by Gideon Marcus
Davey Jones has company
This week, the regional news has been filled with the death of a local hero. Aquanaut Berry L. Cannon, a resident of Sealab III off the coast of La Jolla, died while diving 610 feet to repair a helium leak in his undersea home.
It wasn't a matter of foul play or (so far as is currently known) an accident. The 33 year old Cannon, subject to the rigors of a deep dive and 19 times the pressure out of water, simply succumbed to a cardiac arrest. He was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.
The three other divers who had gone with him had no physical troubles. The repair effort had come shortly after the habitat had been lowered to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean pending long-term habitation by eight aquanauts. Cannon was a veteran of the second Sealab experiment, back in 1965.
We talk a lot about the space program here on the Journey, but it's important to know that humanity is pushing at all the frontiers, from Antarctica to the sea bottom. And in all such dangerous endeavors, there are tragedies as well as triumphs. Sacrifice is part of the bargain we make for survival of the species, but it never goes down any easier. Especially for his wife, Mary Lou, and their three children…
Davy Jones has company
In less tragic news, the latest issue of F&SF is filled with the kind of madcap, surreal adventures you might expect to find on the (sadly cancelled) The Monkees, particularly the first tale:
by Ronald Walotsky, illustrating the title story
Calliope and Gherkin and the Yankee Doodle Thing, by Evelyn E. Smith
Like, far out—two Greenwich Village type 17 year-olds, the Jewish "Gherkin" and his Black girlfriend "Calliope" are set up to take the biggest trip of their life. Like, they don't trip out on acid or pot, but literally are snatched for a jaunt to the stars, where they hook up with some of the sexiest green-furred cats you ever did saw.
Was it all an illusion? Or were they really summoned beyond the stars for stud duty? The plot thickens when Calliope begins to show in a motherly way…
This is the first I've seen of Evelyn E. Smith since she was a frequent star of Galaxy in the early '50s. Her chatty, droll style translates pretty well into the modern day, with her madcap, satirical melange of race relations, drug culture, and extraterrestrial high jinks. It runs, perhaps, a bit overlong, and also overdense, but it's not unenjoyable. Welcome back!
Three stars.
Party Night, by Reginald Bretnor
Carce is a scheming woman-user, all veneer and bitterness. When his multi-year attempts to seduce the woman he wants from her husband fails, he goes on a driving jag that plunges him further and further into a night determined to karmically repay him. The pay-off is horrific, though appropriate.
Typical Twilight Zone or Hitchcock stuff, but nicely presented.
Four stars.
by Gahan Wilson
After Enfer, by Philip Latham
A milquetoast of a man, paralyzed by fear, decides (at the urging of his wife) to find a better job than the museum position he's been stuck in for 16 years. He is recruited to explore the Nth Dimensions with an eye toward opening up tesseractal space for colonization, the world being intensely overcrowded.
We never get no details of the trip; we just know that no one has ever managed to deal with the terror of 3D+ space before. Frankly, without that, the story is just sort of frivolous and a let down.
Two stars.
The Leftovers, by Sterling E. Lanier
The latest Brigadier Ffellowes shaggy-dog-story-told-in-a-pub-setting is the least of the three Lanier has written thus far. This time, it's about a Paleozoic race of sinister, intelligent bipeds that inhabit the southern coast of Arabia, and how the Brigadier and his Sudanese sidekick narrowly escape their pursuit.
Lovecraft was doing such stories better many decades ago. A low three stars.
An Affair with Genius, by Joseph Green
Valence is a gifted biologist, plodding and methodical. For twelve years, he has been estranged from Valerie, a volatile genius in the same field, with whom he had shared a brief but remarkable relationshop. Success tore them apart, as she got the credit for their landmark discovery, and then seemingly abandoned him for a senior professor.
So, when she reappears in his life on the desiccating planet of Tau Ceti 2 where Valence had been researching the colony life forms that eke out a bleak existence, he is shattered, even to the point of contemplating her death.
Fate intervenes in the form of a sudden sand storm, and Valence must save Valerie's life. In the ensuing moment he comes to the realization that without her, he was nothing–just a persistent technician, while Valerie had all the real talent.
But the truth is more complicated; sometimes, it takes yin and yang to make a complete unit…
This is a beautiful story. Perhaps I'm just the intended audience, but I loved it. Five stars.
Just Right, by Isaac Asimov
The Good Doctor offers up, this month, a piece on the square-cube law—explaining why it's not possible to simply shrink or grow the scale of an object and think it will be subject to the same physical laws. He lambasts the TV show Land of the Giants in the process, as is appropriate.
It's a good article, and the final sentence is hilarious. Four stars.
The Day the Wind Died, by Peter Tate
An old man squats on his roof, in a senile dream reliving his days as an ace in World War I, planning to soar on artificial wings he has just purchased. His son Charlie, a harried weatherman, drops a mirror while shaving. His son notices that the wind around their house has abruptly stopped, and he believes his father caused it. He tells his friends.
And the plainclothes agents for the Bureau for the Investigation of Weather Incidents takes notice, certain that Charlie has stilled the wind for nefarious purposes—to ensure his father falls to his death when he takes to the sky on his wings.
Is Charlie a wizard? Who are these agents? Is this our world at all?
A surreal, rather puzzling story. I give it three stars.
Benji's Pencil, by Bruce McAllister
Maxwell, an English teacher, wakes from cold sleep two centuries hence only to find the world crammed with people and utterly lacking in color. But beauty exists as long as poetry is possible, and Maxwell makes sure that his multi-great grandson has the power of simile before the teacher is sent to the euthanasia chamber at age 70.
The story is written in a hopeful tone, but the subtext is entirely cynical. As usual, McAllister shows promise, but there is still a rawness that holds his work back from greatness.
Three stars.
Coming up for air
A good issue, this, and thankfully, no one had to risk perishing to explore these frontiers. Then again, perhaps it is prose daydreams like the ones in F&SF that drive men to explore onward. No coin is without two sides, I suppose.
Here's to future expeditions, both literary and actual, and safe travels to all who undertake them!
by Ronald Walotsky
If there's a common thread in this issue, then for me it's that many of the stories are bloated–some only a little, some more. You could probably trim enough fat here to have made room for another story.
"Calliope" puzzled me the whole way through. I wanted to dislike it; I found the characterization of the young people trite and inauthentic, the slang felt unnatural, a lot of other niggling things. But somehow it managed to pull me in and drag me all the way through.
The Bretnor was pretty good. Mostly standard stuff, but well executed. It's also a reminder that he can write more than just atrocious puns.
"After Enfer" was dull and never paid off. I'm not sure that descriptions of the extra-dimensional world would have helped.
I liked "Leftovers" better than you did. It was a solid, bordering on high, three for me. It's no surprise that Lovecraft touched on the theme before. All of the Ffellowes stories have been in a Lovecraftian vein, but Lanier is doing a very good job of putting them in a more modern tone, without HPL's flaws as a writer and a human being. I dispute that Lovecraft did this better (Robert E. Howard or Clark Ashton Smith, possibly), but it is the least of the three stories we've seen in this series.
I can't get to five stars for "Affair." It didn't make me think the way a five-star story should. I also found it too long, even more bloated than "Calliope, et. al"
I didn't understand the Tate either. It's that British strain of New Wave, where style is more important than sense. Enjoyable, but puzzling.
"Benji's Pencil" was fine, but nothing special. We get another standard drab and overpopulated world that makes no sense. I also found it far less hopeful than the author seems to have intended.
I loved the Evelyn Smith – so amusing. Lines like "she not being human by a long shot, though definitely, enviably, mammalian" and "Gherkin's great-uncle Milton, a skeleton on the groom's
side, over eighty with dyed hair and still fancying himself a blade,
retorted, "Look, I don't like the idea of my nephew marrying a
schiksa any more than you like the idea of her tying the knot with a honky, but that's the way the world is blowing; you gotta swing
with the times, baby." Then he and Aunt Ada went off and killed
a magnum of champagne together – "Now this is what I call real
soul food!" she approved-and subsequently were discovered by
Mrs. Rosenblum in a pantry, behaving in what she would only
describe as "a very disgusting way." I give it five stars.
Reginald Bretnor has written a superb character study – possibly the best piece by him I've read, and O agree with your four stars.
I loved the Evelyn Smith – so amusing. Lines like "she not being human by a long shot, though definitely, enviably, mammalian" and "Gherkin's great-uncle Milton, a skeleton on the groom's side, over eighty with dyed hair and still fancying himself a blade, retorted, "Look, I don't like the idea of my nephew marrying a schiksa any more than you like the idea of her tying the knot with a honky, but that's the way the world is blowing; you gotta swing with the times, baby." Then he and Aunt Ada went off and killed a magnum of champagne together – "Now this is what I call real soul food!" she approved-and subsequently were discovered by Mrs. Rosenblum in a pantry, behaving in what she would only describe as "a very disgusting way." I give it five stars.
Reginald Bretnor has written a superb character study – possibly the best piece by him I've read, and I agree with your four stars.
I did find a lot of the bits in the story amusing, as you say. They were just so densely presented that I found myself a bit overwhelmed. But I did enjoy the piece.