All posts by Gideon Marcus

Book, Magazine

[March 3, 1964] Out and about (March 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Braving My Shadow

Every year on February 2, a groundhog named Punxatawney Phil decides if it's worth vacating his winter hiding place before spring. 

For Galactic Gideon, on the other hand, the end of winter always happens in February.  The annual convention season wraps up around Thanksgiving with the little gathering of Los Angeles Science Fiction Fans called "Loscon."  There is a lull of events in December and January, but well before the vernal equinox, the Journey's dance card is full.  In fact, I've already been to two events in as many weeks, and I've got another one planned next weekend! 

My birthday weekend was spent at a small Los Angeles conclave called Escapade, where we discussed Johnson's tax cut, The Outer Limits vs. The Twilight Zone, and the more peculiar elements of the TV show, Burke's Law.  Unusually for sf-related gatherings, most of the attendees were women.

Last night, I presented at a local pub on the woman pioneers of space, the scientists, engineers, and computers I first wrote about a couple of years ago.  It was a tremendous event, and I am grateful to the folks who crowded the venue to bursting.

The Issue at Hand

In contrast to these past two events, the last magazine of the month is mostly stag.  Nevertheless, the March 1964 Analog is still a pretty good, if not outstanding, read:


Cover by Schoenherr, illustrating Spaceman

Clouds, Bubbles and Sparks, by Edward C. Walterscheid

There are three qualities by which I rate science fact articles: Are they fun to read, do I learn something, and are there bits where I feel compelled to joggle the elbow of the person next to me (usually my wife) and relate to them a neat bit of scientific trivia.

This latest piece, on the detection of subatomic particles, excels in all three.  If you ever wanted to know how a geiger counter works, or what a cloud chamber is for, or what those tubes in our scientific spacecraft do, this is the article for you. 

Five stars.

Spaceman (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster

The dean of Golden Age science fiction returns with yet another entry in his well-developed galactic setting.  In the Leinster-verse, perhaps best represented in his Med Series stories, interstellar travel is a bit like ocean travel in the 19th Century — reliable but not instant.  Colonies are days or weeks apart, and what separates a thriving hub from a backwater is the existence of a magnetic landing grid on which cargo ships can land and trade.

Spaceman is the story of Braden, a ship's mate who seeks passage aboard the Rim Star.  This giant vessel is an experiment — it carries an entire, unassembled landing grid in its hold, and it also possesses the rockets to make a landing on a world without a grid.  Having one ship bring an entire landing grid for installation has never been tried before, but no one is certain that the ship can fulfill this purpose.  Moreover, there are all sorts of bad omens for Braden: he is waylaid by the ship's crew while on his way to his interview; the captain seems negligent to a criminal degree, and the obsequiousness of the ship's steward rings false.  In spite of these alarms, Braden takes the job anyway, feeling it his duty to see the ship through its special mission, and also to protect the six passengers the Rim Star has aboard.

The other shoe drops near the end of this first part of what's promised to be a two-part serial.  The crew is, in fact, up to no good, and the entire ship is imperiled.  Stay tuned.

It's not a bad yarn.  The plot is interesting and the characters reasonably developed.  Where it creaks is the writing.  Leinster has developed an odd sort of plodding and padded style of late, with endless sequences of short sentences and whole paragraphs that repeat information we already know.  Used sparingly, I suppose it's a style that could be effective.  Used excessively, it slows things down.

And then, there's this gem of a line (an internal musing of Braden's) on page 36:

When a man admits that a woman is a better man than he is, he may be honest, but he should be ashamed.

Three stars, barely.  We'll see what happens next month.

The Pie-Duddle Puddle, by Walt and Leigh Richmond

Recently, in Papa needs shorts, the Richmonds showed us how a four-year old child can save the day even with an imperfect understanding of the situation.  The husband-and-wife writing team try it again, this time from an even more exotic viewpoint (which you'll guess pretty quickly).  It's not nearly as effective or plausible a piece.  Two stars.

Outward Bound, by Norman Spinrad

I'm getting a little worried about new author, Norman Spinrad.  He hit it out of the park with his first story, and scored a double with his second.  The latest, about a decades-long relativistic chase across the galaxy in pursuit of the man who has the secret to superluminous travel, is barely a walk to first base.  It's not bad; there's just no mystery to the thing.  Three stars.

Third Alternative, by Robin Wilson

On the other hand, this first story by new author Robin Wilson is rather charming.  It's a time travel piece featuring a fellow who goes back from 2012 to 1904 with naught but what he can cram into his bodily orifices (inorganic matter doesn't transport).  You don't find out his purpose until the end, and it's an engaging, effective piece.  Another three-star story, but at the high end of the range.

Summing up

Reviewing the numbers, it seems like leaving the burrow was worth it.  Least mag of the bunch was Amazing at 2.3 stars and with no four star tales.  Next was IF at 2.4 stars, again with no exceptional pieces.  Fantastic clocked in at 2.7, but it had the excellent The Graveyard Heart by Zelazny; New Worlds, three stars, had Ballard's The Terminal Breach.  At the positive end of the scale were F&SF and Analog at 3.3 stars — their non-fiction articles were the real stand-outs.  Finally, Worlds of Tomorrow was mostly superior, definitely worth the 50 cent cover price.

Women had a banner month, producing 5.5 out of 39 new pieces (14.1%). 

Looks like we'll have a warm spring!

[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

[February 21, 1964] For the fans (March 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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[Due to an oversight (clearly!), Galactic Journey was not included on Locus' Awards Ballot this year.  If you're a fan of the Journey, we be grateful if you'd fill us in under Fanzine!]


by Gideon Marcus

A New Leaf

Today's special birthday (mine!) edition of the Journey is for the fans.  It seems F&SF has been running a three-part series on current (as of 1964) fandom, and it occurred to me it might be fun to spend a little time on the authors who appear in this month's issue.  I also want to take the effort to show the context of each writer's work.  This is in response to the letter of one of our readers who made me realize I can be a bit harsh (even in jest) on a story.  The fact is that writing is hard, and even the worst stories that get printed are usually, though not always, better than most unpublished work. 

Which is not to say that anything like Garrett's Queen Bee will ever get a pass, but I'm going to try to be a bit nicer.  I will, however, never ask John Boston to change his style; when Amazing is bad, well, you'll know…

The Issue at Hand


This picture, by Mel Hunter, is almost worth 40 cents by itself

Automatic Tiger, by Kit Reed

Kit Reed is one of the writers featured on the Journey whom I am honored to call "friend."  She began publishing fiction in 1958, and she is (so far as I know) an F&SF exclusive — and what fortune that is for the magazine!  Her work is "soft" SF, where it is SF at all, but since her rough start, Ms. Reed has been a reliably above-average contributor.  In particular, her To Lift a Ship, almost a Zenna Henderson The People story, got my nomination for the Galactic Star one year.  Sadly, Kit has moved away and left no forwarding address, so our correspondence has come to an end. 

Nevertheless, I can still enjoy her fiction.  Tiger, the lead tale in this issue, is a vivid piece about Benjamin, a nebbishy fellow who acquires a mechanical tiger, which instantly bonds to his master.  Just the knowledge that he is the proud owner of such a creature fills the man with confidence, and he quickly rises in social stature and success.  His downfall is an expensive woman and hubris' inevitable companion, nemesis.

It's not SF at all, nor does it make a great deal of sense, but as a fairy tale, it's worthy reading.  I have only one significant issue with the story, but it's a central one: I was disappointed that Benjamin ends the story roughly the same as how he started, though now aware of what he's lost.  It's a bit like the short story, Flowers for Algernon, except without the inspiring finish.  A strong three stars for this flawed jewel.

Sacheverell, by Avram Davidson

More beard than man, Avram Davidson has been a big name in the field since the mid-50s, charming science fictioneers with his sometimes moody, sometimes effervescent short stories.  Right around 1962, when he took over the editorship of F&SF, his writing became a bit overwrought and self-indulgent.  It's gotten to the point that I generally approach his byline with trepidation (and his editorial blurbs that come before the stories in his mag have gotten bad again, too — thankfully, he's stopped bothering to preface Asimov, at least). 

Sacheverell does nothing to improve his reputation.  It's about a sapient circus monkey who has been kidnapped, rescued in the end by his carny companions.  The story left little impression on me while I read it and none after, such that I had to reread it to remember what it was about.

I suppose forgettable is better than awful?  Two stars.

Survival of the Fittest, by Jack Sharkey

I've been particularly harsh on Jack Sharkey.  No, not the boxer (who could pound me into hamburger), but the prolific author who has been around since 1959.  That's because, while he is capable of quite decent work, much of what he's turned out is pretty bad. 

Survival falls somewhere in-between, I guess.  It's a variation on the, "is my real life really the dream?" shtick mixed with a healthy dose of solipsism.  Not great, but I did remember the piece, at least.  On the low end of three stars.

The Prodigals, by Jean Bridge

The first poem of the issue is by newcomer Jean Bridge, and it suggests that after humanity has matured out of a need for interstellar wanderlust, Earth will be waiting, no matter how long it takes.

Unless the sun eats our planet first, of course, though we may be advanced enough by then to save our home out of nostalgia.  Nice sentiment, nicely framed.  Four stars.

Forget It!, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor probably needs no introduction, having been a titan of sf since his debut in 1938, and a deity of science fact from the 1950s.  However, I will note with pride that he is, like me, a Jewish Atheist of Russian extraction, and of very similar age (we're both the same vintage of 39), spectacle frame, height, and writing style.

This particular non-fiction piece, on the superfluous weights and measures we'd be better off chucking, kept me company while I watched my daughter compete (victoriously) at an inter-school academic competition.  It's an interesting article, noting that just as the English language has regularized itself almost to the point of sense, but with lingering spelling issues that confound any new learner, so have pecks and bushels and furlongs and fortnights overstayed their welcome.  It's time that they went the way of florins and chaldrons and ells.  Let's all adopt the metric system like sensible people!

Who can argue with that?  Four stars.

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is, of course, a fixture of the Victorian age whose wit still finds currency today.  This piece, which I read on a long walk one fine morning, is a pleasant tale about Lord Arthur, a young aristocrat with love, money, and not a care in the world — until a cheiromancer informs him he will commit a murder in the near future.  Convinced of his fate, the young Lord undertakes to perform the deed in as personally nondisruptive manner as possible. 

It reads well, but the ending is just a bit too pat and inconsequential.  And while I am appreciative of the opportunity to rediscover lost classics, I am not certain why Davidson chose to devote half an issue to one.  I should think that a modern magazine could do with less 1887 and more 1987.

Three stars.

Pure Water from Salt, by Theodore L. Thomas

Theodore Thomas oscillates between mildly engaging and somewhat dreary.  A lawyer by profession, he is best with fiction that explores interesting aspects of patent law.  This particular piece is about the value of adapting people to process salt water as opposed to pursuing desalination.  It feels like an incomplete story outline that Davidson bought to fill a vignette-sized hole.

Two stars — one for each page.

Incident in the IND, by Harry Harrison

After his debut novel-sized effort, the superlative Deathworld, Harrison seemed to be in a bit of a rut with none of his stuff cracking the three-star mark.  But Incident, about the evil that lurks in the shadows of the subway tunnels, is a nice piece, indeed.  It's got a sharp, atmospheric style that is a big shift from the author's usual Laumer-esque breeziness.  If I have any complaint, it's just that I wish it had been the fellow and not the lady who gets et in the end.

Four stars.

Humanoid Sacrifice, by J. T. McIntosh

Scotsman James Murdoch MacGregor, who goes by J. T. McIntosh, has been around since 1951.  He hit it out of the park early on with one of my favorites, Hallucination Orbit, and his One in Three Hundred series of stories was good, too.  He's another author who has been in kind of a slump lately, but I always hold out hope for his work, given his prior glories.

Humanoid Sacrifice is an engaging-enough tale with two parallel plot threads involving the same protagonist.  A human troubleshooter is employed by an advanced alien race to fix their rebelling weather control machine.  At the same time, the aliens inform the repairman that they have a human female in suspended animation, a specimen snatched from Earth for study back in 1850.  She is thawed and a written correspondence between the two humans ensues.

It's cute and readable and that's about all I can say.  Three stars.

The Shortest Science Fiction Love Story Ever Written, by Jeffrey Renner

I don't know Jeff Renner, but I think the magazine would have been better served filling these two inches with one of those little EMSH drawings they used to have.  One star.

The Conventional Approach, by Robert Bloch

Bob Bloch has been a pro author for a couple of decades now, creating enduring classics of horror and science fiction.  Like Wilson Tucker, he's also kept one foot firmly in the fan world that spawned him.  He took over Imagination's "Fandora's Box" column from Mari Wolf in '56 (I still miss her) for instance.  Now he has an excellent article on the history of Worldcon, which was so good and witty that I had to read it aloud to my wife on a walk this morning.

I suspect it will be as relevant amd rewarding 55 years from now as it is today.  Five stars.

The Lost Leonardo, by J. G. Ballard

Last up is a novelette by a UK author who has made a big splash on both sides of the Pond.  His Drowned World garnered a Galactic Star from us, and many of his stories have gotten four or more stars.  There's a somber, almost ethereal quality to his work that works or doesn't depending on your mood, I suppose.  I liked this one, in which a certain wanderer of Biblical fame becomes an art thief to do penance for his sins.

It's pretty neat, straightforward but well-executed.  Four stars.

Summing Up

Goodness, it feels good to be positive for a change!  It doesn't hurt that this has been one of the better issues of F&SF, a magazine that has been largely in the doldrums since Davidson took over.  Do tell me what you think of these stories and of the fine folk who wrote them!

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Book, Magazine

[February 9, 1964] Bargain Basement (March 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

Value Shopping

The price of science fiction digests has steadily gone up over the years.  In the early 50s, the standard cost was 35 cents.  I think the last hold-out at that price point was Fantastic.  Now Galaxy and Analog cost four bits, and the cheapest mags go for 40 cents.  Still, that latter price is a steal when the fiction is all good. 

IF is one of the lower rent mags, but whether or not the March 1964 IF gives you value for your money…well, you'll have to read on to find out:

The Issue at Hand


Cover by Norman Nodel

In Saturn's Rings, by Robert F. Young

Every author has their own quality curve.  Some, like Daniel Keyes, explode onto the scene with a masterpiece and then spend the rest of their career trying to live up to it.  Others start off-key but only improve over time (perhaps Rosel George Brown fits this category, though I've not read her very earliest stories.  Randy Garrett and Bob Silverberg might fit, too.) Still others oscillate between greatness and crap (viz. Poul Anderson). 

Robert F. Young is yet another kind of author.  He started decent, rose to stunning heights with pieces like To Fell a Tree, and then descended into mediocrity, mostly recycling fairy tales and myths. 

Take Rings, for example.  A old man named Matthew North comes back from a far planet, his hold full of the waters of the fountain of youth.  His employer, Zeus Christopolous IX, has built an Attic Greek themed Elysium on the Saturnian moon, Hyperion, populated by robots who look like Alexander the Great, Pindar, Helen of Troy, etc.  Zeus is absent when North returns, but his wife, Hera, demands receipt of the cargo.  She undertakes to threaten, cajole, and seduce the elixir out of Matthew.  She almost succeeds, but then Matthew finds that Hera has done away with her husband, Clytemnestra-style, and he calls the cops instead.


Nice illo by Lawrence, though

It's all very moody and metaphorical, but I never got much out of it — and there are few folks who dig the classics like I do.  Two stars, and a chorus of "Woe!  Woe!  Woe!"

Guardian, by Jerome Bixby

This short story is depicted by this month's striking cover.  In brief, an archaeologist and his assistant land on Mars and discover the robotic guardian that defeated the armies of two invading worlds.  If I didn't know better, I'd say this was a deliberate send-up of pulp style and themes, up to and including a Mars with a breathable atmosphere and degenerate post-civilized natives, a "Planet X" that exploded into the Asteroid Belt, and even the use of the word "cyclopean" (although Bixby uses it to mean "one-eyed" rather than "really big"). 

Send-up or not, it doesn't really belong in the pages of a modern magazine.  Two stars.

Almost Eden, by Jo Friday

This month's new author wrote about a planet whose dominant life form has been pressured by evolution to live as four different creatures simultaneously.  Each is specialized for a particular purpose — hunting, digestion, food storage, and…well, you'll figure it out soon enough. 

It's good, though a little rough around the edges, and I can't shake the feeling I've seen this gimmick before.  Help me out?

Three stars.

The City That Grew in the Sea, by Keith Laumer


Some typically Gaughan work — looks like something out of Clarke's The Sea People

I find myself no longer looking forward to Laumer's stories of Retief, the super-spy who works for the ineffectual Terran Confederation.  This one's not bad, really, about a couple of acquisitive agents and their plan to commit genocide on a water-dwelling race to get access to their gold.  And I appreciated that the adversary race, the Groaci, are not universally bad guys.  But I'm just getting tired of the schtick.  I feel like Retief now hamstrings Laumer as opposed to enabling him.

Three stars.

What Crooch Did, by Jesse Friedlander

Crooch was a promoter who revived the increasingly staged art of "professional" wrestling and evolved (devolved?) it into gladiatorial combat.  This is his story.  All four pages' worth.

Two stars.

Miracle on Michigan and How to Have a Hiroshima, by Theodore Sturgeon

There's nary a peep from editor Fred Pohl this bi-month.  He's probably passed out from having to edit Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow as well as this mag.  Instead, we've got a pair of short observations from Ted Sturgeon.  The first is a paean to the twin Marina Towers in Chicago, perhaps a preview of the arcologies of the future. 

The second is a prediction that the next big scientific breakthrough that will revolutionize the world will come in the field of psychology, maybe something to do with hypnotism.

Your guess is as good as his.  Three stars.

Three Worlds to Conquer (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


McKenna's stuff is serviceable, if not exciting

Finally, we get the second half of Anderson's latest book.  There are two parallel threads that run through it.  Firstly, we have a renegade Naval fleet that has seized control of the Jovian system of moons.  At the same time, down on the surface of Jupiter, the evil Ulunt-Khuzul people have besieged the territory of the peaceful Nyarrans.  Each beleaguered group has its champion: the Ganymedans have a middle-aged man named Fraser; the Nyarrans have a plucky resister called Theor.  And, thanks to the neutrino radio link between them, they are the key to each other's success.

Part 2 was better than Part 1, which was turgid and unreadable.  I still found the depiction of Jovian life both unrealistic as well as overly conventional.  Fraser's story is interesting, but the interactions between him and his partner, the turncoat (but not really!) Lorraine, are hackneyed in the extreme.  This was really brought home to me when my daughter, the Young Traveler, showed me a story she'd just written.  Her characters were better drawn than Fraser and Lorraine — and she's only 14!

Anderson can do better, has done much better.  That's what makes churned out stuff like this so disappointing.

Two stars for this installment, one and a half for the whole thing.

Summing up

Was this month's IF worth 40 cents?  I mean, you get what you pay for, right?  I suppose I'm happy for the introduction to Jo Friday, and I'm glad the Anderson didn't end terribly.  But Fred Pohl really needs to start saving the good stuff for the neglected sister of his trio…

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Science / Space Race

[February 5, 1964] That was the Month that Was (January's Space Roundup)

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by Gideon Marcus

Another Lunar Black Eye

NASA's Project Ranger, which is basically a projectile aimed at the moon, has logged failure after failure since it started back in 1961.  The first ones in the series, Rangers 1 and 2, were just Earth-orbiting satellites designed to test the engineering and return scientific data.  Both of their missions were busts due to fault Agena second stages on their Atlas-Agena boosters.

Rangers 3 to 5 were bona-fide moon missions with giant pimples on their noses to do a bit of lunar geology (or selenology).  None of them completed their missions: Ranger 3 missed its target and was pointed the wrong way to boot, Ranger 4 hit the moon but was brain-dead from orbit onward, and Ranger 5 both missed and stopped working long before it got near the moon.

With five cracked eggs' experience to draw from, NASA tried again in January 30, 1964, with the first of the TV-armed Rangers, #6.  Aside from an odd voltage spike early on, Ranger 6 seemed to be working fine.  The spacecraft made a textbook-perfect flight all the way to its target, Mare Tranquillitas, impacting on schedule. 

But its TV camera never turned on.

I've been told that the fellow who announced the flight in real-time to the press has resigned from this duty, unable to go through such a harrowing experience again.  Who can blame him?  This is the sixth Ranger and the tenth failed (counting Pioneer Atlas Able) moon mission in a row.  On the other hand, and this is probably weak comfort at best, Ranger 6 did perform perfectly all the way until the end.  I'm sure Our American Cousin was a fine play, too.

There are three more third edition Rangers left to launch.  Let's hope at least one of them will be successful.  Right now, this program is making Project Vanguard look like an unalloyed success.

Stillborn Quintuplets

Speaking of Vanguard, on January 24, 1964, the Air Force launched another of its multi-satellite missions, attempting to orbit an unprecedented five spacecraft at once.  "Composite 1" comprised LOFTI 2, which was to study the ionosphere, Secor and Surcal, which would have helped the Army and Navy (respectively) calibrate their tracking radars, and Injun 2, a radiation satellite made by the University of Iowa (the same folks who discovered the Van Allen Belts.

Composite 1 also included SOLRAD (Solar Radiation) 4, and this is the Vanguard tie-in.  You see, the spottily successful Vanguard, which was America's first space project, was originally designed to study the sun's output of X-rays and ultraviolet light.  Unfortunately, the last of the Vanguards, number 3, was swamped with radiation from the Van Allen Belts, and its sun-pointed experiments were made useless.  End of story, right?

Well, SOLRAD 1, launched in 1960, was essentially Vanguard 4.  It was made by the same folks (the Naval Research Laboratory), used the same design, and carried the same experiments as Vanguard 3.  The only difference was purpose: the Navy wanted to know if there was a relation between solar flares and radio fade-outs (turns out yes). 

SOLRAD 2 was a dud thanks to a bad rocket, but SOLRAD 3 and Injun 1 returned good data.  The failure of SOLRAD 4 gives the program a .500 average — still pretty good to my mind.  I understand the Air Force will be trying again in a few months.

Five for five

How about some good news for a change?  For the fifth time in three years, the world's largest rocket took to the skies above Florida, January 29, 1964.  The Saturn I rocket, a precursor to the Saturn V behemoth that will take humans to Moon before this decade is out, has completed its run of test flights with a 100% success rate. 

I want that to sink in.  As far as I know, no rocket program has ever been 100% successful.  One would think that a booster as big as the Saturn should be more accident-prone than any other.  And yet, the trim cylindrical stack lifted off from Cape Kennedy, with both stages fueled for the first time, and placed its entire top half into orbit.  This gave Americans another first: world's largest satellite, weighing nearly ten tons!

The timing could not be better.  Apollo's future has been threatened a bit lately, with many in Congress seeking to reduce NASA's funding.  Some question whether there is even value in winning the race to the moon.  The outstanding success of the Saturn I will hopefully be a shot in the program's arm — and maybe for the related Project Ranger.

Now that testing of the rocket is complete, the Saturn I will go on to operational missions, flying full-scale examples of the Apollo spacecraft.  This will be the closest this first Saturn ever gets to the moon, however.  Huge as it is, it is not strong enough to launch Apollo to Earth's nearest neighbor.  It's not even strong enough to loft a fully-fueled Apollo!  But it's bigger brother, the Saturn IB, will be.  Expect its first flights in 1966 or so.

Can you hear me?

Last year, COMSAT corporation started selling publicly traded shares.  COMSAT was President Kennedy's compromise between a public and private satellite communications entity.  COMSAT has not yet developed any comsats, but that hasn't other entities are continuing to build experimental satellites toward the day when COMSAT birds begin to fly.

Relay 2

On January 21, 1964, the RCA-built Relay 2 joined its sister Relay 1, Ma-Bell-made Telstar 2, and the fixed-in-the-sky Syncom 2 in orbit.  With four active comsats in orbit (the kind that can retransmit broadcasts), we'll likely soon see transmissions bounce all over the globe.  The most exciting programming on the schedule?  This summer's Olympic games, live from Tokyo, Japan!

Echo 2

Just four days after the launch of Relay 2, NASA shot up Echo 2, a balloon-type passive reflector satellite — essentially a big mirror in space for bouncing signals.  It's larger than Echo 1, which is still in orbit, and should be visible from the ground when it zooms overhead.  I'm not sure why NASA bothered with this satellite given the sophistication of the active-repeater comsats.  I suspect there won't be many more.

Gavarit pa Ruskii?

Meanwhile, our Communist friends have not been entirely idle.  In addition to their increasing constellation of little Kosmos satellites, which may or may not be civilian in nature (probably not), the Soviets have created the twin "Elektron" orbiting laboratories.  The first two were launched on January 30 into separate orbits, their mission to explore the Van Allen Belts from both below and above!

It's the first time the Soviets have launched multiple satellites on a single rocket (we've been doing it since SOLRAD 1) and the first time since Sputnik 3 that a Russian mission has been verifiably civilian in nature. 

It's about time!

Space for Two

I'll wrap things up with a couple of pieces of news on the Gemini two-seat spacecraft, sort of a bridge between Projects Mercury and Apollo.  Firstly, it looks like the first uncrewed flight will happen as early as March, testing both the capsule and the Titan II rocket.  If this goes well, the first crewed flights may blast off as early as the end of this year.

Fingers crossed!

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Book, Magazine, Movies

[February 1, 1964] The Vast Wasteland (February 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Every Silver Lining has a Cloud

What an exciting month January was!  From President Johnson's declaration of war on poverty to the launching of the Ranger 6 moon mission, not to mention this week's premiere of the amazing satire/horror, Dr. Strangelove, this year is shaping up to be a good one.

But while real life and the silver screen may offer superlative pleasures, this month's written sf , at least on this side of the Pond, has been rather lackluster.  This month's Analog is no exception.  In fact, it rests near the bottom of the pack.  That said, it's not a complete loss — so long as you know what you're getting into:

The Issue at Hand

Secondary Meterorites (Part 2 of 2), by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Dr. Hall returns to tell us more about the hypothesis that the majority of meteors that hit our planet are actually pieces of other planets knocked off when they were hit by meteorites.  It is, if anything, less comprehensible than the last article.  And that's coming from a fellow who studied astrophysics in college and reads journal articles for fun.

One star.

The Permanent Implosion, by Dean McLaughlin

When a bunch of Colorado eggheads blow a hole in the fabric of the universe, all of Earth's air starts whistling to nowhere like water draining from a bathtub.  Mick Candido, an oilman with a talent for capping blown and burning wells, is called in to plug the hole.

This is a smartly written tale whose obvious solution is obscured by deft authorial misdirection.  It's not a story for the ages, but it's solid Analog fare.  Three stars.

Crackpots, Inc., by Richard L. Davis

On the other hand, Crackpots is uniquely Analog fare.  A rural hayseed has purportedly invented perpetual motion, but his feat cannot be duplicated by scientists.  Turns out, it's because the machine is powered by the hick's psychic energies.  The only way this piece could have been more to Campbell's taste is if it included dowsing.

One star.

Dune World (Part 3 of 3), by Frank Herbert

I'm going to spare some inches for this one since I know this has been a popular serial.  In the far future, humanity has spread out among the stars.  Civilization is a strange mix of the advanced and the primitive. There are faster-than-light ships, electro-magnetic shields, and laser guns, On the other hand, computers are outlawed, with savant "Mentats" filling the role.  Society runs along feudal lines, its politics Machiavellian to the extreme.  To wit:

Baron Harkonnen, lord of the desert planet, Arrakis, is ordered by the Padishah Emperor to give his fief to Duke Leto Atreides.  On the face of things, this is a boon.  Arrakis is the only source of the anti-geriatic spice melange, control of which makes one very rich.  However, the transfer is a baited trap.  Not only is a legion of the Emperor's troops poised to seize the fief should Leto stumble, but one of Leto's lieutenants is a traitor in the pay of Harkonnen.

Added to the mix: Leto's mistress, Lady Jessica, member of the female-only Bene Gesserit order, who has keen perception and the ability to control others with her voice.  Her son, Paul, who may be the satisfaction of a prophecy that predicts a male possessor of Bene Gesserit powers.  The "Fremen" natives of Arrakis appear to be primitives yet there is evidence that suggests they possess a great technology.  Finally, we have Kynes, an Imperial surveyor who seems to know the secrets of Arrakis but refuses to play his hand openly.

Not much happens in Dune World.  There are lots of conversations where people reveal the history of Arrakis.  There is an attempt on Paul's life.  Leto saves some spice miners from a sandworm.  There is a feast in the Atreides stronghold with more exposition.  The traitor's plan comes to fruition, with the Duke put in mortal peril and his family forced into exile.  There is no real resolution; I suspect Herbert plans a sequel.

Author Herbert has an intricate grand plan, and he's certainly not stinted on world building.  The various cultures are richly detailed.  There is a refreshing abundance of foreign language and concepts, particularly from Arabic.  What keeps Dune World from being a masterpiece, or even especially enjoyable, is that Herbert's writing chops just aren't up to turning this byzantine mess of a plot into a story.  There are more swaths of italicized text than in the footnotes of a legal contract, and the viewpoint shifts constantly, often every other sentence.  A typical example from page 49:


"Now I know you remain loyal to my Duke," she said.  "Therefore I'm prepared to forgive your affront to me."

"Is there something to forgive? he asked.

Jessica scowled, wondering, Shall I play my trump?  Shall I tell him of the Duke's daughter I've carried within me these two weeks?  No, Leto himself doesn't know and this would only complicate his life, divert him when he must concentrate on our survival.  There is yet time to use this.

And Hawat thought: She's even beautiful when she's angry.  An extremely difficult adversary.

The traitor is revealed early on; the mystery is why he's betrayed Duke Leto.  That said, the identity of the betrayer could have been handled as a double mystery, which would have been more interesting. 

At serial's end, Paul has a soothsaying dream and learns several secrets of Arrakis and spice.  It's all very arbitrary and unsatisfying. 

Herbert has created something like a well researched but dry encyclopedia article on a fascinating topic.  I wanted to know more about Arrakis and Paul's prophecy, but getting through the (half) novel was often a slog. 

Maybe a good editor will help Herbert polish this up before its inevitable publication as a book.

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

Rx for Chaos, by Christopher Anvil

Another entry in the "Unintended Consequences of Science" department: Hangover-killing "De-tox" pills become bestsellers, but they also inhibit creativity and give rise to a fascist, anti-intellectual movement.  It's typical Analog Anvil, written with tongue firmly lodged in cheek.  It rates three stars, barely.

Names for Space Plants, by John Becker

Lots of words in these three short pages, but I've no idea what Becker is actually trying to say.  One star.

The Analytic Laboratory

Add it all up, and Analog scores a limp 2.1 stars, only beaten for badness by this month's Amazing (2 stars even).  F&SF is barely better at 2.2; Fantastic gets 2.6 but at least it's got a good Dick in it.  Galaxy's 3 stars is also, in part, thanks to its Dick story.  The only unalloyed triumph is the February New Worlds, which garnered 3.6 stars.

Women made up just two of the 38 authors who wrote fiction for magazines this month. 

As for books, again, it was the British stuff that stood out.  Brian Aldiss' new fix-up got four stars, per Jason Sacks, whereas neither this month's Ace Double nor Laurence Janifer's second effort stunned.

Next month is my birthday month, though, and I'm certain the writers in my favorite genre wouldn't let me down on my 39th birthday.

Right?

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Book

[January 26, 1964] Sophomoric (Laurence M. Janifer's The Wonder War)

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by Gideon Marcus

About the Author

Laurence M. Janifer (born Larry M. Harris) is a youngish author from New York City.  He's distinguished himself as a science fiction writer of at least the second rank, having produced a number of pretty good short stories (including Sword of Flowers, which I awarded the Galactic Star).  Janifer also co-wrote the Queen Elizabeth serials with Randall Garrett, and those were decent reading.  Thus, his is a name I generally note as an encouraging sign when I see it listed in a magazine's table of contents.

Last year, Larry made the jump to the big time with the recent publication of his first novel, Slave Planet.  Fellow Traveler Erica Frank reviewed it in November and thought it a decent, if not unflawed read. 

Janifer must have been chained to the typewriter last year because his second book, The Wonder War came out just this month.  Given Janifer's track record, I was certain this next effort would be an improvement; thus, I invoked editorial privilege and insisted on being the one to review it.

Well, the joke's on me.

The Wonder War

The setup for Janifer's sophomore effort isn't bad: hundreds of years in the future, the Terran Confederation decides that competition is bad, and the surest way an extraterrestrial planet can develop the technology to become a competitor is through war.  After all, the fastest advances seem to come with the impetus of killing one's fellow.  So the Confederation places teams of spies on planets with the potential to become adversaries.  Their sole mission: to spike the warrior spirit by any means necessary.

The target in The Wonder War is the world of Wh'Gralb.  Not only are its inhabitants utterly humanoid (if a trifle shorter than average), but they are currently in a period like the Earth's 1930s.  Wh'Gralb's two continents are home to antagonistic nations, one a fascist dictatorship, the other a People's Republic.  War has broken out over an island rich in uranium.

Against this backdrop, we are introduced to our team: The sanguine beanpole of a team leader, Glone; the laconic Dempster; and the much put-upon viewpoint character, Plant.  Oh, and let's not forget the flattest, most obnoxious caricature — that of Raissa Renny, the girl.

You see, Raissa is the new Coordinator for Propaganda, an insufferable stuck-up know-it-all who is utterly incompetent, and annoying to boot.  Chicks, right?  The only thing she's got going for her is her knockout good looks.  If only she would keep her mouth shut, ya know?

Raissa is imprisoned about a third of the way through the book while checking up on one of the team's embedded agents, and she is not heard from again until the last few pages (when she is rescued, of course, since she can't do anything for herself).  Raissa still manages to be present, even in her absence, for Plant moons over her the entire time she's gone.  Since Janifer has given us nothing to find likable about the character, one can only assume its Raissa's appearance that has hooked Plant. 

Anyway, the rest of the book is a satire with two main points.  The first involves how easy it is to snarl up a bureaucracy in red-tape and shenanigans.  In fact, so successful are the team's efforts that not a single soldier on either side is killed despite both armies doing their damnedest at it.  The other deals with the futility of the team's mission — after all, no matter how long technology on the planet is suppressed, the Confederation will eventually establish trading relations, and Wh'Gralb will get The Bomb, hyperdrive, and whatever else it needs to be a competitor.  Per the epilogue (perhaps the best single page of the book), that's exactly what happens.

Again, these are interesting topics in theory.  The problem is, Janifer is writing for laughs and utterly failing at it.  I don't think I encountered a single lip-quirking quip in all of the book's short 128 pages.

Summing up

The Wonder War is an intriguing premise rendered stillborn by lousy execution; it's essentially an overlong Chris Anvil Analog story.  Worse, the tacked on love story and the offensive portrayal of Raissa just kills the thing.  It's not awful, exactly.  I mean, you can read it. 

You just won't ever get those hours back.

Two stars.

— — —

(Need something to cleanse your palate?  See all the neat things the Journey did last year!)




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Magazine

[January 18, 1964] Pig's Lipstick (February 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

President McKinley once famously observed around the Turn of the Century that everything that could be invented had been invented.  He was not entirely correct, as it turned out.  However, if one were to read the stultifying pages of F&SF these days, one might be convinced that all the SF that could be written had been written.  The February 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction is a double-handful of cliches with a thin veneer of literary writing to make them "worthy."  It's no wonder editor Avram Davidson has moved to Mexico; he is probably fleeing his outraged readers — whomever's left of them, anyway.

The House by the Crab Apple Tree, by S. S. Johnson

The bad ship S. S. Johnson leads the issue with possibly the most offensive piece I've read since Garrett's Queen Bee.  It's an After The Bomb piece told from the point of view of one the world's last women, who is shacked up with her wretch of a husband and their fourteen year old daughter.  Barely sentient, our protagonist spends most of the story wondering which of the marauding male savages who terrorize her home would make the best husband for her kid.  After all, a woman needs a man.

Bad as it was, I read the whole story (for it it is passably well written) hoping to be pleasantly surprised.  I wasn't.  Mr. Johnson's protagonist shows no initiative at all (and, in fact, each of her episodes is characterized, even precipitated by her inaction), the daughter is violated in the end, and Davidson, in the height of tactlessness, chose to illustrate the gawdam cover of the magazine with a scene of the torture of said little girl.

One star and a new bottom for the magazine.  Shame, Mr. Davidson.  I hope the mail and telegrams stop service to your new home so you can do no more damage.

[And please see the letter sent in by Mr. Jonathan Edelstein, appended below.  It expresses what's fundamentally wrong with this story.  Thank you, Jonathan. (Ed.)]

The Shepherd of Esdon Pen, by P. M. Hubbard

Here's a stunner.  After spending half the vignette telling us about a Scottish shepherd of legend, a modern shepherd departs into a freak snowstorm, searching for his lost flock, and stumbles across the tomb of none other than the aforementioned herder. When he gets back, his sheep are safe.  WAS IT THE SHEPHERD OF EDSON PEN?!?

An ineptly told ghost story that earns two spectrally thin stars.

Ms Found in a Bottle Washed up on the Sands of Time, by Harry Harrison

A pointless bit of doggerel about a fellow intent on disproving the Grandfather's Paradox by doing away with his grandfather — only the old man has quicker draw.

Two stars.

Nobody Starves, by Ron Goulart

A satirical piece (or something) about a dystopian future for whose denizens everything is hunky dory until they stop being useful to society.  No one starves, in theory, but it's damned hard to get a bite to eat when you can't work for your supper.

There's probably a point or two buried under the glibness, but my eyes were too dizzy from rolling to find them.  Two stars.

One Hundred Days from Home, by Dean McLaughlin

The first ship to return from Mars is met halfway by a new ship zipping around at a good percentage of light speed.  The kid driving the speedster guffaws at the old men and their primitive junker, offering them a quick ride home.  Indignant, they refuse. 

Would NASA really send astronauts to Mars and back and not tell them about a huge breakthrough in space travel?  Do these fellows not even have radios?  Editor Davidson says he can't get any spaceship yarns these days, so he was happy to get this one.  With "science fiction" like this, who needs fantasy?

Two stars.

The Slowly Moving Finger, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor has always done a decent job of making abstruse concepts accessible to the layperson.  But this non-fiction piece, about the maximum ages of various animals, is too simple and could have been paraphrased as one sentence: Every mammal but humans lives for one billion heart beats; people get four times that.

Three stars.

Little Gregory, by Evelyn E. Smith

An odd, vaguely SF tale about a woman employed as a governess by a robot for an alien child who turns out to be the vanguard of an extraterrestrial invasion.  It works insofar as it fulfills Smith's goal of telling a 21st Century story with 19th Century style, but I'm not sure why the thing was written at all.

Three stars, I guess.

Burning Spear, by Kit Denton

Pointless mood piece about a kid who can capture and wield sunlight, and the folks who die when they demand proof.

Two stars.

In the Bag, by Laurence M. Janifer

An obvious vignette probably inspired by a trip to the local laundry.  Blink and you'll miss it.  Three stars.  Maybe two.  Who cares?

The Fan: Myth and Reality, by Wilson Tucker

The first of a three-part series on fandom, this one is an historical essay (next month's by Robert Bloch will cover conventions).  I'm a big fan of Bob Tucker, as readers well know, but this is a superficial, perfunctory piece.  It's over quickly, though.  Three stars?  [Note: I forgot to cover this piece in the original printing — thanks to those who pointed out the omission! Ed.]

Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Welcome to the overpopulated world of 2061, where the national parks on the Moon have a long waiting list, the domes open to let the air in only on rare occasion, and citizens take hallucinogenic pills to stay sane.  Still, despite the hoariness of the subject matter, it's not a bad read.  Welcome to the ranks of the prose writers, Ms. Buck.  Now go beyond the well-trodden path.

Three stars.

I'm sounding more and more like John Boston every day.  My wife likes it when I write snippy, but boy am I tired of having things to be snippy about.

Could we please get Tony Boucher or Robert Mills back in the editorial saddle again? 

— — —

(Need something to cleanse your palate?  See all the neat things the Journey did last year!)




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Book, Magazine

[January 8, 1964] A Taste of Homely (February 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Lost that Zing

It's tough to get out of a rut.  After all, you went through all the trouble of digging the trench in the first place — why expend extra effort getting out of it?

But the fact is, the house that H.L. Gold built in 1950, the superlative Galaxy Science Fiction digest, has gotten pretty stale lately.  Sure, the authors are still household names, but the works aren't their best.  Maybe Editor Pohl, who succeeded Gold a couple of years ago, is starved for material given that he maintains an industry record of three simultanteous mags.  Or perhaps Galaxy just doesn't have the cachet (or the budget to pay authors) of F&SF or Fantastic.

Maybe it's just a slow patch.  Anyway, take a gander at the February 1964 Galaxy and see what I mean:

The Issue at Hand

Grandmother Earth, by J. T. McIntosh

It was just a couple of months ago, in Poul Anderson's Conversation in Arcady, that we last saw the a decadent, paradisical Earth visited by more vigorous colonists.  McIntosh's variation on the theme features a less happy homeworld, one on which humans have given up for lack of challenge, and the sum population of Earth is reduced to a few tens of thousands stretched along France's idyllic Mediterranean coast.  When the last efforts at changing the status quo from within founder, it us up to a pair of extraterrestrial Terrans to come up with a solution.


(I have to wonder if this picture is the main reason the story was accepted…

McIntosh is a pretty good writer, though his best days seem far behind him.  The pacing and execution are engaging even if the plot is hackneyed.  What really tips the balance from four to three stars is the utterly unnecessary exposition at the end.

Hence: Three stars.

A Bad Day for Vermin, by Keith Laumer

A wormlike alien lands in a small Arkansan town, but before it can open discussions with the citizens, a ramshackle exterminator shoots it dead.  A trial ensues to determine whether or not the extraterrestrial counts as a person such that the killer can be tried with murder.  Ultimately, the alien is classified as a person and the exterminator, excluded from the definition, is labeled vermin — and exterminated.

Summarized like that, it sounds like a pretty good story.  It's not.  Unpleasant and preposterous, Laumer must have dashed this one off for a quick buck.  Two stars (if that).

Shamar's War, by Kris Neville

When the completely humanoid inhabitants of a another planet refuse Earth's entreaties to formally ally, humanity sends a spy to foment rebellion and install a more friendly government.  The aliens are under a dictatorship, you see, and Earth deems them ripe for a bit of Democracy.  When efforts to install a formal voting system fail, the aliens come up with a more brute force option: selective boycotting of goods nonessential to life but essential to the economy.

It's hard to believe this piece was written by a veteran author, one who has produced several excellent stories over a career lasting more than a decade.  This piece is filled with short, unncompelling sentences; the characterization is nonexistent; and the exposition is endless.  The aliens aren't at all, and the solution to the story's puzzle is laughably simplistic.  I have to wonder if this wasn't an early piece of work that Neville had stuffed in a desk somewhere and which Pohl accepted out of desperation.

In any event, two stars.

The Early Days of the Metric System, by Willy Ley

Our favorite German rocket scientist had been going through a lackluster period, but this non-fiction article on the origin of standard weights and measures, though in some ways overlapping an old F&SF article by Dr. Asimov, is entertaining and informative.  This is the Willy that compelled me to start my subscription to Galaxy umpteen years ago.  5 stars.

Oh, to Be a Blobel!, by Philip K. Dick

Here's another human-sent-to-spy-on-aliens story, except this one takes place after the espionage.  It features a young man whose physical form was altered to match that of the invading amorphous Blobels.  Though promised to be reconditioned back to human physiognomy, the fellow finds himself reverting to Blobel form half the day, making his life thoroughly miserable.

Luckily for him, the other side had spies, too, and some of them are having similar readjustment trouble.  Our hero marries a young female Blobel spy, and all is well…for a while.  But feelings of inadequacy (she is smarter and more successful than he) and the hybrid nature of their children cause rifts.  Ultimately, the couple must choose between love and individual fortune.

This is a story that shouldn't work, ludicrous as it is in its premise.  But it's Dick, and it does. 

Four stars.

The Awakening, by Jack Sharkey

Imagine being one of hundreds preserved in suspended animation against a global catastrophe, only to wake up countless ages after the planned date.  Your machines are rusted, your elders rotted, and the world you knew has drastically changed.  How would you feel?  What would you do?

This story belongs in the "Color Me Surprised" department.  While the plot of the story is not particularly innovative, the execution is perfect — a sharp increase in quality from Jack Sharkey's usual output.

Four stars.

The Star King, by Jack Vance

In the last installment of The Star King, a fellow named Gersen was tracking down the "Demon Prince," Grendel, one of the Galaxy's most notorious crime bosses.  The trail had led Gersen to a university on the civilized world of Alphanor in search of the patron who had commissioned a survey of an Eden-like world far Beyond the edge of civilization.  For Gersen had every reason to believe that this patron was Grendel, especially after he killed his surveyor for refusing to reveal the location of the planet.

Part 2 opens Gersen facing several obstacles.  Foremost is that Grendel could be any of three professors at the school, all of whom profess ignorance of the murdered surveyor.  Then there are Grendel's three lieutenants, all of whom are deadly assassins who want Gersen out of the way.  Finally, there is the issue of Pallis Atwrode, an employee of the university who is the first to touch Gersen's heart after a life of nothing but revenge-seeking.

The conclusion to this novel ties all the threads together, throwing all of the characters onto one ship where Gersen can declaim the solution to the mystery, Poirot-style.

The Star King's problem isn't the plot, it's the execution.  After a rather gripping first half of the first half, the novel becomes a plodding bore, particularly with the unnecessary encyclopedic inserts every few pages.  Vance did such a good job of building a fresh new world in The Dragon Masters (also a Galaxy novel), but he rather flubs it here.  Moreover, Vance completely missed his opportunity to give us a real surprise ending, instead deciding on Grendel's identity almost at random, it seems.

Two stars, two and a half for the whole thing.

Summing Up

When I transfer the story data to punch card and run it through my Star-o-Vac, I get a roll of tape with the computation: 3 stars.  That doesn't sound so bad, right?  Thoroughly adequate compared to some of the other mags we've suffered through lately.  But it's the cavalcade of blandness that saps the will over time.  It's like a steady diet of matzah.  Sure, it gets you out of Egypt, but where's the milk and honey, man? 

Cordwainer Smith's in the next issue.  Maybe we'll make it to the Holy Land in March…

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Book

[January 4, 1964] Something borrowed, something blue (Ace Double F-253)

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by Gideon Marcus

Every good New Year's begins with a resolution.  Mine is to have the Journey review every single new SFF book that comes out in 1964 (that we can get our hands on, anyway).  I figure there's only about 30-40, and this way, we can make truly informed Galactic Stars recommendations.

All journeys begin with a single step, and as luck would have it, the first novel of the new year to hit the book stands was an Ace Double, two-for-one deals that often feel like less of a value than a single novel. 

This was one of those times…

The Twisted Men, by A.E. Van Vogt

Sometimes an Ace Double is an original piece (like One of our Asteroids — see below).  Sometimes it's a reprint like Isaac Asimov's Foundation (in his unfortunate case, chopped up into The 1,000 Year Plan).  I've also seen expansions of novellas (e.g. Brunner's Listen! The Stars! and Anderson's Let the Astronauts Beware!) and fix-up novels (for instance, Leigh Brackett's Alpha Centauri or Die!— a fusion of two separately published stories).)

The Twisted Men is yet another kind of Ace book: a compilation of unrelated pieces with no attempt to bind them.

I suspect the main motivation for these reprints was price.  None of these stories are younger than 12 years old, and they are not among author Van Vogt's better works.  They appear to be unaltered versions of what came out in the magazines, so what you're getting are original pieces from the end of the Pulp Era. 

The Twisted Men

The sun is about to go nova, and Averill Hewitt is the lone scientist convinced of the fact.  His only solace after being labeled a fool and ostracized is the commissioning of an interstellar colony ship, The Hope of Man.  Relief turns to consternation when the ship returns after just six years — far too soon for the trip to have been successful.  Worse yet, when he forces his way aboard the ship, he finds the crew virtually frozen in time, their bodies foreshortened with Lorentz contraction of the variety encountered at close to light speeds.

It's a thrilling set-up, but it's not how physics works.  Some efforts are made to blame the effect on unusual zones of space a la Anderson's Brain wave, but they're feeble, indeed.  For the most part, it's a science mystery with bad science crossed with a vapid thwart-the-spacejacking tale.

Two stars.

The Star-Saint

On a newly colonized world, engineer Leonard Hanley faces two problems: rampaging sentient boulders and a half-alien hunk assigned to the colony to deal with them.  Hanley tries to counter the stony threat himself, and fails.  The womenfolk coo over (and fraternize with) the hunk.  Ultimately, said hunk placates the rock beings and ships out, possibly leaving behind a brood of quarter-breeds.

It's readable enough, but it doesn't make much sense nor does it do women any favors with its characterizations.

Two stars.

The Earth Killers

This one was actually passable.  During the test flight of a Mach 9 "rockjet," Captain Kane Field encounters an ICBM bound for Chicago, part of an overwhelming attack on the United States.  Not only is he unable to stop the missile, but upon landing, he is court-martialed for his inability to identify the rocket's country of origin, insisting that the warhead came from directly overhead.

Kane breaks out of his imprisonment and hijacks his plane, taking it around the nation in an attempt to find the real culprits.  I guessed the answer; you might, too.

Parts of the story feel grounded and realistic (Killers takes place in 1964, and the rockjet is close kin to the real-life X-15).  Others, including the bit where Kane gasses up his ride as easily as one fills up a Studebaker, strain credulity.  Nevertheless, it's a fun read and the best piece of the Double.

Three stars.

One of our Asteroids is Missing, by Calvin M. Knox

The "blue" half of the double (because it's the title with the blue-shaded background on the spine, natch) takes place in the far-future year of 2019.  John Storm is a youth with a yen to make it rich in the asteroid belt.  Apparently, in 55 years, driving spaceships will be about as easy as driving mules was for the '49ers.  At least, that's what I got from the quick travel times and comparative ease of operation. 

Anyway, Storm, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Viking of a young man, finds an eight mile wide hunk of precious metals after two years of prospecting.  With visions of dollar signs dancing in his head, he stakes a claim on Mars and then heads home to his fiancee in New York.  But there, he finds that his papers were never properly processed — in fact, not only does his claim not exist, but per the nation's records, neither does he! 

Storm's suspicion that something underhanded is afoot is reinforced when a set of goons makes an attempt on his life.  This compels the miner to head back to the Belt to check up on his claim, brushing aside the objections of his bride-to-be ("Space is a lousy place for a woman," he says.  "I wouldn't want the responsibility of your safety up there.")

Sure enough, Storm discovers a fleet of Universal Mining Cartel spaceships preparing to make off with his prize.  This is a bold and unusual move.  Sure, the asteroid is a valuable one, but it's penny-ante to a big conglomerate like UMC.  Why risk law suits, bad publicity, and attempted murder charges?

The answer to this question is pretty obvious, but I'll let you figure it out.  A hint: this plotline is well-trodden ground, including appearances in Raymond Jones' The Alien and Murray Leinster's The Wailing Asteroid (and that's just books I've covered). 

Of course, you may give up before you get to the revelation.  One of our Asteroids is not great fiction, with lots of literary shortcuts and pretty uninspiring writing.  Also, for the most part, you could transfer the entire story with hardly an alteration to a Western setting.  This is probably why the author insisted on using a pseudonym so as to not tarnish his good name (said writer being none other than the not-at-all blond and blue-eyed, Robert Silverberg.)

2.5 stars.

***

Next up: The President and the traveler — see the intersection of JFK and the Journey…

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Book, Magazine, Science / Space Race

[December 21, 1963] Soaring and Plummeting (January 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

[Time is running out to get your Worldcon membership!  Register here to be able to vote for the Hugos.]

The Balloon goes Up

It's been something of a dry patch for American space spectaculars, and with projects Gemini and Apollo both being delayed by technical and budgetary issues, it is no wonder that NASA is hungry for any positive news.  So you can excuse them for trumpeting the launch of Explorer 19 so loudly — even if the thing is just a big balloon.  How excited can anyone get about that?

As it turns out, plenty excited.

Explorer 19, launched December 19, 1963, is a spherical balloon painted with polka-dots (they keep the sun from making it too hot or cold), and what it does is measure the atmosphere as it circles the Earth.  Not with any active instruments, but just by moving.  All orbiting spacecraft have an ideal route, one determined by Newton's laws.  If there were no air at all up there, the satellite would just keep orbiting in the same path forever (though the Moon and the Sun exert their own influences).  But there is air up there.  To be sure, the "air" up above 600 kilometers in altitude is hardly deserving of the name — it's a harder vacuum than we can make on the ground!  Nevertheless, the stuff up there is denser than what is found in interplanetary space, and we can tell its density from the slow slip of Explorer 19 in its orbit. 

If we want to know what kind of science we'll get from Explorer 19, all we have to do is look to Explorer 9.  Launched two years ago, it is a virtual twin.  Both Explorers were launched from cheap, solid-fuel Scout rockets.  Both have tracking beacons that failed shortly after launch.  The only way to get any data from these missions is to track the satellites by sophisticated cameras.

Explorer 9 has already contributed immensely to our knowledge of Earth's upper atmosphere.  Thanks to constant photographic tracking of the satellite, scientists have seen the expansion of the atmosphere as it heats up during the day as well as shorter term heating from magnetic storms in the ionosphere.  As a result, we are getting a good idea of the "climate" on the other side of the atmosphere over a wide range of latitudes. 

This is not only useful as basic science; the folks who launch satellites now have a better idea how long their craft will last and the best orbits to shoot them into, saving money in the long run.  It is one of the many examples of how the exploration of space bears immediate fruit and also extended benefits.

And that's something to be excited about!

The other shoe drops

On the other hand, the January 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction begins the year on the wrong foot.  It is yet another collection of substandard and overly affected tales (leavened by a few decent pieces that somehow manage to get through), something like what Analog has become, though to be fair, I'm really looking forward to Analog this month. 

But first…

Pacifist, by Mack Reynolds

The best piece of the month is Pacifist by the prolific, seasoned, and (on occasion) excellent Mack Reynolds.  On a world much like ours, but where the balance of power is held between the north and south hemispheres, an anti-war group determines that the only way to curb our species' bellicose tendencies is to frighten the war-wagers with violence.  But can you really quench fire with fire?

It works because of the writing, something Reynolds never has trouble with.  Four stars.

Starlight Rhapsody, by Zhuravleva Valentina

This curious piece, in which a young woman astronomer discerns intelligent signals being broadcast from the nearby star, Procyon, originated in the Soviet Union.  It was then translated into Esperanto, of all languages, and then found its way into English.  The result is…well, I'll let our Russian correspondent give us her thoughts:


by Margarita Mospanova

In Russian, Starlight Rhapsody is actually a very pretty story — melodic and full of poetry, literally and metaphorically. It’s fairly melancholy, with just a touch of underlying Soviet optimism, nothing too garish in this case. But the translation…

Man, the translation makes me want to tear my hair out. It’s awful. It misses entire paragraphs of text as well as actual poems in the beginning and in the end. And the prose itself in no way resembles the original. Hell, it’s as if the translator used some kind of computerized translation device and just removed the grammatical mistakes afterwards. I’m really disappointed because the original story is really unexpectedly good.


by Gideon Marcus

You can get a glimmer of the story's original strength even from the twice-butchered version that editor Davidson provides.  Thus, three dispirited stars.

The Follower, by Wenzell Brown

Witness the perfect match: A milquetoast who decides to make his mark on society by stalking someone, and a paranoiac who only finds satisfaction when someone really is after him.  But their game develops a twist when their twin psychoses create a third player combining the worst aspects of both.

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?  If it were better done or more profound in its revelation, it might have been.  As is, it straddles the line between two and three stars, leaning toward the former.

The Tree of Time (Part 2 of 2), by Damon Knight

The conclusion of last month's adventure, in which a not-quite-man from the future is abducted from our time by frog people from his and then left to die in an experimental dimension ship.

After a reasonably thrilling beginning, the book reverts to what it was from the start — a pointless pastiche of the worst elements of science fiction's "Golden Age."  Deliberate or not, it's no less unreadable for it.

One star.  Feh.

Thaw and Serve, by Allen Kim Lang

Lang explores an interesting idea: hardened criminals are quick-frozen and deposited two centuries into the future.  It is the ultimate passing of the buck.  Turns out the future doesn't know what to do with them either, choosing to dump them in the wilds of Australia.  There, they fight it out for the televised amusement of the future-dwellers.

Written and plotted with a heavy hand, it's not one of Lang's better works.  In fact, the best thing about the story is the biographical preamble (Lang's middle name was given to him by Koreans during the war).

Two stars.

Nackles, by Curt Clark

"Curt Clark" (I have it on good authority that it's actually Donald Westlake) offers up the chilling story of the creation of a deity.  In this case, it's Santa Claus' dark shadow, the child-abducting "Nackles," who is caused to exist the same way as any other god — through widespread promulgation of belief.

Deeply unpleasant, but quite effective.  Three stars (four if this is your kind of thing).

Round and Round and …, by Isaac Asimov

At long last, I finally understand the concept of the "sidereal day," as well as the length of such days on other planets.  Thank you, Doctor A!  Four stars.

The Book of Elijah, by Edward Wellen

If you haven't read First and Second Kings (or as the uninitiated might call them, "One and Two Kings"), Elijah was a biblical prophet, passionate in his service of the Lord, who ascended to Heaven in flame and is due to return just before the End Times.  Ed Wellen, best known for his "funny" non-fact articles in Galaxy, writes about what happens to Elijah during his sojourn off Earth.

The Book is written in pseudo-King James style and is about as fun as reading the Bible, without any of the spiritual edification.  One star.

Appointment at Ten O'Clock, by Robert Lory

Last up, we have the tale of man with just ten minutes to live…over and over and over again.  Ten O'Clock has the beginning of an interesting concept and some deft writing, but it is short-circuited in execution.  It reads like the effort of a promising but neophyte author (which, in fact, it is — this is his second work).  Three stars.

This is what the once proud F&SF has been reduced to: a lousy Knight serial (shame, Damon!), a disappointing translation, some bad little pieces, and a couple of bright spots.  And Asimov's column, which I read, even if few others seem to.

Oh well.  I've already paid for the year.  Might as well see it through.

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