Category Archives: Book

Science fiction and fantasy books

Book

[March 5, 1961] A Host to Murder (Fredric Brown's The Mind Thing)

7 Comments

There are many kinds of books.  There are important books, the kind that will be remembered and discussed for decades to come, like Harper Lee's recent To Kill a Mockingbird.  There are progressive books that skirt the edge of convention, like Ted Sturgeon's Venus Plus X. 

And then there are the just plain good reads, neither subtle nor ingenious, but worthy nonetheless–like Fredric Brown's latest novel, The Mind Thing.

"The Mind Thing" is an alien, member of a race of parasitic telepaths.  Immobile on any but the lighest gravity planets, they take over the minds of suitable hosts, which then become their arms and legs.  A Mind Thing can only control one creature at a time, and control lasts until the death of that creature…or of the Mind Thing.  Thus, Mind Things have developed an acutely callous attitude toward the death of their hosts; it is merely a necessary step to move onto another.

These aliens have also perfected the art of transmitting their kind across vast gulfs of space.  This mode of travel is primarily employed for expansion of the Mind Thing domain, but it is also used to exile criminals to faraway planets.  Those banished offenders have a slim chance of finding themselves on an inhabitable world, but those that do, and manage to create the mechanism required to return them home, are hailed as heroes.

For they have discovered yet another world for the Mind Things to control.

In The Mind Thing, an alien felon is dispatched to Earth, specifically the fictional town of Bartlesville in rural Wilcox county.  At once deadly dangerous and highly vulnerable, the Mind Thing engages in a series of possessions, followed by suicides, of animals and people toward achieving its ultimate goal–escape from the planet.

The killer's greatest foe, and also its most desirable prize, is the brilliant, vacationing Professor Ralph S. Staunton of M.I.T.  Staunton quickly becomes aware that something strange is afoot, but it takes some time for him to fully deduce the horror behind the mystery.  Will he solve it in time?

The Mind Thing is an engaging, quick read.  The story has that pleasant earthy realism that I associate with Cliff Simak's work.  I don't know where Fredric Brown grew up, but his depiction of the backwoods area near Lake Michigan rings true.  The Mind Thing is told both from the alien's and several humans' point of view, something that I'd expected to be a little heavy-handed, but Brown makes it work.  All of the characters are nicely realized, each one's story being practically a self-contained vignette.  Sadly, we often come to know a character just long enough to see them die at the hand of the Mind Thing.  Of course, the best drawn characters are the novel's heroes: Doc Staunton (described as one of the scientists who worked on Explorer 6; he's clearly fictional–no one from MIT worked on that probe) and the intrepid Miss Talley, teacher and stenographer, who works with the doctor in the latter half of the book.  Their relationship is an excellent one, particularly by the end.

Fredric Brown is a veteran of the pulp era, and he's produced consistently for the last two decades.  That goes a long way toward explaining the unadorned yet effective prose in The Mind Thing.  It's not art.  It's not flowery.  Nevertheless, Brown grips the reader from the very beginning to the last words of the eminently satisfying ending.  Brown is a fellow who knows how to tell a yarn–a disturbing, thrilling yarn. 

Four stars.

(Note: I must give warning to my more sensitive readers: There is a lot of death in this book.  The Mind Thing, in the course of its operations, coldly murders a myriad of animals (including far too many cats) and people.  It kills without sadism, cruelty, or remorse.  The depiction is never overdone, but nor is the impact minimized.  It's gruesome–but also integral to the story.)

7 Comments Leave A Comment
Book

[February 24, 1961] Six into One (A.E. Van Vogt's War Against the Rull)

7 Comments

Action!  Adventure!  A physicist/swashbuckler pitting his wits against the most dangerous planets in the universe!

This is a new book?  Well…

A.E. VanVogt is a prominent space opera writer, dominating the Golden Era of Science Fiction.  A half-dozen of these stories depict an interstellar war pitting a human-led federation against the implacable Rull: iridescent worm aliens from another galaxy.

As written, these stories are only tenuously related.  They are, however, unified by Van Vogt's riproaring style, the backdrop of the Rull war, and the overall theme of survival under hostile conditions, against deadly environments and personal adversaries.

So why not tie them together using the time-worn format of the "Fix-up novel"?  This is where a collection of stories is spliced together with linking material, sometimes with substantial revision.  Brian Aldiss had one called Galaxies like Grains of Sand, and VanVogt, himself, recently did it with The Mixed Men.

Thus, we have The War against the Rull (published in hardcover in 1959, reprinted this month in paperback), comprising the following stories, all of which debuted in Astounding Magazine: Cooperate or Else, 1942; Repetition, 1940; The Second Solution, 1942; The Green Forest, 1949; The Sound, 1950; and The Rull, 1948.

The non-chronological order is deliberate—this is the order in which they appear in the novel.  Polymath protagonist, Trevor Jamieson, ties them together.  The excitement starts on Page 1: trapped on a planet with the fearsome, telepathic ezwal, Jamieson must persuade the murderous alien to work with him long enough for both of them to survive a planet of horrors.  This ordeal convinces Jamieson that the ezwal could be the linchpin in the war against the Rull. 

But prejudice against the ezwal, who have killed countless human colonists and done their best to convince humanity that they are no more than stupid animals, is high.  So high that, on the heels of Jamieson's presentation to the colonist council on the ezwal homeworld, he is the target of an assassination attempt.  Once again, he must work with a hostile companion to defeat a menagerie of alien beasts.

We then awkwardly segue to my favorite bit of the book, wherein a baby ezwal ends up on Earth, evading humanity and attempting survive in the wild.  Told quite effectively from the alien's perspective, it is a nice role reversal. 

Then we're back to the original hero for the next section.  Jamieson thwarts a Rull attempt to sabotage production of an anti-Rull bioweapon.  This is where we learn that the Rull are master spies, able to change their apparent shape at will.

Jamieson's 9-year old son gets to be the viewpoint of the next story.  With some help from an ezwal, the child helps nab an entire Rull spy ring before it can wreck a giant spaceship.

The book concludes with a one-on-one confrontation between Jamieson and a Rull general.  They play a cat and mouse game to capture each other, both convinced that a live prisoner will be the key to understanding the enemy.  It builds on all the previous stories; the final victory would have been impossible without Jamieson's prior triumphs. 

Does it work?  Some of the stitching is a bit clumsy.  Having not read the original stories, I can't tell if they worked better independently; I suspect Jamieson was not the star of all of them, originally.  The writing is in an outdated style, as one might expect.  The novel is like a rollercoaster with six peaks and subsequent wild rides.  As such, the plot doesn't exactly make sense, and Jamieson's life comes off a bit too outrageous.  For all that, War is an enjoyable read.  Van Vogt writes fun, creative, and occasionally thoughtful adventure.

Three stars.

7 Comments Leave A Comment
Book

[Dec. 29, 1960] Out of this World (Ben Barzman's Twinkle Twinkle Little Star)

10 Comments

I don't know who Ben Barzman is, but he's written an interesting little book. 

The synopsis makes the novel sound as if it is composed of more cheese than the Moon.  186 million miles away, on the opposite side of the Sun, is another Earth.  It is a virtual twin, to the point of having the same landmasses, the same biological history, even the same human history up through the end of The Great War.  Thanks to their not having a Second World War, they are far ahead of us in the social, medical, and energy sciences (though not, apparently, in the rocket and atomic sciences).  Scientists of our Earth manage to create a new ray, a ray so powerful that it becomes a living, intelligent entity, which facilitates contact with this other Earth.  The counter-Earth responds by sending a delegation to our planet to determine whether or not we are worthy of receiving their technological gifts.

Sounds silly, doesn't it?  Like something that might have been written in the '30s or earlier.  And, in fact, if you read the story just for the science fiction, you'll be disappointed.  I suspect Barzman is not a scientificitioneer by trade.  Luckily, what he gives us goes far beyond the basic plot.

This tale really is an exploration of alternate timelines, of personal and global what-ifs.  Taken that way, it's quite a beautiful story.  The first half of the book has virtually no s-f trappings at all.  Instead, we get a gentle, self-deprecatingly witty autobiography of a Canadian fellow who ventures off with a friend to see the world on the eve of World War 2.  He has a passionate affair with Marie-Ange, a young French girl in St. Lo (while his friend, Wilfred, maintains an above-board relationship with her).  War breaks out and he and Wilfred become a two-person bomber crew, savaging the very French countryside they had enjoyed so recently.  During a brief break in England, the Germans devastate a nearby block in their nightly Blitz, and the narrator rescues a shell-shocked young girl, who ends up being adopted by a Texan biophysicist.  Wilfred and the narrator are later shot down; the event is fatal to Wilfred and permanently (though not severely) disabling to the narrator.

After the War, the protagonist returns to St. Lo to find Marie-Ange.  She is dead, killed in the war during an Allied bombing raid, though not by one of his bombs.  The narrator then dispiritedly drifts through life, desultorily reporting from Paris for his tyrannical Uncle Derbet's newspaper.  Until Jane, the girl he rescued during the War, comes to visit.

She is a brilliant biophysicist now, and lovely to boot.  She has come to Paris to work with the famed but reclusive scientist, Dr. Morescu, who lost his Jewish wife and child to the Nazis during the War.  Jane and the narrator fall in love, but their ardor is tempered by a mental block she developed as a result of losing her entire family in the Blitz incident.  This prevents them from any serious sort of physical consummation. 

In the end, the novel is an exploration of the lives of these somewhat damaged people in a world still reeling from the last War.  Their turning point, the moment of healing, comes in their interaction with the other Earth.  In the counter-Earth, Wilfred and Marie-Ange never died.  The narrator never went to war.  Jane's family is alive and well, as is Dr. Morescu's.  Moreover, the other world has benefited from the millions of souls who never perished during WW2: artists, scientists, doctors.  Yet, it is not without its share of drama.  When the two worlds interface, we see what might have been and get clarity on what has actually happened.  And without spoiling too much, there are happy endings all around.

Taken as a sideways-in-time story, it's quite effective.  Barzman writes in a droll, contemporary style that engages.  Twinkle's characters are well-drawn, and the world they live in are refreshingly removed from the rather constrained, conservative landscapes we normally encounter in both our lives and our science fiction. 

Four stars.

10 Comments Leave A Comment
Book

[Dec. 8, 1960] Signs of Aging (Murray Leinster's The Wailing Asteroid)

14 Comments

If anyone can claim the title of “Dean of Modern Science Fiction,” it is Murray Leinster.  For decades, the gentle old man of the genre has turned out exciting interstellar adventures leavened with humor and hard science. 

But old men are prone to losing their faculties, and I fear we're seeing the first signs of it.

I was sent an advance copy of Leinster's latest novel, The Wailing Asteroid, last month.  The premise is excellent: a few years from now, an object within the solar system suddenly begins broadcasting a repeating plaintive musical message.  The transmission is indecipherable, but clearly of artificial origin and of automatic nature.  A wunderkind engineer by name of Joe Burke realizes he's heard this music before, in a dream he's had since he was 11, when his father brought home a strange little black cube from a 20,000 year old archaeological site in France. 

The music isn't all Burke got from the dream; included in its details were the clues to build a hand-weapon of almost limitless power, one which he adapts for use as a space drive.  Burke, with the help of a yachting buddy and an introverted savant, as well as his fiancee and her sister, decides to build a craft that will take them to this mysterious wailing asteroid. 

Once there, the team finds an abandoned fortress filled with unfathomable weaponry.  There isn't a shred of written material, but it is clear that humans crewed this structure.  Who built this outpost, and against what was it built to defend?

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?  Except it is written in what I can only term “The New Leinster.” He writes in short sentences.  There are no long ones.  Why should he write that way?  I do not know.  I only know that they are repetitive.  They repeat.  Why should Leinster write short sentences that repeat?  I can't know.  It is annoying.  It is difficult to read.  There are no long sentences.

Pared down properly, the whole thing would be a novella, and it would be a nice addition to two issues of Analog.  But it's not, which makes it a slog, though you will want to find out what happens.

I applaud the active inclusion of two women among the book's stars.  It would have been nice if Leinster had given them more to do than stenotype, cooking, and pining after their fiancees (Burke's fiancee's sister falls for the yachting chap).  On the other hand, I suppose we still live in a world where men aren't allowed to take shorthand and home economics classes, and the story is set in the near future.  How progressive can Leinster be?  In any event, it's hard to get too upset about characters as thin as the ones Leinster has written.  Their dialogue is interchangeable and written in the same choppy format as the non-dialogue prose.  The science is flawed, too, particularly orbital mechanics, and the rest is zap-gun stuff as you might find in pulps from the 30s.

However, the few-page vignette devoted to the doomed cosmonaut who is dispatched before Burke begins his journey, is almost worth the price of the book.  And the story is interesting despite Leinster's efforts to the contrary.

2.5 stars.

14 Comments Leave A Comment
Book

[Dec. 3, 1960] Correcting an Oversight (The Crossroads of Time, by Andre Norton)

8 Comments

I didn't start Galactic Journey with the intention of spotlighting female writers and characters in science fiction.  It just happened organically.  A good many of my readers are women, and their interests may have influenced me.  Or perhaps I simply became bored with the status quo.  Woman authors tend to be more experimental or, at least, stylistically unique.  And good female characters are a rare surprise (though increasing in frequency).

For a column that emphasizes the literary contributions of the species' better half, there has been one curiously large omission.  Not once have I reviewed a work by Andre Norton.

Norton, despite the masculine pen name, is a woman, and she is one of the genre's most prolific writers.  I think she has escaped my ken because she tends to write juveniles and fantasy novels, so she doesn't appear in my magazine subscriptions.  I also attempted to start one of her books at a reader's suggestion (Star Gate), and I found it impenetrable.

But last month, I was caught up with current publications and an Ace Double from a few years back attracted my interest: The Crossroads of Time by Norton paired up with Mankind on the Run by Gordon Dickson.  I finished Norton's short novel over Thanksgiving weekend, and here's what I found:

Blake Walker is a man twice orphaned.  He was abandoned in infancy, and his adoptive policeman father died in Blake's teen years.  Now he is a 20-year old student, freshly arrived in New York.  His world is turned upside down when he crosses paths with the Time Wardens, agents from an alternate timeline where humans have figured out how to travel to parallel universes.  These agents are on the trail of the fugitive, Pranj, who plans to set up shop as a dictator in one of these worlds or “levels.”

Walker is, like most of Norton's characters, a resourceful loner.  In addition, he is possessed of a sense of premonition and a strong psychic shield, the latter of particular importance as the denizens of the Pranj's timeline all have strong psionic abilities.  It is Walker's premonition that enables him to save an agent from one of the fugitive's lackeys, which leads to Walker's recruitment by the agency.  On his first mission, he ends up a prisoner of Pranj, but he is able to make his escape on a level-traveler. 

This is where the book really began for me (some halfway through).  We are treated to a tour of several New Yorks, each one a challenge for survival: Ixanilia, a repressive aristocratic place founded by European refugees from an ascendant Mongol Empire; a nameless island where stone towers occupy our Manhattan, and North America's only inhabitants are far-ranging Pacific Islanders; a level where the Nazis took England and savaged America to collapse.

It is this last level that Pranj intends to rule.  Walker throws his lot in with a band of plucky survivors led by the capable leader and Buffalo Soldier called “The Sarge.” Walker manages to link up with a group of Wardens and assault Pranj's local headquarters, whose barriers to psychic beings prove less effective against Walker as he is a latent.  He is aided in his endeavor by a cute little kitten, who proves to be a tigress both in courage and in effect.  I shan't spoil the ending, but it is a happy one.

This new sideways-in-time genre is one of my favorites.  While, the first half of Crossroads is occasionally rough sledding, Norton gradually sheds the hoary pulpisms that suffuse the work, and things shift into higher gear once Walker begins his jaunt to the levels.  I was pleased by the appearance of both a Negro and a cat as pivotal, compelling characters.  In fact, even Blake is not White, (his ethnicity is a mystery, but it appears to be mixed) and his adoptive father was Black.  I found this degree of departure from the norm refreshing.  No female characters, though we do learn that women comprise a good number of Sarge's able team of soldiers.

Norton has written Crossroads with sequels in mind (she suggests as much in the final lines of the book.) The Time Wardens are akin to Poul Anderson's “Time Patrol” whose time-traveling agents ensure the sanctity of its history, and I could easily see a series developing. 

It's a solid 3.5 stars of entertainment to fill a weekend with.  So find a copy if you can, and hope for a sequel!. 

8 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine

[Nov. 26, 1960] Damaged Goods (Algis Budry's Rogue Moon)

14 Comments

Sometimes, I just don't get it.

The December 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction is almost completely devoted to one short novel, Rogue Moon, by Algis Budrys.  I like Budrys, and F&SF is generally my favorite magazine, so I've been looking forward to this book since it was advertised last month.

To all accounts, it is a masterpiece (and by "to all accounts", I mean according to the buzz in the local science fiction circles).  The premise is certainly exciting: there is an alien structure on the moon, an amorphous multi-dimensional thing, that kills all who enter it.  To facilitate its exploration, the navy utilizes a matter transporter that disassembles one's molecules in one place and reconstructs them elsewhere.  Volunteers are sent from Earth to their certain death to push a few more feet into the deadly extraterrestrial maze.

Of course, the transporter doesn't actually send anyone anywhere; it destroys the original and creates a copy that thinks it is the original.  In fact, it's possible to make multiple copies of a person, and that is what is done: one copy goes to the moon to die, while the other stays on Earth to live on.  It turns out that the two copies have a limited degree of telepathic contact for a short time, so the Earthbound copy can report on what his moonbound copy experiences.

The project's main hurdle is that it takes a special kind of person to experience one's own death and not go insane.  How, indeed, to find such a person to unlock the riddles of the maze?

Sounds pretty intriguing, doesn't it?  Sadly, Budrys hardly wrote this story.  Instead, he gave us a florid, comically humorous soap opera with personalities as flat as the pages they are printed on.  Here's the dramatis personae:

Edward Hawks: The project's director.  A detached scientist, coldly resigned to his status as a murderer (both in terms of sending people to their death and the destruction of those who go through the transporter), desperate to understand how a person's existence can survive one's death.

Al Barton: A suicidal thrill-seeker. he's already lost a leg to his obsession for death-defying escapades–racing, mountain-climbing, parachuting.  Setting records isn't enough for him; he's got to risk his life doing something no one else has done before.  He spends most of his time attempting to prove his manliness to Hawks (in vain, as Hawks is too coldly impersonal to be impressed).

Vincent Connington: The project's director of personnel who introduces Hawks and Barton.  A fellow whose brash arrogance is really just a facade that hides his love for…

Claire Parks: Barton's gorgeous girlfriend: She spends her entire "screen time" attempting to seduce Hawks and Connington and enrage Barton; she's afraid of men, you see, so she is always trying to manipulate them so she can keep her interactions in a safe, nonthreatening place. 

Elizabeth Cummings: A wholesomely beautiful random stranger whom Hawks falls in love with.  Her primary story function is to listen to Hawks' morose reflections on life and occasionally offer pithy observations.

Virtually no time is devoted to the actual exploration of the moon structure, and when the reader finally does get to see the jaunt through the maze, Budrys manages to make it the dullest part of the book. 

Budrys does largely succeed at exploring the fascinating ramifications of "soul" duplication.  What happens when there are two of you, when a moment ago, there was just one?  And are the copies really you?  Are you more than the sum of your memories?  If not, is the communication of your memories to others, no matter how imperfectly, a kind of immortality (this is implied in the last line of the book, an admittedly powerful one.)

Which would have been great had it been less mawkishly presented, and the characters at all plausible.  Budrys set out to make an insightful character study in the Sturgeon vein, depicting a disparate brood all struggling to find "The Meaning of Life."  Instead, he ended up writing something more akin to Merril's The Tomorrow People: full of stilted dialogue, expository speeches, and precious little story.  Fully 30 pages go by before we even get into the plot, which is a lot of time to waste in a 90 page novella.

I'm not sure how to rate Rogue Moon.  Despite all the eye-rolling moments (quite literally), I did finish the short book in one sitting, which suggests there must have been something compelling about it.  There were thought-provoking ideas.  It was the execution which was disappointing, particularly for being by the normally excellent Budrys.  I think, in the end, the book's prime failure is the introduction of so many interesting elements which are completely subordinated to the inferior, implausible psychological drama that Budrys, for some reason, was so hot to present. 

Maybe the book, due to be released next month, will be better. 

Two stars.

Stay tuned for the rest of the magazine!

14 Comments Leave A Comment
Book

[November 6, 1960] Take Five (Store of Infinity by Robert Sheckley)

3 Comments

There are few folks who have taken greater advantage of the Silver Age of science fiction (i.e. the Post-War boom and bust of the digests) than Robert Sheckley.  As of last month, the fellow had already published four collections of his works.  The beneficiaries of this production are Bob's pocketbook…and every reader who gets hands on his stuff.  Sheckley's mastery of the science fiction short story, whether straight, humorous, cynical, or downright horrific, is legendary.

Now, Notions: Unlimited, Sheckley's fourth collection, just came out in June.  Moreover, I'd had reason to believe that November would be a month of slim pickings for new fiction.  Imagine my surprise (and delight!) at finding yet another Sheckley collection on sale.

This one, Store of Infinity, may be my favorite of them all.

All of the stories are reprints of magazine stories, and there are no clunkers in the bunch.  Going through in order, we have:

The Prize of Peril (May 1958 Fantasy and Science Fiction): In the near future, the most popular gameshow on television is a live manhunt.  At every turn, the fugitive is pursued not just by would-be killers, but also a camera crew and a vapidly excited host.  Can a contestant survive?  And what price victory?  The theme was recycled for a part of Sheckley's recent novel, The Status Civilization.

The Humours (originally Join Now in December 1958 Galaxy): This rewrite is substantively similar to the original, but the premises are completely different.  In the future, it is possible to transfer parts of one's personality to a perfectly realistic android.  In the original story, this was done to address a labor shortage on Mars and Venus; individuals would split their personalities in three to work on all of the solar system's inhabited planets simultaneously.  In The Humours, the split is therapeutic, a remedy for Multiple Personality Disorder.  Both tales feature the journey of the "original" (at least, the personality piece inhabiting the human body) to reintegrate his brother personas.  A fun ride.

Triplication (May 1959 Playboy): A set of three humorous vignettes, the kind that are usually droll and forgettable.  Sheckley does it better.

The Minimum Man (June 1958 Galaxy): Who is best equipped to investigate a wild planet for colonization?  Not trained mercenaries, not seasoned jungle trekkers, not veteran explorers–for though they may survive the ordeal, their experience will not tell you if your average, civilization-softened settler can handle the place.  No, you want to send the least qualified pioneer possible.  If he can survive, anyone can.  Sounds like a silly premise, but it's really a beautiful story of a clod, his robot, and an untamed world.  Probably my favorite piece of the book.

If the Red Slayer (July 1959 Amazing): When resurrection technology is perfected, what's to keep a soldier from fighting forever in an endless war?  Nothing, apparently.  A bitter story with an ironically light touch; contrast with the jingoistic Dorsai! and Starship Troopers. 

The Store of the Worlds (September 1959 Playboy): Would you give up ten years of your life and your worldly possessions for a jaunt to an alternate Earth where all of your dreams have come true?  And just what kind of world would you have to have come from to make this trade appealing.  I tell you, Bob Sheckley is reason enough to get a subscription to Heffner's magazine…you read it for the articles, don't you?

The Gun without a Bang (June 1958 Galaxy): A silent weapon may be great for an assassin or a spy, but not so great against dumb animals.  After all, it is the loud report of a rifle as much as anything that scatters the wolfpack.  Still, a bangless gun can have some utility…  The weakest story of the collection, which is to say it gets three stars rather than four or five like the others.

The Deaths of Ben Baxter (July 1957 Galaxy): An excellent multiple-timeline story in which folks from a doomed future attempt to thwart their fate by adjusting the past.  The critical juncture involves the meeting of the same two men in three disparate settings (British, Hindu, and familiar New York).  My second favorite piece. 

4.5 stars.  Pick it up while you can!

3 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 3, 1960] With a little help from a friend (Murray Leinster's Men into Space)

9 Comments

Keeping up with all the science fiction releases is virtually impossible for one person.  Luckily, I'm not making this Journey alone.  When it turned out I could only review one of October's books, long-time fan TRX offered his services as a guest contributor.  He chose to cover Murray Leinster's Men into Space, a collection based on the recently completed television show which had garnered a strong fan base (alas, I was not one of them).  Let's see what he's got for us…

Our Gracious Host asked if I might do a guest post about the new Leinster book.  I naturally leapt at the chance.

While it's officially an October release, the book hasn't completely propagated through the publishing supply chains yet.  After a fruitless search through the local stores, I had an idea and called the lady at Big River Books (my favorite store) and gave her the title and author and asked if she could special order it for me.  Sure, not only that, she'd have it drop-shipped to my house to save me a trip to pick it up.  And she'd let me pay for it next time I was in.  I was delighted, but I'm not sure of the wisdom of being able to buy books over the phone with credit…

A plain brown envelope (well, buff is close enough to brown) showed up in due course, containing one (1) newly-printed book.

From the description on the back cover, "Men Into Space" sounds like it might be a "media tie-in", like the novel released after Forbidden Planet hit the theaters a few years ago.  If so, neither of my local stations has picked up the show.  I can only tell you about the book.

"Men Into Space" consists of short stories following the career of Space Force officer Ed McCauley:

As a lieutenant, McCauley makes the first manned rocket flight.

As a captain, McCauley deals with an injured crewman while piloting the first space-plane.

As a major, McCauley deals with a potentially-fatal construction accident while in charge the building of the first space station.

As a colonel, McCauley deals with a murderous personnel problem while overseeing the establishment of a series of radio relays to the moon's far side, then deals with a technical problem aboard a rocket to Venus, and another personnel problem on a Mars mission.

Lots of nuts and bolts details about ballistics, rocket fuels, radiation, the van Allen belts, and so forth.  And with each story, McCauley deals with progressively more complex human problems as he moves up in rank.

If you're starting to smell something odd… yes, this is a juvenile.

It's a *good* juvenile, however.  I was a rocket-head from the time I learned about the Army's missile program after the war, and if I was thirteen years old again I'd be all over this book.  I would have been entertained and instructed at the same time.

The problem is, judging from the cover, it appears to be marketed as a normal science fiction novel, not as a collection of stories appropriate for "Boy's Life."  I think most of the readers here at Galactic Journeys would be quite disappointed… and then they'd find their kids under the blanket reading it by flashlight after bed time.

Men into Space author Murray Leinster made his first sale in 1916.  In the last 44 years he has written a huge number of novels, short stories, and both radio and television scripts.  He has written westerns, mysteries, romance… and lots of science fiction.  He's an old hand who knows his craft back to front, and I expect he wrote exactly what he intended to.  Or what he was contracted for.

I don't know how the book will be marketed to schools and libraries, but the mass-market paperback edition is almost certainly going to be shelved with the rest of the science fiction instead of with the juveniles, and I expect that most purchasers will be in for a shock.  And that's doubly sad, since many of the the youth Leinster wrote for may never come across the book.

In short, Men into Space probably aims too low for the average Galactic Journeyer…but Christmas is coming, and if there are any ten-to-fifteen-year-old readers on your shopping list, they might find the book very enjoyable.

The nicely typewritten review was accompanied by the following note scrawled on a half-sheet of legal pad.

"Reading a book for review" is a very odd thing.  Book reports in school were mostly done to prove I'd actually read the book.  Here, I've tried to describe what the book *is*, not just what happened in it, and to make a guess as to what others here might think of it.  And I only made it a few pages in before I thought "what is this trash and how did it get printed?", and I started composing a scathing review in the back of my mind as I was reading.  I would have put the book down before finishing the first story had I not committed to writing a review.  About halfway through I realized what kind of book I was reading, and then had to stop and reconsider everything I'd read up to that point.  And when I finished and wrote the review, I looked at it again the next day and realized it was ridiculously long and crossed out most of it before retyping it and going to the Post Office.  Murray Leinster might be an old hand, but this sort of thing is new to me!

Experts make the challenging look easy, I guess.  But practice makes perfect, and I'm happy to say that we will likely see TRX again someday!

9 Comments Leave A Comment
Book

[Oct. 17, 1960] Aiming Low (Robert Buckner's Starfire)

6 Comments

Is dumbed-down science fiction a gateway or an embarrassment?

I commonly hear the complaint that our genre, namely science fiction and fantasy, is not taken seriously.  Despite the contributions of such luminaries as Ted Sturgeon, Zenna Henderson, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, etc., our field is generally considered to comprise purely low-brow fare.

Is it really a surprise?  When is the last time you watched an accurate science fiction movie?  How often do lurid pictures of steel-brassiere clad women grace the covers of our magazines, regardless of the content therein?  How distinguishable are these covers from those of the comic books?

Things are getting better, I think.  The number of science fiction magazines has dwindled to a manageable half-dozen or so, and in a sort of literary Darwinism, their stories are of superior caliber (generally).  Every month, several genre books are published; some of them really push the envelope both in writing and subject matter.

Which is why it's disappointing when I come across a throwback like Robert Buckner's Starfire, published this month by "Permabook."

The cover should have been warning enough.  The blurb advertises, "The Hilarious Exploits of a Bashful Scientist and a Creature Gorgeous Enough to Send any Man into Orbit," and the mostly naked redhead in the astronaut's arms is classic pulp cheesecake.  Still, there isn't much coming out this month, and I needed something to read on the flight to Seattle last week. 

At a bare 139 pages of big print, it didn't last half the journey.  Apparently, the book originally appeared as a serial for the Saturday Evening Post, which explains its vapid, layman-friendly style.

Giving credit where credit is due, the first forty pages are actually pretty good.  We are acquainted with a spaceman, Charlie, his orbital mission in progress.  He's in some kind of capsule, and this is a test flight for a trip around the moon.  There is a good deal of exposition explaining the basics of spacecraft mechanics and recovery, no doubt to catch up the uninitiated general reader.  Only after the mission is complete do we learn that Charlie is a chimpanzee, and that the ape was "man-rating" the spacecraft.  It was a nice touch, and had the story ended there, it would have made a fine novella for a science fiction digest… oh, about ten years ago.

But then the story continues.  The protagonist is Captain Richmond Talbot, the chimp's handler.  A pleasant, unprepossesing type, he is shanghaied into piloting the next flight of the spaceship: a Moon mission scheduled just five days hence!  Talbot is to be given no training.  He has trouble with airsickness.  He doesn't want to go.  Hilarious, right?

Talbot does manage to secure a few days leave to visit his family.  On the way there, he encounters Lyrae, a beautiful young redhead with truly alien manners: she doesn't wear make-up, pluck her eyebrows, or wear a bra (steel or otherwise)!  Oh, and she does speak with a slight accent.  She attempts to warn Talbot that his flight will be fatal unless he wears a special helmet and coats the rocket with rubidium alloy.  This is corroborated externally; after returning from space, it turns out that Charlie's exposure to "proton radiation" has driven him insane.  Hijinks ensue when Talbot assumes Lyrae is a Russian spy and the FBI gets involved.  For a while, Talbot becomes a virtual prisoner of the G-Men during their investigation.

Of course, it turns out Lyrae really is an alien (and all those flying saucers and cigars?  Those are real aliens, too).  The FBI agents are no match for the girl, who turns out to be telepathic and something of a teleport.  She frees Talbot, and they run away together in a race against time to fix the rocket before liftoff.  Along the way, Talbot falls in love with Lyrae, of course.  This turns out to be a bit of a foregone conclusion; prescience is also one of Lyrae's many talents, and she's known since the start that Talbot is her future husband.  Hence why she is so keen on seeing him make his Moon trip successfully.

Everything ends well.  Talbot gets his helmet and his fixed-up rocket.  On his way to the Moon, he is intercepted by Lyrae and whisked off to interstellar parts unknown.  Finis.

Now, I don't want you to get the impression that the book is unmitigatedly awful.  It's not.  It's a bit brainless, and it aims quite a bit lower than those of us in the F&SF crowd (or even the Analog crowd) prefer.  But I like the satirical brush with which Buckner paints the book's politicians and officers, and the beginning was solid.  All in all, Starfire is rather well-written and diverting, even if it doesn't do our genre much credit.  Could it be a gateway book?  Perhaps.  I'd certainly classify it as a juvenile if it hadn't been written for a general adult audience. 

What does that tell you about the general adult audience?

2.5 stars out of 5 (mediocre).

6 Comments Leave A Comment
Book

[Sep. 21, 1960] If you can't beat em… (Theodore Sturgeon's Venus Plus X)

10 Comments

Ted Sturgeon wrote a book about sex.

It appears that Sturgeon has always wanted to write "a decent book about sex,"–how it affects our society, not the act itself.  At least, that's what Sturgeon says in the post-script of his strange new novel, Venus Plus X.  Well, it is a decent book (pun intended), and Sturgeon has a lot to say about sex and the relations of the genders in its 160 pages.  Some of it is told, some of it is shown; the end result is a fiction-buffered sermon not unlike the kind Heinlein likes to concoct. 

First, a Cook's tour of the plot.  Venus is really two concurrent stories.  The "A plot" involves Charlie Johns, a bit of a lover, a bit of a loser, snatched from present-day America by a band of futuristic hermaphrodites called Ledom.  These are not aliens, mind you–just a new variety of genderless humanity.  His kidnappers ostensibly have the most benign of intentions for Johns.  They simply want him to observe their society and give his opinions; whereupon, he can return whence he came.

Ledom (the place and the people share a name) is a technological wonderland.  The Ledom obtain limitless power from the "A-field," which generates energy from a matter-antimatter reaction, the antimatter being (tautologically) generated by the A-field.  This makes possible structures built in the shape of cornucopias balanced on their points.  Food is abundant, delicious, and perfectly tailored.  Transportation is as instant as one would like.  Most importantly, the lands of the Ledom are completely shielded from the outside world.  It is always sunny in Ledom, and no harmful elements can intrude.

This seeming paradise is also sociologically perfect.  There is no War between the Sexes.  Indeed, there is no violence at all.  Mating is completely consensual and pleasurable, but it is not the driving force nor the pinnacle expression of love for the Ledom.  Children are raised in common, and all are taught to eke a living from the soil, even in the presence of the bounty made possible by the A-field.  Thanks to the other great Ledom invention, the "cerebrostyle," education can be implanted directly in a Ledom's mind.  This frees people to pursue the careers for which they feel most suited.

Sturgeon gives each episode of Johns' journey loving, perhaps overindulgent, attention.  The clothes, the food, the buildings, the pottery, the incessant singing of the children, the worship of the children by the adults (the only kind of religion in which the Ledom indulge), all get pages of description.  The impression one is left with, that one is supposed to be left with, is that through the elimination of gender and by learning from humanity's mistakes, the Ledom have created Heaven on Earth.

As counterpoint, Sturgeon gives us the "B plot," which appears in vignettes alternating regularly with the pieces of Johns' story.  Told in the present tense to further stress its otherness, it is a slice-of-life portrayal of two families living next door to each other in near-future suburbia.  In this thread, Sturgeon points out two concurrent trends: the increasing convergence of male and female roles, and the reactionary reinforcement of "traditional" gender identities.  In the former, we see the genesis of the Ledom; in the latter, we see the strife the Ledom have apparently avoided.

Also highlighted are our (1960s American) hang-ups regarding the physical act of sex.  Again, the Ledom have avoided them, but at a price you and I might be unwilling to pay. 

In presenting the book as I have, theme-first, if you will, it must sound frightfully dull.  Well, it is, in some parts.  Even Sturgeon's unquestioned gift for the written word cannot completely sugar-coat this horse pill of sociology.  The great mystery driving the story (and one is mostly aware of it thanks to the dramatic blurb on the back of the book) is only revealed and then quickly resolved near the end.  As a result, there isn't a lot of a plot to the story, nor much build-up. 

That said, the questions posed are fascinating, and if the reader doesn't leave with profound insights on gender relations, s/he will at least come away with profound insights on Ted Sturgeon. 

Three and a half stars. 

Note: The title of the story is derived from a passage in the book.  At one point, Johns wonders how to represent the gender of the androgynous Ledom: "They used to use the astronomical symbols for Mars and Venus for male and female…What in hell would they use for these?  Mars plus y?  Venus plus x?"

This pedant thinks it makes more sense to say "Mars plus x, Venus plus y" (after the sex-determining chromosome).  Perhaps "Venus Plus Y" was a less appealing title.

Note 2: The book can also be purchased here

10 Comments Leave A Comment