[February 12, 1965] Mirabile Dictu, Sotto Voce (March 1965 Amazing)


by John Boston

It’s an age of minor miracles.  Nothing to shout about, but last month’s pretty good issue of Amazing is followed by another one that’s not bad either. 

The Issue at Hand


by Gray Morrow

Greenslaves, by Frank Herbert

This March issue opens with Frank Herbert’s novelet Greenslaves, a rather startling, if not entirely amazing, performance.  In the future, Brazil and other countries are making war against insect life, since it’s a disgusting reservoir of disease and a source of damage to crops.  (The U.S. is an exception, owing to the influence of the radical Carsonists; the reference is presumably to Rachel, not Kit or Johnny.) But the campaign seems to be backfiring, with insects mutating, and epidemics.  The events of the plot are cheerfully bizarre, but the message is similar to that of the more ponderous Dune epic: attend to ecology.  Things work together and if you mess with the balance, you may harm yourselves.


by Gray Morrow

Unlike the more dense and turgid Dune serials, though, this story is crisply told and moves along quickly and vividly to its point.  It also recalls Wells’s story The Empire of the Ants—not a follow-up or a rejoinder, but a very different angle on the premise of that classic story.  Four stars for this striking departure both from Herbert’s and from Amazing’s ordinary course.

The Plateau, by Christopher Anvil

The ground gained by Herbert is quickly given up by Christopher Anvil’s The Plateau, which if it were an LP would have to be called Chris Anvil’s Greatest Dull Thuds.  Actually, my first thought was that it should be retitled The Abyss, but then I realized it is over 50 pages long.  Maybe—following our host’s example in discussing Analog—it should instead be called The Endless Desert.  It’s yet another story about stupid and comically rigid aliens bested by clever humans, which no doubt came back from Analog with a rejection slip reading “You’ve sold me this story six times already and it gets worse every time!”


by Robert Adragna

The premise: “Earth was conquered. . . .  At no place on the globe was there a well-equipped body of human combat troops larger than a platoon.” Except these platoons seem to have an ample supply of mini-hydrogen bombs and reliable communications among numerous redoubts at least around the US, as they bamboozle the aliens in multiple ways, including a cover of one of Eric Frank Russell’s greatest hits: making the aliens believe the humans have powerful unseen allies on their side.  The whole is rambling, hackneyed, and sloppy (late in the story there are several references to the aliens as “Bugs,” though they are apparently humanoid, and then that usage disappears for the rest of the story).  Towards the end, a sort-of-interesting idea about the nature of the aliens’ stupidity emerges, leading to a moderately clever end, though it’s hardly worth the slog to get there: it’s the same sort of schematic thinking that Anvil typically accomplishes in Analog at a fifth the length or less.  So, barely, two stars.

Be Yourself, by Robert Rohrer

Robert Rohrer’s Be Yourself is a little hackneyed, too, but at six pages is much more neatly turned and much less exasperating and wearying than the Anvil story.  Alien invaders have figured out how to duplicate us precisely; how do we know which Joe Blow is the real one?  No one who has read SF for more than a week will be surprised by the twists, but one can admire their execution.  Three stars.

Calling Dr. Clockwork, by Ron Goulart

Ron Goulart’s Calling Dr. Clockwork is business as usual for him, an outrageous lampoon, this time of hospitals and the medical profession.  The protagonist goes to visit someone in the hospital, faints when he sees a patient in bad condition, and wakes up in a hospital bed, attended by various caricatures including the eponymous and dysfunctional robot doctor, and it looks like he’s never going to get out.  Three stars for an amusing farce, no longer than it needs to be.

Wheeler Dealer, by Arthur Porges

The difference between an amusing farce and a tedious one is limned to perfection by Arthur Porges’s Wheeler Dealer, in which his series character Ensign De Ruyter and company are stranded on a nearly airless planet inhabited by quasi-Buddhist humanoids with giant lungs who can’t spare time to help the Earthfolk mine the beryllium they need to repair their ship before they run out of air.  Why no help?  Because the locals are too busy spinning their prayer wheels.  So De Ruyter shows them how to make the wheels spin on their own and thereby gets the mining labor they need.  Porges, unlike Goulart, is, tragically, not funny.  The story (like the previous De Ruyter item, Urned Reprieve in last October’s issue) is essentially a jumped-up version of a squib on Fascinating Scientific Facts that you might find as filler at the bottom of a column in another sort of magazine.  It does not help that the plot amounts to the simple-minded offspring of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God.  Two stars.

The Man Who Discovered Atlantis, by Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg provides another smoothly readable and informative entry in his Scientific Hoaxes series, The Man Who Discovered Atlantis, about Paul Schliemann, grandson of Heinrich Schliemann, discoverer of the buried city (cities) of Troy.  The younger Schliemann wasn’t able to accomplish much on his own, so he exploited the fame of his grandfather to perpetrate a hoax about the discovery of Atlantis, or at least of its location and confirmation of its existence.  Silverberg succinctly recounts the origin and history of the Atlantis myth as well as the charlatanry over it that preceded Paul Schliemann’s, and suggests that had Plato known what would come of his references to Atlantis, he probably wouldn’t have brought it up.  Four stars.

Summing Up

So . . . two pretty decent issues of this magazine in a row!  One very good story, two acceptable ones, and quite a good article, and the other contents are merely inadequate and not affirmatively noxious.  Do we have a trend?  One hopes so, but . . . promised for next month is another of Edmond Hamilton’s nostalgia operas about the Star Kings.  We shall see.



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3 thoughts on “[February 12, 1965] Mirabile Dictu, Sotto Voce (March 1965 Amazing)”

  1. What is the greater sign of the end times? That Amazing has put out two good issues in a row, or that I'm in almost 100% agreement with John?

    "Greenslaves" was very good. Maybe a bit bewildering at first, but once you find your feet, well worth it. There's probably room here for Herbert to expand on this, though I'm of two minds as to whether he should.

    Where we really differ is that I'd give "The Plateau" a solid or even high two stars. But, yeah, he could have hacked out a good 40% or more of this story with no loss. Anvil was once pretty good. He's in slump and I hope he gets out of it.

    "Be Yourself" was a nice little tale. Maybe nothing really surprising, but it did its job and entertained.

    "Dr. Clockwork" was classic Goulart in zany mode. It's the sort of thing you either like or hate. Fortunately, I tend to like it.

    Porges is a pulp author in a world that has passed the pulps by.  These de Ruyter stories seem like he's at least trying to move up to Astounding-style puzzle stories. He's not really succeeding.

    And Silverberg's hoax article was very good. I actually learned something. I thought all the Atlantis nonsense was down to Madame Blavatsky and her successors. I had no idea that Schliemann's grandson jumped in and gave it all an air of credibility.

  2. I agree with others and was very impressed with Greenslaves, Herbert is becoming a more interesting writer recently. The only thing was originally I thought it had ended two pages earlier than it did because of Amazing's continued bizarre formatting.

    Rohrer continues to leave me cold.

    The Plateau I thought was just fine but little more. Readable, enjoyable but forgettable too (which still probably makes it the best novella I have read this year, as it has so far been rather lean pickings).

    Calling Dr. Clockwork just didn't work for me, I am afraid.

    Then finally Wheeler Dealer was a poor story which barely seemed to have a point and seemed like a very colonialist story I would have more expected to see 30 years ago.

    So I was not quite as positive as some people but I enjoyed the longer pieces and the shorter ones were at least over quickly.

  3. Agreement that "Greenslaves" was the highlight of the issue.  Intriguing and imaginative.

    "Be Yourself" wasn't much, with its double-twist ending.  Pretty contrived.

    "The Plateau" wandered all over the place.  The main point — using advanced technology without understanding the basis behind it — was lost in all the other stuff going on.

    "Calling Dr. Clockwork" was a sharper satire than Goulart's usual farces.

    "Wheeler Dealer" is nothing but a sugar-coated, and trivial, science lesson.

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