by Gideon Marcus
Pleasures of the Flesh
There are lots of different kinds of science fiction, from the nuts-and-bolts problem-solving variety one might call the Astounding style, to the literary style of the British New Wave, to the softly surreal speculation that often characterizes Galaxy. This month's issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is one of the more sensual mags I've read in a long time, putting you, the reader, firmly into the viewpoint of its protagonists. From an SFnal perspective, the pickings are pretty slim, the speculations rather shallow. But from a visceral point of view, well, each story sends you pretty far out, making for a perfectly satisfactory experience whose highlights come, welcomely enough, at the beginning and the end.
by Russell Fitzgerald (this suggestive cover is a little frustrating as it gives away the end of the story it illustrates…)
Strange New Worlds
Lines of Power, by Samuel R. Delany
First up, and rightfully so, is the latest novella by a man who has taken SF by storm. It is set in or around the year 2050, when the world has been knit by endless power cables, providing no limit of electricity and prosperity. The lines are laid out by self-contained crawler units (think the highway patrol motor homes from Rick Raphael's Code Three). By the middle of the 21st Century, all of the world, from Siberia to Antarctica has been knit with energy.
But there are occasional holdouts. One such Luddite concentration is in Canada, where a flight of future-day motorcyclists, soaring on winged choppers, have made their haven in the woods. These "angels" are violently opposed to the encroachment of the self-described "demons" and "devils" that comprise the Power Corps crew of the "Gila Monster".
It is progressive in the extreme, with women bosses and free love: interracial, intergenerational, and any-sexual. Modern-day (1968) hangups are completely discarded in a manner that Purdom pioneered and Delany has perfected. At the heart of the story is the moral question, one we've seen explored on Star Trek several times–is it right to give the fruit of knowledge to those who actively reject it?
Like all Delany stories, this is a highly sensory piece, although it also requires close reading, as Delany likes to be a bit sparse with his linking sentences. It's a simple story. You will find no revelations, and the characters are bit shallow. Chip (the name by which the author traditionally goes) has his kinks and tics, and they are all on display here, suggesting that this was a labor of love, but not necessarily too much effort.
Thus, a pleasant, but slightly hollow four stars. You could start a magazine with much worse!
by Gahan Wilson
The Wilis, by Baird Searles
This is a beautifully told spotlight on an opera company, from the pen of someone as experienced with the field as, say, Leiber is with the theater. Honestly, the supernatural components are almost superfluous, coming as they do at the end of the story, with little surprise and rather clunky integration. But without them, I suppose the piece would not have been published, at least in this magazine.
Three stars, as well as the prediction that we won't ever see anything by Mr. Searles again–this was obviously a very personal piece, and I would be surprised if he has more ideas in him. But you never know!
Gifts from the Universe, by Leonard Tushnet
Another fellow who writes what he knows is Leonard Tushnet, whose pieces have a delightful yiddish tinge to them. Here, a retailer of gifts happens upon a wholesaler in ceramics whose stock is beautiful beyond compare–and at such a deal as to prices! But the rather unusual wholesaler only accepts silver as currency, and his tenure and his wares have a definite expiration date…
You'll enjoy it; you'll even remember it. A pleasant three stars.
Beyond the Game, by Vance Aandahl
The second-darkest piece of the issue comes from a young man who filled the pages of F&SF in the early '60s but then disappeared in 1964. He returns with the tale of Ernest, a boy trapped in a sadistic game of dodge ball, huddled for safety behind the broad backsides of two of his teammates. When the sadistic Miss Argentine (who may be a robot) notices the cowering tyke, she commands all of the kids to teach him a lesson. In doing so, she unlocks the child's unearthly powers, which facilitate his escape.
Nicely told, this feels like it was conceived by Aandahl when he was quite young, and he waited until he was deft enough with writing that he could effectively put it to paper. It's fine for what it is, which isn't all that much. Three stars.
Dry Run, by Larry Niven
Now for the darkest piece, a fantasy from a fellow I normally associate with straight-forward "hard" SF (though I suppose The Long Night, which also appeared in F&SF, was also an exception).
Murray Simpson grips the wheel of his Buick, cigarette smoldering between his white knuckles, the stiffening body of his Great Dane in the trunk. The dead dog is Simpson's doing, a dry run for the murder of his wife.
An accident forestalls the culmination of Simpson's plan. Those who judge in life-after-death decide to find out how things might have otherwise played out.
Upon first reading this decidedly unpleasant tale (not just the subject matter; the depiction of a San Diego freeway traffic jam is too spot on for any local's comfort!) I was inclined to give it three stars. After reading it aloud to my family as their bedtime story, the piece came to life for me.
Thus, four stars.
Backward, Turn Backward, by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor takes a stab and planetary rotations and axial tilts in this month's science fact article. I do appreciate that he advances his own theories as to what caused both the "direct" (counter-clockwise) rotations of most of the planets (the natural spiraling in of the bodies as they coalesced) as well as what caused Uranus to spin on its side and Venus to spin retrograde (perhaps collisions early in formation).
It's still a somehow dry and shallow piece. I'm not quite sure what I want from Isaac, but he's not quite doing it for me these days.
Three stars.
A Quiet Kind of Madness, by David Redd
In the snowy winter wastes of Finland, lone huntress Maija comes across a strange creature, shivering and near death. He looks something like a polar bear, but not quite. As she nurses him back to health, she discovers he is intelligent, telempathic, and from an entirely different world. When they sleep, her new Snow Friend takes her to his place-without-men, a warm place of perpetual sunshine. It is a paradise to Maija, who would just as soon leave our world behind.
For a man pursues her, the relentless Igor, who six months tried to have his way with her, and is now back to claim her again. But it is not just fear of Igor that spurs her on, rifle in hand, to fend off the man, but fear for Snow Friend, who will be just a pretty pelt to Igor.
As with Redd's previous story, Sundown (which also features a snowy landscape–Redd must have a deep familiarity with icy terrain), Madness is vivid and compelling, and more artfully told than Sundown. It's almost a contemporary Oz story, with Snow Friend a refugee from a magical land. It's also a beautiful character study, of the bitter and solitary Maija, of the not-entirely-bad Igor, of the well-meaning but still male Timo, and of the sweet, alien Snow Friend.
This time, it is not for lack of deftness that this piece falls just short of five stars, nor for its almost incidental fantastic qualities, but simply because the end is not quite satisfying–almost as if Redd, himself, was unsure how to conclude the piece.
Still, it kept me hooked. A high four stars, and my favorite piece of the magazine.
Back to reality
As my colleague Kris puts it (and Kris insists it originated with me), Fantasy and Science Fiction's experiment at being a monthly version of Dangerous Visions appears to be paying off. The May 1968 issue scores a solid 3.5 stars with no clunkers in the mix. If none of the stories quite achieves classic status, well, maybe next month.
I only wonder where all the women went, given that the pages of F&SF were once the bastion of SFnal femininity. Maybe they're all writing Star Trek scripts.
In any wise, pick up this issue and enjoy. In this tumultuous day and age, it's nice to breathe the rich air of other worlds for a while.
Speaking of other worlds, come join us tonight at 8pm (Eastern and/or Pacific) for the rerun of "The Doomsday Machine", one of Star Trek's best episodes!
Here's the invitation!
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"Purdom pioneered"? Which story of his are you referencing? I'd suggest that Theodore Sturgeon/Farmer/Leiber (among others) might be early 50s originators (Purdom started in the late 50s as you know) of many of the stories that pushed sexual boundaries that were returned to in force in the New Wave. Maybe your reference is to something more precisely connected to the Delany tale?
Sturgeon had a story about (implied) homosexuals. Farmer had a story where the sexuality of an alien was a factor. I can't speak to Leiber's pioneering efforts.
But Purdom had the first Black protagonist of a novel, and in the same novel, had the first explicitly homosexual couple in SF that I'm aware of, with no judgment or disapproval involved. His stories include polygamy, interrational relationships, no bias as to sex, in a way I had never seen before in science fiction.
Delany has continued in the same vein, and he and Purdom are rough contemporaries (chronologically and geographically) as well as friends. But Purdom's I Want the Stars came out in '64, while Babel 17 came out in '66.
I love them both. Delany is the better writer, but Purdom gets credit for opening up a new frontier.
Actually, the aliens in Sturgeon's "The World Well Lost" (I'll be giving away plot spoilers here, for those not in the know) are pretty explicitly male homosexuals. The human protagonist discovers, via studying the race's sexual dimorphism, that males and females are very different physically. The alien lovers, whom he assumed to be male and female, are in fact both male, and this couple are willful exiles from their planet due to their native culture's rabid homophobia, hence the title. To further complicate things, said human protagonist is all but said (it's more than an implication, but not confirmed via dialogue) to be a homosexual himself. Very fascinating story, and it's not even Sturgeon's only venture into such territory.
Hard to get issue anyway, a reader might as well be filled in on it. Much is being said lately about how grand it is to be a homosexual, whereas there is usually trouble about it, as if people felt it didn't conform to biology. I think much of this talk was started by Sturgeon's story. I don't think he should get in peoples' pants that much.
I have an entire series on sex and sexuality on my website with a focus on 50s short fiction. Leiber's "The Ship Sails at Midnight" (1950) was the story I'm referencing with an implied lesbian relationship (and polyamory) between an alien visitor and a group of bohemian friends.
SF&Other Suspect Ruminations? I'll look it up. I don't know why sf writers are wanting to extend their sexual considerations to alien races which have not been found to exist.
Same reason aliens are invoked for racial metaphors–it's a lot more acceptable to rail against bigotry when it's Fuzzy Wuzzies and not human beings with more melanin.
Thank you for your articles. My reading did not become complete until the mid '50s, and I'd forgotten about Venus Plus X, which I've reviewed here. There's also the brilliant The World, the flesh, and the devil (1959), with its implied polygamy (polyandry really) and interracial love–though the world has to END to achieve it.
That said, there's still a difference between the subtle implication of the early '50s stories and the flat-out, "No, in the future, no one will give a shit about multiple partners or sexual preference, period."
The latter is what I'm talking about.
Sorry for the confusion in this conversation chain — all my comments are in response to Gideon and Brian.
Yes, without a doubt, New Wave authors expanded upon the 50s stories in much more overt (as they could now get them published) directions. But that central core group of radical 50s authors (who often, like the Sturgeon story Brian referenced, had to get published in secondary markets) ended up having quite the influence on the boundary-pushing to come. Look at the interior art for the Sturgeon story in Unknown. Talk about homoerotic!
Sorry, should have double-checked the magazine publication of "The World Well Lost." I meant Universe Science Fiction (June 1953)
Joachim, we're just going to have to agree to agree. Hehe.
Yes, Sturgeon, Leiber, and Farmer pioneered the subtle subversive stories. And Purdom/Delany gave visions of a world that was post-genderism.
I look forward to seeing the next revolution!
The boundaries were returned to?
The covers for the past several F&SF issues have really leaned into the "psychedelic" craze among certain people under the age of 30, with this Fitzgerald cover being maybe the most unnerving example yet. Aesthetically it's the most distinctive of the American magazines right now, though depressingly the materials holding these F&SF issues literally together are quite poor still; meanwhile I could blast an issue of Analog or Galaxy out of a cannon and they would probably be fine.
This comment is from the past? Galaxy is no longer around.
"Lines of Power" didn't feel at all hollow to me. Maybe I was just so swept away by Delany's use of language that I simply never noticed something might be missing. I think we all owe Harlan a debt of gratitude for convincing Delany to try short fiction; of all the stories I've seen so far, only one wasn't up to his usual standard, and even that was still a good average story.
The comparison of "The Wilis" to a Leiber story about the theater is spot on. Ballet is clearly a milieu Searles knows intimately. I could see the ending coming a mile away, but was so drawn into the setting it didn't matter. A very enjoyable read.
"Gifts from the Universe" was fine. A you say, "A pleasant three stars." But remember it? No. I'd already forgotten it and needed your recap to remember what it was about.
Complete agreement on the Aandahl. I also found the ending a bit muddled; not entirely sure what happened there at the end.
I'm more in line with your original assessment of the Niven. It's a little too… Twilight Zone for me. Not a bad story, by any means, I just can't see four stars.
I know why Asimov hasn't been working for me a lot. I want him to explain the current state of understanding of some scientific point in clear, plain language. I don't want him inventing his own, abstruse terminology and engaging in lay speculation, well informed or otherwise. And we've been getting all too much of the latter for a couple of years now.
The Redd was a very good story. It took me several pages to realize it was set on Earth and not in the same place as "Sundown." It didn't fully engage me all the way through. I often found my attention wandering or wanting him to get on with the story. And the ending was a bit unsatisfactory. It's still four stars, but I think I have to put this one behind the Delany.
Since Finnish characters comprise 40% of the main characters in my Kitra books, I knew immediately where it was set!
Perhaps I was just much more entranced with Maija's perspective. Delany's "Blackie" felt too much like Chip.
Still, if we're fighting over which of the best stories was better than the other, we're in pretty good shape!
From what I hear in the fannish rumor mill, Delany's preferred title for "Lines of Power" was "We, In Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line." Maybe too long for the magazine? I also understand that it was intended as a pastiche of/tribute to Roger Zelazny. Interesting that two of the best new SF writers have similar names.
Ah, that line was at the head of the story like an epigraph. I wondered what it was quoting.
Has any SF magazine previously ever had such a homoerotic cover? Given how many of the 50s covers on the lower end of the market seemed designed to adolescent heterosexual men, it is nice to have a change. Maybe it was this fact that meant I didn't feel the cover revealed anything about Lines of Power to me.
Lines of Power itself is very good. I would again only give it 4 stars as it is not as amazing as some of Delany's other work but it is so well written and, unusually for Chip, so darn funny in places. I was laughing out loud in a way I rarely do for F&SF. Such a talent.
Whilst I agree with others on the Searles, I would raise it up to a 4 as the quality of writing is so strong. Great stuff.
Tushnet's piece is charming. If this is as close as we get to filler in the current F&SF, we are charmed indeed.
The Anadahl is resonable but not outstanding.
I think I would give a high 3 stars to the Niven, which given a) my harsh marking schema, b) my antipathy towards stories involving cars & c) I am not a Niven fan, shows that it is quite a good piece.
Finally, Redd's Novelette was indeed very good. I think I would put it behind the first two stories as it felt unfinished but still strong.
Great to see a Josephine Saxton piece being highlighted next month. The work I have read of hers so far has been excellent.