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[June 30, 1964] A big Delta (June 1964 Gamma)

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by Gideon Marcus

Heading South

After four lovely days in the Japanese capital, we hopped the train for points southwest, toward the center of the country.  Sadly, we were just a few months too early to take the new "bullet train" which will be debuted in October in time for the Olympics.  The trip thus took many hours, but the scenery was nice (this year's "rainy season" hasn't been very) and I got a lot of reading done.

Nagoya is Japan's "fourth" city, after Tokyo/Yokohama, Osaka, and Fukuoka.  A drab, gray and brown place, it nevertheless was a must-stay location for us given its proximity to so many of our friends: A husband-and-wife couple teach at the local university, our dear friend Hideko (now recently married!) lives in Osaka, and a friend I met when she visited America, Juuri, lives in nearby Shizuoka.

And, of course, there is the super-energetic Nanami, who teaches schoolchildren in Nagoya.

Dan and Jen, whose nieces were visiting at the time, took us up to old Inuyama castle.  This is one of the few original castles still intact.  It gave us a commanding view of the area.

We also explored the nearby town of Oobu, and we were welcomed into a local home.  Here's the bedroom of a little boy who lived there.

The bustling, brash city of Osaka was as smoky and wild as ever.  Western culture has thoroughly soaked the place: clothing, music, and food.

The Issue at Hand

Somehow in the midst of all this, I found time to read and review the latest Gamma, a new magazine whose first two issues had greatly impressed me.  Sadly, it seems that the stock of great fiction the editors had accumulated prior to launch has been exhausted, and what's left is so much trunk work, the substandard stories by big names that hadn't sold elsewhere.  Pity.


by Morris Scott Dollens

The Girl of Paradise Planet, by Robert Turner

The first story illustrates my point well.  Here is a piece by a veteran, with a thousand stories to his credit, and it's just mediocre.  A fellow on vacation on a pleasure planet goes SCUBA-diving and encounters a young girl under the waves.  She's not a mermaid — she has a full complement of human limbs, yet she can breathe underwater.  The vacationer quickly falls in love, to the annoyance of his shrewish wife, and spends endless hours with his newfound paramour. 

Said romance feels solipsistic, like something a fourteen-year-old might come up with, including plenty of the protagonist's thoughts and precious few of the object of his intention.  In fact, near the end, we are led to doubt that the encounter was real at all, which would have made a lot more sense given the sketchiness of the girl's character, who prefers not to talk but rather mostly perform aquatic acrobatics.  And smooch.

Alas, it turns out the girl is real.  Joy for our hero, disappointment for us.  A weak three stars.


by Luan Meatheringham

(speaking of illustrations, Gamma has employed young Luan Meatheringham to produce drawings.  While the pieces are nice, in a fanzine-ish way, they don't relate to any of the stories, and I'm not sure why they're here, taking space.)

The Feather Bed, by Shelly Lowenkopf

Shelly (a man, despite the name) Lowenkopf writes of a future where, upon the expiration of copyright after 56 years, literary works are destroyed to a copy, and replacements commissioned as a kind of artistic welfare.  When a writer refuses to finish his assignment to rewrite King Lear he is fired, eventually becoming a plumber — an industry in which pipes are torn out and replaced every three years.

I like stories about a future with rampant unemployment and the need for makework, but this one doesn't make a lot of sense, even by its own rules (no good argument is made against creating new works) and the piece doesn't work as satire, either, because I'm not sure what it's supposed to be satirizing. 

Two stars.

Angel Levine, by Bernard Malamud

A down-on-his-luck tailor is visited by a shabby, black Jewish angel, who (eventually) eases the man's pain.

Not much to say about this one.  Three stars for atmosphere and dialect.


by Luan Meatheringham

The (In)visible Man, by Edward W. Ludwig

Here's a piece about a man who is such a nonentity that the world completely ignores him, and he is able to lead a life of crime.  That is, until the fellow finds love and confidence, causing him to become visible again.

I might have enjoyed this story more had Ellison not done it so much better in The Forces that Crush six years ago.

Three stars.

Inside Story, by Miriam Allen deFord

From the pen of one of the genre's most venerable creators comes the tale of a sentient world and the tsuris of a cold given it by a four-being scount team from the Galactic Federation.

Cute, but this is the sort of thing Bob Sheckley used to do, and much better.

Three stars.

The Birth, by George Clayton Johnson

We've seen a lot of Johnson on TV, particularly us fans of The Twilight Zone.  This forgettable piece, a first person account of the creation of Frankenstein's Monster, does not even have a Serlingesque twist to redeem it.

Three stars for competent writing.


by Luan Meatheringham

The Gamma Interview: Soviet Science Fiction

The most worthy piece of the issue is an interview with "Ivan Kirov", editor of a Moscow publishing house that produces science fiction.  It is worth picking this issue up just for this piece, even though it has an unfortunate ediorial accident that omits a crucial line.

Five stars.

Buttons, by Raymond E. Banks

Along similar lines, Banks offers up the story of a dying spaceman who transfers his consciousness to a set of computerized buttons until such time as his persona might be restored to a human body.  Said spaceman decides he likes being a disembodied being better.

It's well-written, but like the rest of the pieces in this magazine, it doesn't really go anywhere.

Three stars.


by Luan Meatheringham

Society for the Prevention, by Ron Goulart

Goulart is known for writing humorous pieces, so this light-hearted tale of the fortunate intersection of an interstellar merchant, his shipment of alien pots which are actually extraterrestrial invaders, and some rabid anti-capitalists is right up the author's alley.

Entertaining, though frivolous.  Three stars.

The Snail Watcher, by Patricia Highsmith

Finally, mystery writer Highsmith presents the tale of a man whose love for snails ultimately proves his undoing.  The moral: molluscs are for eating, not voyeuring.

Yet another atmospheric piece that doesn't do much.  Three stars.


by Luan Meatheringham

Summing Up

Thus ends one of the most mediocre collections of digest-sized pages I've ever read.  I have to wonder if this is a momentary blip, or if Gamma is doomed to be short-lived.  Only time will tell.

And now, off to Hiroshima!  See you in two days…

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




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[June 28, 1964] Not Quite What You Think. ( New Worlds, July-August 1964)

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

I’m back to New Worlds this month on its new bi-monthly schedule. Getting an issue every other month is taking a bit of getting used to, if I’m honest – I was so used to receiving a monthly issue – but I must admit I’m liking the changes. Perhaps waiting that bit longer has sharpened my appetite?

The issue at hand


by James Cawthorn

The July-August 1964 issue of New Worlds starts with another eye-catching cover by Michael Moorcock’s friend Jim Cawthorn. Like the one in May, it draws you in and makes you want to read it, which does the job it is intended to do. (Although, as I will say later, there is some dissent in the Letters pages.)

To the stories themselves.

Hang on – where’s the rest of The Star Virus, by Barrington J. Bailey? Last issue I thought that there was going to be a second part. However, it seems I was wrong. Apologies for the misunderstanding on my part. (please take another point off the rating)

The Fall of Frenchy Steiner, by Hilary Bailey

I said last month that the ‘new’ New Worlds seems to want to merge the old clichés of s-f with the new sensibility of the so-called New Wave. The title story is one of those, in that the idea of alternate history is not a new one for s-f, but here it is given a new energy and perhaps grittier realism.

Told through the enigmatic and moody “Lowry”, it is a story of what happens to Frenchy Steiner, a German bar singer with psi-powers in an alternate Britain in 1954 run by the victorious Germans. Expectedly, it is a setting full of grimness, all rationing, power shortages and curfews, with the Germans keeping control through propaganda and a strict regime. As well as a pub entertainer, Frenchy leads a double life, as we find out about her familial connections to the Third Reich and her importance to the Fuhrer.

The story starts slowly but builds a credible impression of England under occupation. However, by the end it moves a little too quickly towards its resolution and there’s a few plot points that lack the thought of the initial set-up.

If you are a long-time reader, you may recognise the author’s name. We have met work by Hilary Bailey before, with Breakdown in the October 1963 issue of New Worlds. Breakdown was odd and a little underwhelming for me, but Frenchy Steiner, in a longer novella format, worked much better for me, even though I felt at the end that it could have been better paced. Despite the slight whiff of nepotism (Hilary is also the wife of Mr. Moorcock) this was a great start to the issue. 4 out of 5.

Storm-Water Tunnel, by Langdon Jones

A new writer with his debut here at New Worlds, Langdon is described by the story’s banner as ‘a musician’ as well as a writer. Storm-Water Tunnel is a time travel story using the Moebius strip idea – you know, the one where time is a continuous journey that twists back upon itself. This is a story that does that, but the reasons for it doing so are not clear and so it remains an intriguing trifle. I can see why editor Moorcock likes this one, as it covers similar ideas shown in his writing. As an attempt to be different, it’s OK. I suspect that we’ll see more of this writer in later issues. 3 out of 5.

Goodbye, Miranda, by Michael Moorcock

And so, after a story by the wife of the editor and a story by a friend of the editor, we now have a story by the editor. The banner at the top claims that Goodbye, Miranda is a story about ignorance and the consequences of ignorance. To me it was an experimental piece that just reminded me of a bad Shakespearean tragedy where everyone dies at the end. Based on this, Mike needs to stick to editing rather than writing, at the moment. Awful. 2 out of 5.

Single Combat, by Joseph Green

And here is the return of one of the ‘old guard’, from the older version of New Worlds! We last read Joseph’s work in the July 1963 New Worlds with the so-so Refuge. Single Combat is the story of a fight between a King and a pretender to the throne on a world where the people are seven feet tall. The main difference is that in addition to the physical battle psi-powers are used, which means that most of the story takes place in the participant’s heads.

It is interesting to see how the old style New Worlds writer stands up to the reinvigorated aims of the new New Worlds. The answer is not particularly well, frankly. Away from the psi-powers angle story, the story’s a mass of clichés. The tribes are clearly modelled on the coloured peoples of Africa and the twist in the tale is that – gasp – one of the combatants is a woman. I’m less convinced myself by this old sheep in new clothing persona given to the author myself, but the editor seems to like his work a lot. This is on a par with the ‘old stuff’, so, unsurprisingly, it gets a 3 out of 5 from me.

The Evidence, by Lee Harding

And from one of the old familiars to another. Next is the return of another writer, that of Lee Harding, last seen in the August 1963 issue of New Worlds. The Evidence is described as a “moral tale in the vein of Kafka or Peake”. These are rather lofty ambitions which the story fails to reach, although it is a good try. It’s very paranoid in nature but makes its minor point that whoever uses thermonuclear weapons in warfare must eventually be brought to trial. 3 out of 5.

Miscellany

We then have some letters! One of the advantages of being bi-monthly is that you can have responses in the next issue about the one just read. So, we have comments about Ballard’s story Equinox, concluded this month, and opinions given on the new style New Worlds, but at the same time there’s also the valid point that serial stories may not be good for the new magazine when the issues are two months apart. At least we have a range of perspectives and the views are not all positive, which I think is a healthy position to take. But again, I noticed that there are letters from Jim Cawthorn and John Brunner, which suggests that Moorcock is relying on his friends a great deal. Nevertheless, Brunner’s comment on Brian Aldiss’s mathematical gaffe in his story last month is gently amusing.

The Editorial that follows – again, an unusual placing in the issue – is a report on the British Science Fiction Association Convention of 1964. As I wasn’t able to attend myself, it’s an interesting read on the state of the genre in Britain and a nice overview of the way things are changing in fandom at the moment, but I do suspect that the report is a rather sanitised version of proceedings and doesn’t entirely cover all of the high jinks usually experienced at such events. Nevertheless it is heartening to read that there seems to be an influx of new younger attendees, whilst at the same time an award was given to New World’s retiring editor John Carnell. Do such matters translate to readers in the US, I wonder? I’m not sure. But I guess we may find out, in that one piece of good news in there was the announcement that the 1965 Worldcon may be held in London.

I’m also very pleased to see the return of the book review column, reviewed by someone new, James Colvin. (But actually, it is not new. James is a pseudonym used by both Michael Moorcock and Barrington J. Bayley.)

It is divided into British publications and US publications. In the British part this month we have under the spotlight Gunner Cade by Cyril Judd, otherwise known as Cyril Kornbluth and Judith Merrill, and a non-fiction book named Science: The Glorious Entertainment by Jacques Barzun.

There’s also two paperbacks reviewed covering similar non-fictional themes – Arthur C Clarke’s Profiles of the Future and the perhaps lesser known Inventing the Future by Dennis Gabor.

In the US section there’s Budrys’s Inferno by (strangely enough) Algis Budrys, You Will Never Be the Same by Cordwainer Smith and lastly an Ace Double, The Dragon Masters and The Five Gold Bands by Jack Vance.

Equinox, by J. G. Ballard

In the first part of this story we followed Dr. Sanders on his mission to find his friend Suzanne Clair who had sent him an odd letter and then disappeared into the Cameroun jungle. Much of this part is about Dr. Sanders’ time at the town of Mont Royale on the border between the jungle and the jungle turning into crystal.

The descriptions of the things that have turned into crystal are vivid and imaginative but there’s little else to the story. The plot, such as it is, seems to mainly involve lots of walking and running about by Dr. Sanders through the crystalline landscape in search of his friends.

Whilst Sanders does this there are a number of characters that we also revisit. Generally, the characters seem rather unpleasant, aggressive or sad, though whether this is because of their own nature or as a result of the crystals is unclear.

It helps that we now get an explanation of the cause of the crystallisation, as the physical effect of the combination of our timestream and anti-time, although it is not really rooted in sensible science. Really, Equinox is all about the mystery and strangeness of the landscape and in this the story succeeds, whilst simultaneously showing Ballard’s melancholic obsession with change and decay. If the story’s purpose is to weird out the reader, then it succeeds admirably. Even if I’m still not entirely sure what it’s all about. 4 out of 5.

Summing up

With the second issue of this “magazine of the Space Age”, we are starting to get a better idea of this brave new vision for New Worlds. We have a mixture of the old-style s-f combined with the new, to keep the old readers but also entice new ones. I still get the sense that the editor is finding his feet and seems to be mainly determined to shock and confuse, but he does seem to be confident in what he’s doing, even if he’s resorting to using those that he knows to create a creditable issue.

This seems to be the right way forward. There was a letter in the issue this month that seems rather telling – the correspondent has said that they had bought the last copy of issue 142 from their newsagent, which had not been the case for a long while during the Carnell era. I hope that it is so.

I do feel that there is a change that is new and exciting, even when it doesn’t quite meet its aspirations. Compared with New Worlds of a year ago, the magazine is good.

On this new schedule the next issue will be out at the end of August. Until next time…

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




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Magazine

[June 22, 1964] The Bridal Path (July 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Here Come the Brides

June is the month for weddings, they say, and recent events seem to bear that out. 

Princess Désirée Elisabeth Sibylla, granddaughter of Gustav VI Adolf, King of Sweden, tied the knot with Baron Nils-August Otto Carl Niclas Silfverschiöld on June 4.  Those of you who aren't interested in royalty may wonder why I bother to mention this.  Frankly, I just love their names, although it gave my typewriter the fits to put in those diacritical marks.


The happy couple, during a serious moment of the ceremony.

Fittingly, a song about marriage is currently at the top of the American popular music charts.  The Dixie Cups hit Number One this month, with their very first single, The Chapel of Love.  No doubt many young women will be singing Goin' to the chapel and we're gonna get married to their boyfriends this summer.


The group is a trio; why are there four cups on the album cover?

From Miss Goldsmith to Mrs. Lalli

When I first opened up the pages of the latest issue of Fantastic, I thought there was a new editor.  I quickly realized that there are very few people named Cele, and it was too much of a coincidence to expect two editors to have that same first name.  Obviously, Cele G. Lalli is our old friend Cele Goldsmith, and she is now married to a Mister Lalli.  (I later found out that Michael Lalli also works for the Ziff-Davis Company, publishers of Amazing and Fantastic.  Sometimes, workplace romances work out for the best.) Will nuptial bliss have an effect on the contents of her magazines?  Let's find out.

The Issue at Hand


by Ed Emshwiller

The Kragen, by Jack Vance

Taking up half the issue is the cover story, a new novella from a writer known for colorful adventures set on exotic worlds.  His latest offering is no exception.

Centuries before the story begins, a starship full of criminals set out for a prison planet.  The inmates took control of the vessel and landed on a planet consisting of a single ocean, with no landmasses.  Their remote descendants have only vague memories of their origin, organizing themselves into clans based on the crimes of their ancestors.

(Vance indulges himself in a bit of humor here.  The clans have names like Procurers and Swindlers.  The Advertisermen have the lowest social status.)

The clans live on the gigantic floating pads of sea plants.  They survive on what the ocean provides, and are able to build houses and signal towers from plants, fish, and even human bones.  The people live a comfortable existence, for the most part, without glass or metal.

The only flies in the ointment are the kragens; large, squid-like sea creatures that prey upon the food supply of the clans.  The King Kragen, an enormous member of the species, chases the smaller ones away in exchange for offerings of food.

Our hero is a member of the Hoodwink clan, apparently descended from a con artist.  Now the name is literal; his job is to cover and uncover lights on a signal tower, in order to send messages to other floating pads.  One day a kragen attacks his home and food, and the King Kragen is not around to prevent the onslaught.  The protagonist takes matters into his own hands, defying tradition and killing the kragen after a long and bloody battle.  This leads to a crisis for the entire society, with the hero and his allies determined to continue their war on the kragens, and eventually to destroy the King Kragen itself, while the priests and rulers oppose them.


by Ed Emshwiller

The author creates a fascinating planet in vivid detail, while never letting the action stop for a moment.  In addition to violent battles with the kragens, the story contains courtroom drama, political debates, spying, kidnapping, plots, and counterplots.  The way in which the rebels obtain glass, metal, and electricity from their environment is interesting, even if it seems unlikely.  Vance adds a couple of footnotes to explain certain aspects of his setting, and this distracts from the story.  Overall, however, he does an excellent job of worldbuilding, while telling a compelling tale.

Four stars.

Descending, by Thomas M. Disch


by Robert Adragna

One of Goldsmith's – I mean, Lalli's – discoveries spins a haunting fable set in a department store.  A fellow down on his luck, without a job, without money, without anything to eat, buys food and books with his credit card, giving no thought to the inevitable consequences.  He purchases a meal at the rooftop restaurant the same way, then heads down the escalator, lost in the pages of a book.  (The volume he reads is Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, which may be a clue to the story's symbolism.) I hesitate to say anything else about the plot, although the title provides a hint.  Suffice to say that exiting a building is not always as easy as entering it.

Disch develops a surreal concept with rigid logic, making the impossible seem real.  He keeps his tendency to be a smart aleck under control, perhaps because a young, struggling writer can identify with the desperate protagonist.  Whether or not I'm reading too much into the story, it's certain to remain in my memory for a long time.

Five stars.

The College of Acceptable Death, by David R. Bunch

Here is the most bizarre and gruesome tale yet from the mind of a highly controversial author of weird and disturbing imaginings.  The narrator instructs students by showing them the violent deaths of animals and people.  (If I'm reading the story correctly, these are only simulacra, which doesn't make them any less horrifying.) They also learn what it's like to be watched by an all-seeing God.  By the end of the lesson, the best thing they can expect is a peaceful death.

As you can tell, this is a grisly and depressing meditation on the meaninglessness of life.  I believe that many readers, maybe most, will hate its eccentric style, its violent images, and its nihilistic theme.  I can't deny that it has a certain compulsive power, but it's not a pleasant one.

Two stars.

The Boundary Beyond, by Florence Engel Randall


by Blair

As far as I can tell, only one other story by this author has appeared in the pages of a genre magazine.  That was One Long Ribbon, in the July 1962 issue of Fantastic.  I liked that one quite a bit, and I hope she continues to come up with equally enjoyable works of fiction in the future.  To my delight, her latest story is just as good.

The narrator looks back on the extraordinary event that occurred when she was a teenager.  Her older sister is engaged to a teacher.  (The theme of marriage appears again, this time in a sad way.) It's obvious that the narrator is in love with him as well, and that she is a better match for the dreamy, poetic young man than her superficial sister.  The fellow discovers a small, naked, delicately lovely woman near an ancient oak tree.  (We know from the beginning that she's a dryad, so the story depends more on mood than suspense for its effect.) The older sister met the same being when she was a very young child.  She hates and fears the dryad, leading to a tragic ending.

Beautifully written, this gentle and melancholy fantasy touches the reader's emotions with its insight into the human heart.  The author also displays a strong appreciation for nature, so that the fate of an oak tree is just as moving as that of a human being.

Five stars.

The Venus Charm, by Jack Sharkey


by Robert Adragna

I never know what to expect from Sharkey, even if it's rarely something outstanding, and I have to admit he took me by surprise again.  This oddball combination of space fiction and fantasy starts with a guy winning a seemingly useless object from a Venusian in a card game.  Later, he crashes his starship on a bizarre world and fights to survive.  The object turns out to bring both good and bad luck, depending on how it's used.  After reading about multiple misadventures, I suddenly found myself with a climax that amazed me with its audacity.

The planet the author describes is truly weird, and shows a great deal of imagination.  The wild twists and turns in the plot, as well as an extended discussion on the ambiguity of good and bad luck, left me dizzy.  I didn't suspend my disbelief for a single second, but the story held my attention.  Logic isn't Sharkey's strong point, so forget about plausibility and try to enjoy the ride.

Three stars.

The Thousand Injuries of Mr. Courtney, by Robert F. Young


by George Schelling

Full appreciation of this story depends upon familiarity with The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe and La Grande Bretèche by Honoré de Balzac.  I'll wait here while you read both stories.  (For those who don't want to bother tracking down those two Nineteenth Century tales of the macabre, let's just say that they deal with people getting bricked up.)

Mister Courtney goes home to discover his wife hiding someone in the closet.  True to his literary forebears, he bricks up the closet.  Because Mister Courtney is also working on a scientific project, the nature of which you'll see coming a mile away, this leads to an obvious twist ending.

Young is much better when he's coming up with original material, rather than retelling myths and legends, or writing pastiches of classic literature.  I like his science fiction love stories, and I wish he would go back to them.

One star.

For Better or For Worse

Despite a few low points, this was a fine issue, with some outstanding fiction.  Like a marriage, the relationship between a reader and a writer has its ups and downs.  If a particular magazine is disappointing, there's always something else to read.

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




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Magazine

[June 20, 1964] How low can you go?  (July 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

SFlying West

Once again, the Journey is brought to you from Japan!  Specifically, the nation's capital, Tokyo.  We've become old hands at making the trk across the Pacific, especially since Pan Am inaugurated direct 707 service from Los Angeles to Tokyo International.

This time, we stayed at a new hotel, in the shadow of the recently completed Tokyo Tower.  From the observatory deck of the hotel, the often elusive Mt. Fuji was clearly visible, thanks to a heavy rain that had occurred the night before.

Tokyo remains as it has been for the past 16 years (our first visit was in 1948!) Bustling, filled with energy and cigarette smoke.  There is a particular focus on renovation what with the Olympics coming to town soon.  Nevertheless, life otherwise goes on normally in the thoroughfares, wide and narrow.

TV cartoons have become a big deal here, with the recently debuted "Mighty Atom" inspiring tons of merchandise.

It's not all roses, though.  Up on the other side of the country, an earthquake struck off the coast of Niigata.  Then, a tidal wave swept in.  The property damage was immense and at least two dozen people have died.

More personally, though my tragedy hardly compares, this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction managed to limbo below the low bar recently set by Editor Avram Davidson (who fled Mexico and apparently now resides in my home state of California).

With a sigh, here we go again:

The Issue at Hand


by Ed Emshwiller

Cantata 140, by Philip K. Dick

It is said that too many cooks spoil a broth, and the SFnal corollary is that too many ideas spoil a plot.  Indeed, Dick's newest novella, the third in the "News Clown" series set late in the 21st Century, has so many handwaves that I could have used the magazine to fly to Japan.  The piece's 60 pages contain:

  • An overpopulated world with abortion but not Enovid (birth control medicine).
  • A satellite of prostitutes to relieve proceative tension.
  • A super cheap way to get to said satellite.
  • Precious few other satellites.
  • Teleportation.
  • Teleportation (accidental) to another world.
  • Suspended animation as the standard treatment for excess, unemplopyed population.
  • An American population that is more "Colored" than "Caucasian".
  • The Presidential campaign of the first "Colored" candidate (the "Event of 1993" caused the demographic shift such that Whites were outnumbered, yet it is not until 2080 that a Black candidate has a chance).
  • A two-bodied, one-headed mutant human crime lord.

For the most part, the plot follows Jim Briskin as he tries to become the first "colored" President of the United States.  Other things happen, including the "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" incident in which a balky teleporter somehow links Earth to a far-off, virgin planet.  It is very quickly taken as read that this is the solution to Earth's frozen overpopulation problem (creating the excuse for the rather esoertic title — it probably refers to Bach's "Sleepers wake!" composition).  I suppose if the story stuck to these two threads and developed them in a satisying manner, this could be a good read — especially since it's written by Dick, one of the genre's masters.  Instead, the piece is a jumbled mess, stuffed with clumsy jargon, and combining both implausible and contradictory elements with several overly conventional ones.

For example, race relations appear to be stuck in the 1960s even though the story takes place more than a century later.  The overpopulation angle makes no sense.  At first, I thought there might be moral objections to abortion and/or medical birth control, but given that state-assisted suicide is a sanctioned population stabilizer, I doubt it.  And how do the prostitutes not get pregnant?  And how do 5000 of them satisfy Earth's billions?

Inconsistencies aside, the narrative is neither interesting nor comprehensible.  If I can't have good SF, I'd at least like good satire.  If I can't have that, I'll settle for decent writing.

And if that's lacking, there's no rating I can give a story other than…

One star.

The Second Philadelphia Experiment, by Robert F. Young

From the lost pages of Ben Franklin's diary comes an account of the great scientist's further explorations into electricity.  It's a facile reproduction of Franklin's style but really just exists to set up a fairly flat joke.  I was feeling more charitable when I read it, but now I think it's fair to give it just two stars.

Balloon Astronomy, by Theodore L. Thomas

This month's nonfiction seed for science fiction articles suggests using balloon-mounted instruments to provide constant weather reports.  But don't they already do that?

Two stars.

The Scientist and the Monster, by Gahan Wilson

Wilson offers The Twilight Zone episode, "Eye of the Beholder" virtually unchanged except for a slightly improved moral message at the end.  Still just worth two stars.

A

The Happy Place, by Toni Heller Lamb

Ms. Lamb's first published story is a dark piece involving a young girl who finds the cemetery a more hospitable residence than any place of the living.  There is a nice final line, and the story is nice in a macabre sort of way, but otherwise it is unremarkable. 
Three stars.


by Ed Emshwiller

The End of the Wine, by C. S. Lewis

This poem, which follows a bedraggled Lemurian as he makes landfall in Stone Age Europe, is made all the more poignant by being the author's last creation (he died last year, same day as JFK).  Thus, the double whammy as we realize what we've lost as the man from Atlantis rues over same.

Four stars.

The Salvation of Faust, by Roger Zelazny

An interesting inversion of the Faustian Bargain, it entertains and then disappears.  Three stars.

All-Hallows, by Leah Bodine Drake

A tiny poem whose message is that nothing dies — it just becomes part of the world around you.

Three stars.

Nothing Counts, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor regales us with a nonfiction article on the evolution of Roman numerals and the utility of the zero.  It's well-written but there is very little useful information, and in particular, almost no history of the zero itself.

Three stars.

The Struldbrugg Reaction, by John Sutherland

New author Sutherland brings us a pointless Sherlock pastiche, the gimmick being that Holmes and Watson ("Bones" and "Dawson") are in their 90s and immortal (thanks to the Struldbrugg Reaction — see Gulliver's Travels to understand the reference). 

It's no Lord Darcy.  Two stars.

The Girl with the 100 Proof Eyes, by Ron Webb

Some schlubb decants a genie named Jeanie and coerces her to love him.  A delightful rape fantasy.  One star.

We Serve the Star of Freedom, by Jane Beauclerk

This final story, the first from Ms. Beauclerk, features a clever native of an alien world (inhabited by quite human extraterrestrials) who gets the best of traders from Earth.  It's a pleasant story, though more fable than SF.  Probably the best prose piece of the issue.  Three stars.

Summing Up

Good grief.  I do hope Avram Davidson's tenure at the helm of this once proud magazine will soon come to an end.  It's either that or my days of subscribing will.

Oh well.  At least I'm in Japan!

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Magazine

[June 16, 1964] Strangers in Strange Lands (August 1964 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

We've probably all felt out of place from time to time, like the philosophical private eye Philip Marlowe quoted above. I'll bet that the Rolling Stones, a British musical group newly introduced on this side of the pond, felt that way when they made a very brief appearance on the American television variety show The Hollywood Palace this month. Their energetic version of the old Muddy Waters blues song I Just Want to Make Love to You lasted barely over one minute. The sarcastic remarks made about them by host Dean Martin took up at least as much time.


Here are the shaggy-haired troubadours at a happier moment, shortly after their arrival in the USA.

In Tears Amid the Alien Corn

Similarly, the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is full of characters who aren't where they belong, along with a couple of authors who might feel more at home elsewhere.


by Gray Morrow

I trust that the shade of John Keats will forgive me for stealing a few words from his famous poem Ode to a Nightingale, because they movingly evoke the emotions of those far from where they feel at home. The stories we're about to discuss may not have many tears, but they've got plenty of aliens, as well as, unfortunately, quite a bit of corn.

Valentine's Planet, by Avram Davidson


by Gray Morrow

Better known, I believe, as the current editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a fact that does not endear him to all readers, Davidson may seem a bit out of place as the author of a long novella of adventure in deep space. Be that as it may, his story takes up half the issue, so it deserves a close look.

We start with mutiny aboard a starship. The rebels kill one of the officers in a particularly brutal way, sending the others, along with a few loyal crewmembers, off to parts unknown in a lifeboat. They wind up on an Earth-like planet, inhabited by very human aliens. (There's one small hint, late in the story, that the natives came from the same ancestors as Earthlings.) The big difference is that the men are very small, no bigger than young boys. The women are of normal size, so they serve as rulers and warriors. (There's a male King who is, in theory, the source of all power, but he's little more than a religious figurehead, living in isolation from the world of war and politics.)

The survivors of the mutiny get involved with local conflicts, while they try to find a source of fuel so they can make their way home in the lifeboat. Things get complicated when the insane mutineer in command of the starship lands on the planet, intending to plunder it. After a lot of hugger-mugger, and a dramatic final confrontation with the rebels, the Hero gets the Girl, achieves a position of power, and is well on his way to reshaping the local matriarchy into something more to his liking.

As you can tell, I was not entirely comfortable with the implication that replacing a woman-dominated society with a male-dominated one is a laudable goal. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt, and assume he was aiming at nothing more than escapist entertainment. On that level, it's a pretty typical example. The feeling of the story changes from space opera to science fantasy halfway through, and the transition is a little disorienting. Davidson avoids most of the literary quirks found in many of his works, although he indulges in a little wordplay now and then. (I lost count of how many times he told us that the armor of the Amazon warriors was black, scarlet, black and scarlet, scarlet and black, black on scarlet, scarlet on black, etc. He also gives names to a large number of the political factions on the planet, apparently just to amuse himself.)

Two stars.

What Weapons Tomorrow?, by Joseph Wesley

A nonfiction article, among a bunch of tales of wild imagination, may seem, as the old song goes, like a lonely little petunia in an onion patch. In any case, this is a rather dry piece, imagining what the tools of war might look like in 1980. The author describes satellites that could rain destruction from above, and energy beam weapons that could defend against them. He then explains why neither of these methods is practical. It's informative, if not exciting.

Two stars.

The Little Black Box, by Philip K. Dick


by George Schelling

This strange, complex story begins with a woman who is definitely not where she belongs. She's an expert on Zen Buddhism, sent to Cuba in an attempt to distract the Chinese Communists living there from their political philosophy. This quickly proves to be a deception, as she's really there so a telepath can read her mind and track down a religious leader. It seems that the woman's lover, a jazz harpist so popular that he has his own TV show, is a follower of the enigmatic mystic Wilbur Mercer.

Mercer is a mystery. He broadcasts an image of himself walking through a desert wasteland on television. His devotees use devices that allow them to experience his sensations, primarily his suffering as he approaches his death. Both sides of the Cold War consider him a danger. There is speculation that he may not even be human, but some sort of extraterrestrial. The United States government declares the empathy machines illegal, driving the Mercerites underground. The story ends in what seems to be a miraculous way.

Like most stories from this author, this peculiar tale contains a lot of a characters, themes, and subplots. Sometimes these work together as a whole, sometimes they don't. It certainly held my interest throughout, even if I didn't fully understand what Dick was driving at. Your enjoyment of it may depend on your willingness to accept that some things have no rational explanation.

Three stars.

We from Arcturus, by Christopher Anvil

Everything about this story makes it seem as if it fell out of the pages of Astounding/Analog and landed in a place where it doesn't belong. That's no big surprise, since Anvil has been a regular in Campbell's magazine for quite a while. You also won't be startled to learn that it's a comedy about hapless aliens who fail to invade Earth. The author can write that kind of thing in his sleep by now, so he pulls it off in an efficient manner.

A pair of shapeshifting scouts from another planet suffer various misadventures as they try to prepare the way for their leaders to conquer the world. Five such teams have already disappeared, so the new duo is cynical about the chance of success. (Like in many of these stories, even when it's human beings making the attempts, you have to wonder why they don't just give up.) One big problem is that the aliens get all their ideas about Earthlings from television. Eventually, they find out why the other scouts vanished, and the story ends with a mildly amusing punchline.

It's refreshing to have a comic science fiction story that doesn't degrade into crude slapstick, and Anvil has a light touch that can provide a few smiles. It's a pleasant enough thing to read, even if it will fade from your memory as soon as you finish it.

Three stars.

The Colony That Failed, by Jack Sharkey


by Jack Gaughan

Here we have not just one person in the wrong spot, but a whole community. Colonists disappear, one by one, from an agricultural settlement on a distant world. Norcriss, a fellow we've seen before in the so-called Contact series, arrives to take care of the problem. As in previous stories, he uses a device that allows him to enter the mind of other beings. One problem is that, in this case, he doesn't know what mind to enter. Adding a touch of what seems to be the supernatural is the fact that the coffin of a dead woman burst open, her body went missing, and other colonists heard her voice after she died.

The author provides a scientific solution to the mystery that is interesting, if not extremely plausible. The story accomplishes what it sets out to do, without anything notable about it. At least Sharkey wasn't trying to be funny.

Three stars.

Day of the Egg, by Allen Kim Lang


by Nodel

Talk about being in the wrong place! This story was supposed to be in the April issue, but because of some kind of goof it's only showing up now. I can't say that its disappearance was a bad thing.

This is a silly farce, set in a solar system where stereotyped British folks rule one planet, stereotyped Germans rule another, and bird people rule another. The protagonist, Admiral Sir Nigel Mountchessington-Jackson (are you laughing yet?), competes with his nemesis, Generalfeldmarschall Graf Gerhard von Eingeweide (still not laughing?), to sign a treaty with the birds. The egg containing the new monarch of the avian planet hatches, and the baby chick thinks the German is her mother. The Englishman comes up with a scheme to turn the tables on his opponent.

I found the whole thing much too ridiculous for my taste. The way in which the British guy wins the day was predictable, and the jokes fall flat. The author makes Anvil look like the master of sophisticated wit.

One star.

Not Fitting In

Reading this issue made me feel like I should have been somewhere else, doing something else. The stories range from poor to fair, with only Philip K. Dick rising above mediocrity. Even his unique story fails to be fully satisfying, and seems to have been shoved into a place where it doesn't quite belong.  As science fiction fans in the mundane world, I'm sure we can all identify with that situation. 


This newly published book provides a fit metaphor, but don't bother reading it. It's all about the pseudoscience of matching people to their proper careers through physiognomy.

Nevertheless, we're also a hardy breed, and we know that even when times are rough, something good is right around the corner.  Like this month's Fantastic…

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Magazine

[June 12, 1964] RISING THROUGH THE MURK (the July 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Wishing Waiting Hoping

Can it be . . . drifting up through the murk, like a forgotten suitcase floating up from an old shipwreck . . . a worthwhile issue of Amazing?

You certainly can’t tell by the cover, which is one of the ugliest jobs ever perpetrated by the usually talented Ed Emshwiller—misconceived, crudely executed, and it doesn’t help that the reproduction is just a bit off register.


by Ed Emshwiller

Mindmate, by Daniel F. Galouye

This hideous piece illustrates Mindmate, an amusingly hokey long novelet by Daniel F. Galouye, an improvement over his last two pieces in Amazing if not up to the standard of his Hugo-nominated novel Dark Universe.  In the near future, the Foundation for Electronic Cortical Stimulation, a/k/a the Funhouse chain, is raking it in selling ersatz experience, but is being chivvied by the Hon. Ronald Winston, chairman of the House Investigative Subcommittee on Cultural Influences, who thinks the Funhouses are addictive and should be stopped. 


by Ed Emshwiller

So the Funhousers do the only sensible thing—they kidnap Winston and, before killing him corporeally, use their technology to install him as a secondary personality in the brain of protagonist Sharp, who has been surgically altered to be a dead ringer for Winston.  It’s Sharp’s job to subvert the Subcommittee’s investigation, though he’s actually thinking of playing a double game. 

Sharp’s access to Winston’s memories and habits permits him to impersonate Winston quite successfully, to the point where he sometimes wonders whether he or Winston is really in charge.  And that, along with his mixed motives, sets the theme for the story: he’s not the only one playing a double game, or the only one with a double personality and questions about who is dominant. The attendant rug-pulling is executed reasonably well, though the author cheats a little: which personality emerges as dominant seems determined by plot needs and not by any identifiable aspect of the invented technology.  And it’s all acted out in the slightly incongruous context of a gangland melodrama.  But it’s sufficiently well turned and entertaining to warrant some generosity.  Four stars.

Placement Test, by Keith Laumer


by Virgil Finlay

There are two other novelets.  Keith Laumer’s Placement Test is one of his aggressively dystopian pieces, similar in degree of oppression but much different in mood from The Walls in the March 1963 Amazing, and less effective.  In a hyper-stratified future society, protagonist Maldon, who has done everything by the book, is excluded from his chosen career path through no fault of his own, relegated to Placement Testing for a menial future, and, if he doesn’t like it, Adjustment (of his brain). 

Instead of accepting his fate, he rebels, and through a combination of chutzpah and chicanery manipulates the rigid and stupid system to get what he wants . . . only to be told (here’s a revelation as massive as the cliche involved) that it was all a set-up, his rebellion was the real placement test, and he’s going to be a Top Executive (sic).  The hackneyed gimmick is offset by Laumer’s usual propulsive execution, so three stars for competence.  But if this is Laumer’s placement test . . . he’s not quite as promising as we might have thought from The Walls, It Could Be Anything, and others. 

A Game of Unchance, by Philip K. Dick


by George Schelling

The third novelet is Philip K. Dick’s A Game of Unchance, set among colonists on a Mars every bit as unrealistic as Ray Bradbury’s, but much more depressing.  A spaceship lands at a settlement, promising a carnival: “FREAKS, MAGIC, TERRIFYING STUNTS, AND WOMEN!”—the last word painted largest of all.  But the colony has just been fleeced by another carnival ship!  This time, though, the colonists have a plan: their half-witted psi-talented Fred can go to the carnival and win the games with the most valuable prizes.

The prizes turn out to be dolls with intricate internal wiring (microrobs, they’re called), which attack and escape, and later prove bent on harm to the colonists, wiring up the local fauna and the livestock.  The UN says the colonists will have to evacuate while they flood the area with poisonous gas; then a higher-powered UN guy shows up and says that they will probably have to evacuate Mars entirely in the face of this extraterrestrial invasion, for that is what it is.  At story’s end, yet another carnival ship has shown up—this one with prizes consisting of little mechanical devices claimed to be “homeostatic traps” that will catch the little things the colonists can’t catch themselves—and at the end, they are falling for it. 

In outline, this sounds like a tight little piece of irony, but on the page it’s quite atmospheric.  Dick has become hands down SF’s master of dreariness.  (“The night smelled of spiders and dry weeds; he sensed the desolation of the landscape around him.”) But more than that, he is a master of a particular kind of horror, the horror of being trapped, not necessarily physically, but in events and situations that can only have a bad end and that his characters cannot turn away from.  The fact that some of the situations (like this one) make very little sense does not detract from their power; this is a sort of dream logic at work.  It doesn’t work for everybody, but for my taste, four stars.

The Mouths of All Men, by Ed M. Clinton, Jr.


by McLane

Ed M. Clinton is a very occasional SF writer, with eight stories scattered over the past decade, almost all in second-tier magazines.  In his short story The Mouths of All Men, Soviet and American astronauts are launched simultaneously, intending to meet in space and return together in a show of brotherhood, but while they’re en route someone triggers World War III, destroying humanity.  So they match velocities, dock, and immediately try to kill each other; then they calm down, show each other their pictures of their now incinerated families, inscribe a proclamation on their viewport, and purposefully botch re-entry so they’ll be killed on the way down.  This is more of a harangue than a story—not a badly done harangue, but the sentiments are quite familiar to SF readers, and starting to get that way for everyone else.  Two stars.

The Scarlet Throne, by Edward W. Ludwig


by Blair

The Scarlet Throne by Edward W. Ludwig, a little more prolific but about as obscure as Clinton, is another Message story, this one less well done than Clinton’s.  Esteban, the patriarch of a poor Mexican family who lives near a desert rocket launching facility in the US, is troubled by the fact that space is being conquered while his family and his neighbors still lack indoor plumbing, and decides to take his message to the launch site where the President will be in attendance.  He doesn’t get far.  The story ends with a crude but appropriate joke.  The worthiness of the message is overtaken by the story’s heavy-handedness and the rather patronizing portrayal of the Mexican family.  Two stars.

Operation Shirtsleeve, by Ben Bova

Ben Bova soldiers on with Operation Shirtsleeve, discussing how to transform Venus and Mars so we can walk around in our shirtsleeves on them—i.e., terraform them, though Bova avoids this term for some reason.  Instead, he uses “shirtsleeve” as a verb at least once.  I don’t think that usage will stick.  Anyway, the answers, respectively, are bombard Venus with algae and bombard Mars ith energy and hydrogen.  (I am simplifying a little bit.) It’s the usual fare of interesting information presented dully. 

Bova does venture outside his specialties with one observation: “While the moon has some political and perhaps even military advantages, Mars is too far away for any nation to attempt to reach single-handedly.  Manned expeditions to Mars will probably be international efforts supervised by the United Nations.” I wonder if he’s giving any odds.  Bova then concludes: “The real question is: Why bother?  That is a question that can only be answered by the men who actually land on Mars.” I would think that the people who will pony up the trillions of dollars or other currency needed to pay for this project, and their representatives, might have something to say about it too.  But the fact that Bova is even asking this question gets him a grudging three stars.

In Conclusion

So: nothing terrible, everything readable, and a couple of items distinctly above average.  Celebrate! . . . while you can. 

Next month . . . Robert F. Young.

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Book, Magazine

[June 8, 1964] Be Prepared! (July 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

In Preparation

In three days, the Traveler family returns to Japan for an unprecedented three-week trip.  That's an endeavor that calls for tremendous planning, from the purchasing of tickets (Pan Am flies direct from Los Angeles to Tokyo these days!) to judicious packing.  A house-sitter must be engaged.  Mail must be held at the post office.  And, of course, three weeks of The Journey must be plotted in advance.  Thank goodness we're such a broad team.

Out in the real world, the United States Senate, under the agile leadership of Hubert Humphrey, is putting its ducks in order.  The goal: to invoke cloture, ending the months-long "debate" over the Civil Rights Act and allowing a vote on the landmark bill.  This fate of this legislation, federally guaranteeing equality of the races regardless of the desire of certain states to retain barbaric discrimination practices,was never really in doubt.  By the time it came to the floor this year, after two years of increasing Black American protest, and support from the President's office (first JFK, now LBJ), it was a matter of when Southern resistance was crushed, not if.  Such are the fruits of good planning.

Twenty years ago, meticulous planning brought another racist regime to heel.  After months of preparation, the Western Allies lined up thousands of ships and tens of thousands of troops for an invasion of Nazi-occupied France.  D-Day at Normandy was a hard-won but smashing success that sounded the death knell for Hitler's empire.  The other night, Walter Cronkite met up with the operation's implementer, President/General Eisenhower, for a heart to heart in France.  It was good television, and stirring tribute to one of America's finest hours.

What If?

IF Worlds of Science Fiction, Galaxy's scrappy younger sister, has also launched a big operation, the result of a long-ranged plan.  For years, the magazine has been a bi-monthly, alternating publication with Galaxy.  Now, editor Fred Pohl says it's going monthly.  To that end, he lined up a slew of big-name authors to contribute enough material to sustain the increased publication rate.  Moreover, Pohl intends IF to be the adventurous throwback mag, in contrast to the more cerebral digests under his direction (Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow.  Or in his words:

"Adventure.  Excitement.  Drama.  Color.  Not hack pulp-writing or gory comic-strip blood and thunder, but the sort of story that attracted most of us to science fiction in the first place."

Frankly, it was Galaxy that got me into SF in 1950, so I'm not sure I want a return to the "Golden Age".  But I'm willing to see how this works out, and in fact, this month's issue is encouragingly decent, as you shall soon see.


by Gray Morrow

The Issue at Hand

Farnham's Freehold (Part 1 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

This issue starts with a serial that is all about being prepared.  In Heinlein's latest, Hubert Farnham and his family are interrupted during bridge night when the Russkies start pounding his town with atom bombs.  Luckily, this second example of a perspicacious Hubert had the foresight to build a well-stocked shelter.  'Hugh', his headstrong son, Duke, cheerful daughter, Karen, alcoholic and listless wife, Grace, 'houseboy' and 'Negro' Joe, and friend, Barbara (as well as Joe's cat, 'Dr. Livingston, I presume') all cram into the basement refuge as the first two warheads go off.

Drama quickly erupts.  Duke does not take kindly to his father's autocratic style (and he is all the more resentful since Hugh is always right).  After the second bomb, Hugh and Barbara keep watch together, and promptly commence to having an affair.  This would have been more palatable had there been any sort of build up or prior history.  Just a few pages ago, Hugh was lamenting that Duke and Barbara weren't an item yet.  All it takes is a couple of bombs, some sweltering heat, and a nearby knocked-out wife to fan the flames of passion, I guess.

There is a third walloping, but this time, there is no accompanying radiation or rumble.  Instead, when the six finally work their way out of the shelter, they find themselves in an utterly virgin version of their former home.  No city.  No people.  Just greenery and wildlife. 

Thus it is that Farnham's Freehold transforms from Alas, Babylon to Swiss Family Robinson. 

Hugh immediately creates a long-range settlement plan, complete with irrigation, plumbing, and light industry.  For several months, there is idyll in the new Garden.  But then (read no further if you don't want telling details) it turns out that both Karen and Barbara are pregnant.  Karen dies in the agonies of childbirth, as does her infant daughter.  Grace refuses to live under the same roof as Barbara and decides to leave, the Oedipally inclined Duke in tow.  Just as this split is about to come to fruition, other humans appear.

Black humans, with hoverships and paralyze rays.  They don't speak English, but they are kindly disposed to Joe.  Less so to the others.  End Part One.

After the disappointment that was Podkayne of Mars), I was not looking forward to spending hours with Bob Heinlein this month.  To some extent, my fears were borne out.  While I do admire the ability to tell a story completely in dialog, with the action implied in the lines of the characters, it is too much of a good thing here, especially since all of the characters sound like Bob Heinlein or Heinlein's Band of Straw Men.  The story reads like the screenplay for Heinlein — a One Man Show! crossed with The Boy Scout Handbook.  Bob even manages to cram in paeans to nudity, cats, and Libertarianism within the first 25 pages (I think he has a checklist).  And the "passionate" dialog between Hugh and Barbara?  Ugh.

That said, the book is readable and well-paced.  If you can look past the cardboard characters and the sparse scenery, the bones of the story are alright, I suppose.  Perhaps it's just my taste for the Post-Apocalyptic that kept me going.

Three stars for now.  We'll see what happens.

Weetl, by Jack Sharkey

This is a silly tale of man who was unprepared.  Raised in religiosity, a young zealot creates a machine that makes it impossible for anyone to weetle.  That is to say, when they try to say something weetleive, it is subweetletuted with the censoring sound, 'weetle.'  As you can see, beweetles a problem very quickly.

It starts great, ends dumb, and yet, I like the concept.  I can see a future where OMNIVAC ruins all of our computer programs by overzealously deleting words it finds offensive.  Or maybe Ma Bell implementing a razzer over particularly spicy phone conversations.

Three stars.

The Mathenauts, by Norman Kagan


by Nodel

Sometimes, things can't be planned for at all.  In the future, it turns out that the mathematically inclined can pilot spaceships that traverse pure math space, shortcutting the physical world.  But one of the geniuses in the crew goes too far and discovers that math isn't just an abstraction — it is the universe, and the physical world is just a construct of the beings that once thrived in the real (or should I say irrationally complex?) world of numbers.

This story left me completely cold, with its flat-falling jokes and easy philosophy ("Like, man, what if the dreams are real, and we're really asleep right now?!") But I know a lot of folks really liked this tale, and in deference to them, I gave the story multiple and deep readings.  After a while, I was able to refine my position.

I still don't like it.  Two stars.

(Full disclosure: I was not able to get past my third year of University mathematics, and proofs are my weak point.  I am a physicist, not a mathematician, and certainly not a philosopher.)

Old Testament, by Jerome Bixby

A wife and husband team of planetary explorers do their best to make a furtive survey of a planet inhabited by primitive extraterrestrials.  But the best-laid plans gang aft agley — the aliens have left a foundling child on board their ship, one who will die if they don't take it back.  Can they return the child without further tainting the culture?

I liked this one, a UFO story in reverse.  Four stars.

The Silkie, by A. E. van Vogt


by Gray Morrow

Last up is a most unusual story from pulp veteran A. E. van Vogt, featuring a profoundly altered variety of humanity that can not only breathe air but also live undersea and sail through the vastness of interplanetary space.  Cemp, a Silkie (sort of a telepathic, spacefaring cop) encounters an extraterrestrial incursion right on the eve of his once-in-a-decade period of spawning.  Talk about unplanned events!  Can he defeat the menace when he is at his most vulnerable?

It's the telling of this story, weird and subtle, that makes it.  Silkie feels less like van Vogt and more like Dick (and perhaps better Dick than a lot of recent Dick).  Not quite perfection, but interesting nonetheless.

Four stars.

Summing up

So far, Pohl's efforts to beef up IF appear to be paying off.  I look forward to seeing his plan further translate into reality!

Now I just need to figure out where to cram in the extra review every month…

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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 2, 1964] June Gloom (June 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Open Your Golden Gate

This weekend, the family and I took a trip to San Francisco for a small pre-Pacificon fan gathering. Well, not so small. By the end, attendance was measured well into the hundreds, and the informally dubbed "Baycon" boasted much the same schedule as any normal convention: panels, parties, even an exhibit hall and art show!

Of course, yours truly and co. were drafted to give a State of the Union on fandom as of May 1964. We were pleased to accept, and the resulting show was one of our best (we think). See for yourself!


The event by the Bay was the highlight of an otherwise dreary month, sfnally. Indeed, June 1964 (by cover date) may well be the worst month in the history of SF mags. Read on to understand why…

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

John W. Campbell's Analog, once the clear flagship of the SF mag fleet, has become a rusted shell of itself.  From a distance, it still retains the proud lines of the S.S.Astounding (as it was once known), but up close, one can see the degradation of years of neglect.  Though many of the crewmen are the same, their uniforms are shabby and their work lackluster.  It's a depressing thing.  Witness this month's issue.

Plowshare Today, by Edward C. Walterscheid

The one truly bright spot of this issue is the nonfiction article.  Usually, the value of these pages is directly proportional to their absorbency.  This time is different — Walterscheid has given us quite an informative piece on the where we are in regard to using nuclear weapons for "peaceful" purposes.  Earth moving, isotope making, Fourth of July demonstrations…that sort of thing.

I learned a lot.  I also know not to expect this project to come to fruition any time soon.  Four stars.

Stuck, by John Berryman


by Steven Verenicin

Exactly one year ago, Berryman wrote a nifty piece called The Trouble with Telstar, a hyper-realistic tale of satellite repair in the near future.  Stuck is a sequel, in which our intrepid space repairman is contracted to catch an enemy spy satellite as it whips past the Earth in a hyperbolic orbit.

The situation is mildly interesting, but the characters aren't, and the writing is workmanlike.  It's a shame — I was looking forward to this one.

Three stars.

Dolphin's Way, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Leo Summers

From the movie, Flipper, to the recent Clarke novel, Dolphin Island, our friends, the littlelest of whales, have been quite the sensation lately.  In Dickson's tale, humanity is on the verge of a communications breakthrough with dolphins.  This attempt becomes time sensitive as budgets are threatened.  Moreover, the principal investigator on the project has a sneaking suspicion that success will be the linchpin to acceptance into a galactic community.

Not bad, though I could have done without all the googoo eyes the scientist has for the journalist who arrives to cover his efforts.  Three stars.

Snap Judgment, by J. T. McIntosh


by Leo Summers

And then we hit the bottom.

The premise isn't bad: aliens come to Earth hoping to have us join their stellar Federation so that we'll vote for them in a pending referendum.  Through various contrivances, they never actually see humans — they only know of us from radio advertisements and from the luggage of a single space traveller.  From these scanty clues, they must craft a pitch that will win over all of humanity.

The thing is, the BEMs salvage a woman's luggage and, thus, deduce all the wrong things about humanity.  That we're frivolous, easily flattered, desperate for a protector.  The radio commercials only reinforce this view since they're aimed at the consumers of society.  You know.  Women. 

Their pitch falls flat when the MEN, who thankfully are in charge of society, are turned off by the aliens' appeal and respond in a way that maximizes Earth's gain over that of the extraterrestrials.

Lest you think I'm being touchy, and that McIntosh was not impugning all womankind, let me read you this tidbit from the end of the story:

"Why," Doreen said, "did women react one way and men another?"
Barker grinned.  "Because of you.  The Grillans only had time for a snap judgment.  they picked your ship and made a quick guess about us based on what they found onboard."
"What they found?"
"Feminine things.  The only personal things in the ship.  The only clues about the human race they had.  And what a mistake that was."
"Why?"
"However women may holler about sex equality, men will always decide things like what to do when contact with an alien race is made.  Right?"
Doreen shrugged.  "I guess so.  Women have other things to think about."
"As you say.  As you said — 'Nobody asks me when big things are decided.  I never expected they would.'  Women's goals are more personal.  More Earthbound."

It goes on from there.  It could not be more offensive if McIntosh had written the BEMs finding a Jew's suitcase and determining that humanity was grasping and miserly.  Or deducing from a Black person's luggage that humans just really love to be enslaved.

One star and 1964's winner of the Queen Bee Award.

Undercurrents (Part 2 of 2), by James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

I left Part 1 of this story none too enthused about where the novella was going, and all of my suspicions were confirmed.  To sum up, 15 year-old Telzey Amberdon is a psionically adept young woman sent off-planet to college.  Her roommate, Gonwil, is about to come into control of great wealth as a result of her reaching majority.  When Telzey makes telepathic contact with Gonwil's giant dog guardian, Chomir, she discovers a plot to kill Gonwil.

Two things made this promising story an utter disappointment.  For one, it was obvious that the dog was going to be the tool of Gonwil's attempted assassination.  But worse still was the writing.  We hardly see Telzey do anything.  There are just endless pages of exposition, introducing and then disposing of plot points, or even just irrelevant information.  It's like Schmitz wrote an outline and then neglected to fill it in with a story.

Two stars, and what a shame.  I haven't been this let down since Podkayne of Mars.  Two stars.

Mustn't Touch, by Poul Anderson


by Michael Arndt

The first hyperdrive test is recovered from the orbit of Neptune after just 60 seconds of operation.  Unfortunately, all the biological specimens on board are dead or dying.  What caused this lethal event, and what does it mean for humanity?

Poul Anderson tends to vacillate between genius and garbage.  This piece falls smack dab in between, featuring some nice writing and a lot of good ideas, but failing to land any punches.  He's got a novel's worth of concepts in here: sentient robots, hyperspace, genetic manipulation.  But with only ten pages to get his point across, it all becomes a muddle.

Three stars. 

I, BEM, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond


by Michael Arndt

Finally, the Richmond twins (I kid, they're probably married — of course, they could also still be twins) offer up yet another turgid short, this one on how robots will ultimately make all humans unemployed — but what happens when the robots have their work done for them?

Written like that, I actually kind of like the concept, but it's not very well done.  Two stars.

Doing the Math

Analog clocks in this month at an unimpressive 2.6 stars, tied with Amazing and beating out Fantastic (2.4).  But even the mags that beat Analog didn't do so by much: Galaxy scored 2.7 and F&SF got 2.8.  In fact, the best parts of the magazines were the nonfiction articles this month.  Only Kit Reed's Cynosure (in F&SF) and Harlan Ellison's Paingod (in Fantastic) merit much attention besides.

Of the 34 new fiction pieces, only two of them were penned (in whole or part) by women. 

Now, to be fair, I have not yet read the June 1964 issue of Gamma, but that's only because the magazine has such spotty distribution that I didn't get a copy until recently.  So it'll get lumped in with July's stuff.  I can only imagine that will be for the good!

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Magazine

[May 22, 1964] Not Fade Away (June 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Hello, Satchmo (And Mary)

A certain British quartet, which shall remain unnamed here, finally toppled from the top of the American popular music charts this month after dominating it for most of the year.  Whether or not this means the end of their extraordinary career on this side of the Atlantic remains unknown.  Whatever their fate may be, I wish them a fond farewell, at least for the nonce, and extend an equally warm welcome to two vocal artists from the United States.

Along with the proverbial flowers brought by April showers, the early part of May offered a hit song from a jazz legend whose career stretches back four decades.  Taken from a hit Broadway musical of the same name, Louis Armstrong's rendition of Hello, Dolly! reached Number One, and is likely to send more people flocking to the St. James Theatre to see Carol Channing in the title role.


Have you purchased your tickets yet?


Gotta love that smile.

Just recently, a much younger singer achieved the same chart position with a romantic rhythm-and-blues ballad.  Mary Wells, currently the top female vocalist for the Motown label, has a smash hit with the catchy little number My Guy.


The juxtaposition of the two titles on this single amuses me.

I suppose it's too early to tell if we're witnessing the slow demise of rock 'n' roll in the USA in favor of other genres, but perhaps the popularity of these two songs indicates something of a trend.  In any case, it's encouraging to see that, in a time when racial animosity threatens to tear the nation apart, music can cross the color line.

The Prodigal Returneth


by Robert Adrasta

Just as American performers reappear in jukeboxes and on transistor radios after an extended absence, a multi-talented author who has been away from the field for a while returns to his roots in imaginative fiction in the latest issue of Fantastic, and even earns top place on the cover.

Paingod, by Harlan Ellison


by Leo and Diane Dillon

After some years spent publishing a large number of science fiction and fantasy stories, as well as crime fiction, mainstream fiction, and a nonfiction account of his experiences with juvenile delinquents, Ellison migrated to the greener pastures of Hollywood.  Writing for television definitely pays better than laboring for the magazines, and you may have seen his work on Ripcord and Burke's Law.  The lure of Tinseltown hasn't kept him completely away from the pages of the pulps where he got his start, however, nor has he lost his talent for creating tales of the fantastic.

Trente, the alien illustrated on the cover, serves the mysterious, all-powerful rulers of all the universes that exist, known as the Ethos, as their Paingod.  He dispenses suffering to all the sentient beings in all the worlds that exist throughout all possible dimensions.  After performing this duty without feeling for an unimaginably long time, Trente develops something completely unexpected: a sense of curiosity, even concern, about those to whom he sends misery and sorrow.  At random, he enters the body of one lifeform on an insignificant planet, which happens to be Earth.  In the form of an alcoholic derelict, he speaks to a sculptor, who is mourning over the loss of his talent.  They both learn something about the nature of suffering, and Trente discovers the motives of the Ethos, and why they selected him to be the Paingod.

This is a powerful story with an important theme, told in a way that holds the reader's attention throughout.  Particularly effective are the scenes in which Trente dispenses suffering to an extraordinary variety of entities, described in vivid and imaginative detail.  I also greatly enjoyed the life story of the man whose body Trente inhabits.  Although the character really plays no part in the plot – he's merely a shell for the alien to wear – the complete and compassionate biography of one who knew more than his share of unhappiness adds to the story's theme, and displays the author's skill at characterization.

The rationale offered for the existence of suffering is, almost inevitably, a familiar one, philosophers having debated this question for millennia.  Ellison has a slight tendency to write with more passion than clarity; the phrase centimetered centuries threw me for a loop.  Despite these quibbles, this is a fine story, likely to remain in memory for a long time to come.

Four stars.

Testing, by John J. McGuire


by Dan Adkins

With the exception of one story in a recent issue of Analog, McGuire is another author we haven't seen around for a while.  Unlike Ellison's success with screenwriting, the explanation for this absence is simply that McGuire isn't very prolific, his few stories mostly written in collaboration with H. Beam Piper.  Our Illustrious Host didn't like his previous solo effort at all, which doesn't bode well for this one, but let's give the fellow a chance.

The narrator is the pilot of a starship carrying a small team of experts whose mission is to determine if a planet is suitable for colonization, a premise that may seem overly familiar to many readers of science fiction these days.  Also unsurprising is the fact that only one of the members of the team is female, and it's obvious that her role in the story is to be the Girl.  They foolishly break with Standard Operating Procedure and step out onto the surface of the Earth-like world without taking full precautions.  Instantly teleported far away from their landing site, they find themselves under observation by a floating sphere with dangling tentacles.  An agonizingly long and dangerous journey begins, as the team makes their way back to the starship through lifeless deserts and snowy mountains, facing deadly alien creatures, constantly under the watch of the inscrutable sphere. 

The only suspense generated by the story is wondering who's going to get killed next, and by what, since the bodies pile up quickly once the sphere shows up.  The mystery of the sphere remains unsolved, although the narrator makes some educated guesses about its nature and motivation.  If the author's main intention is to make the reader feel the suffering of his characters, he does a fair job of acting as a Paingod.  Otherwise, I found it overly long and tedious, as I kept reading about one random, violent death after another.

Two stars.

Illusion, by Jack Sharkey

by Blair

Unlike the first two writers in this issue, Sharkey shows up in the genre magazines on a routine basis, which is sometimes a good thing, and sometimes not such a good thing.  His latest yarn is a variation on the old, old theme of a deal with the Devil.  (Well, technically, a demon, and not Satan himself, but you know what I mean.) The protagonist gets three wishes in exchange for his soul, which isn't the most original idea in the world, either.  The first is for a never-ending pack of self-lighting cigarettes; the second for complete invulnerability, unless he deliberately tries to harm himself; and the third is for the power to make illusions become reality.  If you've ever read one, or two, or a zillion of these stories, you know that things don't work out well, after some slapstick antics. 

Sharkey uses the word illusion in an odd way, meaning anything from tricks of perspective (objects looking smaller when they're far away) to whatever appears on a TV screen.  The whole thing is inoffensive, I suppose, but lacking the rigid logic this kind of story needs and not very amusing.

Two stars.

Body of Thought, by Albert Teichner


by Dan Adkins

Teichner, like Sharkey, also hasn't gone away, making an appearance in Fantastic or Amazing or If every few months or so.  This time he offers us a tale about a secret government project to collect the brains of outstanding intellectuals soon after they die, keep them alive, and attach them to a computer that will allow them to work together, producing results far beyond anything one mind could do alone.  The story moves at a very leisurely pace.  We follow the main character, an elderly physicist contacted by the folks behind the project, as he visits the lab where this is going to take place, and discusses it with a colleague who is also one of its subjects. 

I had no idea where the plot was going, or what point the author was trying to make, until near the end, when a group of potential brain donors argue about what use should be made of this symbiotic, semi-organic supercomputer, each one claiming that his (never her) field is the most important.  I can appreciate the statement Teichner is trying to make about the human ego, but he sure takes a long time getting around to it.

Two stars.

Genetic Coda, by Thomas M. Disch

Disch is another perennial of Cele Goldsmith's pair of publications, either as himself or as Dobbin Thorpe, a pseudonym that always makes me smile, just because it sounds so silly.  Under his own name Disch comes up with a sardonic vision of the future.  Sextus is a humpbacked freak, living with his equally deformed father, his physically normal but perpetually angry mother, and several tutoring robots.  After his mother dies and his father vanishes, he lives alone with the machines, hidden from a world that would force him to undergo castration because of his abnormal genes.  (His father managed to escape that fate through bribery and isolation.) Determined to father a child, Sextus invents a time machine, leading to the kinds of paradoxes you expect, as well as some very Freudian complications.

I have mixed feelings about this story, which some might see as nothing more than a dirty joke, and others as a razor-sharp satire on human aspirations and pretentions.  It's very clever, but you're always aware that the author knows exactly how clever he is — far more than the dolts he writes about.  I'm going to have to be wishy-washy about it and give it a barely passing grade.

Three stars.

From the Beginning, by Eando Binder


by Michael Arndt

We haven't seen that byline in the pages of a science fiction magazine for a long time.  That's not a surprise, since this Fantasy Classic is a reprint from the June 1938 issue of Weird Tales.

As many SF fans know, Eando Binder is actually a pen name for brothers Earl and Otto Binder; E and O Binder, get it?  The introduction by Sam Moskowitz explains that Earl stopped writing after a few years, and most stories under the name of Eando are the work of Otto alone.  The present example is one of those tales, old-fashioned even in the late 1930's, where one man invents or discovers something amazing, so his friend comes over and they talk about it. 


Cover art by Margaret Brundage, who drew a lot of scantily clad ladies for this publication.

The gizmo, in this case, is an incredibly ancient metal ball, found during a paleontological expedition.  When placed in an electrical field, it produces telepathic messages from the remote past.  These reveal that a race of robotic beings with radium-powered brains came to the solar system from another star in search of radium to replace their dwindling supply.  We get a blow-by-blow history of the planets, as the robots create things like the Great Red Spot of Jupiter and the canals of Mars in their quest for radium.  Eventually they come to Earth, after they have drained the outer planets of the vital substance.  They set out for yet another star system, allowing only a small number of the elite to escape (there is only enough room aboard their spaceship for a few, so of course the upper class gets to go). The others to perish at the metal hands of an executioner.  The source of the telepathic messages is a rebel, who chose to remain on Earth alone rather than die (which seems like a reasonable choice to me.) The climax of the story tells us about the origins of the human race. 

Although some of the events in the story create a Sense of Wonder, overall it's a creaky example of Gernsbackian, pre-Campbellian scientifiction, of historic interest only.  I had to look twice to make sure it came from 1938 and not 1928. 

Two stars

Many Happy Returns?

Other than Harlan Ellison's hard-hitting fable, this is a weak issue, full of disappointing stories.  It makes me hope that the author of Paingod won't be blinded by the bright lights of show business, and will stick around for a while.


The Chicago airport probably doesn't have Ellison in mind, but what the heck.

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Magazine

[May 18, 1964] Aspirations (June 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

At the Ballot Box

If you plunked down your $2 for a Worldcon membership (Pacificon II in San Francisco this year), then you probably sent in your nominations for the Hugo Awards, honoring the best works of 1963. Last month, you got the finalists ballot. Maybe, like me, you were surprised.

I'm happy to say that the Journey has covered every one of those nominations. However, with the exception of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Anderson's No Truce with Kings, none of the fiction entries made this year's Galactic Stars list. Also, I'm dismayed to find that neither Worlds of Tomorrow nor Gamma made the list of best magazines, though I suppose their being new precludes wide distribution as yet.

Anyway, they've made my choices very easy this year:

Best novel: Cat's Cradle (based on the review by Victoria Lucas – I haven't had the chance to read it yet, myself!)
Best story: No Truce with Kings
Best magazine: Galaxy
Best artist: Schoenherr (I've been liking his stuff more and more lately — don't get me wrong; I still like Emsh and Finlay, and Krenkel's done great stuff for the Burroughs books, but it's good to spread these things around)
Best amateur magazine: Starspinkle, which is really a fun mag, and good for keeping up on the latest Breendoggle mishigas (I note that Galactic Journey isn't on this list — surely a mistake. Please don't forget to vote for us!)

F&SF appears to be lobbying heavily for your Hugo vote, too, if the back cover of their latest issue be any indication. They've replaced the usual suite of pointy headed admirers in favor of a photo of one of their trophies (last one in the dimly remembered year of 1960).

So does this issue support their claim of being "the best"? Let's read and find out!

The Issue at Hand

The Triumph of Pegasus, by F. A. Javor

Now that Watson and Crick (and the tragically unsung Rosalind Franklin) have cracked the code of the DNA double helix, I am seeing more stories involving the precise engineering of genetics at a microscopic level. Javor's intriguing tale features the pair of scientists who run the shoestring operation "Animals to Order." After they showcase a fantastically fast, quick-grown horse, they are browbeaten by a powerfully rich bully of a woman into producing a winged version.

Here, the story loses its footing, as the new creature is made in an implausibly short time, and the grisly, if morally satisfying, end is thoroughly predictable.

Still, this may be the first story I've read that (to some degree) realistically portrays the art of genes manipulation. Three stars.

The Master of Altamira, by Stephen Barr

Not so much science fiction as historical extrapolation, author Barr depicts the sudden end of one of the world's first artists, the cave painter of Altamira. The piece is, at once, vivid and utterly forgettable.

Three stars.

The Peace Watchers, by Bryce Walton

In the future, murder is a forgotten crime. Literally — murderers are destroyed, and the memories of their crimes are erased from the minds of all affected, even the police! But when the grisly crime is committed, however rarely, how can it be dealt with when even law enforcement knows nothing about it?

I don't necessarily buy this piece, but it is interesting. Three stars.

Trade-In, by Jack Sharkey

Sharkey has been my whipping boy for a while, but he's recently shown a bit of promise. Sadly, while this story, about a prematurely aging husband and his unusually youthful wife, is well-written and properly horrific, it is also needlessly anti-woman.

Three stars for quality, but two stars after demerits applied.

Time-Bomb, by Arthur Porges

I cannot fathom the point of this short poem. One star.

Medical Radiotracers, by Theodore L. Thomas

Once again, Thomas serves up a mildly educational tidbit (this time on ingested radioactives that allow doctors to map certain organs) followed by a ridiculous SF story seed (we'll all be tracked by the Orwell-state via said radioactives).

I want Feghoot back. And I don't even like Feghoot. Two stars.

Cynosure, by Kit Reed

Ahh, now here's the highlight of the issue. Norma Thayer, newly divorced housewife, so desperately wants to impress her neighbors, especially the queen-like Clarise Brainerd. But whether her sink is too blotchy, her carpet too soiled with cat hairs, or her daughter too messy, Norma can't seem to win Mrs. Brainerd's heart and, more importantly, the right to invite the neighborhood wives over for coffee and cake.

That is, until she heeds the ad that states, simply:

END HOUSEHOLD DRUDGERY

YOUR HOUSE CAN BE THE CYNOSURE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD

The product she purchases, and its results, both foreseen and otherwise, I shall leave for the reader. Suffice it to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this delicious little satire, and I am freshly aggrieved that I do not have Ms. Reed's forwarding address since her latest move. I did so enjoy our correspondence.

Four stars.

The Third Bubble, by G. C. Edmondson

G.C. Edmondson lives in Mexico, like F&SF's editor, Avram Davidson (I wonder if he hand delivers his manuscripts), so it's no wonder that he has a series of stories set south of the border. This one involves a crazy time traveler who believes that space is a dream, that worlds are hollow, and that aliens kidnap our astronauts.

All of that takes up about one page of this eleven-page story, the other ten pages of which comprise a kind of travelogue. While there are a few bits of good writing and some genuinely clever lines, Edmonson makes the mistake of trying to make a meal composed solely of spice.

Two stars, and perhaps it's time to try something new.

The Search, by Bruce Simonds

Fourteen year-old newcomer, Bruce Simonds, has a prose-poem about how robots were evolved over time to be made perfectly in human image. I've read over the end a half-dozen times, and I still can't figure out what happened. Help a dumb reviewer out?

Two stars.

The Thing from Outer Space and the Prairie Dogs, by Gahan Wilson

Atiny piece in which we learn:

That prairie dogs are far more hazardous and organized a force than we could have imagined. The punchline isn't worth the half-page the story takes up.

Two stars.

The Heavenly Zoo, by Isaac Asimov

Dr. A is back in form with this fine piece on the origin of the zodiac, in particular, and celestial calendars, in general. I learned several interesting tidbits to share at the next cocktail party (so as to appear far more intelligent and knowledgeable than I actually am.)

Four stars.

Forwarding Service, by Willard Marsh

This touching tale involves a kidney-stone afflicted man with a bad heart and the kindly nurse who also moonlights as a special kind of messenger. Pretty good stuff. Three stars.

The Unknown Law, by Avram Davidson

Last up, a tale from the near future, set in the Oval Office. A newly elected President, youngest in the nation's history, learns that he has a special, unwritten executive power. Since the days of Washington, three minor major (or major minor) federal officers have been entrusted with a sacred trust: once per term, they can be ordered to eliminate a foe to the Republic. This execution is strictly off the books, for the good of the Union.

Of course, having introduced Chekhov's Gunslingers, there is no doubt that they will be employed. And while it is somewhat cleverly laid out who will be the President's target, I felt as if the setup came far too quickly, chronologically, to be satisfying. That said, it is a well-written piece (all too rare for Davidson these days!) and I appreciated the oblique way he established the time setting of the story.

Three stars.

Summing Up

And so we have here a surprisingly decent issue of a magazine that has been in a downward spiral for some time. This installment of F&SF might not be Hugo-worthy, but it's definitely not bad. Then again, it's always brightest before dusk…

Fingers crossed for next month.

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