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[August 14, 1966] So Bad It's Hilarious (The Star Magicians by Lin Carter/The Off-Worlders by John Baxter (Ace Double G-588))

August 14, 2021 Cora Buhlert 4 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

Science Fiction at the Newsstand

Issue 258 of Perry Rhodan features the fan favourite character Gucky the mouse beaver on the cover, expertly drawn by Johnny Bruck.

Ever since its debut almost five years ago, West German science fiction has been synonymous with the dime novel series Perry Rhodan. Issue 258 of Perry Rhodan came out this week and so far, the series shows no sign of faltering.

Success breeds imitators and so there have been challengers for the crown of West Germany's premier science fiction series. The first challenger Mark Powers was hampered by old fashioned and inconsistent plots and so the series was discontinued in 1964, though Mark Powers still occasionally pops up in the pages of the anthology series Utopia Zukunftsroman.

This month, a new challenger appeared on West German newsstands. Ren Dhark is penned by former Perry Rhodan writer Kurt Brand and published by Kelter Verlag. Only one issue has come out so far, but what I've read looks promising.

The first issue of Ren Dhark, the latest Perry Rhodan challenger

The story begins in the far off future of 2051 AD, when overpopulation – a popular theme in current science fiction, as Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room! and several of the stories collected in Orbit 1 show – forces humanity to look for a new home among the stars. So the starship Galaxis under the command of Captain Sam Dhark (no reason is given for the odd spelling of the name) departs for Deneb with fifty thousand colonists. However, the time effect drive malfunctions, stranding the Galaxis in the depths of space, turned into an involuntary generation ship.

Eventually, the Galaxis, now commanded by the titular Ren Dhark, son of the late captain, manages to find a habitable planet. But their problems have only just begun, because the planet in question is not only habitable, but also inhabited…

Ren Dhark started out promising enough, though not particularly innovative. Nonetheless, I will certainly haunt the newsstand on the lookout for issue 2.

Science Fiction at the Spinner Rack

However, my main source of new science fiction is still the spinner rack at my local import bookstore. And during my last visit, I managed to snap up the latest Ace Double, number G-588 to be exact, which includes The Off-Worlders by John Baxter and The Star Magicians by Lin Carter.

The Off-Worlders has just been serialised in New Worlds under the title The God Killers, so I'll just point you to Mark Yon's review of the novel and delve right into the other half of this Ace Double.

Most readers of the Journey will probably know Lin Carter mainly from his "Our Man in Fandom" columns in If, but he is also an up and coming science fiction and fantasy writer. Erika Frank reviewed his sword and sorcery novel The Wizard of Lemuria last year. Now, Carter has set his sights on space opera, though barbarians still feature prominently.

A Familiar History

Amazingly, Jack Gaughan's cover is an accurate illustration of a scene in the novel.

The Star Magicians begins with one of those dreaded information laden prologues which occasionally afflict science fiction novels. In fact, when I read the capsule history of the fall of the Great Carina Empire, I briefly wondered whether I had accidentally picked up a later book in an ongoing series.

But even if there is no previous novel in the series, the history of the Carina Empire, which is beset by barbarians at its borders and eventually breaks apart and descends into a new dark age, will seem familiar to anybody who knows even a lick of history, for here is the fall of the Roman Empire replayed once again in outer space.

However, one planet stands firm against the new dark age and the barbarian Star Rovers: the planet Parlion, which is inhabited by a group called the White Wizards, who preserve science and technology and are considered magicians by their less enlightened neighbours. If that story seems familiar, it's probably because you've read it before when it was still called Foundation and penned by Isaac Asimov.

Naked Bodies and Tortured Metaphors

Once the actual plot begins, the novel becomes more engaging, though not necessarily better or more original. The story proper opens in an arena, where a would-be Conan gladiator is fighting against an alien monster, while the barbarian warlord Drask looks on and fondles a naked girl.

The naked girl is a captive princess, though you wouldn't know it from the first chapter. Carter repeatedly starts and then fails to describe the young woman, getting sidetracked by reminiscing about the conquest of the planet in a pitched space battle, describing the chafing and sweat-soaked leather and iron garb of a barbarian warrior and lovingly detailing the manly vigour and magnificent body of the gladiator (who will be dead within two pages, his "nakedness clothed in dripping scarlet").

Here's a typical example of Lin Carter's tortured prose. If this is too much for you, best bail out now, because the entire book is like that:

Above, in the royal box, Drask reclined at his ease on the satin cushions, half his cynical attention on the tragic drama unfolding below, and half on the trembling young girl beside him, whose nude breasts he was idly fondling. A philosopher in his rough way, the Warlord of the Star Rovers mused on the changeful ways of Fate. In this moment of time the young Argionid swordsman was filled with robust life, bursting with manly vigor in the full hot morning of his youth… in the next moment, his splendid, virile body would be an awful bundle of bloody rags, crushed in the inexorable jaws of the slavering thard.

We are toys at the feet of the gods, he thought.

When Carter finally remembers to describe the young princess – or rather her breasts – he compares them to "warm, white fruit", at which point I wondered whether Carter has ever seen a naked woman, or eaten fruit, for that matter.

After the would-be Conan has met his demise, we are finally introduced to the actual protagonist, Perion of North Hollis (which sounds like a stop on the London Underground rather than a city on an alien planet), a minstrel sentenced to die in the arena for treason. However, Perion manages to outwit the monster and is pardoned and even invited to a feast of the Star Rovers, where he further ingratiates himself by stopping the captive princess from stabbing the warlord Drask. Her attempt at revenge foiled, the princess stabs herself and is forgotten within a page. We never even learn her name nor anything about her appearance except that she has breasts.

Lin Carter

White Wizards and Green Goddesses

What follows is a clunky and exposition laden dialogue, which not only repeats information we already got in the equally clunky prologue, but also reveals that there is only one person who can stand against the mighty warlord Drask, namely Calastor, one of the White Wizards of Parlion. Not only does Calastor have superior quasi-magic technology, he also has dozens of minions willing to do his bidding. Worse, no one knows what he looks like. "For aught we know, he might be standing among us at the very moment," mutters one of the few named Star Rovers at the feast. Anybody who has read Isaac Asimov's Foundation series may develop certain suspicions at this point.

Since the princess committed suicide, Drask is in need of a new bed companion and picks a random dancing girl, who promptly tries to stab him again. Even Drask, who's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, thinks that two assassination attempts in one night are a little much to be a coincidence. So he examines the dagger with which the girl tried to stab him and finds a glowing green stone, a talisman dedicated to the Green Goddess of Malkh. The dancing girl is one of her priestesses. For it turns out that Drask has not one but two sworn enemies in the galaxy, the White Wizard and the Green Goddess. Of course, it might have been helpful if Carter had mentioned that tidbit of information before.

The interrogation of the dancing girl, whose name is revealed to be Lurn, reveals nothing, because Lurn downs a potion that – no, this time around, the potion doesn't kill her, it only makes her fall asleep. When the sleeping Lurn is taken to the dungeon for further interrogation, she vanishes into thin air.

Lurn reappears on the next day, hidden in Perion's baggage, which leads to both her and Perion being arrested. During their interrogation, Perion is unmasked as none other than Calastor, the White Wizard and sworn enemy of Drask. This turn of events might have been a genuine surprise, if Carter hadn't borrowed it wholesale from "The Mule" part of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. And just in case you failed to notice the parallels, Perion is even shown with a (pack)mule shortly before his arrest. In fact, the only surprise is that the reveal happens halfway through the novel rather than at the end, as I expected.

Calastor and Lurn escape Drask by teleporting to safety and engage in yet another exchange of long explanations aboard Calastor's spaceship. Calastor reveals that he must stop Drask and the Star Rovers soon, because they are threatening the planet that the White Wizards of Parlion have picked out as the nucleus of the new galactic empire they are trying to build.

Smoke and Mirrors

The story now heads to Xulthoom, the planet of mists and also the planet that drives men mad. Xulthoom is a fascinating setting with its ancient ruins and perpetual mists and I wonder what e.g. Leigh Brackett could do with it. Lin Carter does not nearly have Leigh Brackett's skills, but even he manages to convey the spooky atmosphere of Xulthoom.

Calastor uses his quasi-magical science to mentally destabilise the Star Rovers and turn them against each other, while gizmo-speaking to Lurn and spouting an amount of nonsense about psionics that would impress even John W. Campbell.

Due to Calastor's manipulations, the Star Rovers go mad one by one and begin to hear voices. Some literally die of fear. In the end, even Drask himself hears a voice, supposedly that of the Green Goddess, warning him to return to the Rim Stars whence he came or suffer the consequences. However, the message from the Green Goddess is not Calastor's doing. There is another power at work here.

Spooked by the message of the Green Goddess, Drask finally gives the order to abandon Xulthoom – no, not to go home, but to conquer the next planet, the one planet that the White Wizards want to keep the Star Rovers away from at all costs.

Calastor summons some help from Parlion and together the White Wizards attempt to dissuade the Star Rovers from travelling onwards by projecting an illusion of space dragons attacking the fleet. However, the Star Rover shaman Abdekiel, an offensive Asian stereotype who is frequently likened to a "butter yellow buddha", sees through the ruse.

So Calastor and his companions teleport aboard the Star Rover flagship to face Drask and his men directly. The White Wizards use their mental powers to disarm the barbarians, while Calastor gets involved in a prolonged and remarkably well described swordfight.

The standoff is interrupted by the Green Goddess herself, who thoroughly smites the Star Rover fleet, a scene strikingly illustrated by Jack Gaughan on the cover. Finally, the Goddess teleports the adversaries away, metes out punishment to Drask and gives her blessing to the marriage of Calastor and Lurn (who turns out to be a princess as well), who will rule together over the world that will become the nucleus of the new empire.

An Unholy Mess

Lin Carter was aiming for Isaac Asimov's Foundation as written by Robert E. Howard. However, Carter has the skill of neither Asimov nor Howard and so the result is just a mess.

One technique that Carter borrows from Robert E. Howard is Howard's tendency to begin a story with a supporting character before his barbarian adventurer Conan steps onto the scene. But while Howard never leaves any doubt that Conan is the hero of the story, Carter seems unsure which of his characters is the protagonist. By rights, Calastor and Lurn should be the stars, but Calastor vanishes for chapters at a time and Lurn never even acquires a personality, so Drask, the villain, is the closest thing to a protagonist this unholy mess of a novel has.

Make no mistake, this is a terrible book. It's certainly the worst book I have ever reviewed for Galactic Journey. The plot is hackneyed, the prose is tortured and so purple that it almost crosses over into ultraviolet. In fact, this book is so awful that I wonder how desperate Ace must have been to publish it. If there was a Hugo Award for the worst science fiction novel, The Star Magicians would be the uncontested winner.

However, this novel has one redeeming feature: it is at least entertainingly terrible. In fact, the book is utterly hilarious. I was giggling the whole time I read it and regaled friends and family members with reading Lin Carter's awful prose out loud. If The Star Magicians were a parody, it would be absolutely brilliant. But unfortunately, it's supposed to be a serious space opera adventure.

I'm sure there is something that Lin Carter excels at and I hope that he will eventually find it. However, writing science fiction is not it.

One and a half stars

Workers at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen are enjoyaing a well deserved break in the summer sun.

Meanwhile, these three young ladies are enjoying a swim in the Stadionbad public pool in Bremen.

Rosel George Brown's new hit novel, Sibyl Sue Blue, is much better than Lin Carter's book. You might want to get the taste out with it!

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 8, 1966] A Leaden Kind of Fluff (Watchers of the Dark, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.)

August 8, 2021 John Boston Leave a comment

by John Boston

Watchers of the Dark, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

Lloyd Biggle’s Watchers of the Dark is a sequel to All the Colors of Darkness (1963), which I am sure I read when it came out but can’t remember a thing about. That’s easier to understand after reading the new book.

Jan Darzek is a private detective in New York City in a future where people get around by means of matter transmitters. He occupies himself with such challenges as a poison pen letter writer, a bookkeeping saboteur, and vending machine pirates. He has a sixtyish secretary, Miss Schlupe, a/k/a Schluppy, who is known for such exploits as breaking bones, reads confession magazines for relaxation, and brews her own rhubarb beer, which makes repeated appearances in the story.

by Emanuel Schongut

A Mr. Smith, who is repeatedly described as reminiscent of a dead fish, tries to hire Darzek for a dangerous and time-consuming assignment that he won’t describe in advance. Darzek doesn’t want the job and demands a million dollars in small bills as an initial payment, and shortly his office is full of cardboard boxes of money. So it’s a contract!

It seems there is a galactic federation that keeps loose order in a galaxy heavily populated with sentient species, with unruly worlds like Earth excluded, i.e., “uncertified.” Someone or something called Supreme is in charge, and asked for Darzek by name. For what? To investigate the Dark—an unknown something that is taking over worlds in some unknown fashion and cutting them off from the usual galactic commerce. All that is known is that the “natives”—Biggle’s word, throughout—become hostile to interstellar traders and riot and pillage, driving them off their planets.

Why hire a private eye from a world with no knowledge of the galactic civilization to investigate this threat to its existence? It’s not explained, but before he can do anything, he and Schluppy have to go to school to learn multiple languages—“And manners and customs and finance and business and practical technology.” It’s hard to believe the galaxy doesn’t have a few good detectives, pre-acculturated and ready to go.

Once their lengthy schooling is complete, Darzek and Schluppy head off towards the Council of Supreme, unaccompanied. Their contact, a textile merchant, doesn’t show up and turns up dead in space, showing that the Dark is on to them even if it hasn’t found them yet. Darzek immediately finds the room from which the merchant was defenestrated, and his sample case. They figure out how to transmit themselves to a hotel.

Three creatures transmit into their room and try to kill them, using weapons we later learn are called Eyes of Death, but Darzek kills them by moving quickly and shooting them with his automatic, assisted by Miss Schlupe with her knitting needle. Next, a member of the Council of Supreme, called EIGHT, shows up, and when he sees the carnage, says, “Now I understand why you were chosen. Praise Supreme!”

This all takes us through a little more than a quarter of this moderately long (228 pages) book, but the landscape is plain enough, and it doesn’t get better. It’s a sort of collage of cliches from 1950s-and-later SF, like a ransom note made with words clipped out of magazines: the galactic civilization governed by what amounts to a rudimentary quasi-monarchy, the mysterious menace, and the hyper-competent savior from Earth to set it all right. There is the menagerie of funny-looking aliens, distinguished from one another only by their looks, increasingly cartoonish as the book progresses, and no match for the superior intellect and talents of the Earthman. Indeed, it comes to resemble the familiar repertoire of Eric Frank Russell and Christopher Anvil: smart humans and dumb aliens, played for laughs, except that Biggle is even less funny than Anvil. He’s clearly trying, at least occasionally, but he just doesn’t know how. The book is impossible to take seriously and fails as farce.

This is not a terrible book. Being terrible requires at least some distinctive character, and this has none. It’s a species of determined mediocrity, reshuffling stock elements with a certain facility but with no value added in style, concept, or anything else. Apparently the publishing strategy is a sort of arbitrage of boredom—as long as it is marginally more interesting than what is going on around the potential reader, it will sell. I feel for anyone who is that bored. One star.

Need something to take the taste out of your mouth? Pick up a copy of Rosel George Brown's new hit novel, Sibyl Sue Blue!

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 14, 1966] October's Judgment (July Galactoscope)

July 14, 2021 John Boston Leave a comment

This month's Galactoscope features a pair of tales from two of the genre's bigger names. Just the sort of mid-summer pick-me-up to get you through the Dog Days… Siriusly!"

by Gideon Marcus

October the First is Too Late, by Fred Hoyle

Fred Hoyle, a prominent British astronomer and also a popular science fiction author (recently of A for Andromeda fame) has come out with quite an interesting little novel. October the First is Too Late is several things in one, which I suppose makes sense given the subject.

The story begins in modern day. Our protagonist, Richard, is a rather prominent composer coming off a disappointing show in Germany. He meets up with an old college buddy, a brilliant physicist (John Sinclair), and the two head off to the Scottish Highlands for a trek. It's a pleasant jaunt with one odd episode: halfway through, John disappears for 30 hours, and when he turns up, he is missing a birthmark he's had all his life.

Coincident with this, the interplanetary rocket for which John prepared some of the experiments has detected odd emanations from the Sun. Perhaps they are modulations of an extraterrestrial beacon system, or maybe their tremendous energies have a more sinister purpose. Sinclair and our viewpoint character head to Hawaii to process the latest data — only to find themselves hurled into a crazy, splintered world. Hawaii is alright, and Fiji, and maybe England. But the rest of the world has become a jumble of different timezones, assembled like a strange jigsaw puzzle.

Why has this happened, and if it be an artificial occurrence, who is responsible?

October is a strange, meandering piece. It hardly does anything for 52 pages, then becomes an exciting voyage of discovery. The last third is something else yet again, something like G.C. Edmondson's The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream. It shouldn't work, with its chatty digressions and frequent scientific/philosophical expositions…and yet it does. October is a highly readable, breezily intelligent novel. It's one I can see myself picking up again for a few more reads, and I imagine it could appear on next year's Hugo ballot.

Four stars.

The Judgment of Eve, by Edgar Pangborn

by John Boston

Edgar Pangborn is one of the finer writers and more luminous spirits to grace SF’s disreputable precincts. After winning the International Fantasy Award for his second SF novel, A Mirror for Observers (1954), he took a detour and published a historical novel, Wilderness of Spring (1957), and a contemporary novel, The Trial of Callista Blake (1961). But in 1964 he returned to SF with Davy, a post-nuclear-war story which made the Hugo ballot and to my taste probably should have won.

Davy portrayed a world centuries after nuclear war in which our present society's knowledge has mostly been lost, and the remainder forbidden by a repressive church. That is, absolutely nothing original; the book was made by the characters and by the vivid detail in which Pangborn imagined a world whose outlines have grown all too familiar during the post-Hiroshima course of SF. The frame is that Davy is writing a memoir of his picaresque adventures, with a goodly dollop of libertarian philosophizing along the way. The result is sometimes reminiscent of Mark Twain, though hints of Jubal Harshaw drift in occasionally.

by Lawrence Ratzkin

Pangborn’s new novel The Judgment of Eve is another, and less satisfactory, kettle of fish. It is set about 30 years after the war, which it turns out involved few actual bombs, but a long siege of plagues, greatly depopulating the world but not irradiating it. Eve Newman, 28 years old, lives with her elderly and blind mother in a farmhouse far down a gravel side road; they’ve had no contact with other humans for many years, except for Caleb, seemingly a half-witted mutant.

Then three guys show up at the door, fleeing from a repressive settlement, and of course they are all smitten by young Eve, and she is smitten by the idea of having a mate. But she has to make a choice, obviously (at least in this book’s moral universe). So she sets them all a task: go forth and figure out what love is, and report back at the beginning of October, a few months away. The rest of the book consists of the separate accounts of what each suitor does and finds before their reunion at Eve’s place.

Sounds like a fairy tale, and if you don’t figure it out on your own, the point is rubbed in by a brief reading from Grimm before Eve issues her orders. Further, this purports to be a critical edition of the Judgment of Eve legend by scholars of later centuries, meaning that as you read the novel, obtrusive commentary pops up all too frequently concerning the relative plausibility of this and other versions, with occasional bursts of sarcasm concerning competing scholarly points of view.

It’s unusual to see a writer so gifted get in his own way so conclusively. Pangborn is an unassumingly graceful stylist and a compelling story-teller, with a special talent for portraying physical settings and for convincingly developing the inner life of his characters. The supposed critical commentary here has about the same effect on the reading experience as auto horns honking outside the window, while the fairy-tale frame distances the reader from the otherwise engaging story and characters.

But still, most of the time it’s a pleasure to read. Pangborn’s failure is more worthwhile than many writers’ successes. Three and a half stars.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 10, 1966] Froth, Fun, and Serious Social Commentary (Sibyl Sue Blue)

July 10, 2021 Janice L. Newman 1 Comment

by Janice L. Newman

Sibyl Sue Blue was not what I expected.

Set in the futuristic year of 1990, Rosel George Brown’s Sibyl Sue Blue takes place in a world both like and unlike today’s world of 1966. Sibyl is a tenacious and smart detective working for the city’s homicide department. When a series of bizarre ‘suicides’ start plaguing the city’s youth, she’s called in to investigate. As she follows the clues, she’s drawn into increasingly strange events, from trying alien drugs to being invited to join a spacefaring millionaire on an off-world jaunt.

Sounds like fun, right? Yet when Judith Merril told me the other day that she’ll be reviewing it in an upcoming issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, she mentioned that “…under all the froth and fun and furious action, there is more acute comment on contemporary society than you are likely to find in any half dozen deadly serious social novels.”

She’s right!

The cover of Sibyl Sue Blue shows her smoking her signature cigar.

That’s not to say that Sibyl Sue Blue is dry, boring, or preachy. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of these things. But, as Merril promised, beneath the wild ride exists a sharp yet understated criticism of both modern racial tensions and treatment of women in science fiction.

Let’s take racial tensions, for example. When I say that SSB offers subtle commentary on race relations, I’m not talking about the obvious parallels between the story’s alien Centaurians and modern day Black people. That analogy is obvious to anyone with half a brain: places where the ‘aliens’ have moved in have become ghettos, they smoke strange cigarettes, and they are generally distrusted by the native human population – but if you’re a cop, you don’t dare say so.

I’ll admit, it threw me for a loop at first. What was with this heavy-handed analogy? It wasn’t until I read further into the story that I got it. The subtlety comes into play in Sibyl’s interactions with Centaurians, as well as Brown’s portrayal of them. Throughout the story Sibyl treats Centaurians the same way she treats humans. Though she warns her colleague not to get caught saying he doesn’t like Centaurians, never once does Sibyl herself express dislike or distrust of a Centaurian simply because they are Centaurian. In fact, though the story opens with her being attacked by a Centaurian, her sharp mind is already searching for the reason behind his actions.

Then, too, Brown’s portrayals of Centaurians are as variegated as her portrayals of humans. They’re not saints, but they’re no worse than anyone else, and better than many. And like humans, they can be coerced, manipulated, and used by people or entities more powerful than themselves.

There’s a certain cynicism coloring everything. The good-hearted and earnest “Jimmy” says things like, “Gee, it’s a shame about Centaurian prejudice,” and sounds hopelessly naive. Yet only a couple of chapters later, Sibyl doesn’t hesitate to invite her Centaurian friend, contact, and occasional lover over for some info and an intimate pick-me-up. The contrast between Sibyl’s attitude and Jimmy’s is telling. It’s not enough to criticize prejudice, Sibyl (and Brown) seems to be saying. You need to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. And Sibyl walks it – boy, does she!

Rosel George Brown, author of Sibyl Sue Blue.

Speaking of walking the walk, another thing that startled me, at least until I got what Brown was doing, was the story’s ‘romantic’ subplot.

Multiple science fiction magazines and occasional science fiction novels, TV shows, and movies are released every month in the USA and the UK. In a good month, maybe ten percent of the fifty or sixty stories published are penned by women. In a bad month, none of the stories are written by a woman. The average usually falls somewhere in-between.

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise, then, that so few protagonists of science fiction tales are women. Whether written by men or women, whether they’re complex and interesting or shallow and flat, main characters are overwhelmingly white men. When women do show up, they’re often relegated to the role of helpmate, something in need of rescuing, or the prize the man wins after overcoming his trials – sometimes all three!

Obviously, there are plenty of exceptions, but in terms of trends, if a beautiful woman is introduced into a story (or a TV show, or a movie) in the first act, chances are she’ll fall in love with the male lead by the end. This is true regardless of how unappealing, uninteresting, or unlikeable the man is.

This cliché is another that Sibyl Sue Blue turns on its head. What is it like to be the woman who seemingly inexplicably falls for a rich, handsome, clever, yet completely terrible man? What happens when a woman who is herself independent, interesting, and already has her own life suddenly gets caught up in the implacable tide of the plot?

Traditionally, the woman marries the man after he solves the case and the two live ‘happily’ ever after. But as I found when I kept reading, if the woman is someone like Sibyl Sue Blue, nothing will turn out the way you expect!

Sibyl is fascinating. She’s small but powerful, repeatedly shown as able to hold her own in a fight, even against men who are bigger than she. Yet she’s also unapologetically feminine. She enjoys wearing nice dresses, applying makeup, and accessorizing. Far from being stoic, when something terrifying and grotesque happens, she screams. When she’s overwhelmed, she cries.

And then she gets up and keeps going. Like so many women throughout history, when faced with circumstances far beyond her control, when she’s sick and exhausted and frightened, she keeps pushing forward.

Rosel George Brown and her children.

Sibyl Sue Blue has silver stripes in her hair and a daughter in high school. She’s strong and vulnerable and smart. She enjoys a startling amount of sexual freedom, unhesitatingly inviting handsome men to her bed as a matter of course. Above all, she is herself – not an easily categorized and dismissed ‘helpmate’, ‘damsel in distress’, or ‘prize’. She’s human and messy and makes mistakes and is sometimes clever. She’s as complex and interesting as the best of the male leads, and maybe even more than any of them.

Because I’ve read the stories of a lot of white men, but I’ve never met a character like Sibyl Sue Blue.

Get your copy of Sibyl Sue Blue from Journey Press today!

Custom bookplates with art by The Young Traveler available at a bookstore near you!

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[July 4, 1966] The Daughters of Jane Eyre (Gothic Romances and a New Soap Opera)

July 4, 2021 Victoria Silverwolf Leave a comment

by Victoria Silverwolf

From the Castle of Otranto to Northanger Abbey

Most literary historians state that the first Gothic novel was The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole. It set the pattern for later spooky stories. You know the type; mysteries, curses, hidden passages, innocent heroines prone to fainting, etc.

All that stuff about being translated from Italian by the nonexistent William Marshal is fictional. Note that the book was very popular, going through multiple editions.

Walpole's bestseller inspired many imitations. The genre was so popular that it was parodied in Jane Austen's posthumously published novel Northanger Abbey (1817), in which a naïve young woman who reads too much Gothic fiction imagines all sorts of dark secrets behind perfectly innocent situations.

It first appeared with Persuasion, another posthumous novel.

Frankenstein Meets Dracula

One of the most famous works of Gothic fiction appeared soon after, with the publication of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. This groundbreaking work, which one might think of as the first real science fiction novel, spawned countless adaptations and imitations, in the form of movies, comic books, and so forth.

It seems odd that authors didn't want their names on their books back in the old days.

I'm sure you're familiar with the scary stories that appeared during the Victorian era, from Edgar Allan Poe's chilling tales of madness and murder, to Bram Stoker's seminal vampire novel Dracula (1897).

The cover of the first edition. Looks very modern, doesn't it?

Isn't It Romantic?

Let me back up a little bit and mention the Brontë sisters, particularly Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre, both published in 1847. Both books added a touch of romance to Gothic fiction, particularly the latter.

At least she used a pseudonym instead of being completely anonymous.

I hesitate to call Wuthering Heights a love story, although you might think it one if you've only seen the movie. The relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff in the book is more complex than simply a romance. (It's a very strange novel in many ways.)

Note that the book pretends to be a true account, and the similarity in pseudonyms. Their sister Anne Brontë used the pseudonym Acton Bell for her novels, which lie outside the topic of this article.

Jane Eyre is more obviously a romance, although it certainly contains elements of Gothic fiction as well. This blending of love and terror had an important influence on romantic novels of the current century, eventually leading to the marketing category of Gothic Romances.

(Just to make things completely clear, allow me to emphasize the fact that I am using the term Romances — note the capital letter — to refer to books sold as love stories. It should not be confused with the rather old-fashioned use of the word romance — note the small letter — to mean an imaginative tale, as in the archaic term scientific romance for what we now call science fiction.)

The most important modern Gothic Romance, I think, is Daphne du Maurier's 1938 bestseller Rebecca. The success of this novel, and the award-winning 1940 Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation, led to many similar books, which you can still find on the paperback racks of your local drug store.

The similarity to the cover of Dracula is interesting.

There are lots of these things floating around, usually with a cover depicting a beautiful young woman and a sinister building in the background. Often there's a single light in the window.

Science fiction writers sometimes produce Gothic Romances as well.

Welcome to Collinsport

I offer you this rather haphazard look at a particular category of popular fiction because the subject came to mind when a new daytime drama (that's a euphemism for soap opera) premiered on American television one week ago. Dark Shadows — even the title suggests Gothic elements — offers the kind of shuddery thrills found in the books I've been discussing. Heck, even the music played during the opening title sequence is spooky!

The first few minutes of the initial episode introduce us to the protagonist and her employers. In the tradition of Jane Eyre, our innocent heroine, Victoria Winters, is an orphan hired to work as a governess.

Victoria Winters, played by newcomer Alexandra Moltke, ponders her past and future.

She travels by train from a foundling home in New York to the fictional village of Collinsport, Maine, where she is to watch over David Collins, the ten-year-old son of Roger Collins.

Young actor David Henesy as the troubled boy David Collins. It must make it easier to have the same first name as your character.

Roger is separated from his wife, David's mother, and is living on the huge estate, including a spooky mansion, known as Collinwood with his fabulously wealthy sister, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Elizabeth's husband disappeared eighteen years ago, and she hasn't left Collinwood since.

Louis Edmonds as Roger Collins and movie star Joan Bennett as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. You may have seen her share top billing with Edward G. Robinson in The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945), or with Gregory Peck in The Macomber Affair (1947).

Arriving on the same train as Victoria is Burke Devlin. Like many male characters in Gothic Romances, he's darkly attractive, but obviously has some kind of secret in his past. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Roger is upset when he learns Burke is back in Collinsport.

Mitchell Ryan as Burke Devlin, ruggedly handsome antihero.

Mention should be made of Carolyn Stoddard, Elizabeth's daughter, and her boyfriend, Joe Haskell. Joe wants to marry her, but Carolyn is reluctant. She also seems to be interested in Burke.

Nancy Barrett as Carolyn Stoddard. Women in nightgowns are a staple of Gothic Romances.

Joel Crothers as Joe Haskell, in a happy mood.

Rounding out the list of major characters are Sam Evans, an artist who appears to know something about the trouble between Roger and Burke, and his daughter Maggie, waitress at the local diner.

Kathryn Leigh Scott, in an obvious blonde wig, greets Victoria at the diner, and provides exposition for the audience.

Mark Allen as Sam Evans, who drinks a lot at the Blue Whale, which seems to be the only place to get booze in Collinsport.

After only six episodes, counting today's, we've already got a lot of mysteries. Who were Victoria's parents? Why does Elizabeth want her to work at Collinwood? Where has Burke been for several years? Why did he return to Collinsport? Why is Roger unhappy to know he's around? What does Sam know about the situation? What happened to Elizabeth's husband? Why hasn't she left the estate since he vanished? What's in the locked room in the basement?

Besides all this stuff, we've got subtle hints of the supernatural. Victoria hears unexplained sobbing sounds in the middle of the night. David claims that ghosts told him to send Victoria away. Sam tells her that Collinwood is haunted by Josette, a French woman who leapt to her death from a cliff called Widow's Hill nearly two centuries ago. Whether the ghosts will turn out to be real or not remains to be seen.

It's also unknown whether this offbeat soap opera will stick around for any length of time. It's a production of ABC (American Broadcasting Company), which is something of an upstart network, much newer than CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) and NBC (National Broadcasting Company.) In my neck of the woods, Dark Shadows shows up at four o'clock in the afternoon, and faces competition from well-established programs on the other networks.

This CBS soap opera has been on the air since 1954.

On NBC, we have The Match Game, which has been running since 1962, and is now being broadcast in color.

If none of this appeals to you, you could always read a book.

Let's see; beautiful woman with a spooky house in the background, one light in the window; must be a Gothic Romance. And guess what? My sources in the publishing world tell me that Cassandra Knye is actually the team of New Wave SF writers Thomas M. Disch and John Sladek cashing in on the trend.

If you don't feel like watching TV or reading, tune in to KGJ, our radio station! Nothing but the hits!

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 24, 1966] Increments: World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

June 24, 2021 John Boston 7 Comments

by John Boston

Donald A. Wollheim’s and Terry Carr’s World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966—second in this series—is here, so it’s time for the usual pontificating, hand-wringing, viewing with alarm, etc., as one prefers. This one comes with not one but two blurbs from Judith Merril, their competitor, though the editors say nothing about her anthology series, the next volume of which is due at the end of the year.

The editors have regrettably pulled in their horns a little on the “World” front. There are no translated stories in this volume, unlike the first; the editors claim that they read plenty of them, but them furriners just don’t cut the mustard. More precisely, if not more plausibly, “what they have lacked is the advanced sophistication now to be found in the American and British s-f magazines.” Suffice it to say that there are virtues other than “advanced sophistication” and they may often be found outside one’s own culture.

by Cosimo Scianna

Nor is there anything here from any of the non-specialist markets that have been publishing progressively more SF in recent years. The only item here that did not originate in the US or UK SF magazines is Arthur C. Clarke’s Sunjammer, originally in Boys’ Life but quickly reprinted last year by New Worlds, and then by Amazing early this year.

So it’s a rather insular party. But my main complaint last year was that too much of the material was too pedestrian, and the book excluded writers who are pushing the envelope of the genre, like Lafferty, Zelazny, Ellison, and Cordwainer Smith. The editors seem to have been listening. This year they’ve got Ellison and Lafferty, though they seem to have missed their chance at Smith, and Zelazny is still among the missing. More importantly, the book as a whole is livelier than its predecessor.

This is not to say the pedestrian has been entirely banished. Witness Christopher Anvil’s The Captive Djinn, the only selection from that rotten borough Analog, yet another story about the clever Earthman outwitting cartoonishly stupid aliens. Anvil has written this story so often he could do it in his sleep, and most likely that is exactly what happened.

There is a lot more of the standard used furniture of the genre here, but at least it’s mostly done more cleverly and skillfully than dreamed of by Anvil. In Joseph Green’s The Decision Makers (from Galaxy), Terrestrials covet the watery world Capella G Eight, but it’s already occupied by seal-like amphibians with group intelligence though not much material culture. Is this the sort of intelligence that should ordinarily bar colonization outright? The “Conscience”—a bureaucrat in charge of making these decisions—thinks so, but proposes to split the baby, allowing colonization but providing that the humans will alter the climate to provide more dry land for the amphibians. Of course, behind the bien-pensant speechifying, a still small voice says, “We’re just now starting to get rid of colonialism here, and you want to start it up again?” And another: “Ask the American Indians about the promises of colonists.”

Less weighty thoughts are on offer in James H. Schmitz’s Planet of Forgetting (from Galaxy), involving a fairly standard space war scenario with chase on unknown planet, with the wrinkle that some of the local fauna seem to be able to make people briefly forget where they are and what they are doing. At the end of this smoothly rendered entertainment, suddenly the wrinkle becomes a mountain range.

Similar cleverness-as-usual is displayed in Fred Saberhagen’s Masque of the Red Shift (from If), one of his popular Berserker series, in which a disguised Berserker robot appears and wreaks havoc on a spaceship occupied by the Emperor of the galaxy and his celebrating sycophants. But it is promptly outsmarted and done in by the Emperor’s brother, who is resurrected from suspended animation and lures the Berserker into the clutches of a “hypermass,” which seems to be what scientists are starting to call a “black hole.” (Though on second thought, I’m not sure that “cleverness” is quite le mot juste for a story that falls back on the dreary cliche that a galaxy-spanning human civilization will find no better way to govern itself than an Emperor.) Jonathan Brand’s Vanishing Point (If) is an alien semi-contact story, in which the functionaries of the Galactic Federation have created an artificial habitat, a sort of Earth-like theme park complete with human curator, for the human emissaries to wait in and wonder what is really going on.

Engineering fiction is represented by Clarke’s slightly pedantic Sunjammer (as noted, Boys’ Life by way of New Worlds), concerning a yacht race in space, and by Larry Niven’s livelier Becalmed in Hell (F&SF), whose characters—one of them a brain and spinal column in a box, with vehicle controlled by his nervous system—get stuck on the surface of Venus (updated with current science) and have to improvise a primitive solution to get home.

There are a couple of near-future satires representing very different styles and targets of the sardonic. Ron Goulart’s Calling Dr. Clockwork (Amazing) is a lampoon of the medical system; protagonist visits someone in the hospital, faints at something he sees there, wakes up in a hospital bed himself attended by the eponymous robot doctor, and can’t get out as his diagnosis shifts and things seem to be falling apart in the institution. Fritz Leiber’s The Good New Days (Galaxy) is a more densely populated slice-of-slapstick extrapolating the welfare state, with a family living in futuristic but cheaply made housing (“They don’t build slums like they used to,” complains one character), with the TV on every minute, and Ma trying to avoid the demands of the medical statistician who wants her vitals, and everyone struggling to get and keep multiple make-work jobs (the protagonist just lost his job as a street-smiler), and things are all falling apart here, too, and a lot of the sentences are almost as long as this one. The two stories are about equally amusing, which means above standard for Goulart and a little below standard for Leiber.

So that’s the ordinary, and a higher quality of ordinary than last year.

A few items are unusual if not extraordinary. R.A. Lafferty’s In Our Block (If) is an amusing tall tale about various odd characters with unusual talents residing in the shacks on a neglected dead-end block, like the woman who will type your letters but doesn’t need a typewriter (she makes the sound effects orally), and the man who ships tons of merchandise out of a seven-foot shack without benefit of warehouse. It has lots of slapstick but not much edge, unlike the best by this idiosyncratic writer. Newish writer Lin Carter (two prior appearances in the SF magazines, a lot in the higher reaches of amateur publications), in Uncollected Works (F&SF), extrapolates the old saw about monkeys on typewriters reproducing the works of Shakespeare, in the direction of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God, leading to an unexpected and subtle conclusion.

In Vernor Vinge’s Apartness, from the UK’s New Worlds, the Northern War has destroyed the Northern Hemisphere, and generations later, an expedition from Argentina discovers people encamped in Antarctica, living in primitive conditions, who prove to be the descendants of white South Africans who fled from the uprising that followed the war and eliminated whites from the continent. (Interesting that this American writer didn’t find a market for it at home.) They are not pleased to be discovered by darker-skinned explorers and try to drive them off. The well-sketched background makes this more than an exercise in irony or just revenge.

On to the extraordinary—three of them, not a bad showing. Traveler’s Rest, by David I. Masson, also from New Worlds, depicts a world where time varies with latitude, passing slowly at the North Pole (though subjectively very fast), where a furious—and possibly futile—high-tech war is in progress with an unknown and unseeable enemy. Life proceeds more mundanely in the southern latitudes. Protagonist H is relieved from duty, travels south, reorients himself to current society, establishes a career, marries and procreates over the years. He's known now as Hadolarisondamo, since names are longer in the slower latitudes. Then, middle-aged, he is called back to duty, and arrives 22 minutes after he left. This world’s nightmarish quality is highlighted by the dense mundane detail of the normal life of the lower latitudes; the result is a tour de force of strangeness.

Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin!” said the Ticktockman (from Galaxy) is a sort of dystopian unreduced fraction. In outline, it’s a simple story of a future world where punctuality is all; if you’re late, your life can be docked. One man can’t take it any more and dresses up in a clown suit and goes around disrupting things until he gets caught by the Master Timekeeper (the Ticktockman), brainwashed, and forced to recant publicly—though the end hints that his legacy lives on. In substance, it’s business as usual; in style, it’s a sort of garrulous stand-up routine, and quite a good one. It’s best read as a purposeful affront to the usual plain functional (or worse) prose of the genre (a reading consistent with the story’s theme) and a persuasive argument for opening up the field a bit stylistically.

The other outstanding item here—best in the book to my taste—is Clifford D. Simak’s Over the River and Through the Woods (Amazing), in which a couple of strange kids appear at a farmhouse in 1896 and address the older woman working in the kitchen as their grandma. The gist: Ordinary decent person confronted with the extraordinary responds with ordinary decency. It’s plainly written without a wasted word, deftly developed, asserting its homely credo with quiet restraint—a small masterpiece amounting to a summary of Simak’s career. Simak is one writer who should ignore Ellison’s advice—and vice versa, no doubt.

The upshot: Not bad. Better than not bad. The field is taking small steps away from business as usual, and the usual seems to be getting a little better. The kid may amount to something some day.

[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, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 14, 1966] Aliens, Housewives and Overpopulation: Orbit 1, edited by Damon Knight

June 14, 2021 Cora Buhlert 6 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

Whale Hunt on the Rhine

Moby Dick on the Rhine — Moby Dick swims past the Duisburg copper smelter.

All of West Germany is currently kept on tenterhooks by Moby Dick. No, I'm not talking about the classic novel by Herman Melville, but about our very own re-enactment thereof on the river Rhine.

On May 18, the skipper of a Rhine barge reported having seen "a white monster" in the polluted waters of the Rhine near Duisburg. The river police initially assumed that the man was drunk, but other sightings were reported as well. The unfortunately named Dr. Wolfgang Gewalt (his surname literally means "violence"), director of the Duisburg Zoo, identified the creature as a beluga whale, which had somehow managed to swim 450 kilometres upstream.

Hunting Moby Dick — Dr. Gewalt and his crew hunt Moby Dick with stun guns and bow and arrow.

Discovering his inner Captain Ahab, Dr. Gewalt decided to capture the white whale and have it transported to his brand-new dolphinarium. However, he was about as successful as his literary counterpart and so Moby Dick, as the whale was nicknamed by the locals, repeatedly eluded the traps laid for him, with the aid of some people who believe that the whale should be free back to swim the ocean and not imprisoned in a too small basin.

Diving bell vessel Carl Straat — The specialist diving bell vessel "Carl Straat" with a tugboat on the Rhine. The "Carl Straat" was built in 1963. My Dad designed the handling gear for the diving bell.

Eluding his would-be captors, Moby Dick even swam as far upstream as the West German capital of Bonn, where he interrupted a parliamentary press conference, most likely to protest the treatment he had suffered at the hands of the West German police as well as the heavy pollution of the Rhine, which turned the pristine white skin of a whale a splotchy grey. However, there is a happy ending, because Moby turned around and made it back to the North Sea unharmed.

Moby Dick in Bonn cartoon — A cartoonist's impression of Moby Dick interrupting the parliamentary press conference, much to the chagrin of Chancellor Ludwig Ehrhard.

All-new Anthology, All-new Stories:

Moby's adventures are enough to keep the entire country at the edge of their seats. But nonetheless, I still found the time to read the new science fiction anthology Orbit 1, edited by Damon Knight, which I picked up from the trusty spinner rack at my local import bookstore. The blurb on the backcover promised nine brand-new stories by the best science fiction authors working today, so how could I resist?

"Staras Flonderans" by Kate Wilhelm

Kate Wilhelm is not only one of the best up and coming science fiction authors, she also happens to be married to Orbit editor Damon Knight. That said, Knight wasn't playing favourites here, because Kate Wilhelm's contribution to the anthology is a genuinely good story.

A scout craft with a three person crew, two humans and the alien Staeen, approaches a derelict starship. The lifeboats are gone and the ship was abandoned by her crew in a hurry. However, our three brave explorers have no idea why, since the ship was in perfect working order. Nor is this the first time something like this has happened; other ships have been found abandoned as well.

Kate Wilhelm explores the mystery of the abandoned starship not through the eyes of the two human crewmen, but of the alien Staeen, who is described as looking like an inverted tulip at one point. Staeen is a truly alien creature, who can survive on land, underwater, in deep space and in high radiation environments. He is an empath, several millennia old and humans are ridiculously short-lived to him. In fact, Staeen's people, the Chlaesan, refer to humans as "Flonderans", which means "children" in their language. Staeen's human crewmates, two big, burly spaceman that would be at home in any issue of Analog, clearly have no idea how their comrade views them.

Staeen uses his empathic abilities and realises that the crew abandoned the ship in a fit of irrational panic. But whatever caused that blind panic is still out there, as our three brave explorers are about to find out…

At its heart, this story is a neat mystery in space that would have been at home in Planet Stories or Thrilling Wonder Stories twenty years ago. What sets it apart is Staeen's uniquely alien view of the world as well as Kate Wilhelm's writing skills.

Four stars.

"The Secret Place" by Richard McKenna

I wasn't familiar with the work of Richard McKenna, who passed away two years ago at the way too early age of fifty-one. So "The Secret Place", which was found among his papers after his death, is my first exposure to his work.

First-person narrator Duard Campbell recounts his strange wartime adventures. As a young geology student, Campbell was part of a team that was supposed to track down a uranium mine in the Oregon desert. For in 1931, a boy named Owen Price was found dead with claw marks on his back as well as some gold ore and a piece of uranium oxide in his pocket. When uranium suddenly becomes vitally important with the onset of WWII, the US Army sends a team to locate the source of the uranium oxide. The chief geologist Dr. Lewis believes that this venture is futile, because the area in question is a volcanic high plateau, where uranium does not naturally occur.

When the team departs, only Campbell is left behind. He wants to prove Dr. Lewis wrong and find the uranium vein. So he hires Owen's sister Helen, who can see things no one else can see, as his secretary to pry the secret of the uranium mine out of her. But the game Campbell plays with Helen quickly becomes dangerous for them both.

I enjoyed the vivid descriptions of the Oregon countryside, though I have no idea how accurate they are. The ending is a bit abrupt, though, and the central mystery is not really resolved, probably because McKenna died before he could finish the story.

Three stars.

"How Beautiful With Banners" by James Blish

James Blish needs no introduction to the readers of the Journey.

Dr. Ulla Hillstrøm is a scientist who runs into problems when her living spacesuit merges with a native creature, described as a floating cloak, during a research mission of the Saturn moon of Titan.

Dr. Hillstrøm realises that the cloak is trying to mate with her spacesuit. She notes a second cloak creature and deduces that it might be jealous, so she tries to use the second creature to separate the cloak creature from her spacesuit. However, she is only partly successful, because the separation destroys the spacesuit. The last thing Dr. Ulla Hillstrøm sees before she freezes to death is the mating dance of the cloak creatures.

Beautifully written, but inconsequential. The stereotype of the icy female scientist who never knew love and companionship is overused. Science fiction writers, please go and meet some actual women scientists.

Two stars

"The Disinherited" by Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson is another author who needs no introduction.

The government of an overpopulated future Earth ends the galactic exploration program and recalls scientific personnel and spaceship crews. Understandably, no one is very happy about this.

"The Disinherited" follows two characters. Jacob Kahn is a starship captain and has been for a very long time due to the time dilation effect of travelling at lightspeed. Kahn is also an Israeli Jew, something which should not be unusual, considering how many science fiction writers are Jewish, but which sadly still is. Kahn's first mate is Native American, his chief engineer is from India, the assistant chief engineer from Africa. Anderson presents us a still all too rare future populated by people other than white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, though most of them are still male.

David Thraikill is a scientist whose family has been living on the planet Mithras for three generations now and who has never been to Earth. As a result, Thraikill and the rest of the scientists do not want to leave Mithras, because this is their home now. Kahn tries to persuade them to leave by explaining that the human inhabitants of Mithras cannot maintain a high level of technology in the long run and that there will also be conflicts with the native population of Mithras, a race of peaceful kangaroo-like beings. Because as history shows, this is what always happens when one group of humans comes in contact with another group and colonises their homeland…

Considering how prolific Poul Anderson, it's no surprise that his works can be hit and miss. "The Disinherited" definitely falls on the "hit" side and offers a look at the dark side of colonialism, something our genre rarely explores.

Five stars

"The Loolies Are Here" by Allison Rice

Allison Rice is the only unfamiliar name in Orbit 1. However, the biographic note explains that Allison Rice is a joint penname used by Jane Rice, whose stories have been brightening up the pages of Unknown, Astounding and F&SF for more than twenty years now, and Ruth Allison, a mother of five and new writer.

The first person narrator – we later learn that she shares the name the authors have chosen to publish this story under – is a harried housewife and mother of four, who is dealing with a torrent of bad luck, appliances breaking down, children and pets misbehaving, etc… One day, she finds tiny footprints on the floor and wonders whether the loolies – mischievous goblins whom her sons blame for their own misbehaviour – are not real after all. Eventually, the narrator sees a bonafide loolie in the bathroom during a massive storm. But even though the loolie causes chaos, he does help the narrator get even with her useless husband.

"The Loolies Are Here" is very much a humour piece and the voice of the harried housewife and mother certainly rings true. In many ways, this story reminded me of Shirley Jackson's collection of semi-autobiographical short stories Life Among the Savages. It's a good story, but as a humorous domestic fantasy story, it doesn't really fit into what is otherwise a science fiction collection.

Four stars

"Kangaroo Court" by Virginia Kidd

Virginia Kidd is a well known name in genre circles as a member of the Futurians, poet, magazine publisher, literary agent, former roommate of Judith Merril and former wife of James Blish. Now she can also add short fiction writer to her resume.

A future Earth, where war is a thing of the past and space travel has been outlawed, receives strange messages from outer space, followed by the landing of a spaceship. A military officer named Tulliver Harms puts himself in charge of dealing with the alien Leloc, whom he is convinced must be dangerous – after all, they're aliens. Harms plans to annihilate the Leloc.

The only potential obstacle to this plan is the newly appointed liaison officer Wystan Godwin, who had no idea what is going on due to having spent the past few months on a retreat in monastery in Tibet. Harms does his best to keep Godwin busy and in the dark, but eventually Wystan gets to parley with the kangaroo-like Leloc, who are not just very alien, but who also believe that Earth is their long lost colony. Wystan has to muster all his diplomatic skills to avoid genocide or all-out war.

"Kangaroo Court" is an amusing story about how diplomacy rather than violence wins the day, featuring some truly alien aliens. However, it also goes on far too long and particularly the expositional sections in the middle about kangaroos, marsupials and the impossible nature of the Leloc spacedrive made my eyes glaze over like the gizmospeak in a bad Analog story.

Three stars

"Splice of Life" by Sonya Dorman

Sonya Dorman burst onto the scene a few years ago and has since established herself as one of our most exciting new writers.

"Splice of Life" opens with a young woman – she's only ever addressed as Miss D. – coming to after a car accident, just in time for a doctor to stick a hypodermic into her eyeball. The eye was injured in the accident and Miss D. worries that she may lose it. The doctors and nurses reassure her, but both Miss D. and the reader realise that something is not quite right in this hospital.

A neat tale of medical horror with a ending that packs a punch.

Four stars

"5 Eggs" by Thomas M. Disch

Thomas M. Disch is another newish author, who was one of Cele Goldsmith-Lalli's discoveries back when she was editing Fantastic and Amazing.

The unnamed writer protagonist of "5 Eggs" has been left by his lover Nyctimene on the eve of their engagement party. Gradually, we learn that Nyctimene was not quite human, but some kind of bird alien, as the reference to the figure from Greek mythology suggests. However, Nyctimene has left something behind: a basket of eggs. But leaving eggs lying around the house can be quite dangerous.

This story is well written, but there isn't much of a plot and the final twist is not as shocking as Disch probably thinks it is. The recipe for Caesar salad sounds good, though.

Two stars

Pure Food-Oil ad — If you're planning on making Thomas M. Disch's recipe for Caesar salad, mind the eggs.

"The Deeps" by Keith Roberts

British writer and artist Keith Roberts has been gracing the covers and pages of Science Fantasy and New Writings in SF for several years now, though this is his first US publication, as far as I know.

"The Deeps" starts with the by now familiar dystopian vision of an overpopulated Earth (for another recent take on this theme see Make Room, Make Room! by Harry Harrison, reviewed here by our own Jason Sacks). This time around, the ingenious solution to the overpopulation problem is cities on the ocean floor.

Mary Franklin is a suburban housewife living in one of those undersea cities. One day, her teenaged daughter Jen goes off to a dance and doesn't come home. Mary goes searching for her, wondering whether the children who grow up under the sea are not becoming steadily more fishlike.

"The Deeps" is well written. Roberts captures both Mary's frustration with her husband and her fear for Jen, though I wonder whether a frantic mother searching for her missing child would really spend two pages describing the infrastructure of undersea living. Atmospheric, but not a whole lot of plot and marred by long stretches of exposition.

Three stars

Summary Judgment

The Orbit anthology series is certainly off to a good start. The quality of the stories varies, but they do offer a good overview of the range of science fiction writing today.

Of the nine stories in this anthology, four are written by women. If we count Jane Rice and her collaborator Ruth Allison separately, we have five male and five female authors. Of course, women make up fifty-one percent of the Earth's population, so an anthology with fifty percent male and fifty percent female contributors shouldn't be anything unusual. However, in practice there are still way too many magazine issues and anthologies that don't have a single female contributor, so an anthology where half the authors are women is truly remarkable.

Three and a half stars all in all

Café on the Bremen market square — Enjoying the summer sun with a cup of coffee, a slice of snow mousse cake and a good book on Bremen's market square.

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Book, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 12, 1966] Which Way to Outer Space? (New Writings In SF 8)

June 12, 2021 Kris Vyas-Myall 1 Comment

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Space has been big news in the British press recently. Not the current struggles of America’s Gemini-9 link-up, but rather the saga of the UK’s presence in the ELDO.

The European Launch Development Organization was formed by a treaty signed in 1962 between Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands for the development of a three-stage rocket launch for satellite use (you can read an excellent report Kaye Dee did on the project two years ago). However, the new British Labour government has been unhappy with the increasing costs and with the fact that Britain was paying around 40% of the cost rather than investing in its own rocket program, like some of the other nations have been.

The issue apparently came to a head when estimates for the Europa 1 launcher had risen to £150m, with no expectation of much practical use before 1969. For the last week negotiations had been happening feverishly to try to come up with a solution, with concerns that Britain would have no involvement in space in the future and the whole Eldo project could end up being scrapped.

ELDO launch brochure — Brochure for the upcoming Europa 1 launches from Woomera

Thankfully, a solution has been found. Britain will still be involved but their share of the cost will be reduced to 27%, whilst other countries shares increasing to meet this shortfall, making the payments between the largest countries more equitable.

New Writings in SF 8

Space is also the main theme of this quarter’s New Writings anthology, with new angles used to look at the familiar subject.

Before we start on the stories, can we address the fact that these Dobson hardbacks are incredibly ugly to look at? They are just the same image and format reproduced in different colors each time. The Corgi paperback editions all have much more attractive covers which are likely to intrigue the reader:

Covers for New Writings anthologies 1, 2 & 3 in paperback from Corgi — The first three New Writings anthologies in paperback from Corgi

Could the publishers please make more effort? Or at least give us some variety after two years of the same dust jacket?

Anyway, on to the stories, let us see what Carnell’s crew comes up with:

The Pen and the Dark by Colin Kapp

We have the return of Kapp’s Unorthodox engineers for a third installment (one in Carnell’s New Worlds and the other in New Writings 3). These stories seem to have fans enough to encourage more tales in this world, although I have personally not been enamored by what has been presented so far.

This time the team go to investigate a strange phenomenon on the planet Ithica. An alien vessel had appeared there, then vanished, leaving a mysterious pillar of darkness. The whole area appears to defy their understanding of physics and so the team must investigate further.

I have read some people find the stilted, unnatural dialogue in this series as a great way to give his world depth. To me it is just irritating, as it does not stray far enough from our own language to read as much other than wooden. This was also compounded for me by the fact that it is filled to the brim with scientific jargon I struggled to understand. I have a suspicion it may have been made up, as they say at the end:

And even if they’d tried to tell us, I doubt our capacity to have understood. Try explain the uses and construction of a Dewar flask to an ant – and see who gets tired first.

However, what I did appreciate was the atmosphere of adventure into the unknown he creates which dragged me along this obscure journey. Perhaps more one for the Niven fans out there?

Three stars

Spacemen Live Forever by Gerald W. Page

Page is a new writer to me but has apparently had a couple of pieces published in the American magazines. Here he produces a very grim take on the long intergalactic voyage.

Torman Graylight is first officer on a ship transporting a sleeping population to a new planet. He is the only person awake apart from second officer Kelly. But when Kelly dies in an accident, Graylight’s loneliness gets the better of him and he decides to wake one of the sleepers. But will this be enough for the two of them to survive the years of travel through the void of space?

Whilst these kinds of grim nihilistic tales are not generally to my taste, I do appreciate the skill with which he presents the atmosphere, giving us a real sense of hopelessness and isolation.

Four Stars

The Final Solution by R. W. Mackelworth

Mackelworth also serves up a grim vignette, this one on the inherent self-destructiveness of fascism. In this future, human racial supremacists (closely modelled on Nazis) encounter another species with similar ideology on The Rose World. They decide to do a series of tests to determine racial hierarchy.

Even though short it is a very poignant and necessary piece on the ease with which militarism and racism can take over a society. The only parts that stop me from giving it a full five stars are that some of the elements (e.g., calling the alien leader Slan) and the ending make the story a little too explicit, but it is still a very strong short.

A high four stars

Computer’s Mate by John Rackham

Captain Sven Soren is piloting the Stellar One through the gaps between atoms as a means of breaching light-speed, with the first attempt to Vega. To achieve this, they need a massive computer to control the ship’s complex mechanisms. Coming with it is Grant Wilson, whose job is to care for the machine and act as the link between crew and computer.

Their first “star-jaunt” is a success, with them finding an Earth style world and its inhabitants. However, the crew are distrustful of Wilson as he himself acts like a computer and are unwilling to heed his warnings of the dangers ahead.

I have decidedly mixed feelings about this piece. Whilst it is nice to see a story about a mentally disabled person (particularly where he gets to be the hero, rather than a victim) the abuse of the rest of the crew because of his differences still feels out of place. There are also large sections which are just philosophizing on the nature of life and humanity, which can be interesting at times but often seem to be used at the expense of the women crew members. And whilst it is nice to see multiple women involved in spaceship operations, they are not really shown to do much that is positive.

I think I will go straight down the middle and give it three stars.

Tryst by John Baxter

On the outer reaches of an Asimov-esque galactic empire, there is a barren, nearly forgotten colonized world called Dismas. their only real link with the central imperium is an annual ship sent to help support the colony and bring back any saleable merchandise.

However, on this shipment all the boxes of equipment sent instead contain boxes of rose petals and the new machines are made from paper and foil. Even the ship in orbit is mysteriously deserted. The young rebellious Nicholas is sent to take the ship back to Centre and find out what has happened.

This is a thoroughly sensory story, beautifully described with a real sense of wonder and melancholy. Unfortunately, the ending was a bit of a disappointment for me and the only thing keeping it from a full five stars.

Four stars

Synth by Keith Roberts

And of course, at last we come to the obligatory Keith Roberts tale! This time making up the final third of the anthology. However, this piece does not seem to have any relation to the space theme of the rest of the book, rather being one of artificial intelligence.

In the twenty-second century, Megan Wingrove is named as a co-respondent in a major divorce case, between famous painter Henry Davenport and his wife Ira Davenport, with it being claimed Megan had an affair with Henry whilst working as their maid and Ira’s companion. What makes this case unusual is that Megan is a synth, a kind of advanced robot with an organic skin and muscle structure.

As well as seeking damages for mental anguish, Ira wants to have Megan destroyed for being dangerous and behaving immorally. We observe the case unfolding as they debate as to whether or not it is possible for a human to have a sexual relationship with a synth and whether a synth can be deemed to be responsible.

I was initially cynical that Keith Roberts would be able to do this kind of tale justice but he manages to produce both a really tense courtroom drama as well as delving into questions of consent and love. This story manages to be applicable to real life (you could see the same questions emerging in a similar situation with a domestic servant) whilst also being distinctly science fictional. He gives more thought to what it would mean for human emotions and longings to hit up against our technological capabilities than I can think of in any similar story.

I am as surprised as anyone to find myself giving a Keith Roberts story a full five stars!

Back to Earth

Readjusting their focus back to traditional science fictional subjects and having a nice mix of new and old talents has really brought out the best in Carnell’s anthology series. Here they put new perspectives on these subjects and come out with a marvelous selection. Even the stories I didn’t like as much I think may have more to do with my personal foibles than the quality of the writing.

Hopefully, this can continue in issue #9 and not regress to the poor state of affairs we saw in the prior collection.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 6, 1966] The World is Ending (Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison)

June 6, 2021 Jason Sacks 4 Comments

by Jason Sacks

The Earth is starting to collapse.

Smog fills the air of our greatest cities, species are dying throughout the world, and the global population continues to increase geometrically, threatening our very existence as human beings on this planet. Half the people in the world live in extreme poverty while most of the other half worry about falling into poverty. Famine threatens much of the world, even as the world’s arable land decreases due to over-farming.

If things keep going as they have been, we will be facing unparalleled destruction by the end of the century.

Our great thinkers are stepping up to warn us about global destruction. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring is a terrifying description of environmental degradation, while Ralph Nader’s 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed is a timely reminder the government doesn’t always look out for the interests of everyday people. John Kenneth Galbraith stated the roots of the problem well in his 1958 book The Affluent Society, most people are blind to the destruction we’re creating:

The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered, and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wire that should long since have been put underground. They pass into a countryside that has been rendered largely invisible by commercial art… they picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American genius?

Galbraith’s fictional family is all too real, all too likely to overlook the terrible ways we’re destroying our planet. The worst part of his scenario is a sad truth: all these issues are likely to compound, to become worse and worse over time. Eventually these trends will become so powerful, there will be no way to reverse them. If we don't reverse them, our planet is doomed.

Population growth vs the rate of food production, from a Malthusian perspective

Add to those problems the massive impact of the Mathusian theory of population growth, which states (to simplify it dramatically) that population growth is exponential while increases of food, water and other key commodities is linear. Anyone extrapolating out Malthus’s theories will discover our world population is fast outstripping our ability to feed and clothe them. Malthusians believe we’re facing a ticking population bomb – and they also believe too many people are ignoring that bomb.

A new science fiction novel has come around to remind us of that the bomb exists and is ticking.

Make Room! Make Room!

Make Room! Make Room is a major departure for author Harry Harrison. Harrison is probably best known for his Stainless Steel Rat series, which are light and silly action-adventure stories. In this book he shows his versatility with one of the most compelling and downbeat speculative fiction novels I’ve ever read.

Harrison takes the destruction of the planet to its logical conclusion. By 1999, on the edge of the new millennium, Earth is ravaged. Thousands of species of animals have gone extinct. The world’s population has exceeded 7 billion and continues to grow. Meat and vegetables are commodities more precious than gold. All the oil has been mined from the planet and all the trees have been chopped down.

As Make Room! Make Room! begins, we learn New York City is massively overpopulated. Some 35 million people live in the metropolis, and thousands of people living on the streets. Thousands more live in abandoned cars, now made useless by the lack of oil in the world. Police officers are barely paid, and they live in tiny apartments powered by batteries whose generator is a man riding a bicycle.

Only a small wealthy class of people continue to live in the city, residing in air conditioned, spacious apartments, showering with rare and precious clean water and enjoying the occasional cherished strip of black market steak.

In this world we follow police officer Andrew Rusch as he tries to track down the murderer of a rich man who lives in one of those spacious apartments. We watch Rusch fight through his wretched world to find the killer, find a new love, lose an old companion, and fight like hell to acquire even the most basic things he needs to survive. Even the pathetic SoyLentil steaks are a rare, delicious luxury. Harrison puts us in the well-worn shoes of his characters, forcing us to understand their privations and pain on a personal level.

Make Room! Make Room! is a combination cautionary tale and hard-boiled detective novel, as if Raymond Chandler and Rachel Carson had a child who they gave to Philip K. Dick to raise. Like Dick’s brilliant Dr. Bloodmoney (my favorite book from 1965), Make Room! Make Room! takes place in an anti-utopian society which has experienced a profound collapse in every one of its structures. Unlike Dick’s masterpiece, however, there is little or no catharsis or heroism in Harrison’s book. Everything is misery in Make Room! Make Room!.

Every aspect of Harrison's world brings emotional, financial, or physical pain to the people who live there. The mere act of existing in this anti-utopia is pure torture. And the true sadness of this book is that Rusch and his new girlfriend Shirl only sometimes see this world for the hellhole it is. Other times they wander through the world, like goldfish never seeing the water they’re swimming in.

Harrison does a compelling job of extrapolating out the effects of environmental degradation, and he does a masterful job of portraying governmental breakdown. Despite the presence of police, the world seems nearly lawless, with civil servants shown as woefully unable to help in the world and with rebellions cutting off aqueducts into the city. While politicians argue endlessly about stupid things, bureaucrats cut back on food and water rations. Rioting breaks out in the streets and the police are unable to do anything about it. I’m not sure if Harrison is a libertarian, but his portrayal of government here shows a deep distrust of the net the current presidential administration has endeavored to create for all of us.

Another of Harrison’s main ideas is the blindness most people have to the events they’re part of. In one powerful scene late in the book, the government orders a large family to move into the apartment Andy and Shirl are sharing. The family is huge, with ten kids, a couple who have died and a few more on the brink of death. The family are filthy and pathetic, loud, obnoxious and self-involved. They have no class, which bothers Andy and Shirl deeply. But more than class or loudness, the family is horrible to live with because they are representative of the larger, broken society in which they live.

They have too many kids. Those kids get a maximum of three years education. Nobody can find a job. The family live on government rations. They have nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive for, no reason to think things will ever improve for them. Life is misery and eventually you die. If you’re rich and connected, perhaps the police will track down your murderer. If not, you’ll just die like the hundreds who die each day, unloved, unmourned, just another boring statistic in this Malthusian wasteland.

Make Room! Make Room! is a professionally written, powerful novel which took me to a place I don’t want to visit again. Harrison creates a rich and compelling anti-utopia extrapolated from the pages of The New York Times. He shows us a frightful future that seems all too likely to happen. Maybe this book will do a little bit to spur readers to fight for our ecology and to keep population growth low. Malthus would approve.

3.5 stars.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 18, 1966] What's the Difference? (Two versions of Mindswap by Robert Sheckley)

May 18, 2021 Victoria Silverwolf 6 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

What's The Big Idea?

Science fiction writers often take novellas that have appeared in magazines and turn them into novels, to be published as books. Sometimes this doesn't require any expansion of the original at all, particularly if it's half of an Ace Double.

Case in point, as Rod Serling might say, is The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick, which appeared in the December 1964 issue of Fantastic.

Cover art by Lloyd Birmingham. It's not really a complete short novel, but you'll rarely see the word novella in a magazine.

It showed up as half of Ace Double G-602 without any changes. (In case you're wondering, the other half was something called The Mind Monsters by somebody named Howard L. Cory.)

Cover art by Kelly Freas. It's still not a complete novel.

On the other hand, an author can make use of the big (and profitable) idea of reusing old material by adding new stuff to it. One example is The Whole Man by John Brunner. The first half is original, while the second half makes use of two previously published novellas.

The cover art is anonymous, and deserves to be so, in my opinion.

With that background in mind, let's take a look at a recent example of stretching a novella into a novel.

What's The Story?

I'll start with the magazine version of Mindswap, Robert Sheckley's comic tale of a fellow whose consciousness goes bouncing around the universe from body to body. It appeared in the June 1965 issue of Galaxy.

Cover art by George Schelling. The table of contents calls Mindswap a, you guessed it, complete short novel.

Our Gracious Host didn't care for it, awarding it only two stars. That's a matter of taste of course, as I'll discuss later. For now, let me outline the plot, so we can compare it with the novel.

Marvin Flynn is a fellow who wants to travel to other planets, but who can't afford the extremely high price of space travel. Fortunately, the process of switching bodies with somebody, even over interstellar distances, is a lot cheaper. (Maybe not the most plausible premise in the world, but let's go with it.)

He answers an ad from a Martian who wants to mindswap with an Earthling. The bad news is that the Martian is a crook, who has already sold his body to a previous customer, and who runs off with Marvin's body. Marvin has to mindswap again, in order to avoid dying when he gets kicked out of the criminal's body.

Having no other choice, he winds up in an alien body, working as an egg catcher. These aren't ordinary eggs. They talk, for one thing. In addition to that, the dinosaur-like beings who produce the eggs hunt down those hunting the eggs. Facing a very unpleasant demise in the jaws of one of these creatures, Marvin mindswaps once more.

This time he's in the body of an insectoid alien, and he has a ticking ring in his nose that might be a bomb, ready to go off in the near future.

Things are already complicated enough, but it gets a lot weirder. You see, the act of mindswapping tends to cause the swapper to perceive reality in odd ways. The story turns into a parody of cowboy fiction when Marvin hallucinates that he's in the Old West.

Without going into too much detail about a complex plot, let me just say that Marvin falls in love, loses the woman he adores, searches for her with the help of a peculiar companion, confronts the villain who stole his body, and winds up back on Earth. There's a twist at the end.

What's New?

Mindswap just came out as a hardcover novel from Delacorte Press. Is it worth paying the three dollars and ninety-five cents they're asking at the bookstore? Let's find out. (Or you could just wait for the paperback edition, which should cost just about as much as the magazine did.)

Cover art by James McMullan. By the way, The Game of X isn't science fiction, but a comic spy novel.

At first, there seems to be very little difference between the novella and the novel. That changes at Chapter 24 (out of 33) or, if you prefer, on page 151 (out of 216.) Either way, that means that not quite one-third of the book is new.

In the short version, Marvin runs into the Martian crook a lot quicker. In the long version, there's a major section of the book where he gets involved in a swashbuckling adventure. Reality has completely broken down at this point, so you'll just have to accept the fact that he starts acting and talking like somebody in an Errol Flynn movie. After that, we get the same twist ending as in the magazine.

What's So Funny?

Appreciation of comedy is very much an individual thing; more so, I think, than appreciation of any other form of art. Maybe I like the Marx Brothers and you like the Three Stooges. Each of us would have a difficult time convincing the other of the superiority of our differing preferences. Without arguing for the merits of Sheckley's work, allow me to discuss the various forms of humor he employs.

Slapstick

Maybe we can define this as amusement at another person's woes, as long as they're ludicrous. When Marvin is about to get his head bitten off by a dinosaur, or when he expects to have the bomb in his nose explode, we can laugh at his anxiety.

Parody

I've already mentioned the spoofs of Western and swashbuckling fiction. There's also a section where, for ridiculous reasons, characters start speaking in pseudo-Shakespearean verse. The novel as a whole seems to be a parody of science fiction itself.

Wordplay

This occurs all through the book. Right at the start we hear Marvin and his buddy talk in futuristic slang that borrows from other languages. (Might Sheckley be making fun of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange?)

The author delights in silly names, of which there are dozens, if not hundreds, scattered throughout the novel. Marvin's companion during his search for his lost love alternates speaking in a thick, stereotypical Mexican accent and formal English. During the swashbuckling section, everybody talks in a highfalutin' fashion that you'd only hear in a romantic novel or a Hollywood movie.

Illogic

Reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter, Sheckley's characters often reason in ways that might seem superficially logical, but which expose their inside-out and upside-down thinking.

The Martian detective searching for the criminal (I didn't mention him, did I?) figures that probability is on his side; he's failed to solve 158 cases, so he's bound to solve this one.

The hermit who mindswaps Marvin from the egg hunter's body into the insectoid body (I didn't mention him either, did I?) speaks in verse because he thinks it protects him from the dinosaurs. His proof? That he hasn't been killed yet.

The pseudo-Mexican helping Marvin in his search (I did mention him, didn't I?) has an unusual theory of searching; just go somewhere and wait, so that the searcher becomes the searchee.

Overall, I have to say that the book amused me. It doesn't have quite the same satiric bite as some other Sheckley works, but it made me smile all the way through.

Three and one-half stars.

What's Next?

I'm sure that other writers will continue to turn stories into novels. (The series of linked stories by Robert Silverberg that started with Blue Fire and which recently ended, or so it seems, with Open the Sky cries out to be a novel.)

My sources in the publishing industry tell me that Larry Niven's impressive novella World of Ptavvs has been expanded into a novel, and will appear in a few months. Here's a sneak preview.

Cover art by Norman Adams

And just to prove that authors aren't the only ones to reuse old material, just take a look at this book from 1963.

Look familiar?

All of us should heed the example of writers, artists, and publishers, and reuse whatever we can. It's the patriotic thing to do.

Junior looks like he might be searching through old science fiction magazines.

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction