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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 8, 1969] Around the Universe (April 1969 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Around the World

Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, is back from a tour of Europe.  All of his visits made headlines, particularly when he went to the Vatican and a couple hundred students held signs that said, "Nixon go home!"

Hey now—we don't want him either!

The Dick met with the "Jesus of the Franks", General DeGaulle, for a high profile religious summit.  Our President failed to return with the next Ten Commandments nor a commitment to allow Britain into the European Community (much less France's return to NATO).

Nixon is now back in the States.  Apparently, Jack Benny managed to buy more than a gallon of gas at Texaco since he made it all the way to Andrews Air Force Base to amuse the President upon his return.  Well, maybe the air fare was on the country's dime.

newspaper photo of a profile of a laughing Richard Nixon, his wife smiling full-face to his left

One of the places Nixon did not stop, but sent a staffer in his stead, was the funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol.  The Jewish leader's death was rather a surprise, and his interim replacement is something of a dark horse: 70 year old foreign minister Golda Meir.  She is the first woman leader of the Jewish state, and one of the few female national leaders this century.  It is possible she will step down in favor of her party confederate Yigal Allon when he stands for the next regular election against conservative rival General Moshe Dayan.

newspaper photo of Golda Meir's face—she is an elderly, Jewish woman with dark hair, bushy eyebrows, and a big nose; she is wryly smiling

Into the wild Blue/Black yonder

As I type this, Apollo 9 is currently in orbit, its crew practicing a series of maneuvers that will be duplicated on this summer's trip to the Moon.  It's sort of like a Gemini training mission (two of the astronauts, Scott and McDivitt, are Gemini veterans) but with Apollo hardware.  It is fitting, therefore, that the latest issue of Galaxy deals with space in almost all of its stories:

cover painting of a spaceship descending on a planetoid, a wary-looking, bipedal alien looking up at it
by Reese

Witch Hunt, James E. Gunn

line drawing of two bearded and mustached men in 17th Century outfits dueling with swords
by Adkins

Centuries after a nuclear apocalypse, the Earth's four billions reduced to just one hundred million, humanity lives in a patchwork of low-technology communities.  There are the farmers, who make up the vast majority; the villagers who comprise a rude middle class; the Luddites, barbarians who plunder, mostly for fun; the arrogant Neo-Scientists, who enslave many so that a few may reconstruct the wisdom of the past; and the Empires—petty states whose influence extends no further than their capital regions.

And there are the witch-doctors, who use "magic" to heal and educate, and the pilgrims, who seek the truth.  "Witch Hunt" is the tale of two such pilgrims, their tour of America's degraded communities, and a survey of their relative merits and lacks.  Of course, the story reveals the truth they have been searching for.

There is more than a whiff of Silverberg's Nightwings serial here, and while the prose is not quite so beautiful, it is serviceable.

Four stars.

Beam Us Home, James Tiptree, Jr.

Hobie was a precocious child whose life was irrevocably influenced by Star Trek, though the TV show is never mentioned by name. 

A successful teen and, later, frustrated serviceman, he can't shake the feeling that he is somehow separate from the human race.  The story's conclusion bears much in common with that of "Witch Hunt". I wonder if putting thematically-similar stories together was deliberate or coincidental?

Something about this story reminds me a bit of the works in our Rediscovery anthologies, or perhaps a bit of the works in the fanzines. In particular, the focus on Trek and also the fact that the protagonist is a minor for much of the piece set it apart from many of the stories we encounter regularly.  I had to check the byline to make sure it wasn't by Evelyn E. Smith, or Rosel George Brown, or Zenna Henderson, for example. 

As a whole the story isn't bad, but unfortunately, Tiptree botches the end. Three stars.

How Like a God, Robert Bloch

line drawing of a tailed, bipedal alien looking into what appears to be the heart of a giant cave or geode
by Reese

Pride goeth before a fall: Mok is an incorporeal being who refused to surrender his personality to the group; as a consequence, the divine Ser confines him to an alien, physical body and banishes him to a planet of primitives.  There, Mok becomes a kind of Prometheus, elevating the aborigines' culture and technology.  But is Mok a God…or a serpent in the garden?

Kind of a neat piece.  I think it falls on the lower side of the three/four star divide.

Buckets of Diamonds, Clifford D. Simak

line drawing of a man holding a set of pipes approaching a pile of electronic junk; someone is throwing a bucket of diamonds on the pile
by Reese

Simak loves to write "pastoral science fiction" set in his stomping grounds of Minnesota, and so, "Buckets of Diamonds" reads a bit like The Andy Griffith Show meets The Twilight Zone.  Drunk Uncle Charlie gets locked up in the pokey one day when he is found staggering down the street, an Old Master's canvas under one arm, and carrying a bucket of diamonds.  Later, he disappears from jail and turns up driving a hovercar alongside a sour-faced alien…who presently encourages all of the citizenry to dispose of their technological gadgets!

All of this is much to the chagrin of Charlie's nephew-in-law, a local attorney who must sort the mess out.

Not much to this tale, which ultimately doesn't go anywhere, or when.  Three stars.

Slave to Man, Sylvia Jacobs

Tony is an editor for one of those schlock-houses that produces "the sexies" (prurient pulps).  One day, he notices he's getting a lot of torn off covers from returns that say "Help!  Help!  I am being held in bondage!  I am only 15 years old!"

Who he finds when he seeks the poor soul out, and how said soul revolutionizes the sexies industry is both amusing and, perhaps, prescient.

Four stars.

And Now They Wake (Part 2 of 3), Keith Laumer

line drawing of a man hitting with a sledgehammer a collection of cylinders
by Jack Gaughan

The saga continues of two immortal aliens destined for a final confrontation somewhere in 21st Century America.  Last time, we learned that Gralgrathor had self-exiled from his stellar Federation to go native amongst medieval Vikings.  His confederate, Lokrien, murdered 'Thor's wife and child to incentivize his return to galactic civilization.

In this installment, Lokrien, now fully healed from vicious scars he carried for decades, is looking for 'Thor, who now goes by the name of Grayle.  Grayle, as you recall from last time, escaped from the Caine Island maximum security prison, where he had been languishing for over a century.  Both immortals have assistants: Lokrien's is a mercenary cabbie who is efficient with his fists; Grayle has picked up a lovely woman named Anne who insists on helping him despite not knowing the whole story.

Meanwhile, an enormous whirlpool is growing in the middle Atlantic, generating hurricane force winds across the hemisphere.  It seems to be powered by the newly online broadcast power plant on the Eastern seaboard.  Attempts to shut down the plant are all thwarted by some unknown force.  You can bet that the aliens are somehow involved, however…

Still interesting stuff.  Four stars.

For Your Information: The Drowned Civilization, Willy Ley

This month's article is a potpourri dedicated to three questions: 1) how easy would it be for a planet to capture a new moon, 2) how would the Earth's land contours change should the ice caps melt, and 3) what kind of creature is the biblical zaphan?

Three stars.

There and back again

Well, that was rather fun!  Nothing spectacular, but all in all, a rapid, enjoyable read.  Galaxy remains my favorite of the monthlies, and I can't wait to see how the Laumer turns out.  I am also happy to see that we're getting at least one woman writer each month again.  The magazine was at its best when that was the case back in the '50s, and Sylvia Jacobs turned in one of my favorites of the issue.

Until next time…keep up to date with Nixon on Laugh-In, and science fiction on the Journey!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 2, 1969] Dreams and reality (April 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

A different kind of colonialism

When the Indian subcontinent gained independence, the Muslim and Hindu regions went their separate ways, contrary to the hopes of Gandhi. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, and there have been several conflicts between India and Pakistan over the border. But there is another problem which is beginning to make itself felt.

There are two Muslim regions of the subcontinent separated by India, and so Pakistan is split into East and West Pakistan—but unlike East and West Germany, they are a united country. The west comprises the Punjab and points west to Afghanistan, while the east is made up of eastern Bengal and the Ganges delta. West Pakistan holds a majority of the population and almost all of the political power.

East Pakistanis have felt increasingly marginalized in the twenty-two years since independence. As an example, the only official language is the western Urdu, which uses the Arabic script, while Bengali, with its own script and long literary history, is ignored. Civil unrest in the east has grown, led by the Awami League under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. They aren’t asking for full independence, merely autonomy with Pakistan becoming a federation of two nations with joint defense and foreign policy.

President Ayub Khan’s rule is becoming increasingly shaky. It is widely believed that the 1965 election was fraudulent and he actually lost. The military now supports Zulifikar Ali Bhutto, and there have been massive student protests in the last couple of years. Ayub Khan thought he had a way to regain support, but it seems to have blown up in his face.

Ayub Khan greets LBJ in Karachi in 1967.

In January of last year, the government announced they had uncovered a plot for the secession of East Pakistan with the help of India. Over a thousand people were arrested, among them Sheikh Mujib. Originally, the plan was for a court-martial, but President Khan later opted for an open trial, perhaps thinking he could move public opinion his way before next year’s elections. As a result, the number of accused was reduced to 36.

The trial was set to begin in Dacca on February 6th, but public unrest resulted in a delay. Then on the 15th, Sergeant Zahurul Haq was shot and killed in his prison cell. When word got out, East Pakistan exploded. The rioters tried to set fire to the State Guest House where the judges and chief prosecutor were staying. The officials escaped, but some of the evidence was destroyed. A week later, the government dropped all charges, and the prisoners were released.

It’s a huge embarrassment for Ayub Khan, and it’s hard to see how he survives this politically. Meanwhile, Sheikh Mujib and the Awami League are riding high. Let’s hope that a peaceful resolution can be found.

Sheikh Mujib (center) emerges from prison.

Science fantasy

And now, this month's first magazine, featuring (like the Pakistans) a single entity with two names—Worlds of IF and Worlds of Tomorrow.

Once upon a time, the term science fantasy was another name for science fiction. These days, it usually refers to work that combines elements of both science fiction and fantasy. Spaceships and magic, that sort of thing. This month’s IF runs strongly in that direction, starting with a new serial from one of that movement’s most prominent authors.

Like I said, swords and spaceships. Art by Adkins

Toys of Tamisan (Part 1 of 2), by Andre Norton

At the urging of his cousin Kas, Lord Starrex buys Tamisan, a powerful action dreamer. Seeking to craft a dream that will impress a former adventurer, she hits on the idea of setting her creation in a place where the history of their city and world turned out differently. Before she can finalize her plans, Starrex demands her services, and Tamisan learns that both he and Kas will be sharing this dream, which has never been done before. The dream appears to be all too real, and Tamisan discovers that she can’t break out of it unless both of the other dreamers are with her. She finds Starrex, but Kas seems to be aboard the approaching spaceship. To be continued.

A spaceship approaches to meet a different welcome than it actually did. Art by Adkins

As you might expect from Norton, this is a well-written adventure, but it’s just not my cup of tea. The mix of science fiction and fantasy is similar to her Witch World books, and I haven’t really enjoyed those. The casual acceptance of Tamisan’s slavery—even if it’s not called that—is also very off-putting.

Three stars for now, but those who like this kind of thing might rate it higher.

Starbright, by E.G. Von Wald

Starbrights are gemstones that take ambient light and emit a color characteristic to the individual stone as long as the wavelength of the stone’s light is longer than that it takes in. Gem collector Sean Macnessa has come to the Aldebaran system, following a rumor of seven rare red starbrights. His search will involve him with local politics, a missing princess, and a Golden Ruberg.

The story is a trifling adventure tale, but it’s fun. It’s not overly long, the humor works, and the reader is given just enough information to work out the solution.

A solid three stars.

A Report on the Sixth International SF Film Festival, by Luigi Cozzi

What it says on the tin: a quick rundown of the festival held in Trieste, Italy. 2001 was naturally a big hit and the only film we covered here at the Journey. The big winner, though, was the British film The Sorcerers, which took awards for the film and its stars, Catherine Lacey and Boris Karloff (who died at the beginning of February).

Three stars.

That Season, by Lawrence Mayer

Humans are rare, maybe unique, among mammals in that they don’t have mating seasons in which females go into heat and males compete violently for access. But what if that changed? That’s the question new author Mayer asks, looking at the events right before, during, and immediately after one season a few generations after such a change. I’m not sure I agree with his conclusions—once could even argue he presents a best-case scenario—but he tells it well, particularly in exposition provided by showing us things rather than “As you know, Bob” conversations.

Three stars.

Spork of the Ayor, by Perry Chapdelaine

Expectations can have a large effect on how you feel about what you read. Where I grew up, “spork” was a humorous name for a spoon with tines on the end (spoon+fork=spork), so I was expecting a farce. Instead, Chapdelaine gives us a straightforward tale of a human raised among intelligent beings not of his kind, who must use his innate human skills to save his adoptive people.

Spork learns to use direct action against the Tepen. Art by Reese

From that picture and the title, you can probably tell that this is basically Tarzan, just with aliens and mental powers. It’s fairly typical of other Chapdelaine stories I’ve read: decently written, but much too long. From the loose threads at the end, it looks like we’ll be getting more. Unfortunately, I’ve never been a fan of Tarzan.

A low three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at the brain and sleep. He starts with electronarcosis, which may be able to cure insomnia and treat schizophrenia. He then discusses the idea of recording dreams and playing them back for others. Lester is making good use of his time in the Galaxy Publishing office. This is the third month in a row in which his article has directly referenced a story in the current issue of either IF or Galaxy. I like it; it gives the article a bit of extra relevance to the reader.

Three stars.

The Light Bearer, by William M. Lee

Pete Coghill is a biochemist with a knack for finding flaws in other people’s research. It hasn’t made him many friends, but management loves him. After accidentally dosing himself an LSD derivative, he has a strange encounter with a prominent scientist. It changes his life for the better, but he will have to pay for it one day.

This story isn’t what it looks like, or what Pete thinks it is. It’s actually quite fun and turns the whole concept on its head.

A high three stars.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Jack Williamson

An interesting interview with an interesting man. Some of that’s down to the life he’s led so far, but some of it probably due to his being a university lecturer who knows how to engage his audience. This is the first time the interview has been with someone who isn’t in the issue, which contrasts with what I said about the del Rey article.

Jack Williamson. Art by Gaughan

Four stars.

Tourists Welcome, by Roger Deeley

The sleepy British town of Maxcombe Parva has been hit with a spate of car thefts in one night. Police sergeant Slocombe wonders if local poacher and con man Geoff Rye might know something. It’s not his style, but he has been known to sell tourists something he doesn’t actually own.

An amusing little tale, though it takes a dark turn right at the end.

Three stars.

Retief, the Long-Awaited Master, by Keith Laumer

The diplomatic mission Retief is on runs afoul of the Groaci, and it’s up to him to save everybody’s career and reputation. I’m going to keep a copy of that sentence on file; it will save time when reviewing the next Retief story.

Retief and Magnan meet the locals. Art by Gaughan

When this story was teased last month, I wondered if enough time had passed for it to feel fresh. The answer is no. Laumer isn’t just going through the motions, the way he was a few years ago, but these are all stamped out by the same cookie cutter. Only the frosting is different.

Three stars, but only recommended if you’re new to the series or are a really big fan.

Summing up

This is a typical middle-of-the-road issue. Rather than rehashing what I usually say at the end of theses articles, let’s talk about art. There’s not much of it, with only three stories being illustrated. No one seems to have paid much attention to it during layout either. The piece reproduced here for “Toys of Tamisan” ran on page 93 for “Spork,” and the piece reproduced here for that story ran on page 27 for “Tamisan.” You’d think somebody would have noticed that even the robots are posed much too naturally and dynamically to have been drawn by Adkins. The magazine really needs to do better with its art.

Bloch could be good or bad. His humor is hit or miss.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 1, 1969] Beyond this Horizon (March 1969 Analog and Mariner 6)

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photo of the face of a long haired man with glasses
by Gideon Marcus

On to Mars!

black and white photo of Mariner 6, a round probe with four rectangular solar panels jutting from it at right angles

Four years ago (has it been that long?) Mariner 4 became the first space probe to sail by Mars.  This event instantly destroyed a thousand dreams.  The 21 grainy, black and white pictures returned by the spacecraft's TV cameras showed a cratered, lunar-type surface.  The Martian atmosphere was found to be less than 1% as dense at the surface as that of Earth.  Gone was the romantic Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett.

These findings should not have come as such a surprise—the abundance of craters and the thin atmosphere had already been suspected before Mariner 4 ever got there.  But the photographic evidence was the final nail in the coffin.  Mars is dead.

Or is it?

Mariner 4 was a rather limited spacecraft.  We only got 21 pictures, after all.  And while 7 millibars may not seem like much, that's a veritable atmospheric blanket compared to the Moon or Mercury.  We need more data.

This is why a second generation of spacecraft, Mariners 6 and 7, are being sent to Mars.  These are heavier spacecraft with more sophisticated equipment: infrared and ultraviolet radiometers (measuring Martian energy output in those wavelengths), a better TV camera, and the ability to reprogram the spacecraft in flight, as needed.

color photo of an Atlas Centaur rocket taking off from a red launch complex at night

Mariner 6 took off last week on the 24th, and Mariner 7 will blast off March 21st.  We've yet to have both members of a Mariner pair make it to its destination (Mariner 1 and Mariner 3 both had mishaps), but hope springs eternal.  Come this summer, perhaps around the same time a man sets foot on the Moon, we will unveil more mysteries of the fourth planet.

illustration of a blue-furred humanoid, stripped to the waist, looking at a viewscreen with crocodile-head humanoids waving primitive weapons furiously
by Kelly Freas

On to the stars!

Trap, by Christopher Anvil

line drawing of crocodile-headed alien holding a mouse trap clamped around the tale of a furry humanoid stripped to the waist
by Kelly Freas

I have a private joke that every Chris Anvil story for Analog begins (Mad Lib style):

[Military Rank] [WASPy male name] of [military organization] [verbed] down the [corridor/hall/base] lightly touching his [weapon] clipped to his [clippable article of clothing].

"Trap" did nothing but reinforce this cliché, and I hunkered down for a slog of a novella.

Instead, I got a reasonably interesting, technical tale about peaceably dealing with implacable aliens, who possess an unbeatable weapon.  In this case, the planet is a swampy wasteland, the aliens have the ability to teleport anywhere they've been before, and the humans and Centrans (in an alliance since the 1956 story, "Paradise Planet") must find a way to make peace before the aliens find a way to teleport onto every ship and planet in both empires.

It starts a bit slow, but I found myself compelled.  Certainly better than the fare Anvil usually offers us in Analog.  Three stars.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, by R. E. Allen

How does Mannie supply all the movies and music producers with the top talent?  Why, by dowsing over each of the actor's/musician's headshots with a divining rod, of course!

Not much of a story.  Not much science fiction.  Two stars.

They're Trying to Tell Us Something (part 1 of 2), by Thomas R. McDonough

diagram of four pulsar graphs with amplitude of signal versus time

This month's science article is on those enigmatic, recently discovered interstellar radio beacons known as pulsars.  Beeping on the radio dial on the average of once a second (some are faster, some are slower), they are significant for their unwaveringly precise timing and for their enormous power output—some one billion times the power output of all of Earth's civilizations!

There is a lot of interesting information in this article, but what annoys me is that McDonough seems convinced that pulsars are the work of "Little Green Men" (LGM), and presents his article accordingly.  Nowhere in the piece is the general accepted wisdom that the regularity of the signals and the fact that they seem to carry no information (not to mention their tremendous power) indicates that pulsars are rapidly rotating stars, and likely rapidly rotating, collapsed dead stars called "neutron stars".

This isn't esoteric knowledge I gleaned from The Astrophysical Journal—it's from the Sunday Supplement of Escondido's rag of a paper, The Times-Advocate.  So, its exclusion from McDonough's piece must be conscious, and that makes his arguments suspect.  Perhaps he'll discuss neutron stars in the next piece, but they really should have been front and center.

Three stars.

Minitalent, by Tak Hallus

line drawing of a courtroom setting with an older judge with glasses, a steno clerk woman behind him, and a gallery of seal-like aliens, looking at a worksuited human with a gallery of humans behind him
by Leo Summers

Alice Culligan, third mate and computer officer on the space ship Iphigenia, witnessed a crime: gun runners had smuggled cruel "nervers" to a race of aborigines.  They were caught, but the company they're working for looks to get away scott free.  They will do anything to ensure that verdict—including silencing Miss Culligan forever.

But Alice has an ace up her sleeve: a minor talent for telekinetics.  And in a computerized world, sometimes a little push is all that's needed…

Similarly premised as Larry Niven's sublime "The Organleggers", this tale (Tak Hallus' first) is not as deftly told.  That said, it is pretty good, and I liked the heroine very much.  It's clearly in the vein of, say, James H. Schmitz, so if you like him, you'll like this.

By the way, Tak Hallus is simply Arabic for "pseudonym", so who knows?  Maybe it really is Schmitz!

Four stars.

From Fanaticism, or for Reward, by Harry Harrison

line drawing of a man with a beam rifle shooting at a robot that looks like a suit of armor
by Leo Summers

An assassin named Jagen performs a job and, with the help of a teleportation system, escapes The Great Despot's justice.  But is there any ultimate evasion the efficient robot machines of the Despot's police force?

The well-written piece is really a setup for the philosophical question posed at the end.  The answer is surprising for such a libertarian mag as editor Campbell's.

Five stars.

Wolfling (Part 3 of 3), by Gordon R. Dickson

line drawing of two stylized men in tunics dueling with glowing rods, a woman crouched over a body in the background
by Kelly Freas

And now, the conclusion of Wolfling.  By Gordy Dickson.

Jim Weil, archaeologist and Ace of All Trades (the term "bannou" (万能) is even more appropriate), had infiltrated the High-Born empire he was sent to detachedly examine, becoming a general in its armies.  Having discovered a plot to destroy the imperial warrior race of Starkiens, Jim quickly returned to the throne world to thwart a plot on the Emperor, himself.  He is successful in defeating the pretender, the Emperor's cousin, but now he must return to Earth and face treason charges for possibly incurring the imperial wrath on humanity.

In a dramatic courtroom scene, Jim explains his actions, how they saved the Earth, and the true origin of humanity vis. a vis. the High-Born.  Did we come from them, or did they come from us?

The answer is rather disappointing, more along the lines of something I'd expect written in the pulp era than modern times.  In addition, all of the energy-saber dueling seemed unnecessary; when everyone can teleport at whim, how do you keep your foe in the same room long enough to dispatch him?  Or keep your foe from materializing behind you?

But most of all, I had expected a statement against eugenics, but instead got something of a defense of it.  If not for the skilled writing, I might rate it more poorly.

Three stars for the serial as a whole.

On to the numbers!

black and white photo of a plump Black woman leaning over an eighth-grade white girl seated at a computer, a eight-grade black boy behind her, mathematical equations on the blackboard behind them all

You know, it's been quite a month!  With Analog clocking in at 3.4 stars, it's near the top of the heap rather than taking its usual place in the middle.  Ahead of it were Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4) and IF (3.5).  The good news is, the spread was pretty narrow: Galaxy scored 3.3, New Worlds 3.2, New Writings 14 3.  Only Amazing scored below the three-line (2.7), and it was still better than usual.

In other vital statistics, women produced 11% of the new fictional content.  The superior stuff this month would fill three full-sized magazines.  Given that there were seven published this month, that's a good ratio.

Stay tuned for the end of next month when we find out how April's magazines do…and how Mariner 7 flies!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

February 26, 1969] Springtime for Moorcock? New Worlds, March 1969

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black and white head-shot photo of a spectacled, bearded, mustached man in his 40s
by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again.

As I am a Brit, you may have realised that it is essential that from time to time we talk about the weather – after all, it is usually so changeable here.

And post-Christmas I haven’t really mentioned it – the grey, sometimes snowy, dreariness of Winter is not something to write home about, unless it is extreme as it was in the winter of ’63. None of that recently, thank goodness!

Anyway, I was guided to write something about atmospheric conditions because as we approach March, things seem to be improving. It is lighter with longer hours of daylight and noticeably warmer. Spring is clearly on the way.

Daffodils and blossom in spring, Hampton, Greater London

But does this upturn in the weather mean that I continue to look at New Worlds with a sunnier disposition? Let’s see..

cover of the magazine, magenta, with Michael Moorcock holding up his arm wardinglyCover by Gabi Nasemann. Is this Moorcock horrified by his announcement? 

Lead In by The Publishers

Well, I was expecting to be annoyed here by the second part of James Sallis’s diatribe on the modernist novel, as told to expect last month, but no. Instead, we have the return of the Lead In and a shock revelation.

The Lead In tells us that Mike Moorcock and Charles Platt have resigned as editors of New Worlds magazine from the next issue. “It is with regret that we announce the resignation of Michael Moorcock and Charles Platt…”

After my initial astonishment, I read it again. It’s not quite what I thought I read – it actually says that Moorcock and Platt are resigning “from full time editorial involvement”.

Whilst this is clearly a change – and one I didn’t expect – it does not mean that they are banished from the magazine forever; more that they have other things to do, like write stuff and ensure the regular production of the magazine as publishers. An advisory role, in fact. Talking of writing:

A Cure for Cancer (Part 1 of 4) by Michael Moorcock

Artwork by Mal Dean.

Our lead story is a Jerry Cornelius story by the originator himself. In case you didn’t know, three months ago, the magazine declared that Mike Moorcock’s character Jerry Cornelius would continue in future issues by stories written by others, starting with James Sallis’s Jeremiad, which was in last month’s issue. So this is a bit of a surprise, but a welcome one.

This time Moorcock gives us what is really a James Bond-ian espionage romp, with guns, sex, cars, helicopters and airplanes, more sex, drugs – things that Fleming or the movies could never get away with – but in a sectioned, fractured, Ballardian style that currently seems de rigueur at New Worlds.

The plot, not that it really matters, is deliberately random but concerns Jerry travelling all over the world and meeting various odd characters, many of whom he seems to bed. There are villains in the form of Doktor Krupp and Bishop Beesley, a sort of corpulent Sidney Greenstreet.

Although the story may be initially set in 1970, there’s an interesting juxtaposition of old and new as Jerry seems to combine elements as diverse as  George Formby songs from the 1940’s and Beatles lyrics with futuristic weapons like the vibragun. It’s an engaging mix, even if it’s not always clear what’s going on. Hopefully the second part will make things clearer, but this is another one where you must not consider the story’s logic and just enjoy the ride.  4 out of 5.

White Dove by Carol Emshwiller

Artwork by Pamela Zoline.

The return of Emshwiller to New Worlds. I have found that her previous prose has often been unsettlingly sexual and odd, something I’ve not really liked personally. But it can’t be denied that she has an impact on readers and so it is here.  This is a story of a statue of an older man that the narrator is obsessed by. 3 out of 5.

The Death Layout by Graham Charnock

Graham was last seen with Crim in November, a story I’m tempted to call ‘grim’, though it wasn’t really that bad. This time it is about life and death – more cheerful stuff. Darkly satirical as an advertising campaign looks at how they can profit from a recent upsurge in pain and suicide. Could give ‘Chuckles’ Ballard a run for the monopoly on negative topics. 3 out of 5.

Mr. Black’s Poems of Innocence by D. M. Thomas

The magazine’s obsession with D.M. Thomas continues, with something given under the premise that it is a transcript of speech from Mr. Black, a schizophrenic, as he is treated. As the story progresses, in Flowers for Algernon fashion, Black becomes increasingly more literate and emotional. Despite my usual moans I found this more readable than some of D. M.’s previous efforts. 3 out of 5.

The Luger is a 9mm Handgun with a Parabellum Action by J. J. Mundis

Here’s an American writer we’ve not seen since November 1966. One of those allegorical stories where the narrator talks to his dog, who is an atavism, for most of the story, but at the end the owner shoots the dog with the titular Luger, presumably signalling the death of God, religion or both. Minor tale that sadly underperforms for me. 2 out of 5.

Plekhanov Screams by Leo Zorin

Bizarre artwork by Mal Dean, seemingly stuck in at random in the middle of this story.

It may help you to know that Georgi Plekhanov was a  Russian philosopher and revolutionary widely regarded as the first Marxist, but if you didn’t know that the story becomes even more meaningless than it actually is. Here Georgi Plekhanov is a surgeon on a secret operation. Lots of randomness, meaningless sex and obtuse actions ensue, including the odd artwork above, which I couldn't decide whether it was part of the story or not . Literary pretention at its highest.  2 out of 5.

I D by Charles Platt

The latest dystopian post-apocalyptic story, filled with death and decay. The narrator follows a mysterious woman before drifting into a dream-state which imagines birth and death. When he awakes the woman isn’t there, of course. Ballard-like bleakness. 3 out of 5.

The Killing Ground  by J. G. Ballard

Artwork by Mal Dean.

And talking of Ballard, here’s ‘Chuckles’ himself. Unusually though, this one is startlingly direct, an anti-war story where the British Army is tasked with the difficult task of maintaining order in a world in decay. Includes a not-so-subtle nod to the US war in Viet Nam. Unusual in its directness, although as a result many will see it as lower-league Ballard. Nevertheless, I liked it. 4 out of 5.

The Hiroshima Dream by George MacBeth

Continuing the war theme, now with poetry, this time from writer and reviewer MacBeth. His last prose piece was in July 1967. The Hiroshima Dream touches on themes that seem very Ballardian, so it seems a logical piece to follow Ballard. Death, destruction, dystopia….fifty tankas*  all based around apocalypse and the nuclear bomb dropping at Hiroshima. Although it is shockingly dark, I prefer MacBeth to D. M. Thomas.  4 out of 5.

*I had to look it up in my dictionary – tankas are prose poems made up of five lines, similar to haiku.

Book Reviews

The Future of Art by Kenneth Coutts-Smith

Coutts-Smith reviews a book with an ambitious title – Heaven and Hell in Western Art by Robert Hughes, and then Art, Affluence and Alienation by Roy McMullen.

Mr. Throd and the Wise Old Crocodile by M. John Harrison

M. John Harrison reviews books of genre interest – the latest Mervyn Peake reprinted novel, Gormenghast, which shows what a talent the late Mr. Peake was, a spy novel by Anthony Burgess, and a story collection by Fritz Leiber, described as “one of the most underrated and misunderstood writers in the field”.

No News is Good News by William Barclay

Barclay reviews in detail Andrew Wilson’s The Bomb and the Computer, which reduces warfare to computer-simulated wargames.

The scary thing is that these simulations are real. Look at the diagram above, which could be easily used in, say, Viet Nam. I guess that this is science fiction made real.

Those Erotic Green Men in Their Flying Machines by James Cawthorn

Eye-catching title aside, James Cawthorn reviews Frank Herbert’s ‘far more presentable than it deserves’ The Heaven Makers, the ‘dated but fast-moving novel’ Doomsday Morning by Catherine L. Moore, and A. E. van Vogt’s first story collection for fifteen years (‘not a collection designed for new readers’)

More positively are the reviews of books from now-departing editors. Michael Moorcock’s latest ‘original and remarkable’ Elric fantasy, Stormbringer and  Charles Platt’s The Garbage World,  which we reviewed when it was a serial here in the magazine There are also brief reviews of Alan Garner’s fantasy novels, as well as Poul Anderson’s ‘ponderous and irritating’ The Star Fox, Robert Silverberg’s The Time Hoppers, The Ring by Piers Anthony and Robert E. Margroff. There's also  a brief re-review of The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny, which was reviewed a while back.

Also quickly mentioned and reviewed by D.R.B. are a number of books also received about poetry, theatre and imagery.

Pictures: M. C. Escher

A page of pictures by this unusual artist, who you may remember was also examined in the July 1967 issue of New Worlds. Seems to be here to highlight the publishing of a new book, The Graphic Work of M. C. Escher.

Summing Up

With a cheery wave goodbye, the leaving of Moorcock and Platt as full-time editors leaves something of a hole at New Worlds, but I am sure that they are leaving feeling that the magazine is in safe hands under the auspices of Langdon Jones and James Sallis.

My own view on Sallis’s work is much less positive. He is far too fond of the poetic allegory and the ‘dissertation as lecture’ article for my liking, as recent issues have shown, although he can surprise me and also produce work I liked. I'm not sure where this means New Worlds will go.

Despite the weather making things seem better, Moorcock's final issue is a rather dark one, with most of the material being about life and death, war and things that are generally unpleasant.* The only thing to lighten the mood is Moorcock's own A Cure for Cancer, which doesn't seem to take itself seriously at all.

*This gloom also looks to continue in the next issue, looking at the 'Next Month' banner (below.)

So, as Moorcock and Platt move on to pastures new – well, more book writing and editing, anyway – is it possible we have another dawning of a new age – not just for them but for New Worlds as well?

Um. Even under new management I’m not expecting things to change much. I think that this issue is what we should expect more of in the future, continuing the trend of combining the well-known writers such as J. G. Ballard with newish writers who are becoming regulars – Leo Zorin, Graham Charnock and yes, my own favourite (sarcasm) D. M. Thomas.

However,  with allegory piled onto allegory, the overall feel is that the issue is rather intense. As is always the case with such experimental work, there are times when it worked for me, whilst others less so. It should make the future interesting.

Ah well – just when I thought things were settling down! Life’s never boring here at the British front, eh?

Until next time!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 12, 1969] Slick stuff (March 1969 Galaxy science fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Bad Kind

For 12 days, 21,000 gallons a day of crude oil spilled into the Pacific ocean off the coast of Santa Barbara.  Only on February 8 was the leaking undersea well finally capped. This debacle, courtesy of the Union Oil Co., has blackened the harbors and beaches of the San Gabriel Valley coastline, killing hundreds of sea birds.  Even Governor Reagan is declaring this mess a disaster, making federal funds available for cleanup.

Newspaper picture of Coast Guard Admiral Chester Bender and Senators Muskie and Cranston inspect the oil slick at Santa Barbara Harbor

Nevertheless, the Governor did not relieve the oil company of its obligation to the government agencies and private citizens harmed by this catastrophe.  It will likely take more than 1000 men three weeks to clean up the mess.

The silver lining is that only about 1% of the local seabird population has been affected, and virtually none of the seals.  Indeed, the damage is only about a quarter of that caused two years ago when the super tanker Torrey Canyon broke up off the coast of Southwest England.

Still, if the best we can say is that this crisis is not as bad as the worst, I think we can do better.

The Good Kind

In refreshing contrast to the environmental incident described above, the latest issue of Galaxy is anything but a tragedy:

cover featuring a bird-like aircraft floating on an ocean, with a man on top. Similar aircraft are flying in the distance.
by Douglas Chaffee illustrating The Weather on Welladay

And Now They Wake (Part 1 of 3), by Keith Laumer

In 1981, just as broadcast power switches on for the first time, an inmate by the name of Grayle makes a daring escape from a New York prison.  He is an enigmatic man, an inmate who looks 35, but who has been incarcerated since before World War 2.  He also possesses an uncanny ability to heal from wounds.

At the same time, another fellow with similar powers stumbles drunk out of a bar, making his way to a steam room where he miraculously heals a profound set of scars and ejects an antique Minie ball from a wound in his back.

These events are coincident with the appearance of a tremendous water spout in the middle of the Atlantic, and interwoven with tales from a thousand years ago of a renegade from the Galactic Fleet named Thor, and his comrade-turned-betrayer, Loki.

Viking era scene where a slave is beset by a haughty noble while others watch. Backdrop is a long ship which has just made shore.
by Jack Gaughan

Who are these two immortals, and why has their story suddenly come to a head?  I don't know…but I'm hooked!

Four stars, so far.

The City That Loves You, by Raymond E. Banks

The Alpha Centauri city of Relax offers everything to its twenty million inhabitants—comfort, company, computerized guidance.  But what happens when a citizen wants to leave?  What if every inducement, soft and hard, is made to keep him there?  Does the fellow really have a choice in the matter?

I read the whole story waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I was not displeased with the result.  In the end, for a place to truly be paradise, there must be a way out.  The socialiast utopias of the world, from Bulgaria to Beit Ha Shita, might take note.

Four stars.

Leviathan, by Lise Braun

An advanced submarine, akin to the Seaview from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea rescues a primitive fisherman lost at sea in the Atlantic Ocean.  This inadvertently gives rise to a number of familiar legends.

This is an old-fashioned story; it would have been right at home in Imagination in 1954.  I do like the clever, organic way Braun conveys that the action takes place thousands of years in the past, and the reading is pleasant, if not extraordinary.

Three stars.

The Weather on Welladay, by Anne McCaffrey

illustration of a woman in a skin-tight, belted suit, gripping her shoulder. She stands in what looks like a big rock formation. A man in a black, skin-tight suit is behind her, arm oustretched.
by Reese

The sodden, storm-lashed world of Welladay seems too bleak a world for settlement.  However, schools of whales that inhabit it produce a valuable radioactive substance prized for medical applications.  A team of hardy fishermen taps these whales for their lymphic treasure, braving the waves and weather.

But some pirate has been draining the whales dry, decimating the population and threatening the economy and health of the Federation.  Is it one of the four fishers?  The mysterious woman space pilot shot down at the beginning of the tale, who crashes on a lonely archipelago?  Or someone else?

This is definitely one of McCaffrey's better stories, with far more atmosphere (no pun intended) and far less barely suppressed violence and hokey romance.  It goes on a little long, and I find it improbable that this vast planet seems to have exactly six people on it, but I enjoyed it.

Three stars.

For Your Information: Collision Course, by Willy Ley

Mr. Ley's piece this month is on asteroids that cross Earth orbit, particularly Icarus, which precipitated the 49th end-of-the-world scare since the birth of Christ.

Interesting and useful, though rather brief.

Three stars.

four-panel image depicting the stages of crater formation, from meteorite impact, to explosion, to resulting crater.

The Last Flight of Dr. Ain, by James Tiptree, Jr.

A sick scientist and his dying love make a multi-stop air flight around the world.  At each landing, he makes sure to expose as many people as possible to what appears to be an aerosol for cold symptoms, and he feeds bread crumbs to migratory birds.  As the story unfolds, told mostly in third-party reports, we learn the scientist was working on a deadly disease, and that he thinks of humanity as a blight on the Earth.

There's no subtext to the story—it's all on the surface—but it's beautifully told and very eerie.  I liked it; my favorite from Mr. Tiptree so far.  Four stars.

The Theory and Practice of Teleportation , by Larry Niven

drawing of various teleport booth configurations: E and F face each other, a man shooting a gun into E and getting hit in the back of the head from F; C is on top of a cliff, A and B are on the ground, and D is on a railroad track

Adapted from a lecture Niven gave at Boskone in front of the MIT Science Fiction Society, this is an interesting look at the effects of teleportation, in all its potential developmental paths, on society.

Four stars.

Greeks Bringing Knee-High Gifts, by Brian W. Aldiss

A darkly humorous story set in the near future, satirizing the world of executives. They all hate each other but are not allowed to express it or complain, so they do things that they can claim are generous as an act of passive aggression.

For instance, one gifts another with a genetically tailored midget Tyrannosaurus…which promptly eats the recipient's leg.  Said giftee then names the dinosaur after the giftor's coquettish wife and turns up at the giftor's funeral with the creature to terrorise people, but in doing so claims it is a lovely tribute.

Rather obtuse and pointless.  I didn't like it.

One star.

(with thanks to Kris for co-writing this review-let).

Godel Numbers, by J. W. Swanson

three men in suits look at an enigmatic black flat cuboid that looks like a bar of dark soap
by Jack Gaughan

200 miles west of Cairo, archaeologists have dug up what they're calling the "Cairo Stone".  It is a black tablet, obviously artificial, clearly advanced, and meticulously carved with a series of scratch marks.  Dated to 3000 B.C., it could not have been made by a contemporary terrestrial civilization.  It's up to three scientists, a melange of linguists and computer engineers, both to crack the code of the tablets and to fend off Soviet agents.

In the end, the tablet serves much the same purpose as the monolith(s) in 2001, jump-starting humanity's progress.  It's an amiable, old-fashioned sort of tale, and so esoteric that it probably would have done well, if not better, in Analog.

Three stars.

Cleaning up

All in all, the latest Galaxy makes for pleasant, if not outstanding, reading.  I would certainly much rather read about Godel numbers, teleportation, immortals, and isotopic pirates than oil slicks any day!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 8, 1969] So Much for That (March 1969 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Last issue, new editor Barry Malzberg declared that “the majority of modern magazine science-fiction is ill-written, ill-characterized, ill-conceived and so excruciatingly dull as to make me question the ability of the writers to stay awake during its composition,” and proposed to use Amazing and Fantastic to promote the “rebirth—one would rather call it transmutation—of the category.”


by Johnny Bruck

Now, in this March Amazing, Barry is gone.  Sol Cohen, listed as Publisher last issue, is now Editor and Publisher.  Laurence M. Janifer is listed as Associate Editor, and contributes a guest editorial and a movie review.  Ted White, new to the masthead, is listed as Managing Editor.  Most likely he will actually be editing the magazine, having been Assistant and then Associate Editor at Fantasy and Science Fiction until mid-1968.

But as a great philosopher said, you can predict anything but the future.  What we have right now is the last issue of the Malzberg editorship, credited or not, which we know since the new stories are the ones he announced in the last issue. 

So why his sudden departure?  I had a conversation with Barry, and he reported that it had nothing to do with the direction he proposed for the magazine’s fiction or his jaundiced account of the state of the field.  Rather, he bought a cover, which he understood he was authorized to do, and said he would quit if Cohen did not allow him to run it.  Cohen responded, "I don't know anything about stories but I do know about art and I can't run this cover.  [Pause] You're fired."  Barry adds, on reflection, that Cohen was right, and there’s no resentment on his part.

But back to the issue before us.  Overall, it’s business as usual: another tiresome cover by Johnny Bruck, four new short stories (mostly very short) and the conclusion of a new serialized novella, and three reprinted novelets.  There is the usual "Science of Man" article by Leon E. Stover, and the usual book review column, credited as before to William Atheling, Jr., the not-at-all secret pseudonym of James Blish–though the review of The Making of Star Trek is bylined Blish (who is also the author of several Star Trek paperbacks).  Janifer’s above-mentioned movie review is about Hot Millions, a scientific heist film in which Peter Ustinov, as an embezzler, goes up against a giant computer.  (Before long, I am sure, there will need to be a name for such a villain.  Computer . . . hijacker?  Nah, too cumbersome.)

We All Died at Breakaway Station (Part 2 of 2), by Richard C. Meredith

Richard Meredith’s two-part serial novella, We All Died at Breakaway Station, concludes here.  It may well be the most downbeat space opera ever published.  Earth is at war with the Jillies.  Protagonist Captain Absolom [sic] Bracer has been killed in battle and resurrected, and is now hideously disabled and disfigured and patched up with mechanical parts, since there are no replacements to allow him to return to Earth for more seemly regeneration.  Also he is tormented by phantom pain from the missing parts, as well as the psychological impact of his mutilated condition.  His fellow officers are all in similar shape. 


by Dan Adkins

Bracer is charged with escorting a hospital ship full of other casualties back to Earth for better treatment.  But he learns that the relief ships from Earth to Breakaway, a barren planet where the essential faster-than-light communications link to Earth is located, are days away from arriving.  He decides to delay departure so he and his subordinates will be around to protect Breakaway from the expected Jillie attack.  This set-up of course leads to a lot of slam-bang action, with continuing death, destruction, and angst (though a note of glee does creep in here and there), and then the probably obligatory tragic but uplifting ending. 

The writing is amateurish in places but quite readable even as one is noting that Meredith is going on much too long about things that don’t advance the narrative, playing silly games with chapter divisions (there are 36 of these in 79 pages, one of which is four lines long), and writing dialogue some of which seems lifted from World War II B-movies.  But there’s actually a story here, the author is clearly having a good time, and it’s infectious as long as you manage your expectations.  Three stars.

The Invasion of the Giant Stupid Dinosaurs, by Thomas M. Disch


by Bruce Jones

Thomas M. Disch, whose career started in Amazing and Fantastic, makes his first appearance here of the Sol Cohen era.  The Invasion of the Giant Stupid Dinosaurs is a short jokey First Contact story involving a spaceship landing on the property of a small town church.  It is archly told in a fussily stilted style possibly meant to remind the reader of The War of the Worlds (though Wells was generally not arch, stilted, or fussy).  It’s well turned, as always with Disch, but trivial.  Three stars, mostly for style.

The Aggressor, by John T. Sladek

John T. Sladek’s The Aggressor is also short, highly surreal, and seemingly an exercise in dream logic or a satire on the very idea of a story.  Or maybe—since the main character (loosely speaking) is the head of a large computer corporation—it’s supposed to be the output of a defective computer, or perhaps a very advanced one that is unexpectedly beginning to achieve consciousness. Sometimes Sladek’s humor escapes me entirely, and this is one of them.  This dog is too damn shaggy!  Two stars; at least the guy can write.

Prelude to Reconstruction, by Durant Imboden

Durant Imboden is an assistant fiction editor at Playboy, says the blurb to his story Prelude to Reconstruction, with one prior SF magazine appearance.  The story is a slightly rambling farce about a future authoritarian USA in which the work is all done by robots, who are supervised by the Ministry of Slaves.  The robots have to be kept in line lest they get funny ideas about slaving for humans; so Cerebra-1, a giant computer, is devised to monitor their loyalty quotients and reorient those needing it. 


by Bruce Jones

But now Cerebra-1 is getting balky, spitting out ancient political slogans, and things only get worse fast for humans (and the story ceases to be so farcical).  Problem is Imboden hasn’t quite caught on to “show, don’t tell,” so most of the story is the author recounting events after the fact without dialogue or even on-stage characters for stretches of it.  There’s also very little background on exactly what the robots’ and Cerebra-1’s capabilities and limits are, so the analogy to American human slavery (which becomes explicit at the end) falls flat, and there’s not much to be interested in conceptually.  Two stars.

In the Time of Disposal of Infants, by David R. Bunch

David R. Bunch, an avowed editorial favorite, is here again with In the Time of Disposal of Infants, listed among the new stories, but in fact new only to professional publication.  It first appeared in the fanzine Inside #13 (January 1956) along with five other Bunch stories.  It is much more sedate stylistically than his later work, but outrageous enough in content.  The title says it; the story is narrated by a garbage collector whose team finds a four-year-old among the refuse—surprisingly, since if they last that long, the parents usually keep them.  Three stars.

The Man in the Moon, by Mack Reynolds

The first of the acknowledged reprints is Mack Reynolds’s The Man in the Moon (from Amazing, July 1950) , a very early story (his eighth, appearing three months after the first).  It amounts to a tutorial about early space flight, now thoroughly outmoded and a bit boring.  Protagonist Jeff Stevens and two of his fellow trainee astronauts are bundled off to the Moon in separate ships; their voyage was preceded by some unsuccessful (i.e., fatal) tries, and by a number of unmanned ships carrying supplies and materials. 


by Leo Summers

Only Stevens makes it, and he proceeds (despite a broken arm) to assemble several of the unmanned ships into a base.  Human, as opposed to mechanical, interest is provided by the repeated reminders that Stevens is sensitive about being short, and by the fact that his sometime girlfriend left him for one of the other astronauts, who died on an earlier expedition.  But it’s all right, because he finds that astronaut’s body where he expired in his spacesuit in the line of duty.  “’Last Brenschluss, spaceman,’ he whispered.” Hackneyed, maudlin, two stars, generously.

Ask a Foolish Question, by Milton Lesser

Milton Lesser’s Ask a Foolish Question (Fantastic Adventures, June 1952) is a slickly rendered dystopian story.  In this world, most people work long hours for low pay, living in barracks, in order to support the space colony Utopia, where, it is said, everybody lives a lot better.  That’s OK, since the Earth dwellers regularly get the chance to take examinations to see if they can qualify to space out, and some win and depart.


by Tom Beechem

But Citizen Gregory Jones has been notified by the Department of Prognostication that he is to die in five days.  After some plot maneuvers not worth recounting, he winds up killing a government employee, faking his own death a day early, and then impersonating the government man.  But in that fake role, he is given the choice of dying when Jones would have died, or going to Utopia with the lucky exam-winners, since the government can’t allow anyone to stick around who knows that a prognostication didn’t occur on schedule.  Of course, he chooses Utopia, and the next events show that Lesser has clearly taken note of The Marching Morons.  And there's another twist before the end.  Derivative but well turned; three stars.

Death of a Spaceman, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

In Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s Death of a Spaceman (Amazing, March 1954), Old Donegal is a retired spacer bedridden and dying of cancer, though nobody but him acknowledges it, and he goes along with the pretense that he’ll be well before long.  Going to space is a pretty rotten blue-collar job (it killed his son-in-law), his pension and his daughter’s widow’s benefits are lousy, but Donegal can’t let go of it—he wants to stay alive long enough to hear the evening rocket blasting off from the nearby spaceport, demanding that his space boots be put on for the occasion after the priest has come by to administer the last rites. 


by Ernest Schroeder

It’s well written and clearly heartfelt (though thankfully less febrile than the other early Miller stories Amazing has reprinted (like Secret of the Death Dome and The Space Witch), but thoroughly maudlin and hard to take too seriously, especially by comparison with the much better stories Miller was already known for (e.g., Conditionally Human and Dark Benediction).  Three stars.

Science of Man: Apeman, Superman —Or, 2001's Answer to the World's Riddle, by Leon E. Stover

Leon E. Stover’s “Science of Man” article this issue is Apeman, Superman—or, 2001’s Answer to the World’s Riddle, which eschews the usual anthropology for a long synopsis of the film, superfluously I suspect to most readers.  Stover’s interpretation: humans spreading into space will be good (contra C.S. Lewis), we’ll leave all the bad stuff behind along with our bodies, sort of like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin explains: “the gathering force of mind that has come to envelope the surface of the planet Earth must eventuate in a projection into space as a purely spiritual component that will converge ultimately at the Omega point in one single entity, the very stuff of God.  But once all the consciousness of the universe has accumulated and merged in the Omega point, God will get lonely in his completeness, and the process of creation must begin again by way of arousing conscious creatures to reach out once more for closure in one collective identity.” Ohhh-kay, whatever you say, chief.  Next, Stover quotes Nietzsche, and adds: “Now that the theologians tell us that God is dead, it appears that the burden of theology is upon SF.” Three stars, it’s amusing and probably harmless, but Stover should probably get back to writing what he knows.

Summing Up

At Amazing, the beat goes ever ever on, ever more wearily, with some worthwhile material, but burdened by the weight of mostly lackluster reprints.  The ambitious new editor is gone.  The apparent new editor is well qualified, but will he be allowed to give the magazine the makeover it needs?  Yet again, wait and see.

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




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 28, 1969] Slidin' (February 1969 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Mudslides

Winter is the wet season for Southern California, and we've been just drenched these past weeks.  I understand seven inches of rain fell in the Los Angeles area, causing terrible mudslides, property damage, and injury.  Apparently, things were made worse by a spate of arson last year that got rid of the stabilizing undergrowth.

Ontario's Foothill Boulevard looking west toward Red Hill Country Club Drive, flooded. (Daily Report photo)
Ontario's Foothill Boulevard looking west toward Red Hill Country Club Drive, flooded. (Daily Report photo)

I've had many friends ask if we're alright, afraid we might have been swept downstream in the torrent.  Rest assured that Vista is disaster-proof (knock on wood), and our house is at the top of a hill.  We had some deep pools of water in the backyard, but they've since drained.  Our neighbors have gotten invaded by bugs seeking refuge from the storm, though.

A man runs past a station wagon that was washed two blocks down Carnelian Avenue, along with part of the road surface. (Daily Report photo)
A man runs past a station wagon that was washed two blocks down Carnelian Avenue, along with part of the road surface. (Daily Report photo)

Ups and Downs

If the physical world is getting washed away, one edifice that manages to stand firmly, if not always proudly, is Analog, science fiction's most popular magazine.  Has this month's issue slid at all, or is it holding fast?  let's see:

Analog cover featuring drawing of woman holding a baby swathed in christmas light glows data-recalc-dims=
by Kelly Freas

A Womanly Talent, by Anne McCaffrey


by Kelly Freas

We're back in the world of psionic talents, perhaps related to the stories that involve ladies in towers.  A pair of politicians want to pass a law protecting and enabling the psionically adept, legitimizing things like professional prognosticators and psychic manipulators.  A Luddite strawman, name of Zeusman, is against it.

Meanwhile. Ruth is the wife of Lajos, a precog.  She is frustrated because she has an unidentified talent, and also because she really wants to be a mom.  Eventually, the latter frustration is relieved, and her daughter ends up demonstrating what Ruth's power really is.

Aside from the tale beginning with ten pages of conversation that reads more like a Socratic dialogue than a story, I just find McCaffrey's writing so flat and amateur.  I'm sure all the psi stuff was music to editor Campbell's ears, including lines like "Those who truly understand psionic power need no explanation. Those who need explanation will never understand," but it doesn't work for me.  Beyond that, McCaffrey's attitudes on the relations of the sexes is so atavistic, although I suppose she gets points for talking about sex at all.  Maybe Campbell likes that, too.

Two stars.

You'll Love the Past, by J. R. Pierce

Illustration for You'll Love the Past with a bunch of heads of the characters in the story
by Leo Summers

A time traveler from the 21st Century takes a trip in a time machine to the 24th Century.  A war has transformed society: America is now largely mixed race, with the whitest of the population an inbred and stupid group.  Socially, the continent is organized into placid socialist cooperatives run by religious Brothers, advanced technology provided by the Japanese.  It's the sort of world one can be happy in…provided one is favored by the status quo.  Every so often, one of the non-favored tries to escape.

Not a bad story, even if it seems to be obliquely casting aspersions on Communists of darker hue.

Three stars.

The Man Who Makes Planets, by G. Harry Stine

picture of Ken Fag holding a globe of Mars he has painted in front of a large globe of Saturn he painted. data-recalc-dims=
Photos by G. Harry Stine

A nifty piece by Analog's resident rocket enthusiast about a fellow who makes model planets for a living.  I'd get one for my house, but they're a bit pricey—a quarter of a hundred large!

Four stars.

Extortion, Inc., by Mack Reynolds

Illustration of a man in a suit holding a bottle of whiskey looking like he's being exploded toward the viewer
by Leo Summers

Yet another piece set in the (anti-) Utopian future of People's Capitalism, where North America has become a stratified welfare state, and money is a thing of the past.

Rex, last of the private dicks, is engaged by a government minister to find out who stole the plans for a miniaturized nuclear bomb, and why said criminal is blackmailing him, threatening to distribute the plans should a ransom not be paid promptly.

The solution to this mystery is actually trivial, and the story isn't quite long enough for what it's trying to do.  Nevertheless, I always find this setting interesting.  And perhaps prescient.  There was piece in last week's newspaper about the National Urban League's proposal for a universal income…

Three stars.

Wolfling (Part 2 of 3), by Gordon R. Dickson

illustration of the main character teleporting into a space, wearing a beret and tartan, surprising two alien soldiers and their leader
by Kelly Freas

Back in part one, Jim Kiel was sent from Earth to study the intergalactic empire whose fringes were discovered when a Terran probe made it to Alpha Centauri.  An anthropologist and ubermensch, Jim is essentially a spy, though the High Born of the empire don't know that—they think that he's an interesting curiosity, favored for his bullfighting skills and independent thinking.

This installment begins just after Jim's first encounter with the Emperor, a genial, capable man who, nevertheless, seemed to suffer a stroke.  A stroke that no one but Jim noticed.  Much of this middle installment is devoted to Jim's navigation of High Born society, attempting to master the reading machines to determine if Earth really is a long-lost colony of the empire or something else, and also how he discovers and foils an insurrection attempt with designs on incapacitating the empire's leader.  In the last portion, Jim is promoted to the equivalent of a Brigadier General and sent to quell a rebellion.  This is actually a trap designed to kill him, but he neatly sidesteps it.  Now he wants to know why he's marked for death.

The pot continues to boil.  There's a lot of the flavor of Dickson's Dorsai series, but with a different, perhaps even more interesting, setting.

Four stars.

A Chair of Comparative Leisure, by Robin Scott

illustration of a suit-vested professor and little bubbles surrounding him illustrating seens from history
by Leo Summers

A stammering professor somehow manages to be the most magnetic, as well as effective at conveying information.  Does his technique go beyond the verbal?

(Yes.  He has the power of psychic projection.  Whoopee.  Two stars.)

Calculating the damage

Japanese ad for a Hitachi computer with a Japanese woman leaning over a machine

You win some, you lose some, and this month's issue clocks in at exactly three stars.  While nothing could compare with the superlative four-star Fantasy and Science Fiction, three stars is still lower than New Worlds (3.3) and Galaxy (3.2).  It does beat out IF (2.8) and Fantastic (2.2), however.

You could fill as many as three issues with good stuff out of the six that were put out—in large part thanks to how great F&SF was this month.  Nevertheless, women contributed very little of that, with only 6.67% of new fiction written by female writers, most of that Anne McCaffrey's drudge of a story.

Still, in an uncertain world, I can't complain too much.  Especially since, mudslides or no, the Post Office still manages to get me my magazines on time!




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[January 4, 1969] Not following through (February 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

The misrule of law

You may recall that Brazil underwent a military coup back in the spring of 1964. The reasons were the usual ones, and the U.S. response can be characterized, at best, as “turning a blind eye,” because then-president João Goulart (popularly known as Jango) was leaning a little too far to the left. The military junta which has ruled Brazil since prefers to call it a revolution, not a coup, but whatever you call it, the result is the same.

Seeking to give themselves more legitimacy, the military instituted a two-party system in 1966. The National Renewal Alliance (ARENA) officially represents the military dictatorship, while the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) gets to make speeches against and vote no on things that are going to happen anyway. That way, the legislature doesn’t look like the rubber stamp it is.

Or was. Unrest has been growing, particularly among the young. Arbitrary arrests and the torture of politcal prisoners has been ongoing. In March, a teenager who was leading a protest against rising food prices was shot point-blank by military police. This murder sparked further unrest, to the point that officials felt they had no choice but to allow a large protest march, hoping it would let the students blow off steam. The March of the One Hundred Thousand in June saw little violence, as the protestors demanded an end to the military government.

The March of the One Hundred Thousand. The banner reads “Down with dictatorship. People in power.”

Enter Márcio Moreira Alves. He started out as a journalist and opposed the Goulart government. After initially supporting the coup, he soon began to oppose it as well, with his primary cause being an end to the torture of political prisoners. He was elected as a Federal Deputy in 1966 and has continued his fight. In September, he called for a boycott of Brazil’s Independence Day celebrations on September 7th, and urged young women not to dance with military officers (or perhaps not date them, I have seen both mentioned in reports).

That was too much. The Justice Department asked the legislature to lift Alves’s immunity so that he could be tried for treason.  On December 12th, a joint session of the Federal Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate resoundingly refused to do so with a vote of 216-141.

Márcio Moreira Alves delivering the speech that got him into trouble.

The very next day, President Arturo da Costa e Silva issued Institutional Act Number 5. This act, which is not subject to judicial review or legislative oversight, allows the president to rule by decree, eliminates habeas corpus for political crimes, establishes censorship, and lets the government suspend any public servant who is found to be subversive or uncooperative, along with a number of other heavy-handed measures. Costa e Silva ordered hundreds of arrests of government critics the very next day.

There is strong opposition even within ARENA, the party founded to support the junta. Whether this is merely a crackdown or the beginning of cracks in the foundation of the dictatorship remains to be seen.

Passing judgment

If last month’s issue was about forgetting, this month’s IF is about the law and judgment. There’s something else that ties almost all the fiction here together, but we’ll get to that at the end.

Time travelers on their way to meet their ancestor. Art by Vaughn Bodé

The “Hoax” Story, by H.L. Gold

Former editor H.L. Gold offers a guest editorial on the two threads in science fiction that have dominated since the days of Verne and Wells. Today we might call them hard science fiction and speculative fiction, though Gold doesn’t use those terms. It’s interesting, but rather muddled. Gold’s definition of what constitutes a hoax seems ridiculously broad and not connected to his theme.

Three stars.

Beside the Walking Mountain, by Burt Filer

After being cashiered out of the GS (never explained, but probably something like Galactic Service), Hatch bought the planet where he ruined the careers of his superior and himself, hoping to right some of the wrongs they committed. Now that superior has returned to finish what he started and get revenge on Hatch. And he has the law on his side.

In desperation, Hatch tries to get his barge over the moving mountain. Art by Brock

Filer has been an inconsistent author, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Here, he demonstrates the full range of his quality in one story. He’s created an interesting, if implausible, planet, with a mountain that follows the terminator during the 14-month day. The conflict is solid, though the antagonist may be a little overdone. But the resolution falls flat on its face. Largely because eminent domain doesn’t work the way the author thinks it does. In fact, the precedent cited in the story invalidates the ending.

Good and bad average out to three stars.

Praiseworthy Saur, by Harry Harrison

A boy is taking home an interesting lizard he’s caught. His walk is interrupted by a group of time-traveling lizardoids descended from his new pet. They want him to let their ancestor go, so she can lay her eggs safely.

A tight little story with a sting in its tail. Harrison packs a lot into a very small space and does so with skill. The boy is also a believable and skeptical modern boy, which is a nice touch. Is that enough to get it to four stars? For me, it falls just short.

A very high three stars.

At Bay with Baycon, by Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch reports on last year’s Worldcon in Oakland. After a rocky start and the requisite namedropping, he settles in to a fair report, though a lot of the humor is forced. Of course, the Journey covered Baycon several months ago, and we had pictures.

Three stars.

How many of these folks can you identify? Art by Gaughan

The Defendant Earth, by Andrew J. Offutt

It turns out that Mars, Venus, and a few other places in the solar system actually are habitable and are joined in an interplanetary union of sorts. Now, they’d like to give Earth the chance to join, but there’s one problem. The Martians are unhappy with the way they have been depicted in science fiction, going all the way back to Wells. It falls to Ohio lawyer Joe Blair to negotiate a solution.

Offutt is another author who’s been very uneven, but he does a good job here. The story is enough fun that I can overlook the lack of explanation for why the job fell to the protagonist and the reliance on a somewhat tired cliché for the resolution. It’s not a deep tale, but it is enjoyable.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, Lester del Rey has been reading The Biological Time Bomb by Gordon Rattray Taylor, which looks at all the recent advances in the biological sciences, what scientists are working on and advances they expect to see in the not too distant future. Organ transplants, cloning, sex selection of children, tinkering with DNA (both intentionally and unintentionally), artificial life. There’s a lot coming down the road that society, politics, and the law are going to have to deal with. Hopefully, science fiction will have plotted a safe path forward by the time these changes hit us.

Three stars.

Trial by Fire, by James E. Gunn

John Wilson is in something resembling a fugue state, unsure of anything, even his own name. His consciousness drifts between two worlds. In one, he’s on trial for arson and murder, though he has apparently been framed by an anti-science political party which is using him to further their agenda. In the other, he works as a witch doctor in a fractured United States, secretly using science to help the superstitious peasants. There he has been arrested by the secret police for witchcraft.

This isn’t happening in the world you might expect. Art by Gaughan

This rumination on anti-science and anti-intellectual attitudes is a sequel to a much older story (“Witches Must Burn,” Astounding, August 1956), but having read that isn’t necessary. Most of it is summarized by the prosecution in Wilson’s trial. Either way, it’s not very good. The drift between the worlds is interesting at first, but having the viewpoint character addled and unsure of what’s going on around him wears out its welcome quickly. Gunn still managed to keep my interest most of the way, but then we get several pages of philosophical rambling about science and the duty of scientists, followed by a climax that’s difficult to believe. Even less believable is the suggested connection between the two worlds Wilson inhabits. And all that in about twice the length the story needed.

A high two stars.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Harry Harrison

In what appears to be a new feature, we have another interview transcribed directly from tape and again without the questions. This month, as you can tell from the title: Harry Harrison. This was a little more interesting than last month’s interview with Roger Zelazny, but then Harrison is a dozen years older and has spent time living in Europe. The highlight for me was him talking about his transition from comic book writer and inker to SF author.

Three stars.

A caricature, but recognizably Harry. Art by Rudy Cristiano

The Fire Egg, by Roger F. Burlingame

This month’s new author is a 38-year-old minister and former Fulbright scholar who wrote his story—which begins with a peasant finding the titular fire egg—as an assignment in the Famous Writer’s School. It’s well-written, as you might expect from the author’s background. Unfortunately, it’s also obvious and superficial. The sting at the end feels more sarcastic and nasty than ironic and deep.

A high two stars.

Six Gates to Limbo (Part 2 of 2), by J.T. McIntosh

In part 1 of this story, a man and two women found themselves in a pleasant but sealed off region with six portals leading away.  The man knows nothing, one woman a little, and the other more than she’s saying. As the first installment ended, Rex and Regina had run into trouble while exploring one of the worlds beyond the gateways. In this part, the explorations continue, and many questions are answered, with some surprising revelations. Finally, the trio must make a momentous decision.

Rex and Venus discover an empty world. Art by Gaughan

Last month, I feared that McIntosh didn’t have enough room to explore all six worlds. The final three are given very short shrift, with each character exploring one alone and merely reporting on what they found. Everything is rushed, the reason behind the sense of ennui and doom afflicting all of humanity made little sense to me, and the solution was far too extreme. A weak finish to a promising start.

A low three stars for this installment, but still three stars for the novel as a whole.

Summing up

In baseball, they tell batters to swing through the ball, not at it. The same goes for golf and probably every other sport that involves hitting one thing with another. It’s the follow-through that makes the difference, and that’s what is missing from all the stories in this issue except for Harrison and Offutt. The rest feel like the author simply rushed to get the story over and offers no sense of what, if anything, might come after. Gunn hints at it, but I don’t see how he gets from the end to what he tells us is coming. (Admittedly, I was bored and rushing to get it over with myself by that point.) The result is another C- issue with no standout stories. IF deserves better.

Another Hugo winners issue. Dare we hope?




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[December 31, 1968] Auld Lang Syne (January 1969 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

We made it

And so, 1968 ends with a bang, not a whimper.  After a miserable year that saw the loss of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the capture of the Pueblo, the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam, the riots at the Democratic Convention, the election of Richard Nixon, and many other tragedies, we finally have some good news to end the year.

First, there was the stirring flight of Apollo 8, a bit of unmitigated good that gave the holiday season additional poignancy.  And then, just last week, the crew of the Pueblo were finally released.  Vietnam peace talks appear to be stumbling forward.

On a more personal level, I got to prepare the Galactic Stars for the year, which involves reading all of the four and five star stories recommended by my colleagues.  For one month, everything I read is terrific.

It is in this euphoric mode that I get ready for tonight's New Year's celebration…and present to you the last of this month's magazines, the January 1969 Analog.

We read it


by Kelly Freas

Wolfling (Part 1 of 3), by Gordon R. Dickson

A galaxy-spanning empire makes contact with Earth.  Amazingly, the denizens of the sprawling star-society appear to be humans, though the ruling caste is distinctive due to selective breeding—onyx white, seven feet tall, and brilliant.  Because of the clear relation between the species, the prevailing belief is that Earth is some kind of lost colony.


by Kelly Freas

James Keil, bullfighter extraordinaire, is adopted by the High-born for display at the Throne World.  Keil is also a trojan horse, dispatched by the United Nations to gather information about the non-alien aliens. 

The hidebound High-born possess tremendous powers, from teleportation to matter conversion, but they are also just as petty and Machiavelian as any Earthers.  Keil's only ally is Ro, a (comparatively) dark-skinned High-born tasked with caring for the High-born queen's menagerie.

Dickson spins an interesting tale, detailing how the "Wolfling", Keil, walks the diplomatic tightrope, navigating a literal lion's den all through his FTL journey to the heart of the galaxy.  Though the story featueres eugenics, it is clear that the tale is an indictment rather than an endorsement.  Of course, the message might have been more strongly made were Keil's surname "Chang" or "Ojukwu".

Four stars so far.

The Hidden Ears, by Lawrence A. Perkins


by Leo Summers

A renegade UFO on the lam breaks through the cordon placed around Earth by the interstellar fuzz, taking refuge in the barn of a rural homestead.  The cops scratch their carapaced heads for a while, until they figure out a way to locate the hidden fugitive.  The genuinely amusing conclusion is the one bright spot in an otherwise frivolous story.

Two stars.

The Other Culture, by Ted Thomas


by Kelly Freas

If ever the word "pedestrian" described a story, it's now.  Thomas strings the most colorless sentences together, most of which are superfluous, and none of which are more than adequate.

The plot?  The Weather Council has to decide who will be prioritized for the increasingly demanded amount of world rainfall.  Because, as we all know, that's the kind of minor issue that is solved at a single conference.

That would be silly enough, except for the bombshell dropped about a quarter-way into the story: continental drift is suddenly speeding up, and all land masses will reunite as Pangaea in half a century.

Turns out this (ludicrous) plan is the work of BROW, the Brotherhood of the World, a rival underground (no pun intended) society.  But this potentially disastrous plan also, fortuitously, contains the solution to the water problem.

"Culture" is a talky, ridiculous story with no merits whatsoever.  It makes no scientific sense—moving continents around like bumper cars will produce a million 1906 San Franciscos—and the prose is dull as dishwater, as are all of the "characters".

One star.

"On a Gold Vesta … ", by Robert S. Richardson

This is a pretty neat piece about how we measure the density, size, and albedo (reflectiveness) of the myriad minor planets in the solar system.  All of these values are related, and without a firm grasp of at least one of them, it's virtually impossible to estimate the others.  A little short, but valuable.

Four stars.

Classicism, by Murray Yaco


by Kelly Freas

It's been eight years since we last heard from Mr. Yaco, and quite frankly, he might as well have stayed in hiding.  This is the "funny" tale of a young engineer from the last planet that believes in "classical economics".  He is sent to the big universe to become a cog in the command economy—specifically, to manage planet-wide garbage operations.  In his spare time, he works on perfecting a teleportation system, which he hopes to sell at great profit.

Too silly to be truly offensive; too lightweight to be worth your time.  Two stars.

Krishna, by Guy McCord


by Kelly Freas

Last year, Mack Reynolds…er… "Guy McCord" wrote a tale about Caledonia, a strange planet that was an odd combination of Scots and American Indian societies.  Krishna is a direct sequel, and a much better (though incomplete) story.

John of the Hawks is now a man, Raid Cacique for his clan, in fact, when Outworlders return.  The villain of the last piece, Mr. Harmon, is now wearing the black cloak of an acolyte of Krisha.  His ship, the Revelation, houses a bunch of missionaries who offer cures to all diseases if only they will partake of soma, a powerful hallucinogen.  Those who ingest soma become peaceful, one with Krishna…but also sterile and apathetic.  Obviously, such is anathema to the hardscrabble, lusty Caledonians.

"McCord" balances the clan politics with the Outplanet menace much better this time around, and John's endeavor to "steal" Alice Thompson for a bride is pretty gripping.  I don't mind that this novella is obviously the first (second?) installment in a novel, and I look forward to the next one.

Four stars.

We rate it

The word for this month is "vicissitudes".  On the face of it, none of the magazines did very well—Analog finished at 2.9 stars, well above Amazing (2.4 stars), but below New Worlds (3 stars), Galaxy (3.1 stars), IF (3.2 stars), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3 stars).

Yet, every mag save Amazing had at least one four-star story in it.  Several had more than one.  If you took all the good stuff this month, you could fill two magazines with it and have some quite good reading ahead of you.  Women contributed 12% of the new fiction published, which is on the high end.

So, a foreboding or auspicious sign for the New Year, depending on whether you fill your scotch half full or half empty with soda.  Either way, here's looking forward to a lovely 1969 with you all.  May your holiday season be bright!




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[December 26, 1968] Comfort OK? Looking Forward, Not Backwards New Worlds, January 1969

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again.

A recent comment from our leader here at Galactic Journey caused me to pause for thought. As he summed up the year in science fiction, it struck me that we are about to end one year (not that un-obvious, admittedly) and about to begin the last year of the decade, in what must be one of the most significant decades in recent human history.

Personally, the near-end of the decade seems to have crept up on me, but I can’t deny that it has certainly been eventful. Who knows, judging by all the recent activity (e.g. the Apollo missions!) we could be seeing people on the Moon in the next couple of years. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Anyway, I digress. My point is that I was suddenly made aware of how much things have changed in the last decade.

Which in a roundabout way brings me to the many changes involving New Worlds in the last few years. The New Worlds of 1968-69 is a very different beast from that of ten years ago. Some will say ‘better’ – more intelligent, more literary, more complex, more adult in nature – whilst others will say ‘worse’ – perhaps summarised as “Where’s my Science Fiction?”

After reading Gideon’s final article of November, I wrote him a letter, noting:

“More seriously, despite my personal grumblings, New Worlds is miles ahead of what the magazine used to be, even if its science-fictional content varies enormously. Much more inner space than outer space these days.

And there’s a whole debate over whether we can count it as an SF magazine any more – many of its older readers think not! – but it is noticeably different to pretty much anything else out there at the moment. I do hope that New Worlds can keep going next year, although it's not entirely certain.

That applies not just to the US but to Britain as well, of course – there is no other magazine to compare it to, as all the others have been cancelled!"

This year exemplified that range of content. In the last issue alone we had, on one hand, the stunning Samuel R. Delany story, Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones, which I am still thinking about, and on the other a story about a man repeatedly raping a paralysed patient and making her pregnant. Talk about eclectic….

Cover by Gabi Nasemann

Anyway, this month’s issue feels like the return of the old guard. Although the cover is in the new format started last month – a strangely coloured but generic photo of two heads, text from one of the main stories within – the roster of authors is mainly the usual. Even these stories are mostly connected to previously published stories… more later.

Lead In by The Publishers

More about the contributors this month: Ballard, Disch, Langdon Jones. They also sneak in an apology for the contents of this issue being different to what was expected due to the Post Office delivering the manuscripts too late for publication. Hmm.

The Tank Trapeze by Michael Moorcock

Last month the magazine declared that Mike Moorcock’s character Jerry Cornelius would continue in future issues by stories written by others, starting with James Sallis’s Jeremiad.

For whatever reason this hasn’t happened, and so we get a story from Jerry’s originator instead, the sixth by my reckoning. And we’re straight into contemporary issues, with assassin-for-hire Jerry being in Czechoslovakia whilst the Russians take over the country. Jerry plays cricket whilst Dubrovnik burns, seduces (or is seduced) by a woman and executes a young boy-monk, who may or may not be important. Memorable, shocking, surreal – a typical Jerry Cornelius story. 4 out of 5.

Anxietal Register B by John T. Sladek

Back in the April 1968 issue Sladek wrote New Forms, an increasingly surreal fictious form. It was amusing and quite popular (I liked it.) As befits the current mood of this issue, if it works once, why not do it again?

This time it is about testing how anxious you are. Mundane responses are encouraged amongst shockingly provocative ones – “Have you ever suffered from: arthritis… rheumatism…homosexual tendencies” etc. It is still amusing, but its impact is diminished as the shock novelty value of the first time is less of a surprise second time. 3 out of 5.

Epilogue for an Office Picnic by Harvey Jacobs

A story in the form of a unrequited love letter between "Bald Mr. X from Data Processing" to "Sherill" – or  Sheril, or Sherrill – the writer isn't sure. An odd tale that's meant to be amusing. I just found it sad. 2 out of 5.

The Summer Cannibals by J. G. Ballard

Ah, J. G. “Chuckles” Ballard. Lots of imitators of late, none really of his ability. After the last few stories by him have underwhelmed me (see The Generations of America in the November 1968 issue), we’re back into a better story of Ballard’s usual observational descriptions of societal bleakness – sex, cars, money, belongings, the American lifestyle. (Anybody else notice how often Ballard’s characters are just walking?)

With its sections of different prose styles, photos and sheer oddness, this is a better piece of work than his last one, although I’m not quite sure about the strange juxtaposition of sex and car parts. (Really. Try reading the section entitled “Elements of an Orgasm”.)

As perplexing yet as iconic as ever, The Summer Cannibals is typical Ballard and therefore welcome, if only to be brought down by the point that this is like Ballard-things we’ve read before and – of course! – another extract of something that will soon be a novel. Does it matter? Echoing the tone of Ballard – not really. Appreciate the style, consider the content. 4 out of 5.

Spiderweb by John Clute

An author we’ve read before, back in the November 1966 issue, but has been very quiet since. This seems to fit the current New Worlds template – a surreal story of love, sex, race and graphic hallucinations, although mainly sex. Vivid imagery. Bug Jack Barron has a lot to answer for by setting a standard for this sort of thing. 3 out of 5.

Article: Sim One by Christopher Evans


The welcome return of Dr. Christopher Evans brings us an interesting article about how close we are to creating a life-like human robot. I think Asimov would be pleased at the progress, but I keep thinking about Philip K. Dick’s stories about simulacra and personally am a little horrified. 4 out of 5.

Hospital of Transplanted Hearts by D. M. Thomas

Erm.. poetry warning. If you’re a regular reader of my reviews, you know my general view on poetry. But perhaps you know more about it than I do, New Worlds reader.

Just to be clear – New Worlds editors really like D. M. Thomas. As in, REALLY like. Declaring the poet to be “without question, one of England’s very best poets” in the Lead In, they like this particular poem so much it is available as a poster, courtesy of Charles Platt.


Here, I’m less enthused. This was the ‘poet’ who wrote that awful Mind Rape poem back in the March issue, after all, but I try not to let that affect me.

Here the poem is like a pick and mix jumble of statements and phrases so you can make up your own as you skip through the Battleships-type grid. It is amusing, but less important than it would like to be. It is certainly not an event on the scale of the Second Coming of the Messiah that New Worlds seem to want to create. (How’s that for a Christmas reference?)

The thing about creative work such as poetry is that people often passionately agree or disagree about such things. This may be a case in point. Others may love it – me, less so. 3 out of 5.

Juan Fortune by Opal Nations

A story in deep homage to Ballard here – broken into sections, with lists of characters WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS like a play…and (of course!) all about sex. Seems pointless to me. (the prose, not sex!) 2 out of 5.

Ouspenski’s Astrabahn by Brian W, Aldiss

It hurts to write about this one. “The longest part of the Charteris series”, it says in the Lead In, about to be published as a book. As a series I have grown to actively dislike, I have little to say on this one. Yes, it’s clever, and as ever with Aldiss, well written. But at the same time, it’s an incomplete extract of a story that may make little sense if you haven’t read the previous parts and secondly, it degenerates (like some of the previous parts) into a variety of prose styles that I can only politely describe as stylistic gobbledygook.

Does the story, such as it is, make sense? Is it worth my time? In the end I didn’t care about the characters, the setting or the story.

Others will disagree, I’m sure – I’m just pleased that this, whatever it is, is finished, and I can move on (see also Bug Jack Barron earlier this year too.) 2 out of 5.

Book Reviews

J.G. Ballard reviews The Voices of Time by J. T. Frazer in a very Ballardian way, Langdon Jones reviews Silence by John Cage as if it was a questionnaire, John Brunner reviews four psychology books published by Allen Lane, whilst at the same time trying to persuade me that as a reader of science fiction I should read such books (I’m personally not too convinced), and William Barclay reviews Jack Trevor Story’s books, an author I only know because of Hitchcock’s film of his novel, The Trouble With Harry.

It is left to James Cawthorn to review some British science fiction books, although Thomas M. Disch reviews Quicksand by John Brunner. Joyce Churchill (who I believe is a pseudonym for M. John Harrison) briefly reviews a bunch of anthologies and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. Langdon Jones also gives us the sad news of Mervyn Peake’s recent death, illustrating it with some of Peake’s drawings.

Summing Up

I think Moorcock and his team have been pushed to get an issue out this month. (Perhaps they’ve been Christmas shopping instead?) Whilst Langdon Jones has been away, his absence, not to mention the effect of Post Office delays, as mentioned in the Lead In appears to have led to what feels like an issue cobbled together from remainders from old established authors with nothing really new to say, just finishing off what has already been started.

I realise that some readers may see the issue as a comfort, as in the return of old friends, but to me, it is like a shop clearing the shelves of tired, old stock ready for the new year. The Ballard is entertaining, but even then just a variation on a previous theme. I’ve said on many previous occasions (even last month!) how much I’ve come to dislike Aldiss’s Charteris stories, and it doesn’t help that this conclusion fills up much of the issue. At least the Jerry Cornelius was good.

I know that there are readers that will love both the Ballard and the Aldiss and even D. M. Thomas’s ‘poem’, but not me, sadly. The standard has been raised so much in recent years that it is almost a given now that each issue of New Worlds will surprise, amuse, antagonise and annoy. For the first time in a long time, this issue for me has really let me down.

Really the only good thing I can say about the issue is that at least these series are finished, and as the new year begins, we can look at new material in the future – looking forward, not backward. Rather appropriate for the end of one year and the beginning of the next, I think.
On a more positive note, have a great Christmas, and I look forward to returning next year when (hopefully) I will be less grumpy. “Bah, Humbug!” and so forth.

I'm off to look at the Christmas Radio Times to cheer myself up and see what's worth watching and listening to (Morecambe and Wise?)

Until next time!



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