by Gideon Marcus
Once more with feeling
Less than two months ago, the Soviets sent Zond 5 on a trip around the Moon in a precursor to a manned flight. And on November 18, Zond 6 repeated the feat with, apparently, even more success. There was some suggestion that Zond 5's reentry and descent was fraught with issues. No such trouble (reported) on Zond 6.
A photo of the Earth from the vicinity of the Moon returned by Zond 6.
The USSR now says (or say, if you're British) that they might well have a manned flight to lunar orbit by early December. This is even as NASA prepares to send Apollo 8 on a circumlunar course on December 21. Yes, it sure seems like the breakneck Space Race is on again. May it claim no more lives in the process.
Once more with mild enthusiasm
by Kelly Freas
The Custodians, by James H. Schmitz
In the far future, Earth's one-world government has collapsed, leaving a plethora of princely states to war with indifferent ferocity. Further out, the settled asteroids, turned into giant space ships, placidly orbit the Sun, maintaining civilized culture as well as they can. And beyond lie the alien-settled "out planets".
After an unprofitable eight-year cruise, Jake Hiskey, commander of the Prideful Sue, has a jackpot plan. He is smuggling in a ship of Rilfs—humanoids with a deadly, natural weapon that kills all animals within a twenty-mile radiius—to serve as mercenaries on Earth. But to get them to Terra, he must first stage on an asteroid. The obvious choice is the one that the sister of Harold, the Sue's navigator, calls home.
The catch: the Rilf who goes by the name McNulty insists that no one know that the Rilfs are on the asteroid. That means all potential witnesses must be eliminated. This includes all of the asteroid's residents and, by extension, Harold, since he is afflicted with a conscience.
Well, Harold is no fool, and he susses out the plan just at its moment of murderous implementation. Can one unarmed man thwart his captain's evil scheme before the asteroid's population is slaughtered? And are the people on the giant rock as effete and defenseless as they seem?
by Kelly Freas
This is a riproaring piece, filled with well-executed action and interesting concepts. If anything, it's a bit too short, reading like two sections of a more fleshed-out novel. The concepts revealed at the end, when we learn the true purpose of the asteroid, are explained too quickly, and in retrospect.
I have to wonder if Schmitz needed to sell this before it was quite ready; I hope an expanded version makes its way to, say, an Ace Double.
Four stars.
A Learning Experience, by Theodore Litwell
by Leo Summers
A fellow signs up for a correspondence course and gets a Type III tutor robot trained at the Treblinka Institute for the sadistically inclined. While the mechanical's browbeatings do get the student to buckle down, he ultimately decides he will get more satisfaction from tearing the robot bolt from bolt.
Just as he is expected to…
Do you have a child who has trouble focusing? This may be just what the tyke needs. Just be ready to sweep the floor afterwards.
Three stars.
The Form Master, by Jack Wodhams
by Kelly Freas
The more complicated a bureaucracy, the better chance someone will find a way to take advantage of it. But he who lives by the forged form may ultimately die by the forged form.
At first, I thought this piece was going to be a celebration of the "rugged individualist" who comes up with a clever justification for stealing from his neighbors. It's not, but it's still kind of tedious.
Two stars.
The Reluctant Ambassadors, by Stanley Schmidt
by Kelly Freas
Humanity's first colony is on a marginal planet of Alpha Centauri. It has been failing for decades. Only one of the two sublight colony ships made it, and there just aren't enough people to make a go of things, especially since the planet's weird orbit takes it between the two bright stars of the trinary, resulting in massive swings of temperatures over the decades.
When FTL drive is invented, a follow-up ship is dispatched from Earth to check on the settlement. On the way, its crew note that hyperspace, which is supposed to be empty, appears to have inhabitants…or at least something is emitting a mysterious glow off the port bow. Once at Centauri, apart from the much bedraggled but doughty Terrans, the relief crew also find evidence of alien visitation, which apparently has been going on since the start of the colony. The colonists had been reluctant to investigate the aliens too deeply as the extraterrestrials had done their best not to be seen. Thus, the first faster-than-light reconnaissance turns into a kind of ambassadorial mission as the captain of the relief vessel heads off in search of the aliens not only to learn their secrets (and the reason for their secrecy) but also to find clues as to the disappearance of the other colony ship.
This is solid, SFnal entertainment, if a little dry and drawn out, and with aliens who are much too humanoid for anything but Star Trek. I like the setting, though.
Three stars.
Situation of Some Gravity, by Joseph F. Goodavage
Analog had been doing so well with its nonfiction articles of late that the appearance of this one is highly disappointing. It's a screed about how the magnetohydrodynamics of the planets affects physical phenomena and people as much as, if not more than, gravity, and that's why astrology works.
I think that's what Goodavage is trying to say. It's certainly what editor Campbell says (in a two-page preface) what Goodavage is trying to say. I found the thing incomprehensible and unreadable, not to mention offensive.
One star.
Pipeline, by Joe Poyer
by Leo Summers
The year is 1985, and the Earth is entering the next Ice Age. Its most immediate impact is a subtle shift in weather patterns, plunging America's industrial northeast into drought. Luckily, engineering has a solution: a great Canadian aqueduct to ship water from the frozen North to the thirsty Eastern Seaboard.
But there are folks not too happy about the project, and just before the pipeline's inaugural activation, saboteurs break the conduit, threatening forty miles of tubing. It is up to a small band of engineers to fix the breach and stop the terrorists before it's too late.
Poyer has written a competent "edge-of-tomorrow" thriller. We never find out just who was behind the sabotage. Strongly implicated is some combination of Japanese businessmen and right-wing Birch-alikes (my suspicions went with some left-wing group like a militant Sierra Club). Anyway, I think this is the first time I've seen Japan as the bogeyman in an SF story. It's a novel twist, and given how much is Made in Japan these days, perhaps a valid prognostication.
Three stars.
Once again with the computers
Here we are at the end of the year for magazines, and it's been a rather middle-of-the-road month. Analog finishes at a mediocre 2.7 star rating, beating out Orbit 4 (2.7), Fantastic (2.6), and IF (2.6)
Scoring above Analog are Galaxy (3.5),
New Worlds (3.5), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.2).
Women wrote about 9% of the new fiction published this month, and you could fit all the 4/5 star stories in two magazines out of the seven publications (including one anthology). Really, that sums up the state of magazine SF in general—some excellent stuff, a lot of mediocrity, and attention now focused on television and novels.
That said, it's still clear that magazines contribute a lot to the genre, particularly in the area of short fiction. Certainly Michael Moorcock thinks so, as he is composing a book a week just to keep New Worlds afloat with his own money! That he manages to turn out pretty good stuff in a single tea-fueled draft is a feat that makes him the British Silverbob…with fewer descriptions of underaged bosoms.
So, bid a fond adieu to 1968, at least in cover dates, and let's see what 1969 has in store!
William Shatner waves to the crowd at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York…but he might also be saying goodbye to 1968
The Reluctant Ambassadors is too reluctant.
"Custodians" is very good, the sort of thing Schmitz does almost as well as he does writing children. It's also worth noting that the women in the story are much more than mere damsels in distress. That's something else Schmitz does well.
"Learning Experience" was a decent read, but I'm not sure if I liked it or not. The motivational method here might work for some, but I think it takes a poor view of those who have trouble concentrating that could do more harm than good.
"The Form Master" was just sort of there. I'm coming to the conclusion that Jack Wodhams just isn't for me.
I remember absolutely nothing about "The Reluctant Ambassadors." Since the Traveler has decided to tell us nothing about it other than the title, and I find myself too reluctant to get up from my desk and find my copy of the issue, I have nothing to say.
The "science" article was unreadable nonsense. I think it was trying to say that astrology works for predicting the weather, as Analog has asserted in the past, but nothing was really clear. Most of it sounded like a modern version of Aristotelian aether.
"Pipeline" is about what I've come to expect from Poyer. It's one of his better outings, but that still leaves it more or less average and forgettable. The motivations of the bad guys were never clear, but I think the ones doing the actual sabotage were Canadian nationalists (if you can imagine such a thing).
Your copy had a printing error. Try the new one and tell me if your memory is jogged on the Schmidt!
Well, it stirred some faint memories, but I still had to go get the magazine to really remember it. It was a decent story, very Analog, but in a good way, not the Campbell nonsense way. It's probably the second best story in the issue. Certainly a big improvement over Schmidt's first story. He might be one to watch.
But having Schmitz and Schmidt in the same issue is confusing.
Don't know if this detail about "Plato's Stepchildren" is of any interest — but I thought I'd mention that Alexander's song "Great Pan sounds his horn … brekekexkoaxkoax" — is a somewhat garbled version of a translation of a song from Aristophanes' "The Frogs" (the brekekexkoaxkoax refrain is the frogs croaking). In the actual translation, Pan nods his horn — he has forehead bumps (he isn't a trumpeter). The translation itself is extremely free. The Greek describes Pan as horn-footed — i.e., hooved (not a description of his forehead adornments).
I caught that, too! The benefits of a classical education…
So glad to have you with us on this journey, Ruth. I hope I do your words justice.
Well, Mike Moorcock may have fewer descriptions than Silverberg of very young ladies, but then he just puts photos and drawings of naked bodies (including young women) in New Worlds instead! And only this month we had a story involving sex with a paralysed woman…. Anything to sell an issue, I guess.
More seriously, despite my personal grumblings, New Worlds is miles ahead of what the magazine used to be, even if its science-fictional content varies enormously. Much more inner space than outer space these days.
And there's a whole debate over whether we can count it as an SF magazine any more – many of its older readers think not! – but it is noticeably different to pretty much anything else out there at the moment. I do hope that New Worlds can keep going next year, although its not entirely certain.
That applies not just to the US but to Britain as well, of course – there is no other magazine to compare it to, as all the others have been cancelled!