It's hardly shocking news to point out that much of modern American society is dominated by men. To pick a random example, out of one hundred members of the United States Senate, there is only one woman.
Margaret Chase Smith (Republican, Maine) who also served in the House of Representatives from 1940 to 1948, when she was elected to the Senate.
Popular culture isn't much different. Take, for example, a new television series that's drawing a lot of attention. It's named for the two male hosts.
From left to right, straight man Dan Rowan and goofy partner Dick Martin.
I have to admit that I'm already a big fan of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, which premiered last month. Besides the rapid-fire pace of its jokes, I also admire the talents of a quartet of regular female performers on the program. Here's to you, Ruth Buzzi, Jo Anne Worley, Judy Carne, and new cast member Goldie Hawn!
This is not meant to detract in any way from the fine work provided by the men on the series. Bravo, Henry Gibson, Arte Johnson, and announcer Gary Owens!
(I would be remiss if I did not also mention the appearance of a remarkable entertainer calling himself Tiny Tim on the premiere episode. His performance is unique, to say the least.)
Dick Martin is nonplussed.
The same pattern of male domination is often found in the world of popular music (though not always–if the Beatles are the Kings of Pop, the Supremes are the Queens.) Right now, for instance, the Number One hit in the USA is Green Tambourine, a sprightly little psychedelic number performed by some guys calling themselves the Lemon Pipers.
Even the 45 rpm single is groovy-looking.
Proving the old adage that behind every great man there's a great woman, the lyrics for the song were written by Rochelle (Shelley) Pinz.
Pinz with Paul Leka, who wrote the music.
Stag Party
As we'll see, the only original work of fiction in the latest issue of Fantastic takes male domination to an extreme, in a certain way. Let's take a look.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
As usual, the cover comes from another source. In this case, it's from an issue of the popular German publication Perry Rhodan.
The original looks better, even if I can't read it.
As the title implies, the setting is a world with a culture based on ancient Greece, particularly Sparta. Society is rigidly divided into various classes, determined at birth. The main character is a military policeman.
The native animals on this planet reproduce by splitting themselves apart, a bloody and painful process. The human inhabitants believe that they used to have children this way, but now make use of a so-called Birth Machine, which makes things much easier. Nobody has access to this fabled device, except for members of the Doctor class.
Did I mention that there are no women to be seen? This is an all-male world, at least as far as the vast majority of the population knows.
There's an implication of homosexual relationships. The so-called helots tend to be slightly effeminate, compared to the red-blooded Spartans, and there's mention of close friendships between members of the two classes.
The planet receives twice-yearly shipments from their only colony world, founded by a group of rebels. The two societies have a distant relationship, trading goods but having no other contact.
The story begins when a starship from another group shows up. Aboard is our old friend John Grimes, who has appeared in a handful of other stories by Chandler. More important is the fact that he's got an ethologist with him, here to study the planet's culture.
The ethologist. Can you tell there will be trouble?
The locals, having never seen a woman before, assume the ethologist is either deformed or an alien. The protagonist feels a peculiar mixture of emotions. (The implication is that males are inherently attracted to females, even if they have no idea that such people exist. That's debatable, at least.)
Meanwhile, a security officer gives the policeman a secret assignment. It seems that the Doctors have some kind of hidden agenda. The hero sneaks into a forbidden area and gets a hint the world doesn't quite work the way he thought it did.
Chandler tips his hand pretty early, so it's probably not giving away too much to reveal that there are, indeed, women on the planet. The Doctors keep them locked away in a sort of harem.
I don't know how the rest of this is going to resolve itself, or what role Grimes will play, but so far it's fairly interesting. As I've noted, there isn't much suspense about the Doctors' conspiracy, but I'll keep reading.
Three stars.
The Court of Kublai Khan, by David V. Reed
The March 1948 issue of Fantastic Adventures supplies this mystical swashbuckler.
Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.
A fellow is obsessed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous incomplete poem Kubla Khan (note the change in spelling from the title of the story.) So much so, in fact, that he finds himself back in time, in the palace of that fabled ruler. (Let's ignore the fact that the poem has nothing to do with real history.) People from all ages who are passionate about something wind up there. (There's even a prehistoric man around.)
Illustrations by Robert Fuqua.
Coleridge himself is present, because of his love for the maiden he saw in his vision of Xanadu. Our hero tries to help him win the adored lady. If I managed to follow the confusing plot correctly, the same day keeps repeating itself over and over, ending in Coleridge's failure. The protagonist does his best to change this endless cycle.
Sometimes this means using a sword against man or beast.
Part of his motivation is that he wants Coleridge to finish the poem. Complicating matters is a rival for the woman's affection. There's also the peculiar fact that once somebody achieves his passionate desire, he goes back to his own time with no memory of what happened.
The premise is intriguing, but I found the story difficult to follow. I never quite understood how this magical form of time travel was supposed to operate.
The bulk of the text consists of a letter the hero writes to his buddy, chronicling his adventures. (Somehow he manages to remember things just long enough to jot them down.) There's plenty of action, but the ending is anticlimactic.
I was disappointed that I never got to see Where Alph, the sacred river, ran/Through caverns measureless to man/Down to a sunless sea.
The July 1946 issue of Amazing Stories is the source of this weird tale.
Cover art by Walter Parke.
An archeologist finds an incredibly ancient bronze statue in the Australian desert. He hears a voice coming from inside, and breaks open the very thin outer shell. Inside is a figure made entirely of diamond.
(There's some nonsense about carbon being the source of life. Thus, a diamond being can live. Yeah, sure.)
Anyway, the diamond person turns into a beautiful woman. (At first, the hero assumes the figure is that of a man. I guess the voice and shape weren't enough of a clue.) She takes the fellow on a bizarre journey through time. (At least, I think so. This was another story that confused me.)
Illustration by Julian S. Krupa.
She leads him to an entity made of light. He finds out that a civilization from another planet, led to Earth by the benevolent light being, fought off loathsome creatures straight out of a Lovecraft yarn. (The story even mentions H. P. Lovecraft and his acolyte August Derleth by name.) All the people died, except for the woman, who was preserved by the power of the light entity. Now it's time to wipe out the enemy for good.
The author throws a bunch of stuff at the reader at a breakneck pace. The whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's not boring.
Two stars.
The Great Steel Panic, by Fletcher Pratt and Irvin Lester
We go way back to the September 1928 issue of Amazing Stories for this disaster story.
Cover art by Frank R. Paul.
Somebody, or something, cuts through the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge. The same thing happens to elevators, subways, and other modern devices made of iron and steel.
Illustration also by Paul.
A brilliant scientist figures out what's going on, and what should be done about it.
That's the entire plot. Even the disaster stuff, which kills lots of people, is described dispassionately, in a second-hand fashion. The result is a very uninvolving piece. David H. Keller's similar work, The Metal Doom, wasn't that good, but at least it developed the basic idea to a greater extent.
The nifty Scientifiction symbol on the cover of the old magazine is a lot more impressive.
Two stars.
Incompatible, by Rog Phillips
This science fiction horror story first appeared in the September 1949 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.
An alien spaceship crashes on Earth. The creature inside lives on the blood of living organisms. (Shades of Queen of Blood!)
She's also telepathic, and uses this ability in an attempt to survive in this very strange world. Besides that, she can change her appearance, eventually looking like a very attractive woman.
Illustration by W. E. Tilly.
Things work out pretty well for her, until a military man gets a little too friendly.
In essence, this is a vampire story. The first part, told from the point of view of the alien, is quite effective. The author does a fine job describing Earth and humans from an extraterrestrial's perspective. The rest of the story goes downhill here from there. Some of the sections told from the human point of view are extraneous.
Two stars.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber
The first installment of this new book review column discusses the nonfiction tome Spirits, Stars and Spells: The Profits and Perils of Magic by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine C. de Camp. Leiber gives a glowing review to this skeptical account of human superstitions. I mention this mostly to contrast it with Harry Harrison's editorial, which talks about the same article about dowsing rods used by the United States Marine Corps as appeared in the latest issue of Analog. Buy the de Camps' book instead.
No rating.
I Love Lucifer, by William P. McGivern
Finishing up the magazine is this tale from the December/January 1953/1954 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Mel Hunter.
A little girl who claims her name is Lucifer shows up at a place where a man watches over a junkyard of old spaceships. The only other resident is a boy the same age as the girl. The two kids play together among the worn-out vessels.
Illustrations by Ernest Schroeder.
A government agent shows up at the place, looking for escaped criminals. Meanwhile, the kids meet a seemingly friendly man who wants their help in getting away from bad guys. Let's just say that there are plots and counterplots, and neither the man nor the girl are quite what they claim to be.
Would you name this child Lucifer?
The title may suggest something supernatural, but nothing of the kind occurs. I imagine the author called the girl Lucifer just so he could pun on the name of a popular TV show of the time. (Get it?)
The story caught my interest at first, but quickly lost me. The plot started to reek of space pirates and other corny stuff. The true nature of Lucifer was just silly.
Two stars.
In Need of a Woman's Touch
Maybe my increasing awareness of feminism (they're starting to call it Women's Liberation these days, since the National Organization for Women was created last year) just puts me in a cranky mood, but it seems that this all-male issue wasn't very good. One so-so half of a novel and a bunch of unsatisfactory old stories don't add up to much. A few female writers (and fewer reprints) may not be the whole answer, but it sure wouldn't hurt. Meanwhile, go read a good book.
At least the title is honest about the contents.
You could also catch up on the news and see if they cover the emerging women's movement.
That might be true for most ordinary Hollywood productions playing at your local theater, anyway. However, if you sneak downtown to one of the seedier movie houses, you might wonder if the Hays Code has any real meaning these days.
We've already dived into this cinematic underworld some time ago, with a discussion of the extremely silly movie Nude on the Moon. Like other so-called nudie cuties, there's a certain innocence to it, despite the display of unclothed female flesh.
There's a category of nudies known as roughies, adding violence to the naked women in order to provide even sleazier thrills. That wouldn't normally be my cup of tea, but I have to admit that a recent ad for one of these things caught my eye as I was walking past a disreputable theater.
I snuck my way into the darkened theater and got ready for a truly unusual viewing experience.
A Krazy Kat And Three Blind Mice
Let's get the dirty stuff out of the way first. The sequences featuring naked women were obviously added to the original film later. They don't look anything at all like the main part of the movie, so we can disregard them.
What we really have here is a variation on Richard Connell's famous story The Most Dangerous Game, which reached the silver screen way back in 1932. (Try to catch the original on your local Shock Theater TV program. It's quite good.)
Confessions of a Psycho Cat retains the basic concept of hunting human beings for sport, but otherwise bears little resemblance to its inspiration. For one thing, the hunter is a woman.
We begin with our villainess, Virginia, saying goodbye to her brother at the airport. He's off to Africa to do some big game hunting. (Do you sense a theme developing?) Virginia usually goes with him, but her psychiatrist recommended that she stay home and recover from a nervous breakdown.
We then jump right into a scene of a guy running for his life. He manages to reach the apartment of some of his friends (insert unrelated nude party scene here) and tells them he's been shot. A flashback tells us what's going on.
It seems that Virginia brought three men together in order to offer them a very strange deal. If they'll allow her to hunt them down for twenty-four hours, she'll pay each one who escapes one hundred thousand dollars.
Each of the three men killed someone and escaped punishment. I guess this is Virginia's way of having fun while administering a kind of rough justice. She also thinks of each one as a specific type of animal. From left to right in the above scene of Virginia and the trio of intended victims, we have:
Buddy, a drug addict. He accidentally gave his girlfriend a fatal overdose of heroin. He's a jackal.
Charles, a stage actor. He murdered his wife's lover. He's a lion.
Rocco, a boxer. He killed an opponent in the ring. He's a bull.
I should mention here that all the characters are portrayed by totally unknown performers, with the exception of Rocco. He's played by well-known boxer Jake "Raging Bull" LaMotta, appropriately enough. (I wonder if the concept of symbolizing the men with animals came about when he was cast in the role.)
The three guys figure it'll be easy enough to hide out for a day and then collect the loot. Virginia cleverly uses their individual weaknesses to lure them into her traps. She makes Charles think he's got a chance for a big role. She accuses hot-tempered Rocco of being a coward. Of course, Buddy needs a dose of heroin.
While all this is going on, we learn about the traumatic incident during her childhood that made Virginia a Psycho Cat. Suffice to say that it puts her supposedly sane brother in a very bad light. By the end of the movie, Virginia is completely insane.
Obviously made on a very small budget, this modest little thriller has a certain gritty appeal. Filmed on location in New York City, with frequent use of a handheld camera, it sometimes feels like a very weird documentary. The highlight of the movie is the battle between Virginia and Rocco. I don't want to give too much away, but the fact that he's supposed to be a bull may give you a hint.
The irrelevant nude scenes are an annoying distraction, although there's one that made me laugh. When Rocco is on the phone with Virginia, there's supposedly a woman in the room with him. It's really, really obvious that the two characters aren't on the same set. In a bizarre scene, the woman kisses her reflection passionately.
If you can work up the nerve to walk into a place showing this thing, you may find it more enjoyable than you'd expect. If nothing else, the actress playing Virginia gives a really wild performance, whether she's hunter, matador, or little girl.
Give this kooky kitty a chance, and you may wind up purring.
Or, if you're ashamed to show your face in a nudie theater, you can stay home and watch the news.
by Gideon Marcus
Harlan is back with another money-grab collection, this time from Belmont. Actually, I don't know how complicit Ellison actually is given that he was furious that Belmont reprinted Doomsman without his consent. Still, he did contribute forewords to all the stories.
And that's really the reason to get this collection, since almost everything in it has appeared somewhere else before.
Cover by Leo and Diane Dillon
Where the Stray Dreams Go
One of the niftier pieces in the book, and the one fresh publication, this is not a story but a collection of aborted story fragments. We may see them grow into complete stories someday. Or perhaps, now that they have been born, after a fashion, this is their final form. Four stars.
This one was in Ellison Wonderland and I still feel the same way. The idea that the universe is already inhabited by superior beings should not be as damaging to the racial ego as Ellison believes. Three stars.
The ninth (and first successful) trip around the moon, manned by a solo pilot, is threatened by a stowaway. It's got a gimmick you'll see a mile away. Three stars.
The Time of the Eye
from The Saint Mystery Magazine, May 19591
A Korean war vet meets a beautiful blind woman during rehabilitation. He falls for her, hard, but it turns out the tragic cause of the woman's injury is communicable…
A wounded spaceman is trapped in his life hutch by a deranged robot. Can he defeat the mechanical monster before it smashes him to bits?
This one appeared in Ellison's first collection, A Touch of Infinity (1960). Four stars.
Battle Without Banners
from Taboo, (1964)
Society's refuse (e.g. the Jews and the non-lily-white) are packed into prisons. This is the story of one brave squad's attempt to break out. But the jail they live in is really called "society".
This one was written for Taboo, a sort of precursor to Dangerous Visions, including such luminaries as Charles Beaumont and Fritz Leiber. It's a good piece, if a bit maudlin. Three or four stars, I can't really decide.
The creator of the first sentient robot gets his revenge on a cruel world. When said android makes a 300 year round-trip to Alpha Centauri, his back wages amount to more than the value of the world, and since the robot was granted person-hood, there's no way out of the deal.
Even Ellison concedes that the plot doesn't work, but he likes it anyway.
This one also appeared in Ellison's first collection, A Touch of Infinity (1960). Three stars.
After the last war, a loyal servant robot welcomes his new masters, though not without a touch of regret.
This one suffers for having the exact same ending as the prior robot story (Ellison writes so much, he's never above lifting from himself). But it is nicely written. Four stars.
A two-page "after-the-bomb" story to end all "after-the-bomb" stories, published in the latest issue of Terry Carr's semi-prozine Lighthouse (I read it there, too).
I laughed. Five stars for this skewering of cliché TV writers.
The longest single piece of the book is also the best. A private soldier named Qarlo is warped by a freak accident into the past. After being subdued and interrogated, he is put to his most effective use–telling his story as a cautionary tale against the ills of war.
Can't argue with this one, either the morality or the storytelling. Five stars.
This is the Ellison episode I missed (I did catch Demon with a Glass Hand, which was good). But Natalie enjoyed it, and I hope I see it in rerun.
I feel that the story is far less impactful than its source material, but then, judging a show from a script is like judging a sculpture from its shadow. I will say that, having read it, I now feel like I have an idea how to turn my Kitra books into a TV show…
Anyway, I won't rate this–it's invaluable if you're interested, and somewhat superfluous if you're not.
From the Land of Hype
My problem with Ellison is a personal one. There's no doubt but that he's a brilliant writer. You're never bored reading his stuff. The thing is Harlan offers no viewpoint but his own; he just communicates it so well as to make you feel it's "the truth" rather than just "his opinion."
But Harlan and I are so diametrically opposed, constitutionally, that it always rings a bit false. Harlan's never had long-term luck with ladies (though he bemoans the incessant interest he gets from women thanks to his "talent"). I've been happily married for 25 years. Harlan has no sense of time; I am punctual to a fault. Harlan famously has no tact and carries life-long grudges. I have some sense of diplomacy, and I tend to forgive and forget.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Ellison–he is who he is–but it means that the belchings of his id, no matter how exquisitely crafted, never quite resonate with me. This makes most of his stories fall into a sort of 3.75 star slush in my mind.
They're still worth reading, though. He is a genius.
As people who read my review of last year’s Orbit will recall, I loved Joanna Russ’ new fantasy hero Alyx the Adventuress. These stories combined a modern sensibility, great characterization and the kind of fun you would get from Howard or Leiber.
Needless to say then, I was extremely excited to learn we would be getting a new novel of Alyx’s adventures so soon afterwards. Trying to go into the book with as little foreknowledge as possible, I found it was definitely not the story I was expecting.
When we last left Alyx she was escaping Orudh and planning her next move. In the opening paragraph of Picnic on Paradise we are reintroduced to her:
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I cannot believe you are a proper Trans-Temporal agent; I think-” and he finished the thought on the floor his head under one of his ankles… “I am the Agent, and My name is Alyx.
To understand what a sharp diversion this is, imagine picking up Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Conqueror and finding it opens in 1917 with Conan at the Battle of the Somme. A fascinating choice but also one that requires a lot of readjustment of expectations as well as explanations.
Eventually what we piece together is that while she was escaping by sea after robbing the Prince of Tyre, she was somehow brought to the future and has come to work for the transtemporal agency. Although she has learnt some elements and language of this future millennia and these weird new worlds, she is still largely a stranger.
What is continued from the previous installments is Alyx’s impatience for impractical people. Here it is the tourists she must shepherd across Paradise. They are all different representatives of this future, showing different facets of the time, but for Alyx they are all fools in one way or another, coddled by society and unable to survive without it.
In some ways this could be seen as a version of Montaigne’s Des Cannibales but it significantly improves upon it. Whilst the original uses cultural relativism as a means to critique contemporary society, Russ sets up two opposing societies as alien to us as each other: the ancient Mediterranean of Alyx and the highly complex future of the tourists, and compares them to make more complex points as well as building fascinating worlds.
It should not be thought as an old-fashioned kind of text at all, as it does not pull any punches. Instead, we have explorations of drugs, sex, religion, complex psychology, violence, humanity and much more. It is like all of society attempting to be distilled into one perilous journey.
I know it is only January but if this isn’t to be my favourite novel of 1968, something really special will have to come along in the next 11 months.
A very high Five Stars
by Victoria Silverwolf
Short and Not So Sweet
I recently came across a trio of new works of speculative fiction that don't require a lot of time to read. In fact, I was able to finish all three books in one day. Each features a fair amount of disturbing material, even though one is a comedy, one is intended for younger readers, and one is a action-packed thriller. Let's take a look at these brief, dark-tinged novels.
I use the word new loosely for this satiric Russian novella from an author who died in 1940. It was actually written in 1925, but has never been officially published in the Soviet Union. (I understand that copies of it have been circulated in the underground form known as samizdat.) Michael Glenny's translation is its first appearance in English, I believe.
Cover design by Applebaum & Curtis, Inc., according to the back cover, but the artist remains anonymous.
In classic horror movie fashion, a Mad Scientist adopts a homeless pooch for the bizarre purpose of transplanting a dead man's testicles and pineal gland into the animal's body. (The detailed descriptions of surgery are the gruesome parts of the book. Dog lovers beware.)
The mutt changes into a man, of a particularly vulgar sort. The canine fellow claims to be a loyal Communist, turning against the aristocratic scientist and siding with the bureaucrats who want the doctor to give up several rooms in his apartment.
It's obvious that the author is attacking the Bolshevik revolution in his portrait of the dog-man and the other collectivists. He also satirizes quack medicine of the time.
The narrative alternates from first person, in the dog's point of view, to third person, sometimes in a single paragraph. Some readers may find these sudden transitions jarring, although otherwise the book is quite readable. (Kudos to the translator.)
Despite the blood-soaked scenes of surgery and the savage satire of Communism, much of the novel is pure slapstick. There's an extended sequence in which the newly created man chases a cat, leading to the flooding of the apartment. Overall, the book is both amusing and thought-provoking.
Next we have an unusual fantasy for young people. I think this is the author's first book.
My sources suggest that this art is by John Holder.
We jump right into a scene of nail-biting suspense. A sixteen year old boy and his kid sister are trapped on a small rock in the sea off the coast of England. Folks with spears are ready to kill them if they make it back to shore. The tide is rising, ready to drown them.
The boy got hit on the head by one of the mob and has amnesia. This gives the girl a good excuse to tell her brother (and the reader) what's been going on for the last five years.
A mysterious something made the inhabitants of Britain hate machines. They've gone back to a medieval way of life. The boy was caught messing around with a motorboat, and his sister was seen drawing pictures of machines. The fanatical locals are ready to execute them for witchcraft. (Apparently the anti-technology effect has worn off on them.)
The boy is a weathermonger; that is, he can control the weather with his mind. (Every village in England has one, it seems. I suppose it's a side effect of the machine-hating phenomenon.)
He uses this power to create a fog. The siblings escape, make their way to the forbidden motorboat, and reach France. (The anti-technology effect is limited to Britain.)
That's just the start of their adventures. The French authorities, seeing that they are immune to the phenomenon, send them back to track down its source. Thus begins a wild odyssey to Wales, making use of a snazzy 1909 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost stolen from a museum. (I get the feeling the author is in love with that classic car.)
It's an exciting book, with one heck of a climax. The explanation for what's going on strains credibility, even for fantasy. The story is too intense for very young readers, I think, but it should be fine for teenagers. Adults who don't mind reading so-called juveniles should enjoy it as well.
The cover makes it clear that this is the start of a series. The name of the series, and the illustration, suggest that we're in for the kind of SFnal sword and sorcery yarn you might find in an old copy of Planet Stories. That's pretty accurate, but there's a bit more to it.
Cover art by Jeff Jones, who also provides a couple of interior illustrations.
The author doesn't waste any time. In just a couple of pages, a starship is destroyed by a weapon launched from the planet it's orbiting. A scout ship carrying two guys crashes on the planet. A few pages later, one of them is dead.
Let's catch our breath and see where we are. See the tiny black dot in the middle of the left side of the map? That's where the scout ship landed. The sole remaining hero won't get very far from that spot by the time the book ends. He just travels a bit to the northwest, not even reaching the coast. There are a few references to other places on the map, but the vast majority of the rest of the planet is going to have to wait for other volumes in the series.
The map art is not credited, but might be by Jeff Jones as well.
If you think the geography is complicated, wait until you hear about the population. There are humans of many different cultures present, for reasons explained later. There are at least four species of aliens, broken up into subgroups. The aliens who give the book its title, for example, are divided into the Old Chasch, the Blue Chasch, and the Green Chasch.
Complicating matters is the fact that some humans are (pick one) servants/slaves/worshippers/devotees/imitators of the various aliens. One such person is the book's most amusing character.
With all this going on, we still have a nonstop action-packed plot, as our hero sets out on a seemingly hopeless quest to get back to Earth. Along the way, he meets the traditional beautiful princess, whom he has to rescue from captivity no less than three times.
(At this point, I had to wonder if the author was poking subtle fun at the kind of work produced by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard.)
The story is full of violence and, frankly, kind of puerile. What distinguishes it from a typical thud-and-blunder yarn is the extraordinarily intricate setting. The author is a master of creating exotic cultures, and that's a lot more interesting than the endless killing and corny plot.
If the male characters are two-dimensional, the females are one-dimensional. The princess exists only to be stunningly beautiful, get kidnapped, and fall in love with the hero. There's a cult of priestesses who hate men and loathe attractive women. There are no other female characters of any importance, just servants and the like.
Taking a break from her various long-running series, Andre Norton, one of the most prolific science fiction novelists, has produced a new one-off. It's a simple, dare I say, old-fashioned tale wherein ex-GI Ray Osborne gets inadvertently whipped into the distant past when he stumbles across an experimental time travel beam. Emerging into the primeval forests of "The Barren Lands" that will one day be North America, he is quickly captured by a party of Atlanteans (as in from the lost continent of Atlantis) and turned into a galley slave. Fortunately, he is able to make his escape, with the help of a fellow prisoner named Cho. The two, now sword-brothers, secure passage on a warship commissioned by Atlantis' rival, the Pacific continent-nation of Mu. On said ship, Ray and Cho make their way to the land of the Sun, where Ray is elevated to the aristocratic rank of Sun-born and welcomed.
But Ray is in for more than he bargained, as he is imbued with a subconscious geas to infiltrate the perfidious former colony of Atlantis and stop their nefarious plan to bring in other-worldly demons, their doomsday weapon in a cold war about to turn hot…
Operation: Time Search is all very Burroughsian in its setup and execution, up to and including the pseudo-scientific, modern era bookends (that do not add much to the book save padding). It's essentially riproaring action from beginning to end, and Norton delivers it competently. There are also agreeable relationships between the sword-brethren Ray and Cho, as well as, later in the book, Ray and a buccaneer captain named Taut.
This is a peculiarly shallow book, however. The Murians are portrayed as universally good and just (even when they commit actions that are not so nice, as in making Ray an unwitting weapon). The Atlanteans are foul in every respect. This could be fine–after all, when has Conan been subtle? But the writing is peculiarly sparse, almost oblique, when describing the many visceral horrors and foes of this bloody world, almost as if Norton were censoring herself (or perhaps she was censored after the fact). An encounter between Roy and "The Loving One", a gruesome Lovecraftian menace, in particular suffers for this.
Plus, I was sad that the potentially interesting Lady Ayna, captain of a Murian warship, essentially disappears shortly after her introduction. The saintly Lady Aiee, Cho's mother, is not nearly so compelling; in any wise, she is gone halfway through the book, too. Really, there just isn't a lot to become attached to in this book: Ray isn't a good enough character, and the setting is too one dimensional.
All in all, it felt like Norton was just going through the motions on this one. Three stars.
Until now, the protests and unrest have been confined to the bigger cities, particularly West Berlin. My hometown of Bremen did have its share of protests, but those were mostly just a few dozen people standing around on the market square, holding up placards. Though protests are getting bigger even here. On the day before Christmas, there was a protest against the war in Vietnam of several thousand overwhelmingly young people outside the US general consulate.
Right now, however, Bremen is seeing the biggest protests since the Bremen Soviet Republic fifty years ago. And for once, those protests are not against the war in Vietnam or the West German emergency laws or a visit of the Shah of Persia or former Nazis in positions of power, but about something far more mundane, namely an increase in bus and tram fares from 60 to 70 Pfennig for single tickets and 33 to 40 Pfennig for group tickets popular with students and apprentices. On the surface, this increase seems modest. However, for students, apprentices and young people in general who neither have cars nor a lot of money and rely on public transport to get around the city, even a small fare increase is a big problem.
The tram protests started small on January 15 with approximately fifty students of several Bremen high schools protesting the fare increase on the Domsheide square, one of the main tram traffic hubs in the city center. When the protest was ignored, the students decided to stage a sit-in on the tram tracks. The police removed the students, whereupon the protest continued outside Bremen central station – another major traffic hub – where other young people joined in.
Protesting youngsters on the Domsheide squarePolice officers face teenaged protesters on DomsheideProtesting students stage a spontaneous sit-in on the tram tracks.
In the following days, the protests continued to grow. On January 16, there were roughly 1500 young people staging a sit-in on the tram tracks, holding placards with slogans like "70 Pfennig – Lieber renn' ich" (70 Pfennig – I'd rather walk). The initial protesters had been high school students, but by now they were joined by students of the technical and pedagogical colleges and apprentices of various local companies. The protest managed to bring tram traffic in Bremen's city center to a complete halt with a backlog of trams stretching all across town.
Student leaders speak to the protestersStudent leader Christoph Köhler addresses the protesters.Young protesters hold up a banner saying "70 Pfennig – I'd rather walk"More placards. One protester announces that he will henceforth go by bike, while another declares "Avoid the tram – 70 Pfennig is crazy".
And the protest was still growing. The next day, there were 5000 young people protesting and blocking the tram tracks to the point that the public transport company BSAG suspended all tram traffic across the entire city.
Police officers stationed on the Domsheide square.
Bremen's chief of police Erich von Bock und Polach, who was a Colonel in the Waffen-SS before he reinvented himself as a member of the Social Democratic Party, proved that he had learned nothing whatsoever from the tragic events in West Berlin last June and ordered the Bremen police to attack the protesting students with truncheons, batons and water cannons. Hereby, the police not only managed to beat up several innocent bystanders, but the resulting unrest also caused damage to twenty-one tram cars and fourteen busses.
Sadly, we have seen pictures like these all too often. Police officers beat up a protester.A police water cannon attempts to blast protesters on Bremen's market square, but only manages to hit the stall of the Bürgerpark tombola and the Roland statue.A police water cannon blasts protesting students in front of the St. Petri cathedral, whose rector supported the protesters. Note the trams in the background.Two young protesters face off against water cannons and are clearly loving every minute of it.The police arrest a very dangerous protester who appears to be fourteen or fifteen at most.Police officers drag off a protester and chase a very dangerous kid on a bicycle.The editor of this student newspaper thought that marking his car as "press" would protect him from police violence, but the police officers dragged him out of the car anyway.This protesters holds up a placard asking the police not to beat up protesters, but negotiate, sadly without success.Protesters hold up placards decrying police violence.
Chaos on the streets of Bremen
And still the protests grew. The workers of the AG Weser shipyard and the Klöckner steelwork, the two biggest companies in Bremen, employing thousands of people, many of whom rely on public transport, declared their solidarity with the protesting students and apprentices. By January 18, twenty thousand people were protesting in the city center.
By January 18, the protest had grown to twenty thousand people and the protesters are no longer just teenagers.A representative of the metal workers' union speaks to the protesters.
The city was in utter chaos by now and the Bremen senate held an emergency meeting. Thankfully, cooler heads than the noxious chief of police von Bock und Polach prevailed and so Bremen's new mayor Hans Koschnik, who has only been in office since November, met with representatives of the protesters in the townhall, while the protests were still going on outside and threatened to boil over into violence again.
Bremen's new mayor Hans Koschnik has only been in office since November and really deserves better.The police has cordoned off the area around the townhall to allow members of the city parliament to attend the emergency meeting.
An unlikely heroine emerged in 54-year-old Annemarie Mevissen, deputy mayor and senator for youth, sports and education. Mrs. Mevissen left the relative safety of the townhall and went out to talk to the protesters directly. On the Domsheide, where the protests had begun four days earlier, Mrs. Mevissen climbed onto a crate of road de-icing salt, grabbed a megaphone and spoke to the protesters, explaining why the fare increases were sadly necessary, but also expressing sympathy for the protesters. Annemarie Mevissen's speech as well as the meeting with Mayor Koschnik did the trick and the protests gradually ceased. As of today, trams and busses are mostly running again.
Senator for Youth, Sports and Education and deputy mayor Annemarie Mevissen speaks to the protesters to express sympathy and call for calm.Annemaire Mevissen is a remarkable woman. Since she also is Senator of Sports, she is showing off her ball kicking skills while meeting with young football players.
By chance, I was shopping in the city center on the second day of the protests. I could still get into the city by tram, but by the time I wanted to go home I had to walk several kilometres to where I had parked my car. However, I still found the time to stop at my favourite import bookstore to peruse their spinner rack of English language paperbacks.
The Return of the Dynamic Duo: The Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber's delightful pair of rogues, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, have had a troubled publication history. They debuted in the pages of Unknown, Astounding/Analog's fantasy-focussed sister magazine, almost thirty years ago. After Unknown's demise in 1943, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser were left adrift, until they finally found a new home in Fantastic under the editorship of Cele Goldsmith Lalli. However, with the sale of the Ziff-Davis magazines to Sol Cohen, the appearances of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser in the pages of Fantastic became scarce. It seemed the dynamic duo was homeless once again, unless they shacked up with Cele Goldsmith Lalli over at Modern Bride magazine, that is.
So imagine my joy when I spotted the brand-new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser adventure The Swords of Lankhmar in the spinner rack of my trusty import bookstore. Nor was this adventure short fiction, like the duos' previous outings, but a full length novel. So of course I had to pick it up, even if I had to carry it five kilometres through the city, dodging protesters and aggressive police officers.
The story
Fafhrd and Gray Mouser return to Lankhmar, only to find themselves first attacked and then hired by Lankhmar's overlord Glipkerio Kistomerces to escort a fleet of grain ships to a neighbouring city. The fleet's cargo is a gift to Movarl of the Eight Cities in exchange for some help with a pesky pirate plague. Also aboard the grain ships – and another gift to Movarl – are the Demoiselle Hisvet, daughter of Lankhmar's wealthiest grain merchant, her maid Frix and Hisvet's twelve trained white rats. The ship's captain isn't happy about the presence of the rats, because rats and grain don't mix. Meanwhile, both Fafhrd and Mouser are fascinated by the Hisvet and her maid.
It does not take long for trouble to find Fafhrd and Mouser, who soon find themselves fighting off monsters, pirates and rat attacks. The two rogues also have their hands full with Hisvet and Frix. Luckily, they get some help from Karl Treuherz, a German-speaking time-travelling hunter capturing monsters for Hagenbeck's Zeitgarten. Karl Treuherz (his last name means "true heart") is a delightful character, particularly if you're German and can understand not only his dialogue in flawless German (kudos to Mr. Leiber), but also understand that Hagenbeck's Zeitgarten is a riff on Hagenbecks Tierpark, the famous Hamburg zoo, which apparently will open a time- and dimension-travelling dependency in the future. Cover artist J. Jones clearly likes Karl Treuherz, too, and put him on the cover.
The distinctive main entrance of Hagenbecks Tierpark in Hamburg. So far, they don't yet display alien monsters, but it's only a matter of time.
Something smells of rat here
If the story feels a little familiar, that's probably because it is. For the first half of The Swords of Lankhmar appeared under the title "Scylla's Daughter" in the May 1961 issue of Fantastic. That novella ended on a cliffhanger with the treacherous Hisvet and Frix escaping aboard one of the ships, leaving Fafhrd and Mouser marooned.
Fantastic's cover artist clearly liked Karl Treuherz as well.
The novel follows the two ladies as well as Fafhrd and Mouser back to Lankhmar, where even more intrigues await. For sinking a fleet of grain ships was just the start for Hisvet and her twelve trained rats. It turns out that Hisvet and her father are members of a race of intelligent rats, who live in Lankhmar Below and want to take over the entire city. Mouser shrinks himself down to rat size to spy on them, only for the mad overlord Glipkerio to ignore his warnings in favour of building a contraption that may or may not send him to a parallel universe. The way of defeating the rat invasion is as obvious as it is ingenious by using the rats' hereditary enemy against them.
The Lankhmar Below scenes were my favourite parts, probably because as a kid, I envisioned thumb-sized beings, both humans and animals, who inhabit a parallel city in the sewers, basements and walls of our world. In order to cross between the two worlds you needed a magical shrinking potion. Reading Leiber's descriptions of Lankhmar Below felt as if he had reached into my mind to bring my own fantasy world to the page. Or maybe there really is a parallel world of intelligent rodents and both Fritz Leiber and I somehow stumbled upon them in early childhood.
My imaginary parallel world of little people and animals sprang from the collection of small figures kept in this cookie tin featuring a picture of the Cologne Cathedral, hence I called them "church box people".
An ode to interracial and interspecies romance
Because this is a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story, there also are plenty of romantic entanglements. Mouser falls for Hisvet and finds himself wondering if she's human or rat underneath her floor-length gown and if it even matters to him. Fafhrd prefers Frix, but Hisvet likes Frix, too. Furthermore, Mouser is fascinated by Reetha, a maid at the overlord's palace who is completely hairless, while Fafhrd starts a relationship with Kreeshkra, a ghoul with transparent skin and flesh who is basically a walking skeleton.
Over the past few years, the amount of sex in science fiction and fantasy has been creeping upwards, as the sexual revolution makes it possible to write about previously taboo subjects. This is not necessarily a good thing, since some writers feel the need to foist sexual fantasies that had better remained private upon the unsuspecting reader – see Piers Anthony's Chthon or John Norman's Gor books. Thankfully, Leiber does not go this route, even though there is quite a bit of sexual content, including sexual content of the more unusual sort, in The Swords of Lankhmar. However, nothing here is even remotely as prurient as Chthon or the Gor books. Instead, Leiber's message – even spelled out at one point – is that love is love, no matter the gender, race or species of the participants. And indeed, none of the women Fafhrd and Mouser become involved with in this story are in any way standard love interests. Frix is a black woman, Reetha's hairlessness does not match any classic beauty standards, Hisvet may or may not be part rat and Kreeshkra is essentially a walking skeleton. Furthermore, there are several not so subtle hints that Hisvet and Frix are in a romantic relationship as well.
All in all, The Swords of Lankhmar is a thoroughly enjoyable fantasy adventure and a welcome return to the world of Nehwon and its most famous rogues. However, the plot meanders a bit, particularly in the second half. The genre that Robert E. Howard pioneered in the pages of Weird Tales almost forty years ago and that Fritz Leiber named sword and sorcery works best in the short form. Almost all of Howard's tales about Conan the Cimmerian or Kull of Atlantis, C.L. Moore's adventures of the medieval swordswoman Jirel of Joiry, which I hope will be reprinted eventually, as well as Michael Moorcock's stories about Elric of Melniboné and all previous Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories have been novellas and novelettes. A genre that focusses on action and adventures thrives best in the short form and tends to meander at novel length, a problem that's also apparent in Robert E. Howard's sole Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon, recently reprinted as Conan the Conqueror.
Welcome to the last of our three discussions about an anthology of original fantasy and science fiction that's drawing a lot of attention. Love it or hate it, or maybe a little of both, it's impossible to ignore. I showed you the full wraparound cover the the first time, and offered a closer look at the front the second time, so here's the back cover. It gives you a convenient list of the authors.
As before, I'll give each story the usual star rating as well as using the colors of a traffic light to indicate how dangerous it might be.
A woman desperately tries to escape her pursuers. Flashbacks tell us more about this dystopian world.
Saying anything more would lessen the impact of this intense little story. Ellison's introduction compares it to the work of Shirley Jackson, and that's a fair analogy. It's deceptively quiet and matter-of-fact at times, but full of icy horror at its heart.
Four stars. YELLOW for unrelieved grimness.
The Happy Breed, by John T. Sladek
In the near future, machines take care of all our problems, leaving us to enjoy a life of leisure. Of course, what the machines think is best for us may not agree with our own ideas.
This dark satire on automation isn't exactly subtle. It makes its point clearly enough, and follows it to its logical conclusion. The details of the characters' degeneration make it worth reading.
Three stars. YELLOW for cynicism.
Encounter with a Hick, by Jonathan Brand
Our smart aleck narrator tells us how he met a fellow from a less sophisticated background and what happened when he told the man something about the origin of his planet.
You'll probably figure out the punchline of this extended joke. Despite its predictability, I enjoyed the story's wise guy style. Others may find the narrator annoyingly smug.
Three stars. YELLOW for a wry look at deeply held beliefs.
From the Government Printing Office, by Kris Neville
Set at a near future time when childrearing has changed in an eye-opening way, this yarn is told through the eyes of a kid who is only three and one-half years old. Adults are bewildering creatures indeed!
The quirky choice of viewpoint, with its combination of precocity and naiveté, is what makes this story worth a look. I'm not quite sure what the author is saying about parents and children, but it's provocative.
Three stars. YELLOW for an unflattering portrait of Mom and Dad.
All over the world, people with Romany ancestors feel compelled to return to a place that vanished long ago. But what will disappear next?
This synopsis fails to capture the author's eccentric style and unusual combination of whimsy and oddball speculation. If you like Lafferty, you'll enjoy it. If not, you won't. Like many of his works, it's something of a tall tale and a shaggy dog story. I dug it.
The narrator witnesses a woman and a dwarf set up a strange menagerie at night, not far from where a carnival is in progress. The mystery of the cages deepens as visitors show up.
I find this story difficult to describe. It's quite a bit different from the author's jagged, chopped up pieces for New Worlds, and from his decadent tales of Vermillion Sands. It's very subtle, and there seems to be more than meets the eye. The premise evokes thoughts of Ray Bradbury, but only in an extremely subdued way. Maybe haunting is the word I'm looking for.
Four stars. GREEN for intriguing writing.
Judas, by John Brunner
A robot sets itself up as God. One of the people who created it sets out to destroy the false deity.
The plot is simple enough, and the analogy between the worship of the robot and Christianity is made crystal clear. You may predict the twist ending, given the story's title.
Three stars. YELLOW for religious themes.
Test to Destruction, by Keith Laumer
The leader of a group of rebels is captured by the forces of a dictator. They use a gizmo to retrieve information from his brain. Meanwhile, in what has to be the wildest coincidence of all time, aliens approaching Earth also probe his brain, in order to learn how to conquer humanity. The combination is explosive.
Looking at my synopsis, I get the feeling that this isn't the most plausible story in the world. Since it's by Laumer, you know it's a fast-moving adventure yarn. As a matter of fact, it's so lightning-paced that it makes his other stories look slow. The reader is left breathless. There's a serious point made at the end, but mostly it's just a thrill ride.
The delightfully named Harrison Wintergreen is a guy who has always gotten what he wanted out of life. As a kid, baseball cards. As a young man, women. As an adult, tons of money. Now he's got terminal cancer. Can he triumph over the ultimate challenge?
As Ellison says in his introduction, this is a funny story about cancer. Sick humor, to be sure. Bad taste? Well, maybe, but I think you'll get a kick out of it.
Replace a bullfight with a battle between man and car, and you've got this tongue-in-cheek tale. All the details of a traditional corrida del toros are here, transformed to fit the automotive theme.
Space explorers are raised from childhood to be absolutely free of sexual characteristics. It's impossible to tell if they started off as female or male; they are completely neuter in every way. People known as frelks are attracted to them.
Amazingly, this is the first short story Delany ever sold, although others have already appeared in magazines. It's superbly written, as you'd expect, and explores sex and gender in completely new, profound ways.
Five stars. RED for unimagined forms of human sexuality.
20 20 Hindsight
Looking back at the book as a whole, it's clear that the level of stories is generally high, with a few clunkers. Not all the stories are dangerous, and they could have been published elsewhere. A few are truly groundbreaking. The Silverberg, Leiber, and Delany are the best. The Sturgeon is the biggest disappointment. The Farmer is going to start the most arguments. Put on your reading glasses, fasten your seat belt, and give it a try.
According to a story that may be apocryphal, somebody in the crowd shouted the phrase I'm using for the title of this article during one of Harry Truman's campaign speeches. True or not, we'll see how it relates to a major change in Fantastic magazine. Just to build up the suspense, however, let me digress and talk about another big change.
A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss
The British rock 'n' roll band known as the Rolling Stones, famous for gritty blues-driven music, went in a different direction recently. The new album Their Satanic Majesty's Request, released just a couple of days ago in both the UK and the USA, is full of the surrealism and dreamy psychedelic tunes to be found in the Beatles' groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Even the cover looks similar. Note that lack of words. If you don't know who these guys are, you must not be a fan.
I don't know if this album represents the future of the Stones, or if they did it just to gather some green (and I don't mean moss.) At least the groovy song She's a Rainbow is worth a listen while you stare at your lava lamp.
With a new editor at the helm of Fantastic, there are certain to be changes coming, although it may take a while. The mills of the publishing world grind slowly, to be sure, so the latest issue probably doesn't yet reflect the taste of the current boss. If nothing else, however, it's got two new stories instead of the usual one. Thank goodness for small favors.
Cover art by Frank R. Paul.
One change that hasn't yet happened is using new cover art. This issue recycles the back cover of the July 1945 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Please excuse the faded, wrinkled, beat-up copy of the old magazine I had to use. Twenty-odd years haven't been kind to it. At least you can see the two big suns at the top and not just the two little ones to the side.
The fellow depicted above is none other than God. The God of the Bible, indeed, but also all the other deities. He hasn't checked on His creation for a while, and it seems to have been messed up by the Adversary, so he gets ready to take a look.
This version of the Almighty seems like a weary old man, wandering around His shabby surroundings, not sure what He should be doing. If you don't mind this kind of literary blasphemy, the main problem you'll have with this story is the fact that it comes to a dead stop when it becomes most interesting.
God never does take a look at things down below. It's almost like the first chapter of a much longer work.
Leiber is incapable of writing a bad sentence, of course, so it's not painful to read. I just wish there were more of it.
Three stars.
A Darkness in My Soul, by Dean R. Koontz
Also by Jones.
A fledgling writer — he's only had a couple of stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, both this year — offers this disturbing vision of the future.
After a quarter of a century and countless failures, a project to create superhuman beings has produced only two successes, if you can call them that. One is the main character, a outwardly normal man but with telepathic powers. The other is much more grotesque, a being that looks like a child with the face of a very old man. The latter is immensely intelligent, but his scientific discoveries are buried deep in his subconscious. The telepath dives into his mind in order to dig out vital information.
There's a lot more to the story than that. We've got the protagonist's Freudian sessions with a computer therapist, revealing the meaning of his dreams. The main character has a relationship with a woman who writes scandalous books. The author uses typographic tricks and symbolic fantasy sequences, adding more than a touch of New Wave writing. There's one heck of an ending.
The author displays great skill at creating an eerie mood. Maybe he should try writing out-and-out horror stories instead of creepy science fiction. In any case, this complex nightmare of neurosis shows great ambition for a newcomer.
From the May/June 1953 issue of the magazine comes this wry tale of the afterlife.
Cover art by W. T. Mars.
A teenage girl is dying. She's not at all upset about this, because she's absolutely certain she's going to enjoy the bliss of Heaven. For some reason, the ghost of a slightly older woman appears.
Illustration by Charles J. Berger.
The dead woman has taken a peek at the various paradises created by men, and she doesn't much care for them. This changes the dying girl's attitude.
This featherweight jape has a pleasing feminist aspect to it. (Despite the fact that the ghost is wearing only a brassiere and underpants.) Like the Leiber and the Koontz, it may raise the hackles of folks who take their religious faith very seriously.
As I mentioned last time, this serialized novel first appeared in three issues of Amazing Stories back in 1932. Dig through the archives if you want to see the covers of those old magazines.
Illustration by Leo Morey.
Last time we saw how civilization fell apart when all metals dissolved into dust. Some folks set up strongholds in the country, where they could defend themselves against packs of desperate criminals.
This half of the novel wanders around quite a bit. One sequence involves a group of female physicians and other professionals living on their own. As soon as one of the male characters meets them, you know we're going to have a love story. You may not predict the fact that it involves a tiger.
In the most bizarre plot development, a horde of Tartars shows up, and we get a big battle scene. There's an explanation, of sorts, for how these landlocked nomadic warriors wound up in New England. The way the good guys defeat the bad guys is implausible, to say the least.
Eventually, our heroes figure out how to turn the dust back into metal. You'd think somebody would have discovered the secret long before, but what do I know. Interestingly, the main motivation for producing small amounts of metal is to make surgical instruments so childbirth isn't so dangerous for mother and baby.
The author seems to believe that city life is inherently corrosive to the human spirit, and suggests that society was ready to fall apart even if metal things hadn't crumbled away. I'm not convinced.
Overall, I didn't find the development of the apocalyptic premise as interesting as its introduction.
This early work from a writer who is now something of a household name comes from the December 1944 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by James B. Settles.
A handful of the people killed when a German submarine destroyed their passenger ship turn into water-breathing ghosts or zombies, for lack of a better word. They spend their non-lives preventing Nazi subs from attacking Allied ships.
Illustration by Arnold Kohn.
This is something more than just wartime propaganda, although there's certainly some of that. The undead characters have their own motives and personalities. The most interesting are two women, one of whom is out for revenge, gleefully killing Germans, the other trying to protect the man she loves, who is sailing on a convoy.
We don't get much of the Bradbury touch, love it or hate it, with the exception of a few metaphors here and there. If I hadn't see the author's name, I never would have suspected it was his work.
Three stars.
They Fly So High, by Ross Rocklynne
This outer space yarn comes from the pages of the June 1952 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Walter Popp.
A spaceman holds a Mad Scientist prisoner aboard his vessel. The taunting genius has already rigged the ship to blow up, so the two of them go flying off towards Jupiter in their spacesuits.
Illustration by David Stone.
What follows is a strange odyssey on the surface (more or less) of the giant planet, and a change in the relationship between the two characters.
This is an odd story. It combines melodramatic space opera, vistas of a bizarre environment, and philosophical dialogues. I suppose the author is trying to say something about human thinking while telling a rattling good yarn, but much of its meaning escapes me.
This tale of love, death, and biology comes from the Fall 1952 issue of the magazine.
Cover art by Leo Summers.
The plot begins in gruesome fashion, as a couple are murdered by street thugs. A coroner (male) reveals the weird thing about the bodies to a reporter (female). (I mention their sexes because it's relevant to the story.)
The two victims are Siamese twins, bound together at the chest. (You may have already guessed that this isn't quite true.) When an eerie, inhuman scream draws the protagonists out of the building, somebody destroys the bodies in a blazing fire.
Also by David Stone.
The coroner meets a woman with whom he shares an intimate but nonsexual evening. The reporter has the same kind of encounter with a man, but we only get to hear about it second-hand. What does this have to do with the bodies? And why should the reader run to the dictionary and look up the various definitions of the word syzygy?
This is an intriguing work that always keeps the reader's interest. It's a mystery, a romance, and good science fiction to boot. Maybe you should stir in a touch of horror as well. In any case, it's a solid work from one of the masters.
The magazine finishes with this time travel story, reprinted from the August/September 1953 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Gaylord Welker.
A guy goes back in time to prevent a childhood friend from drowning. The weird thing is that there's no sign of his own younger self, and even his mother denies such a child exists. When he returns to his own time, the scientist he worked with claims he never saw him before. What the heck is going on?
Illustration by Ernie Barth.
The author makes up some pretty weird rules about time travel. I have to admit they're unique, even if they don't make a lot of sense to me. The ending is gruesome enough for any horror fan.
That's an overstatement, although I am hopeful that the new editor will bring some freshness to a magazine that has been dragging its feet for a while. This issue doesn't show any evidence of a major shift in policy yet. Time will tell. Meanwhile, just having double the usual amount of new fiction is enough to make me want to be kind to small animals.
I can't tell you anything about this drawing, which follows the Sturgeon story, except that it doesn't appear with the original publication of that work. It's probably a reprint from somewhere, but I have no evidence for that one way or another.
A couple of months ago we looked at the first third of a massive new anthology of original science fiction and fantasy stories, put together by one of the most colorful figures in the field of imaginative fiction. Let's jump into the middle of the book and see if it maintains the same level of quality and controversy. As before, I'll provide traffic signals to warn you how dangerous each story might be.
A fellow with the incredible ability to throw small objects with extreme accuracy goes out to shoot dice at a very strange and disturbing casino. But is he ready to risk the ultimate bet with the Big Gambler?
I have to admit up front that I can't be objective here. I am head-over-heels, madly in love with this story. Leiber blends science fiction, fantasy, tall tale, horror, and every other kind of imaginative fiction you can name into a perfectly crafted work of art. Just read it.
Five stars. GREEN for fine writing.
Lord Randy, My Son, by Joe L. Hensley
A man dying of cancer has a very strange young son with seemingly miraculous powers. The boy observes a cruel world outside. What will he grow up to be?
The premise reminds me a bit of Jerome Bixby's story It's a Good Life and the Twilight Zone episode adapted from it. That was an out-and-out horror story, however, and this one is more ambiguous. Randy is capable of great good and great evil, and it looks like the people of Earth are going to get what they deserve. In a way, that's more chilling than Bixby's monster.
The protagonist is from a parallel world in which Alexander the Great lived to a ripe old age, and the Hellenistic culture is dominant. They've colonized other planets, and have even figured out a way to visit alternate realities. (There are hints that the main character explored our own world, and found it utterly repulsive.)
In a North America inhabited by a mixture of Norse, Magyar, and Native American cultures, he violates a taboo and is pursued by folks out to kill him. He makes a desperate attempt to escape, eager to rejoin his beloved in his own, much more civilized world.
Anderson has obviously done his homework. The various parallel realities we learn about seem very real. The plot follows the action/adventure/chase structure we're familiar with, and which Anderson can write in his sleep. The only dangerous part of the story comes at the very end, when we finally figure out what taboo the protagonist violated. The revelation is more of a punchline, really, and not a major part of the story.
Here's the first of two brief tales from one of the most debated authors of speculative fiction. As the title indicates, it's part of his series about the dystopian future world he calls Moderan, a hellish place where people who have replaced almost all of their flesh with metal and who live in heavily fortified strongholds wage endless wars with each other. In this story, one of these hate-filled semi-humans meets a more normal person, barely existing in the no-man's-land between fortresses. Typical of the series, it's a dark and bitter satire of humanity's evils.
Three stars. YELLOW for grimness.
The Escaping, by David R. Bunch
Here's the other one. The narrator is imprisoned, and spends time imagining the rolling and unrolling of the sky. Something like that, anyway.
Two stars. YELLOW for surrealism.
The Doll-House, by James Cross
A guy who is up to his eyebrows in debt goes to his father-in-law for help. The old man isn't very sympathetic, but he gives his son-in-law a miniature house that contains a tiny, immortal oracle, who can answer all questions. Can you guess that this won't work out well?
This is an efficient fantasy story of the be careful what you wish for school. There's nothing particularly distinguished about it, for good or bad. Worth reading, anyway.
Three stars. GREEN for being a decent, typical yarn of its type.
The narrator is a rather strange woman who is obsessed with a very fat man who lives in the same building. She hides in his room, watching him undress, in order to find out if he's a human being or an Other.
You can interpret the plot as science fiction or as the delusions of the narrator. In either case, what it's really about is the human body, particularly those parts we're not supposed to expose or talk about. It's the kind of thing you expect to find in New Worlds.
Three stars. RED for New Wave writing and sexual content.
Shall the Dust Praise Thee?, by Damon Knight
God and his angels show up at the end of the world, just like it says in the last book of the Bible. The only problem is that there aren't any people around to witness the Apocalypse. A little digging around reveals a final message from humanity.
Knight is thumbing his nose at traditional religion here. This tiny little story is basically a grim joke. Don't show it to your local cleric.
A guy figures out that valuable stuff is coming from a planet that official records claim doesn't even exist. Folks who know it's real make it nearly impossible to get there. On another world where just about all activities are tolerated, somebody who shows up from that planet is instantly attacked and is likely to be killed. The guy finally reaches the place, and finds out what the big mystery is about.
It's hard to talk about this story without revealing too much about the premise, although the title gives you a clue. It breaks my heart to have to give a poor rating to a work by one of the true masters of speculative fiction, but this is really a lecture in lightly fictionalized form.
The climax is nothing but a long discussion as to why one of the strongest of cultural taboos should be broken. Sturgeon makes his point carefully and logically, to be sure, but forgets to engage the reader with an honest-to-gosh story. Inevitably, this work is going to compared to his groundbreaking tale The World Well Lost, but that one worked perfectly well as fiction, and not just as a debate.
Two stars. RED for advocating something most people would rather not think about.
What Happened to Auguste Clarot?, by Larry Eisenberg
This is a madcap farce in which the main character tracks down a missing scientist. There's a lot of slapstick and general silliness. It's really out of place in this anthology. Even Ellison's introduction jokingly says he was crazy to buy it. You may get a few chuckles out of it. With the French setting, I pictured Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther as the protagonist.
Two stars. GREEN for wacky hijinks.
Ersatz, by Henry Slesar
In a future world devastated by war, a weary soldier reaches one of the few places where he can rest for a while. All he can get there is fake food, fake tobacco, and something else that isn't real.
This very short story depends on its ending for its impact. It definitely creates a grim, dystopian mood.
Four stars. YELLOW for unrelieved gloom.
Middle of the Road
The central portion of this massive volume isn't quite as consistent as the first part, although Leiber's story is the best in the book so far. Sturgeon's polemic is a major disappointment, and there are some other pieces that don't really work for me. Maybe the last third of the anthology will be better. We'll see.
Books seem to be published faster than ever these days, and many are worth a gander. Please enjoy this triple-whammy featuring SEVEN sciencefictional titles…plus a surprise guest at the end!
Shaw recently made a big impact with his Hugo-nominated short story, Light of Other Days, and I've enjoyed everything he's come out with. So it was with great delight that I saw that he'd come out with a full length novel called Nightwalk.
I went in completely blind, and as a result, enjoyed the twists and turns the story took far more than if I'd known what was coming. Thus, I give you fair warning. Avoid the following few paragraphs if you wish to go into the book completely unaware.
by Frank Frazetta
Sam Tallon is an agent of Earth based on the former colony and now staunch adversary world, Emm Luther. In-between are 80,000 portals through null-space. Would that there could be but one, but hyperspace jumping is a blind affair, and the direct route between portals is impossible to compute. Only trial and error has mapped 80,000 matched pairs whose winding, untrackable route bridges the two worlds. Luckily, transfer is virtually instantaneous.
Literally inside Tallon's head is the meandering route to a brand new world. Given the dearth of inhabitable planets, both overcrowded Luther and teeming Earth want this knowledge. Before Tallon can escape with it, he is captured by the Lutheran secret police, tortured most vividly and unpleasantly, and sent for a life sentence to be spent at the Lutheran version of Devil's Island, the Pavillion.
Oh yes–in an escape attempt, the sadistic interrogator whom Tallon fails to kill on his way out zaps his eyes and leaves him quite blind.
Tallon is not overly upset by this development. At this point. he is quite content to spend the rest of his life in dark but not unpleasant captivity…except the wounded interrogator is coming for a visit, and Tallon knows he won't survive the encounter. Luckily, he and a fellow prisoner have managed to create a set of glasses tied into the optic nerve and tuned to nearby glial cells. They will not restore a man's sight…but they will allow him to tune in to the vision of any animal about him. With this newfound advantage, Tallon must make the thousand mile trek back to the spaceport, and then traverse the 80,000 portals to Earth.
Alright–you can read again. Nightwalk is 160 pages long. 60 of the pages, the first 30 and the last 30, are brilliant, nuanced, full of twists and turns, and genuinely exciting. The 100 pages inbetween comprise a well-written but forgettable thriller. I will not go so far as to agree with Buck Coulson, who wrote in the latest Yandro: "pulp standard; described by Damon Knight as "putting his hero in approximately the position of a seventy-year-old paralytic in a plaster cast who is required to do battle with a saber-tooth tiger and there being no place to go from there, kept him in the same predicament throughout the story, only adding an extra fang from time to time." But the assessment is not completely inapt.
Nevertheless, the book kept me reading, and if you can keep momentum through the middle, the whole is worthwhile.
3.5 stars.
ACE double H-34
Another month, another "ACE double". They seem to increasingly becoming my province these days, or perhaps I'm becoming the resident Tubb novel reviewer. Either way, I'm thoroughly amenable to the relationship!
I originally covered this novel when it appeared in the pages of Analog. Long story short: it's a history lesson disguised as an SF story–Reynolds doesn't even bother to color his nations, which retain their stock names of Alphaland and Betastan, as if this were an Avalon Hill wargame or something.
Not one of his better efforts, and it doesn't even have the benefit of Freas' nice art. A low three stars.
Three centuries from now, England is still recovering from "the Debacle", an atomic paroxysm that all but destroyed the world in the 1980s. Society has calcified into an oligarchic, capitalist nightmare, with a few rich entities ultimately controlling everything: the loan sharks, the power generators, and the hypnotists. In many ways, it is the last group that is the most powerful, for a generation after the Debacle, they fostered a pervasive belief in reincarnation. With their guidance (or perhaps suggestion), all (save the rare odd "cripple") persons can Breakthrough to their past lives). So universal is this belief in multiple lives that many have become "retrophiles", living out their lives in the guise of a former existence, even to living in towns constructed along archaic lines.
Into this world are thrust three bonafide time travelers, put in stasis in the 1970s to await a cure for their radiation-caused illnesses. Not only are they exiles in an age not theirs, but they have also amassed a tremendous debt in their centuries asleep. Brad Stevens, an atomic physicist born in 1927, is determined to free himself and his 20th Century comrades from the fetters of financial obligation. Thus ensues a rip-roaring trip through an anti-utopian Britain, filled with narrow escapes, exotic scenery, and a few interesting, philosophical observations.
Tubb has already impressed me this year with his vivid The Winds of Gath, and he does so again with this adventure. Indeed, Tubb is such the master of the serial cliff-hanger that I found myself quite unable to put the book down, reading it in two marathon sessions. Of particular note are his observations on faith, on the seductiveness of nostalgia, and on the pernicious nature of laissez-faire capitalism, which inevitably degenerates into anything but a free market.
What keeps this story from a fifth star is precisely what garners it a fourth: it is quick, excellent reading, but it doesn't pause long enough to fully explore all of its intriguing points. Thus, it remains like Ted White's Jewels of Elsewhen–beautifully turned, but somewhat disposable.
Still, I'm not sorry I read it, and neither will you be. Four stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
From the L File
Two new science fiction novels with titles that begin with the twelfth letter of the alphabet fell into my hands recently. Other than that trivial coincidence, they could hardly be more different. Let's look lingeringly, lest literature lie listlessly languid.
The first thing you'll notice when you open the book is a map. With that, and the title, I wonder if the author and/or the publisher is alluding to J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings, which has recently become quite popular here in the USA. That series has a map too.
Map by Jack Gaughan
Given the size of a paperback, it's darn hard to see everything on the map, which has a lot of detail. Fortunately, it's not really necessary. I'll point out a few landmarks as we go along.
A Public Works Project
We start in the middle of the map. At first, you might think the novel takes place in the past, with horse-drawn vehicles and such. We soon find out that it's thousands of years in the future. Our own technological society is nearly mythical, lost in the mists of time. There are bits and pieces of it here and there, left in ruins.
It seems that humanity lost its spirit long ago. Civilization has stagnated. A military officer has a plan to deal with that, and he explains it to a government official.
Take a look at the extreme southwest corner of the map, right next to the compass. That's a place where gigantic remnants of the glory days of yesteryear lie wasting away. The officer's scheme is to build a huge starship from what's left and carry its passengers to a new, better world.
If that sounds crazy to you, you're on the right track. There is no real intent to complete the project. Instead, it's just a trick to get the population excited about something, and working together for centuries. Think pyramids and cathedrals.
The first step is to launch a series of bloody wars, so the folks in the middle of the map can make their way to the coast, conquering and slaughtering along the way. Make no mistake; there are a lot of gruesome battle scenes in this book.
Many years later, society is divided into a small number of elites, who know the truth about the phony starship, and the ordinary people, who do not. The latter come to almost worship it. Under the leadership of a charismatic figure, they revolt against their rulers.
We're still not done with bloodshed. Without going into details, suffice to say that the naval fleets of the islands off the eastern coast (look at the map) get involved. This leads to a conflict that makes everything else that happens in the book look like minor skirmishes. Then we get a wild twist ending that really pulls the rug out from under you, making you rethink everything you thought you knew about what's going on.
This is a strange book. There are no real protagonists. The plot takes place over a couple of centuries or so, and characters come and go very quickly. This accelerates in the latter part of the novel. Some chapters consist of only one sentence, and read like excerpts from a history book. (The author is a history major, still in college.)
It's also a dark and cynical book. From the deception that starts the story to the completely unexpected revelation that ends it, it's full of sinister plots, secretive government agencies, and human lives sacrificed for the schemes of others.
A sense of despair and resignation to fate fills the novel. The commander of the naval fleet I mentioned above knows that building up his ships for the upcoming war will take eighty years, and also knows that wholesale destruction will be the outcome of the conflict, but accepts the situation as inevitable.
It's an intriguing work, but one that's very hard to love.
There's no map in this book, but it does have what must be the world's longest dedication. See for yourself.
I don't recognize everything on that massive list — The Ears of Johnny Bear? — but I am familiar with much of it. What do those things have in common? Unless I am mistaken, none of them are very recent. Keep that in mind.
Next we get the book's basic premise.
I get the message. It's that darn Youth Culture everybody is talking about. I suppose that's because a lot of post-World War Two babies are in their teens and early twenties now. Mods, hippies, bikers, protestors; they're all young folks, aren't they? The two authors of this novel don't seem too happy about the situation.
Don't Trust Anyone Over Twenty-One
(Apologies to political activist Jack Weinberg for stealing and distorting his famous quote. The original number was thirty.)
Something like a century and a half from now, people are only allowed to live to the age of twenty-one. We get an explanation late in the book as to how this happened, but never mind about that. Most folks go along with this, but some try to escape. These rebels are called — you guessed it — Runners.
There's a special police force that kills Runners. They're known as Sandmen. Our hero, Logan 3, is a Sandman near the end of his assigned lifetime. He gets a gizmo from a dying Runner that is supposed to lead the person who holds it to the fabled refuge known as Sanctuary. Determined to find and destroy the place, he pretends to be a Runner himself. The dead man's sister, Jessica 6, is also a Runner. You won't be surprised to find out she's the love interest, too.
Most of the book consists of the pair's wild adventures all over the world as they try to find Sanctuary. Feral children in a decaying part of a city; an inescapable prison at the North Pole; rebellious young folks who ride around on what seem to be flying motorcycles; robots recreating a Civil War battle; and much, much more. The plot moves at an insane pace, and you probably won't believe a minute of it.
Meanwhile, a Sandman named Francis 7 tracks down the two. He's kind of like Inspector Javert from Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables or Lieutenant Gerard from the TV series The Fugitive. Cold-blooded and relentless, he never gives up. He's also got a secret of his own, leading to a surprise ending.
I get the feeling that the co-authors threw wild twists and turns at each other, shouting Top This! as they tossed pages of the manuscript back and forth at each other. It's a wild ride indeed. As I've indicated, it's got a lot of implausible aspects. The one that really stood out for me was when Logan and Jessica instantly — and I mean instantly — fall in love when they pose nude for a ice sculpture carved by a half-man/half-robot. (Long story.)
If you like lightning-paced action/adventure novels with a touch of satire, you'll get some fun out of this one. Just don't expect serious speculation about where the younger generation is taking us older folks.
Three stars.
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
Not Quite What We Were Tolkien About!
Whilst it has been delayed by the legal shenanigans around the paperback edition of The Lord of The Rings, we are going to be getting the next installment in Tolkien’s Middle Earth series, The Silmarillion, very soon. Cylde S. Kilby was helping Professor Tolkien over the summer and gives some details in a recent edition of The Tolkien Journal, including that this is going to borrow a lot from Norse Myths around the creation of Midgard. Sounds like an epic and complex work for sure.
However, in the meantime, we have a new tale from him, not related to Middle Earth. In some ways, it is a more traditional fairy story, but with many fascinating elements that make it well worth your while.
Every twenty-four years, in the village of Wootton Major, there is held the feast of Twenty-Four where a great cake is made by the Master Cook and shared with Twenty-Four children. The current Master is not particularly skilled in his job and often relies on his apprentice. However, he ignores it when the apprentice tells him not to add the Faery Star to the cake, which ends being eaten by young Smith.
On Smith’s tenth birthday, the star begins to glow on his forehead, and he has many adventures, including into Faery itself.
One of Pauline Baynes many beautiful illustrations in the book
As you can probably tell, Smith of Wootton Major is not an epic quest narrative filled with battles and doom (as you may expect if you have only read The Lord of The Rings). Instead, this is a more charming and quiet work of his, resembling more closely Leaf by Niggle or The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
I don’t want you to get the impression from this it is boring or frivolous. If the Middle Earth novels are like your eighth Birthday Party with all your best friends, this is like snuggling up by a roaring fire with a mug of cocoa and a wonderful book. Different but can be equally enjoyable.
As anyone at all familiar with him will tell you, Tolkien is an absolute master of language and can use it multiple ways to create whatever effect is needed. Here he creates an effortless amiability about the whole thing, introducing wit and joy without seeming forced or conceited. The story is just a marvelous experience.
Apparently, this story came from another project, specifically as an introduction for a new version of George MacDonald’s The Golden Key. He wanted to explain about Faery using this as a kind of metaphor; however, this ended up being expanded into a story in its own right, one I am very glad to have.
It seems odd that Dodie Smith’s latest novel The Starlight Barking has flown under the radar.
It is written by a great novelist who is beloved by mainstream literary publications, and whose play Dear Octopus is currently a hit in the West End. It has been praised by luminaries such as Christopher Isherwood. Moreover, it is the sequel to a beloved children’s classic, the movie version of which was the first movie ever to earn more than $100 million in the cinemas.
And yet, it is also a very odd illustrated novel. Though I find much to recommend in the work, I can understand why it seems not to have grabbed the public imagination as much as the work to which it is a sequel, The Hundred and One Dalmatians.
Picking up shortly after the first book, The Starlight Barking finds the protagonist Dalmatians Pongo and Missis living in Suffolk. One night, all living beings other than dogs fall into a deep magical sleep. The dogs also discover that they can fly, communicate across long distances, and operate machines.
Each dog takes on the jobs of their owners. Having been adopted by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Cadpig (the runt of the litter from the first book) is therefore now in charge of the country. She summons her family to London to help.
A subsequent scene in which the United Kingdom Cabinet goes to the dogs is a highlight of the book. Followers of British politics will note the well-drawn satire of Secretary of State George Brown depicted as a clumsy but cosmopolitan Boxer, and Minister of Transport Barbara Castle depicted as fussy and officious poodle. (Is the refusal of James Callaghan to devalue the Pound the reason that his dog is shown as being less mathematically inclined than the other dogs?)
Back in Suffolk, Cruella de Vil’s Persian cat — who helped the dogs escape in the first novel — turns out to be unaffected by the sleeping illness as she was named an “honourary dog.” The cat suggests that Cruella must be behind the plague of sleep, and therefore must be killed. But when the dogs find Cruella, she is asleep like the rest of humanity. So they spare her.
An alien, Dog Star Sirius, appears at the top of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square. He admits that he is behind the sleep, and that he has come to Earth to save dogs from an impending cataclysmic nuclear war.
Sirius invites all dogs everywhere to join him in the sky, and gives them a day to decide. Pongo is given the final choice. I won’t spoil the ending, but let me be completely up-front here: it doesn’t get less weird.
This is a flawed and chaotic short novel. But it is that chaos of a childhood flight of fancy; unbounded by expectation, and brimming with whimsy. Dodie Smith’s writing alternates between compelling action writing, and something poetic and magical. Her evident affection for dogs in general leads her to make them very lovable characters.
Given that the only animated movie that Disney has released since 101 Dalmatians was a critical and commercial flop (The Sword In The Stone earned just $20M), they may try to film this sequel. If and when they decide to do so, I hope they have the ambition and the audacity to stay true to this novel.
I would wager that if there were a Hugo Award category to celebrate works geared for younger readers, The Starlight Barking would be a strong contender for that shortlist.
This month sees the release of a film I’ve been anticipating for a long time: Quatermass and the Pit, the final instalment in Hammer Film Productions’ adaptations of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass trilogy. With a whole new cast of actors and a very different look and feel to Hammer’s earlier movies starring Brian Donlevy, The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass 2 (1957), this represents a concerted effort to bring Quatermass into the 1960s.
While reportedly this film was considered as another outing for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir as Quatermass and Julian Glover as Breen provide great interpretations. Keir is the most likeable of the Quatermass actors, while still managing a bitter world-weariness in keeping with the character. Rising star Glover is a bold choice as Breen, being considerably younger than Anthony Bushell in the TV serial, but this casting shifts the interpretation from an old officer too set in his ways to acknowledge the impossible, to an immature, overpromoted man falling back on rigid denials to cover the fact that he is out of his depth. Barbara Shelley as Barbara Judd is more sexy than the usual Quatermass women, wearing outfits that one would think not very sensible for an archaeologist.
Likeable: Andrew Keir as Quatermass and Barbara Shelley as Miss Judd
The basic narrative has had only a few updates. For instance, rather than a new building, the construction work which revives the ancient horrors is the digging of a new Underground extension, something which many Londoners are having to put up with right now. The story has been compressed from six half-hour episodes to a lean 97 minutes, meaning that the plot cracks along at a ripping pace without every feeling overpadded, and we lose most of Kneale’s excruciating working-class stereotype characters. On the more negative side, the film lacks the slow buildup of tension that the TV serial had. Crucially, the themes of the original are all present. Perhaps because Kneale is here adapting his own screenplay, we do not lose the sense of anger at military proliferation, colonialism, and humanity’s self-destructive tendencies.
One aspect which remains unchanged, however, leads to a rather specialised criticism I have of this movie, speaking as an anthropologist. While in 1959 the dominant theory about human evolution was, indeed, that large brains would precede upright walking, more recent discoveries by Louis and Mary Leakey in East Africa are starting to move the consensus more towards the idea that the opposite was true.
The colour film and production values give the film a much more lavish feel than the austere Donlevy movies, but are a mixed blessing. The alien spacecraft is a thing of beauty compared to the crude cylinder of the serial, but this makes the idea that it could be initially thought to be a German V-weapon less credible. The simple ground-shaking effect in the TV serial when Sladden (played here by Duncan Lamont) accesses his primitive side was somehow more terrifying than the wild poltergeist activity seen here. However, the climax of the film uses its production values to build on the sense of terror as humanity succumbs to the Wild Hunt: we have a chilling scene where a group of people surround a man and beat him to death telekinetically with stones and masonry. Rather than concluding with an explanatory speech by Quatermass, the film simply lingers on the image of Quatermass and Barbara sitting among the ruins, shattered by what they’ve experienced.
Hammer's take on the Martians.
Quatermass and the Pit provides evidence both that the themes of the original Quatermass stories remain fresh and relevant almost a decade later, and that Hammer are still capable of producing a decent horror film without relying on gore and nudity to bring in the shocks. It’s a shame there’s unlikely to be a Quatermass 4.
Four out of five stars.
by Jason Sacks
Bonnie and Clyde
And while Fiona praises Quatermass and the Pit for its lack of gore, I have to praise Bonnie and Clyde for its copious use of gore.
You're probably aware of this newest film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. In the two months since its New York premiere, perhaps you've seen the numerous newspaper articles focusing on the highly violent nature of Bonnie and Clyde, or articles which have condemned the idea that the film makes heroes of its bankrobbing protagonists.
Or perhaps you've read the rhapsodic review of Bonnie and Clyde in the latest issue of The New Yorker by their new critic Pauline Kael and possibly dismissed it because of your annoyance with Kael's now legendary condemnation of The Sound of Music three years ago in McCall's.
I've had the most amazing experience since I saw Bonnie and Clyde last weekend after it premiered at the Northgate Cinema: I've been raving nonstop to my friends about this film.
Like Kael, I was thrilled to see a film which is so bold, so intense and somehow so contemporary feeling. Despite–or perhaps because of–its setting in during the Great Depression, this film feels like a deconstruction of the myths we have told ourselves about the past. Bonnie and Clyde makes villains out of the brave federal men who chase our heroic criminals. This isn't an episode of The FBI. This is an inversion of what it means to be a hero. And in that inversion I saw myself in the faces of people who lived and died 35 years ago.
Because the world in which Bonnie and Clyde live feels like a real world. It's dusty and ugly and people wear worn clothes. Some banks have collapsed and others are near collapse and peoples' lives are miserable. In that misery, ordinary people are desperate for someone, anyone, who is able to triumph against all odds, even if the fate of those heroes seems horribly preordained.
Like all of us, the characters in Bonnie and Clyde are deeply flawed. I was especially swept up in Clyde's foibles. We're all used to seeing Warren Beatty as the smooth handsome lover in movies like Promise Her Anything and Splendor in the Grass, but here Beatty plays a man who's just not interested in love, or maybe more truthfully Clyde is a man who gets his thrills from robbery and not from women. Faye Dunaway is thus not quite Beatty's girlfriend on screen as much as she is his accomplice, fascinatingly contrary to what we expect.
With its echoes of the French New Wave and its shattering of cliche and audience expectations, Bonnie and Clyde feels like a revolution–a harbinger of the types of films I hope to see as the new decade dawns.
4½ out of 5 stars
by Victoria Silverwolf
Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts
Filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis had an international hit with Zorba the Greek a few years ago, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three. With that success behind him, I guess he figured he could do just about anything he wanted. He decided to do something different.
The film starts with an unseen narrator telling us about the tragic incident last year when a B-52 bomber collided with a tanker during mid-air refueling, killing most of the crew. Four nuclear bombs fell out of the doomed aircraft, three of them landing near the Spanish village of Palomares and one falling into the sea. Since this movie is a black comedy, this frightening story is accompanied by three flamenco dancers.
They also have the ability to sing with subtitles, giving away the plot.
In the future year 1972, a plane carrying a pilot, a navigator, two atomic bombs, and a mysterious metal box crashes near a tiny Greek island. The unfortunate pair of flyboys lose their clothing, and spend most of the film in their underpants.
Colin Blakely (left) and Tom Courtenay (right) offer a little beefcake.
A bunch of military types, pretending to be folks interested in building a hotel on the island, search for the bombs and box. They get the bombs back, but it seems a local fellow found the box and thinks it has a treasure inside. Unfortunately for him, it's sealed tight and can't be opened except by a laser or a special chemical. (Keep that latter possibility in mind.)
Meanwhile, a bunch of tourists, attracted by the rumor of an upcoming hotel, flock to the island. Like almost everybody else in this movie (not including the locals or the barely dressed airmen), they wear clothes that would be rejected by Carnaby Street as too extreme. They also dance a lot.
In fact, if you get a chance to watch the trailer for this movie, you'll think it's a beach movie.
After more than an hour of this stuff, the plot gets going with the arrival of Electra Brown, played by Candice Bergen, the beautiful daughter of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. She's supposed to be an archeologist, but the way she behaves with one of the military guys makes me think she's more interested in human biology. Bergen made her film debut as a lesbian in the classy soap opera movie The Group, but here she is very heterosexual indeed.
Electra Brown in one of her more conservative outfits.
Electra has this weird device that uses a special chemical (sound familiar?) to cut through metal in order to make replicas of ancient objects. (No, that didn't make much sense to me either.) Long story short, the guy who found the box steals the gizmo, opens the box, and . . .
Well, without giving away too much, let's just say that the depressing ending finally explains the title. This movie badly wants to be Dr. Strangelove and it fails miserably. The comedy isn't funny, the satire falls flat, and there are long stretches where nothing much is happening.
Two stars, mostly for the wacky costumes.
Designed by the director, who also wrote and produced.
Stay away from this one unless you want to laugh at it. Read a book instead.
Maybe not this one.
by Cora Buhlert
Horror in the Real World
1967 is certainly turning out to be a year of disasters.
Belgium has barely recovered from the devastating fire at the À l'Innovation department store in May and now two express trains and a local passenger train collided near the village of Fexhe-le-Haut-Clocher in the French-speaking part of Belgium on October 5, leaving twelve people dead and 76 injured.
Aftermath of the train crash of Fexhe-Le-Haut-Clocher in Belgium.
The photos of the wrecked trains bring back memories of another terrible railroad disaster that happened only three months ago in East Germany. A barrier at a railroad crossing near the village of Langenweddingen malfunctioned. As a result, a passenger train crashed into a tanker truck, setting the train on fire. 94 people died, 44 of them school children en route to a holiday camp. The Langenweddingen train crash is the worst railroad accident not just in East Germany, but in all of German history.
Aftermath of the devastating railroad crash in Langenweddingen, East Germany. Note the burned out train cars.
Horror on the Silver Screen: Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel (The Snake Pit and the Pendulum)
Compared to the many horrors of the real world, watching a spooky movie in the theatre feels almost cathartic. And so I decided to get away from the real world by watching the new West German horror movie Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel (The Snake Pit and the Pendulum) at my local cinema.
As the title indicates, the film is a (loose) adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum". Of course, we already had a very good (loose) adaptation of that story by Roger Corman only six years ago. And indeed, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum intends to be West Germany's answer to Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, the UK's Hammer horror films and the lurid horror films from Italy, all of which are popular, if not necessarily critical successes in West German cinemas. So how does The Snake Pit and the Pendulum hold up?
Judge Richard von Marienberg (Lex Barker in a wig) setnences Count Regula (Christopher Lee) to death.
Pretty well, it turns out. The movie starts with a bang, as a bewigged judge and a scarlet-masked executioner visit Count Regula (Christopher Lee) in his cell. The judge informs Count Regula that he is sentenced to death for murdering twelve virgins in his quest for immortality. However, the immortality elixir requires the blood of thirteen virgins and the final virgin managed to escape the Count's clutches and alerted the authorities.
The bodies of the twelve murdered virgins are arranged in a censor-friendly way, covering up any stray breasts.
The death sentence is to be executed immediately and a most bloody sentence it is, too. First, a bronze mask lined with spikes is nailed onto Count Regula's face – reminiscent of Mario Bava's 1960 horror movie La Maschera del Demonio a.k.a. Black Sunday. Then Count Regula is led onto the market square of the fictional town of Sandertal – portrayed by the Bavarian town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which is famous for its medieval architecture – where his body is torn apart by four horses. Of course, we have seen similar scenes in Italian and French historical and horror movies many times, but by the rather tame standards of West German cinema, this is a remarkably bloody opening.
The judge (Lex Barker) and the thirteenth virgin (Karin Dor) oversee the execution of Count Regula.The executioner is ready for action.
The movie continues in the same vein. For true to form, Count Regula has vowed bloody vengeance from beyond the grave, not only on the judge who sentenced him to death and that pesky virgin who escaped his clutches, but also on their descendants.
A creepy extra in "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum"
Vengeance from Beyond the Grave
The story now jumps forward by thirty years, from the early nineteenth century into the 1830s. A mail coach is traveling to Sandertal. The passengers are the lawyer Roger Mont Elise (Lex Barker), Baroness Lilian of Brabant (Karin Dor), her maid Babette (Christiane Rücker) and Fabian (Yugoslav actor Vladimir Medar), a highwayman masquerading as a priest. Roger and Lilian have both been summoned to Castle Andomai via mysterious letters. Roger, who is an orphan, is supposed to learn more about his parentage, while Lilian is supposed to receive the inheritance of her late mother. Both letters are signed by Count Regula, the very same Count Regula whose bloody execution we just witnessed.
Lilian of Brabant (Karin Dor) and Roger Mont Elise (Lex Barker) compare the latters they received from Count Regula.The mail coach makes a pit stop in the woods, so Lilian of Brabant, her maid Babette (Christiane Rücker), Roger Mont Elise and Priest Fabian (Vladimir Medar) disembarkThe woods around Sandertal are certainly spooky.
En route to the castle, the coach and its passengers must not only travel through a spooky forest where the bodies of hanged men are dangling from every tree, but are also assailed by bandits intent on kidnapping the two women. Roger and Fabian manage to fight off the bandits. But even more trouble awaits them at the castle, where the undead Count Regula and his equally undead servant Anatol (played by the delightfully creepy Carl Lange) are about to make good on the Count's dying threats.
The undead servant Anatol (Carl Lange) is about to revive his master Count Regula.Roger Mont Elise meets the undead Count Regula (Christopher Lee) and his equally undead servant Anatol (Carl Lange).Anatol harrasses Lilian.
For unbeknownst to them, Roger and Lilian are the descendants of the judge who sentenced Count Regula to death and the virgin who escaped the Count's clutches (and clearly did not remain a virgin). A gruesome fate awaits them at the castle, a fate that involves a pit full of snakes and a razor-sharp pendulum.
Roger and Lilian explore the spooky dungeons of Castle Andomai.The ladies' maid Babette (Christiane Rücker) is about to meet an unpleasant end.Count Regula and Anatol don't just employ pits and pendulums. Here they are about to guillotine Lilian.
The Snake Pit and the Pendulum is not quite up to the high standards set by Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptations on the one hand and the Hammer movies from the UK on the other. However, it is an enjoyably spooky film that will send a shudder or two down your spine.
Harald Reinl is a veteran of the Edgar Wallace, Dr. Mabuse and Winnetou movie series and probably the best director working in West Germany right now. His skills are on full display in this movie and he uses existing locations such as the medieval town of Rotenburg ob der Tauber or the Extern Stones in the Teutoburg Forest to great effect.
The cast is excellent. Christopher Lee has graced many a Hammer movie and now brings his horror skills to West German screens. Carl Lange has specialised in playing dubious characters and outright villains for a long time now and his performance as a hangman forced to execute his own son in Face of the Frog is unforgettable. I'm always stunned that Lex Barker never got to be the A-list star in Hollywood that he is in Europe, but their loss was our gain. That said, at 48 Barker may be getting a little too hold for hero roles. Finally, I'm very happy to see the always reliable Karin Dor back in a West German production and with her natural brunette hair after the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice wasted her talents on a cliched femme fatale role and foisted a terrible red wig on her, too.
Lex Barker and Karin Dor are enjoying themselves on the set of "The Snake Pit and the Pendulum".
Almost fifty years ago, the horror film genre was born in Germany. But like so many other things, horror film making in Germany died with the Weimar Republic. Let's hope that The Snake Pit and the Pendulum heralds a revival of a film genre that was pioneered here.
There's a new anthology of original science fiction and fantasy stories in bookstores this month. It's certain to be the topic of a lot of discussion among SF buffs, and maybe even some arguments.
It's also big; more than five hundred pages, and it'll set you back a whopping seven bucks. It's so big, in fact, that Galactic Journey is going to slice it into three pieces and discuss it in a trio of articles. (Why three? Because it's got thirty-three stories in it, and eleven articles would be silly.)
Let's dig into the first part of this mammoth collection and see if it's destined to be the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of speculative fiction, or just another dud.
Wraparound cover art by the husband-and-wife team of Leo and Diane Dillon, who also provide an interior illustration for each story.
Before we get to the nitty-gritty of fiction, we've got no less than two forewords by Isaac Asimov and a lengthy introduction by the editor.
In The Second Revolution, the Good Doctor outlines the history of modern science fiction from Gernsback through Campbell, and into the New Wave. Astounding was the first revolution, you see, and now we're in the second one. That may be a little simplistic, but it gets the point across.
Harlan and I, on the other hand, is a personal essay about Asimov's relationship with the editor, ending with a teasing anecdote. Ellison adds a long footnote offering a different version of their first encounter.
More substantial is Thirty-Two Soothsayers, the editor's longwinded but endlessly entertaining and informative account of what this book is supposed to accomplish, and how it came to be. Ellison wanders all over the place in this piece, and it's a fun ride. In brief, the stories he chose are supposed to be both enjoyable and provocative, with new ideas that might not appear in the usual SF markets. We'll see.
(If you're wondering why thirty-two and not thirty-three, it's because one writer supplies two stories; but that's for another time.)
I should mention that each story comes with an introduction by the editor and an afterword by the author, except for the one case when those roles are reversed. You'll see what I mean in a while.
I'm going to do something a little different here. I'll rate the quality of each story with the usual one to five stars, but I'll also add an indication for how dangerous each one is. This will be determined by sexual content, violence, profanity, experimental narrative style, taboo subject matter, etc. GREEN = safe to proceed, YELLOW = caution indicated, RED = hazardous conditions.
An unnamed character flees through the universe in an attempt to escape those who have overthrown his reign. To say anything else would give away the point of the story, which is an allegory.
Three stars. YELLOW for questioning the deeply held beliefs of some readers.
In a premise similar to his excellent novel Thorns, the author presents a severely injured astronaut who has been put back together by aliens. In this case, however, his body has been restored to normal, but his mind has been made more sensitive to the emotions of others. That doesn't work out well.
Silverberg has become a fine writer, one of the best now working. Like Thorns, this is an uncompromising look at human suffering.
Five stars. YELLOW for scenes of extreme cruelty.
The Day After the Day the Martians Came, by Frederik Pohl
Set in the very near future, this tale deals with humanity's reaction to the discovery of ugly, semi-intelligent lifeforms on the red planet. Mostly, people make nasty jokes about them. The intent of the story is to expose human prejudices, in a way that's about as subtle as a brick thrown through a window.
Three stars. YELLOW for dealing with a major social problem in the USA today.
This is, by far, the longest story in the book. It is also incredibly dense and fast-paced, so any attempt to describe the plot would be a miserable failure. That said, I'll just mention that it takes place in a very strange future, involves an artist and his tax-dodging ancestor, and contains a ton of wordplay. There are scenes of slapstick violence that are simultaneously hilarious and offensive. It's a wild rollercoaster ride, so keep your seatbelt tightly secured.
Five stars. RED for a Joycean narrative style and Rabelaisian humor.
The Malley System, by Miriam Allen deFord
In the future, the worst criminals receive a very unusual punishment. This is a grim story, that doesn't shy away from the horrors perpetuated by human monsters.
In a decadent future, a man uses the only time machine in existence to kidnap people from the past, in order to satisfy the whims of his sadistic granddaughter. He picks the wrong potential victim. This is a spine-chilling little science fiction horror story with a twist in its tail.
This is a direct sequel to the previous story, with an introduction by Bloch and an afterword by Ellison. An infamous murderer finds himself in the far future, where the inhabitants enter his mind in order to enjoy his sensations as he kills.
Written in an experimental, almost cinematic style, this is an unrelenting look at the evil that lurks inside all of us. Not for weak stomachs.
People get so-called time gas supplied to their homes through pipes. It allows them to enjoy better times in the past. As with any form of technology, things can go wrong. This is a light comedy with a unique premise.
Three stars. GREEN for whimsy.
The Man Who Went to the Moon – Twice, by Howard Rodman
A young boy takes a trip to the Moon by holding on to a balloon, becoming a local celebrity. Many years later, as a very old man, his only claim to fame is not as valued as it once was. Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, this is a gentle, quietly melancholy tale.
The Communist East has won a hot war with the Capitalist West. The protagonist is a bureaucrat given the task to determine which of two term papers truly represents the Party line. Meanwhile, a seemingly harmless substance allows him to perceive what appear to be multiple and contradictory truths about the Mao-like Party leader.
That's a vague synopsis, because this is one of the author's stories in which you've never quite sure what is real and what is illusory. Ellison strongly hints that it was written under the influence of hallucinatory drugs. Be that as it may, it's a provocative and disturbing look at the possible nature of reality.
Four stars. YELLOW for politics, drug use, and existential terror.
A man is sentenced to death for his crime. His organs will be harvested for transplant. Through a series of unusual circumstances, he manages to escape from prison, but his troubles aren't over yet.
The full impact of this story doesn't hit the reader until the very end, when we find out the nature of the man's offense. Other than that, it's an ordinary enough science fiction action/suspense story.
Three stars. GREEN for futuristic adventure.
One Down, Two To Go
So far, this is a fine collection of stories, without a bad one in the bunch. Sensitive readers might want to stay away from the more dangerous ones, but most mature SF fans will enjoy it.
The seaside amusement area known as Pacific Ocean Park, opened in 1958, closed its doors forever a couple of days ago, due to decreasing attendance and failure to pay back taxes and rental fees.
Pacific Ocean Park in happier days.
This aquatic rival of nearby Disneyland offered such futuristic and nautical delights as the House of Tomorrow, a Sea Circus, Diving Bells, the Sea Serpent Roller Coaster, and even a Flight to Mars, to name just a few out of dozens.
Artist's impression of the entrance to the defunct wonderland.
Long Time Passing
The vanishing of this Southern California landmark brings thoughts of the way in which almost everything disappears sooner or later. Pete Seeger's classic folk song Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (perhaps best known in the version recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary a few years ago) could serve as appropriately melancholy background music for such meditations.
It's on the trio's first album, by the way.
Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic contains a number of stories dealing with the passage of time and the decay of technology and culture.
Recycled art by Johnny Bruck.
The painting on the cover, as usual, has already appeared elsewhere. In this case, it's from an issue of Perry Rhodan, the popular weekly German publication named for the heroic space adventurer who appears in its pages.
Working from a German/English dictionary, the caption seems to mean something like Robots Please Allow . . . Far Is The Way To Noman's Land — A New Arlan Story. I'm sure my German-speaking fellow Galactic Journeyers can supply a better translation.
The Housebreakers, by Ron Goulart
Before we get to all the doom and gloom stuff dealing with vast expanses of time and the breakdown of society, let's have a little comic relief from a writer who specializes in funny stuff. If nothing else, it's the only new story in the issue.
Illustrations by Jeff Jones.
A mercenary gets his latest assignment from a talkative computer riding in an unreliable automated car. It seems there's a planet that essentially serves as a suburb. Folks commute from it to other planets to work. Some of the inhabitants are criminals and other lowlifes dumped there. (That seems like a really bad idea to me, but it sets up the plot.)
Crooks are appearing out of nowhere, grabbing loot and then disappearing. Since they don't have the gizmo necessary for teleportation, this seems impossible. The last guy to investigate the case is missing in action and presumed dead. Our hero has to contact the wife of a fellow who has joined the robbers in an attempt to track them down. Could it have anything to do with the planet's only real city (as opposed to bedroom communities), thought to be abandoned?
And what about this guy?
Maybe this sounds like crime fiction or an adventure story, but it's almost pure slapstick. There's not a lot of plot logic. The bad guys show up on horses, which doesn't make any sense in this high-tech setting. I guess the author wanted to spoof Westerns. The explanation for teleportation without a device is completely anticlimactic. Without giving too much away, it boils down to plot convenience.
Two stars.
Hok Visits the Land of Legends, by Manly Wade Wellman
Illustrations by Jay Jackson.
Speaking of vast amounts of time, let's go way, way back to the Stone Age. We've met the mighty caveman Hok a couple of times before. This yarn comes from the April 1942 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Cover art by Malcolm Smith.
Hok decides to kill a mammoth all by himself. He manages to wound the beast badly, and track it down through heavy snow to its place of dying. (This is similar to the legend of the elephant's graveyard.)
Note the very modern-looking snowshoes.
This turns out to be a deep valley, where the weather is nice and warm. The first thing you know, Hok is attacked by a pterodactyl.
Yes, this is an extreme anachronism; but what's a few million years between friends?
He also has to fight off a nasty critter, sort of like a rhinoceros, that doesn't belong in his time either. Poetic license, I guess.
A tribe of folks live in the treetops of this hidden tropical jungle. They're ruled by a brutal dictator. Hok has to deal with this guy as well as the animals that are out to kill him.
Even more so than in previous stories in this series, it's impossible to take this outrageous tale as a serious look into the remote past. The hot weather in the valley, the presence of beasts that died out millions of years before humans showed up; none of it makes sense.
There are tons of footnotes, as if we're supposed to accept this as scientific speculation rather than pure fantasy. These get in the way of just enjoying an exciting adventure story. Perhaps the most unbelievable thing about this exercise in pseudo-scholarship is the notion that Hok is the source of legends about Hercules.
Two stars.
That We May Rise Again . . ., by Charles Recour
Illustration by Julian S. Krupa.
From the remote past we jump forward into the extreme far future, in this apocalyptic tale from the July 1948 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Arnold Kohn.
A really long time from now, Earth is ruled by gigantic telepathic ants. They keep a few human beings around as servants. Our hero's master is a relatively kind ant, it seems. It lets him wander through a library of ancient books, learning how humanity used to dominate the planet. Apparently, the huge ants were created by radioactivity during the atomic war that destroyed civilization (The author anticipated the flick Them! by a few years.)
The ants want this fellow to take a ride in their only rocket ship, so he can act as a sort of double-check on their navigation systems. They don't want to go into space, but they want to take a look at things up there. Meanwhile, the guy meets the only other human being he's ever seen. Wouldn't you know it, she's a woman, and they fall instantly in love out of pure instinct.
Suddenly the prospect of taking a trip into the void doesn't sound so appealing. The lovebirds set out on their own, despite the opposition of the massive brain that rules over all the ants and their human slaves.
This is kind of a silly story that tries to create pathos in the fate of the two humans but winds up seeming ludicrous instead. The love story is implausible, to say the least, since these folks have never encountered one of their own kind before. It almost makes the giant ants seem realistic.
The May 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures supplies this story featuring one of the author's favorite themes.
Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.
As in his famous novel More Than Human (1953), Sturgeon presents us with a kind of group mind. Three college students form a triangular relationship. One, the only woman in the group, supplies the emotional and esthetic aspects of their lives. One of the men is an intellectual, and the other performs physical tasks. They drift apart over the years, but inevitably come back together. There's an unexpected reason for this.
An alien who consists of three symbiotic parts inhabits their minds. Those of its species have been acting as mental parasites on the simple lifeforms on the moon Titan. Now they intend to move to Earth, because the creatures they prey upon are running out. Working as one, the humans come up with an alternate plan to benefit everyone.
Despite its rather melodramatic science fiction aspects, this is a moving account of people who find themselves drawn together mysteriously, often against their conscious wills. As you'd expect from Sturgeon, the characters seem like real, complex people. It may be something of a stereotype to have the only woman be the emotional member of the group, but this doesn't seriously detract from the story.
Four stars.
Full Circle, by H. B. Hickey
Illustration by Ed Valigursky.
The premiere issue of the magazine (Summer 1952) is the source for this brief bit of irony.
Cover art by Barye Phillips and Leo Summers.
Once again, we're in the very far future, after human society has disappeared. The world is inhabited by robots. After an extremely long struggle, they have finally produced the ultimate being.
Well, just a glance at the illustration gives away the story's twist ending. Despite that, it's fairly effective. A minor piece that nevertheless accomplishes what it sets out to do.
This Kelleryarn (Kellernovel?) originally appeared in three parts in the May, June, and July 1932 issues of Amazing Stories. All cover art also by Leo Morey.
Another physician in the issue.
This time there's a Ph.D. included.
Keller gets his name on all three covers.
For no apparent reason, all metal rots away. Naturally, this wipes out civilization. A husband and wife, with their infant daughter, escape the city early enough to find an abandoned farmhouse where they can live off the land.
A wealthy fellow not too far away sets up a group of folks who work together in order to fight off the bands of desperate criminals roaming around, now that no prison can hold them. After some violent battles, the first attempts to form some kind of loose confederation with other communities for mutual defense begin.
This is a grim story, not always pleasant to read. The main character changes from an ordinary citizen into somebody willing to kill dangerous people in cold blood. There's a disturbing subplot about the physician in charge of an institution for the so-called feebleminded, who has to make a terrible decision about what to do about them.
Three stars.
Order Out Of Chaos?
This wasn't a very good issue, with only the Sturgeon worthy of notice. I wonder if the magazine and its sister publication Amazing are going to slowly wear away into nothing, given the way they're both raiding back issues for the dregs. Maybe it's about time to look around for some better reading, like a classic novel.
From 1958, a groundbreaking work of modern African literature.
Or you could turn on the radio instead, and listen to KGJ for all the hits, all the time!
![[February 10, 1968] It's a Man's World (March 1968 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cover-2.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[February 6, 1968] The Most Dangerous Dame (<i>Confessions of a Psycho Cat</i>) and From the Land of Hype (Ellison's <i>From the Land of fear</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/680206covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[January 20, 1968] Alyx and Company (January 1968 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/680120covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[January 10, 1968] Saving the Best For Last (<i>Dangerous Visions</i>, Part Three)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/1967_Dangerous-Visions-hc.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[December 10, 1967] Give 'Em Hell, Harry! (January 1968 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/COVER-ART-3.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[December 6, 1967] Brotherly Love (<i>Dangerous Visions</i>, Part Two)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/DangerousVisions1stEdxx971656156_465_692_int-2.jpg?resize=464%2C299)
![[November 18, 1967] Escape Velocity (November Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/671120covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[October 18, 1967] We Are The Martians: Quatermass and the Pit, Bonnie and Clyde, The Day the Fish Came Out and The Snake Pit and the Pendulum](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/671018posters.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
Likeable: Andrew Keir as Quatermass and Barbara Shelley as Miss Judd
Colonel Breen, representing humanity's negative side.
Hammer's take on the Martians.
![[October 10, 1967] Jack the Ripper and Company (<i>Dangerous Visions</i>,Part One)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/1967_Dangerous-Visions-hc-2.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[October 8, 1967] Things Fall Apart (November 1967 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fantastic_v17n02_1967-11_0000-3.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
