Category Archives: Science Fiction/Fantasy

Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 10, 1965] Strangers in Strange Lands (December 1965 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Time for the Stars

I was having a lovely conversation with fellow traveler Kris about the mixed reviews for the British anthology show, Out of the Unknown.  Some critics are saying the stories aired would have been better served in a conventional setting rather than on Mars or wherever.

Indeed, this has been a common complaint for decades, that science fiction should be uniquely SF with stories that depend on some kind of scientific difference/unique setting, even if many of the trappings are familiar.

Galaxy is a magazine that has led this charge since its inception in 1950 and it therefore comes as no surprise that this month's issue features a myriad of settings that are in no way conventional, backdrops for stories that could take place in no genre but science fiction.

Citizens of the Galaxy


by John Pederson, Jr.

The Mercurymen, by C. C. MacApp

On the face of things, Mercury would seem a most inhospitable planet for colonization.  Until this year, the general conception of things was that the innermost planet of our solar system was tidally locked, presenting just one baked hemisphere eternally toward the sun, while the other remained in perpetual frigid night.


by Gray Morrow

C. C. MacApp offers up a most imaginative tale set on this half-cooked world.  The planet, or at least the twilight zone between the hot and cold sides, is overrun with the vines of a plant, the interiors of which are large enough and contain sufficient air and water to support human inhabitants.  How they plant came about or how the settlers came to dwell in them is a mystery, but hundreds of years later, the colonists have reverted to near savagery.  The ecosystem of the vines provides most of their needs: latex for vacuum suits, luminescent mold for light, oxygen-producing fungus for air.  But for precious metals and for new soil for crops, the denizens must venture into the airless waste outside.

Similarly, population pressure periodically forces tribes to split, members of a certain age tasked to form a new settlement further along the vine. The Mercurymen is the tale of Lem, eldest son of a recently expired chief, who leads a party out over the bleak landscape of Mercury in search of a new hope.  Along the way, he must deal with a deadly environment, hostile tribes, and treachery within the group.

Because so many of the concepts are alien, even as the characters are human, The Mercurymen can occasionally be a detailed, hard read.  Nevertheless, I appreciated MacApp's world building quite a lot, and I was carried along with Lem on his engaging, difficult adventure.  The novella would merit expansion into full length novel though the following discovery may require a complete change in setting to make it work:

From Nature, Volume 208, Issue 5008, pp. 375 (October 1965):

Rotation Period of the Planet Mercury, by McGovern, W. E.

The recent radar measurements of Mercury indicate that the period of rotation of the planet is 59 +/- 5 days1. This result is in complete disagreement with the previously quoted value of 88 days based on the visual observations of the markings on Mercury2-6. In this communication we show that the same visual observations can not only be reconciled with the radar-determined rotation period of Mercury but, in addition, can be used to derive an improved value for the period of rotation of the planet, namely, 58.4 +/- 0.4 days.

Yes, Mercury isn't tidally locked at all, and the stories that made use of this presumption are now all obsolete.  Editor Pohl may even have known this even when he put this issue to bed, as the news first broke in June.

Still, it's a good story, and again, you can squint your eyes and pretend it takes place on a different one-face world entirely.

Three stars.

Galactic Consumer Reports No. 1: Inexpensive Time Machines, by John Brunner

The latest Galaxy non-fact article is written in the style of the venerable magazine Consumer Reports, offering evaluation of six cut-rate personal time machines. 

The aforementioned Kris noted that there seem to be two John Brunners: one who writes Hugo-worthy material like The Whole Man and Listen! The Stars… and another who churns out hackwork.  I'd say this piece is representative of a third Brunner, neither outstanding nor unworthy.  It's a cute piece, although I would have appreciated a little more time travel in it.

Three stars.

Laugh Along With Franz, by Norman Kagan


by John Giunta

In a disaffected future, "None of the Above" (the so-called "Kafka" vote) threatens to become the electoral candidate of choice.

More pastiche of outlandish societal explorations than tale, I found myself falling asleep every few pages.  I'm afraid Norm Kagan continues not to do it for me.

One star.

For Your Information: The Healthfull Aromatick Herbe, by Willy Ley

A rather defensive Willy Ley discusses the history of tobacco in his latest science article.  It's actually pretty interesting, though I am no closer to taking up the still-ubiquitous pasttime than I was before.

Four stars.

The Warriors of Light, by Robert Silverberg


by Jack Gaughan

In the previously published story, Blue Fire, Silverberg introduced us to an Earth of the late 21st Century, one that worships the Vorster cult.  Vorster and his disciples cloak the scientific pursuit of immortality with a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo, complete with a rosary of the wavelengths of light.

Warriors of Light is not a sequel to Blue Fire, per se.  Instead, it is a story from a completely different perspective, that of an initiate of Vorsterianism who is recruited by a heretical group to steal some of the cult's deepest serets.

Reportedly, Silverbob produces 50,000 words of salable material per week, enough to make it seem like SF is his full time career even though it's just a fraction of his overall output.  Light is not the brilliant piece that its predecessor was, but the Cobalt-90 worshipping future Earth remains an intriguing setting, and I look forward to the next story that takes place therein.

Three stars.

"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman, by Harlan Ellison

In Ellison's latest tale, The Master Timekeeper, a.k.a. the Ticktockman, is the arbiter of justice for a chronologically regulated humanity.  Everything runs to schedule; tardiness is punishable by the lost of years from one's lifespan.  There is no room for deviation, nonconformity.

Yet one clownish fellow, known as The Harlequin, cannot be restrained.  His antics distract, his capers disrupt, his personality compells.  This dangerous threat must be stopped.  But in erasing the heretic, can even the master inquisitor escape just a little of the nonconformist contagion?

This is the most symbolic of Ellison's work to date, and with a deliberate, almost juvenile storytelling aspect that veers toward the Vonnegutian.  I appreciate what Harlan is doing here, but there's a lack of subtlety, a ham-handedness that makes the piece less effective than much of his other work.

Oh, my telephone is ringing.  One moment. 

Ah.  Harlan says I'm an ignorant so-and-so and if I withdrew my head from my seat, I might be able to better comprehend his work.  (Note: this is not an exact transliteration).

Anyway, three stars.

The Age of the Pussyfoot (Part 2 of 3), by Frederik Pohl


by Wallace Wood

Last up is the continuation of last month's serial by editor Pohl, who is indulging himself in his first love, writing.  Forrester, who died in the late 1960s only to be ressurrected in the 25th Century when medical technology was up to the task, has run out of dough and has become employed by the one boss who will have him, an alien from Sirius, member of a race with whom Earth is currently in a Cold War.

In this installment, we learn about how this state of not-quite conflict came to be, as well as about the Forgotten Men, the penniless humans who make a living outside of normal society.  We also learn how difficult it is to survive when one cannot pay the bill on one's "joymaker," the ubiquitous hand-held combination telephone, personal computer, and electronic valet. 

Let us hope that we never get so reliant on this kind of technology that we find ourselves similarly helpless without them!

Pussyfoot continues to be entertaining and imaginative, far more effective in execution of its subject than similarly themed Kagan piece, though less satirical in its second installment than its first.

Four stars.

Beyond This Horizon

My Heinlein motif for the article section titles may be a little misplaced given that R.A.H. doesn't appear in the pages of Galaxy this month. Call it artistic license since his most recent novels are coming out (or have come out) in sister mags Worlds of Tomorrow and IF.

Anyway, at the very least, the stories in the December 1965 Galaxy hold to the Heinlein tradition of fundamentally incorporating unique settings. No transplanted Westerns or soap operas here!

For the most part, it works, resulting in a solid 3-star issue. Why don't you pick up a copy, Space Cadet, and see if you agree!




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 8, 1965] You Must Be Mythtaken (Doctor Who: The Myth Makers)

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By Jessica Holmes

Yes, I am quite proud of myself for that title. This month, we’re taking a trip back to a time where the line between myth, legend and fact becomes blurred. Doctor Who has a new producer in John Wiles, who has some big boots to fill, and a new writer for this serial, one Donald Cotton. Let’s dive in and see how they got on.

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Movies

[November 4, 1965] The Best Bad Science Fiction Wrestling Can Offer (A Review of Two Films of El Santo)

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Ginevra Gafaro

There is nothing that hits the spot like a good bad science fiction film. For the best bad science fiction, there is nothing quite so satisfying as the genre of masked wrestler movies.

These films are required to balance plot, science fiction, and actual wrestling all while operating on a tight budget and being filmed in a short number of weeks. The ingenuity required of the cast and crew is nothing short of extraordinary. There are no stunt doubles and little room for error.

Two of the best examples of the new genre, Invasion of the Zombies and Samson Versus the Vampire Women, are now showing in a double feature at the Fort Lauderdale Thunderbird Drive In Theater — dubbed in English, but I've seen the originals, and I had to see them again in any format possible, they're that good.

Why These Films are Good

The plots of both films follow a simple premise: science fiction shenanigans occur and the best person to help resolve it is the masked wrestler Samson. It is easy to extrapolate how it ends from there. The beauty of these films is in the fast pace that keeps viewers at the edge of their seat and frankly, that they offer some of the most impressive wrestling matches ever seen on the screen.

El Santo
The masked wrestler himself, El Santo.

Both of these films star actual masked wrestler Rodolfo “El Santo” Guzman Huerta essentially playing himself on the big screen. Both films are produced by Alberto Lopez with cinematography by Jose Ortiz Ramos. Starring opposite El Santo is Jaime Fernandez who technically plays a character named Detective Rodriguez in one film and a character named Inspector Carlos in the other, but it is easy to imagine them as the same character.

Invasion of the Zombies

Title shot of Invasion of the Zombies in Spanish
Title shot from the original film, Santo Contra Los Zombies. This was later released in English under the name Invasion of the Zombies.

Invasion of the Zombies opens exactly as you might expect: on a ring match between Samson and another wrestler. The bout is a combination of choppy greco wrestling and some impressive lucha libre moves. One lovely highlight is when Samson jumps, grabs his opponent around the neck with his ankles and throws him flat on his back over on the other side of the ring. Incredible.

Ankles
Gorgeous.

The match goes on for about ten minutes before the actual plot begins (which is just fine). A young woman, Gloria, reaches out to local police after her father disappears. He had just finished his book on zombies. Three detectives agree to take the case, and they head over to her house to investigate. They find no leads but they do meet her uncle and his dedicated caretaker, who are distraught about the missing relative.

The film cuts to three men breaking into a jewelry store while moving in unison. They use what appears to be a laser wand to burn through a jewelry vault. A man walks in and shoots one of the three men. The bullets don’t affect him in the slightest, not even when one is shot directly in his head! The shooter is knocked unconscious by what is clearly a zombie and the three robbers leave. As they approach their getaway car, the police attempt to stop them. Again, bullets have no effect on these men, who are all obviously zombies, and the police are easily defeated.

Three men dressed in grecco style clothing while emptying out the safe deposit boxes.
Three robbers, who may or may not be zombies, empty out safe deposit boxes.

And Now For Samson

The officers explain the events to the police chief back at their station. No one uses the word zombie but it’s pretty clear this was not the typical robbery. The police chief calls local masked wrestler Sampson for help on his audio/visual communications system. Clearly the strange circumstances can only be resolved with his assistance.

Police Chief and Santo communicate through communication devices.
Samson talks with the Police Chief regarding his request for assistance.

Meanwhile the private investigators looking for the missing professor come to the same conclusions as the police chief: they decide to ask Samson for his help in their investigation. No explanation is given, but really, at this point does anyone need to provide one?

Samson somehow manages to use his communications system to spy on the black hooded villain controlling robbers. He sees the villain order the three robbers to steal children from the local orphanage. Samson rushes over to stop them. When he arrives, the zombies have children under each arm and the orphanage is on fire.

Zombies steal children from an orphanage. Typical zombie nonsense. Zombies steal children from the orphanage and light it on fire. Because they're evil.

Luring them outside to fight in the grass, a three-on-one battle ensues, Samson keeping them busy until the police appear. The good guys then all band together to stop the three robbers and yet the robbers still manage to defeat them. Not all is lost; the zombies escape without stealing any children.

The officers manage to identify the robbers and are shocked to discover they are all dead men. It is at this point that someone proposes that these people are zombies. The police chief cannot believe it.

To The Shock of No One, Things Escalate

The black hooded villain decides something must be done about Samson. He abducts Samson’s next wrestling opponent and injects him with an unknown substance.

In the ring match against Samson, the opponent shows superhuman strength and skill, nearly choking Samson to death. Samson notices something strange under his opponent's tights and pulls open the hem of his pants. The tug causes smoke to pour out from the pants and the opponent falls over in the ring. His body disappears right in front of everyone, leaving behind a strange belt on fire.

The villain then decides to try to kidnap the Mayor and Gloria. Like you do.

The villain sends three zombies out to do his bidding.
The villain gives his orders to his three favorite zombies.

Samson and the team of detectives trace the villain down to his lair, Samson battling the villain while the police fight the zombie horde. He manages to slay him and break the zombie controlling machine. The identity of the villain is revealed and the zombies disappear in a mesmerizing special effect.


Zombie Horde.

Here the story ends with a beautiful comment from Samson: “When men violate the rules of God, they become victims of their own misdeeds.” It is a more thoughtful ending than one would expect for a movie about a masked wrestler fighting zombies.

Samson Versus the Vampire Women

Title shot of Samson Versus the Vampire Women
Original title shot of Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro, later released in English under the title Samson vs. the Vampire Women

Samson Versus the Vampire Women starts strong with haunting music and beautiful close ups. A vampire woman, Tundra, slips from her coffin to awaken three male vampires from their slumber. The men have been chained to granite slabs while the women rest comfortably in underground coffins.

The aesthetics of their home are stunning, a fine line between Gothic and Grecian. The special effects on the audio render the opening monologue nearly unintelligible but the beauty of the film makes it irrelevant.

The film cuts to a young woman, Diana, playing Moonlight Sonata on the piano for her brother and father. She stops playing and claims she felt summoned by the face of a beautiful woman.

The beautiful woman that Diana claims is watching her.
This is the beautiful woman Diana believes is watching her. She's right.

Diana and her brother retire for the evening, leaving their father to pull out some papers covered in large hieroglyphics. He starts to translate the document, stating that in 200 years a descendant of the woman named Rebecca will be called when she turns 21 to be put through the rituals of the vampire women.

This appears to be a universe where 200 years prior, people recorded information by using rudimentary hieroglyphics as a cipher to prevent the information from falling into the wrong hands. This is the only explanation one can surmise for the use of hieroglyphics spelling out gibberish and being read in the wrong order.

The professor calls Samson for assistance on his audio/visual communications device. Samson enters his office through the balcony, and the professor explains that Samson is the masculine equivalent of Rebecca with the condensed force of masculine strength. The actor's ability to deliver that bit of dialogue is impressive. The professor asks Samson for his assistance in keeping his daughter Diana safe. It is believed that she is the descendant of Rebecca. It’s either that, or she’s the descendant of Sappho.


The professor speaks with his friend Samson. I wonder how they became friends.

It is very important for you to know that Samson spends this entire film wearing tights, his mask, and an optional cape. It’s a good look.

Samson looking very handsome and shirtless.
Samson looking very handsome in his shirt optional attire.

We Now Interrupt Your Plot for Wrestling

Here the film cuts to Samson at a wrestling match. The match goes on for quite a while, but it’s composed of excellent fight choreography. And if you didn't come here for the wrestling, why did you come here?

Afterwards, the film moves back and forth between some quick scenes:

The vampire woman from the beginning of the movie bites Diana’s neck and drinks her blood before running off. The Carmilla similarities are off the charts.

Vampire woman leans down to drink Diana's blood.
The vampire leans down to drink Diana's blood.

A group of vampire women corner a man and drain him of blood in their lair.

The vampires discuss how they will take Diana on her 21st birthday. It is just as absurd as you can imagine, a cross between a high school girls sleepover and a cult militia. I am torn at this point in the movie. On one hand, clearly Diana would be happy with these young women considering that this is being presented as some sort of destiny plot. On the other hand, she can do better.

Vampire woman gather to discuss stealing Diana.
The vampires gather to discuss the abduction of Diana. My enemy, rubber bat on a string, makes an appearance.

In the evening, the professor throws a birthday party for Diana. The front door is guarded by two men who are charged with making sure no one enters without an invitation. A male and female vampire put him into a trance and slip in among the party guests. Not proficient at mingling, the vampires are discovered and Samson shows up to fight them. He manages to drive them off. A man is found dead from vampire bites. The group gathers to discuss next steps.

Two vampires walk into a party.
Two vampires walk into a party. They talked their way into an invitation.

Plot Relevant Wrestling Commences

Samson is forced to leave in order to fight in his next wrestling match. His opponent wears a black mask and fights with inhuman strength. Things are touch and go but Samson unmasks his opponent only to reveal a hideous vampire face. The spectators and officials riot. In the confusion, the vampire escapes and is next seen abducting Diana in a taxi.

Officers and wrestling fans alike riot.
Nearby officers try to stop the vampire while wrestling fans riot.

Her father consults his books and thus determines the location of the vampire lair. Samson immediately heads over… and walks into a trap. The vampires chain him down on one of the granite coffins but the foxy Samson manages to escape. He keeps the vampires busy but they pin him down, reaching for his mask. Just as they are about to reveal him, the sun comes in from the windows and sets the vampires on fire. A few manage to escape to the underground lair, but Samson is determined to stop them. He grabs a flaming torch and sets all of their coffins to blaze.


Samson sets fire to the vampire coffins.

Triumphant, Samson carries Diana out of the lair. He hands her back to her family and drives off into the distance.

It Sounds Terrible. Why Bother Watching?

So is it worth watching a pair of import SF films about a wrestler fighting the evil forces of the supernatural? In a word, yes. Invasion of the Zombies offers some stunning visuals and a clever version of zombies not seen before on the silver screen. Using a belt and computers to control zombies? Brilliant. Similarly, the soundscaping in Samson Versus the Vampire Women really cannot be overpraised — creepy, haunting, and beautiful in equal measures. And El Santo is always a joy to watch, one of the greatest athletes to appear on the silver screen.

True, there is also some awful film making. Invasion of the Zombies doesn’t even bother to attempt to explain why a masked wrestler is the ideal person to fight zombies or search for a man in a missing persons case. For every jaw dropping action sequence in both films, there was at least one very stupid on screen event. The ancient Egyptian bit was particularly enraging.

But the gravest sin of all, dear readers, is the use of a cheap rubber bat on a visible string in multiple shots of Samson Versus the Vampire Women. The bats weren’t even necessary for the film’s progression.

Still, for all the faults, at the heart of both films is a sincerity. Their creators clearly tried to make a product greater than the sum of its parts. That the films end up a joy to watch despite their admitted flaws is evidence that the creators have succeeded.

These two movies are truly some of the best bad science fiction that wrestling has to offer.

Samson waves goodbye from his car.
Samson waves goodbye.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 2, 1965] Revolution! (December 1965 IF)

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by David Levinson

Americans have an odd relationship with revolution. They’re quite proud of their own, but extremely leery of anyone else’s. But revolution seems to be the natural order of things in the 20th century. Not all of them have been violent, nor have all of them been political. And no doubt we will see many more – political, scientific, economic, social and even sexual – before the decade, let alone the century is out.

Revolution turned upside-down

Since the end of the War, the major colonial powers of the 19th century have been gradually handing over control of their colonies to the native people. It hasn’t always been voluntary, nor has it always been smooth. But the British seem to be doing better than the others at handing over power. Most transitions have gone smoothly, though not perfectly. Until now.

Negotiations have been ongoing with Rhodesia since last year. The sticking point has been an improvement in the status of Black Rhodesians and an end to racial discrimination, insisted on by the United Kingdom. The white Rhodesian government led by Prime Minister Ian Smith is vigorously opposed the idea of equality for Blacks.

Talks broke down on October 8th over the issue of majority rule. With rumors circulating that Rhodesia will declare independence, the U. N. General Assembly voted 107-2 to call on the United Kingdom to use military force to prevent such an event. Ten days later, the Organization of African Unity passed a similar declaration. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson has gone to Rhodesia to continue negotiations, apparently without success. On the 30th, Wilson gave a press conference before returning home in which he stated that a unilateral declaration of independence would be treason, but that the United Kingdom would rely on trade sanctions and ruled out the use of military force against “kith and kin”. A peaceful resolution does not seem to be at hand.


Harold Wilson (l.) and Ian Smith (r.)

Revolutions start to finish

Americans may not like the idea of revolution in the real world, but as part of their national mythology it turns up frequently in fiction. This month’s IF is filled with revolution, both political and otherwise.


There’s no clue what this odd revolutionary slogan means. Fred Pohl promises an answer next month. Art by Morrow

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 31, 1965] Finished and Unfinished Business (November 1965 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Spooks and SF

All Hallow's Eve is upon us, that annual moment when the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead is at its weakest. The departed spirits of those with unfinished business return to fulfil their goals. And puckish souls, alive and passed, spread mischief.

And amidst all this, there is candy.

In this light, the November 1965 issue of Analog is the perfect companion for Halloween. There are familiar faces, a significant departed face, delicious trifles, and sad tricks.

Tricks and Treats


John Schoenherr

Down Styphon!, by H. Beam Piper

If you read H. Beam Piper's Gunpowder God this time last year, you're familiar with Calvin Morrison, a Pennsylvania cop who got whisked to an alternate world where Aryan tribes settled the Americas and the precursors to our Amerinds stayed in Asia.  Calvin encountered a feudal patchwork where the United States had been, and he quickly took advantage of his military prowess and knowledge to help break the gunpowder monopoly of the House of Styphon, becoming Lord Kalvan of the principality of Hostigo in the process.

If you haven't read Gunpowder God, you'll be rather lost reading Down Styphon!, which is a direct sequel.  After winning its first battle against its neighbors, Hostigo now finds itself about to be attacked by neighboring Nostor and a host of Styphon-funded mercenaries.  Only by developing a mobile force and the science of military cartography can Kalvan and Hostigo hope to repel the vastly superior forces of the invaders.

Down Styphon! is little more than a campaign log, chronicling the ebb and flow of the fight from the initial preparations, to the attempted Nostorian breakthrough, to their ultimate rout. It's clearly a middle third to a novel of Kalvan's story, started in Gunpowder God.  Indeed, the tale ends on a cliffhanger: it is clear that Styphon has one more trick up their sleeve and will not go down without a fight.

The problem, of course, is that readers of Analog may never get a conclusion to this tale.  Sadly, Mr. Piper took his own life last November, and Down Styphon! is touted as the author's last published story.

On the other hand, a novel of Lord Kalvan (Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen) came out recently, and it may well have the resolution to the story.  It's also possible that editor John Campbell will license the last part of the book to finish the saga in Analog.

One hopes so.  While Down Styphon! is clearly incomplete and focused primarily on a single battle, it is yet one of the best and most riveting recountings of a military campaign I've read.  There is such rich detail that I could easily see Avalon Hill making a wargame out of it.

So I give this tale four stars for what it accomplishes and in appreciation for what it could have been (and perhaps might be — fingers crossed).

Even Chance, by John Brunner


John Schoenherr

A young Kalang tribesman in the remote mountains of Java rushes to meet a party of foreign anthropologists.  He bears a shard of a crashed vehicle, one he's certain will convince the expedition to regale him with gifts, as had happened during the War when a pilot had set down his crate and had to be nursed back to health.

But the fragment is highly radioactive, and the craft it comes from is not of Earthly construction.

That's a great setup for a story, but in (the oddly titled) Even Chance, the setup is the whole story.  You know its outcome from the beginning, and the thing reads like something from the 1940s.

A high two — it's not offensive, but it could use finishing.

A Long Way to Go, by Robert Conquest


Kelly Freas

A Mr. Randall from modern day is transported 500 years into the future.  Unlike other contemporaries who had made the trip, Randall is allowed to keep his memories of the 20th Century even if it means he'll have trouble adjusting to the 26th, the better for anthropologists to study him.

At the end, however, it is decided that it is better for Randall to be acclimatized after all.  The time traveler takes the news philosophically, noting that the future seems to have solved all of today's problems. But, his future host sadly informs him, they have unique problems of their own.

Once more, we have a fine setup to a story that fails to go anywhere. Indeed, I'm not quite sure what the point of the tale was.

Another high two.

Some Preliminary Notes on FASEG, by Laurence M. Janifer and Frederick W. Kantor

Here's a cute quasi-scientific piece on the generation of fairy godmothers, done in the style of a short journal article.

Three stars.

Onward and Upward with Space Power, by J. Frank Coneybear

On the other hand, Coneybear's longwinded piece on steam power in space keenly suffers for want of an introduction, a conclusion, and subheadings.  I suppose it's better than pseudoscience, but Analog really needs a dedicated science writer like F&SF's Asimov and Galaxy's Ley.

Space Pioneer (Part 3 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


Kelly Freas

At last we come to something that does finish: Reynolds' latest serial.  When last we left Ender Castriota (who had assumed the identity of Rog Bock to join the roster of the colony ship Titov on its way to complete a blood feud against the last of the Peshkopi clan, rumored to be on the vessel), the colony of New Arizona had been attacked by natives.  As the first intelligent aliens encountered by humanity, their presence on the planet not only poses an existential threat to the new settlement, it also invalidates the colonial charter.

A war ensues, egged on by the Captain of the Titov, who, not wanting to see his lucrative opportunity fade away, insists the aliens are simple animals.  That these "animals" wield crossbows and religious totems makes no difference to him.

Curiously, the "kogs" (as the indigenes are derogatorily called) are extremely humanoid in appearance.  Stranger still, they appear to be confined to the island on which the Titov landed.  I'm sure you can guess, as I did, the true origin of the "aliens."

Space Pioneer's third part is, like Down Styphon!, primarily a chronicle of battle and, like the Piper story, a deftly executed one.  Reynolds is good at that kind of thing.  The Peshkopi feud issue is resolved, and not as I expected it to be, and there is some good development of the relationship between Castriota and Zorilla, the one member of the colonial board who seems to be a decent man.  I was disappointed that Cathy Bergman, advocate for the non-charter member colonists had a minimal role in the third segment, however.

All told, I'd give Part Three four stars, and the book as a whole three and a half.  Good stuff, but it likely won't make the nomination for this year's Galactic Stars.

Assorted Sweets

With all of its ups and downs, Analog clocks in at exactly three stars.  However, as with any Halloween grab bag, you can always skip the candy you don't like and concentrate on what you like.  There's certainly much to enjoy in this month's first and last thirds.

Analog is surpassed this month by Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.7), Science Fantasy (3.2), and New Worlds (3.1).

Campbell's magazine is better than this month's largely reprint Fantastic (2.8) and the perennially lackluster IF (2.6).

Only one story out of the 30 new pieces was written by a woman, which makes Science Fantasy the winner of this month's SF equal opportunity award without trying very hard. 

Sad as that statistic may be, there was far more worthy reading this month than usual.  One could easily fill two big magazines with nothing but 4-star stuff.

So grab yourself this month's digests, stuff them in your trick or treat bag, and have a swell spooky holiday of haunting.  I know I will!




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Movies

[October 29, 1965] Oater, West German style (The movie, Winnetou Part 3)

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Cora 'faxed this piece from West Germany along with yesterday's comics article. It was such a delightful snapshot into the state of Westerns in Europe that we're giving it an off-schedule publication. Enjoy!


by Cora Buhlert

Not a dry eye in the house:

Winnetou Part 3

West German cinemas are currently dominated by the heroic Apache chief Winnetou and his white blood brother Old Shatterhand from the adventure novels of Karl May.

Karl May (1842 to 1912) was a small time criminal turned writer of pulpy adventure stories and continues to be one of Germany's most popular authors more than fifty years after his death. Generations of German youths have devoured the glorious adventures of May's heroes in the Middle East, Mexico and the Old West, adventures the author assures us are autobiographical, even though May never left Germany. The most popular are the novels and stories May wrote about the adventures of Old Shatterhand, a Saxonian engineer and thinly veiled May stand-in, and his friend and blood brother Winnetou. When I was twelve, I was going to marry Old Shatterhand and my best friend Dagmar was going to marry Winnetou.

In 1962, Horst Wendlandt, producer of the popular Edgar Wallace films, began adapting May's novel for the big screen. Two weeks ago, the long-awaited Winnetou Part 3 hit West German cinemas, starring Hollywood star Lex Barker as Old Shatterhand and French actor Pierre Brice as Winnetou. In spite of the numbering, this is already the seventh movie about the adventures of the heroic Apache chief – the number three only refers to the fact that this movie is the adaptation of the third volume of May's Winnetou trilogy.

Now everybody who has read the novels (and is there anybody in Germany who hasn't?) already knows that Winnetou heroically gives his life to save his friend and blood brother Old Shatterhand at the end of the story. Nonetheless, there was not a dry eye in the theatre when Winnetou tragically expires in the arms of his best friend to the soaring theme music by Martin Böttcher.

Winnetou and Old Shatterhand
Friendship beyond death: Winnetou (Pierre Brice) and Old Shatterhand (Lex Barker)

Producer Horst Wendlandt and actor Rik Battaglia, who played the man who shot Winnetou, reportedly received threats. However, fans need not fear, for the Winnetou movies are still a cash cow for Wendlandt and so the heroic Apache chief will be back in German theatres in only two months in the prequel Old Surehand, Part 1.

Will you be buying a ticket?




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 26, 1965] Mythology and Multiple Earths Science Fantasy and New Worlds, November 1965

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

It is getting to be a routine now, but the issue that arrived first in the post this month was Science Fantasy..

The covers by Keith Roberts are still an acquired taste, but his art is starting to grow on me. Compared with some of his other efforts, I quite liked this one! It clearly illustrates Brian Aldiss’s lead story this month.

This month’s Editorial is for the second month by someone other than Kyril – where is Kyril, I wonder? Surely not still star-gazing? Nevertheless, it is another interesting one. Brian Stableford is an up and coming fan who has his first story published in this issue. As a fairly new “neo-fan”, it is his turn to try and define science fiction in the Editorial in the form of an open letter. It’s a good attempt, thoughtful and seemingly well-read. I expect to read more from this young man, who I believe is only about 18 years old.

To the actual stories.

The Day of the Doomed King, by Brian W. Aldiss

Serbian King Vukasan is wounded and in retreat after being defeated by the Turks. With his General he sets out for the Turkish capital city, but sees what he regards as an ominous omen – a magpie with a lizard in his mouth, which then dies. Troubled by this Vukasan detours to a monastery to seek understanding. There Vukasan gets two opposing visions. One is of a Serbian Empire, greater than ever, the other where the Turkish army triumph and effectively erase the memory of his monarchy. There is then a twist in the story, which you may find either intriguing or annoying, but for me the story ended satisfactorily.

Brian has been a continuous presence in the magazines this year, as a writer, commentator – and Dr Peristyle! One of the things I have noticed is the range of material showcased. Some his works are clearly science fiction and others much less so, some horror, some psychological study and even some comedy.

This one emphasises the Fantasy aspect of Brian’s work, and makes an interesting counterpoint to Robert Burnett Swann’s The Weirwoods, also in this issue. Like Burnett Swann’s tale, this is knowingly literate, written in a style clearly determined to evoke a sense of earlier times. Although Aldiss’s world is traditional Middle Ages fantasy (the back cover calls it a “tale of ancient Yugoslavia”), rather than something older, I was impressed by how much the tone of the story is set through its lyrical language, like Burnett Swann’s so often is.

For me King was one of Aldiss’s better efforts of late and shows the reader how good he can be. Whilst I suspect your enjoyment of the story will depend on how convinced you are by the ending, I enjoyed it very much. A strong start to the issue. 4 out of 5.

The Saga of Sid, by Ernest Hill

Ernest’s latest is one of his efforts to write lighter humorous tales. It is initially about a vicar who, whilst watching a baptism finds that the baby, about to be called Sid, speaks to him. Understandably chaos ensues, and a bell-ringer, who is also a local reporter and who also heard the baby talk, tries to kidnap him and sell him to a circus owner. Sid, realising a scam in action, acts like a typical baby until the men have gone. Having survived all of this, it becomes clear as Sid grows up that he is unusual. He talks of Asgard and other non-worldly things in such a way that his mother, believing him to be possessed, attempts to instigate an exorcism. The consequence of this is that during the exorcism a flying saucer appears to Sid, and Norse gods Odin and Frigg take back from Sid the soul of Baldur. This leaves him as a ‘normal’ child in the end.

This one is as silly as it sounds, but long-winded to boot. For those who find the thought of a child named Sid funny. Not for me. 2 out of 5.

Beyond Time’s Aegis, by Brian Craig

Although the story is published here as by “Brian Craig”, it is really written by two writers, Craig A. Mackintosh and Brian Stableford (who I mentioned before.) Having enjoyed the Editorial by Stableford, I was expecting great things from this novella. But, oh, this one starts badly, so much so that initially I thought that the first paragraph was meant to be a parody of epic space opera. No, its pompousness and pretentiousness is genuine.

To be fair, once past this ominous beginning, the tale settles down a little, although throughout I kept feeling that at any moment the story could disappear into a pool of its own portentousness.

The story begins in the style of a medieval-esque fantasy, yet we soon realise that this is some sort of post-apocalyptic world where travel between worlds is possible and there are mentions of technology beyond the imagination of most of the people there. It is about someone who calls himself “The Firefly”, who I at first thought was a satire of Asimov’s character “The Mule”, who is on a quest to find the “Man Who Walked Through Time” who The Firefly believes can transport him back in history to a time where this world was not in decline.

On his journey The Firefly meets a diverse variety of odd characters, who all seem to spout strange homilies and portents.

It has an almost Elric-esque tone to it, but is weighed down by the ominously weighty words of great meaning the characters seem to give at every opportunity. Each character is an allegory of something else, which becomes a little wearying. It also doesn’t help that towards the end one of the characters strangles a dialect so well that he could give Keith Roberts’ Granny Thompson a run for her money.

Far too long, and rather too derivative of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories for me, it is better by the end, but clearly a debut work, and an overworked one at that. 3 out of 5.

The Wall, by Josephine Saxton

A newcomer, but again nice to see a woman author in this male-dominated bastion of genre. And this was interesting, if odd. One of those allegory-stories about a city at the bottom of a saucer-shaped valley with a wall running through the middle bisecting the circle.

Two lovers, whose only contact initially is by touching hands through the wall, decide to escape the valley together, only to come to a sticky end. Weird yet vividly written, if bleak. 3 out of 5.

Yesterdays’ Gardens, by Johnny Byrne

Either I am starting to get more acclimatised to Johnny Byrne’s odd stories, or he is just getting better at writing them. This is another I quite liked. Uncle Ernie is told by a young girl of the man who lives in a silver cup in the garden. As the story progresses, all is not what it seems as we discover some sort of post-nuclear holocaust has happened. 3 out of 5.

The Weirwoods (Part 2 of 2), by Thomas Burnett Swann

We ended the first part on a bit of a cliff-hanger where the mythical creatures of the Weir were about to attack the human city of Sutrium to free Vel the Water Sprite and take some sort of revenge on the humans there.

This story begins with Tanaquil watched over by cats. She is freed by witch-queen Vegoia, who explains that a spell by Vel meant to use the city cats to disable the guards has actually led to a massacre in Sutrium. She takes Tanaquil to Arnth and encourages them to escape the city. Tanaquil, after finding her father dead, agrees. The slaves, now freed, have revolted and the journey is difficult. Vegoia finds a secret way through the forest for them to safety. At the lake they meet Vel again. Vegoia seduces Arinth, much to Tanaquil’s jealousy.

Vegoia then sends Arith to make love to Tanaquil, but is rejected by her, not wanting to be one of Vegoia’s cast-offs. Vel appears and attacks Tanaquil, but is killed. Tanaquil grieves. We discover that Vegoia is ill and she eventually dies. In the end, Vegoia and Arith, now a couple, leave for Rome to start a new life.

The second part of this serial is shorter than the first, and not quite as enjoyable, although there is much in this part to like. Burnett Swann’s descriptions of the Weir Ones' way of life are as poetic as ever, but I found the ending somewhat sad. Whilst the humans are happy, the death of Vel and Vegoia leave a sadness as their lives have been changed by dealing with humans. Whilst Vegoia has shared love with Arith, Vel in particular is an innocent who would have continued a happy and contented life had it not been for the interference of humans.

Nevertheless, though the second half did not quite match the set-up of the first part, it is undeniable that Burnett Swann’s story still has a lyrical magic that many others seem to lack – although Aldiss has a good stab at emulating it with his story this month. For that reason, still 4 out of 5.

Summing up Science Fantasy

A mixture of odd tales this month. I enjoyed the Aldiss story the most, although I suspect the twist at the end will make some readers groan. Whilst Thomas Burnett Swann’s serial was good, I did feel that it did not quite hold the potential that the first part suggested it would. The rest of the issue is, like last month, not really bad, but often not for me.

Onto this month’s New Worlds.

The Second Issue At Hand

This month’s editorial from Mike Moorcock starts by praising an author I’ve never heard of before in his attempt to broaden our literary knowledge. Alfred Jarry is “the father of the literary surrealist movement” and given Moorcock’s enthusiasm for such stories he is therefore effusive in his review of a recent collection. He then goes on to point out that, like issue 152, the emphasis this month is on new, young writers.

To the stories!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Wrecks of Time (Part 1 of 3)), by James Colvin

In his Editorial Mike Moorcock states that James Colvin’s (who is also Mike Moorcock, don’t forget) serial is “pretty straightforward stuff”, and it is, but I liked it. It’s not particularly new but I like the premise that there are fifteen alternate Earths, all in slightly different stages of development. Our hero, Professor Faustaff (clearly influenced by Shakespeare’s Falstaff) travels his way through them all with a group of varied assistants. He is in constant conflict with his nemesis Herr Steifflomeis and the nefarious D-Squad, who for reasons initially unknown seem determined to attack Faustaff’s teams and cause chaos, destroying alternate Earths by creating Unstable Matter Situations (UMSs).

This one is straight out of Doctor Who with a bit of The Avengers or even your Man from UNCLE thrown in, the sort of free-wheeling caper not too adrift from the old pulp fiction of yesteryear, but given a modern sensibility. It also helps that I liked Faustaff, who appears to me as a much more likeable version of Heinlein’s Jubal Harshaw. (I have a sneaking suspicion that this is Moorcock’s version of a Heinlein novel.) Not to be taken seriously at all, and great fun. But why write it as Colvin instead of Moorcock? I can see this one working in the same way that Moorcock’s Jeremiah Cornelius does. I’m pleased to read that it continues next month. 4 out of 5.

The Music Makers, by Langdon Jones

Time for Moorcock’s second-in-command to do some writing instead of editing. Set on a colonised Mars with ancient Martian cities straight out of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, the story is based around a musician who after performing the Berg Violin Concerto tries to come to terms with the importance of music. This is an ambitious tale, if limited by the fact that it is trying to describe the emotions generated by music in prose. The ending is a little overdone. 3 out of 5.

Until We Meet, by Colin Hume

A story of people who have lived for thousands of years, with an ending straight out of Brian Aldiss’s story in Science Fantasy. There are some nicely written parts, but that conclusion is grim. 2 out of 5.

Time’s Fool, by Richard Gordon

The latest story by Richard Gordon (last seen in July’s New Worlds with A Light in the Sky) is one that, like Good Night, Sweet Prince by Philip Wordley in last month’s Science Fantasy, revisits history by using a famous person. Last month it was Shakespeare; this month it is a person more infamous – the Marquis de Sade. A person perhaps best known for his perverse sexual predilections, this story gives de Sade chance to answer his accusers as he is put on trial in order to address the rather grotesque impression people have of him being one of the most evil men who has ever lived.

I liked the general idea, but felt that its purpose was more to shock than to debate de Sade’s ideas, which it does. De Sade actually comes out well from the experience. It reminded me of Moorcock’s recent story The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius which used Hitler and Eva Braun in a similar way, as characters in the story. (Hitler even gets mentioned in this one.) This time around, prepare for “New Worlds Magazine writes positively about old pervert!” type headlines. Provocative and readable. 3 out of 5.

Night Dweller, by Terry Pratchett

A new author to me. I gather that Terry is very young – Moorcock mentions that he is sixteen in the Editorial – and if this is so, then this is an impressive story for someone his age. It is the tale of a suicide run, three men on their way to destroy an all-encompassing world eater passing through the Solar System, knowing that it will cost them their lives. Quite effective. 3 out of 5.

50% Me, At Least, by Graham Harris

After an accident, Bob Forton is restored to health to find that half of his body has been restored by artificial replacements. His outpouring of emotion at surviving is regarded as an anomaly by the doctors and nurses looking after him. An interesting one this, in that it deals with the issue of disability and makes the reader question how much of a person’s personality is based on their physical attributes rather than their other characteristics. It’s a shame I guessed the ending before-hand – the title rather gives it away. 3 out of 5.

Cultural Invasion, by Charles Platt

After his evisceration of Heinlein’s A Stranger in a Strange Land last month, Charles is back with some writing of his own this month. His last story, Lone Zone, was generally well-received, a gritty story of post-apocalyptic gangs. This time around, it’s a ‘humorous’ story of the consequences of a Russian spaceship, with cosmonauts aboard, landing by accident in Willy-in-the-Mud, a village in rural Hertfordshire. For a story so frenetic in action it is surprisingly mundane, with a weak twist in the tale. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews, Articles and Letters

After a few issues of few book reviews, Moorcock promised in his Editorial that there would be more this month. And so there is – there are reviews of Fifth Planet by Fred Hoyle, (“better”, but not to James Colvin’s tastes), Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, which I thought would be more typical of Colvin’s interests, but is given grudging praise here.

Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth’s collaboration The Space Merchants is recommended for light-reading. Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human is given a tremendous thumbs-up as “his best work yet.” Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth is reissued in its best translated version so far, Eric Frank Russell’s Men, Martians and Machines story collection is all “readable, well-polished jobs”, if too American in style for Colvin’s tastes.

Surprisingly, John Carnell’s collection of horror stories, Weird Shadows from Beyond was found to be better than expected – “not the usual old rubbish at all”. How much of this positivity is based on Moorcock’s appreciation of Carnell I was less certain about. Martin Caidin’s Marooned was “a bore” to read, Prodigal Sun by Philip High has little of merit other than to have a good cover. The Demons by Kenneth Bulmer is “Bulmer at his best.” Lastly, Colvin can’t resist reviewing himself as he reviews Blades of Mars by “E.P. Bradbury”, although his criticism as “harmless and unpretentious enough” is quite refreshing.

Hilary Bailey reviews the “lively, varied collection” New Writings in SF 5 edited by the aforementioned John Carnell. Continuing the standard set by Charles Platt last month it may be unsurprising to regular readers to find that Farnham’s Freehold by Robert Heinlein is ”not.. a very good book.”

But no Dr. Peristyle this month.

Alan Dodd reviews a Russian science-fiction film, Cosmonauts On Venus, which is better than it sounds, even if the best actor is a robot.

Summing up New Worlds

I said last month that I hoped this issue would be a fresh start. And so it is. Moorcock admits at the beginning of this issue that this is an issue full of promising new potential rather than well-known authors, and he has kept to his word. There were surprises in this issue for me. The Pratchett was a surprise, as too the de Sade story, even if they tread familiar territory.

Nevertheless, whilst I agree that new talent should be nurtured, my overall impression this that this is an issue that smoulders rather than sparkles. There’s a lot I liked, but none that I really loved.

 

Summing up overall

As much as I liked the Colvin serial (so much more than Harrison’s recent effort!) the two big stories of Science Fantasy from Aldiss and Burnett Swann make Science Fantasy an easy winner this month for me.

As I type this it is nearly Halloween, one of my favourite times of the year. I hope that your celebrations are glorious and everything that they can be.


Whilst the Beatles collect their MBE's, WHO's playing at the Cavern this Halloween?

Until the next…



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 24, 1965] "What time is it?" (October Galactoscope)

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By Jason Sacks

Well, so far this has been a great month. Last week saw the end of a dynamite World Series, in which Sandy Koufax, the greatest pitcher of his generation, showed himself to be one of the greatest Jews of his generation as well. It was tremendously meaningful to my family that Sandy refused to start Game 1 for the Dodgers against the Minnesota Twins since the day coincided with our holy day of Yom Kippur.

As Sandy said, "I've taken Yom Kippur off every year for the last 10 years. It was just something I've always done out of respect."

As if that wasn't good enough, Koufax dominated games 5 and 7 of the series, with his electric fastball mowing down batters in a pair of crucial shutout victories. The Twins played well, and  were outstanding American League champs – Tony Oliva is a monster – but it seems the Koufax gave the Dodgers the edge, and turned the '65 Series into a classic.

At the movie theatre, my wife and I caught The Bedford Incident last week at our favorite theatre here in north Seattle. If you haven't had a chance to see it yet, the film is well worth a night out — if, that is, you can handle an intense and sometimes bleak drama.


Richard Widmark turns in a powerful performance as a zealous battleship captain on the search for an elusive Soviet nuclear submarine. Also featuring Sidney Poitier and Martin Balsam, this black and white drama treads similar ground to last year's thrilling Fail Safe and ends in a similarly dramatic way.

The Hunter Out of Time, by Gardner F. Fox

If it seems like I'm dragging my feet a bit before talking about my entry for this month's Galactoscope, well, you're right. Gardner Fox's new novel is the epitome of mediocrity, a book that will give you 40¢ worth of excitement but not a whole lot more. The fantastic Mr. Fox is a prolific author who churns out more books and comic book stories than nearly anyone else living. Sometimes that causes him to create some delightful work. Other times it seems like he is just delivering words just to deliver him a paycheck. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that – I'm sure the man has a mortgage to pay – but it also represents a lost opportunity.

See, this book starts out with one of the most striking first lines I can remember.

I saw myself dying on the other side of the street.

The first page builds on that momentum, with the protagonist describing his body as "blood oozed over my fingers where I held that awesome wound."

I mean, seriously, how can you read a first page like that without feeling like you have to read more? Mr. Fox is an old pro and he clearly knows some classic tricks. As I read that book, I leaned back, took a deep breath, and readied myself for a page-turning thrill ride.


Cover by Gray Morrow

But, dear reader, I'm sorry to inform you that all the best writing in The Hunter Out of Time happens on the first couple of pages. It soon turns out that the man who falls to Earth is a time traveler from the far, far future who traveled back through a supposedly impregnable barrier to steal the man's identity. The time traveler is named Chan Dahl and soon other time-displaced men come to our time, confuse our guy, Kevin Cord for Dahl, and that unleashes the most obvious and cliched adventure you can imagine.

There's little in The Hunter Out of Time you haven't seen before. Fox gives us fantastic devices, headspinning time travel with seemingly arbitrary rules, and the obligatory beautiful, weak babe from the future.  Of course Cord uses his native 20th century skills to overcome his opposition, of course Cord and the woman fall in love, and of course Fox leaves room for a sequel if somehow people want to read more of this frightfully ordinary pap.

I could go on and on about this book, but hey, it costs 40¢, it'll take you a couple hours to read, and it's got a pretty nice cover by artist Gray Morrow. I'd rather spend my time watching young Warren Beatty in Mickey One in the theatres, but you won't hate this book and it's pleasing enough entertainment for a rainy Seattle Sunday.

2 stars.

Solid Fuel


by John Boston

The rising star John Brunner has produced ambitious work such as The Whole Man and the upcoming The Squares of the City, both from Ballantine in the US, and a raft (or flotilla) of unpretentious upscale-pulp adventures for Ace Books. Some of the best of the latter were mined from the UK magazines edited by John Carnell.


by Jacks

But there’s a lot more. Brunner has been one of the mainstays of the UK magazines for a decade, but much of his best magazine work has not been reprinted because it’s too short for separate book publication and too long to fit in the usual anthologies or collections. The UK publisher Mayflower-Dell, previously distinguished by its unsuccessful attempt to bring Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure to the British public, remedies a bit of this omission with Now Then, a collection of three novellas, two from the Carnell magazines and the other, his first professional sale, from Astounding in 1953.

Some Lapse of Time

The book opens with the energetically clever and creepy Some Lapse of Time, from Science Fantasy #57 (February 1963). Dr. Max Harrow is having a bad dream of a group of starving people living in ruins, one of whom is holding a human finger bone in his hand. He wakes and there is someone at his door: the police, because a tramp has collapsed in his garage. The tramp proves to be suffering a rare disease (heterochylia, an inability to metabolize fats, which become lethal) that Harrow is uniquely qualified to recognize, his infant son having died of it only recently, and which should have made it impossible for the tramp to survive to adulthood. The tramp also has clamped in his hand a human finger bone—the same bone, the end of the left middle finger, as in Harrow’s dream.

Unintelligible to the hospital staff, the tramp proves when examined by a philologist to speak a badly distorted version of English, like one might expect a primitive and isolated group to use. Meanwhile, Harrow’s marriage is blowing up under the emotional stress caused by his son’s death and his own preoccupation. When his wife slams the car door in his face, she catches his hand in the door and severs the end of his left middle finger, which falls down a gutter. Meanwhile, the tramp is sent for a head x-ray, but he turns out to be so radioactive that not only do the films turn out unusable but he has to be put in strict isolation.

Brunner brings all these elements to a thoroughly grotesque resolution—it doesn’t entirely work, but is a grimly ingenious nice try. Others apparently think so too; it is rumored that a dramatization will be broadcast later this year in the BBC’s Out of the Unknown TV series. Four stars.

Imprint of Chaos

Next up is Imprint of Chaos, also from Science Fantasy (#42, August 1960), one of a number of outright fantasies Brunner contributed to that underrated magazine. This one introduces us to a character mainly called “the traveler,” who we are repeatedly told has “many names but one nature,” unlike the rest of us who I suppose contain multitudes.

The traveler has been appointed (by whom, or Whom, or What is not explained) as a sort of metaphysical supervisor over part of the universe, charged with ensuring the primacy of order over chaos. He is on his way to Ryovora, a formerly sensible town where they have now decided they need a god.

So the traveler nips out to our Earth and snatches the unsuspecting Bernard Brown from a hike in the wood, tells him he’s unlikely to find his way home, but gives him directions to Ryovora. There, to his discomfiture, Brown is welcomed as a god, and when the next city over hears about it and sends over their god, Brown sends it packing in terror. Then the Ryovorans say they could have done it themselves (though they didn’t), and excuse Mr. Brown, after a final scene where he and the traveler bruit the futility and undesirability of magic.

A fantasy writer bad-mouthing magic may seem incongruous, but this rationalist in spite of himself really hates it, and comes not to praise magic but to bury it, though only after enough colorful magical episodes to entertain the rubes. Here the tension is more extreme than usual. His earlier fantasies mostly featured incursions of magic into the world of ordinary salt-of-the-earth types. Here, the entire setting is exotically magical, and the story is told in the fey and pompous cadences of high fantasy.

For example, from a conclave of the necromantic elite of Ryovora: “The Margrave nodded and made a comforting gesture in the air. He said, ‘But this cannot be the whole story. I move that we—here, now, in full council—ask Him Who Must Know.’” Brunner walks the edge of parody at times (“Tyllwin [a particularly powerful magician] chuckled, a scratching noise, and the flowers on the whole of one tree turned to fruit and rotted where they hung.”). But the story is clever and entertaining and merits its three stars, towards the high end.

Thou Good and Faithful

Thou Good and Faithful is older; as mentioned, it is the first story Brunner sold to an SF magazine—and it was featured on the cover of the top-of-the-market Astounding (March 1953 issue). Moreover, the readers voted it best in the issue, and it was quickly picked up by Andre Norton for her pretty respectable YA anthology Space Pioneers. Not a bad start for an 18-year-old! Though Brunner has had some second thoughts about showing us his juvenilia; the acknowledgements note it appeared in the magazine “in a somewhat different form.” I haven’t compared the two texts, though there’s clearly some updating; in this version Brunner refers to something as “maser-tight,” and masers were barely invented when this story was first published.

The story is for most of its length a bog-standard though well-turned rendition of a basic plot: find a planet, there’s a mystery, what’s going on, are we scared? The mystery is an idyllic Earth-type planet inhabited only by robots, who presumably didn’t make themselves; what happened to the makers? The final revelation is partly in the direction of, say, Clarke’s Childhood’s End, and partly in the one suggested by the story’s title, so in the end it’s much more high-minded than the puzzle story it starts out as. This is all older news nowadays than it was in 1953, but it too merits a high three stars.

Summing Up

Now Then is a solid representation of the mid-length work of this very readable and thoughtful writer, and there’s enough in the Carnell back files for several more worthwhile volumes of Brunner novellas.

Two by Two


by Gideon Marcus

The Journey has made a commitment to review every piece of science fiction released in a year (or die trying). In pursuit of this goal, I've generally tried to finish every book I've started, and if unable to, I simply don't write about it.

It occurs to me, however, that the inability to finish a book is worth reporting on, too. And so, here are reports on two of this summer's lesser lights:

Arm of the Starfish, by Madeleine L'Engle

The latest from Madeline L'Engle, author of the sublime A Wrinkle in Time, starts promisingly. Adam Eddington is a freshman biology minor tapped to work with a Dr. O'Keefe on the Atlantic island of Gaia off the coast of Portugal. O'Keefe (a grown up Calvin, from Wrinkle) is working with starfish, zeroing in on an immortality treatment. Just prior to Adam's departure from Kennedy Airport, he runs across the beautiful young daughter of an industrialist, Kali, who warns Adam to stay away from the sinister-looking Canon Tallis, who is chaperoning the O'Keefes' precocious daughter, Poly.

Adam finds himself embroiled in international intrigue, not knowing who to trust. This is exciting at first, but a drag as things go on. Gone is the quietly lyrical prose of Wrinkle, replaced by a deliberately juvenile style leached of color. Events happen, one after another, but they are both difficult to keep track of and largely uninteresting. By the time Adam made it to Gaia, about halfway through the book, I found myself struggling to complete a page.

Life's too short. I gave up.

Quest Crosstime, by Andre Norton


Cover by Yukio Tashiro

Andre Norton has come out with the long-awaited sequel to her parallel universe adventure, The Crossroads of Time, starring Blake Walker. The universe Walker lives in is a bit like that of Laumer's Imperium series and Piper's Paratime stories: there's one Earth that has mastered the art of crossing timelines, and it has built an empire across these alternate Earths.

On Vroom, the imperial timetrack, there had been a devastating war that killed most of the female population, making them particularly precious. Also, mutation has made psionic ability the rule rather than the exception. The timeline is ruled by an oligarchy of 100 meritocrats.

At the start of Crosstime, Walker is dispatched to assist Marfy, whose twin sister, Marva, has been lost amongst the timeless — and all signs point to a kidnapping. Of course, the allure of all parallel universe books is the exploration of what-if, and so Walker and Marfy's trek spans a dead Earth where life never arose, a strange saurian Earth where sentient turtles and lizardmen rule, and ultimately, an interesting timeline in which Richard III won the battle of Bosworth Field while Cortez lost the battle of Tenochtitlan. By the Mid-20th Century, there is a Cold War between Britain and the Aztec Empire along a militarized Mississippi river. It is to this world that Marfy and her abductors are tracked, and it turns out that the kidnapping is part of a plot to topple Vroom's Ancien Regime.

True to form as of late, Norton sets up some genuinely interesting background, but the characters are as flat as the pages they appear on. This time, I made it through two thirds of the book, partly on momentum from the first book in the series, which I rather enjoyed. In the end, however, disinterest won out.

Call it two stars for both books.

Don't miss the next exciting musical guest episode of The Journey Show, October 24 at 1PM Pacific!




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 22, 1965] Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (November 1965 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Days of Our Lives

I'm stealing the name of a new soap opera, due to premiere on NBC next month, because it sums up the way that past, present, and future came together in the news this month.

Yale University put an item known as the Vinland Map on public display on October 12. This is a map of the world, said to date back to the Fifteenth Century, which seems to indicate that Norsemen visited the Americas long before Christopher Columbus. In case you're wondering about the date, it was Columbus Day, in a nice bit of irony.


A detail of the Vinland Map. That's Greenland to the right, and a chunk of North America to the left.

As you might expect, there's controversy over whether this is the real thing or a forgery. Today, nobody knows for sure if this visitor from yesterday is genuine, but maybe we'll find out tomorrow.

If authentic, the Vinland Map is a voice from the past. In a similar way, folks in the present are trying to send a message to the future.

On October 16, the penultimate day of the New York World's Fair, a time capsule was lowered into the ground. (A similar object was buried nearby, during the 1939 World's Fair.) It is scheduled to be opened in the year 6939. (I'm a little skeptical as to whether such a thing can really survive and be found nearly five thousand years from now, but I like the idea.) The contents include . . . well, see for yourself.


People in that distant era will also know that we weren't very careful about spelling.

The Beatles seem destined to represent the artistic achievements of our time, if somebody actually finds the time capsule, opens it, and figures out how to play a record. They are once again at the top of the American popular music charts this month, and show no signs of leaving that position any time soon.

The latest smash from the Liverpool lads is, appropriately, called Yesterday. Unlike their other hits, it's a slow, melancholy song about lost love. Paul McCartney plays acoustic guitar and sings, backed by a string quartet. The other Beatles do not perform on the record, so it's really a McCartney solo performance.


By the way, Act Naturally is a remake of a Number One song by Buck Owens. The Beatles go Country-Western!

Flipping Through the Calendar

Given the peculiarities of the publishing business, it's no surprise that I'm reading the November issue of Fantastic in October. With their policy of filling about half the magazine with reprints, it's also not a shock to discover that we go back in time to fill up the pages. First up, however, is a new story set in a strange world that mixes up the past and the present.


Cover art by Julian S. Krupa. It's actually taken from the back cover of the July 1939 issue of Amazing Stories.


Look familiar? We'll hear more about the Space Devastator later.

Axe and Dragon (Part One of Three), by Keith Laumer


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Our hero is one Lafayette O'Leary, an ordinary working stiff, living in a crummy boarding house. He has a lot of intellectual curiosity, performing experiments in his tiny room and reading obscure books. He happens to find a Nineteenth Century volume on hypnotism, and learns about a technique whereby he can experience a dreaming state, while remaining aware that he is dreaming, and exercising some control over it.

(This isn't so crazy a premise as it might seem. More than fifty years ago, the Dutch psychiatrist Frederik Willem van Eeden coined the term lucid dream for such states of mind.)

Of course, he gives it a try. He winds up in a world that seems to be a bit medieval, a touch Eighteenth Century, a tad modern, and partly straight out of a fairy tale. The limitations on his ability to alter this dream world — if that's what it is — show up when he tries to give himself a set of fancy modern clothes, and winds up dressed like somebody in a swashbuckling movie.


Lafayette, ready for action.

At first, he enjoys the situation, happily replacing the lousy wine in a tavern with fine Champagne. Thought to be a wizard, he gets mixed up with the local equivalent of the cops. Still thinking this is just a dream, he tries to disappear, with only partial success.


Our hero tries to vanish, but can't quite do it.

Lafayette winds up in the palace of the King, where he is thought to be a prophesized hero, destined to save the realm from an ogre and a dragon. He also meets the King's magician, who seems to know more about what's going on than he admits. For one thing, he's responsible for the steam-powered coaches and electric lights in this otherwise nontechnological world.


The magician looks on as Lafayette admires himself.

Eventually, our hero meets the King's beautiful daughter, as well as the master swordsman who is her current boyfriend. Jealousy rears its head, and a challenge to a duel arises.

Lafayette assumes that his opponent, like everybody else in this world, is just a product of his imagination. Therefore, he reasons, the foe can't really be any better with a sword than he is. It looks like he might be in for an unpleasant surprise.


Tune in again for the next exciting chapter!

So far, at least, the tone of this novel is very light. Laumer almost seems to be parodying his own tales of the Imperium, with the protagonist finding himself in alternate realities. Unlike those serious stories, this one is a comedy. The people inhabiting the dream world speak in a mixture of archaic language and modern slang. The police are about as effective as the Keystone Kops. It's entertaining enough to keep me reading, but hardly profound.

Three stars.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Ray Bradbury

The rest of the magazine consists of stuff from the old days, both the prose and the art. First we have a piece with a title that is fitting for my chosen theme. It comes from the May 1947 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones, for what looks like a very odd story.

The protagonist is a would-be writer, reduced to pawning his typewriter due to his failure to find his way into print. (Surely based on the author's own early years, I assume.) He comes home to find a strange device. It sends him messages from the far future.


Illustration by Virgil Finlay.

Tomorrow's world is a dreary place, under the rule of a brutal dictator. A woman sent the machine back in time, insisting that the writer kill the remote ancestors of the tyrant. If he doesn't, the woman will be executed. If he does, the future will change, and she won't remember him at all. Since he's fallen in love with her, he will lose her either way. Besides this dilemma, he faces the moral crisis of murdering two innocent people.

This early work shows Bradbury developing his style, although it is not yet fully formed. You may think that's a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, it's got some emotional appeal, some passages of poetic writing, some implausibilities, and some lapses in logic. The ethical problem at the heart of the story — would you kill Hitler's ancestors? — is an important one, but here it's mostly used as a plot point.

Three stars.

I'm Looking for "Jeff", by Fritz Leiber

From the Fall 1952 issue of Fantastic comes this horror story, created by a master of the macabre (and other things.)


Cover art by Leo Summers. The Capote story is his very early work Miriam, which is a fine, eerie tale.

A bartender claims that a mysterious woman shows up regularly, although the owner of the joint can't see her. The reader is aware right from the start that she's a ghost.


Illustration by Emsh.

She uses her feminine wiles to pick up a customer, offering her affection in return for a promise to do something particularly violent to somebody named Jeff. The fellow, entrapped by her seductive charms — even the scar that runs across her face doesn't mar her beauty — agrees. He encounters Jeff, and makes a terrifying discovery.

There are no surprises in this variation on the classic theme of vengeance from beyond the grave. What elevates it above the usual ghost story is truly fine writing. The woman's first appearance, when she is a barely detectable wisp, is particularly fascinating.

Four stars.

Wild Talents, Inc., by Robert Sheckley

The September/October 1953 issue of Fantastic supplies this comic yarn.


Cover art also by Leo Summers, what little you can see of it.

As you'd expect, the company named in the title deals with people who have psychic powers. It's pretty much an employment agency for such folks. Their latest client presents a problem.


Illustration by Emsh

It seems the fellow can observe anyone, at any location. Unfortunately, he's very much an oddball. His only interest is in recording their sexual activities in excruciating detail. The guy in charge of the company has to figure out a way to protect the public from this Peeping Tom, while making use of his peculiar ability in an acceptable way.

The whole thing is pretty much a mildly dirty, mildly clever, mildly amusing joke. You might see it as a spoof of the kind of psi-power stories that appear in Analog far too often. A minor effort from an author who is capable of much sharper satire.

Two stars.

Tooth or Consequences, by Robert Bloch

Another comedy, this time from the May 1950 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Arnold Kohn

It starts off like a joke. A vampire walks into a dentist's office . . .. It seems even the undead need to have their cavities filled. The vampire also swipes blood from the supply kept refrigerated in the same medical building. When the red stuff is then secured under lock and key, to prevent further thefts, the vampire tells the dentist he better get some of it for him, or else. There's a twist at the end you may see coming.

I suppose there's a certain Charles Addams appeal to the image of a fanged monster sitting in a dentist's chair. Otherwise, there's not much to this bagatelle.

Two stars.

The Eye of Tandyla, by L. Sprague de Camp

We go back to the May 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures for this sword-and-sorcery yarn, one of a handful of stories in the author's Pusadian series. (The best-known one is probably the novel The Tritonian Ring, also from 1951.)


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones

The setting is far back in time, long before recorded history. (The story goes that de Camp wanted to create a background similar to the one appearing in Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan, but in a more realistic fashion.) A wizard and a warrior must steal a magical gem from the statue of a goddess for their King, or be executed. Their plan involves disguising themselves with sorcery and sneaking into the place.


Illustration by Virgil Finlay.

To their amazement, it proves to be really easy to grab the jewel. So simple, in fact, that they smell a rat. They cook up a scheme to put the gem back in its place, steal a similar one from another place, and present that one to the King instead. Complications ensue.

You can tell that this isn't the most serious story in the world. The plot resembles a farce, with its multiple confusions and running back and forth. It's got the wit often found in Fritz Leiber's work of this kind, but not quite the same elegance. I'd say it's above the level of John Jakes, or even — dare I say it? — Howard himself, if not quite up to the very high standard of Leiber.

Three stars.

Close Behind Him, by John Wyndham

The January/February issue of Fantastic is the source of this chiller.


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg. The so-called new story by Poe is actually Robert Bloch's completion of a fragment.

Two crooks rob the house of a very strange fellow. The guy catches one of them in the act, so the hoodlum kills him.


Illustration by Paul Lundy.

The pair make their getaway, but are followed by blood-red footprints wherever they go. You can bet things won't go well for them.

This is a pretty decent horror story, nicely written, although — once again! — not up to the level of Fritz Leiber, particularly since we've got an example of his excellent work in the field of tales of terror in this very issue.

Three stars.

Space Devastator, by Anonymous

I'm not sure if I should even mention this tiny article, excerpted from the pages of the July 1939 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

Anyway, it's less than a page long, and speculates about a huge station in orbit, equipped with a bunch of big mirrors.


Illustration by Julian S. Krupa

The notion is that such a thing could destroy entire populations from space by focusing the sun's rays and burning up cities. Casual mention is made of the fact that it could supply solar energy as well. I suppose it's imaginative for 1939, but it's so short — the original version was probably somewhat longer — that you can't get much out of it.

Two stars.

What Day is Good for You?

Today comes out a big winner over Yesterday and Tomorrow in this month's Fantastic. Leiber's contemporary ghost story is clearly superior to tales set in the future or in the legendary past. Otherwise, this isn't that great an issue, ranging from OK to below average.

You might well get more entertainment out of an award-winning film, such as this Italian comedy, which got the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film last year. Sophia Loren plays three different women, and Marcello Mastroianni three men, in a trio of lighthearted tales of love.


For some reason, every poster I've seen for this movie features Loren in her underwear. I wonder why that might be.

And you'll definitely enjoy the next exciting musical guest episode of The Journey Show, October 24 at 1PM Pacific!




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Magazine/Anthology, Serial

[October 18, 1965] Turn, Turn, Turn (November 1965 Fantasy & Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Winds of Change

History is divided into eras: The Stone Age, The Middle Ages, The Renaissance.  There are Golden Ages and Dark Ages.  The Jazz Age.  The Gilded Age.  One is never quite sure of a period's exact delineations, the precise moments of its beginning or end, until the next one is well on its way.  It is possible to tell when one is in an age, however, and also to feel keenly the wistful uncertain sense one gets in the doldrums between epochs.  Who can't have felt that way in the year succeeding President Kennedy's assassination, when his civil rights program, American involvement in Indochina, even the character of government in general hung in the balance.  And who can doubt that, for better or worse, the Johnson era has clearly begun?

I've lived through two sea changes in music.  The first was in 1954, when the overripe swing and schmaltz on the radio was overrun with a wave of rock and roll, particularly if you tuned into the Black stations (luckily, a radio tuner cannot easily be segregated).  By 1963, the winds of change had become muddled.  With folk, pop, motown, surf, and country vying for our eardrums, it was quite impossible to know then where the next two years would take us.  Then the Beatles spearheaded the biggest British invasion since 1812, and a new age was upon us.

Science fiction has its ages, too.  When I got into SF in a big way, the genre was clearly plumb in the middle of one.  It was 1954, four years after Galaxy's editor, Horace Gold, had thrown the gauntlet down at the feet of puerile pulp SF, five years after the new Fantasy and Science Fiction established a literary benchmark for the genre that has yet to be exceeded.  Science fiction primarily came in digest sized magazines, and the market was aflood with them.  Quality ranged from the penny-a-word mags which were little above the pulps that preceded them to stellar new fiction that burst beyond our solar system and ranged deep into our pysches.

As the 60s dawned, the genre had become anemic.  Almost all of the monthly digests had gone out of print.  The old stalwart, Astounding, had changed its name to Analog, but is fiction remained stolidly fixed in an older mode.  Gold retired from Galaxy and Fred Pohl struggled to keep it and its sister mags fresh as its reliable stable of authors left for greener (as in the color of money) pastures.  F&SF's helm passed on to Avram Davidson, whose whimsical style did the magazine few favors.

But the genre seems to have found its feet and is stomping off in a new direction.  Propelled by a "New Wave," again largely based in Britain, the science fiction I've been reading these days no longer feels like retreads of familiar stories.  They have the stamp of a modern era, an indisputable sense of 1960s.  And no single issue of a single magazine has represented this renaissance in SF better than the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

A Fresh Breeze


by Gray Morrow (illustrating the many perils of … And Call Me Conrad (Part 2 of 2)

Come to Venus Melancholy, by Thomas M. Disch

Disch is one of the flagbearers of the new era.  In just three years, this new author has produced more than 20 stories, some of them quite brilliant.  In this one (set on an obviously pre-Mariner Venus), a lonely cyborg staffer of a trading post literally holds you captive while she tells the sad story of how she lost her love.

By turns horrifying and heartbreaking, it's a moving piece.  Four stars.

The Peacock King, by Larry McCombs and Ted White

Less effective though more experimental is this piece on the first successful hyperdrive jaunt.  After four failures, it is determined that the transition to hyperspace bears similarities to drug-induced schizophrenia.  One couple, so in love as to practically share a consciousness, is fed a regimen of psychoactives to prepare them for the trip.

Somewhat roughly written, and perhaps too short, it is nevertheless a fascinatingly "now" story delving into new territory.

Three stars.

Insect Attractant, by Theodore L. Thomas

This usually disappointing column of sf-story ideas masquerading as short science articles starts promisingly, discussing how insect pests could be eradicated through synthesis of female sex pheromones, which could then be sprayed to disrupt their breeding cycles.  A fine alternative to DDT.

But then he goes on to suggest that human females have similar pheromones, and that distillation and application of same could be used by marriage counselors, as if love is purely a matter of chemical compatibility. Perhaps the author has never been in love, let alone gotten married.  Of course, Mr. Thomas may have meant the piece in jest, though I also resented its casually sexist overtones.  Either way, it's not worth the page it occupies.

Two stars — and let's please 86 this column, Mr. Ferman?

… And Call Me Conrad (Part 2 of 2), by Roger Zelazny

When last we left Konstantin Karaghiosis, Minister for Cultural Sites on an atomics-devastated Earth, he was giving a tour of Greece to a blue-skinned Vegan, name of Cort Vishtigo, and his human entourage.  Ostensibly, the alien was on Earth to write a travelogue.  His true purpose is unknown, but the members of the Radpol movement believe Vishtigo's trip is a real estate survey, prelude to the Vegans buying up the planet to plunder.  An assassination attempt is in the offing, and Karaghiosis (virtually immortal and currently going by the name of Conrad) believes that the alien's bodyguard, Hassan, is the likely killer. 

That's the context, but the tale Zelazny weaves reads like a modern interpretation of mythology, with Conrad's party encountering a host of radiation mutated beasts, humans, and everything in-between.  Conrad is a tale of survival, of derring do, of proving worth.  It's also a pretty good mystery with a satisfying, if a touch too pat, ending.

At first, I was leery of Zelazny's style, a first person macho that threatens to become precious.  But there's enough self-deprecatory humor to make it work, and I found the pages flying.  There's enough action to keep it moving, enough depth to keep you thinking.

Four stars for this segment, and the novel as a whole is elevated to this rank as well.

El Numero Uno, by Sasha Gilien

It used to be that Death attended to matters personally.  Now, the business has boomed, and he requires field agents armed with legal contracts instead of scythes.  This particular case involves a harried operative on the sports beat and a particularly recalcitrant matador scheduled for expiration.

Good stuff in the style of Ron Goulart.  Four stars.

Squ-u-u-ush!, by Isaac Asimov

Having previously discussed the shortest measure of time, the largest measures of dimension, the hottest heat, and the coldest cold, the Good Doctor now explores the densest densities, starting with ordinary matter and proceeding the greatest crushes in the universe: the interior of giant stars.

Cutting edge stuff, and it's the first time I learned of neutronium, a state of matter even more compressed than that found inside a white dwarf.

Four stars.

A Few Kindred Spirits, by John Christopher

Last up, the much heralded author of No Blade of Grass offers up a tale combining a queer (in both senses of the word) group of dogs, the concept of reincarnation, and the pursuit of literary laurels.  A character study cum literal shaggy dog story, it's perhaps the most conventional piece of the issue — save for the rather daring (and refreshingly uncondemned) discussion of alternate sexual preferences.

Four stars.

The Sound of Shoes Dropping

It is clear that, after a long many-tacked jaunt in trackless seas, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has set a bold new course.  I have high hopes and more than a little suspicion that this New Wave era has many more exciting years left to it.

After quite a few lean years, I'm finally getting my dessert again!




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