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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 26, 1966] All that glitters: in praise of Cele Goldsmith Lalli

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by John Boston

Gone but not Forgotten

SF editors come in highly assorted makes and models and evoke equally varied reactions. Some are revered as movers and shakers (though not always unanimously); a few are reviled as debasers of the field; some are barely noticed at all. A few have earned sympathetic respect for making something out of nothing, or close to it. Before World War II, Frederik Pohl edited several pulp magazines with a budget of zero, and he had to beg for stories from his friends. Robert Lowndes had little more than zero to work with, but managed to publish three at-least-readable magazines through the 1950s, occasionally coming up with something excellent. (And he’s at it again with Magazine of Horror.)

Another in this mode was Cele Goldsmith, later Lalli, who joined Ziff-Davis in 1955, straight out of Vassar. First, she was editorial assistant to Howard Browne, then to Paul Fairman when Browne left, with promotions along the way to associate editor and managing editor. At the time she was hired, she had read no SF beyond Verne and Wells. When Fairman left at the end of 1958, she inherited the editor’s mantle. During that time, the magazines were firmly, and intentionally, stuck in a rut of formulaic stories. Most of them were produced almost literally by the yard by a small number of regulars (among them Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, Stephen Marlowe (nee Milton Lesser), and Howard Browne, joined in midflight by Harlan Ellison and Henry Slesar) under various pseudonyms and house names as well as their own names. Though more outright fantasy did appear in Fantastic than in Amazing, overall there was not much difference between their contents, and in fact the label Science Fiction appeared on Fantastic at times.

Things changed quickly under the new editor. (Hints of these changes were already apparent in the last months under Fairman, when Goldsmith was assuming progressively more responsibility). The contents pages gradually became more various, with respectable middle-grade writers from outside the regular crew appearing more and more frequently—some of whom, like Cordwainer Smith and Kate Wilhelm, became much more prominent later. Though some of the regulars—Silverberg, Garrett, Slesar, Ellison—continued to appear, the pseudonyms vanished.

Goldsmith’s most audacious coup in her first year as editor was the November 1959 Fantastic, which consisted entirely of five stories by Fritz Leiber. No SF magazine had previously devoted an entire issue to one author (though some issues of Amazing and Fantastic had probably come close, with authors’ identities obscured by pseudonyms.) Most notable among the stories was "Lean Times in Lankhmar," the first new entry in a number of years in Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery series featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, which signaled a revival of a style of fantasy that had fallen badly out of favor.

Fantastic November 1959

By 1960, the magazines had been reestablished as having some claim to merit, a welcome counter-trend to the rapid disappearance of other SF magazines. (No fewer than 15 magazines ceased publication from 1958 to mid-1960.) Amazing’s and Fantastic’s roster of contributors quickly became more impressive. Frank Herbert, James Blish, James E. Gunn, Damon Knight, and Clifford Simak all appeared during 1960, and Fritz Leiber made multiple contributions to both magazines. Other signs of an enterprising editor included the resumption in Fantastic of Sam Moskowitz’s articles on early figures in SF and fantasy, which had been running in Satellite when it folded; pieces on Lovecraft, Stapledon, Capek, M.P. Shiel and H.F.Heard, and Philip Wylie appeared in 1960. (The series was later continued in Amazing with more recent writers as subjects.) Amazing began a selection of reprints from its earliest days, selected and introduced by Moskowitz. Fantastic published a “round robin” story titled "The Covenant", with chapters by Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Robert Sheckley, Murray Leinster, and Robert Bloch, modelled on similar stories published in the 1930s. On the outside as well, the magazines improved, with the covers of Fantastic in particular becoming steadily less cheesy and more imaginative.

Goldsmith’s most often recognized achievement is the significant number of excellent writers whom she discovered and who went on to considerable success. The list speaks for itself: Keith Laumer, Neal Barrett, Jr., Roger Zelazny, Sonya Dorman, Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Phyllis Gotlieb, Piers Anthony. She also provided a home for David R. Bunch, who had been publishing in semi-professional and local markets throughout the ‘50s, but who became a regular in Amazing and Fantastic, albeit to decidedly mixed reception. Similarly, she was the first American editor to publish J.G. Ballard, who had made a substantial reputation in the British SF magazines but had not previously cracked the US magazines. Lalli’s lack of background in SF before she came to Ziff-Davis may have served her well by leaving her more open than other editors to departures from genre business as usual.

That’s the good news—the straw-into-gold part. But the magazines were not all gold by any means. Being at the bottom of the market in terms of pay rates meant that the stories Goldsmith received from the most prominent writers would be those that had been rejected everywhere else. She could (and had to) take a chance on new writers who might or might not pan out, and in some cases she had to take work that she probably would rather have avoided. Many of the serialized novels were quite weak. Jack Sharkey’s disastrous Amazing serial The Programmed People comes to mind. Overall, the bag was especially mixed in Amazing. Most issues of the magazine included some stories that were variously crude, inane, or otherwise barely readable. Reading Amazing month by month was a perpetual bait-and-switch game, with expectations raised by impressive issues and dashed the following month.

Nevertheless, by the end of the Ziff-Davis era, the Goldsmith/Lalli Amazing had put up an enviable score of memorable stories. There are too many to list here, but the highlights include Arthur C. Clarke’s Before Eden (June 1961); J.G. Ballard’s startling run including The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista (March 1962), Thirteen to Centaurus (April 1962), and The Encounter (June 1963); Mark Clifton’s scarifying Hang Head, Vandal! (April 1962); Roger Zelazny’s Moonless in Byzantium (December 1962); Keith Laumer’s It Could Be Anything (January 1963) and The Walls (1963); and Philip K. Dick’s The Days of Perky Pat (December 1963). The last half-dozen issues amounted to a crescendo towards oblivion, featuring Zelazny’s serial He Who Shapes (January-February 1965), Frank Herbert’s Greenslaves (March 1965), Clifford D. Simak’s brief and elegant Over the River and Through the Woods (May 1965), and Zelazny’s exuberantly shameless performance The Furies (June 1965). Fantastic offered among others Jack Vance's The Kragen (July 1964), Thomas M. Disch's chilly Descending (the same issue!), Ursula Le Guin's April in Paris (her first story!), and the renewed series of Gray Mouser/Fafhrd stories by Leiber.

It’s not clear whether Lalli had the option of staying with Amazing and Fantastic when they were sold, but if so, it’s just as well she didn’t take it. Life under the Sol Cohen almost-all-reprints, negligible-budget regime, shortly to be compounded by a boycott by the Science Fiction Writers of America when Cohen refused to pay for reprints, could scarcely have been anything but miserable. She wisely slipped sideways into Ziff-Davis’s Modern Bride, there to purvey a different sort of fantastic literature, while the Sol Cohen magazines’ editorials and letter columns rang with surly bad-mouthing of her time at the helm of Amazing and Fantastic. Something tells me that her decade’s foray into SF and fantasy will be well remembered long after her successor is forgotten.

Cele Goldsmith and the Sword and Sorcery Revival


by Cora Buhlert

When Cele Goldsmith took over editing duties at Amazing and Fantastic in 1958, sword and sorcery was not just dead – no, the type of historically flavoured adventure fantasy with a good dose of horror that was pioneered by writers like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner or Nictzin Dyalhis in the pages of Weird Tales some thirty years ago did not even have a name. A few stalwarts were holding up the flame in the fanzine Amra, but commercially the subgenre was dead and those who'd written it during its brief flourishing in the 1930s had either passed away (Howard, Kuttner, Dyalhis) or had retired from writing (Moore and Smith).

One of the few writers from the genre's heyday who was still around and still writing was Fritz Leiber, who had published several stories about a pair of adventurers called Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in Unknown and other magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. The last Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story "The Seven Black Priests" appeared in Other Worlds Science Stories in 1953. For all intents and purposes, the two rogues from the city Lankhmar, though dear to Leiber's heart, were permanently retired, as the market had moved away from the sort of swashbuckling fantasy that characterized their adventures.

Enter Cele Goldsmith and the Fritz Leiber Special Issue of Fantastic in November 1959. Of the five stories Leiber wrote for that issue, two were part of his Change War series (a novel in that series, The Big Time, had just won the 1959 Hugo Award for Best Novel), two were standalones and one, "Lean Times in Lankhmar", was the first new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story in six years.

Fantastic May 1961
The May 1961 issue of Fantastic, illustrating a memorable scene from Fritz Leiber's "Scylla's Daughter". There's also a reprint of a Robert E. Howard story.

 

"Lean Times in Lankhmar" is one of the best and definitely the funniest story in the entire series, a satire of organized religion that manages to be sharp but not offensive. The story must have struck a chord both with Cele Goldsmith and the readers of Fantastic, for over the next six years eight new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories appeared in Fantastic, more than had been published in Unknown, where the series originated in 1939.

Fantastic October 1962
Ed Emshwiller's striking cover illustration for Fritz Leiber's "The Unholy Grail".

In 1961, the still nameless genre that was about to undergo a revival finally got a name, when Fritz Leiber proposed "sword and sorcery" in an exchange with Michael Moorcock in the pages of the fanzines Amra and Ancalgon. The alliterative term stuck, so now there was finally a name for stories like the adventure of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Robert E. Howard's Conan.

Fantastic May 1964
Ed Emshwiller's portrait of Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, patron wizard of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, adorns the cover of the May 1964 issue of Fantastic, which reprinted Fritz Leiber's "Adept's Gambit".

Cele Goldsmith had only just been born during sword and sorcery's first heyday in the 1930s and certainly did not read Weird Tales in the crib, but she knew a rising genre when she saw one. So she began publishing more sword and sorcery stories by other authors.

Roger Zelazny is one of Cele Goldsmith's great discoveries. His first professional story "Horseman!", which appeared in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic, was a sword and sorcery story. It wasn't even the only sword and sorcery story in that issue. The title story "Sword of Flowers" by Larry M. Harris a.k.a. Laurence M. Janifer as well as "The Titan," a reprint of a 1934 story by P. Schuyler Miller, were sword and sorcery as well.

Fantastic August 1962
Roger Zelazny debuted in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic which also featured sword and sorcery by Laurence M. Janifer and P. Schuyler Henstrom. The cover is by Vernon Kramer.

Zelazny has since branched out, but he keeps returning to sword and sorcery once in a while, for example in the haunting Lord Dunsany-inspired stories of Dilvish the Damned, three of which have appeared in Fantastic to date.

Fantastic June 1965
Roger Zelazny's Dilvish the Damned story "Thelinde's Song" is the cover story of the June 1965 issue of Fantastic, which was also the last issue edited by Cele Goldsmith-Lalli.

Though only in his thirties, John Jakes is already a veteran writer who has been publishing across various genres since 1950. An admitted fan of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories from the 1930s, Jakes created his own Conan-like character in Brak the Barbarian, who has appeared in four stories in Fantastic between 1963 and 1965.

January 1965 Fantastic
Ed Emshwiller's iillsutration for "The Girl in the Gem" by John Jakes.
Fantastic March 1965
Gray Morrow's cover for the March 1965 issue of Fantastic illustrates "The Pillars of Cambalor" by John Jakes.

 

British writer and editor Michael Moorcock has been a prolific contributor to the fanzine Amra and also pushed the sword and the sorcery genre into new directions with the adventures of Elric of Melniboné, an albino elven warrior who depends on drugs to survive and fights evil with his cursed sword Stormbringer. The majority of Elric's adventures have appeared in the pages of Science Fantasy, but "Master of Chaos" appeared in the May 1964 issue of Fantastic alongside a reprint of Fritz Leiber's 1947 Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story "Adept's Gambit."

Since Amazing and Fantastic were sold to Sol Cohen and Cele Goldsmith Lalli left for the greener pastures of Modern Bride, the appearances of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Dilvish the Damned and Brak the Barbarian have become rare in the pages of Fantastic (and what stories there did appear were likely leftover from Goldsmith's tenure). However, the sword and sorcery revival is still in full swing and Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, which started it all back in 1932, are set to be reprinted later this year.

One day in the future, when the history of sword and sorcery is written, Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock and John Jakes will be remembered as pivotal figures in the revival of the genre in the sixties. However, I hope that any history of sword and sorcery will also make room for Cele Goldsmith, who championed the genre when it had neither a name nor a market and without whom the sword and sorcery revival may well have been strangled in the crib.

Modern Bride, December 1965
No more mighty muscles in Cele Goldsmith Lalli's new stomping grounds, though at least the gothic castles and maidens in white gowns remain.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 10, 1966] Dollars and Cents (September 1966 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Render Unto Caesar

There's a new way to lose your money when visiting Las Vegas. A hotel, showroom, and casino called Caesars Palace (no apostrophe) opened a few days ago. As the name implies, it has an ancient Rome theme rather than the Western theme found in most gambling dens in Sin City.


A showgirl advertises the grand opening. I don't think that's an authentic costume of the time.

The inauguration ceremony is said to have cost one million dollars, including money spent on huge amounts of caviar, filet mignon, crabmeat, and champagne.


A page from a brochure advertising the place. Or possibly an illustration for a time travel story.

The Deuce Gets Loose

Speaking of losing money, today the United States Department of the Treasury announced that it would no longer print two-dollar bills. (The U.S. Mint hadn't actually printed any since June 30, but now they're going to stop completely.)


Thomas Jefferson looks glum about the situation. At least he'll still be on the nickel.

Two-dollar bills only make up a tiny percentage of the paper money in circulation. Some folks think they're unlucky. They're welcome to give any they don't want to me.

Wild Success

One thing you can do with a two-dollar bill is buy a couple of 45 rpm single records, and maybe even have a little change left over. A lot of people are shelling out a buck or so for the current Number One smash hit Wild Thing by the British band the Troggs. This raw, energetic tune was originally recorded last year by an American group called, appropriately enough, the Wild Ones, but failed to reach the charts.


It's the only rock 'n roll hit I can recall that features an extended ocarina solo.

You Pays Your Money And You Takes Your Choice

If you've only got fifty cents to your name, you can still purchase a copy of the current issue of Fantastic. That's less than one-third of a cent per page, so it sounds like a pretty good deal.

Of course, as my esteemed colleague John Boston recently pointed out, both Amazing and Fantastic are publishing lots of reprints without paying the authors. Whether you want to support these publications or boycott them is your choice. As for me, duty calls.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

Of course, the image on the front is also a reprint, and I doubt it was paid for either. In any case, it comes from the back cover of the April 1942 issue of Amazing Stories.


Here's the original painting, titled City of the Future. Looks a lot better this way, doesn't it?

For a Breath I Tarry, by Roger Zelazny

As the cover announces, here's the author's newest story.

Wait a minute! Haven't I read this before? Let me see, where could it have been?

Oh, yeah, it appeared in the March issue of New Worlds, and was reviewed by my esteemed colleague Mark Yon just a few months ago. I hope the author got paid twice.


Anonymous cover art.

I cannot hope to match the quality of this outstanding article. I will simply offer my own views, for whatever they might be worth.


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Long after humanity has disappeared, Earth is controlled by machines. Orbiting the planet is the supreme ruler, Solcom. Dwelling deep underground is a rival machine, named Divcom. (An allegory with God and the Devil seems intended, and some of the story reminds me of the Book of Job. However, the plot is completely original, and not merely a retelling of the Bible story.)

Solcom creates a machine to rule the northern hemisphere, calling it Frost. The ruler of the southern hemisphere is Beta. Frost makes a hobby of studying what little remains of humanity's relics. A machine named Mordel, in the service of Divcom, comes to Frost with a supply of ancient books. These excite Frost's curiosity, and it sets out on a quest to understand human emotions; in fact, to become a human being. Mordel offers Frost a deal. It will give Frost all the aid it requires to achieve this goal, but if Frost comes to realize that the task is impossible, it will have to serve Divcom forever.

(An allusion to the legend of Faust also seems intended. Note the similarity in names.)

Frost travels to the southern hemisphere, in order to witness one of the last places where people dwelled. This act is in defiance of Solcom's will, leading to a conflict between creator and created. (We are told that a temporary malfunction in Solcom's operation, at the time it made Frost, caused Frost to be unique among machines. Perhaps this is a form of original sin.)


What Frost wants to be.

I have barely touched the surface of a remarkable story. I haven't mentioned, for example, the giant ore-digging machine that carries the remains of the human being it accidentally killed within itself, causing all the machines it encounters to listen to its story. The fact that it bears parts of a dead human is enough to make other machines obey it, a subtle and important point. I also haven't talked about the role Beta plays in the plot. Go see for yourself.

Five stars.

"You Can't See Me!", by William F. Temple

If we allow the Zelazny tale to be considered new, our first reprint comes from the June 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Walter H. Hinton.

A fellow discovers that the people around him are happily conversing with folks he can't see. At first, a few others witness the same peculiarity, assuming the chatterers are crazy. Soon everybody succumbs to the delusion, and only the protagonist doesn't have an imaginary companion.


Illustration by Gerald Hohns. I assume all the reprinted drawings failed to earn the artists any new money, just like the writers.

Of course, there's an explanation for this strange happening. It's a pretty weak one, unfortunately, and the story just kind of fizzles out toward the end. Although it's not really a comedy, the fact that the main character has the unlikely name Zechariah Zebedee Zyzincwicz, and that this unusual moniker is relevant to the plot, tells you that you shouldn't take it too seriously.

Two stars.

Carousel, by August Derleth

This chiller comes from the April 1945 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by R. E. Epperley.

A little girl lives with her father and a wicked stepmother, straight out of a fairy tale. The evil woman is insanely jealous of the man's affection for his daughter, and would even be happy to see her dead.


Illustrations by Robert Fuqua.

A few years before the story begins, a mob lynched a carnival worker, leaving behind a wrecked merry-go-round. The child often goes to play in the ruins, claiming to be friends with a black man. The wicked stepmother takes advantage of the situation to make sure the girl is punished for her actions, whipping her severely. She follows her to the merry-go-round, hoping that the dangerous machinery will cause the child to suffer a fatal accident. (The implication that the woman intends to cause the accident is pretty clear.) Things don't work out the way she expects.


The haunted carousel.

As you can probably tell from this synopsis, there are no surprises at all in the plot. It's a pretty ordinary horror story, of the supernatural punishment variety. Although the murder of the carnival worker is obviously due to racial hatred, this isn't really relevant, which lessens the story's impact.

Three stars.

The Little People, by Eando Binder

This fantasy novella first appeared in the March 1940 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

A scientist, his adult daughter, and her boyfriend are in a cabin somewhere in a remote area. The gruesome discovery of a cat with its throat cut is the first hint that something weird is going on. The next odd happening is the disappearance of a gold watch.

We find out right away that a community of fairies, or whatever you want to call them, is located nearby. One of them went into the cabin to steal the watch as a sign of bravery, in order to win the hand of the woman he loves, and had to kill the cat to escape.


Illustrations uncredited. They might be by Robert Fuqua again.

A rival for the fairy woman's affection tries to outdo the other by stealing a pair of binoculars. He gets caught by the scientist, who wants to exploit the little people as a scientific curiosity. The two young people are more sympathetic to their plight. The rival acts as a traitor to his kind, helping the scientist capture others.


Happier times, before the big people trap them.

The fairy man who stole the watch undertakes the dangerous task of rescuing his people from their captor, as well as defeating the treacherous rival.

I may as well mention here that Eando Binder is a pseudonym, used by brothers Earl (deceased) and Otto Binder. They're best known for a series of stories about the robot Adam Link. My sources tell me that this story is the work of Otto alone. In any case, it's not a bad fairy tale, if not outstanding in any way. Animal lovers should be warned that the cat is not the only creature to fall victim to the diminutive hero.

Three stars.

The Psionic Mousetrap, by Murray Leinster

The March 1955 issue of Amazing Stories is the source for this Cold War thriller.


Cover art by Edward Valigursky.

Our hero parachutes into the Soviet Union on a suicide mission. His grim task is to kill a kidnapped scientist before he can reveal the secrets of powerful psionic technology to the Reds.


Illustration by Paul Orban.

Things go badly right from the start. The hero winds up in the hands of the enemy. They force him to complete the work of the captured scientist, which turns out to be their undoing.

I didn't get much out of this spy yarn. The plot depends on the fact that the Commies are too materialistic to believe in psionics, which was a little hard to swallow. The story's conclusion strains credulity as well. You'd expect something like this in a mediocre issue of Astounding, given the fact that psionics is pretty much just another word for magic.

Two stars.

No More Tomorrows, by David H. Keller, M.D.

Here's a Kelleryarn (as they used to call the works of this author) from the December 1932 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Leo Morey.

The narrator develops a substance that destroys the part of the brain that allows one to imagine the future. He plans to sell the secret of this stuff to a trio of Soviet agents for a ton of money.


Illustration by Leo Morey also.

He rather stupidly whips up a vial of the substance, as well as a vial of plain water, in order to brag about his plot to the woman he wants to marry. (He figures that being a multimillionaire will win her hand.) Predictably, she winds up switching the two vials, so the narrator is hoist by his own petard.

This story has an intriguing premise, but it isn't developed very well. As I've indicated, the switching of the two vials requires that the narrator act like a complete fool. (There doesn't seem to be any reason at all to have a vial of water around.) The three Soviet agents are bizarrely deformed, as the illustration indicates. I guess the author really hates Communism, but this makes the whole thing seem ridiculous.

Two stars.

Rocket to Gehenna, by Doris Piserchia

At last! A story that hasn't appeared anywhere else. It's the author's first publication, too. It's a comic tale in the form of a series of letters. (A work of epistolary fiction, for those of you with highfalutin vocabularies.)

It seems that Earth sends the bodies of the deceased to the supposedly uninhabited planet Gehenna. It turns out that the place is occupied by a caterpillar-like alien and a very naïve human boy. Since they have the power to transport anything from one place to another, they start sending bodies back to Earth. The boy also captures a woman, because he thinks he needs a wife, although he doesn't even know the basic anatomical facts of life.

This is all very silly stuff. It's obviously trying to be a wacky farce, but I didn't find it very amusing. Let's hope the author does better work in the future.

One star.

Did You Get Your Money's Worth?

The Zelazny story, all by itself, is worth the four bits you'll pay for the magazine. The rest of it goes downhill at a rapid pace. If you have half a buck to spare, you might want to give it a try.


That isn't exactly what I had in mind.

A copy of Rosel George Brown's new hit novel, Sibyl Sue Blue, is worth every penny! Buy one today!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 28, 1966] Cat People and Overpopulation (SF Impulse and New Worlds, August 1966)

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

After my brief mention at the end of last month about England and the soccer World Cup, I had better start by congratulating them on their tournament win since last time we spoke. The country does seem to have got behind them – indeed, there’s been little else talked about here since they won. Whilst I’m not a fan of football (soccer to you!) particularly, I must curmudgeonly admit that the mood of the country has been rather pleasant.

In this spirit of optimism and change, there’s also been some interesting changes with the British magazines. At the moment I’m not sure whether these changes have been made for good reasons or bad, but they might just stir life into the magazines that have rather been treading water on the whole over the last few months.


Cover by Keith Roberts – again!

To Impulse first.

Or rather SF Impulse. Notice the subtle change? The magazine seems to be trying to attract the interest of traditional readers by nailing its genre roots firmly to the mast. Interestingly, I understood that this was something the editor Kyril Bonfiglioli was keen not to do when the magazine changed its name to Impulse.

In fact, where is Kyril? The magazine has no Editorial at all this month, instead going with a “Critique” by Harry Harrison instead. This was mentioned in last month’s issue, although I was rather expecting Kyril to be about as well. Has he been deposed? Perhaps after his complaints about not knowing what an Editor does in the last few issues this leaves Kyril with more time to – you know – edit.

Let’s move on. To this month’s actual stories.

Make Room! Make Room! (Part 1 of 3), by Harry Harrison

When this was mentioned as coming up, I was very pleased. The magazine was going to have to do something big to cap Keith Roberts’ Pavane series for me, and this was clearly it.

Mind you, I have been less impressed with Harrison’s last two serialised novels, Plague From Space and Bill, the Galactic Hero (shudder.) But this one sounded great.

Whereas this is just the first part for us in Britain, being in the USA fellow Galactic Journey-er Jason Sacks has had the chance to read the whole novel, lucky thing. His wonderful review goes into much more depth and detail than I would here. So I will point out his review, with thanks, and say that so far I agree with everything he has said.

This is the best Harrison I’ve read in ages, if not one of the best stories in Impulse to date. Admittedly, its scenes of shabbiness and squalor are rather depressing, but its description of a world of overcrowded excess, crime and a lack of resources is done with imagination and flair. The situation is entirely possible and the characters appropriate for that setting. I hope the quality continues. I was so impressed, I’m awarding it 5 out of 5 – my first, I believe.

Wolves by Rob Sproat

After such a great start it would be difficult to maintain such a standard, and so we go from the great to the typical “Bonfiglioli filler”, had Kyril been here. This is the third story we’ve had in the magazines from Rob, none of which have particularly impressed me, sadly. And so it is again here. A story of creatures that have haunted Mankind for millennia and yet are rarely seen. When their presence is noted by a drunken man, he is killed. Lots of talk here about Ancient Ones that doesn’t seem to mean much. A weak horror story that is bleak and yet strangely predictable. 3 out of 5.

The First, Last Martyr by Peter Tate

Another relatively new author, who seems to be liked by many readers. His last story was The Gloom Pattern, in the June 1966 issue of New Worlds. This one is a tale of Hubert Flagg, a window dresser whose occupation makes him part of the pop-culture and yet inwardly he hates it. As an act of rebellion against current trends and to become a celebrity, Flagg attempts to kill people at a concert by the current pop favourite The Saddlebums, which I guess is not just a comment on society but also a bit of a dig at bands like The Beatles. On a good day this could have been a satire in the same vein as Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius, but instead it just seems odd, and not in a particularly good way. 3 out of 5.

Disengagement, by T. F. Thompson

Another surreal ramble through the viewpoints of various characters. Think of it like an inferior Frankenstein story from multiple perspectives, a similar re-tread of clichés that seems all too similar to Robert Cheetham’s The Failure of Andrew Messiter in last month’s New Worlds. (Are new ideas really that hard to come by?)

It seems more like a Hammer Horror film than the “really chilly horror” the banner attempts to persuade me it is. Although actually I like Hammer Horror movies… this less so. Some of the characterisation is awful. Any story that has a character named “Doctor Dog” and tries to make a joke out of it deserves not to be taken seriously. Marks for effort, not originality. 2 out of 5.

A Comment by E. C. Tubb

E C Tubb returns with an opinion piece on the state of science fiction, rather akin to Harrison’s Critique at the beginning of the issue. Here Tubb takes on the thorny issue of sex in science-fiction, pointing out that it has been around longer than sf and it is wrong for the New Wave to “dwell on it”. To quote, “The more sex you put in a story the less action, characterisation, futuristic background, scientific content and plain, old, entertainment value you leave out.”

Whilst I understand the author’s point of view, it does read a little like one of the oldsters complaining about the new kids on the block.

The Scarlet Lady by Alistair Bevan

Lastly, back to the stories. Here we have the return of Alistair, a regular author but who is also author/editor/artist Keith Roberts. Both names have appeared regularly in these magazines.

Here Alistair continues an ongoing theme of motor car stories. His last was a rather excitable story of future traffic congestion, road rage and restrictive laws in the story Pace That Kills back in the May 1966 issue of Impulse. By contrast, this is a tale that attempts to emulate Weird Tales in its story of a possessed car and its effect on two brothers and their respective families. No reason is given for the automobile’s actions, which show a constant drain on the owner’s monetary funds and a taste for blood. Whilst it is – please pardon the expression – as cliched as hell, I must admit that I quite enjoyed it for all of its silliness. Some of the passages reminded me in style and tone of Roberts’ version of contemporary lifestyle as read in The Furies in July – September 1965. It is too long, but was a fun read. Much better than the last story, for all of its limitations. 3 out of 5.

Summing up Impulse

And that’s it for SF Impulse this month. At over 80 pages most of the magazine is taken up with Harrison’s novel, which is its selling point. As a result, I liked the issue a lot, even when the rest of the material suffers by comparison. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the Bevan story, even if it is repeating old cliches.

And with this, onto issue 165 of New Worlds, hoping that it is also better this month.

The Second Issue At Hand


Cover by Keith Roberts – him again!

Like last month’s New Worlds the Editorial is not by editor Moorcock, but a film review by a guest reviewer. Last month, La Jetee was praised by J. G. Ballard as something extraordinary.

This month, Alphaville directed by Jean-Luc Godard has a rather different response. Guest reviewer John Brunner begins his review with “Let’s get one thing straight to begin with. Alphaville is a disgracefully bad film, reflecting no credit to anybody – especially not on those critics who have puffed it as a major artistic achievement.” Well, that should certainly grab the reader’s attention!

To be fair, Brunner makes some good points, although the review really reminds me that all reviews are little but opinions and in this world the New Wave will gain as much criticism as praise. Our own Kris Vyas-Myall reviewed Alphaville, for example, and had a very different response. Interestingly, Brunner does add that La Jetee, reviewed by Ballard last month and seen by Brunner as a double-bill, completely overshadows Alphaville.

Brunner’s writing is entertaining, though, and as a deliberately provocative read is a much more interesting read than any of the other Editorials of late.

To the stories!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

Amen and Out, by Brian Aldiss

Another appearance from Harry Harrison’s friend Brian Aldiss, who was also here last month. (Again: has anyone ever seen the two of them in one room together?) The cover describes this story as ”Irreverent, thought-provoking stuff that only Aldiss can do well”, which I agree with, although I would further qualify by pointing out that such irreverence can also lead to wildly uneven material from Mr. Aldiss.

(Where has “Dr. Peristyle” gone to, by the way? Just a thought.)

The good news is that this one is not quite as madcap as it could have been. Amen and Out is a story of a future where a number of characters with different backgrounds are at the Immortality Investigation Project – one is a supervisor of the immortals, one a young assistant, one an acid head itinerant and the other a doorman. They each communicate with their Gods, and are all consequently given instructions with various consequences for themselves and the Immortals held in the Project. The twist in the story is that the Gods are actually an AI. It’s good fun, and feels like Aldiss wrote it with a permanent grin on his face, though will no doubt offend anyone seriously beholden to a religion. A 4 out of 5.

The Rodent Laboratory, by Charles Platt

Charles Platt’s been a regular here for a while. This is a story of rats in a laboratory being observed as a group social experiment, and what can happen when the rats develop new behaviour and the scientific community watching them are put under stress. It gains points from me for being a ‘proper’ science-experiment-based story with a touch of the laboratory experiment pulp stories of the 1930s, although the ending is almost something out of Weird Tales. Overall, it reads well enough but feels like minor-league stuff, nothing we’ve not read before. 3 out of 5.


With a lack of artwork this month we have instead this quote, which seems to have inspired the story.

Stalemate in Time, by Charles L. Harness

I’ve mentioned in the past of Charles being a veteran author who seems to be trying to embrace the New Wave of writing. If sales of his novel The Rose are anything to go by, this has been popular, if met with varying degrees of success.

Here we have a reprint. The story was first published as Stalemate in Space back in 1949. Now renamed, it does feel like an old-style piece of pulp fiction. This is clearly intentional – the story begins with a purple-prosed quote from Planet Stories which seems to sum it up nicely. I’m not quite sure what Mike is trying to do here. Is this one of those examples to show that ‘the old stuff’ is still worth reading, as he did with Harness’s Time Trap back in the May 1965 issue? Or is it just filler? Whatever the reason, Stalemate in Space is an engaging if dated Space Opera story, which makes up with enthusiasm what it lacks in logic – but I wish the magazines would stop trying to sneak reprints to bulk out their issues. 3 out of 5.

Look On His Face, by John Kippax

William Kibbee is a Christian priest on a mission to the planet of Kristos V. Unsubtle, heavy-handed religious allegory. 2 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Transfinite Choice, by David Masson

The return of recent genre superstar David Masson whose sudden and dramatic appearance in these magazines has been stellar, although with slightly diminishing returns. Here is the story of Naverson Builth, who finds himself transported from 1972 to the year 2346. Lots of difficulties with language, which seems to be a Masson specialty, before we discover that Naverson finds himself working for a world government known as Direct Parameter Control. There are some interesting concepts put forward to Builth in this future, and some in turn suggested by Bulith, before the story crashes to a halt with a poor ending that we’ve come across before. Masson’s writing is still readable and still involves ambitiously big ideas, but I rather feel David has passed his peak. A slightly disappointing 3 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Keys to December by Roger Zelazny

I have repeatedly said that I think that Roger is one of the best American writers of recent years to have taken on the New Wave of science fiction and run with it. He keeps producing quality stories which are thoughtful, readable and also genuinely original. His last story here, For A Breath I Tarry, has been rightly nominated in this year’s Hugo Awards. So any return to these Brit magazines is something to be pleased about, I think.

And this is another cracker. The key premise is that in this future people can be adapted pre-birth in order to cope with the environment they will live on. It is different to the usual Zelazny fare, beingless philosophical and surprisingly hard-science-based, something that I could see Poul Anderson or Hal Clement writing.

To this Roger sets up a situation that Jarry Dark, a homeless Coldworld catform, his betrothed Sanza and his friends in the December Club who have put up the money, move to a planet where they will terraform the planet into something they can use. Whilst reconnoitring the planet they observe a species that they call Redform that even though thousands of years will pass to allow for adaptation will be unable to adapt in the face of their impending catastrophic event.

Knowing that the intelligent species will die but at the same time being unable to do anything about it sets up the sort of dilemma that challenges both the reader and the characters, and at the end gave me an emotional reaction akin to Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations.

Surprisingly different for Zelazny, both elegaic and emotional, I can see this one being nominated for future awards. A high 4 out of 5.

Letters and Book Reviews

We begin this month with Bill Barclay giving a potted biography of writer and anthologist Sam Moskowitz and then reviewing Moskowitz’s latest book of biographical essays. It does sound interesting.

James Colvin (aka Mike Moorcock) then covers a broad range of material. A highlight this month is Colvin being rather unsurprisingly unimpressed with Asimov’s novelisation of the movie Fantastic Voyage. The subtitle for this review, Per Ardua Ad Arteries did make me laugh, as well as the clinical evisceration of the novel.

The shorter reviews, all written by initialled reviewers, include story collection The Saliva Tree by a certain Brian W Aldiss, many of which have appeared in these magazines, Judith Merril’s 10th edition of The Year’s Best SF and the 15th volume of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction. All are liked – Zelazny comes out particularly well – though these three books show me the divide in style and content opening up between the old style stories and the so-called New Wave. Things are still changing….

Lastly there is a great review for Edgar Pangborn’s A Mirror for Observers, which ”stands head and shoulders above most sf”.

Very pleased to see the return of Letters pages this month. Generally detailed and thought-provoking, though generally still raking over the same themes of "What is SF?" and "What is this new SF?"

Summing up New Worlds

A stellar line up, with many of Moorcock’s favourite writers here. Whilst I could quibble and say that some of these stories from writers with a proven track record are not the author’s best, there are many that are very good. Aldiss is good but, unsurprisingly, Zelazny’s story is better. It’s not quite perfect (Kippax, I’m thinking of your story), but there’s a great deal of range and a good deal of quality. One of the best issues of New Worlds for a long time.

Summing up overall

A tough choice this month. Harrison’s novel is the best thing I’ve read here and dominates Impulse, quite rightly, although most of the rest are unmemorable. By contrast, the stories in New Worlds are not quite as good, but the range of the quality is greater. Zelazny’s story in New Worlds is as good as Harrison’s and this is the best New Worlds I’ve read for a few issues.

So – very pleased to say that both magazines have (thank goodness!) improved enormously this month. Whilst Harrison’s serial novel seriously impresses in the new SF Impulse, the range and breath of quality makes New Worlds the best this month. Let’s hope this continues. Must admit, the next New Worlds sounds good…

Until the next…



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Magazine

[May 20, 1966] Things to Come and Things that Are(June 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Future

Over in England, they're swimming in science fiction anthology-esque shows, from Out of the Unknown to Doctor Who.  What have we got Stateside?  Lost in Space?  My Favorite Martian?  Ever since The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone went off the air, TV has been something of an SF wasteland.  That may all be changing come Fall.

A new show, called Star Trek is supposed to be kind of an anthology/serial — the same crew every week, but wildly different stories, many by actual science fiction authors.  It could end up being like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or Forbidden Planet (i.e. pretty but dumb), or it could be the revolution necessary to bring science fiction to the masses.  We won't know for another four months.  I'm prepared for disappointment, but I also can't help being a little excited.

The Present

Until then, I've got a pocket full of futures right hear in front of me with this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction.  As usual, it's a grab-bag of good and ho-hum, the latter in greater proportion… but whaddaya want for four bits?

Dig it:


by Hector Castellon

This Moment of the Storm, by Roger Zelazny

Zelazny has made a name for himself with his fantastic but punchy prose, sort of an SFNal Hemingway, the vanguard of the American New Wave.  For me, he's hit or miss, though his hits are worth waiting for.  Storm looked like it was shaping up to be a hit, but I'd say it's a near miss.

Dozens of light years from Earth lies Tierra del Cygnus, a rustic "stopover" colony where folks on decades-long STL interstellar trips can break out of hibernation and stretch their legs before embarking for their final destination.  Our protagonist, Godfrey Justin Holmes, is a Hell Cop, responsible for civic peace and weather safety with his 130 floating, autonomous metal eyes.  He'd settled on Cygnus after fleeing a tragic personal loss, and on Cygnus, he believes he has found the key to mending his heart.

But in the midst of solving this long term problem, an acute short term one arises: the biggest storm his area of the planet has seen in recorded history is brewing.  And for a week, it lashes with unabated fury.

I have the same problem with Storm that I did with Keith Roberts' Lady Anne: I'll be reading right along, enjoying the evocative prose, but after a few pages, I find myself wondering, "What the hell is all this?  Get to the point, man!"  Pretty writing isn't enough.

Beyond that, Storm feels utterly conventional.  Take out the spaceflight trappings, which is easy to do as they are not central to the story, and you've got a thoroughly terrestrial story. 

It's not bad, mind you.  Zelazny does a masterful job of introducing the world and the relevant considerations in subtle snatches of detail rather than a single burst of exposition.  Others might also enjoy the blunt, first person perspective; I eventually found it a little tiresome and too reminiscent of the better …and call me Conrad.

So, a minor work from a major player.  Three stars.

The Little Blue Weeds of Spring, by Doris Pitkin Buck

A winged woman commits the horried crime of breeding outside her caste.  Her punishment is exile to ground-bound humandom on Earth.  But a plucked bird can still find ways to soar…

A nice poetic piece that's perhaps a bit too trivial.  Three stars.

Care in Captivity Series: Tyrant Lizards Tyrannosaurus Rex, by Barry Rothman

This is one of those non-fact pieces, in this case, about raising a tyrant lizard what had been frozen for 70 million years.  Very slight stuff.  Two stars.

The Adjusted, by Kenneth Bulmer

A pair of caretakers mind the last vestiges of humanity, locked in cages, fed porridge, clad in rags, but hypnotized to think they are leading fulfilling lives.  It's all part of the computers' plan, you see — a way of dealing with the hordes unemployed and pointless humans. They can't just be killed off, but they also can't be left to their own chaotic devices.

Of course, there's a sting in the story's tale, one that you'll see a mile away.  It's not very clever, at first, but there's something compelling about a world of humans under the thrall of machines, all living in a shared fantasy world, slave to some sinister but inscrutable purpose.

It might make an interesting movie someday.  Three stars.

Migratory Locusts, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas suggests that since locusts are just grasshoppers that get too crowded together, maybe humans will turn into something else altogether when Indian/Chinese conditions become the worldwide norm.  I suppose there's an SF story in there somewhere.  In this case, there's not enough here here to provoke much thought.

Two stars.

Memo to Secretary, by Pat de Graw

Pat de Graw offers up an ode to bureacratic paperwork, Stone Age style.  Nicely done, particularly the line about the wing/ed/itorial bull.

Four stars.

A Quest for Uplift, by Len Guttridge

A carny agent out looking for freaks in a world where access to health care has largely addressed unwanted deformity follows a tip that leads to a genetic lineage of true levitators.

Unfortunately, elevation turns out to be involuntary — and communicative.

Guttridge's narrator tells the story in an unbroken harangue that will glaze your eyes over by page three.  It also manages to be casually and offputtingly offensive several times over.

One star.

Forgive Us Our Debtors, by Jon DeCles

Ah, but then we have a rather sublime tale of an empath whose job is planetary evaluation.  On the world of Red Kitra (a fine name), said empath is tasked with attuning to a world's entire ecology to determine if the glimmer of sentience lies therein.  He ends up in a literal and metaphorical web of karma, learning the value of life, as well as the meaning of charity, in the process.

I may be a little biased as I happen to be friends with Jon, but I think this is inarguably the best piece of the issue.  Four stars.

The Isles of Earth, by Isaac Asimov

Another list article from Dr. A, this time on the size and distribution of Earth's islands.  Diverting, I suppose, but nothing you won't find at the beginning of any decent atlas (of which I have about two dozen — I like atlases!)

Three stars.

The Pilgrims, by Jack Vance

We wrap up with the penultimate tale of the ordeals of Cugel the Clever, hapless magical errand boy in the far future setting of The Dying Earth.  As related in prior episodes, this is a set of stories that gets less appealing as it goes on, though Vance does mix in some amusing literate ribaldry.

This particular installment doesn't even have a proper ending.  Let's hope the series as a whole does.

Three stars.

The Edge of Tomorrow

All told, the latest F&SF merits a drab 2.9 stars, definitely one of the weaker entries of the past year.  But every month offers a chance at redemption, and the next issue is only a few weeks away.  Will the July issue offer a collection of immortal classics or more of the humdrum same?

The anticipation, waiting to find out, is half the fun!

While you're waiting, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest and best hits!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 22, 1966] A New Age? Impulse and New Worlds, March 1966

17 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

This is a particularly exciting time with the British magazines this month. After the announcement of the end of Science Fantasy in the February issue, we now have Impulse, “The NEW Science Fantasy”, as it says on the cover, and a bigger, bolder, thicker New Worlds – albeit with a shilling rise in the price of each.

Do I get extra value for my extra two shillings a month? I’m looking forward to finding out.

Well, the cover of the new Impulse is interesting. There’s nothing like selling yourself with a roster of names on the cover – and the list is impressive, admittedly. The cover artwork is reasonable too. Gone are the Keith Roberts covers (more about him in a moment) to be replaced with a rather unusual cover by “Judith Ann Lawrence”, though we may also know her as Mrs. James Blish.

As Kyril points out in his as entertaining as ever Editorial, there is even a theme to the issue, that of “Sacrifice”. Sounds intriguing.

To this month’s actual stories.

The Circulation of the Blood, by Brian W. Aldiss

We start this issue with the return of one of the current and most vocal exponents of the New Wave, Brian Aldiss.  Clem Burke is an oceanologist who has returned to his tropical idyll to meet his wife and son after spending six months investigating ocean currents. We discover over the course of the story that he and his team have discovered a new virus carried by microscopic copepod that seems to imbue immortality upon the creatures who ingest it.

This is typical Aldiss, in that the story that at first reads as if it is a travelogue of tropical islands. It could almost be published in any magazine. However this is Aldiss, and what the author then does is reveal a science-fictional element gradually, by which time of course the reader is hooked. What we end up with is a world on the edge of major irretrievable evolutionary change from which there is no going back.

Brian would hate me for saying this, as he’s not a fan of the author’s writing, but to me this one felt like it had a touch of the John Wyndham “global catastrophes" about it, although it leaves the reader wondering “What happens next?” at the end. It is about what would be the consequences of what will happen when this secret discovery is revealed to the world, and the effects afterwards, on society, on relationships and on the world’s ecology. A good start. 4 out of 5.

High Treason, by Poul Anderson

From a story that’s rather British in tone to a stridently American tale. Edward Breckenridge is a space pilot currently imprisoned and on trial for treason. The reason is that he was the commander of an attack force given the job in a last ditch effort of wiping out the enemy’s home planet, but who took an alternative decision, sacrificing his own family and career to do so.

I have always thought of Poul as a right-wing writer, and consequently this story is something I didn’t expect. To begin with it reads like a typical sf Space Opera tale from the States, with its roots in Doc Smith’s Lensmen, all about honour and loyalty, but then takes a left turn into the unexpected.

It shows us that when difficult choices have to be made, the answer is far from simple and leaves us with the moral dilemma – would you, faced with a relatively benign enemy, make the same decision?

Whilst the tone of the story is what I would expect in the American magazines, this one is a tale that I don’t think you’d find in Analog. Surprising. 4 out of 5.

You and Me and the Continuum, by J.G. Ballard

And then from a story that appears at first to be traditional to one that is most definitely not. If Aldiss is often seen as “the voice” of New Wave, then here is perhaps the group’s leading exponent, making a welcome return to the British mags.

Ballard has set himself quite a challenge here, as the banner suggests: “The theme of sacrifice led me to think of the Messiah, or more exactly, the second coming and how this might happen in the twentieth century.”

Written in that typically fractured, disjointed manner, the disparate pieces together make up a story which doesn’t quite reach its lofty ideals yet must be admired for its ambition. Deliberately provocative, ambitiously subversive, the story is filled with phrases that remain in the memory after the story has been read. One where the parts may be greater than the sum of the whole. 4 out of 5.

A Hero’s Life, by James Blish

The banner on this one tells me that for the first time this is the first original piece published in Britain from this American author (admittedly living in Britain). I’m sure that you will know him for his Cities in Flight series of stories if nothing else,  although I know him more for his literary criticism as much as his fiction writing.

It is a strange story about a poisoner on a Romanesque planet where being a traitor is a valuable trade. As a traitor Simon de Kuyl is given untouchable status, but he is about to have his twelve days of grace expire. The story is about how he manages to use his wits to survive, finding himself playing a complex game with the planet’s leaders. Lyrical, a bit grim, one that seems to combine Samuel Delany’s style of grimy underworld writing and when de Kuyl is tortured produces stream of consciousness gibberish with more than a touch of the lyrical Jack Vance. It’s ambitious, but feels a little like it’s trying too hard. 3 out of 5.

The Gods Themselves Throw Incense, by Harry Harrison

Friend and colleague of Mr. Aldiss, here’s another name that seems to be forever in the British magazines at the moment. This time Harry is into Space Opera mode, but not the farce of Bill, the Galactic Hero (thank goodness!), but instead a darker, more visceral story.

The explosion of the spaceship Yuri Gagarin leads to a motley trio of survivors in an emergency capsule. With oxygen running out and rescue unlikely for at least a few weeks, the story is how they survive – which means that one of them needs to make the ultimate sacrifice in order for the others to live. A story which examines what could really happen when people are put under significant life-changing stress. Like Poul Anderson's story this month, this is not a story of honour or glory, nor is it particularly pleasant, but it is memorable. 3 out of 5.

Deserter, by Richard Wilson

Continuing the theme of sacrifice, Richard’s story tells of William Leslie, a soldier who with an impending war coming, marries Betty. The couple are immediately separated, because – wait for it! – it’s a war of the sexes! Bill deserts to meet Betty, and does so, but is then arrested and sent for a court-marshal. It all seems a little silly. Not the best story in the issue. 2 out of 5.

The Secret, by Jack Vance

Having mentioned the lyrical American Hugo-winning author already, here he is, with a coming-of-age story. Rona ta Inga lives in idyllic tropical paradise with food, shelter and all the company he could want. However, one day as the oldest of the group, he, like many of his friends and predecessors before him, feels the urge to sail away to the West, where he discovers "the secret" and his innocent child-like life is changed. It’s a one-trick tale, but well done. Precise wordage mingles with metaphor. 3 out of 5.

Pavane, by Keith Roberts

This is the first of what I believe will be many stories spread over the next few months, and something a little different from Mr. Roberts, who in this same issue we are told has taken on the responsibility of assistant editor.

Pavane is an alternate history where Elizabeth I was assassinated in 1588. As a result, Protestantism has not taken hold in England and Roman Catholicism still dominates the world. With the Roman Catholic view of science being one of suspicion, and innovation supressed, inventions have not as developed as they have been here today. Although it is still the 1960’s, here we have Keith’s descriptions of this strange new-yet-old world which runs a feudal system and where communication is not through telegraph or radio (electricity not invented) but by flags.

The story is focussed upon the duties of Rafe Bigland, a signaller whose job is to pass semaphore flag messages down the line to the next semaphore station in a distinctly more rural England. It shows us Rafe’s job at a semaphore station and through a bit of history how he got to this prestigious position. Think of it like a particularly British Lord Darcy story.

I’m not sure where it is going – presumably we will discover more in later stories set in the same world – but I enjoyed the worldbuilding and the sense of timelessness that pervades this slower pace of life. There is a deliberately shocking ending, which I guess does fit with the overall theme of the issue. 4 out of 5.

Summing up Impulse

Well, this one hits the ground running. What a superior issue! Impulse covers an impressive range of story. From Space Opera to alternative history to New Wave, each story this month combines this impressive variety of styles from a host of well-known authors to create an all-star issue. There’s little I didn’t like about this one. I particularly enjoyed the Aldiss, the Poul Anderson and the Keith Roberts, though if I had to pick a weak story it would probably be Richard Wilson’s Deserter, which was a little overwrought.

We seem to have started well. Can this month’s New Worlds compete?

Onto this month’s New Worlds

The Second Issue At Hand

After last month’s rally against the old guard, this month Mike Moorcock is attempting that perennial theme of trying to summarise what Science Fiction means to him and how fans can make it matter. It’s a nice summary for all those jumping on board at this point, but I’ve read similar before.

To the stories!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Evil That Men Do (Part 1), by John Brunner

I think we’ve had a bit of resurgence with John Brunner in the magazines of late. I was under the impression that even with the use of various pseudonyms, the magazines had lost him to the US magazines and writing novels, but in the last few months we’ve had stories (The Warp and the Woof Woof, last month) and non-fiction articles (Them As Can, Does in the January 1966 issue) in these pages, and now a novel split into two parts. This is different though in that it is less science fiction and more of a horror novel.

Godfrey Rayner’s party-piece is that he is a hypnotist, although he really uses the skill as a psychological tool. When persuaded to perform at a party, he does so reluctantly, to find the quiet young girl Fey Cantrip is upset by the process. Whilst not Rayner’s intended participant, Fey goes into a trance and talks of a nightmare involving a white dragon. When Rayner discusses what has happened with his psychiatrist friend Dr. Laszlo, they are surprised to find that Laszlo has a patient in Wickingham Prison who has recounted what sounds like the same dream (and the reason for one of the silliest covers I've seen on New Worlds lately.)

Lots of setting up here, which reads well but then just as the story gets going, it stops. What is the connection between the two dreamers and why are they having identical dreams? We’ll find out next month. This is OK, and reads easily, but as this is something with more of a Fritz Leiber / Weird Tales vibe about it, it’s not typical Brunner, and I would argue not his best. Kudos for trying something different, though. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by Douthwaite

The Great Clock, by Langdon Jones

One of the points that’s surprised me lately in New Worlds is that Langdon Jones manages to pull a double shift. Not only is he the Assistant Editor, but he’s managing to create a line of intriguing fiction as well. They haven’t always worked for me, but I can’t deny that they are usually quite ambitious both in style and content. This one’s another allegorical one, about a naked man who finds himself giving his life’s service to the working of a giant clock. I get the idea that it is probably about the passage of time and the uselessness of spending an entire life giving service to a machine. Some nice descriptions of the workings of this enormous edifice, but in the end it seems rather pointless. It wouldn’t happen inside Big Ben, now, would it? Weirdly, it rather made me think of the film Metropolis. 3 out of 5.

From ONE, by Bill Butler

A poem, from a new name to the magazines. It’s about burning animals and dinosaurs. Marks for effort, but it doesn’t stir me to any kind of emotion. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

Psychosmosis, by David I. Masson

And another story from who is probably my favourite ‘new’ author of the moment – this is his third story in three successive months. Again, this story is quite different, this time set in some kind of primitive cultured society.

To begin with, it is about a death in a tribal village, which leads to a naming-feast and much partying. However, in the aftermath Nant, one of the husbands is missing, followed by his newly-renamed wife Mara (once named Nira) in something referred to as a “double-vanishing.” We discover that they have passed over into The Inside, a realm where the village cannot see or hear them.

We then have two worlds – the first, the Faded lands of The Hard of Hearing, which is a harsh and difficult life with a language to match, whilst those who have passed over to The Inside, the Invokers, have a life of relative pleasure and luxury, which is again reflected in the language.

Returning to the land of the Hard of Hearing there is a boar hunt. Tan is regarded as a hero for surviving and killing many animals. However, like Nant and Mara before, when he goes to find his girlfriend Danna it seems that she has gone missing. He searches for her, eventually dies and passes over to the Inside where he meets all of his friends again, including Danna.

As is often the case on a first read of Masson's stories, I’m not quite sure what it all means. All the story really does is depict two opposing societies – is it an allegory for Heaven and Hell, for example? – but it is entertaining enough. as Masson manages to indulge in his love of language to depict the differences in society and lifestyle. The second tribe are, according to the author, ‘saved’, whilst the others are doomed, as shown by the last sentence.

Not sure that this one entirely works for me, but it is still impressive. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by Douthwaite

The Post-Mortem People, by Peter Tate

Another new name to the magazines, or at least me. A strange tale of men and women who go around literally rubber-stamping dying people with their time of death in order to allow organ harvesting. The latest in another depressing dystopian setting, this one is typically sombre and actually rather unsettling. 3 out of 5.

The Disaster Story, by Charles Platt

Charles’s presence in the magazine in recent months has been a constant, with often well-received stories and entertainingly grumpy reviews in New Worlds. The Disaster Story is an attempt by the author to become deliberately more Ballardian, beginning with the statement “This is an attempt to isolate and express the ingredients which endow a distinct type of science fiction with unusual appeal.”

Well, they do say that imitation is the best form of flattery and if so then Ballard should be pleased. There’s nothing like ambition, but whilst The Disaster Story echoes Ballard in its visually dramatic and lyrical imagery and like some of Ballard’s tales is made up of short, discordant paragraphs, it is not as good as Ballard. Compare with Ballard’s story in this month’s Impulse and this is weaker, though a brave attempt. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

For A Breath I Tarry, by Roger Zelazny

I mentioned how much I enjoyed Roger’s writing when I reviewed Love is an Imaginary Number in the January 1966 issue of New Worlds. It seems that Mike Moorcock is similarly impressed, as here’s another story. I think that this one is just as good, if not better. It is a post-apocalyptic tale about Frost, who is a sentient computer created by Solcom, with dominion over half of the Earth. Over ten thousand years, Frost has taken on a hobby – that of studying Man, even though Man has long gone. At the South Pole there is the Beta-Machine, created by Solcom to work in a similar way over the Southern Hemisphere. Solcom now watches over both of them from space.

Opposing Solcom is Divcom and The Alternate, a computer system originally meant as a back-up to Frost and The Beta that through a chance accident to Solcom has also been activated. The two systems have spent the last few thousand years trying to remove the other – Frost claiming that the Alternative should not have been made operative in the first place, Divcom claiming that Solcom has been damaged and needs replacing. Over time this has created a somewhat uneasy but stable peace.

When Mordel, a robot created neither by Solcom or Divcom, strikes up a conversation with Frost, they find that they have a common interest – to study humans. This leads to Frost and Mordel examining a human relic – a book on Human Physiology – and then sharing of ideas on what is the nature of Man. This leads to Frost becoming determined to attain Manhood, and much of the rest of the story is about how far it goes towards that.

This story of god-like machines wanting to comprehend and even become like Man is thoughtful and well written and shows that Roger is writing material that is setting the standard across the Atlantic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one nominated for Awards in the next few months. Robots with personalities and a conscience – I wonder what Asimov would make of it? 4 out of 5.


Illustration by Douthwaite

Phase Three, by Michael Moorcock

Nice to see the editor as author again. This is the third Jerry Cornelius story (having first been seen in issues 153 and 157). Moorcock mixes cultural references with pagan mythology and strange happenings in time through the actions of his action-hero and his side-kick, Miss Brunner. (Where has Cornelius's wife gone to, I wonder?) This time Jerry goes to Scandinavia to try and find his brother Frank who appears to be “in a bad way” following the events of the previous story.  Frank leaves a strange map:

which Jerry and Miss Brunner use to track Frank down, to a place with secret Nazi constructions in some variant of the Hollow Earth theory. In terms of the bigger picture, it all seems to be connected to the super-computer mentioned in the last story.

Wildly imaginative, if supremely improbable, the rattling pace almost covers up the fact that this is an extract of a novel soon-to-be-published. As an extract, it doesn’t make much sense. But then that may be the point. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews

We start with a big-hit reviewer this month. J.G. Ballard takes up the mantle and reviews The Childermass, Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta by Wyndham Lewis. Must admit, I always confuse Wyndham Lewis with the already-mentioned-this-month John Wyndham, he of The Day of the Triffids fame, but Ballard makes a good case for reading Wyndham Lewis.

James Colvin, the Editor-by-Another-Name, tackles the paperbacks. He reviews J G Ballard’s story collection The Fourth Dimensional Nightmare in some detail before going onto a very brief mention of Isaac Asimov’s latest British releases.

Keeping that literary viewpoint he then reviews Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse and Jorge Luis Borge’s Fictions which, as expected, is regarded as “sublime”, and then Ray Cummings’s Tama of the Light Country for a bit of contrast. (As an old pulp story it does not fare well.)

Lastly Colvin mentions, but actually does little more than list, a number of Philip K Dick recent publications, stating at the end that they are “much, much better than most sf published recently.”

Like Moorcock, not content with just having a story in this issue, Assistant Editor Langdon Jones, under the heading Rose Among Weeds reviews The Rose by Charles L. Harness. It sells the book well, although as it is published by the same publisher as this magazine, I did cynically wonder whether it masquerades as subtle promotion. Given the reviewer’s usual sense of scorn (so-British!) I hope not.

There are no Letters pages this month.

Summing up New Worlds

In an appropriate moment of serendipity, the back cover subtly points out that this is the 160th issue and the first to have 160 pages. I have been quite positive about the changes in New Worlds in recent months, but the extra space seems to have reenergised the magazine even further. The weaker spots for me are the Brunner and the Platt, but even they are not bad, just eclipsed by the Zelazny and the Masson, both of which are excellent. The range is broad, and perhaps not for everyone, but if I was to point out an issue that epitomises the changes that sf has experienced in the last couple of years this would probably be it. From intangible horror to post-apocalyptic dystopia and decay, from culture bending satire and even a search for meaning, from Ballard-esque imagery to poetry, it is, dare I say it, a diversely classic issue. Moorcock’s editorial summing this up forms the impressive structure upon which current sf can be exhibited.

Summing up overall

Difficult choice this month. Both magazines seem to have benefitted from the extra space more page-age provides. I think that both editors have pulled out all the stops and produced better than average issues – I hope that it lasts. Impulse has hit the ground running, and I liked the the fact that both issues have managed to combine quality writing from both British and American writers to create a varied issue. Overall, I liked more of Impulse than I did New Worlds, but the Zelazny story in New Worlds is perhaps the best I’ve read this month.

So: Impulse has the edge, although – and I say this very rarely – in my opinion both issues are worth reading this month – despite me being two extra shillings down on the deal.

This is a wonderful sign for the future of sf here in Britain. What is also great is that comparing what we get here with what you get in the USA, the difference to me is quite apparent. Absolutely nothing wrong with that – in my mind, a broad genre is a sign of strength, not weakness. We really do seem to be entering some sort of new Golden Age.

To reflect this – next month, more Ballard in New Worlds!

Until the next…



 

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 12, 1966] Past?  Imperfect.  Future?  Tense. (March 1966 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Straight From the Horse's Mouth

The Noble Editor and my Esteemed Colleagues always do a fine job of informing our fellow Journeyers about what's happening on Earth and in outer space. There is one small piece of news, however, which seems to have escaped notice.

The last episode of Mister Ed appeared on American television screens last week. For those of you fortunate enough not to be familiar with this program, it's about a talking horse.


The star of the program. I believe there are some human actors as well.

I find it remarkable that a show with a premise that does not lend itself to a large number of variations has lasted for more than five years. For those of you who are counting, that's five times as long as the excellent, groundbreaking series East Side/West Side.


George C. Scott as New York City social worker Neil Brock. He doesn't seem happy about being outdone by a loquacious equine.

To add insult to injury, Mister Ed wasn't even original, but an obvious imitation of a series of low budget movies about Francis the Talking Mule, who appeared in no less than seven films from 1950 to 1956.


In Hollywood, changing a talking mule to a talking horse is known as creativity.

How Green Was My Valley

If the success of Mister Ed proves that entertainment was less than perfect in the recent past, a new novel suggests that the future of popular literature may lead to some tension among sensitive readers.


Every Night, Josephine! is a nonfiction book about the author's dog. I can't seem to get away from animals, can I?

Jacqueline Susann's first novel, Valley of the Dolls, appeared in bookstores a couple of days ago. The word on the street is that it is quite racy. I expect the author will earn a fair amount of greenbacks from this fledgling work of fiction.

A Songbird Flies Back

In the world of popular music, even a song a few weeks old can seem dated. A little more than a year ago, multilingual British singer Petula Clark had a Number One hit in the USA with her upbeat number Downtown, which I quite like. I might even say her past success is far from imperfect.

Now she's back with another smash hit. It makes me a little tense to realize that My Love isn't as good a song as Downtown, but I have to admit that the lady can sing, and I wish her more success in the future.


You're going to the top of the charts, dear.

Half a Century for Half a Buck

Given the fact that Fantastic and its sister publication Amazing are now filling their pages with lots of reprints, not all of them classics, we have plenty of evidence that speculative fiction's past hasn't always been perfect. The latest issue goes back in time nearly fifty years, but also features a couple of new works. Appropriately, many of the stories deal with threats from the distant past, while the only futuristic tale describes a tense situation that may confront the people of tomorrow.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul, reprinted from the back cover of the November 1940 issue of Amazing Stories, as shown below.


I don't think this is a very accurate picture of what the surface of the moon Titan might be like.

The Bells of Shoredan, by Roger Zelazny


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

We've already met Dilvish, a warrior who escaped from Hell, a couple of times before. He returns to the material world to defend his homeland, with the aid of a being that takes the form of a steel talking horse. (There's that again! Francis and Ed, what hath thou wrought?)

In this adventure, he journeys to the ruins of an incredibly ancient, seemingly deserted citadel. His quest is to ring enchanted bells that will summon soldiers from the limbo where they have been trapped for an immense amount of time. Along the way, he acquires a temporary companion in the form of a priest.


The unlikely pair witness a ghostly battle.

Dilvish is an intriguing character, and the author gives readers just enough information about his past to make them want to know more. This sword-and-sorcery yarn is full of imaginative supernatural happenings and plenty of action. I could quibble about the author's attempt to sound archaic — he has a habit of inserting the word did before verbs in order to sound old-fashioned — but that's a minor point. Overall, it's a solid example of the form. I'd place it somewhere between Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, and a little bit higher than John Jakes.

Four stars.

Hardly Worth Mentioning, By Chad Oliver


Cover art by W. T. Mars.

From the pages of the May/June 1953 issue of the magazine comes this tale of unexpected rivals of humanity from the mists of prehistory.


Illustrations by Ernie Barth.

A team of archeologists digging in rural Mexico discovers a plastic disk in a layer of soil from pre-Columbian times. The apparent paradox leads the protagonist to discover that another humanoid species, distinct from Homo sapiens, has been directing human history since the beginning. They even have the ability to travel in time, in order to correct little mistakes, like leaving the plastic disk where it could be found centuries later.


An army of the time travelers arrives in an ancient Indian village.

When the archeologist discovers the truth, the humanoids hurt him in the worst way possible. Knowing that he cannot fight them directly, he resolves to protect the future of humanity in a different way.

The author is an anthropologist by profession, so his portrait of the related field of archeology is completely convincing. The price the protagonist must pay for learning too much carries a powerful emotional impact. I was pleased and surprised to find out that the story avoids a melodramatic battle between the two species, but instead ends in a quiet, hopeful, bittersweet fashion.

Four stars.

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


Illustration by Gray Morrow.

In the first two parts of this novel, we journeyed with our hero, one Lafayette O'Leary, into another reality, that he seemed to create through self-hypnosis. After many wild adventures, he wound up getting blamed for the disappearance of a beautiful princess. Now he sets out to rescue her from a legendary ogre and his dragon.

This segment starts off with an even more comedic tone than the others, bordering on the just plain silly. Lafayette meets with some folks who are obviously intended to be cartoon versions of Arabs. They remind me of a famous novelty song from a few years ago, Ahab the Arab, by comic singer Ray Stevens. As an example of the goofiness, at a feast they not only consume Chinese and Hawaiian dishes, but bottles of Pepsi.

Anyway, Lafayette goes on to acquire a loyal steed in the form of a friendly dinosaur, and finally meets the ogre. The ogre has a very strange brother indeed. After an unexpected scene of bloody violence in such a lighthearted story, Lafayette returns to the palace. He meets an old rival, learns the truth about the king's mysterious wizard, saves the princess, discovers who was behind her kidnapping, finds out about his own special background, and gets the girl (although maybe not in the way you'd expect.)

The whole thing moves at a furious, breakneck pace, so that you don't realize it doesn't always make a whole lot of sense. Lafayette's ability to change reality, for example, seems to come and go, depending on how the author needs to propel the plot. There's a scientific explanation, of sorts, from the so-called wizard about what's really going on, but it might as well just be pure magic. It's entertaining enough to keep you reading, but hardly substantial.

Three stars.

Keep Out, by Fredric Brown


Cover art by Clarence Doore.

The March 1954 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this brief tale, from a master of the short-short story.


Illustration by John Schoenherr.

From birth, a group of people are bred to survive on the surface of Mars. The narrator is one of these folks, and reveals their plans.

Some of Brown's tiny tales are masterpieces of a very difficult form. This one is not. I saw the twist ending coming. Maybe you will, too.

Two stars.

The People of the Pit, by A. Merritt


I have been unable to find out who drew this cover.

We jump back to the January 5, 1918 issue of All-Story Weekly for yet another yarn about danger from the remote past. It was reprinted in the March 1927 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

Some folks head for a remote part of the Arctic in search of gold. A man who is nearly dead crawls to their campsite and relates his strange story.

It seems that there is an immense pit, bigger than the Grand Canyon, beyond a chain of mountains. Not only that, but a gigantic set of stairs, carved in the remote past, leads down into it.

The fellow descends into the pit, and encounters bizarre beings who enslave him. He tells how he finally escaped, and managed to crawl his way back up to the surface.


Illustration by Martin Gambee.

This story reminds me of H. P. Lovecraft, with its unimaginably old structures and creatures who are almost beyond the ability of the human mind to conceive. Given the original date of publication, I presume Lovecraft was influenced by it. The author creates a genuine sense of weirdness and menace. The old-fashioned use of a narrative-within-a-narrative slows things down a bit, and it's mostly description rather than plot, but it's not bad at all.

Three stars.

Your Soul Comes C.O.D., by Mack Reynolds


Cover art by Leo Summers and Ed Valigursky.

Once you get beyond the face of Joseph Stalin on the front of the March 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures, you'll find the original appearance of this variation on a very old theme.


Illustration by Leo Summers.

A guy intends to summon a demon in order to exchange his soul for a good life. Before he can even perform the necessary ritual, however, a being appears, ready to make a deal. The man gains forty years of true love, prosperity, and a happy family. When it comes time to pay the price, he finds out what he bargained for.

A story like this depends entirely on the twist in the tail. I have to admit that the author took me by surprise and came up with a new version of the sell-your-soul premise.

Three stars.

How Did You Enjoy Today's Grammar Lesson?

Example of the past imperfect: I was reading Fantastic magazine yesterday.

Example of the future tense: I will finish this article today.

Well, that may not be the best way to study the structure of English, but it gives me something to think about while I sum up my feelings about this issue. For the most part, it was pretty good. Only the Fredric Brown reprint was disappointing, because I expected more from him. There was a good old story, and a good new story. The rest of the stuff was decent filler.

If you don't care for the way I'm acting like a language instructor, maybe you'd prefer something a little more technologically advanced.


Don't blame me if you don't like math.

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well! If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article! Thank you for your continued support.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 28, 1965] God-Birds and Dreams Science Fantasy and New Worlds, January 1966

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

It’s that strange time of the year. I’m currently typing this a few days just after Christmas 1965 (hope it was a good one for you!), although the magazines are all dated January 1966, of course, and I suspect many of you will be reading this and the magazines in 1966!! So, whilst I’m still celebrating Christmas, and thinking back over the year gone by, we are also looking forward to new things in 1966.

It’s almost as if it was science fiction, isn’t it?

Anyway, the postman has managed to deliver me two magazines in the Christmas mail. Perhaps unsurprisingly by now, the issue that arrived first in the post this month was Science Fantasy, so I’ll start there first.

Regular readers will know that I have been moaning about these covers for a while now. As you can see, this one is cheap-looking and not reversed the trend – what is that? A tree slice? A sliver of onion? I’m almost beginning to miss those Keith Roberts covers – but wait! This is a Roberts cover, clearly one from the bottom of his artist’s paintbox.

This month’s Editorial is a little unusual. It is in the form of an open letter, with responses from Kyril, to Mr. Chris Priest, a reader who has graced the letters pages of both magazines in recent years. It immediately covers one of the issues given thought here since it was put under new management – namely, that a letter column is, to quote, “an absolute necessity.”

Using references to recent letters, Chris makes three points. Firstly, Brian Stableford’s examination of what is sf (reviewed here back in the November 1965 issue) boiled down to “it is what it is, and when it is, we know.” Secondly, Ken Slater’s letter (in the same issue of Science Fantasy ) about the literary standard of sf suggests that Kyril’s policies on this being “uncertain”. Thirdly, Science Fantasy seems to combine both modern, cutting-edge stories and yet persists in publishing ” stories that went out of vogue many many years ago.” Coincidentally, this was something I accused the magazine of last month with its publication of Harry Harrison’s Plague from Space.

Whilst I’m not sure dissecting one letter in this way is always advisable, it is interesting. The editorial is short, but Kyril replies with thought and humour.

To the actual stories.

The God-Birds of Glentallach, by John Rackham

It feels like it has been a while since we’ve seen John in either Science Fantasy or New Worlds, although he was last seen in the August 1965 issue of with A Way With Animals. I believe that he has been a regular contributor to John Carnell’s New Writings in SF in the meantime.

Here he tells us the story of Andrew Malcolm, recently-made Laird of Glentallach, who allows an archaeological dig on what is now his land and with the discovery of a mysterious box discovers that an ancient myth may have more in it than he imagined.

It is a good solid tale, which reminded me of Fritz Lieber stories in a style not that different from old issues of Weird Tales. This seems to be exactly what Chris Priest was writing about in his letter about old-style storytelling. And yet, I quite liked it. 3 out of 5.

Sealed Capsule, by Edward Mackin

And this is also the return of a veteran regular, though not seen since April 1965’s New Worlds. Sealed Capsule (a rather appropriate title considering what happens in the previous story!) is the story of what could happen if you coop up men in a sealed spaceship together for six months on the way to Alpha Centauri. Clue: it doesn’t end well, especially when you add homemade poteen and prescription medicines to the plot. Another “OK” story, which reads well but doesn’t tell the reader anything new. 3 out of 5.

“In Vino Veritas”, by E. C. Tubb

Another old hand, clearly on a roll, as he was in both magazines last month – and here he is again. We will read another from E. C. in New Worlds later, as well.

Just to clarify for the non-Latin readers, “In Vino Veritas” means “In wine, truth”, which seems appropriate for many a writer, inspired by the drinking of the stuff! Claus Heston is a writer who, in an attempt to pay his bills and clear his writers block, sets forth to use alcohol and a magic potion to help him regain his mojo. It doesn’t quite work, but there is a revelation that forms the end of the story. 3 out of 5.

The Satyrian Games, by D. J. Gibbs

A writer new to me. Johnny Collins is a reporter sent to commentate on the mysterious Annual Games on Satyrus. With the offer of a bonus, Johnny and photographer Randy Hill are prepared to spend two weeks on Satyrus, despite the rumours of danger that have been reported on before. Meeting King Kopulus, the two Terrans are treated as VIPs, which is a little unusual for reporters, until the true reason is revealed – the next day they are to be put to combat against athletic Satyrian females as a test of manhood. We find out that it is a tough life being a Breeder, and in the end the King is beaten in a competition between himself and the appropriately named Randy to copulate with as many women as possible.

In case you didn’t guess, this one reads like a satire of a substandard story from the pulps of the 1930s. If the attempt at humour is the point, it is a weak point, and clumsily done. Overall, The Satyrian Games feels like it is here as a result of the Editor’s desperation. 2 out of 5.

For One of These, by Daphne Castell

Another story by Daphne after her debut in New Worlds in October. It is noticeable how both magazines have embraced the issue of there being a lack of women writers this year.

This is a story about a baby that Anna and her mother take in after the parents are killed in a road accident near their home. In the time it takes for help to arrive, Anna becomes bonded with the infant, even though it bites her and draws blood. The revelation is then that the baby, and the parents who were killed, are aliens in disguise. The Military Intelligence team who then arrive take Anna and her family into protective custody. Anna is told that the baby alien seems to derive its food from the mother’s blood – a space vampire, if you like. (The baby is even referred to at one point as “Poor little Dracula.”)

The story ends with Anna and two other ‘nurses’ taking on the responsibility of helping feed the child, until the authorities can work out what to do, waiting for others of the same race to arrive. Solidly told, but again, nothing exceptional. 3 out of 5.

The Plague from Space (part 2 of 3) , by Harry Harrison

The second part of this serial carries on pretty much as we left off, with Doctors Sam Bertolli and Nita Mendel trying to slow down the spread of the disease in New York brought back from Space by the spaceship Pericles. At the start of this second part, Sam is rushed to Stonebridge where it is rumoured that there might be a possible cure. The rumour is sadly mistaken, but Sam finds himself in a gun battle between his team and a group of armed militia who think that their helicopter is a means of escaping the plague.

Eventually returning back to the city, Sam is contacted by Nita, who tells him that the disease is mutating and that the samples they have previously taken do not survive in Jupiter-like conditions. The point is that the disease seems to be human-based and is mutating to infect other animals, such as dogs.

Sam and Nita find themselves side-lined for political reasons, so in protest they sneak themselves into an United Nations World Health meeting. There a decision is made to quarantine and then cleanse the worst part of the city by dosing it with radioactive material, leaving nothing alive.

Lots of running about and, as is typical for a middle part of a story, lots of exposition. Like last month, a tale told well but with little to elevate it to best-seller material. 3 out of 5.

Summing up Science Fantasy

Science Fantasy continues to play safe this month, continuing to rely on regular seasoned writers. Looking at the names returning, it is almost as if editor Kyril has fallen back on old ways and simply lifted work in the slush pile from writers from the old-school Carnell-era New Worlds. This may be intentional, but the overall impression I get is that of a magazine in a holding pattern, seemingly determined not to move forward. Surprisingly mundane.

Onto this month’s New Worlds.

The Second Issue At Hand

The editorial this month takes as its contentious starting point the idea, from James Colvin’s serial, that Science is the New Religion, before going further to say that in this wonderful world of the New Wave writing we are currently in, Science is the only prism through which Man can focus upon his future hopes and fears. It is a bold and deliberately argumentative point, but one which seems rather old-fashioned. I’m sure it was a point being made back in the early years of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Nevertheless, it is a discussion made with passion and enthusiasm.

To the stories!

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

Last month’s part of this serial was clearly a middle part, all rushing about with no resolution. In this third and final part, Professor Faustaff and his faithful friends have appeared on the newly-created Earth Zero, with his enemies Steifflomeis and Cardinal Orelli.

Here the story becomes even more fractured and diluted. On arriving at Earth-Zero, Steifflomeis attempts to rally Faustaff to his cause but is turned down. There is a standoff between Faustaff’s team and Orelli’s men before Faustaff, with Nancy Hunt and Gordon Ogg, escapes in a car. They reach what appears at first to be a garbage dump but is actually made up of new-looking but random objects from different times – an arquebus, a Chinese kite, a Fokker triplane, for example. Presumably these are the "Wrecks of Time" of the title?

Faustaff realises that Maggy White may be the answer to his problems. Like Steifflomeis she appears to be working for the Principals, a set of immortals who created the multiple Earths and now seem to be involved in some sort of multidimensional game across Space and Time.

This also explains the increasingly bizarre nature of the story. Faustaff returns to Orelli’s cathedral to find Orelli crucified, symbolising the death of Religion that Moorcock talked of in his Editorial. Steifflomeis explains that this is part of an Activation Ritual that all of the newly-formed planets must go through. These appear to Faustaff in a dream-like state.

Faustaff sees a ritual sacrifice, a symbolism of the primitive people’s fears and wishes. He chases after Steifflomeis to find Maggy Smith in some kind of medieval-esque Queen of Darkness ritual. Nancy and Ogg are elsewhere in another ritual, in Hollywood, which causes Faustaff to laugh at the ludicrousness of the situation, to which I could only agree. Steifflomeis reappears and challenges Ogg to a duel.

The story at this point seems to make little sense, although there is an attempt to point out that the rituals seem to be repeated dream-like events needed as simulations for the principals to activate the planet. Maggy kills Steifflomeis, as he is blamed for the failure of this activation. Leaving the team at a hospital to tend Orelli, Maggy then takes Faustaff to meet the principals. We finish with a huge exposition as the principals explain the reasons for the simulations, although at this point I was beginning to lose interest. It seems that all of this is some cosmic joke. However, there is a happy ending.

After a great start and a lot of potential, this series appears to end with a confusing jumble of increasingly erratic sequences and an all-too convenient solution. A lot of noise but despite the author clearly thinking that it has, not a lot of sense. 3 out of 5.

The Case, by Peter Redgrove

Oh, God – poetry. Perhaps one of the most underwritten and over-appreciated forms of the English language, the first page made my heart sink. But I need to put my personal prejudices aside, and I do think that it is good to see the magazine push the boundaries a little and include something a bit different this month. Even if it is not to my own tastes. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by David Kearn

The Failures, by Charles Platt

Another regular author this month. It is very brave to title a story The Failures, isn’t it? It is almost as if it is taunting me to say something like how much of a failure this story is. Well, it’s not quite as bad as all of that. But it didn’t entirely work for me.

It seems to cover similar ground to Platt’s recent story The Lone Zone, , in that it deals with disaffected young adults. Last time it was some kind of future apocalypse, this time it is about the near future, although it is full of things from the present as well. Greg meets Cathy Grant at a Press party for his band, the Ephemerals. At first glance it all seems good – fast car, music being played on the radio, nice clothes. However, as the story crawls through a simulacrum of 1960s culture with its litany of dodgy characters, drugs, bad sex and a never-ending search for thrills, the point seems to be that such a seemingly luxurious life can end up being monotonous and unfulfilling, Really, life is awful and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. All rather depressing, which I suspect is the point. 3 out of 5.

Love Is an Imaginary Number, by Roger Zelazny

This is perhaps the story I was looking forward to reading most this month. American Roger has been blazing a trail over with you in the States and seems to be seen as an American writer firmly coming to grips with what we are calling ‘the New Wave’. His writing, what I have read of it so far, is usually imaginative, intelligent and deals with those themes of the softer sciences and inner space so beloved of the new breed of writers.

Like Charles Platt’s story, this is another one that begins in a seemingly positive manner. It is a fast-paced story of an unnamed character, told in the first person, who escapes from a prison and his jailor Stella. A renegade who runs across different landscapes, chased by villains who want to do him harm. In the end, he is bolted down and tortured.

In precis this story sounds like a lot of others. What such a summary doesn’t show is the way the prose is written – a dazzlingly precise yet grandly lyrical piece of writing that pulls you in and doesn’t let you leave until the end. This, when compared with the Colvin story, showed me what a dazzlingly prosed chase story could be like when combined with a plot that feels like a Greek myth combined with a Fantasy plot. As good as I hoped it would be. 4 out of 5.

Mouth of Hell, by David I Masson

And this is the other story I was looking forward to reading this month. David made quite an impression on me with his startlingly clever story Traveller’s Rest in the New Worlds issue of September 1965. This is quite different, yet just as brilliant. It is a story of an expedition to a place initially unknown but seems like somewhere we know. It reminded me a little of Lovecraft’s In the Mountains of Madness, but as the story progresses it becomes more science fictional. The expedition continues to traverse a continuous down-slope, first with vehicles and then on foot. The three expeditioners who continue – with the great names Mehhtumm, ’Ossnaal and Ghuddup – experience many challenges with increased heat and pressure. ‘Ossnaal has a fit and upon a rescue attempt one of the group is killed and another goes missing.

The next day, another trio, led by the team leader Kettass but with oxygen, manages to get further, but the death of another of the team leads to the search being abandoned.

There is then a couple of postscripts. Five years later Kettass returns with two VTOL craft and descend into the abyss, filming for a documentary. Their first attempt is deeper, yet defeated. On the second attempt one of the vehicles is crushed by the pressure 25 kilometres down and the second expedition is halted.

Thirty years after that. Kettass, now a septuagenarian, is taken down via pressured cable railway. The story ends by explaining that despite further deaths the area will eventually become a tourist resort with a game reserve and a sanatorium. Technology and Man’s endeavours have eventually tamed the challenges of the mysterious hole.

I love the fact that this is so different to Traveller’s Rest and yet so good. It may not be quite as unique as Traveller’s Rest was, but it is literate and memorable, with an unusual setting. This is a Boys Own adventure story rewritten for intelligent adults. 4 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

Anne, by E. C. Tubb

What’s this? Another story by the prolific E. C. Tubb? This is a brief yet memorable story, written in a different style to his usual about a dying Warrior in his also dying spaceship who in his pain dreams of a different place, with Anne. It made me think that it was a science fictional version of the Brian Aldiss story The Day of the Doomed King, back in the November 1965 issue of Science Fantasy. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews, Articles and Letters

Them As Can, Does, by John Brunner

Oh, look – an article from Mr. Brunner, after his allegedly impressive sparring with John W. Campbell at the recent Worldcon.

Fellow traveller Gideon has suggested before that there are two or three types of Brunner writing that we see. So, which Brunner do we have here? It is perhaps a little unfair to use such comments on a non-fiction article about how to get published. But the article is faintly amusing, makes its point well with some dignity and some sardonic wit that feels like it is based on experience. It can be summed us as “It’s not easy.” 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews

And so after the serial, we now get the Book Review. James Colvin reviews Bill, the Galactic Hero with the sort of praise expected from the editor of the magazine himself. Colvin also weirdly reviews himself when he reviews Mike Moorcock’s The Fireclown. This can be a little confusing, especially when Colvin takes Moorcock to task for some of his writing, as he does here.

I can’t help feeling that Moorcock is laughing at us as he does this, although I guess that those of us in the know about such things may find it rather irreverent and amusing.

In the letters pages there is a point made about the price going up being a good thing but that there should also be more short stories and less serials, which can be bought as novels at anytime. The second letter suggests that as Analog is “the engineer’s magazine”, then New Worlds is “the undertakers’ magazine”, such is the magazine’s preoccupation with gloom and death. Must admit that I don’t entirely disagree with that one – it is something I’ve noticed myself recently.

Summing up New Worlds

Having said that the last issue of New Worlds was unmemorable, this one is a considerable improvement. The Zelazny story is great, as is the very different Masson story, which is perhaps my favourite story of the month.

I should give credit for the poetry, even when I didn’t like it. There are still a few of the regular contributors as well, but I am pleased that this is a step in the right direction, pushing the genre whilst at the same time maintaining some connections to the past.

 

Summing up overall

And with that, it should not be a surprise that the ‘winner’ this month for me is New Worlds.

With Christmas just gone, it means that I must wish you all the best for what is left of the Festive season and indeed for the New Year. 1965 has been shown to be an interesting one for the Brit magazines and despite my grumbles I can’t see 1966 being any different. (If you haven't seen it yet, Judith Merril makes some astute comments about it in this month's Magazine of Fantasy & SF that are worth a read.) Here’s hoping!

Until the next…



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 24, 1965] Gallimaufry du Saison(The Year's best Science Fiction and Paingod and Other Delusions)

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by John Boston

Adventures in Miscellany

If it’s 1965, then it must be time for Judith Merril’s annual anthology from 1964.  Admittedly, it’s pretty late in the year, which likely has to do with Merril’s change of publishers.  After five years with Simon and Schuster, the new volume is from Delacorte Press, an imprint of Dell Publishing, which has published these anthologies in paperback since their inception in the mid-1950s.  But here it is, styled 10th Annual Edition THE YEAR’S BEST SF, in time for the Christmas trade.


by G. Ziel

Over the years these anthologies have become larger.  The growth is mostly in density; the page count has gone up a bit (400 pages this year), but the amount of text per page has grown remarkably from the early Gnome Press volumes. 

The books have also grown much more miscellaneous.  Their contents were initially drawn mostly from the familiar SF magazines, with a few other items from the well-known slick magazines.  No more.  This volume includes a gallimaufry of stories, quasi-stories, satirical essays, and what have you from sources as various as The Socialist Call, motive (sic—official magazine of the Methodist Student Movement), New Directions, and Cosmopolitan.  (No cartoons this year, unlike last year’s book.)

This is all in service of Merril’s editorial philosophy of science fiction, which is that it doesn’t exist—or, at least, that there’s no difference between it and everything else, or at least something else.  (See her soliloquy in the previous volume on what “S” and “F” really stand for, quoted in my previous comment on this series.  The theme is continued here in her between-stories commentary, like a background noise you stop noticing after a while). You may find this view intellectually incoherent, but, like the feller (or Feller) said, by their fruits ye shall know them, and Merril makes a pretty interesting fruit salad.  (Even if I have a bone to pick with parts of it.)

Unfortunately it’s hard to review a salad this big without sorting out its ingredients, which Merril might say defeats her purpose.  Nonetheless, onwards.  The book can only be discussed in layers.

Usual Suspects

The top layer, analytically speaking, is the first-class, or at least pretty good, SF and F from genre sources.  The outstanding items here are J.G. Ballard’s The Terminal Beach from New Worlds and Roger Zelazny’s A Rose for Ecclesiastes from F&SF—and stop right there: Merril’s benign eclecticism is nowhere better illustrated than in the contrast between Ballard, driving avant-garde style and imagery and his preoccupation with psychological “inner space” into the genre’s brain like an ice pick, and Zelazny, rehabilitating the old-fashioned pseudo-other-wordly costume drama of the pulps with high style and intellectual decoration.  Runners-up include Thomas Disch’s chilly Descending from Fantastic, John Brunner’s well-turned gimmick story The Last Lonely Man from New Worlds (the only story also to have appeared in the Wollheim/Carr best of the year volume), Norman Kagan’s audaciously zany The Mathenauts from If, and Kit Reed’s sprightly self-help/morality tale Automatic Tiger from F&SF. 

Barely making the cut is Mack Reynolds’s Pacifist, also from F&SF, a sharp piece of political didacticism about a pacifist underground that uses decidedly non-pacifist means to fight against warmongering politicians, unfortunately too contrived to have much impact.  Surprisingly, Arthur Porges, perpetrator of the dreadful Ensign Ruyter stories in Amazing, rises briefly from the muck with the affecting Problem Child, from Analog, about a professor of mathematics whose wife died bearing a mentally retarded child; the child proves to be anything but retarded in one significant way.  This one gets “better than expected” credit.  So does Training Talk, by the militantly eccentric David R. Bunch (Fantastic), in which he outdoes himself in grotesque lyricism (“It was one of those days when cheer came out of a rubbery sky in great splotches and globs of half-snow and eased down the windowpanes like breakups of little glaciers.”), complementing his even more grotesque plot.  Edging into this category is The Search, a poem by (Merril says) high school student Bruce Simonds, from F&SF, which is minor but clever, pointed, and readable. 

All right, downhill to the next layer, the less distinguished selections from the SF magazines, ranging from the merely competent or inconsequential to the actively dreary. There are several supposedly humorous trifles.  Fritz Leiber’s Be of Good Cheer, from Galaxy, is an epistolary satire, a letter from a robot at the Bureau of Public Morale to a Senior Citizen (as they are known these days) reassuring her unconvincingly that the absence of humans and prevalence of robots that she observes is nothing to worry about.  Larry Eisenberg’s The Pirokin Effect, from Amazing, is a more slapsticky satire about extraterrestrial signals received in a restaurant kitchen which may or may not be from the Lost Tribes of Israel, now resident on Mars; this one is distinguished from the Leiber story by actually being mildly amusing.  The same is true of Family Portrait by new author Morgan Kent, from Fantastic, a vignette about the mundane domestic life of a family that proves to have unusual talents. 

The same is unfortunately not true of The New Encyclopaedist, from F&SF, by Stephen Becker, a novelist (see last year’s A Covenant with Death) and translator of some repute, with no prior SF credits.  This comprises several satirical encyclopedia entries about events in the near future, but their main purpose seems to be to prove the author’s superior sensibilities, and they’re more tedious than funny.  I’m guessing the New Yorker rejected them.  Czech author Josef Nesvadba’s The Last Secret Weapon of the Third Reich belongs here as much as anywhere—it’s from his collection Vampires Ltd., which is apparently devoted to SF stories.  It’s a frenetic black comedy about a last-ditch Nazi effort to generate a new fighting force with a process for developing embryos to adulthood within seven days of conception; the story is less effective than it should be since . . . gosh . . . Nazis are kind of hard to satirize.

There are also a couple of yokel epics here, which is almost always bad news.  Sonny, by Rick Raphael, from Analog (where else?) is a dreary attempt at humor about a kid from West Virginia whose psionic talents come to light after he is drafted into the Army.  The Man Who Found Proteus, by the always promising but never quite delivering Robert H. Rohrer, Jr., from Fantastic, features a caricatured semi-literate miner encountering a hungry shape-changing monster and coming off no better than you’d expect.

Several other more conventional SF stories are just not very lively.  Richard Wilson’s The Carson Effect, from Worlds of Tomorrow, like much of his work to my taste, is a rather limp account of strange human behavior in what everybody thinks are the last days, but prove not to be, a denouement explained by a gimmick reminiscent of Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter.  The Carson of the title is Rachel.  Jack Sharkey’s The Twerlik, from Worlds of Tomorrow, is an alien contact story in which the alien, a planet-encompassing plant, tries to make sense of explorers from Earth landing in a spaceship; it’s an earnest effort (unusually for this author) that doesn’t quite revive a hackneyed theme.  A Miracle Too Many, by Philip H. Smith and Alan E. Nourse, from F&SF, concerns a doctor who wishes he could save all his patients, and suddenly he can, with grim consequences that are all too obvious.  Its problem is not ennui but predictability. 

That’s an awful lot of lackluster for a book with “Best” in the title.  More on that problem later.

Neighboring Provinces

The next stratum consists of fairly straightforward SF/F that Merril has trawled or excavated from the established mainstream magazines in the way of SF/F.  A couple of these are by well-established (or –remembered) genre names.  One of the best in the book is Arthur C. Clarke’s The Shining Ones, from Playboy, about an encounter with the fauna of the sea, rendered with the same dignified enthusiasm as Clarke’s portrayals of human encounters with the Moon and the other planets.  This is a writer who will never lose his sense of wonder, or his discipline in writing about it.  Interestingly, the plot takes off from the notion of powering a city with energy derived from temperature differentials between oceanic depths and the surface.  Maybe somebody should try that sometime.  The other big name is John D. MacDonald, who wrote a lot of quite good SF from 1948 to 1953 but gave it up for crime fiction.  Unfortunately his The Legend of Joe Lee from Cosmopolitan is unimpressive, a lame sort of ghost story about a teen-age hot-rodder whom the cops can’t catch, for reasons revealed at the end. 

The others in this category are all satirical extrapolations of things the authors have seen around them, a standard maneuver in standard SF and a game that anyone can play—though not always well.  The best of the lot is A Living Doll by Robert Wallace, from Harper’s; Wallace is said to be a photographer for Life, and the story to have been inspired by an encounter in a toy store with a doll that spoke to him and nibbled his finger.  The narrator’s sullen and sadistic daughter wants a doll for Christmas, along with some needles and pins and a book on Voodoo.  He discovers that dolls have become more sophisticated than he realized, and purchases one who proves to mix a mean Martini and to discourse knowledgeably about Mexican art—a considerable improvement over his daughter.  The rest follows logically.  Almost as good is Frank Roberts’s It Could Be You, from the Australian Coast to Coast (which seem to be an annual anthology of stories from the previous year, just like this one).  In the future, it posits, the populace will be kept entertained by a televised game: one person in the city is selected to be killed, with a hundred thousand-pound prize to the winner; and clues narrowing down the victim’s identity are given through the day to build suspense (a man; never wears a hat; black hair; blue eyes; etc.).  This is not exactly a new idea to readers of the SF magazines, but it’s sharply written and no longer than it needs to be.  James D. Houston’s Gas Mask, from Nugget, one of many cheap Playboy imitations, is a reasonably well done “if this goes on” piece about future traffic problems and people’s adaptation to them. 

And there are selections from places you wouldn’t think to look, but Merril always casts a wide net.  The satirical motif continues, unfortunately in combinations of facile, arch and ponderous.  Russell Baker’s A Sinister Metamorphosis is apparently one of his regular columns from The New York Times, taking off from the theme that sociologists “thought the machines would gradually become more like people.  Nobody expected people to become more like machines.” James T. Farrell’s A Benefactor of Humanity—the one from the Socialist Call—is about a man who can’t read but loves books; however, he dislikes authors, and devises a machine to replace them.  It’s overlong and not funny.  Hap Cawood’s one-page Synchromocracy, from motive, is a rather undeveloped sketch of government by computer and constant public opinion polling.

Farther Out

From here, things just get weird, for better or worse.  Donald Hall, a well-known poet and former poetry editor of the Paris Review, is present with The Wonderful Dog Suit, from the Carleton Miscellany (literary magazine of Carleton College), about a precocious child who is given a dog suit, and takes to it; the dog becomes rather shaggy by the end.  I suppose this is brilliance taking a day off.  The Red Egg, by Jose Maria Gironella, apparently a well-established Spanish writer, is a jolly tale about a cancer which flees its home on the skin of a laboratory mouse and takes to the air, feeding on industrial smoke and other toxic delicacies, terrorizing the populace while contemplating which human victim to descend upon.  It’s quite entertaining, but the point is elusive; too profound for me, I guess.  This first appeared in a collection titled Journeys to the Improbable, collecting the author’s “psychic experience” over a period of two years. 

Probably the weirdest item here—since I can detect no element of anything resembling S or F even by Merril’s ecumenical standard—is Romain Gary’s Decadence, from Saga (the men’s magazine?  Really?) by way of Gary’s collection Hissing Tales.  A group of mobsters goes to Italy to meet their charismatic leader, who after taking over a union was prosecuted and deported; now he’s eligible to return, but they find he has meanwhile become an acclaimed modernist sculptor with a rather different outlook than they had expected.  M.E. White’s The Power of Positive Thinking, from New Directions, is a first-person story told by a smart, fanatically religious schoolgirl which amounts to a horror story with no trace of fantasy, the horror only suggested, but heightened by the relentless mundanity of the account. 

The book closes with Yachid and Yechida by Isaac Bashevis Singer, from his collection Short Friday.  Singer is among other things the book reviewer for the Jewish Daily Forward, and the story was translated from Yiddish.  It is a theological fantasy about dead souls condemned to Sheol, a/k/a Earth, and their posthumous lives there, and it is absolutely captivating, one of the best things in the book.  This Singer really has something going; if he works at it, he might crack F&SF.

Summing Up

So, what to make of this “best SF” anthology, in which much of the SF/F is just not very interesting and is outshone by some of the loose marbles Merril has found in other yards?  At least part of the problem is her seeming unwillingness to include longer stories, which of course would displace multiple shorter ones and yield a less crowded contents page.  But much of the best SF writing these days is at novella length or close to it; consider Jack Vance’s The Kragen and Roger Zelazny’s The Graveyard Heart, from Fantastic, and Gordon R. Dickson’s Soldier, Ask Not and Wyman Guin’s A Man of the Renaissance, from Galaxy.  Merril would probably be better advised to devote a little more space to substance and less to short trifles.

But still, there’s a lot here—much of it quite good, much of it unexpected, and some of it both.  This anthology series is still in a class by itself.


by Gideon Marcus

Paingod and Other Delusions

Three years ago, Harlan Ellison released his first collection of science fiction stories.  It was a fine collection, representing the era of his writing career before he struck out for Hollywood to become a big-time screenwriter (some of his work not surviving to the small screen unscathed…)

Now he's back with a new collection.  A mix of stories recently written and others excavated from the vault, it offers up a strange combination of mature and callow Ellison, though none of it is unworthy.  Dig it:


by Jack Gaughan

Introduction

After seven stabs at it, Harlan reportedly threw up his hands and decided he wasn't going to write an introduction.  Instead, we get a several page nontroduction that is probably worth the price of the book in and of itself.  I read it aloud to my family while we were waiting to get into a new sushi place in town.  It's excellent, funny, self deprecatory, and illuminating.

Paingod

If God is Love, why does He allow pain to exist?  This moving, brilliant story tries to answer this question.  Nominated for the Galactic Star last year and covered previously by Victoria Silverwolf, there's a reason it leads this book.

Five stars.

"Repent, Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman

In an increasingly time-ordered world, the wildest rebel is he who would gum up the works of society.

I didn't much care for this story when I first reviewed it, finding it a bit overwrought and consciously artistic.  Ellison's introduction, in which he explains his congenital inability to mark time accurately, makes the piece much more understandable.  I'd had trouble relating in part because my time sense is preternaturally perfect (I can tell you what time it is even after being asleep for hours).  So, with the story now in context, I can understand the enthusiasm with which it's been received.

Four stars.

The Crackpots

An exploration of a planet of misfits, who it turns out are the real movers and shakers of the galactic federation.

Based on the odd characters Ellison observed when manning an adult book stand on 42nd Street, this is an older piece, and it shows.  About ten pages too long and a little obtuse, but even young, imperfect Ellison is usually worth reading.

Three stars.

Bright Eyes

The former masters of the Earth have been diminished by war to just one representative and his oversized rodent sidekick.  Like a salmon swimming upstream, he returns to the blasted surface to witness the destruction one last time.

Inspired by a piece of art (that later accompanied the story—you can see it at Victoria's original review—it's a vivid piece.

Four stars.

The Discarded

A plague turns a number of humans into "monsters", who are exiled to an orbiting colony.  When a new outbreak occurs, suddenly the discarded find themselves valued as the potential source of a cure.  But will normal humans ever really tolerate the deviant?

I will go out on a limb here — this is my favorite story of the collection, one I enjoyed when I first read it in the 1959 issue of Fantastic.  It's a much more effective "misfit" piece than the previous story.

Five stars.

Wanted in Surgery

Automated surgeons displace their human counterparts.  Are they truly infallible?  And is it ethical to find fault in them?

This piece doesn't work on a lot of levels, plausibility-wise and narratively, as even Ellison concedes.  I suppose it's here to fill space and to make sure it got in some collection.

Two stars.

Deeper than the Darkness

Another misfit, this time about a pyrokinetic recruited to destroy the star of an enemy race.  Fools be they who expect a hated rebel to suddenly be overcome with patriotism…

This is another flawed, early piece that shows Ellison's potential without realizing it.

Three stars.

Summing Up

Two fives, two fours, two threes, and a two, not to mention a great Intro.  If that's not worth four bits, I'm not sure what is.  Get it!




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Magazine, 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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Magazine, Serial

[September 20, 1965] Unfinished Business (October Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Leaving things hanging

There's something compelling about things left incomplete – from Schubert's Unfinished Symphony to President Kennedy's first term.  In the gaps of what could have been, we can fill in countless possibilities rather than just the one.

This month's Fantasy and Science Fiction (like this month's Galaxy, an "All-Star" anniverary issue) trades almost exclusively in incompletes, its pieces ending in ellipses dots rather than hard stops.

Does this make for an effective magazine?  Let's dig in and find out:

Beginnings…


by Chesley Bonestell

… And Call Me Conrad (Part 1 of 2), by Roger Zelazny

Hundreds of years from now, a war-ravaged, radiation-scoured Earth is little more than a colony of the blue-skinned Vegans who lease our planet out of historical curiosity.  Humanity is much reduced, confined to the former backwaters of civilization. 

Against this backdrop, we are introduced to Conrad Nomikos, head of the world's antiquities preservation bureau, who is tapped to escort a Vegan journalist as the alien gathers information for a travelogue of blasted Earth.

But there is far more to Conrad than he likes to let on.  Something of a rogue, and possessed of pretenatural strength, skills, and psychic abilities, he is actually Konstantin Karaghiosis – mutated into a Methusaleh by radiation and erstwhile leader of a radical anti-Vegan colonial movement that had, decades before, spiked Vegan ambitions to take all of Earth.

Now Conrad finds himself embroiled in multiple intertwined plots as the Vegan journalist becomes the target of an assassination attempt, his mission to Earth having a more significant goal than just a John Gunther volume.  Conrad, too, is personally imperiled, though who wants him dead and why are open questions.

This first part of a serial leaves off just as the second attempt on Conrad's life (if such they were; he cannot be certain) has failed.  It looks as if Conrad may well have to resume the revolutionary mantle of Konstantin to navigate the crisis.

Zelazny can sometimes be a tough pill for me to swallow.  One of the Journey's regular readers observed that he's done more than any current SF writer to bring Hemingway to our genre, and I feel that Roger sometimes trades readability for that stylistic choice.  That said, after a somewhat plodding beginning, the fleshed out background and advanced storyline becomes quite compelling.

Call it three stars for now, but with potential for the ending (if and when it come) to raise things retrospectively.

Mirror, Mirror, by Avram Davidson

Milquetoasty fan of A. Merritt spends his spare hours scouring local second-hand shops for jade mirrors with which to escape our reality into something more fantastical and swashbuckling.  What he doesn't count on is someone from another reality with a similar passion finding their way to his world.

As a premise, it's a fantastic mirror to works like The Incomplete Enchanter.  As a vignette, however, it suffers for an overlong beginning (relative to the length of the piece) and the lack of a real resolution.  In this case, unfinished means unsatisfying.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

(here's a rather pointless doodle by Mr. Wilson, one that doesn't even pertain to our genre; the reason for its inclusion escapes me)

The Future, Its Promoters and False Prophets by E. Brandis and V. Dmitrevskiy, and
Replies by Poul Anderson and Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury and Mack Reynolds

Here's an interesting piece: a critique of American science fiction by two Soviets followed by replies by the authors specifically mentioned (including reference to Asimov's foreword to More Soviet Science Fiction).  It makes for a fascinating debate, one that is clearly ongoing.  I hope F&SF continues to cover it.

Five stars.

No Jokes on Mars, by James Blish

A journalist is sent to the Red Planet to check up on a colleague whose work has become perfunctory and cynical.  While on a tour of the Martian wilderness, her escorts poach a pomander from the pouch of a native dune-cat; the aromatic ball is of high value on Earth as a perfumed ornament, but its heist dooms the Martian creatures (who prove to be sentient) to a slow death.  Can she make it off Mars with the story?

It's a good story, but it suffers both for its 1950s depiction of Mars and the extremely sudden ending, which I ended up reading several times, wondering if I'd missed a paragraph or two somewhere.  Here, the unfinished nature left me wanting rather than dreaming.

Three stars.

The Glorious Fourth, by Jack Sharkey

Three astronauts from Earth land on an Eden teeming with an ecology so vigorous that its creatures refuse to die.  One of the crew, despairing of service under the martinet captain, goes native – literally.  And while the process is pleasant for him, the interaction between the remaining two and the planet's life forms is ultimately less enjoyable.

Jack Sharkey's byline is one I'm normally wary of, but he delivers a decent story here, and the vague ending, only hinting at the horrors the two spacemen will face (and the reason for their unpleasantness), is effective.

Three stars.

Minutes of A Meeting At The Mitre, by Robert F. Young

Old Nick meets Samuel Johnson.  With a punchline telegraphed from the beginning, the only motivation for this piece seems to be Young's desire to do a Boswell pastiche. 

Well, the story may have finished, but it's clear that the hoary "Deal with the Devil" subgenre of fantasy is not.

Two stars.

The Land of Mu, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor picks up where he left in his elementary physical particles, this time discussing the differences between electrons and mu mesons (muons).  It's an absolutely fascinating piece, and it's very clear from its conclusion that there is still so very much we don't know about the universe's tiniest components.

Five stars.

Something Else, by Robert J. Tilley

A punctilious, nature-hating music professor crashlands on a deserted planet with only a clarinet and box of jazz music spools to keep him company.  Well, not quite deserted: there is also a solitary shaggy alien with the ability to mimic music perfectly.  Thus begins an interspecies friendship.

Perhaps intentionally, the ultimate story in this collection does have a definite ending, which is sadly to its detriment.  Rather than building to some kind of revelatory peak offering some sort of interesting insight on the human condition, there is, instead, a pointless downer of a conclusion, better suited to a lesser episode of The Twilight Zone.  Tilley, the piece's author, is also about 20% more wordy than he needs to be.

Three stars.

Endings?

I would say that this month's reliance on the unfinished story had mixed results.  However, at the very least, I am now looking forward to the conclusion of the Zelazny piece; at most, I find my thoughts returning to the other uncertain endings, imagining the myriad outcomes that might have better resolved these otherwise unsettled lines.

Art reflects reality indeed!

Our next Journey Show: At the Movies, is going to be a blast!

DON'T MISS IT!




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