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Magazine

Whatever Counts (June 1959 Galaxy, first part; 4-11-1959)

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I mentioned last week that Satellite no longer prints full-length novels between its covers anymore.  It looks like that role is now going to Galaxy, which, in its new, 196-page format, can accommodate longer works more comfortably.  In short order, it looks like Galaxy will specialize in two-part serials, responding to reader requests for same. 

I'm a fan of longer stories in my magazines.  F&SF scratches my short story itch quite nicely, and there are lots of good science fiction novels coming out, so that intermediate length can only be found in the digests.  I find that the novella/short novel length is quite good for adequately developing a concept without overly padding the matter.


Cover by EMSH

That length was certainly used to excellent effect in Fred Pohl's new space exploration/first-contact thriller, Whatever Counts.  What a fine story.  With the exception of some over-traditional gender roles (in the far future, I'd expect women to be more than secretaries and babysitters), Pohl paints a quite mature and sophisticated vision of tomorrow.  Moreover, while the female characters have traditional roles, they also get to be intelligent and vital protagonists.  Just skip over the rather exploitative art…

So what's the story actually about?  The Explorer II, essentially a generation colony ship, though the journey "only" takes about seven years, is part of humanity's first gasp of interstellar expansion.  Unfortunately, during the vessel's journey, our race (as a whole) makes contact with its first alien species, the technologically and biologically more-sophisticated "Gormen."  Wherever we encounter the Gormen, we are able to offer but feeble resistance.

The same is true for several of the crew of the Explorer II, who are quickly captured by the Gormen upon touchdown.  Their trials at the hands of the Gormen, and the nifty way in which they make escape, are all interesting and well-written.  But what really sold me was the attention to detail.  The colony ship is plausible, the Gormen truly alien, the characters well-realized, and the style both gritty and artistic.  And I really like any story that takes the time to explain where characters are going to take care of their toilet needs…


illustration by WOOD

I'd hate to spoil any more than I already have.  Just go read it!  (Please note that the author has not given me permission to freely distribute this story.  If you can, I'd buy a copy.)

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Magazine

Star Dim.. (May 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction, second part; 4-07-1959)

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How scary is a truly dark night sky?

In Asimov's Nightfall, a certain planet's orbital situation ensures that there is always a sun overhead.  On the rare occasion that all of the nearby stars align on the opposite side of the planet, the planet's population is consumed with hysteria.  I suppose it's a justifiable extrapolation of the impressive and cowing effect on our ancestors caused by eclipses of the sun.

In A. Bertram Chandler's The Man Who could not Stop (which I will discuss at length further on in the article), there are inhabited planets at the edge of the galaxy.  When the lens of the galaxy aligns with a rim planet's sun, the result is a near-featureless dark sky marred only by a few far-away solitary stars and nebulae.  As Chandler describes it, the effect is unsettling in the extreme, and most natives move away to planets comfortably surrounded with stars.

I suppose it's Chandler's world, and he can do what he wants, but would a truly empty sky be that disconcerting?  Even today, on Earth, there are plenty of locales where cloud cover renders the stars invisible.  In downtown Tokyo or New York, the lights of the city drown out any puny stellar competition.  I should think that the spectacle of the full lens of the galaxy, visible at least half of the year, would more than make up for a half-year of darkness. 

What do you think?

As you can probably guess, I have finished this month's Fantasy & Science Fiction, and I've got a report for you.  I can honestly say that the magazine ended on a rising trend, quality-wise.

The lovely Rosel George Brown is back with the light-hearted Lost in Translation.  It's a silly tale of time travel featuring a drippy but lovely fan of the classics (the Greek classics, that is), but the whole thing is really just a set-up for a bad pun at the end.  I like Brown's writing–I'm just waiting for one of her stories to really wow me.

Avram Davidson's The Montavarde Camera is a moody piece (does he write any other kind?) about an antique camera whose pictures spell doom for their subject.  Well-written (does he ever write poorly?), but rather a second-rate premise.

I enjoyed (with reservations) Jack London's tale of present-day adventure told in past-tense, The Angry Mammoth, in which a hunter recounts his adventures tracking down and killing the last of the hairy elephant cousins.  Not for the animal-lover.  Of course, it is a reprint, the original story having been published in 1901 (and it reads like it).

But the real jewel of this issue is the aforementioned The Man Who could not Stop.  It is a little reminiscent of those stories where people who could not fit into the regimented roles meted out by society (a la Asimov's Profession) become its masters.  In Chandler's story, the protagonist (name of Clavering) is a hardened criminal fleeing justice.  He runs from Earth to the galaxy's rim, from where extradition is impossible.  Once there, however, he quickly runs afoul of the law.  The first time is intentional–he wants to be incarcerated to locate a fence so as to offload a haul of stolen jewelry.  The second time is unintentional, but criminal habits are hard to break (and the rim planets make recidivism all but inevitable).  The third time is intentional–our anti-hero is told that criminals are deported third time 'round. 

Except it turns out that deportation is a one-way trip into the abyss; Clavering ends up press-ganged into the crew of a starship heading out deep into inter-galactic space.  So we learn that this is standard operating procedure on the rim worlds: attract the incorrigible and shanghai them.

I liked it a lot, and I understand there may be more tales of the rim worlds on the way.  I'm looking forward to it.

That's that for today.  I've largely finished this month's Galaxy (which is excellent, by the way), but I understand that NASA plans to announce the Mercury astronauts on April 9, so I'm sure that event will feature prominently in my next article.

Thanks for reading!

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Magazine

Diverting fare (May 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction; 4-03-1959)

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There are months when The Magazine of Fantasy AND Science Fiction is filled with sublime stuff.  Then there are months when F&SF is just mildly diverting.  This is looking to be one of those months.  Things could be worse, of course.

Editor Robert Mills opens things up by asking if we'd like longer short stories (novelets), which apparently are in a bumper crop this year.  Robert, if you're reading, I think that's a fine idea.  I like a good 20 pages to feel the start, middle, and end of a story.  Shorter pieces tend to rely on gimmick endings or be mood pieces.  Not that those don't have their place, but everybody has her or his preferences, and that one is mine.

What do y'all think?

First out of the gate is J.T. McIntosh's Tenth Time Around, which takes place in a nearish future where travel back in time is possible, but expensive, and only into your younger self.  Our protagonist uses his multiple lives trying to successfully woo a lost love.  The result is not unpredictable, but McIntosh writes a fine yarn.

I much liked Asimov's non-fiction column in this issue, detailing the fiendish difficulty involved in both escaping Earth's gravity and ensuring subsequent capture by the moon.  It is a subject of which I never had a real intuitive grasp, despite having followed all of the Pioneer and Mechta shots avidly (I've even published a few non-fiction articles on the subject, myself).

Satirist Ron Goulart's Ralph Wollstonecraft Hedge: A Memoir is a genuinely humorous account of a fictitious writer from the tarnished side of pulp's Golden Age.  I caught the Lovecraft references, having read virtually everything H.P. ever published, but I'm afraid I've missed the other jokes.  Perhaps someone can help me with this one.

Then there's The One that Got Away by Chad Oliver, who writes both science fiction and westerns.  He combines the two to good effect here.  Well, I'm not sure it actually takes place in "the west," but the setting is a bucolic valley and involves by turns pyromania, a rustic lodge, good fishing, and aliens.  Fun and fluffy.

Finally, for today, is Robert Graves' The Shout, which Robert Mills found good enough to reprint, the story having first appeared in the magazine seven years ago (before I was a regular reader).  Or perhaps F&SF is simply hard up for material.  Or Mr. Graves is hard up for cash.  Somehow I doubt the latter, the great classicist having penned such eternal works as I, Claudius. 

In any event, Shout is a moody piece, told in a lunatic asylum, one inmate to another, involving a soul-shattering scream taught the narrator by Australian aboriginals.  I found the tale a little too disjointed to be entirely comprehensible, but I did enjoy the idea that all of the souls of the world are actually small stones on a sandy hill between a town and beach in southern England. 

I mean, they have to be somewhere, don't they?

So there you go.  Nothing stand-out, nothing offensive.  Pleasant fire-side or shady tree fare.  In two or three days, Part II (unless some space spectacular compels me to issue a stop-press…)

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Magazine

Earthbound Satellite (April 1959 Satellite; 3-29-1959)

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by Ray Pioch

And now for something a bit different.

Back in '56, famed pulp editor, Leo Margulies, launched Satellite, a bi-monthly science fiction digest with the gimmick that it contained a full-length short novel as well as a few short stories.  I always had a soft spot for that mag.  One of my favorite novels was Planet for Plunder by Hal Clement and Sam Merwin; it came out in the February '57 ish, and I read it on the beach during one of trips to Kaua'i.  It's an excellent tale of first contact mostly from a truly alien viewpoint.  Highly recommended.

Late last year, Satellite went out on hiatus.  Then, at the beginning of this year, Satellite returned with Cylvia Kleiman at the editorial helm.  The magazine sported a full-sized format, presumably to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the slicks.  No longer featuring novels, it dubbed itself "The Best in Science Fiction."

Who could resist a pitch like that?  So the other day, I picked up this month's (May) and last month's (April) issues.  What did I find inside?

I suppose one could argue that some of the writers are among science fiction's best, but these are definitely their second-rate stories.  This is not the Satellite I used to know and love.  Let's have a look, shall we?

The lead story is by the reliable J.T. McIntosh; The Solomon Plan is easily the best fictional piece in the magazine.  In Plan, a terran spy tries to succeed where all of his predecessors have failed before: solving the mystery of the backward planet of Bynald.  Where the other planets of the 26th century terran federation enjoy a correspondingly advanced quality of life, the hyper-patriotic Bynald seems to be stuck in the 20th century.  Moreover, their population is unaccountably low given the length of time it has been settled. 


by Leo Morey

McIntosh creates a nice group of characters, including a couple of reasonably developed females.  The solution to the mystery is rather implausible, and the ending rather pat, but the story does not fail to entertain.  I would have been more impressed had Plan not been a reprint–originally appearing in the February 1956 New Worlds Science Fiction.

A regular feature of Satellite is a biographical piece on one of the antediluvian forefathers of science fiction.  In this case, it is a somewhat hagiographic piece by Sam Moskowitz on the justifiably famous A. Merritt.  I'm a sucker for history, so it was worth picking up this ish for the piece. 

The rest of the magazine is mediocre at best.  Fritz Leiber's Psychosis from Space was, reportedly, an old story that he thought so little of that he forgot of its existence until Satellite asked him for a contribution.  An astronaut goes out on humanity's first faster than light mission and returns able only to stumble about aimlessly and babble meaninglessly.  Turns out his brain is running backwards.  There is also some intrigue surrounding the astronaut's doctor and his attempts to coerce information about the trip from his patient.  At least the (female) nurse character is competent and resourceful.


by Leo Morey

The duel of the insecure man, by newcomer Tom Purdom, is rather strange.  In the far future (1988), it has become popular to engage in duels of cutting questions, the goal being to lay bare the soul of one's opponent and leave them a humiliated wreck.  I am given to understand that this story was heavily hacked in editorial, so I won't dignify the resulting kluge with further verbiage.

I did enjoy Ellery Lanier's rather star-eyed account of the American Rocket Society meeting.  In particular, I was excited to see his report on the Mouse in Able project.  For those who don't know, prior to the Air Force's Pioneer missions, the Thor-Able rocket was used in suborbital shots to test re-entry nose cones.  Since scientists abhor unused space as much as nature does, a mouse was included as part of the payload.

What makes this story particularly interesting is that the project was the brainchild of one of the very few woman scientists working in the space program: Laurel 'Frankie' Van der Wal, an amazon of a lady both in stature and fiery spirit.  At some point, I'll give you all the inside story on that project; it is both enlightening and humorous.

Algis Budrys' The Last Legend is fair but not up to his usual standard.  It's a traditional gotcha story of an older generation of science fiction: an astronaut makes humanity's first trip to another star, the journey having been previously unsurvivable by living things.  After returning as a hero, it turns out that he's just a robot.

Robert Wicks' Patient 926, in which all children are inoculated against imagination, and Henry Slesar's Job Offer ("Dig this!  The post-nuclear mutant is a normal human!") are both unremarkable in the extreme.

In sum, Satellite is definitely bargain-bin science fiction, though it is not without its charms.  I have trouble seeing it surviving much longer, especially out on the news stands next to Life and Time.

Next up, the other half of the double-feature that included The Blob!

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Magazine

Anderson breaks the mold! (April 1959 Astounding; 3-18-1959)

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Good gravy!  Two good Andersons in a row?

This month's Astounding opens with Wherever you are, by "Winston P. Sanders."  If it wasn't the swashbuckling yet science-adoring prose, it was the heroine protagonist's name and ethnicity (Ulrica Ormstad–couldn't get more Swedish!) that suggested Mr. Sanders might well be the well-known nordic science fiction writer, Poul Anderson.  A quick checking of sources confirmed the suspicion.

Well, it's really good.  The fierce soldier, Major Ormstad, gets to be the viewpoint character for half the novelette, whereupon her meek and brainy shipmate, Didymus Mudge, becomes the reader's eyes.  Both have become marooned on an alien planet, an ocean away from the local Terran base.  Ship's instruments have been destroyed, and constant cloud cover and a lack of a magnetic pole preclude navigation.  It is up to Mudge to puzzle out a way home, and up to Ormstad to deal with the fierce mini-Tyrannosaurs so as to secure transportation.  My favorite line of the story goes to Ormstad, who initially thinks little of Mudge yet deigns to speak to him anyway:

"For one honest human conversation, in any human language, she would trade her soul.  Make it Swedish, and she'd throw in her sidearm."

On to the next story.  When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was John Dough and the Cherub, by L. Frank Baum, sort of a Wizard of Oz side story.  In one of the chapters, the story's heroes (John Dough and Chick the Cherub) are captured and threatened with execution.  However, this execution is delayed when Chick the Cherub begins to tell the tale of "The Silver Pig."  So entranced are the heroes' captors that they delay the execution every night so as to hear more of the pig's adventures.  Of course, the story is designed to be endless so as to forestall the execution long enough for John Dough and the Cherub to escape.

I learned much later that this had been the plot to 1,001 Arabian Nights, and the cliché has been used a myriad of times since then.  Usually, the set-up is that sentence of death will follow some religiously or legally prescribed ritual, with the sentenced to have some choice as to the format of the ritual.  Virtually every story has the same format–the reader is informed that our hero has worked out the puzzle to prolong his/her life, but we don't get to find out the solution until the end.  Since classic science fiction favors the "gotcha" ending, I've seen this kind of story a lot in my literary travels.

So it is with Now Inhale, by Eric Frank Russell.  I didn't much care for his last story, but this one is fine.  A Terran is imprisoned for suspected espionage on an alien world.  Condemned to death, he is allowed one final game of his choice before strangulation.  The trick is to prolong the game, to neither win nor lose.  The record was 17 days.  Our hero beats this record a dozen-fold and is prepared to play the game forever, if need be.  Can you guess the game?

I'm afraid the rest of the ish meanders into mediocrity (which is perhaps above par for Astounding these days.  Chris Anvil's The Sieve is nothing special–on a brand new colony world, half the pioneers take up smoking the local marijuana and become lazy and shiftless.  The rest of the colonists decide to let them starve over the winter.  Reefer madness, indeed.

Gordy Dickson turns in a disappointing performance with The Catch, in which a galactic federation fairly begs humanity to retake the reins after thousands of years of retirement.  It seems those darned aliens just can't stand the burden of leadership.  And it turns out they got all of their technology from humanity the last time we were ascendant.  Poor little primitive aliens. 

Definitely a story after Campbell's heart.

Finally, we have Set a Thief by H. Chandler Elliott, a Canadian brain doctor whose stuff I've never before read.  It's an interesting first contact story, though told in a flip off-hand manner I didn't much care for.  Is it a set of thieves' tools or a lady's handbag?  An interesting case of convergent evolution, to be sure.

The rest of the ish is the final installment of The Pirats of Ersatz so there's nothing more to report for this month.  My hands are throbbing, so I may take a break until March 24.  I'll have lots to write about by then, though.

Thanks for reading!

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Magazine

Fire from the Sky (March 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction; 3-10-1959)

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Last time on this station, I informed all of you that Part 2 of this (last) month's Fantasy & Science Fiction review would have to wait since I'd wanted to get through the Poul Anderson novelette before reporting.

Well, I'm glad I did.  Damn that Anderson, anyway.  How dare he write a good story!  Now I can't justify skipping him.  But more on that later.

Of Time and Cats by Howard Fast, who normally doesn't dip his toe in the science fiction pool, is a fun tale of the multiplicity that ensues when time travel is involved.  A slick, paradoxical story.

Algis Budrys has another winner with The Distant Sound of Engines about impending death and the urgent need to impart a lifetime's accumulated wisdom before final departure.  Sad.  Good.

Avram Davidson's The Certificate is dystopic in the extreme, and probably inspired by the recent Holocaust.  A subjugated humanity is reduced to bitter slave labor.  The only "gift" from their new overlords is perfect health.  How does one escape?

I liked Three Dimensional Valentine by Stuart Palmer (who had a story in the very first F&SF) quite a lot.  It is fun and frivolous and rather old-fashioned.  It is also unexpected.  The author has given me permission to distribute this one, but I haven't quite received it in the mails yet.  I'll let you know when I do.

And now to Poul Anderson's The Sky People.  As you know, I always approach Anderson with trepidation.  Apart from the amazing Brainwave, his work is generally turgid, and I don't like his manly men and absent women.

This one was different.  There is still plenty of swashbuckling in this post-apocalyptic tale, but it is done in the style and with the flaire of a good pirate movie like Black Swan.  It is set in old San Antone, in the heart of the decaying "Meycan" Empire, south of Tekas and north of S'america.  Their technology and mindset is mired in the 16th century.  The eponymous "Sky People" are dirigible-driving corsairs from the Kingdom of "Canyon."  Though rapacious and ruthless, they possess a greater technology than their target–the Meycans.  Unfortunately for them, the timing of their attack proves to be inauspicious as it coincides with the arrival of a delegation from the Federation, successors to the Polynesian nations of Oceania. 

Told by three viewpoint characters, one Polynesian, one sky pirate, and one Meycan (a woman!), it is really quite good.  Not only has Anderson managed to convincingly portray a wide variety of cultures, he has done a fine job of projecting recovery from an atomic catastrophe in a world that has used up most of its natural resources.  I don't know if Anderson has written other stories in this universe or if he intends to, but I would enjoy reading more.

The final story is Alfred Bester's Will You Wait?.  The deal with the Devil story has been just about done to death, but this is an infernally cute story about how the modern way of business has made the process Hell on Earth.

Gosh, where does that leave us for the issue?  4 stars?  4 and a half?  Definitely a good read worth picking up–if there are any left on the stands, that is.

See you on the 12th!



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Magazine

Second chances (March 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction; 3-6-1959)

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I promised a book review today, but then I misplaced my book.  Life is like that.  So, for your reading pleasure, I instead offer my meanderings through the March 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction (you know, the one I was supposed to have done last month instead of the prematurely secured April issue).

As with the last (next) ish of F&SF, it starts with a bang.  Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies—" is an unique tale of time travel.  Everyone has heard of the Grandfather's Paradox, but what if you end up being your own granpaw?  I have to give extra credit to Heinlein for having a transsexual protagonist (i.e. someone who has been both male and female).  I hope I'm using that word correctly–it's brand new.

I like Asimov's science article, Nothing, in which he points out that the mass of all the "empty" spaces between the galaxies actually exceeds the mass contained in the galaxies by a significant margin.  I suppose that makes sense, but it is odd to conceptualize.  I guess the Great Watchmaker needs to stir up the universe just a little more to get the lumps out…

Ray Bradbury has a tale involving mermaids in this issue called The Shoreline at Sunset.  Any mermaid story in F&SF naturally invites comparison to Sturgeon's mermaid story A Touch of Strange (published in the Jan. 1958 issue).  Unfortunately, unlike Sturgeon's quite brilliant piece, Bradbury's is well-written but somewhat pointless.  But then, I might say that any time I compare Bradbury to Sturgeon.

Have you been following Zenna Henderson's stories of "The People"?  Human in form but possessed of tremendous psychic powers, these interstellar refugees have been trapped on Earth in hiding for many years.  They dwell in their sequestered valleys, occasionally venturing forth to rescue isolated members of their kind raised by native Earthers.  Henderson's stories are always beautiful, often with a touch of sadness.

Well, with Jordan, the castaways finally have the opportunity to be rescued.  More "civilized" members of their race arrive in a spaceship with an invitation to settle on a new planet, one on which they won't have to hide their powers or use rough technology to do what their powers could do more elegantly.  Yet the exiled People have grown to love the Earth and even the crude methods they've had to employ to survive.  Can they leave it all behind? 

According to the editorial blurb preceding the story, it looks like Ms. Henderson finally has enough stories of The People to fill an anthology.  I definitely recommend picking it up when it hits the shelves.

See you on the 8th!



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Magazine

Odds and Ends (April 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction; 2-24-1959)

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A bit of a grab bag today as I finish off the odds and ends before the new (diminishing) crop of magazines comes in. 

Firstly, the sad news regarding Vanguard II has been confirmed: the wobbly little beachball has got the orbitum tremens and is unable to focus its cameras on Mother Earth.  So much for our first weather satellite.

Secondly, the sad news regarding the April 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction.  Yes, Poul Anderson does have a story in it.  The Martian Crown Jewels is a science fiction Sherlock Holmes pastiche.  As a mystery and as a story, it is fairly unremarkable.  Still, Doyle-philes may enjoy it.  As can be expected, both for the genre and for the author, the only women's names are to be found gracing ships, not characters.

There are a couple of oddball pieces in this issue.  One is a translated Anton Checkhov parody of a Jules Verne story called The Flying Islands.  Perhaps it's better in the original Russian. 

There is also a chapter of Aldous Huxley's new book, Brave New World Revisited, comparing the myriad of mind-altering substances available today to the simple and perfectly effective soma that appeared in the original Brave New World.  It is an interesting contrast of prediction versus reality.  It is also a great shopping list for some of us.

As I mentioned earlier, Damon Knight is out of an editorial job after just three issues at the helm of IF.  F&SF has found him a new place to hang his reviewer's hat–as the new writer for the magazine's book column.  Good news if you like damonknight.

Jane Roberts, an F&SF regular, contributes a two-page mood piece called Nightmare.  It's another two-minutes-to-midnight fright.

But the real gem of the latter portion of the magazine is Fred Pohl's To see another Mountain about a nonagenarian supergenius being treated for a mental illness… but is he really sick?  Interestingly, I never liked it when Pohl and Kornbluth teamed up, but Pohl by himself has been reliably excellent.  This story is no exception. 

Where does that leave us in the standings?  There isn't a bad piece in the bunch (the Anderson and Chekhov being the least remarkable).  Let's say "four", maybe "four-and-a-half" given the greatness of the lead story.

Two days to Asimov!



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Magazine

A study in contrasts (April 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction, Part 2; 2-22-1959)

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Happy birthday to me!  I entered my fifth decade of life yesterday; I hope middle age will be kind to me.

This month's F&SF certainly has been.  I have an interesting mix of stories about which to relate. 

It has often been said that, to be a good writer, one must be an avid reader.  There is no better way to learn the tricks of the trade than to see how others have manipulated the printed word.  I, myself, have been a writer for two decades, but I still often find some new technique that impresses me sufficiently to enter my repertoire.


Permission to republish graciously granted by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

Something that struck me while reading Gordon Dickson's quite good modern fantasy, "The Amulet," was its focus on sensual descriptions.  You always know the temperature and flavor of the air, the tactile qualities of a seat, the character of sound and light.  It makes this a very feeling story, very visceral.

The following psi/space-travel story, by brand-newcomer Anne McCaffrey, The Lady in the Tower, is far more spare in its descriptions.  The focus is on a series of telepathic conversations that presumably carry little sensual information.  It is a story drawn almost in skeleton sparseness, and it makes sense in the context.

Seeing the two techniques in stark juxtaposition really drove home how important it is to focus (or choose not to focus) on the scenery.  Frankly, when I write fiction, I am often afraid to lavish attention on the background or prosaic items for fear of boring my audience.  Yet spending some extra time describing an item or sensation is the literary equivalent of conveying the focus of a character's attention.  It happens in real life, so it should happen in a story, where appropriate.

So an oldish dog can learn new tricks!

Aside from all that, you probably want to know more about the stories, themselves.  Well, The Amulet has witches and all the paraphernalia associated with them.  It's a dark story with a dark viewpoint character, about as different from The Man in the Mailbag (April 1959 Galaxy) as you can get.  Gordy's got some range.

McCaffrey's tale features a future in which a few supremely powerful telepaths with the ability to teleport matter have become the foundation for an interstellar transportation system.  It is a first contact story in several ways, and it is also a love story.  I found it very good though perhaps with a bit of the rough-hewn quality one associates with new writers.  I hope we see more of Anne in the future.

Speaking of unusual writing styles, Asimov has a piece of fiction in the issue in addition to his science article.  Unto the Fourth Generation is an interesting mood piece involving the evolution of a name's spelling and pronunciation over time.  Perhaps the only "Jewish" piece I've seen Asimov write, it is a departure from his usual unadorned, functional technique.  I liked it.

That's that for this installment, but there are still several more stories on which to report.  And if you're an Asimov-o-phile, you'll like this column 'round the end of the month.

Stay tuned!

P.S. Some have inquired as to what happened to the March F&SF and how I got my hands on an early April release.  The answer is simple–the author of this column pulled a "Charlie Gordon" (as opposed to a "David Gordon," which some would argue is worse).  I actually managed to pick up both the March and April copies at the same time at the source, the latter being a pre-release proof.  So entranced was I by the cover that I started reading and forgot that I needed to do March first. 

Please forgive me, and if the order bothers you, I recommend swapping your left eye for your right, or perhaps reading upside down.



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Magazine, Science / Space Race

Flowers for Algernon (April 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction; 2-20-1959)

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Wow.

The April 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction opens with a bang.  The lead novella, Flowers for Algernon, is destined to go down as a classic, I'm sure. 

But first, a quick detour to Asimov's column for the week.  The old polymath (older than me–I don't turn 40 until tomorrow!) has been on a gloom kick lately.  First it was melting ice caps.  Now, he points out that the limiting factor to the density of life on Earth is the limited quantity of terrestrial phosphorous.  Sure, there are lots of chemicals that are vital to life, but phosphorous is the one with the greatest imbalance between its concentration in living things and its abundance in nature.

Basically, living things have used up all the phosphorous, and if we want any more, we have to get it from the dead.  In the ocean, this cycle is maintained by currents that scoop up dead creatures from the bottom and bring them to closer to the surface.  On land, however, our rivers pour thousands of tons of soil into the ocean every year, and it comes back much more slowly than it leaves.  COULD THIS SPELL DOOM FOR LIFE ON EARTH?

I suspect not.  I am willing to wager that there is a nice equilibriating mechanism that we just haven't discovered yet, much like the one that regulates the ocean's salinity, sadly for those who wished to use the ocean's salinity as a yardstick to determine the age of the Earth.

But back to Flowers.  Its writer is Daniel Keyes, who I know slightly from his work for Atlas Comics and as editor of the long defunct pulp, Marvel Science Stories.  It follows the life of high-functioning moron Charlie Gordon, who wishes to become smarter.  Diligent and good-natured, he is selected for a radical brain surgery that, if successful (as it had been for the eponymously named lab mouse, Algernon) will treble his I.Q.

The story is written in the style of a journal kept by Charlie.  We get to see him progress from a barely functional human being to the highest level of genius–and then back down again.  It turns out that the effect of the process lasts only a few weeks, barely enough time for Charlie to taste of brilliance before sinking to his former state.

What makes this novella is the writing.  Keyes really captures the phases of Charlie's transformation.  At first, Charlie is a simple person.  Not childlike, which would have been, perhaps, easier to pull off.  Just stupid, barely managing to write, and only after months of prior effort.  Charlie is then made a genius, and that is when childishness enters the style, because Charlie is really a newborn at that point.  He spends a lonely several weeks in virtual isolation, unable to communicate, as those he once found unspeakably brilliant become universally less gifted than he.  This part resonated with me, a fairly bright person (though by no means a genius).  I remember in 4th Grade, a teacher once chastised me saying, "you think you are so smart–how would you like it if everyone was as smart as you?"  I replied, earnestly, "I'd love it!  Then I'd have people to talk to!"

The poignancy of the story as Charlie declines and nearly dies is tear-jerking, but what really affected me was Charlie's condition at the end of the tale.  He may still have an I.Q. of 68, but now he has the memory of being a genius.  He is aware of his former place in society–a laughing-stock.  Now Charlie burns to accomplish something, to recover, by the dint of his own effort, even the barest fraction of what he has lost.

And thus, we're left with hard questions: Is it better to have been smart and lost it than never to have been smart at all?  Is ignorance bliss? 

What do you think?



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