[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
by Gideon Marcus
There ain't no Justice
It was only a few months that President Dicky tried to ram a conservative Supreme Court justice pick through the Senate to replace the seat left open by the retirement of the much laureled Chief Justice Earl Warren. Clement Haynworth's candidacy went down to defeat in the Senate on November 21 of last year.
Now up is G. Harrold Carswell, until last year, the Chief Justice of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida. He was elevated to the Fifth Circuit Appellate Court last June. To all accounts, he is no less conservative than his predecessor, and he's a (former?) segregationist to boot. His jurisprudence is also lacking: 40% of his rulings were overturned on appeal! As Senator McGovern observed, "I find his record to be distinguished largely by two qualities: racism and mediocrity." Nebraska's Senator Hruska damned with faint praise in his reply, to the effect saying, "Sure he's mediocre…but don't the mediocre warrant representation, too?"
G. Harrold Carswell
But as LIFE and other outlets are noting, Nixon's soothing rhetoric thinly veils a deeply conservative agenda, cutting social programs, withdrawing from world affairs, and trying to stack the Court with allies. Carswell's nomination passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 16 of this year. We'll see if the Senate as a whole can stomach him for the Court proper.
Plus ça change
Galaxy's editor Eljer Jakobsson is like Richard Nixon (well, perhaps this is a stretch, but indulge me—I need some sort of transition here!) He is trying all of the styles at his disposal in this new decade of the 1970s and seeing what sticks. The result remains inconsistent, but not unworthy.
This month's issue trumpets Silverbob's newest serial (sure to be novelized, perhaps as we speak) The Tower of Glass. Stephen Tall has the lead "breakthrough novelette", which I presumed meant this was his first work, but checking my index cards, I see it's not, since he first wrote a story for Worlds of Tomorrow four years ago. And then there's Ray Bradbury, undeservedly getting a third of the cover's masthead, presumably because of his pop culture stature.
The editor starts out the issue with an interesting piece, noting that even if there something to genetic races, it's meaningless anyway because none of us stick exclusively to our own (something folks of my persuasion blame on how lovely those shiksas always end up…) It's short and sweet. Then it's onto the "breakthrough novelette".
Allison, Carmichael and Tattersall, by Stephen Tall
illustration by Jack Gaughan
The three names in the title belong to a trio of compatible astronauts sent on the first expedition to the Jovian moon, Callisto. A biologist, a mathematician, and a computer engineer, the three have just barely settled in for the several month trip when the first of them, Tattershall, makes an interesing hypothesis: space is a near vacuum but not a complete one—what if the interplanetary cosmos harbors life? Incredibly diffuse, extremely voluminous life, to be sure. Unrecognizable at a passing glance, certainly. But there, nonetheless.
Seek, and ye shall find. As the Albratross sails for Jupiter, the ship sails by and inside a number of planetoid-sized creatures, sensed only by their abnormal particle densities. Unfortunately for the "Callistonauts", one of them take a fancy for their krypton-powered engine, and their fuel supply soon becomes dangerously depleted.
If this story appeared in Analog, it'd be a thrilling (or maybe just turgidly technical) SF action piece. In F&SF, maybe fantastically whimsical or horrific. Here, it's… pleasant. More inches are devoted to the genial interactions of the tic-tac-toe playing Allison and Carmichael, the blissful absorption in ant farms of Tattershall, and the dietary proclivities of all three. Plus, lots of discussion of biology.
Frankly, I suspect space life as posited by Tall is impossible. Things don't scale like that (and someone tell Irwin Allen…) Still, it's a nice story.
Three stars.
Discover a Latent Moses, by Michael G. Coney
illustration by Jack Gaughan
Here are the adventures of Jacko, Paladin, Switch, Cockade, and the Old Man, a band of humans surviving the Fifth Ice Age perhaps fifty years from now. They live under a dozen feet of snow in an entombed town, surviving on canned food and bottled booze. But they dream of land in the warmer West… if only they can outmaneuver the winged, snow skiing, Flesh Eaters. It reminds me of a bit of Michael Moorcock's series involving the ice schooner.
It's never explained what causes the big freeze. The general consensus of scientists is that industrial emissions will cause a global warming, but I've read at least one article lately that suggests smog particles will block the Sun and cause cooling. Maybe that's it. Or maybe, like in Robert Silverberg's Time of the Great Freeze, the next Ice Age will trump any artificial effects.
Anyway, the story is excitingly told and the characters vivid, if cardboard. It's enjoyable reading, but it brings little new to the table.
Three stars.
The Tower of Glass (Part 1 of 3), by Robert Silverberg
illustration by Jack Gaughan
Robert Silverberg sure loves him some dark futures.
Over the next several decades, the world will undergo plague and war that mow down the Third World. Birth control and ennui take care of the rest. But the productivity of the race remains as high as ever, thanks to mechanization, computerization…and the development of androids. These perfect physical specimens range from moronic (the gammas) to brilliant (the rarefied alphas—someone's been reading Huxley), and they fill the role of technician, nanny, nurse, and (but only secretly) lover.
The much-reduced human population lives effete, rich, and pampered, interplanetary and even nearby interstellar, knit globally by a network of "transmats" that eliminate commutes and homogenize culture. This, then, is the world 250 years hence, contemporary with Star Trek, but oh so different.
For one thing, this is no utopia. The androids seem quiescent, but there is indication that they might be on the verge of insurrection, or perhaps being manipulated to do so by human interests. And then there are the women…
Silverberg seems to hate worlds in which women are anything but shallow playthings. There is no narrative reason for women to get such short shrift in this story, and they do in all of Bob's stories, so I suspect it's more tic, less deliberate intent.
Anyway, that's the background. The story involves billionaire Simeon Krug and the constellation of relatives, top staff, and associates who surround him. Krug is building a 600 meter transmission tower in the tundras of Ontario to reply to a message recently received from the stars: "2-4, 2-5, 1-3" repeated ad nauseum.
So far, the story seems to be about thwarted expectations: Krug is disappointed that the alien senders seem to hail from a bright O-class star, precluding anything akin to humanity. His son is dissatisfied with both his unexciting human wife and his vat-produced android paramour. The android foreman Thor Watchman is dissatisfied with a nameless something, probably attached to his inferior position in human society, even as one of the most powerful beings on Earth.
It's all written with Silverberg's usual, if somewhat overdramatic, brilliance and not a little emphasis on sex. There are some very nifty concepts here, from the eternal dawn or noon that teleportation affords, to the "jacking in" to vast computet networks (the ultimate evolution of ARPANET, perhaps).
So, bad taste in my mouth aside, I am interested to see where this goes. It's in the same vein as his blue fire stories, which I liked.
Four stars.
Darwin, the Curious, by Ray Bradbury, Darwin, in the Fields, by Ray Bradbury, and Darwin, Wandering Home at Dawn, by Ray Bradbury
A trio of pointless poems from the master of mawk: what if Chas sat in a field all day, and on the way home, passed a fox?
Two stars—the illustrations illuminating them are nice.
The Rub, by A. Bertram Chandler
illustration by Jack Gaughan
The adventures of John Grimes, intrepid if cantankerous officer of the Space Scout Service, have been going on for more than a decade. Like Horatio Hornblower, we've now gotten most of his career, from Ensign through Commodore. There's not a lot of room left to fill. How then can Chandler keep this cash cow going?
Why, by returning to the mystical planet of Kinsolving, where dreams become reality. In this case, Grimes ends up in a nightmare parallel universe where, instead of meeting his lovely wife, Sonya, and advancing to flag rank, he instead marries a shrew and ends up in a dead-end job as commander of a fourth-rate backwater base.
And yet, even schlub Grimes has got a touch of that seadog magic…
I quite enjoyed this story, although it ends just a touch too abruptly. Four stars.
Sunpot (Part 3 of 4), by Vaughn Bodé
illustration by Vaughn Bodé
The adventures of the Sunpot continue to take turns for the worse—this time, the pages aren't even printed in the right order.
I said one star last time, but there's (a little) less sexism this time, and the pictures are pretty, even if the typeface is still illegible.
Two stars.
Galaxy Bookshelf, by Algis Budrys
The magazine's book column is devoted solely to The Universal Baseball Association, Inc, by J. Henry Waugh. It is about a fellow who creates his own private universe, centered around a baseball team, using a self-devised chart and dice to randomly determine what happens next. It's a bit like how Philip K. Dick created The Man in the High Castle (he used bamboo sticks and the I Ching.
As Budrys puts it:
It does convey a convincing approximation of how a God might be infinitely creative and yet not in direct control of his creation, omnipotent and yet prey to events, omniscient and nevertheless blind to the future.
Though not technically SF or F, and thus perhaps not sold in the same outlets as our beloved regulars, Budrys recommends in no uncertain terms that we read it.
No Planet Like Home, by Robert Conquest
illustration by Jack Gaughan
A race of humanoid aliens, prone to frequent mutation, wrings their collective hands over what to do about a comically tragic pinhead nephew of a Senator. The aliens scour the galaxy until they find a race that constitutes a close physical match so they can deposit the hapless lad on their world.
Three guesses which world, and the first two don't count.
Two stars for being obvious.
Kindergarten, by James E. Gunn
illustration by Jack Gaughan
Speaking of, here's a (charmingly illustrated) tale about a precocious child who creates a planet for his amusement, but its inhabitants are too dangerous to be allowed to live. The world's genesis takes, of course, six days. The name of the planet is…
Well, you already know the answer.
Two stars.
Diverging courses
The Supreme Court's constitution has evolved since 1950, becoming for a time one of the most liberal Courts in the nation's history. The building remains the same, but the members change…and only time will tell if we'll be happy with the new direction.
The magazine that Gold launched in 1950 also continues its slow, insensible slide toward whatever lies ahead in the '70s. It still retains the same dimensions as when it started, the same tactile feel to its cover and pages. But its cover art, its typeface, its stable of authors, the literary style, all have evolved. Perhaps not always for the better, but generally still worthy.
Sure, I'll renew.
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
The problem with "Allison, et al." is that theirs are storied names of great import, but I don't see the discovery of a new form of life bringing that about. That said, the narrative style is very engaging, and the characters are quirky enough to be mildly interesting.
I found "Moses" turgid. The pacing was slow (tempting to say glacial), and much of the plot doesn't really hang together. Line by line, the writing is fine, which lifts it up a little, but I might actually come in at two stars on this one.
I'll give Silverberg the benefit of the doubt for now. He's given us an interesting set-up, but it took him an awfully long time to get there. Having at least one sympathetic character would also have helped a lot. Right now, I'm more interested in the mysterious signal from space, than in anything that's going on down on Earth.
I'm not much for poetry, so I was mostly skimming Bradbury's offering. That is, until he tried to rhyme "silo" and "kilo," at which point I stopped reading altogether.
"The Rub" is probably the most enjoyable story in the issue, though not without its flaws. The foreshadowing was a bit too heavy-handed, and I figured out the significance of the title before they even got to Kinsolving's Planet. Chandler still has plenty in Grimes's career to write about. We've seen the crusty old man at the end and the wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant, but not much in between. We still don't know what led to him leaving the Space Service and going out to the Rim, though there's something hinted here about a court-martial. That's the stuff I'd like to see.
I didn't even notice that the pages of "Sunpot" were out of order, which says a lot about the overall quality. The format's wrong for the delivery, and the printing quality is poor. I'd say this is a failed experiment, but if I came across a complete story bound together and printed more clearly, I might buy it.
The last two stories suffer from the same overdone obviousness. Either of them could easily have been from any time in the last 20 or even 25 years. A pair of hoary old cliches that should have been put out to pasture long ago.