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[October 28, 1964] We Live In Hope (November/December 1964 New Worlds)

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

After last month’s surprise visit to Science Fantasy magazine, this month we’re back to the wild and wacky realms of New Worlds, to wit, the November/December 1964 issue.

What has happened since we last met? Well, the biggest change here, as the Traveller has already noticed this month, is that as of the 15th October we have a new British Government. My impression is that the governing Conservative Party were fairly confident about their chances of returning, and so it has been a bit of a shock to them to be ousted, having been in power for 13 years or so. It was close though – Labour won a majority by a mere four seats.

I did have a hunch that it would be the younger vote, eager for change, that would decide it – all of those I spoke to saw the Labour Party, led by Harold Wilson, as a means of better reflecting their concerns – and so it appears to be. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that Mister Wilson is the youngest Prime Minister we’ve had in over 150 years, at a mere 48 years old.

Me, I blame it on The Beatles.

Harold meeting the Fab Four in March 1964

 

Talking of music, there’s been some change at the top of the charts here. Herman’s Hermits was at the top of charts for two weeks with I’m Into Something Good, but was replaced by the mighty Roy Orbison, singing Oh Pretty Woman for three weeks. It’s a terrifically powerful song, which I much preferred myself.

However, Roy has now been replaced by Sandie Shaw singing (There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me. It’s quite pleasant and seems to be quite popular in part because Ms. Shaw sings her songs barefoot.

At the cinema Goldfinger is still there and doing very well. I’m not surprised. I expect its success to continue for a while yet.

Other than that, the cinematic pickings have been rather slim, although if you like Westerns, you are in for a treat. I’ve counted three at my local Odeon recently – John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn, starring Richard Widmark and one of my favourite actors, James Stewart, was good. There’s also been Invitation to a Gunfighter, with Yul Brynner, who seems to be trading on his popularity in The Magnificent Seven a few years back. Thirdly, more recently there’s been Rio Conchos, starring Richard Boone and Stuart Whitman.

My favourite movie this month has been Fail Safe, which Rose Benton has already reviewed this month – isn’t it good when movies are released here in Britain at nearly the same time as yourselves in the US? I nearly missed it, as the cinemas were full of Goldfinger at the time, but it was a great nail-biting drama.

If I am really unlucky, the next time I speak to you I may have been dragged, kicking and screaming, to see My Fair Lady, which the trailers are telling me is out in a couple of weeks. (I’m not a huge fan of musicals.) I managed to avoid Mary Poppins back in August, but as a result I fear I may have to see this one. Wish me luck.

The Issue At Hand

This month’s cover by Robert Tilley is striking, but to my mind not as well done as the last few month’s covers. We seem to have gone from covers with a triangle shape to covers with circles. I feel that it is a bit of a step-down, to be honest. It is simpler and more basic than last month’s, for example. Interestingly, this change of cover style seems to be deliberate – there’s a comment in this month’s Letters page that suggests so. Nevertheless, it is still better than the bad old days of the last John Carnell issues, so I shouldn’t complain.

The Editorial examines the idea of ‘bad SF’ on radio, television and cinema. It makes some valid points about how SF stories may become bestsellers in prose but then fail to make the most of this in other mediums. However, the Editorial seems to mainly be an excuse to bad-mouth the movie The First Men in the Moon for not sticking to HG Wells’ admittedly superior novel – “insulting the intelligence, sloppily written, poorly acted and directed.” I didn’t think it was that bad, myself, when I saw it back in August – but then it was either see that or Mary Poppins.

To the stories themselves.

The Shores of Death (part 2), by Michael Moorcock

Look how serious they are!

And we’re straight back into editor Mike Moorcock’s serial, an energetic yet dour story which attempts to bring Space Opera up to date in the 1960’s. After the set-up last time we rejoin Clovis Marca of the 30th century, trying to discover the deeper meaning of life on The Bleak Worlds of Antares before he is driven mad or the Solar System dies.

It’s OK but rather depressing. In the end, it’s all a bit Biblical, with Clovis dying then becoming immortal and eventually wandering off into a proverbial desert. Whilst I think I get what Moorcock is trying to do, I struggled to keep reading through the morass of unremitting bleakness. Nearly fifty pages is a long time to be in pain or be miserable. As a result, I’m not sure I’ll remember it long after finishing the magazine. Spending time at the dentist may be more fun – but as the Reader’s Poll later in the issue will suggest, some may like its tone. It’s a far cry from the optimistic SF of the 50’s. 3 out of 5.

Mix-Up, by George Collyn
A new author to me. Mix-Up is a lighter story, much-needed to relieve the despair that may descend after reading The Shores of Death. It’s a one-idea story though, about what happens when matter transmitters mix up the molecules of a young male scientist and an attractive young female film star. It’s quite entertaining, though the conclusion is rather poor and even rather perverse. What can we say when the two decide to marry each other – is it a recognition of a need for understanding between the sexes or does it reflect a secret wish that all we want to do is marry ourselves? Hmm. A fair debut, though. 3 out of 5.

Look… a new magazine! Sounds quite good.

Gamma Positive, by Ernest Hill
Ernest is a returning author, having last appeared in New Worlds in the Carnell era, in January 1964. How long ago that seems!

Really though, this is nothing new, and could be a leftover from the Carnell editorial-ship – another story of the consequences of experimenting with new drugs. In this case the treatment appears to allow time travel, a favourite theme of editor Moorcock, but to me the story is really a thinly disguised attempt to make the point that time seems longer when imbibing narcotics. Dare I say that time just seemed to become longer by reading this story because it seemed to take ages to go nowhere? We’ve been here before. Yawn. 3 out of 5.

Just in case you didn't get the Biblical message! Image by Harrison.

Some Will Be Saved, by Colin R. Fry
Another writer new to me. Unfortunately, this is another story that attempts to dress up Biblical allegory in a science-fictional setting – it seems to be a theme this month. This is a sardonic take on the Garden of Eden – in a modern post-apocalyptic setting. The Biblical references are rather unsubtle – further emphasised by the fact that the two main characters are named Adam and Eve, for example. Points are given for trying to be a little scandalous, being a contemporary rewriting of the story of the Garden of Eden, but sadly it is another tale that, having made the point that the future is bad and that there’s no place for religion in it, doesn’t seem to go anywhere. In the end, it just exudes a depressingly dark sense of irony. 3 out of 5.

The Patch, by Peter Woods
Peter Woods is, as I have said before, Barrington J. Bayley writing as someone else. This time, the novella is one of those that is Science Fantasy – spaceships and atomic missiles mixed up with Kingdoms and Princes set against a civil war and an impending planetary disaster with the arrival of The Patch. It’s perhaps the story I’ve most enjoyed this month, but reads like an inferior form of Jack Vance or Poul Anderson’s work. Some of that dialogue is astoundingly clunky, and this is another story with a dreadful ending. 3 out of 5.

Emissary, by John Hamilton

The emissary being condescending to children.

Another writer new to me. In a grim Northern industrial town a stranger is seen, patting children on the head at a local school (hence the picture above) and making notes on everything else. His origin and purpose are unknown, which creates concern, fear and mistrust in the town’s populace. The point of the story is to discover the stranger’s purpose – is he a force for good or evil? The story does well to create a sense of unease, but by the end it fritters away to nothing substantial.
3 out of 5.

When is a review not a review? When it's an advertisement (I think.)

 

Onto the Book Reviews by Moorcock’s alter-ego, James Colvin.

Notice those book titles… MJM? Could it be "Michael J Moorcock"? Hmm.

The article focuses mainly on publications by Dobson’s Books, one of the first publishers here in the UK to regularly publish SF, with varied results. Eric Frank Russell’s latest, With A Strange Device, is found to be slightly disappointing, but likeable for those ‘in the mood’.

Contrastingly, the reviewer found Robert A Heinlein’s collection The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag more enjoyable than he expected. It is a grudgingly positive review – I get the impression Colvin really didn’t want to like it, but did. Alan E. Nourse’s collection The Counterfeit Man is contrarily summarised as “bad literature but good SF”. Isaac Asimov’s The Martian Way is a collection from an author that the reviewer finds “frustratingly good… in that he is good – but you know he can be even better.”

Of the paperbacks, the publication of Second Foundation, Asimov’s final book in the Foundation Trilogy, is “guaranteed top SF”, Robert Manvell’s The Dreamers is a horror story “better than (Dennis) Wheatley”,  whereas Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is summarised with the statement “Never has such terrible old rubbish appeared between the covers of a book“ and August Derleth’s collection From Other Worlds is “mediocre”.

Even when I don’t agree with his comments, I must admit that I find Moorcock/Colvin’s comments entertaining.

In terms of the Letters, there’s a letter suggesting that the magazine is becoming more literate – something the Editor will no doubt be pleased about – and the fact that the sense of wonder, once important to SF, seems to have departed at the same time. The change in the cover style, as mentioned earlier, is also discussed.

The verdict's in on the last issue…. even if I disagree!

As ever, the reader’s ratings of recent issues make interesting reading. Just to show you how out of touch I clearly am, readers rated the first part of the Moorcock serial top last issue. This suggests that this month’s conclusion may fare equally well, to my bemusement.

Summing up

This issue of New Worlds is OK, but I’m less enamoured than the previous issues of the new ownership. Considering the title of the Editorial, this one is actually a bit bleak and depressing. This issue seems to rely less on Moorcock’s usual team of friends and associates but actually seems worse for it.

Overall, my abiding impression is that this is all a bit so-so. This may be because the repeated themes – drugs, religion – are rather groan-worthy. Whilst we’re not as depressingly poor as the bad-old-days at the end of the Carnell editorialship, I was surprised that this issue was rather mundane, which is amusing considering that two of the stories involve religious themes that would suggest a higher order of things. Cheer up, Mike – things are not as bad as you think!

I should be back to a new issue of Science Fantasy next month. Until next time… have a great Halloween!

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




Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 26, 1964] A revolting set of circumstances (October 1964 Galactoscope #2)

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by Gideon Marcus

If there is one constant to the universe, it is change.  Appropriately, if there is one constant to government, it is that no system lasts forever.  Revolutions have occurred since the dawn of history, motivated by class resentment, public outrage, and plain avarice.  Some are cloaked in nobility, like the American Revolution; others started nobly but ended in darker places, like the French Revolution (whose darker points were recently spotlit on Doctor Who.) Even now, revolts roil the world — from The Congo to Vietnam, Iraq to Zanzibar, people are taking up arms to topple governments. 

It's not surprising, then, that the three books I read for this month's Galactoscope all deal with some kind of revolution.  Does the subject make for good science fiction?  Let's find out!

Star Watchman

Ben Bova is a fairly new phenomenon, his only previous book being The Star Conquerors, which I understand is in the same universe as Star Watchman.  He is probably better known to you as the fellow who writes non-fiction articles for Amazing.  So how's his fiction?

Turns out it's not bad at all.  Watchman is set on an agrarian planet of the Terran Empire known to the humans as Oran VI.  But to the natives (entirely human, curiously), it is the cherished world of Shinar.  Their revolt against the Terran authority has already happened by story's start, and the Shinarians have invited the rapacious, cat-like Komani to help throw off Earth's yoke.  But the Shinarians are about to find out that they have a tiger by the tail.  The Komani plan to subjugate Shinar, and to then rally the disparate cat-people dominions into an alliance that can attack the Terrans head on.

Enter Emile Vorgens, himself a non-Terran humaniform from another Imperial protectorate world.  A freshly minted Star Watchman (the Star Watch is essentially the galactic navy), he has the seemingly impossible task of defusing or defeating the revolution.  At his disposal is a powerful but small flotilla of hovercraft, ranging from "scouts" to "dreadnoughts".  It also turns out that there are Shinarians who are not happy with the current course and might be enlisted as allies.  But it will take all of Vorgens' diplomatic and tactical skills to effect a positive resolution to the crisis.

Per the author's own afterword, "We live today in a world peppered by revolutions, and in this tale I have tried to show some of the complex forces involved in revolution and how rebellion might lead, in the long run, to a growth of freedom and a better world."  Indeed, it is difficult not to look at the Shinarian case through the lens of current crises.  Given the Terran name for the planet, and the French name of the protagonist, my thoughts went to the Algerian movement for independence.  That one obviously did not work out as desired for the empire in question.  Ditto Indochina, whose destiny is still in doubt.

In fact, I struggle to find an example of a revolution that was peaceably ended, but which resulted in a more satisfactory internal situation for the province.  At least, not one that lasted any real length of time.  On the other hand, while the ending of Watchman is sort of a happy one, it is also left ambiguous as to Shinar's fate after the revolt. Bova's politics, while hopeful, are not entirely naive.

But how's the book?  One thing Bova does very well is portray battle and tactics.  His writing is clear, never lurid, and as a wargamer, I was always able to picture the tactics described.  And they seemed reasonable, too!  As for characterization, Emile is a bit like C. S. Forester's Hornblower, wet behind the ears, self-doubting, but game and quite talented.  I liked him, though I couldn't say he's very deep. 

There is, sadly, exactly one female character.  But Altai is a good one, essential to the Shinarian plans, and while there are some implied romantic chemistry between her and Emile, nothing is ever consumated.  I hate it when a woman is included in a story just to be a love interest (and a prize) for the hero. 

In fact, throughout the story, Altai makes it clear she knows that her contributions are less valued among the Shinarians for her being female.  I'd like to think that she will lead a revolt of her own on Shinar: for more respect and recognition of women's rights.  On the other hand, it's not like there are any female soldiers in either the Star Watch or the Terran Marines (which strained my credulity — hell, there was a woman Captain in the U.S. Marines just last week on Gomer Pyle).  So if there is to be a women's revolt on Shinar, it probably won't get much help from the humans.  Oh well.

Anyway, I enjoyed Watchman.  It's not literature for the ages, but it did keep me reading.  Call it three and a half stars.

Ace Double F-289

Demon World

I'm pretty sure I know the genesis for this book: someone approached prolific sf scribbler, Ken Bulmer, at a pub and said (gently weaving), "Hey!  What if there were a story where we were the rats, and aliens were the people?!"

Because that's the premise to Demon's World.  Humans live in warrens, surviving my making daring raids into the larders of the "Demons", beings some hundreds of feet high (square-cube law be damned!) Said Demons are uncannily conventional, with familiar-looking houses, furniture, and technology.  Of course, it takes us a while as readers to get the full view of the alien landscape since it's always viewed through the eyes of diminutive people.

That's the background.  The setting is somewhat interesting.  Humanity has no idea how it got to this world generations before — it only knows that, aside from cats and dogs, it seems to have no kinship to any of the strange creatures on the planet.  Civilization has stratified into hard castes, with the Controllers on top, the Soldiers (who wage wars against other warrens of people) next up, and the Foragers (who get food) along with the Laborers occupying the bottom rungs of society.  Only the Foragers ever encounter the Demons, who are widely believed to be a myth among the denizens of the warrens.

Our protagonist is an amnesiac named Stead, discovered by a squad of Foragers from the polity of Archon.  He is given a Controller's education and then dispatched into the same squad that found him.  This puts him in the unique position of understanding the ruling and under classes.  He also knows for certain that the Demons are real.  It is only a matter of time before Stead decides to lead a double rebellion: Foragers/Laborers against Controllers, and humans against Demons.

Demons World is an odd book, executed in a workmanlike fashion that suggests it was a quick draft (though without the egregious typographical errors that sometime mar Ace productions).  Descriptions of people and items are particularly bland, often repetitive.  We never even understand what it is the humans eat, their food invariably referred to as "food".  You'd think that in a story where half the scenes involve getting sustenance, there would be a bit more emphasis on the sensuous.

Women fare better in the Bulmer than the Bova.  The capable doctor, Della, is Stead's ward in Archon, and two members of the squad are women.  However, despite Bulmer's preference for unadorned writing, you can bet we always known how attractive the women are and in what ways.  Moreover, women in Demon World are still somewhat second-class citizens, treated like "girls" despite participating somewhat equally in society.

Unlike with Watchman, I found reading Demon's World something of a chore.  Two and a half stars for this one.

I Want the Stars

Ah, but flip F-289 over, and we're in an entirely different world.

Tom Purdom is quite new to the writing scene.  Over the past few years, he has been published in several of the sf mags, with stories ranging in quality from two to four stars.

Now, his first novel is out, and it's something of a revolution in and of itself.

Hundreds of years from now, after several near brushes with atomic extinction, humanity has reached the stars.  Not just the nearby stars but the entire galaxy is open to our hyperspace drives.  But we do not expand to conquer; Purdom subscribes to Arthur C. Clarke's notion that our species will never expand to space until we make peace with ourselves.  Consistent with that, all of the other starfaring races are also peaceful beings.  War is a concept confined to the planet-bound races. 

With the exception of the telepathic, xenophobic Horta.  On a planet 60,000 light years from Earth, they are in the last stages of subjugating the amphibian Sordini.  And there to witness, perhaps even stop the event, are five humans: three women and two men.  Raised in Terran tradition, they have never known want or strife.  Yet they are restless, impelled by some inner desire they cannot name. 

Combat with the Horta causes the death of the woman who planned the expedition.  The rest, scarred by her passing, and the rigors of combat with psionic aliens, numbly continue their tour of the galaxy.  They are looking for some key that will allow them to confront, perhaps defeat, the Horta before they pose a threat to the peace of the galaxy.

One possibility lies with a mysterious race called the Borg.  Aliens from another galaxy, they have made it their mission to enlighten the warlike races still lacking space travel.  They welcome representatives from any world to a sort of university planetoid, where they are given a decades-long course in history and philosophy whose end result is yet unknown to any of the students.

Our viewpoint humans enroll in the school, but long before their courses are complete, conflict breaks out on the planetoid.  This, of course, is inevitable — most of the student races are pre-starfaring, and many are jealous of the technologies the starfarers possess.  The arrival of the humans creates the catalyst for a bloody fight, a civil conflict that the Borg do nothing to stop.  The Terrans demand to know the Borg's true intentions: are they really cosmic benefactors, or are they sowing the seeds of galactic strife?  The answer, one way or another, promises to overturn the order of civilization.

What a fascinating book this is, by turns riproaring adventure, interesting philosophical rumination, and portrayal of an unique and plausible future for humanity.  Per the author's foreword,

"I like adventure stories when it's well done…but I think…that means above all it has to be believable.  For one thing, if the characters are future people, then they should be different from present day people.  And their social customs and politics should be different, too.  I can't believe in–which means I can't enjoy–space adventures in which the characters all seem to be people just like Twentieth Century Americans from a society just like Twentieth Century America…"

You will not find contemporary people in this story — the headstrong protagonist Jenorden, gentle Veneleo, haunted Theleo, resourceful Elinee, they are at once relatable yet different.  There is no distinction or inequality between men and women, and there is a strong suggestion of polyamory amongst the crew (or at least flexible relationships without jealousy).  Purdom lays out the motivations of his characters, and then lets the story flow from those precepts rather than conventional, modern-day ones.

It's not a perfect story.  Purdom is not as good at depicting battle as Bova.  The novel's parts don't tie together in a perfect through-line (although, to be fair, neither does life!) And the ending is a little abrupt — I understand it had to be cut from 50,000 to 40,000 words in the 11th hour. 

Still, I Want the Stars is a true science fiction novel, one of my favorites of the year.  What an accomplishment for the first time out!

Four stars.

Tallying the Score

Though the Bulmer is too minor and conventional a piece for recommendation, both Star Watchman and I Want the Stars show that science fiction affords a fresh look at old topics.  Indeed, per Purdom, "just by telling an exciting story, I think I've ended up saying more about nuclear weapons, love, death, the meaning of life, and what it is to be human, than if I had sat down and tried to write about all those things."

Sounds like the crashing of the British "new wave" on American shores.  Leave it to the youngsters to lead a revolution in our genre!

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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 24, 1964] Nothing Lasts Forever (November 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

This Too Shall Pass

There is an ancient fable of Persian origin, retold many times over the centuries, about a monarch who asked the wisest sages in the realm for a statement that could apply to all possible situations. The answer, of course, is the title of this piece.

It is impossible to deny the ephemeral nature of all Earthly things, even if we speculate that the universe may be eternal. (The truth of that is still a matter of scientific debate, as to whether the cosmos will expand forever, or eventually collapse into itself.)

Evidence for the temporary nature of politics, for example, came with the unexpected fall of Nikita Khrushchev from power in the Soviet Union, as discussed by our host in detail.


Americans were caught by surprise, it seems.

Obviously, the most common evidence for the fragility of humanity is the universality of death. To mention just one recent example, Herbert Hoover passed away this month, at a more advanced age than any other former President of the United States.


Let him be remembered for his extraordinary work providing supplies of food to millions of starving Europeans during and after World War One, rather than his failure to deal with the Great Depression.

In a less sober way, the 1964 Summer Olympics, the first to be held in Asia, came to an end as well, with a memorable closing ceremony in the Tokyo setting.


Why summer games in October? To avoid the heat and typhoon season.

Few things are as short-lived as popular music, as shown by the fact that two songs reached the Number One position on the American charts this month. First came Oh, Pretty Woman, a tribute to feminine beauty by singer and guitarist Roy Orbison.


I'm used to seeing him with dark glasses.

This was quickly replaced by the nonsensically titled Do Wah Diddy Diddy by the British group Manfred Mann.


Confusingly, the name of the band is the same as the name of the keyboard player.

In Search of Eternal Life

Fittingly, the two lead stories in the latest issue of Fantastic deal with futile attempts to escape the ravages of time.


Cover art by George Schelling

The Knocking in the Castle, by Henry Slesar


Interior illustrations also by Schelling

We begin with a chilling tale set in modern Italy. A widow attends a party, during which the host suggests an excursion to a nearby castle, said to be haunted. The woman reluctantly goes along, only to scream in fear when a knocking emerges from within the dungeon. A flashback reveals the reason for her horror at the sound.

In the United States, she married a man whose ancestors built the castle. Once a year he goes back to the family estate, where his sister lives year-round, rarely emerging from seclusion. We soon discover that the man is well over two hundred years old, despite his youthful appearance. He returns to the castle for an annual dose of the liquid which keeps the siblings from aging.


The magical elixir, a few drops of which drives back the Grim Reaper.

A violent quarrel breaks out between brother and sister when the man wishes to share the potion with his bride. Driven to extreme measures, the sister hides the key to the chamber holding the supply of liquid in a particularly macabre way.


Extreme measures, indeed.

What follows is a grim account of the man's desperate attempt to find the key before time runs out. It all leads up to the frightening conclusion, explaining the woman's terrified scream.

I found myself imagining this story as one of those Italian Gothic horror movies that make their way to the USA in badly dubbed and edited form. That's one reason I enjoyed it, to be honest. I pictured Barbara Steele, veteran of such films, in the role of the mysterious sister. I could see the gloomy interior of the castle in glorious black-and-white, and hear the spooky violin music on the soundtrack.

From a fan of Shock Theater and Famous Monsters of Filmland, a very subjective four stars.

Elixir for the Emperor, by John Brunner


Illustrated by Virgil Finlay

Our second account of a quest for eternal life also takes place in Italy, but goes back thousands of years to the days of the Roman Empire. A general and a senator plot against the life of a popular emperor. Their subtle plan involves offering a large reward for an effective elixir of immortality, convincing the emperor that it really works, thanks to the deceptive aid of the ruler's trusted slave, and substituting poison.

Complicating matters is an old man, saved from death in the arena by the emperor's mercy. In gratitude, he manages to create a genuine potion granting endless life, but is too late to prevent the emperor from being murdered. He hatches his own plot against those who slew his savior.

This is mostly a story of palace intrigue and vengeance, with just a touch of fantasy. The ancient setting is convincing, and there's a bit of philosophical musing at the end. It's very readable, if not particularly memorable, and not quite up to the author's usual high standard.

A middle-of-the-road three stars.

The Man Who Found Proteus, by Robert Rohrer

The gods of mythology, with some exceptions, enjoy the freedom from death sought by the protagonists of the first two stories. This comic romp features the god Proteus, famous for being able to change into any shape.

A grizzled prospector encounters the deity, first as a moving rock, then in the form of a talking mule, and later as a series of letters appearing on the ground, allowing the god to announce his desires in writing. His wants are simple enough; he's eternally hungry, ready to devour anything the prospector can provide. As you might imagine, things don't work out well for the old sourdough.

For the most part, this is a silly comedy, more notable for a certain amount of imagination than for belly laughs.

A slightly amused two stars.

Seed of Eloraspon (Part 2 of 2), by Manly Banister


Illustrations by Schelling again

The hero of this thud-and-blunder yarn may not be immortal, but it sure seems that way some times. As you may recall from last month, he set out to find the ancient city of the long-vanished, technologically advanced inhabitants of an alien world, accompanied by a warrior princess, an enemy turned friend, and a fellow Earthling. After many battles with the wicked Tharn, and a strange encounter with their mysterious rulers, the Bronze Men, they were about to be killed by huge flying monsters.

The author cheats as badly as any old movie serial, by setting up a cliffhanger from which there seems no escape, and then offering a disappointing way out. It seems that the hero, because he's got the advanced mental powers of what the story calls a magnanthropus, is able to communicate with the creatures. It seems that they're on his side, and want him to fulfill his quest. (There's a weird explanation that the flying beasts, along with other beings on this world, are the incarnation of emotions. That seemed really goofy to me.)


A typical battle. I like the use of the circle.

After getting out of that scrape without any effort, our quartet of adventurers fight the Tharn, get captured, escape, and so on. Eventually the hero discovers the secret of the Bronze Men, which will come as no surprise to anybody who has ever read any science fiction, and triumphs over all challenges. This pretty much just involves pulling a lever, which is pretty anticlimactic.


A defeated Bronze Man, although it sure looks more like a stone statue to me.

I got the feeling that the author really rushed through this half of the story. Things move at a breakneck pace, but without much purpose or meaning. The whole thing just sort of fizzles out at the end, leaving the reader exhausted and unsatisfied.

A disappointed one star.

Hell, by Robert Rohrer

(The Table of Contents credits the story to somebody named Howard Lyon. As best as I can figure out, this is a pseudonym meant to disguise the fact that the author has two pieces in the same issue. Rohrer and Lyon, get it? The Table of Contents also lists the author of The Man Who Found Proteus as Robert H. Rohrer instead of plain Robert Rohrer, so I guess there was some confusion around the editorial offices.)

A man finds himself, as the simple title implies, in the infernal regions. He passes some damned souls lying immobile on a beach under a cloudy sky, then takes a ride across the water with a demonic boatman assumed to be Charon. The fellow has no fear of eternal punishment, because he feels ready to face any psychological torment Hell might provide. As you expect, his attitude turns out to be badly mistaken. In a way, he faces the worst kind of immortality, if only in a spiritual sense.

The ending of this brief tale is not surprising. I never did figure out what the point of the motionless bodies on the beach was supposed to be. The story is decently written, but there's not much to it.

A confused two stars.

The Mermaid and the Archer, by Barry P. Miller


Illustration by Robert Adragna

The title characters in this romantic fantasy are two department store manikins, unable to move but conscious and able to communicate through a kind of telepathy. They were crafted by a master puppet-maker, whose affection for his creations gave them life. A violent storm threatens their physical existence, but a painter is able to preserve their love in his art.

This gentle, bittersweet fable suggests a kind of immortality in the works of gifted artists. Written in a introspective, poetic style, it is sure to touch the reader's emotions.

A sentimental four stars.

Daughter of the Clan, by Wilton G. Beggs

A teenage girl, who was adopted as an infant, experiences a gnawing, unsatisfied hunger. An attempted rape leads to the discovery of her true nature, and she meets others of her kind. A particular kind of immortality is implied.

Despite a certain moody intensity in the author's style, this is a simple, predictable tale, which ends just when it starts to get more interesting. Like the lead story, it attempts to produce old-fashioned chills, but not as effectively.

An unsatisfied two stars.

From Here to Eternity

Although none of the stories in this issue are likely to win undying fame, a couple of them should remain in the reader's memory for quite some time, if not forever. It makes me wonder how long copies of the magazine are likely to exist; if not in paper form, maybe on microfilm or some other medium. Whether anybody will be reading this issue in the distant future is an unanswerable question. Let's just be grateful we can enjoy the best of it here and now.

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Book

[October 18, 1964] Out in Space and Down to Earth (October's Galactoscope #1)

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There were quite a lot of books to catch up on this month, but two of them stood out for their quality.  As a result, they're going to get full-length treatments, and the other books we read will be dealt with later.  So please enjoy these exciting offerings, reviewed by two of the Journey's finest writers…


by Victoria Silverwolf

No Man on Earth, by Walter Moudy


Cover art by Richard Powers

Mister Moudy, Mysterious Missourian

Here's a writer who is completely new to me. In fact, after doing a little research, I believe that he is new to all readers. As far as I can tell, this is his first published work of fiction.

Beyond that interesting fact, I have been able to discover very little about the author. He comes from the Show Me state; he's an attorney; and his middle name is Frank. The book is dedicated to his wife, Marguerite.

In a way, it's a good thing to approach a novel without any preconceptions about the person who wrote it. We predict that certain elements will appear in a work by Heinlein or Bradbury. I have no idea what to expect from Walter Frank Moudy, so I hope I can provide an objective look at this fledgling effort.

Child of Violence

If you were to tear off the covers of this book — not that I suggest actually doing such a horrible thing — and hand it to me without the blurbs that appear on front and back, it would take me quite a while to figure out that it's a science fiction novel. The first few chapters make it seem like a backwoods fantasy, something like a darker version of the stories of the wandering balladeer John, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for some time now. (They can also be found in the collection Who Fears the Devil?, published last year by Arkham House, if you can find a copy of this limited edition, and are willing to shell out four bucks.)


Cover art by Lee Brown Coye

The novel begins with a young woman about to give birth. Her painful memories tell us that she was raped by a man she thinks is a witch. Everything about the setting, and the woman's dialect, suggests that this takes place in a primitive settlement in the mountains. (At first I thought it was Appalachia, but later details make it clear that we're in the Ozarks.)

The villagers wait for the child to be born, intending to kill it as a unnatural monster. The woman's brother, and the local midwife, who has secrets of her own, manage to save the baby's life. The newborn boy seems to be perfectly normal, but he learns to speak by the age of six months, and grows into a super-intelligent preteen with strange powers. Both loved and hated by his mother, he runs away from home after she makes a feeble, tearful attempt to end his life.

Escape From the Reservation

We get our first hint that the novel is set in the future when we find out that the First World War took place a century and a half ago. What makes this even stranger is the fact that the mother believes it was the last war that ever took place. At this point, I wondered if the villagers were so isolated they knew nothing about recent history. That didn't make sense, because there's a school nearby with plenty of books. Was this some kind of alternate time line? The truth turned out to be quite different.

In fact, the villagers live in a reservation, separate from the rest of the USA in the late 21st Century, and are deliberately kept ignorant about the modern world around them. The midwife is actually an observer, studying their culture. The boy is the only resident ever to make his way out of the reservation, thanks to his superhuman intelligence. He manages to survive, and even thrive, in this strange new world, eventually becoming enormously wealthy, due to his ability to create highly advanced inventions.

Searching the Galaxy for a Father

The young man uses all his acquired money and power to build the world's first faster-than-light spaceship. This technology threatens to upset the balance of power, which could lead to Armageddon. (In this future world, there was a limited atomic war. After this disaster, both sides of the Cold War worked together to make sure that neither gained any advantage over the other. The FTL drive could destroy this uneasy peace.)

The protagonist wants to explore the cosmos, determined to find the humanoid alien who impregnated his mother. In order to ensure that he does not return the spaceship to Earth and reveal its secrets to either power, he is accompanied by a female Russian cosmonaut and a male American astronaut, each keeping watch over the other. Acting on the orders of the President of the United States, a Federal law official is also along for the ride. His mission is to ensure that the spaceship does not return at all, even if it means killing the young man, of whom he has grown very fond.

What follows is a series of encounters with several different alien species, mostly very similar to human beings. After many adventures, the main character eventually tracks down his father, leading to the dramatic conclusion.

A Very Mixed Bag

This is an unusual science fiction novel, not quite like anything else I've ever read. In addition to reminding me of Wellman, as I've mentioned, it also brought to mind traces of Philip K. Dick, A. E. van Vogt, and Theodore Sturgeon. That's a quartet of very different writers, and I'm probably greatly misleading you by mentioning their names.

The book consists of many highly varied sections, told from several points of view. One particularly interesting chapter consists of multiple first person narratives, relating how different alien societies, from primitive to advanced, react to the human visitors.

Despite its frequent changes of mood, the author manages to make the novel into a coherent whole. (One chapter, late in the book, can only be described as a bedroom farce. Even this lighthearted interlude turns out to be relevant to later events.)

The complex plot always kept my interest. The characters, for the most part, are fully developed and win the reader's empathy. (The fate of one character, whom I have not even mentioned, comes as a real shock, about halfway through the book.)

The story has a fair amount of sexual content, particularly for a paperback science fiction novel. This, by itself, shouldn't bother mature readers, but one scene repelled me. Without giving anything away, let's just say that it reminded me of the late Ian Fleming's James Bond novel The Spy Who Loved Me, which contains this statement from the female narrator.

All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful.


Cover art by Richard Chopping, for what is generally considered to be the worst Bond novel

Like this quote, the scene in question made my skin crawl, particularly after the author effectively conveyed the young woman's horror of being raped at the very start of the story. Readers are also likely to find the end of the novel disturbing, in a similar way.

Despite my serious concerns about the book's treatment of sexual violence, overall I thought it was a good novel, particularly for a first effort.

Four stars.


by Cora Buhlert

Davy by Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn has been writing science fiction under his own name for thirteen years at this point and was apparently writing under other names before that. However, none of his stories have been translated into German and the availability of English language science fiction magazines is spotty at best. Therefore, I had never encountered Pangborn's work before, when I came across his latest novel Davy in my local import bookstore.

Davy by Edgar Pangborn

Davy does not look like a typical science fiction novel. It's a hardback, for starters, with a plain cover enlivened only by a drawing of a man's hand holding a French horn. However, the cover is completely appropriate, because Davy is not your typical science fiction novel. Besides, a French horn plays an important part in the story.

Davy is set approximately three hundred years after a nuclear war, followed by various natural disasters, wiped out most of North America and threw what remained back into the dark ages. The North Eastern US has been reduced to small fiefdoms and walled towns besieged by mutated beasts that roam the wilderness. The Holy Murcan Church rules over all, hoarding forbidden knowledge from the "Old Time" and keeping the population in ignorance. Though the reader will have to infer this for themselves, because Davy takes the form of a memoir written by the titular character, with occasional footnotes and asides from Davy's wife Nickie and good friend Dion.

Coming of Age in the Post-Apocalypse

In a rambling and roundabout way, Davy tells us that he was born in brothel, which is why he has no last name, raised in an orphanage and eventually sold as a bond servant to an innkeeper. Though he has little formal education, Davy is intelligent. By his early teens, he begins to question church doctrine, though he wisely keeps his doubts to himself, as heretics are mercilessly executed. Davy dreams of running away and eventually does, after the stealing the French horn seen on the cover from a "mue" – a mutant Davy had befriended in defiance of church doctrine – accidentally killing a city guard and losing his virginity to Emmia, the innkeeper's daughter.

We get a blow by blow account of the latter event. As a matter of fact, Davy talks quite a lot about his sexual adventures, which frequently involve wrestling his partners into submission. Davy certainly gives a lot more room to sexual matters than is common even in the fairly liberal science fiction genre. Readers who are uncomfortable with such scenes may want to skip this novel.

After his escape, Davy falls in with a group of deserters from one of the many skirmishes between the various fiefdoms, finds his father and eventually joins a troupe of travelling entertainers named Rumley's Ramblers, where his self-taught horn playing skills come in handy. After his father's death, Davy sets out on his own and meets Nickie, the love of his life, who is not just an aristocratic lady posing as a man, but also puts him touch with a secret underground society of heretics who try to preserve "Old Time" knowledge. Via Nickie, Davy meets her cousin Dion, monarch of the nation of Nuin (which roughly corresponds to modern day Massachusetts). Both Nickie and Dion and much of the Nuin aristocracy are casually described as black, while Davy himself is white and redhaired, racial prejudice having thankfully died out along with the pre-apocalyptic world.

Together, Dion, Nickie and Davy try to introduce reforms and break the stranglehold of the church. They lose and are driven out of the country. A ship takes them and a few followers to the Azores, where they settle down and build a utopian colony. The memoir is written during Davy's time aboard the ship. The novel ends with Davy planning to sail to Europe, after Nicky has died in childbirth, giving birth to a mutated baby that did not survive either.

A Unique Narrator

Davy's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, for it is Davy's first person narration with all its charming idiosyncrasies that makes what could have been a standard post-apocalyptic yarn come to life. However, Davy is also given to digressions and if he decides to interrupt the ongoing story to talk about a storm at sea, the difficulties of making reading glasses without "Old Time" tools or to give us an overview of the various fiefdoms of his home region and their major cities, all of which bear the corrupted names of cities in the North Eastern US (which is probably more interesting to someone actually from the region, whereas I found myself constantly referring to a Rand McNally road atlas, trying to figure out what the names might stand for), the reader has no choice but to follow along. Many of Davy's digressions are fascinating, others are just dull. Furthermore, Davy also tends to skip over parts of his life – for example, he mentions taking part in a war to expel pirates from Cape Cod, but we never see this undoubtedly exciting episode.

Not Your Typical Science Fiction Novel

The Long Tomorrow by Leigh BrackettThe Chrysalids by John Wyndham

In the past fifteen years, nuclear war and its aftermath have become both a timely and popular subject for science fiction, resulting in such varied works as A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett, "That Only a Mother" by Judith Merril, On the Beach by Nevil Shute, Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank or The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. Davy shares some DNA with these works and borrows the post-apocalyptic theocracy trying to suppress knowledge from The Long Tomorrow and The Chrysalids and the state-sanctioned murder of mutants from "That Only a Mother" and again, The Chrysalids, while the tale of a young man from humble origins making his way in the world is reminiscent of the various juveniles of Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton. But in spite of superficial similarities with other works, Davy is its own thing, a science fiction novel that doesn't feel very science fictional.

Tom Jones movie posterThe Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth

At heart, Davy is a Bildungsroman, reminiscent of such 18th century novels as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding as well as last year's successful film adaptation thereof. If we are looking for a modern day literary comparison, Davy is far closer to John Barth's 1960 novel The Sot-Feed Factor (and indeed Pangborn tuckerises Barth as an author of forbidden texts from the "Old Time") than to anything found in the pages of Analog, even if parts of Davy appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in February and March 1962.

A highly enjoyable picaresque adventure in a post-apocalyptic New England.

Four and a half stars.

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Book, Magazine

[October 12, 1964] Slow Cruising (November 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

It’s a cliche that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  What can one say about those who don’t learn even from what they see around them?  At the University of California at Berkeley, a city within a city in which many thousands of people study, work, and in many cases live, the administration recently decided it will strictly enforce rules prohibiting political advocacy and speech, appearances by political candidates, and recruitment and fundraising by student organizations at a heavily-travelled area (an intersection of the city’s main street!) where such activities were routinely conducted.

Let’s pause for station identification.  This is 1964.  All over the United States, people are standing up for the rights and freedom of individuals, including political rights, most notably the right to vote.  Most of them are Negroes, but you’d think people in responsible positions would realize that a few white people (as apparently are most of Berkeley’s students) might get some funny ideas too—like the ideas of direct action and civil disobedience that they have been seeing on TV, and in some cases in person, for several years. 

You’d also think they would be aware that a significant number of their own students and some faculty members just got back from the Freedom Summer activities in the segregated South, where they lived daily with the risk of physical assault and even death, and are unlikely to be too fearful of university administrators.

So on October 1, the campus police arrested a guy named Jack Weinberg—one of those who went south this past summer—who was sitting at an information table for the Congress of Racial Equality and refused to show his identification.  A crowd formed around the police car, preventing it from moving, and the car became a speaker’s podium for a crowd said to have swelled to three thousand people.  This went on for 32 hours until the university agreed not to press charges against Weinberg, and also agreed to . . . what else? . . . form a committee!  This is to be a student/faculty/administration committee to discuss “all aspects of political behavior on campus and its control, and to make recommendations to the administration.”

What next? Nobody knows.  But one thing seems to be clear: increasingly, infringement on the rights that politically active Americans have come to expect to exercise will be challenged using the tools we all see on TV every week from the civil rights movement.  Authority is no longer its own justification, and those in positions of power, some of whom seem to look to Louis XVI as their role model, will need to change their approach to survive.  As that folksinger put it—I forget his name, the one with the frizzy hair and nasal voice—“you’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.”

The Issue at Hand


by Alex Schomburg

More prosaically—back to science fiction.  The November 1964 Amazing is distinguished by being the second consecutive issue with a cover depicting a guy in a flying chair, calling to mind the observation of the Hon. Jimmy Walker, erstwhile Mayor of New York City, before fleeing the country to avoid a corruption prosecution: “Never follow a banjo act with another banjo act.” Alex Schomburg’s rather static and solemn depiction of the device contrasts amusingly with Virgil Finlay’s interior illustration, which attempts to imbue the same gadget with all the energy and drama that the cover picture lacks.  Can we say Apollonian versus Dionysian?  I thought not.  Forget I mentioned it.

Rider in the Sky, by Raymond F. Jones


by Virgil Finlay

The story itself, Raymond F. Jones’s long novelet Rider in the Sky, is unfortunately pretty inane, a hardware opera that reads as if it had been dumbed down for prime-time TV.  In the near future, private enterprise is starting to get into the act in space, and Space Products, Inc., has developed the Moon Hopper, essentially a rocket-propelled chair in which a space-suited person can sit and fly over the lunar surface, untroubled by the quantities of fine dust covering it.  But how to market this device?

The Space Products boys (usage highly intentional) decide on a publicity stunt—they’ll get somebody to fly the Moon Hopper from Earth orbit to the moon.  Who?  They’ll ask for volunteers from within the company!  They get one—Sam Burnham, a company accountant and secret space buff, who knows he doesn’t have the right stuff but has indulged his fantasies to the point of installing a centrifuge and an imitation space capsule in his basement. 

Sam’s wife Edna, who spends her copious spare time supporting the cause of the orphans of Afghanistan, is appalled, and leverages her Afghan-symp connections to start a national movement to keep Sam Earthbound.  This, and Edna, are presented in a spirit of condescending sexual oppression of the sort one finds in, say, True: The Man’s Magazine.  I forget if the author refers to “the little woman,” and I’m not going back to look, but that’s the attitude.

After much machination, with the President getting into the act, Sam goes, and his trip takes an unexpected turn, plot mechanics unwind reasonably cleverly, and he and the story are brought to a soft landing.  But the treatment of women, and the smarmy faux-folksy style in which a lot of the story is told, make it difficult to appreciate the admittedly limited virtues of the story.  Two stars, barely.

Enigma From Tantalus (Part 2 of 2), by John Brunner


by Ed Emshwiller

John Brunner’s two-part serial Enigma from Tantalus concludes in this issue.  While it’s not the pretentious mess that his previous effort The Bridge to Azrael was, Brunner has not regained the form of (as I keep saying) his sequence of smart and well turned novellas in the UK magazines. 

Here, humans have discovered Tantalus, a planet inhabited by a singular intelligent life-form with separate units linked telepathically and capable of being molded into a variety of forms and functions.  The crisis that drives the plot is that the Tantalan is believed to have made a fake human (presumably disposing of the real one) and dispatched it on a spaceship to Earth; we can’t let it loose on our planet!  (There is an acknowledgement along the way that the Tantalan appears to be studying humanity just as humanity is studying it.)

So, there’s a bunch of people confined in a small space, and we must learn which is the alien!  This is not exactly an original plot, but Brunner plays it more in the style of a country-house mystery than that of its distinguished and horrific predecessor, Campbell’s Who Goes There?, spiced up by the fact that the passengers are as eccentric a bunch of freaks and neurotics as one could wish for.

Brunner manages the latter parts of the plot capably and trickily enough, but overall the story has two sore-thumb-level problems.  One is that by far the most interesting part is the discovery and opening of communication with the Tantalan, all of which happens off-stage—in fact, before the story opens—and we learn about it only in fragments.  In that sense the story is much too short. 

In another sense, it’s too long.  The other big problem is that here as in The Bridge to Azrael, Brunner wants to wrestle with Big Thinks, in this case chiefly that technological development and affluence have left the run of humanity with a sense of helplessness and lack of purpose.  But his attempts to integrate this notion into the story are perfunctory, or worse; for example, he invokes it to explain the manipulative and nymphomaniacal female journalist who is confined in the spaceship and chewing the furniture.  (This is a conspicuous sour note from a writer whose prior work is notable for strong and relatively cliche-free female characters.) So this exercise in speculative social psychology in the end contributes nothing to the story but verbiage.

Another problem, at least to my mind, is that when something comes up that the machines can’t handle in the ordinary course, Earth is essentially governed by a tiny elite called the “Powers of Earth” (a particularly arrogant and irascible specimen of which conducts the inquiry of the spaceship passengers).  These “Powers” apparently exercise unchecked authority based on their extraordinary powers of deducing correct conclusions from limited information. 

This seems to me a sort of magical thinking, no better than (not much different from, in fact) the recurring notion in another magazine that the future will be dominated by a psionic elite, and about as plausible and useful for thinking about the future as the depiction by Edmond Hamilton and others of galactic empires ruled by hereditary nobles with pompous titles.

One might ask if this criticism is too big a demand to make of popular fiction in newsstand magazines, but Brunner invites it by posing the questions himself.  I don’t want to be hard on the guy for essaying too much, but his ambition is outrunning the format he is writing in, and he will have to find better ways to integrate them, or move on to a different kind of writing.  Anyway, three stars for a nice but flawed try.

Your Name Shall Be … Darkness, by Norman Spinrad


by George Schelling

Norman Spinrad displays his own brand of ambition with Your Name Shall Be . . . Darkness, about an Army psychiatrist captured and subjected to sophisticated brainwashing in the Korean War. He is repatriated, seemingly intact, but . . . .  This is essentially The Manchurian Candidate as applied social psychology, and pretty clever, though done in an overly bombastic style for my taste.  Still, it’s effective: three stars verging on four.

The Seminarian, by Jack Sharkey


by Virgil Finlay

And, last of the fiction, Jack Sharkey . . . is Jack Sharkey, with The Seminarian, about a guy, the son of missionaries, reared on a South Sea island without significant technology who comes to the States to conduct his own missionary work.  It’s a tribute to Sharkey’s superficial skills that his facility distracts one from the story’s complete implausibility.  Two stars.  Sure you don’t want to go into advertising, Jack?

The Lying Stones of Dr. Beringer, by Robert Silverberg


by Virgil Finlay

There’s a new byline on this month’s non-fiction: Robert Silverberg (also now the regular book reviewer) contributes The Lying Stones of Dr. Beringer, apparently the first of a series—it’s labelled “Scientific Hoaxes #1.” It’s about a 16th-Century German scholar who was taken in by a large aggregation of fake fossils, an interesting story in itself (especially in the hands of Silverberg, a much more capable writer than the usual suspect Ben Bova) and one which contributed to a shift in understanding of what fossils actually are.  Three stars.

Summing Up

So, business as usual at Amazing: a couple of nice tries, one dreary failure, one lighter-than-air piece of trivia, plus a better article than usual.  Steady as she goes.

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Book, Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 10, 1964] Drop The Bomb and We All Go Down (Sidney Lumet's Fail Safe)

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By Rosemary Benton

The Rogue Element

Grim and uncertain times can seemingly serve as interesting creative fuel. As the world becomes embroiled further and further in the mounting crisis between Cuba and the US, Hollywood has scheduled a list of releases this year that look both critically and comically at current world affairs. This month the much-plagued movie Fail Safe, directed by Sidney Lumet and featuring a star studded cast of actors, was released. Boy, is this one a rollercoaster.

Based on the 1962 novel of the same name (initially released as a serial for the Saturday Evening Post) by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, Fail Safe covers the topical issue of mutually assured destruction. It is supposed to be a deterrent to war — it's also the inevitable conclusion when our technology and policy fail us.

Picture this scenario: an unknown aircraft enters US air space and triggers preparations for a possible enemy attack, US bombers are sent to their holding (fail-safe) points on the Soviet borders. Everyone of importance is called in (select members of congress, the President, Air Force command and political advisors), but when Strategic Air Command in Washington learns that the craft is merely a commercial vessel off course, the situation is deescalated and the surveillance system within the Control Room is reset.

But an error causes an attack order to be sent to a group of bombers at their fail-safe point. Unaware of the error and gravely realizing the enormity of what an attack order means, the bombers nevertheless begin flying towards Moscow with the intention of razing it to the ground with their 40 megaton payloads. Back at Command, the error is spotted; all attempts are made to contact the bombers and call them back, but it's too late.

If this all sounds familiar then you have either seen Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (or read the book that inspired that film – "Red Alert" (1958) by Peter George aka Peter Bryant), or you, like me, just saw the premiere of Fail Safe. Both films are produced by Columbia Pictures, and initially both films were scheduled to be released in 1964 around the same date! The logic of this is baffling, and understandably it ruffled some feathers. The inside scoop is that Kubrick put a great deal of pressure on Columbia Pictures in order to have his film released at the beginning of the year decently spaced from the other.

Predictably, the eerily similar plots of Wheeler and Burdick's story compared to George's story resulted in a very public lawsuit – Kubrick and George vs Wheeler and Burdick, McGraw-Hill, Curtis Publishing Company, and Entertainment Corporation of America. The suit, initiated by George and Kubrick, claimed that Wheeler and Burdick lifted significant plot points from plaintiff Peter George's book. Evidently the matter was settled privately, as the American public is now able to see Fail Safe in many major theaters.

Initial Impressions

Despite their glaring story parallels, Fail Safe is a different animal entirely from Dr. Strangelove. It's hard to describe the experience of watching this film. The violence of the opening scene, wherein a veteran bomber pilot finds himself both observer and victim at a bullfight, sets the audience up with a baseline anxiety that grows and wanes, but never dissipates. The plot doesn't introduce the error (in this movie, caused by a machine rather than a person) until over 20 minutes into the movie. Prior to that we see haunting scenes that manage to capture intense raw emotions and family moments instrumental to defining our surprisingly complex and fascinating characters.

Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau, 1964

The suspense as the disaster gets wildly out of control builds relentlessly. For the audience, stuck in their seats with the knowledge that this is all very relevant to our country's current situation, there's an accompanying sense of angry futility. It's a hard truth that the general public (in the theater and on the screen) is blind to the national procedures set in place, and ultimately powerless to influence the decisions being made by the ranks of command. During the film's two and a half hour runtime this fury grew intense. By the end of the film I was actually teary eyed with a kind of writhing rage in my gut. It was especially fueled by the unbearably unfair price the Soviet and American civilian populations pay. Millions of people in both countries die minutes apart, or more accurately, are murdered. All for a technical error.

The Blame Game

The issue of blame and responsibility for a crime against humanity like the deployment of nuclear weapons is central to the plot in Fail Safe. As the cast discuss their options for the impending nuclear strike, the issue of how it could have happened in the first place is intensely debated by the characters. There are numerous people who keep saying that blame can't be assigned because the whole situation is an accident. No human hand sent the mission to the bombers streaking towards Moscow. A reset error caused the order to be delivered. It was always a possibility that the machines could malfunction. It's a risk of new technology that they could fail. As such everyone can be reasonably absolved of guilt. Absolving oneself of guilt and responsibility is a natural gut reaction in everyone when they are charged with making a mistake. But a crime against humanity? Of this magnitude? Someone has to take responsibility for that.

Even though it is explained earlier that he has no direct oversight of the checks and fail safes set in place to prevent such a tech error, the U. S. President (Henry Fonda) feels that the blame must lie with those at the highest peak of authority, and the actions he takes to address the situation reflect this. He verbally underlines this point in his angry statement near the end of the film to the Soviet premier that the blame for the dead lies with both men. Both men wield the destructive force of 20 megaton bombs as part of the unspoken detente of mutually assured destruction. Their use is ultimately the responsibility of the men in power. The President implores his Soviet counterpart, and the generals and senior officials on both sides, that they all must learn from this disaster to make sure it doesn't happen again. We don't hear what the Soviets have to say to this, and are left to wonder if they feel the same way about the shared responsibility and guilt.

But can people overcome the trap technology sets for us? Early in the film we see two WWII-veteran Air Force pilots playing pool and bemoaning the studiousness and "impersonal" attitudes of the new recruits grimly reading technical manuals at the tables next to them. Their conversation foreshadows the attitudes of many other characters. This film does an extremely good job of linking the fear of technology and the heavy responsibility of those who "control" it. Nearly all of the cast express, or hold firm to, the sentiment that technology is pulling people away from one another and will ultimately replace humanity in the resolution (and creation) of conflicts.

Another example of assigning blame to technology is in the Control Room when Congressman Raskob (Sorrell Booke) is given a tour of the new tech and an update on the emergency. He is disgusted and angry that a technical failure caused the orders to be sent, describing it as as humanity losing control of its inventions.

The scene revealing his feelings on the matter is very well executed. Congressman Raskob has just been shown how American satellites can monitor submarine movements and can zoom in nearly down to street level! He's also made aware that foreign surveillance is occurring within an alarmingly close proximity to the US shoreline. What disturbs him even more than all of this highly evolved (and very plausible) surveillance technology is that no one knows who is overseeing it. When he asks who double and triple checks the fail safes set up to monitor the machines, he is given different answers simultaneously: "The President" and "No one". That is profoundly disturbing, and Raskob knows it. He replies, "The only thing that everyone can agree on is that no one's responsible".

Final Thoughts

While Fail Safe offers a horrifyingly plausible solution to address the catastrophe shown in the film, neither the movie nor the best-selling book that the movie is based on offer any answers on how such a catastrophe could be avoided. Per the film, such an attack is the ultimate avalanche of events. It is the inevitable collapse of a shaky, hastily built structure rigged with cheap materials and patched with quick-fixes. Is it already too late to stop something like this from happening? Fail Safe asks this question, but suggests that there is no answer.

May sleep come easy to you tonight…

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Book, Conventions/Performances

[October 8, 1964] Through Time and Space (November 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

In the presence of greatness

This weekend, I attended a small gathering of SF fans in San Diego.  I'd been invited to give a talk on the first season of Doctor Who, a new science fiction show currently playing across the Atlantic in the UK.  While I've never actually seen any episodes (it doesn't air here, of course), thanks to the wonderful summaries of Jessica Holmes, and various promotional pictures and script transcripts I obtained, I was able to do a reasonable job of summarizing the Doctor's first year of adventures.

It appeared I wasn't the only one at this gathering who was familiar with Doctor Who — some enterprising fan had mocked up a full-size Dalek, one of the aliens featured on the show.  It even had a little engine in it!  Either that or the rope used to pull it along the floor was well-camouflaged…

What I absolutely did not expect was a surprise appearance from none other than Verity Lambert, herself — she is the youngest and only woman producer for the BBC, and she runs the production of Doctor Who. 

Does her presence in the States mean that her show will debut soon on American airwaves?  Stranger things have happened — after all, Danger Man (Secret Agent) made the jump in 1961, not to mention Supercar and Fireball XL5.

Fingers crossed!

The Issue at Hand

In the quiet spaces of the day, I pulled out my copy of the latest issue of IF, which clearly was supposed to have an October cover date, but thanks to problems with the printer, went out with one for November.  While this latest edition didn't have moments quite as stunning as those that transpired at the fan gathering, it was still worthy entertainment.


by Ed Emshwiller

The Hounds of Hell (Part 1 of 2), by Keith Laumer

We start on the baked desert city of Tamboula in the Free Republic of Algeria.  It is the early 21st Century, and this Mahgreb city is a latter-day Casablanca where intrigue abounds by night, and by day, warring Moroccans and Algerians drink together in an intoxicated armistice.  Enter Brigadier John Bravais, a secret agent posing as a journalist, sent to get the inside story on the North African conflict.  At first, the story reads like an Earth-bound Retief tale, with a smart-allecky agent quipping his way out of the hearts of the local authorities.

But in the middle of a battle-torn wasteland, John encounters something most horrifying — a wolf-headed, human-handed alien, fearsome and supremely powerful, appears and kills an Algerian officer with his mind, proceeding to surgically remove and store his brain. 


by Ed Emshwiller

The Brigadier is able to kill the alien, but when he returns to Tamboula to alert the authorities, he finds that the aliens are everywhere, in human guise, and with (apparently) android servants.  Now Bravais must make it back to the United States before he is captured…but who will he find when he gets there?

Keith Laumer is a facile action writer, and once he settles in, this piece is engaging.  The problem is, Bravais is a virtual cipher — his background, his personality, his motivations.  The setting is a mere thumbnail (unlike, say, the future Africa of Mack Reynolds).  And Laumer struggles with the bugaboo all writers (including me!) face when writing the first person viewpoint: excessive use of sentences starting with "I".

It may well be that this is a chopped down version, and when this two part serial be novelized, we'll get some expansion.  As is, Hounds is a decent adventure but will not be one of Laumer's enduring classics.

Three stars.

The Perfect People, by Simon Tully

Thirty years to finish a doctoral thesis?  It's possible, especially when the alien race you're studying remains stubbornly enigmatic.  The "symetroids" spend their day strolling and eating, making perfect circuits of their sea-side area over the course of several months.  They don't converse or use tools, yet their investigator is certain their is a pattern to their movements, a code to their sentience that he just needs a little more time to crack.  Sometimes perfection is perfectly impenetrable. 

Sadly, while this tale by neophyte Tully shows promise, its end does not pay off the beginning.

A high two stars.

The Ultimate Racer, by Gary Wright


by Ed Emshwiller

Newcomer Gary Wright's first work appeared in IF nearly two years ago.  Captain of the Kali was an interesting tale of naval combat on an alien world.  Wright's second work is more down to Earth, literally. 

In Racer, it is the 1990s, and auto racing has become truly "auto" — due to the lethality of the sport, humans have been banned from the driver seat, and cars are remote controlled or self-driving.  Among the sleek IBM-GMs and Volgas and Lotuses, one aging duo insists on racing their vintage 1980 Ferrarri.  But on the eve of the big race, one of the car's solenoids goes kaput, making telemetered driving impossible.

If you've read the classic Matheson story, Steel, then you'll recognize where this is going.  It gets there vividly and with great affection for the sport, but it also takes too a bit too long to reach the finish line.

Three stars.

The Diogenes Planet, by L. J. Stecher, Jr

How can a space merchant captain make a living if he's compelled to be 100% honest?  It all hinges on what truths he decides to tell…

If this shaggy dog tale is not one for the ages, there is certainly nothing unpleasant about it.  A good three stars.

Assassin & Son, by Thomas M. Disch

There's been much discussion here about how newcomer Tom Disch ranges from superb to, well, disappointingly less superb than he can be.  Rest easy — this is one of the good ones.

Around the far sun of Sepharad lies a hot world inhabited by the blob-like and telepathic Sephradim.  These seven-gendered aliens possess a particular racial quirk: when one is murdered, the killer augments their own powers with that of the victim.  For this reason, murder is specifically and rigorously outlawed.

By other Sephradim.

And so, a busy import business of human assassins has built up.  Highly esteemed and ritualized, the assassin tradition is a proud one, passed on from father to son.  But what role can a second-born have in such a system?  It's all a matter of opportunity.

Disch spins a beautiful tapestry here, creating truly alien extraterrestrials, and defining a unique culture that is as compelling as that of Frank Herbert's Dune World, developed with far fewer words.  My only complaint is that the novelette reads like the first few chapters of a book.  While being left wanting is usually a good sign, there is far too much left to be said!

Four stars…and fervent hopes for expansion.

Father of the Stars, by Frederik Pohl


by Ed Emshwiller

So far as I know, Fred Pohl is the only editor who contributes significant amounts of his own material to his magazines.  Far from being a self-aggrandizing enterprise, the issues in which his stuff appears are generally the better for it.

This concluding novelette features the last days of the man who gave humanity the stars, spending his fortune and life to fund 26 slower-than-light generation ships, only to see the development of FTL drives before any of the slowboats make planetfall.  What place can this superseded man have in history?

While Pohl never turns in a bad piece, there's not a great deal to this story.  This is a shame because the premise is fantastic, and I'd love to see a novel that expands on this theme.  Imagine generations of humans living and dying in their tiny mobile world, and once they reach their destination, it's already fully inhabited.  I know there have been stories that touch on the subject, but I don't think any have made it the central premise.

Add to that the superfluous bits about spacers grafting their consciousnesses to chimpanzees while their bodies remain in suspended animation, and the piece feels both undeveloped and misfocused.

But not bad.  Three stars.

Things to Come

Between meeting Ms. Lambert and exploring the wealth of worlds offered in this month's IF, October has started with a bang.  I can't wait to see what wonders the coming weeks have to offer!

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




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 2, 1964] Terrestrial Adventures (October 1964 Analog)

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


by Gideon Marcus

Close to Home

Time was, science fiction meant space adventure.  As far back as Burroughs, trips to Venus and Mars were commonplace, and by the '50s, authors routinely took us to the stars.

But while each week sees a new satellite launched toward the heavens, tremendous advances are taking place here on Earth, too.  In just the last week, the news has been filled with some stunning achievements in the field of travel.

In the Air

For instance, the YF-12A interceptor, a Mach 3+ interceptor capable of flying at 100,000 feet, was just publicly unveiled.  It's a beautiful, wicked-looking machine, and unlike the X-15 rocketplane, it's about to be an operational part of the Air Force's inventory.

With planes like the F-12, it's no wonder that this Mach 3 bomber, the B-70 Valkyrie, has been restricted to just two prototypes — fast as it is, it's not fast enough to evade modern interceptors!  Still, it's a beautiful bird, and I think engineers will get useful data from flying it — if for nothing else, lessons to be learned for the upcoming Concorde trans-Atlantic passenger jet!

On Land

The new "Shinkansen" train, linking the cities of Tokyo and Osaka, may not be jet-propelled; nevertheless, the speed with which it whizzes across the Japanese countryside is certainly Jet Age.  Now, one can travel between Japan's two principal cities in less than three hours. 

I can't wait for Governor Brown to build one of these babies between Los Angeles and San Francisco!

At Sea

Operation Sea Orbit is coming to an end: the three nuclear-powered ships, CVAN Enterprise, CGN Long Beach, and DLGN Bainbridge circled the Earth without refueling, the first global showing of the flag since Teddy Roosevelt's "Great White Fleet". 

Between the Navy's nuclear ships, the Air Force's atomic space drives, and the proliferation of nuclear power plants around the county, the latter 20th Century will definitely be the Age of the Atom!

And on Paper

With all this big news of Earthbound traveling, it's perhaps no surprise that Analog, the most read science fiction magazine has most of the stories of its October 1964 issue set on our planet. 


by Robert Swanson

Inconstant Moon, by Joseph H. Jackson

Or, in the case of the science article, the Earth's closest neighbor.  It has been speculated for some time that there may be some kind of vulcanism going on under the dead-seeming crust of the Moon.  In support of that are the occasional observations by astronomers of new craters, of colored puffs of smoke, and other oddities.

There is something of a breathless quality to Jackson's piece, and the fact that it appears in Campbell's Analog makes it more suspect.  In any event, it sure would have been nice if there were color pictures of these phenomena instead of the black and whites included in the article.

Three meteorites.

Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes (Part 1 of 3), by Mack Reynolds

Author Reynolds is no stranger to the Eastern Bloc, having extensively traveled through it in the '50s (as well as many other parts of the world).  It's no surprise, then, that his stories set in the nearish future, in which the Soviet Union has reached parity with the West, smack of plausibility if not inevitability.

Mack first projected the future with his African series starring Black American Homer Crawford, who goes to the continent to unify its northern portions.  It's a flawed pair of books, but the political scene is well developed.

The subsequent series starring Joe Mauser, in which everyone is on the dole and corporate disputes are resolved by division-level mercenary engagements, is better.  It may well be in the same universe, just further along in time. 

The background is that the North America has evolved into a stratified society, employing "People's Capitalism" wherein all get a basic income and a supply of tranquilizers and television entertainment.  Maybe a quarter of the populace is employed.  Behind the Iron Curtain, the "Sov-World" has developed similarly, though the external trappings remain Marxist-Leninist.

Between them lie Common Europe, led by the ambitious French under The Gaulle, and the "Neut World", the underdeveloped fourth corner of the power square.


by Robert Swanson

Unlike the previous stories in this universe, we get a new protagonist, Etruscan Studies professor Denny Land, of the "Middle Middle" class.  His enthusiasm for researching ancient combats gets him embroiled in the new gladiatorial games, which to his great surprise, he ends up winning.  But when he tries to go back to teaching, he finds that his superior, a member of the 1% "Upper" caste, resents Land's fame and sends him on indefinite leave.

This leaves Land ripe to be recruited by the American government as a spy, providing cover for a mission to Spain to turn, kidnap, or eliminate a French professor whose recent invention could break the decades-long balance of power of the early 21st Century.

There is something compelling yet mechanical about Reynolds' writing — it always makes you want to turn the page, but it is never flashy or inspiring.  His world building is fascinating, however. 

I think, in the end, it merits four stars.  I suspect the latter parts will fall into the standard three star zone, but we'll see.

The Mary Celeste Move, by Frank Herbert


by John Schoenherr

Do you remember that sense of trepidation when you first got on Ike's superhighway system?  The panic you felt when you realized you had to navigate four lanes of traffic to get around?

Frank Herbert offers up this minor piece in which the freeway system has become something like the jet-speed expressways of Rick Raphael's Code Three universe.  The problem at hand is that people are getting on, panicking, and deciding it's easier to resettle at the other end of the country than to risk the nerve racking trip home.

Two cars.

Flying Fish, by John T. Phillifent


by John Schoenherr

On a distant planet (this is the one off-planet story), humanity meets an alien race that tells us we are limited and incapable of advancing to their lofty level.  This being an Analog story, of course it's the alien that's wrong — and limited, to boot — and anyway, if humanity has limits, those only make us better.

It's not a great story, and I rolled my eyes at the pivotal character, Captain Beefcake, being infinitely selfless and flawless (as proven mathematically by the protagonist!) Still, it's not poorly written, and I was about to give it three stars until I wrote the above and convinced myself out of it.

Two ubermenschen.

Professional Dilemma, by Leonard Lockhard


by Leo Summers

Lockhard (really attorney Thedore L. Thomas) has penned some interesting stories of the intersection of patent law and science fiction.  This one is of the same subject matter but not the same quality — it rambles, it's not really SF, and it's conclusion is a ho hum.

Two trademarks.

Situation Unbearable, by Herbert Pembroke


by Michael Arndt

Our last story, by a brand-new author, begins with the premise of Brian Aldiss' recent novel, Greybeard.  To wit, humanity's birth rate has declined to almost nothing, and nobody seems to know why.  Well, almost nobody, but the one geneticist who might have a clue seems to have gone catatonic after encountering some horrific truth.

Can he be snapped out of it before it's too late?

This one takes a long time to get going, and the ending is a bit silly (the story is presented as a mystery, but the embedded hints aren't strong enough — did any of you guess what was going on?) I think Pembroke has the makings of a decent thriller writer, but he whiffed on this one.

Two baby bottles.

Summing up

All told, this was not a stellar issue of Analog, clocking in at just 2.6 stars.  I don't think it has anything to do with where the stories took place, though — this is just becoming a tired mag whose heyday was two decades ago.  Still, I am interested to see where the Reynolds goes.

As for the other mags, Science Fantasy was the clear winner, garnering an impress 3.5 stars with its first issue under new management.  Worlds of Tomorrow was also worthy, scoring 3.1 stars. 

Everything else was pretty dismal.  Amazing is tentatively a 2.7 (jury remaining out on the Brunner serial), Fantasy and Science Fiction got 2.7 stars, Galaxy was an unusually low 2.6, as was IF (also a Pohl mag), and Fantastic finished at 2.4.

Women writers got extremely short shrift.  We only saw a 6% participation; "Partners in Wonder" indeed.

As dreary as those numbers are, most magazines had at least one piece to recommend them, often their longest.  You could take all the better than average stuff from this month's crop and fill two magazines.  Thin ones.

Which gives me hope for next month, on or off the planet.  Come space travel with me?

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




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 20, 1964] Apocalypses and other trivia (Galactoscope)

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

[This month's Galactoscope features two global catastrophes, two collections, and four authors you've almost certainly heard of!]


by Jason Sacks

The Penultimate Truth, by Philip K. Dick

Like many fans, I first became really aware of Philip K. Dick after he won the 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel for his remarkable The Man in the High Castle. That book dazzled in its chronicle of an alternate history in which the Nazis and Japanese won World War II (which opened up many areas of thought and conversation for me and my friends) as well as in its brilliant world-building and the fascinating, multifaceted characters at the heart of Dick's award-winner.

High Castle was also an amazingly tight novel, packing a dense plot into its mere 240 pages. As many of us Dick fans have learned, not all of his works are quite so tightly plotted. I adored his Martian Time-Slip and Dr. Bloodmoney from last year, but those books tended to both delight and annoy in their meandering, nearly stream-of-consciousness styles.

The newest Philip K. Dick novel, The Penultimate Truth (just out in paperback from Belmont) fills a bit of the gap between his ’62 masterpiece and the challenging ’63 books. This thoroughly delightful book wanders a bit but always held me in its comforting grasp.

The Penultimate Truth is shambolic and episodic, but that approach serves the work well. Its main characters are living shambolic lives, which Dick depicts as full of odd episodes which occasionally have great and beautiful moments of transcendence, even in the post-apocalyptic wasteland in which the book is set.

Note that this review will reveal elements of the book, comments that "spoil", if you will, so skip down to the next review if you love surprises in your fiction.

In the future world of this book, much of humanity lives in massive underground bunkers, nicknamed anthills, in which they build weapons and medical devices for the nuclear war they believe is ravaging the surface of the Earth. When Nick St. James, the president of one anthill, makes his way to the surface, St. James discovers his people have been lied to. The world on the surface has survived nuclear devastation and has emerged into a unique and odd civilization. Needless to say, the revelation of the relatively peaceful world surface changes nearly everything.

What makes this novel so special, though, is that those revelations don't change the way St. James views his world. He doesn’t become a noble crusader for truth or a vengeful destroyer of the new civilization. Instead our protagonist goes the opposite way of most heroic leads. Instead of rebelling, he goes out of his way to allow the world to stay in its current state. He will not let the truth of his world change life in the anthill. The penultimate truth of the story is the truth behind the nuclear war. But the ultimate truth is more powerful: it is the special bond society creates, the relationships created and enduring for decades, and the lies and half-truths that are necessary to perpetuate that society.

This description makes The Penultimate Truth sound heady and brainy, and it is filled with a intriguing level of intelligence and wisdom about human nature. But it is also has the several elements we have come to expect from Dick’s finest work.

First and foremost, this is an exciting story, with scenes of high adventure, escapes and shootouts which keep the reader turning the page. There are mysteries piled upon mysteries, characters who shift and change as the story proceeds only to have them revealed in ways for which the reader was foreshadowed but for which he likely could not have anticipated.

Secondly, this is a wise and fascinating study of human nature. The Penultimate Truth is about jealousy and lust for power balanced with trust and love for family and friends. It sets stability and chaos in opposite sides of the metaphorical coin in ways few other novels of any type have explored, and in doing so shows the power of novelistic science fiction in the hands of a master of the medium.

Thirdly, this book seems to explode with ideas, from the anthills (an idea Dick has explored in some of his short fiction such as “Second Variety”) to the vast demesnes in which the surface dwellers live, to the vast conspiracies used to keep ordinary people following their leaders. In fact, it is in that last set of ideas that Dick falls down a bit for me. I had trouble imagining a government systematically lying to its people in the way described here. In a world in which leaders are elected by the governed, there is no reason for leaders to lie to their people. [Oh, my sweet country mouse…(Ed.)]

And the last element I’ve come to love in Dick’s work comes from the very end of the book. In my mind there are two endings to this novel, and in fact I won’t reveal them here so you can experience them yourself. But I’m curious how many readers wish The Penultimate Truth had ended with the deeply ironic penultimate chapter as its conclusion as opposed to those who preferred the redemptive final chapter.

Throw in some gorgeously descriptive language and you have one of the finest science fiction novels of 1964. I hope Mr. Dick brings home another Hugo next year from London.

4.5 stars


by Gideon Marcus

Tongues of the Moon, by Philip J. Farmer

Three years ago, just before John Boston started reviewing Amazing for us, Philip Jose Farmer had a short story called Tongues of the Moon.  The tale began with a literal bang: the Axis of southern nations launched a preemptive strike on the Communist Northern Hemisphere (including a subjugated United States kept pacified with skull-mounted pain inducers!), and the entire world was destroyed.  At the same time, the "Axes" attacked their enemies throughout the solar system — from Mercury to the Mars, Copernicus to Callisto.  Our hero, a scientist named Broward, is caught in a crossfire at what was supposed to be a lunar peace conference.  Together with the monomaniacal American, Scone, he manages to escape the fight and deactivate the central pain induction center on the Moon.  Now free agents, Scone finds himself the leader of some of the very few human beings left alive.  Can he knit together a new human race from the four hundred survivors representing dozens of nations and ideologies?  Can a viable culture be created when men outnumber women 4:1?

These are all excellent questions, and I'm not surprised that Farmer decided to expand his novelette into a full novel.  Unfortunately, what could have been a fascinating sociological study is subverted in favor of a fairly pedestrian adventure story and a series of treasure hunts.

In the expanded portion of the book, Broward is dispatched to the ruined Earth to find a planet-destroying bomb.  The plan is to destroy the last significant Axis presence in the system, their colony on Mars, so that the Moon is safe.  But Broward recognizes paranoia when he sees it, and he is reluctant to carry out Scone's plan, which will cause yet more decimation of the human population.  He also, understandably so, has issues with Scone's plan to condemn the remaining women to forced multiple marriages.  And so begins a merry excursion — to the caves of Siberia, the undersea domes of the Mediterranean, the vastness of outerspace, the tunnels of Mars.  Tongues never stops to take a breath, and each sequence is more or less self-contained.  The most interesting bit involves the Siberian expedition, when Broward takes along as co-pilot the last Jew in the world (and probably the last person of Japanese extraction, too).  In this section are tantalizing hints of what the story might have been.  Alas, all development is tossed for more running and chasing.

It has been said of Farmer that he is "always almost good", which is not nearly as nice as "almost always good."  This latest book continues the trend.  Someday he'll make a masterpiece.  Until then, he's just a decent writer who can never quite deliver.

3.5 stars


by Rosemary Benton

Ace Double: "The Million Year Hunt" by Kenneth Bulmer and "Ships to the Stars" by Fritz Leiber

Ace Double novels are always a treat. Even though they are largely reprints of stories from the 1950s I always feel like I have rediscovered something special when I pick up one of these books at the bookstore. This month's release features titles by veteran authors Fritz Leiber and Kenneth Bulmer. Given the styles of each author I was intrigued to see how they would read back to back. Sadly to say, this was not one of the better lineups from Ace.

"The Million Year Hunt" by Kenneth Bulmer

Kenneth Bulmer's contribution to this month's Ace Double follows the adventures of a scrap yard worker turned savior of the human race. The story begins as we drop in on the aftermath of a prank pulled by protagonist Arthur Ross Carson, a mischievous young colonist on a back-water planet with few prospects. In short order he finds himself contending with the unjust killing of his fiancé Lucy, startling news of his parentage, and the piteous million-year mission of an alien conscious that enters his body. This is a lot to unwrap within less than 150 pages, and that's not even the full extent of the plot. Bulmer goes on to reveal a slew of converging political schemes to control the universe, including a program to selectively breed a successor to lead the intergalactic police force known as the Galactic Guard.

I felt like I was reading a much larger story that had been brutally and awkwardly chopped down to fit a page count limit. Up to the very last sentence the story is rife with major plot points that are not resolved, gawky transitions of emotion within the cast of characters, and plot twists that feel last minute and cheap. I can't overstate the issue that lies with the jerking sensation the reader gets as the story shifts from scene to scene. So awkward and halting was the pace that I just couldn't believe Bulmer was the one to give it a final proof read before sending it to publication. There was just no way a man as prolific as him could have been satisfied with this story, a public presentation by which he would be judged as a writer, going to press in the state it's in.

If "The Million Year Hunt" is indeed the butchered result of a much larger manuscript, then the most tragic victims of its murder were the emotional transitions of the characters and the quirky, adventurous and lighthearted atmosphere that was so desperately trying to take hold. The easy and funny dialogue between Arthur Ross Carson and the alien conscious that strapped itself to him nervous system is very entertaining to read. Their banter actually comprises some of the best scenes in this story. Instead of clunky exposition their conversations dynamically teased out information on their respective pasts, personalities, and surroundings.

If only Bulmer could have let the characters be themselves stumbling through space on adventures loosely tied to an end goal, specifically Carson's mission of revenge and his origin as the "savior" of the Galactic Guard, then this would have been a fantastic story. Unfortunately in its current state "The Million Year Hunt" is not a story that should have made it to print.

[Apparently, The Million Year Hunt is a fix-up of sorts, created from Scarlet Denial in Science Fiction Adventures No. 26, and Scarlet Dawn in Science Fiction Adventures No. 28. Both came out in 1962, published in the United Kingdom. The text is unchanged from the originals. (ed)]

"Ships to the Stars" by Fritz Leiber

On the other side of this Ace Double is a collection of six short stories by power house actor and novelist Fritz Leiber. In contrast to Bulmer's story, Leiber's "Dr. Kometevsky's Day", "The Big Trek", "The Enchanted Forest", "Deadly Moon", "The Snowbank Orbit", and "The Ship Sails at Midnight" are all well structured with tight plots and developed characters. Leiber's writing also demonstrates a more measured understanding of how to maintain the flow of a story. The tendency of his characters to repeatedly ponder the effects fear has on them makes them fragile, fallible, and very true to the duality of human nature. They want to know and see everything, but there are limits to what they can understand and what their eyes have access to. Leiber's inclusion of these relatable and basic human failings forms a tension in his stories that would be otherwise missing if he had held full faith in humanity's ability to rationalize everything with science.

The strongest short stories in this small selection were "The Big Trek" and "The Ship Sails at Midnight". In these two tales the reader can really see Leiber's deep connection with the gothic authors whom he draws inspiration from. In "The Big Trek" Leiber writes from the first-person perspective of a man joining a feverish march of bizarre beings from across the universe. The employment of fluctuating space and loose concepts of time's passage echoes William Hope Hodgson's "The House on the Borderland" (1908) and pretty much any piece by Edgar Allan Poe. The narrator's awe and trepidation touched with excitement are also very similar to Arthur Machen's inner voice within "The White People" (1904).

Like H. P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany, Leiber's strongest talent as a writer is keeping his characters grounded by the weighty truth that humans are far from the most powerful forces in the universe. All of Leiber's stories have humans sprinting to stay out of the way of some larger, stronger entity charging through with little interest in our species’ plight. "The Ship Sails at Midnight" best encapsulates this with its accompanying message that humans have such potential but are so readily self-sabotaging.

The joy of reading Fritz Leiber’s short stories greatly made up for my disappointment in Kenneth Bulmer’s novella. Fast paced, thoughtful and touching, they make this Ace Double a worthwhile purchase. I will absolutely be looking forward to reading more of his work in the future.

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




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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

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


by Gideon Marcus

Which one is it?

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

The Castle of Light, by Keith Laumer


by Jack Gaughan

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

Two stars.

Mad Man, by R. A. Lafferty

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

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

Two stars.

Gremmie's Reef, by Hayden Howard


by Virgil Finlay

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

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

Nice try, but it's another two.

Rescue Mission, by Kit Reed

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

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

Two stars.

Monster Tracks, by Robert E. Margroff

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

Not much to this one.  Two stars.

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


by Jack Gaughan

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

Well, editor Fred Pohl got a ringer.

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

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

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

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

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

Making Whole

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

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

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

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




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