All posts by David Levinson

Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 2, 1970] Par for the course (April 1970 IF)

March 2, 2025 David Levinson 5 Comments

by David Levinson

The Veep that couldn’t shoot straight

I’m no fan of golf (unless it involves little windmills), but a lot of people seem to like it. They show it on TV and not a week goes by without at least one golf joke in the funny pages. It also intersected with politics last month. February continues to be the month that gives me very little to talk about, so I guess this is it.

The Professional Golfers’ Association likes to start their tour early in the pleasant climes of Hawaii and California. One such event is the Bob Hope Desert Classic held on a variety of courses in the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs. The highlight of the tournament for many is the pro-am event, where the pros competing in the tournament are matched with (celebrity) amateurs for one day’s round.

Pro Doug Sanders—best known for his odd swing and dapper dress—found himself in a foursome with Bob Hope, California Senator (and former song-and-dance man) George Murphy, and Vice President Spiro Agnew. On his very first shot, the Veep managed to hook the ball so far to the left it ended up on the path for an adjacent fairway. (Probably the farthest left he’s gone since being elected governor.) Trying to get back to the right fairway, he then sliced hard to the right. (This whole thing is starting to sound like a metaphor for Agnew’s political career.)

Bob Hope and Doug Sanders were standing in the path of the ball. Hope managed to duck out of the way, but Sanders was struck on the head. The blow drew blood, which Hope mopped up with a towel. Agnew was duly apologetic, and Sanders played gamely onward. At the nine-hole break, he was examined by a doctor, and the wound was sprayed with a pain-deadener.

Wire photo of the aftermath.

Agnew went on to have a terrible day. He frequently missed putts and took penalties for giving up on a hole. As the AP put it, “Agnew chatted amiably with the fans when his ball landed in or near them, which was often.” Sanders didn’t do much better, though he was already having a poor tournament. He won $200, far less than the top prize of $25,000. Agnew rather crassly quipped that it should just about cover his medical bills.

Am I picking on Spiro Agnew? Yes. Yes, I am. After his recent attack on the press, he deserves all the opprobrium he can get. He’s already being talked about as the clear front-runner for the Republicans in 1976. Let’s nip that idea in the bud right now.

Down the fairway

When he took over as editor, Ejler Jakobsson got off to a strong start. Since then, there’s been something of a return to form, although those C+ to B- issues have felt fresher than they did in recent years under Fred Pohl. Has he sent this issue cleanly down the fairway, hit a hole in one, or—worst of all—smacked the reader in the head with an errant shot? Let’s find out.

Arrival at Ocean-Deep. Art for “Waterclap” by Gaughan

Waterclap, by Isaac Asimov

The long-standing lunar base and the new deep sea base at the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench must compete for the limited financial resources offered by the Planetary Project Council. After the first fatal accident on the Moon, safety engineer Stephen Demerest travels to Ocean-Deep, ostensibly to learn more about their safety procedures. His real purpose is to convince them to turn down any increase in funding at the expense of the Moon base, and he’s willing to take extreme measures.

Demerest makes his case. Art by Gaughan

This is a very unusual Asimov story. There’s no puzzle, the characters are a little more fleshed out than is typical, and the tone is a lot darker. He pulls it off quite well. It could be tightened up here and there, and Demerest’s real plans are foreshadowed a little too strongly, but all in all, it’s solid, with a maturity that’s often not in evidence in the Good Doctor’s work.

A high three stars.

To Touch a Star, by Robert F. Young

Angry at being rendered impotent as punishment for a crime he didn’t commit, Ben Powers steals the starship Mary and heads for the one place he can reverse his condition. Unfortunately for him, the ship’s computer is intelligent and programmed to combat theft.

The Mary being exposed to ChiMuZeta (whatever that is). Art uncredited

Science fiction editors have long rejected out of hand any story which ends with the characters becoming Adam and Eve. Can we extend that to include any Biblical figure? Just in the last couple of months, we’ve had Jesus, Jonah, and even God. It’s trite. Add in Young’s nonsensical science, and this is an awful story. Only the author’s ability to write halfway decent sentences keeps this from the bottom of the barrel.

A low two stars.

Spaceman, by Lee Harding

Facing a long layover on the planet Hydria, Captain Marnsworth takes the opportunity to find out why his best friend jumped ship there three years earlier. What he finds shocks him to the core.

Marnsworth can’t comprehend what he sees. Art uncredited, but obviously Gaughan

The back to nature movement is popular with young people, especially hippies. Star Trek even used it for a plot last year. Concern for how the technological life and separation from nature, especially life in space, will affect humanity is a worthy subject for SF to confront. This really could have been the story to do that; Harding doesn’t take sides, showing value in both approaches. But it’s too long. That or Marnsworth’s general confusion makes the narrative heavy going. Either way, it brings the story down.

Three stars.

Swap, by Ron Goulart

Ron Goulart give us another of his tales of technology gone very wrong. This time, it’s computerized spouse swapping sending the protagonist to the wrong part of town. It’s got that typical Goulart wackiness, but with a darker than usual undertone. If you’re familiar with Ron, you’ve got a pretty good idea whether you’ll like this or not; if you aren’t, this isn’t a bad place to start.

Three stars.

When blind dates go wrong. Art by Gaughan

Ride a Tin Can, by R.A. Lafferty

Two folklorists investigate a race of goblinesque creatures that most people don’t think are intelligent.

The Shelni hope to ride a tin can one of these days. Art by Gaughan

For me, the best Lafferty stories are those that actually don’t have much in the way of plot. This one has a bit, but not enough to spoil the essential Lafferty-ness of the whole thing. I could say the same thing here as I did about the Goulart story. I liked it.

Three stars.

Thou Spark of Blood, by Gene Wolfe

One hundred and thirty-five days into the first mission to Mars, the three astronauts aboard are cracking up. They’ve been out of contact with Earth for weeks, and most of the equipment for improving their quality of life has also broken down. When the man in the middle seat is found with his throat cut, tensions run high, with the two survivors accusing each other of murder.

How do you dispose of a body without a functioning airlock? Art by Gaughan

Gene Wolfe started out writing in a slightly New Wave style, but seems to have fallen into a more traditional form since—he’s not the better for it. I also saw the ending of this one coming. Despite this, I was originally prepared to give the story three stars, but the more I think about it, I can’t. There’s a massive flaw that I can’t really discuss without giving away the ending, but it renders the whole thing completely unbelievable.

Two stars.

Whipping Star (Part 4 of 4), by Frank Herbert

Saboteur Extraordinaire Jorj McKie and the Bureau of Sabotage race to prevent the death of the Caleban Fannie Mae. If she dies, almost every sentient being in the galaxy will die with her.

The final confrontation as the clock runs out. Art by Gaughan

Herbert manages to bring his novel to a fairly satisfying conclusion. There’s enough action and about as much tension as you can expect in a story like this. We also learn the true nature of the Caleban, though it may stretch credibility. If I have a complaint, it’s that Herbert never really engages with the interesting questions he raised in Part 1 about the problems of communicating without common references. It’s still an engaging read, which might read better over the course of a few hours than a few months, though I don’t find myself at all motivated to test that hypothesis.

Three stars for this segment and the novel as a whole.

Reading Room, by Lester del Rey

Lester del Rey turns his attention to two recent Buck Rogers books, one a retrospective on the long-running comic strip, the other a reprint of the original two stories by Philip Francis Nowlan. He uses the occasion to discuss Buck Rogers’ limited connection to SF as it is and its role in furthering the ideas of the Yellow Peril. He even asks if the comic might have played a role in the internment of Japanese Americans during the War by keeping those ideas alive.

A high three stars.

Summing up

That’s another issue in the books. No holes in one and maybe a couple of bogeys, but at least the reader never gets conked with an errant shot. The magazine seems to be drifting back into its old routine. The freshness I mentioned earlier that keeps it different from the Pohl era is still there, but it’s starting to get a little stale. Asking for a four or five star story every month is probably too much, but the magazine needs a real highlight every now and then to keep the reader interested. Fingers crossed for next month.

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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 2, 1970] Deceptive Appearances (March 1970 IF)

February 2, 2025 David Levinson Leave a comment

by David Levinson

The Super Fight

Back in 1967, a radio producer by the name of Murray Woroner came up with the idea of using a computer to work out who the best heavyweight fighter of all time is. He polled 250 boxing writers and came up with a list of 16. He then worked closely with a programmer to input everything that could be determined about each boxer into a computer.

Match-ups were set up as a single-elimination tournament to be broadcast as a series of radio plays. Each fight was run through an NCR 315 computer the night before broadcast to create a blow-by-blow account of the fight. Woroner and boxing announcer Guy LeBow would then “call” the fight as if it were really happening. In the end, Rocky Marciano beat Jack Dempsey and was awarded a championship belt worth $10,000.

The arbiter, an NCR 315.

Ali was not happy. The computer had him losing in the quarter finals to Jim Jeffries, a boxer he has little respect for. He sued for defamation of character, asking for $1 million. They settled when Ali agreed to take part in a filmed version of a computerized fight between him and Marciano in return for $10,000 and a cut of the box office.

Last year, Ali and Marciano got together and sparred for over 70 rounds, filming a few different versions of events that the computer might predict. Marciano dropped 50 pounds and wore a toupee so he’d look more like he did in his prime. Ali probably had to get back in shape too, since he’s been banned from boxing for refusing induction into the army. Instinct seems to have taken over for both men. Ali bloodied Marciano’s nose and opened cuts over his eyes (Rocky always bled easily); at one point, Ali was so exhausted he refused to go back into the ring (until he got another $2,000) and could barely raise his arms enough to eat breakfast the next day. Filming ended just three weeks before Marciano was killed in a plane crash last Labor Day.

Armed with hours of footage and the top secret computer result, Woroner and his team put together a film they dubbed The Super Fight. On January 20th, it aired in 1,500 theaters in the US, Canada, and Europe via closed-circuit television, with viewers paying a whopping $5.00 a head.

How did it turn out? Ali is not happy. The computer had him knocked out in the 13th round. He’s talking about another defamation suit. Maybe he’ll change his mind when he finds out that was only in the US and Canada. European viewers saw Ali win by TKO. The producers are also talking about destroying all the prints.

Movie poster for the event. That “LIVE!” is a little deceptive, which is something else Ali is complaining about.

It’s a rather science-fictional concept we’ve seen in other guises. Maybe Murray Woroner got his original idea from the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon.” Of course, any statistician will tell you that a single simulation doesn’t really say anything. Rolling a die once doesn’t tell you if it’s fair; it takes hundreds or thousands of repetitions to determine that. But when the computer needs 45 minutes to determine the events of one match, this is the best that can be expected. For now.

Not what it looks like

Authors like to counter readers’ expectations. It’s a good way to evoke a response, particularly in a genre that has a fair number of cliches and formulas. Sometimes, the surprise comes from the author doing something that’s not what you expect that particular writer to do or say. This month’s IF offers some of both.

Art actually for “SOS,” rather than just suggested by. Maybe because it’s by Mike Gilbert, not the overworked Jack Gaughan.

SOS, by Poul Anderson

Some 2,000 years from now, the Earth’s magnetic field is fading, prior to a reversal of the magnetic poles. The feudalistic Westrealm and the communist Autarchy of Great Asia compete for dwindling resources as they search desperately for a way to survive the pending catastrophe. The Autarchy secretly invades a Westrealm research station on the dark side of the moon, preparatory to a surprise attack on the West’s space fleet. It’s up to the scientists to find a way to prevent it.

The invasion arrives. Art uncredited

This feels like a fairly typical Anderson story of the well-done sort all the way through. But then he hits the reader with a punch to the gut right at the end. The ending and the commentary from the author are surprising in light of most of his work. It’s a good story, but weakened by two things: the title completely gives away the resolution; worse, there’s a couple of paragraphs at the beginning that undercut the emotional impact of the ending.

A high three stars, but could have been better.

Telemart 3, by Bob Shaw

Shaw gives us the tale of an unpleasant man who married for money and his wife who seems intent on spending all of it. The problem is made worse by the titular device, which allows her to buy things from the comfort of her living room with instant delivery. It’s probably meant as commentary on consumerism, but feels more like a sexist rant about women and money.

Two stars.

Matters come to a head. Art by Gaughan

The Thing in the Stone, by Clifford Simak

After a car accident that killed his wife and child and may have given him brain damage, Wallace Daniels retired to the countryside of south-western Wisconsin, where he has visions that seem to let him go walking in the geologic past. There’s also something alive buried deep in the limestone, not to mention an unpleasant and shiftless neighbor. Not everything is as it seems.

Daniels finds himself in the deep past, before life has truly left the ocean. Art by Gaughan

This story has almost everything I don’t like about Simak: the pastoralism, wandering back and forth over the line between science fiction and fantasy, the slow progression. I understand why people like him, but he just isn’t for me. If you like those aspects of his work, you may like this one a lot.

Three stars for me, might be four for Simak fans.

The Ethics of Trade, by Timothy M. Brown

This month’s (official) new author gives us a series of letters from the operators of a company that provides dangerous animals to zoos to one of their clients. There’s nothing really new here, but it’s done fairly well. Brown does a good job of calling the letter writer into question, even though we only hear his side.

Three stars.

Rigellian wombats are very, very dangerous. Art by Gaughan

In the Silent World, by Ed Bryant

Julie is a co-ed with telepathy. As far as she know, she’s the only telepath in the world. At least, until an overwhelming cry of loneliness prompts another to contact her.

Julie, I suppose. Art uncredited, but looks like Gaughan

Nothing about this story is bad, but nothing is particularly outstanding either. I saw the ending coming almost as soon as the other telepath made contact. There’s not much more to say about it.

Three stars.

Traps, by Jack Dann and George Zebrowski

Planet 3-10004-2 can’t be approved for colonization until all land animals have been properly classified; Rysling has taken the contract to capture the last unclassified species. He’s puzzled by the presence of another ship and the cryptic messages left by its pilot. Even more puzzling is the effect the creature he’s after seems to have on him.

Rysling’s not sure who or what he is. Art by Gaughan

Dann seems to be a new author, but Zebrowski had a story in a collection that came out last month, so this isn’t quite an IF first. The premise and the powers of the creature are hard to buy, but it’s told well enough. There’s enough talent here to make the story readable; we’ll see if either author has any staying power.

Three stars.

Whipping Star (Part 3 of 4), by Frank Herbert

Herbert’s tale of Saboteur Extraordinary Jorj McKie and his efforts to stop a “reformed” sadist from causing the death of an alien, thus triggering the deaths of nearly every sentient being in the galaxy, plods along. Last month, I said the story was holding my interest and praised the action. Neither of those things is true this month. This installment is nothing but conversations. There are a couple of brief bits of action, but neither is more than a flash.

I’m also getting a little bored. There may not be enough here for a novel. The idea of examining communication without a common perspective is sound, but the whole thing might have been trimmed to a longish novella.

Three fading stars.

The bad guys make an ineffectual attempt to eliminate McKie. Art by Gaughan

The Time Judge, by Dannie Plachta

A criminal is dragged through time and condemned by the title character to a fitting punishment.

Here come da judge. Art by Gaughan

Actually, we don’t know if the punishment is fitting, since we’re never told the nature of the crime, just of the judge’s disgust. For that matter, the punishment wasn’t all that uncommon in its day. As with nearly every Plachta story, the nicest thing I can say is that it’s very short.

Two stars.

Love Thy Neighbor, by E. Clayton McCarty

Jake Terrell starts seeing something out of the corner of his eye. Then it jumps into his head, and he begins behaving oddly.

It’s a stretch, but I see how this connects with the story. Art uncredited

Another story that’s like a piece of popcorn. You consume it without really noticing it, nor is there anything memorable about it, good or bad. A decently told piece of filler.

Three low, but not too low stars.

All Brothers Are Men, by Basil Wells

Three alien religious fanatics are part of a conspiracy to drive humans off their world. Two of them started out as the personality of the third implanted into mind-wiped bodies. The years apart have undermined their commonality, and two of them may no longer believe in the cause.

Not sure what the paper airplane is doing here. Art by Gaughan

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this story is that the humans aren’t really in it. They’re a distant, never seen presence affecting the characters’ society in ways they don’t like. For a guy who started out 30 years ago and probably spends more time writing mysteries and westerns than SF, Wells has managed to stay up-to-date. This is by no means a New Wave tale, but it still manages to have a modern sensibility.

A very solid three stars.

Miscellany

Elsewhere in the magazine, the letters were almost universally in praise of the savaging Ejler Jakobsson gave John Campbell in two editorials over the latter’s piece on race and IQ. I particularly liked the point made by one writer, who notes that Campbell’s premise is based tightly on statistical analysis of something poorly defined and understood, while he flatly rejects statistical evidence indicating clear connections between smoking and lung cancer and heart disease.

Summing up

Looking over what I’ve written, this seems like a weak issue, but it’s not as bad as I make it sound. The Simak is undoubtedly the best in the issue; it might even be a four-star story, but my own prejudices keep me from rating it that high. The Anderson and Wells are fine stories, if not outstanding. The rest are mostly just there. The only really bad story is the Shaw (Plachta’s not bad, just stupid). Frank Herbert might manage to salvage his novel in the final episode, but I’m not holding my breath.

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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 14, 1970] Root Rot (February 1970 Venture)

January 14, 2025 David Levinson Leave a comment

by David Levinson

A less perfect union

Unions have been a positive for workers. They’re why we have the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, paid time off, why blue collar workers are able to buy a house, not to mention not owing their soul to the company store; I’m old enough to remember when none of those things were a given. Of course, as human institutions, they are also flawed, and where money and power flows, those flaws can turn to worse things. That’s what gives many politicians—and the editor of a certain science fiction magazine—a pretext to rail against them.

One of the most important unions this century has been the United Mine Workers of America. Much of that stems from the four decades of leadership by John L. Lewis, who died last June. Lewis took a well-earned retirement in 1960 and was replaced by his vice president Thomas Kennedy. Old and in poor health, Kennedy was largely a caretaker and was soon followed by Lewis’ chosen successor, W.A. “Tough Tony” Boyle.

Lewis ran the UMWA with an iron fist, ignoring demands by the rank-and-file for a greater say in the union. He maintained his power through skill, charisma, and reputation. Boyle has run things with a similar style, but lacks most of what kept Lewis in charge. There’s even a feeling among the membership that he tends to favor the interests of the mine owners over the workers.

Enter Joseph “Jock” Yablonski. He was one of the leading figures in the opposition to Boyle’s policies. He had also been the president of the UMW’s District 5 until Boyle unilaterally stripped him of office in 1965. Last May, Yablonski announced he would challenge Boyle for the UMW presidency in the December election and was formally nominated in September. Boyle won the election on December 9th by an almost 2-to-1 margin, and Yablonski conceded. However after seeing the detailed election results, Yablonski promptly asked the Department of Labor to investigate the election. On the 18th, he also filed five civil lawsuits in federal court against the UMW over a variety of irregularities.

On January 5th, Yablonski’s older son, Kenneth, discovered the bodies of Yablonski, his wife Margaret, and their 25-year-old daughter Charlotte in their home in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. The next day 20,000 miners in West Virginia staged a one-day wildcat strike in protest against Tony Boyle, who they believe is responsible for the murders. Hours after the Yablonskis were buried, several of his supporters met with his attorney to plan further actions to reform the union.

As I write, the police have no leads. A $60,000 reward has been offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction. I don’t want to point any fingers without evidence, but an awful lot of people close to Yablonski are looking hard at Tony Boyle and the acrimony surrounding last month’s election.

Corrupt institutions

Most of this month’s Venture is given over to the new Keith Laumer novel, which spends quite a while with miners. But it and the other stories in the issue deal with corruption, both institutional and personal.

A not very representational image for Laumer’s new story. Art by Bert Tanner

The Star Treasure, by Keith Laumer

Lt. Ban Tarleton is the son of an admiral and a proud member of the United Planetary Navy. He firmly believes in the status quo and holds no truck with rebellious Hatenik philosophy. But a purge leads to his discovery of some unpleasant facts, eventually resulting in him being cashiered from the Navy and sentenced to permanent exile on a harsh Class I planet. There, he finds work as a miner and makes a discovery that may give him the power to bring the whole system down.

Ban must use his best friend’s corpse as a trap. Art by Bert Tanner

Laumer is probably best known for his comedic stories, particularly those about the interstellar diplomat Retief, but he mostly writes serious stuff. Those tales come in two flavors: two-fisted adventure and thoughtful pieces that frequently tug at “masculine” emotions like duty and sacrifice. The Star Treasure is very much in the former category, but it also differs from Laumer’s usual approach.

Laumer’s typical adventure protagonist is an old-school Competent Man writ very large. Ban, on the other hand, blunders from episode to episode, generally succeeding through dumb luck. Laumer also tends to go wildly off the rails, often to the point of the surreal, investing his protagonists with incredible powers or giving them an alien background of which the were unaware. This one goes off the rails, too, but it’s right at the end. That usually happens around the mid-point. I guess this counterbalances The Seeds of Gonyl, where it happens on page one.

Three stars.

Breaking Point, by V.N. McIntyre

An ambitious but untalented colonel is captured and tortured by the enemy. There are a number of science-fictional elements.

Looks more like Neil Diamond to me. Art by Craig Robertson

It’s hard to say much about this story without simply retelling it. There is one thing that kept me from liking it: The colonel has a cat, and the cat dies. Twice. I understand how it fits in the story, but it put me off completely.

Anyway, McIntyre seems to be new. I don’t know if that V. hides a Virginia or a Virgil and can’t make a guess based on the writing either. Either way, there are signs of some solid talent. More from this author would not be amiss—just leave the cats alone.

Objectively three stars, but only two from me for reasons already stated.

Disposal, by Ron Goulart

You probably don’t think about how much trash you and your family generate. Someone in the house takes the cans to the curb on the appointed day and brings back the empties once the truck has been by. What would happen if that didn’t happen? What if there wasn’t a nearby dump you could take the trash to yourself? Goulart asks those questions with a slight science-fictional twist.

Although the story takes place in Goulart’s old stomping grounds of San Francisco, I recall reading that he recently moved to New York City. It would have been after the great garbage strike of a couple years ago, but he may have been inspired by horror stories from the locals. His typical satirical style is fully in evidence, but he keeps the outright wackiness in check.

Three stars.

Standoff, by Robert Toomey

A human and an alien find themselves on opposite sides of an asteroid after their ships were destroyed in combat. Hostilities are extreme, and neither side takes prisoners. If they work together, the two might find a way for both to survive.

As the situation of the story became clear to me, I expected something like John Boorman’s 1968 film Hell in the Pacific (starring Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune). That might have been Toomey’s original inspiration, with a possible assist from the 1965 Frank Sinatra feature None But the Brave, but that’s not where the story goes. The ending might be darker than either of those films.

A high three stars.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the issue, we get a “super Feghoot,” which is twice the usual length at a full page. Unfortunately, the pun is extremely tortured, resulting in one of the worst Feghoots I’ve ever read. Meanwhile, Ron Goulart has finally found a book he likes. Two, in fact. One is a Doc Savage reprint, the other A Wilderness of Stars, an anthology edited by William F. Nolan. Most of the stories seem to be from the 1950s. I’m not to sure that Ron is all that keen on the modern state of science fiction, even the old fashioned stuff.

So, a rather middle-of-the-road issue. However, it’s dominated by the condensed novel, far more so than any of the previous issues. If we have to have a novel in every issue, let’s at least make it something shorter so we can have a couple more stories as well.

Wellen’s written some good stuff, so I hope this more than the pot-boiler thriller it appears to be.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 2, 1970] Under Pressure (February 1970 IF)

January 2, 2025 David Levinson Leave a comment

by David Levinson

Pressure Cooker

Every December, the American Geophysical Union holds its Fall Meeting in San Francisco. There, a number of papers are presented on a wide variety of topics in fields such as geology, oceanography, meteorology, space, and many more. Usually, it might produce a paragraph or two in the back pages of your newspaper on an attempt to predict earthquakes or some new information about the Moon, but this year’s meeting garnered headlines (hardly front page news, but more than just filler). Most of attention went to the proposal to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon to build up a seismological picture of our neighbor and the news that Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice as it rose into the skies above Florida. However, it was another article that caught my eye.

Most of the column inches went to a presentation by Dr. E.D. Goldberg of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. He spoke of the “complex ecological questions” raised by the amount of toxic substances we’re dumping into the ocean. The use of lead in gasoline results in 250,000 tons winding up in the ocean every year, over and above the 150,000 tons that are washed there naturally. Oil tankers and other ships discharge a million tons of oil into the sea annually, with the result that there are “cases of fish tasting of petroleum.” Mackerel had to be taken off the market in Los Angeles due to unacceptable levels of DDT, while in Japan 200 people were poisoned and 40 died before authorities traced the cause to mercury discharged into Minimata Bay by a chemical company. Dr. Goldberg asked, “Will [pollution] alter the ocean as a resource? Will we lose the ocean?”

Dr. Edward D. Goldberg of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California

That seems like the sort of pollution we can do something about. Perhaps more concerning is the warning provided by J.O. Fletcher of the Rand Corporation. Fletcher is a retired Air Force Colonel, best known for being part of the crew that landed a plane at the North Pole and for establishing a weather station on tabular iceberg T-3 (now known as Fletcher’s Ice Island), which is still in use. He called carbon dioxide the most important atmospheric pollutant today. It is responsible for one-third to one-half of the warming thus far in the 20th century. The human contribution may surpass that of nature within a few decades. Global warming could increase the melting of the polar ice caps and change the Earth’s climate.

Col. Fletcher (r.) on his ice island in 1952. This was the most recent photo of him I could find.

Fletcher’s warning was underscored by Dr. William W. Kellogg of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who stressed the need to educate people that “man has got to change his way.” He added that global climate is going to have to become a problem that can be managed.

Dr. William W. Kellogg of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado

If the warnings of Fletcher and Kellogg sound familiar, that’s because you read it in IF first. Back in the April, 1968 issue, Poul Anderson had a guest editorial talking about the dangers of increased warming. In the August issue of the same year, Fred Pohl had an editorial warning about increasing levels of carbon dioxide. [And Isaac Asimov wrote about it back in 1958! (ed.)] An article from UPI has a much wider reach than IF, and people are more likely to take working scientists more seriously than a couple of science fiction writers. Let’s hope they pay attention.

Pressure Tests

It’s not uncommon for authors to put their characters through the wringer, pushing them to or even past their breaking point. Some would argue it’s the best way to get a story out of a setting and characters. Several of the stories in this month’s IF have taken that approach, though one subject has an awfully low tolerance for stress.

Cover by Gaughan. Supposedly suggested by Whipping Star, but it looks more like it illustrates Pressure Vessel to me.

Pressure Vessel, by Ben Bova

Robert O’Banion is second in command on a mission into the depths of Jupiter, looking for life. Grieving over the loss of his wife, he only feels truly comfortable when he is connected to the ship and its computer, flying the vessel like it’s his own body. Add in a general sense of urgency and friction between the scientific and military members of the small crew, and there’s a lot of tension.

Art by Gaughan: O’Banion hooked up to the ship.

Bova has written a couple of stories about Dr. Sidney Lee, in which humanity is desperately seeking the aliens who built the strange machines on Titan, still working after millennia or even longer. Lee doesn’t appear in this story, but the protagonist’s wife knew Lee on Titan and fell in love with him there. There are some flaws in the tale—notably the protagonist’s psychological suitability for the mission—but it’s still very strong.

Four stars.

A Matter of Recordings, by Larry Eisenberg

Another of Eisenberg’s awful Emmett Duckworth stories. This time, Duckworth has come up with a way to record memories so they can be played back to anyone. The usual nonsense follows.

Two stars.

Can recordings made in a harem stop a revolution? Art uncredited, but probably by Gaughan

Prez, by Ron Goulart

Norbert Penner is looking forward to spending the winter alone with his girlfriend on her family’s palatial estate. Unfortunately, he doesn’t like her dog, the titular Prez. Worse, thanks to cybernetic enhancements, Prez can talk and has the intelligence of a 10-year-old. He’s able to make very clear that the feeling is mutual without having to pee on Penner’s leg.

Prez recharging his batteries. Art by Gaughan

This is a fairly typical Goulart comedy, though not as wacky as some. If you like those—and I do—you’ll like this one.

Three stars.

The Cube, by C.M. Drahan

Humans and the E-tees have been at war from the moment they first made contact. The Telepath chosen as humanity’s representative for the truce talks on a remote planetoid seems remarkably unsuited for the task.

Art by Gaughan

Drahan is this month’s new author. Unfortunately, there’s no biographical information, so I don’t know anything about the person behind the initials. It’s a decent debut. Bits of the story may come across as confused with a casual reading, but careful attention should make everything clear. This is an author I’m willing to see more from.

Three stars.

A Game of Biochess, by T.J. Bass

On a layover at a space station, tramp trader Spider meets Rau Lou during a chess game (biochess refers to a game against a biological opponent, rather than a computer). The two hit it off, but not on a sexual level. When Spider has a big score that will let him upgrade his ship to a two-person crew, Olga the ship’s computer suggests Rau Lou. However, she has disappeared, so Spider and Olga go looking for her.

Spider makes his way to the wreck of Rau Lou’s ship. Art by Gaughan

Bass is shaping up to be a pretty good writer. He still needs to work on throwing around medical terminology (Bass is a doctor), but he has reined it in this time. I only had to pull down my dictionary once. Otherwise, this is a fine story with a nice twist at the end.

A high three stars.

Hired Man, by Richard C. Meredith

A human mercenary working for an alien employer is the only survivor of a raid on a human settlement. The pay is excellent, and the offer for a six-month extension will set him up for a long time.

Power armor, but this mercenary is no Johnny Rico. Art by Gaughan

All the previous Meredith stories I can think of have been brutal war tales with depth. This one is no different. The ending hits the protagonist with a question the reader has probably been asking all along.

Four stars.

Fruit of the Vine, by George C. Willick

The smuggling of flora and fauna between the worlds of the Federation is punishable with death. Somehow, grape varieties suitable for wine-making have reached almost every world. This story weaves three threads together: the official search for the smugglers, a group known as the Entertainers, and a skid row bum staggering through a winter night.

Art by Gaughan

There are a lot of flaws in this story. It’s fairly obvious how two of the three threads tie together, the whole thing is too long, and the set-up is a little hard to believe. While the desire to keep potentially hazardous plants and animals from moving between worlds is commendable, are there really 49 habitable worlds where people can and are willing to eat the local produce from the moment they arrive? But it’s told well.

Three stars.

Dry Run, by J.R. Pierce

General Devlin, D.I.A., is a special adviser to the Prime Minister on the Panda War. In this case, D.I.A. stands for Demon In Attendance, not Defense Intelligence Agency. His job seems awfully easy.

Probably not Devlin. Art by Gaughan

This is a fun, little story that proposes something I’m sure many of us have thought at times. The Vietnam analog is obvious, but not overdone. While it might be trivial, the whole thing doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Three stars.

Whipping Star (Part 2 of 4), by Frank Herbert

The alien Caleban Fanny Mae has signed an unbreakable contract with the human Mliss Abnethe, allowing herself to be whipped. The flagellations are killing Fanny Mae, and if she dies nearly every sentient being in the galaxy will die with her. It’s up to Saboteur Extraordinaire Jorj McKie to stop Mliss.

In this installment, McKie tracks Mliss to an impossibly primitive planet, where he finds himself imprisoned. We also learn that there is someone else driving Mliss to do what she’s doing. Time travel may also be involved. To be continued.

McKie favors the Bond school of defusing traps by walking into them. Art by Gaughan

I’m not sure if I really like this story, but it is keeping my interest. In many ways, this feels more like the Frank Herbert who wrote The Dragon in the Sea than the navel-gazer we’ve seen of late. There’s more action in the first chapter of this installment than in the whole of Dune Messiah. It remains to be seen how well he handles the interesting questions he’s asked so far.

Three stars.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the magazine, Lester del Rey is back in form, offering actual criticism over mere review. He might be the best reviewer in the magazines right now. I’d say his only competition is Joanna Russ over in F&SF. Meanwhile, Ejler Jakobsson’s answers in the letter column offer quite a bit of news. Philip José Farmer is working on a Riverworld novel, the promised new issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is coming soon, and there will be news about the IF First program in the near future.

All in all, not a bad issue. A couple of excellent stories and only one clunker out of nine. Jakobsson is turning out to be a fine replacement for Fred Pohl.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 2, 1969] Communication Breakdown (January 1970 IF)

December 2, 2024 David Levinson 3 Comments

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by David Levinson

Free press

American readers and those who follow American politics are no doubt well aware of President Nixon’s speech on the “Vietnamization” of the war in Indo-China. All three national networks carried the speech, of course, and followed it up with analysis and commentary. This apparently didn’t sit well with the White House.

On November 13th, Vice President Spiro Agnew addressed a regional Republican committee in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he attacked the networks, accusing them of political bias in their news coverage. He complained that the president’s speech had been subjected to “instant analysis and querulous criticism” without giving the American people time to digest the speech for themselves. Agnew accused “a small and unelected elite” of exerting undue influence on public opinion without any check on their power. He even called it a form of censorship.

Vice President Spiro Agnew addressing the Midwest Regional Republican Committee.

Some television executives accused Agnew of attempting to undermine the freedom of the press and intimidate a form of journalism that requires a government license in order to broadcast. I’d say the intimidation was at least partly successful, since all three networks carried the Vice President's speech. However, the networks are also fighting back. The CBS news magazine 60 Minutes devoted a full hour to rebutting Agnew’s charges.

When asked if anyone in the administration had an advance look at the speech, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler denied it. He also said that the White House would have no reaction to statements by other members of the administration and that Nixon and Agnew had not discussed the speech. That’s nonsense. A speech like this would never be made without approval at the highest levels, and if it had been, the White House would have promptly issued a statement distancing Nixon from the remarks or at least trying to soften them. I’d say the administration has fired a shot across the bows of the news media.

White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler

Seeking common ground

Carrying on the love theme from last month, this month’s IF offers us two romances. But the real focus is on learning to communicate, especially without a common point of reference. It also gives us two sequels to stories from several years ago.

Suggested by “This One”. Art by Gaughan.

Diary Found in the St. Louis Zoo, by Robert Bloch

Bob Bloch gives us his report on the Worldcon, held in St. Louis this year. It’s his typical mix of name-dropping and bad jokes. I generally enjoy Bloch’s fiction (I met him once, and he was very nice), but his humor is just awful. Unlike the delightful and funny drawings by Jack Gaughan that accompany this article. If you want to know what really happened in St. Louis, read the Traveler’s con report. It was timelier and much more informative.

Barely three stars.

A photorealistic portrait of Harlan Ellison. Art by Gaughan

Whipping Star (Part 1 of 4), by Frank Herbert

The ConSentiency is an interstellar society composed of several intelligent species. Among them are the Caleban, a strange people who seem to be only partially in this dimension. Only 84 of them have ever been seen, but they are very important, because they gave the ConSentiency jumpdoors, which allow people to travel vast distances. Now, 83 Caleban have vanished, leaving millions dead in the disappearance of each one.

Enter Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinaire (the Bureau of Sabotage keeps government from becoming too efficient, so that nothing happens without due deliberation). He makes contact with the last Caleban, who calls herself Fanny Mae, and learns that she has entered a contractual relationship with the wealthy and sadistic Mliss Abnethe. In an attempt to treat her sadism, Mliss was conditioned so that she cannot stand to see another sentient suffer, but Calebans can barely be perceived and do not outwardly show suffering.

The problem here is that the flagellations are killing Fanny Mae, and if she undergoes “ultimate discontinuity,” every being that has ever used a jumpdoor—which is almost everyone—will die. To complicate matters, the BuSab is not allowed to interfere with private individuals, which seriously limits Jorj’s options. To complicate things even further, Fanny Mae declares that she has fallen in love with Jorj. To be continued.

Some Gaughan-esque abstractions. Art by Gaughan

We’ve seen McKie and the BuSab before, in the story “The Tactful Saboteur,” which the Traveler gave a mere one star. This installment is better than that, though it’s mostly just Herbert setting the scene. It can be difficult reading at times, thanks to Fanny Mae’s odd speech patterns and the difficulties she and Jorj have finding common referents to understand each other, but that appears to be the point of the story.

Three stars for now, mostly because of the interesting philosophical questions about language and understanding.

By the Falls, by Harry Harrison

Harry Harrison has written a J.G. Ballard story. There is an unexplained natural phenomenon—in this case a waterfall that makes Niagara look like a faucet with a slow leak—and a bunch of suggestive, but not obvious symbolism that is never clarified. Line by line, the writing is fine; I might have liked it if I had any idea what Harrison was trying to say.

Two stars.

By the falls, like it says on the tin. Art by Gaughan

If a Man Answers, by Richard Wilson

Doctoral candidate Walter Hurd takes a job in remote western New York, hoping to finish his dissertation. For an hour a day he beams messages into space, and for another hour he monitors reception. The isolation soon gets to him, and along with the mathematical formulas he starts sending poetry and, eventually, thoughts from his own journal. When he starts receiving a female voice sending out her thoughts, he quickly falls in love.

More abstracts. Art by Gaughan

Here’s our first love story. Parts of it are rather silly, especially the reason Walter’s Star Girl speaks English, but it doesn’t ignore things like the speed of light. It’s a bit long and highly improbable, however there is some nice writing.

A low three stars.

Child’s Play, by Larry Eisenberg

The deeply annoying Emmett Duckworth returns. This time, the implausible chemist has figured out how to create life, including a six foot tall rabbit. I do not like these stories. I’d sooner read the most formulaic of Retief stories or a full novel of Paul Atreides contemplating the grains of sand in his navel. That said, this is the least stupid story of the series. It almost makes sense, and is just readable.

A generous just barely three stars.

Aunt Sam? Art by Gaughan

This One, by James Sallis

A human linguist falls in love with an alien woman. They’re torn apart, and he must search the galaxy to find her again.

I keep trying to see more than one face here, but it doesn’t work. Art probably by Gaughan

Our second love story was highly touted last month. Call me hard-hearted and unromantic, but I hated it. It’s overwrought and melodramatic. With very few changes, it could be a Victorian tale of a man searching the seraglios of the Near East for his lost love.

A low two stars.

O Kind Master, by Daniel F. Galouye

Centuries ago, spherical energy beings conquered the Earth. Now, humans are pampered pets. A group of wild humans have a plan to destroy the Spheres, but they need to know if the tame humans can handle the loss of their masters.

A wild human dwelling with a city of the Spheres in the background. Art probably by Gaughan

This is a sequel of sorts to “The City of Force” from 1959. The Traveler thought that one was solid, but not outstanding (no star ratings in those days). I say this story is only a sequel of sorts, because in the earlier tale, humans were pests, not pets. That story also left humans with powers equal to the Spheres.

It’s all horribly old-fashioned, even by the standards of 1959. Add in a solution to beating the Spheres that should have been found back during the initial invasion and my general vague dislike of Galouye’s work, and I didn’t like this one.

Two stars.

The Story of Our Earth: The Coming of the Dinosaurs, by Willy Ley

Ley’s survey has reached the Triassic and the first dinosaurs. He starts off with a discussion of the importance of jaws in paleontology, and then runs through both early dinosaurs and the mammals of the period, as well as some marine creatures. Interesting, but a bit perfunctory.

Three stars.

Summing up

Maybe the worst issue that editor Ejler Jakobsson has overseen. Some of that may just be me being curmudgeonly. There’s also a lot that isn’t here. We’re told that there’s no letter column due to the length of Bloch’s con report. That may also be why there’s no preview for next month and why Lester del Rey’s book review column is barely more than a page, with little of the depth he usually has. There’s also no new author this month. I’ve liked Jakobsson’s work so far, so hopefully this is just an aberration. Fingers crossed for next month.

In lieu of a preview, have a fanigator. Art by Gaughan

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 2, 1969] Love and Hate (December 1969 IF)

November 2, 2024 David Levinson 1 Comment

by David Levinson

A paper dragon

Back in April, I wrote about a border skirmish between the Soviet Union and China. That wasn’t the end of the matter. The Soviets went on a minor diplomatic offensive, trying to get India to join an alliance against China and to pull North Korea back into the Soviet orbit. Violence flared up again in August on the Terekty River on the border between the Sinkiang region of China and the Kazakh SSR. As in April, both sides accused the other of crossing the border.

Rumor has it that Soviet Foreign Minister Alexei Kosygin attempted to contact the Chinese government in an effort to calm tensions and reopen negotiations on the border. His efforts were reportedly rudely rebuffed by Chairman Mao. At the funeral of Ho Chi Minh in early September, the Soviet and Chinese delegations went out of their way to avoid being in the same room with each other, even attending the funeral at different times.

When Kosygin left Hanoi on September 11th, his plane was denied entry into Chinese airspace, forcing a long detour. But while the plane was refueling in India, Kosygin was informed that the Chinese were ready to talk. He promptly flew to Peking, where he and Chinese Foreign Minister Chou Enlai met at the airport. They agreed to reinstate diplomatic relations and reopen talks on the border.

l. Soviet Foreign Minister Alexei Kosygin, r. Chinese Foreign Minister Chou Enlai

Despite that, Mao continued to ramp up his hostile rhetoric towards the Soviets. China also began moving large numbers of troops north to the border regions. That was followed by two unannounced nuclear tests at the end of September, most notably China’s largest detonation to date (3 megatons) on the 29th. The very next day, Chinese Defense Minister Lin Biao put the armed forces on the highest level of alert.

And then on October 9th, Mao blinked. China announced that they would no longer claim territory annexed by Tsarist Russia over the last 300 years through “unequal treaties.” The only concession demanded is that the Soviet Union acknowledge that the treaties were unfair. The status quo has been restored, and the only result of six months of high tension is several ulcers and a huge sigh of relief around the world.

Love among the ruins

Love runs through most of the stories in this month’s IF. Not as a romantic theme, but rather as an examination of the ways in which it affects the events of the stories and is in turn affected by events.

Vaguely suggested by Ancient, My Enemy. Art by Gaughan

Ancient, My Enemy, by Gordon R. Dickson

Udbahr is a hell world. Daytime temperatures are so high it is impossible for humans to survive outside of special shelters. On top of that, protein is so scarce, the only source for the natives are each other or the humans who have come to prospect and explore the ruins of an ancient civilization.

One such person is Kiev Archad, currently acting as a guide for female graduate student Willy Fairchild. Unfortunately, she is full of ideas that don’t mesh well with the ways in which humans and Udbahrs interact. Despite that, a relationship develops between the two. The final obstacle to their romance is a native named Hehog, who has decided that he and Kiev are ancient enemies, reborn every generation to take turns killing each other.

Hehog taunts Kiev. Art probably by Gaughan

This is not the Dickson story I was expecting. From the title, I thought this would be one of his military pieces, maybe a new Dorsai tale. This is personal in a way those stories aren’t, and it’s very, very good. But Dickson didn’t quite hit the mark for me. He never really sells the relationship between Kiev and Willy; worse, even though Kiev is the viewpoint character, we never really get into his head, which makes the ending a bit inscrutable. And for all that, and because I know Dickson is capable of doing better, I have to lower my rating. Don’t be surprised to see this one nominated for a lot of awards, though.

A very, very high three stars.

Now No One Waits, by Neil Shapiro

Wrecked on a dead world, a man and a woman have little hope of rescue. They spend their time in meaningless sex and exploring the ruins of a lost civilization.

The doomed couple study the map room. Art by Gaughan

Shapiro seems to be a new writer, though he isn’t this month’s IF first; maybe he has a sale or two outside science fiction. In any case, the writing is solid for the most part. The ending, though, didn’t seem to grow naturally from what came before and also felt rather obscure. A writer with potential.

A slightly below average three stars.

What Time Was That?, by Barry Malzberg

Malzberg offers us a New Wave tale of the invention of a time machine, told in first, second, and third person. It mostly works.

Three stars.

A crackpot’s time machine. Art probably by Gaughan

Heroes Die But Once, by Norman Spinrad

A newlywed couple are exploring the galaxy, hoping to find a habitable world and make their fortune. They find one, but they also find aliens who decide to stress test their relationship.

I don’t know if this is a printing error or a deliberate choice, but it’s awfully hard to read. Art by Gaughan

A reasonable effort by Spinrad, with more than a touch of Ellisonian cynicism. It’s not a pleasant read, but then it’s not trying to say pleasant things.

Three stars.

The New Thing, by John Brunner

From the title and author, I was expecting a piece satirizing the New Wave. Instead, it’s an examination of what happens to societies in the extremely far future when a sort of interstellar Guinness Book of Records makes it clear that there truly is nothing new under the sun (or any other star).

Waiting rooms will never change. Art probably by Gaughan

It’s a bit long-winded and consists almost entirely of people sitting around and talking. Nevertheless, it mostly works.

Three stars.

In the Beginning, by Glenn Chang

This month’s official new author asks if love can endure beyond the end of all things. The theme is jejune, and the ending rather trite, but the author is only 18. He shows promise, and more experience with the real world could result in some good stories.

Three stars.

The Story of Our Earth (Part 4), by Willy Ley

Ley’s history of the planet has reached the Carboniferous period. He talks about the origins of coal (no matter what Sinclair Oil may say, it wasn’t dinosaurs) and how our understanding of the period has changed. From there he moves to the Earth’s first ice age and the Permian period. He focuses on the primitive reptiles of the time and the importance of teeth to paleontologists.

Four stars.

The Man Who Would Not, by James E. Gunn

It’s hard to say anything about this without giving the whole thing away. In essence, it’s a conversation about the end of an experiment. Beyond that, I’ll only say that it is both downbeat and hopeful.

Four stars.

Art by Gaughan

The Seeds of Gonyl (Part 3 of 3), by Keith Laumer

Honestly, I just don’t feel motivated to summarize the end of this serial. Aliens, a guy with memories he can’t quite explain, blah, blah, blah. The hero triumphs in the end. Sort of. Everybody on Earth is dead except for a few hundred people in south-eastern Nebraska. If you’re familiar with Laumer, he does this better in other books; if you aren’t, this is not a good place to start.

A low three stars for this part (some of the action is OK) and barely three stars for the whole thing.

The hero and an ally fight an invader. Art by Gaughan

Summing up

I’m starting to feel like I know what IF is going to be like under the new management. Just looking at the scores, it doesn’t seem all that different from the Pohl days. That’s true for the peaks and averages, but the lows don’t seem to be as low. Plus, the overall tone is fresher. My only real complaint is the art being all Gaughan all the time, and uncredited. We’re not getting his best work. Otherwise, I’d say IF is looking good as we move into a new decade.

Sounds like the big story would have fit right in this month.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 20, 1969] There was a ship (November 1969 Venture)

October 20, 2024 David Levinson 3 Comments

by David Levinson

”There was a ship,” quoth he.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Northwest to Alaska

Almost from the moment Europeans discovered the Americas, they’ve been looking for a sea route to Asia across the top of the continent. Dubbed the Northwest Passage by the English (because they were trying to travel west), the name stuck, and the route has been of interest ever since. The McClure Arctic expedition showed there was a sea route in 1850, though much of it was blocked by ice, and the journey was partially completed by sledge. Roald Amundsen became the first to go from Atlantic to Pacific entirely by ship between 1903 and 1906.

When oil was discovered last year at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic coast of Alaska, attention turned once again to the Northwest Passage. A pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to a mostly ice-free port like Anchorage or Valdez faces a number of technological and legal challenges, so, even though planning is well underway and several hundred miles of pipe have already been ordered, oil companies are taking a look at the viability of shipping through the Northwest Passage.

Enter the SS Manhattan, an oil tanker owned and operated by the Esso company; she’s also the largest merchant vessel registered in the United States. She has been refitted with an icebreaker bow by the Finnish shipbuilder Wärtsilä, which built a huge ice tank to help optimize the design.

The SS Manhattan breaking through the ice of the Northwest Passage.

The Manhattan left Pennsylvania in August and sailed for Alaska under the command of Captain Roger A. Steward. Sea ice in the M’Clure Strait forced her take a more southerly route through the Canadian Arctic archipelago. After she reached Prudhoe Bay, a token barrel of crude oil was placed aboard, and the return voyage began. The ship cleared the Passage on September 14th, becoming the first commercial vessel to make the transit.

Is the Northwest Passage now open for commerce? Maybe, maybe not. The Manhattan required the support of several American and Canadian coast guard icebreakers to get through. Also the legal challenges a pipeline faces may be nothing compared to the sea route. Canada considers all waters in the Arctic archipelago to be internal waters, not an international shipping lane. In fact, at one point a group of Inuit hunters stopped the ship and demanded the captain request permission to pass through Canadian territory. He did so, and permission was granted.

So there are legal problems. Whether the Passage can be used year-round is also unknown. There’s talk of sending another ship this winter to see if the way is open then. Time will tell, but I’m betting on the pipeline.

Involving, but avoiding, calamity

There’s something about a shipwreck that seems to resonate with people. From The Wreck of the Hesperus (the bane of schoolchildren for nearly a century) to A Night to Remember (something of a disaster itself at the box office), wrecks are found all through popular entertainment. Science fiction is no exception, although the ships are usually in space. This month’s Venture offers no fewer than three ship related disasters, not to mention a plane crash and a global disaster.

Thankfully, the issue itself is not a disaster. Quite the contrary, actually.

Art by Tanner

This issue’s cover is a slight improvement over the last. It’s recognizably science fiction, and there’s a second color.

Plague Ship, by Harry Harrison

The route from the Moon to Mars is supposed to be a milk run. But then a meteorite strike leaves the ship’s doctor, on his first ever space trip, the only surviving officer. After that, disaster follows fast and follows faster, to paraphrase Poe. The disease hinted at by the title isn’t even the last dreadful thing to befall the ship.

Disaster strikes the Johannes Kepler. Art by Tanner

The constant occurrence of a new disaster every few pages sometimes feels a bit overdone, but that may be the result of the condensed novel format. A full novel would give the characters some room to breathe between incidents. I enjoyed this a lot, but a little voice in the back of my head kept whispering that someone with more of a naval background, say A. Bertram Chandler, would have made this more believable.

A high three stars.

In Alien Waters, by Richard E. Peck

A scoutship crewed by water-breathing aliens crashes on a habitable world. They’re searching for intelligent life, even highly improbable surface dwellers, but don’t sense any. They effect repairs and attempt to take off. Interspersed with this story is a man reminiscing about the wreck of a ship he was on.

A somewhat abstract view of one of the aliens. Art by Keller

This is a decent story, but it’s weakened by the interwoven narratives. It quickly becomes obvious what ship the human narrator is talking about, which leaves the final line without any punch. The story might have been better served if Peck had moved more of that thread to the end, so it isn’t so obvious. That or relied a lot less on the impact of the final line.

Three stars.

IQ Soup, by Larry Eisenberg

Eisenberg inflicts another of his awful Emmett Duckworth stories on us. This one is even stupider than usual. The only nice thing I can say about it is that it’s less than a full page long.

One star

Basic, by Christopher Anvil

Another of Anvil’s tales of the Interstellar Patrol and their unusual methods of recruitment and training. It’s much like the others, and there isn’t much more to say. It’s clearly meant to come before Test Ultimate in the September Analog, but reading order shouldn’t make much difference.

A low three stars.

Escape Velocity, by Robin Scott

Astronaut Hogate struggles to fight down his fears as he sits on the launch pad. He’d be fine if there was something to do, but whenever they pause the countdown all he can do is think about everything that brought him to this place. When his capsule fails to make orbit, he’s forced to try out an experimental escape pod.

Ground Control to Major Tom. Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong. Art by Keller

You might want to listen to David Bowie’s recent single while reading this one. This is very good, but I’m not sure Scott is quite up to what he was trying to achieve; it falls just short of the four stars it could have been.

A high three stars.

The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone, by James Tiptree, Jr.

In a world apparently devastated by nuclear war, a girl with no arms and a very intelligent wolf undertake a journey to investigate some wild humans. It’s difficult to say much more about this without telling the whole story, but it is so much more.

A girl and her wolf. Art by Bhob Stewart

The timing is difficult, but if this wasn’t written in response to Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog, I’ll eat my hat. I will admit that I’m not entirely sure about what Tiptree was trying to say right at the very end, but it’s an impressive piece. My only complaint is really that the girl manages to do a couple of things much faster than it seems she ought to even with wolf assistance. Initially, that was enough to pull it under the four-star line, but I’ve changed my mind. Either way, Tiptree is now officially an author to watch.

Four stars.

Summing up

Another issue of Venture in the books. It’s getting better, though maybe not quite up to the standards of its parent magazine, F&SF. The biggest improvement has to be in the art. Tanner’s cover is better than the previous issue’s, though it still leaves a lot to be desired, and the addition of other (dare I say better) artists inside is a step up. I’m particularly taken with the two pieces signed "Keller". They’re sort of a combination of psychedelic and Art Nouveau that works very well.

More of all of this, please, except for Emmett Duckworth and maybe Chris Anvil.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial, Uncategorized

[October 2, 1969] Darkness, Darkness (November 1969 IF)

October 2, 2024 David Levinson 1 Comment

by David Levinson

An unexpected, expected coup

To the surprise of almost no one, September 1st saw a military coup in Libya. King Idris has grown increasingly unpopular ever since the United Kingdom of Libya was proclaimed in 1951. His government was initially seen as weak, due to the federal structure of the kingdom, sharing power between the three main regions of the country: Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitania in the northwest, and Fezzan in the southwest. After Idris dissolved the federal system in 1963, he was seen more as an autocrat. Always more a religious leader than secular, he was viewed by more progressive elements in the country as a hindrance to making Libya a modern nation. His government has also been widely seen as corrupt. Once one of the poorest countries in the world, Libya has grown rich in the last decade since the discovery of oil, but little of that wealth has gone beyond the king and his advisers.

So when Idris traveled to Turkey for medical treatment, everyone was expecting a coup. The king himself had offered to abdicate a few weeks earlier while he was on vacation in Greece. The blow was expected to come from Abdul Aziz Shahli, Chief of Staff of the Libyan Army, and his brother Omar, the royal councilor. The two are the sons of Idris’ longtime chief advisor, who had been murdered by a nephew of the queen.

King Idris from a couple of years ago.

But they were beaten to the punch by a group calling themselves the Free Officers Movement, no doubt inspired by Nasser’s Egyptian Free Officers who toppled King Farouk. The coup was swift, seemingly bloodless, and has been accepted in the country with no resistance and a fair amount of enthusiasm. The Revolutionary Command Council which heads the FOM quickly informed foreign diplomats that treaties and agreements would be respected and that foreign lives and property would be protected. Recognition of the new government followed almost immediately, including from the United States on the 6th.

Since then, a cabinet of eight ministers has been appointed to implement the policies of the Revolutionary Command Council. Six of ministers, including Prime Minister Soliman Al Maghreby, are civilians, and the two military men are not members of the RCC. The new government has announced that Libya will not be renewing the leases on British and American air bases as they come due over the next two years. That means Wheelus Air Base will be closing down next year, but the base’s importance has declined over the last few years, and there had already been discussions with the previous government about the U.S. withdrawing from Libya.

Libya’s new Prime Minister, Soliman Al Maghreby.

A deep but dazzling darkness

We’re all still wondering what direction Ejler Jakobsson is going to take the magazines he helms. Based on this month’s IF along with the story Survival in last month’s issue, I’d say he likes stories with a darker tone, because, boy, is this issue full of dark stories.

This month’s cover depicts nothing in particular. Art by Gaughan

Happiness Is a Warm Spaceship, by James Tiptree, Jr.

Fresh out of command school, Lieutenant Quent expects a plum assignment. After all, he finished high in his class and his father is an admiral. Instead, he’s assigned to a mere patrol boat, one of the first with an integrated crew of humans and aliens. The lieutenant doesn’t—quite—share his father’s extreme prejudices, but he’s going to have to make a lot of adjustments.

Deathly ill, the captain has some advice for his first officer. Art uncredited

This was really good, right up until the last two or three pages. The ending felt a bit confused, and the story seems to be saying integration isn’t a good thing. It’s not really clear on the point, because the very end seems to contradict that. Nevertheless, Tiptree continues to improve. I may not necessarily like what I read, but it always seems to hold my interest.

A high three stars.

To Kill a World, by Irwin Ross

When his wife died, Colonel Ward crawled into a bottle. Now he’s desk-bound and in command of an air force base, while the arrival of his commanding general signals that his career is over. But the landing of an alien spaceship changes the trajectory of his life.

An alien invader, or is it? Art uncredited

Here’s our first dark story. Once the action gets going, it seems fairly obvious how things will turn out. But Ross takes his tale in a different, more poignant direction, and it is much the better for it.

Four stars.

Genemaster, by Barry Alan Weissman

Far, far in the future, Earth is forgotten, and humanity has been messing with its genes so long that nobody looks what we would call human. When proof is found that humans came from a single world, an aristocrat with a zoo hires the protagonist to provide him with an Original human.

If the previous story went somewhere unexpected, this one goes exactly where you think it will. It also gets to the punchline far too easily. The only thing this story has going for it is the narration, which is brisk and engaging. I’d call it Zelaznyesque if the first-person narrator were more sarcastic. That’s just enough to pull it over the three-star line for me; you might think otherwise.

Barely three stars.

For Sacred San Francisco, by Alfred Coppel

A century or so after World War III, men are a scarce resource that the women of the city-states of the shattered United States go to war for. Jere is a fighter pilot for San Francisco. She survives being shot down and encounters a wild man.

A San Franciscan gunner, not our protagonist. Art uncredited

Back to darkness, though I can’t say much about it without giving away the ending. The story stands on its own, but would probably work better as part of a novel. Many aspects of the world Coppel has created go unexamined, and the consequences of the conclusion could be far-reaching.

Three stars.

The Story of Our Earth: The Conquest of the Land, by Willy Ley

Having taken us through the formation of the Earth and the emergence of life, Ley shows us the Devonian period, when life first crawled onto land. Unfortunately, the fossil record for this period is scarce (most creatures were soft-bodied and didn’t fossilize well), so he spends most of the article talking about trilobites. I think a few lines may be missing at the end, because it is very abrupt, but what we have is interesting and engaging.

Three stars.

By Civilized Standards, by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Barrett offers us a first contact story in which humans and aliens struggle to find a point of commonality. Eventually, they think they found one, but how well do the humans really understand? And once again a very dark story that’s also well-written.

A high three stars.

The Seeds of Gonyl (Part 2 of 3), by Keith Laumer

In Part 1, Jeff Mallory woke to find that three months had passed, his town in the thrall of alien invaders, and his daughter Lori missing and forgotten. He escaped, joined up with Lori’s best friend Sally, and wound up drafted by Colonel Strang, who believes it is the Chinese who have conquered his town.

As the story picks up, he discovers Lori in Strang’s camp, but she is a true believer in the colonel’s vision. He and Sally attempt to kidnap her and things go wrong. Sally is shot and Jeff must flee on his own. Guided by memories that don’t seem to be his own, he comes to a large house, where he meets a very old man named Gonyl. The old man claims to be an alien and explains what’s going on. As the story ends, Jeff expresses disbelief and demands the truth. To be concluded.

Gonyl is not in good shape. Art uncredited

This is all fairly typical for Laumer in adventure mode. There are a lot of elements he’s used before: two aliens who have lived on Earth for centuries, an imminent threat they were originally sent to stop, a hero plagued by strange memories who may be connected to the aliens. Much of this feels like he’s just going through the motions, and a lot of the action has been episodic, not really advancing the plot (though he may wind up bringing it all together in the end). Right now, it’s average at best.

A low three stars.

Appropriate Punishment, by Theresa M. Treadway

This month’s new author tells the story of an old man facing judgment on the last night of his misspent life. It’s extremely well-written, but rather trite. Worse, the ending could be read as supporting a racist stereotype; that’s probably not intended, but it’s there.

Three stars.

Judgment night. Art uncredited but clearly signed by Gaughan

I’ve been wondering if Jakobsson would carry on with the IF first program. The issues under his leadership have all had a new author, but there was no acknowledgment of the fact. This time, there’s a note at the top of the first page of the story announcing “an IF first,” and the author bio makes its return (though somewhat insultingly never referring to Miss Treadway by name; I’ll put that down to poor editing for now).

Summing up

With this issue, IF begins to at least feel different from the Pohl years. Not significantly better or worse, but different in tone. It’s a gloomy issue, though looking at each story individually it’s not quite as dark as the overall impression I initially came away with. I don’t mind too much; the best story in the issue is also the darkest. But let’s not overdo it either.

Right now, my biggest complaint is that the art is all uncredited. It all appears to be by Jack Gaughan, who was on the masthead last month (there isn’t one this month) as Associate Art Director. Maybe that’s a fancy way of saying he’s doing all the interior art now. I hope not. I like Gaughan’s work, but I also like a bit of variety.

Looks like another of Dickson’s military stories. Those are often quite good.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 4, 1969] Plus ça change (October 1969 IF)

September 4, 2024 David Levinson Leave a comment

by David Levinson

Silly season

It’s considered a truism in journalism that nothing happens in August, so the papers run filler stories about silly things to make up their page count. Sure, Hurricane Camille killed hundreds as it raged from Mississippi to Virginia, and China and the Soviet Union are on the brink of war, but that doesn’t sell papers. Madison Avenue also has a truism: sex sells. Now, the two have come together.

Newsday columnist Mike McGrady was disgusted by the schlocky, sex-obsessed books that regularly make the best-seller lists, so he recruited a bunch of fellow journalists (19 men and five women, by one count) to write a deliberately bad, oversexed book. The result is Naked Came the Stranger, in which the editors worked hard to remove any literary value from the tale of a New York woman’s sexual escapades.

When the book sold 20,000 copies, McGrady and his co-conspirators decided they’d better come clean. Nineteen of them appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, being introduced as Penelope Ashe (the book’s purported author) and walking out to the strains of A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody. As a result of their confession and discussion of their motives, the book has become even more popular. And as of last Sunday, it’s on the New York Times list of best-sellers. You have to laugh to keep from crying.

Penelope Ashe, in part, with the cover model superimposed.

This puts me in mind of a similar literary hoax with a more sfnal connection. Back in 1956, radio host Jean Shepherd was unhappy with the way best-seller lists were being compiled and urged his listeners to ask their local bookstores to order I, Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing. He offered some vague hints about the plot, and many listeners who were in on the joke created references to the book elsewhere. Demand was so high, publisher Ian Ballantine convinced Theodore Sturgeon to knock out a quick novel based on an outline from Shepherd. Betty Ballantine wrote the last chapter as Sturgeon lay in exhausted sleep on the Ballantines’ couch after trying to write the whole thing in one sitting. The cover by Frank Kelly Freas is full of visual jokes and puns. The book is rumored to have gone to number one, but it doesn’t seem to have been on any lists, probably out of pique on the part of the list makers.

The pub sign features a shepherd’s crook and a sturgeon. Art by Frank Kelly Freas

New and old

I think we’re starting to see some of the influence of new editor Ejler Jakobsson. Editor Emeritus Fred Pohl doesn’t seem have ever had anything nice to say about the New Wave, while there is at least one story in this month’s IF with a nod in that direction. There’s a new printer, with a crisper typeface (though it seems better suited to a news magazine than fiction). No one’s mixed up their e’s and o’s, but instead of lines being printed out of order, some lines are just missing. Hopefully, that will be corrected in future issues.

Supposedly for Seeds of Gonyl. If so, it’s from later in the novel. Art by Gaughan

The Mind Bomb, by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert appears to have tried to write a Philip K. Dick story. There’s a computer that keeps changing the world in an attempt to carry out its function, an unhappy marriage, and an old man who gets a glimpse of why the world he lives in is the way it is.

Art uncredited, maybe by Gaughan

Unfortunately, none of it works. The lines of reality aren’t blurred; people know the computer is changing things, just not why. And the marriage isn’t as unrelievedly grim as in a Dick story (thank goodness). We’re left with none of the good things that either author brings, and the flaws of both.

Two stars.

By Right of Succession, by Barry Malzberg

A man named Carson shoots the occupant of a motorcade. As he leaves the building he fired from, he’s met by a policeman who escorts him to his next destination on a strict timetable. Eventually, all is explained. Sort of.

Is that Nixon? Art uncredited

Here’s our New Wave—or New Wave-ish—story. It’s fine for what it is, but I don’t quite see the connection between the events and the explanation.

Three stars.

None But I, by Piers Anthony

When last we saw him, interstellar dentist Dr. Dillingham had been accepted as an instructor at the galaxy’s top dental school. Now he’s off to cure the oral ills of a long-buried robot that has vowed to kill the person that frees it from 10,000 years of imprisonment.

Dr. Dillingham meets his patient. Art by Gaughan

Anthony is developing a reputation at the Journey, and not a good one. That’s largely down to the way he writes women. Fortunately, none of that is on display here, possibly because the only female character is a highly efficient secretary who looks like a giant spider. We’re left with an inoffensive and mildly entertaining story, whose only flaw is that it specifically makes note of the old tale it is clearly modeled on of a genie with a similar vow.

Three stars.

Survival, by Steven Guy Oliver

A day in the life of an old man living in the irradiated ruins of a city.

Ignore the blurb. These aren’t the last people on Earth. Art by Gaughan

This month’s new author offers us a grim tale of life after World War Three. It’s very well written, but also very depressing, what I believe kids these days call “a real downer.” I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing more from Oliver. But did I mention that the story is grim?

Three grim stars.

Down on the Farm, by W. Macfarlane

Three agricultural salespeople were brought from Earth to a distant planet. Now their contract is up, and the local autocrat who hired them struggles to find a way to pay what they’re due. Unbeknownst to him, they have ulterior motives.

Erasmus Ballod is having a bad day. Art by Gaughan

A bit old-fashioned, but otherwise an enjoyable enough story. Ask me what it was about a month from now, and I won’t be able to tell you, but it didn’t waste my time. For some reason, Macfarlane’s name was left off the first page; fortunately he was credited in the table of contents.

Three stars.

The Story of Our Earth: 2. The First Traces of Life, by Will Ley

The second part of Willy Ley’s sadly incomplete final book looks at the latest theories as to how life began. He discusses the idea of the “primordial ooze” and how and why it has fallen out of favor. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of continental drift.

While still very good, this chapter didn’t engage me quite as much as the previous did. I can’t say if that’s down to my interest in the subject matter or the quality of Ley’s treatment of it.

A very high three stars.

The Seeds of Gonyl (Part 1 of 3), by Keith Laumer

Jeff Mallory wakes up to discover that three months are missing, the house shows little sign of cleaning and maintenance, and his wife and two younger children are frightened and worn down. Worst of all, no one remembers his oldest daughter, and her room doesn’t even exist. He soon learns that the town has been taken over by things that are barely human, which force everyone to work on a mysterious project.

Remembering that his daughter was planning to stay with a friend who lives well outside of town, Jeff makes his escape. At the friend’s house, he finds only the friend and several unpleasant occupiers, who tell him that the United States has fallen to Russian forces and that his town is a bombed-out, plague-ridden ruin.

He and Sally, his daughter’s friend, move on and are arrested by Russian military. But the Russians are working together with Americans led by a Colonel Strang, who tells him that the Russians were called in to fight the real occupiers, the Chinese. As the installment ends, Jeff finds himself drafted into Strang’s army. To be continued.

Tonight, the role of Colonel Strang will be played by Ronald Reagan. Art by Gaughan

So far, so Laumer. He may be influenced by some of his work on those books he wrote based on The Invaders, what with people not believing in the invading aliens. Honestly, the main thing that stands out to me in this part is the way young Sally abruptly and quickly throws herself at our hero. Jeff put up at least a token resistance so far, though there is a vague paragraph that suggests things could be otherwise. It plays uncomfortably.

Three stars so far, if you like this sort of Laumer story.

To the Last Rite!, by Perry Chapdelaine

One-Girk-Two is undergoing a field test to see if he will be promoted to One-Girk-One. If he passes, he will become the thinking portion of a composite creature called a Unit.

Our hero. Art by Gaughan

This is probably the Chapdelaine story I’ve enjoyed the most. Unfortunately, like all of Chapdelaine’s work, it’s too long. On the other hand, it didn’t go where I thought it was going. Best of all, it has nothing to do with Spork.

Three stars.

Machines That Teach, by Frederik Pohl

Fred took a trip to Tennessee A. & I. In Nashville, where Perry Chapdelaine is a professor of mathematics and is running a lab researching computer aided instruction. There, through a computer in the lab, a computer at Stanford in California administered a test to measure competence in mathematics. Neat stuff, even if the headline is misleading. Maybe even more interesting is the simple fact that he was able to use a computer in Tennessee to interact with another computer a couple thousand miles away

Three stars.

Summing up

We’re starting to see some of the new editor’s influence, though things aren’t really that different. I’m wondering if Jakobsson is going to continue the IF first program, running a story from a new author every month. The issues he’s been in charge of have had such a story, but he hasn’t called attention to it the way Fred did.

The other thing that stands out to me is that the interior art is all uncredited. Where I’ve indicated it’s by Gaughan, it’s because his signature is visible either on the piece reproduced here or a different piece for the same story. I’m not too keen on all the art coming from just one artist (although if the alternative is “art” by Dan Adkins…). More importantly, they give out Hugos for art. If we don’t know who did it, how do we know who to nominate and vote for?

Tiptree is the only name that means anything to me. A bit of a coin flip as an author, but definitely improving with every story.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial, Uncategorized

[August 2, 1969] Specters of the past (September 1969 IF)

August 2, 2024 David Levinson 1 Comment

by David Levinson

La guerra del fútbol

Land reform has been a major issue in Central America since not long after the War. Honduras passed a land reform law in 1962 to take land illegally occupied by immigrants and squatters and give it to Hondurans. Most of the immigrants who have been displaced are Salvadorans, many of whom held their land legally. Thousands have been uprooted and sent back to El Salvador. Tensions between the two nations are high.

The two countries have also been vying for a spot in next year’s soccer World Cup. They faced each other twice in June, with the home team winning each time. Both events were marred by riots and other unpleasant incidents. On the eve of the playoff match in Mexico City on June 26th, El Salvador severed diplomatic ties with Honduras, claiming 12,000 Salvadorans had been forced to flee Honduras while the government did nothing.

Early July saw various border skirmishes, largely involving violation of air space. Honduras asked the Organization of American States to step in, but the OAS largely just dithered. On the 12th, Honduras claimed to have killed four Salvadoran soldiers on Honduran territory, and the next day six Honduran civilians were injured during an exchange of mortar fire.

War began on the evening of the 14th, when the Salvadoran air force launched a bombing raid on Honduran airfields. That was followed up by a two-pronged ground invasion. The Honduran air force struck back the next day, destroying 20% of El Salvador’s fuel reserves, but quickly fell back to a defensive posture. After early successes by El Salvador, both sides stalled due to a shortage of ammunition.

Salvadoran President and General Fidel Sanchez Hernandez inspecting the troops.

The OAS stepped in quickly after the war began and formed a committee to oversee the negotiation of a ceasefire. They were successful and a ceasefire was announced the evening of the 18th, going into effect at midnight. The Salvadoran army was given 96 hours to withdraw, but as the deadline approached they announced they were staying. They would respect the ceasefire, but demanded the Honduran government guarantee the safety of Salvadorans living in Honduras (300,000 people by some accounts, over 10% of the population of Honduras), the payment of reparations, and the punishment of the anti-Salvadoran rioters. At the time of writing, they are still in place. (As we go to press, El Salvador has withdrawn in the face of threatened sanctions by the OAS.)

It’s been a strange little conflict. The extensive air war was fought without a single jet, mostly P-51 Mustangs and F4U Corsairs. We’re not likely to see that again. Some are calling it the 100 Hour War, the length of time from the first bombing raid to the announcement of the ceasefire. Others are calling it the Football War (that’s soccer to Americans, Canadians, and Australians), reflecting some of the language used to report on the June matches and their role in escalating tensions. Whatever history knows it as, let’s hope it’s over.

The bad old days

For unstated reasons, IF failed to appear last month. It’s pretty clear that this September issue was intended to be dated August. If you look at the cover, you can see that the old month was overprinted with a black bar, and the new month was added below.

A robot carrying off a fainting human woman. It’s not as old-fashioned as you might think. Art by Chaffee

Brood World Barbarian, by Perry A. Chapdelaine

In the far future, our unnamed protagonist is captured on a primitive human world and brought to civilization to fight in the arena. There, he rises to Grand Champion, makes his escape, vows revenge, and winds up learning things.

Our hero digs his way through a mountain. Art by Gaughan, but uncredited

Chapdelaine writes well, and this is one of his better stories, but there are some caveats. First, he has a tendency to be long-winded, though when a writer is paid by the word, that’s to be expected. More he importantly, he nearly always writes stories about Van Vogt-style supermen, and that’s just not my bag. I’m also bored with future gladiatorial combat to the death, even if there is a reason for it here. It’s become a tired cliche.

Three stars.

And So Say All of Us, by Bruce McAllister

Art by Gaughan, but uncredited

Speaking of tired cliches, Bruce McAllister offers us a story of trying to find mental powers among the mentally ill. You’ll see where this one is going pages before it gets there. I think my problem with McAllister is his tendency to hint vaguely at depth and then suggestively waggle his eyebrows Groucho-like until you get it. He needs to dig into the depth more. This story, for example, would make an interesting first chapter to a novel or (significantly pared down) the first part of a novella or novelette that explores the consequences. He could be good, but he needs to put in more effort.

Three stars, but towards the lower end.

The Posture of Prophecy, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Art uncredited

This month’s new author gives us a tale of aliens discussing the impossibility of life developing on what is obviously Earth. Not exactly a new idea, but it takes a not uninteresting, dark turn at the end. I wouldn’t mind seeing more from this author, though perhaps with a little more originality.

Three stars.

Robot 678, by E. Clayton McCarty

Another uncredited piece. The style is reminiscent of Gaughan, but isn’t signed.

A cantankerous old prospector, along with his antiquated robot, winds up as the administrator of a nearly empty planet, decides to bring the daughter-in-law and grandchildren he’s never seen to live with him, the kids get in trouble, and the titular robot saves the day. Not McCarty’s best work, though acceptable. But can we please stop looking at the antebellum South through rose-colored glasses? Replacing slaves with intelligent robots or supposedly barely intelligent aliens doesn’t make it better; it just dehumanizes the millions of Black people who were held in bondage. This is at least the third story in just the last month to play this game, and it needs to stop. I’m about ready for William Tecumseh Sherman to go marching through science fiction.

Barely three stars.

Star Seeder, by T.J. Bass

Humanity’s first probe of the Andromeda galaxy held the means to plant numerous human colonies through the use of human zygotes raised by computers. This rapid expansion is opposed and blocked by aliens known as Dregs to humanity and Symbiots to themselves, but they will allow one human to be aboard. Zuliani earns the right to be that person through his victory in the Procyon Games. Humanity may have a way to get around the Dreg ban.

Art uncredited, but both illustrations in the story are clearly by Gaughan, though unsigned.

Bass is a doctor, and his sophomore effort once again puts his medical knowledge to use, though less gruesomely than his debut. He writes very well, and if he can find the time to pursue the craft, he could be someone to watch. I was particularly impressed with the misdirection of the comparison between the highly competitive humans and the somewhat collectivist Symbiots. The story makes a very different and much better point than you might be expecting.

But once again, I find myself being put off by blood sports in the far future. The first round of the Procyon Games is a round-robin of all-out unarmed fights in which anything is allowed, including potentially lethal blows. The Competitors are able to heal themselves somewhat between bouts, but it’s about as effective as a boxer’s trainer using styptic pencil on a cut that will need stitches after a fight.

A slightly high three stars.

The Last True God, by Philip St. John

An expedition under religious authority is seeking proof of the 20,000 year-old legend of lost Earth. On a planet bombed back into primitive savagery 1,500 years ago, they find the locals worshiping what seems to be a long dead robot. Primitive doesn’t mean stupid, and appearances can be deceiving.

The scene from the cover again. Art uncredited, but could be Gaughan.

Here’s another hoary old theme from the pulp days, but it feels fairly modern (though not at all New Wave). I’m reasonably sure that St. John is a pseudonym for Lester del Rey; at least, a story that originally ran under that by-line appeared in a collection of del Rey stories a year or so ago. When he puts his mind to it, del Rey can write some very good stories. This is certainly in the upper half.

A high three stars.

The Story of Our Earth: 1. How Long Is the Past?, by Willy Ley

Willy Ley comes over from Galaxy to begin the promised series on the history of the planet. Here he discusses estimates of the age of the Earth, from the calculations of Rabbi Hillel and Bishop Ussher to to the most recent scientific proposals. Along the way, he also talks about how and when the various geologic ages were proposed. The difference between a work he has taken the time to polish thoroughly and something knocked out for his monthly column is clear.

Alas, Willy Ley died suddenly at the end of June, just as this issue was going to press. I suspect the delay in publication is the result of the editors dithering over what to do with the incomplete series. They’ve decided to run those installments which were already delivered.

Four stars.

Reading Room, by Lester del Rey

Normally, I wouldn’t cover a book review column, but this is a new feature for IF. When this was announced in the last issue, I wondered if we really needed another venue for reviews. What del Rey gives us is closer to critical analysis than reviews. More so even than the most incisive commentary from Judith Merrill. What this most reminded me of is the reviews Damon Knight used to do fifteen or twenty years and mined for his In Search of Wonder. If the column maintains this level of quality, it’s worth the loss of a story or two.

Not rated.

The Towns Must Roll (Part 2 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

The mobile town cum artists’ colony of New Woodstock is on its way to South America. Shortly after crossing into Mexico, town sheriff Bat Hardin ran into a conspiracy of locals unhappy with the influx of gringos. As this installment begins, Bat has warned the town of the threat, but they vote to continue. At first the threat seems empty, but after Bat lets his guard down, the town is lured into a trap.

The wagon train rolls into an ambush. Art by Gaughan

I enjoyed the first half of this story, but this half doesn’t live up to the promise. It’s fine, and the battle scene is good; there’s just not enough here to justify the length. The whole thing could have been told in two-thirds of the wordage or less. This is average Reynolds. There’s a hint we’ll see more of Bat in the future, and that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. This one just ran out steam along the way.

Three stars for this installment and the novel as a whole.

The Cosmic Philosophy of K.E. Tsiolkovsky, by Alexis N. Tsevetikov

Tsiolkovsky is the father of Russian rocketry and is usually mentioned alongside Robert Goddard and Hermann Oberth. He also dabbled in philosophy, developing ideas that had as much to do with mysticism as rationality. Those ideas have been suppressed by the Soviet state as anti-materialist. This precis of his thought makes him sound like your everyday saucer nut.

Two stars.

Summing up

We’ve all been wondering what the changes in ownership and editor at IF and Galaxy will mean for the magazines. While some of Fred Pohl’s fingerprints are on this issue, we may be getting a clearer picture. Ejler Jakobsson’s first editorial for the magazine tells us that “IF is the magazine of infinite Alternatives.” I guess that means the science will be a little less “hard” than in Galaxy, but that’s all right. The letter col is given over to a letter by Anne McCaffrey in her role as SFWA Secretary asking a number of pertinent questions, all of which Jakobsson answers.

Reading the tea leaves from this issue, there’s a lot of non-fiction in a magazine that used to be exclusively fiction. I’ve had my say about the new book column. If the rest of Will Ley’s (sadly incomplete) series is as good as the first part, I’m all for it. But we could have done without the article on Tsiolkovsky’s nonsense.

On the art front, the illustrations are of the usual quality, but only the cover is credited. Most or all of the pieces are by Jack Gaughan, who is now on the masthead as Associate Art Director. I hope that doesn’t mean he’ll be the exclusive interior artist. I like his work, but I also like some variety. Either way, credit your artists!

A final hopeful note: In a conversation in the Journey offices, my colleague Kris rated Super Science Stories as the best magazine of the early 50s. Jakobsson was the editor for that incarnation of the magazine. Fingers crossed he can replicate that feat for the early 70s.

Every one of these authors is a coin flip when it comes to quality.

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Galactic Journey

All posts by David Levinson

[March 2, 1970] Par for the course (April 1970 IF)

[February 2, 1970] Deceptive Appearances (March 1970 IF)

[January 14, 1970] Root Rot (February 1970 Venture)

[January 2, 1970] Under Pressure (February 1970 IF)

[December 2, 1969] Communication Breakdown (January 1970 IF)

[November 2, 1969] Love and Hate (December 1969 IF)

[October 20, 1969] There was a ship (November 1969 Venture)

[October 2, 1969] Darkness, Darkness (November 1969 IF)

[September 4, 1969] Plus ça change (October 1969 IF)

[August 2, 1969] Specters of the past (September 1969 IF)

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction