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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 10, 1970] Baby, It's Cold (And Dark) Outside (April 1970 Fantastic)

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photo of a dark-haired woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

Who Turned Out The Lights?

Folks living in certain parts of southern Mexico and the eastern coast of the United States and Canada were treated to a spectacular sight in the sky a few days ago.  On March 7, there was a total eclipse of the sun visible from those areas of the globe.

Black and white photograph with the silhouette of the moon centered and the haze of the corona seething around it. The final sliver of sunlight gleams like a gem at the top left of the 'ring'
The sun is about to completely disappear behind the moon.

I live in the southeastern corner of Tennessee, so I missed this extraordinary event.  Let's see; when do astronomers think a total solar eclipse will be visible from my neck of the woods?  Let me check my almanac.

August 21, 2017.  Holy cow, close to half a century to go. 

While I'm waiting, I can spend the time reading.  Just as a solar eclipse causes the Earth to cool down, at least for a moment, the latest issue of Fantastic features a new novella from one of the masters of imaginative literature that is dominated by a sense of cold.  Grab a cup of hot chocolate, wrap yourself up in a blanket, and join me as we dive into its icy pages.

Cover of Fantastic depicting a demonic young woman with spread black wings and a white dress flying against a red background
Cover art by Jeff Jones.

Hey!  An original piece of art on the cover instead of something borrowed from a German magazine!  That's a good sign, as is the promise of a new sword and sorcery yarn from the greatest creator of such.  (No offense, Conan fans.)

Editorial, by Ted White

The editor explains that readers have different tastes (obviously) and that he just selects the stories he thinks are the best (even more obviously.) He mentions a new member of the staff, Arnold Katz, who has the job (an unenviable one, to me) of selecting each issue's Fantasy Classic (i.e. reprint) from yellowing copies of Fantastic Adventures.  Finally, he states that he goes through all the letters he gets from readers, separates them out by which stories they're commenting on (even cutting up ones that talk about more than one work), and forwarding them to the authors involved.  Sounds like a lot of extra work, so wish him good luck.

No rating.

The Snow Women, by Fritz Leiber

Black and white illustration of a snow-swept forest of tall conifers.  In the foreground a woman stalks forwards through the snow, her long straight hair and heavy cloak caught by the wind, obscuring the figure that follows in her wake
Illustrations by Jeff Jones also.

We go back to the teenage years of Fafhrd, before he ran around with the Gray Mouser.  (There's one tiny hint that he encountered his future buddy during a brief career as a pirate.) It's the dead of winter in his northern homeland.  A troupe of actors is around to provide entertainment, with a fair amount of nubile female flesh on display, for the men only.

That makes it sound like Fafhrd lives in a male-dominated society, but in fact the women have a lot of power, some of it magical.  They're also not reluctant to attack the men with snowballs, sometimes causing serious injuries.  Fafhrd lives with his widowed mother, who tries to dominate him completely.  He's also got a girlfriend, pregnant with his child, who is a tough cookie indeed.

Black and white illustration of a tall man standing deep in the shadow at the massive trunk of a gnarled and lonely tree, with the sword in his right hand lowered obliquely towards the ground
Fafhrd and the tree where he keeps a cache of weapons and other supplies.

The plot gets started when Fafhrd gets mixed up with an alluring actress, who has a complex back story of her own.  It seems that other northerners plan to buy her as a slave from the leader of the troupe.  Suffice to say that a lot of complications follow.  Wait until you find out how Fafhrd uses some firework rockets he steals from the actors!

It's no surprise that this is very well written, with wit, tasteful eroticism, vivid descriptions, and plenty of action.  We also get quite a bit of insight into Fafhrd's personality.  He's fascinated by the civilized, decadent south in comparison with the barbaric north.  The female characters are fully developed, three-dimensional individuals, which is not something you can say about a lot of fantasy and science fiction written by men.

Five stars.

The Wager Lost by Winning, by John Brunner

Black and white illustration of an aged and mustachioed white man reaching his left hand towards the viewer, while his right hand holds a 'staff' made of rays of light from crepuscular illumination breaking through the clouds that make his 'cloak' and 'furs', gloaming above a shining tower, beyond a deep wood, all over the legend 'As you wish, so be it'
Illustrations by Michael Kaluta.

This is one of a series of stories about a mysterious figure known only as the Traveller in Black.  A couple of tales about him have appeared in British publications. (That's why I'm using the double-l spelling.)

He's a god-like being who wanders around a fantasy world.  His mission is a little vague, but it somehow involves order and chaos.  We get several brief sections of text describing how he fulfills the desires of those he encounters, often not to their liking.

Black and white illustration of the mustachioed man wrapped in a hooded robe and staff, passing by clusters of large fungi and a partially buried column, all under the deep shadow of rocky heights.  While
The Traveller and an empty pedestal that plays a part in the plot.

The Traveller becomes involved with an aristocrat who has kidnapped the inhabitants of a peaceful village in order to use them as slaves that he can risk in wagers with other lords.  The ruler believes that the local goddess of luck holds him in her favor.  The Traveller makes a bet that she will turn her back on him.  The wager plays out in an unexpected way.

The story is full of imaginative details, from the lazy entity who dwells in a lake at the peaceful village to the bizarre methods of gambling engaged in by the lords.  The theme of Be Careful What You Wish For may be a familiar one, but there's a lot more to the story than just that.

Four stars.

Dear Aunt Annie, by Gordon Ecklund

Black and white psychedelic illustration of two people in an almost solarized silhouette, both facing the viewer, with plugs and cords passing from one head to the other through the suggestion of a computer
Illustration by Michael Hinge.

This, the author's first published story, reveals a willingness to experiment and a fair amount of ambition for a newcomer.  It's told from multiple points of view, and we don't get full information on what's going on right away, so it requires careful reading.

After a devastating war, the citizens of the United States are lulled into a state of complete nonviolence through a combination of drugs and psychotherapy.  A problem develops when a woman writes to newspaper columnist Aunt Annie for advice, revealing that she attempted suicide.  That's not supposed to be possible, so Aunt Annie sends one of her assistants to investigate.  The situation leads to debate over how to handle the apparent return of human violence.

The exact nature of Aunt Annie and her assistants doesn't become clear at first, so I won't discuss it here.  (The illustration is a clue.) This is more or less a New Wave story, particularly in its disjointed narrative style.  I found it both intriguing and confusing.

Three stars.

The Freedom Fighter, by Ray Russell

The narrator is a movie director in the near future.  Not only is she one of the few women in that profession (I guess things won't change much over the next few years), she's in trouble with her producer.  It seems she doesn't make the kind of movies expected of her.

The story has only one point to make, so I won't give it away here.  It's a simple reversal of current trends.  The satire plays out as expected.  I should note that the text contains derogatory terms for homosexual women and men, which is distasteful.

Two stars.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Hank Stine

Leiber praises the collections Daughters of Earth by Judith Merril and Jirel of Joiry by C. L. Moore.  He also reveals that he has read the manuscript for the new novel And Chaos Died by Joanna Russ (under its initial title End of Chaos) and states that it describes fully what it would feel like to possess powers of telepathy and clairvoyance.  (Our own Jason Sacks recently reviewed the same novel.)

Stine has high praise for the British television series The Prisoner, as well as for a novel, with the same title, based on the series by Thomas A. Disch.  He is less enthusiastic for Number Two, another book based on the show, by David McDaniel.

No rating.

The Pulsating Planet, by John Broome

The September 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures is the source of this reprint.

The colour cover illustration for Fantastic Adventures.  The cover story is 'The Liquid Man' and the painting catches him leaning over a lab table with a test tube in one hand, semi-transparent and with dripping, gelatinous texture.  Watching mutely from the background is a bound and gagged white woman wearing such clothing as could be painted on
Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

Our two-fisted hero is a reporter.  For some reason he's on an asteroid heading into the solar system.  He claims that he saw a base of enemy aliens, but there's no sign of it.  The military is about to arrest him for misleading them, but he manages to kidnap a corporal and head for where the base should be.

Black and white illustration of a woman running from the right foreground across and away from the viewer, while looking back over her shoulder towards the foreground.  In the left background there is either a small, or a distant someone in a space suit with their arms outstretched, looking at the woman.
Illustration by Albert Magarian

The mismatched pair follow a dwarf into the hidden base.  The dwarf is a Mad Scientist, so there's also his Beautiful Daughter for the love interest.  Mix in the aliens, some of whom don't really want to invade Earth, and a weird monster for the hero to fight. 

The explanation for fact that the alien base appears and disappears is really silly.  Corny and poorly written, this is an example of the kind of pulp fiction that gives science fiction a bad name among the literati.  If this is a Fantasy Classic, I'd hate to see the ones that didn't make the grade.

One star.

Fantasy Fandom, by Jeffrey Clark

Instead of the usual article reprinted from a fanzine, this is a long letter sent to the magazine's sister publication Amazing.  Clark discusses Old Wave and New Wave, stating that there's room for both, and compares science fiction and fantasy with mainstream fiction.  Decently done, but there's not a lot that's new here.

Three stars.

According to You, by Various Readers

Very much a mixed bag of letters, with no particular theme to them.  Notable is the fact that controversial author David R. Bunch gently points out that one of his stories was announced to be coming soon under the name David Bloch. 

No rating.

The Reader Who Came In From The Cold

Overall, a pretty good issue, enough to warm the heart of the lucky person who peruses it on a chilly night in early spring.  A couple of disappointments, but the two lead fantasy stories are worth the price of the magazine.

Stay warm, everybody!

Colour advertisement for the Remington Electric Serving Dish, calling particular attention to the fact that it is insulating and stackable, capable of keeping food hot for hours (if plugged in) whether in the event of an unexpected delay or generally for allowing preparation and plating in advance of hosting.
And keep your food warm, too!




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 6, 1970] The Waters of Centaurus, And Chaos Died, and High Sorcery

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As luck would have it, the first three novels to be reviewed this month were all by women!  They all have something else in common—they each have both merits and demerits that sort of cancel out…neither Brown, Russ, nor Norton quite hit it out of the park this time at bat.

photo of a dark-haired woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

In Memoriam

An unavoidable note of sadness fills this review of a newly published novel. The author died of lymphoma in 1967, at the very young age of 41. With that in mind, let's try to take an objective look at her final novel.

The Waters of Centaurus, by Rosel George Brown

A book cover, primarily black and white. The image suggests a twisted, futuristic, mechanical face, with odd orange-pink lips. The letters of the title and author are in white, and somewhat mechanical in shape as well.
Cover art by Margo Herr

This is a direct sequel to Sibyl Sue Blue. My esteemed colleague Janice L. Newman gave that novel a glowing review. In fact, our own Journey Press saw fit to reprint it in a handsome new format.

A book cover, showing a dark-haired woman in a blue cocktail dress with matching gloves, holding a cigar. There is a futuristic city behind her. The title reads
Order a copy today!

Sibyl Sue Blue is back. She's a forty-year-old police detective and a widow with a teenage daughter. She's fond of cigars, gin, fancy clothes, and attractive men.

After her previous adventure, she's on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. Familiarity with the first novel would help get the reader oriented, but let me try to sum up the situation quickly.

The planet is inhabited by at least three varieties of humanoids. Those dwelling on the main continent can't mate with humans, and don't play much of a role in the plot. The folks living on an island are semi-aquatic, can mate with humans, and are the main focus of the book. The third kind, from a northern continent, supplies our story's antagonist.

Sibyl Sue Blue and her daughter are on the planet as part of a working vacation, enjoying the beach while acting as ambassadors from Earth. Sibyl is attacked by somebody and nearly drowns, but manages to fight off the bad guy handily. That's bad enough, but things get worse when her daughter, in a sort of trance, walks off into the ocean. What's going on?

Let's try to make a complex plot, a lot of which depends on what happened in the first novel, simpler. The antagonist, acting like a James Bond villain, plans to flood the planet by melting the ice caps. He's got a secret underwater lair, as well as a substance that turns air-breathers into water-breathers.

There are several other characters involved, and plenty of plot twists. Unlike the first novel, this one doesn't seem to have much in the way of social commentary. It somehow manages to be action-packed while also spending quite a bit of time describing Sibyl's wardrobe. There's a bit too much drinking of gin and smoking of cigars for my taste.

The antagonist has a very weird love/hate feeling for human women. Sibyl and he somehow manage to be lovers while also trying to kill each other. The speculative biology at the heart of the plot isn't much more plausible than this odd relationship.

Overall, I'd say this is a readable but forgettable potboiler. It's nice to have a middle-aged mother as the heroic protagonist, anyway.

Three stars.

BW photo of Jason Sacks. He's a white man, with short light hair, rectangular glasses, and headphones.
by Jason Sacks

And Chaos Died, by Joanna Russ

Two months ago, I reviewed one of the worst books I’ve ever covered in this column: Taurus Four by the absolutely deplorable Rena Vale. This month I review the second novel by promising newcomer Joanna Russ. In some ways And Chaos Died and Taurus Four have nothing in common. In other ways these books have a huge amount of thematic overlap.

I wish I could say Russ’s novel is completely successful. She’s clearly ambitious. And Chaos Died is a novel of heady ideas and language. Russ plays in fascinating ways with internal and external perspectives, delivering a novel of alternating views and alien attitudes. But I feel like she simply fails to reach the heady levels she's aiming for with this novel.

And Chaos Died and Taurus Four both have long sequences which take place on strange alien worlds. On those worlds, beings live in primitive states. Both worlds are Edenic, full of civilizations who are one with the land they live in. The locals in both novels are naked and unashamed, in a world of boundless plenty on a fertile plain. Vale took that setup and revealed her hatred for “primitive” society. Russ takes that setup and delivers something complex and uncanny.


Cover by Diane and Leo Dillon

See, the locals on the planet “speak” telepathically and have psionic ability. Children can speed up or slow down their aging:

"I'm nine," she went on pedantically, "but actually I'm fifteen. I've slowed myself down. That's called 'dragging your feet.' Mother keeps telling me 'Evniki, don't drag your feet,' but catch me hurrying into it!"

There’s playfulness about the ideas of language:

"By the way," she said in a low voice, "I know what it means to cannibalize; it means to eat something. I heard about that." She seemed to hesitate in the half-dark.

But tell me, please," she said, "what does it mean exactly—radio?"

And Russ gives us beautiful literary-minded ideas about perception and peace and communications which abound in this book – at least until Jai returns to an overpopulated, warlike Earth. A shift in global temperatures and climates has devastated our planet; wars and starvation and hatred have made our planet a dystopia. And Jai has been so changed by his experiences on the alien planet that he finally is able to see things on Earth as they really are.

I loved the wildly imaginative approach to this book. The writing here is elliptical and dense. The prose rewards slow reading and attention to detail, but I was never lost in the book. In fact, I often find myself swept away by its literacy and ambitions. At times Russ reads like a less academic, more playful Ursula LeGuin.

A BW photograph of Russ. She is a slim, raw-boned woman, sitting in a theater seat and wearing a velvet sweater.Joanna Russ

Russ has deeply inventive ways of putting readers in the mind of psychic people of all ages as well as the ordinary people who have to interact with the natives. The book deserves high marks for the sequences on the alien planet, though I found her Earth-bound scenes a bit cliched.

But the book has another flaw: its treatment of homosexuality.

Our lead character is named Jai Vedh, and very early in the novel Jai proclaims himself to be a homosexual. But partway through And Chaos Died, Jai falls into a relationship with a woman. We are led to believe Jai’s homosexuality is “cured” with that relationship, and he himself even declares his happiness in a “straight” lifestyle.

I know we live in a world in which the American Psychological Association still declares “gayness” as a mental illness. But I still find it unthinkable that an intelligent and well-spoken woman like Joanna Russ would ally herself with the idea that homosexuality can – or even should – be “cured”. Love is love, whether between genders or in the same gender, and I was shocked Russ has her lead character change his whole approach to intimacy so quickly.

[I had a similar issue when I reviewed an excerpt of the novel, published as a stand-alone story earlier this year. (ed.)]

I would expect that approach from a Rena Vale, but not from a Joanna Russ. It’s jarring to see, and it really hurt my opinion of the novel.

There’s really nothing wrong with falling short when taking on heady ambitions. Joanna Russ is clearly a talented writer with many ideas. She falls squarely in the cohort of new wave sf authors who are elevating science fiction to new levels and confronting our new decade with a revolution. And Chaos Died aims to feel revolutionary. I feel it’s merely evolutionary.

3 stars.

A photo portrait of Winona Menezes. She is a woman with light-brown skin, long black curly hair and dark eyes. She is smiling at the camera.
by Winona Menezes

High Sorcery, by Andre Norton

High Sorcery is an anthology featuring three short stories and two novelettes from Andre Norton. I had a good time with it, though it's not obvious to me why these particular stories were chosen, as any thread linking them together feels no stronger than that of any other in Norton’s body of work, which does have better to offer. Still, it felt like a pretty decent cross-section of her work, and her skill as a writer and storyteller is on full display.

A faintly Frazetta-like cover, showing a man in a winged helmet pulling out a sword. He is facing a black-haired woman in a clinging, semi-transparent white dress. Large letters first say
by Gray Morrow

"Wizard’s World" opens on a world ravaged by nuclear war, scattered with mutants who have been subjugated and enslaved for the psychic abilities they developed in the aftermath. Craike is one such mutant, and we find him fleeing a mob wishing to hunt and kill him for his abilities. Unexpectedly, he falls through a rift between worlds and awakes in a land much unlike his own, less technologically advanced and more akin to the days of Medieval Europe. He discovers a man and woman being persecuted for the magical psionic powers they were born with, much like his own, and feels compelled to help them out of an affinity for the hunted.

This story – its premise, its characters, its plot and setting – feel very much at home in a Norton anthology. The dissonant combination of a post-nuclear apocalypse and an Old World fairytale landscape is very characteristic of her tendency to combine genre cliches or buck them altogether, and the equitable inclusion of women and characters of color is still unfortunately rare enough to be notable. I can’t fault this story on any technicalities. Rather, I simply felt that it didn’t quite live up to what we are now well aware the author is capable of.

Beyond our main character, who is given the moral high ground to an extent verging on gratuity, I didn’t feel that any other characters were fleshed out enough to make me properly care about them. Norton has a flair for slowly revealing information to the reader as it is discovered by the protagonist in a way that normally builds excellent suspense, but here I found it disorienting. I don’t even think I properly knew what was going on until far too late in the story, and the female main character’s skittishness toward the Craike meant that I effectively knew too little about her to form an attachment until the end. The ending itself was cut tantalizingly short just as things were happening that I could actually be bothered to care about.

"Wizard’s World" feels like an unfinished draft of a story that could have been excellent, but was forgotten by its author before she could add embellishment enough to distinguish it from any other second-rate fantasy pulp. Sorry, but just two out of five stars for this one.

[David reviewed the tale when it came out a couple of years ago in IF—he was not overly enamored, either (ed.)]

Fortunately, its only up from here.

"Through the Needle’s Eye" is a charming little short story about a young girl named Ernestine, crippled by polio and longing for connection with her able-bodied peers. She meets an older woman named Miss Ruthevan and is struck by her stately beauty, as well as the handicap they both share. Miss Ruthevan has a gift for creating otherworldly masterpieces with embroidery, and takes Ernestine under her wing to teach her the art. But under her tutelage, Ernestine begins to discover that Miss Ruthevan’s talent, passed down through generations of women, comes at a magical cost.

I love bite-sized stories like this; it takes a skilled storyteller to write one in a way that feels satisfying, but still trusts the audience’s imagination to fill in the gaps. The portrayal of disability felt sympathetic without being pitiful. Miss Ruthevan is the type of scorned woman-turned-unsettlingly powerful witch that I love and appreciate. I also love to see a story making use of the underappreciated beauty of the fiber arts. It’s short, but it excels at what it sets out to do, so it's five stars from me. I’ve been turning it over and over in my head for days.

"By a Hair" (originally published July 1958, in Phantom) is another short one. This one concerns a small Balkan village struggling to rebuild and defend itself after being plundered by Nazis. The once-lovely Countess Ana was taken to an extermination camp and now returns maimed beyond recognition. She chooses to devote her now-reclusive life to midwifery and the supernatural arts in service of her small village. Meanwhile, the incomparably beautiful Dagmar has chosen to use her dangerous allure to scheme and climb her way to security. She requests that Ana use her occult powers in service of a treacherous gamble, and receives her desire at a tragically ironic price.

This story left less to the imagination, but was no less effective. Though both women were positioned as diametrically opposed foils of each other, I still found both of their motives perfectly understandable given the desperation of their war-ravaged lives. I could not bring myself to condemn Dagmar for her desire for self-preservation, and that made the ending of this story as bleak as its setting. Of course, it’s also possible that I may have a blind spot in my moral code for beautiful scheming women in a world that leaves them few options. Either way, four stars.

"Ully the Piper" is the final short story in this anthology. In the sleepy, idyllic village of Coomb Brackett, young Ully longs for a life of normalcy after a fall in his childhood rendered him paralyzed. One day he discovers a beautiful flute, and his time spent in the tranquility of nature inspires him to become a talented piper. He wishes to share his gift with the other villagers, until the town bully Matt antagonizes him by taking his flute and leaving him lost in the forest. But Ully’s musical skill did not go unnoticed by the ancient fae who called the forest their home long before it was Coomb Bracket, and it is by their favor that Ully receives his heart’s desire and rises above Matt’s torment.

This one feels like a true fairy tale in its simplicity. Its uncomplicated morals and expected ending did nothing to detract from its beauty. The fae were as mischievous and mysterious and beguiling as they are in all the best fairy stories. There isn’t much for me to say about this one, other than that it feels like the sort of enchanting bedtime story that was read to you as a child, the kind that echoes in the back of your mind when you find yourself wandering through nature alone on moonless nights. Four stars.

"Toys of Tamisan" is the longer of the two novellas, which thankfully left enough room to develop the scenery. Tamisan is a skilled “dreamer,” an occupation inhabited by those who possess the skill to create vivid imaginary worlds and share them with their clientele via a psychic link. She is hired to create engaging dreams for the entertainment of the wealthy Lord Starrex and his cousin Kas, but when she attempts to build a dream world that mirrors an alternate history of their own something goes horribly wrong. She loses control of the world she has created, and is stuck within it and left to devise a way out of her own dream.

The premise of this story certainly appealed to me. I felt that the idea of a dreamer effectively enslaved to create beautiful dreams for a wealthy lord was a poignant distillation of the way that employing artisans to use their creativity in service of creating capital for a wealthy ruling class demeans human creativity as a whole. Other than that though, the story did drag along a little slowly, and after a while I found myself losing track of the plot in a way that made me care even less. This was made even worse by the fact that the ending failed to tie up several loose ends, which made me feel a little silly for even trying to follow.

What did stand out to me, however, was how well-crafted the dialogue was. I think that Norton is uniquely good at writing incisive dialogue, and this was on display in a way that made me look forward to the next line that was about to be said, regardless of where it was about to take the story. It was impressive how economically Norton uses short lines to precisely convey ideas, tone, and mood. It was enough to keep me reminded that Norton is a master of her craft regardless of how boring this story was, and for me that’s enough to elevate the story to a three out of five [Which is also what David gave it when it came out in the May 1969 IF (ed.)]

That puts us at 3.4 stars for the collection, with the two non-reprints being some of the strongest work.  It's probably worth 60 cents, even if it's not the best Norton can produce.

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


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 10, 1970] Thirty Years To Go (The Year 2000, a science fiction anthology by Harry Harrison)

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photo of a dark-haired woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

Clarke and Kubrick Minus One

A recent film has made many of us aware of the first year of the next century.  But what about the last year of this century?

(You do know that 2000 will be the last year of the twentieth century and not the first year of the twenty-first century, right?  I thought so.)

A new anthology of original science fiction stories attempts to offer a glimpse of that evocative year to come. 

The Year 2000, edited by Harry Harrison

Cover of the book The Year 2000, An Anthology Edited by Harry Harrison. The cover illustration is a lustrous white surface with half a crater visible at the top.
Cover art by Pat Steir.

Obviously, all the stories take place three decades from now.  Other than that, they have a wide range of themes and styles, from old-fashioned tales of adventure to commentary on social issues to New Wave experimentation.  Let's take a look.

America the Beautiful, by Fritz Leiber

The narrator is a poet and scholar who travels to the United States on an academic tour.  He stays with a typical American family and has an affair with the adult daughter of his hosts.  Despite the fact that pollution has been eliminated and racism is no longer a problem, there's something about the place that makes him uneasy.  Part of it has to do with the fact that the USA is still involved in small scale wars, similar to the current conflict in Vietnam. 

Although there is a fair amount of futuristic content (rocket transportation between North America and Europe, for example), this reads almost like a mainstream story, something that might be published in a future issue of The New Yorker.  It's impressionistic and introspective.  Given that it's by Leiber, it's no surprise that it's very well written.  Perhaps it's a bit too subtle for me.

Three stars.

Prometheus Rebound, by Daniel F. Galouye

An aircraft that uses the Earth's magnetic field gets in trouble.  The huge plane, which looks like a flying saucer, keeps gaining altitude, beyond the control of the pilots.  Can an elderly veteran flyer of World War Two help the crew save the lives of all aboard?

There's a ton of technical jargon throughout the story, the vast majority of which went way over my head.  The plot depends on a character doing something really foolish. 

Two stars.

Far from This Earth, by Chad Oliver

In Kenya, an area formerly used for raising cattle now serves as a wildlife preserve.  The main character is a warden who has to prevent elderly people from following their traditional ways by tending cattle in the region.  Part of the preserve is an amusement park, something like an African Disneyland.  The protagonist visits the space-themed part of the park, which offers hope for his son's future.

The story offers a thoughtful look at culture change.  The warden bitterly regrets what has been lost, but also welcomes improvements.  He's an ambiguous sort, not always sympathetic, which adds depth of characterization.  The author obviously knows the area and its culture very well, and depicts them vividly.

Four stars.

After the Accident, by Naomi Mitchison

The title disaster contaminated the Earth with radiation.  Genetic testing is used to find out which persons would be likely to produce offspring without mutations.  The narrator, a biologist and historian, meets a man who plans to send colonists to another world.  She becomes pregnant with their child, who will have mutations that will allow it to survive on the planet.

This is a quietly disturbing story.  The narrator's calm acceptance of the situation and decision to bear a mutant baby are the most chilling aspects of it.  The speculative biology is convincing, the stuff about colonizing another planet less so.

Three stars.

Utopian, By Mack Reynolds

A social activist who was in suspended animation wakes up to find that the world has become the kind of paradise he imagined.  There's no money, because everybody has everything they need.  The folks who revived him tell him what they need from him.

The fellow went into suspended animation only because the people in the year 2000 used a sort of mental time travel to take over his mind and make him abscond with funds from his organization and then freeze himself.  I found this aspect of the story gimmicky and implausible compared to the rest.  The impact of the piece depends entirely on its punchline.

Two stars.

Orgy of the Living and the Dying, by Brian W. Aldiss

A man leaves his wife in England to work for a United Nations famine relief agency in India.  He has an affair with a physician.  When the facility is attacked by bandits, he battles them in an unusual way.

This synopsis makes the story sound like mainstream fiction, without futuristic elements.  The main speculative premise is that the man hears voices, some of them seemingly precognitive.  Excerpts of what he hears alternate with the narrative portion of the text, giving the work a touch of New Wave. 

The author creates an evocative setting, if one that could easily be set today rather than in the year 2000.  The man's lust for the doctor causes him to force himself on her at one point.  It's hard to accept him as a hero later, when he comes up with a technological way to defeat the bandits.  (This technique, by the way, is the part of the story that most evokes the feeling of science fiction, even if there is nothing futuristic about it.)

Three stars.

Sea Change, by A. Bertram Chandler

(The book just calls the author Bertram Chandler, but we know better than that, don't we?  It's also no surprise at all that it's a sea story.)

A sea captain (of course!) who went into suspended animation for medical reasons gets thawed out, cured, and given a job commanding a gigantic, automated cargo ship.  When things go wrong, he has to make use of his experience with sailing ships to save the day.

Chandler can't be beat when it comes to describing nautical stuff, and in this case he doesn't even have to pretend that his vessel is a starship.  It may be hard to believe that a guy whose experience with ships is thirty years out of date would be given command of a futuristic vessel.  It may also raise a few hackles to learn that the ship's troubles are caused by a female member of the crew, who messes everything up.

Three stars.

Black is Beautiful, by Robert Silverberg

New York City is populated almost entirely by Black persons, with only a few White commuters and tourists.  The main character is an angry teenager who sees the mayor of the city as an Uncle Tom.  He stalks a White teenager out of a sense of injustice and seeks revenge.

A White author writing from the point of view of a Black radical is taking a big chance, I think, and could be accused of depicting Black stereotypes.  In this case, the gamble pays off pretty well.  The teenager is passionate but naive, the Mayor cynical but effective.  The story might be read as a debate between two styles of Black activism.

Four stars.

Take It or Leave It, by David I. Masson

Two sections of text alternate, both featuring the same characters.  In one, they face challenges like local crime bosses and being forced to move in a technologically advanced society.  In the other, they struggle to survive in a world devastated by a plague.

This reads almost like two different stories.  The first one is full of futuristic slang and nouns used as verbs.  (The word visited is replaced by visitationed, for example.) The second one has more direct language, but is very grim.  People hunt cats to eat them, for one thing. 

The tricks with language make the story difficult to read.  Given the title, I wonder if the author is saying that an imperfect future is a lot better than a horrible one.  This is one for New Wave fans.

Three stars.

The Lawgiver, by Keith Laumer

As a way to fight overpopulation in the United States, a controversial law makes it mandatory to terminate pregnancies unless the mother-to-be has a birth permit. (There's also the implication that she has to be married.) The Senator who pushed this law through Congress, against much opposition, confronts a woman made pregnant by his son. 

Given the fact that abortion is only legal under certain circumstances in a handful of states, it seems unlikely that it would often be mandatory a mere thirty years from now.  (And the story makes it clear that the procedure has to take place even if birth is imminent.)

The author doesn't seem to be making a case for or against abortion, as far as I can tell.  The plot is melodramatic, throwing in a car crash to add excitement (and maybe some dark irony.) Still, I have to admit that it held my attention throughout.

Three stars.

To Be a Man, by J. J. Coupling

A fellow is seriously injured in battle and has almost all of his body except brain, eyes, and part of his spinal cord replaced by artificial parts, indistinguishable from the original.  He returns from the war to confront his lover.

Much of the story consists of exposition, as the man explains in great detail how his new body works.  This makes for dry reading.  In sharp contrast to this is the sexual content: it seems that the fellow can be programmed to be a tireless sex partner.  This results in an outrageous scene in which all the nurses in a battleground medical facility have an orgy with the guy.  Pure male fantasy.

Two stars.

Judas Fish, by Thomas N. Scortia

A man works in a deep sea facility, altering the genetics of fish so that they will lead members of their species into the facility's chambers, to be processed into food for a starving world.  Squid-like beings, having intelligence at least as great as humans, steal the fish away.  The man's capture of one of the creatures leads to a strange transformation.

This is probably the most speculative story in the book, with a common science fiction theme that goes far beyond just extrapolating the next few decades.  Not overly plausible, but readable enough if you're willing to suspend your disbelief.

Three stars.

American Dead, by Harry Harrison

Black guerrillas wage open warfare against the United States government, making use of weapons stolen from the military.  An Italian journalist observes an assault by one of the Black commanders. 

This is a gruesome vision of the worst possible outcome of current racial tensions in the USA.  The manner in which the rebels fight is clearly based on tactics used by the Viet Cong.  A powerful and disturbing tale.

Four stars.

Worth Waiting Thirty Years?

Overall, the book is OK, if not great.  Some low points, some high points, mostly decent stories if not outstanding ones.  Worth reading once, but don't expect it to be in print three decades from now.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 10, 1970] Time On My Hands (February 1970 Fantastic)

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photo of a dark-haired woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

What Time Is It?

That's a question that you can answer with more confidence than before, if you're willing to shell out a whole bunch of bucks.  On Christmas Day the Japanese company Seiko introduced the world's first quartz wristwatch.  (There have been clocks using quartz crystals, but not anything this small.)

As I understand it, quartz crystals vibrate in a precise manner when voltage is applied to them.  Thus, the tiny bit of quartz inside the watch, powered by an itty-bitty battery, provides an unvarying pulse that supplies extraordinary accuracy.

The Quartz Astro 35SQ keeps time to within five seconds per month, which is said to be about one hundred times better than a mechanical watch of good quality. 

The catch?  You have to pay 450,000 yen for it.  That's well over one thousand dollars.  You can buy a nice new car for the price of two watches.

photograph of a gold watch with a brown leather strap. In the center of the face, letters spell out Seiko-Astro
Quite a stocking stuffer.

If you like, you can use your fancy new timepiece to measure how long it takes to peruse the latest issue of Fantastic.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

Or maybe the publishers can measure how much time they saved by copying the cover art from yet another issue of Perry Rhodan instead of waiting for an artist to create a new one.

Cover of Fantastic: illustration of a spacesuited man on a pink lunar surface grappling with a blue robotic, treaded tank with a big eye stalk and two grasping tentacles.
The title translates to The Cannons of Everblack.  Note the use of English for what I presume is the name of a planet.

Editorial, by Ted White

This wordy introduction wanders all over the place.  The editor states that the magazine is getting a lot more mail from readers.  (See the letter column below.) He says that he doesn't like the name of the magazine, and suggests changing it to Fantastic Adventures, the name of the old pulp magazine from which reprints are often drawn.  (The sound you hear is me screaming No!)

He discusses the old problem of defining science fiction as distinguished from fantasy.  The essay winds up complaining about an article by Norman Spinrad that appeared in the girlie magazine Knight.  Apparently Spinrad griped about SF fans and pros being hostile to the New Wave.  Sounds like a tempest in a teapot to me.

No rating.

Double Whammy, by Robert Bloch

The author of Psycho leads off the issue with another shocker.


Illustration by Michael Hinger.

A guy who works at a sleazy carnival is afraid of the geek.  If you don't know what a geek is, you haven't read William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel Nightmare Alley, or seen the movie adapted from it the next year.

A geek is an alcoholic who has fallen so low that the only work he can get is pretending to be a so-called wild man and biting the heads off live chickens. 

Our slimy protagonist seduces a teenager.  When she tells him she's pregnant, he refuses to marry her, leading to tragic results.  The girl is the granddaughter of a Gypsy fortuneteller, who has a reputation for supernatural revenge.

This is an out-and-out horror story that may remind you of the 1932 film Freaks. (Like that controversial film, it features a man without arms or legs.) The author saves his final punch to the reader's gut until the last sentence.  If you don't like gruesome terror tales, it may be too much for you.  I thought it accomplished what it set out to do very effectively.

Four stars.

The Good Ship Lookoutworld, by Dean R. Koontz

This space opera begins with a fight to the death between a human and a weird alien, apparently just as a sporting event.


Illustration by Ralph Reese.

This violent scene is just a prelude to a yarn in which the triumphant human recruits the narrator (another human) to join him in a mission to salvage a derelict alien starship.  The vessel was operated by an extinct species of extraterrestrials who seem to have been nice folks.  They just traveled around the universe bringing entertainment.  Too bad a disease wiped them out.

The starship turns out to contain the headless skeletons of its crew.  That's mysterious and scary enough, but when our heroes journey back to their homebase in it, parts of the ship disappear, one by one.  Can they survive the long voyage before the whole thing vanishes?

This is a fast-paced adventure story with a twist in its tail.  Given a few clues, you might be able to figure out the surprise ending.  It's a little too frenzied for me, but short enough that it doesn't wear out its welcome.

Three stars.

Learning It at Miss Rejoyy's, by David R. Bunch

The narrator has dreamed about visiting the place named in the title since childhood, when his dad told him about it.  The stunningly desirable Miss Rejoyy promises him an intimate encounter with her if he can meet the requirements.  He has to pay to enter a room where his reactions to pain and pleasure will be measured.

The narrative style is less eccentric than usual for this author.  The content, however, is just as strange.  There are some really disturbing images.  The point of this weird allegory is a very pessimistic one, which is likely to turn off many readers.  Still, it has an undeniable power.

Three stars.

Hasan (Part Two of Two), by Piers Anthony

Here's the conclusion of this Arabian Nights fantasy.


Illustrations by Jeff Jones.

Summing things up as simply as I can, the title hero went through many adventures before stealing away with a woman who could turn herself into a bird, hiding the bird skin that gave her this power.  More or less forced to marry him, she had two sons with him.  She eventually found the skin and flew off to her native land with the children.

In this installment, he sets off on an odyssey to find her.  This involves a whole lot of encounters with strange people and supernatural beings.  In brief, he gets involved with a magician, rides a horse that can run over water, rides on the back of a flying ifrit, meets a group of Amazon warriors, faces an evil Queen, takes part in a huge battle, and witnesses an explosive climax.


Some of the many characters in the story.

A wild ride, indeed.  This half of the novel has a fair amount of humor.  The magician and the ifrit are particularly amusing.  The plot turns into a travelogue of sorts, as Hasan journeys from Arabia to China, then to Indochina and Malaysia, winding up in Sumatra.


A helpful map allows you to follow the hero's travels.

A lengthy afterword from the author explains how he changed the original story from One Thousand and One Nights.  He also offers several references.  One can admire his scholarship. 

The resulting story is entertaining enough.  I'm still a little disconcerted by the fact that Hasan kidnaps the bird woman, and that she eventually decides that she loves him anyway.  A product of the original, I suppose.

Three stars. 

Creation, by L. Sprague de Camp

This is a very short poem about various legends concerning the creation of humanity by an assortment of deities.  It leads up to a wry punchline.  Not bad for what it is.

Three stars.

Secret of the Stone Doll, by Don Wilcox

The March 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures supplies this tale of the South Seas.


Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

The narrator winds up on a paradisical Pacific island.  He falls in love with a local beauty after rescuing her from drowning. 


Illustrations by Jay Jackson.

Everything seems to be hunky-dory, but his new bride insists that she must make a journey to a part of the island kept separate from the rest by a stone wall.  Because the islanders have a strong taboo against discussing fear or danger, she can't tell him what it's all about.  Along the way, they meet a madman with a sword and the object mentioned in the title.


Apparently, he's a visitor to the island, just like the narrator.

I found this exotic, mysterious tale quite intriguing.  The revelation about the woman's journey surprised me.  (There's an editor's footnote — I assume it's from the original publication — that tries to offer a scientific explanation.  This is just silly, and the story works much better as pure fantasy.  The new editor's suggestion that it relates to something in Frank Herbert's Dune also stretches things to the breaking point.)

Maybe I'm rating this story higher than it might otherwise deserve because I wasn't expecting much from this issue's reprint.  Unlike a lot of yarns from the pulps, it isn't padded at all, with a fairly complex plot told in a moderate number of pages.  Anyway, I liked it.

Four stars.

According to You, by Various Readers

As the editorial said, there are a lot of letters.  Bill Pronzini offers an amusing response to a reader who didn't like his story How Now Purple Cow in a previous issue.  I didn't care for it either, so I'm glad he's a good sport about criticism.

The other letters deal with all kinds of stuff, besides talking about what kind of stories they want to see (offering proof that you can't please everybody.) One speculates about a combination of Communism and Christianity.  (The editor dismisses this as unlikely.) Many react to an editorial in a previous issue about the cancellation of the Smothers Brothers TV show.

No rating.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Alexander Temple

Just like Fred Lerner did in the last issue, Leiber praises Lin Carter's Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings for its history of fantasy fiction, and condemns Understanding Tolkien by William Ready, while admitting that it has a few good insights.  He praises The Quest For Arthur's Britain by Geoffrey Ashe and Isaac Asimov's The Near East: 10,000 Years of History as fine nonfiction books with subjects relating to fantasy fiction.

Temple very briefly discusses The Demons of the Upper Air, a slim little book of poems by Leiber.  It's a lukewarm review, talking about his occasional careless choice of words . . . hardly to be compared with his prose and recommends it for Leiber fans only.

Worth Your Time?

This was a pretty good issue, with nothing below average in it.  I imagine others will dislike some of the stories, but I was satisfied.

While admiring your new thousand dollar watch, don't forget to get a new calendar as well.  I wonder how long I'll be writing 1969 on checks.


Did you make it to either of these groovy concerts?

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


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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 16, 1969] Fun, Frivolity, and Flandry (The Unicorn Girl and more!)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Compare and Contrast

Two new science fiction novels that fell into my hands are similar in many ways. Both are by British writers and might be classified as action-packed adventure yarns. Each features a rather ordinary hero who gets involved in a secret scientific project of epic proportions. Both protagonists fall in love along the way. Each has a touch of satire and a cynical attitude about politics.

The main difference is that one takes place in the present and the other is set some centuries from now. Let's take a look at the first one.

98.4, by Christopher Hodder-Williams


Cover art by David Stanfield.

Our hero has just lost his job and his live-in girlfriend. He worked as a security expert at a research facility, but certain parts of it were off limits to him. A fellow claiming to work for the United Nations hires him to do some unofficial investigating of the place.

I should mention at this point that everybody the protagonist meets refuses to tell him everything that's going on. I suspect this is a way for the author to keep the reader in suspense. It's also worthy of note that the hero, who is also the narrator, casts a jaundiced eye on the world around him.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and members of the Warsaw Pact send troops into Czechoslovakia to suppress the liberal reforms known as the Prague Spring. This part of the novel is torn straight from the headlines.

As the Cold War heats up, things get complicated. There's an accident at the facility that causes two ambulances to rush away from the place, although there's apparently only one victim. The hero runs into a mysterious woman who knows more about the situation than she lets on (like a lot of characters in the novel.) She's also suffering from some kind of disease she won't discuss. As you'd expect, love blooms.

Add in a gigantic hidden complex of underground tunnels and automated submarines. The big secret behind everything involves Mad Science at its maddest. The protagonist and a few allies battle to stop World War Three from breaking out, and we'll finally learn what the numerical title means. (I suppose it's also an allusion to George Orwell's famous novel 1984, but that's not all.)

Not the most plausible plot in the world. You have to accept the fact that there could be a secret project extending over many miles without anybody finding out about it. If you can suspend your disbelief, it's a very readable page-turner.

Three stars.

The Weisman Experiment, by John Rankine


Cover art by Richard Weaver.

Let's jump forward hundreds of years. People are rigidly assigned to different levels of society, with their jobs chosen for them. They can't even marry until the powers that be allow them to do so. There are some folks living in the wilderness outside this system. If the previous novel tipped its hat to 1984, this one owes something to Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Our hero works for what seems to be the planet's only news agency. His job is only vaguely described, but it seems to be some kind of editing or proofreading position.

The daughter of the boss fancies herself one of those Spunky Girl Reporters from old black-and-white movies. (That's my interpretation, not the author's.) Somehow she came across a reference to something called (you guessed it) the Weisman Experiment. This happened a few decades ago, and the government has repressed all knowledge of it.

The boss tells the protagonist to help his daughter investigate the mysterious experiment. As soon as they set out, somebody tries to kill them. Whenever they track down one of the few surviving people who remember the Weisman Experiment, that person is murdered.

The hero and the daughter (who will, of course, eventually fall in love) are separated by the powers that be before they get too far. The protagonist goes through some brainwashing to straighten him out, but it doesn't quite work.

The rest of the novel takes us to North Africa, where the hero acquires an ally. (This character is a bit embarrassing, as she speaks in an accent and ends almost all her statements with I theenk.) Next we go to an underwater facility, where he's reunited with the daughter. Eventually, we wind up at the estate of an incredibly wealthy fellow, where we finally find out what the heck the Weisman Experiment was all about.

Like the other novel, this is a fast-moving tale with something to say about the way society is set up. Worth reading once.

Three stars.

by Brian Collins

We have two short novels from very different authors, one being a promising young writer and the other one of the more reliable workhorses in the field. Neither novel is all that good, but at the very least I needed something less demanding after I had recently covered Macroscope.

Grimm's World, by Vernor Vinge

A kind of island in the middle of an ocean, with a few sailing ships around it.
Cover art by Paul Lehr.

Vinge has written only one or maybe two short stories a year so far, but all of them have been interesting, if not necessarily good. Grimm’s World, his debut novel, is itself an expansion of the novella “Grimm’s Story,” which appeared in Orbit 4 last year. The novel is split into two parts, with the first being “Grimm’s Story,” which as far as I can tell Vinge did not change significantly. If I was just reviewing the first part, I would say it’s fairly good, certainly in keeping with Vinge’s other short fiction. High three to a low four stars.

Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there.

The short of it is that Svir Hedrigs is an astronomy student who gets roped into a scheme by the notorious Tatja Grimm and her crew, those who make the speculative fiction (although here it’s called “contrivance fiction”) magazine Fantasie, a publication that is so old (centuries old, in fact) that its oldest issues seem to have been lost to time, if not for maybe a handful of collectors. The world is Tu, a distant planet that, like Jack Vance’s Big Planet, is vast and yet poor in metals. (Indeed this reads to a conspicuous degree like a Vance pastiche, albeit without Vance’s sardonic humor, and thus it’s not as entertaining.) Something to think about is that characters in an SF story are pretty much never aware that they’re inside a work of SF, and indeed SF as a school of fiction is rarely mentioned, much like how characters in a horror story are often blissfully unaware (for the moment) that they’re birds in a blood-red cage. Yet in Grimm’s World, what we call speculative fiction these days is held as the highest form of literature. It’s a curious case of characters in SF basically realizing that their world itself is SFnal, and therefore the possibilities are near-endless.

Of course the scheme to rescue a complete collection of Fantasie turns out to be a ruse, with Grimm usurping the tyrannical ruler of the single big land mass on this planet, on the falsehood that she is descended from the former monarchy. It’s at this point that the first part ends, and there’s a rather gaping hole in continuity between parts, the result feeling more like two related novellas than a single work. The second part is considerably weaker. What began as a nice planetary adventure turns into something more military-focused, as the people of Tu are terrorized by a race of humanoid aliens, whom Grimm may or may not be in cahoots with. Said aliens take sort of a hands-off approach with the Tu people, provided that their technology doesn’t become too advanced (a high-powered telescope, “the High Eye,” becomes increasingly an object of fascination as the novel progresses), and also that the Tu people reproduce at a rate to the aliens’ liking. What the aliens intend to do with the human surplus is absurd and raises some questions which Vinge never answers. There’s also a love triangle (or perhaps a love square) that I found totally unconvincing, if only because Svir seems to get a hard-on for whatever woman is within his field of vision.

I liked the first part but found the second part a bit of a slog.

Barely three stars.

The Rebel Worlds, by Poul Anderson

A man and a woman on top of a rhino.
Cover artist not credited.

Anderson’s writing is comfortable and comforting: rarely surprising, but often (not always) a mild stimulant that can help one during trying times. Just when I think everything might be going to shit, there’s a new Poul Anderson novel—possibly even two of them. The Rebel Worlds is short enough that it could’ve easily made up one half of an Ace Double, except this is from Signet. A few years ago we got Ensign Flandry, which saw the early days in the career of Dominic Flandry, clearly one of Anderson’s favorite recurring characters (although he’s not one of mine). The Rebel Worlds takes place not too long after Ensign Flandry, with Flandry now Lieutenant Commander and with more responsibilities, but still very much the playboy.

Hugh McCormac, a respected admiral of the Empire, is imprisoned, only to break out and go rogue, taking those loyal to him along for the ride. The prison breakout blossoms into a full-on rebellion across multiple worlds, which is a rather big problem for the Empire. Flandry, despite knowing that the Empire is on the brink of collapse and that “the Long Night” will begin soon enough, stays aligned with those in power—perhaps a sentiment Anderson himself shares, given he supports the war effort in Vietnam despite said war effort turning more sour by the week. Indeed Flandry’s seeming contradiction, between his extreme individualism and his allegiance to what he knows is a dying government, is both the core of his character and something he shares with his creator. We also know, from other Flandry stories, that the Empire will in fact soon collapse and that the Long Night, a centuries-long era of barbarism and disconnect across many worlds, will soon commence. And we know that Flandry is in no imminent danger, for better or worse. The real tension, then, lies in McCormac and his wife Kathryn, who has been taken captive by the Empire on the basis that she might cough up valuable info on her husband.

Something I admire about Anderson, despite sharply disagreeing with his politics, is that he’s evidently fond of anti-heroes (Flandry, Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, Gunnar Heim), but he also sometimes concocts anti-villains, in that these characters are technically antagonists but meant to be taken as sympathetic or noble. Despite being a thorn in the Empire’s side, McCormac is basically a good man who cares about those who work for him, never mind he also loves Kathryn very much. Much less sympathetic is Snelund, a planetary governor who is horrifically corrupt, and who also wants to put his filthy hands on Kathryn while she is his prisoner; yet this man also watches over Flandry’s assignment. It should not come as a surprise then that Flandry rescues Kathryn and hides out with her on the planet Dido, which has some unusual alien life. It also shouldn’t be surprising that the two fall in love, although understandably Kathryn still cares for McCormac and isn’t eager to be swept off her feet. (I also must say Anderson tries what I think is a 19th century Southern aristocratic accent with Kathryn, and it’s a bit odd.)

So business as usual for Flandry.

The major problem with The Rebel Worlds is that it’s too short. This is a problem Anderson’s novels sometimes have, but it seems to me that scenes and maybe entire chapters that would have fleshed out the conflict are simply not here. Sure, the plot is basically coherent, but we’re far more often told about things than shown them, to the point where I wonder if Anderson was working with a deadline that he struggled with, even with his near-superhuman writing speed. It’s a fine novel that could have easily been better, with some more time.

A solid three stars.


by Cora Buhlert

A New Chancellor and a New Era

Willy Brandt being sworn in as chancellor on October 22, 1969
Willy Brandt is sworn in as chancellor of West Germany.

In my last article, I mentioned that West Germany was about to have a federal parliamentary election. Now, that election has come and gone and has led to sweeping political change. Because for the first time since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, i.e. twenty years ago, the chancellor is not a member of the conservative party CDU.

Since 1966, West Germany has been governed by a so-called great coalition of the two biggest parties, the above mentioned conservative CDU and the social-democratic party SPD. The great coalition wasn't particularly popular, especially among young people, but due to their large and stable majority, they also got things done.

When the election results started coming in the evening of September 28 and the percentages of the vote won by the CDU and SPD respectively were very close, a lot of people expected that this meant that the great coalition would continue. And indeed, this is what many in the CDU and even the SPD would have preferred.

Willy Brandt with his wife Rut and his youngest son Matthias
At home with the Brandts: West Germany's new chancellor Willy Brandt with his Norwegian born wife Rut and their youngest son Matthias.

However, SPD head Willy Brandt, former mayor of West Berlin and West German foreign secretary and vice chancellor in Kurt Georg Kiesinger's great coalition cabinet, had different ideas. And so he chose to enter into coalition negotiations not with the CDU, but with the small liberal party FDP. These negotiations bore fruit and the 56-year-old Willy Brandt was sworn in as West Germany's fourth chancellor and head of a social-democratic/liberal coalition government on October 22.

Gustav Heineman and Willy Brandt shake hands.
West German president Gustav Heinemann and the new chancellor Willy Brandt shake hands.

Personally, I could not be happier about this development. I've been a supporter of the SPD for as long as I've been able to vote for them (sadly, I spent the first years of my voting age life under a regime where there were no elections) and I have liked Willy Brandt since his time as mayor of West Berlin. What is more, Willy Brandt is not a former Nazi like his predecessor Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, but spent the Third Reich in exile in Norway and Sweden. Of course, "not a former Nazi" should be a low bar to clear, but sadly West Germany is still infested with a lot of former Nazis masquerading as democrats. And indeed, the one blemish on the otherwise positive results of the 1969 federal election is that the far right party NPD, successor of the banned Nazi Party, managed to gain 3.8 percent of the vote, though thankfully the five percent hurdle keeps them out of our parliament.

Willy Brandt and his cabinet outside the Villa Hammerschmidt
Willy Brandt and his (very male) cabinet pose for a photo on the steps outside Villa Hammerschmidt, seat of the West German president.

In one of his first speeches as chancellor, Willy Brandt said he and his government want to "risk more democracy" and promised long overdue reforms. He also wants to initiate talks with East European governments to thaw the Cold War at least a little. I wish him and his cabinet all the best.

A Magical Mystery Tour: The Unicorn Girl by Michael Kurland

The Unicorn Girl by Michael Kurland

During my latest trip to my trusty import bookstore, I came across an intriguing looking paperback in the good old spinner rack called The Unicorn Girl by Michael Kurland. From the title, I assume that this would be a fantasy tale along the lines of The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. The Unicorn Girl, however, is a lot stranger than that.

For starters, The Unicorn Girl is actually a sequel to The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson, which my comrade-in-arms Kris Vyas-Myall reviewed last year. Like Kid, it's also a book where the author and his best friend, i.e. Michael Kurland and Chester Anderson, are the protagonists.

The Unicorn Girl starts off not in a far-away fantasyland, but in a place that – at least viewed from this side of the Atlantic – seems almost as fantastic, namely a coffeehouse cum performance venue called the Trembling Womb on the outskirts of San Francisco. Our hero Michael (a.k.a. Michael Kurland, the author) is sitting at a table, trying to compose a sonnet, while his friend Chester (a.k.a. Chester Anderson, the author of The Butterfly Kid) is performing on stage, when all of a sudden the girl of Michael's dreams walks in – quite literally, because this very girl has been appearing in Michael's dreams since childhood.

Michael does what anyone would do in that situation: he gets up and talks to the girl. Turns out that her name is Sylvia and that she's looking for her lost unicorn. Michael understandably assumes that Sylvia is playing a joke on him, especially since he had addressed her in the sort of pseudo-medieval language you'd hear at a Renaissance Fair. Sylvia, however, is deadly serious. She tells Michael and Chester that she's a circus performer and that her unicorn Adolphus ran away, when they stepped off the train. There's only one problem: train service into San Francisco ceased six years before. As far as I can ascertain from this side of the Atlantic, this isn't true and San Francisco does have train service, as befits a major metropolis, all which suggests that Michael and Chester live in the future, even though their surroundings seem very much like something you could find in San Francisco right now.

When Michael and Chester ask Sylvia, what year it is, she replies "1936", so Michael and Chester assume that time travel is involved. However, the truth is still stranger than this, for Sylvia seems to have no idea where she is. True, San Francisco today is very different from San Francisco in 1936, but you'd assume that Sylvia would at least recognise the name of the city. The fact that she keeps calling California "Nueva España" is also a clue that Sylvia hails from further afield than our version of 1936.

When Michael, Chester and Sylvia head out to look for the missing unicorn, they are met by some Sylvia's circus friends: Dorothy, an attractive but otherwise normal human woman, Giganto, a cyclops from Arcturus, and Ronald, a centaur. Upon seeing this strange trio, Michael and Chester immediately assume that they are experiencing drug-induced hallucinations – as do two random bystanders. It's a reasonable assumption to make, though two people normally don't experience the same hallucinations, even if they took the same drugs. And Chester swears that he hasn't slipped Michael any drugs…

Methinks we're not in Kansas – pardon, San Francisco – anymore

Before our heroes can get to the bottom of this mystery, they split up to search for the missing unicorn, only to find a flying saucer. There is a mysterious blip and Michael, Chester, Sylvia and Dorotha suddenly find themselves elsewhere and elsewhen, namely in the early Victorian era or rather a version of it that is very reminiscent of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories. I guess they should count themselves lucky it wasn't "The Queen Bee" instead.

The sojourn in the Victorian era according to Randall Garrett ends, when our heroes find themselves falsely accused of jewellery theft (and the way the true culprits accomplished those thefts is truly fascinating). During their escape, there is another blip and our heroes find themselves in World War II in the middle of a battlefield…

For most of its pages, The Unicorn Girl is a picaresque romp through time, space and dimensions. Literary allusions abound, for in addition to the Victorian era according to Randall Garrett, our heroes also briefly visit J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. It's all great fun, though eventually, there needs to be an explanation for this weirdness. And so, Michael and Sylvia, who have been temporarily separated from Chester and Dorothy, figure out – with the help of Tom Waters, a friend of Michael's and Chester's who'd disappeared earlier – that the blips always happen in moments of danger and crisis. They provoke another blip and finally land in a world that at least is aware that there is a problem with visitors from other times and universes showing up in their world, even if they have no idea why this is happening.

Turns out that all the different time lines and universes are converging, which may well mean the end of this world and any other. Luckily, there is a way to fix this issue and send everybody back to their own universe. The drawback is that solving the problem will be very dangerous. What is more, Michael, Chester and Tom on the one hand and Sylvia, Dorothy and the unicorn (with whom Sylvia has been reunited by now) on the other will return to different universes, even though Michael and Sylvia as well as Chester and Dorothy have fallen in love amidst all the chaos…

A Trippy Delight

The Unicorn Girl is not the sort of book I would normally have sought out, since I'm not a big fan of psychedelic science fiction. However, I'm glad that I read this book, because it's a true delight.

The novel is suffused with humour and wordplay, whether it's the tendency of the Victorians from the Randall Garrett inspired world to speak in very long, very complicated sentences or Michael parodying a wine connoisseur by evaluating plain water. The dialogue frequently sparkles such as when Sylvia asks, "Do you not travel to far-off planets?" and Chester replies, "We barely travel to nearby planets."

A fabulous adventure. Four stars.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 8, 1969] Arabesques (December 1969 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

From Arabia to Japan

The collection of Middle Eastern folktales known in English as Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights is familiar to folks all over the world.  Case in point, as Rod Serling might say, is the recent Japanese animated film Senya Ichiya Monogatari, which is loosely based on the collection.


Japanese poster for the film.  I don't know if it will ever show up elsewhere.

I should point out that this is not a cartoon intended for children.  Like the work which inspired it, it contains considerable erotic material.  If it ever gets released in the USA, it might get the infamous X rating.

I bring this up because the latest issue of Fantastic contains the first part of a new novel inspired by the same source as the film.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck

As is often the case lately, the cover is (ahem) borrowed from a German publication.


Die Herrscher der Nacht (The Ruler of the Night) is the title of the German translation of Jack Williamson's 1948 novel Darker Than You Think.

Editorial, by Ted White

The editor begins by telling us how the magazine's lead serial (see below) fell into his hands.  Long story short, it failed to find a publisher, got reviewed in a fanzine, Ted White read it and liked it.  He then goes on to relate the big changes in Fantastic and its sister publication Amazing.  My esteemed colleague John Boston has already discussed this in detail, so let me give you the Reader's Digest version.  Higher price, more words, only one reprint per issue.  Nuff said.

No rating.

Hasan (Part One of Two), by Piers Anthony


Illustrations by Jeff Jones.

More than half the magazine consists of the first installment of this Arabian Nights fantasy adventure. 

Hasan is a rather naive and foolish young man, living in Arabia around the year 800 or so.  He meets a Persian alchemist who demonstrates how to turn copper into gold.  His mother warns him not to trust this fire-worshipping infidel, but Hasan's greed overcomes what little common sense he possesses.

The wicked Persian kidnaps him and takes him on an ocean journey to the island of Serendip. (We call it Ceylon nowadays—the magazine provides a helpful map).

Despite this, Hasan still trusts the alchemist enough to perform the dangerous task of being carried to the top of a mountain by a roc, in order to gather the stuff needed to transform copper into gold.  The poor sap doesn't realize that the Persian intends to leave him stranded on the peak, where he'll starve to death.

Suffice to say that, with a lot of dumb luck, Hasan makes his way to an isolated palace inhabited by seven beautiful sisters, who adopt him as their brother.  He goes on to witness birds change into even more beautiful women, one of whom he is determined to have for his bride.  (She has little say in the matter.)


Seeing her naked while she is bathing makes him fall madly in love.

Without giving away too much, let's just say that the further adventures of Hasan and the bird woman will appear in the next issue.

The author appears to be well acquainted with One Thousand and One Nights, given his accompanying article on the subject (see below.) As far as I can tell, he captures the flavor of this kind of Arabian folktale in a convincing way.  Despite the fact that the hero is kind of a dope, and that the female characters (except Hasan's long-suffering mother) mostly exist to be alluringly beautiful, this half of the novel makes for light, entertaining reading.

Three stars.

Morality, by Thomas N. Scortia


Illustration by Bruce Jones.

It's obvious from the start that this is a science fiction version of the myth of the Minotaur, although the author doesn't make this explicit until the end.  The legendary monster is an alien stranded on Earth, forced to serve an ambitious king while trying to contact his own kind.

There's not much more to this story than its retelling of the old tale.  It plays out just as you'd expect.

Two stars.

Would You? by James H. Schmitz

A wealthy fellow invites an equally rich acquaintance to make use of a magic chair.  It seems that it has the ability to allow the person seated in it to change the past. 

I hope I'm not revealing too much to state that neither man chooses to alter his past, preferring to leave well enough alone.  That seems to be the point of the story.  A tale of fantasy in which an enchanted object is not used is unusual, I suppose, if not fully satisfying.

Two stars.

Magic Show, by Alan E. Nourse

A couple of guys watch a magic show at a cheap carnival.  One of them heckles the magician, who invites him to take part in his greatest feat.

You can probably see where this is going.  No surprises in the plot.  I have to wonder why a real, powerful magician works at a lousy little carnival.

Two stars.

X: Yes, by Thomas M. Disch

An unspecified referendum always appears on the ballot in every election.  Everybody knows that the proper thing to do is vote No.  A woman chooses to vote Yes, just as children vote Yes during their mock elections.

Can you tell that this is an odd little story?  I'm not sure what the author is getting at, unless it's something about conformity and rebellion.  At least it's not a simple, predictable plot.  Food for thought, I guess.

Three stars.

Big Man, by Ross Rocklynne

The April 1941 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this wild yarn.


Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

I can't argue with the accuracy of the title.  A gigantic man — he's said to be one or two miles tall — walks through the Atlantic Ocean to Washington, D. C.  The behemoth is under the control of a Mad Scientist, who intends to take over the United States government and run things the way he thinks they should be run.


Illustration by Robert Fuqua.

It's up to a heroic pilot and his girlfriend (who, in an incredible coincidence, turns out to be the sister of the young fellow who was transformed into the giant) to defeat the Mad Scientist and end the reign of terror of the Big Man.

Boy, this is a goofy story.  I think the author saw King Kong too many times.  The premise is, of course, absurd, and it's treated in the corniest pulp fiction manner imaginable.

One star.

Alf Laylah Wa Laylah — A Essay on The Arabian Nights, by Piers Anthony

As part of the magazine's Fantasy Fandom column, this article is reprinted from the fanzine Niekas.  It discusses One Thousand and One Nights in detail, comparing English translations and offering examples of the kinds of tales it contains.  Copious footnotes, some serious and some playful.  The author clearly knows his subject.

Three stars.

Fantasy Books by Fritz Leiber and Fred Lerner

Leiber quickly gives a positive review of Captive Universe by Harry Harrison, praises Walker and Company for reprinting science fiction classics in handsome hardcover editions, defends the use of strong language in Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad, gives thumbs up to A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle, and talks about Eric R. Eddison's fantasy novels.  He ends this rapid-fire essay by comparing the way that Heinlein, Spinrad, and Eddison describe a woman's breasts.  (The latter excerpt is a really wild bit of outrageously purple prose.)

Lerner, in an article reprinted from the fanzine Akos, talks about two nonfiction books about J. R. R. Tolkien.  He dismisses Understanding Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings by William Ready as poorly written and overly interpretive, and praises Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings by Lin Carter for its discussion of epic fantasy in general.

No rating.

… According to You, by various

The letters from readers offer both praise and criticism.  One of the editor's replies reveals that sales of the magazine went down when Cele Goldsmith was in charge, even though the quality of fiction improved.  I hope that's not a bad omen for the way Ted White is taking the publication.

No rating.

Worthy of Scheherazade?

Not a great issue, although Anthony's novel and related essay are well worth reading.  The new stuff is so-so and the reprint is laughably poor.  It might be better to watch an old movie instead.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 16, 1969] The March Goes On (Heartsease, Masque World, The Shadow People, Avengers of Carrig…and more!)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Unusually for the Galactoscope, our monthly round-up of new science fiction publications, we're starting this article with a stop press. It's simply too big an item to ignore.

If you read the papers this morning, you know the big news was that the Mets played the winning game of the World Series last night, against the Orioles. Competing for inches on the front page was the largest, the most coordinated, the most widespread anti-war demonstration this country has yet experienced.


Demonstrators in Washington

One million people, in every state of the union, participated in Vietnam Moratorium Day. Originally planned as a nationwide strike, instead, attendees made highly their protests highly visible—and peaceful. A quarter of a million marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation's capital, echoing Dr. King's march on Washington in 1963. 100,000 gathered in Boston, with similar numbers protesting in New York (where Mayor John Lindsay is rumored to have given tacit support) and Miami. My local rag reported that there were counter-protests, too, but I have to wonder how big they were.

Closer to home, 1,500 gathered in Los Angeles to burn their draft cards. And at Palomar Community College, just ten minutes from my home, hundreds of students gathered for a "Teach-In". When word got out that protestors might take down the flag in front of the student union, a squad of football players was stationed at its base. No altercation occurred.


Protestors at Palomar

Will this demonstration alter the course of a war, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese? A spokesman for Richard Milhouse Nixon said last night, "I don't think the President can be affected by a mass demonstration of any kind." Comedian Dick Gregory retorted to the crowd in New York, "The President says nothing you kids do will have any effect on him. Well, I suggest he make one long-distance call to the LBJ ranch. "


Card-burners in Los Angeles

In any event, this may be just the first salvo fired in a peace offensive. Washington protest organizer Sam Brown said last night, "If there is no change in Vietnam policy, if the President does not respond, there will be a second moratorium."

And now on to book news—are this month's science fiction titles as noteworthy?


By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

Heartease by Peter Dickinson (as serialized in Look and Learn)

Cover of 1965 editions of Ranger and Look and Learn in a red folder
Copies of Ranger and Look and Learn from my collection inside the official binders

Regular readers of the Journey will probably know I am a big fan of British comic books. They may even recognize the name Look and Learn due to it containing the multi-Galactic Star winning Trigan Empire (formerly of Ranger).

However, I have not talked much about Look and Learn itself. It is by far the most expensive comic book on the market at 1/6-, almost triple the price of your standard copy of June or TV Century 21. In spite of this it has retained a significant market presence by presenting itself as an educational magazine for young people, in contrast to the naughtiness of Dennis the Menace, or the pulp space adventures of Dan Dare.

This, however, is not merely a trick. They have both some of the best comic strips on the market and non-fiction articles–better than you see in most magazines aimed at adults. Looking at the contents of a June issue we have:

  • Ongoing comic book adaptation of Ben-Hur
  • How to prevent forest fires and how to apply for a career in forestry
  • A short story on a Gypsy boy winning the Natural History Prize
  • The life of the current Prince of Wales
  • An interview with a Chicago police officer on what crime fighting was like in the 1930s
  • Story of the ship Emile St. Pierre in the American Civil War
  • How the Magna Carta came to be
  • Regular series of identification of coins, planes, stamps and trains
  • Rob Riley comic: Adventures and daily life of English school boys
  • Laugh with Fiddy: Short uncaptioned humour comics
  • Wildcat Wayne: Action adventures of a troubleshooter for an oil company
  • Trigan Empire: Tales from the history of an interstellar empire, centering around its ruling dynasty
  • Dan Dakota – Lone Gun: Western comic
  • Origin and meaning of the saying The Widow’s Mite
  • Diary entries from James Woodforde in 1786
  • The history of RADAR in British aviation
  • Ongoing prose serialization of The Mark of the Pentagram, a tale of slavery in the 18th century
  • How tea came to be imported to Britain
  • Marsh land reclamation efforts on river estuaries
  • How William and Dorothy Wordsworth influenced each other’s work
  • Picture series on how heavy loads have been transported over the centuries
  • Feature on the novel Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell
  • About the game Takraw
  • Picture series on Iceland.

As such, it is much easier for a kid to justify dropping their pocket money on this each week when they can also show their parents a page on the lifecycle of a butterfly and give them a series of facts from the life of Jane Austen between reading about spaceflight and the adventures of cowboys.

2 Black and White drawings, one of a two children sheltering from flames with clothes wrapped around their faces. The other of an otter with its tale being bitten by an otter.
Example illustations for I Am David (left) and Tarka the Otter (Right) (uncredited)

However, outside of the comic strips Space Cadet and Trigan Empire, SF content is rare inside. Keeping to its educational mode, it tends towards historical fiction or uncovering the natural world. With serials tending to be works like The Silver Sword, Tarka The Otter or I Am David.

In fact, I cannot recall any prose serials that have been science fiction, before now. As such, with adult responsibilities getting the better of me, I hadn’t paid too much attention to these pieces. It was only when flicking back through them recently that I perked up at the name Peter Dickinson.

Last year he published The Weathermonger, a book that was much enjoyed by the folks here. This was not only by the same author but Heartsease also takes places in England under The Changes. It was serialised in 10 parts (from 8th March to 10th May 1969).

This is set in an earlier time in the history of this world. Whilst Weathermonger is set when The Changes are a well-established way of life, this is in the earlier stages of these events. As we are told at the beginning:

This is a story about an England where everyone thinks machines are wicked. The time is now, or soon; but you have to imagine that five years before the story starts, because of a strange enchantment, people suddenly turned against tractors and buses and central heating and nuclear reactors and electric razors. Anybody who tried to use a machine was called a witch or stoned or drowned.

Margaret on her pony rearing as a bull charges at her.
Illustrator uncredited

In the Cotswolds, Margaret and her cousin Jonathan live with her Aunt Alice and Uncle Peter, plus two servants Lucy and Tim, the latter of which is unable to speak. Near their village, an outsider is found using a radio and is sentenced to be stoned as a witch.

The horror of witnessing the stoning seems to break Jonathan out of the hatred the adults have, so he works with Margaret, Lucy and Tim to free the man condemned for witchcraft. Hiding him he reveals his name is Otto, he is an American sent to investigate the situation in Britain when he was caught. The children agree to get him back to his ship.

However, the local Sexton, Davey Gordon, is still on the hunt for Otto. What’s more he is suspicious of Lucy and Tim, given the latter’s disability. They all form a plan to help him escape using an old tugboat called Heartsease.

Margaret and Lucy running holding petrol cans as the timber on the quayside burns around them
Illustrator uncredited

I can understand why this would appeal to the editors of Look and Learn. With the removal of technology, it resembles historical fiction and does not have the magical elements of The Weathermonger. In addition, it contains information on how locks work, so it can be marketed as educational.

It is a much smaller tale than The Weathermonger, just about young people trying to do the right thing as they get caught up in horrific events. But, for that, it becomes a bit of a deeper tale. As well as having plenty of adventure, it looks at how we treat others and posits some darker reasons why things may be happening than is revealed in the prior novel:

“…they’ve done so many awful things they’ve got to believe they were right. The more they hurt and kill, they more they’ve been proving to themselves they’ve been doing God’s will all along.”

Heartsease 1968 hardback Gollancz book cover
Gollancz book edition. Unknown illustrator

Based on some fag-packet-maths I estimate the word count here is somewhere between a third to a half of what is in the book version, so there is likely more story to be told.

But for this serialized form, I will give it Four Stars.


by Victoria Silverwolf

Bigger and Better?

Two novels that are expanded versions of earlier, shorter works fell into my hands recently. Will this added verbiage improve them? Let's find out.

Worlds of the Wall, by C. C. MacAppp


Anonymous cover art. Human and pterodactyl number one.

This book started life as a novelette called Beyond the Ebon Wall in the October 1964 issue of Fantastic. I reviewed it at the time, giving it two stars. That's not a good omen, but let's not give up hope.

Our hero is inside an experimental starship. He winds up near a planet that seems to be missing an entire hemisphere. Forget all this science fiction stuff, because the rest of the book is pure fantasy.

Landing on the weird world, the guy finds out that the place is divided in half by a gigantic wall. He sees two naked men fighting and an elderly fellow with a scarred face. The latter seems very familiar, which is a clue as to the novel's major plot twist.

The protagonist passes through the seemingly solid wall as if it weren't there. He meets a double for the elderly guy and hears a huge magpie recite an enigmatic poem. This begins an odyssey that involves becoming a galley slave, taking part in a hunt for a gigantic beast (which develops a bond with a hero), and battling a pirate captain allied with a sorcerer. It all winds up where it started.

This is the plot of the novelette, so what's new? The middle section of the novel, detailing the hero's adventures as a galley slave, is much longer. There's a vivid scene of the protagonist and his shipmates climbing down a gigantic cliff.

The new version is a slight improvement on the old one. The explanation for what's going on, involving multiple continua and time travel, still doesn't make much sense, but it's a little less incoherent that before.

Two and one-half stars.

Thbe Avengers of Carrig, by John Brunner


Cover art by Jack Gaughan. Human and pterodactyl number two.

A shorter version of this novel appeared in 1962 as half of an Ace Double, under the title Secret Agent of Terra. It was reviewed by my esteemed colleague Rosemary Benton, who gave the twin volume four stars as a whole.

The setting is a planet settled by human refugees from a nova that wiped out another colony world many centuries ago. The survivors have evolved into a medieval, feudal kind of society. Carrig is the dominant city-state. The place has an ancient ritual of choosing its leaders in an unusual fashion.

Contenders for the title of regent board gliders and try to kill the biggest and strongest specimen of the giant flying beasts that inhabit the planet. (The winner is called a regent because the creature is considered to be the true king.) If nobody slays the animal, which definitely puts up a good fight, the former regent retains the title.

A couple of strangers show up, one of whom easily kills the so-called king with what is obviously highly advanced technology. It's clear to the reader, if not the locals, that they're from another world. Along the way they kill a fellow who discovers their nefarious plan.

The victim was secretly an agent for the folks who keep an eye on refugee planets like this one, being careful to avoid interfering with their natural development, but also making sure other people don't take advantage of them.

When the dead man stops sending messages back to his superiors, they send a fledging agent, along with an older, more experienced one, to the planet to find out what happened. (The young agent is something of a snob and unpopular with the others, so this is one last chance for her to prove herself during what is supposed to be a routine mission.)

They don't know the bad guys are there (they think the deceased agent has gone silent for some other, less sinister reason) so they're taken completely by surprise when an enemy spaceship attacks. The young agent winds up in a frozen wasteland. We don't find out what happened to the older man until later.

As luck would have it, she joins forces with the fellow who was the favorite to become the next regent. Both of them win an unexpected ally in the form of one of the flying creatures, who turns out to be a lot more intelligent than they thought.

Like MacApp's novel, this is strictly an adventure story. The big difference is that Brunner offers a tighter, more unified plot (even if it does depend on some remarkable coincidences.) It's not a complex, ambitious work like Stand on Zanzibar or The Jagged Orbit, but it's highly competent entertainment.

Three and one-half stars.

Masque World, by Alexei Panshin


by Jason Sacks

Last year I reviewed the first book in Alexei Panshin's "Anthony Villiers" series, Star Well . I praised the book for its wry, often post-modern take on heroic fiction, digging Panshin's frequent absurd sidebars and silly takes on events.

Now the third book of the Villiers series is out, and Masque World offers much the same as his earlier book: it's absurd and wise, clever and sometimes frustrating, and a pretty delightful "shaggy dog" story.


cover by Kelly Freas

This time Villiers and his pal, the Trog named Torve (a deliberately odd alien creature who is thoroughly uncanny for most people) have found their way to Delbalso, "a semi-autonomic dependency of the Nashuite Empire," as the introductory text informs us. When there, the duo gets deeply involved in all kinds of affairs in the kingdom, many centered around Villiers's uncle Lord Semichastny who is obsessed and addicted to melons (did you know there are over 100 different types of melons? Semichastny  can tell you all about that topic, and many more, as if he's some sort of savant or young child in adult form).

Cultures are games played to common rules — for convenience. The High Culture, while not superior to very much, is a fair-to-middling game, and that is all.

There's also an angry robot bulter who seems to resent his subservient role and who tells spooky stories to the other mechanical creatures in  Semichastny's castle, and there's a Semichastny friend who gets transformed when he puts on a costume, and there's a cult who seem incredibly happy – perhaps too happy for their own good.

Monism promises only one thing, to make you very very happy. There is a catch, of course. To be happy as a Monist, you must accept Monist definitions of happiness. If you can — you have a blissful life ahead of you. Congratulations.

A lot of this story, therefore, centers around the idea of identity, how to shed identity and how to transform identity; how identity conforms to crowds and how identity stands alone. This all does a wonderful job of showcasing Panshin's elusive commentary on the human condition. As becomes clear by the end, it's the humor and commentary which matter here, not the story.

Do places dream of people until they return?

For the longest time I kind of fought this book, trying hard to make sense of the twists and turns of its plot. Until, that is, I realized that plot is meant to be arbitrary and somewhat confusing. Its twists and turns reflect the mindset of Mr. Panshin, and that and his wordplay – highlighted here as excerpts – are the key things he wants to share with readers.

Holidays are no pleasure for anyone but children, and they are a pleasure only for children only because they seem new. Holidays are no pleasure to those who schedule them. Holidays are for people who need to be formally reminded to have a good time and believe it is safer to warm up an old successful party than to chance the untried.

Masque World is very loose  and fun, a bit arbitrary and silly, and I enjoyed it alright. The book feels a bit indulgent at times, and Panshin's having a bit of a goof, but it's well worth 60¢ and 3 hours of your time.

The ending promises a fourth book in  the series, to be called The Universal Pantograph. I do hope we get to spend more time in this wildly discursve world of the one and only Anthony Villiers.

3 stars

The Shadow People, by Margaret St. Clair


by Tonya R. Moore

I had never encountered any works of fiction written by Margaret St. Clair before reading The Shadow People. The story’s premise is wonderfully dark and imaginative but the reader’s sense of wonder is drowned out by the book’s glaring faults.


cover by Jeff Jones

Aldridge, our hero, descends into a strange and alien underworld in search of his girlfriend who has gone missing. He finds her while navigating this strange dimension, but something about her has been irrevocably altered. Even so, Aldridge seeks a way back to the human world for himself and for the love of this life. When he/they finally returns to the surface, he finds that during his absence, human civilization was twisted into a dark, futuristic dystopia where people are now heavily policed and managed like cattle.

The fact that a female author would center a male character in her work feels like some kind of betrayal. I understand that science fiction tends to be a male-dominated genre, where only men can be the heroes and only men are expected to save the day. But Carol is the one who disappears into the fae realm first. Why does she need to sit on her laurels and wait for The Man to come and save her?

Furthermore, Carol is transformed into a mindless shell of a human, devoid of any ability to express any will of her own or even think for herself. Ultimately, The Man must dictate the woman’s fate. So much for the Women’s Rights Movement. There is a part of me that expects female authors to push back against such demeaning notions and St. Clair, in very bad taste, seems to capitulate to this male chauvinist ideology. Perhaps it was this bias that made it impossible for me to resonate with this story’s protagonist.

Aldridge is a canned character. He is everything a heroic male protagonist “ought” to be and possesses very little depth or complexity in personality. He responds “correctly” to every situation and never seems to doubt or question himself. This leaves a discerning reader with little choice but to question his humanity.

Another possible reason the story rankled was the way elves are portrayed in The Shadow People. St. Clair's version runs counter to the commonly held mental image of elves, portraying them as grotesque and malevolent, instead of beautiful, good-willed, and elegant. St. Clair’s elves are more like the lesser known spriggans of elven lore. This, I agree, is very clever of St. Clair but still, broadly classifying these beings as “elves” felt like needlessly shattering the average reader’s fanciful notions about fae-kind.

There are some disconcerting allusions here to the alienation and institutionalized oppression of the Negro people. As a black woman, I felt that there was a certain lack of sensitivity in drawing these parallels while also side-stepping the cruel reality plaguing modern society.

The imagery in The Shadow People is visceral and draws the reader into every moment. The events of the story are quite dramatic and would make a great film. For some reason, though, none of this resonated with me. I could not fully appreciate or enjoy reading this book nor could I quite rid myself of the vague suspicion that this author had to be a man, a misogynist at that, writing under the guise of a female author.

2.5 stars.

West of Sol


by George Pritchard

Postmarked the Stars


Cover by R. M. Powers

There is a phrase, deja vu, which refers to feeling or seeing something that you have not interacted with before, yet seems intensely familiar. These are now believed to be psychic echoes, but it is a useful term for Andre Norton's latest work, Postmarked the Stars. I was excited to begin this, as the last thing I read of hers was Star Man’s Son, which I enjoyed deeply and still own a copy of.

I want to emphasize that I did not hate this book, nor did I find it incompetent, but reading Postmarked feels like watching a piston engine. Smooth and efficient and automatic, but always quite obviously a machine. This is the fourth entry in the Solar Queen adventures, although no previous books need to be read to understand this one. The previous book in this series came out a decade ago, but I am not particularly familiar with what interest there was, or is.

Dane Thorson, assistant cargo master to the Free Trader ship Solar Queen, discovers that a strange, radioactive box on board is causing the creatures near it to change, becoming larger and more intelligent. Before the crew can figure out what to do with this information, the ship is caught in a tractor beam, and they are dragged to the planet’s surface. Dane, Tau the medical officer, and the psychic cat end up separated into a search party. A group of dead miners are found, an enormous insect monster is battled, before another tractor beam drags them and the planetary ranger onwards towards a secret base in unexplored territory. It all seems to be connected to that strange, radioactive stone!

Is there indeed gold in them thar hills?

One thing I have always enjoyed about Norton's writing, particularly given the genres she works in, is the equal footing she gives to non white characters. Even the names she gives to background characters vary in ways that speak to strength in differences amongst the stars — names from the Indian subcontinent right alongside Welsh, Jewish, and Chinese! For another example, a prospector type is introduced, and it's only mentioned half a chapter later that he is dark-skinned.

This story is a space Western, plain and simple. The recent movie, Moon Zero Two [review coming out October 18] is my immediate point of comparison, but this has been a rich vein in the genre for a long time. The potential for racism in the story is, for better or worse, replaced by that dullest of Westerns, the claim jumper plot, combined with the Pony Express or stagecoach robbery.

Norton has been publishing continuously for almost two decades at this point. Maybe she needs a break, taking a chance to look at the New Wave trends and use them for her own. I know that, given time, she can make them shine the way Star Man’s Son pushed the boundaries of boy’s adventure novels. Norton can do better, and has, but Postmarked the Stars does nothing at all.

Two stars.




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[September 24, 1969] Murder, Madness, and Middle Age (What Ever Happened To Aunt Alice? And Its Predecessors)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

For the past few years, there's been a cycle of psychological horror films starring famous actresses who are no longer young enough to be ingenues.  One producer/director is mostly responsible for this trend, as we'll see.  However, I believe its roots begin in a classic film nearly two decades old.

Sunset Boulevard (1950) stars Gloria Swanson, a major star in silent films and early talkies.  She plays Norma Desmond, who was — guess what? — a major star in silent films.  (Apparently not in early talkies.) She is also as mad as a hatter. 

The film is something of a satire of Hollywood and a dark comedy (it's narrated by a dead man) but it also has elements of horror.  Desmond is a grotesque caricature of a fading star who lives in a Gothic mansion that would suit the Addams Family.  The final scene is as creepy as heck.

Sunset Blvd (as the title actually shows up on the screen) is a great film, but it wasn't until a dozen years later that a fellow named Robert Aldrich took the idea of casting famous actresses who were no longer young in psychological shockers and made it a fad.

1962 saw the release of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Henry Farrell.  It stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as sisters.  Davis plays Baby Jane Hudson, a former child star.  Crawford plays Blanche Hudson, whose own movie career was cut short when she was paralyzed from the waist down in an automobile accident. 

The siblings now live together.  Baby Jane is completely insane, dressing like a little girl and wearing outrageously heavy makeup.  This unhealthy situation leads to psychological torture and, of course, murder.

The two stars play against each other very well.  Hollywood gossip says they loathe each other, which may help.  Davis has much the meatier role.  The scene in which she sings I've Written a Letter to Daddy (His Address is Heaven Above), a sentimental number from her days as a child star, may give you nightmares.

The film was a success.  Aldrich decided that there was no reason to mess around with a winning formula.  He produced and directed Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, released in 1964, with the same screenwriter (Lukas Heller, this time assisted by novelist Farrell) and one of the same stars.  Bette Davis is back, and Joan Crawford was supposed to return also, but she was eventually replaced by Olivia de Havilland.

Davis plays Charlotte, whose lover was brutally murdered in 1927 (in an extremely gruesome and bloody scene).  Decades later she's a recluse.  She's blamed for the killing, but it was never officially solved.  Suffice to say that de Havilland plays a cousin who shows up to help Charlotte; or does she?

Other film makers jumped on the bandwagon.  William Castle, famous for his gimmicky shockers, brought us Strait-Jacket the same year.  Crawford (and not Davis) returns, this time as a woman who murdered her husband and his lover with an axe. Her three-year-old daughter witnesses the crime.  A shocking scene opens the film, so know what you're in for.

Crawford spends twenty years in an institution for the criminally insane.  When she gets out . . . Let's just say that heads will (literally) roll.

Not to be outdone by Yanks, British production company Hammer offered Fanatic (known as Die! Die! My Darling! on this side of the pond) in 1965.  This time the actress of mature years is Tallulah Bankhead, who terrorizes the woman who was going to marry her recently deceased son. 

Is there murder on the way?  You betcha.

This trend has become so obvious that Mad magazine came up with a spoof of it.

It's in the January 1966 issue.  Track down a copy of the issue and enjoy the full parody.

Let's take a look at the latest example.

What Ever Happened To Aunt Alice?

Aldrich is back, but only as producer.  The director is Lee H. Katzin, and the screenplay is by Theodore Apstein.  It's based on the 1962 novel The Forbidden Garden by Ursula Curtiss.

Obviously, Aldrich is alluding to the title of his biggest success in this genre.  The trailer for the film makes this clear.  It's also misleading, implying that it's a whodunit.  We know who the killer is right at the start.


We don't even get the opening titles until after the first murder.

Geraldine Page, who has been nominated for four Oscars, a Tony, and who has won an Emmy, has the lead role.  (Not Aunt Alice; we'll get to her later.) The film begins with her discovery that her recently deceased husband left her nearly penniless.


The new widow.

She doesn't even own her palatial home, so she moves to an isolated house in the American Southwest.  (The film is unusual in having a sunny desert setting instead of the usual dark and spooky one.)

We find out right away that she has a habit of hiring housekeepers, convincing them to let her invest their savings, murdering them, burying them in her garden, keeping the loot, and making up some story about how the servants left.


Not the first victim, but the one that gets the plot going.

Some time after this latest killing, Ruth Gordon, fresh from her Oscar-winning performance in Rosemary's Baby, shows up and applies for the job.  (She's Aunt Alice, but we don't find out who she's the aunt of for a while.)


Aunt Alice and the desert landscape.

Aunt Alice has her own secret, but let's not give too much away.  Suffice to say that events threaten to unravel Page's little scheme.  The arrival of a young widow and her pre-teen nephew in the abandoned house nearby, the only one for miles around, adds complications.


There's also a dog that's very interested in the Forbidden Garden.

Aunt Alice snoops around, for a reason we'll discover later.  She finds evidence of Page's crimes.


A letter written to the victim we saw above.

Not quite as gruesome as some others of its kind — it almost looks like a made-for-TV movie at times — this is an enjoyable thriller.  There are a lot of other characters I haven't mentioned yet, and even a love story.

But Page and Gordon are the whole show.  The interaction between these two gifted actresses is a joy to behold.  Page is imperious, haughty, sarcastic, and ruthless.  Gordon is down-to-earth but brave and clever.

The plot creates a great deal of suspense.  It's not obvious whether or not Page will get away with it, or whether Gordon will expose her.  There's a nifty bit of irony at the very end.

Four stars.

I hope you enjoyed this journey through what has become a bonafide subgenre.  Who knows when the next film of this type will come out—but you can bet it'll make a killing…




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 16, 1969] September 1969 Galactoscope

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[And now, for your reading pleasure, a clutch of books representing the science fiction and fantasy books that have crossed our desk for review this month!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

Ye Gods!

Two new fantasy novels, both with touches of science fiction, feature theological themes.  One deals with deities that are now considered to be purely mythological, the other relates to one of the world's major living religions.  Let's take a look.

Fourth Mansions, by R. A. Lafferty


Cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon.

The title of this strange novel comes from a book written by Saint Teresa of Avila, a Spanish Christian mystic of the sixteenth century.  This work, known as The Interior Castle or The Mansions in English, compares various stages in the soul's spiritual progress to mansions within a castle.  From what I can tell from a little research, the Fourth Mansion is the stage at which the natural and the supernatural intersect.

(I'm sure I'm explaining this badly.  Interested readers can seek out a copy of Saint Teresa's book for themselves.)

I understand that Lafferty is a devout Catholic, so this connection between his latest novel and what is considered to be a classic of Christian literature must be more than superficial.  Be that as it may, let's see if we can make any sense out of a very weird book.

Our hero is Fred Foley, a reporter who is said to be not very bright, but who seems to have some kind of special insight or perception as to events beyond the mundane.  (A sort of Holy Fool, perhaps.) He gets involved in multiple conspiracies of folks, who may be something other than just ordinary human beings, out to change the world.

There are four such groups, said to be not quite fit for either Heaven or Earth.  Each one is symbolized by an animal.

The Snakes, also known as the Harvesters, are a group of seven people who blend their psychic powers to influence the minds of others.  They are intent on bringing about a sort of hedonistic apocalypse.  Their connection to Foley and other characters allows for telepathic communication, and sets the plot in motion.

The Toads are folks who are reincarnated, or somehow take over new bodies.  (It's a little vague.) Foley's investigation into one such person starts the novel.  They intend to release a plague, wiping out most of humanity and ruling over the survivors.

The Badgers are people who are something like spiritual rulers of a kind of parallel world that most ordinary people can't perceive.  Foley pays a visit to a couple of these seemingly benign people for information.  In one case, this involves a trip to a mountain in Texas that shouldn't be there.

The Unfledged Falcons are would-be fascists, military leaders trying to take over the world by force.  Only one such person appears in the book, a Mexican fellow named Miguel Fuentes.  He gets involved when the Snakes try to influence an American named Michael Fountain (see the connection in names?) and wind up entering his mind by mistake.

I would be hard pressed to try to describe all the bizarre things that happen.  Lafferty has a way of describing extraordinary events in deadpan fashion.  (We're very casually told, for example, that one character brought a dead man back to life when he was a boy.  One very minor character is a demon, and another one is an alien.)

The book's combination of whimsey and allegory is unique, to say the least. There's a lot of dialogue that sounds like nothing anybody would ever say in real life.  Did I understand it all?  Certainly not.  Did I enjoy the ride?  Yep.

Four stars.

Creatures of Light and Darkness, by Roger Zelazny


Cover art by James Starrett.

Zelazny's recent novel Lord of Light offered a futuristic twist on Buddhism and Hinduism.  This one makes use of ancient Egyptian gods, as well as a bit of Greek mythology.  There are also a lot of original concepts, making for a very mixed stew indeed.

The time is the far future, when humanity has settled multiple planets.  Don't expect a space opera, however.

We begin in the House of the Dead, ruled by Anubis.  He has a servant who has lost his memory and his name.  Anubis gives him the name Wakim, and sends him to the Middle Worlds (the physical realm) to destroy the Prince Who Was A Thousand.  Meanwhile, Osiris, who rules the House of Life, sends his son Horus on the same errand.

You see, Anubis and Osiris keep the population of the Middle Worlds in balance, bringing life and death in equal amounts.  The Prince threatens this system with the possibility of immortality.  Although the two gods have the same goal, they are also rivals, so their champions battle each other as well as the Prince.

This is a greatly oversimplified description of the basic plot.  A lot more goes on, with many equally god-like characters.  There's a sort of scavenger hunt for three sacred items, with the protagonists hopping around from planet to planet in search of them. 

Zelazny experiments with narrative techniques, from poetry to a play.  There's some humor, as demonstrated by a cult that worships a pair of shoes.  (They actually play an important role in the plot.) The pace is frenzied, with plenty of purple prose.

Full understanding of what the heck is really going on doesn't happen until late in the book, when we learn the actual identities of Wakim and the Prince.  Suffice to say that this requires a lengthy description of apocalyptic events that took place long before the story begins.

Some readers are going to find this novel disjointed and overwritten.  Others are likely to be swept away by the richness of the author's imagination.  I'm leaning in the latter direction.

Four stars.


by Fiona Moore

Damnation Alley

Roger Zelazny’s been busy this month! His new novel Damnation Alley expands his novella of the same name into an action piece which is exciting enough but ultimately unsatisfying, a sort of postapocalyptic pony express with futuristic vehicles and implausible characters.

Cover of Damnation Alley
Cover of Damnation Alley by Jack Gaughan

The story is set in a relatively near-future USA after a nuclear war which has split it into isolated states within a radiation-ravaged wasteland, the only relatively safe passage through which is a corridor known as Damnation Alley. There are pockets of radiation, giant mutant animals and insects, tornadoes and killer dust storms. The descriptions of these is the book’s real strength, with some of them verging on the genuinely poetic. Our protagonist is Hell Tanner, a former Hell’s Angel who is offered a pardon for his crimes by the State of California, if he’ll deliver a shipment of vaccines to Boston, which has been hit by an outbreak of plague. Of course, this necessitates driving through Damnation Alley, but never fear, Tanner is also driving a super-tough vehicle bristling with weaponry.

The whole thing is almost laughably macho in places, and I say that as someone who really quite likes both cars and adventure stories. Tanner is that implausible archetype, the bad guy who nonetheless somehow has other people’s best interests at heart. However, there’s also some nice contrasts set up between Tanner and the criminal world he inhabits and the much more normal parts of society he encounters on his journey, where people seem to be on the whole generally decent and kind, making Tanner’s casual violence seem all the more out of place.

The book has a lot of problems. Some are clearly the result of padding it out to novel length, with several episodes which go nowhere and add little to the story. The characterisation of everyone aside from Tanner is weak to nonexistent. In particular, the main female character, Cordy, is a frustrating cipher: she is a woman who Tanner essentially abducts, and yet she shows none of the emotions one might expect under the circumstances, while Tanner seemingly comes to think of her as his girlfriend despite neither of them making any moves in that direction.

However, the biggest problem is that there are too many holes in the story for it to stay afloat. Despite the devastation of the land around it, the state of California somehow still has the resources to build giant armoured cars bristling with every kind of weapon from bullets to flamethrowers. Only two human beings are apparently capable of making the trip from California to Boston, which is surprising given the aforementioned level of technology and that there is clearly no shortage of young men with a death wish. Tanner makes it almost to Boston before encountering anyone who makes a serious effort to steal the vaccines, which I also find somewhat implausible. And so on, and so on.

Damnation Alley held my attention for the duration of a train journey and had nicely surreal, well-paced prose in places, but it was just too unbelievable for me to really enjoy it. Two and a half stars.

by Brian Collins

Since he returned to writing some half a dozen years ago, Robert Silverberg has tried to reintroduce himself as a more “serious” writer. This is not to say his rate of output has slowed down in favor of more refined work; if anything the past few years have been the busiest for him since the ‘50s. This year alone we have gotten enough novels from Silverberg that a bit of a catch-up is in order. The first on my plate, Across a Billion Years, hit store shelves a few months ago, from The Dial Press (I believe this is Silverberg’s first book with said publisher), and it seems to have flown under the radar—possibly because there’s no paperback edition, and also it might be aimed at younger readers. The second book we have here, To Live Again, is from Doubleday, and it too is a hardcover original; but unlike Across a Billion Years, To Live Again is a new release, fresh out of the oven.

Across a Billion Years, by Robert Silverberg

Two faces framed within a circle.
Cover art by Emanuel Schongut

It’s the 24th century, and humanity has not only spread to other worlds but encountered several intelligent alien races along the way. Tom Rice is a 22-year-old archaeologist on an expedition to find the ruins of a bygone race called the High Ones, who apparently lived a billion years ago (hence the title) but who have since vanished. Whether or not the High Ones have gone extinct is one of the novel’s core mysteries, although Silverberg takes his time raising this question. The novel is told as a series of diary entries, or rather messages Tom sends to his sister Lorie. In a curious but also frustrating move, Lorie is arguably the most interesting character in the novel, yet we never see or hear her, as she’s not only away from the action but stuck in a hospital bed for an indefinite period. Lorie is a telepath, and enough people are “TP” to make up their own faction, although telepathy only works one-way and Tom himself is not a telepath. The one positive surprise Silverberg includes here is finding a way to tie telepathy together with the mystery of the High Ones, but obviously I won’t say how he does it.

As for bad surprises, well…

Even taking into account that Tom is a young adult who also has personal hang-ups (his father wanted him to enter real estate), his treatment of his colleagues is abhorrent in the opening stretch. He dismisses the aliens on the team as mostly “diversity” hires and has a standoffish relationship with Kelly, the female android on the team, whom he more than once compares to a “voluptuous nineteen-year-old.” Why someone of Tom’s age would make such a comparison is befuddling…unless you were really a lecherous man approaching middle age and not a recent college graduate. There are a few other humans here, but the only human woman present is Jan, whom Tom gradually takes a liking to—just not enough to do anything when he sees Leroy, a male colleague, sexually assault Jan near enough that he could have intervened. This happens early in the novel, and I have to admit that Tom’s indifference regarding Jan’s wellbeing, a weakness in character he never really apologizes for, cast a cloud over my enjoyment of the rest of the novel. I kept wondering when the other shoe would drop. That Tom and Jan’s relationship turns romantic despite the former’s callousness only serves to rub salt in the wound. The bright side of all this is that while some of Silverberg’s recent work has bordered on pornographic, Across a Billion Years is relatively tame, almost to the point of being old-fashioned.

Indeed, this feels like a throwback to an older era of SF, even back to those years when Silverberg (and I, for that matter) had not yet picked up a pen or used a typewriter. In broad strokes this is a planetary adventure of the sort that would have been serialized in Astounding circa 1945. We’re excavating alien ruins on Higby V, a distant planet where High Ones artifacts have been supposedly found. During a drunken escapade one of the alien diggers stumbles upon (or rather breaks into) a piece of High Ones technology, something akin to a movie projector, not only showing what the High Ones look like but revealing a clue as to the location of their homeworld. This should sound familiar to most of us, and I suspect Silverberg knows this too, because this novel’s biggest problem and biggest asset is how it uses perspective. We’re stuck with Tom as he sends messages to Lorie, recounting events in perhaps more detail than he has to, knowing in advance that his sister won’t receive these messages until after the fact. As with a disconcerting number of Silverberg protagonists, Tom can be annoying, and honestly quite bigoted; and since he is the perspective character we’re never relieved of his oh-so-interesting remarks. But, and I will give Silverberg this, he does put a twist on the epistolary format very late in the novel, which does the miraculous thing of making you reevaluate what you had been reading up to this point.

In other words, this is not an exceptional novel, but it does have its points of interest, and with the exception of an early scene and its ramifications (or lack thereof), nothing here made me want to throw my copy at a nearby wall. For the most part this is inoffensive—possibly even decent. Three stars.

To Live Again, by Robert Silverberg

A minimalist drawing of a half-silhouetted faced.
Cover art by Pat Steir.

Those who want a bit more sex with their science fiction can do worse than this one, which looks to be the fourth (or maybe fifth—I’ve lost count) Silverberg novel of 1969. It’s the near-ish future, and the good news is that for those with enough money, death is not necessarily the end. Courtesy of the Scheffing Institute, a person can have their memories stored periodically, making copies or “personae” of themselves, which can be transplanted to the brain of a living host. The host and the persona will cooperate, lest the latter erase the former’s personality and become a “dybbuk,” using the host’s body as a flesh puppet.

The infamous businessman Paul Kaufmann has recently died, with his persona waiting to be claimed. Paul’s nephew, Mark, and Mark’s 16-year-old daughter Risa each see themselves as ideal candidates for Paul’s persona, but one of the rules at the Institute is that close family members can’t host each other’s personae: the implications of, for example, a teen girl hosting her grandfather’s persona, would be…concerning.

While we’re on the lovely topic of incest, let’s talk more about Risa, who must be one of the thorniest of all Silverberg characters, which as you know is a tall order, not helped by the fact that Silverberg describes, in almost poetic detail, every curve of this teen girl’s nude body—and she does strut around naked a surprising amount of the time. Risa is such a depraved individual, despite her age, that she at one point tries seducing an older male cousin and rather openly has an Electra complex (they even mention it by name), which Mark is understandably disturbed by—with the implication being that Mark has lustful thoughts about his own daughter. This is the second Silverberg novel I’ve read in two months to involve incest, which worries me.

The only other major female character is Elena, Mark’s mistress, whom Risa sees as a rival for her father’s affections and who (predictably) starts conspiring against Mark. Not content to ogle at just 16-year-olds, Silverberg also takes to describing the nuances of Elena’s body in wearying fashion, which does lead me to wonder if he was working the typewriter one-handed for certain passages. It’s a shame, because there’s an intriguing subplot in which Risa acquires her first persona, a young woman named Tandy who had died in a skiing accident—or so the official record claims. Tandy, or rather the persona of Tandy, recorded a couple months prior to her death, suspects foul play. Of the women mentioned, Tandy is the least embarrassingly written, but then she is only tangentially related to the plot and, what with not having a physical body, Silverberg is only able to ogle at her so much.

I’ve not even mentioned John Roditis and his underling Charles Noyles, business rivals of Mark’s who are clamoring for Paul’s persona. You may notice that this novel has more moving parts than Across a Billion Years, and certainly it’s the more ambitious of the two, the problem being that its shortcomings are all the more disappointing for it. Silverberg raises questions that he can barely be bothered with answering, and he alludes to things that remain mostly unrevealed. Much of To Live Again is shrouded in speculation, which is to say it uses speculation as a night-black cloak to cover things we sadly never get to see.

Another rule at the Institute is that a persona has to be of the same gender as its host, a rule that characters mostly write off as bogus. And indeed why not? Why should a male host and female persona not be able to coexist? Or the other way around. The prohibition has to do with transsexualism, which is certainly uncharted water for the most part. There has been very little science fiction written about transsexualism or transvestism—the possibility of blurring and even crossing gender lines. Unfortunately the novel does little with the ideas it presents. There are multiple references to religion and mythology (the word “dybbuk” refers to an evil spirit in Jewish mythology), including lines taken from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. There’s a minor subplot about white Californians appropriating Buddhist practices, in connection with the Institute, but this is so tangential that the reader can easily forget about it.

Finally, I want to mention that I was reminded eerily of another novel that came out this year, Philip K. Dick’s masterful and deranged Ubik, which I have to think Silverberg could not have known about when he was writing To Live Again. Both take cues from the Buddhist conception of reincarnation, although in Dick’s novel people who have died are kept in a state of suspended animation called “half-life,” whereas Silverberg’s characters die the full death, or “discorporate,” only that their personalities (up to a point) are kept intact. Not to make comparisons, but given that Silverberg’s novel is longer than Dick’s I have to say he does a fair bit less with the shared material. Of course, these are both talented writers, who at their best do very fine work indeed. Silverberg has become a major writer, but sadly he is not firing on all cylinders with either of the novels I’ve covered.

Hovering between two and three stars on this one.


by George Pritchard

The Glass Cage by Kenneth W. Hassler

The mockery for this book writes itself:

  • This book made me think of a Bulwer-Lytton novel for the Space Age.
  • This book could make Damon Knight take back everything he said about van Vogt.
  • This book made me long for the complexity of Commander Cody shorts.
  • This book’s style is so out of date that I think it fell out of the TARDIS.
  • This book wishes it had the character depth of a Lin Carter work.

And yet, I can't hate it the way I hated Light A Last Candle. That book was one mass of forgettable hate, but The Glass Cage is not hateful. It's incompetent at every turn, from line editing to plot development (I really don't know how it got the hardcover copy I received), but the overall effect is an oral record of a children's game.

There's this guy, Stephen, he’s twenty! He's a neophyte to the priests of the computer, TAL! It keeps life going in the city beneath its glass dome! Stephen is a perfect physical specimen, and his only flaw is being too curious about things. But that's because he’s secretly a spy for the Rebellion outside the glass dome!

The sentences are short and rarely have the benefit of internal punctuation. The characters are, generally, exactly how they appear — wicked characters with their close-together eyes, good characters with their strong jaws, straightforward manner, and perfect blonde hair. If this is chosen for adaptation, Tommy Kirk is made for the lead part.

The treatment of nuclear power seems to come from another time, where the leaders of interstellar development are in the Baltimore Gun Club rather than NASA. The giant computer, TAL, is attached to a nuclear bomb, to go off at a certain date, destroying the whole glass dome and the people within! No need to worry, though, Stephen and his various Rebellion people get most everyone out in time, except for the bad guy head priest of TAL, who is determined to die with his machine. Stephen and the gangster leader of the in-Dome Rebellion try to get him out, but to no avail! The nuclear bomb is about to go off, so the two of them hop on their air-sled, turn it skyward, and smash through the glass dome, just as the nuclear bomb goes off! Luckily, the nuclear bomb just pushes them a few miles away from the blast, where they are safe and unharmed.

One point of the book that is surprisingly forward-thinking is its treatment of one of the main characters being severely disabled. Despite being paralyzed from the neck down, he is a leader of the Rebellion, commanding through his immense psychic ability. But that cannot keep me from giving it…

Two stars

[A bit of a downer note to leave on, but at least there's some fine stuff upstream. See you next month, tiger!]




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 2, 1969] People, Machines, and Other Thinking Entities (October 1969 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Machine Language

Two events occurred today that demonstrate how computers can communicate with each other and with people.

At the University of California in Los Angeles, a gizmo called an Interface Message Processor (IMP) allowed two computers on campus to have a conversation, of sorts.  (I assume it was something like beep boop beep.) Plans are underway to set up another IMP at Stanford University, so the two institutes of higher education can share data.  One can imagine computers all over the planet chatting away, plotting to take over the world . . . well, maybe not that.


The thing that lets computers exchange information.  Don't ask me how it works.

The same day, a device replacing your friendly neighborhood teller appeared at a branch of the Chemical Bank in Rockville Centre, New York.  Apparently it can take your money, give you back your money, etc.  Is it just me, or does Chemical Bank seem like a weird name for a financial institution?  Not to mention the fact that the city doesn't know how to spell center. 


Possibly depositing some of the money his company makes from the robot teller.

Fittingly, the latest issue of Fantastic features machines and other things besides humans who are capable of communicating, and performing other activities that demonstrate intelligence.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

As usual these days, the cover image comes from a German publication.  It's not Perry Rhodan for a change.


Translated, this says The Ring Around the Sun.  This seems to be a version of Gallun's 1950 story A Step Further Out, with additional material from German writer Clark Darlton, one of the folks behind Perry Rhodan.

Editorial, by Ted White

The new editor talks about the cancellation of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour because of material CBS considered offensive.  He goes on to discuss the hypocrisy of some members of the older generation, and how science fiction and fantasy might help bridge the gap between young folks and their elders.  Pretty serious stuff.  He also admits that Fantastic is less popular than its sister publication Amazing, and promises to do something about that.

No rating.

It Could Be Anywhere, by Ted White

Maybe printing his own fiction is part of the editor's plan to improve sales of the magazine.


Illustrations by Michael Hinge.

The author spends half a page explaining the provenance of this story.  He was inspired by Keith Laumer's story It Could Be Anything (Amazing, January 1963.) Note the similar title.  My esteemed colleague John Boston gave this work a full five stars.

At first, White's tribute took the form of a novel called The Jewels of Elsewhen a couple of years ago.  The Noble Editor gave that book four stars.  Will this latest variation on a theme reach the same exalted level as its predecessors?


When the familiar becomes unfamiliar.

The narrator is a big guy who works as a private detective.  After a very long day, he tries to ride home on the subway in the wee hours of the morning.  A wino falls out of his seat.  When the gumshoe tries to help the fellow, he finds out that he's not really a genuine human being, but some kind of lifeless simulation.

The only other real person on the subway is a young woman.  (In the tradition of popular fiction, she's always called a girl.) When they get off the subway, they find out that the entire city is fake, just a bunch of empty buildings.

The premise reminds me a bit of Fritz Leiber's short novel You're All Alone, in which almost all people are mindless automatons.  There's an explanation, of sorts, for what's going on.  The characters are interesting, even if they are mostly passive observers of the situation.  The way in which the woman's ring plays a role in the plot struck me as arbitrary.

Three stars.

A Guide to the City, by Lin Carter

This was a big surprise.  I expect Carter to offer very old-fashioned sword-and-sorcery yarns or equally outdated space operas.  Who knew that he could venture into territory explored by Jorge Luis Borges or Franz Kafka?

The story takes the form of an article.  The author lives in a gigantic, possibly infinite, city.  A single neighborhood takes up hundreds of thousands of blocks.  Traveling such a distance is the stuff of legends.  The author explains why mapping the entire city is impossible.

This is not a piece for those who demand much in the way of plot or characters.  It's all concept, an intellectual exploration of an abstract, mathematical premise.  I enjoyed it pretty well; others may find nothing of interest in it.

Three stars.

Ten Percent of Glory, by Verge Foray

In the afterlife, people continue to exist based on how living folks remember them.  George Washington can expect to be part of the collective memory for a very long time; Millard Fillmore, maybe not.

The main character is an agent of sorts, who collects a percentage of the renown of his clients in exchange for promoting them in various ways.  The plot involves the motives of his secretary.

Stuck somewhat between whimsy and satire, this odd little tale winds up with an ending that may raise some eyebrows.  I'm still not quite sure what I thought of it.

Three stars. 

Man Swings SF, by Richard A. Lupoff

This is a broad spoof of New Wave science fiction.  It starts with an introduction by the fictional Blodwen Blenheim, which alternates lyrics from songs performed by Tiny Tim with a rhapsodizing about an exciting new form of speculative fiction coming from the Isle of Man. 

After this, we get a story called In the Kitchen by the imaginary author Ova Hamlet.  Like a lot of New Wave SF, it's hard to describe the plot.  Suffice to say that it's full of outrageous metaphors and features a doomed protagonist.  The piece ends with a mock biography and a ersatz critique of Ova Hamlet.

The (real) author is able to write convincingly in the style of some of the things found in New Worlds, with tongue firmly in cheek.  Amusing enough, even if it goes on a little too long for an extended joke.

Three stars.

A Modest Manifesto, by Terry Carr

This essay, reprinted in the magazine's Fantasy Fandom section, originally appeared in the fanzine Warhoon.  It wanders all over the place, but for the most part it deals with what the author sees as a cultural revolution, both in fantasy and science fiction and in the outside world.  Food for thought.

Three stars.

So much for the new stuff.  Let's turn to the reprints.

Secret of the Serpent, by Don Wilcox

This wild yarn first appeared in the January 1948 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

As I noted at the start of this article, we're going to run into a lot of entities that have as much sentience as human beings.  Would you believe that this one is a gigantic people-eating serpent?


Illustration by Jones also.

Let me back up a little.  The serpent used to be an ordinary guy, until he wound up on what the author calls a space island. If that means something other than a planet, it escapes me.

He encounters a huge two-headed cat (don't look at me, I don't make up this stuff) who used to be a woman.  The place is also inhabited by a bunch of pygmies, who used to be people living on Mars.  Not to mention some Mad Scientists.  Or the guy who is a giant skull on a small body.

Very long and complex story short, the formerly human serpent gets partly changed back, and he becomes a serpent with human arms and legs.  Somebody wants to turn him into a skeleton for a museum.  There's a revolution by the enslaved pygmies against the Mad Scientists.  A lot more stuff happens.

I hope I have managed to convey the fact that this is a crazy story.  Plot logic is thrown out the window in favor of action, action, and more action.  The only explanation for the weird transformations?  The water on the space island does it.

Nutty enough to hold the reader's attention for a while, but at full novella length the novelty soon wears off.  I got the feeling the author was pulling my leg at times, but there's not enough humor to make the story a parody.

Two stars.

All Flesh is Brass, by Milton Lesser

The August 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures supplies this grim tale.


Cover art by Walter Popp.

The Soviet Union has conquered Western Europe, and is now attacking the United States via Canada.  The story takes the form of the diary of a soldier.  He learns that some dead fighters are being replaced by robotic duplicates, who not only copy their bodies but also their minds.


Illustration by Ed Emshwiller.

The replacements don't even know that they're not human, until that fact becomes obvious in one way or another.  They are also designed to be eliminated within a couple of years after they're activated.  Let's just say that the situation doesn't work out well.

In addition to the plot, the story paints a vivid and realistic portrait of warfare, as seen by an ordinary soldier.  I was particularly impressed by the way the author handles the subplot concerning the female fighter encountered by the main character.  I wasn't expecting that to go in the direction it did.

Four stars.

According to You . . ., by Ted White, etc.

After an extended absence, the letter column returns.  I wouldn't bother to mention it, but it's odd in a couple of ways.  First up is a mock letter from Blodwhen Blenheim and Ova Hamlet (remember them?) thanking the editor for printing Hamlet's story.  A cute extension of the joke.

Next are a couple of letters asking for more sword-and-sorcery stories.  One reader includes a poem about Conan.  I probably shouldn't say anything about the quality of the verse.

Last is a missive attacking just about everything in the April issue.  The writer, if he's real, is in jail.  Hmm.

No rating.

Isolationist, by Mack Reynolds

This ironic yarn comes from the April 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones again.

The narrator is a cynical old farmer, suspicious of technology and of the modern world in general.  When an alien spaceship lands in his field, he thinks it's an American vessel of some sort.


Illustration by Julian S. Krupa.

The accents of the friendly inhabitants convince him they're foreigners, which makes them even less welcome than before.  Not to mention that they ruined part of his crop of corn.

This is a very simple story, with an inevitable conclusion.  The crotchety narrator is a decent creation, but there's not much else to it.

Two stars.

The Unthinking Destroyer, by Rog Phillips

The December 1948 issue of Amazing Stories offers this philosophical tale.


Cover art by Harold W. McCauley.

Two guys talk about the possibility of intelligent life being unrecognizable by human beings.  (Back to the theme with which I started this article.) In alternating sections of text, two beings discuss abstract concepts.


Illustration by Bill Terry.

It took me a while to get the point of this story.  It might be seen as a rather silly joke, or as something a bit more meaningful.

Two stars.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Francis Lanthrop

Leiber offers mixed reviews of a collection and a novel.  Lanthrop praises three books by Leiber about the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

No rating.

Worth Talking About?

This was a middle-of-the-road issue, with everything hovering around a three-star rating.  Not a waste of time, but not particularly memorable either.  Maybe someday a computer will be able to read it to you, so you don't have to turn the pages of the magazine.


The Parametric Artificial Talker (PAT), developed by the University of Edinburgh in 1956, was the first machine to synthesize human speech.




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