A couple of months ago we looked at the first third of a massive new anthology of original science fiction and fantasy stories, put together by one of the most colorful figures in the field of imaginative fiction. Let's jump into the middle of the book and see if it maintains the same level of quality and controversy. As before, I'll provide traffic signals to warn you how dangerous each story might be.
A fellow with the incredible ability to throw small objects with extreme accuracy goes out to shoot dice at a very strange and disturbing casino. But is he ready to risk the ultimate bet with the Big Gambler?
I have to admit up front that I can't be objective here. I am head-over-heels, madly in love with this story. Leiber blends science fiction, fantasy, tall tale, horror, and every other kind of imaginative fiction you can name into a perfectly crafted work of art. Just read it.
Five stars. GREEN for fine writing.
Lord Randy, My Son, by Joe L. Hensley
A man dying of cancer has a very strange young son with seemingly miraculous powers. The boy observes a cruel world outside. What will he grow up to be?
The premise reminds me a bit of Jerome Bixby's story It's a Good Life and the Twilight Zone episode adapted from it. That was an out-and-out horror story, however, and this one is more ambiguous. Randy is capable of great good and great evil, and it looks like the people of Earth are going to get what they deserve. In a way, that's more chilling than Bixby's monster.
The protagonist is from a parallel world in which Alexander the Great lived to a ripe old age, and the Hellenistic culture is dominant. They've colonized other planets, and have even figured out a way to visit alternate realities. (There are hints that the main character explored our own world, and found it utterly repulsive.)
In a North America inhabited by a mixture of Norse, Magyar, and Native American cultures, he violates a taboo and is pursued by folks out to kill him. He makes a desperate attempt to escape, eager to rejoin his beloved in his own, much more civilized world.
Anderson has obviously done his homework. The various parallel realities we learn about seem very real. The plot follows the action/adventure/chase structure we're familiar with, and which Anderson can write in his sleep. The only dangerous part of the story comes at the very end, when we finally figure out what taboo the protagonist violated. The revelation is more of a punchline, really, and not a major part of the story.
Here's the first of two brief tales from one of the most debated authors of speculative fiction. As the title indicates, it's part of his series about the dystopian future world he calls Moderan, a hellish place where people who have replaced almost all of their flesh with metal and who live in heavily fortified strongholds wage endless wars with each other. In this story, one of these hate-filled semi-humans meets a more normal person, barely existing in the no-man's-land between fortresses. Typical of the series, it's a dark and bitter satire of humanity's evils.
Three stars. YELLOW for grimness.
The Escaping, by David R. Bunch
Here's the other one. The narrator is imprisoned, and spends time imagining the rolling and unrolling of the sky. Something like that, anyway.
Two stars. YELLOW for surrealism.
The Doll-House, by James Cross
A guy who is up to his eyebrows in debt goes to his father-in-law for help. The old man isn't very sympathetic, but he gives his son-in-law a miniature house that contains a tiny, immortal oracle, who can answer all questions. Can you guess that this won't work out well?
This is an efficient fantasy story of the be careful what you wish for school. There's nothing particularly distinguished about it, for good or bad. Worth reading, anyway.
Three stars. GREEN for being a decent, typical yarn of its type.
The narrator is a rather strange woman who is obsessed with a very fat man who lives in the same building. She hides in his room, watching him undress, in order to find out if he's a human being or an Other.
You can interpret the plot as science fiction or as the delusions of the narrator. In either case, what it's really about is the human body, particularly those parts we're not supposed to expose or talk about. It's the kind of thing you expect to find in New Worlds.
Three stars. RED for New Wave writing and sexual content.
Shall the Dust Praise Thee?, by Damon Knight
God and his angels show up at the end of the world, just like it says in the last book of the Bible. The only problem is that there aren't any people around to witness the Apocalypse. A little digging around reveals a final message from humanity.
Knight is thumbing his nose at traditional religion here. This tiny little story is basically a grim joke. Don't show it to your local cleric.
A guy figures out that valuable stuff is coming from a planet that official records claim doesn't even exist. Folks who know it's real make it nearly impossible to get there. On another world where just about all activities are tolerated, somebody who shows up from that planet is instantly attacked and is likely to be killed. The guy finally reaches the place, and finds out what the big mystery is about.
It's hard to talk about this story without revealing too much about the premise, although the title gives you a clue. It breaks my heart to have to give a poor rating to a work by one of the true masters of speculative fiction, but this is really a lecture in lightly fictionalized form.
The climax is nothing but a long discussion as to why one of the strongest of cultural taboos should be broken. Sturgeon makes his point carefully and logically, to be sure, but forgets to engage the reader with an honest-to-gosh story. Inevitably, this work is going to compared to his groundbreaking tale The World Well Lost, but that one worked perfectly well as fiction, and not just as a debate.
Two stars. RED for advocating something most people would rather not think about.
What Happened to Auguste Clarot?, by Larry Eisenberg
This is a madcap farce in which the main character tracks down a missing scientist. There's a lot of slapstick and general silliness. It's really out of place in this anthology. Even Ellison's introduction jokingly says he was crazy to buy it. You may get a few chuckles out of it. With the French setting, I pictured Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther as the protagonist.
Two stars. GREEN for wacky hijinks.
Ersatz, by Henry Slesar
In a future world devastated by war, a weary soldier reaches one of the few places where he can rest for a while. All he can get there is fake food, fake tobacco, and something else that isn't real.
This very short story depends on its ending for its impact. It definitely creates a grim, dystopian mood.
Four stars. YELLOW for unrelieved gloom.
Middle of the Road
The central portion of this massive volume isn't quite as consistent as the first part, although Leiber's story is the best in the book so far. Sturgeon's polemic is a major disappointment, and there are some other pieces that don't really work for me. Maybe the last third of the anthology will be better. We'll see.
According to the very latest Science Fiction Weekly (formerly Degler), F&SF has failed to gain readership in the last several years. Contrast this to the steady gains (and 2x readership in general) that Analog has enjoyed.
Van Arnam ascribes this stagnation not to the inherent superiority of Campbell's mag, but the fact that F&SF just can't get the same kind of distribution that the other mags enjoy. The owners of Fantastic and Amazing benefit from having two mags to use as leverage. Fred Pohl has three, sort of. And Analog is put out by Condé Nast, which means newsstands get Analog as part of a larger package including big deal pubs like Vogue.
So the question becomes this: would F&SF score better with the fans if distribution was no longer a factor? In other words, is F&SF a better mag than the rest? Let's look at this month's issue and find out!
I always enjoy stories that mix magic with technology, and this piece by David Redd does so quite well. The setting is distant world with a steep axial tilt and a long orbit. Thus, for decades of its solar sojourn, whole swaths of the planet are in perpetual day or night.
Humans came to this world and drove away, enslaved, or slaughtered the natives of the northern polar continent when it was in sunlight. They built cities, exploited the land, and in general behaved like the expansionistic menace we so often are. Then the night came again…
As of the beginning of the tale, the dryads, gnomes, fur spirits, oreads, elves, and trolls, have lived in peace for some time, mining the abandoned human colony for metallic treasures under the endless starry night. But the serpent is returning to paradise: Josef Somes, a human from the southern lands, is trudging north in search of valuable "life-rock", and he doesn't care who he has to kill to get it.
The hero of our story is a the White Lady, a dryad. Her companions, a stolid, axe-wielding gnome, two fur spirits, and a cronish oread, form a squad whose mission is to dispatch the human before he can defile the fairy Homeground.
There is a lovely world here, and an unusual storytelling perspective. If the story has any fault, it is the rather prosaic language and somewhat shallow treatment. I feel Thomas Burnett Swann could have raised the material up to five stars.
It's still a fine piece, though, and an excellent opening to the issue. Four stars.
The Saga of DMM, by Larry Eisenberg
The synthetic drug, DMM, is not only the tastiest substance in existence, it is the richest food imaginable. And it's a powerful aphrodesiac. It soon proves more popular than pot, acid, reds, whites, and heroin comined. A wave of fornicative obesity sweeps the world, with catastrophic results.
Pretty frivolous satire. Not really worth your time. Two stars.
by Gahan Wilson
Brain Wave, by Jennifer Palmer and Stuart Palmer
A male college student is mentally contacted by a comely alien woman from from Alpha Centauri. A friendly correspondence ensues.
I find I have very little to say about this up-front story, which reads like some kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy until the end, whereupon it has a rather silly twist conclusion (that I suppose is meant to be horrific, but it's really not).
"Mildly diverting fluff" covers it. It straddles the 2/3 star barrier, but I think it ends up on the poorer end of the spectrum.
Cerberus, by Algis Budrys
Marty McCay is an amiable ad man, legendary for his mildness. His method for coping with his wife's flagrant infidelities is to tell shaggy dog tales with a punning punchline. In the end, we see that the butt of his jokes was always himself.
There's no science fiction in this tale. What there is, however, is some excellent writing. Four stars.
Noise, by Ted Thomas
In this month's science fact vignette, I thought Thomas was going to propose a sonic weapon. Instead, he outlines the invention of selective ear-plugs that would blot out the bad noise, but admit desired sounds.
One of his better pieces, which is to say, it doesn't stink.
Three stars.
To Behold the Sun, by Dean R. Koontz
The first expedition to the sun is about to take off, crewed by three regular humans and a cybernetic ship-master. Unfortunately, said cyborg is still shellshocked from losing his beloved in a fire several years prior. And what is the sun if not a big ball of fire?
Behold feels as if Koontz read a bunch of Zelazny tales and thought, "I can do this too!" Well, he can't. His writing is hamfisted, the science is silly, and the situation is contrived.
Besides, if they wanted a safe trip to the sun, they should have waited until nighttime…
Wilson not only provides the cartoons for each issue of F&SF, he is also an author. Mandarin is the story of a pulp villain increasingly taking control of his creator's work, ultimately departing from the printed page into reality.
Reasonably well done, and arguably more successful than his drawings. Three stars.
The First Metal, by Isaac Asimov
I rate an Asimov article by its memorability and quotability. The good Doctor's discussion of the earliest knowledge of metals was pretty interesting, and I ended up summarizing the piece to my family on one of our morning walks. The only real fault with the piece is that it would have been well served by a couple more pages.
Four stars.
The Chelmlins, by Leonard Tushnet
A droll piece about how the Jewish version of the Leprechauns helps keep the schlemiels of the Polish city of Chelm from becoming schlimazels. It's the kind of story Avram Davidson might write, though had he done so, it may well have been funnier. Chelmlins isn't bad, but it doesn't quite hit the mark hard enough.
Finally, the latest story in the Vermillion Sands setting. These tales of the rather surreal artists colony tend to be my favorite by Ballard. This particular one involves a troupe of cloud-sculptors: glider pilots who use silver iodide and custom aircraft to create ephemeral images in the sky. They are hired by a bitter widow possessed of extreme vanity, with deadly results.
If you've read one story, you've read them all. They universally involve desolate landscapes, a dreamy sense of time, and have a sour undertone. This was dramatic stuff when Ballard first came on the scene early in the decade, but it's getting a bit played out.
Three stars.
Hung jury
This issue turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. There are some stand-out pieces and some duds. Most interestingly, we have a several stories that would have been well served by being written by greater talents. On the other hand, rawer authors have to start somewhere, so I'd hate to deny them their chance to improve.
All in all, this issue would probably keep me subscribing, particularly at the discounted holiday rates. I don't know if the quality demonstrated in the December 1967 F&SF would be sufficient to displace other mags for the Best Magazine Hugo, however, even if distribution were not an issue.
It's all academic, in the end. As long as you order directly from the company, it doesn't really matter how many newsstands the magazine ends up on. So tell your friends and get a subscription today. You just might help F&SF outlast all of its competitiors!
Books seem to be published faster than ever these days, and many are worth a gander. Please enjoy this triple-whammy featuring SEVEN sciencefictional titles…plus a surprise guest at the end!
Shaw recently made a big impact with his Hugo-nominated short story, Light of Other Days, and I've enjoyed everything he's come out with. So it was with great delight that I saw that he'd come out with a full length novel called Nightwalk.
I went in completely blind, and as a result, enjoyed the twists and turns the story took far more than if I'd known what was coming. Thus, I give you fair warning. Avoid the following few paragraphs if you wish to go into the book completely unaware.
by Frank Frazetta
Sam Tallon is an agent of Earth based on the former colony and now staunch adversary world, Emm Luther. In-between are 80,000 portals through null-space. Would that there could be but one, but hyperspace jumping is a blind affair, and the direct route between portals is impossible to compute. Only trial and error has mapped 80,000 matched pairs whose winding, untrackable route bridges the two worlds. Luckily, transfer is virtually instantaneous.
Literally inside Tallon's head is the meandering route to a brand new world. Given the dearth of inhabitable planets, both overcrowded Luther and teeming Earth want this knowledge. Before Tallon can escape with it, he is captured by the Lutheran secret police, tortured most vividly and unpleasantly, and sent for a life sentence to be spent at the Lutheran version of Devil's Island, the Pavillion.
Oh yes–in an escape attempt, the sadistic interrogator whom Tallon fails to kill on his way out zaps his eyes and leaves him quite blind.
Tallon is not overly upset by this development. At this point. he is quite content to spend the rest of his life in dark but not unpleasant captivity…except the wounded interrogator is coming for a visit, and Tallon knows he won't survive the encounter. Luckily, he and a fellow prisoner have managed to create a set of glasses tied into the optic nerve and tuned to nearby glial cells. They will not restore a man's sight…but they will allow him to tune in to the vision of any animal about him. With this newfound advantage, Tallon must make the thousand mile trek back to the spaceport, and then traverse the 80,000 portals to Earth.
Alright–you can read again. Nightwalk is 160 pages long. 60 of the pages, the first 30 and the last 30, are brilliant, nuanced, full of twists and turns, and genuinely exciting. The 100 pages inbetween comprise a well-written but forgettable thriller. I will not go so far as to agree with Buck Coulson, who wrote in the latest Yandro: "pulp standard; described by Damon Knight as "putting his hero in approximately the position of a seventy-year-old paralytic in a plaster cast who is required to do battle with a saber-tooth tiger and there being no place to go from there, kept him in the same predicament throughout the story, only adding an extra fang from time to time." But the assessment is not completely inapt.
Nevertheless, the book kept me reading, and if you can keep momentum through the middle, the whole is worthwhile.
3.5 stars.
ACE double H-34
Another month, another "ACE double". They seem to increasingly becoming my province these days, or perhaps I'm becoming the resident Tubb novel reviewer. Either way, I'm thoroughly amenable to the relationship!
I originally covered this novel when it appeared in the pages of Analog. Long story short: it's a history lesson disguised as an SF story–Reynolds doesn't even bother to color his nations, which retain their stock names of Alphaland and Betastan, as if this were an Avalon Hill wargame or something.
Not one of his better efforts, and it doesn't even have the benefit of Freas' nice art. A low three stars.
Three centuries from now, England is still recovering from "the Debacle", an atomic paroxysm that all but destroyed the world in the 1980s. Society has calcified into an oligarchic, capitalist nightmare, with a few rich entities ultimately controlling everything: the loan sharks, the power generators, and the hypnotists. In many ways, it is the last group that is the most powerful, for a generation after the Debacle, they fostered a pervasive belief in reincarnation. With their guidance (or perhaps suggestion), all (save the rare odd "cripple") persons can Breakthrough to their past lives). So universal is this belief in multiple lives that many have become "retrophiles", living out their lives in the guise of a former existence, even to living in towns constructed along archaic lines.
Into this world are thrust three bonafide time travelers, put in stasis in the 1970s to await a cure for their radiation-caused illnesses. Not only are they exiles in an age not theirs, but they have also amassed a tremendous debt in their centuries asleep. Brad Stevens, an atomic physicist born in 1927, is determined to free himself and his 20th Century comrades from the fetters of financial obligation. Thus ensues a rip-roaring trip through an anti-utopian Britain, filled with narrow escapes, exotic scenery, and a few interesting, philosophical observations.
Tubb has already impressed me this year with his vivid The Winds of Gath, and he does so again with this adventure. Indeed, Tubb is such the master of the serial cliff-hanger that I found myself quite unable to put the book down, reading it in two marathon sessions. Of particular note are his observations on faith, on the seductiveness of nostalgia, and on the pernicious nature of laissez-faire capitalism, which inevitably degenerates into anything but a free market.
What keeps this story from a fifth star is precisely what garners it a fourth: it is quick, excellent reading, but it doesn't pause long enough to fully explore all of its intriguing points. Thus, it remains like Ted White's Jewels of Elsewhen–beautifully turned, but somewhat disposable.
Still, I'm not sorry I read it, and neither will you be. Four stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
From the L File
Two new science fiction novels with titles that begin with the twelfth letter of the alphabet fell into my hands recently. Other than that trivial coincidence, they could hardly be more different. Let's look lingeringly, lest literature lie listlessly languid.
The first thing you'll notice when you open the book is a map. With that, and the title, I wonder if the author and/or the publisher is alluding to J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings, which has recently become quite popular here in the USA. That series has a map too.
Map by Jack Gaughan
Given the size of a paperback, it's darn hard to see everything on the map, which has a lot of detail. Fortunately, it's not really necessary. I'll point out a few landmarks as we go along.
A Public Works Project
We start in the middle of the map. At first, you might think the novel takes place in the past, with horse-drawn vehicles and such. We soon find out that it's thousands of years in the future. Our own technological society is nearly mythical, lost in the mists of time. There are bits and pieces of it here and there, left in ruins.
It seems that humanity lost its spirit long ago. Civilization has stagnated. A military officer has a plan to deal with that, and he explains it to a government official.
Take a look at the extreme southwest corner of the map, right next to the compass. That's a place where gigantic remnants of the glory days of yesteryear lie wasting away. The officer's scheme is to build a huge starship from what's left and carry its passengers to a new, better world.
If that sounds crazy to you, you're on the right track. There is no real intent to complete the project. Instead, it's just a trick to get the population excited about something, and working together for centuries. Think pyramids and cathedrals.
The first step is to launch a series of bloody wars, so the folks in the middle of the map can make their way to the coast, conquering and slaughtering along the way. Make no mistake; there are a lot of gruesome battle scenes in this book.
Many years later, society is divided into a small number of elites, who know the truth about the phony starship, and the ordinary people, who do not. The latter come to almost worship it. Under the leadership of a charismatic figure, they revolt against their rulers.
We're still not done with bloodshed. Without going into details, suffice to say that the naval fleets of the islands off the eastern coast (look at the map) get involved. This leads to a conflict that makes everything else that happens in the book look like minor skirmishes. Then we get a wild twist ending that really pulls the rug out from under you, making you rethink everything you thought you knew about what's going on.
This is a strange book. There are no real protagonists. The plot takes place over a couple of centuries or so, and characters come and go very quickly. This accelerates in the latter part of the novel. Some chapters consist of only one sentence, and read like excerpts from a history book. (The author is a history major, still in college.)
It's also a dark and cynical book. From the deception that starts the story to the completely unexpected revelation that ends it, it's full of sinister plots, secretive government agencies, and human lives sacrificed for the schemes of others.
A sense of despair and resignation to fate fills the novel. The commander of the naval fleet I mentioned above knows that building up his ships for the upcoming war will take eighty years, and also knows that wholesale destruction will be the outcome of the conflict, but accepts the situation as inevitable.
It's an intriguing work, but one that's very hard to love.
There's no map in this book, but it does have what must be the world's longest dedication. See for yourself.
I don't recognize everything on that massive list — The Ears of Johnny Bear? — but I am familiar with much of it. What do those things have in common? Unless I am mistaken, none of them are very recent. Keep that in mind.
Next we get the book's basic premise.
I get the message. It's that darn Youth Culture everybody is talking about. I suppose that's because a lot of post-World War Two babies are in their teens and early twenties now. Mods, hippies, bikers, protestors; they're all young folks, aren't they? The two authors of this novel don't seem too happy about the situation.
Don't Trust Anyone Over Twenty-One
(Apologies to political activist Jack Weinberg for stealing and distorting his famous quote. The original number was thirty.)
Something like a century and a half from now, people are only allowed to live to the age of twenty-one. We get an explanation late in the book as to how this happened, but never mind about that. Most folks go along with this, but some try to escape. These rebels are called — you guessed it — Runners.
There's a special police force that kills Runners. They're known as Sandmen. Our hero, Logan 3, is a Sandman near the end of his assigned lifetime. He gets a gizmo from a dying Runner that is supposed to lead the person who holds it to the fabled refuge known as Sanctuary. Determined to find and destroy the place, he pretends to be a Runner himself. The dead man's sister, Jessica 6, is also a Runner. You won't be surprised to find out she's the love interest, too.
Most of the book consists of the pair's wild adventures all over the world as they try to find Sanctuary. Feral children in a decaying part of a city; an inescapable prison at the North Pole; rebellious young folks who ride around on what seem to be flying motorcycles; robots recreating a Civil War battle; and much, much more. The plot moves at an insane pace, and you probably won't believe a minute of it.
Meanwhile, a Sandman named Francis 7 tracks down the two. He's kind of like Inspector Javert from Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables or Lieutenant Gerard from the TV series The Fugitive. Cold-blooded and relentless, he never gives up. He's also got a secret of his own, leading to a surprise ending.
I get the feeling that the co-authors threw wild twists and turns at each other, shouting Top This! as they tossed pages of the manuscript back and forth at each other. It's a wild ride indeed. As I've indicated, it's got a lot of implausible aspects. The one that really stood out for me was when Logan and Jessica instantly — and I mean instantly — fall in love when they pose nude for a ice sculpture carved by a half-man/half-robot. (Long story.)
If you like lightning-paced action/adventure novels with a touch of satire, you'll get some fun out of this one. Just don't expect serious speculation about where the younger generation is taking us older folks.
Three stars.
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
Not Quite What We Were Tolkien About!
Whilst it has been delayed by the legal shenanigans around the paperback edition of The Lord of The Rings, we are going to be getting the next installment in Tolkien’s Middle Earth series, The Silmarillion, very soon. Cylde S. Kilby was helping Professor Tolkien over the summer and gives some details in a recent edition of The Tolkien Journal, including that this is going to borrow a lot from Norse Myths around the creation of Midgard. Sounds like an epic and complex work for sure.
However, in the meantime, we have a new tale from him, not related to Middle Earth. In some ways, it is a more traditional fairy story, but with many fascinating elements that make it well worth your while.
Every twenty-four years, in the village of Wootton Major, there is held the feast of Twenty-Four where a great cake is made by the Master Cook and shared with Twenty-Four children. The current Master is not particularly skilled in his job and often relies on his apprentice. However, he ignores it when the apprentice tells him not to add the Faery Star to the cake, which ends being eaten by young Smith.
On Smith’s tenth birthday, the star begins to glow on his forehead, and he has many adventures, including into Faery itself.
One of Pauline Baynes many beautiful illustrations in the book
As you can probably tell, Smith of Wootton Major is not an epic quest narrative filled with battles and doom (as you may expect if you have only read The Lord of The Rings). Instead, this is a more charming and quiet work of his, resembling more closely Leaf by Niggle or The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
I don’t want you to get the impression from this it is boring or frivolous. If the Middle Earth novels are like your eighth Birthday Party with all your best friends, this is like snuggling up by a roaring fire with a mug of cocoa and a wonderful book. Different but can be equally enjoyable.
As anyone at all familiar with him will tell you, Tolkien is an absolute master of language and can use it multiple ways to create whatever effect is needed. Here he creates an effortless amiability about the whole thing, introducing wit and joy without seeming forced or conceited. The story is just a marvelous experience.
Apparently, this story came from another project, specifically as an introduction for a new version of George MacDonald’s The Golden Key. He wanted to explain about Faery using this as a kind of metaphor; however, this ended up being expanded into a story in its own right, one I am very glad to have.
It seems odd that Dodie Smith’s latest novel The Starlight Barking has flown under the radar.
It is written by a great novelist who is beloved by mainstream literary publications, and whose play Dear Octopus is currently a hit in the West End. It has been praised by luminaries such as Christopher Isherwood. Moreover, it is the sequel to a beloved children’s classic, the movie version of which was the first movie ever to earn more than $100 million in the cinemas.
And yet, it is also a very odd illustrated novel. Though I find much to recommend in the work, I can understand why it seems not to have grabbed the public imagination as much as the work to which it is a sequel, The Hundred and One Dalmatians.
Picking up shortly after the first book, The Starlight Barking finds the protagonist Dalmatians Pongo and Missis living in Suffolk. One night, all living beings other than dogs fall into a deep magical sleep. The dogs also discover that they can fly, communicate across long distances, and operate machines.
Each dog takes on the jobs of their owners. Having been adopted by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Cadpig (the runt of the litter from the first book) is therefore now in charge of the country. She summons her family to London to help.
A subsequent scene in which the United Kingdom Cabinet goes to the dogs is a highlight of the book. Followers of British politics will note the well-drawn satire of Secretary of State George Brown depicted as a clumsy but cosmopolitan Boxer, and Minister of Transport Barbara Castle depicted as fussy and officious poodle. (Is the refusal of James Callaghan to devalue the Pound the reason that his dog is shown as being less mathematically inclined than the other dogs?)
Back in Suffolk, Cruella de Vil’s Persian cat — who helped the dogs escape in the first novel — turns out to be unaffected by the sleeping illness as she was named an “honourary dog.” The cat suggests that Cruella must be behind the plague of sleep, and therefore must be killed. But when the dogs find Cruella, she is asleep like the rest of humanity. So they spare her.
An alien, Dog Star Sirius, appears at the top of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square. He admits that he is behind the sleep, and that he has come to Earth to save dogs from an impending cataclysmic nuclear war.
Sirius invites all dogs everywhere to join him in the sky, and gives them a day to decide. Pongo is given the final choice. I won’t spoil the ending, but let me be completely up-front here: it doesn’t get less weird.
This is a flawed and chaotic short novel. But it is that chaos of a childhood flight of fancy; unbounded by expectation, and brimming with whimsy. Dodie Smith’s writing alternates between compelling action writing, and something poetic and magical. Her evident affection for dogs in general leads her to make them very lovable characters.
Given that the only animated movie that Disney has released since 101 Dalmatians was a critical and commercial flop (The Sword In The Stone earned just $20M), they may try to film this sequel. If and when they decide to do so, I hope they have the ambition and the audacity to stay true to this novel.
I would wager that if there were a Hugo Award category to celebrate works geared for younger readers, The Starlight Barking would be a strong contender for that shortlist.
With so many new books coming out, it's not often that we at the Journey can devote inches to older titles. However, the original Fail-Safe has been staring me in the face for the past four years, and when I finally picked it up, I found I couldn't put it down. Morever, the events depicted in the book are supposed to take place in 1967, so what better year to review it?
If you've seen the movie, then you know the plot of the book: mechanical malfunction causes a flight of bombers, responding to a false threat, to head irretrievably on an atomic raid of Moscow. Indeed, the movie is in many ways a shot-for-shot rendition of the print version. The differences pertain to the medium: we get several mini-biographies of the main characters, including the translator, the war-monger, the self-loathing SAC General, the commander of the Omaha base. There are also occasional, Marooned-style depictions of the technology involved, in lurid detail.
But the events are the same, the dialogue is largely the same, the agony is the same. Fail-Safe is the story of breakdown–of huge computerized networks failing for the disruption of tiny components, of people failing when confronted with clashing instructions. Despite the fundamental tragedy of the story, it is ultimately a hopeful book. It says that people made this death trap we live in, and only people can get us out of it. And thankfully, there are still good people left in the positions that matter.
Indeed, the main divergence between the book and movie is that the two national leaders involved are not generic statesmen but real people: Kennedy and Khruschev. This is a little jarring given that neither outlasted the book's publication by very long. However, it's also fundamental to the plot. Burdick and Wheeler ascribe a basic competence and goodness to these particular national leaders, qualities that keep the world from exploding when all factors say it should.
Were the two "K"s given too much credit? Are LBJ and Kosygin men we can trust to steer us clear from the edge of disaster? Those are questions that can only be answered by biographers in the first instance, and in the moment for the second. May summits like the recent one in Glassboro ensure the latter never needs answering.
Have you seen The Invaders? It's a dopey riff on The Fugitive, instead of Richard Kimball running from the law for a murder he didn't commit, at the same time tracking down the real killer, it's about an architect running from alien invaders, while he also plans a counterattack.
The Fugitive was, itself, a riff on Route 66, about two hunks Kerouac-ing across the country doing odd jobs trying to find themselves. The Fugitive works because Kimball has a reason to keep moving, but, as a doctor, a moral obligation to help people wherever he goes. There's a reason the show lasted four years.
The Invaders doesn't work for lots of reasons — being an architect doesn't fundamendally involve protagonist David Vincent in anything. The aliens are laughably inept, betraying themselves with crooked pinky fingers, and yet Vincent can never really get anyone to believe him.
It's a dumb show.
So, of course it has a tie-in novel. Keith Laumer probably wrote this one in his sleep and happily pocketed the $2000 royalty to pay for his next trip to London. It is cliché-ridden and tired, a typical potboiler with a B-movie plot and science decades out of date.
It's still better than the show.
It's better because Laumer's Vincent discovers the aliens through canny investigation rather than stumbling on them at an old diner (tracking several seemingly unrelated factory production orders; once the widgets are assembled, they make a ray gun). It's better because Laumer is a competent action writer. It's better because the book is highly divergent from the show, only retaining the name of the hero, the plot of invasion (even the aliens are quite different — their high temperature gives them away), and the William Conrad-esque narration that precedes and succeeds the three vignettes included in this first volume.
Three stars. Why not?
Belmont Double B50-779
The second Belmont Double, poor imitation of the Ace Double follows a similar format to the first: one old novella combined with a newly commissioned one.
These days, Harlan's name is associated with avante garde stuff, the cutting edge of the New Wave laden with emotion and impact.
Back in the late '50s, when he was cranking out material for the profusion of SF digests, Harlan's work was of more variable quality. Doomsman originally came out in the last issue (October 1958) of Imagination as The Assassin, and it is lesser Ellison.
A hundred years from now, the Western Hemisphere is dominated by the AmeriState, a totalitarian regime that ascended in the ashes of an atomic war. Power is maintained by an assassin's corps, of which one Juanito Montoya, abducted from the Pampas of Argentine in his early manhood, is a typical example. He can kill in a thousand different ways, endure most any climate, and he lacks even the rudiments of empathy or civilization.
But in one way, he is different from his peers, for he comes to learn that he is the son of Don Eskalyo, a princeling who would topple the AmeriState. Once in possession of this knowledge, he resolves to stop at nothing to meet Eskalyo and join his forces. Except, of course, that's just what the AmeriState wants him to do…
Doomsman is a brutal, unpleasant story, rife with torture and grossness. In particular, I could have done without the introduction of the lone female character, the nude and violated (but still desirable, of course!) imprisoned young woman who proves the linchpin to finding Eskalyo. Not only did I find her character a sop to the more lewd readers, but though Ellison makes it clear that she endured three months of the worst tortures without cracking, she succumbs to Montoya's techniques immediately. And we never learn what these techniques are. Obviously, it's an author's trick to imply how effective and monstrous these methods are, but it just comes off as implausible and a cheat.
The one thing Doomsman's favor is it is never dull. That's not enough. 2.5 stars.
Lee Hoffman is a name I've heard a lot in the fanzines, but I've never met her because she lives in Chicago. It's always a delight to see a fan turn into a (filthy) pro, and the main reason I picked up this Double is because of her byline.
Her book takes place in and around the post-atomic ruins of Cleveland, which have settled into a sort of medieval complacency, its inhabitants placid and staid. The defense of the city is left to the soldiers, an almost robotic breed of human, who live outside the city walls. The main threat to Cleveland isn't other men–it's waves upon waves of rats. The story opens up with such an attack, and we are introduced to Beldone, one of the many anonymous drones in the ranks.
Beldone, unlike his companions, develops a spark of curiosity, of individuality. This terrifies him since such is a sign of illness, and the remedy for illness is execution. We quickly learn that this spark is externally created: inside the city dwells the beautiful, and bored, Illyna. In a fit of ennui, she developed the embers of a psychic power, initially telepathic in nature but ultimately controlling. Beldone was her first contact, and through him, she seeks to learn more about the world she inhabits–and to find a way to control it.
There's a lot of disturbing stuff in this novel. Folks who are turned off by depictions of violence, depictions of rats, and/or depictions of telepathic mind control may wish to give this piece a miss. It's also not a happy story, even when it is triumphant. But it is an interesting, well-written one, and I look forward to more of Hoffman's work.
There's a new anthology of original science fiction and fantasy stories in bookstores this month. It's certain to be the topic of a lot of discussion among SF buffs, and maybe even some arguments.
It's also big; more than five hundred pages, and it'll set you back a whopping seven bucks. It's so big, in fact, that Galactic Journey is going to slice it into three pieces and discuss it in a trio of articles. (Why three? Because it's got thirty-three stories in it, and eleven articles would be silly.)
Let's dig into the first part of this mammoth collection and see if it's destined to be the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of speculative fiction, or just another dud.
Wraparound cover art by the husband-and-wife team of Leo and Diane Dillon, who also provide an interior illustration for each story.
Before we get to the nitty-gritty of fiction, we've got no less than two forewords by Isaac Asimov and a lengthy introduction by the editor.
In The Second Revolution, the Good Doctor outlines the history of modern science fiction from Gernsback through Campbell, and into the New Wave. Astounding was the first revolution, you see, and now we're in the second one. That may be a little simplistic, but it gets the point across.
Harlan and I, on the other hand, is a personal essay about Asimov's relationship with the editor, ending with a teasing anecdote. Ellison adds a long footnote offering a different version of their first encounter.
More substantial is Thirty-Two Soothsayers, the editor's longwinded but endlessly entertaining and informative account of what this book is supposed to accomplish, and how it came to be. Ellison wanders all over the place in this piece, and it's a fun ride. In brief, the stories he chose are supposed to be both enjoyable and provocative, with new ideas that might not appear in the usual SF markets. We'll see.
(If you're wondering why thirty-two and not thirty-three, it's because one writer supplies two stories; but that's for another time.)
I should mention that each story comes with an introduction by the editor and an afterword by the author, except for the one case when those roles are reversed. You'll see what I mean in a while.
I'm going to do something a little different here. I'll rate the quality of each story with the usual one to five stars, but I'll also add an indication for how dangerous each one is. This will be determined by sexual content, violence, profanity, experimental narrative style, taboo subject matter, etc. GREEN = safe to proceed, YELLOW = caution indicated, RED = hazardous conditions.
An unnamed character flees through the universe in an attempt to escape those who have overthrown his reign. To say anything else would give away the point of the story, which is an allegory.
Three stars. YELLOW for questioning the deeply held beliefs of some readers.
In a premise similar to his excellent novel Thorns, the author presents a severely injured astronaut who has been put back together by aliens. In this case, however, his body has been restored to normal, but his mind has been made more sensitive to the emotions of others. That doesn't work out well.
Silverberg has become a fine writer, one of the best now working. Like Thorns, this is an uncompromising look at human suffering.
Five stars. YELLOW for scenes of extreme cruelty.
The Day After the Day the Martians Came, by Frederik Pohl
Set in the very near future, this tale deals with humanity's reaction to the discovery of ugly, semi-intelligent lifeforms on the red planet. Mostly, people make nasty jokes about them. The intent of the story is to expose human prejudices, in a way that's about as subtle as a brick thrown through a window.
Three stars. YELLOW for dealing with a major social problem in the USA today.
This is, by far, the longest story in the book. It is also incredibly dense and fast-paced, so any attempt to describe the plot would be a miserable failure. That said, I'll just mention that it takes place in a very strange future, involves an artist and his tax-dodging ancestor, and contains a ton of wordplay. There are scenes of slapstick violence that are simultaneously hilarious and offensive. It's a wild rollercoaster ride, so keep your seatbelt tightly secured.
Five stars. RED for a Joycean narrative style and Rabelaisian humor.
The Malley System, by Miriam Allen deFord
In the future, the worst criminals receive a very unusual punishment. This is a grim story, that doesn't shy away from the horrors perpetuated by human monsters.
In a decadent future, a man uses the only time machine in existence to kidnap people from the past, in order to satisfy the whims of his sadistic granddaughter. He picks the wrong potential victim. This is a spine-chilling little science fiction horror story with a twist in its tail.
This is a direct sequel to the previous story, with an introduction by Bloch and an afterword by Ellison. An infamous murderer finds himself in the far future, where the inhabitants enter his mind in order to enjoy his sensations as he kills.
Written in an experimental, almost cinematic style, this is an unrelenting look at the evil that lurks inside all of us. Not for weak stomachs.
People get so-called time gas supplied to their homes through pipes. It allows them to enjoy better times in the past. As with any form of technology, things can go wrong. This is a light comedy with a unique premise.
Three stars. GREEN for whimsy.
The Man Who Went to the Moon – Twice, by Howard Rodman
A young boy takes a trip to the Moon by holding on to a balloon, becoming a local celebrity. Many years later, as a very old man, his only claim to fame is not as valued as it once was. Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, this is a gentle, quietly melancholy tale.
The Communist East has won a hot war with the Capitalist West. The protagonist is a bureaucrat given the task to determine which of two term papers truly represents the Party line. Meanwhile, a seemingly harmless substance allows him to perceive what appear to be multiple and contradictory truths about the Mao-like Party leader.
That's a vague synopsis, because this is one of the author's stories in which you've never quite sure what is real and what is illusory. Ellison strongly hints that it was written under the influence of hallucinatory drugs. Be that as it may, it's a provocative and disturbing look at the possible nature of reality.
Four stars. YELLOW for politics, drug use, and existential terror.
A man is sentenced to death for his crime. His organs will be harvested for transplant. Through a series of unusual circumstances, he manages to escape from prison, but his troubles aren't over yet.
The full impact of this story doesn't hit the reader until the very end, when we find out the nature of the man's offense. Other than that, it's an ordinary enough science fiction action/suspense story.
Three stars. GREEN for futuristic adventure.
One Down, Two To Go
So far, this is a fine collection of stories, without a bad one in the bunch. Sensitive readers might want to stay away from the more dangerous ones, but most mature SF fans will enjoy it.
Tere Ríos is the name used by writer Marie Teresa Ríos on her books, such as An Angel Grows Up (1957), Brother Angel (1963), and the one under discussion, which came out last year. I haven't read those other two, but the titles suggest that they might have something to do with the author's Catholic faith, which is also reflected in her newest work. (Even the cover artist, who also supplies several interior illustrations, is a Catholic priest.)
The Fifteenth Pelican is a whimsical tale about Sister Bertrille, a nun newly arrived at a convent in Puerto Rico. The most notable thing about Sister Bertrille is that she is tiny; four foot ten and weighing only seventy-five pounds.
The nuns wear large hats that look like wings. Given the fact that Puerto Rico is very windy, you can probably already see where this is going.
While hanging laundry on the roof of the convent, a gust of wind lifts Sister Bertrille into the air. At night, she has what she thinks of as dreams of flying with a flock of fourteen pelicans. (Hence the title.) In fact, she is really soaring through the air with them.
During one of these nocturnal excursions, she lands at a hush-hush military base. Suspected of being a spy, Sister Bertrille has to prove that she just flew in by accident.
That's about all there is to this slim little book. There's some stuff about Sister Bertrille's work with the orphans at the convent, but that has nothing to do with the plot. It's made absolutely clear that Sister Bertrille's flight is not miraculous, but simply a matter of aerodynamics. We're told more than once that if lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, the result is flight.
I, for one, don't believe that a strong wind is enough to allow a seventy-five pound woman to fly, even with the help of wings on her head. Nevertheless, I suppose the attempt at a rational explanation makes the book science fiction rather than fantasy.
Like Sister Bertrille herself, The Fifteenth Pelican is as light as a feather, a bit of fluff best described as cute. I suspect it would quickly be forgotten, were it not for the fact that some television executive got ahold of it, and thought it would make a good series.
Gidget Goes To San Juan
Actress Sally Field, not yet twenty-one years old, got her start while still a teenager in the title role of the television series Gidget. By my count, she's the fourth actress to play the part of the petite surfer girl, after Sandra Dee, Deborah Walley, and Cindy Carol. (Yes, I know too much about beach movies.)
The series lasted only one season, but it became something of a hit during summer reruns. Eager to provide their young star with a new situation comedy, the folks at Screen Gems came up with something. It wasn't called The Fifteenth Pelican.
Field plays the part of Sister Bertrille. We're still at the same fictional convent in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's still really windy, and she still wears the big hat that looks like a pair of wings.
Field isn't quite as small as the character in the novel. She's about five foot two (but without eyes of blue) and is said to weigh ninety pounds. That makes her ability to soar in the wind even more unlikely, but that's television for you.
The pilot, which aired last Thursday, had a one-hour time slot. I think the show will normally be a half-hour series, which is typical for an American situation comedy. It was narrated by a new character, Sister Jacqueline, played by Marge Redmond. She recently appeared as a nun in the movie The Trouble With Angels, so I guess it's typecasting.
She's a friendly, down-to-earth type, who supplies wry commentary throughout the pilot. At her side is Sister Sixto, played by Shelley Morrison. She's a Puerto Rican nun who provides comedy in questionable taste with her mangling of English idioms.
Unlike the rather meek character in the book, the TV version of Sister Bertrille is a perky, outgoing, slightly rebellious sort. We're even told she spent time in jail for participating in a free speech protest.
She quickly tries to improve conditions for the young orphans at the convent by holding concerts and such. (This subjects the viewer to a cloyingly sweet song, which we'll suffer through twice. Believe me, it makes the saccharine songs in The Sound of Music sound like rock 'n' roll.)
This newfangled way of doing nun stuff earns the disapproval of the head of the convent, Reverend Mother Superior Placido, played by Madeleine Sherwood. She's a stern, old-fashioned type. Needless to say, she's not very happy about the fact that Sister Bertrille takes to the sky now and then.
As in the book, Sister Bertrille accidentally lands at a secured military base, and has to answer a lot of awkward questions. That's cleared up pretty quickly, leaving some military types befuddled.
More important is a subplot not found in the novel. Sister Bertrille keeps running into a new character, Carlos Ramirez, played by Alejandro Rey. He's a playboy who runs a discothèque/gambling den. Sister Bertrille first encounters him when she winds up on his yacht full of bikini-clad beauties, where Ramirez is busy trying to seduce one of them into spending the weekend with him.
This adds a tiny bit of sex appeal to an otherwise squeaky clean series. Given the fact that the Catholic Church provided technical advice for the pilot, I don't think we're going to see romantic tension between Sister Bertrille and the fun-loving bachelor.
Anyway, Ramirez owns a piece of land that the convent could use for a new school, but he doesn't want to donate it. When Sister Bertrille flies by his private airplane as he's on route to a weekend getaway with yet another gorgeous girlfriend, he thinks it's a religious vision and gives up the land.
The whole thing is very silly, of course. It takes the gentle whimsy of the book and turns it into broad comedy. Like many American sitcoms, it's ruined by an obnoxious laugh track. The hour-long pilot (forty-odd minutes without the commercials) really drags. Maybe it'll be more tolerable cut down to a half-hour (twenty-something minutes) next time.
Or you could turn off the television and listen to KGJ for all the hits, all the time!
I have lamented for some time that we've been at a nadir of female participation in our peculiar genre. If this month's clutch of books be any indication, that trend is finally reversing, to the benefit (for the most part) of all of us science fiction readers!
by Victoria Silverwolf
Wordplay
Two new science fiction novels arrived this month with one-word titles that don't show up in my dictionary. No doubt that's meant to intrigue the potential reader, and create the sense of strangeness associated with much SF. Let's take a look at them and see if we can figure out what the titles mean.
Sara is a very ordinary young woman, maybe a little less content with her life than most. She considers herself unattractive, and is particularly sensitive about her large nose. She runs off from an unhappy home to take a job in New York City.
While walking through Central Park one night (not a wise thing for an unaccompanied woman to do, I'd think) she is abducted and taken aboard an alien spacecraft. The opening of the novel is a chaos of strange and disturbing sensations, so we don't really figure this out for a while, but it becomes clear later.
In a way that isn't explained until late in the book, she winds up in a
new body. For some time, she's in a dazed, zombie-like condition, only slowly coming to full awareness. The good news is that she's beautiful, with golden skin and a perfect nose. The bad news is that she's enslaved as a sort of nursemaid to a fellow in a mindless state.
Eventually, she figures out that the fellow has been drugged into catatonia by the bad guys. She helps him return to normal by reducing the amount of drugged food he consumes. The two escape from the hospital/prison and a tale of palace intrigue and space opera adventure begins.
The plot gets pretty complicated, and there are lots of characters with odd names, so I got lost at times. (The drugged man's name is Harlan, by the way; a reference to one of the author's fellow writers? Anyway, he's got the only name I've ever seen before, other than the heroine's.)
Suffice to say that Sara is on another planet, although the inhabitants are completely human. Harlan is the Regent for the planet's young Warlord. The bad guys drugged him, faking it as insanity, in order to control the government in his place. Add in aliens that Harlan's people have been fighting for millennia and rival factions for the throne. A further complication is that Sara has to hide the fact that she's a restoree (there's that word!) or she is likely to be killed as an abomination.
Besides all this science fiction stuff, there are a lot of romance novel aspects to the book. The beautiful, virginal heroine and the dark, mysterious hero fall in love, finally consummating their passion in sex scenes that are far from explicit. I also found a fair amount of subtle humor in the novel, as if the author has her tongue firmly in her cheek. What the evil aliens do to the people they capture stirs in a bit of gruesome horror as well.
The characters, for the most part, are either all good or all bad. The only ambiguous one is the brilliant physician who gave Sara her new body, in the forbidden and universally reviled procedure that made her a restoree. (If he hadn't, she would just be dead.) He does seem to be genuinely concerned with healing the afflicted, but he also works with the bad guys.
Kind of a silly book, really, but mildly entertaining if you turn your brain off. It's the author's first published novel, so let's just say that she shows promise.
The explanation for the title is simple enough; Croyd is the hero's name. He has no other, as far as I can tell.
Croyd is some kind of agent for the galactic government. He is also a Van Vogtian superhuman, with a brain that allows him to do things like go back and forth in time. While waiting to hear the details of his latest assignment, he saves a lady in distress from an abusive man.
There's a lot more to the woman than he realizes. It seems that an alien from another galaxy, bent on conquering the inhabitants of the Milky Way, has her mind inside the woman's body. Next thing you know, her mind is inside Croyd's body, and his is inside the woman's.
The woman's mind is still inside her body as well, so she and Croyd share it as they track down the alien who stole Croyd's body. Meanwhile, a gang of beatnik terrorists are planning to send the asteroid Ceres crashing into Nereid, one of Neptune's moons, where there's a government base. The alien in Croyd's body has to deal with this, to convince people that she's really Croyd.
Things get really complicated. There are alien agents among the government staff, with the ability to hypnotize people into turning against humanity. There's another group of aliens that wants to destroy the entire Milky Way rather than conquer it. Both Croyd in the woman's body and the alien in Croyd's body have to fight their nefarious scheme. There's even a second Croyd mind that shows up inside his purloined body. This one is a stupid brute, intent only on animal pleasures.
With all this going on, and characters rushing back and forth in space and time, this is definitely a wild roller coaster ride. I didn't believe any of it for a second. If McCaffrey's book often has the feeling of a stereotypical woman's romance novel, with science fiction trappings, Wallace's frequently seems like a stereotypical men's adventure novel, with the same decorations.
Two stars.
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
With the New Wave such a strong force in British science fiction at the moment there is a real blurring of the boundaries of what is speculative and what is literary experimentation.
Science fiction or experimental literature? Which is which?
If they had not come of Science fiction publishers and\or from science fiction authors would we consider Squares of the City, Greybeardor Ballard’s cut-up tales to be speculative? By the same token if Fowles’ Magus, O’Brien’s Third Policeman or Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita had been published as Ballantine Paperbacks from Cordwainer Smith or Daniel Keyes, would they be on the Hugo Ballot?
This leads into probably one of the most interesting edge cases of recent years, where the author says she had no intention of writing science fiction but it is hard for the SF community to see it as anything else:
In contrast to some recent writers, Kavan’s move into the speculative realm is not as much of a leap. She has been writing since the twenties and her works have often made use of experimental and surrealist techniques, commonly looking at madness and incarceration.
As anyone who has read the stranger side of science fiction, such as Philip K. Dick, these kind of ideas are often played with in the speculative space. However, in this work it definitely feels like she walks over the 49th parallel into SFnal Canada.
In Ice we follow our unnamed protagonist (no one has names here) through a world where society is collapsing under the weight of a frozen disaster. Our narrator seems to be in pursuit of a young woman near the start but the full motivations remain obscure as, even though written in the first person, it is narrated in a very matter of fact style.
In many ways this reminded me of Ballard’s elemental apocalypses, where The Drowning Worldflooded the world and The Drought boiled it, this one has frozen it. And all involve the characters moving through the disaster riven Earth in a dream-like state, as we get to see insights into their state of mind.
However, where Ballard does more direct exploration of his inner-space, Kavan keeps everything very cold and clinical, written in sharp fragments such as this description of the aftermath of a rape:
Later in the day she did not move, gave no indication of life, lying exposed on the ruined bed as on a slab in a mortuary. Sheets and blankets spilled on to the floor, trailed over the edge of the dais. Her head hung over the edge of the bed in a slightly unnatural position, the neck slightly twisted in a way that suggested violence, the bright hair twisted into a sort of rope by his hands.
There is no mention of our narrator’s feelings on this, it is treated in a disassociated manner, as if he is outside the events being described. This in itself gives us insight, but predominantly by the absence of explanation than by the paucity of it.
Yet, it remains dreamlike in another way, for it follows through in a manner that feels coincidental and directionless. They move between scenes in a way that often led me to look back if I had missed anything. In addition there are regular hallucinations throughout, meaning that we have extra questions as to the reality of what we are seeing.
But I believe this is the point: we are meant to feel isolated and abstracted, just as the protagonist does. To see what we as the reader are appalled and terrified by this world, yet we see someone completely numb to it all as our guide.
I could take you through various sections but really it is one of those books you need to experience, to delve into the atmosphere and feelings (or rather lack thereof) in order to truly understand.
A very high four stars.
by Gideon Marcus
Bringing up the Rear
Ace Books, regular as clockwork, releases a monthly double dose of adventure in the form of the luridly composed Ace Doubles. In the past, these bundled short novels had a reputation for being rather shallow and adventure-focused, while also being subject to the mercurial editorial whims required to ensure the stories fit in the prescribed lengths. Over the last few years, however, these volumes have become some of my favorite sources of entertainment, and they've launched the careers of many a new and promising author. This time around, we've got a veteran paired with a newcomer:
Earl Dumarest awakens from cold sleep several days prior to his destination. He is one of the fortunate ones: 15% of the interstellar travelers who take Low Passage on a starship never revive. But Dumarest's luck ends there–instead of being dropped off at Broome, he must debark on the hell planet of Gath. On that tidally locked world, the Low Passage travelers are trapped without sufficient funds to leave, exploited by the Resident Factor of Gath despite the efforts of the local enclave of the Church of Universal Brotherhood.
What fuels the economy of this blighted planet? It is the winds that blow from the baked day side to the frozen night side. As they whistle along twilight mountain ranges, they set up resonances in the human mind, facilitating all manner of hallucinations: some pleasant, some insanity-inducing.
This natural phenomenon is the least of Dumarest's troubles as he has been plopped down into a budding conflict between the Matriarchy of Kund, the cruel Prince of Emmered, and other miscellaneous galactic forces. Can he thread the needle before the looming tempest envelops them all?
Truth be told, I was not expecting much from E.C. Tubb, a writer who almost invariably merits three stars. Even more so as the story reminded me strongly of Dune, with its sweeping setting, frequently shifting viewpoint, and its almost mythological character. The problem, of course, is that Dune was also a three-star tale for me.
So I was quite surprised that this tale grabbed me by the throat and did not let go until I finished, quite soon after I started. I think the main reason Tubb succeeds where Herbert does not is that Tubb can write! There are few wasted words, and his prose is sensual and visceral (perhaps he overuses "blood-colored" a touch; crimson would do occasionally). If Dumarest is a bit too superhuman, he is at least consistent in his abilities, and the limitations thereof. And such a vividly drawn world–it is clear that Dumarest will have more adventures in the future.
Carl Race is a Federation junior ecologist brought into investigate an agricultural blight on Cheiron. The garden-like world is home to a race of primitive but industrious centauroids working with the private enterprise Consolidated Enterprises (humorously abbreviated to "Con En"). There is concern that Con En caused the global catastrophe, which threatens the planet's legume and honey industries, potentially destroying the entire ecosystem. Should Con En lose its contract to trade with the Cheironi, its rival, Trans-Galactic, will swoop in.
Very quickly, Carl, with the assistance of a human teacher, Marcy, and a precocious Cheironi teen, Nubi, determine not only that the blight is artificially caused, but that there is a nefarious conspiracy involved. Much rushing around, near-miss assassinations, chase scenes, scientific explanations, and spelunking ensue. Don't worry–it's got a happy ending.
Author Juanita Coulson is probably better known to the world as half of the editing team of Yandro, a prestigious fanzine that has garnered nearly a dozen Hugo nominations and one win. This is her first foray into novel writing, and she's not nearly as polished as Tubb. The first 20 pages are quite rough sledding, and probably could have been pared down to perhaps a page. In fact, the whole first third is quite padded, and I have to wonder if this was an editorial decree to fill space (this particular Ace Double has very compressed pica, resulting in more words per page). But I stuck with it, and ultimately I found the book to be decently enjoyable. It feels pitched at a much younger audience, what was once called "juvenile" and is now coming to be termed as "young adult". You will probably guess the phenomenon that is the culprit before it is described, but that's fine. One should be able to solve a mystery from the clues provided.
I appreciate that Marcy is vital to the plot and Carl clearly finds her attractive, but no romance develops between the two leads. The aborigines are depicted as equals to humans (with good and bad examples of the species), which I would expect as Coulson has been a strident civil rights booster since her college days in the early 1950s.
After a mammoth twenty-four-and-a-half-hour Parliamentary session (the longest in 16 years) the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill, more commonly called “The Abortion Act”, proceeded through its third reading before the summer recess. Meaning it will be going for final vote in the autumn.
This has been a change that has been long campaigned for and fiercely fought over. The existing law in the UK is over 100 years old and states:
Every woman, being with child, who, with intent to procure her own miscarriage… [or] of any woman, whether she be or be not with child, [by any] means whatsoever…shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable… to be kept in penal servitude for life
This extremely restrictive law allows only where a medical professional considers the mother’s life to be in immediate danger or a risk of severe mental and physical impairment.
This is a very high bar has forced numbers of women to be stuck between to choosing to keep unwanted and\or dangerous pregnancies to term, or make use of an illegal “backstreet abortion” which can also be hazardous, without trained medical professionals around
These have been featured as plots in many major works of fiction lately, such as Ken Loach’s adaptation of Neil Dunn’s Up The Junction or big screen hit Alfie.
Still from Alfie of a relevant scene
There are many objectors to reform, with objections to the new law including claims it will give Doctor’s a carte-blanche to euthanize infants, women claiming rape later as a means to have promiscuous sex without birth control, a method for genocide of the disabled by the back door, and other extreme claims.
The most dramatic moment in the debate came where the Bill’s sponsor David Steel brought out a seven-week-old half-inch fetus and said:
To talk of this in terms of crying, wriggling or anything like that is quite misleading. This is what we are weighing against the life and welfare of the mother and her family.
This was a direct refutation of the claim of The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children where Prof. Donald claimed at their conference that, at 28 days:
You have a live baby and it kicks, and goes on kicking for a long time.
Whilst there have been some amendments made in The House of Lords which will have to be debated when the Bill returns to The Commons in October, it looks set for there to be an expansion of abortion available on the NHS coming. And I myself am very glad of this. It has been a long time coming and represents a real move towards a women’s rights.
Perhaps this spirit of change is in the air, for in the latest anthology I am reviewing Orbit 2, the best stories are about the treatment of women in societies past and yet to come:
Orbit 2
The Doctor, by Ted Thomas
Dr. Gant takes part in a time-travel experiment and finds himself back in the stone age. There he attempts to continue his practice and medically help the early humans.
That is it. I came out of it saying “…and?” If there is some kind of moral in it, it is that savage people don’t appreciate modern science and don’t know what’s good for them.
In the future a new kind of entertainment has been developed where you can feel the emotions of another. The most popular is A Day in the Life of Anne Beaumont, eight hours of programming where they get to experience wealthy actress Anne Beaumont’s life.
Anne wants to break the contract as she is sick of the contrived situations they put her in and has fallen in love. However, at this point what is real and what is fiction?
This quite a terrifying story about the development of television as people seek out more shocking entertainment in the style of Candid Camera. The scenes of rape auditions are particularly striking, but in a way that I am sure was intended. It makes very fascinating points and is one of the most interesting pieces in this collection.
I do have a bit of trouble imagining why anyone would want to experience the edited highlights of the life of a rich starlet, but then I also don’t understand why so many people tune in to Crossroads or Peyton Place each week, so maybe these future TV producers are on to something.
In an unpublished story from the late author, a group of different people are stuck in a lifeboat adrift in the Ocean. To survive, Krueger gets them to believe in another world they can access, one they call Fiddler’s Green. At first it is just them there, but soon more people begin to enter.
The longest piece in the anthology and, my word, does it need editing! There are diversions, huge sections of extraneous detail and filled with the most horrendous stereotypes. The entire thing was a real struggle to get through. It feels like a cross between A Voyage to Arcturus and Farmer’s Riverworld tales, but considerably inferior to either.
One Star
Trip, Trap, by Gene Wolfe
This is a multiple narrative piece where we see events from different letters describing the events. On the one hand we get a fantastical narrative between Garth, son of Garth, and The Protector. On the other, a more scientific narrative between Dr. Finch and Professor Beaty, both chronicling the events on planet Carson III.
Honestly, like the two prior stories by Wolfe I have read, this one failed to work for me. An interesting idea that just seemed to be stretched beyond my interest. I was regularly checking how many pages I had left.
Two Stars
The Dimple in Draco, by Philip Latham
A strange object has appeared on a photographic plate at the Institute of Cosmological Physics. Its spectrum is unlike anything else seen, exhibiting a huge Red Shift. It is up to Bill and MacCready to work out what it is. However, there is also the small matter of organizing a party…
We are told in the introduction the author is an astronomer and it shows here, although not in a good way. Most of this is just people discussing in dull technical detail the observations they have made. But, for some reason, the story also includes points that seem intended for children, such as a footnote:
Stars do not have points sticking out of them. Stars are spherical.
Maybe it works for others but this, along with the regular disparaging comments about women, put me badly off this piece.
One Star (a spherical one)
I Gave Her Sack and Sherry, by Joanna Russ
The first of two adventures from Russ following the same character, the swashbuckling Alyx. Although we are only told her name at the end of this tale, I will use it instead of “she” for the sake of ease.
"Many years ago,” Alyx is a seventeen-year-old woman married to an abusive husband who expects obedience. Sick of the beatings she receives she cuts her hair, escapes and joins the ship of Captain Blackbeard.
This is predominantly setup, consisting of situations of men underestimating Alyx and her then defeating them for their trouble. However, as entertaining as this is on its own, there are many fascinating elements Russ employs to raise this tail up.
As I noted at the start Alyx isn’t given a name until the end of the story, before being referred to as she. This really reflects the nature of this tale, with her finding herself and going through a metamorphosis on this journey.
Russ also doesn’t make use of the common tactic of trying to suggesting age by writing this in an aged manner, such as cod-Shakespearean. It instead combines an ironic narrative voice with modern speech patterns. For example:
SHE: I wouldn’t do it if you were a —
(Here follows something very unpleasant)
HE: Woman go back with those pails. Someone is coming tonight.
SHE: Who?
HE: That’s not your business
SHE: Smugglers.
HE: Go!
SHE: Go to hell.
Perhaps he was somewhat afraid of his tough little wife. She watched him from the stairs or the doorway, always with unvarying hatred; that is what comes of marrying a wild hill girl without a proper education. Beatings made her sullen. She went to the water and back, dissecting every step of the way, separating blond hair from blond hair and cracking and sorting his long limbs. She loved that.
This is very different from what we would get from Howard or Leiber, pointing to something more contemporary. A new kind of tale rather than just attempts to recreate the works of the 30s and 40s.
This story takes place significantly later in Alyx’s life. When she was 23, she had gone down to the city of Orudh as part of a mission to convert people to the Hill God Yp. Alyx grew disillusioned with the religion quickly, so when the mission was chased out of Orudh by the authorities, she took up as a lockpick.
Seven years later, Alyx is employed by Lady Edarra to help her escape from Orudh. Whilst originally uncertain about taking on this role, the rewards convince her, even if Alyx is unsure due to how naïve and proper Edarra is.
This represents an older and more confident Alyx, one who is experienced in the world and now able to take charge of her own destiny. Yet it does not sacrifice the stylistic elements and clever touches that made the previous installment so enjoyable.
Homer Hoose comes home to his wife, but she realizes he is not the person she knows as her husband, and he proceeds to eat her. Another Homer comes home and retrieves his wife from the version that just ate her. They then need to work out why there are two different versions of himself in the same house.
In case you cannot tell, this is a darkly comic tale. Your enjoyment of it will probably depend on how much you like Lafferty’s shtick as all his usual tricks are on display. Unfortunately, it does not work for me–one for his fans I imagine.
Nelly likes eating and enjoys being fat. Her parents want a thin daughter. Both are willing to go to extreme lengths to get what they want.
This is a delicious take on our current thinness obsessed culture. It is full of great lines providing clever commentary on people’s attitudes such as:
Her mother used to like to take the children into hotels and casinos, wearing thin daughters like a garland of jewels.
In a The Machine Stops style future, machines have become incredibly advanced and now take care of all human needs. People only leave their home cities for either specific reasons or if they are “abnormal”. Balank travels out with a trundler to hunt werewolves that inhabit the countryside. But after meeting a strange Timber Officer, Balank begins to wonder if the machines are the real danger to humanity.
This is more traditional Aldiss in the mode of Hothouse rather than his recent Ballard-esque Charteris tales. But that is no bad thing, it is a science fiction fantasy blend with great style and concept that showcases why he is one of the best people writing today.
Four Stars
Whither The Future?
In my previous article I asked whether these kinds of anthologies are the new magazines. I would say that whilst I do not want the magazines to completely disappear, both these show the way forward.
Last month 9% of the magazine fiction was written by women. In these anthologies it is one third. They also manage to get in a balance of new writers, old hands, hard to obtain reprints and ongoing series.
True they lack the factual articles, but can TV not provide those through programmes like Horizon and Tomorrow’s World? And is the fan community not more enriched these days by conventions and fanzines than by the letter pages of Analog?
Whilst there may be some kinks still to work out, I say “Long Live the Paperback!”
Orbit, New Writings and Pan Horror, all out now in paperback!
As you may know, I am a big fan of Tom Purdom. He's a very nice fellow, and his first book, I Want the Stars, was a stand-out. Thus, I was quite excited to see that the new Ace Double at the local bookstore featured my writer friend.
The first two chapters do not disappoint. We are thrown into the action as Migel Lassamba (explicitly of African descent; no lily-white casts in Tom's books) holds up a rich man and his personal doctor. His goal: to get an artificial heart for his companion and love, Anata. Why doesn't he just get one for free from the government hospitals? Because Migel, Anata, and three others are rebels whose goal is to topple Jammett, dictator of the planet Arlane. Five against Arlane, you see?
Thus ensues a ever-widening conflict between the outnumbered but canny rebel troops and Jammett, who resorts to increasingly draconian methods to retain control. His biggest ace in the hole is his ability to slap mind-control devices onto citizens. These "controllees" are fully conscious, but their bodies belong to the dictator, obeying his every whim. As Migel's cadre begins to turn the tide against Arlane's leader, the abuse of the controllees gets pretty grim.
There's a lot to like about this book. Arlane is a nicely drawn world, mostly tidally locked so its days last forever and only the pole is inhabitable. The descriptions of technology and society are largely timeless. Purdom is excellent at conveying material that will not be dated in a decade. As in Tom's other stories, we have intimations of free love and even polygamy/andry, and there is no real distinction between sex or race.
Sadly, where the book falls down is the execution. After those exciting first chapters, the chess-like contest between the rebels and Jammett feels perfunctorily written, as if Tom had to get from A to C, and he wasn't particularly interested in writing B. It almost reads like a chronicle of a homebrew wargame (ah, what a wargame this novel would make!) If I'd been the editor, I'd have sent it back and asked for…more. More emotion. More characterization. More reason to feel invested. And a more fleshed out ending (but perhaps that was a fault of the editing, not the writing).
I noted that the weakest parts of I Want the Stars and Tom's latest short story, Reduction in Arms, were the curiously detached combat scenes. Where Tom excels is the thinky bits. I suggest he either work harder on the fighting pits, or stick to thinky bit stories (like his excellent Courting Time).
Emil Petaja is a new writer perhaps best known for his science fiction sagas based on the Karevala, the Finnish body of mythological work. Now, Petaja plumbs Irish myth for this truly strange, but also rather conventional science fantasy.
Diarmid Patrick O'Dowd (a fine Jewish name) is a scout captain for X-Plor, Magellanic Division. His flights of exploration frequently take him close to a mysterious, green-shrouded object. Finally unable to resist, he becomes the first of his corps to pierce the viridian veil. His ship crashes and disintegrates, leaving him stranded in a Celtic nightmare. On one side, the towers of the islands, inhabited by Irish lords whose beautiful works are created on the backs and tears of countless generations of peasants. On the other, the fetid swamps of the Snae–froglike magicians who seem to predate the human colonists. And up in the tower of T'yeer-Na-N-Oge resides the Deel, Himself, who rules over the world with a song whose lyrics none can deviate from, enforced by a panoply of beasts, flying, swimming, and creeping.
Of course, there is a personal element as well. The beautiful but utterly rotten-hearted Lord Flann plans to unite the islands and lead a crusade against the Nords. But first, he would marry his fair and kind cousin, Fianna. Fianna, on the other hand, has other designs. After rescuing Diarmid upon his arrival, she falls for the fellow, teaches him swordplay, and helps him fulfill his geassa to save the planet from the domination of the Deel. Along the way, there is plenty of swashbuckling, mellifluously articulate sentences, weird foes, and a twist.
It's pure fantasy, more akin to Three Hearts and Three Lions than anything else. But it's fun. And it has warcat steeds (Purdom's book has watchcats–I guess oversized felines are in this year).
Three and a half stars — and I'll wager Cora and/or Kris would give it four.
Triads
by Victoria Silverwolf
Two new science fiction novels deal with the relationships among three characters. As we'll see, in one of these the trio is very intimately connected. First of all, however, let's take a look at the latest book from an author known for prolificity.
The novel begins and ends with the same words, spoken by two very different characters and having different implications.
Pain is instructive.
In this way, the author announces his theme from the very start. Thorns is all about suffering. Physical pain, to some extent, but, more importantly, emotional pain.
Duncan Chalk is a grotesquely obese, incredibly rich man who controls just about all forms of entertainment throughout the solar system. Secretly, he is also a kind of psychic vampire, feeding off the misery of others.
Minner Burris is a space explorer who, against his will, was surgically transformed by aliens. His two companions died during the procedure and he barely survived, monstrously changed outside and in. As a result, he is a loner, seen as a freak by other people.
Lona Kelvin is a teenage girl who had a large number of her ova removed and fertilized outside her body. The resulting babies were developed inside other women, or in artificial wombs. Although her physical appearance remains unchanged, the resulting publicity made her as much of an outsider as Minner.
Duncan's plan is to bring these two miserable people together, both as a form of voyeuristic entertainment for an audience of millions and to feed on their suffering. To win their cooperation, he promises to give Minner a new body and to allow Lona to raise two of the infants produced from her eggs as her own children.
At first, the pair simply share their mutual pain, sympathizing with each other. As Duncan sends them on a luxurious vacation to all the pleasure spots in the solar system, they become lovers. As he predicted, however, their differences soon lead to ferocious arguments. Minner sees Lona as an ignorant child, and Lona comes to hate Minner's bitterness and anger. Can they escape from Duncan's scheme, and find some kind of peace?
Reading this book is an intense, almost overpowering experience. It is the most uncompromising work of science fiction dealing with human suffering since Harlan Ellison's story Paingod. Although set in a semi-utopian future, the settings — a cactus garden, Antarctica, the Moon, Saturn's satellite Titan — are almost all stark and bleak. There are other characters I have not mentioned — an idiot savant, abused by his family; the widow of one of Minner's fellow astronauts, obsessed with him in a masochistic way — who offer more examples of the varieties of pain.
In addition to offering a vividly described, detailed future, Silverberg writes in a highly polished style, full of metaphors and literary allusions. I believe this is his finest work since the outstanding story To See the Invisible Man. With this novel, and his highly praised novella Hawksbill Station, I think we're seeing a new Silverberg, adding greater sophistication and more serious themes to his inarguable ability to produce an unending stream of fiction.
Andrew Blake is a man with a problem. First of all, that's not even his real name. He picked it at random.
You see, Andrew (as we'll call him in this review) was discovered in deep space, after having been in suspended animation for a couple of centuries. He has no memory of his past, although he is familiar with Earth the way it was two hundred years ago.
In order to discuss this novel at all, I need to talk about something that the author reveals about one-third of the way into the book. I don't think that gives too much away, but if you'd rather dive into it without knowing anything about the plot you should stop reading here.
Still with me? Good.
Andrew is actually an android, an artificially grown human being with a mind taken from another person. He was designed to copy the mental and physical forms of aliens he encountered while exploring other star systems. The idea is that he would record this information, then revert to his previous condition. It didn't quite work out that way.
Andrew shares his mind with two other beings. One is a wolf-like alien, although it has arms that allow it to carry things and manipulate objects. The other is a sort of biological computer, a relentlessly logical entity that often takes the form of a pyramid.
Andrew's body changes shape, depending on which mind has control. After a brief period of confusion, during which these alterations happen at random, Andrew recovers some of his memory. The three minds and bodies work together, evading the folks who think he's some kind of monster.
There's a lot more to this book than the basic plot. Simak throws in a lot of futuristic details. Notable among these are talking, flying houses, and aliens who are essentially the same as the brownies of folklore.
Not all of these concepts mesh together smoothly, although they provide proof of a great deal of imagination. The overly solicitous robot house offers some comic relief, and the so-called brownies may seem too whimsical for some readers. Otherwise, the novel is quite serious, even offering a mystical vision of the unity of all life in the universe.
My major complaint is a plot twist late in the book, revealing the true nature of a character I haven't even mentioned. It comes out of nowhere, depends on a wild coincidence, and creates an artificial happy ending.
Despite these serious reservations, I actually liked the novel quite a bit. It's not a classic, but it's well worth reading.
The great British pulp imprint Badger Books ceased trading earlier this year. This is a mixed blessing, but nevertheless a significant event. So it seems like a good time to provide a brief introduction for people who, like me, have a taste for schlocky and pulpy science fiction. Stuff which can make you wince and laugh by turns, but which has its heart, broadly speaking, in the right place.
This is what we're losing.
Badger Books was an imprint of publisher John Spencer and Co., which started off publishing pulp magazines in a variety of genres including SF, but branched out in the 1950s to publishing pulp novels. Badger Books are cheap as chips; they have no copyright pages, and they do have two to three pages of advertisements salted through the text, usually for items like good luck charms, muscle building systems or creams that magically affect your body in some way (cheekily, bust enhancement and reduction creams are usually advertised on the same page).
Badger’s output covers all popular genres, but the two lines most of interest to Galactic Journey readers are the science fiction and paranormal ranges, which are almost entirely written by a single person under a variety of pseudonyms. That person is Lionel Fanthorpe, schoolteacher, mystic and general eccentric, also known as Pel Torro, Leo Brett, Bron Fane, Robert Lionel Fanhope, Mel Jay, Marston Johns, Victor La Salle, Oben Lerteth, Robert Lionel, John E. Muller, Elton T. Neef(e), Phil Nobel, Peter O'Flinn, Peter O'Flynn, John Raymond, Lionel Roberts, Rene Rolant, Deutero Spartacus, Trebor Thorpe, and Karl Ziegfreid.
Even Mr Fanthorpe isn't always sure who he is
Fanthorpe has written as many as 250 books, by some estimates, for Badger between the early 1950s and 1967 (though some credible sources indicate his wife deserves some of the credit). Exact numbers are hard to tell, because other writers share the same pseudonyms, but he is estimated to have written one 158-page book every twelve days at the height of his productivity. Another reported detail is that the books are generated by the publisher sending Fanthorpe a copy of some cover art and asking him to write a story based on the images: sometimes, also, these images come from previously-published Ace or Avon books.
Knowledgeable readers may be able to identify the source.
Sometimes these inspirations make more sense than others: Exit Humanity, for instance, is based on the cover of John Brunner’s The World Swappers, which depicts a crowd of humans going into a giant spaceship; Fanthorpe’s story involves a race of aliens deceiving humanity into thinking that the sun is about to go nova, and enticing them into what the humans think is a rescue ship that will take them to a new home. Sometimes the connection is more opaque: Space Trap, a story where two alien spaceships crash-land in medieval China, for instance, has a cover featuring a caveman and a man in an iron lung.
Yes, this really says "medieval China" to me too.
Reportedly Fanthorpe dictates his stories onto tape and sends them out to be typed, though this only partly explains the lackadaisical nature of his work. Character names change from page to page; subplots are abandoned or introduced depending on the needs of the word count; books change focus and plot without warning. World of Tomorrow, for instance, which opens with a pitched space battle, goes on to have the Earth stricken with plague courtesy of a misfired missile from the space battle, and then shifts to the story of an Earth astronaut who comes aboard one of the space ships and has to find his way back. The titles are often only tangentially related to the story inside the covers.
Don't expect it to make sense.
Ethnic stereotypes regrettably abound. For instance, there are the long, painful sections of Exit Humanity which feature a stereotypical Englishman, Irishman, Welshman and Scotsman musing in embarrassing dialect about the abandonment of the Earth by humanity. Arguably even worse is the homicidally excitable Chinese scientist in World of Tomorrow (named, I am very sorry to report, Hi Mi Fun), and the frequent use of the word “yellow” to describe East Asian characters in Space Trap. Asteroid Man features a Barsoom-like society divided into Black, Red, Green and White members, but the essentialism by which these are described is a little too reminiscent of the less enlightened literature of our time.
And yes, Fang Guy really *is* in the story.
However, Fanthorpe is not your typical dreadful pulp writer. He is also literate, imaginative, possessed of a distinct sense of morality, and seemingly determined to have fun. There’s a lot to like in Space Trap, for instance: two sets of combatants from a galactic war between a species that look more or less like humans and a tiny insect species are stranded in medieval China. The first one deceives a local peasant boy, one Aladdin, into trying to retrieve the spaceship of the second, which looks surprisingly like an oil lamp, and whose denizens are able to win Aladdin over by seemingly doing miracles. Familiar hijinks ensue.
In Micro Infinity, a story about the human race encountering an intelligent species of bacteria with a gestalt mind, all the characters are based on ones from The Canterbury Tales, and the reader can have great fun spotting the references. At an exciting point in The In-World, Fanthorpe ratchets up the tension with, erm, a historical geography of the city of Amsterdam. For the fans, he’ll throw in mentions of the likes of Quatermass and the Pit when you least expect it. Fanthorpe will also work ideas from paranormal research even into his SF novels, for instance in Exit Humanity, where a plot point revolves around the Fortean idea that humans are naturally telekinetic.
The stories can also have a strong, and generally positive, moral streak. Despite the lurid Orientalism of the cover of The Face of Fear, for instance, the story itself features an ecumenical and diverse group of paranormal researchers—- including a Church of England vicar, an Irish Catholic priest, a Buddhist, an implied-to-be-Jewish woman secretary and a Black boxer—- coming together to defeat a villain who is not, in fact, Oriental, but faking his identity. The good aliens in The Space Trap briefly provide a lecture on the evils of slavery and advise Aladdin to purchase slaves in order to free them. In World of Tomorrow, only smokers are affected by the alien plague, and humanity can be saved by people giving up that filthy habit.
He's a fake fakir.
On the one hand, a lot of these stories would be improved with an editor, or two, or three. On the other hand, part of what makes Fanthorpe’s work so irresistible is its spontaneity, its sense of someone throwing down words in a way that gives them pleasure, sharing jokes with readers in the know, not caring if it makes sense in the final analysis. For all their awfulness, Badger Books will definitely be missed.
Postscript: The copy of World of Tomorrow which I purchased from Porcupine Books arrived with an advertisement for family planning services tucked into the pages. Perhaps Fanthorpe readers really do have more fun?
![[December 6, 1967] Brotherly Love (<i>Dangerous Visions</i>, Part Two)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/DangerousVisions1stEdxx971656156_465_692_int-2.jpg)
![[November 22, 1967] Being #3… (December 1967 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/671122cover-653x372.jpg)
![[November 18, 1967] Escape Velocity (November Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/671120covers-672x372.jpg)
![[October 14, 1967] Threat level: High (October Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/671014covers-672x372.jpg)
![[October 10, 1967] Jack the Ripper and Company (<i>Dangerous Visions</i>,Part One)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/1967_Dangerous-Visions-hc-2-672x372.jpg)
![[September 12, 1967] Heavens Above! (<i>The Fifteenth Pelican</i> and <i>The Flying Nun</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/sddefault-2-619x372.jpg)
![[September 10, 1967] Women's liberation! (September 1967 Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/670910featured-672x372.jpg)
![[August 14, 1967] She Does Everything For Me (<i>Orbit 2</i> by Damon Knight)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/670816cover-410x372.jpg)
![[August 12, 1967] Planetary Adventures (August 1967 Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/670812covers-672x372.jpg)
![[August 10, 1967] Badger Books: A Farewell and an Introduction](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/IMG_6354-672x372.jpg)
This is what we're losing.
Even Mr Fanthorpe isn't always sure who he is
Knowledgeable readers may be able to identify the source.
Yes, this really says "medieval China" to me too.
Don't expect it to make sense.
And yes, Fang Guy really *is* in the story.
He's a fake fakir.
Yes, this really happened.