Category Archives: Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 31, 1966] Shapes of Things (April 1966 Analog)

March 31, 2021 Gideon Marcus 7 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Change

Out in the world of music, there's a change brewing. One can hear it in the experimentation of the Beatles' Rubber Soul album or the otherworldly tinge of The Yardbirds' latest hit, Shapes of Things. I've been long planning to write an article on the musical scene, and I'd best get it done quickly before the landscape changes entirely!

My friend and associate, Cora Buhlert, has noted that although the Stones and Beatles are popular in Germany, the number one hit right now is the syrupy Schlager tune by Roy Black, "Ganz in Weiß" (All in white). In other words, even in times of great flux, conservative forces remain steadfast, like stubborn boulders in a stream.

Oh look — it's time to review the latest issue of Analog.

Stagnation

by Kelly Freas

Moon Prospector, by William B. Ellern

It would be hard to find a more emblematic story of the reactionary SF outlet that is Analog than this, the lead story in the April issue. Set early in E.E. Smith's Lensman series, it apparently got the full blessing of "Doc" Smith just a few days before he died! That's pretty remarkable.

The story, however, isn't. A lunar prospector in is semi-sentient "creeper" gets a distress call. Turns out an old buddy has been buried in the aftereffects of a meteor shower, and ol' Pete has to dig him out. But what was the fellow doing out in that quadrant of the Moon to begin with, and does it have anything to do with a centuries-old missile base abandoned around there?

by Kelly Freas

There's no water on the Moon, so I suppose it's appropriate that the story, itself, is dry as a bone. Perhaps it would have been more exciting if I'd had some stake in the universe. Maybe I'd have thrilled at the mention of the Solar Patrol being evolved into a Galactic Patrol. The fact is, I didn't care for Doc Smith's stories much when I was a kid, so they evoke no nostalgia for me now.

Two stars.

Rat Race, by Raymond F. Jones

by Kelly Freas

A century and a half in the future, when a completely computer-planned economy has resulted in plenty for all of humanity, a fellow decides to recreate the hobby of model train running (though not in the destructive manner of the Addams family, more's the pity).

This hobby runs the fellow afoul of the Computer, for when he tries to make his own trains, he is accused of attempting his own production, which will upset the finely balanced economy and lead to scarcity. Our protagonist must find a way to satisfy the human urge to create while not upsetting the economic apple cart. The story ends with the suggestion that do-it-yourselfism will spread and eventually topple the current order.

It's a pleasant-enough story, and I suppose the "stick-it-to-communism" sentiment appealed to editor Campbell. On the other hand, while I appreciate that some folks really like to build things even when they could just be bought (and I have to think that hobbyist building would not break a planned economy), the notion that we've become too centralized and folks should all be able to be self-sufficient, making a living from the land, is unworkable.

The fact is, we've long since populated the Earth beyond its ability to sustain a society of independent farmers. The great island cities, the vast modern nations, they only support their teeming millions through coordinated and interconnected systems. The writer in the air-conditioned apartment, who bangs out a paean to independent living before catching a television show and then popping off to the deli for dinner, is a dreamer, not a visionary.

Three stars.

The Easy Way Out, by Lee Correy

by John Schoenherr

Aliens conduct a survey of planet Earth, evaluating its species for aggressive tendencies. After coming across a grizzly bear and a wolverine, and then the human family that has adopted the latter, they decide Earth is more trouble than it's worth.

Typical Campbellian Earth-firsterism. Two stars.

Drifting Continents, by Robert S. Dietz

by John Holden

If it's a crackpot theory that flies in the face of the scientific establishment, chances are you'll read about it in Analog. But sometimes a theory is crackpot, flies in the face of the scientific establishment, and is probably right. As someone born in earthquake country, I've probably heard more about "continental drift" than many. It's the idea that the continents very slowly move around the globe. It's why the coasts of South America and Africa seem like edges of the same torn newspaper. It explains why there are similar fossils at similar depths across continents that are nowhere near each other…today.

It's a theory I found little reference to in my science books of the 50s, including Rachel Carson's seminal The Sea Around Us. But damned if Dietz doesn't make some very compelling arguments. I would not be surprised if continental drift, as has happened recently with the Big Bang Theory and global warming, did not become thoroughly accepted this decade.

Five stars.

Who Needs Insurance?, by Robin S. Scott

by Kelly Freas

Pete "Lucky Pierre" Albers has always been blessed with good fortune. Twenty years a pilot, he has always managed to avoid even the slightest injury, despite 8500 hours of flying time. He first suspected that his lucky streak was not completely due to chance after a harrowing mission over Ploesti left his B-24 with just one working engine. That tortured device not only held together all the way back to Libya, but it spun with the 800 horsepower needed to keep the plane in the air. After the crash landing, Albers found a little gray box attached to the driveshaft.

Twenty years later, over Vietnam, Colonel Albers was in a bullet-riddled Huey whose engine somehow held together long enough to get him and his charges back to base. Sure enough, a little box was installed on the engine.

Clearly someone, or something, has taken an interest in Albers' survival. It's up to Albers and his closest friends to discover the secret.

I really enjoyed this story, told in narrative fashion. It's a fun mystery, the details are evocative, and I like when a piece includes a competent woman scientist (in this case, Marty the programmer, with her pet 2706).

Four stars.

A Sun Invisible, by Poul Anderson

by Domenic Iaia

With this latest installation in the adventures of David Falkayn, the momentum gained by the magazine comes to a shuddering halt. Anderson's writing is of widely varying quality, and the adventures of this troubleshooting young protogé of Nicholas van Rijn are among the worst.

The plot takes forever to develop, but it's something about a planet of Germanics looking to take on the Polesotechnic League by working with the belligerent Kroaka. The trick is that Falkayn has to figure out where the would-be enemies make their home. By getting the female leader of Neuheim drunk and talkative, Falkayn learns enough astronomical clues to deduce the star around which the insurgents' planet revolves. Falkayn stops the threat and gets the girl.

I do like the astronomy Anderson weaves into these stories and I also appreciated the seamless way he introduced a new pronoun for an alien race with three sexes. Other than that, it's a deadly dull story, and smug to boot. Falkayn is like a boring, Sexist Retief.

Two stars.

Computation

After all that, the conservative reef that is Analog finishes near the bottom of the pack, though that is as much due to the relative excellence of the other mags that came out this month. Campbell's mag clocks in at a reasonable 3 stars, beating out the truly bad, all-reprint Amazing (2.3).

Above Analog, starting at the top, are Impulse (3.5), Galaxy (3.4), IF (3.3), New Worlds (3.1), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1).

It was something of a banner month for SF mags, actually. Enough worthy stuff was printed to fill two full-size mags (and if you take out Amazing, that means a full third of everything printed was four stars and up). Also, women produced 11.5% of the new fiction published this month, the highest proportion I've seen in a long time. We'll see if this trend holds out.

That's it for March! April is a whole new ballgame, starting with the next issue of IF. I'm very keen to see how that magazine does now that the excellent Heinlein serial has ended (I've high hopes for the Laumer/Brown novel.)

Until then, all we can to is keep trying to discern the pattern of Shapes of Things to Come…

Don't miss the next exciting Adventure-themed episode of The Journey Show, taking you to the highest peaks, the deepest wildernesses, the coldest extremes, the vacuum of space, and the depths of the sea. April 3 at 1PM — book your (free) ticket for adventure now!)

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 28, 1966] Typhoid Doctor (Doctor Who: The Ark)

March 28, 2021 Jessica Holmes 1 Comment

By Jessica Holmes

Spring has sprung, and rather than going outside to look at the flowers, I’ve been on my settee watching science fiction serials. All is as it should be. So, what do we have this month? Let’s take a look at The Ark, written by Paul Erickson and Lesley Scott. Going by my records, we've never had a woman writer credited on Doctor Who before. Hopefully Lesley Scott will be the first of many!

I will admit it's clever to get the actors to hold their 'eyes' in their mouths.

THE STEEL SKY

We open in a lively forest, various critters scampering about. There’s a lizard, a toucan, a weird cyclops-thing in a bad wig… the usual rainforest menagerie, basically.

There’s even a Dodo.

The new addition to the crew of the good ship TARDIS is the first out the door, taking her sudden change of surroundings entirely in stride. After all, they’re only a little way outside London.

London, well known for its population of Indian elephants. Dodo presumes they’re in a zoo enclosure. That would make sense if not for the ugly chap with the table tennis ball in his mouth.

I think they might have just gone through the entire production budget for the series. It's not often we see real live creatures on Doctor Who, much less actual elephants. Perhaps they went to the zoo and snuck a camera in the picnic hamper?

The Doctor notices that this jungle seems to be missing something vital: the sky. Add that to the trembling ground and the unusual buildings in the distance, and the full picture becomes clear. They’re not at the zoo. They’re not even on Earth. They’re on a spaceship!

I’d say that’s nothing to sneeze at, but Dodo can’t seem to stop. The Doctor immediately gets to do some surrogate grandfathering and scolds her for not using a handkerchief, then proceeds to ask just what in the world she’s wearing.

I think the doublet and mismatched stockings ensemble looks quite good on her, in an odd way. It’s like a medieval spin on the Mod look. Very Twiggy.

Their presence hasn’t gone unnoticed though, and one of the creatures (‘Monoids’ being the correct nomenclature) informs their human bosses of the intruders. Baffled, the humans decide to bring the travellers in for questioning.

Back in the forest, the Doctor has moved on from critiquing Dodo’s fashion sense to nagging her about her improper English. Well I’m sorry Doc, but we can’t all talk in perfect RP. Snob.

The Monoids round up the wayward group, and bring them to the humans. The Doctor doesn’t criticize their fashion sense, though he should. They look like they’re wearing party streamers. Also, they aren't around for long so I didn't bother writing down their names. It's really not important.

I take an immediate dislike to the leader of the humans, who explains that they’re in a spaceship carrying the Earth’s population to a new world, as the old Earth is soon to be engulfed by the dying Sun. As for the Monoids, they came as refugees to Earth from a similar situation, offering their service in exchange for their survival. The humans took them up on the offer, which strikes me as exploitative, and the leader's smarmy attitude makes me wonder if this service is at all voluntary.

It's hard to capture smarminess in a still image, but I think this epitomises it.

Unfortunately for both the humans and the Monoids, the Doctor and company have brought more than just well-wishes. You see, other than having to flee the Earth, life for the future humans is pretty good, annoyances like the common cold having long since gone the way of the dodo…

And now the Dodo's back.

She keeps sneezing away as the leader of the humans has a nice chat with the Doctor. This is a generation ship, its journey expected to last seven hundred years. Why so long? They’re picky.

The new planet, Refusis II (catchy) is the only one they can find which has a climate just like Earth’s. I hope it’s mostly like the Mediterranean. I wouldn’t fancy living on the Planet Of The English Drizzle.

They’ve loaded the whole of Earth’s population onto this ship, down to the last ant. What with all the peoples of the world on this ship, it’s funny that every single human they’ve encountered is white (and going by accent and language, English). Funny, that.

It’s a touch more complicated than that, though. Obviously it’s impractical to have billions of people running about a spaceship, so most of the population have been shrunken to microscopic size and stored in trays, while a small group remains full sized, guiding the ship to its destination. Ah, so the reason that the ship seems to have nobody but white Brits (and aliens) onboard is that they’re in charge and everyone else is… luggage.

I see.

It’s not all fun and games and dubious implications, however! The Guardians have even found time for a bit of art. They’re working on a colossal statue of homo sapiens, begun on Earth and expected to be completed around the end of the voyage. The projected design is really…something.

Something like a giant half-naked Beatle holding a grapefruit, that is.

The idea’s nice at least.

All’s not well aboard the Ark, alas. It seems a strange disease is spreading among the crew of the ship, all the way to the very top of the chain of command. When a Monoid dies and the commander of the ship is taken ill, the Doctor and company are arrested.

Dodo really should have brought her hankie.

THE PLAGUE

Fearing that they’re all doomed, the Guardians imprison the Doctor and his companions. The Doctor reassures an upset Dodo that if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s his, as she had no way of knowing about the danger. Steven wonders aloud if this is the first time this has happened, spreading a disease to a vulnerable population. Could it be that the Doctor is a time-travelling Typhoid Mary?

The Doctor’s verdict is to try and not think about that too much. See, this is why you should always get your jabs before travelling, and quarantine where necessary. Time travel responsibly, chums.

The virus rages through the ship, afflicting the Monoids worst of all. The Guardians’ microbiologists are at a loss, as all data on the common cold was lost in a war long ago.

At death’s door, the commander tells his daughter to make sure the voyage goes ahead. Even on the brink of death he seems smarmy. Perhaps he’s just an over-actor.

Following the funeral of the first Monoid to die of the disease, the Guardians commence with the trial, calling Steven to give evidence.

They accuse him of coming to spread the disease on purpose, suspecting the travellers of being natives of Refusis II, come to sabotage their mission.

Oh, so Refusis II is inhabited, is it? What exactly is the plan when the Guardians arrive? Are they going to ask nicely for a place to stay, or will we just have colonialism in space?

Steven starts to look rather sweaty under the interrogation, but methinks that’s nothing to do with the grilling they’re giving him.

The Guardians almost come around to believing Steven when he says it was an accident, but then disaster strikes. A Guardian has died of the fever. With one of their own dead, the Guardians readily find Steven and his friends guilty, not even allowing his advocate, the commander’s daughter, a word in edgeways. Just once it’d be nice if the Doctor and company ended up somewhere with a decent judicial system.

The Guardians rule that the group shall be ejected from the ship, and Steven picks the perfect moment to faint. It would seem that he too has come down with the fever.

The Doctor begs to be allowed to try and save Steven and all the other afflicted, and the Guardians initially refuse his offer, until the commander, who has been watching all this unfold from his sickbed, orders them to let the Doctor go and give him everything he needs.

To be on the safe side, they make the Doctor use Steven as his guinea pig. Well, better him than hurting a real guinea pig, I say.

The Doctor comes up with a plan to recreate the old vaccine (as unlikely as a vaccine for the common cold sounds), for which he’ll need some ‘animal membranes’. The Monoids collect what he needs, and help the Doctor as he perfects the formula. As he mildly condescendingly puts it, they’re more knowledgeable than most people realise.

I’m not sure being smart makes their indentured servitude (or worse) any less wrong.

The Doctor tests his cure out on Steven, and rather than waiting to see if it cures or kills him, he immediately goes and starts treating other patients. He’s just asking for a malpractice lawsuit.

It takes an hour, but eventually the medicine kicks in and Steven, the commander and everyone else who got sick are on the mend.

With the commander back on his feet, the journey can continue, and the Doctor prepares to depart. It looks like everything is going to be okay.

Or is it?

The TARDIS dematerialises, only to rematerialise in what appears to be the same spot. However, upon leaving the ship to investigate, the group find the ship deserted. One look at the now-completed statue tells them how long they’ve been gone: seven hundred years.

It seems they’ve missed a lot in the interim.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that massive statue wasn’t meant to have a Monoid’s head.

THE RETURN

After some searching, the group finally find what’s become of the passengers of the Ark. The Monoids are now on top, the humans having become their slaves.

Oh, and the Monoids can talk now. That’s handy, though I had rather enjoyed an alien race who communicated through signing.

They soon run into a Monoid, who takes them to the leader of the Monoids, One. Finally, some names I can actually remember.

From One, they learn that although they did cure the initial outbreak of the fever, a mutated form developed, which ended up weakening the Guardians enough for the Monoids to overthrow and subjugate them.

Rumour soon spreads among the enslaved Guardians that there are time travellers onboard, but not everyone believes it. However, it’s soon proven true when the Monoids bring the time travellers to the, uh, ‘security kitchen’.

Well, could be worse. They could have been dumped in the lavatory jail.

With their guests having been shown to their accommodations, the Monoids discuss their plans for when they land on Refusis II. One is planning to destroy the Guardians when they land. Not really sure why. Probably spite.

In the kitchen, Dodo asks why the humans haven’t fought back. Wow, gosh, I bet they never thought of that (!)

One’s second in command, the creatively-named Two enters the kitchen, and the Guardians try to snatch his heat gun away. However, Three comes in moments later and shoots one of the Guardians, foiling the attempt. Two orders the Doctor and Dodo to come with him. They’ll be part of the landing party, and Steven will remain here, to ensure that the others behave themselves.

They head down in a pod with Two and another Guardian, and find a world both verdant and completely empty…or so it would appear.

Unseen to both the audience and the characters, something enters the ship, sits down, and fiddles with the controls before leaving again. The only sign that they’re there is a slight depression in the cushion of the seat, and some moving levers.

On reflection, it might have been a mistake to try and show you something invisible.

Unable to find any signs of habitation, the Doctor declares that the colonisation can go ahead. Two, subtle as a brick, laughs and says it might not take as long as the Doctor expects.

He might as well have thrown back his head and done a dramatic cackle.

Moving a little further afield, the Doctor spots a castle in the distance, and wonders why none of the inhabitants have shown up. The group investigate the castle, finding it to be in excellent condition, but deserted. Two is convinced the Refusians are hiding, and like the monster he is he knocks over a vase of flowers. What did the flowers ever do to him?!

The Doctor tells him to behave himself, and an unseen voice concurs, before an invisible force sets the flowers back in their proper places.

Back on the ship, One and Three discuss their plans to deal with the humans, and find the most roundabout way possible of saying they’re going to blow up the ship with an atom bomb. And guess where it is? It’s in the statue.

They go on loudly discussing it, not realising that one of their human servants is watching everything on the ship’s surveillance cameras. He rushes to the kitchens to report what he saw, though the rest of his species aren’t best pleased to see him. It would seem he’s a collaborator. However, Steven advises that they should hear him out, and he tells them all about the bomb, but alas he couldn’t see from his viewpoint where it was hidden. They’ll have to find the bomb themselves.

Down on the planet, the Doctor’s having a nice chat with his new invisible friend. The people of Refusis II have known about the coming of the Ark for a while, and built facilities for the humans to use. A solar flare rendered the inhabitants of Refusis II invisible and incorporeal, and they’re lonely, unable to interact with one another. Essentially, it’s a planet of ghosts.

That seems a bit convenient. It’s basically just sidestepping any discussion of the ethics of settler colonialism, which would be very interesting to cover in a science fiction setting.

Two goes to report back to the Ark, and realising the Monoids’ plans for humanity, his human servant attacks him, trying to stop him from warning the others about the native inhabitants. However, he loses the fight, dying what appears to be an agonising death.

Two starts to make his report using the pod’s communications equipment, and then something goes a little bit wrong.

The pod blows up.

THE BOMB

Rather than sending another scouting party to find out what happened to Two, One decides to go ahead with the landing. However, some of the other Monoids have reservations about this whole plan for colonisation.

The Doctor and Dodo meet back up with their invisible friend. The Refusians blew up the pod because they’re a peaceful bunch. Mostly. They don’t much fancy handing their planet over to the Monoids, given that they made such a bad first impression.

The Refusians are still open to the humans living on their planet, as long as the humans manage to regain control of the Ark.

They’ll need to get out of the kitchen first. Luckily, they have a plan for that. When the Monoid collaborator returns one of the Monoids’ eating trays to the kitchen, one of the Guardians sneaks out the door behind him. Once he’s gone, the Guardian on the outside opens the door for the rest of the group.

Well, that was simple. I’m surprised they didn’t try that sooner. You’d think there’d be guards.

The Monoids prepare to head off, setting their bomb to detonate in twelve hours– more than enough time for some escaped humans to find it. I wonder why they left such a long timer. Did they leave themselves a little extra time in case they get down to the planet and realise they forgot to bring their toothbrushes?

The Monoids find the remains of Two’s pod on Refusis II, and the Doctor and Dodo observe from a distance as Four discusses his plans to confront One and return to the Ark. After they go, the Doctor and Dodo steal aboard the pod and use its communication equipment to talk to Steven. The Doctor promises to send the landing pods back to the ship so that the humans can escape, and he’ll also find out where the bomb is hidden. How? Well, his invisible friends can help with the former, and for the latter, the Doctor does what he does best: he has a little chat.

One starts to interrogate the Doctor, but Four throws a spanner in the works as he picks his moment to confront One. Four fears that One has led them to certain doom, and wants to return to the ship. However, One taunts him that he’ll have a hard time getting the bomb out of the statue, so it’s not as if he has any choice. Undeterred, Four heads off with a few of his own allies, and One takes his forces to pursue the errant subordinate, leaving the Doctor and Dodo behind.

One of the pods makes it back to the Ark, and Steven comes up with a plan. They can’t all fit in the pod, so half the Guardians will go down to Refusis II to help the Doctor, and the others will look for the bomb. Practically daring fate to hand him an ironic death, the collaborator says he’s not going to risk his life searching the ship, so the others agree he can go down to Refusis II.

Down on the planet, One and his allies confront the defectors, engaging in a firefight that leaves a number of them dead. The Guardian pod lands in the middle of the skirmish, and the collaborator is the first one out.

…And the first one gunned down.

The Monoids continue to fight, and the other Guardians sneak out of the ship and have the good sense not to go running up to the nearest Monoid, so they manage to find the Doctor and Dodo and distract their guard.

Four is the last Monoid standing by the time they make it back to the pod. He doesn’t even bother to stop them. He looks exhausted, which is quite impressive acting given that he’s mostly made of rubber. Casting his weapon aside, he allows them to pass.

The group race back to the Ark, the Doctor sending Steven a message on the way there. But how are they going to get the bomb out of the statue?

Well, apparently the Refusians are immensely strong space ghosts. Our invisible friend picks the statue up as if if were made of polystyrene, and launches it out of the ship, there to safely detonate.

So, all’s well that ends well. The Refusians insist that the humans and Monoids must live together in peace, and the Doctor beats us over the head with the aesop of the story: don’t make a whole group of people second-class citizens, or they might rise up and return the favour.

It’d be a bit stronger if the narrative treated the Monoids as equal to the humans, but I don’t think it does. We don’t really get any Monoids to sympathise with. They don’t even have real names, only numbers. We don’t really get an explanation from the Monoids themselves about what made them rise up (other than ‘because they could’). What’s more, their leadership is shown to be worse than the human leadership, and the humans end up back on top in the end anyway. The Doctor’s little speech at the end gives the illusion of balance to a script which, when you step back and look at the whole thing, is quite solidly on the Guardians’ side.

And the speech does feel a little patronising too, like the Monoids were a bunch of children the Guardians were meant to be looking after.

You can tell it's an important speech because he's doing the thing with his lapels again.

Little speech given and lessons learned all around, the Doctor and company depart, leaving the Guardians to start building their new world, and from the way they’re talking about the Doctor, they might be about to start a cult.

Aboard the TARDIS, Dodo changes into some more normal apparel, and then something quite odd happens.

The Doctor fades away with a sneeze, before vanishing entirely. He’s still around– at least, his voice is. But the man himself is nowhere to be seen! It would seem that the time travellers are in mortal peril.

…Again.

Final Thoughts

I'm not sure there's much else to say on The Ark that I haven't already covered (she said, then continued for another few hundred words). The production value is quite impressive, with large sets and the procurement of live animals, but the costuming doesn't match up.

The politics of the story would appear to have a colonialist bent, what with the humans heading for an inhabited world and just assuming they can move straight in. Then there's the matter of the human-Monoid relationship, which I already mentioned, but it ties back into the colonialist sentiments, the sense of paternalism even promoted by the Doctor himself. With the sun setting on the British Empire, perhaps we ought to turn a more critical eye to these imperialist attitudes and narratives.

I don't feel qualified to speak further on the matter, so I'll leave it to you to discuss.

We've not seen enough of Dodo for me to make any real judgements on her. She doesn't have much to do in the story, besides setting the whole chain of events in motion. Still, that's not even by any deliberate action of hers. It's a simple matter of biology. That's not what I'd call an active contribution to the plot. I also didn't much like how critical the Doctor was of her. I know he's pretty much desperate for another Replacement Susan, but they've only just met and he's already scolding her on her dress and diction. Steven seemed to warm up to her a bit by the end of the serial, but he wasn't exactly welcoming at first.

A thought did occur to me as I was typing up this conclusion. I was pondering how the argument between Steven and the Doctor seems to have been dropped. I realised that it hasn't. This serial is a direct response to the last. Steven pointed out the Doctor's lack of regard for the people left behind at the end of their adventures, and this serial reinforces his point. It's effectively two stories in one. There's the story of the plague, and then the consequences that the Doctor isn't normally around to see.

Other than that, the story is just… decent? The Doctor would scold me for saying so, but that's the most apt word for it. It's not boring, but it's not really anything extraordinary. Well, they can't all be winners.

3 out of 5 stars

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 26, 1966] Steam Tractors and Ballardian Mind Games Impulse and New Worlds, April 1966

March 26, 2021 Mark Yon 13 Comments

by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

Well, after last month’s rather enthusiastic response from me – most unusual, honestly! – with the emergence of Impulse, “The NEW Science Fantasy”, I was very interested to see if it could keep up the standard of last month’s issue.

Having graced us with a cover from Mrs Blish last month, this month’s Impulse cover is back to the usual of late by using a Keith Roberts cover to illustrate his latest story in this magazine. Well, as the recently-promoted Mr Roberts is now the Associate Editor, why not? Presumably there’s a discount for using all these elements…

Kyril, the Editor, is in pensive mood this month. He professes that after two years he is still not sure what to write in the Editorial, but then goes on to give brief descriptions of this month’s stories before mentioning that he has concentrated on four longer stories this time, which has led to less “typically Bonfiglioni space-fillers”.

To this month’s actual stories.

Pavane: The Lady Anne, by Keith Roberts

I really liked Keith’s alternate history story last month, despite the odd ending. It has been hinted that this was the first of a series, and here is the second, now elevated to prime position in the magazine. As I said last time, and is made explicit this month, the premise is that Elizabeth I was assassinated in 1588. As a result, Protestantism has not taken hold in England and Roman Catholicism still dominates the world. With the Roman Catholic view of science being one of suspicion, and innovation suppressed, inventions have not as developed as they have been here today.

This time the story focusses on a life on the road, being centred around the Lady Anne, a steam tractor that moves goods from settlement to settlement along the roads of the predominantly rural Britain. It’s not an easy life – the cover suggests one of the challenges! – but there’s a real feeling of a way of life that is not dissimilar to that of the ancient mariner or the locomotive driver of Edwardian England. Keith’s vivid imagination describes what life could be like in this alternate history in a way that made me feel like I was there. Although there’s a rather clumsy attempt to tell of a doomed and unrequited relationship between Jesse the tractor driver and a woman in the town of Swanage which sits uneasily, this is a good start. 4 out of 5.

A Last Feint , by John Rackham

Another regular. John was last seen in the January issue of Science Fantasy with his Weird Tales-type story The God-Birds of Glentallach. This time the story is a much lighter one, about an inventor who attempts to invent a cheap vest and foil for fencing electronically but inadvertently creates a weapon that can slice things in half. This month’s silly story in Impulse, and the weakest. 3 out of 5.

Break the Door of Hell, by John Brunner

Having mentioned in New Worlds last month how much more we’re seeing of John Brunner of late, here’s a novella from the man. And whilst last month’s serial in New Worlds was OK (more about that later), this one is terrific.

Break the Doors of Hell is a fantasy story about a nomadic traveller, who has many names, who seems to be journeying from place to place and at different times to bring Order in an eternal battle between Law and the forces of Chaos. It is a great idea. I could see Mike Moorcock liking it, for it has that same mythical tone to it that the Elric stories have.

To bring Order, the Traveller travels across the All, giving people what they ask for, although the first part of the story shows that the result is often not what the requester wishes for.

Most of Break Down the Doors of Hell is about the Traveller visiting the once proud and pretty city of Ys, which now seems to be a place of decay where the inhabitants live a life of amoral decadence and decline. Led by Lord Vengis, they blame this decline on the city’s founders and wish to contact them, though long dead, to reprimand them. This does not go well.

Break the Doors of Hell is extravagant in its portrayals of decline and excess, giving vivid descriptions of the setting and the characters therein. There are cannibal babies, hints at bestiality and shriekingly awful lords and ladies in positions of power, none of which are particularly nice, but which also means that their come-uppance at the end is perhaps more satisfying.

Imaginative and definitely odd, this is quite different from the Brunner work I usually read, and different again from the other Brunner I've read this month. 4 out of 5.

Homecalling (Part 1 of 2) by Judith Merril

A few months ago I mentioned that both Moorcock and Bonfiglioli had said that as a result of talks at the London Worldcon we could expect fiction from Ms Merril in both Science Fantasy and New Worlds soon. And here it is. Kyril in his Editorial claimed that it is perhaps the best story in the issue.

Unfortunately, my own excitement was tempered by the fact that this is not “new” fiction but a reprint from Science Fiction Stories back in November 1956. Even more annoyingly, although the back cover claims that it is a complete short novel, it is actually only the first part of the story, to be continued next month. It is perhaps understandable, though. Ms Merril currently spends most of her time currently dissecting books in her reviews in The Magazine of Fantasy and SF. and The Year’s Best SF anthologies and presumably has little time to write new fiction.

We begin with what appears to be a family – mother Sarah, father John, daughter Deborah (also known as Dee) and baby Petey. However, their spaceship crashes on a strange planet and Dee is left with Petey to survive. After some exploring, Dee finds the home of the insect-like Lady Daydanda, who lives in a hive-like colony. After First Contact, Dee and Petey are persuaded by telepathy to be rescued by Daydanda’s hive, who take them back to their home. Daydanda as a Mother and a Lady of a Household is fascinated by them, especially as they seem to have travelled beyond the skies. The end of this first part leads to Dee and Daydanda meeting and, despite Dee’s initial and understandable reluctance, communicating with each other.

The character of Dee is lovely – a nine-year old who is brave, strong and resourceful in a way that I usually only see Heinlein achieving. She is no child prodigy, though, and Merril does well to make her seem like a nine-year old and not a child wunderkind. However, the triumph of this story is that through Daydanda, Merril manages to create aliens whose thoughts and concepts are logical and yet definitely alien. Daydanda’s initial mistaken ideas about Dee and Petey are understandable given the nature of her race, but much of the latter part of the story shows her resourcefulness, bravery and intelligence as she tries to both look after the orphaned children and understand them.

The story’s definitely worth reading, but like the reprint of Arthur C Clarke’s Sunjammer story in New Worlds in March 1965, it takes up space that could perhaps be better filled with new material. Therefore, although it is, as Kyril suggests, one of the best stories in the issue, I have removed one mark from my original score to make it 3 out of 5.

Summing up Impulse

The stellar group of authors in last month’s issue have been superceded by a smaller group of more varied and less well-known writers.

This could be seen as a return to normal, of going back to basics, and as a result a bit of a let-down. It doesn't help that the Merril is half of a reprint.

However, despite there only being four stories in this issue, I am impressed by the quality of what’s on offer. At least three out of the four are great, whilst the Rackham is a little bit of a placeholder, I’m afraid. Nevertheless, this is a good issue.

Onto this month’s New Worlds

The Second Issue At Hand

Editor Mike Moorcock does not have Kyril’s crisis of confidence this month. He spends his time talking about the difference between ‘truth’ and ‘untruth’, which for most sf writers is difficult, involves total intellectual and emotional detachment and discipline. The reason for this musing is to allow Moorcock to suggest (again) that the best of the ‘new SF’ does this, unlike the ‘old’, and then use that point to say how good JG Ballard’s story in this issue is. That cover is awful, though.

To the stories!

Illustration by Unknown

The Assassination Weapon, by J G Ballard
After his book reviewing in New Worlds and his story in Impulse last month, we have a return to fiction by Ballard in New Worlds.

There has been an interesting trend in the New Wave fiction in recent months. Moorcock’s done it as James Colvin, referencing Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler in a story in the September 1965 issue, and Richard Gordon brought the Marquis de Sade back to a trial in the November 1965 issue. Here JG manages to use JF Kennedy, Harvey Oswald and Malcolm X in a much darker story, connecting them together in his usual cut-up disparate fashion.

My understanding of the story may be unclear. I get the vague impression that this one may even be beyond me, but Moorcock in this month’s Editorial summarises the story by saying that Ballard ”questions the validity of various popular images and modern myths which remain as solid and alive as when they were first given concrete form in the shape of the three assassinated men who continue to represent so much the atmosphere of their times. Ballard does not ask who killed them, but what killed them – and what combination of ideas and events created and then destroyed them?”

To do this Ballard writes a number of short paragraphs from different perspectives, all evoking people we ‘know’ and sometimes images Ballard has used before – the terminal beach, decaying cars, cityscapes – in a dazzlingly assembled group of seemingly disconnected elements which together form a patchwork of a story.

Personally, I am torn between admiration of such a bold idea and a feeling that the story is just taking American culture and trying to shock. The fact that Moorcock has to explain to me what the story is about, rather than me being able to work it out for myself, is a minus.

Despite this, Ballard has imagined a deliberately controversial story here that will confuse many (like me) yet at the same time make the reader think. Therefore typical Ballard, on form. 4 out of 5.

Skirmish, by John Baxter

The return of Australian John Baxter, last seen in these pages back in February 1965 with More Than A Man. This is the story of a hopelessly damaged spaceship, the Cockade, and the remaining crew’s attempts to finish their mission and survive against the alien Kriks. Well written but predictable Space Opera. It’s a bit of a relief after the intense Ballard, frankly. 3 out of 5.

No Guarantee, by Gordon Walters

We’ve met Gordon before with his story Death of an Earthman in New Worlds in April 1965. You may know him as George Locke. No Guarantee is a comical attempt to publish a monograph about the Moon landing but along the way discusses Literature and the members of the “Leicester Literary Longhairs”. The overall point of the story to me seems to be “Don’t go to the Moon!” It is written almost as a stream of consciousness, part comedy, part horror story, but the combination seems forced and it doesn’t really work for me. 3 out of 5.

Illustration by James Cawthorn

House of Dust, by Norman Brown

Yet another new name. Another post-apocalyptic tribe story about a group’s struggles to eventually return to the deserted city of their past. Not particularly original. 3 out of 5.

Illustration by Douthwaite

The Ruins, by James Colvin

James’s first story since the serial The Wrecks of Time, which started really well but disappointed me in the end. Here Maldoon is wandering in a set of ruins. He seems to encounter a city with cars, people and cafes, and then stranger things but in reality all of this seems to be hallucinations experienced whilst in the ruins as his mind breaks down. More drug related allegory that didn’t really mean a lot to me. Again, Colvin's story isn’t really bad but fails to excite. 3 out of 5.

Cog, by Kenneth Harker

A new writer to me. The title suggests something that is part of bigger machinery, but actually the word Cog is short for “cognito-handler”. Or at least I think so. Through this story there are a number of alternatives suggested – Chaser of Gloaming, Chance Orbit Gambler, Clerk Ordinary Grade, even Castor Oil Gargler. It is a mildly amusing joke that overstays its welcome and attempts to cover up the fact that this is an overworked satire. 3 out of 5.

Eyeball, by Sam Wolfe

Another new writer. A short but deliberately lyrical story about an Earthman from planet Alpha 762 who is the involuntary host of an invading Martian spaceship inside their body – actually, in one of his eyeballs – to gain intelligence before invasion.

There’s some wonderfully florid descriptive passages here. Try the first few lines as an example: ”Irritation surrounds the glowing softness, the jelly mass light sponge crisping in the raw sunlight attack. The red streaked itch and harsh grains of invisible sand dust. Ganglion strands sucking away protective juice,” which I suspect you will either love or, like me, feel that it is a little overworked. A story of style over substance, perhaps. 3 out of 5.

Illustration by James Cawthorn

Consuming Passion, by Michael Moorcock

A story about a man known as “Pyro Jack”, who can set off fires at will and does so across London for fame and triumphant recognition by the police and public – a sort of pyromaniac Jack the Ripper! He is arrested but escapes to a library, determined to make his last act memorable. Wonder what Ray Bradbury would make of this one? 3 out of 5.

The Evil That Men Do (Part 2)), by John Brunner

The second part of Brunner’s creepy story now. If you remember, Godfrey Rayner’s party-piece was that he is a hypnotist. When he puts reluctant Fey Cantrip into a trance she talks of a nightmare involving a white dragon. We found at the end that Rayner’s psychiatrist friend Dr. Laszlo has a patient with what sounds like the same dream.

This month Godfrey tries to get more about Fey’s background in order to help her. He talks to her few acquaintances and meets the patient Alan Rogers in Wickingham Prison. Through hypnosis Rogers reveals a sad and perverted background that seems to be centred on a pornographically explicit book, The Harder Dream by Duncan Marsh. To try and get to the bottom of the issue and help Fey, Godfrey travels to Fey’s original home in rural Market Barnabas, where we find that Fey has also had access to this book. The story ends in a fury of Weird Tales-ian psychosexual violence.

Last month I said that this is OK and read easily. This month the point of the story is revealed, as a sexual tale designed to shock. Whilst undeniably violent and sexually intense, It is still readable, but I much preferred the other Brunner on offer this month. 3 out of 5.

Articles and Book Reviews

First this month is an article from Bill Butler, he being the author of the poem From ONE in last month’s issue, which talks of William Burroughs and his work. As you may have noticed, since Moorcock’s uptake as Editor in New Worlds there has been a fairly regular indulgence in the deification of William Burroughs. We continue this here. Whilst I realise that there may be new readers to the magazine who may not have read this before, the long-term readers (of which I see myself as one), will recognize it.

Two points sprang to mind after reading this – one, the first part of the review does little more than summarize what J G Ballard said in issue 142, which, although relevant, rather bores those of us who have been here before, and second, it’s never a good idea to spend paragraphs explaining why Burroughs is deliberately obtuse and then berate fans of his work for not understanding his writing. I appreciate the enthusiasm of the article, but this feels like what you Americans call “a puff-piece” and so undoes the promotion that it seems to be trying to do.

George Collyn then continues this look at New Wave writers by examining the work of Kurt Vonnegut. Because I haven’t read this before, although it is not the first time Mr. Vonnegut has been mentioned lately in this magazine, I was more interested. Collyn points out that if Ballard is the British version of New Wave the Vonnegut is the American. Personally, I disagree (I think Zelazny, Ellison, and Samuel Delany fit the description, myself), but I understand the point he is trying to make. Like Ballard, Vonnegut plays with form and writes in a way that is not what most people may think of science fiction, even when there are elements within. Reading this article further I’m fairly sure Vonnegut doesn’t think he writes science fiction, either. The rest of the essay is expectedly rather gushing.

Assistant Editor Langdon Jones, under the intriguing title ‘Wireless World’ Strikes Again reviews Voices from the Sky by Arthur C Clarke. As one of the old guard of writers, and as this is a book of non-fiction essays, I was rather expecting these trendy reviewers to denigrate the book. I am pleased to read that they are surprisingly complimentary. “Only Clarke (with the possible exception of Asimov) could write about Space Flight and the Spirit of Man without descending into dreadful pseudo-poetry and bathos.” It sells the book well, which may be the point.

There are no Letters pages AGAIN this month, though we are promised letters on Science vs Religion next time.

Summing up New Worlds

In this 161st issue of 160 pages, there’s a lot to like, despite the dodgy cover. Moorcock has (deliberately, I think) gone for a wide range of stories, often from new writers. This was part of his mission statement a few months ago, and it is pleasing to see him keep to his word.

Unfortunately, whilst appreciating the chance to read new writers, many of the stories are clearly work from writers still learning their craft and frankly they are not always that good. The Colvin disappoints, the Moorcock is good, though a minor piece. The Ballard is the selling point this month, but one story does not make an issue. There’s a lot here that seems to be simply trying too hard, which is why I liked rather than loved this issue. It was a little ironic that I felt at the end that New Worlds had more “typically Bonfiglioni space-fillers” this month.

Summing up overall

Less of a difficult choice this month. Whilst both magazines still seem to be blazing a trail, and all the better for it, the relative inexperience of the work in New Worlds and the quality of the Keith Roberts and John Brunner in Impulse means that Impulse has my vote this month.

Next month, the return of Bob Shaw, a name we’ve not seen for a while, in New Worlds!

Until the next…

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Movies, TV

[March 24, 1966] Dark Comedy and Birthday Wishes (a Tony Randall double feature)

March 24, 2021 GalacticJourney 3 Comments

by Lorelei Marcus

Spring is here

The month of spring is upon us, and with it comes the withdrawal of the frigid cold, swaths of buds peeking from their branches, and the boisterous emergence of new life. It's a wonderful time of year, warming the earth until "California Dreaming" is no longer necessary, and promising renewal in general. Yet the most important part of March is not the spring equinox, or another green-centric holiday, or good weather, or flowers, or the fresh start of life.

The most important part of March is the fact that it contains my birthday.

And it just so happened that my special day fell right between two old movie reruns, each of them starring the love of my life, Tony Randall.

I couldn't have asked for a better gift.

Many Happy Buryings

Of course my obligation to consume every piece of media Randall has ever been in is what drove me to watch an obscure TV special of Arsenic and Old Lace . It took that initial incentive, because I have been wary of Arsenic and Old Lace since I'd previously had to watch it (the 1944 film with Cary Grant) in my drama class. Needless to say, the experience was both exasperating and unpleasant. Luckily, this version was neither of the above, and had me hooting with laughter throughout the program.

For those who are unfamiliar with the show, Arsenic and Old Lace is a dark comedy about two sweet old ladies who murder for fun, and their poor nephew, Mortimer Brewster, who discovers their nasty habit and tries to clean up the whole mess. Further conflict arises when Boris Karloff- I mean Jonathan Brewster, Mortimer's brother and a notably malicious murderer, returns home to hide out for a while. As you might imagine, insanity ensues.

The Brewster sisters

I was pleasantly surprised by just how funny this rendition of the classic chaotic plot was. I have to credit the sublimity of the production to three main parts: the acting, the script, and the pacing. I would round off my praise with compliments to the set design as well, but my TV sadly went on the fritz that evening, and I could hardly see what was happening through the snow. Apparently there are still problems the magic of color television cannot fix.

(Not) Boris Karloff and his associate, Dr. Einstein

Yet I still managed to enjoy the show, thanks to some excellent casting choices. Dorothy Stickney and Mildred Natwick play Aunt Abby and Martha Brewster perfectly, with just the right amount of sweetness and charm to build sympathy for these lovely old women, despite their homicidal tendencies. Their banter with each other and their nephews is hysterical, and the contrast of their outwardly harmless appearance with their dark secret is very fun.

Our hero

Boris Karloff is, of course, excellent in his dark, monstrous role. He plays a great foil to the aunts, defining the line between true evil and simply misunderstood. The ladies murder for the claimed benefit of their victims, and they take great delight in their charity work. Jonathan, instead, clearly murders out of spite and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The difference is key in establishing who the audience should root for; the homicidal aunties seem a touch less bad and un-relatable when compared with a literal scourge of the Earth.

Sibling rivalry

Though the rest of the cast is marvelous, I'd have to say Tony Randall gives the best performance as Mortimer Brewster, the straightman nephew. You may believe I have a slight bias in favor of Randall at this point, and that's probably true, but I think it's also fair to say that his execution of Mortimer ties the whole show together. Mortimer is a complex balance of a character, always in between being both capable and yet on the edge of a nervous breakdown. If he falls too far in either direction he's either unfunny, annoying, or both. This was the downfall of the first version of Arsenic and Old Lace that I'd watched. That Mortimer was too excitable to get anything done, and spent the entire show whining and floundering around insufferably. Randall was the complete opposite.

He struck the perfect equilibrium of distressed yet productive that made his character both likable and hilarious. The scene where he tries to call his boss to alert him that he can't come into work had me rolling with laughter. I may be severely biased, but here, Randall is deserving of the praise.

Tom Bosley has a humorous turn as Teddy Roosevelt.

The other two great aspects of the show go hand in hand. The dialogue is witty, fun, and delightfully self-aware. I found all the jokes about Jonathan looking like Boris Karloff particularly funny and ironic (given that they got Karloff to play Jonathan!) Alongside the script was the masterful direction, which ensured that the jokes never fell flat and the pacing never dragged. The presentation was very tight and complemented the other positive aspects perfectly. Overall, this version of Arsenic and Old Lace was a splendid time watching the wild antics of the nutty but charming Brewster family. There's not a single flaw that I can find, just a great time, therefore I give it five stars.

Down to New Orleans

The second film, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , aired a week later as the local Saturday night movie. It kept in keeping with the theme of dark yet funny classics. Based on the 1884 novel of the same name, the film follows a young Huckleberry Finn as he runs away from his abusive father and takes a raft down the Mississippi with his friend and runaway slave, Jim. Finn and Jim encounter a variety of obstacles on their journey, including a feuding family, slave hunters, and a couple of cunning swindlers who rope them into their con. Eventually, they get through it all thanks in part to Finn's ability to lie through his teeth, and the story ends bittersweetly as the traveling pair must seperate and pursue their own paths.

A pensive Huck contemplates a world without shoes

I definitely enjoyed the movie, though I think I would rather read the novel if I would ever consume the story of Huck Finn again. The pacing drags at the beginning, probably due to some poor direction choices and Eddie Hodges' (Huck Finn) stiff acting. Both improve as the show goes on, but the first hour could benefit from being about 20% shorter.

Jim convinces Huck to board his raft

This also may have been a case where Tony Randall's superb acting skills actually hurt the production. Randall plays "The King of France," the brains of the two grifters who force Finn to play along in one of their plots. Unfortunately, he gives the role such charisma and personality that it took me nearly the whole movie to realize his character was supposed to be the villain! Perhaps in hindsight the child-threatening and attempted gold theft should have tipped me off, but truly, who can hate a man that competent at what he does? (Especially one that looks like Tony Randall)

The villain?

My favorite part of the movie was the nuanced way it conveyed its abolitionist themes. Despite explicitly stating several times how "freeing slaves is wrong," the story develops Jim just enough that we empathize with him and hope that he acquires his freedom. Archie Moore's lovable performance also aids in building rapport and getting the audience to root for Jim, especially in heart-wrenching scenes like when he tearfully describes regret at hitting his daughter. This subtle antiracism is a bit new to me, compared all the (justified) current protests and riots that are explicitly denouncing unequal treatment of the black community. It gives me hope that perhaps art like this can be used to bridge the gap of understanding to those who insist on marching in white sheets.

Poignant stuff — who can but wince when seeing a man in chains?

The film is also fairly amusing, with a few solid jokes, and some good physical comedy and dialogue. The funnest part was seeing all the crazy tall tales Finn comes up with to get out of tight situations. I found it very funny that Finn ultimately never gets punished for any of his fibs, subtly implying that the only way to successfully get through life is to flat out lie all the time. I personally haven't read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , so I don't know if this theme is an artifact of Mark Twain's writing, or just some poor script and direction choices. Despite its flaws, the movie successfully told the story and conveyed the messages it was trying to, all while being fairly entertaining along the way. I give it three stars.

Bittersweet parting

Seventeen candles

And with that, my birthday festivities have come to a close. I think it's time I step away from the silver screen and instead take a walk outside and appreciate the dawning spring. The experience of another year has granted me new wisdom, and I'd like to see what life has to offer outside the artificial television set.

At least, until the next Tony Randall movie comes along.

This is the Young traveler, signing out.

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Magazine

[March 22, 1966] Summer in the sun, winter in the shade (April 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

March 22, 2021 Gideon Marcus 10 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Time of (no) change

Seasons don't mean a whole lot in San Diego. As I like to say, here we have Spring, Summer, Backwards Spring, and Rain. All of these are pretty mild, and folks from parts beyond often grumble over the lack of seasonality here.

I grew up in the Imperal Valley where we had a full four seasons: Hot, Stink, Bug, and Wind. San Diego is a step up.

Judith Merril, who writes the books column for F&SF these days asserts that there is a seasonality to science fiction as well, with December and January being the peak time of year in terms of story quality. If it be the case that the solstice marks the SF's annual zenith, then one might expect the equinoxes to exhibit a mixed bag.

And so that is the case with the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which contains stories both sublime and mediocre. Trip with me through the flowers?

Spring is here

by Jack Gaughan

We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, by Philip K. Dick

Given the prolificity with which Dick produces SF these days, one can hardly believe there was a long time when he'd taken a hiatus from the genre. This latest story fuses his recent penchant for mind-expanding weirdness with the more straight science fiction characteristic of his work in the 50s.

To wit, Douglas Quail is a humdrum prole who dreams big. Specifically, he really wants to go to Mars, but such privilege is reserved to astronauts and high grade politicians. Luckily, there is an organization whose business is literally making dreams come true…or perhaps I should say Rekal Incorporated makes true come dreams. They inject their clients with artificial memories, lard them with convincing physical ephemera, and so a dream becomes reality — at least for the customer.

But when Quail is put under for the procedure, it turns out that he already has memories of a trip to Mars, which have been imperfectly wiped. In short order, Quail becomes the center of a spy thriller, pursued by countless government agents.

On the surface, this is a fun gimmick story, but knowing Dick, I'm pretty sure there's a deeper thread running through the plot. Indeed, clues are laid that make the reader wonder if the entire story is not the phantom adventure, deepening turns and all. As with many recent Dick stories, the question one is left with is "What is reality?"

Four stars.

by Gahan Wilson

Appoggiatura, by A. M. Marple

A flea with an amazing tenor and the music-loving but otherwise talentless cat on which he resides, get swept into the world of urban opera. Can their friendship withstand sudden fame?

This silly story by newcomer Anne Marple shouldn't be any good, but the whimsy of it all and the utter lack of explanatory justification keeps you going for a vignette's length.

Three stars.

But Soft, What Light …, by Carol Emshwiller

Spring is the time for romance, and so a fitting season for this piece, a love story between a computer with the soul of a poet, and the young woman who wins its heart.

Lyrically told, avante garde in the extreme, and just a bit naughtier than the usual, But Soft makes me even more delighted to see Carol Emshwiller return to the pages of this magazine.

Five stars.

The Sudden Silence, by J. T. McIntosh

The city of New Bergen on the planet of Severna goes silent, and a rescue team is dispatched from a nearby world to find out what could suddenly quiet the voices of half a million souls.

This novelette would be a lot more tolerable if 1) the culprit were more plausible and 2) McIntosh didn't have two of the male members of the team more interested in seducing their crewmates than saving lives.

It's a pity. McIntosh used to be one of my more favored authors. These days, his stuff is both disappointing and difficult to read for its shabby treatment of women (though at least he includes them in his futures, which is uncommon).

Two stars.

Injected Memory, by Theodore L. Thomas

The latest mini-article from Mr. Thomas is about the promise of skills and experiences induced with genetic infusions. It's a neat idea, lacking the usual stupid execution the author includes at the end of these. I don't know if the article's inclusion in this issue alongside the Philip K. Dick story mentioned above was serendipitous or deliberate, but I suspect the latter.

Three stars.

The Octopus, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Time is an octopus, tearing us in both directions.

Decent poem. Three stars.

The Face Is Familiar, by Gilbert Thomas

I had to look this story up twice to remember it, which should tell you something. A Lovecraftian tale of terror recounted by one man to another in Saigon. The latter has seen real horror. The former saw his wife preserved after death in an…unorthodox manner…which just isn't as shocking or interesting as is it's supposed to be.

Some nice if overwrought storytelling, but not much of a story. Two stars.

The Space Twins, by James Pulley

There was a hypothesis going around for a while that long term exposure to weightlessness would have not just adverse physical but psychological impacts. In this piece, two astronauts on their way around Mars revert to their time in the womb and have trouble returning.

Clearly written before Gemini 6, it comes off as both quaint and facile.

Two stars.

The Sorcerer Pharesm, by Jack Vance

Continuing the adventures of Cugel the Clever in his quest to bring back a magic item to the wizard Iucounu, this latest chapter sees the luckless thief happen across an enormous carved edifice. Its goal is to entice the TOTALITY of space-time into the presence of the great sorcerer, Pharesm.

Of course, nothing goes as planned for Pharesm or Cugel. Clever byplay, some good fortune, lots of bad fortune, and a bit of time travel ensue.

Vance strings nonsense words and scenes together with enviable talent, but the shtick is honestly running a bit thin.

Three stars.

The Nobelmen of Science, by Isaac Asimov

Instead of a science article, the Good Doctor offers up a comprehensive list of Nobel Prize winners by nationality. Seems a bit of a copout, though I imagine it'll be useful to someone.

Three stars.

Bordered in Black, by Larry Niven

Lastly, Niven returns with an effective story of two astronauts who head to Sirius and encounter a clearly artificially seeded world. Is it merely an algae farm planet, or is there something more sinister going on, associated with one of the continents, fringed with an ominous black ring?

Niven is great at building a compelling world, and the revelation at the end is pretty good. It's a bit overwrought, though. Also, I'm not sure why Niven would think Sirius A and B are both white giants when Sirius B is famously a dwarf star.

Anyway, four stars, and a good way to end an otherwise unimpressive section of the magazine.

Spring comes finally

And with the equinox, I turn the last page of the issue. In the end, the April F&SF is a touch more good than bad, which is appropriate given the now-longer days. Will the magazine obey the seasonal cycle and turn out its best issue in June (at odds with Ms. Merril's predictions)?

Only time will tell!

Spring is also the time for new beginnings — a fitting season to release its new daughter magazine, P.S.!

10 Comments Leave A Comment

Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 20, 1966] Two of A Kind (March Galactoscope #2)

March 20, 2021 Kris Vyas-Myall Leave a comment

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Whilst the comedy double act has been popular since the days of music hall, they seem to be having a moment on British Television.

Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise are probably the biggest draw, with their ATV series Two of a Kind being more widely known simply as Morecambe and Wise.

Whilst the BBC’s primary double act are Mike and Bernie Winters who have just concluded Blackpool Night Out and we will soon be getting The Mike and Bernie Show.

There are, however, others coming up as well. In particular, the irreverent Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are currently in the second season of Not Only… But Also, which has been getting great acclaim, as well as a strong following among younger viewers.

The format tends to work on having a funny man and a straight man, in order to play off against each other. The books from two British Veterans I picked up looked like they could be their own comedic duo, however they might end up getting booed off the stage:

The Not-so Funny Man:

The Richest Corpse in Show Business by Dan Morgan

The outside of this books gives next to no detail about the plot. The Keith Roberts cover sketch of a bearded man gives nothing away. Instead, we get a warning notice on the front:

WARNING! Earnest students of SCIENCE FICTION who deprecate hilarity on the subject should avoid this book like the plague.

Is this a marketing ploy? Absolutely! But an intriguing enough one to catch my attention.

At the same time Dan Morgan had always been one of the stronger of Carnell’s set but he is also much less prolific than many of his counterparts. As such I usually look forward to whenever he finally does publish something.

So, what would Mr. Morgan be writing? Perhaps a madcap adventure, like a cross between Jerry Cornelius and Bill the Galactic Hero? A comedy about a zombie who becomes a pop star? Disappointingly the whole affair is rather more pedestrian.

It tells of Harry Trevey, the producer of Just Folks at Amalgamated Tel. This seems to be a kind of documentary show following real-life subjects throughout their entire lives. This is an incredibly important part of Amalgamated Tel’s line-up as there is currently a long-fought and bitter actors' strike going on, meaning that scripted programming is not available.

At the start the terrible news emerges that their current star, door-to-door salesman Carmody Truelove has died of a heart attack. However, the biggest initial concern is he died off-camera, and no one seems to know him well enough to try to do a memorial show afterwards. Now, Carmody would appear to be the titular “Richest Corpse” and it would seem that the story was going to be about finding out his past. But this plot turns out to be only so much pre-amble for the main story and frustratingly just fizzles out about a third of the way through the book.

It turns out the meat of the story is actually about what will fill Just Folks after Truelove’s demise. They decide to use a hunter (the fellow pictured on the cover), who has a licence to hunt down humans and get him to announce his next victim on the show. Things finally appear to be going Trevey’s way until he is selected as the victim and has to fight for his life against one of the most skilled killers in the world. He will be paid incredibly well, though, for being the star of the series, making him The Richest Corpse in Show Business.

Anyone who has read Robert Sheckley’s Seventh Victim will probably recognise this plot. Morgan does attempt to put his own spin on it by using it to skewer the media’s desire for increasingly sensational content (also demonstrated by the character of Dick Gordon, who is trying to setup his own network of pornographic stations) but it is all done very bluntly and clumsily.

It also doesn’t help much that everyone in it is very unpleasant, although Trevey himself most of all. At one point he even attempts to rape the main love interest. This happens for no good reason I can fathom other than to justify the claim on the back that it contains a:

…a deliciously amoral line in sex…

I know there are still some fans that like this kind of thing. For example, John Christopher’s much praised Death of Grass features a gratuitous rape scene that seem to be there mainly to show how bad the world is. Or in Robert A. Heinlein’s Let There Be Light the protagonist forces a women into a literal shotgun wedding.

William F. Temple wrote an editorial in New Worlds saying that having women in SF stories directly was the problem:

Bring women into it, and they gum up the works.
The solution, as I see it, is to try one’s best to leave women, as characters, out of the plot if possible.

I would disagree with both of these sentiments. The issue with the women in The Richest Corpse is not that they are present; it is the fact that Morgan writes them in cliches and uses them as tools for Trevey’s story, instead of showing them as people in their own right. Even Isaac Asimov (who is infamous in fan circles for his treatment of women) managed to create the wonderful Susan Calvin. If people like Mr. Morgan are scratching their head, why not just try talking to a woman and asking her opinion on a scene? Even if you lack female friends or work colleagues, maybe you have a wife, a mother or a sister you could go visit and listen to?

But, perhaps, the biggest issue is I simply didn’t find it funny. From everything involved in the promotion of the book I expected it to be a laugh fest but it doesn’t even appear to be written as such. Maybe it could be said to try to raise a smile, like The Midas Plague, but even in this aspect it doesn’t really achieve its goal.

Overall, it is just a mid-level satire of the entertainment industry. Not truly terrible but certainly not destined to be the next Space Merchants either.

Two Stars

The Wobbly Straight Man:

The Crystal World by J. G. Ballard

This story may be familiar to SFF magazine readers as this was previously published as Equinox in New Worlds in 1964.

Although, confusingly, the second part of the Equinox serial from New Worlds is named The Illuminated Man in the book format, which is the name of a similar story in F&SF in the same month, also about a petrified forest and likely set in the same world. This has led some people to conclude this is actually a fix-up story. However, this is not the case as far as I can tell.

Putting them side by side my copy appears to just be an expanded version of Equinox. Specifically, with additional conversations throughout and two new chapters:

Chapter Three – Mulatto on the Catwalk: A chase scene in Port Montarre.
Chapter Eleven – The White Hotel: Whilst staying in the chalet they become acquainted with an abandoned hotel and former leper colony.

I would not be surprised if these were simply excised for space from the New Worlds version as neither add anything more to the conclusion of the tale.

The Crystal World seems to be part of his continued look at elemental catastrophes. We had air in The Wind From Nowhere, water in The Drowned World and fire in The Drought, so it makes sense to complete the set with an earth based catastrophe (or crystalline at the very least).

These seem to be somewhat in vogue right now, as Disch’s debut novel The Genocides is about a tree-based apocalypse and Aldiss’ Earthworks is about an environmentally damaged Earth. Is it a sign of increasing environmental awareness since The Silent Spring was published? Or does the New Wave just not like nature?

Anyway, the text itself. As those of you who read the New Worlds serial or Mark’s excellent write ups will probably recall it concerns Dr. Sanders and his running around a crystalline landscape near Mont Royale getting into various scrapes and lots of discussing what it is all about. In less skilled hands this could be a terrible book. But as this is Ballard, he manages to pull this one off…just.

Predominantly this is because this is not so much a book about ideas and events as one about atmosphere. The mystery of why the jungle is crystallizing and the gun toting antics are not why you should read. Rather it is for the dream-like and magical feeling you get as you go through this environment, along with the word-for-word quality of Ballard’s writing. For example:

In a few places the affected zone had crossed the highway, and small patches of the scrub along the roadside had begun to vitrify. Their drab leaves gave off a faint luminescence. Suzanne walked among them, her long robe sweeping across the brittle ground. Sanders could see that her shoes and the train of her robe were beginning to crystallize, the minute prisms glancing in the moonlight.

Few other writers can create an atmosphere as beautiful and written with such style as J. G. Ballard and it is why he remains a master of the field.

We have to address the big elephant in the room when it comes to this story, colonialism. Ballard seems to have taken a lot of influence from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. However, he is taking on many of the mistakes Chinua Achebe critiqued in his modern classic Things Fall Apart.

The African characters seem to be treated as incidental to what is happening and throughout rarely even have names, referred to instead with terms such as “The Mulatto” “The Negro” or “Natives”.

I don’t think it is beyond the scope or capability of contemporary western science fiction writers to address these kinds of themes with more thoughtfulness. After all, they are able to handle making critiques of colonialism through extra-terrestrial cultures, such as in Aldiss’ The Dark Light Years or MacLean’s Unhuman Sacrifice. So how about we make sure to use the same care and attention when writing about real people on our own planet?

Overall, I think that this is a readable but flawed and unnecessary publication. It is still better than a lot of science fiction out there, but one I would only recommend for Ballard completists.

Three Stars

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 16, 1966] Sometimes Older is not Better (Mystery and Imagination)

March 16, 2021 Kris Vyas-Myall Leave a comment

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Will He Get It, Son?

And we’re off! We are officially in general election season as British Prime Minister Harold Wilson hopes to gain an increased majority for his Labour government.

Harold Wilson meeting miners in the ’64 election campaign

Wilson is touting his achievements of helping to bring about social equality by such measures as the repeal of the rent act, moving towards comprehensive education and the race relations act.
Heath, on the other hand, has been concentrating “equality of opportunity” proposing to put more restrictions on unions to strike, reforming welfare to target the most in need, controlling immigration and entering the EEC.

Labour is, however, also using their budget preview to make the economic case for getting an increased majority, pushing for an increase in exports, making it easier for people to get mortgages and a plan to introduce decimal coinage by 1971.

Edward Heath campaigning in his own constituency

The Conservative’s main objection is that these measures will likely result in a weakening in pound sterling which should be the government’s first priority.

The other main flash point is over the Rhodesian crisis. Whilst Heath wants to resume talks with Ian Smith’s government and stop economic sanctions, Wilson believes that only keeping up pressure will end their racist policies.

Former Avenger, Honor Blackman, campaigning for Liberal candidates in London

The biggest question remains what will happen to the Liberal vote that seems to be in decline. With in-fighting and a lack of funds a survey has suggested up to 35% of voters are now undecided. Will these middle-of-the-road and anti-establishment voters be more interested in Mr Wilson’s interventionism or Mr. Heath’s free market approach?

Mr. Heath doesn’t appear to be helping himself so far on the campaign trail, not being able answer legitimate criticism. For example, when asked about one of his candidates being accused of taking funds from a racist organization and making inflammatory speeches, the Conservative leader simply responded that he had made his views clear and local MPs were allowed their own opinions.

Christopher Soames, Conservative MP for Bedford, (L) & Brian Parkyn, Labour candidate (R)

For myself I am out campaigning for Labour candidate Brian Parkyn to attempt to unseat Conservative Christopher Soames. All of us in the local party know it will be an uphill struggle. Soames is Shadow Foreign Secretary and Bedford has been almost continually Conservative since 1922 with a brief one term Labour MP during the 1945 landslide winning by just 288 votes.

But we still all fired up for this campaign. For many of us it is about trying to move the country forward whilst the current Conservative policies seem more interested in returning us to Victorian era.

This brings me to ABC’s latest television series, which is distinctly Victorian and is definitely not the better for it.

Mystery and Imagination

The idea behind Mystery and Imagination seems obvious. ABC’s Armchair Theatre has been a successful fixture of the ITV lineups for the last ten years showcasing a number of great plays (including the pilot of Out of This World). However, it can only run for so many episodes a year and something needs to fill the slot for the other half of the year. Last year we had a combination of mystery and suspense anthology series, none of which seemed to capture the public’s imagination.

SFF anthology series such as Out of the Unknown and import The Twilight Zone have been critical successes. Even Doctor Who to a certain extent works on an anthology format, simply having the regulars go into totally new situations each week thanks to the TARDIS. At the same time gothic horror is doing well at the cinema thanks to Hammer and Amicus productions.

Fontana’s tie-in Mystery & Imagination Anthology — Fontana’s tie-in Anthology

And Mystery and Imagination seems to have been a ratings success, with a second set of stories commissioned for later in the year. They even have released a book with a selection of stories related to the series.

However, as an audio-visual experience it was terrible. I found it even less watchable than ABC’s SF thriller, Undermind, they aired last summer (one of the few pieces of British speculative television I gave up on before the conclusion). This had all the ingredients to make something I would adore. So, let us look at the ways it went wrong:

Failure of Imagination 1: Richard Beckett

David Buck as Richard Beckett in Fall of The House of Usher

The use of a regular character to go through the series is, in itself, not a bad idea. Much like with Doctor Who, it allows for a connective thread and a reason to keep watching week to week.

The problem in this show is they do not seem to know what to do with him. Sometimes he arrives and is a passive observer of what happens, sometimes he gets involved, others he just does a Rod Serling style frame to the tale. None of these arrangements prove satisfactory. It possibly doesn’t help that David Buck does not have magnetism of either Serling or Hartnell to draw us through the tale.

But perhaps a bigger problem is that he is not allowed to develop from his adventures. Whilst The Doctor is not the same person in Ancient Rome as he is when he is trying to murder a caveman, Beckett feels like he is cut from the same cloth throughout these episodes. He is merely a foppish idiot stumbling between weird circumstances and adds nothing whether he is in the tale or merely introducing it.

Failure of Imagination 2: Poor Direction

Whilst this may be a series of plays, I think it is the role of a great television director to bring us into the story and make us feel like we are seeing into the world that the characters inhabit. For a fantasy tale this is even more important, in order that we can have a willing suspension of disbelief.

Unfortunately, I was so far outside of these tales, I almost wondered if it was a Brechtian experiment. The shots are arranged like they are on a stage, all the actors' performances are generally pitched far too over the top (even for a gothic tale) and the pacing is glacial without being intriguing.

I was surprised to find this was a significant issue as many of the directors have done work on The Avengers which has always been very good at making the action exciting and the world seem to be more expanded than the three walls of a studio set.

Failure of Imagination 3: No Atmosphere

When making gothic horror, the most important feature is surely atmosphere. Few people would read The Castle of Otranto if it was just the mystery of death by a giant helmet. Rather it is the atmosphere that Walpole creates which makes for an intriguing reading experience.

Unfortunately, Mystery & Imagination has little to none of that. The setup feels more like I am watching an episode of Code of the Woosters, wondering if it is meant to be played for laughs. The only acknowledgement for horrific setup is the music, which is near-constant, blaring and more distracting than anything else.

Rather than terror, the only emotion it evoked in me is boredom.

Failure of Imagination 4: Unimaginative Reinterpretation

Mystery & Imagination Usher — Roger Corman’s version of House of Usher vs. Mystery & Imagination’s interpretation

Perhaps the biggest issue of all is that no real effort seems to have been made in reinterpreting these stories for the screen. The original pieces are usually very short, rich on atmosphere but not so on character and plot. If you are not able to do any good with the direction or feel, you at least need to make sure there is enough happening to fill up the 50 minutes we are meant to be paying attention. Instead characters regularly repeat themselves, wander around the same sets and just seem to be killing time until the next occurrence in the script.

By comparison Roger Corman has been spending this decade adapting Poe’s stories, but he has been combining them, changing them and giving us new ideas based on the texts whilst still staying true to their spirit. Hammer has also been at its best when it is willing to take risks with its monster stories rather than slavishly following the originals. Maybe the writers of Mystery & Imagination could try taking some lessons from the silver screen?

Neither Mysterious nor Imaginative

And so I remain fully unsatisfied by this run of episodes. Beckett will be returning later this year to lead us through another set of gothic tales, but I do not believe I will be watching. Saturday evening we will instead turn off the box after Morecambe and Wise and settle in with some good books.

May I suggest people pick up M. R. James’ original Ghost Stories of an Antiquary or Panther’s collection Tales of the Supernatural? Try reading read some of the original masters of horror and hopefully these books will scare you with quality writing, rather than merely deafen you with blaring music!

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well! If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article! Thank you for your continued support.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 14, 1966] Random Numbers (May 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

March 14, 2021 Victoria Silverwolf 11 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

Printers' Devils

When I'm reading a book or magazine, if I come across a mistake in printing it takes me right out of the story. If it's a simple misspelling, it's no big deal, yet there's still that brief moment when my mind unwillingly goes back to reality.

More serious problems, such as a few lines duplicated or in the wrong place, cause greater distress. In the most extreme cases, as when entire pages are missing, the experience is ruined.

I bring this up because my copy of the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow contains an egregious example of this kind of technical shortcoming.

Dig That Crazy, Mixed-Up 'Zine, Man

Cover art by Gray Morrow.

Allow me to provide you with a metaphorical road map for the route you need to take between the front and back covers of the publication.

Pages 1 through 15: OK so far.
Pages 18 through 21: Hey, what happened to the other two?
Pages 16 through 17: Oh, there they are.
Pages 22 through 45: Smooth sailing.
Pages 48 through 55: Here we go again!
Pages 46 through 47: Another two pages out of place.
Pages 56 through 164: No more detours, thank goodness.

If I've managed to annoy and confuse you with that, now you know how I felt when I read this issue. The short, sharp shock (to steal a phrase from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado) of jumping from an incomplete sentence on page 15 or page 45 to a completely unrelated incomplete sentence on page 18 or page 48, then having to flip through the magazine to find page 16 or page 46, then having to hop back to page 15 or page 45 to remember what the incomplete sentence said, was a pain in the neck. (That's another allusion to the short, sharp shock. Ask your local G and S fan what it means.)

Thus, if I seem a little more critical than usual, blame it on the printer (not on the Bossa Nova.) With that in mind, let's get started.

The Ultra Man, by A. E. Van Vogt

Illustrations by Peter Lutjens.

I'll confess that I have a real blind spot when it comes to Van Vogt. I know he's one of the giants, like Asimov and Heinlein, of Astounding's Golden Age, but I almost always find his stuff hard going. Often I can't follow the plot at all. When I think I understand what's going on, it usually seems overly complicated. Given my prejudice, I'll try to be as objective as possible.

The setting is an international lunar base. A psychologist demonstrates his newly acquired psychic ability to a military type. It seems the headshrinker can tell what somebody is thinking by looking at his or her face. Suddenly, he spots an alien disguised as an African who intends to kill him.

(There's an odd explanation for why the alien takes the form of an African. Something about that would give him the protection of race tension. I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. That's my typical reaction to Van Vogt.)

We soon find out that other folks have been gaining psychic abilities, all of them following a very strange pattern. The people retain the power for a couple of days, then lose it for a while, then get it back in a much more powerful form for a brief time. If there was any sort of explanation for this bizarre phenomenon, I missed it.

Like the first illustration, this is more abstract than representative.

Anyway, the psychologist and the military guy get involved with a Soviet psychiatrist and with aliens intent on conquering humanity. Only the psychologist's intensified psychic powers, of a very mystical kind, save the day.

Science fiction is often accused of being a literature full of power fantasies, and this story could serve as Exhibit A. (Just look at the title.) The psychologist's abilities eventually become truly god-like.

I have to admit that this thing moves at an incredibly fast pace. It reads like a novel boiled down to a novelette. I can't call it boring, at least, even if it never really held together for me.

Two stars.

The Willy Ley Story, by Sam Moskowitz

Uncredited photograph.

The tireless historian of science fiction turns his attention to the noted rocket enthusiast, science writer, and SF fan. As usual for Moskowitz, there's a ton of detail, as well as a seemingly endless list of early publications by Ley and others. For an encyclopedia article, it would be a model of thoroughness. As a biographical sketch for the interested reader of Ley's writings, it's pretty dry stuff.

Two stars.

Spy Rampant on Brown Shield, by Perry Vreeland

Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

A writer completely unknown to me jumps on the James Bond bandwagon with this futuristic spy thriller.

It seems that the Cold War has been replaced by a struggle between the good old USA and some kind of unified Latin America. The enemy Browns — named for their uniforms, I believe, and not intended, I hope, as a reference to their ethnicity — have a shield that will protect them from nuclear weapons. This means that the dastardly fellows can attack the Norteamericanos with impunity.

The protagonist is the typical highly competent secret agent found in this kind of story, although said to be more cautious than others. He gets a cloak of invisibility so he can sneak into the office of the Brown scientist in charge of the shield and get the plans for it.

Our hero stuns his target.

The invisibility gizmo has several limitations. Dirt and moisture render it less than effective in hiding the user. (In an amusing touch, the hero has to keep changing his socks.) Some kind of scientific mumbo-jumbo is used to explain why it shimmers when more than one source of light, of particular intensities and locations, strike it.

Much of the story consists of the spy just waiting, so he can walk through a doorway, opened by somebody else, without drawing attention. In an interesting subplot, he has to fight altitude sickness as well, because the headquarters of the scientist are located at a great elevation, way up in the Andes.

Walking through the streets of La Paz, the highest capital city in the world.

The twist ending, during which we find out the true nature of the Browns' shield technology, is something of a letdown. It also allows the hero to escape from the Bad Guys, thanks to dumb luck and pseudoscience.

Two stars.

The Worlds That Were, by Keith Roberts

Here's a rare American appearance by a new but quite prolific British author. The narrator and his brother, from an early age, have been able to escape the slum in which they live and enter other times and places. He meets a woman in a dreary public park and brings her home. This leads to a battle with his brother, who sabotages the paradises into which he brings the woman, even trying to kill her. At the end, the narrator learns the truth about his brother and the power they share.

This is a delicate, emotional, poetic tale, full of vivid descriptions of both the beautiful and the ugly. Despite the speculative content, in essence it is a love story. Notably, the narrator, despite his incredible ability, is quite ordinary in most ways. Similarly, the woman isn't an alluring beauty or a temptress, but a fully believable, realistic character. This makes their romance even more meaningful.

Five stars.

Delivery Tube, by Joseph P. Martino

Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

More proof of the continuing effect on popular culture of the late Ian Fleming, if any be needed, appears in yet another spy yarn. The setting is the fictional Republic of Micronesia. (Given the fact that we're told this is one of the most populous nations on Earth, which is hardly true for the many tiny islands collectively known as Micronesia, I'm guessing this is supposed to be something like Indonesia.)

Anyway, the supposedly neutral Micronesians, with help from Red China, possess atomic bombs and at least one satellite to send into orbit. The paradox is that they don't seem to have any way to launch either the bombs or the satellite. Our hero, with the help of some local opposition parties and anti-Communist Chinese, investigates the mysterious construction project happening on Micronesia's main island.

What are they building in there?

Along the way, he gets mixed up with an old enemy, a Soviet agent. The USSR wants to find out what Micronesia is up to as well, so the two foes become temporary allies. A lot of familiar spy stuff goes on. I'm pretty sure you'll figure out what the construction is all about long before the hero does.

Two stars.

Alien Arithmetic, by Robert M. W. Dixon

People who hate math can skip this part of my review.

The author considers various ways to record numbers, other than our familiar base ten Arabic numerals. Before he gets to the alien stuff, he talks about Roman numerals, and demonstrates how to perform addition with them. It makes you glad you don't use them in daily life.

After a brief discussion of binary arithmetic, familiar to many of us in this modern age of electronic computers, we get to some weirder ways of symbolizing numbers.

First comes an odd and confusing system in which the column on the right uses only 0 and 1, the one to the left of that 0, 1, and 2, the one to the left of that 0, 1, 2, and 3, and so forth. As an example, 4021 translates as (4x1x2x3x4) + (0x1x2x3) + (2x1x2) + (1×1) = (96) + (0) + (4) + (1) = 101. (The author claims it translates to 99, but I'm just following his exact method of calculation, using the same example and the same steps. Somebody doublecheck me, but I think I'm right! For 99, I think the number would be 4011.)

Next we turn to a way of recording numbers by combining symbols for their prime factors. This is easier to explain via the author's diagram than in words.

An example of number symbols based on prime factors. The symbol for six combines the symbols for two and three, and so forth.

These imaginary number systems seem awfully impractical to me. The author vaguely links them to imaginary aliens, but that's really irrelevant. My formal education in mathematics ended with first semester calculus, so I'm no expert, but this kind of thing interests me to some extent (which is why this part of the review is longer than it should be.)

Number-haters can start reading again.

Two stars.

Trees Like Torches, by C. C. MacApp

Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

We jump right into a drastically changed far future Earth, so it takes a while to figure out what's going on. Many centuries before the story begins, aliens conquered the planet. It's considered an unimportant, backwater world, so they use it as a hunting preserve. (I'm assuming this includes humans as prey, although this isn't made explicit.) They also mutated Earth creatures into new forms, so the surviving humans have to face dangerous animals.

As if that weren't enough to ruin your day, there are also human renegades who kidnap children, for a purpose not revealed until the end. The plot deals with a man out to rescue his daughter from the renegades. Help comes from blue-skinned, telepathic human mutants.

Beware the trees!

A lot of stuff goes on besides what I've noted above. Despite the science fiction explanation for everything, this fast-paced adventure story felt like a fantasy epic to me. The beings in it seem more magical than biological. It's not a bad tale, if a little hard to get into.

Three stars.

Holy Quarrel, by Philip K. Dick

Illustrations by Dan Adkins.

Three government agents wake up a computer repairman. It seems that the super-computer that monitors all the data in the world for possible threats against the United States has a problem. It claims that it needs to launch nuclear weapons against a region of Northern California. The G-men managed to stop that by jamming a screwdriver into the machine's tapes.

The danger, or so it says, comes from a fellow who manufactures gumball machines. This seems utterly ridiculous, of course, so the government guys want the repairman to figure out what's wrong with the computer. Just to be on the safe side, they investigate the gumball magnate, and study the candy machines as well as the stuff they contain. They communicate with the stubborn computer, even trying to convince it that it doesn't really exist.

You don't really think it will fall for that, do you?

You can tell that there's more than a touch of the absurd to the plot, along with a satiric edge. The author throws in the computer's religious beliefs, as well as an outrageous ending. The whole thing has the feeling of dark comedy. (There are references to the USA having attacked both France and Israel, due to the computer's perception of threats.) Like a lot of works by this author, it has a plot that seems improvised. It always held my interest, anyway.

Three stars.

In Need of Some Repair

So, were the works in this issue as messed up as the page numbers? For the most part, I have to admit they were. With the shining exception of an excellent story from Keith Roberts, both the fiction and articles were disappointing, although they got a little better near the end of the magazine. My sources in the publishing world tell me that this will be the last bimonthly issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, and that it will turn into a quarterly. This should give the editor, and the printer, time to deal with its problems.

Even an amusement park has to close down once in a while to fix things.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 12, 1966] In Aid of Earth and Other Worlds (Jack Vance's Ace Double and Tom Purdom's latest)

March 12, 2021 Vicki Lucas Leave a comment

The Brains of Earth/The Many Worlds of Magnus Randolph

[Every so often, the Journey features a guest reviewer. In this case, it is Keith Henson, a friend of our own Vicki Lucas. Keith works at Heinrich GeoeXploration, studies for his degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Arizona, and owns two buildings with two apartments each, in one of which he lives. His interests include pyrotechnics and amateur rockets.

(Keith's in the cowboy hat)

He also digs scientificition, and he happened to pick up the new Ace Double hot off the shelves. And so, without further ado, may I present Keith!]

by Keith Henson

Heading home from work I stopped off at my favorite bookstore. There near the bottom of the SF section is a new Ace Double, both by Jack Vance, 45 cents. Vance is one of the authors I read with pleasure since running into a copy of The Dying Earth.

Eliminating Mind Parasites

The Brains of Earth is a somewhat conventional SF story, with unlikeable aliens, and competent (for the most part) humans. The story starts with a description of events at the end of a war to rid the alien population of mind parasites (nopals) on the planet Ixix. This motivates the local aliens (Tauptu) to travel to Earth, which is saturated with nopals, and kidnap a scientist, one Paul Burke. The aliens remove his nopal (a painful task). They then assign Burke an impossible task (clear Earth of nopals) and return him to Earth. The rest of the story plays out as Burke discovers an even more serious mind parasite, the ghre, which are kept at bay by the nopals. Burke convinces the aliens that their problems are even worse than they think, and they set out on an expedition seeking the physical location of the mental projections.

I found it to be a decent story, consistent with good dialog, if not quite up to the standards of The Dying Earth. Usually you can open a Vance story to any place and identify it as Vance by reading a few paragraphs. I tried this with The Brains of Earth and it didn't work. Still it's hard to award Vance less than three stars.

Short Stories of a Problem Solver

The other side of the double is The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph, a series of short stories set in exotic places (mostly planets). The stories feature an elderly goateed gentleman problem solver in detective mode. (Vance also writes mysteries.) The stories usually start with Ridolph in a financial bind of some kind and he outsmarts the people who took advantage of him, all in supercilious tones and Jack Vance's unique literary style. Applying the reading test to identify the story as Vance's, here is a sample that does work:

Magnus Ridolph sighed, glanced at his liqueur (Blue Ruin). This would be the last of these; hereafter he must drink vin ordinaire, a fluid rather like tarragon vinegar, prepared from the fermented rind of a local cactus.

Magnus Ridolph is more fun than the other side of the double, four stars. Altogether well worth the 45 cents.

The Tree Lord of Imeten, by Tom Purdom

by John Boston

Tom Purdom has had a dozen stories scattered among the SF magazines over the past near-decade, and one prior novel (and Ace Double half), I Want The Stars. His second novel is also Doubled, back to back with Samuel Delany’s Empire Star, reviewed last month. It’s called The Tree Lord Of Imeten, and is decorated with a John Schoenherr cover as dispirited and unattractive as that of its other half.

by John Schoenherr

The novel, however, could not be more different in style and spirit from Delany’s. Purdom is solid, Delany mercurial; Purdom plays the game, Delany plays with the game.

The story opens in a human colony on an extrasolar planet, with protagonist Harold hiding behind a tractor with his bow and arrows, so the people who killed his father and best friend won’t shoot him too. His childhood friend Joanne appears and conveys the bad guys’ offer: they can leave, with food and equipment, and go down from the human-inhabited plateau to the jungly lowlands, where there are sentient—or at least structure-building—inhabitants that nobody knows much about.

But what are these people on the plateau fighting about, and how did it get this bitter? It’s not explained, which seems incongruous at first, but as the book progresses, it becomes clear that that’s part of the point.

Harold and Joanne, pulling a wheeled cart full of supplies, first encounter the Itiji, sentient catlike animals who attack and are driven away, but clearly have language if not hands. They then are found and captured by the other species, the Imetens, tree-dwelling primates with hands as well as language, the beginnings of ironworking, and of course conflict among tribes. They also enslave the Itiji to pull their carts and bear their burdens.

Harold first persuades the Imetens that he can be useful to them, and attains a reasonably safe and privileged position for Joanne and himself. But he hates slavery, and soon enough contrives an escape for himself and Joanne and a number of Itiji slaves. The Imetens do not take emancipation lightly, and war ensues. Harold must help the Itiji by creating warmaking technology that they can use without hands, under his leadership of course, and ultimately brings peace after heroic feats at arms.

The story is most basically about people cast out of their society who have to find a place in another one, since, as Purdom hints earlier (and notwithstanding Harold’s lone heroics), humans on their own are nothing in the long run. That’s why Purdom was right not to explain what the colonists were fighting over; it can never matter again for his characters, who are now committed to a new life in a new tribe.

This is a well worked out book, dense with detail and invention, but the latter parts drag a bit, and also revert towards the standard fare of exotic-planet opera, with long descriptions of battle strategy and hand to hand combat and Harold’s exploits with sword and shield. The ending also feels a bit rushed. Three and a half stars, and high expectations for this promising writer’s future work.

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[March 10, 1966] Top Heavy (April 1966 Galaxy)

March 10, 2021 Gideon Marcus 6 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Stacked

For as long as I can remember, American culture has really liked people who have extra on top. Whether it's Charles Atlas showing off his wedge-shaped physique or Jayne Mansfield letting herself precede herself, we dig an up front kind of person.

So I suppose it's only natural that this month's issue of Galaxy put all of the truly great material in the first half (really two thirds) and the rest tapers away to unremarkable mediocrity (though, of course, I'm obligated to remark upon it).

Dessert first

by Jack Gaughan

The Last Castle, by Jack Vance

by Jack Gaughan

Millenia after the Six-Star war, Earth has been resettled in a series of citadels by a league of aristocrats. Their stratified society disdains the wretched nomads who remained on the birthplace of humanity, instead living an effete life served by a variety of caste-bound aliens: The ornamental Phanes, the laboring Peasants, the conveying Birds, and the technician Meks.

That is, of course, until one and all, the Meks rebel. They sabotage the human equipment and begin a methodical campaign to destroy all of the castles. Presently, only mighty Hagedorn remains. Can our race survive? Should it?

In the Algis Budrys' review column this month, he laments that Frank Herbert could have made a real epic out of Dune if someone had told him they don't have to be 400+ pages long. After all, the Odyssey, the original epic, is less than 200. And Jack Vance has created a masterfully intricate and beautiful epic in just 60.

There is sheer art in beginning a story in medias res, then retelling the opening scene with further detail, and then elaborating still further on this scene once more, and the result being utterly compelling. Storytellers take note: Jack Vance knows his craft. Not since The Dragon Masters (also Vance's) has there been such economy of impact.

Five stars.

The Crystal Prison, by Fritz Leiber

The Last Castle is a hard act to follow. Luckily, the aforementioned Budrys column forms a refreshing interlude. I don't always agree with Budrys, but the instant article is passionate and poetic.

Leiber's piece is rather throwaway, about two ardent striplings barely in their thirties, suffocating under the oppressive ministrations of their several century-old great-grandparents. He is forced to wear a padded suit, and She must wear a virtual nun's habit. Both are required to have eavesropping electronics on their persons at all time. Oh, the old biddies mean well, but is that living?

The young'ns don't think so, and thus they hatch a plan to get away.

Three stars for this trifling cautionary tale.

Lazarus Come Forth!, by Robert Silverberg

by Jack Gaughan

Ah, but then back to the meat. We've now had three tales in Silverberg's Blue Fire series, involving a pseudo-scientific cult (reminiscent of Elron Hubbored's, in fact) having taken over the Earth circa 2100. Author Silverbob clearly intends making a book out of all of these, and Editor Fred Pohl is probably delighted to be able to stretch out a thinly disguised serial in his magazine.

In this latest installment, which features lots of characters we've met before, we finally get to see Mars of the future. The Red Planet has chosen neither the cobalt-worshipping Vorsterism of Earth nor the heretical Harmonism sect that is taking Venus by storm. But the individualistic Martian culture is thrown for a loop when they discover the tomb of Lazarus, founder of the Harmonists. According to legend, Lazarus had been martyred. Actually, he is simply in cold sleep, and the Vorsterites now have the ability to restore him.

But is this merely providence or part of old man Vorster's long range plan?

By itself, I suppose it might only merit three stars, but I really like this series, and I was happy to see more.

So… four stars.

The Night Before, by George Henry Smith

When the world is going to pot, and atomic annihilation seems a button press away, it's natural to seek out wiser heads to right things. And when all of humanity has gone nuts, your only option is to look elsewhere for guidance.

And hope they aren't in the same boat…

Smith is a new name to me, though my friends assure me he appeared in the lesser mags in the '50s and that he maintains a decent career outstide the genre. Three stars for this somewhat inexpert yet oddly compelling story throwback of a story.

For Your Information: The Re-Designed Solar System, by Willy Ley

One of the fun things about being a science writer for decades is being able to compare the state of knowledge at the beginning of your career to that at the current moment of writing. Ley was penning articles back when Frau im Mond debuted, more than 30 years before the first interplanetary probes. In this latest piece, he talks about how our view of the planets has changed in these three decades.

Good stuff, interspersed with pleasant doggerel.

Four stars.

Big Business, by Jim Harmon

And now, after admiring the impressive pectoral, the well formed abdominal, and the fetching pelvic zones, we arrive at the sickly thighs, the slack calves, and the flat feet. What remains is serviceable — after all, the body still stands — but little more can be said of these lower extremities.

Jim Harmon's piece is one of those overbroad talk pieces. In this one, a man from the future and an extraterrestrial compete against each other for the patronage of a rich old cuss who'll see humanity burn if he can keep warm by the fire.

It's not very good. Two stars.

The Primitives, by Frank Herbert

by Wallace Wood

Speaking of throwbacks, this is the tale of Conrad "Swimmer" Rumel, a man of surpassing intelligence but brutish appearance who, as a result, turns to a life of crime. He ends up blowing up a Soviet sub to steal a Martian diamond, but the only one who can cut the thing is a four-breasted Neanderthal stonecutter from 30,000 B.C. Can the neolithic Ob carve the diamond before the mobster fence's impatience proves Rumel's undoing?

Herbert crams a lot of science fiction canards into this short story (which is still half again as long as it needs to be). It's got the same writing crudities that plague the author, but somehow I stayed engaged to the end.

A low three stars.

Devise and Conquer, by Christopher Anvil

A joke story in which the American race problem is solved by the simple expedient of making it impossible to know what race anyone is.

Less annoying than when he appears in Analog — another low three.

Twenty-Seven Inches of Moonshine, by Jack B. Lawson

by Jack Gaughan

Finally, we peter our with this nothing "non-fact" article about fishing on the Moon in the 21st Century. Maybe I'd have enjoyed it more if I were a rod and reel man. Or if it were science fiction.

Two stars.

Shave a little off the bottom

Of course, the ironic thing about all this is that if you took out the subpar stuff, you'd still have a full issue's worth of material. Ah, but people already grouse about having to pay that extra dime (Galaxy is 60 cents; the other mags are 50) for 194 pages. They'd scream their heads off if Galaxy went to 128. So, we end up with a mag that looks great from the waist up, but less good as you gaze goes down.

Ah well. You can still do a lot, even with half a loaf. Or a pair of pastries.

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Galactic Journey

Category Archives: Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 31, 1966] Shapes of Things (April 1966 Analog)

[March 28, 1966] Typhoid Doctor (Doctor Who: The Ark)

[March 26, 1966] Steam Tractors and Ballardian Mind Games Impulse and New Worlds, April 1966

[March 24, 1966] Dark Comedy and Birthday Wishes (a Tony Randall double feature)

[March 22, 1966] Summer in the sun, winter in the shade (April 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[March 20, 1966] Two of A Kind (March Galactoscope #2)

[March 16, 1966] Sometimes Older is not Better (Mystery and Imagination)

[March 14, 1966] Random Numbers (May 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

[March 12, 1966] In Aid of Earth and Other Worlds (Jack Vance's Ace Double and Tom Purdom's latest)

[March 10, 1966] Top Heavy (April 1966 Galaxy)

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction