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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 18, 1964] Split Personality (October 1964 IF)

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[Don't miss your chance to get your copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age.  If you like the Journey, you'll love this book (and you'll be helping us out, too!)


by Gideon Marcus

Which one is it?

It's election season, and the commercials are already out in force.  Maybe it's just my neighborhood, but it seems that LBJ is crowding the airwaves a lot more than Barry Goldwater at this point.  One effective ad notes several times the GOP candidate has made mutually contradictory statements and asks "How is a Republican supposed to note on his ballot which Barry he's voting for?"

This piece is a pretty low blow.  Make no mistake — there's no way I'm voting for a reactionary this November, but if there's one thing one can say for Barry, he's consistent.  I'd rather see some positive messaging.  Lord knows LBJ has plenty of successes to run on.

But while Goldwater's split personality may all be a Madison Avenue construct, the schizophrenic nature of IF, Worlds of Science Fiction magazine is very real.  IF has always been Galaxy's experimental little sister, the place where the more offbeat stories, the lesser known writers are featured.  As a result, it is the more variable mag, with higher highs and lower lows, often within the same issue. 

This dual nature is perfectly represented in microcosm with the latest October 1964 issue:


by Paul E. Wenzel (note the obscured "September 1964")

The first thing you might notice is that the issue was clearly intended to have a September date.  IF went to a monthly schedule in August (after years as a bi-monthly), but there was trouble at the printers, and things got delayed.

When the issue finally came, it was very much a mixed bag, with trouble appearing right from the start:

The Castle of Light, by Keith Laumer


by Jack Gaughan

Within the pages of IF, Keith Laumer's name is inextricably linked with that of his creation, Retief, that sardonic super-spy in diplomat's clothing.  What began as a more tongue-in-cheek version of Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" is becoming a tired series of retreads.  This particular story involves an invasion by the squamous Groaci, who take legal possession of a planet by landing 50,000 troops in cities abandoned by the native populace during a global religious ceremony.  The piece rambles, and the jokes — like the characters — are flatter than usual.

Two stars.

Mad Man, by R. A. Lafferty

The ever-whimsical Lafferty offers up a piece about androids who only attain genius capability when given their daily dose of anger enzyme.  Said extraction is provided by a group of human individuals kept thoroughly miserable through poor working conditions and constant aggravation by paid actors.  But when one android develops a kinship for her donor, the formerly angry man's heart melts, and his biochemistry becomes useless.  Can a replacement be found?

I imagine some will like this story.  I found it contrived, cruel, and rather pointless.

Two stars.

Gremmie's Reef, by Hayden Howard


by Virgil Finlay

In which a teenage surfer is delighted to find a perfect wave break on a formerly unpromising beach, thanks to a new reef.  Turns out the reef is an alien biological probe, and as might be expected, it's not a friendly one.

The surfing scenes are nicely rendered, but the third-person omniscient viewpoint, the shrieky characters, and the Twilight Zone ending all suggested a young novice of a writer.  Imagine my surprise when I checked my notes and found that Hayden Howard has been writing for more than a decade, and I've even covered one of his stories before!

Nice try, but it's another two.

Rescue Mission, by Kit Reed

Science teacher goes on sabbatical to the mountains and finds his cottage besieged with bugs.  Turns out they are the servants of Mavna, the alien beauty who resides one cottage over, and she is using the crawlies to send the prof a message: (paraphrased) "Help me fend off these three oafs I'm staying with so I can sacrifice myself for the operation of our interstellar matter transmitter!"

Reed, an author I'm quite fond of, has written exclusively for F&SF since she started half a decade ago.  This rather silly piece would fit better in that magazine.  That it wasn't published there is not surprising — it's probably the weakest story Reed has produced.

Two stars.

Monster Tracks, by Robert E. Margroff

The last piece of short fiction in the issue is by a genuinely new author, about a boy raised in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by aliens.  They came in "peace", disguised as tourists, bringing gifts and cute pets, but it was all a ploy.  Their gifts were bombs, their luggage was guns, and their pets are poison.  Our young protagonist is almost taken in by a cute rabbit-like creature before being saved by his savvy uncle.

Not much to this one.  Two stars.

Farnham's Freehold (Part 3 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

"Where's the split?" I hear you ask.  So far, this issue has been a solid disappointment — how could it be a mixed bag?

Well, editor Fred Pohl got a ringer.

Robert Heinlein is one of the masters of the field with dozens of classic titles to his name.  To be sure, his record has been tarnished a bit lately by such substandard works as Stranger in a Strange Land and Podkayne of Mars.  Moreover, the first installment of his latest serial, Farnham's Freehold, got off to a stultifying start.

But then it got better.  In Part 1, Hubert Farnham and his family (including his house-servant and his side-girlfriend) are whisked thousands of years into the future thanks to a new Russkie bomb.  That first bit reads like a cross between a libertarian screed and the Boy Scout Handbook.  But in Part 2, we meet the inheritors of the atomically ravaged Earth, the dark-skinned peoples of Africa and India.  Hugh and co. are made privileged slaves — except for Joseph, Hugh's servant.  His Black skin makes him a de facto member of the ruling caste, and he is afforded the privileges thereof.  We learn a lot about the new society, and this section is genuinely interesting.

Part 3 more-or-less sticks the landing.  It is all about Hugh's attempt to escape his gilded cage along with mistress Barbara and their newly born twin sons.  While his first attempts end in failure (and this part is not unlike the middle section of Have Spacesuit Will Travel — thrilling but ultimately pointless), Hugh's kindly master ends up sending him and his family back in time to just before the Bomb goes off, and they have a second chance at life.

It's a thrilling page-turner, and I liked the central message: decadence and depravity have nothing to do with color or national origin.  It all boils down to Lord Acton's dictum, "Power corrupts".  I especially appreciated that the story recognized the unequal status of Joseph, and does not condemn him for throwing his lot in with America's new rulers.  Whatever loyalty Joe had to Hugh, he has found his Earthly paradise — unfair to others, perhaps, but wasn't that just after a lifetime of discrimination?  Hugh is dismayed, but not surprised.  After all, whatever his libertarian aspirations, he was part of the problem.

I'd give this last part five stars except that the ending is awfully abrupt.  All told, I think the novel earns an aggregate of 3.75 stars and, if you can get through the beginning, suggests a return to form of the author.

Making Whole

This latest issue of IF reminds me of Analog a few years back, when the serials were generally good and the other material sub-par (I note with bemusement that while Heinlein's Farnham would fit stylistically in Analog, the editor of said mag would never allow a storyline where the Whites are slaves…) When all is computed, the magazine actually scores above the 3-star middle, which tells you how good the second half is compared to the first.

In any event, the vice of a split-personality magazine is also its virtue: if one can always count on one or more stories not being very good, one can also expect at least one nugget of gold. 

And wasn't my entire state founded on the search for such nuggets?

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




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 8, 1964] It's War! (The October 1964 Galaxy and the 1964 Hugos)

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[We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!]


by Gideon Marcus

It's a War, Man

No matter which way you look these days, fighting has broken out somewhere.  Vietnam?  War.  The Congo?  War.  Yemen?  War.

Worldcon?  You'd better believe it's war.

Back in May, the committee putting on this year's event (in Oakland, called Pacificon II) decided that Walter Breen would not be allowed to attend.  For those of you living in a steel-plated bubble, Breen is a big-name fan in the SF and coin-collecting circles with a gift for inciting dislike in direct proportion to one's proximity.

Oh, and he's also a child molester.

Now there has been much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the draconian action taken by the Pacificon committee, likening the arbitrary action to McCarthy's witch trials of the last decade.  As a result, fandom has largely resolved itself into two camps, one defending the attempt to evict Breen from organized fandom, the other vilifying it.

I know we're a kooky bunch of misfits and our tent should be pretty inclusive, but ya gotta draw the line somewhere, don't you?  And what may have been fine for Alexander doesn't hold in the 20th Century.  I guess it's clear which side I fall on.

Well, despite the protests and the boycotts that tainted the Worldcon (which were part of what deterred me from attending this year), they still managed to honor what the fans felt was the best science fiction and fantasy of 1963.  Without further ado, here's how the Hugos went:

Best Novel

Here Gather the Stars, by Clifford Simak (63 votes)

Nominees

For the first time, the Journey had reviewed all of the choices for Best Novel before the nominating ballots had even been counted.  While we didn't pick the Simak for a Galactic Star last year, it's not a bad book, certainly better than the Heinlein and the Herbert, probably better than the Norton.  I suspect the reason the Vonnegut finished so low is that, as a mainstream book, fewer had read it.  Or perhaps just because it was so weird.

Short Fiction

The No Truce with Kings by Poul Anderson (93 votes)

Nominees

We got all of these this year, too.  The Anderson was our clear favorite, being the only one on the list to rate a Galactic Star.  The rest are in the order we had rated them.  Sadly, because this category encompasses so many stories, a great number got cheated out of recognition.  Perhaps they will divide the categories by length in the future.

Best Dramatic Presentation

None this year — insufficient votes cast for any one title to create a proper ballot.

I bet this will change next year what with so many SF shows coming out this Fall season (Rose Benton has got an article coming out in two days on this very subject!)

Best Professional Magazine

Analog ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr. (90 votes)

Nominees

It looks like people voted for the magazines in rough proportion to subscription rates, though F&SF did disproportionately well.  I am happy to say that this is the year we start covering Science-Fantasy…in its new incarnation under the editorship of Kyril Bonfiglioli.

Best Professional Artist

Ed Emshwiller (77 votes)

Nominees

Book covers are showing their influence on the voting — Krenkel and Frazetta don't do the SF mags. 

Best Fanzine

AMRA (72 votes)

Nominees

  • Yandro (51 votes)
  • Starspinkle (48 votes)
  • ERB-dom (45 votes)
  • No Vote (52 votes)
  • No Award (6 votes)

(isn't it interesting how close the ERB fanzine's tally is to Savage Pellucidar's…)

I was glad to see that Warhoon, which is full-throatedly in favor of Walter Breen, was not in the running.  Starspinkle, which makes no secret of its disdain for Breen, is the only one of these I read regularly.

Also, while Galactic Journey was not on the ballot again (for some reason), we did get a whopping 88 write-in votes.  So, unofficially, we are the best fanzine for 1964.  Go us!

Best Publisher

Ace Books (89 votes)

Nominees

  • Pyramid (79 votes)
  • Ballantine (45 votes)
  • Doubleday (35 votes)
  • No Vote (25 votes)
  • No Award (11 votes)

I should keep track of who is publishing what for next year.  The problem is, I usually read novels in serial format.

And that's it for my Hugos report.  It'll be interesting to see if fandom's scars heal at all by next year.

Veterans of Foreign Wars

Given the turmoil in the papers and in fandom, it's not surprising that war is a common theme in science fiction, too.  In fact, the October 1964 issue of Galaxy is bookended by novellas on the subject; together they take up more than half the book.  They also are the best parts.


by George Schelling

Soldier, Ask Not, by Gordon R. Dickson

Centuries from now, after humanity has scattered amongst a dozen or more stars, the species has splintered to specialize in particular traits.  The eggheads of Newton focus on scientific advance while the Cassidans make the building of starships their trade.  The mystical Exotics have devoted their lives to nonviolent pursuit of philosophy.  The Dorsai, of course, are renowned galaxy-wide for their military prowess.  And the hyper-religious "Friendlies" are committed to faith.

Our story's setting is the wartorn Exotic world of St. Marie, where Dorsai mercenaries have been employed to topple the Friendly mercenaries who had conquered the world years prior.  Newsman Tam Olyn has learned that the Friendlies' mission is a forlorn one, and he hopes to leverage that information to force the Christian zealots to do something desperate, illegal, to win the fight.  For Olyn has a grudge to settle with the Friendlies, having watched them slaughter without mercy an entire company of surrendered soldiers several years back.


by Gray Morrow

Set in the same universe as Dickson's prior Dorsai stories, Soldier is a more mature piece, asking a lot of hard questions.  Is Olyn's zeal any less than that of the Friendlies, any more laudable?  If Olyn's actions cause the destruction of an entire sub-branch of humanity, can the species' collective psyche withstand the loss of one of its vital components? 

Of course, the situation turns out to be far more complex than Olyn thought, with the Friendly commandant and the Dorsai commander proving to be independent variables beyond his control.  In the end, nothing goes as planned.

Soldier is not perfect.  It's overwritten in places, although since the tale is a first-person account written by a war correspondent, I wonder if this was intentional.  The omniscience of the Exotic, Padma, who has an understanding of events and factors that would make even Hari Seldon jealous, is a bit convenient as a storytelling device.  The idea that humanity has evolved in a few centuries, not just societally but mentally, such that vital components of our minds have been bred out of existence, is difficult to swallow.

But Dickson is a good writer, and I found myself turning the pages with avid interest. 

Four stars.

Martian Play Song, by John Burress

A variation of patty-cake that will make you chortle.  Three stars.

Be of Good Cheer, by Fritz Leiber

The first of two robot stories, this is a letter from Josh B. Smiley, Director-in-Chief of Level 77's Bureau of Public Morale to one Hermione Fennerghast of Santa Barbara.  It seems she just can't be happy living in a mechanically run world, where robots ignore the people, where people seem to be increasingly scarce, and where both the indoors and outdoors are being reduced to dull grayness.  Smiley does his best to reassure her that all is for the best, but the Director's verbal smile increasingly comes off as forced.

It's cute while it lasts, forgettable when it's over.  Three stars.

The Area of "Accessible Space">, by Willy Ley

Mr. Ley offers us a list of near-Earth celestial targets that could be reached in the near future by rockets and probes.  The author is quite optimistic about our prospect, in fact: "There can hardly be any doubt that a mission to a comet (unmanned) will be flown before a man lands on the moon."

Anyone want to lay odds?

Three stars.

How the Old World Died, by Harry Harrison

Robot story #2: computerized automata are programmed with one overriding desire — to reproduce.  Soon, they take over the entire world, having deconstructed our buildings and machines to make more of them.

The twist ending to the story is not only ridiculous, but it also is in direct contradiction to events described earlier.  Sure, perhaps the narrator (a crotchety grandpa who remembers the good old days) is not reliable.  But if that be true, then 90% of the story is invalid, and what was the point of reading it?

Two stars.

The 1980 President, by Miriam Allen deFord


by Hector Castellon

Have you noticed that every President of the United States elected in a year ending in zero ultimately dies in office?  Perhaps that's why, in 1980, the two big parties have nominated candidates they wouldn't mind losing (though they'd never admit it publicly).

A cute idea for a gag story, I guess.  Except, in this case, the parties have been maneuvered into their actions by alien agent, The Brown Man, and his goal is racial harmony and equality.

Yeah, I found the whole thing a bit too heavy-handed for my tastes, too.  I've liked deFord a lot, but her work lately has seemed kind of primitive, more at home in a less refined era of science fiction.

Three stars, barely.

The Tactful Saboteur, by Frank Herbert


by Jack Gaughan

From bad to worse.  This unreadable piece involves a government with a built in Department of Sabotage to ensure things don't run too smoothly.  I guess.  Maybe you'll get more out of it than I did.

One star.

What's the Name of That Town?, by R. A. Lafferty

A supercomputer is tasked with discovering an event not from the evidence for its existence, but from the conspicuous lack of evidence.  Lafferty's piece is an inverse of deFord's — a great idea rather wasted on a feeble laugh. 

Another barely three-star story.

Maxwell's Monkey, by Edgar Pangborn

What if the monkey on your back was a real monkey?  This monkey is a clunker.

Two stars.

Precious Artifact, by Philip K. Dick

Humanity emerges victorious from a war with the "proxmen", and Milt Biskle, a terraformer on Mars, is granted the right to return to Earth.  He does so only reluctantly, subconsciously dreading a trip to his overcrowded homeworld.

Once there, he is wracked with fears that the teeming masses of people, the burgeoning skylines are all imaginary.  Underneath, he is certain, lies nothing but ruins, smashed by the proxmen — who were actually triumphant and project this illusion to keep the few remaining humans sane.

But there is a level of truth even deeper…

A minor effort from a major author, Dick's latest warrants three stars.

The Children of Night, by Frederik Pohl


by Virgil Finlay

Lastly, Galaxy's editor picks up the pen to deliver a tale of marketing in the early 21st Century.  It's a topic near and dear to Pohl's heart, he having started out as a pretty successful copywriter, and it's no surprise that he often returns to this subject in his stories.

In this particular case, Pohl's protagonist is "Gunner", a fixer for the world's most reputable (and infamous) publicity firm.  They're the kind who'd even try to reform Hitler's image if the were enough Deutschmarks in the deal.  And in 2022, Moultrie & Bigelow's client is no less than the Arcturan insectoids who tried to wipe out humanity in a decade-long interstellar war.  I mean, how do you sell the public on a bunch of stinky bugs who killed indiscriminately and conducted experiments on children that would make Mengele blanch? (Who am I kidding — the bastard would take notes.)

Unlike many of the author's other marketing stories, this one is played straight; and while I don't know that I buy the ending, no one would argue that Fred Pohl can't write.

Four stars.

Picking up the Pieces

At times, the latest issue of Galaxy feels like a battlefield, with definite winners and losers.  In the end, though, this kind of war is a lot more palatable than the other ones going on in the world. 

At four bits, that's affordable and welcome R&R.

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




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Book, Magazine

[September 2, 1964] Taking on The Man (September 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Tarnished Gold

I am an avid fan of science fiction magazines.  It would not be going too far to say that Galactic Journey's original purpose was to document these delightful digests as they came out (since then, our scope has crept quite a bit, even as far as the opening of a publishing company!)

If you've been following my column, you know that I view some magazine editors more favorably than others.  For instance, I have a great deal of respect for Fred Pohl, who helms Galaxy, IF AND Worlds of Tomorrow, all of them quite good reads.  Then there's Cele Goldsmith (now Lalli) who took on both Amazing and Fantastic, and while neither are unalloyed excellence, they are improved over where they were before she came on, and there's usually something excellent in at least one of the mags every month. 

My relationship with Fantasy and Science Fiction's Avram Davidson is more complicated; I understand he's moved to Berkeley and is retiring from the editorship of that magazine to devote himself to writing.  I think that's probably better for everyone involved.  Still, there have been some good issues under Davidson, and I can't let curses go without some grudging admiration.

And then there's John W. Campbell.

Look.  I recognize that his Astounding kicked off the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and that, for a while, his magazine (and its sister, Unknown) were the best games in town, by far.  But Campbell went off the deep end long, long ago, with his pseudo-science, his reactionary politics, his heavy-handed editorial policy that ensures that White Male Terrans are usually the stars (and writers) of his stories, and his inflammatory editorials that I gave up reading a while ago.

Asimov's long-since turned his back on him.  Even I've rattled sabers with him.  But the most poignant declaration against Campbell is a recent one, given by prominent writer Jeannette Ng at a local conference.  She minced no words, denouncing his male-chauvinism, his racism, his authoritarianism, and urged that the genre be freed from the overlong shadow he casts. 


Jeannette Ng, iconoclast

While Campbell's influence in SF is somewhat on the wane, Analog still has double the circulation of the next biggest competitor, four times that of F&SF, where the majority of the women SF writers publish.  It's people like Ms. Ng, pointing at the naked Emperor and noting the ugliness, who will advance the New Wave, the post-Campbellian era.

All I have to say is "bravo". 

The Issue at Hand

The ironic thing is that the current issue of Analog is actually pretty good (full disclosure: I didn't read the editorial, which is probably awful).  Just the cover, illustrating the latest Lord D'Arcy story is worth the price of admission.


by John Schoenherr

Opening up the pages, things are pretty good inside, too.  At least until the end. 

the risk takers, by Carolyn Meyer

This article on the use of mannequins in aeronautical and medical science is lively, much more Asimovian than most of the non-fiction Campbell has subjected us to recently.  And, it's the first time a woman author has graced the science column of Analog.  While the piece is comparatively brief and perhaps aimed at a more general (dare I say "younger") audience than the average Analog reader, I enjoyed it.

Four stars.

A Case of Identity, Randall Garrett

Randall Garrett is possibly the author I've savaged the most during my tenure running the Journey, but even I have to admit that the fellow's latest series is a winner.  Lord D'Arcy is a magical detective hailing from an alternate 1964.  In this installment, the Marquis of Cherbourg is missing, and coincidentally, an exact double has just been found dead and naked near the docks.  There's witchcraft afoot, and the good Lord, along with his sorcerer assistant, Master Sean O Lochlainn, are on the case.


by John Schoenherr

This story doesn't flow quite as smoothly as the first one, spending many inches on the historical background of this brand-new world.  It's still a superlative tale, however.

Four strong stars.

The Machmen, James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

An interstellar survey group is overpowered by a group of ambitious cyborgs.  The goal of these so-called "Machmen" (presumably pronounced "Mash-men"?) is to forcibly convert the captured team of eggheads into brainwashed cybernetic comrades and start a colony.  But one the scientists has gotten loose, and he has a risky plan to thwart the nefarious scheme that just…might…work.

It's not a bad piece.  In fact it moves quite nicely, far more readily than the author's latest (and disappointing) Telzey Amberdon story.  But on the other hand, it reads like it might have come out in the 1930s.  I wonder if it's been hiding in a desk from the early days of Schmitz' career.

Three stars.

Sheol, Piers Anthony and H. James Hotaling


by John Schoenherr

This is an odd piece about the Government postman who delivers parcels to the oddballs who live in the suburbs.  It's quite deftly written, but there's weird social commentary that, while not offensive, feels Campbellian.  Tailor made for John, or doctored after the fact?  There's no way to tell.

Three stars.

Sleeping Planet (Part 3 of 3), William R. Burkett, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

Last up, we have the conclusion to Sleeping Planet.  What started out as a promising novel about the sudden subjugation of the Earth has ended up exactly as predicted.  The few unsleeping humans, along with their robotic allies (abruptly introduced near the end of the last installment), put on a movie show that convinces the invaders that the dead spirits of Earth are taking out their revenge.  This confusion facilitates the final gambit of the Terrans: to infiltrate and revive one of the planetary defense stations in El Paso.  After that, it's all over but the shouting.

There are several problems with this last part.  First off, it's essentially unnecessary.  There are no surprises, the human plan pretty much going as discussed in the last part.  That's the big picture.  Smaller picture issues include:

  • Why were Earth's defense centers even vulnerable to the sleeping dust in the first place?  Wouldn't it make sense for them to have their own air supplies against chemical/biological attack?
  • The amazingly human-like aliens (another Campbellian feature) are always played for suckers.  I was almost rooting for them to win at the end, so arrogant and annoying were the humans.
  • At the end, Earth's leaders make light of the attack, calling it a brief nap (but a warning as to what might happen NEXT TIME).  I understand this is largely to quell panic and outrage.  At the same time, though, it is mentioned numerous times that hundreds, maybe thousands of women were revived and rendered stupefied so that the might "service" the alien troops.  That this mass rape goes unaddressed and essentially laughed off really bothered me.  Honestly, even including this element was disgusting and unnecessary, especially in a story that mostly kept a light tone.

Two stars for this segment, two-and-a-half for the book as a whole.  We'll see if it gets picked up for separate print.

Summing Up

Thus ends another edition of the magazine that Campbell built, representative of the best and worst of the man.  This time, the positive aspects have won out, resulting in a 3.2 star issue.  This is surpassed this month only by Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4).  There was no IF this month due to a problem at the printers, the result of shifting from bimonthly to monthly.  That leaves the new New Worlds (3.1), Amazing (2.7), and Fantastic (2.6) scoring below Analog and F&SF.  An unusual month, indeed.

Women wrote 6 of 38 pieces (1 of 4 science articles, 5 of 34 fiction pieces), a fairly average month.  Despite the paucity of magazines, there was enough high quality material to make a decently sized issue.  Now that I'm in the anthology business, perhaps I'll do just that…

SPEAKING OF WHICH:

We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!  Not only will you find it excellent reading, but it will support our efforts and allow us to make more of the material you enjoy!  Thank you for your support!




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Book

[August 31, 1964] Grow old along with me (Brian Aldiss' Greybeard)

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by Gideon Marcus

A slow burn

The British love writing about the end of the world.

Whether it's J.G. Ballard depicting a drowning world, Nevil Shute showing us clouds of atomic radiation slowly enveloping the globe, the cinema showing the day the Earth caught fire, or John Wyndham terrorizing a blind world with man-eating plants, the UK has been fertile ground for a particular kind of disaster story.  While presenting global catastrophes is not unique to Britain, U.K. authors are more apt to focus on the social ramifications, and also the aftermath, rather than the more flashy destruction scenes.  Moreover, British SF tends to take its time with disasters, letting you stop for a contemplative tea rather than maintaining a continuous mad dash.  Of course, Americans write contemplative post-disaster too (viz. Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, but it's rarer.

Brian Aldiss, the vanguard of the British "New Wave" of science fiction, had already made his mark in this genre with Hothouse, a portrayal of Earth's far-future where humans have reverted to knee-high savages and plants have displaced virtually all of the animal kingdom.  A popular series and then a fix-up book, Hothouse was a hit, winning a Hugo a couple of years back. 

Now, the prolific Oxonion (by residence, not degree) has produced the latest in inexorable aftermath fiction: Greybeard.

Winding down

The basic premise of Greybeard is like a cross between On the Beach and John Christopher's The Death of Grass (No Blade of Grass in the United States).  In 1981, orbital atomic tests cause the Earth's protective Van Allen Belts to waver, and the Earth is scoured with extraterrestrial radiations.  Most large mammals are adversely affected; they sicken and die, they cease to breed true.  Humans are hit worst of all: half the world's children succumb to the ensuing illness, and virtually all humanity is rendered sterile.

Aldiss begins his story in 2029, after society has largely collapsed.  The viewpoint character is Algernon Timberlane, generally known as "Greybeard" for his signature adornment.  Of course, some fifty years after "the Accident", everyone is grey, but Algy stands out for being among the youngest of humanity's remnants, a spry 54-year-old in a world of old coots.  An intellectual and possessed of vigor, and also married to one of the youngest and loveliest women yet living (Martha Broughton), Greybeard stands out, and he has many years left for adventure.

Adventure he does, in a sort of quiet, understated fashion.  From the first chapter, the book wends in two chronological directions.  Going forward, Algy and Martha leave their authoritarian community of Sparcot after it is overrun with feral stoats, their goal to reach the coast and see what's left of the world before it decays completely to a natural state.  Going backward, we journey stepwise to the immediate aftermath of the Accident, first to the warlord era of 2018, then to the world wars of 2001 as nations struggled to secure the last viable children, and finally to Algy's youth, before humanity is certain of its doomed status.

A British manner of storytelling

Greybeard does an excellent job of exploring humanity with a hollowed out spot where its legacy should be.  It's a fascinating study, a story of old people (men and women equally represented) in a field normally dominated by the young.  At first, our species tries to carry on, business as usual.  We then fall by stages into strife and then a senescent blurriness.  In other words, as a race, we age and begin to die. 

Aldiss is never in a hurry to tell his story, letting the reader soak in the sights and smells of the slowly decaying civilization.  At the same time, neither does the pace lag, with Algy moving around quite a bit and meeting an interesting ragtag of other survivors.  The book is in many ways a travelogue of southeast England, with Aldiss' home of Oxford featuring prominently.  This intimate familiarity with the region adds verisimilitude to a very immediate-feeling tale.

The author also cuts the subtle horror of the situation with an arch sense of humor; for instance, the journalistic organization Algy joins after the wars, in order to document the last days of humanity, is called Documentation of Universal Contemporary History, for which Timberline is assigned to the English branch.  Yes — DOUCH(E).  The advancing senility of the people Greybeard meets is at once deeply chilling and comically ridiculous.  In other words, the situation is hopeless but not serious.

Hope or despair at the bottom of the box?

Of course, the overriding question on everyone's mind (particularly the reader's) is whether or not there are any viable children left on the planet.  There are hints given throughout; however, certain verification yea or nay is reserved for the very end.  Either answer would work, but would result in wildly different tales and messages.  I liked the path Aldiss chose.

In any event, Greybeard is definitely one of the stronger books of the year, and another excellent outing by Mr. Aldiss.  Four stars.


photo by John Bulmer

[We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine

[August 21, 1964] The Good News (September 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Reversing the trend

The United States is the richest country in the world.  By any reckoning, we measure in superlatives: biggest economy, strongest military, most movies, coolest cars.  But there is one outsized statistic we shouldn't bury in gloss — 19% of Americans live in poverty.

Several months back, newly installed President Johnson took an unscheduled trip through Appalachia, the poorest part of our country.  This region, between the Eastern seaboard and the Plains states, north of the agrarian South and the Industrial North, has traditionally been an economic backwater.  Shocked by what he found, LBJ promptly declared a War on Poverty, seeking to continue the efforts of President Roosevelt to bring up the nation and, in particular, Appalachia.

Yesterday saw a great step forward taken in that direction.  President Johnson signed into law the Economic Opportunity Act, designed to help the poorest families find their way out of their economic quagmire.  This will be achieved a number of ways, largely through the creation of new task forces and funding of groups whose goal is poverty relief. 

For instance, the newly created Job Corps and Neighborhood Youth Corps will provide work and training for the underskilled and underemployed.  Work Study college grants and Adult Basic Education will ensure that the poor are not barred from employment by illiteracy or lack of education.  There are also loan and grant programs for individuals and agencies. 

It's a smart system, not a simple redistribution of wealth but an investment in the next generation of Americans.  I have a lot of confidence that it will be successful — provided, of course, that the money gets put to good use.  Time will tell.

Big and small scale

Just as the White House has endeavored to improve the lot of Americans, so has Fantasy and Science Fiction's editor worked to address a disturbing trend.  In fact, this month's issue is easily the best one of the magazine that I've read in a while, and it's not even an "All-Star Issue".  It's just good.

So for those of you who came to hear me flog F&SF, you're going to be disappointed…

Mel Hunter's cover shows a post-Mariner 2 Venus, a cloudy inferno.  It's a beautiful piece, though it pertains to no story in this issue and is, perhaps, a better fit for Analog. 

The stories, on the other hand, are pure F&SF:

Chameleon, by Ron Goulart

Ron Goulart writes these flip, droll little pieces, with deft skill (if not great consequence).  This particular one stars Ben Jolson, member of a corps of secret agents whose special talent is shapeshifting.  People, animals, furniture, these superspies transform instantly and apparently without regard for mass considerations.  Jolson is a particularly adept, if eccentric, agent, grudgingly tasked with getting the prime minister of Barafunda to make a proclamation against the practice of using soulless, mass-produced people as slave labor.  By any means necessary: becoming a trusted adviser, inciting violence, even becoming the PM herself.

Goulart keeps things real enough to avoid farce, light enough to avoid melodrama.  If you like Laumer's Retief or Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat stories, this will be right up your alley. 

Four stars.

A Miracle Too Many, by Alan E. Nourse and Philip H. Smith

Dr. Stephen Olie discovers that being able to miraculously cure with a touch is a curse as well as a blessing.  Both Nourse and Smith are physicians, so it's no surprise that this piece involves the medical profession.  I liked everything but the ending, which felt a bit lazy.

Three stars. 

Slips Take Over, by Miriam Allen deFord

Ms. deFord, who is 76 today (Many Happy Returns!) offers up a tale of a man who slips between parallel timelines as easily and inadvertently as we might get lost on the streets of an unfamiliar city.  It's a neat idea, with the kind of great creepy atmosphere deFord is good at, but she doesn't do much with the story.  Plus, there are inconsistencies regarding what items do and do not travel with the hapless universe-crosser.

Three stars.

Olsen and the Gull, by Eric St. Clair

Eric, the husband of famed author Margaret St. Clair, is an author in his own right.  This is his first story not to be written for children and involving SFF elements.  In this case, it's a shipwrecked lout of a sailor whose only entertainment is to crush the eggs of the multitudinous seagulls while chanting "tromp tromp tromp."  One enterprising bird undertakes to distract Olsen the sailor by teaching him the art of summoning… with amusing and unfortunate results.

Four stars.

Carbonaceous Chondrites, by Theodore L. Thomas

Even Thomas' little column, usually sophomoric in the extreme, isn't bad this month.  He posits that the carbon compounds being found in certain meteorites are evidence of extraterrestrial life — but not the way you think!

Three stars.

Four Brands of Impossible, by Norman Kagan

The longest piece of the issue is by a new writer, a student at New York City College.  As befits a novice, the story, about a mathematician tapped to develop an illogical logic, is somewhat unfocused.  Moreover, when it's all done, I'm not exactly sure that anything of importance has happened.

On the other hand, there are bits in the story that are quite compelling, about space research, the value of an automated presidency, the folly of racism, etc., and I will remember the novelette for these if nothing else.

Thus, three stars.

The New Encyclopaedist-II, by Stephen Becker

A mock encyclopaedia article, about Jacob Porphyry, who reversed the trend toward malaprop and literary inanity by making his books hard to read.

It's cute once you get into it.  Three stars.

Theoretical Progress, by Karen Anderson

This first of two poems by Karen Anderson (Poul's other half), is a modern-day send-up of Antigonish. 

I liked it.  Four stars.

Investigation of Galactic Ethnology, by Karen Anderson

On the other hand, the second poem, a limerick, is barely worth a pained smirk. 

Still, that's the appropriate reaction to a well-delivered pun.  Three stars.

Elementary, by Laurence M. Janifer and Michael Kurland

Raise your hand if you want to murder your agent.  Goodness, there are a lot of you!  I shouldn't be surprised…I'm not even convinced that they're a necessary evil these days.  Anyway, this story is about a pair of authors who decide to put paid to their 10% bloodsucker only to find their efforts repeatedly thwarted.

This is another piece with a great beginning and middle, but the ending didn't quite work for me.  Perhaps you'll feel differently.

Three stars.

The Haste-Makers, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor's non-fiction article is on catalysts this time around.  I learned a great deal, but then chemistry has never been my bag.  The big revelation I got out of the piece was that catalysts aren't magic but merely a side effect of our living in an oxygen-filled environment (just like airplanes no longer boggle the brain when you realize that they don't fly on nothing — air just happens to be invisible).

Four stars.

The Deepest Blue in the World, by S. Dorman

When the stars become a battlefield, the men will go off to fight and die, and women will be brought to the Wedding Bench to conceive and rear the next batch of soldiers.  If they resist their breeding lot in life, it's prison and the mines for them.

A chilling story by an author with an uncanny vision of female subjugation.  A strong four stars.

Inconceivably Yours, by Willard Marsh

A bachelor worries that the failure of a contraceptive will end his bachelor days, but one God's curse is another man's blessing.  A fair story with a delicious title.

Three stars.

The Star Party, by Robert Lory

The astrologers presume to know a lot about people.  Unfortunately, master star-teller Isvara picked the wrong two Madison Avenue party attenders to cast readings on.  It's a nice little tale, though the astronomical inaccuracy at the end was unfortunate.

Three stars.

A Crown of Rank Fumiter, by Vance Aandahl

Last up, we have young Vance Aandahl, who started out strong and has been delivering weak tea indeed for several years.  This piece, about a recluse who, in the midst of death finds his humanity, is a refreshing change of direction — and thus a perfect capper for a surprisingly strong issue.

Four stars.

Summing up

I don't know that any of these stories hit it out of the park for me, but there were plenty of good pieces and no clunkers in the lot.  Even Davidson's introductions were entertaining.  This issue will certainly be a contender for best magazine this month.

More good news: F&SF has several foreign editions.  They've just started a Spanish edition, Minotauro, the first issue of which arrived by mail the other day.  My daughter, who is learning the language in high school, is currently working her way through Damon Knight's What Rough Beast and enjoying it, even translated.  So, if you speak Spanish, and you want a "best-of" issue of the magazine, you could do worse than to pick up a copy!

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




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Science / Space Race

[Aug. 17, 1964] Yes and No (Talking to a Machine, Part 1)

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by Gideon Marcus

Making sense of it all

Computers can do amazing things these days. Twenty years ago, they were vacuum tube-filled monstrosities purpose-built for calculating artillery trajectories; now, they are sleek, transistorized mini-monstrosities that do everything from calculating income tax to booking vacations across multiple airlines. It used to be that computers were mathematically inclined women — these days, digital computers do everything those able women did, and many times faster.

This is an absolute miracle when you realize just how limited a digital computer really is. It's about the dumbest, simplest thing you can imagine. Appropriately, the successful operation of a computer, and programming those operations, is one of the more abstruse topics I've come across. Certainly, no one has ever been able to give me a concise education on the subject.

I'm a naive (or arrogant) person. I'm going to try to give you one. It's a complex topic, though, so I'm going to try to break it into "bite"-sized parts. Read on for part one!

Ones and Zeroes

Whether you know it or not, you are already familiar with the concept of binary. Your light switch is either on or off. Your television, your radio, your blender — all of them are either in operation or not. There is no in-between (or, at least, there shouldn't be).

A digital computer is nothing but a big bunch of places where you process ons and offs; for simplicity's sake, let's call an off "0" and an on "1". Inside every computer is a place for storing 1s and 0s called its "memory". If you've ever seen medieval chain mail, you have an idea what it looks like, a net of metal rings, each of which can be individually magnetized. If a ring is magnetized, the computer sees it as on or "1". If not, it sees it as off or "0".

Now, there's not a lot of information you can store there — just the on/off state. But what if you grouped of eight of these binary digits (or "bits") so that your computer knew they were associated? Then you could have all sorts of 8-digit groups (called "bytes"). For instance:

00000000
11111111
11110000
00001111
10000001

and so on. All told, you could have 256 combinations of ones and zeroes in each of these groups, and that's enough to be useful. Here's how.

Three simple tasks

A computer, at its heart, can do just three things:

  1. Store information. Think of a computer's memory as a post office, and each byte is a mailbox. In fact, in computing, these mailboxes are called addresses. Each address can store one of the 256 combinations of ones and zeroes.
  2. Do arithmetic. A computer is designed to be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
  3. Compare numbers. A computer can look at two different numbers and tell you if one is equal to, greater than, or less than the other.

That's it! When I first learned that, I (like you) wondered "how the heck can something like that do something complicated like making sure my Allegheny Airlines reservation gets transferred to Eastern for my trip to New York?"

As it turns out, these three basic computer functions are sufficient for that task — if you are clever in how you instruct a computer to do them.

Talking in numbers

Remember that a computer can only speak in binary digits ("binary" for short.) Let's say a computer has been hard-coded to know that when you input "110", you mean "store the following number in the following address." If you input "101" it means "add the number in the following address to whatever is in this other, following address. And let's say "111" means "print out whatever is in the following address."

A very simple program, computing A + B = C might look like this (for the sake of simplicity, let's say that your computer's memory has 256 addresses in which it can store bytes, each addressed with digits 00000001 through 11111111):

  1. 110 1 00000001
  2. 110 10 00000010
  3. 110 0 000000011
  4. 101 000000001 00000011
  5. 101 000000010 00000011
  6. 111 000000011

In English, that's:

  1. Put "1" in address #1.
  2. Put "2" in address #2.

    3. (how does 10 equal 2? Just like when you add 1 to 9 in normal, base 10 arithmetic, you make the ones place 0 and carry the one into the tens place.  In binary, 1 is the most that can ever fit into a digit — so if you add 1, you make that place zero and carry the 1 to the next place over.

    Thus 1 + 1 = 10 (2), 10 (2) + 1 = 11 (3), 10 (2) + 10 (2) = 100 (4) …and 11111111 =255!)

  3. Put "0" in address #3 (just to make sure we're starting from zero — if a program had used that byte before, it might not be empty!)
  4. Add whatever is in address #1 (in this case, 1) to whatever's in address #3 (so far, nothing).
  5. Add whatever is in address #2 (in this case, 2) to whatever's in address #3 (so far, 1).
  6. Show me what's in address #3: The answer should be "3" (because 1+2=3). Except, it will probably be displayed as "11" because this is a computer we're talking about.

Good grief, that's a headache, and that's just for one simple bit of math. The first big problem is just remembering the commands. How is anyone supposed to look at that code and know what those initial numbers mean?

An easier way

The folks at IBM, Univac, CDC, etc. solved that particular problem pretty easily. They designed a program (entered in binary) that translates easier-to-remember three letter alphanumeric codes into binary numbers. Thus, someone could write the above program as, for example:

  1. STO 1 00000001
  2. STO 10 00000010
  3. STO 11 00000000
  4. ADD 000000001 00000011
  5. ADD 000000010 00000011
  6. SHO 000000011

STO, ADD, and SHO make a bit more intuitive sense than strings of numbers, after all.

And since you can translate letters to binary, why not numbers and addresses?

  1. STO 1 A1
  2. STO 2 A2
  3. STO 0 A3
  4. ADD A1 A3
  5. ADD A2 A3
  6. SHO A3

Note, these are not commands in any actual language — I made them up. And each computer system will have its own set of commands unique to the system, but real code will look something like this.

This easier to understand, mnemonic language is called "Assembly" because the program assembles your commands into something the computer understands (remember — they only know ones and zeroes).

Hitting the ceiling

Assembly makes it easier to program a computer, but it's still tedious. Just adding 1+2 took five lines. Imagine wanting to do something simple like computing the hypotenuse of a right triangle:

In geometry class, we learned that A2 + B2 = C2.

The first part of that is easy enough.

  1. STO A A1 (store A in address A1)
  2. STO B A2 (store B in address A2)
  3. STO 0 A3 (Clear out address A3 for use)
  4. MUL A1 A1 (multiply what's in A1 by itself)
  5. MUL A2 A2 (multiple what's in A2 by itself)
  6. ADD A1 A3 (add what's now in A1 to what's in A3)
  7. ADD A2 A3 (add what's now in A2 to what's in A3)

All right. That gets us A2 + B2 in the third address…but how do we get the square root of C2?

When I wrote this, I had no idea. I've since talked to a programmer. She showed me a thirty line program that I still don't understand. Sure, it works, but thirty lines for a simple equation? There has to be an easier way, one that doesn't involve me pulling out my accursed slide rule.

There is! To find out how, join us for the next installment of this series!

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Book, Magazine

[August 3, 1964] Running hot and cold (August 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Summertime, but the livin' ain't easy

Summer is supposed to be the slow season, a time for relaxing away from school, hitting the beach, and soaking up the Sun.  Or sitting in the shade:

But as temperatures have risen, so have tempers.  On the heels of a landmark de jure victory in racial progress with the passing of the Civil Rights Act, the de facto conditions of segregation and discrimination still obtain across the nation. 

And so, sparked by decades of frustration and the still-distant prospect of true equality, riots have broken out in several of America's premier cities.  Some started as peaceful demonstrations, like the recent turmoil in New York City, sparked by the police shooting of 15-year-old student, James Powell.

Others needed just the tiniest of sparks, like the aimless violence that inflamed Rochester, New York last week.

These outbreaks began soon after Barry Goldwater, arch-conservative Senator from Arizona, was nominated as the GOP candidate for President at the Cow Palace convention in San Francisco.  Goldwater's position on civil rights compares starkly to the President Johnson's record, and there is justifiable fear that, should the Senator win the election, all recent progress could halt or even reverse.

To that end, the heads of the six major Black American organizations agreed last week that they would deprioritize civil rights demonstrations in favor of efforts to defeat Goldwater in November.  Whether this will damp the wave of rioting is an open question.

Interestingly, Johnson and Goldwater made a related pledge: neither will make civil rights a major talking point of the election. 

A Tepid Analog

But where the news is hot, Analog, the old warhorse of science fiction magazines, remains stubbornly lukewarm.  The United States struggles to make its way to the future; Analog is content to stick with the styles of the past.  This month's issue is no exception.


by John Schoenherr

How to Make a Robot Speak, by Dwight Wayne Batteau

The opening non-fiction piece is on engineering efforts to mechanically reproduce human speech.  Or perhaps to control robots through voice commands.  Or dolphins.  I really couldn't tell you — this article is more impenetrable than last year's matzah.

One star.

Genus Traitor, by Mack Reynolds


by John Schoenherr

A hundred years from now, Benjamin Fullbright, member of the first expedition to the Red Planet, stands trial before a world court.  His crime: giving the Martians the secret of interplanetary travel and laying the Earth bare to invasion.  But is the sole other survivor of the trip, Commodore Raul Murillo, telling the whole story of their trip?  And are the Martians really the bug-eyed aliens everyone thinks they are?

The latest from Mack Reynolds is reasonably engaging and often exciting, but definitely not at the high end of what the author can produce.

Three stars.

Satisfaction, by Damon Knight

I was surprised to see Knight's by-line here; his work tends to be more on the thoughtful,"softer" side of SF (though his awful The Tree of Time was straight pulp…and it appeared in F&SF of all places!) Satisfaction shows the lack of ambition that could become endemic should humanity get a hold of Artificial Reality technology, allowing them to live out their fantasies within a computerized simulation.

Knight does a decent job of conveying the lassitude of an addict, but his story doesn't go anywhere beyond that. 

Three stars.

Inter-Disciplinary Conference, by Philip R. Geffe


by John Schoenherr

If the name of Philip R. Geffe is familiar to you, you're either an engineer with an interest in electric filters (he literally wrote the book on the subject last year) or an amateur chess player.  Geffe's first science fiction story likely covers ground that is familiar to the author — an interdisciplinary conference at which scientists from several different fields fail to put the pieces of their research together to reach an externally obvious conclusion.

It's cute.  Three stars.

Sleeping Planet (Part 2 of 3), by William R. Burkett, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

When last we left this serial, the Llralan Empire had captured the Solar System of the 25th Century without a shot, its inhabitants having been rendered unconscious with a genetically tailored sleeping dust.  Now the "Larries" are holding half of the human race hostage as leverage in surrender negotiations with the Terran Federation.

The only fly in the ointment is James Rierson, an attorney and weekend hunter who is one of the nine souls who proved immune to the dust.  He has embarked on a one-man insurgency, which has been aided by the belief (spurred on by similarly immune truck driver Bradford Donovan) that Rierson is actually an avenging ancestor spirit with supernatural powers.  The added wrinkle in this installment is the army of sentient but subservient robots, also unaffected by the dust, who offer their services to Rierson.  It's a development that was not telegraphed earlier, and it comes out of nowhere.

The problem with Burkett's story is he can't decide if he's writing a farce or a serious SF book.  It comes off as too gritty for the former and too silly for the latter.  Still, it is readable.

Three stars.

Thermal Gradients

"It's readable" summarizes this latest issue of Analog, which is better than can be said for many of the mags this month.  Celle Lalli's (née Goldsmith) Fantastic and Amazing fared the worst, garnering abysmal 1.8 and 2.1 star ratings.  The once-proud F&SF got a lousy 2.3, and I hear it through the grapevine that its editor, Avram Davidson, is looking to leave his job.  On the positive side are Fred Pohl's digests, IF and Galaxy, both of which scored a solid 3.4, and which had the best individual stories, too.

For those keeping count, there were five women authors out of 34.  15% is actually a good month for that measurement.

So that's that for last month.  Next month, there's a new Lord D'arcy story.  God help me, I'm actually looking forward to Randall Garrett.,

And that's a hot one!

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Science / Space Race

[August 1, 1964] On Target (The Successful Flight of Ranger 7)

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With the recent American lunar triumph, it is appropriate to take a look back at the long road that winds from Sputnik and ends in Oceanus Procellarum…


by Gideon Marcus

Shooting the Moon

It all began with a dream.

The Moon has captured our imaginations since we were first definably human.  Some two thousand years ago, the Greeks learned that the Moon was our closest celestial companion; it took another 1800 years for Galileo to determine that it was a spherical body, not unlike the Earth. 

It is no surprise that this discovery spawned some of our earliest science fiction stories: Godwins's The Man in the Moone, Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, Wells' recently cinemized The First Men in the Moon. 

With the launch of Sputnik, the heavens were broken open, and science fiction could be made fact.  Indeed, just after the Soviets launched their first satellite, the engineers at Ramo-Wooldrige's (now TRW) Space Technology Laboratories, made plans to build their own Moon rocket out of boosters already in existence, mating the Thor missile they had developed with the Vanguard rocket's second and third stages.  With luck, they would have probe around the Moon less than a year after the inauguration of the Space Age.

It was an ambitious plan.  Too ambitious.  The first of the so-called Pioneers blew up on the launch pad.  The next, Pioneer 1, made it halfway to the Moon before, like Icarus, falling back to Earth.  Pioneer 2 barely limped out of the Earth's atmosphere before burning up.

So ended the first American Moon program.  Enter Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Situated across the San Fernando Valley from its rival, JPL was working with Von Braun's Jupiter rocket, the same one that had launched America's first satellite, Explorer 1.  Unfortunately, JPL's first attempt, Pioneer 3, also faltered on the way. 

And then came the Soviets' turn.

Red Moon

1959 began with a Dream, a Russian Dream.  On January 3, Mechta ("dream") sailed off toward and past the Moon, the first human-made object to become a satellite of the Sun.  The American success of Pioneer 4, two months later, was subsequently eclipsed when the second Mechta impacted the Moon in September, depositing Soviet medals upon Earth's companion — the first interplanetary delivery. 

Capping off this lunar tour de force was the Soviet follow-up, called Luna 3, Lunik 3, and Mechta 3.  Not only did this probe sail around the Moon, but it took pictures.  These missions were not just engineering and prestige shots, they were returning valuable information about the Moon.  It had no magnetic field, for instance.  The never-before seen Far Side was curiously devoid of the "seas" that mottle its Earth-facing surface.

We had to know more.

Local Space Race

With JPL batting .500 with its Pioneers, STL decided it needed to do better than its .000 average (though, to be fair, the flight of Pioneer 1 was a triumph for its time).  Mating the Vanguard stages of its prior Pioneer rocket to the beefy Atlas ICBM, the boys from Redondo Beach were sure they could launch the first bonafide lunar observatory into orbit around the Moon.

It didn't work.  1959-60 saw four failed attempts, all botched because the bleeding-edge Atlas wasn't yet up to the task (and how reassuring that must have been to the Mercury astronauts who had to ride the thing in a couple of years!)

One team's failure is another's opportunity.  While the second STL lunar endeavor was ending in tears, JPL was already hard at work on its own second-generation Moon project: Ranger.

Ranger was actually two programs in one.  This reflected the tension between the engineers, who wanted a craft that could make it the Moon and return information about its surface (of immediate use to a crewed lunar program), and the scientists, who wanted not only to learn about the Moon, but the space between it and the Earth.

The first two Rangers weren't even built to go to the Moon.  Planned to be launched into high orbits on a combination of the Atlas and a powerful second stage called the Vega (this civilian stage later substituted with the military's Agena), Rangers 1 and 2 would measure magnetic fields and the solar wind.

Would, but never did.  Ranger 1 and Ranger 2 both were stranded in useless low orbits due to booster malfunctions (plus ça change).  On the other hand, the satellites themselves were sound, and a modified Block 1 Ranger became the highly successful Venus probe, Mariner 2, in 1962.

Never mind them.  Rangers 3-5 were the real lunar probes, even including giant balsawood pimples on the end, which housed seismometers that could survive impact with the Moon.  It was more important than ever that we know what the lunar surface was like now that President Kennedy had announced that we would, as a nation, put a man on the Moon and bring him safely back to Earth before the decade was out.

Easier said than done.  Ranger 3, launched in January 1962, missed the Moon.  Moreover, it sailed past while facing the wrong way.  The probe took no useful pictures, and a failure of the onboard computer prevented the acquisition of sky science data.

The identical Ranger 4 was both more and less successful.  From a launch and trajectory perspective, it was perfect: On April 26, 1962, Ranger 4 became the first American probe to hit the Moon.  Unfortunately, it was an inert frame of metal by that time; NASA might as well have shot a cannonball.  In fact, the probe never worked, the first Ranger not to function at all in space. 

Still, the mission was heralded (rightfully) as a partial success.  Surely Ranger 5, last in the Block 2 series, would be a win.

No dice.  Ranger 5, launched in October 1962, lost internal power shortly after take-off and sailed silently past the Moon two days later.

Sharper Focus

For those keeping count, the Americans were now 1 for 14 in the Moon Race, a record even worse than that of last year's San Francisco 49ers.  As 1962 drew to a close, JPL undertook an internal audit and came to the following conclusions:

  • JPL's management structure was unsuited to big, complicated projects like Ranger
  • Ranger was too complicated, too dependent on every system working perfectly
  • The general scientific objectives conflicted with the specific, Apollo-supporting objectives

The result was a beefed up management staff that would focus primarily on Ranger until the probe worked.  And a newer, leaner Ranger.

Ranger, Block 3, had one job.  It would crash into the Moon, taking TV pictures all the way down.  No other science experiments.  Up came the hue and cry from scientists, but the decision was made.  As it was, it would take at least another year to develop and launch Ranger 6.  It had to work.

It didn't.

Ranger 6 had a textbook launch on January 30, 1964.  Shortly after the probe reached space, its TV system inexplicably turned itself on and off, but otherwise, all was well.  Indeed, Ranger 6 cruised through its mid-flight course correction burn like a dream, pointed straight and true for the Moon's Sea of Tranquility.  JPL Director William Pickering felt confident enough to declare, "I am cautiously optimistic."

But when it came time for Ranger 6 to do its job, to take TV pictures of the Moon, it stubbornly refused.  The probe impacted the lunar surface without returning a single shot.

Uproar.  Six failures in a row.  There was serious Congressional talk of shutting down the Ranger program altogether.  On the other hand, the mission had been almost entirely successful.  There was every reason to believe (or at least hope) that improved check-out procedures on the next, already built, Ranger 7, would lead to a completely successful mission.  After a NASA investigation and a Congressional inquiry, JPL was given one more chance.

Dream into Reality

Opportunities for lunar missions come once a month, when the Moon is situated such that the least energy is required for a rocket from Earth to reach it.  The latest such apparition started on July 27, the opening of the lunar "window."  Ranger 7's powerful Atlas-Agena rocket, now the most reliable part of the mission infrastructure, stood ready on the launchpad.  The countdown was steady, until, just 51 minutes before the scheduled launch, a faulty telemetry battery had to be replaced.  It was, and the countdown resumed…but the a fatal flaw in a ground guidance component meant that the launch had to be scrubbed. 

But only for a day.  On July 28, the countdown proceeded smoothly, and at 9:50am PDT, Ranger 7 was sent into orbit.  The onboard TV system appeared to be working normally, and half an hour later, the Agena engine fired once more, propelling the spacecraft toward the Moon.

So accurate was this burn that Ranger 7 didn't need a mid-course correction to hit the Moon.  However, the path it was to take would carry it to the lunar Far Side, which would make the transmission of TV pictures impossible.  A day after launch, a short engine burn aimed the probe directly for its destination: The Sea of Clouds.

In the early morning on July 31, 1964, reporters and cameramen once again filed into JPL's von Karman Auditorium for Ranger 7's final descent.  Just six months ago, Ranger 6 had been so disappointing that Walter Downhower, the Chief of the System Design Section who had been the voice over the auditorium speakers that day, refused to ever do that job again.

This time, JPL's George Nichols was the voice of Ranger as it zoomed toward the Moon at 5000 miles per hour.  At 3:07am PDT (yes, I stayed up, too), Nichols was able to announce that Ranger's television system and its six cameras were working properly.  Three minutes later, the first images taken from the vicinity of the Moon began to pour in as a stream of ones and zeroes on a telemetry stream.  Five minutes went by.  Still going.  Ten minutes.  Then, at 6:25 PDT, the hum of Ranger's telemetry abruptly cut off.

But this was a planned cessation — Ranger had hit the Moon!

Where we Stand

In all, some 4,316 pictures were taken of the Moon, all of higher resolution than is possible from Earthbound telescopes.  JPL identified dozens of new craters, never before seen.  One cluster was probably made by rocks thrown into the sky when the giant impact crater, Copernicus, was formed ages ago, two hundred miles away from where Ranger 7 crashed.  More importantly, NASA has gotten its first close-up look of the lunar surface; JPL scientists have identified favorable and treacherous landscapes for the upcoming Apollo missions to land on.

There will be at least two more Block III Ranger flights aimed at other parts of the Moon.  Plans to continue the series through to #14 are in doubt given that the upcoming Lunar Orbiter project (managed by Langley Research Center in Virginia) may already be flying by the time the later Rangers are ready.

And what about the Soviets?  What happened to the madcap competitive days of 1958-9?

As it turns, out, the USSR has had just one lunar probe since then: Luna 4.  Launched during the gloomiest days of Ranger, on April 2, 1963, it was highly touted by Soviet news services.  Three days later, as the craft approached the Moon, TASS and Izvestia reported that a bonanza of science would be forthcoming.

Then…nothing.  The probe sailed past the Moon with hardly any coverage.  A couple of conferences scheduled for the discussion of Luna 4's results were quietly canceled.  Per the British astronomer, Sir Bernard Lovell, the craft actually failed in its mission to enter lunar orbit.

This brings up the interesting possibility that the Soviets have launched other Moon missions and that none of them have been successful enough to be publicly announced.  That would explain some of the Kosmos flights about which the Russians have been so terse in their reporting.  It may well be that the Soviet Union is finding the Moon as tough a target as the Americans were.

The bottom line, then, is this: After five years of diligent effort (presumably by both of the planet's Superpowers), the Americans have emerged the victors in this second stage of the Moon race.

Who will win the third?

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




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Magazine

[July 22, 1964] (August 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

(If you found us at San Diego Comic-Con and can't figure out why we seem to be 55 years behind you, this should clear things up!)

Bayside Heroics

This weekend, the family and I took a mini-vacation in our home town.  Living in the suburbs as we do, it's easy to forget that San Diego has so much to offer.  Balboa Park, Old Town, the Gaslamp, not to mention the docks and the waterfront. 

Of course, being who we are, we needed some kind of event to anchor the trip, such excuse being provided by a little get together of comics enthusiasts ambitiously dubbed "Comic-Con."  I think San Diego is big enough to warrant a real SFF con — perhaps we'll get our equivalent of Lunacon someday?

Anyway, time travel was the theme, and I ran across this fellow who looked a bit like a medieval version of me:

There were also these fantastic women dressed up as Spy vs. Spy from Mad Magazine.  Very impressive!

All was not roses, however.  I took along some reading material to while away the calm hours by the hotel poolside, a bunch of books and the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  I had (dim) hopes that this installment might reverse, or at least halt, the declining trend in the magazine's quality.  Alas, such was not meant to be.

The Issue at Hand


Cover by James Roth

A Bulletin from the Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Research at Marmouth, Mass., by Wilma Shore

It's always a good idea to start your magazine with a hook, your best stuff.  Instead, Editor Davidson led the August 1964 issue with a short piece by newcomer Wilma Shore, a dialog between a scientist from the present and an everyman from the future — one that proves utterly fruitless.  It's the sort of throwaway gag that Jack Benny might make mildly amusing.  Here, it just droops like a wet rag.

Two stars.

"I Had Vacantly Crumpled It into My Pocket … But By God, Eliot, It Was a Photograph from Life!", by Joanna Russ

Evoking but not aping Lovecraft, Joanna Russ' latest turn involves a fellow with a taste for the pulps and nothing fantastical written since 1940ish.  An abrasive anti-social, he unexpectedly finds his love in a park, her nose in a tome by the long-dead H.P.  But does she really exist?  And what ominous specter animates her, gives her purpose?

Russ never fails to deliver something atmospheric, but in the end, I found the piece as insubstantial as the story's mysterious femme fatale.

Three stars.

Poor Planet, by J. T. McIntosh

A few pages into this "latest" tale by McIntosh, I had a distinct impression of deja vu.  In fact, my description from his story in the April 1959 Satellite, The Solomon Plan, will summarize things quite adequately:

"A terran spy tries to succeed where all of his predecessors have failed before: solving the mystery of the backward planet of [Solitaire].  Where the other planets of the 26th century terran federation enjoy a correspondingly advanced quality of life, the hyper-patriotic [Solitaire] seems to be stuck in the 20th century.  Moreover, their population is unaccountably low given the length of time it has been settled."

In fact, Poor Planet is almost identical to the prior tale (which, itself, was a reprint!) including the sub-plot involving our middle-aged spy meeting with, and ultimately turning, a young local spy.  However, in this one, the spy spends much of his time leering at the girl, noting her affections for him, and then decides that it's best if he be her new father-figure.  Because all girls (even ones who are adults) need a daddy, and her current one wasn't doing his job very well.

I thought the original story decent if somewhat implausible.  This new version is the worse for its ickyness.

Two stars.

Nada, by Thomas M. Disch

I had such high hopes for this one.  It starts like something from the pen of Zenna Henderson, a sweeping piece about a teacher trying to connect with a gifted but apathetic pre-teen.  But what starts out like the next installment of The People falters and ends as a lesser episode of The Twilight Zone. 

Two stars.

The Red Cells, by Theodore L. Thomas

Another short "Science Springboard" piece in which Mr. Thomas says that, since red blood cells are more robust in our youth, that the key to youth is to strengthen our red blood cells.  Correlation, causation… what's the difference?

Two stars.

Epitaph for the Future, by Ethan Ayer

Decent but forgettable poetry about a man (or a planet) and his/its desire for a plain, unadorned grave.

Three stars?

A Nice, Shady Place, by Dennis Etchison

Another newcomer, and a story straight from Weird Tales.  Young woman with freckled skin (we are told this many times) goes to summer camp with her lip-licking (we are told this many times) boyfriend to find out what became of her brother.  Turns out that the campers are all forcibly made hosts to salamander-thingies that take over their minds.  A la The Puppet Masters.

Young Etchison has not yet learned Polonius's dictum, and the piece is pure corn.

Two stars.

Redman, by Robert Lipsyte and Thomas Rogers

Lipsyte and Rogers offer a perhaps prescient look into the television of tomorrow, when shows won't just simulate violence but will actually feature real violence.  In this case, the program is Massacre, portraying the slaughter of the White Man at the hand of the Indians.  Except, in this case, the Blue-eyed Devils aren't actors.

At first, I thought this was going to be an interesting take on (perhaps justified) revenge by the consistently decimated natives of our continent, as seen by an actor who derives lineage from both camps.  In the end, I'm really not sure what the two authors were trying to say.

Two stars.

The Days of Our Years, by Isaac Asimov

If you want to know how the calendar got to be the way it is today, the good Doctor's article is a nice primer on the subject.  There's little in here I didn't know, but it was a fun read, nevertheless.  Also, I happen to know that the entertainer, whom he got off the hot seat by performing in his place, was none other than Tom Lehrer.

Four stars.

When the Change-Winds Blow, by Fritz Leiber

This one started well enough — a fellow wings through the air of partially terraformed Mars, trying to forget the atomic destruction that savaged Earth and killed his would-be beloved.  But it then segues into a vividly (one might uncharitably say "purplishly") rendered lucid dream involving a cathedral of sand and people from a poem.  I didn't like it.  I'm sure it'll be nominated for the Hugo.

One star.

In the Calendar of Saints, by Leonard Tushnet

Last up is (yet another) Deal with the Devil story, this one won by Old Nick.  The gotcha is only mildly clever, but the portrayal of Communist Poland, with which Tushnet is well-acquainted, is fascinating.

Three stars.

Summing Up

It's a good thing the rest of the weekend was such a blast because this issue was really quite lacking.  Oh well.  You tune in for the sardonic (half) wit, right?  On the positive side, there was some discussion of a renewal of The Twilight Zone.  The issue is finding a new host since Serling doesn't want the job anymore.

I have a modest proposal…

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




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Book

[July 18, 1964] Dog Day Crop (July's Galactoscope)

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by Gideon Marcus

Thank you for joining this month's edition of Galactoscope, where we plow through all the books that came out this most recent month of June/July 1964! Don't thank us; it's all part of the job…

(and if you found us at San Diego Comic-Con and can't figure out why we seem to be 55 years behind you, this should clear things up!)

Times Two

Time Travel has been a staple of the genre since before the genre had been formalized. H. G. Wells' The Time Machine is still a classic, and it was written last century. In the Journey's short tenure, we have encountered at least a dozen tales involving chronological trips, with notable books including John Brunner's Times without Number and Wallace West's River of Time, not to mention the stand-out tales, All you Zombies!, by Robert Heinlein (and his less stand-out tale, By His Bootstraps) and The Deaths of Ben Baxter, by Robert Sheckley.

This month, we have two variations on the theme, both invoking time in their title:

Time Tunnel, by Murray Leinster

As the specter of nuclear war threatens to manifest, a post-graduate student named Harrison is summering in Paris, waiting for school to resume. By chance, he runs across Pepe, a fiery Spaniard (are there any other kinds in books?) and fellow former student who reunites Harrison with Professor Carroll, late of the archaeology department of Harrison and Pepe's alma mater. It turns out that Carroll has made a tremendous discovery: he as learned how to bridge the gulf between eras. No special machine is required; one must simply find a sizeable hunk of cast metal that has been left alone since the time of its forger.

Carroll's private time tunnel goes back exactly 160 years to the France of Napoleon's time. Thus far, the professor has made little use of it, save to satisfy his wife's pecuniary avarice. She has enlisted her brother to start a little shop that sells perfectly preserved antiques pinched from 1804. But when the Harrison learns that someone from 1964 is undertaking to sell secrets of the future to the scientists of the past, he and his compatriots must stop the interference before history changes for good. In addition, they must complete their mission before rising international tensions instigate a nuclear war in the present, sealing off (and perhaps destroying) the time tunnel.

It's a great setup! We've seen fixed tunnels to the past, as recently as in River in Time, but they aren't common in the genre. I find them particularly compelling as they make points in the past more tangible destinations. One can't pick historical highlights at random; they have to soak in the local atmosphere one second at a time, just like the natives. I've even toyed with the idea of making a fanzine with that conceit, perhaps with a time shift of (to pick a length at random) 55 years. That would put me in 1909 with plenty of time to capture the pulp era as it happens.

Something to think about.

The problem with Tunnel is the same problem that has bedeviled most of his latest stuff — it's too long. Indeed, Tunnel is about three times longer than the story calls for, in large part because the author repeats everything he says several times throughout the book. Heck, Harrison's party doesn't even get to old France until halfway through the book, and then it mostly stays to the back roads and farms that have not significantly changed in "nearly two centuries" as Leinster insists on calling about a century-and-a-half.

It's too bad. There's an exciting novella here under all the chaff.

Three stars.

The Time Twisters, by J. Hunter Holly

The newest book by Ms. (the J. stands for Joan) Holly has the opposite problem: the writing is quite compelling, but the story doesn't work.

The time is present day, the protagonists the Garrison family — Rick, Lynn, and six year-old daughter Tina. We start with the family already ill at ease. A neighborhood boy has gone missing, and shortly before, a big brown patch appeared in his yard. Then, while touring an amusement park to distract themselves, a cluster of bright lights appear in the sky, eerie and menacing.

Over the course of the next few days, more children disappear. Tina longs to be allowed outside, affected by a sirensong the adults cannot hear. A monster appears on the block, terrifying the neighborhood. The Army appears and sets up camp around the small Great Lakes town. Throughout it all, Rick is suspicious of his new boarder, Marcus Jantz. That is, until Marcus helps defeat the monster, which turns out to be a tin-plated prop. Obviously, the alien invasion shtick is a ruse, a cover for something else. But what?

It turns out (as has been teased since the beginning, but it takes Rick a while to learn) that Marcus is actually an agent from the future. In this future, aliens have appeared, demanding millions of their children. But humanity of the future is near-sterile, thanks to an overabundance of nuclear energy. Their only source for children is the past, hence a series of raids throughout history. Indeed, the Pied Piper legend has roots in truth, a kidnapping strike from a century long distant. In the end, Rick follows the last child to be abducted, his own, into the future, where he makes a desperate plea to Marcus to let their children go.

The Time Twisters is a very quick read by a talented author (who, like Andre Norton, stays out of the genre magazines). The characters are nicely drawn, the situations nicely tense. Unfortunately, the plot is absurd. Any people with time travel have already won any war they might face. Moreover, surely the indiscriminate removal of ancestors must destroy countless future generations.

Still, I was entertained on my latest trip to Japan, and thus, I give this very flawed piece a full three stars.

And now, I turn things over to Mark Yon, who contributes the second half of this month's column…

Ace Double F-275: No Truce with Terra, by Philip E. High; and The Duplicators, by Murray Leinster


by Mark Yon

My latest read is one that I had delivered to me from my friends in the States. As it is an Ace Double, and being someone never to knowingly avoid a cliché, I must say that it is a book of two halves (although The Duplicators is a little longer than the other story): as befits a double book, they are quite different in tone and style.

No Truce with Terra

No Truce with Terra examines the premise of what might happen if Earth was invaded — not by the traditional all-guns-blazing War of the Worlds style invasion but instead by stealth. Written by Brit Philip E. High, it begins quite normally but soon becomes strange. Scientist Lipscombe goes home from work one evening to find that his fibroplastic home will not allow him entrance. All attempts to break-in are thwarted.

Furthermore, over the next few days the house changes shape and unusual objects appear to grow around the outside of the house. There’s some electric blue grass and a plant that gives those who touch it a near-lethal electric shock, for example. Impressions are that they are alien, a means of colonising the planet before taking overall control, a bridgehead before the full-blown invasion.

Michael Lipscombe and his colleague Peter Collard become part of the scientific observation group. Then the “house” is surrounded by the British Army and attacked, the house retaliates – “they have set the dog on us” is the summary from Lipscombe.

Lipscombe and Collard are evacuated to a research centre in the North of Scotland as the alien threat spreads. With their mentor Stanley Dyson, obviously “one of the greatest names in science”, they determine that the invading force is a form of “natural electronic life” which has evolved naturally on another planet.

The scientists create a contraption that warps the fabric of space time and allows the humans to be granted access to the alien world. They do so, believing that such an action would create an escape route for humans and also allow them to create a secret base that can organise retaliatory actions.

All of this is basically World War Two re-written, of course. It’s interesting, if a little predictable, beginning with lots of stoic scientists discussing things and then frantic battles between the military and the aliens.

What we also get is the alien perspective, that they are willing to discuss terms of future contact through Collard, who they select as an emissary between the two races. The aliens are odd but not the unholy terrors that other stories would have you believe, and it is this aspect that makes this fast-paced story readable.

Three stars.

The Duplicators, by Murray Leinster

The second story is longer (an expansion, in fact, of Lord of the Uffts), but I found it less enjoyable. This time around it is the humans doing the invading, in a faux- Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court kind of way. The Duplicators tells us of Link Denham, a non-too-scrupulous gadabout who, when he drunkenly signs himself up as an astrogator on the not-so-good ship Glamorgan under the equally drunk Captain Thistlethwaite, finds himself on the way to the mysterious planet Sord III. Thistlethwaite claims there are riches beyond compare there, which he is willing to share with Denham in return for his help.

On arriving at the planet, they meet two types of extraterrestrials. Firstly there are the rather sarcastic and oppressed pig-like aliens known as Uffts, who claim their ship on its landing, and secondly there are the humans, led by Harl, who live in Households and run the planet’s society using the Uffts as servants. Their response to Thistlethwaite’s arrival is to arrest him and agree to execute him for spreading sedition – for in offering to pay to send a message to his seller Old Man Addison he has caused great offense. Doing business, except with Uffts, is a major insult on Sord III.

Link’s attempt at rescuing Thistlethwaite – for how else is he going to escape the planet? – leads to Link also being arrested by Harl’s Household. Instead of being grateful, the non-too-stable Thistlethwaite seems annoyed, even betrayed, by Link for abandoning their spaceship.

By offering their spaceship and cargo as a guest-gift to Harl, Link manages to persuade the Householder to avoid hanging them, but the rather unpredictable Thistlethwaite, still determined to make a business deal and participate in the socially abhorrent activity of business, believes that Link has betrayed him.

To complicate things further, there’s a revolution brewing from the down-trodden Uffts. A deal is made by Thistlethwaite with the Uffts to arrange his escape and take advantage of the unrest felt by the enslaved group. Link is ‘fired’ by Thistlethwaite.

On a more positive note Link also meets Thana, Harl’s sister. She reveals the reason for Thistlethwaite’s interest in the planet, that the aliens of Sord III have the technology to duplicate objects with dupliers, something that Thistlethwaite believes would be worth a great deal. Harl disagrees, his reasoning being that such an invention would lead to the collapse of civilisation as societies become too lazy to bother working.

Thistlethwaite’s escape leads to a chase to try and recapture him before he makes a deal with Old Man Addison for dupliers. The dilemma of the novel then becomes how Link can manage to keep the dupliers a secret whilst not allowing Thistlethwaite to exploit the aliens on Sord III. It may not be a surprise that Link’s ingenuity saves the day, avoids an Ufftian Revolution, keep Thistlethwaite pleased and ends things happily ever after for Link and Thana.

The Duplicators is one of those heartily humorous tales, a story of manners and misunderstandings that is all about the behaviour of “strangers in a strange land”. It seems to be meant to be a lighter counterpoint tale to the Philip High story, a parody of politics and behaviour that is clearly meant to strike the reader as amusing but for me really wasn’t. In fact, at times there are places where it all becomes a bit silly. On the positive side, it’s well written, if predictable, but Animal Farm it isn’t.  2.5 stars.

Together these tales do what Ace Doubles tend to do – put on display deliberately different aspects of the genre. Whilst the two stories are undeniably entertaining, in the bigger scheme of things they are really minor league stuff. They are not the best Double I’ve ever read, but not the worst either and frankly neither story is the best work I’ve read from either author. File under “OK but not essential.”

Summing Up

I suppose one can't expect more from an average month than a bunch of average books. But, boy… it'd sure be nice!

We'll just have to wait for the next Galactoscope to see if our fortunes change (hopefully for the better…)

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




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