Category Archives: Serial

Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 2, 1967] Women and Men (January 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

Small steps towards equality

It’s been almost 50 years since women in the United States were given the right to vote. But while things have come a long way, there’s still a long way to go for real equality for women, especially economically and financially. For example, it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible in some places, for a woman to have a bank account in her own name. It’s like that in most of the First World, so imagine how much worse off women are elsewhere. On November 7th, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously approved the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. It’s non-binding, but it has set the U. N. on the path towards improving the rights of women around the globe.

Closer to home, the Johnson administration has been taking steps to do something about the economic inequality of women. In October, the president issued an executive order which adds sex as a category that cannot be used as a basis for discrimination. This affects the federal government and contractors that work for the government and is much broader than the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and other civil rights legislation regarding sex discrimination. Then on November 8th, President Johnson signed a law which allows women in the military to be promoted to flag rank (generals and admirals) and eliminates caps on the number of women officers at all levels.

President Johnson signing the law allowing women to rise in the ranks.

Women actually doing things

Time was, lots of women wrote science fiction, and not all of them hid their sex behind their initials. In 1967, IF has published a grand total of four stories by women. Two were by fans with no or very few previous professional sales, and neither was all that good. The third was an average story by Andre Norton. The fourth is in this month’s issue (and that’s dated 1968). How was it? Read on to find out.

What are these people doing in these blobs? Art by Pederson

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 30, 1967] One door closes… (December 1967 Analog and Australia joins the Space Race!)

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by Gideon Marcus

Mags or paperbacks?

The latest issue of Yandro has got a nice piece from Ted White reviewing the latest (and best?) tome on science fiction by Alexei Panshin.  The best part of White's article is his gentle but lengthy disagreement over the status of magazines versus paperbacks.  Both White and Panshin agree that the paperback novel format is The Next Big Thing (indeed, it's already here), but they disagreed on their role and prospects.

Panshin sees the science fiction digests as a continuation of the pulps, with all the negative connotations attached thereto.  He thinks they will eventually die.  White strongly disagrees.  Firstly, he notes that pulp does not equal bad–many extremely talented authors got their start cranking out a half million words for the old mags.  Indeed, White says magazines are now populated by a stable of established writers who have perfected their trade while the paperbacks, since they are a buyer's market, will publish anything.  Essentially, the books have taken the role the magazines had in the glut days of the early '50s.

White goes on to say that paperbacks are great, but 1) mags are the main outlet for short stories, and some authors are just better at the short form, and 2) editors keep mags going for the love of it.  This means they are likely to survive longer than purely economic considerations would suggest.

It's a good piece.  I'd give it a read.

The issue at hand

Speaking of which, should you give the strikingly covered latest issue of Analog a read?  Well, if you're one of the 30,000 subscribers who gets it delivered, sure go ahead.  If you're eyeing it at a newsstand, you'll want to read further…


by John Schoenherr

Dragonrider (Part 1 of 2), by Anne McCaffrey

In Weyr Search, the first installment of this serial-in-all-but-name, we were introduced to planet Pern.  It is a fraught former Earth colony, severed from its homeworld for thousands of years and ravaged periodically by rhizomic attacks from a nearby world.  The only defense against the "threads" are fire breathing dragons ridden by telepathically connected humans.

The problem is it's been four centuries since the last attack and the "weyrs" of dragronriders have been allowed to go fallow.  Only Benden Weyr is left, and it is woefully undermanned and underdragoned.

This latest installment in the saga of Pern opens up sometime after the last.  Lessa, heir to the Hold of Ruatha and now Weyrlady by virtue of her communion with the dragon queen Ramoth, has shacked up with the F'lar, head of the dragonriders.  Not because the two like each other, but because that's the law: Weyrladies and Weyrleaders must get hitched.

The thread has begun to fall, and the dragons are sorely taxed to meet the challenge, teleporting in and out of the frigid between to intercept the alien spores.

(Note: What do you call it when a dragon relieves itself between?  An ICBM!)

Despite the perseverence of F'lar's crew, the thread has the upper hand–until Lessa accidentally discovers that dragons not only can teleport and telepath, but they can also time travel, too!  (telechron?) As one might expect, this changes the whole equation…but maybe not for the better.


by John Schoenherr

I dunno.  I was expecting a rousing Battle of Britain story, with never so much being owed by so many to so few.  The thread would start gradually, the brave fighters would fight to their limits, and through ingenuity and tenacity, eventually win.  The story would get extra points for being by and from the viewpoint of woman, a rare thing in science fiction, particularly in the mag that Campbell built.

Instead, the story is badly paced, lurching from scene to scene.  There is no build-up to the thread strike, no mounting of tension; it is just suddenly upon them.  McCaffrey throws psionic conceits against the wall to see which ones stick (Lessa not only discovers time travel, but she is the only one who can communicate with all of the dragons–unlike the other riders, who can only communicate with their bonded dragon).

Beyond that, the two main characters are thoroughly unlikeable, by turns yelling and sardonically sniping at each other.  An element of violence suffuses their interactions, with F'lar and Lessa's couplings being referred to as not less than rape.  It all feels very Marion Zimmer Bradley.  I've said before that Lessa feels like a wish-fulfillment character for the author.  This hypothesis is only becoming more concerning.

What's frustrating is I feel there could be an interesting story here in the hands of someone else.  Jack Vance has already written a thematically similar tale with his The Dragon Masters.  It's clear that Campbell wants Pern to be the next Dune, complete with striking Schoenherr covers.  Thus far, I'd say McCaffrey isn't up to the task.

I was originally going to give the installment a bare three stars, but I think I've talked myself out of it.

Two stars.

The Destiny of Milton Gomrath, by Alexei Panshin

In this short short, an orphaned garbage collector spends his life convinced that his existence of drudgery is a mistake, and that someone, somehow, will rectify the mistake some day.

Turns out he's right, but that may not be a good thing.

This could be the start of a mildly entertaining Laumer novel.  Instead, it ends right after the first punchline.

Blink and you'll miss it: three stars.

Whosawhatsa?, by Jack Wodhams


by Kelly Freas

Picture a world where a sex change is as complete and easy as an appendectomy…and reversible, to boot!  Now picture the most complicated legal case possible involving a married couple seeking a divorce, both parties of which have swapped genders.  And there are children involved, multiple paramours, probate issues, and a Strong Public Interest.

On the one hand, this story is a drag.  The attempts to make it "funny", mostly consisting of endless scenes in which the judge assigned the case contemplates suicide rather than attempt presiding, are a flop.  Also, one gets the feeling that if women's lib had advanced in the story as much as medical science, most of the legal issues and many of the social ones would be irrelevant.  Particularly if 1) we could extend the legal rights currently afforded women in the federal government to all women, and 2) we could approach homosexuality with a less than medieval attitude.

That said…

There is very interesting exploration of what it means to change genders and the motivations that underly the desire to make such a transition.  While the situation is made as ludicrous as possible, the subjects, for the most part, are taken seriously.  I actually found the piece remarkably progressive, especially for Analog.  Certainly, I've never read anything like it before.

Three stars.

Beak by Beak, by Piers Anthony


by Kelly Freas

An alien spacecraft orbits the Earth, neither communicating nor responding to communications.  Meanwhile, a red parrakeet arrives at the home of a bird-keeper and joins his avian pet family for a time.

This is a pleasant pastoral piece that tries a little too hard to get its message across.  Still, I'll read something like this a thousand times before I'll read Chthon again.

Three stars.

Venus and Mercury—Locked Planets? by R. S. Richardson

Dr. Richardson writes so-so science fiction, but I generally quite like his science fact articles.  This one talks about the newly discovered rotation rates of Venus and Mercury, as well as what they might mean in relation to the history of the solar system.

On the one hand, I learned a bit, and that's significant given that I know a lot of astronomy.  On the other, I felt the pictures were worth a thousand words, and I found myself skimming a lot of the text.  In other words, maybe 20 pages wasn't necessary to make the point (God help us–next month's science article will be 10,000 words!).

Still, four stars.

A Question of Attitude, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

A recruit for the interstellar patrol finds himself in an increasingly difficult series of imaginary tests, ones that stick him in mortal peril in a simulated alien planet environment.  He seems to fail each one, ending up "dead", yet the Lt. Colonel in charge of training seems to think he has promise.

Normally, Anvil and Campbell are a toxic combination.  This time around, the story is kind of interesting.  I also rather enjoyed the nihilistic suggestion that the recruit's success is measured in the degree of his failure, and also that passing the tests only means his life is about to get worse.  It fits with the whole zeitgeist of our current engagement in Vietnam.  Even if Joseph Heller did it better.

Three stars.

Psi Assassin, by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

Lastly, yet another of Reynolds' tales of Section G, the interstellar agency whose job is to make sure no human planet ends up too backwards, lest the race become prey to an ominous but yet unmet alien menace.  This time, a psionic assassin is sent to kill the head of a Latin dictatorship.  The problem: agent Ronny Bronston has already dispatched said leader and taken his identity!

We have all the hallmarks of a Reynolds Section G story: endless historical lectures (that never seem to have any object lessons beyond the mid-20th Century), flippant personalities that leach the story of any gravitas, the lone female agent (Reynolds never lets us forget her sex), and a happy ending.

Reynolds has done decent work with this series, but less often than not.

Two stars.

Doing the math

So who's right?  Alex or Ted?  Based on this month, I'd give the nod to Ted.  While Analog was on the mediocre side, managing just 2.8 stars, other magazines fared much better.  Both Galaxy and New Worlds scored 3.2 stars.  Fantasy and Science Fiction was also pretty good (3.1).  If was a bit tired, but par for the course (2.8), and while Amazing's 2.7 score puts it at the bottom of the pack, it actually is on an upward trend.

You could fill two magazines with all the superior stuff that came out this month, which is a good crop.  Sadly, McCaffrey wrote the only woman-penned piece, and it wasn't very good (though it was better than Poul Anderson's novella in Galaxy).

I give magazines at least a few more years…

But that's not all we have for today.  All the way from Australia comes this exciting stop press in the world of space news!:


by Kaye Dee

“Australia Joins the Space Club!”

Although Australia has supported American and British/European space efforts over the past decade, just yesterday, on 29 November we finally gained our own membership of the Space Club by placing our first satellite, WRESAT-1, into orbit. I’ve written articles previously about the first satellites of France and Italy, so it gives me great pride to report on Australia’s own satellite launch.


WRESAT-1 under construction in at the WRE

WRESAT-1 (WRE Satellite) has been a joint project of the Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) and the University of Adelaide, with significant support from the United States. In 1966, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) offered Australia a spare Redstone rocket from the ARPA-led Project Sparta programme at Woomera as a satellite launcher. Sparta has been the final phase of a US/UK/Australian re-entry physics research programme commenced in 1960, investigating radar-echo phenomena created by re-entering missile warheads. The Sparta team even offered to prepare and fire the Redstone for the WRE.

“A Rush Job!”

The scientists and engineers involved in the Australian upper atmosphere research programme took advantage of the proposal to move their instruments from sounding rockets to satellite. However, the Sparta launch offer placed the satellite project on a very tight schedule, as the spacecraft would have to be ready for launch by the end of 1967, when the Sparta project would be complete and the Americans returning home. So, in just 11 months Australia’s, WRESAT has been designed, constructed, tested and was finally launched on 29 November. Its development has been an example of local “make-do” ingenuity, as much of the testing equipment needed was not available in the country.

Australia’s first satellite has been designated WRESAT-1 because my WRE colleagues hope that it will have many successors. Australia doesn’t yet have a space agency like NASA, but the WRE is putting a proposal to the Australian Government for a national space programme, and we hope that it will be funded, with the WRE formally designated as the Australian national space agency.


Diagram showing the internal layout of WRESAT’s systems and scientific instruments

Given the short development period, WRESAT’s scientific payload consists of instruments similar to those already flown in the Australian sounding rocket programme conducted in conjunction with the University of Adelaide Physics Department. The university team has developed a suite of instruments to study solar and ultra-violet radiation, atmospheric ozone and molecular oxygen density, as well as measuring the temperature of the solar atmosphere.

“Going Up From Down Under”

After an aborted launch attempt on the 28th, the Redstone lifted-off flawlessly on the 29th to place WRESAT into a polar orbit, where it is being tracked, and its telemetry signals recorded, by NASA’s Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition Network – a service also generously provided free to Australia.


WRESAT soars on its way to orbit from Launch Area 8 at Woomera

Because of its short development time, a solar array could not be designed for WRESAT, and the satellite is only battery-powered. This means it will have a very short operational lifespan, but we expect it to gather a large amount of data on the upper atmosphere that will provide a check on the data already gathered by sounding rockets.

Let’s hope that WRESAT-1 marks the start of Australia’s true Space Age, and that this country will soon “shine as brightly as the Southern Cross”, as President Johnson has put it in his congratulatory telegram on our first national launch!




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 26, 1967] The Shock of the New – Part 3 New Worlds, December 1967 – January 1968

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

You might have realised that it’s nearly Christmas – again!

It has turned colder here but I’m pleased to say nothing like THAT Winter of four years ago, which has gone into the record books, I understand. Nevertheless, I do like the season, as it means I can sit at home, warm and cosy with (hopefully) a pile of good stuff to read.

Carnaby Street, London: where's the snow?

One little shock to finish this year, however. The arrival of the latest New Worlds brings with it the usual excitement in anticipation of what I am about to read – it is pretty much a mystery at the moment, with each issue’s content rarely being predictable.

And out of all of the un-predictability, one point I wasn’t really expecting was the announcement that this issue is for TWO months – December AND January.

There were no signs of this happening in last month’s issue (other than a price increase), although I did say that there were rumours – grumblings of the publisher being unhappy, sales figures being a lot lower than expected, and editor Mike Moorcock having to go cap-in-hand to beg for more money.

Well, I might have exaggerated that last part a little. But here’s what I know. As I understand it, the ‘new’ New Worlds since it reappeared in July has been financed with an agreement between Mike Moorcock, a business partner named David Warburton and the British Arts Council, brokered by Brian Aldiss.

Facts are unclear, but evidently the take-up of subscriptions has been less – a lot less – than hoped, and so the anticipated money has not appeared. Not only that, but with such news Mike’s business partner has decided not to continue with the venture and has left Mike pretty much to it.

The money from the Arts Council has helped, admittedly, but doesn’t go far enough. The Arts Grant covers most, but not all, of the printing costs. It now seems that Mike has been paying author’s fees out of his own pocket, hoping things will improve, which haven’t. The result? Well, the price of the magazine has already gone up.

I guess that in the future these difficulties mean fewer magazines published each year, or magazines with less content and fewer pages, perhaps? It seems that Mike’s solution, at least for now until he can find more funds, is to keep up the quality but reduce the quantity.

Anyway, let’s go to the issue.

Cover by Eduardo Paolozzi, designed by Charles Platt and Christopher Finch

Article: Free Agents and Divine Fools by Christopher Finch

A relatively short first article this month. In it Christopher looks at the year in art nearly gone and tries to point out trends and patterns. Finch’s summary is that the year’s been fairly uneventful on the surface. For Art to thrive, artistic freedom is important and is needed for art to survive, but deliberately avant garde activity seems obsolete and there is a risk of Culture becoming a sub-culture. Old class structures may be being broken down in society, but in Art in its place is a type of snobbery based on specialism. To rail against this there are a few artists, including Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton, both of whom have been in the magazine over the past few issues. There’s two pages of photos at the end to show some of their work.

Example of one of the pages of Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton art.

Really, this article is a rallying call for art in the future to be outside of the systems already in place, which is pretty much the point of the new New Worlds, I think. 3 out of 5.

Bug Jack Barron (Part 1 of 3) by Norman Spinrad

An American writer who may be new to us here in Britain, although he has been mentioned here at Galactic Journey lately with his recent script for Star Trek (The Doomsday Machine) and his story Carcinoma Angels in Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions. He’s clearly a hot property at the moment, and I think this story will further add to his reputation.

Bug Jack Barron is meant to shock. It is full of expletives, overtly provocative, presenting a US in the 1980’s where the United States is often shown to be corrupt, prone to being un-democratic and riddled with corporate schemes.

This seems to follow a theme. From Ballard’s caricaturish depictions of John F Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Mickey Mouse, to John Brunner’s cut-up depiction of a near future New York in Stand on Zanzibar last month, it is clear that Bug Jack Barron continues this trend of anti-utopian unrest. Jack Barron is a media star who encourages anger across the country. On his nightly video show “Bug Jack Barron” he asks for, and gets, people sounding off on the concerns of the day. Jack is seen as someone whose purpose is to bring these injustices to light to the public, and gain publicity and viewers at the same time, of course!

When a caller accuses the Foundation for Human Immortality of racial discrimination by negatively discriminating against black people on Barron’s show, Jack attempts to contact live and on air the CEO of the Foundation, Benedict Howards, for a comment. However, Howards is unreachable and as a result, Jack gives air-time to negro Mississippi Governor Lukas Greene who launches into an attack on the Foundation. In an attempt to give an alternate view similar to Howards, Jack also speaks to Senator Teddy Hennering, the co-sponsor of Howards’ Freezer Utility Bill, but the result is to suggest that the Freezer Utility Bill should be cancelled. By the end of this first part, Barron begins to suspect that he may have inadvertently made an enemy in Howards, for which we must read on in the next issue.

Why is this shocking? I have already mentioned the expletive-ridden language throughout this story, which may be a little too gauche for some readers. In particular, a familiar expletive associated with those of African descent is bandied about an awful lot. This is inflammatory, vivid writing rather in the style of William Burroughs, the author so beloved by Moorcock and his colleagues. This frank discussion of race and politics in America is something a universe away from us here in Britain, although I suspect that the issues it raises are universal.

Most striking of all though is the suggestion that the media could have such an influence over a country. Could this really be a future? Could we see media monsters like Jack Barron dominate our future? I’m not sure, and certainly not in Britain, although Spinrad’s version is quite convincing.

If this is editor Moorcock’s last-hurrah, a response to his monetary struggles, it seems that he is determined to go down fighting, albeit in flames. 4 out of 5.

The Line-Up on the Shore by Giles Gordon

By comparison, the next story is much milder. One of those short stories that seem to be more a stream of consciousness than a story with a literary narrative. 58 people who seem to be stood staring until they move – or as described in the story “they run, run, run, run, run, run, run…” etc. Rather creepy, but I’m not entirely sure of its point – other than to be creepy, I guess. 2 out of 5.

Auto-Ancestral Fracture by Brian W. Aldiss and C. C. Shackleton

The return of the seemingly ever-present Mr. Aldiss (see his serial later in the issue, finishing this month), but unusually this one appears to be cowritten. This is not as it seems, however as C. C. Shackleton is a pseudonym for… Mr Brian Aldiss!

Anyway, this one is another story – or extract, I’m never quite sure – involving Colin Charteris. New Worlds insists on publishing these – the last story was Still Trajectories in the September issue – although for me they have had diminishing returns.

This time around, Colin is in Brussels, which you might know of from previous stories as having been heavily bombed with psychotropic drugs in the Acid Head War, surrounded by his disciples with his new god-like status.

Hearing two followers, Angeline and Marta, fight for Charteris’s attention as waves of reality flood in and out is rather torturous, making them sound like cast-offs from Anthony Burgess’s Clockwork Orange or devotees of Mr. Stanley Unwin’s famous gobbledegook. This also gives Aldiss/Shackleton a great chance to write about sex covertly, with words like ‘friggerhuddle’ and ‘bushwanking’, all of which seem to have been written with great glee. Edward Lear it isn’t, but I suspect an homage to James Joyce.

The last part of the story describes what happens when Cass, Charteris’s agent, persuades Colin to see famous film director Nicholas Boreas and have a film made about him. The finished film reads like a cross between something from Ken Russell and J. G. Ballard, full of fractured images and cars crashing. Afterwards Charteris continues his pilgrimage in Brussels, but things get out of hand. There’s a fire and much of Brussels burns. The story ends with eight sets of lyrics from imaginary songs.

Really don’t know how to summarise this one. The story is to be admired for its deliberately diverse styles of writing, but really not a lot happens. Like most of these Charteris stories, to me it feels incomplete, a portion of a bigger story, and as a result feels a little unsatisfying. It is better than the last Charteris story, admittedly, but that may not be saying much. Style over substance, which may be beyond most readers. 3 out of 5.

Article: Movies by Ed Emshwiller

A bit left-of-field, this one. I was pleasantly surprised that this month’s artist I have heard of, for like you perhaps, I know Ed for his artwork on magazines such as Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. However, here this article tries to distance itself from all that pulp fiction nonsense, as it says here that in England he is best known for his film work, such as his 38 minute film Relativity, “thought by many to be about the best short film ever made.”.

Philistine that I am, I’ve never heard of it – and I suspect fans of Godard may have something to say on the matter. Anyway, this is a little different, in that it is a “primarily non-verbal description, done as a film storyboard, of his interests and aims in making films.” 4 out of 5.

Linda & Daniel & Spike by Thomas M. Disch

After Thomas’s recent serial Camp Concentration, I’m quite interested to read what fiction he comes up with next. (He has been busy writing non-fiction articles and reviews as well, admittedly.)

Linda & Daniel & Spike begins by telling us that it is a story of sex. The fact that the title is written on the back of a naked lady on the magazine cover, and the banner picture (above) may also be a clue to this. However, it is more than that. Linda tells her imaginary friend Daniel that she is pregnant with his child. Daniel walks away. Linda goes to a gynaecologist, who tells her that she is not pregnant but has uterine cancer. She gives birth to the tumour and names it Spike. Over the next fifteen years she brings Spike up, until she is readmitted to hospital for the removal of more tumours.

I get the impression that this is meant to be darkly humorous, but I didn’t find it so–just sad. It is written well, but I can’t say I enjoyed the experience. But, New Worlds is attempting to shock, and this story does that. 3 out of 5.

An Age (Part 3 of 3) by Brian W. Aldiss

Last month Edward Bush had been recruited as part of a group of soldiers from the Wenlock Institute in 2093 whose purpose was to mind-travel using the overmind back to the Jurassic and find, or arrest, or kill Silverstone, a scientist seen as a traitor by the dictatorial regime of General Peregrine Bolt.

This part begins by saying that they have had to omit chapters here and are presenting the last part of the story in a condensed form. As the book of this serial is advertised in the issue, it does feel a little like an attempt to make any interested reader go and buy the novel. There is a summary of what has gone on so far at the beginning, though, which may suffice.

Nevertheless, the story limps to an inconclusive finish. We now find that Bolt has been overthrown to be replaced by Admiral Gleeson. Bush finds Silverstone and meets him. Bush, Silverstone and a group of others mind-travel back to the Cryptozoic to avoid assassins. Silverstone then reveals his idea – that time is back to front and the future is actually our past. Silverstone is shot and killed by an assassin. The identity of the Dark Woman is revealed as someone from Central Authority and she explains the future, or rather the past. Silverstone’s body is taken away to be buried by people from Central Authority. The creation of the universe and the purpose of God is explained.

Bush and others return to the present of 2093 to explain Silverstone’s idea about the overmind to Wenlock, owner of the mind-travelling institute. Bush is put in a mental institution, allegedly because of anomia, a breakdown caused by excessive mind travel. Bush’s father tries to see him but is rebuffed. A girl (The Dark Woman? Ann?) watches him as he leaves.

A fair bit happens here. The scale is certainly epic, but the pace is rather uneven. Too much of the middle part of the story spent trying to explain Silverstone’s ‘big idea’, whilst other events feel like they happen too conveniently or too quickly. I also found the downbeat ending rather contrived and unsatisfying, leaving the story without a good ending. 3 out of 5.

Article: Book Reviews – A Literature of Acceptance by James Colvin

This month’s Book Reviews seem to be another example of Mike Moorcock as James Colvin. He begins by examining a connection between literature – not just sf – and times of stress, postulating that the paranoia of the age is often reflected in popular writing of the time, not just now but in the past as well.

He then turns it around by claiming that change may be happening, and that – guess what! – stories like those in New Worlds may be a sign of the future and of mainstream acceptance, not just trying to entertain but to stretch and expand the genre.

The actual book reviews are for J. G. Ballard’s new collection of stories, The Overloaded Man, a reissue of Alfred Bester’s Tiger! Tiger!, Kit Reed’s first story collection, Mister da V. and Other Stories, The Seedling Stars by James Blish, Robert Zelazny’s Lord of Light and Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr Rosewater.

Unusually, Ballard’s collection is not given the usual glowing recommendation his work seems to get in New Worlds as it is “a poor representation of some of his early work – some of it is clumsily written and consisting principally of raw subject material that is worked in only the simplest and most obvious ways.”

The rest are generally more favourable. Taking a chance to self-promote, Moorcock/Colvin finishes the review section with a list of books coming out in 1968, many of them having first appeared in New Worlds, of course!

Article: Mac the Naif by John Sladek

This article examines the work of Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher whose style of work seems to echo much of what is being printed in New Worlds these days, in that cut-up mosaic form that Ballard and others seem to like. Even this article is written in that style.

Sladek looks at four of McLuhan’s books – The Mechanical Bride, which introduces McLuhan’s ideas of global communication, The Gutenberg Galaxy, which suggests that it is the printed word that has influenced society and ways of thinking since the Renaissance but with a McLuhan perspective, which leads to Understanding Media and his latest, The Medium is the Message, which is a condensation of his previous work and in the words of Sladek, “hardly worth reviewing” for that reason. Nevertheless, I can see that phrase becoming a mantra for all those executive advertising types in the future.

It's an interesting article, but complex, and I found I had to reread it to understand. Even Sladek admits that he doesn’t quite understand it all; whilst grudgingly admitting that there’s enough good ideas in the books to make them a worthwhile read. 3 out of 5.

There's quite a few missing here!

Summing up New Worlds

We are again in a position where Moorcock seems to be determined to shake things up and is going all out to shock again this month. The Spinrad is a story I suspect would not be published in this form anywhere else. I am sure that its expletive-ridden prose, albeit with a purpose, may not go down well with the “Old Guard of Science Fiction”, but would have made an ideal choice for Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions collection, had it been shorter and a story from Spinrad not already accepted. Like Ellison, I think Spinrad has an exciting future ahead.

It actually is quite a surprise to realise that this is the same writer who wrote the script for the Star Trek episode "Doomsday Machine" – they are very different and show that the writer has a range. Obviously, this is only the first part, but I think it shows that in the future Spinrad could be up there with Samuel R. Delany at his most impressive.

The Disch also seems determined to shock, but I don’t think that it is as good as his previous work. I am now feeling that, even with my reservations about it, the rest of his writing tends to pale in significance against Camp Concentration.

Both Aldiss stories disappointed. Although I enjoyed Auto-Ancestral Fracture more than most of the others of his Charteris stories, it still was as unsatisfying as I had feared. An Age finished weakly.

But all in all, a good issue that seems to defiantly tread the path in the new direction the magazine is taking. Whilst there were parts that left me feeling dissatisfied, it must be said that it made me think. There’s a lot of things here as in recent issues that definitely make you think beyond the confines of the magazine, which in my opinion is good, but may be the magazine’s downfall. Extra cerebral activity may alienate some of the readership the magazine hopes to acquire.

Certainly, based on what I’m reading here, there are few signs that this will be the last issue – after all, the magazine feels confident enough to start a new serial this month. Hopefully this means that things financially will be resolved soon, and the magazine will continue.

It was interesting that the magazine put this at the back:

And that’s it from me for this year. All the very best to you all, have a wonderful Christmas and I’ll get back to you in the New Year (hopefully!)



 

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[November 20, 1967] Fresh Air? (December 1967 Amazing)

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by John Boston

A Fresh Heir

We have been harbinged.  When Harry Harrison, recently departed as editor of SF Impulse and suddenly appeared as book reviewer in this magazine that seemed to have eschewed features entirely, I wondered whether it was an omen of a larger change. 

And here that change is, in big letters at the top of the cover of this December Amazing: “HARRY HARRISON New Editor.” Joseph Ross is gone from the masthead and his departure is unheralded elsewhere in the magazine, though Harrison is quite gracious to him in his book review of Ross’s anthology The Best of Amazing.


by Johnny Bruck

Otherwise, the kudos are reserved for the recently-deceased Hugo Gernsback.  Harrison’s editorial is a tribute to him, and Science Fiction That Endures, Gernsback’s own guest editorial from the April 1961 anniversary issue, is reprinted.  Gernsback says among other things that enduring SF stories are those that “have as their wonder ingredient true or prophetic science,” and notes that Jules Verne and H.G. Wells wrote most of their notable SF early in their careers, later succumbing to “science fiction fatigue—the creative science distillate of the mind had been exhausted.” That sounds scientific!

But does this change in masthead mean any actual material change in this too frequently lackluster magazine?

The most visible difference is that the cover and title page have suddenly become more crowded.  Nine items are touted on the cover, five of them touted as “NEW” and others as “SPECIAL” or even “XTRA SPECIAL.” There’s so much puffery going on that the cover illustration, by Johnny Bruck from the German Perry Rhodan periodical, is confined to the bottom third of the cover, though little harm is done, since it’s quite horizontal in orientation, depicting a spaceship traveling very low and being pursued by flying snakes.  Beat that, Frank R. Paul! 

Other aspects of the magazine’s presentation represent both continuity and change.  The proofreading is still terrible; look no farther than the misspelling “Lester del Ray” on the title page of his story.  And curiously, part of the magazine—pages 90 through 125—is in a different, smaller typeface than the rest, though this increase in wordage is not touted on the cover or elsewhere.

As to the contents, the balance is shifted only a little.  Two short stories and the serial installment are original, one story is probably reprinted but this is its first appearance in English, and four short stories are reprinted from earlier issues of Amazing and Fantastic.  And of course we don’t know whether Harrison actually had much of a hand in selecting what went into this first issue of his incumbency.  But the question of reprints versus new material seems to be a continuing sore point.  Note the column on the left side of the cover—five iterations of "NEW"—which musters everything in the magazine that's not a reprint, including the book review column.

So, too early to tell, but promising—it almost has to be, given Amazing’s doldrums of mediocrity to date under Sol Cohen.  As Bob Dylan, the alleged troubadour of my generation, put it:

I wish I was on some Australian mountain range.
I wish I was on some Australian mountain range.
I got no reason to be there, but I imagine it would be some kind of change. 

Santaroga Barrier (Part 2 of 3), by Frank Herbert


by Gray Morrow

First, to the non-reprinted fiction.  The longest piece of fiction here is the second installment of Frank Herbert’s serial Santaroga Barrier, in which the suggestively named Gilbert Dasein tries to unlock the secret of the reclusive town of Santaroga, which seems to involve a psychoactive substance called Jaspers that the locals all consume.  As usual I’ll hold my comments until the story is complete.

The Forest of Zil, by Kris Neville


by Jeff Jones

Kris Neville, who contributed prolifically to the SF magazines during the early 1950s but slowed down considerably thereafter, opens the issue with The Forest of Zil, a cryptic story of space explorers who land on a planet entirely covered in forest and begin to make plans to clear trees to make space for human activities.  The forest begs leave to differ, and its response can be read either as an epic in brief of raising the ante exponentially, like A.E. van Vogt but not as noisy, or as a weary parody of the entire conceptual armamentarium of SF.  Or maybe something else!  How many faces can you find lurking in the coffee shop placemat?  Four stars for this subtly memorable piece.

The Million Year Patent, by Charles L. Harness


by Jeff Jones

Charles L. Harness, a patent lawyer by day, is present with The Million Year Patent, in which the technicalities of patent law collide with those of relativity, not very interestingly to this lay person.  Two stars.

An Unusual Case, by Gennadiy Gor

The “Sensational Story from behind the Iron Curtain” per the cover is Gennadiy Gor’s An Unusual Case, translated from Russian by one Stanley Frye.  Gor, born to a family exiled to Siberia by the Tsar, was apparently part of the avant-garde in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, but survived to write popular science texts as well, and to start writing SF in 1961.  There’s no indication where this story was previously published, if at all.  It’s a first-person account by the creator of an artificial intelligence (apparently at least humanoid; a hand is mentioned) of his rearing of this pseudo-child, which is cut short when representatives of the corporation that financed the project come to take it away, as it protests piteously.  It’s short and poignant, though blunted a bit by not making much sense; the ingenue develops detailed memories of human life that its creator didn’t put there.  Three stars, and I hope we see more of Gor’s work here (or anywhere).

The Smile, by Ray Bradbury


by L. Sterne Stevens

The ”Ray Bradbury Masterpiece” touted on the cover is The Smile, from the Summer 1952 Fantastic, set in what seems like an American town after a nuclear war has mostly destroyed civilization and left everyone who survived destitute.  People of course respond in the only logical way—by destroying or defiling any available relics of the former civilization.  A while back it was smashing an old car with sledgehammers; today everyone is lining up to spit on a fragment of a famous painting (clue: the title).  But young Tom just can’t get with the program.  It’s a bit overdone, but Bradbury’s overdone is better than many writers’ perfectly-baked.  Or something like that.  Three stars.

Stacked Deck, by Lester del Rey

Our Journeyer-in-Chief recently had occasion to mention “the sort of inferior stuff that filled the lesser mags of the ’50s.” Here’s the real article, Lester del Rey’s Stacked Deck from the November 1952 Amazing.  Del Rey is one of SF’s hardy journeyman professionals, in the game since 1937 as writer, first for John Campbell’s Astounding and Unknown, then for everyone in sight during the 1950s’ efflorescence of SF magazines.  In the ‘50s he edited magazines and anthologies and wrote novels as well as stories, including a prodigious ten of them under various pseudonyms for the Winston series of juvenile SF.  Occasionally he excelled, and his work almost always maintained a basic level of competence.

Almost always.  Sometimes a working writer just has to crank it out, inspiration or no, as in this excruciatingly contrived piece.  Before it opens, a man flew to the moon, without enough fuel to get back, expecting to be rescued in time by a later expedition.  (This already makes no sense.) But that rocketeer, inexplicably, showed up again on Earth, talking about entities he encountered on the moon but claiming scrambled memory.  So a better-equipped expedition sets out, only to discover that the Russians are neck and neck with them.  All this is told in an annoyingly jaunty, I’m-just-a-regular-guy first person style, as in the opening sentence: “The bright boys with their pep talks about space and the lack of gravity should try it once!”


by Ed Emshwiller

Upon landing, our heroes find a building with an airlock, and inside, a nice lounge with red leather chairs, a cigarette machine, and plenty of alcohol and food, along with a machine shop and a lot of electronic gear, with signs and manuals in English and Russian—and a vault full of missiles, ready to be armed with warheads.  They surmise the Russians are finding something similar.

So what gives?  All along there have been passing references to gambling, such as the protagonist’s having bought a sweepstakes ticket, and racing magazines lying around, some inside the mysterious building.  Our hero picks up one of the latter and finds a note in it written by the aliens who set up the building, explaining that they are all betting on whether the Earthfolk will blow themselves up in short order, or avoid extermination and come calling on the aliens a bit later.  Narrator ruminates: “I don’t like being the booby prize in a cosmic lottery.  And that’s all the human race is now, I guess.”

And that arid gimmick is the story, with no other redeeming feature.  Del Rey must have been short on the rent that month.  One star. 

Luvver, by Mack Reynolds

Speaking of gimmicks, arid ones that is, Mack Reynolds’s Luvver (Fantastic Adventures, June 1950) is about as contrived as Stacked Deck.  Old Donald Macbride and his flirtatious daughter Patricia are having spaceship problems and make an emergency landing on a handy planet despite the “RESTRICTED ZONE.  LANDING FORBIDDEN” warning that comes over the radio. The local garrison, consisting of Steve and Dave, hustles them off their ship—blindfolded—and into their quarters, warning them not to look around, not to go outside, not to open the windows, without explaining why. 

But Patricia, of course, goes outside, and before Steve can drag her in, she sees a little animal–a luvver.  He knocks her out and the guys shoot her up with “the lethe drug,” since wiping her memory is her only hope.  Steve explains to the old man that all animals have means of defense—speed, size, venom, scent, etc.  The luvvers’ defense is eliciting undying love—“a stronger force than the most vicious narcotic”—in anyone or anything that sees them.  If Patricia retains her memories, she will “die of melancholy” if kept away from them, and if they escaped their world, pandemonium would ensue.

The gimmick is slightly less inane than del Rey’s, and Reynolds writes in a style more facile and natural than del Rey’s artificial and irritating voice, so two stars, barely.

Sub-Satellite, by Charles Cloukey

The gem of the issue, remarkably, is Charles L. Cloukey’s Sub-Satellite, from the March 1928 Amazing.  It recounts a great inventor’s construction of a spaceship and his voyage to the Moon in it, and the attempt on his life there by a disgruntled and demented former employee who has stowed away.  It is well told in an agreeable, slightly stilted but very plain style with a good balance of narration and exposition, reminding me of (my old memories of) Jules Verne.  It too ends with a gimmick—one that has been used in later decades by better-known writers—but there’s much more of a story here than in del Rey’s or Reynolds’s efforts, so it doesn’t detract from the whole.  Four stars.

So who’s this Cloukey?  Never heard of him, though I’m familiar with most of Gernsback’s repeat contributors.  Turns out he died in 1931, at age 19, of typhoid fever, after publishing eight stories, a poem, and a serial novel in Gernsback’s magazines.  Sub-Satellite was his first story, and he was not quite 16 when it was published.  Forget G. Peyton Wertenbaker, whose The Man from the Atom, done when he was 16, was pretty terrible—Cloukey is the real prodigy of the Gernsback years.  Too bad he didn’t last.

Summing Up

So, not a bad issue, with a couple of four-star stories, and some evidence (mainly the cover and table of contents) that the new regime at least wants to make the magazine look a bit livelier.  Whether a sustained improvement is in process of course remains to be seen.




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[November 4, 1967] Conflicts (December 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

Conflicts at home over the conflict abroad

It seems like scarcely a day goes by without images of young people protesting showing up on the evening news and landing on our doorsteps. These days, it’s usually about the war in Vietnam as President Johnson ratchets up the number of troops involved yet again. Monday, October 16th saw the start of Stop the Draft week. Induction centers in cities all over the country were blockaded by protesters, while many young men either burned their draft cards or attempted to hand them in to authorities, which is now a criminal offense. Arrests were plentiful. In Oakland alone, 125 people (including singer Joan Baez) were arrested, and I’ve seen estimates that as many as 1,000 draft cards were either burned or turned in. The week culminated in a march on the Pentagon. Check back later this month for an eyewitness account from the Journey’s Vickie Lucas.

Joan Baez is arrested in Oakland.

Of course, the protests didn’t end there. On October 27th, Father Philip Berrigan, Rev. James Mengel and two other men, forced their way into Selective Service office in Baltimore, Maryland and poured blood into several file drawers containing draft records. The men have refused bail and are being held awaiting trial.

Fr. Berrigan pouring blood into a file drawer.

Conflicts big and small

When we study literature in school, we’re usually taught that conflict is one of the most important elements in narrative and drama. It’s often broken down into three types: man against man, man against nature and man against self. The December issue of IF has them all.

Futuristic combat in The City of Yesterday. Art by Chaffee

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[October 24, 1967] War, Anti-utopias and Near-Future Apocalypses New Worlds, November 1967

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

As the weather turns distinctly autumnal here, I guess that we can say Goodbye to the so-called “Summer of Love”. Here in Britain I can’t say I’ve noticed major social changes, and certainly not as much as you in California – but it has at least brought me The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album, which has been a constant source of entertainment here since its release in June.

Whilst it is not on the British streets, such images of casual living, sex, drugs and rock and roll are still in my British magazine, of course. It feels like there’s at least one story every month that relates to this. Recently it was Thomas Disch’s Camp Concentration, and now… well, I’ll get to that later.

Not only that, but this issue seems to have a general theme of conflict about it.

Here’s the issue.

Cover by Vivienne Young

Article: Peace and Paradox by John T. Sladek

An example of the logic shown in this article. Not sure I understood this!

In recent months these first articles in the magazine have been pretty intense, dealing with aspects of philosophy, mathematics and psychology that have made me have to read them more than once to get any understanding.

This month’s is even more esoteric, showing a connection between war and peace in War Game Theory through mathematics that made my head spin. No named writer in the title, although the cover states that it is by John Sladek. Its relevance as a theme may be deliberate, on reading the Book Reviews later this month. 3 out of 5.

An Age (Part 2 of 3) by Brian W. Aldiss

Here’s this month’s drug-culture story.

Continuing from last month’s first part, Edward Bush and his new girlfriend Ann take a mind-trip to the Jurassic using the mind-altering drug CSD. They meet stegosauri and go to a town set up by other travellers from the future. Bush wanders away from the town bar and is attacked. Separated from Ann, he returns to the world of 2093, where we discover that this world whence they came is a rather unpleasant place run by a dictator named General Peregrine Bolt, which is why many people transport themselves to the past.

Bush meets his family to renew his strained relationship with his father and finds that his mother has died whilst he was travelling. He is then arrested by the Wenlock Institute, the place where mind-travel was invented, for overstaying his mind-travel journey, but really it seems that this is just an excuse for Bush to be interrogated by Franklyn, the Deputy of the Institute.

Towards the end we seem to stray into satire as Bush is press-ganged into Bolt’s new Mind-Travel Police Squad. After training, he is sent back into the past as part of Ten Squad to capture and kill the scientist-traitor Silverstone, who has wandered off. It very much reminded me of Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic Hero in its amusement at the idiocy of training soldiers for war.

Despite this veer into humour, this serial still feels like something from a middle-class writer trying to broaden his range in an attempt to appear gritty and progressive. Bush refers to Ann as “a slag” and “a cow” – charming! For a middle-of-the-story-part, this one was a little uneven, but acceptable, though worse as it went along. 3 out of 5.

Article: The Terror-Pleasure Paradox by Christopher Finch

Example of Self's imagery.

This month’s ‘artycle’ examines the “selective naturalism” of Colin Self. The “Terror-Pleasure Paradox” is namely that by using “nuclear warfare paraphernalia” in a manner which verges on advertising it therein creates a paradox – something that should frighten, yet at the same time may provide pleasure.

In its combination of provocative war imagery, modern machinery and even eroticism it all seems very Ballard-ian to me and therefore will be appreciated by many New Worlds readers. Me, I’m not so sure. 3 out of 5.

Stand on Zanzibar (excerpt) by John Brunner

Uncredited image, but it looks like a Douthwaite, who is credited in the magazine.

From John Brunner there’s an excerpt from his latest book (due next year.) This one, I must admit, is a revelation, but actually not as entirely new as it claims to be.

The title comes from the idea that if you took all of the world’s population and stood them together, they would occupy a space merely that of the island of Zanzibar. The introduction refers to the work of John Dos Passos, which seems to have this style of lots of different styles of writing, in a cut-up manner that Ballard would be proud of. It’s certainly something we’ve seen much of in New Worlds recently.

We don’t get a narrative here as such, more of a taste of a big, complex future world. Donald Hogan is a corporate executive for General Technics in New York. He has the ability to make the right guesses, which is part of his job as a synthesist. As seen through Donald, New York is a busy city, under a dome and overpopulated with people, and noisy. Advertising is everywhere, a culture of consumerism dominant. Its multicultural streets at night are a dazzling blend of energy, suppressed violence and pseudo cab drivers.

We also meet Poppy Shelton, a young pregnant girl who goes to visit the doctors. In contrast to Hogan’s, hers is a world of squalor made bearable by casual psychedelic drugs.

To show all of this, we have disparate forms of prose presented in that cut-up manner we’ve seen in a lot of stories here. There is some sort of street-speak language, academic descriptions of a future multi-ethnic society, quotes from people in the street, advertising slogans and signage to show this, often in short sentences. It is a world of government-decreed abortions, riots and casual drug usage.

Another uncredited image that looks like a Douthwaite.

Although this is only a taster, it is interesting – and perhaps most important of all, makes me want to read more, as the point of Donald and Poppy are unclear based on this. It seems to combine the ideas of Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! with the style of Thomas Disch’s Camp Concentration to create a multifaceted, kaleidoscopic view of this near-future world. Who knows where this near-future dystopia is going?

It’s just a shame that it is an extract, as the book sounds BIG – the introduction points out that they would have liked to have run it as a serial, but a fifteen-part serial was not viable. If the rest of the book is like this, Stand on Zanzibar may be the most ambitious, yet simultaneously accessible work of the British New Wave of SF to date, although I am aware that the novel may be just style over substance. Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks?

This might be one of the most intriguing stories I’ve read recently, so much so that I can see it in the Awards nominations next year – providing that the rest matches this extract, of course! 4 out of 5.

After Galactic War by Michael Butterworth
Sharing the horror in full – another poetic gem – well, they seem to be liked by some!

Oh, oh – more poetry alert! To quote: “i looked out of the forehead of a doubledecker bus and my legs were wheels”… indeed. I suspect the author’s been visiting that new New York of Brunner’s… 2 out of 5.

Wine on an Empty Stomach by George Collyn

Illustration by Cawthorn

It’s been a while since we’ve seen George as an author in these pages – he has been better known for reviewing books recently, of which there are some later!

His story is a decent effort at writing in the New Wave form about a post-apocalyptic future as written from different people’s perspectives: a group of literary readers, a soldier, an obsessive book hoarder, an amateur philosopher and a prostitute whose lives come together at the end to create a new future. I quite liked this one, divided into chapters that each told of another person, each adding another element of the story to make a coherent narrative at the end. Of course, this being British anti-utopia, it all ends badly.  4 out of 5.

Article: Off-Beat Generation by Dr. John W. Gardner

The future of energy?

No Dr. Christopher Evans this month, so not a medical-based article. Instead, Dr. John W. Gardner looks at how to secure future energy production in a world where the population is growing. Talk of fuel cells (see photo) and thermonuclear reactors ensue. Quite heavy on the science this one. Like the leading article this month, it’s interesting, but I wouldn’t say that I understood it all. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews

George Collyn reappears in his now more regular role here, as book reviewer. This month The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy makes “good reading” and August Derluth’s “less robust” story collection, Over the Edge much less so. The Tenth Galaxy Reader, edited by Frederik Pohl, is “thoroughly professional” but “fairly conventional”, which seems to echo comments on the magazine around here at Galactic Journey. The Last Castle is “typical Vance”, with World of the Sleeper by Tony Russell Wayman being a swashbuckling better buy.

As has been a pattern over the last few Book Reviews, the last reviews this month are in more detail and determinedly not genre-based. Professor Gordon A. Craig writes of War, Politics and Diplomacy, no doubt as an adjunct to the leading article at the beginning of the magazine. Secondly, Dr. Donald West looks at the issue of juvenile delinquency in his book The Young Offender.

Summing up New Worlds

And that’s it for this month. This issue feels like it has less quantity than normal, although the quality of what is there is of the usual good standard. The star for me this month is the Brunner extract, although I am wary of being overenthusiastic. Nevertheless, I am hoping it holds up when it becomes a “proper” novel. It has the potential to be something special.

I am enjoying the Aldiss more than some of his more recent stories, I must admit, although the last part of the story seemed to fizzle out a bit. The Collyn was better than I thought it was going to be, which was a pleasant surprise.

So, all in all, not a bad issue – again.

After writing this article, I did hear of an interesting rumour about New Worlds. Gossip has it that the new direction of the magazine may not be leading to increased sales. There are rumblings in the ether that Mike Moorcock is having to go with metaphorical cap-in-hand to the publishers to gain further finance. Does this put the magazine at risk again? Possibly. More in the future as I get it.

An advertisement from this month's magazine that shows how different book sales and New Worlds magazine is, perhaps? How many of these authors are mentioned in detail in the magazine these days?

Until the next!



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[October 2, 1967] Switching Sides (November 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

Crossing the road

You probably know that, while much of the world drives on the right-hand side of the road with steering wheels on the left side of the vehicle, Great Britain and most of her former colonies do things the other way around, steering wheel on the right and driving on the left. A few other countries follow the British example, such as Japan, Indonesia, and Thailand. Up until a month ago, Sweden was among them.

A switch has been considered for a while and, although Swedes voted overwhelmingly against the change in 1955, it has now gone through. All of Sweden’s neighbors drive on the right, with something like 5 million vehicles crossing the borders with Norway and Finland (not to mention Danish and German tourists arriving with their cars by ferry). On top of that, roughly 90 percent of the cars in Sweden have their steering wheel on the left, which means that Swedish automakers have been building their cars that way for a long time.

The logo for the traffic changeover.

After four years of preparation and education, H-day (Dagen H for Högertrafik, which means right-hand traffic) came in the wee hours of Sunday, September 3rd. Road signs had to be moved or remade, new lines had to be painted on the roads, intersections had to be reshaped. Just as much effort went into educating the public. The logo was plastered on everything from milk cartons to underwear. There was even a catchy tune written for the event, “Håll dig till höger, Svensson” (Keep to the Right, Svensson). Everything seems to have gone off without a hitch, and traffic accidents have been down, probably because everyone is being extra careful. Iceland is planning on following suit next year.

This photo was staged several months ago as part of the education campaign. The real thing was much less chaotic.

Turncoats and breakthroughs

This month’s IF begins and ends with characters changing sides (or appearing to) while elsewhere the crew of a spaceship breaks on through to the other side.

A newcomer gets the cover. Does he deserve it? Art by Vaughn Bodé

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[September 30, 1967] Ain't that good news! (October 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

End of Summer

The long, hot summer is over, and with it a general cooling across the country, both in temperature and in tension.  While San Francisco enjoyed a summer of love, with folks as disparate as Eric Burdom and Scott McKenzie coming to just be-in, the rest of the nation was rocked by civil strife, strikes, and protest.


Ashes in Cambridge, MD


Teachers on strike

And why not?  The cities have been bubbling kettles for a long time, and too many mayors and councilmen are ignoring the problem.  Too many workers have been stiffed and neglected.  Too many young men, too young even to vote, have lost their lives in Vietnam.

Now, the strikes are largely settled in the workers' favor.  The racial problems, well they're still there, but harder to ignore, and with the departure of sultry weather, tempers are a little less frayed.  Vietnam…well, they had a free election didn't they?  Surely things must be getting a little better.

Surely.

In any event, enjoy the respite.  We're going to need our strength.

So goes the nation…

The nation of science fiction, that is.  SF had a rocky summer, with a slew of lackluster magazines, inconsistent books, and of course, endless reruns on TV.  I'm happy to report that the dog days are over, at least for now: not only has it been a good month for SF mags in general, but the latest issue of Analog is the best in more than a year and a half.


by John Schoenherr

Weyr Search, by Anne McCaffrey


by John Schoenherr

Jack Vance and Frank Herbert have made sweeping, quasi-fantastic tableaus the in thing.  Universes that feel thousands of years old, with venerable, somewhat tattered institutions vying for power in a decadent setting.  Now Ann McCaffrey, best known for her The Ship Who series, has tossed her hat in the ring.

Pern is a planet somewhere in the galaxy, once settled by Earth, but long since forgotten.  It is a verdant, pleasant world save for one feature.  Every few hundred years, a rogue planet comes close enough in its eccentric orbit to launch deadly spores of "thread".  These burrow into Pern's soil, destroying native life, scourging farms and people.

To combat them, humans formed a sort of treaty with the native intelligent life: sapient dragons, with whom their riders bond telepathically.  These dragons not only breathe fire, but they can teleport.  This makes them formidable defenders, indeed!  Clearly, they once dominated Pernian politics.  Long ago, there were six "Weyrs"–barren fortresses wherein lived the dragons and their human brethren.  From these strongholds, Pern was kept safe from the baleful "red star".

But humans have short memories, and when Weyr Search begins, it has been several centuries since the last orbital conjunction.  Human politics have supplanted other concerns, and the "Holds", fortresses against human incursion, reign supreme.  Only one Weyr, called Benden, remains in operation–a shabby shadow of itself.

Nevertheless, with the rogue planet approaching, and the queen of dragons recently dead, it is imperative that the Benden riders find a new rider for the next queen, one who has the requisite psychic talents and the necessary strength of character.  Can any such person exist in these fallen times, when even proud Ruatha hold, whose royal family's blood once ran with a strong vein of dragon talent, has become a wreck under the cruel ministrations of Lord Fax of the High Reaches?

Well, of course the answer is yes.  It's obvious from the first page, told from the point of view of Lessa, Ruathan scullery girl, who is secretly scion of the dead lineage.  Weyr Search is not a story to surprise, a tale of twists and turns.  It is not even really a complete story; it is clear there will be sequels.  What it is, however, is an intriguing setup for a story.

As such, it really succeeds or fails on its writing.  McCaffrey is better at her job than Herbert, whose reach regularly exceeds his grasp.  She is less talented than Vance (who wrote a somewhat reminiscent tale several years ago called The Dragon Masters).  The first portion of the story is a bit stiltedly told, and Lessa comes across as something of a caricature, a wish-fullfilment vehicle akin to Cinderella ("I may seem a nothing, but I'm really a secret princess-queen!") Not that this kind of character can't work–after all, look at Roan in Earthblood, but Laumer and Brown did a better job with it.  And, of course, there are the tics that sold the work to Campbell: psionics and the idea of people being genetically special.

Nevertheless, the writing gets better as it goes along, and the concepts are interesting.  I've read some great stuff by McCaffrey, and I've read some tepid stuff by McCaffrey.  This installment gets four stars.  We'll see how the serial (in all but name) does as a whole when its done.

(Note: There's a bit in the prologue where Pern's "Yankee" colonists are mentioned.  I'll bet my bottom dollar this was a Campbell edit, as nowhere in the rest of the story is the race of the colonists suggested.  Heaven forbid anyone but WASPs settle the galaxy…)

Toys, by Tom Purdom


by Leo Summers

I'm always happy to see a piece from my good friend, Tom.  This one involves a cop duo (male and female) taking on a gang of pre-teenage kids, who have taken their families hostage using a host of homegrown weapons: genetically engineered apes and tigers, chemistry-set psychedelic drugs, erector-set shock guns.  The work of the police is complicated by their standing directive to minimize casualties.

A little insight from the author:

I have a lot of thoughts on Toys. I gave a talk on it at a Philadelphia Science Fiction Society meeting this month.

Basically, it's built around three ideas.

The first came from a John Campbell editorial I read around 1950 or 51.  What are you going to do, Campbell asked, when an angry teenager can blow up a city merely by twisting a pair of wires in a certain way?  It's a thought experiment that gets at the heart of some of the issues raised by technology.  I reduced the problem to a world where children have access to all kinds of potentially lethal technologies.

The second big idea is economic growth.  I got interested in that years before, and it figures in many of my stories. The standard of living in the industrialized nation has been doubling two or three times per century since about 1700.  The children in my story are lower middle class or might even be considered poor, but they have access to things like home genetic kits.  They are poor in land, however, living in a five story house on a narrow plot.  And lots of other kids have a lot more.

The third element is a Utopian police force.  In a world with so much potential for violence, you need a first class police force and a society willing to pay for highly trained, well educated cops.  Edelman [the viewpoint character] understands that he is supposed to resolve this situation without harming the kids.  He takes bigger risks than he has to because he is responsible for the kids' welfare.

Thus, both utopian and anti-utopian predictions.  Purdom excels at these concepts, painting a future world with realistic touches.  For instance, complete equality of the sexes (exemplified by the cop partners), and one of the few stories that takes monetary inflation into account ($50,000 a year is a poor salary; $200,000 is pretty good.)

Where Tom always has trouble is combat scenes.  It's no coincidence that his best works, like I Want the Stars and Courting Time, focus on people rather than fighting.

Toys is essentially a non-stop fight sequence.  Thus, three stars.

Political Science—Chinese Style, by Research Group of the Theory of Elementary Particles, Peking

Editor Campbell offers up the preamble to a Chinese paper on subatomic particles, the realm of the "quark".  The actual paper is not included; instead, we get many pages of explanation as to the philosophy that let to the composer's discoveries–all guided by the pure thought of their leader Mao Tse Tung.

It's pretty obvious that such folderol is necessary to get anything published in China.  I'm sure the Nazi and Stalinist publishers had to do the same.  What's special about this paper is that the science is reportedly "first-class".  Which makes me sad that the whole paper wasn't included.  Subatomic physics is fascinating stuff.

Anyway, it's short and interesting for what it is.  And given the quality of fiction in this mag, I didn't miss the (hit and miss) science column too much.

Three stars.

The Judas Bug, by Caroll C. MacApp


by Kelly Freas

C.C. MacApp, using his first name rather than an initial for some reason, offers up this tale of a colony in peril.  Two settlers of a new planet have been found dead in the field, their faces, throats and hands gnawed away.  The fauna of the planet just don't seem harmful enough to be the culprit; Mechanic James Gruder worries that a human conspiracy is involved.

This is a perfectly competent story, although I found the resolution a little rushed.  Three stars.

Free Vacation, by W. Macfarlane


by Leo Summers

I really liked the concept behind this story: Terran convicts are offered a choice–imprisonment, or teleportation to a roughhewn world as conscripted explorers.  Day Layard, a brand new draftee, is paired with an old hand, who proves invaluable in keeping him alive.  It turns out Layard's partner is particularly happy with his lot in life; it gives him the opportunity to seek out signs of the "Prodromals", the race of beings that preceded humanity in the galaxy.

This is another tale that runs along just fine until the somewhat rushed ending.  An extra page or two would have perhaps garnered a fourth star.  As is, a pleasant three.

Pontius Pirates, by J. T. McIntosh


by Leo Summers

The planet of Molle is a rich, advanced world, with nothing to hide.  So why is it the moment Jack Sheridan makes planetfall from Earth, he is under 24 hour surveillance?  Nothing formal, mind you–just subject to the attentions of four jovial fellows eager to get him drunk, and a pretty young girl employed to spend the night with him…or at least tell him she did when he wakes up with no memory of what went on the previous day.

Could it be that Molle is actually the home base for the piratical Buccaneers, and the surveillance is to make sure no one gets too close to the secret? That's certainly why Sheridan, actually an Interstellar Patrolman, was dispatched to the planet.

On the surface, this is just a secret agent thriller.  The plot is interesting, but nothing noteworthy.  The average reader will probably enjoy it and move on.

As a writer, I found much to admire.  The thing is, Jack Sheridan is never wrong.  He has his working theories, he tests them, and they always turn out to be more or less as expected.  There are plenty of stories with characters like these, from Retief to James Bond, and they quickly run into one or both of two issues:

1) When you know the hero is always right, where's the tension?

2) When the hero knows he's always right, he tends to become insufferable.

McIntosh, who has been writing for two decades now, neatly avoids both pratfalls.  The mystery is unfolded piece by piece, and at each juncture, Sheridan is plagued with doubt.  He doesn't know if he's right, he lists all the reasons he could be wrong, and he explains what he'll do in that event.  The thing is, he isn't some schnook like Bond who stumbles upon the truth.  He lands on Molle with enough information to be pretty sure it's the Buccaneer base.  After that, it's logical and plausible deduction.

We also learn a lot about Sheridan, his character and his values, without ever explicitly being told about them.  It's a lovely piece of oblique writing, all showing and no telling.

So, well done, Mr. McIntosh.  Perhaps others in Campbell's stable can learn from your example (*ahem* Chris Anvil).  Four stars.

Doing the math

With a star-o-meter rating of 3.4 stars, Analog tops its competition.  But competition it did have!  New Worlds and Fantasy and Science Fiction both scored 3.3, and even Amazing got 3.0.  Only IF and
Galaxy lagged, with 2.8 and 2.7, respectively.

If you took all the four and five star stories, you could fill two slim digests.  The only really sad statistic is that, out of 33 new pieces of fiction, just one was written by a woman.  Looks like women have struck out for books and screenplays, where the money's better.  A smart move, but not a happy sign for magazines in general.

Nevertheless, let's dwell on the positive.  Good job, Analog, and thanks for a happy punctuation to the month of September!

Speaking of books by women…

You've probably heard of Marie Vibbert, one of the biggest names in SFF magazines (of the far-future year 2022).  Her book, The Gods Awoke, is what I've been calling "a new New Wave masterpiece":

Do check it out.  You'll not only be getting a great book, but you'll be supporting the Journey!




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 26, 1967] Anniversary? Really? New Worlds, October 1967

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

The changes with New Worlds in the last few months have been so much that they’ve rather left me guessing what the next issue will be like. Will it be sexually adult, like last month’s issue? Will it introduce me to art and artists I’ve never heard of before? Or will it try to flummox me with philosophy, religion and science?

Who knows? Each issue has been one of surprise and bewilderment, with, as I suggested last month, less emphasis on the science fiction and more on those other elements. It certainly keeps me guessing!

And it is an anniversary issue, too! If you’ve been following what’s been going on here in the last year or so, many of us didn’t think we’d get to celebrating 21 years of New Worlds, but here we are – even if its publishing schedule has been a little erratic, admittedly. I am hoping that there is plenty to celebrate here.


Cover by Richard Hamilton

And with that in mind, let’s go to the issue!

Article: The Languages of Science by Dr. David Harvey

We seem to have given up any pretence of an Editorial now. We’re straight into a Science article, which discusses the importance of language in science, as “a theory … is a language for discussing the facts the theory is said to explain.”


Art from the article: Geometry is important!

It’s interesting in that science is usually considered (at least by me) as being unemotional yet here there’s an argument for the point that it is all down to how we use the language that is important. It also examines the question of whether the language of science is fit for purpose. Not a light read, but another one that makes you think. 3 out of 5.


More art that seems unrelated to the story it is in!

An Age (Part 1 of 3) by Brian W. Aldiss

Another month, another Aldiss – although this is the first part of a new serial. Here time travellers from 2090 spend time in the Cryptozoic. The past has become a destination for a myriad of unusual characters.

Artist Edward Bush describes what the place is like before the story brings in Ann, the girlfriend of motorbike gang leader Lenny. Bush has an affair with Ann and they decide to hop off to the Jurassic together. Before they leave, Edward finds himself being watched by a mysterious woman in black, about whom I suspect we will discover more in the next part.

This is different to the recent Aldiss stories published, although like many of his stories deliberately socially conscious. Also self-conscious. It feels rather like how a British writer believes they should write about a counterculture, with its casual sexual relationships and talk of drugs and mind-travel, but I must admit that I prefer this story to that of the recent Charteris series – at least so far. 4 out of 5.


An advert for the novelisation of this serial from this issue. However, be warned – there might be some future plot details here!

Article: A Fine Pop-Art Continuum by Christopher Finch


Art by Richard Hamilton

This month’s ‘artycle’, (I’ll keep saying it because I like it) examines the work of Richard Hamilton, an artist able to “distil from the idioms of the present a possible language for the future”. I was impressed by the range of work, from paintings to photography to models and even buildings, although much of this is prose trying to describe a medium that seems primarily visual. 3 out of 5.

Solipsist by Bob Parkinson

A quick check – for those who didn’t know, a solipsist is “a very self-centred or selfish” person (as it says in my English Dictionary.) I don’t know about you, but that immediately makes me think that this story is going to be one that spends its time gazing introvertly at itself. And guess what? It does. Lots of empty phrases and Words! With Exclamation Marks! that ape Alfred Bester’s novels from a decade ago. So, to paraphrase: Run! Go now! Avoid! 2 out of 5.

The Men Are Coming Back! by Barry Cole

And in the same manner, approach with caution. The magazine is still trying to bring poetry to the readership, which for me is a bit of a lost cause, frankly – though I hope that one day there will be something I like! At least this one is understandable, if enigmatic. It tells of what happens to a village of women on seeing their men return from somewhere. It casts mockery upon sexual stereotypes, I guess. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by Zoline

Camp Concentration (Part 4 of 4) by Thomas M. Disch

In this fourth and final part we see the culmination of Louis Sacchetti’s exposure to the Pallidine bug, and as expected it is not pretty. Sacchetti is now the last remaining prisoner of the inmates there in Camp Archimedes when he arrived, although there are new recruits brought in by Skilliman.

Haast, the prison director, is concerned by Louis’s realisation that Dr. Aimee Busk’s disappearance means that she is spreading the disease to the general public, and therefore within months 30-50% of the American public will be geniuses. The consequences of this is that all of those needed to stabilise society will die and society will collapse, something which Skilliman and his fellow recruits seem to be engineering. Louis’s attempts to make Haast see what is happening initially appear to be unheeded, and there are no signs in the news that changes are happening.

As a consequence of the infection, Louis eventually goes blind but is still able to type. Skilliman continues to taunt Louis. He maintains his friendship with Schipansky and Fredgren, two of Skilliman’s recruits, who despite Skilliman’s attempts to isolate Louis, manage to bring in more visitors. Louis also hallucinates discussions with people as well, such as Thomas Nashe.

At the end, things are resolved. Louis has a stroke, which paralyses him. One of Sacchetti’s visitors, Watson, leads a protest against Skilliman, which Louis is accused of instigating by Skilliman. When Skilliman tries to get Haast to shoot Louis ‘escaping’, he is shot by Haast. Haast then tells Louis that he is Mordecai Washington, who we thought died two parts ago.

It seems that Haast and Mordecai swapped bodies through secret equipment developed by the venereally-infected geniuses during their production of Faust. Louis is then transferred to the body of a guard he has continually referred to as Assiduous. They continue to search for a vaccine.

Frankly, this final part seemed to make more sense than the last, as it draws the story to an end. The last part was confusing – understandably so, admittedly – for its disjointed ruminations on disconnected issues, whereas this time around, Louis’s demise seems to create a more intensely focussed perspective. Although it was flagged up in part 2 of the serial, the ending seems a little bit of a cop-out, though, lacking conviction.

Nevertheless, on balance this is one of the most memorable stories I’ve seen in recent years, and certainly in New Worlds. It is a startling piece of work, although the impact of this has worn off a little since that initial first part. 4 out of 5.


Terrific artwork to illustrate the article on the brain.

Article: The Inconsistent Alpha by Dr. Christopher Evans

This month – and rather appropriate, given what has just happened in Disch’s serial – in his series of articles about the human body, Dr. Evans looks at the brain and brain waves, the alpha wave in particular. 4 out of 5.

The City Dwellers by Charles Platt

Do you remember Charles Platt’s story, Lone Zone which I reviewed back in the July 1965 issue of New Worlds? This one treads similar ground as it is set in a dilapidated city of the future. It’s the story of Manning and a group of fellow emotionless and exhausted characters who try to maintain their difficult existence. There’s fighting between gangs, military weapons on the streets and buildings set light to, as if life in the city wasn’t depressing enough. It’s fine, but nothing special. This one feels like a leftover, filling up a space without any importance. 3 out of 5.

Yes: people are willing to go to war over Baked Beans!

The Baked Bean Factory by Michael Butterworth

I have in the past felt pretty disappointed by Michael’s stories. So I am pleased that this is one I actually liked. It is basically a future-war story, where the combatants are all based on big corporate industries. So we have a Baked Beans company fighting rival corporations referred to as “The Enemy” in Image Warfare, all for the sake of dominance and greater profit. I was amused by this extreme extrapolation of corporate influence, even with its sudden and disappointing ending, but it makes a chilling prediction – could we see a future where big business runs everything? 3 out of 5.

Article: Reverie of Bone by Langdon Jones

A page showing some of Peake's imaginative artwork.

The Assistant Editor reviews the work of artist and writer Mervyn Peake, who you may know for his work Gormenghast. It shows an eclectic body of work, from art to poetry and prose, and hopefully will draw reader’s attention to his work. Peake may be a real version of Louis Sacchetti, a multi-talented genius. 4 out of 5.

This illustration seems to sum up this odd story.

The Last Inn on the Road by Danny Plachta and Roger Zelazny

For me these days, just the appearance of the name ‘Roger Zelazny’ in a magazine is a pleasing one. His work generally shows a range, intelligence and depth that few reach, and I see him as at the vanguard of the American interpretation of the New Wave writers.

With that in mind, then, I think that this is the first collaboration of his I have read. I must admit that I found it a bit disappointing. There’s a satirical tone that seems to echo the mannerisms of Brian Aldiss, but overall this story about Hells Angel-type motor bikers who stop in a garage, murder a priest and a nun and then drive off seems pointless. The involvement of a dog and some celestial aliens are there too, for an unknown reason. Perhaps its meaning is just beyond me. A surprisingly low 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews

Thomas Disch this month expounds a lengthy article on the idea of Metropolises in culture and society, which is mainly focused on Oswald Spengler’s ideas in his book The Decline of the West and allows Disch to explain more about Faust, which partly helped me understand his relevance in Camp Concentration. Disch then goes on to review D. F. Jones’s novel Implosion as a story of a future Britain suffering from population decline, and a “moderately entertaining” collection edited by Douglas Hill named The Devil His Due.

The other reviews this month by James Cawthorn are for the “indescribable” The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, Edmond Hamilton’s "colourful"  Starwolf and Poul Anderson’s The Trouble Twisters, which manages “a smooth blend of science and adventure that few other authors can achieve with such consistency.”


Read some of the biographical details carefully. A poetry magazine entitled "Ronald Reagan", after that film star? Really?

Summing up New Worlds

I’m pleased to read much more fiction this month, and it is of a greater variety. The Disch ends on a bit of a deux ex machina, but is still good, Aldiss continues to produce well written work, and I liked the Peake article. I was pleasingly impressed by the Butterworth story, up to the unimpressive end. The Platt story was OK, but the Zelazny was a disappointment and felt like a minor work, even if competently written.

All in all, not a bad issue, unless you wanted to argue about the imbalance in the new New Worlds between art, articles and fiction.
But, in short, it feels like a stronger issue than the last, and worth me giving my money to. Not quite as much to celebrate as I had hoped for,  but c'est la vie.


And speaking of celebrating anniversaries, I was surprised at how little the magazine’s 21st anniversary was mentioned, other than on the front cover and a tiny box in the Wanted columns.

Although the magazine claims that it is more about looking to the future rather than the past, to me it feels a little like the opposite – almost like the magazine is ashamed of its heritage.

I’m sure that it’s not – and I am pleased that they’ve not seen the occasion as a time to fill the magazine with reprints – but I would have liked a little more reference, I think. After all, 21 years of publication, even if they have been a little "stop-and-start", is quite an achievement for a British science fiction magazine.


No advert for next month's issue, worryingly. Instead, some books to look forward to.

Until the next!



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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 2, 1967] Of Genies and Bottles (October 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

The radiant genie

They say that, once you let the genie out of the bottle, it can be very hard to get him back in. Twenty-two years ago, we unleashed the genie of atomic warfare, and it has loomed ominously over humanity ever since. Most of us remember the tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis just five years ago (though it seems both farther in the past and more recent) and probably still feel a little uneasy whenever a warning siren goes off. Current predictions estimate as many as 25-30 nuclear-armed countries within 20 years.

William C. Foster, the chief American representative to the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament.

Is this an inevitability? Perhaps not. In 1960, the Ten Nation Committee on Disarmament, composed of five Western and five Eastern countries, met briefly in the spring and early summer, but adjourned indefinitely in the face of the U-2 incident and the collapse of the planned Paris summit. Toward the end of the following year, the U. N. created the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament, composed of the original ten countries and another eight non-aligned nations, which has been meeting regularly in Geneva since March of 1962. On August 11th, William C. Foster, the chief American representative on the committee, announced that the United States and the Soviet Union have agreed in principle on the terms of a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The two nations submitted identical drafts to the U. N. on the 24th. These will (hopefully) form the basis of a treaty to be voted on by the General Assembly, that will at least rein in the genie.

A bottle of jinn

There are a couple of metaphorical genies out of the bottle in this month’s IF, not to mention all the demons of Hell. Let’s pop the cork.

The art is intriguing, but none of this happens in Hal Clement’s new novel. Art by Castellon

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