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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 12, 1970] War and Peace (June 1970 Fantastic)

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

These are troubling times.

We are all still recovering from the shock of the killing of four students and the wounding of nine others by Ohio National Guard troops at Kent State University on May 4.  A mere four days later, construction workers and office workers clashed with anti-war protestors in New York City.

A black and white photograph of a group of white men marching down a city street.  Some are are chanting and/or holding poles.  The poles extend out of frame so we can't tell if they have signs or flags attached.  Some of the men are wearing construction outerwear and hard hats, others are wearing dress shirts and ties.
Due to the distinctive headgear worn by some of the construction workers, the incident has become known as the Hard Hat Riot.

In the chaos that ensued, with an estimated twenty thousand people in the streets near Federal Hall, the counter-protestors attacked the anti-war demonstrators while police did little to stop the violence. 

The pro-war crowd later marched up Broadway and threatened to attack City Hall.  They demanded that the building's flag, flown at half-mast in commemoration of the Kent State killings, be raised to full mast.  In an example of grim irony, the hard hats and their allies also attacked nearby Pace University, a conservative business school.

About one hundred people were injured, including seven police officers.  Six people were arrested.  Only one of them was a construction worker.

With all of this going on, it's tempting to escape from the real world and allow our imaginations to run wild.  As we'll see, however, the latest issue of Fantastic contains as much violent conflict as reality.

The cover of Fantastic magazine. The title appears near the top in yellow-green block capitals.  Above, Always the Black Knight: A new kind of Fantasy Novel by Lee Hoffman is written in orange serifed font.  Down the left of the cover are listed the short stories included, with authors in orange and titles in yellow: Into the Land of the Not-Unhappies, by David R Bunch; I of Newton, by Joe W. Haldeman; Communication by Bob Shaw; Psychivore, by Howard L. Myers; The Time, by David Mason; The Prince of New York, by Benford & Littenberg.  Underneath is written Beginning in this issue: Science Fiction in Dimension, a new column by Alexei Ranshin.  To the right of the short stories list is a picture of a the Black Knight against an orange background. He is wearing black armor and gauntlets and a face-concealing helmet that resembles an insect head with pincers at mouth level. The main part of the helmet is black. The face has red decorations in an X shape that crosses at the nose and ends in the pincers.  The eyes are also outlined in red and above the X there are two small red circles on the forehead. he is holding a sword out toward the viewer, held upward in salute. In the bottom right corner two much smaller people are looking up toward the Black Knight as though he is on a giant poster. One is a white woman with brown curly hair wearing a short burgundy tunic and belt.  Her legs are bare.  She is holding her right hand to her mouth in surprise.  Behind her, a brown-haired white man in a short yellow tunic is staggering in shock.  His right arm is against his forehead in a fainting pose, and his left hand is clutching the upper arm of the woman in front of him.
Cover art by Gray Morrow.

Editorial, by Ted White

The editor describes in great detail the tasks he performs to put out the magazine.  I found this to be a fascinating look behind the scenes.

No rating.

Always the Black Knight (Part One of Two), by Lee Hoffman

A black and white pen and ink drawing of the Black Knight.  He is in full Renaissance-esque plate armor with helmet down so that only his eyes are showing. He is wielding a long striped lance which extends past the top of the frame.  He is riding a horse which is also wearing armor and a full-face helmet.  They appear to be galloping toward the viewer across a tournament field.
Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Our hero is named Kyning.  His job is to take part in jousts for the amusement of folks on various planets.  As the title implies, he plays the Bad Guy, who gets trounced by the White Knight.  This is all just a simulation, of course.  He gets a few bruises from time to time, but only fake blood is spilled.

(At this point, I was reminded of the new novel Six-Gun Planet by John Jakes, which I recently reviewed.  Both stories feature people recreating romanticized versions of the past, complete with robot horses.)

An accident during a joust leaves Kyning severely injured.  Several days later, he emerges from a coma, fully healed.  The bad news is that his squire and the White Knight have left him stranded, blasting off for some other planet.  With no money and a phony passport confiscated by the authorities, he's stuck here.

(Why the phony passport?  We don't really know yet, although there are hints that Kyning doesn't want to talk about his past.)

Things could be worse.  The folks who run the planet give him a place to live, with a roommate, and a small stipend.  He's given the education needed to get a job, which boils down to TV repairman.

Kyning soon finds out that the populace is kept in a peaceful, passive state through a universally consumed drink containing tranquilizers, as well as subliminal messages to keep drinking the stuff.  He convinces his roommate to stop swallowing the liquid, and gives him lessons in sword fighting.

A black and white pen and ink drawing of two men against a gray background. In the foreground, a man in a light-colored renaissance-esque doublet and pantaloons is has his back to the viewer and cringing backward.  He is facing a man in a checkered doublet and black hose who is swinging a sword .  His sword arm is covering his face so only his angry eyes are visible. The hilt of a knife is visible at his belt.
A lesson gets out of hand.

It seems that, once released, the suppressed aggression inside the tranquilized folks can explode out of control.  Despite this risk, the roommate convinces others to give up the drink.

Meanwhile, Kyning makes a pass at a pretty young women, only to discover that the tranquilizers also completely repress sexual desire.  She doesn't even know what a kiss is.  On this planet, people marry and have children only in order to maintain the population, without any pleasure.

So far, the novel fits the common science fiction pattern of somebody fighting against a repressive society.  Once again, I'm reminded of a new book I reviewed recently.  Like Ira Levin's This Perfect Day, we've got a peaceful world that is only kept that way by drugging the populace.  It's keeping my interest so far, even if it's not outstanding in any way.

Three stars.

Psychivore, by Howard L. Myers

A black and white pen and ink drawing of an alien landscape.  in the foreground is a body of water with some small rocks and water plants sticking up from the surface. A slimy-looking collection of roots appears to be crawling out of the water and toward the straight trunk of a tree, whose leaves just extend down into the frame from the top of the image.  In the background, a man stands with one foot resting on the slight rise in front of him.  He is resting his elbow on his knee, and has his other hand on his hip.  He is looking curiously at the slimy roots and tree.  Behind him, there is an oval spaceship with an opened round hatch in the top.
Illustration by Michael Wm. Kaluta.

On a planet full of carnivorous plants and other hazards, a boy orphaned by a recent war ekes out a living by gathering wild fruits and selling them at the spaceport.  He meets a very old, very weak man, one of the original colonists.  The fellow wears goggles over his eyes.  The boy agrees to give the man a ride to the city.  Along the way, his strange story emerges.

The man encountered a creature that feeds on the souls of others.  When he looked into the thing's single eye, his mind went into the being's brain.  The man now has the unwanted ability to project his mind into anybody who looks into his eyes, hence the goggles.  Looking into an animal's eyes kills it, and gazing into a human's eyes drives that person insane.

(I may be explaining the premise badly, because I found it hard to follow.  It's unique, if nothing else.)

An accident causes the boy and man to lock eyes.  In order to avoid driving the lad mad, the fellow puts his soul into the boy, losing his life in the process.  The rest of the story deals with the boy's wild adventures, now that he has the man's memories in his mind.  These include trying to stow away on a starship and meeting the title soul-eater.

As I said, original but confusing.  It's also outrageously implausible, even for this kind of complicated story, which throws in bizarre concepts left and right.  And yet, it's still not bad to read.

Three stars. 

The Time, by David Mason

A man quits his job, drops his girlfriend, and just sits in his apartment waiting.  The impact of the story depends entirely on what he's waiting for, so I won't say much more.  Suffice to mention that it reminds me of an old Ray Bradbury story, the title of which would give away too much.  There's a striking final image, which you may or may not anticipate.

Three stars.

Communication, by Bob Shaw

A black and white composite image.  At the top, straight lines and circles arranged to resemble a circuit board descend and transform from perfect circles to paint-like blogs that merge into a face looking directly at the viewer. Below the face the words Subject A are written in a blocky computer font in outlined capitals.  To the right, a string descends as though from around the person's neck and holds a black paper tag.  At the top the words Mervyn Parr are written in white block capitals. A man's face looking to the left is drawn in the same style as the top face. A white arrow curving up and to the left points directly at his lips.
Illustration by Michael Hinge

Our hapless hero is the world's worst computer salesman.  He has to fake his records so it looks like his products don't match the needs of potential customers.  Out of the blue, a mysterious fellow offers to pay cash for one of the advanced machines, as long as it's kept secret.  Forced by his boss to get some publicity for the sale, he tracks the guy down and finds out what it's all about.

The mystery is intriguing at first.  Why does the customer use a false name?  Why did he remove a ring from his finger?  The revelation about what's going on is less interesting.  Without saying too much, I'll just note that there's a reason this story is in Fantastic and not Analog.

Three stars.

I of Newton, by Joe W. Haldeman

A new author gives us this variation on the old deal with the Devil theme.  A mathematician accidentally summons a demon, who will answer three questions, but then the mathematician has to give it a task that is impossible to perform or lose his soul.

Given the premise, you'd expect the guy to ask the demon to find the last digit of pi or some other impossible mathematical feat.  (You may recall the Star Trek episode Wolf in the Fold, which featured this notion.)

Nope.  This tiny tale ends with a trivial joke instead.  Decently written and inoffensive, but it falls flat.

Two stars.

In the Land of the Not-Unhappies, by David R. Bunch

A black and white pen and ink drawing of a man in a knee-length cape facing away from the viewer. He is either wearing a kippah on the back of his head or has a circular bald spot. He is carrying a rifle over his left shoulder.  He is staring toward a pointillist orb hanging above him.
Illustration by Jeff Jones.

More weirdness from a controversial New Wave writer.  The narrator crosses a barrier (possibly mountains) and enters a land where the people emerge from identical domes to spend time sweeping the ground in one direction, then sweeping it the other direction.  This is all explained by the machines that welcome the narrator.

You don't read Bunch for plot logic or characterization, but for strange concepts and allegorical content, often disturbing.  In this case, the futility of human action seems to be the point.  Your interpretation may be different.

Bunch is a matter of taste.  Love him or hate him, there's nobody like him.

Three stars.

Hok and the Gift of Heaven, by Manly Wade Wellman

This issue's Fantasy Classic comes from the March 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.

The cover of the March issue of Amazing Stories.  The magazine name is across the top in white block capitals with red drop shadows. The illustration is a color painting of two people engaged in combat in the desert.  A black-haired man wearing only a white loincloth and belt is in mid-jump with his sword swung across his body as though about to slice forward.  His knee is about at eye level of his enemy, who is wearing a green bodysuit, gold pointed helmet, and red cape and short pants. He is carrying a long spear-pointed lance and facing away from the viewer toward the jumper.  He is riding an eight-legged black and brown alien creature, which is wearing a saddle and harness.  It is rearing backward up onto two horse-like legs.  The head is long like a horse's but looks more doglike. In the background stone city walls rise in the distance.
Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

We've met our caveman hero Hok a few times before.  He's already invented the bow and arrow.  This story gives him an even more advanced weapon.

A black and white illustration of Hok, a white man wearing a short furry tunic and headband. He is on the back of a great white shark as though riding it as the shark leaps halfway out of the water. He grips the left pectoral fin and has a sword held behind his head as though about to strike downward. In the background, palm trees rise from the shore of an island.

Some folks who live by the sea invade Hok's territory.  Before the battle really begins, a meteorite lands at Hok's feet.  A fragment knocks him out.  He wakes up to discover that his people thought he was dead.  Everybody panicked, understandably, when this big rock fell out of the sky.  In the chaos, the bad guys kidnapped Hok's mate and son.

In an amazing set of unlikely circumstances, the meteorite ignited some coal just sitting around, so the iron and other stuff in the rock melted together, eventually cooling into a piece of steel in the shape of a sword.

No, I don't buy it either.

Anyway, Hok hones the edge of this hunk of metal and gives it a handle.  He uses the new weapon against dangerous animals and, of course, the bad guys.  Another extraordinary coincidence occurs at the climax.

I believe I once called the stories about Hok sword-and-sorcery yarns without swords and without sorcery.  Well, now we've got a sword, but still no sorcery.  (On the other hand, Hok's incredible good luck makes me wonder if his sun god has a hand in things.)

The use of footnotes, trying to convince me that this thing is a realistic portrait of the prehistoric world, doesn't help.  If nothing else, old pro Wellman knows how to keep the action moving.  Sensitive readers should be aware that this is an extremely violent story, with too many folks getting killed to count.

Two stars.

The Prince of New York, by Gregory Benford and Laurence Littenberg

A black and white illustration showing a large, fat man with dark hair staring contemplatively at a beach-ball sized earth, resting before him on a pillow.  Behind him to the left of the image, a thinner white man with spectacles and a dark suit is looking over his shoulder.  To the right, a balding man is sitting and writing behind a window over which is written Handwriting Analysis.  Curtains are partially drawn, partially obscuring him.
Illustration by Steve Stiles.

A guy becomes filthy rich by borrowing a modest amount of money, using it to get a bigger loan, and so on.  He enlists the aid of an acquittance to do some routine stuff.  The other guy wonders why the rich fellow is doing things that might wipe out the economy.  Curiosity killed the cat, and the inquisitive aide might face a similar fate.

The economic stuff that sets up the story doesn't really have much to do with anything, and what's behind the rich guy's scheme is pretty silly.  I think this is a case in which two authors is one too many.

Two stars.

Science Fiction in Dimension, by Alexei Panshin

A new column begins with the author of Heinlein in Dimension (discussed in fascinating detail by my esteemed colleague John Boston) broadening his critical eye to talk about the genre in general.  Maybe not a lot new here, but worth a look.

Three stars.

Fantasy Fandom: Science Fiction and Drugs, by Donald K. Arbogast

The real author of this essay is hiding behind a pseudonym because it discusses the use of illegal substances.  It states that fans used to drink a lot of beer, but now there's more use of marijuana.  Other psychedelic drugs are discussed.  I don't even drink coffee, so I'm not the one to judge.

Three stars.

…According to You, by various

The readers discuss a possible change in the name of the magazine.  Going back to the old pulp magazine title Fantastic Adventures is firmly rejected.  I say leave well enough alone.

No rating.

Worth Fighting Over?

That was a middle-of-the-road issue, for the most part.  From fake medieval battles on another world to slaughter in the Stone Age to threats from alien beings and denizens of Hell, this was a magazine full of real, ersatz, and potential forms of violence.  I can only wish all readers more peace outside their recreational reading.

A black and white photograph of President Nixon standing in profile with two secret service agents in front of and behind him.  He is facing several long-haired college students, who do not look impressed.
President Nixon meets with students on the day of the riot.  A chance for peace?


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 10, 1970] Fever Pitch (New Writings in S-F 17 & Vortex)

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Black & White Photo of writer of piece Kris Vyas-Mall
By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

The World Cup starts later this month in Mexico and excitement in England is palpable. Winning four years ago at Wembley has raised expectations significantly, and there is a real hope that England can repeat the success Brazil had in the early 60s, to win two years-on-the-trot.

Possibly one of the strangest ways this has manifested is in a new album, sung by the Current World Cup Squad!

Album of Worldbeaters Sing The Worldbeaters, showing the special carboard sleeve (in the shape of a football with the england team's signatures on it) with the actual LP sitting next to it

In its special circular football sleeve, you can discover what it sounds like to have Bobby Moore singing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da or Gordon Banks covering Lovey-Dovey. (From what I have heard of it on the radio, consider my curiosity fully sated).

Off the pitch, there is once again an international competition for my attention in the anthology releases. With Carnell leading his team for another round of New Writings facing off against new fiction from the Soviet Union. Three years ago, the two countries faced off in one of my articles, now let’s see how each of these new seven stories matchup:

New Writings in SF-17

Hardback cover of New Writings in SF-17, in the usual design style, this one in blue and yellow. Listing of authors: Joseph Green Ernest Hill Michael G. Coney Lee Harding H. A. Hargreaves R. W. Mackelworth L. Davison on the front

In his introduction Carnell notes how much the world has changed in his lifetime and says that continued technological change is the theme of this issue.

More Things in Heaven and Earth by H. A. Hargreaves

Alan Hamilton is Senior Lecturer at University Television Central, a Tri-Vid system linking universities. The performances of Shakespeare are broadcast for 60,000 Students who watch together and can chime in. This is then edited and sent out to a further 180,000 home viewers. They are preparing to have the process opened up for a public view, when they discover they have a telepath on the course, who is communicating with people using Alan’s voice.

I have heard other people cite this story as one of the most interesting SF pieces of recent years and worth the price of entry alone. As such, it seems inevitable that I would disagree. I found it slight, dull, overly long and a chore to get through. It is just over 50 pages long but took me almost 3 days to read. It is not offensive to me as much as just forgettable.

Two Stars

Aspect of Environment by L. Davison

I could find no information on this author. Could it even be one of those rarest of species, a woman writing for a British publication? Anyone with more information, please write to us at the Journey.

On their way back to earth on an unsuccessful mission, Brandt overrides the ship’s computer to follow a trail of radiation. Even though the other two scientists, Spengler and Olga, are not entirely happy with the plan, they follow along until they discover its origin as a tiny planet. Once a computer bug causes the ship to crash-land, they go in search of the source. It turns out to be one of the strangest results of evolution, an organic computer.

This whole story felt a bit dull and pat to me. It seems to want to make some kind of grand point on the nature of chance in our lives and the shaping of the universe but it rings hollow. There is also a weird situation where Brandt spends a lot of time ogling Olga which just stretches a thin tale even further.

Two Stars

Soul Survivors by Lee Harding

One of my favourite Australian writers gives us an SF take on the Christmas ghost story. Elliot Westerman's wife and two children were killed in a Transmat accident. He now lives in his empty old house, reliving his time with them on the Home Memories equipment, which projects old scenes in perfect detail. However, his deceased family have begun appearing outside of their programmed settings. Is it a technical fault, a delusion, or could something have survived beyond death?

A very effective little mystery based around a touching exploration of grief. This might have been a better tale to have read in December rather than when we are reaching the full bloom of summer. One I will have to remember to revisit towards the end of 1970.

Four Stars

Death and the Sensperience Poet by Joseph Green

Alistair McAlistair was a Sensperience Poet (creators of sensory experiences for humans to relax to) of some success. However, after his wife Carolyn killed herself, he found himself unable to create anything. As such he signed up for a tour of space. On the planet Achernar, crew members begin mysteriously disappearing, whilst Alistair starts to see visions of Carolyn.

There are a number of similarities here to the previous story, but there are also enough differences that they actually work well together as companion pieces. They both explore grief but whilst Elliot has trapped himself in a cycle of memory, Alistair is trying to live again.

Four Stars

Two Rivers by R. W. Mackelworth

For five generations people have lived in a utopian agricultural life inside the dome. An automated power plant and factory the only interruptions to this pastoral idyll. Outside a deadly airborne virus had raged and kept the community in isolation. Jon is now to be among first to leave for a hundred years to assess the world beyond its protection. But his older brother Bruno who leads the expedition knows a series of secrets that will change all their lives.

This is a very evocative tale, with something of Blackwood’s The Willows about it. And whilst it is not always entirely surprising, it had enough original elements to keep me intrigued throughout.

A high four stars

The Hero by Ernest Hill

Aston Wainwright was injured in the crash of the Daedalus II, proclaimed Hero of the Western World and given a series of commendations and medals. But this is small comfort forty-two years later when he is just another blind arthritic beggar on the streets.

Black and white photo from 1923 showing a German soldier with one leg begging on the streets as another man offers him a coin.
German Veteran on the streets in 1923

This is a depressing but unfortunately ever-relevant story of how heroes of one generation are soon discarded by the next. In my own youth I recall the homeless former soldiers of the Great War on the streets of London, and I have no doubt that, in another generation, injured Vietnam veterans will be all over America. So it is honestly not hard to imagine Neil Armstrong in the year 2000 injured in a plane crash and living in poverty. At only 8 pages it cannot go particularly in depth, but it still hits its mark.

Four Stars

The True Worth of Ruth Villiers by Michael G. Coney

Since 2012, Britain social services were replaced by a system of credit worthiness. If you want to access any state services such as medical, you will be granted a loan based on this that you will pay back from your salary once you are back to work. If the required loan exceeds your creditworthiness plus personal savings, you will be ineligible. Friends or family helping each other out in these situations is a punishable offence.

Six months ago, Mr. Archer was happy in his role evaluating people’s credit worthiness for the Department of Social Value. That is until he has to assess Ruth Villiers who has fallen down an abandoned mineshaft. At every step it seems that being able to save her is just out of reach but neither is her credit low enough to completely abandon her. What are they to do?

It is an interesting take on the facelessness of bureaucracies. In some ways it feels like it fits into the mold of Asimov’s Robot Stories, where you take a system that appears solid and then explore how it can fail in edge cases. Not astounding but a reasonable way to finish things off.

A high three stars

So, it is a slow start for England, but they rallied in the middle to show a performance they can be proud of. But how will their Soviet counterparts fare?

Vortex: New Soviet Science Fiction

Hardback cover of Vortex: New Soviet Science Fiction showing black and white concentric circles with a shadow in the centre.

Introduction: At the Frontier of the Present Age by Ariadne Gromova

After a short preface by the editor, Gromova gives us a 20 page essay on the relationship between science and art, mass psychology, the scientific method and how “Nauchnaya Fantastika” looks in the USSR. Amazingly it doesn’t ramble and is one I will think on for a while.

Five Stars, along with a sense of disappointment none of her fiction appears in this collection.

The Time Scale by Alexander Abramov and Sergei Abramov

Wačlaw, a journalist at UNO meets with Leszczyski, former Princeton professor known for his discredited theory of discreet time. He shows Wačlaw a device that proves his theories are true, one that allows for a person to jump between different parallel times to decide which take they wish to use. This proves useful for Wačlaw, as he soon finds himself in the midst of a battle between two opposing factions.

This is the kind of thriller that does not particularly appeal to me, but I will admit it is well structured and I like the way it made use of time travel and different realities to add to the tension.

Three Stars for me; maybe add one more if you enjoy James Bond.

Futility by Andrei Gorbovskii

Space traders arrive at the planet Earth to discover it has no evidence of advanced civilization. Captain believes they must have degraded and disappeared, whilst Vamp thinks they may be looking in the wrong places.

A reasonable vignette about how our own biases may be inhibiting the search of extra-terrestrial intelligence. I do wonder how an alien species knows how to play draughts though….

Three Stars

(As a side note, in this translation they have chosen to render the Cyrillic ий as ii as opposed to the more common y, so if some familiar names look a little different, this may be why)

The Test by Artur Mirer

A giant automated factory is created to produce napalm for the army. To oversee the operation an artificial brain is installed. However, it decides it would much rather create jam and its resists all attempts to turn it off. A human named Philip is brought in by the robotic control centre, in the hopes he can help learn how to make more of its kind.

Whilst the portions with Philip were less interesting than I had hoped, I was utterly charmed by the concept of the story: that an intelligence would decide that it didn’t want to be a killer and would choose to make a sweet treat instead.

Three Stars

The Old Road by Artur Mirer

This story continues on from his previous instalment. Philip is now travelling with his pregnant wife Maria along the transcontinental highways, looking for a Doctor to assist in the birth. To his surprise he finds himself back at the artificial jam factory. The centre is extremely insistent on helping with the birth but not every part of the building seems to agree.

Regular readers will know I do not tend to connect as much with car-based tales as others do, so this may be part of why I felt less interested in this sequel. However, I also think that once you get past the initial cute concept, it becomes a bit of a standard tale of robot logic. Not something that is particularly original or memorable.

Two Stars

The Silent Procession by Boris Smagin

Herman and Andrei were once great friends but fell out due to differences of opinion. Andrei receives a letter from Herman asking him to come visit him quickly. What could this be about?

This is an odd vignette. The concept is something right out of the 30s, but the style is closer to that of a fairy tale.

Three Stars

He Will Wake in Two Hundred Years by Andrei Gorbovskii

Andrei believes he is destined for more than organising dictionaries, so decides to freeze himself for 200 years

Yes, this is another Sleeper Wakes style tale, albeit one with a bit more of a comic lean than most. Reasonable but forgettable.

A Low Three Stars

The Second Martian Invasion by Arkadii Strugatskii and Boris Strugatskii

Easily the largest story in this collection. This novella by the already famous brothers concerns Mr. Apollo who observes from his small town a possible major disaster happening over the horizon. However, he concludes the most logical response is to stay in their isolated settlement and get on with their lives. As such, whilst the bigger cities are being levelled by Martians, we get a glimpse of small town life at a time like this, such as debates over the use of stadium building funds and the creation of new stamps.

What really appeals to me is the cynicism of the narrator and the whole silliness with which events proceed. If you had told me this was actually a Brian Aldiss tale, I would have believed you.

A Solid Four Stars

Will the World Beaters Defeat the People’s Champions?

Black and white photos of the Soviet and England Football Teams for World cup 1970 lined up on the pitch
Soviet & English World Cup squads

The scores of these two publications are so close together, I will call the whole thing a draw. New Writings was more mixed whilst Vortex performed reasonably well throughout.

Whatever happens it definitely seems that the country has caught World Cup fever, where the events in Mexico will be dissected in every public house and I will be hearing Back Home blaring out of every radio for the foreseeable future.

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


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 8, 1970] Tower of Glass (June 1970 Galaxy)

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Be sure to tune in tonight at 7PM Pacific for a terrific Science Fiction Theater!

a panel showing the words IN COLOR, with each letter in a different color.

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

It shouldn't happen here (or anywhere)

It was a scene out of Saigon or Prague.  It shouldn't be happening in Middle America.  On May 4, Ohio National Guardsmen, shot four Kent State students dead, wounding ten more.  Here's what we know:

On April 30, President Nixon announced that U.S. troops had entered Cambodia, expanding the war in Southeast Asia.  This sparked mass May Day protests across the country.  After the Kent State ROTC building was burned down over the weekend, Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom asked Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes to dispatch the National Guard to the campus.

Clashes between students and law enforcement escalated, with several students reportedly being stabbed by guardsman bayonets.  Calls for the Guard troops to be recalled were refused.  This set the stage for Monday's tragedy.

It is not certain what triggered the firing.  Eyewitnesses said about 600 protestors surrounded a company of 100 Guardsmen and began pelting them with rocks and hunks of concrete.  A single shot rang out, whether from a guardsman's rifle or someone else's firearm, is unknown.  Without a warning, the guardsmen then began a three second volley, half of them pointing their guns into the air, the other aiming levelly—into the milling crowd of boys and girls.

Ohio National Guard members move toward students at Kent State University

Amont the dead were William K. Schroder, 19, a sophomore from Lorain, Ohio; Jeffery Miller, 19, a freshman from Plainview, New York; Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, a junior from Youngstown, Ohio; and Allison Krause, a 19-year-old freshman from Pittsburgh.  John Cleary, 19, a freshman from Scotia, New York; Dean Kahler, a 20-year-old freshman from East Canton, Ohio; and Joseph Lewis, just 18, from Massillon, Ohio, were reported in critical condition at Robinson Memorial Hospital in nearby Ravenna.  They were not all protestors—indeed, Miss Krause had just telephoned her parents to express disgust at the demonstration. 

A wave of new protests is wracking the country, now with fresh ammunition.  And it is ammunition that is at the center of this outrage, for the Guard did not use tear gas, rubber bullets, or blanks.  Never mind if they should have been on the campus at all.  At the very least, their rules of engagement should not have incurred collateral deaths on innocent students.

There are just two positive consequences of this tragedy.  The first is that if the goal of calling in the Guard was to cow protestors, it has backfired spectacularly.  The second is that, on May 5, President Nixon announced that American troops would be withdrawn from Cambodia in seven weeks.  How much this decision is in reaction to the demonstrations and how much is due to the heavier-than-expected resistance of the Communists is presently unknown.

I suppose there's one more result—I've been radicalized, and I plan to start marching.  It's something I've always supported in the abstract, but observed a modicum of restraint, recalling Tom Lehrer's sentiment, "It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against – like peace, and justice, and brotherhood, and so on."

But now we see that the audience doesn't all agree, and some of them shoot.  I know I'm in the over-30 untrustworthy set, but you'll see my grizzled mug in among the protestors in the weeks to come.

Congratulations, Dick—you managed something Lyndon couldn't.

Shards

And so I plunge into fiction, hoping for a relief from the growing madness.  I am greeted with more madness: each of the stories in The latest issue of Galaxy is broken into pieces, with their ends crammed into the latter half of the magazine, as if written like some strange BASIC program with too many GOTO commands.  Nevertheless, it's the stories that count.  How are they?

Picture of a multi-armed spacecraft sliding into a disc of blackness in front of the Moon
cover by Jack Gaughan illustrating The Moon of Thin Reality

In lieu of a traditional editor, editor Jakobsson gives us a page-long pitch for Heinlein's new serial, I Will Fear No Evil:

"Here is a novel that delivers, page by page, the thundering promise of its title.  Mr. Heinlein, I am convinced, fears no evil.  I like to think of myself as reasonably inured to the standard shivers but I found myself even more so after turning the last page.  Don't miss that feeling.  It's a good one."

I guess we'll see if it's a masterpiece, like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, an overblown dud, like Stanger in a Strange Land…or a limp timewaster like Podkayne of Mars.

The Player at Yellow Silence, by Carl Jacobi

an illustration of a man carrying a golf club, pushing against a tornado of twisting faces and human figures. Beneath the title and author's name is the legend 'Unconquerable man meets unbeatable alien -- in a match for human souls!'
illustration by Jack Gaughan

As tension between the Terrans and the Yansis heats up, threatening to break out into war, a certain Joseph Forbes tries to calm things down by arranging an interstellar golf open.  Forbes is also rumored to be a healer, having brought a young woman who collapsed on a course back to life, and having restored the withered legs of another.  Oh, and he's also been witnessed speaking to some otherworldly patriarchal figure…

Yes, it's Arnold Palmer styled as the Prince of Peace.  I don't know.  It all seemed kind of stupid to me.

Two stars.

Out of Mindshot, by John Brunner

a greywash image of a woman clutching her head. Behind her, a crescent outline frames her body like wings. A hulking, shadowy figure is behind her, but also appears to be coming out of her head. The legend reads '
illustration by Jack Gaughan

A cruel, ambitious man is in the high desert on the trail of a telepathic young woman, hiding out from a society whose mental emanations are too painful for her to endure.  By cunning and force of arms, he plans to enslave her, using her powers to make him a fortune.

Ruthless and a combat veteran, he seems to have the upper hand.  But who between them really holds all the cards?

This is a brilliant little tale, ripe for adaptation for a Twilight Zone revival (perhaps a second Night Gallery?) It drips with color, the characters and setting richly described, the hunter's motivations introduced at a perfect pace, and the ending sweet and suitable.

Five stars.

Ship Me Tomorrow, by William Rotsler

an illustration of a small figure carving a colossal bust of a woman from stone. The legend reads 'When you buy a woman -- do you always sell a dream?'
illustration by Jack Gaughan

In an overcrowded, overmechanized, oversterile world, sometimes the only love you can rely on is the love you buy.  But is an android built to your specifications really what you're looking for?

Well, we'll never know since the story ends with our hero having ordered the robot but not yet having received her.

Buildup with no point.  Two stars.

Galaxy Book Shelf (Galaxy, June 1970), by Algis Budrys

the words 'Galaxy Book Shelf, Algis Budrys' in calligraphy inside a loop

In which Budrys praises T. L. Sherred's 1940's Astounding story "E for Effort" to the Moon—and expressed disappointment that Sherred's new novel, Alien Island, is a far lesser work.  Indeed, his thoughts closely mirror those of Brian when he covered the book earlier this year.  Budrys also notes that D.G. Compton's The Steel Crocodile is a fine book, provided you haven't read Synthajoy, which covers the same ground, but better.

Oil-Mad Bug-Eyed Monsters, by Hayden Howard

a pale pencil illustration of a wide-eyed face that might be human, or might be some sort of pig-faced thing.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Not too long ago, a bunch of oil-eating bugs rammed their spaceship into a tanker, possessed the crew by inhabiting their bellies, and went to work buying up as many oil fields as possible.  This tale follows one of the invaders, encased in the body of a young, innocent-looking man, who is going house to house in a neighborhood that sits atop a potential drilling site, getting homeowners to sell their land.

The last holdout, a beautiful human, excites the borrowed gonads of the alien, causing him to embrace a dual motivation.

This is the second story of Howard's to involve an oil spill, the first appearing in Analog not too long ago.  I have to wonder if he lives within sight of Long Beach.  Anyway, this probably could have been an effective, unsettling tale in the hands of someone like Sturgeon or Ellison.  Hayden simply lacks the literary creativity to pull it off.  Instead, it's a highly repetitive, flat-lying piece with far too many references to bumping carapaces.

Two stars.

The Moon of Thin Reality, by Duncan Lunan

an image of a massive planet behind a smaller one. The legend reads 'Interface relays had opened the Universe to Man -- and his betters!'
illustration by Jack Gaughan

A Terran rescue ship, answering the distress call of an alien vessel, plunges wildly into hyperspace in an attempt to avoid crashing into the Moon on the way.  Both ships find themselves within the confines of a "Dyson Sphere" enclosing a red dwarf sun.  The science of this piece is immediately suspect: one of the characters observes that, because the star is a small one, it has a shorter lifespan.  We've known for some time that the longevity of a star is inversely proportional to its mass.

Anyway, because of the ships' initial velocity, they cannot circularize their orbit; they will intersect with the surface of the sphere.  All attempts at communication are answered with silence.  In desperation, the Terrans hurl the crippled, rescued ship at the shell.  Still no response.  But as the Terrans prepare to blast their way through with missiles, the sphere-builders make their presence known.

The story begins confusingly, such that I had to read the first page several times.  Ultimately, I gave up and figured things out in retrospect.  Once in the sphere, things move more smoothly, but the resolution is far too quick for the setup.  If you're going to introduce a civilization that can englobe a star, I want it to serve as more than a two-page gimmick.

Two stars.

The Tower of Glass (Part 3 of 3) , by Robert Silverberg

an immense, swift-sketched tower, drawn from the air. The only legend reads CONCLUSION in small letters.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

And now we pass the stone that is Silverbob's newest novel, taking up a good half of the magazine's pages.  The background is still the same: Simeon Krug's tachyonic transmission tower is rising above the Canadian tundra; Krug scion Manuel is diddling an upper-class android; the artificially generated humans are rallying for rights; female characters exist to be vessels for wombs, breasts and hips.

Some new developments: Manuel's android mistress Lillith Meson is actually manipulating Krug's son, showing him the sad plight of the androids to get him to sway his father into supporting their cause.  We learn that a twin project to Krug's tower is a relativistic space ship that can, in twenty years subjective, get to the system that is the source of the signal that triggered the building of the tower.

And that's it.

No, really.  Hardly a damned thing happens in these 70 pages, and what does happen is outlined at the beginning before being superfluously acted out in detail over the rest.  Lillith does show Manuel a "Gamma town" and the chapels where Beta androids worship the image of Krug and the holy DNA double-helix that emblemizes their artificial existence.  Manuel does confront his father.  His father has a mental communion with his right-hand robot, Thor Watchman, who discovers that his creator his human after all.  Over the course of a few pages, mass hysteria breaks out amongst the androids, the tower is sabotaged, and Krug flies off to deep space in the starship.  The end.

Along the way, we get some android sex, a lot of plodding descriptions of scenery and crowds, and a great deal of narrative repetition.  This is, in effect, an over-padded novelette.

Did I mention the boobs?

Tower of Glass reminds me of a lot of other pieces.  Dune Messiah for one, with its plodding pace and inaction.  Silverberg's own Up the Line—just substitute scenes of Canadian wastes, android worship, and futuristic drug trips for the tour of old Constantinople.  Silverberg can offer up compelling views of a weird tomorrow, even mixed with crackpot techno-religions: viz. his Blue Fire stories, but those also had plots, and none overstayed their welcome.

But if he really wanted to make a story about android liberation, or what it means to be human, he could have done a lot better than this piece with its MacGuffin Tower and its lifeless characters.

Two stars for this installment; two and a half for the whole.

Children's Crusade, by Lawrence Mayer

a loose portrait of a man in a high-collared leather biker jacket. He has shoulder-length hair and a sort of goatee-beard hybrid. He may be wearing a peasant blouse as well.
illustration by Jack Gaughan

Last up, but wedged in the middle of the above serial, is the second story published by Lawrence Mayer.  It follows the tribulations of Gladys and Herman Green, who give birth to a vampire.  It's a modern, technological kind of vampire—no supernatural beast, it just has a short, inefficient gut, large teeth, and can only survive on human blood.  And it's not alone; vampire babies are being born all over.

Being dutiful parents, the Greens nurse their child, though it is debilitating.  Sadly, all the vampire kids grow up to be no-goodniks, with lots of violence and leathers like you see in the biker movies.  I think Mayer is trying for Cheeky Metaphor.

He achieves Crashing Bore.  Two stars.

Crashing Down

The world explodes before our eyes; the world explodes inside our sanctuarial pages.  The Age of Aquarius is stillborn.  It's a hell of a time we live in.  Can anything get us out of this?  Perhaps… Dianetics?

an advertisement for Dianetics, and its accompanying convention in July.

No, probably not.

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


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[May 6, 1970] Wondrous and Astounding (The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, Part One)

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A young white man with short hair wearing a navy P-coat, blue polo collar, and green t-shirt.
by Brian Collins

For those who don’t know, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) was founded five years ago in what would become the first successful attempt at forming a professional writers’ association for science fiction writers—at least here in the States. With the SFWA came the Nebula, an award made to be on par with the Hugo in terms of prestige, but voted on by SFWA members rather than Worldcon attendees; in other words, an award by authors for authors. SF in the American “pulp” tradition (as differentiated from SF of the H. G. Wells sort) has been around for not quite 40 years, and those of the older generation have clearly taken on a retrospective attitude as of late. If the New Wave asks where SF might be heading, then those who’ve been in charge of the SFWA, including Damon Knight and Robert Silverberg, are now asking where SF has been.

We thus have a massive reprint anthology, published by Doubleday in a rather colorful hardcover edition, called The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One. It is, as far as I can tell, the largest SF anthology since Dangerous Visions, running 560 pages. We don’t often cover reprint anthologies at the Journey, but this one is a huge endeavor, and since most of the stories included predate the Journey it would be negligent to not cover it. It’s also such a long book that we have no choice but to split the review into multiple parts. Now, many of these stories are actually not new to me, although this knowledge does little to help me when it comes to evaluating some three decades of short SF.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, edited by Robert Silverberg

Colour photo of a dustjacket whose spine declares it to be 'The Science Fiction Hall of Fame' (Vol 1) - Edited by Robert Silverberg.  The front matter of the cover gives pride of place to the list of the 27 featured authors, with decorations of lightning projectors taking up the outer corners, and the title is set against an illustrated 'space' background with a stylized Earth, Moon, and a pink Saturn with golden rings, with a boast that the book contains 'The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time Chosen by the Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America'.
Cover art by Sagebrush.

Introduction, by Robert Silverberg

Silverberg was President of the SFWA in 1967-68, incidentally around the time when his return to writing SF hit many readers in full force. He explains, as editor of this anthology, the method behind the madness with regards to voting for what stories would be included, followed by what Silverberg included at his own discretion to round out the book. SFWA members, being professionals, are of a certain age or older, but they were asked “to keep historical perspective in mind” with what they should pick. The idea, to paraphrase Silverberg, was to present a rough chronology of the American (as in published in the US, not necessarily written by an American) short SF story from the 1920s to 1964, the year before the SFWA was founded. The top 15 stories to get the most votes were included, while the rest are a mix of the next 15 runners-up and stories Silverberg picked himself.

A projected second volume will include stories that were too long to fit into Volume One, so presumably it will focus on novellas and long novelettes. Time will tell if said volume will come to fruition.

No rating.

A Martian Odyssey, by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Colour photo of the cover of the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories (Hugo Gernsback Ed).  The illustration on the cover features what appears to be a New York air terminal to Sydney built atop arching buildings separated by broad boulevards and green pedestrian parks.  Small red winged vehicles with bubble canopies are flying passengers up to the platform for embarkation.
Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

When Weinbaum’s first SF story hit the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories, it apparently came to readers as a revelation. Weinbaum became a star practically overnight, and then died just a year and a half later. “A Martian Odyssey” is in some ways horribly dated: in addition to emphasis on pulpy exploration of a much-inhabited Mars, the human characters are walking stereotypes. Jarvis, the American of the bunch, is only slightly less flat than his goofy-sounding comrades. Assuming you’ve read “A Martian Odyssey” before, though, you know you’re not here for the astronaut trying to make his way back to the ship, but rather the colorful alien life he encounters. The most memorable of all these aliens is, of course, Tweel, an ostrich-like creature who befriends Jarvis.

Weinbaum’s story was so popular, and he seemed to like his own creations enough, that he wrote a sequel. It’s hard to blame him, assuming your heart has not yet turned to stone. “A Martian Odyssey” reads poorly if taken seriously, but really it is not meant to be. This is a story for the young at heart. Those who are looking for creatively realized aliens in their SF can't do much better than Weinbaum.

Four stars.

Twilight, by John W. Campbell

Colour photo of the cover of the November 1934 issue of Astounding Stories.  The cover illustration depict what appears to be some sort of 'transparent' ship which is exhausting some green vapour out its nose, surrounded by a trio of men (two police officers and a brown-coated white man) attacking it with fire axes.  Several more blue-coated police officers are running onto the scene, firing pistols and calling back over their shoulders as though for more assistance.
Cover art by Howard V. Brown.

You and I know Campbell for—let’s say other things. But 35 years ago, he was in fact two of the most popular writers in the field. “Twilight” appeared in the November 1934 issue of Astounding Stories (now Analog), and was the first under Campbell’s “Don A. Stuart” pseudonym. The premise is simple: a man from the 31st century accidentally jumps ahead millions of years before landing in 1932. The framing narrative is inelegant, even by the standards of the time: we’re treated to one narrator before quickly switching to a different one, who then relays the man’s story in a second-hand fashion. What made “Twilight” special at the time was that it was one of the first mood pieces in genre SF writing, having much more of an emphasis on describing the decline of this far future than on plot or characters. The problem is that time really has devoured what once made “Twilight” special, revealing how painfully stilted Campbell’s style was at the time.

Campbell wrote a sequel, “Night,” although I’ve never read it.

Three stars.

Helen O’Loy, by Lester del Rey

Colour photograph of the cover of the December 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.  The cover illustration is for 'The Merman', and features a crowd of reporters gathered in front of an aquarium, marveling what appears to be a white man in suit jacket, shirt, trousers, shoes and tie, sitting underwater at the bottom of the 'Sand Shark' tank', entirely engrossed in his thoughts.
Cover art by Charles Schneeman.

It’s 1938, and not only has Campbell taken over as editor of Astounding, but he changed the name from Astounding Stories to Astounding Science Fiction. Lester del Rey was an up-and-coming writer at the time, whose “Helen O’Loy” was published in the December 1938 issue. Not only have I read this one before, but have even gotten into civil arguments with feminists over the story’s merits. No doubt there’s a sexist angle, with Helen being an android who looks and acts like the “ideal” housewife. What’s more forward-looking, and indeed more memorable, is the friendship between our leads, Phil and Dave, with Phil narrating. This is, on the one hand, a predictable and sentimental love triangle, but the fact that Phil and Dave’s friendship remains anchored despite their shared love of Helen means that while “Helen O’Loy” may not be that convincing in its romance, it’s surprisingly touching in its depiction of male friendship. It helps that del Rey does not waste the reader’s time with developing these characters.

A light four stars.

The Roads Must Roll, by Robert A. Heinlein

Colour photograph of the cover of the June 1940 issue of Astounding. The cover illustration for 'The Roads Must Roll' depicts a group of brown leather clad motorcyclists wearing goggles and helmets and brandishing pistols, riding in formation on what appear to be single-wheeled steel scooters flanking a tandem two-wheeled cycle completely enclosed in a metal & glass fairing
Cover art by Hubert Rogers.

Heinlein has been exceedingly popular for the past 30 years, although the Heinlein of 30 years ago is quite different from the man we know now. “The Roads Must Roll” appeared in the June 1940 issue of Astounding, and is an entry in what became known as Heinlein’s Future History. It’s vast in scope, and what it lacks in character psychology or even practical believability (a future America wherein mass transit happens on massive conveyor belts sounds ridiculous now, and possibly even to readers at the time), it compensates with genuine speculation. This one has been reprinted multiple times already and has even been adapted for radio more than once, although I’ve never been able to wrap my head around why it stood above a few other early Heinlein stories that I think are superior.

Another curious note is that “The Roads Must Roll” is bound nowadays to spark conversation, not for its ambitious if exposition-heavy depiction of the future, but for its overt anti-union sentiments. Heinlein was a New Deal Democrat at the time, but one would not guess this from the story’s politics.

A high three stars.

Microcosmic God, by Theodore Sturgeon

Colour photograph of the cover of the April 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The cover illustration two white men wearing brightly coloured and form-fitting one-piece outfits (one in green, the other quarters of blue & yellow), appearing to do battle with implements resembling brass walking sticks with small rounded balls at crown, but wielded as though bats.  A briefcase lays discarded in the grass, and a group of similarly dressed people crowded at the top of flight stairs seem to be just reacting to the fray and are beginning to descend
Cover art by Hubert Rogers.

The premise of a mad scientist who plays God was not new, even in 1941, but there are few stories, even today, that have the same level of zest and playfulness as Sturgeon’s “Microcosmic God,” from the April 1941 issue of Astounding. Sturgeon was very young at the time, and at this point he had mostly stuck to writing fantasy rather than SF; so it might’ve surprised readers who picked up that issue of Astounding that Sturgeon managed to write such a masterpiece of SF. James Kidder, the mad scientist in question, is actually not the villain of the story, but rather his banker, the vicious capitalist Mr. Conant, who takes advantage of Kidder’s talents. The race of microscopic people, whom Kidders calls Neoterics, are merely the icing on the cake.

Sturgeon has since written stories that are more heartfelt, or more sophisticated, or more perceptive of the human condition; but arguably, for sheer entertainment value, he has never topped “Microcosmic God.”

Five stars.

Nightfall, by Isaac Asimov

Colour photograph of the September 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.  The cover illustration is for Nightfall (by Isaac Asimov) and it features a crowd of people bearing torches running into the foreground across the floor of an observatory's open dome.  We can see through the aperture that in the background there is a great conflagration, and in the sky we see a dense field of stars.
Cover art by Hubert Rogers.

You and I both know the Good Doctor, although he has written very little SF as of late. Asimov was barely out of his teens when he wrote “Nightfall,” which appeared in the September 1941 issue of Astounding. The story of how Asimov came to write “Nightfall” is almost as famous among fans as “Nightfall” itself. Given its placement in the top 15 among SFWA voters, its inclusion was mandatory, although I’ve never found “Nightfall” to be that good. We all remember the premise and the ending it gives way to, which are both unforgettable, but truth be told, it also shows signs of a young writer who hasn’t quite found his voice yet. What we think of as Asimov’s trademark conciseness of language when it comes to his fiction isn’t here, nor is his rigorousness when it comes to SFnal implications. You can poke a few logical holes in the world of “Nightfall” if you feel like it.

Yet for its faults, this story about a world which has not known the darkness of night in 2,000 years is home to such powerful imagery, with its ending capitalizing on such a sense of existential terror, that it’s hard to discount.

Four stars.

The Weapon Shop, by A. E. van Vogt

Colour photograph of the December 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.  The cover illustration features a great black monolithic building picked out in the coloured lights of its windows in the middle distance.  A massive neon advertisement circling the building appears to promise 'Red Death, Green Living, White [..]'.  A vast translucent walkway stretches across the sky to the entry situated half-way up the building, and many people appear to be traveling along this path.
Cover art by William Timmins.

From the December 1942 issue of Astounding, this is actually the second entry in the Isher series, the first being “The Seesaw.” Those who have read The Weapon Shops of Isher but not “The Weapon Shop” as it had originally appeared will find this to be familiar ground. Fara is a decent upstanding citizen in a far-future empire who gets caught in the crossfire between said empire and the weapon shops—teleporting, seemingly magical shops that host all manner of weapons for civilians (cops and military are prohibited), with the infamous slogan: “The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.” Van Vogt’s politics are suspect, but in contrast to Asimov, this is better than his more recent work (his investing in Dianetics utterly derailed his career and seems to have sucked out most of the talent he once had). Whether you agree with the libertarian bent of “The Weapon Shop” or not, it’s a strange and thought-provoking piece that shows this once-great writer in his element.

Four stars.

Mimsy Were the Borogoves, by Lewis Padgett

Colour photograph of the February 1943 issue of Amazing Science Fiction.  The cover illustration shows (from behind) an older man wearing a uniform aiming what appears to be some sort of large ray-gun down across the room and down a corridor at a person with orange coveralls who is holding their hands above their head.
Cover art by William Timmins.

We now know that “Lewis Padgett” was a pseudonym for the late great Henry Kuttner and his wife C. L. Moore, a husband-wife team who at their best were really something else. “Mimsy” is one of the duo’s best and most haunting stories, being about a set of children’s toys from the far future that get accidentally sent back to what was then the present day, to an unassuming American family with their two kids. “Mimsy” appeared in the February 1943 issue of Astounding, but it could just as well have appeared a decade later in Galaxy, with its observations on the relationship between parents and their children being just as acute, and with Kuttner and Moore having such a fine ear for dialogue. The ending, which I dare not give away, could be seen as grim, transcendent, or most likely both at the same time, depending on one’s viewpoint. The exact scientific rationale for the children’s behavior might now sound quaint, but the implications of their playing are not.

Five stars.

Good, If Unbalanced

Despite the intent of presenting a rough chronology of genre SF in the American tradition, seven out of the first eight stories here are from Astounding, with six of those being from after Campbell took over the magazine. I have no doubt that many members of the SFWA feel they owe their careers to Campbell, and it doesn’t help either that the early ‘40s are considered by some (although not me, who would push the “Golden Age” back a decade to the early ‘50s) to have been the best era of American genre SF so far. Just one look at the table of contents will tell us that this bias in favor of Astounding during its glory days will persist for some time.

What struck me as a bit more conspicuous is the authors so far included, or rather how the stories selected are pretty much all from early in these authors’ careers, when they were quite young and hungry, so to speak. The problem is that some of these people have since gone on to bigger and better things, with these early outings really not showing them in the best light. As much as I love “Microcosmic God,” Sturgeon has since written superior and more mature short stories that are more indicative of his style. I’m sure Asimov will tell you he has written better than “Nightfall.” Del Rey was similarly in his early 20s when he wrote “Helen O’Loy.” “A Martian Odyssey” was Weinbaum’s first SF story, although one could argue he never really topped it. The voters seemed to have prioritized a story’s initial impact over whether the author has since written better.

These are minor gripes, ultimately, because those who are unfamiliar with SF of this vintage will find the contents so far to be (probably) entertaining as well as providing a useful (if biased) timeline for the history of the form. And we’re just getting started.

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


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[May 4th, 1970] The Blue Meanies Are Coming (Doctor Who: The Ambassadors Of Death [Parts 5-7])

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By Jessica Holmes

Have you ever been on a rollercoaster just to have it break down halfway through? That’s what this story is like. It was so close. It was so, so close to being a genuinely excellent serial. But tripping just before the finish line, this month’s story just comes out as ‘pretty good’. Let’s try and find out what went wrong in “The Ambassadors Of Death”.

Lennox (white, balding, middle aged) sits at a small table in a bare concrete cell. He has a dinner tray in front of him, on which is a blue plate with a metal rod on it.
Excuse me, waiter? There's some plutonium in my soup.

In Case You Missed It

We last left off with the Doctor finding Quinlan dead, unaware that his assassin is still in the room. With the arrival of the Brigadier, the spaceman forgoes the chance to kill the Doctor, making its escape. It’s not as if anyone could stop it.

The Doctor has a feeling these creatures are being used for something. Perhaps someone wants him to think they’re alien invaders, but he suspects the truth may be more complicated.

On the alien assassin’s return to the lab, a horrified Liz persuades Lennox to escape, whereupon he heads straight for the Space Centre and gets the soldiers to put him in a cell for his own protection. While waiting to see the Brigadier, someone nicely brings him some lunch. On lifting the lid however, he finds that clearly they’ve not taken his dietary requirements into account, as instead of a ham butty there’s a nice hot radioactive isotope. He doesn’t make it to his meeting with the Brigadier.

Cornish and the Brigadier watch from mission control as the Doctor appears on a big blue screen. His face is contorted by extreme g-force.
Not your best angle, Jon.

Reegan meanwhile is on a mission to stop the Doctor getting to space. As the Doctor waits impatiently on the launchpad for the Space Centre to finish fuelling his rocket, Reegan breaks into the fuel control area, sabotaging the fuel injection. The rocket makes it off the launchpad, but with too much force, the Doctor struggling to remain conscious despite his more robust physiology. Regaining control just before the rocket ends up flung out of Earth’s gravity and into a solar orbit (one of these days I am going to have to sit down with the writers of Doctor Who and draw them a diagram of the scale of space), the Doctor links up with the orbiting recovery capsule. But something is approaching. Something much, much bigger. It’s an alien spacecraft big enough to swallow the linked space capsules whole. [Shades of You Only Live Twice (ed.)]

On board, the Doctor finds the astronauts alive, well, and watching the match on telly. Well, that’s what they think they’re doing, anyway. They’re also under the impression that they’re back on Earth undergoing extended quarantine.

The Doctor talks to the three astronauts in a room lit in pink and blue. There's a space-age television set with a blank screen and the astronauts are all seated and wearing silver suits.
Anything good on?

This is for their own good, the aliens explain to the Doctor, to reduce psychological distress. It turns out the aliens don’t bear the astronauts themselves any ill will, but they are running out of patience with Earth. When will their ambassadors return?

This is of course news to the Doctor. Apparently some Earth authority agreed to host a trio of ambassadors, who have now vanished into the ether. Unless Earth gives them back, the aliens will be forced to escalate. Don’t worry, they don’t plan on doing anything to the astronauts. No, they’re just going to blow up the planet.

Of course, why take any intermediary steps?

Assuring them that this is all just a misunderstanding, the Doctor asks to back to Earth and clear things up. The aliens agree, and return him to his craft, holding the astronauts as collateral.

On Earth, Carrington’s paranoia towards the aliens continues to worsen, as he does everything in his power to get the UN to agree to throw a bunch of nukes at the alien spaceship. Cornish thinks he’s simply gone mad, but the Brigadier guesses there might be more to his ‘madness’ than meets the eye. It’s not that he agrees with him, but he thinks the General might know more about these aliens than he’s letting on.

In the control room, Carrington (white, middle-aged, khaki military uniform) talks to the Brigadier (white, middle-aged, lighter khaki military overalls and green beret) and Cornish (white, 30s-40s, seated and wearing a tan suit). The Brigadier and Cornish look quite annoyed at Carrington.
At this point it's a toss-up between the Brig and Cornish for who snaps and punches Carrington first.

Because UNIT apparently did not learn a single lesson from Reegan’s sabotage of the fuel injection, Reegan manages to swan back into the Space Centre once again to sabotage the Doctor’s decontamination unit. When the Doctor stops responding to the Brigadier’s communications, the Brig orders the base sealed—moments too late, as Reegan speeds the unconscious Doctor back to his bunker.

Relieved to see Liz alive and well, the Doctor is fascinated to see the alien ambassadors, remarking that with the right resources, he could build a much more sophisticated communication device to talk to them. Reegan’s happy to accommodate him and recruit him into his own criminal enterprise, but then who should show up but General Carrington?

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the guy who was obviously the villain all along. Quelle surprise. He and Quinlan cooked up a cover story to justify kidnapping the astronauts, then he had Reegan kidnap the astronauts AGAIN when UNIT came too close to finding them, then killed Quinlan before he could reveal the truth.

And all of this he considers his “moral duty”.

The Doctor stares down the barrel of a pistol, held by Carrington (offscreen).
Do you mind? I'm busy.

His mission to Mars didn’t go entirely according to plan. He and his crew encountered the aliens there, and they killed him with a touch, not realising how vulnerable humans are to ionising radiation. But since that first interaction, Carrington’s managed to convince himself that the aliens are out to invade the entire galaxy, and it’s only a matter of time before they attack Earth.

Humanity must strike first if they want to survive.

So says Carrington, anyway.

He lured the ambassadors to Earth with the intention of turning the world against them. Underneath all the complicated conspiracy to keep things secret, his plan is actually quite simple: use them to attack some government facilities, then reveal them to the public while spinning a yarn about the aliens attacking with the aid of human collaborators. And also the Doctor. Might as well kill two birds with one stone, I suppose.

One of the aliens appears behind a set of blue blinds. The alien is blue and indistinct.

His plan gets even easier when he takes one of the aliens to the space centre for their moment in the spotlight, as the alien spacecraft picks the worst possible moment to broadcast their ultimatum to the world. In plain English. And it’s not thanks to the Doctor’s device that the humans can now understand them, oh no. They spoke to him in English on board their spacecraft.

Hold on a mo.

The supposed crux of the story is that this is all a misunderstanding and a case of humans jumping to conclusions about aliens that don’t—and can’t—communicate as we do, but we find that it’s simply not the case. They can, but just won’t, until it’s time for their final ultimatum.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if it turned out that, like Carrington, they were also attempting to contrive some justification for a pre-emptive strike?

Unfortunately, exploration of that idea would require the narrative to actually be interested in the alien creatures the plot hinges on.

Carrington arrests the Brigadier in the control room, flanked by two military guards.

When the Brigadier objects to Carrington’s assertion that the Doctor has been collaborating with the aliens, Carrington has him arrested. But you’ll need more than two men to take down Lethbridge-Stewart. Under a hail of bullets, he steals a staff car and flees the Space Centre.

On regrouping with the few UNIT men that Carrington hasn’t managed to detain, he learns that they’ve managed to triangulate the Doctor’s position from the SOS signal he’s been secretly using the translation device to broadcast. The next task is working out how to actually get there, as all of UNIT’s jeeps are at the Space Centre, and the car the Brig “borrowed” is swiss cheese.

Well. There’s always Bessie.

The UNIT soldiers drive Bessie (yellow Edwardian roadster) down a muddy trail. Their arms and guns are sticking out the sides.

I laughed aloud at the look on the Brig’s face when one of the young Sergeants (Benton or something?) brought it up, and laughed even harder at the sight of them all packed into the most absurd car on Britain’s roads.

Fighting his way into the bunker, the Brig finds a not-entirely-grateful Doctor who snippily asks what kept him so long.

It’s funny, when he’s around Liz he’s a total gent, but around literally anyone else this Doctor is probably best described as ‘difficult’. I’m getting notes of early Hartnell before he learned to embrace the power of friendship.

The Brigadier, Liz and the Doctor in the bunker.

Now is the time to take the fight to Carrington, but they don’t exactly have firepower on their side. Or do they? Reegan, having accepted defeat with grace, suggests that they use the spacemen. It’s a pity he’s morally bankrupt; he strikes me as probably a very effective UNIT agent in another life.

I enjoy Reegan as a villain more than Carrington. He knows he’s a villain and is having a great time. There’s a certain charisma to him, unlike Carrington who I wouldn’t really like even if he wasn’t intent on starting a war. Carrington’s at least got convictions and thinks he’s doing the right thing, but I’d be a lot more sympathetic if he had the brains to go with them. I don’t know what he expects to happen after blowing up the alien ship, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t end well for Earth.

In the control room, General Carrington is surrounded by UNIT soldiers and held at gunpoint by the Brigadier. He also has his pistol raised. There are two of the alien Ambassadors in the foreground, wearing spacesuits.

The aliens agree to help the Doctor break back into the space centre, and under his command they walk in without even getting into a fight. Entering the Space Centre moments before the televised revelation of the aliens can proceed, the Brig arrests Carrington and orders the release of his alien captive.

Carrington puts up no resistance to the combined might of UNIT and the aliens (some planetary defender he turned out to be), and the serial just sort of…stops.

The Doctor tells Cornish the the astronauts are fine and tells him to swap them for the alien ambassadors, leaving Liz with him to assist in translation, then swans off. That’s it.

Wide shot of mission control, with the Doctor walking away from the assembled characters.

What Do You Mean, That’s It?!

Talk about an abrupt denouement.

To me, a well-written ending needs both an exciting climax and a satisfying conclusion. You can’t have one without the other. There’s plenty of excitement but you’re left with a sense of ‘Is that it?’

Yes, the spy plot gets wrapped up neatly, but what about the ambassadors? You know, the beings the serial is named for? Surely we could have made time in the script for one last chat with them.

This serial is supposedly about the importance of communication. The entire conflict rests on humanity’s inability to talk to the aliens. And yet at the end of it all, when they finally have both the means and the opportunity, everyone, including the writer, loses interest in what they have to say.

An alien Ambassador. Humanoid, with blue hair and blue skin with a warty or stonelike texture, and a distorted mouth, but recognisably human nose and eyes.

On the one hand, it does make sense thematically that a fairly military-heavy serial like this gets wrapped up in a second once everyone starts communicating. But as I said, that would require actual interest in the theme of communication.

The narrative is telling me that communication and diplomacy are ultimately more valuable than underhanded tactics and firefights, but the way the story is structured shows me the opposite. Much of the screen time is devoted to spy high jinks and military stunt sequences, with the more alien-focused scenes sprinkled lightly through and making for rather dry viewing. I don’t think it’s a problem that would be fixed quite as easily as fiddling with the ratio of action-heavy scenes to dialogue-heavy scenes. In the hands of a stronger dialogue writer it might be workable but as it stands, though the dialogue isn’t at all bad, it’s pretty nondescript.

None of this should be taken to mean I didn’t like the spy stuff or the action scenes. They’re fun! I just wish the same amount of care had been given to the core theme.

The Doctor (wearing a spacesuit) and the Brigadier shaking hands.

Final Thoughts

It’s at least encouraging that UNIT and the Brigadier seem to have learned their lesson from the previous serial, consistently supporting the Doctor as he attempts to uncover the truth and backing him up against the war-mongering Carrington.

For all his sniping and general irritability with him, I do think the Doctor is glad to have the Brigadier on his side. I’m still uncertain about him, but his characterisation here feels more in line with previous stories before the Silurians.

Despite the strong start, Ambassadors Of Death starts faltering in the middle and foregoes a satisfying ending in favour of the Brigadier punching a baddie off a cliff. That said, it is still fun. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it on that level at least. But fun isn’t enough to elevate a story from ‘pretty good’ to ‘great’. It all rests on the aliens, and the aliens aren’t up to the task.

They’re not characters. They exist within this plot only to be misunderstood, kidnapped and exploited, treated as a monolith, none of them having any discernible personality. They’re a glorified MacGuffin, and it’s a shame, because in concept there’s so much interesting potential with them. What happens next for humanity and the aliens? Did Carrington blow our chances of relations with another world, or did the actions of the Doctor, UNIT and the Space Centre help to smooth things over? Do the ambassadors even have an opinion at all on all this?

Unfortunately, this serial doesn’t seem interested in the answer, or indeed in asking the question.

3 out of 5 stars for The Ambassadors Of Death.

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


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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 2, 1970] Gaudy Shadows in the Crystal Cave (May 1970 Galactoscope)

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by David Levinson

The Matter of Britain

When I was a boy, someone gave me Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. For many years, I would occasionally look at the pictures, but never bothered to read it. I finally did when I was 14 or 15, and I was hooked.

All things Arthur became an obsession. I wasn’t satisfied with modern retellings and hunted long and hard for a decent modernization of Sir Thomas Malory. That led to Continental poets who wrote about Arthur, like Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chrétien de Troyes. Once I had access to a university library, I discovered the Welsh legends and then the early Medieval and Dark Age historians who mentioned him by name or indirectly. Suddenly, my obsession with King Arthur merged with my obsession with ancient history, and I was off again.

Eventually my ardor cooled due to a lack of new things to learn and the demands of being an adult, but for 15 or 20 years I lived and breathed this stuff. And now, Mary Stewart has brought it all back.

The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

Black book cover covered in a rain-like texture. The Authors name 'Mary Stewart' appears in white and the caption continues 'author of THE GABRIEL HOUNDS' In rainbow lettering 'THE CRYSTAL CAVE'

Writing as an old man, Merlin—wizard, seer, engineer, and poet—recounts his life story, beginning with his childhood in Carmarthen as the bastard son of a Welsh princess and an unknown father. Fate eventually takes him to Brittany, where he joins Aurelius Ambrosius (possibly a real historical figure) and his brother Uther, who are planning to overthrow the British High King Vortigern (almost certainly a real historical figure) and drive out the invading Saxons. Merlin aids the two princes in achieving their goal, at one point facing down Vortigern’s priests and magicians and later rebuilding Stonehenge as a monument to Ambrosius. The book ends with Merlin’s role in the conception of Arthur and a vision of him receiving the newborn infant to take away to foster care.

Mary Stewart is well-known for her blend of romance and thriller. Her recent books The Gabriel Hounds and Airs Above Ground are prime examples, and both spent months on the best-seller lists. There’s not a lot of romance here, and this is more of a historical novel than a thriller, but the skills that have made her earlier books so popular are fully on display.

Anyone familiar with the old legends of Merlin will recognize the high points in my story recap, but Stewart makes the tale all her own. Events are firmly set in the late 5th century, after Rome has pulled out of Britain and the Saxons are beginning to move in and displace the native Celtic population. This is no Medieval Never-Never Land with knights in shining armor jousting for the favor of a fair maiden. Instead we have Roman military discipline and engineering battling a barbarian invasion against a backdrop of early Christianity tinged with superstition and older religions.

The obvious comparison is to Mary Renault’s The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea, which tell the story of Theseus set in the Mycenean Era as it was understood a decade ago. Like those books, there’s little magic here. Merlin has prophetic visions, but they could just as easily be epileptic seizures. He hints at other powers, but we never see them. Everything else is skill, intelligence, and reputation.

There’s room for a sequel. Merlin still has the best known part of his career ahead of him. If Mary Stewart writes it, I, for one, will be there the day it comes out.

Five stars.

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

The Gaudy Shadows, by John Brunner

John Brunner is one of my favorite authors working in science fiction these days. His Stand on Zanzibar was one of the most striking and innovative science fiction novels I've ever read. Zanzibar was a mind-expanding yet grounded exploration of how people might really live their lives in the future, melding internal introspection with external events in a thrilling manner.

While Brunner hasn't quite reached those heights before or since, most of his other fiction has been at least enjoyable and often quite fun. In fact, Brunner is one of those writers who seems remarkably successful at conjuring up an image of modern times in his novels while also maintaining a satirical science-fiction edge.

His latest novel, The Gaudy Shadows, is more a kind of modern Victorian melodrama than an innovative book. It's also a delightful page-turner.

White book cover captioned in red font, Constable Crime the gaudy shadows' The 'S' in 'shadows' is black,hollow and stacked. The caption continues, 'John Brunner Verdict: Scared to death. By whom? By what? The hunt for Sammy Logans killer set London's smart set talking- and lying.'

Sammy Logan is the most popular man in central London these days. He's young,  wealthy, extremely well-dressed, knows all the right people and goes to all the right parties and has all the right secrets.

Sammy seems like a man without any real fears, so it's shocking to friends and family alike when Sammy seems to die of fear. His American friend, Laird Walker, just happens to be visiting England to surprise Sammy. To his great shock, Laird is drawn into the mystery and embraks on a madcap adventure to discover why his pal is deceased.

Along the way, Laird finds Sammy's amazing car and Sammy's secret ex-wife, and embarks on a madcap adventure with both to discover just what in the world happened to the man. And when Laird finally discovers the truth, all the adventure twists into a bizarre melodrama which seems to flow right out of a slightly sexed-up dime novel of the Victorian era. The tale has a viciously evil madman at the center of everything, a man whose strange drugs can bring ecstasy… and madness.

I enjoyed how Brunner set the novel firmly in London with passages like this one:

He looked for the boutique by which he had formerly located the correct turning, its windows full of way-out clothes, and found its place had been taken by an equally way-out hairdresser. Nylon wigs in purple and pale green loomed behind the glass now. A girl emerged as he passed, soothing a yappy poodle which had been dyed mauve to match its mistress's trouser suit."

Accentuating the modern feel of Gaudy Shadows, the character who really steals the show is the wildly named Bitchy Lagree, an androgynous chanteuse of sorts who sings in a gothic-feeling cabaret, wearing pancake makeup, half-inch nylon lashes, and a Marlene Dietrich dress while playing bitchy, gossipy songs on his/her gold and white piano. She feels like a character from the stage play Cabaret, decadent and dangerous, hilarious and strange and oh so transgressive to society and gender… and so contemporary feeling for today's London.

Bitchy acts like a greek chorus or voice of reason as Laird and friends gallivant from place to place to uncover Sammy's secrets. And if the secrets feel like a bit of an anticlimax after they've all spilled out, the speedy journey has been bright and bold and lots of fun.

Turns out London can be more fun than Zanzibar…

4 stars.

Photo of Amber Dubin. She's a wavy haired, freckled nosed girl with Star of David necklace around her neck
by Amber Dubin

Hoping to Ace a Walt and Leigh Richmond Double

This is the first Ace Double I’ve read from Walt and Leigh Richmond, and I’ll admit my hopes were unreasonably high. The idea proposed by the depiction of a crazy man riding a giant ice cube through space promised to be either hilarious or insane in my expectation, but disappointingly the execution was neither. Maybe if I had known more about the set of authors, I could have known not to expect that type of experience, but I stayed the course because even if this duo weren’t comedy writers, taking the absurd and making the reader seriously contemplate it is an art unto itself. Unfortunately, what I found was that the collaboration between these authors was not as smooth or symbiotic as I had hoped. Overall I don’t feel insulted or angered by the quality of these stories, but I do feel like if reading them had been a gamble, I broke even on my bet and wasted quite a bit of time doing it.

Gallagher's Glacier, by Walt and Leigh Richmond

Gallagher’s Glacier should only barely be defined as science fiction, in that it’s mostly science with precious little fiction. It’s rather thickly written, the action thawing slowly like the glacier at the center of its plot as the story goes on and hitches often on what I think is an unreasonable amount of descriptions and explanations of every single piece of technology used by the spacefaring protagonists.

Book cover depicting a triangular spaceship darting toward a glacial asteroid with glowing machinery inside. The caption reads, ' GALLAGHER'S GLACIER WALT and LEIGH RICHMMOND His cosmic icew was too hot for the space tycoon to handle!'
cover by Kelly Freas

The premise is that of a dystopian future where mankind appears to have been in space for several generations, but has unfortunately brought the problems of Earth with them in full force. Though spread out across the galaxy amongst dozens of planets, earth-rooted society seems to be fully in the throes of late-stage capitalism, the earth-planted colonies on nearly every system owing their establishment to corporate buy out. Each colony, then, is less a society and more a business center with an accompanying employee residential area with all the accoutrements that are necessary to keep said employees entertained and alive. Predictably, with the economic divisions that intergalactic corporations require to remain solvent, the rankings have become stark over the decades, with the skilled employees becoming an elite class and the unskilled resource gatherers falling past poverty into a stiflingly oppressive debt-slavery system.

We follow the perspective of the straight-laced, company-funded Captain of the Starship Starfire, Harald Dundee, a character that is half audience stand-in and half Wonderbread-generic everyman. He meets the titular character upon the acquisition of his eponymous glacier, in a company bar as the Captain is complaining of losing one of his most essential engineers at a crucial point in his tasked journey for his company superiors. Maverick engineer N.N. Gallagher offers to do repairs on the Captain’s ship in exchange for passage towards an unclaimed giant chunk of ice floating in space along the path that Captain Dundee happens to be travelling. Though Gallagher’s conversion of the piece of space debris into an innovative intergalactic vehicle at first appears merely to be the odd behavior of an eccentrically brilliant yet harmless spacefaring engineer, it gradually becomes a threat to the status quo of the entire structure that the corporations have painstakingly built. With his self-funded, self-innovated, corporate-unregulated ship, Gallagher is able to slowly drill a hole through and around the structure of economic exchange set up by the corporations, maintaining commerce through slowly strengthening black market back channels that increase communication between the formerly oppressed and isolated socio-economically oppressed communities on many of the corporate outposts sprinkled throughout the galaxy.

Captain Harald Dundee’s curiosity is piqued on a particular corporate colony named Stellamira, where he seeks out Gallagher’s company once more, hoping to revel in the excitement of the adventures in which Gallagher is rumored to be involved. The Captain ends up biting off much more than he can chew when he has to visit the less reputable side of the corporate-funded colony to find Gallagher, and thus gets exposed to the horrors of the way the lower classes are forced to live in the corporate society that he has always benefited from. Emboldened by alcohol and the recklessness of naïve youth, Captain Dundee returns that night to his side of the colony, railing against his superiors and citing injustice and moral failings deep seated in the corporate structure, ranting that he will send word all the way up the chain of power if he has to in order to get awareness of what Corporate Greed has wrought. In a manner that everyone seems to see coming except Harald, this outburst is not received favorably, and in short order he is confronted with the depth of moral corruption in his company as it is swiftly turned against him.

Thankfully, allying himself with Gallagher that very night is just in time, as Gallagher predicted the company’s betrayal, sending allies to override their unreasonable punishment for pointing out their flaws. Harald then is unwillingly conscripted into the full-scale revolution that Gallagher has launched on the colony and its corporate overlords.

As the conflict between debt slaves and corporate elite goes from bloodless to bloody to bloodless again, we watch Harald slowly lose faith in the structure that raised him to his original status. Trying desperately to cling to his faith in the moral correctness of Earth politicians, he consistently expresses interest in reaching out to the Earth Council at the earliest opportunity, convinced that they will still express moral outrage when they learn how inhumanely the corporate entities have been able to run their colonies when unmonitored by Earth laws. Gradually, though, when confronted over and over by the wanton disregard for human life expressed by his former colleagues, he finally begins to come around to the perspective of the reader and his compatriots, that corporate greed has rotted Earth’s entire interplanetary system to its core, and whether its founders on Earth are willfully ignorant or willing participants is irrelevant to how far the entire system has fallen.

To be sure, being guided by such a predictable and naïve narrator through the plot does a good job of emphasizing the depth of the corruption of the powers that rule this universe, but I found this role superfluous when there was so much time spent elaborating on the depictions of the human rights violations. This is why, when they splashed in a transparent and half-hearted spoonful of a romance to endear the reader to the narrator, it felt so forced and awkward that I found myself wondering why the narrator’s character was created at all.

The plot had a super interesting premise for a foundation, but I feel like it wasted a lot of time trying to get me to care about fictional feats of engineering that felt rooted in an author’s rudimentary understanding of electrical processes that were not elaborate enough to immerse me in the same amazement and wonder that the author clearly would have felt if his/her creation was made real. Where my interests and the author’s values clearly clashed was in how much focus was necessary on the socio-economic structure upon which the world was based that I felt had stronger potential to draw and maintain interest.

The foreboding warning about corporate greed, political corruption, and the oppressive power of debt slavery was hugely compelling, and the heroic quest of one engineering maverick to overthrow the system could have been an amazing story, if that had been the one told, if the narrator had been less distracting from that focus, or less time had been spent describing the minutia of how everything was done.

Three stars

[Note: I wasn't that impressed when I read the original, shorter, version of this tale six years ago. (ed.)]

Positive Charge, by Walt and Leigh Richmond

Positive Charge felt disorganized and sloppily patched together with no connecting thread, like the contents of the author’s intellectual junk drawer.

Book cover featuring a humanoid made of sattered ainbow fragments on a black background. The title in white reads, 'POSITIVE CHARGE' Below in yellow font, the authors names, 'WALT and LEIGH RICHMOND' The last caption in yellow 'Inventors, impostors, and galactic inquiries...'
cover by Kelly Freas

Where the story on the opposite side moved at a glacial pace in one general direction, this side lacks any direction at all. The narrative focus jumps so jerkily from story to story in this collection, that I found myself regretting reading the other half first because it put me in a mindset where I spent the first three stories grasping to find the common thread between each chapter.

There at first appears to be none, and yet four of the seven stories feature the same eccentric inventor, Willy Short, who seems to be accidentally and almost single-handedly launching the technological revolution of his entire species. In the first Willy Short story, we are dropped in the middle of a ‘day in the life’ snapshot, the second is told by a father to his child as if Willy is a fabled inventor of old, the third is watched by a nebulous governmental entity set to track him, and the fourth is told from the perspective of a sentient robot he invented. The fourth I found most interesting, as we are given a hazy view of Willy through a very elongated timeline in which we witness the rise and fall of sentient robotics, as they first solve the problem of human mortality, then last long enough to see themselves made obsolete and replaced by their now immortal, time and space travelling creators.

One of the biggest issues I take with the Willy Short set of stories is that they do not appear to be set chronologically in Willy’s life, and so the reader spends an annoying amount of time orienting themselves in each story, looking for clues that would put each one in sequence. I wonder why this was printed this way, because I already found it jarring enough to be following the same character in four different narrative lenses, without the added frustration of having to navigate time as well as space.

I was also particularly perturbed by the stories that bookend these Willy Short stories, as they seem so very random that they may as well have been printed in another book: they don’t center around engineering, invention or the innovative power of one bumbling genius in the right place and the right time to make meaningful change.

[Turns out they were all printed elsewhere—this collection is entirely of stories previously reviewed on the Journey, save for the new "Shorts Wing", written for this book (ed.)]

One of the aforementioned three, the concluding tale, happened to be more fiction than science, but did surprise me by being worth my time. It follows an advertising campaign on a television broadcasting station from the perspective of its sponsor and his lawyer. It begins innocently enough, as a nervous company man watches the launch of the first commercial, a witch-themed set of cleaning products that are being sold by 13 beautiful performers that dance and chant their way through a demonstration that investing in their company can clean up the world. The man is nervous because he’s worried that the ad will appear in poor taste, as it depicts scantily clad witches spraying cleaning fluid on the epicenter of a dirty bomb recently dropped on the Suez canal. His concerns appear ameliorated the next day, however, when the projected disaster appears averted, and an antidote seems to have been distributed over night to the contaminated water supply system.

With each airing of this new commercial, however, the reader is made to feel just as nervous as the company’s sponsor, because every attempt to make these cleaning products relevant to a current societal problem is paired with a miraculous clearing out of the problem that is mentioned. It doesn’t appear as if this was the advertiser’s intention, as he is just as bewildered by these “coincidences” as the participants and observers; yet we are left to wonder if the occult-themed performances didn’t accidentally access something structural in the rules of this world that has very real and tangible power.

I would rate this half of the Ace Double lower if the last story hadn’t left me with the nagging moral quandary: ‘If you could be given a magic wand with which to delete any of the world’s problems, would it be ethical to use it?

Three Stars


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 30, 1970] Praise for the Resident Witch (May 1970 Analog)

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

With the inflation scare going away, national protest attendance down to the tens of thousands, and a Supreme Court on its way to being filled, not to mention a lull in space news, I can finally turn my attention where it matters: this month's science fiction magazines!

I'm always grateful when Analog turns in a decent issue to round out the month, and this month's edition has some real bright spots.

The cover of Analog; a color image, showing a Viking riding horseback through a forest. Behind him rises a ruin, and in the sky above is outlined the faces of a woman, and a wolf.
by Kelly Freas, illustrating "But Mainly by Cunning"

But Mainly by Cunning, by John Dalmas

A few months ago, we followed the adventures of Nils the neoviking psychic in the serial novel, The Yngling, in which he spearheaded the defeat of the evil Turkish immortal, Baalzebub.  Now he's back in what seems to be an interstitial tale, roaming Bohemia in search of Ilse, the raw-boned beauty who taught Nils how to master his powers.

Black lines on white background depict three Nordic barbarians on horseback, riding out of ruins to approach an overturned cart in the foreground. Beside the cart, taking up much of the space of the page, is a desiccated corpse. Above the figures reads the title, and the legend 'The strong man is the one who can face realities and induce others to the same hard courage!'
by Kelly Freas

Though the back of Baalzebub's assault on Europe was broken in the previous adventure, thousands of desert horse barbarians still roam the countryside, pillaging and occupying so as to brave the upcoming winter.  Nils and his three Nordic companions attempt to rally a defense while they quest for our hero's lover (who, it turns out, has been captured by the marauding Arabs).

Dalmas continues to be an above-average depicter of scenery and character, and his tales read like history.  Nevertheless, there's precious little SF in this installment, and not a great deal of plot movement.  Again, this feels like a bridge piece.  I look forward to the main course after this appetizer.

Three stars.

MR Robot, by William L. Kilmer and Louis L. Sutro

A black and white photograph of a computer office. Various parts are labelled -- 'computer', 'stereo TV camera', 'long-persistence display', 'gray-scale display', and 'camera monitor'. One white man sits at the printout station, another stands in the background near the stereo TV camera.

This is a long, technical article about mimicing the human brain—specifically the sense processing and response subsystems—for implementation in Mars rovers.  Aside from this being an overly abstruse and dry piece, it has a rather fatal flaw.  Its premise is that the mind is a computer, so mimicing its structure an efficient way to design digital brains.  But the authors start their piece by modeling the brain as a computer in the first place, and then taking that model and applying it back to their theoretical rover.

That's a tautological application.  Who knows if the brain really works like a digital computer?  This all seems like an exercise in sophistry.  And it's boring to boot.

Two stars.

Resident Witch, by James H. Schmitz

An two-paneled image in black and white. On the right side, a white woman with long blonde hair and painted fingernails winds a string towards herself. This side is done with black lines on a white background. The string leads to the left panel, where the illustration becomes white lines on a black background. The string is part of many strands being pulled from a human form, which is in front of an embryo curled within an egg. Beneath the hands of the woman on the right is the title, and the following legend: 'Kyth Interstellar, a detective agency, had a problem that not even their highly skilled operatives could handle -- without Telzey, their Resident Witch!'
by Kelly Freas

Telzey Amberdon, the 16-year old psi who has been heroine of a clutch of prior stories, has returned.  This time, she is hired to find and rescue a rich magnate, who has been kidnapped by his jealous younger brother.  Said evildoer is holed up on an estate worthy of a Bond villain, with genetically modified guard dogs, dead-eyed security mooks, automatic defenses, and a psionic shield.  Telzey and her two employers must infiltrate the compound, incapacitate the abductor, and save the billionaire—if possible.

Schmitz is an excellent writer, weaving action, astral projection, and suspense with ease.  Telzey, in particular, is an interesting character: physically a teenager, but centuries-old mentally, due to her having touched so many consciousnesses telepathically.  Unfortunately, Schmitz doesn't linger too long on Telzey's interior personality, which renders her presentation a bit sterile.  Also, the depictions of the torturous depredations the tycoon suffers at the hand of his brother are a bit hard to take if you're of a squeamish nature.

Still, a well-earned four stars.

Caveat Emptor, by Lee Killough

An illustration, black lines on a white background, depicting three aliens and one human, in a rough line. From the left: A lion-headed man sitting on the floor and wearing a woolly sweater and fringed pants; a human man in a jumpsuit, holding a blanket and facing away from the viewer; a centaur with clawed feet and a foreshortened, donkey-like head; and a BEM wearing a loose tunic and pants, and checking off a clipboard. In the foreground, there is a bowl and three balls.
by Vincent Di Fate

An interstellar merchantman attempts to seal a trade deal with the human Federation.  It looks like the Terrans hold all the cards, forcing our alien hero to settle for a humiliating agreement…but sometimes a poor primitive has an ace up its sleeve.

Something of a forgettable piece, its greatest noteworthiness comes from having the extraterrestrial get the best of the human.  Analog editor Campbell has historically poopooed such tales, but I note they have been creeping onto his pages more often.  Perhaps he allowed it this time since the alien is a humanoid whose greatest distinguishing feature is his tail.

Three stars.

An illustration from the Department of Diverse Data, white lines on black background. Four creatures speed across the panel, looking rather like a cross between a flatfish and a shovelnose guitarfish. Four tubes come out of each of their back ends, streaming behind them. Underneath this image is typed the following legend: 'Jet propelled Fork-and-Platter bird Avis Messator. E.T. from Spica IX. Has an insatiable appetite but is rather untidy in its habits. Does not fly very well, due to rarified atmosphere.'
art by David Pattee

Heavy Duty, by Hank Dempsey (Harry Harrison)

This is the third tale (that I've read, anyway) set in Harrison/Dempsey's newest setting.  We are thousands of years in the future, and humanity is sending out teleportation stations out to planets settled centuries before by conventional space ships.  We follow Langli, an agent of "World Openers", as he transits to an almost uninhabitable world looking for survivors of an ancient colonization.

An illustration, black lines on a white background. On the left side, a craggy-faced spaceman tries to pull wrist restraints from a futuristic wall. On the right side, a bearded man in traditional taiga clothing crouches, ready to fling a short spear towards the spaceman. In the space above the spaceman's head reads the legend, 'What you get for nothing is worth it! And on a bleak, heavy planet -- the future can look like a free gift...'.
by Vincent Di Fate

The planet's gravity is 2.1 g, and even its summer is frigid.  Its settlers have, in fact, survived, but just barely.  Only two literate colonists are left: the chief and his beautiful (if stocky) daughter.  Their subsistence economy is on the razor's edge of viability.  They are left with the choice: sign an onerous exploitation contract with Langli's concern, or stumble onward to almost certain exctinction.

Once again, we've got an atypical story for Analog, which is something of an indictment of rapacious capitalism.  The color is interesting, too, with the setting and settlers reminiscent of (if more primitive than) the ones from Harrison's Deathworld.  Of course, the Crew/Colonist divide is reminiscent of Niven's Slowboat Cargo/A Gift From Earth.

My favorite story in this series so far, I give it four stars.

The Siren Stars (Part 3 of 3), by Nancy and Richard Carrigan

An illustration, white lines on a black background. Along a silvery river on the left side of the page, a massive satellite complex rises against the sky. On the right side, it is watched by a translucent bubble (so tall as to occlude the moon) surrounding a disembodied eye.
by Kelly Freas

Sadly, I cannot be so effusive about the conclusion to the latest Analog serial.  John Leigh, agent of SPI, infiltrates the Soviet radio telescope base to sabotage the facility, rescue the pretty Swedish biologist who guessed that the alien message picked up by the installation was really a Trojan Horse designed to subvert humanity to its own purposes, and bump off the Russian Chief Astronomer, already in the thrall of the alien Lorelei.

Maybe John Dalmas could have pulled it off.  The Carrigans are simply not up to the task.  They write amateurishly, often repeating turns of phrase in close succession.  Leigh succeeds almost at random, stumbling into lucky break after lucky break.  Really, if this were submitted to a publisher as the pilot of some kind of contemporary hero series, like James Bond or Sam Durrell (Assignment:) or Mack Bolan: The Executioner, I imagine it would have gotten rejected.  Campbell has lower standards, I guess.

Two stars.

Doing the math

A computer room, largely empty. There is only one person in the room, a white woman in a brown minidress, reading punch cards in the corner.
IBM 360

We end on a bit of a downbeat, especially since P. Schuyler Miller's book review column is strangely absent this month.  Nevertheless, there's enough good stuff in this issue to make it worth your while, rating just a hair under three stars in toto.  How does it compare with the other May-dated mags? 

A pretty middle-of-the-road bunch, actually. Galaxy's 3.2 barely edges out Fantasy and Science Fiction's 3.2. Both do better than Vision of Tomorrow (3.1), Amazing (3.1), IF (3), Venture (3), and the anthology "magazine" Infinity (2.8), but none are abyssmal.

Despite having eight short story sources this month, the four/five star material would fill just two of them.  Women wrote 7.8% of what was published.

So, my praise for Analog, the resident witch (since, as we know, witches are just humans with psi powers) is muted but not inaudible.  Still, would we rather have a very wide middle to our bell curve of science-fictional quality, or more superlative (and awful) outliers?

What do you think?

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[April 28, 1970] A Strange Case of Vulgarity & Violence (Vision of Tomorrow #8)

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Black & White Photo of writer of piece Kris Vyas-Mall
By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

There has been a steady rise in complaints about the state of current TV in the liberal society. It is commonly held up as the cause of declining moral standards and a crude form of entertainment. The Times decided to look into this and had a team watch through and analyse the 284 hours of television in the first week of April. Of these almost 60% of them contained no hint of violence, vulgarity or sexual content.

Looking at the violent content 19 of the hours are from the news, documentary or sport. And others include such broad definitions as children’s fairy tale containing a threat of “losing your head”. Among the remaining violent content, it is predominantly American films and television, in particular Westerns. If the Western was the cause of growing societal violence, it would be declining from its domination of large and small screens.

Jackanory Title Card
Jackanory, source of violence?

On the other-hand vulgarity tends to come from British comedies in later evening and these are on the milder side of expletives. It tries to make headlines out of 47 uses of the word “bloody” in one week, but this is skewed by the fact that Braden’s Week ran an episode discussing if the word was still offensive.

Braden's Week Title Card
Braden’s Week: Too vulgar for TV?

Finally, nudity and sexual content is barely present. There are a couple of bedroom scenes and double-entendres, but full nudity or sexual acts are absent. The closest is in a cigar commercial where a woman emerges from the sea in a wet t-shirt.

Mannkin Cigars TV ad still a woman in a wet top comes out of the ocean cupping her breasts
Are Manikin’s Cigars causing a breakdown of Britain’s morals?

If that is the case, then where should we look for the riding tide of sex and violence? One MP has a theory, witchcraft! Gwilym Roberts MP has been calling on the Home Secretary to introduce legislation against anyone who claims to practice witchcraft as it leads to drugs and blackmail. This will certainly be news to most of the witches I know.

Poster for Legend of the Witches documentary film with black and white images of women in shadow
Malcolm Leigh’s recent “documentary”

Whatever the cause, the panic over the current changes in society continues apace. It also seems highly present in the short SF of Britain, as its sole surviving magazine is certainly not limiting their bloodshed:

Vision of Tomorrow #8

Vision of Tomorrow May-70 illustrating the inside of a human spaceship where an astronaut has degraded to a skeleton in a suit whilst writing a note. Through the door behind the skeleton, 2 multi-armed aliens enter
Cover illustration by Kevin Cullen

Editorial: Full Circle by Philip Harbottle

Once again, Gillings’ sorting through his archives unearthed an unpublished story from John Russel Fearn. This one was incomplete, as it was meant to be the first part of a round robin story intended for Future Fiction. At the same time the cover illustration came in unsolicited which, coincidentally, worked very well for the Fearn story. As such Bounds has used both the text and image to complete the tale.

Lost in Translation by Peter Cave

Black and white ink illustration of Lost in Translation by Peter Cave with a ghostly worm like creature reaching up to man on a rocket ship, a bright light is blazing behind him
Illustration by Eddie Jones

The sole survivor of the Newtonian recounts what happened to the other 18 members on the Delta 4 expedition. They discovered a chain of planets that give off no spectroscopic readings and contains a form of life that does not seem to resemble any known form of matter.

This is a perfectly reasonable, but ultimately forgettable, first contact story. If you had told me it was a 20 year old reprint, I would have believed you.

A low Three Stars

Readers' Reaction E. C. Tubb emerged as the winner in our third issue, as determined by reader response, and wins our bonus of £10. The reader whose votes most nearly tallied with the final result was M. S. Brierley, of Yorkshire. The four most popular stories were: 1. Lucifer by E. C. Tubb. 2. People Like You by David Rome. 3. The Nixhill Monsters by Brian Waters. 4. The Adapters by Philip E. High.
Finally, Readers’ Poll results for Issue #3. I personally would have put Stableford as my top choice and not have had Nixhill Monsters in my top 4, but not too far off my own selection.

The Custodian by Lee Harding

Black & White Photo for The Custodians of a man with a moustache sitting in front of radio equipment listening.
Photo illustration by Lee Harding

Asian war lords launched a series of bacteriological missiles. When the fallout mutated a virus, it destroyed much of the world’s population and drove many of the survivors insane. In the aftermath, Carl Bleeker meets Deidre Ashton, a young woman, in an abandoned house in the mountains. Bleeker wants to keep it as a repository of knowledge, whilst Ashton wants to find other survivors. Together they try to work out how to live in this strange new world.

In the introduction we are told that Harding set out to create a story that is entirely derived from the history and culture of Australia. Initially I didn’t see much difference between this and one of the many mid-western post-nuclear survival stories Americans seem so fond of, but as it goes on it becomes much more about the relationship between the coastal settler population and the interior Aboriginal people.

Bleeker and Ashton are interesting characters. Firstly, I was expecting this to follow the standard Silverbergian format where the old-grizzled man sleeps with the innocent young woman but this is not the nature of their relationship. What they both want and need is friendship. Also, Ashton counters our expectations as to how she will be described:

This was no fey young girl but a capable woman already versed in the grim techniques of survival.

She was dressed for travel: a heavy maroon sweater and dark gray slacks made her sex ambiguous from a distance…Once she might have been petite; now her small frame verged on skinny…But underneath this fragile exterior he could detect uncommon strength.

Yet they are not meant to be paragons of virtue. We see they have their own problems and prejudices to overcome, in particular regarding the indigenous peoples.

It is not an easy tale to read but certainly a worthwhile one.

A high Four Stars

Fantasy Review

Kathryn Buckley gives a positive review to Thorns by Robert Silverberg whilst feeling that Hauser’s Memory by Curt Siodmak is good on science but poor on art. John Foyster reviews the Wollheim collection Two Dozen Dragon Eggs, saying it is not amazing but still worthwhile, and Donald Malcolm heaps praise on The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick (declaring it “a minor classic”) and The Journal of Paraphysics, an odd choice given it is full of subjects such UFO-ology, Arthurian mysticism and psi-powers.

Transference by K. W. Eaton

Black & White illustration of Transference by K. W. Eaton showing a human looking up at lizard like creature in robes as another one looks on from a nearby seat.
Illustration by Eddie Jones

Dr. Martin Lewis, an English psychiatrist, has been selected by the Capellans, controllers of the Federation, for an unusual task. The Shurans, the oldest and wisest race in the galaxy, are afflicted with some kind of species-wide neurosis. In interviewing a Shuran geologist, Teremen, Dr. Lewis must work out what has happened to them.

Once again this is a darker and deeper tale than it first appears, however it is one that I don’t think that can be done justice in a vignette. Probably a novelette would be more suitable.

Three Stars

Fixed Image by Philip E. High

Black and white ink illustration of Fixed Image by Philip E. High showing a man with half a face as human, the other half as a tiger, a line graph behind the man half.
Illustration by James Cawthorn

When Jim Bowls is first brought into the mental institution after taking an unusual cocktail of drugs, he seems like a standard delusional patient, believing himself to be a dog. It turns out to be more complex, as he can:

1) Spread his delusion to other patients
2) Physically transform himself if he so wishes

For the sake of both science and mankind, M’Guire and Saranac must work out what is really happening here.

I feel like drugs and mental institutions have become to recent British Publications what spaceships and time machines were to 30s American magazines. This another reasonable tale in a familiar mode.

Three Stars

The Scales of Friendship by Kenneth Bulmer

Black & White Ink Illustration of The Scales of Friendship by Kenneth Bulmer showing a spaceship launching into the sky past tall alien buildings
Illustration by Eddie Jones

This story marks the return of Bulmer’s “Galactic Bum” Fletcher Cullen. Here he wakes up in damp and dark alley near Klank, a Rolphollan (a species that looks like a bone dustbin with a large single eye on the side). They have both had their drinks spiked and had all their money taken. They must try to avoid those people trying to kill them and uncover the conspiracy behind it.

This is a little better. The alien races created are more interesting, there are some great little touches hinting at the wider universe, and the story is action-packed. The problem remains though that it is all a little thin and I have no interest in reading about Cullen. By the end I was glad it was over.

Two Stars

The Ghost Sun by John Russell Fearn & Sydney J. Bounds

Illustration of The Ghost Sun by John Russell Fearn & Syndey J. Bounds, showing a spaceship in a stellar void near two spherical bodies.
Illustration by Eddie Jones

In a distant galaxy, the Elders of the Tormah find an Earth ship approaching from the direction of the Ghost Sun. These insectoid beings go inside the TERRA to find all the humans dead and attempt to translate their last words to discover their fate.

The weakness of this story is actually stated in the Harbottle’s introduction, this was intended to be the first part of a round-robin serial, so it doesn’t really go anywhere. The aliens just discover the last moments of the Earth crew and then leave.

And (despite what Harbottle may believe) Fearn is not an interesting or important enough author for an uncompleted scrap to be worth our time reading it. JRF has produced worse work but this could have been written by any reasonably talented SF author for Astounding in the 40s.

Two Stars

The Impatient Dreamers: The Way of the Prophet by Walter Gillings

Reprint illustration of John Russell Fearn's Death at the Observatory of men surrounding a circular space with lightning running through it.
Illustration for John Russell Fearn story Death at the Observatory

In the final part of Gillings’ excellent series, he concludes by tying off some loose ends, talking about what HG Wells was up to (and how much he disliked John Russell Fearn being described as HG Wells II), another short-lived magazine Modern Wonder, and a meeting between members of The Worlds Says ltd. and the Science Fiction Association on a new magazine called New Worlds.

Next week the story will be taken up by another attendee of that meeting and the next big editor in British publishing, the young Mr. John Carnell.

This does feel a bit of a fragmentary conclusion to the series, but still very insightful and, overall, it has been easily the highlight of Visions. I only hope Carnell can keep up its high quality.

Four Stars

The Planet of Great Extremes by David A. Hardy

Colour Illustration of two men walking on the surface of Mercury
Illustration by David A. Hardy

David Hardy’s tour of the solar system continues with Mercury.

This is much the same as the last issue: dryly rattled off facts and figures more like another encyclopedia entry rather than a piece of genuine insight, but it probably achieves the objective of giving the uninitiated a feel for what it might be like to visit Mercury.

Three Stars

Quite the Horror Show

Outside of The Custodian there is little in the way of memorable content here. A couple of months ago I thought this was the best publication on the market, it has now slipped back into the doldrums.

I don't think this is to do with the level of violence or not in these tales. It is that Harbottle is in love with the SF of 20-30 years ago so much, it feels like he is not only repeating that era in much of what he selects but that he is also repeating himself.

I do imagine though that this would shock Mary Whitehouse and The National viewers and Listeners Association. Will they start running an SF readers branch soon too?

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[April 20, 1970] Not the final quarry (May 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Tunnel light

There have been a lot of happy endings recently.  The postal strike is over, thanks to the government agreeing to an 8% raise for federal employees.  Ditto the air traffic control strike.  Nixon's third nominee to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court, 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Harry Blackmun, isn't somewhere to the right of Ghengis Khan.  The Apollo 13 astronauts made it back home by the skin of their teeth.

Newspaper photo of Harry Blackmun

But of course, the old stories go on.  The Vietnam war has grown to include Cambodia—if Domino Theory is to be believed, we'll soon be fighting in the streets of Canberra.  Teachers are on strike in California; Governor Reagan says they're "against the children".  And actor Michael Strong says you can't walk the streets of the nation's capital without a good chance of getting mugged.

And so, it is appropriate that the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a mixed bag.  Some of it will thrill you, some of it will leave you cold.  On the other hand, none of it will mug you.

The Issue at Hand

A robot sits on a nighttime apocalyptic desert reading a trail of issues of Fantasy and Science Fiction
by Mel Hunter

The Final Quarry, by Eric Norden

Two Englishmen are on the hunt in the backwoods of Thessaly.  One is a corpulent and uncouth Lord, looking to bag the last unicorn.  The other is his guide looking to bag the Lord and take the half million drachmas the noble carries on his person.  Gradually, we learn the exact year of this expedition (a little over half a century ago).  The timing is signicant.

An interesting story that intertwines unicorns with Christian theology and ties their extinction with the death of good things in the world.  The Book of Revelations…with hooves and horns.  It's all very visceral and sensory, with full descriptions of each meal, and with doom dogging every footstep.  A singularly F&SF sort of tale.

Four stars.

Scientist comes out of lab with sign reading 'the end is nigh'—associate says 'I don't like the looks of this!'
by Gahan Wilson

Books, by Barry Malzberg

The F&SF reviewer roulette ball has landed on Barry this month.  He laments that the SF writing community is small enough that one hates to disparage one's peers lest they end up crossing paths on some other project.  This does not keep Malzberg from condeming Moorcock's The Black Corridor ("It is really not at all good…[but] I remain convinced that someday Moorcock will write a subtantial novel, fully worthy of his pretensions and our expectations), Zelazny's Damnation Alley ("The flaw of the novella was that it had no characterological interior or true sense of pace; and instead of concentrating his novelization on those areas whih might have done some good (like ironic counterpoint), Zelazny has simply souped up and extended the action; and, if I don't miss my guess, he has put in a wee bit of sex."), and Orbit 5 ("…not so terribly happy with, and I am not sure why this is so.")

He also was disappointed with the SFWA's latest compilation, Nebula Award Stories Four ("These are good stories, but even the writers, I think, would attest to the fact that better work was published in 1968, if not by others, then by themselves.")

Better luck next time, Barry!

Runesmith, by Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon

If you combine Ellison and Sturgeon and then dedicate the story to Cordwainer Smith, you're setting yourself up for some high scrutiny!  Luckily, this tale (more or less) survives the heightened expectations.

The story's antihero is also named Smith, though perhaps his name is symbolic, for through a knowledge of the occult arts, he has wrought the near destruction of all of humanity.  Unknowingly cultivated and spurred on by the evil ones who lie just beyond the veil of sense, Smith has reduced virtually every city, slaughtered every person, all by casting knuckle bones from a bag and reading their divination.

Now, with guilt gnawing at him, and with the last few survivors aiming to gnaw on him, the true instigators of this hell-on-Earth lick their chops and prepare to return the world they once called theirs.

The problem with this (beautifully told) story is that it has a happy ending.  Now, I like happy endings (viz. the first paragraph of this article) but this tale doesn't really earn its.  It just decides to lurch in a positive direction with no setup, derailing a consistent tone and the macabre satisfaction at seeing just how destructive evil can be.  The conclusion comes off as twee and affected.

Three stars.

Voices Answering Back: The Vampires, by Lawrence Raab

The last couple of lines are the best part of this overlong proem.  Two stars.

The Fourth Tense of Time, by Albert Teichner

An old zillionaire has made his fortune through a talent for close-term prognostication.  He can see just a few hours into the future, which is enough for horse racing and the stock market.  But it comes at a cost: terrible migraine headaches.

When a scientist learns of the zillionaire's talents, he labors to identify the source, in the process, lengthening the rich fellow's future range.

But what happens when one's ability to foretell what's to come crosses over the barrier between life and death?

There's a lot of promise to this story, but there's also a bit of repetitious belaboring, and the conclusion's tea is somewhat weak.  Three stars.

The Fabulous Bartender, by Paul Darcy Boles

The Greek God Bacchus takes a short-term gig as a bartender.  Everyone has a good time.

That's all there is to this affable but longwinded story.  I guess the challenge to the reader is to see how long it takes him to figure out who's serving the drinks.

Two stars.

Nobody Believes an Indian, by G. C. Edmondson

We once again go South of the Border for a flip, steeped-in-Mexican-culture tale of Edmonsdon's "mad friend".  This time around, the narrator and his pal are guests of one of Pancho Villa's generales de dedo (brevet generals) who is rumored to be a pot grower, the kind subject to occasional field burnings to satisfy the Yankees up North.

Turns out that the indio general has got something significantly more harmful than marijuana between his rows.

Fun, frivolous, and more travelogue than tale, it passes the pages pleasantly.  Three stars.

Playing the Game, by Isaac Asimov

Magazine graphic that precedes the science article

The Good Doctor explains the Doppler effect and its application not only to sound waves but to light waves.  Nothing new for me, but it's a very cogent detailing of a fundamental astronomical principle.

Five stars.

Murder Will In, by Frank Herbert

Once again, we have a piece sprouting from the death of Douglas Bailey.  The opening passage is always the same—Bailey is euthanized.  But what comes after that is up to the commissioned author.

In this case, we find that Bailey has been inhabited for most of his life by a pair of thought beings: the Tegas, which seeks out those with inclination to murder as the easiest prey, and the Bacit, which seems to be superego to the Tegas ego (and id?)

The problem is, Bailey was euthanized in a future in which the greatest human technology is that of control.  There are precious few suitable hosts for the Tegas/Bacit to jump to in this mechanized, soulless age.  And when he does manage to escape the dying Bailey, the Tegas learns that humanity is onto him, killing his hosts to find the alien presence.  The alien presence finds himself at the mercy of an interrogator without emotion, only a driving motive.

But perhaps even the most passionless interrogator betrays a passion after all, one that makes him vulnerable to Tegas control…

I give this one marks for creativity, but it is told with the typical Herbert over-the-top quality.  Frank is rarely one for subtlety.  I'd half expected it to turn out that there were multiple Tegases on Earth, and they'd all sought refuge in the last human with emotion, but that turned out not to be the case.

Instead, we get a lot of vivid, emotionally charged passages; some innovative alien perspectives; but nothing particularly exciting.

Three stars.

Summing up

The star-o-meter puts this issue on the positive side of things, and that feels right.  Gone are heady days of the 1950s when Boucher was the editor, but things seemed to have stabilized for F&SF into something consistent and unique.  It's not so much The New Thing now—more of an aping of an old style by folks who don't quite remember the dance moves.  Still, it's good enough for the nonce.

And that's some kind of hope.

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[April 18th, 1970] The Spaceman Who Came In From The Cold (Doctor Who: The Ambassadors Of Death [Parts 1-4])

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a white woman with auburn hair and glasses
By Jessica Holmes

The name’s Who… Doctor Who. In the latest adventure, our favourite double-hearted space alien finds himself embroiled in a spy thriller with all the trappings: cool car, wacky gadgetry, and an espionage plot I need a diagram to keep track of. Let’s take a peek under the bonnet of David Whitaker’s most recent contribution to Doctor Who, “The Ambassadors Of Death”.

The space centre. Cornish communicates with an astronaut, who appears on a big screen.

In Case You Missed It

Grab your notepads, this is going to get a little complicated.

Let’s start with the basics: Seven months before the start of the story, ground control for a Mars mission lost contact with their astronauts and gave them up for dead. Now their craft is on the way home but the occupants still haven’t contacted Earth. Moments after docking with the Mars capsule, the rescue capsule goes silent, too. Shortly afterwards, mysterious signals start beaming out from the paired capsules. Enter UNIT and the Brigadier, who had been supervising the rescue mission. Hopefully they won’t blow anybody up this time.

Seeing news coverage of the mission on television, the Doctor invites himself over to the space centre and starts telling anyone who will listen (and anyone who won’t, in increasingly loud and tetchy tones) that the signal from the spacecraft was an attempt at communication. With the Brig vouching for him, the Doctor immediately starts work on trying to decode it. Someone has beaten him to the punch, however, and transmitted a reply. UNIT are able to trace the source back to an abandoned warehouse in London, but the signallers flee before they get there, and a firefight ensues.

A man fires a pistol from behind a flight of stairs.

The Doctor, meanwhile, finds his attempts to decipher the signal stymied at every turn by the Mars mission’s chief scientist, Taltalian (Robert Cawdron), who sabotages the space centre’s computer before going AWOL. Don’t forget about him. He still has a part to play.

With still no communication from the occupants, the recovery capsule returns to Earth, but as UNIT transport it back to the space centre their convoy comes under attack. The Doctor is able to recover the capsule (in a way that’s absolutely hilarious and involves sticking the attackers’ hands to Bessie’s rear bumper and absconding with their stolen lorry), but in the brief time it's out of UNIT’s control, the astronauts disappear.

Cornish, the Brigadier and the Doctor peer into the empty space capsule.

Growing suspicious that there is someone within the space centre (other than Taltalian) spying on their progress and sabotaging them, the Doctor and the Brigadier attempt to raise the issue with the highest authority they can find, Sir James Quinlan (Dallas Cavell), Minister for Technology. Quinlan confirms their suspicions and introduces them to General Carrington (John Abineri, who previously appeared in “Fury From The Deep” as Van Lutyens), former astronaut and new head of Space Security. Carrington apologises for all the cloak and dagger, but it was for the astronauts’ own safety and that of the public.

He claims the signal was a coded warning from them, so he had Taltalian sabotage the Doctor’s efforts to decode it in order to avoid panic, and sent men to abduct the astronauts to keep them out of the public eye. According to Carrington, the astronauts came down with a nasty case of contagious self-sustaining space radiation and needed to be contained to avoid mass panic.

Carrington, Quinlan, the Doctor, the Brigadier, and Liz meet around a table.

I’m not the only one who finds his version of events a little difficult to believe. Even more suspicious now, the Doctor asks to examine the astronauts, but whoops! While Carrington was with him, someone abducted the astronauts. Again. Or rather, someone abducted the entities pretending to be the astronauts. Whatever’s wearing their spacesuits, they aren’t human. They’re absolutely buzzing with radiation—far more than any human could survive for more than a few minutes. It’s even dangerous to be around them, as two of their kidnappers find out to their detriment. Their leader, Reegan (William Dysart), leaves their radiation-poisoned bodies (with planted documentation to make them appear to be foreign agents) in a gravel quarry for UNIT to find.

Satisfied with his work, he delivers the mysterious spacemen to the care of his own pet scientist, Lennox (Cyril Shaps, previously seen in “Tomb Of The Cybermen" as John Viner), who was apparently disgraced for undisclosed reasons. Lennox doesn’t seem a bad sort, just in bad company.

Having finally figured out that the real astronauts must still be in orbit aboard the Mars probe (I had a few jokes lined up about this but in light of recent events they don’t seem quite as funny), the Doctor and the space centre's controller Cornish (Ronald Allen, previously seen as Rago in "The Dominators"), inform Quinlan that work on a rescue mission will commence immediately. This greatly disturbs Quinlan and Carrington, who for whatever reason are quite determined that no attempt should be made to get the astronauts back. The consequences could be disastrous. What do they know that we (and the Doctor) don’t?

The three astronauts lying side by side on their backs.

Lennox finds himself baffled by the mystery spacemen, who turn out to require radioactive isotopes to survive. Luckily for him, he’s about to have some help, as Reegan lures Liz out of the Space Centre and abducts her. He was hoping to get the Doctor, too, but he didn’t take the bait, staying behind to work on the recovery capsule.

There’s a car chase and everything. It’s jolly exciting, even if Bessie does look very silly in a high-speed chase—there’s just something inherently comical about her.

Lennox, already an unwilling accomplice to Reegan, tries to help Liz escape. She makes it as far as the main road, where she flags down a passing car, only to find Taltalian in the driver’s seat. See, I said he’d be back. He promptly delivers her back to Reegan.

The Doctor finishes deciphering the mysterious message, and finds that it’s a set of instructions on how to build a pair of electronic devices. To work out what it does, he’ll have to build it. What he doesn’t know is that Taltalian has built one part already, a receiver and sent another to Reegan, a transmitter.

Reegan, Liz, Lennox and another man watch the spacemen through a glass window.

Having failed to abduct the Doctor, Reegan goes to the next sensible option to get him out of the way: blowing him up. It doesn’t work, but the bomb does go off in Taltalian’s face, blowing him to smithereens and out of the story. Reegan then uses the transmitter Taltalian made to give the spacemen orders. They make for formidable living weapons: bulletproof, radioactive and lethal to anyone who comes into contact with them, as Quinlan soon learns.

Offering to finally tell the Doctor the whole truth, Quinlan invites him for a meeting to explain why he doesn’t want the astronauts rescued from orbit, but before the Doctor can get to him, the spaceman finds him first. The truth remains hidden—and the assassin is still in the room.

The Doctor examines Quinlan's supine body. There is a spaceman behind him.

Licence To Thrill

I think I’ve already compared the most recent Doctor to James Bond, but this serial is kicking things up a notch. This is legitimately a spy thriller. It’s got everything. Action. Intrigue. Absurd car gadgets. It’s even got a whiff of Le Carré in that I need some sort of diagram to keep track of the espionage antics. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little. There’s a lot of moving parts but it’s not hard to follow if you’re paying attention.

Speaking of car gadgets, I love Bessie. I just find her ridiculously charming, and charmingly ridiculous. It’s like James Bond driving around in Mr. Toad’s motorcar.

There is an aspect I do have some qualms about, however: the violence. I promise I’m not going to be a pearl-clutching killjoy fretting about the delicate sensibilities of children. I enjoyed the action scenes; I’d be lying if I said otherwise. It’s just that there were quite a lot of them and their number has definitely increased over the last few stories.

Which brings us to the Doctor’s relationship with the Brigadier. I can only assume that some time has passed between the end of Silurians (in multiple senses) and the start of ‘Ambassadors’, because the Doctor seems to be on decent enough terms with him now. A pity; I would really have liked to have seen the Doctor confront the Brigadier about his decision. As it stands now, he’s just a little frosty with him, but that’s not really unusual for Pertwee’s Doctor, who is a good deal more prickly than Troughton’s.

I suppose the question is not whether or not I am comfortable with Doctor Who’s more violent turn, but whether the Doctor is. And I don’t think he should be. Doctor Who is a constantly evolving show, and its titular character is a reflection of that. From ambiguously-human scientist to two-hearted space exile, there’s a core ethos to the Doctor that he should remain true to: it’s better to solve problems with wits and words than with bullets.

A closeup of a pistol in the Brigadier's hand.

Final Thoughts

Where does all this leave us? For all my hand-wringing about the violence, I’m honestly having a good time. I’m riveted by the mystery and the twists and turns, and every week eagerly tuning in to find out what happens next.

There’s so much I want to know. What’s become of the human astronauts? Who are the entities impersonating them, and what do they want? Where does Reegan fit into all this, what’s he hoping to achieve?

And most importantly: will we see a repeat of the slaughter of the Silurians?




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