Category Archives: Science Fiction/Fantasy

Magazine/Anthology

[June 2, 1960] Fewer is Less (July 1960 Astounding)

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What makes a story worth reading? 

As a writer, and as a reader who has plowed through thousands of stories over the past decade, I've developed a fair idea of what works and what doesn't.  Some writers cast a spell on you from the first words and maintain that trance until the very end.  Others have good ideas but break momentum with clunky prose.  Some turn a phrase skillfully, but their plots don't hold interest.

I find that science fiction authors are more likely to hang their tales on plot to the exclusion of other factors.  This is part of the reason our genre is much maligned by the literary crowd.  On the other hand, the literary crowd tends to commit the opposite sin: glazing our eyes over with experimental, turgid passages.

A few authors have managed to bridge the gap: Theodore Sturgeon, Avram Davidson, Daniel Keyes.  And, in general, I think the roster of science fiction authors, as they mature, are turning out better and better stuff.

Sadly, Astounding is rarely the place you'll find them.

After last month's decent issue, I had looked forward eagerly to this one, the July 1960 edition.  It's not unmitigatedly horrible, but it does sink back into the level of quality I've come to expect from Campbell's magazine.  Let's take a look:

Poul Anderson, with whom I've had a rocky relationship over the last decade, begins a new serial called The High Crusade.  It's about a 14th century English town that gets attacked by an alien scout ship.  Surprisingly, the "primitive" residents manage to overpower the alien crew and commandeer their ship, which they then sail across the suns to another alien outpost, where they defeat a contingent of the more technologically advanced aliens.

Now, this is the kind of story editor Campbell loves: plucky humans defeating inferior space aliens.  I suspect that the humans in Crusade will face increasingly ridiculous odds, always coming out on top.

This should bother me.  On the other hand, the story is really quite well written, with an excellent use of archaic language, a fair depiction of the age, and compelling characters.  Moreover, I have the faintest suspicion that Anderson is satirizing Campbell's fetish, hence my prediction that the story will be ever more over-the-top.

Sadly, this incomplete tale is the high point of the book.  Chris Anvil is up next with The Troublemaker.  It starts out promisingly, involving an interstellar cargo ship and the seditious new cargo inspector who joins the crew.  The fellow has a knack for dividing and conquering, causing friendships to disintegrate and morale to plummet.  But the Captain's solution for the problem comes out of nowhere and is thus unsatisfying.  Which brings me back to my preface.  Writer tip #1: Foreshadowing is important.  No one likes a mystery novel where the murderer is not presented before the detective explains whodunnit.  A good writer introduces concepts earlier in the story if they are to be used later. 

Onto the next story.  Its author, Dean McLaughlin, has been writing for various digests over the past decade.  I know I've read a few of his stories, but they do not stand out in my memory.  In any event, his The Brotherhood of Keepers leaves much to be desired.  In this case, characterization is utterly subverted to an involved, somewhat odious plot.  There is a race of near-sapient upright seals on a harsh alien world.  They are on the brink of becoming sentient, and a human outpost has been established on their planet, despite the uncomfortable conditions, to watch the transition.  There are three main characters, all made of the same grade of carboard. 

You have the fatuous, bleeding heart animal rights activist who wants to bring an end to the suffering of the "floppers," both at the hands of their environment and the scientists (who employ them as slaves and vivisect them every so often).  You have the xenophobic scientist who pushes all of the activist's buttons in the hopes that this will bring about a relief mission, allowing the floppers to be "saved" before they become truly sentient.  Finally, you've got the outpost chief.  He grieves for the cruel plight of the floppers, but he feels it would be more cruel to deny them their destiny of intelligence.

On the face of it, this could have been a very interesting story.  Aside from the truly hackneyed portrayal of the characters, I took umbrage with the way the floppers were treated by the humans.  Granted, the most egregious comments made by the scientist character ("they're only animals," he says of creatures smarter than chimpanzees) were probably designed specifically to goad the activist, but they must reflect, at least in part, the deeply held sentiments of his fellow researchers.  As any sociologist would tell you, the best way to study a society probably does not involve murdering its members.

Asimov has a fair sequel to his article on animal phyla, published month before last.  This one is called, appropriately enough, Beyond the Phyla.  The good doctor makes some interesting speculation on the next evolutionary steps humanity might take.  They will not involve physical adaptations, he opines, but rather a level of social cohesion that will transform our race into a larger, integrated whole.

It's a pity that Isaac doesn't write fiction anymore; I imagine folks will be lifting his non-fiction ideas and turning them into stories soon.

Finally, we have Subspace Survivors, by the renowned Doc Smith, himself.  All due respect to an admitted titan of the field, this is not a very good story.  It's something of a relic from the pulp era, this tale of nine survivors on a wrecked interstellar vessel, four of whom are psionically gifted (of course).  Writer tip #2: Description should be incorporated seamlessly into a narrative, not obtrusively inserted in-between bits of action. 

There are two women in this story.  They acquit themselves rather well against two of the castaways, who turn out to be bad men, but for the most part, they are content to be submissive child incubators, comforted in times of distress by their lantern-jawed officer husbands.  Feh.

I recently exchanged letters with a fan who expressed his dislike for magazines with only a few, longer stories.  I told him that I didn't mind them so long as the stories were good.  But, I am starting to take his point.

See you shortly with more fiction reviews!

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Book

[May 25, 1960] Getting there is half the problem (Judith Merril's The Tomorrow People)

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Every novel is a kind of contract with the reader, a promise that ideas, events, and characters will be presented in the beginning such that, by the end, they will have facilitated a satisfying story.  A corollary to this is that a writer must ensure that all of a story's scenes are interesting to the reader.  Lesser authors pound their keys trying to get "to the good parts," stringing together pearls of interest with thread of mediocre space-filler. 

Judith Merril has managed to break the above-described contract in spectacular fashion, by publishing a story solely of the thread between the pearls. 

Let me explain.  The Tomorrow People, released this month, promises to be quite a book.  Not only is it by Merril, who has proven that she can write on prior occasions, but within the first 30 pages, we get a set up that includes: humanity's first Mars mission, on which one of the crew commits suicide for reasons unknown; the suggestion that life was found on Mars; the possibility of telepathy and/or clairvoyance; the suggestion of an active espionage ring on the American moonbase.  Merril also tempts us with the veneer of a mature piece with discussion of adult topics like closeted homosexuality, menstruation, polyamory. 

The problem is that Merril never delivers on any of these threads (except for a few perfunctory pages at the end).  Instead, we get hundreds of pages of the sort of stuff one hammers out for the sake of hammering out.  Most of the book is presented in quotation marks and italic print.  Pointless dialogues between men done in an overly breezy, almost caricature style.  Endless angsty conversations between characters punctuated by italicized internal monologues (that's right!  You tell 'em!) Dysfunctional relationships between the one female character, the lovely dancer, Lisa, and… virtually every male character in the book (the astronaut who returns from Mars, his psychiatrist, the Moon's chief psychiatrist, random lunar laborers).  Endless depictions of drinking, drunkenness, romantic quarrells.

I don't know if Merril is trying to be avante garde, or if she simply doesn't know how to make a book out of a trilogy's worth of ideas but a novella's worth of action.  The result is an uphill slog.  It's too bad as there is stuff to like.  There is a thoroughly modern feeling about the portrayed universe, a feeling that Merril really does try to convey the world of the mid 1970s, technologically and socially.  I enjoyed the bits about the adaptation of classical dancing to the lunar setting.  And I appreciate a story that doesn't just present the bones of a plot, with the characters playing second fiddle, as is often the case in science fiction. 

Merril's The Tomorrow People, however, is an invertebrate.  Its characters meander about with no plot bracing them into an enthralling narrative.  Maybe that's the point.  Maybe life is like that, and Merril is just trying to capture that feeling of naturalistic randomness.

Or maybe she had a deadline, a page quota, and insufficient inspiration.

Two stars.

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 23, 1960] Month's End (June 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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With Astounding so good this month, I suppose it was too much to ask that Fantasy and Science Fiction would also be of high caliber.  While it's not a bad issue, it's not one of the better ones, either.

Charles Henneberg (who I understand is actually a Parisian named Nathalie) has the best story of the bunch, The Non-Humans, translated by Damon Knight.  This is the second story the team has published in F&SF, and it is far better than the previous one.  It's a lovely historical tale of an Italian renaissance painter and the androgynous alien with whom he falls in love.  An historical personage has a supporting part; his identity is kept secret until the end, though the half-clever can deduce it before finishing.

Britisher H.F. Ellis offers up Fireside Chat, a reprint from Punch.  It involves a haunted house and leaves the reader wondering just who are the ghosts, and who are the current residents?

I know many of my readers are Howard Fast fans, but his latest, Cato the Martian is not among his best.  For the past fifty years, the Martians have listened to our radio broadcasts and watched our television programming with avid interest and increasing concern.  A certain Martian lawmaker, nicknamed after the famous anti-Carthaginian Roman, concludes each speech with "Earth must be destroyed!" until, finally, he gets his comrades in litigation to agree.  The ensuing war does not turn out well for the dwellers of the Red Planet. 

It's not really science fiction.  If anything, it's perhaps the other side of the coin to Earthmen Bearing Gifts, in which the Martians eagerly await the arrival of their Terran neighbors, but with a similar ending.

The Swamp Road, by Will Worthington, is an interesting After-the-Bomb piece about a community held together by a bitterly strict Christian doctrine a la Salem, Massachusetts.  Every so often, one of the citizens changes, developing a second eyelid and otherwise adapting to a dessicated, alien world.  When the change happens to the storyteller and his love, they are forced out of the village and must learn the true nature of their metamorphosis.  It's a good, atmospheric yarn, though I feel it could have been longer.  Some subjects deserve more than just a taste.

Some, on the other hand, don't deserve the space.  Slammy and the Bonneygott is the story of an alien child who crosses dimensions in a tinker toy spaceship and plays with a few children for an afternoon.  It was apparently written by a neophyte named "Mrs. Agate," and the plot was provided by her six-year old son.  One can tell.

Avram Davidson has two settings: amazing and passable.  The Sixth Season is a passable story about a small crew of humans stuck on an anthropological expedition to a backwoods alien-inhabited world for 200 days.  They endure five miserable seasons–can they survive the sixth?

It reminds me of my days growing up in the desert community of El Centro.  I used to lament that we had four seasons like everyone else, but they were Hot, Stink, Bug, and Wind.  That's not being entirely charitable, of course.  We had a balmy Winter, too.  For about two weeks.

Asimov's column this month is Bug-eyed Vonster.  No, it has nothing to do with aliens; it's how the good Doctor remembers the term BeV.  It is an abbreviation for "Billion electron Volts," a unit of electric energy commonly encountered when discussing cosmic rays and atom smashers.  I learned what Cerenkov radiation is (the radiation given by particles going faster than the speed of light in a given material).

Cliff Simak's The Golden Bugs takes up most of the rest of the book.  This time, he trades the poetic farmlands for the prosaic suburbs for the story's setting.  A swarm of extraterrestrial crystal turtle-beetles ride into town on an agate meteorite and begin to wreak havoc on an average American family.  It's fun while it lasts, but it ends too abruptly, and there isn't much to it.  It's the sort of thing one cranks out between masterpieces.

Finally, there is the nigh impenetrable Beyond Ganga Mata by John Berry, a space-filler originally published in The Southwestern.  A fellow travels to India, meets a holy man, journeys for a year, and meets him again.  Perhaps it was simply the lateness of the hour, but had the story not been blessedly short, I'd have had trouble finishing the magazine.

For those who like to keep score, this issue of F&SF was, depending on how you average things, earned between 2.78 and 2.88 stars.  Compare that to Galaxy, which got between 3 and 3.13 stars, and Astounding, which earned exactly three stars even.

Though it could be argued on the numbers that Galaxy was thus the better magazine, and it was certainly the biggest, I'm going to give the June 1960 crown to Astounding.  All of the fiction was decent to very good, and it's not Janifer, Anvil, and Berryman's fault that Campbell wrote a stinker of a "science" article.  Plus, Charley de Milo was the choice story for the month.

Continuing my analysis, this means that the Big Three magazines (counting Galaxy and IF as one) each took the monthly crown twice–all of them tied.  And that's why I keep my subscriptions to all of them.

A more depressing statistic: there was only one woman author this month, and she wrote under a male pseudonym!

By the way, remember Sputnik 4?  The precursor to Soviet manned space travel?  Well, it looks like the Communists won't be orbiting a real person any time soon.  In an uncharacteristically candid news announcement, the Soviets disclosed that the ship's retrorocket, designed to brake the capsule for landing, actually catapulted the craft into a higher orbit.  It'll be up there for a while.  Oh well.

See you soon with a book review!

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 20, 1960] Three for Four (June 1960 Astounding)

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Astounding, the venerable science fiction digest, has often been my monthly whipping boy.  Today's article is going to be a bit different because, apart from one noteworthy, execrable exception, the June 1960 Astounding was actually quite good.

Much of the magazine is taken up by Part 3 of the enjoyable "Mark Phillips" effort, Out Like a Light.  There are only three other fiction entries in this issue, all novelette/novella-sized.

Chris Anvil's Star Tiger leads the pack.  A colony is wiped out completely by an invisible enemy.  Is it an alien invasion?  An incorporeal monster?  Or some new permutation of biology?  The mystery is the best part of this story. 

Anvil is an author who started out mired in mediocrity, and who seems to be improving with effort.  However, despite some good description and atmosphere throughout much of this tale, he still ends it with that sort of droll, wrapped-in-a-bow fashion that feels perfunctory.  A story should be more than just the "gimmick."  Not bad, though.

Charley de Milo is a minor masterpiece by Laurence Janifer (who co-wrote Out Like a Light).  It features a man born without arms, who has learned to use his feet with tremendous dexterity: comb his hair, light cigarettes, etc.  He makes a comfortable and enjoyable living as bally performer for a carnival freak show.  But when a friend creates a cure for lost limbs, his audience drops off precipitously.  Charley is faced with the hard choice: continue as a low-rent freak or be "cured" and start off from scratch as a normal person–at age 41.

This story raises a lot of poignant questions.  If one is handicapped and comfortable with one's disability, is a cure always desirable?  If one can be cured, will society have less tolerance for the voluntarily crippled, be less supporting of those who refuse to be cured?  I have a minor disability, myself: I am somewhat color-blind.  It has never been much of a hindrance; in fact, I often find it amusing.  But, imagine if, someday, a set of glasses were invented that would enable me to see as "normal" people do.  Would I take the opportunity?  I'm actually not all that sure.  I am physically different from most people, and it has shaped my world.  It is part of my identity.  I don't know that I want to lose that. 

I've always maintained that the measure of a story is the extent to which it makes you think about the points raised afterwards.  By that standard, this is definitely a 4-star tale.

Last of the three is John Berryman's Vigorish, though he wrote it as Walter Bupp, same name as the story's protagonist.  Interestingly, the lead is also a handicapped person.  His right arm is essentially useless, and its lack of functionality contributes to his ability to wield telekinesis with a fine degree of control.  He is employed, practically enough, to watchdog casinos when it looks like someone is using psionics to bend the odds her/his way.

There are a lot of stories featuring psi powers in Astounding, but this one is done better than most.  Give it a try.

Now, for those wondering about my comment in the first paragraph, it's time for that other shoe to drop.  I've observed before that Astounding's science fact column is the lousiest among the Big Three digests.  Not surprising given that the competition is Isaac Asimov and Willy Ley (and when the Astounding column is any good, it's usually written by a pinch-hitter named… Isaac Asimov).

This month, Campbell has put it upon himself to write his own column.  It's a long, whiny screed in defense of the (deservedly) much maligned Norman Dean, inventor of the "Dean Drive" that, purportedly, converts rotational acceleration to linear acceleration thus creating a reactionless drive.

Well, no one's seen it work.  Even Campbell hasn't seen it work.  But Campbell blames the lack of government and private interest in Dean's engine on bureaucratic myopia… or perhaps something more sinister and collusionary.

I recognize and respect Campbell's contributions to the genre, but he's the embarrassing half-senile old uncle of our community.

Happy 57th birthday (tomorrow) to pulp icon Manly Wade Wellman.  He has not written much as late, so the Journey has only covered one of his stories, but it was a good one.

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Fashion, music, politics, sports, TV

[May 18, 1960] Good and bad news (Twilight Zone and the Summit)

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What makes quality television?  No, that's not an oxymoron, despite what anyone might tell you.  Sure, there are plenty of vapid game shows, variety shows, soap operas, situation comedies.  The techniques and technology are primitive–sometimes, it feels as if I'm watching a local junior high troupe in their multi-purpose room.

But there are those occasional gems that stand out, the shows that bridge the gap between the small and large screens.  They feature top notch storytelling, acting, cinematography, and scoring.

I'm talking, of course, about I Love Lucy.

No, I'm not.  I'm talking about The Twilight Zone, as you might have expected since I do a monthly wrap-up after four episodes have gone by.  This latest batch is another good one.  It is a show that has found its feet, that reliably entertains and provokes thought every Friday night.

First up is A Nice Place to Visit, a well-executed if unsurprising tale about an utter wretch of a criminal with no redeeming qualities.  He dies in a police shoot-out and finds himself in what can only be described as paradise.  All the best food, the best drink, the prettiest dames, neverending good fortune at gambling.  But no challenge.  No sense of accomplishment.  No element of risk.  Is it Heaven?  Or the other place? 

While the episode won't leave you guessing, it is fun to watch.  The actor playing the criminal does a fine job, as does the overly genial "butler" who caters to the dead man's every whim… until the very end.

Perhaps the best of the bunch (certainly the most cleverly titled) is Nightmare as a Child.  A young schoolteacher finds herself haunted by a menacing, yet strangely familiar little girl.  The girl seems to know all about the woman, even things the teacher seems to have forgotten, including a dark secret. 

I won't spoil this one at all.  It's nicely creepy, and it goes unexpected places.  It's also fun to watch with a daughter who happens to be the same age as the guest star, and who shares a fondness for hot cocoa.

A Stop at Willoughby is classic Twilight Zone.  A harried, ulcered ad executive has grown weary of his fast-paced world, his materialistic wife, and his hounding boss ("It's a Push Push Push business!  Push Push Push!").  While on his nightly train commute from New York to Connecticut, he drops to sleep and wakes up on a train in 1888, stopped at the idyllic town of Willoughby. 

The most thoughtful bit of this episode involves the mystery of what happens to the exec in the event he decides to get off at Willoughby.  Is it a dream?  A genuine journey? 

Finally, we have the rather unpleasant, The Chaser, in which a desperate young man endeavors to seduce an uninterested young woman with the aid of a love philter.  It's the kind of story that unfailingly disturbs me, as it involves a variety of rape.  It's also a Deal-with-the Devil tale, and one is given the impression that the whole affair was orchestrated by Lucifer-as-storekeeper: from the purchasing of the potion, to the inevitable aftermath where the woman is reduced to cloying adoration, to the ultimate end where the young man will do anything to rid himself of his beloved.

Not badly done; just not my cup of tea.  But what I wouldn't give for a house with that kind of bookshelf set-up!  Oh wait… I do have that house.

By the way, it looks like the expected has come to pass: The four-party Summit in Paris ended catastrophically on the same day it began, May 16, thanks to a grandstanding Mr. Khruschev.  He demanded that we stop overflying Soviet airspace.  Ike agreed to a temporary suspension of flights, but that wasn't good enough, and the Soviet Premier stormed out.  It is pretty clear that this was Khruschev's sole reason for attending, and one wonders just what he would have talked about had we not given him an excuse to torpedo the conference (i.e. one U2 pilot named Gary Powers).

Lest this sound hypocritical (i.e. "We'd have done the same in their shoes"), recall that Ike didn't raise a stink when the Soviets started sending beep-beep satellites over the American continent.  Espionage is part of normal foreign relations.  To sabotage world peace on such a thin thread smacks of diplomatic cynicism, not genuine outrage.

That's just my two cents.

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 13, 1960] Second Lightning Strike (Out Like a Light)

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by Freas

I poke a lot of fun at John Campbell's magazine, Astounding for its overfeaturing of psionics and Randall Garrett, two things of which I've gotten very tired–so imagine my surprise when I found myself enjoying a serial that intimately involves both!

For the last three months, Astounding's serial has been Out Like a Light, the sequel to the actually-not-bad That Sweet Little Old Lady.  Both stories were co-written by the team of Randall Garrett (who seems to be getting better these days, at least prose-wise) and Laurence Janifer (who may be the real talent behind the operation).  Together, they go by the monicker of "Mark Phillips." 

Lady introduced two investigating agents of the FBI in the nearish future, Malone and Boyd, who are stand-ins for the authors.  I think.  Boyd certainly shares Garrett's physical similarity to Henry VIII as well as his penchant for girl-chasing.  And Janifer, if he cut his hair into a Mohican, would look a bit like Malone.  Their first misadventure involves tracking down a gaggle of psychics and enlisting their aid to fix a security leak in the government.  The sanest of the bunch or telepaths, despite believing herself to be the not-so-late ex-Monarch, Elizabeth I, ends up being the lynchpin to the agents' success.  As the title suggests, she really is a sweet little old lady.  Who can read minds.

Out Like a Light is essentially a solo adventure, with Malone sleuthing around after a spate of carjackings.  All of the cars are red Cadillacs, and the investigating officers tend to get nasty bumps on the side of the head.  Yet, no trace of the perpetrators is ever seen.  Of course, psionics are involved, and Her Majesty serves an important supporting role in solving the mystery. 

It's about 10% too long in the droll recounting of things, but it moves swiftly and entertainingly, features a couple of strong female characters (shock!) and is a reasonably executed "how-dunnit."  I say "how" since the "who" is determined fairly early on. 


by Freas

I found myself actively looking forward, each month, to reading more of the story.  It's not literature for the ages, but it is genuinely amusing.  If my meter allowed for half increments for individual stories, I would give it three and a half stars.  Since it doesn't, I suppose I'll be generous and give it four. 

Astounding can use the charity, especially after the non-fiction "article" featured in this month's issue… but more on that later.

Pick up a copy, and enjoy!

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Movies

[May 11, 1960] Spelunkers Unite! (Journey to the Center of the Earth)

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With so much schlock crowding out the marquees at our local cinemas, it's nice to get a chance to see a quality production for a change.

Last weekend, my daughter and I managed to finally catch the Cinemascope epic, Journey to the Center of the Earth, loosely based upon (read: with the same title as) the Jules Verne classic.  Thankfully, mine eyes are virginal—I have never read the Verne novel.  Rather, I was always partial to Burroughs' Pellucidar series (about which a movie is coming out this Summer!), so while I am sure there are egregious departures from the original story, they did not and could not offend me.

There is much to like about this charming movie about a priggish Scotsman geologist (who sounds a lot like James Mason), a fresh-faced geology student (who sings a lot like Pat Boone), a strong-willed and competent widow, a strapping Icelandic farmer, and (the true hero of the story), a duck named Gertrude.  This team forms the Lindenbrook Expedition, which aims to penetrate the depths of the Earth.  The access point is an Icelandic volcano, this entry having been pioneered by Arnie Saknussemm decades before.


Four of the five intrepid explorers


Did you know Pat Boone could sing?  Who'da thought?

The science is silly, of course, but that's acceptable since this is based on a novel of Victorian (3rd Republican?) vintage.  Beneath the Earth, there are giant mushrooms (all edible, of course), ubiquitous phosphorescent algae, intelligent cannibal Dimetrodons, and a giant subterranean ocean.  And, of course, none of our heroes need shave or brush their hair.  Apparently, in the deep vaults of the Earth, little invisible gnomes keep chests, underarms, and coiffures in perfect order.

Less palatable is the rather artificial conflict between the Mason party and his rival, an Icelandic self-styled "Count," the descendant of Saknussemm, who attempts to derail and vanquish the expedition.  I would have been just fine with a Human vs. Nature spectacle rather than an obligatory Man vs. Man piece.



A most charming aspect, however, is the movie's streak of feminism.  The Widow Goteborg, who came to Iceland at her husband's request (Professor Goteborg having attempted to get the jump on Lindenbrook) convincingly argues herself onto the Lindenbrook expedition.  Lindenbrook sputters on about the uselessness of a female explorer, and is then shown up at every turn by the cleverer, more capable Goteborg.  The cleverest member of all, however, is the duck, Gertrude; she unerringly guides the team to safety and profit, and she was my daughter's favorite character. 

At one point, I noted, "The message of this film is that women are always right."  My daughter replied, "I'm fine with that message."


Gertrude leads the crew across the Nonestic Ocean

In sum, it is an absolutely stunning film, in gorgeous color and with fantastic visuals.  I was engaged throughout, even on the several occasions when the movie nearly careened into the musical theater genre.  Immediately upon finishing the movie, I wanted to find my own mustard-coloured traveling outfit.  Sadly, they are in short supply these days.

Coming up, more science, more television, more books, and more magazines.  May is proving to be a month of embarrassing riches.  Stay tuned!

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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 7, 1960] Grab Bag

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Here's a bit of a hodgepodge article for the column as I plow through reading material and await the next Space Spectacular:


RCA's Mrs Helen Mann, holder of two degrees in physics, issues instructions to FLAC (Florida Automatic Computer) at Patrick Air Force Base, from where military and civilian (Air Force) space launches originate. From here

Being a statistics nut, I like to track the (completely subjective) quality of my science fiction digests.  For those just joining us, I use the Galactic Star scale, as follows:

5: Phenomenal; I would read again.
4: Good; I would recommend it to others.
3: Fair; I was entertained from beginning to end, but I would not read again or strongly recommend.
2: Poor; I wasted my time but was not actively offended.
1: Abysmal; I want my money back!

For those who like summaries, here is how the Big Three digests did last month (May 1960):

IF: 2 stars; best story: Matchmaker by Charles Fontenay, 3 stars

Astounding: 2.5 stars; best story: Wizard by Laurence Janifer, 3 stars

Fantasy and Science Fiction: 3 stars; best story: The Oldest Soldier, by Fritz Leiber, 4 stars

That's a comparatively bad crop!  On the other hand, I've seen enough slumps to expect that this one won't last.  After all, people have been predicting the death of science fiction for 6 years now…

—

In other news, something of an ominous development.  Apparently, a U2 high-altitude "spy plane" was shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1.  Premier Khruschev is making a lot of hay about it, but the White House says it was a civilian "weather study" mission under the auspices of NASA.

There's even a picture to go with it:

I hope this doesn't jeopardize the upcoming peace summit.

—

Happy birthday to Jack Sharkey, who turned 29 yesterday.  Galactic Journey has covered two of his tales to date.

—

Finally, I am excited to say that this column garnered an honorable mention in no less esteemed a venue than Astounding/Analog!  Rest assured, however, that the accolade will not prevent me from skewering Campbell's magazine when skewering is due.

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 5, 1960] The Next Step (Rosel George Brown in Amazing)

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Has Rosel George Brown finally broken through?

For several years, I've kept an eye on this promising New Orleans native.  Apart from being a woman writer in a predominately male field, she has brought a refreshingly feminine viewpoint to her stories.  But they've never quite rung all of my bells.  Some, like Virgin Ground have a real bitter tone to them.  Others, like Car Pool and Flower Arrangement are overly domestic in feel.  I want my heroines to be lantern-jawed and stalwart! 

In any event, I've always felt that Ms. Brown was an extraordinary talent waiting to break free.  Leafing through a friend's latest issue of Amazing (generally trailing the Big Three/Four in terms of quality), I saw that she had a story within, Step IV and I quickly devoured it.

It definitely falls in the "bitter" category, but it has a new depth I have not yet seen from Brown.  Moreover, it has that quality that marks the truly good (and, occasionally, the truly bad): it is memorable.

I welcome your thoughts.

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Book

[May 3, 1960] Sharpening Up (Poul Anderson's Brain Wave)

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It's tough to be a smart person in a dumb world. 

When I was in 4th grade, I had a miserable, mean teacher named Mrs. Middleton.  She was the sort of lady who wore a smile on her face that had a depth of about a micron—she certainly didn't have a pleasant soul.  I remember many incidents that caused her to rank in the lower tiers of my instructors, but the one that sticks out the most went as follows:

I had done or said something that displayed my somewhat above-average intelligence, and Mrs. Middleton took umbrage.  She sneeringly asked me, "You think you're so smart!  How would you like it if everyone was as smart as you?"

I answered, quite innocently, "I would love it.  Then I'd have people to talk to."

Perhaps this is why Poul Anderson's 1954 novel, Brain Wave, which explores the aftermath of an event that causes every living thing with a brain to become about four times smarter, resonates so strongly with me. 

I recently saw a reprint of this masterpiece at the local bookseller, so now is a good time to take a second look.

Brain Wave opens with the change already in progress.  It occurs quickly and universally.  Within a week, normal folks have IQs in the 300s, and the world begins to fall apart.  After all, who wants to do the menial jobs that society requires to keep functioning?  In the meantime, every animal with an intelligence above that possessed by, say, a goat, develops full sapience.  Many remain docile creatures; others become a menace.

There are really two parallel stories.  One involves a physicist who is captivated by his new talents and applies them to building an interstellar spacecraft (once automation allows humanity to apply itself solely to intellectual pursuits).  His is not an entirely happy story; his wife finds her new brilliance difficult to handle, and their marriage suffers for it.

The other thread, and perhaps the better one, involves a mentally handicapped man who develops a (by pre-change standards) a supergenius IQ.  He forms a sort of commune with a pair of chimpanzees, an elephant, and a dog.  Perhaps the most affecting scene in the book comes when the man must slaughter a sheep, now nearly human in intelligence, to survive the winter. 

The latter plot is more approachable as it features characters whose thought processes are not too unlike our own.  On the other hand, Anderson manages to portray super-intelligence in a plausible and engaging manner.  The newly brilliant communicate in an almost telepathic shorthand.  After the initial anarchy, world peace is achieved since humans are now better able to understand each other.  Wishful thinking?  Maybe, but I happen to like my stories upbeat, and I can certainly subscribe to the idea that the world could do with a bit more smarts to go around.

I understand that the book started out as a magazine serial.  This makese sense–there is a change in tone about halfway through, right around the time a team of astronauts head into space.  The highlight of this section is their first starship voyage, wherein the cause and galactic ramifications of the change are discovered. 

I shan't spoil the rest.  Go ye and purchase a copy.  After reading it, you will understand why I stuck with Anderson for so long even though most of what he wrote in the mid-'50s was comparatively lousy.

And then send me a letter or two–so I have people to talk to!

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