published adventure fiction from 1910 to 1937. 

Things start with a bang, as an archeological expedition in a mountainous region of Chinese Turkestan is attacked by a flying, fire-breathing dragon.  Our two-fisted American hero, along with his loyal servant and a couple of suspicious characters, makes his way into the mountains, where he discovers a lost kingdom founded by Alexander the Great.  Daring escapes and violent action results, and it's no surprise that a beautiful young woman shows up to stand by the hero's side.  This story is typical of old-fashioned pulp action yarns, and certainly moves at the speed of lightning.  It's marred by some casual racism (the Chinese character is often called "yellow," and non-Americans are generally cowardly and treacherous) and the fact that the true nature of the dragon isn't terribly convincing.  Two stars.

After this tale of an isolated nation, we turn to a story about a lonely individual.  A Drink of Darkness by Robert F. Young deals with a man who has destroyed his marriage and ruined his life through alcohol.  At the end of his rope, he meets a gaunt man who takes him to a strange land where a journey across a dark plain leads him to a towering mountain.  The alcoholic assumes that the gaunt man is Death.  During their trek he opens mysterious doors which lead to various times in his past life.  He relives the loss of his happiness to the bottle.  This is a bleak story, but it offers a glimmer of hope.  The true identity of the gaunt man is concealed until the end, although an astute reader may pick up a clue earlier.  Whether or not you believe the twist ending is appropriate, you are likely to respond to the story's emotional power.  Four stars.

The second half of Poul Anderson's short novel Shield continues the adventures of the fellow who has invented a force field.  Held captive by a crime boss, sought by both the Americans and Chinese for the secret of his invention, he receives help from an unexpected source.  An extended chase follows at a fast and furious pace.  Not quite as interesting as the first half, this section still provides plenty of action and a complex, fully developed character in the aide/mistress of the crime boss, who proves to be another example of the persons suffering from emotional loss in this issue.  Three stars.

The people in The Thinking Disease by Albert Teichner have become isolated from each other by their own technology.  Robots designed to self-destruct when there is any possibility of harming human beings (with a nod to Isaac Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics) somehow change from loyal servants to berserk killers at unpredictable times.  Their masters live in fear of leaving their homes.  The protagonist discovers a way to project his consciousness outside his body, enabling him to fight off the rebel machines.  The explanation for how the robots could hurt people, and the manner in which they can be controlled, is rather disappointing.  Two stars.

One Long Ribbon is, I believe, the first published story from Florence Engel Randall.  The protagonist is a recently widowed mother with a young son.  Her husband was a pilot, stationed at one air base after another, who was never able to give her a stable home.  Years before his death, he made arrangements to purchase a house for her in case of his demise.  When she moves in, she discovers that the other people living on her street act as if they can't see her.  Her son claims that he can't see the children that she sees playing outside.  This is a Twilight Zone kind of story with an unexpected explanation for its strange events.  Four stars.

Overall, this is a pretty good issue, although I wouldn't recommend reading it alone.

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[February 4, 1962] Promised Land in Sight? (the March 1962 Amazing)

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by John Boston

A couple of months ago I described Amazing, as “promising.” Now here’s the March 1962 issue, with two up-and-comers on the cover and a third on the contents page.

Verdict: promise partly kept.

Maybe “up-and-comer” isn’t quite le mot juste for Frank Herbert; “what have you done for me lately?” might fit better.  Herbert’s reputation was made by the very well-received Under Pressure, a/k/a The Dragon in the Sea and . . . [gag] . . . 21st Century Sub.  But there’s been no new novel, and the short fiction, though much of it is very solid, has not delivered on expectations.  Mindfield!, the lead novelette, doesn’t advance things.  After a cataclysmic war, a religious tyranny suppresses the old technology, but young rebels want knowledge and progress!  This unoriginal premise is decorated with some original details, e.g., everyone is conditioned against violence, and the priests must regularly undergo “Ultimate Conditioning” in some sort of ego-dissolving regeneration tank. 

The story is pretty murky, so I’ll leave it at this detail: The rebels have found an ancient skeleton and have put that into their stolen regeneration tank, and the simulacrum that emerges remembers its name (barely), and later, how to pilot a helicopter.  No disrespect to bones—where would we be without them?—but how do you get memory and complex skills out of them?  The answer: mumble mumble handwave, and not much of that.  This reads like an exercise in sauve qui peut, to salvage something from a larger project that didn’t pan out.  Two stars.

Mindfield! is illustrated on the cover, sort of: it portrays a missile launch that is about to happen at the end.  It’s consistent with Amazing’s habit of featuring machinery on the cover, but this is rather wimpy machinery: the artist Lloyd Birmingham seems to have used some medium like chalk or colored pencil rather than good old forceful oils or the new acrylics.  Lackluster!

Briton Brian W. Aldiss is definitely up and coming, now prolific in the US as well as the UK, and known for pushing the envelope and/or kicking the shins of standard SF practice.  So Tyrants’ Territory, featuring planetary exploration and a science puzzle, played very straight, is a surprise.  Askanza VI has huge mineral-filled oceans and littoral fauna that look like giant turtles, who build rudimentary structures and throw crockery full of acid when threatened.  Their heads are literally empty.  What’s going on?  The heads of the turtles, or more properly pseudo-chelonia (Aldiss has a footnote about that term), are radio receivers; they are guided by radio waves from the ocean, which by virtue of its composition, is a low-power transmitter.  Who’s transmitting, or whether there is some sort of collective mind, is not clear—but once human colonists arrive, they will quickly figure out how to control the pseudo-chelonia, and the worst elements among them will do so—hence the title. 

But why allow human colonists at all where there already is intelligent life? Uncharacteristically for Aldiss, there’s no real questioning of the colonial imperative beyond the protagonist’s bad mood. The only discordant note is the name of this venture—the Planetary Ecological Survey Team, or PEST—but that’s it for moral witness.  Nonetheless, the story is so well conceived, written, and assembled as to merit four stars.

J.G. Ballard is back with The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista , another in his series about Vermilion Sands — a colony of artists and other creative types, not to mention layabouts and poseurs.  It introduces psychotropic houses, which reflect the emotional states and physical reactions of their occupants—including their previous occupants.  This idea is good for gags early on, e.g.: “Rapidly we went through a mock Assyrian ziggurat (the last owner had suffered from St. Vitus’s Dance, and the whole structure still jittered like a galvanized Tower of Pisa).”

Protagonist Talbot and wife buy the house once belonging to Gloria Tremayne, a movie star who shot and killed her husband in the house but was acquitted of murder—with Talbot assisting her defense.  He’s never gotten over his fascination.  The relationship between Talbot and his wife and the house’s memory of Tremayne and her husband reinforce each other until the house tries first to kill Talbot’s wife and then to kill Talbot when he comes home drunk and aggressive, not unlike Tremayne’s husband.  Talbot has, as he later puts it, “reconstructed the original traumatic situation in order to release the repressed material.”

This superficially jokey story is extremely well done.  Apart from the cleverness of the idea and its development, Ballard (like Aldiss) is a vastly better writer at the word-and-sentence level than the genre standard, with a knack for striking phrases and images (“Starting to walk down to the lounge, I realized that the house was watching me like a wounded animal.”).  The portrayal of Talbot as a narcissistic jerk through his first-person narration is a little tour de force of “show, don’t tell.” Four stars.

Newish writer David Ely is here with The The Wizard of Light, in which multiple copies of artistic masterpieces appear, utterly indistinguishable from the originals—like hundreds of Mona Lisas left outside the Louvre.  The art market is destroyed.  Turns out old Dr. Browl, brilliant inventor of optical devices, has invented a molecular scanner, complete with “cybernetic reactor” to copy whatever was scanned.  And why is he doing this?  To destroy art, which “falsifies nature in general, and light values in particular.” Clever idea, but spun out for too long, and the story is told in a faux-19th Century verbose style; whether as pastiche or just reinventing the square wheel, it talks itself down to three stars.

The Classic Reprint this issue is Euthanasia Limited by David H. Keller, M.D., a power in his time (the 1920s and ‘30s).  It features detective Taine of San Francisco.  Sam Moskowitz’s introduction says Keller “performed a feat of characterization [with Taine] so extraordinary that it should be studied by every student of writing technique.” Whatever.  It begins: “A little white-haired woman was working in her laboratory.” Not bad for 1929!  Anna Van Why (honest) is making a battery—out of apple halves.  She studies death and has learned that all life has electrical potential, and death is its reduction to zero, as she explains for not quite four pages.  Her sociopathic brother is eager to learn more, and a year later a police official comes to discuss with her a series of unusual deaths and arrange a visit from Taine.  Taine arrives and cracks the by now obvious case through tedious chicanery.  To hell with this, bring back Anna Van Why!  Two stars.

Frank Tinsley contributes Cosmic Butterfly, a short article about a spaceship design that uses solar power to ionize a propellant.  Tinsley is a fairly boring writer and this is pitched at a level more elementary than most SF readers are likely to need.  Two stars.

In 1956, F&SF began running a series of vignettes titled Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot, by one Grendel Briarton (hint: think anagram), consisting of elaborate set-ups for terrible puns, usually on cliched sayings.  Now Amazing has commenced Through Time and Space with Benedict Breadfruit, by one Grandall Barretton (not even quite an anagram), consisting of elaborate set-ups for terrible puns on the names of SF authors.  This has been a public service announcement.

[Speaking of which, if you registered for WorldCon by January 31, you should have received your ballot.  Don't forget to nominate Galactic Journey for "Best Fanzine!"]

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