Tag Archives: Roger Zelazny

Book, Magazine

[May 8, 1965] Skip to the end (June 1965 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Impatience

Normally, I'd open up with a discussion at length of the news of the day.  Like how the United States is still knee-deep in the Dominican Republic, losing soldiers to snipers every day despite the ceasefire between the current military-civilian junta government and the supporters of ousted President Bosch.

Or that Collie Wilkins Jr. was acquitted by a 10-2 hung jury in a trial for the murder of civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, shot in her car after the Selma rallies.  Wilkins' defense attorney's statements included language so profane and racist that I cannot transcribe them here.

Or that the comedy/news show, That was the Week that Was, had its final show on May 4th.

And then, having given my report, I'd tie it pithily to the subject at hand, namely the June 1965 Galaxy science fiction digest.  But the fact is, there's lots to cover and I'm anxious to get it all down while it's still fresh in my mind.  So, you'll just have to pretend that I was clever and comprehensive in my introduction.  On to the important stuff:

Bob Sheckley and friends


by George Schelling

As is happening more and more often, the king-sized bi-monthly, Galaxy, is dominated by a short novel this month.  This time, it's by a fellow who probably was the best SF short story writer of the 1950s.  Bob Sheckley has turned to novels of late with something less than (to my mind) great success. The Journey of Joenes, The Status Civilization, Time Killer — none of them were triumphs, though some disagree.  Will this time be different?

Mindswap, by Robert Sheckley

Young Marvin Flynn is bored to death of living in the bucolic New York town of Stanhope, desperate enough to risk "mindswap."  And so, Marvin exchanges minds with the Martian, Aigeler Thrus.  Unfortunately, Thrus' body was currently occupied by the unscrupulous Ze Kraggash, who had taken residency to elude the police after a crime.  Thrus is entitled to his body; Kraggash has Flynn's.  This leaves Flynn six hours to find a body, any body, or be extinguished forever.


by George Schelling

An increasingly frantic Flynn ends up bopping across the galaxy, first as a collector of sentient ganzer-eggs on Melde, somewhere near Aldeberan; then on to Celsus for a stint as a professional victim wearing a ticking time bomb gift; and ultimately to a reality-bending place called The Twisted World.

It's complete fluff, vaguely satirical and fun-pointing, but for the most part, pointless.  I went along with it, mildly amused for about 60 pages, before my tolerance ran out and I skimmed the rest.  Unlike Harrison's brilliant and cutting Starsloggers, Mindswap is just self-indulgent…and far too long. 

Two stars.

Servant Problem, by Otis Kidwell Burger

On the dreary, sandstorm-plagued planet of Dexter, there's little for the married couples to do but drink and kvetch about their house-servants, a race of off-putting aliens that only look like middle-aged spinsters.  After an endless seven pages of this stuff, we learn that the servants are actually the masters, and the humans are being evaluated for their level of social development.  Turns out they're in the emotional equivalent of kindergarten.

Yeah, I didn't get it either.  Two stars.

Blue Fire, by Robert Silverberg

Nat Weiner, visitor from newly terraformed Mars, the "Sparta of space," arrives on Earth to sample the luxuries of an overcrowded, decadent world.  Assigned to escort him is Reynolds Kirby, a "major bureacrat who gets paid like a minor one."  Together, they attend a spiritual gathering of the devotees of Vorster, a pseudo-scientific cult that preaches the unity of humanity and worships at the altar of the cobalt reactor. 

Vorsterism is just one of many avenues of relief against the physical and mental crush of living amongst 10 billions; hallucinogens are also popular, and the upperclassmen, like Kirby, favor the sensory deprivation "Nothing Chambers".  Cosmetic replacement of external features with metal and plastic substitutes is popular. 


by Jack Gaughan

As the tour of the once-proud homeworld progresses, Weiner becomes increasingly belligerent, resolved to steal a Vorster nuke and put it to "worthwhile use" as an energy-generating reactor on Mars.  Through Kirby's interactions with Weiner, and with the Vanna, a Vorsterian with a face modifed to inhuman grotesqueness, Kirby comes to see his own life as a hollow shell of an existence and reconsiders all of his carefully created precepts.

Blue Fire is a day-in-the-life of a fellow on the edge of a midlife crisis in a tired world.  With deft writing and vivid imagery, Silverberg accomplishes in 25 pages what usually takes Philip K. Dick a full novel.

Five stars.

Think of a Man, by Karen Anderson

Poetess Anderson offers up a latter-day space shanty.  It might make a decent filk, but it will likely leave no great impression on you.

Three stars.

For Your Information: The Observatory on the Moon, by Willy Ley

Observatory on the Moon, by Donald H. Menzel

An Eye For Selene, by R. S. Richardson

The idea that astronomy is better conducted on the Moon than Earth is an old one.  Not only is Earth's celestial neighbor airless, but its slow rotation makes it much easier to do long film exposures.

This should be a fascinating topic; instead, this is probably the least interesting article Ley's ever written.  A truly disappointing development for a column that was a major selling point when I first began my subscription to Galaxy 15 years ago. 

The short counterpoint following the main article is equally undistinguished.  Richardson's comments, on the other hand, are interesting. 

Barely three stars for the lot.

Devil Car, by Roger Zelazny

Sam Murdock speeds across the Great Central Plain of a post-apocalyptic United States in his sentient car, name of Jenny.  His monomaniacal mission: to destroy the black Devil Car and his minions, who have been savaging the continent.  Though Murdock's conviction never wavers, Jenny is torn between her programmed loyalty to her driver, and to the Devil Car's sirensong call to join his pack.

Plausible?  Not for a second.  Slick and enjoyable?  Absolutely.  Four stars, and I'll bet this gets optioned for a movie or episode of a Twilight Zone revival.

One Face, by Larry Niven


by Nodel

Last up is the third short story from this promising new writer, which may or may not take place in the same universe as his recent short novel, World of Ptavvs.  The passenger liner, Hogan's Goat, has an accident in hyperspace on the way to Earth.  It ends up at the right place but billions of years in the future.  The Sun is a burned out husk, and humanity's home is an airless world with one face permanently locked toward its star.  With no way home and nowhere to go, Verd Spacercaptain, his crew and passengers, and their increasingly debilitated computer Brain must find a way to survive.

I'm not entirely sold on the science of this piece, but Niven has a way of creating a very rich world in just a few pages.  It's also obvious that Niven is a new writer: his cohort has no problem with presenting women as equal partners and in roughly equal numbers to men; moreover, he displays no preference in terms of skin tone or ethnicity.

Four stars.

Satisfaction

How to judge the latest Galaxy?  It contains a full issue's worth of slag, but then again, it contains almost a full issue's worth of gold.  Perhaps it needs to be a regular length bi-monthly?

Especially since editor Pohl is crowing about how next month's novel will be even longer, and by Frank Herbert.

God help us all…

Our last three Journey shows were a gas!  You can watch the kinescope reruns here).  You don't want to miss the next episode, May 9 at 1PM PDT, a special Arts and Entertainment edition featuring Arel Lucas, Cora Buhlert, Erica Frank…and Dr. Who producer, Verity Lambert! Register today and we'll make sure you don't forget.




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Magazine

[February 16, 1965] Return to a Quagmire (March 1965 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Sliding Downhill

In the twenty years since the beginning of the Cold War, there have been many potential flashpoints between East and West.  In 1950, Chinese-backed North Koreans almost took the entire Korean peninsula in a see-saw, later stalemated, conflict that lasted until 1953.  Berlin twice became the hot spot — during the 1948 blockade and after the building of the Wall in 1961.  Cuba, too, has been a fraught locale, with the 1959 Communist takeover followed by the disastrous American-backed invasion in 1961 and then the near-calamitous Missile Crisis of 1962.

And then there's Vietnam.

Formerly part of French Indochina, the region has been divided into two roughly equal halves since 1954, when Ho Chi Minh's Viet Cong threw off the colonial yoke in 1954.  Since then, the Communist North has engaged in both insurgent and conventional tactics against the South.

Of course, the United States has backed South Vietnam despite it being a rather corrupt and authoritarian state that, for the past two years, has seen a revolving door of junta leaders running the country.  American involvement included air support and "military advisers", our presence including about 20,000 troops, all told. 

And then came the Gulf of Tonkin incident last August, in which American naval vessels reportedly were attacked off the coast of North Vietnam.  That opened the door for a flood of American air strikes, including into neutral Laos to bomb the "Ho Chi Minh" supply trail.

It was perhaps inevitable that the Viet Cong would hit back, first with a bombing of an American billet in Saigon last month, and now, on February 6, with a mortar attack on Camp Holloway, near Pleiku in central South Vietnam.

8 soldiers died in that attack, more than 100 were injured, and there was extensive damage to American equipment.  In retaliation, the U.S. launched Operation Flaming Dart, yet further intensifying the air war.  Wives and children of American personnel were ordered to leave Vietnam, Hawk surface to air missile batteries were set up at the airbase in Da Nang, and a general escalation of the conflict appears inevitable.  Publications, from the conservative Chicago Tribune to liberal LIFE Magazine, are clamoring for direct involvement.

That means American troops abroad, and anyone between 18-25 not currently enlisted in the military better start reconsidering their plans for the next few years.  People like my nephew, David, who just turned 23.  He's married, has a young son, and goes to UCLA, so perhaps he's safe.  For now. 

In any event, the papers are full of Vietnam news these days, and the voices against escalation are being drowned out by the hawks. 

It looks like we're about to slide, slow-motion-wise, into another Korea.  Call me an iconoclast peacenik, but I'm registering my protest early.  This won't end well.

No Relief in Sight

For those hoping that the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction would offer a respite from the world's glum news, I'm afraid I have to disappoint you.  The return to form we rejoiced in last month quickly fizzled.  This month's mag is a dud:

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, by Roger Zelazny

In the sultry oceans of Venus resides a leviathan of a fish, a kind of mammoth angler called "Ikki".  Bane to boaters, menace to fisheries, Ikki has been the target of big game hunters and professional exterminators.  None have succeeded.

Rich dilettante Jean Lucarich is willing to pick up where others have left off, driving a 10-acre raft equipped with tranquilizer harpoons and giant cages off in search of the modern day Moby Dick.  So keen is her desire that she has hired her old flame, a deep sea adventurer, to be a baiter.  His job is to lure the Ikki in range of Jean's craft…and capture.

Persons who are more familiar with literary fiction can probably tell me what style Zelazny (the author) is going for.  I found it overwrought and, in places, difficult to parse.  But what bugged me the most was the utterly archaic (virtually Burroughsian) rendition of Venus.  Zelazny's version of the Planet of Love is kinda warm, rather than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.  Its day is roughly like an Earth's day, rather than 250 days long.  The air is breathable, the water potable. 

I nitpick because there's no way that the author doesn't know his Venus is wrong.  Mariner 2, first interplanetary probe, finished its mission two years ago.  It was in all the papers.  Indeed, the story would have been more palatable had it taken place on Earth, say, in some remote corner of the Indian Ocean.  It might even have been so, originally — some reject planned for Collier's or some other mainstream mag.

Anyway, it's not bad, but it's not really SF, and I found it too consciously literary.  One Bradbury is quite enough.

Three stars.

Final Appeal, by J. H. Brennan

This first piece by the Ulsterian Brennan involves the quest for justice when the judges are all automated.  It's one of those pieces that requires such an implausible development of technology (in this case, no human involvement at all in the rendering of judgment) that the "clever" solution falls flat.

It doesn't help that the solution, itself, while it may appeal to the mainstream of society, will be distasteful to a more free-thinking sort.

Two stars, and only because it kept me along for the ride until the inevitable disappointment (which came about a page too late).

Essentials Only, by Jack Sharkey

An absent-minded professor accidentally opens up a portal to a virgin alternate-Earth.  He invites his friend to join him for a lifetime of simple pleasures, but of course, they need to bring their girlfriends.  And their girlfriends insist on some modicum of civilization.  And that includes certain, essential people.  And their possessions.  And more luxuries, just in case.  And so on.

Jack Sharkey varies between mildly impressive to (more often) rather dreadful.  But this story is pleasantly droll, inoffsenive.

Three stars.

The End of Eternity, by Ernesto Gastaldi

According to F&SF's new editor, Joseph Ferman, the state of Italian SF is pretty poor: mostly send-ups of cliches we abandoned in the Pulp Era.  But, Ferman promises, this imported tale (translated by Harry Harrison) is something different.

He's wrong.  End takes place in modern day Rome on the eve of its nuclear destruction.  The bomb that will destroy it, scientists say, is so powerful that the space-time continuum might be ruptured.  By the way, the protagonist is named "Romulo", and the story is redolent with reminders of the antiquity of the city.  Can you guess what will happen?

Two stars for this Italian version of the creation myth.

Tripsych, by Ron Smith

Ferman praises Smith for his satirically broad rendition of three hoary SF ideas in as many vignettes.  However, the world doesn't need more bad stories, even if their badness is intentional.

Two stars.

Illusion, by Walter H. Kerr

In 1951, J. T. McIntosh wrote Hallucination Orbit, the definitive tale on cracking up while on solitary assignment in space.  Kerr's poem is on the same topic and compares unfavorably in all respects.

One star.

Better Than Ever, by Alex Kirs

There's a movie playing "over there".  It takes a month to watch, and no one can tell you what it's about.  But those who see it come back…changed.  More mature, no longer plagued with their frailties and foibles.  Better, one might say.  An adman named Clinton is one of the last, stubborn holdouts, increasingly alienated as everyone he knows, one by one, goes to see this movie. 

This is his story.

Well, sort of.  Nothing much happens in this short piece, mostly just a portrait of social isolation — an isolation Clinton refuses to remedy with the obvious solution.  Can you blame him?

Anyway, it's a fair piece, I guess.  Probably some kind of metaphor.  I don't know. 

Three stars, sure.

Oh, East is East and West is East, by Isaac Asimov

In a recent Analog, editor Campbell included a geographical quiz: which states of the U.S.A. are the farthest North, South, East, and West?  It's kind of a trick question since it hinges on the fact that Alaska straddles the 180th meridian and, thus, is both the farthest East and West (and North, but that's obvious to anyone who's read the paper since 1959, when Alaska became a state).

I got the answer right, but then, my first book was an atlas.  The Good Dr. A. got it wrong, and thus produced an article to explain why he was really right.  It's cute, but it doesn't tell you any more than a decent map would. 

Three stars.

Ado About Nothing, by Bob Ottum, Jr.

There is a wall at the end of the universe posted with a sign that says that nothing exists beyond the wall.  If you don't believe it, put a quarter in the wall and look through the peephole for yourself.

It's a silly vignette, but it appealed to the former editor, Avram Davidson, whose collected materials Ferman is apparently still depending on.

Two stars.

Uncollected Works, by Lin Carter

If 50 million monkeys at 50 million typewriters could eventually produce the works of William Shakespeare, what could a computing machine with infinite monkeys worth of random creative capacity produce?

Lin Carter has been around for a while, at least in SFF and Lovecraftian fandom circles, but this is the first story of his I've run across.  Told from the perspective of an old literary critic, given to sentimental verbosity, it's a charming piece.  It doesn't make a lick of sense, but it's charming.  I feel like a little more thought could have made the scientific conceit more plausible, which would have then made the story more effective.

Three stars, anyway.

Maiden Voyage, by J. W. Schutz

Thankfully, the end of the issue is the bright spot.  Schutz, currently American Consul General in Tangiers (Morocco), offers up this novelette in epistolary, detailing a scientific mission to Mars in the mid 2030s.  Refreshingly, it stars a woman, and in a chatty, engaging style, describes the rigorous training, arduous journey, and perilous events that she endures. 

It's straight science fiction, more what I'd expect from Analog than F&SF these days, and I enjoyed it.  Bravo, especially for a first effort.

Four stars.

War Report

Both Vietnam and F&SF have been troubled spots for some time, with only isolated moments of hope to keep us going.  I guess the question is this: do we continue to throw good money after bad?  Maybe we should stick both out for another year and see what happens.  If neither improves, maybe it's time to pull out, at last…




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Magazine, Serial

[January 22, 1965] With Apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein (February 1965 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf


The guy on the right doesn't seem too happy about all this.

The long-anticipated movie version of the smash hit stage musical The Sound of Music had sneak previews in Minneapolis and Tulsa this month, and is scheduled to show up in theaters across the nation in March. This sugary-sweet confection, very loosely based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers, isn't really my cup of tea, but I thought I would pay tribute to the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II by stealing the titles of some of the ditties that appear in it.

Caution: May cause diabetes.

Climb Ev'ry Mountain

Just a couple of days ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States for his first full term.


Chief Justice Earl Warren administers the oath of office.

The inaugural address was a short one. In the space of twenty minutes or so, he raised the issues of poverty, health care, literacy, and much more. A phrase about American lives lost in countries we barely know is surely a reference to the conflict in Vietnam. He even threw in a nod to the space program, mentioning the rocket that is heading toward Mars.

Those are a lot of steep, difficult mountains to conquer for any politician, so let's wish the President well.

Do Re Mi

I've complained before about some of the syrupy ballads that reach the top, so I was pleased to see two tunes more to my liking jump to Number One this month. Both are courtesy of the UK, so pip pip and cheerio to our friends across the pond!

Earlier this month, the Beatles made a big comeback on the American charts with their upbeat rock 'n' roll number I Feel Fine.


The big advantage of buying a record instead of going to a Beatles concert is that you can actually hear the song instead of screaming.

Even as I type this, the news reaches me that British songbird Petula Clark is now Number One in the USA, belting out a nifty tribute to the pleasures of big city living called Downtown.


Baby, it's her, as far as music fans go.

My Favorite Things

Like the rest of you, I'm a big fan of science fiction and fantasy stories, at least when they're done reasonably well. Let's take a look at the latest issue of Fantastic and hope for the best.


Cover art by Heidi Coquette.

A Fortnight of Miracles, by Randall Garrett

A magician, who is also handy with a quarterstaff, travels around with his familiar, a goblin. (In this world, that means an earth elemental.) They run into — literally! — a most unusual knight. Although he can talk and fight and do all kinds of knightly things, he's just an empty suit of armor. After a brief period of misunderstanding, the sorcerer and the goblin agree to help him find the wizard who put a curse on him.

Fortunately, all users of magic have to travel to a convention once per century or lose their powers, and it's going on right now. The knight also has to triumph at a jousting tournament, which is hard to do when you're just a suit of armor that doesn't weigh very much. Add in a lovesick wood nymph, the King of Faerie, and some Bad Guys, and you got a lighthearted fantasy adventure. It provides some amusement, although it's hardly profound.

Three stars.

Passage to Dilfar, by Roger Zelazny

If you studied Homer in school, you're familiar with the term in medias res. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, this brief tale begins in the middle of things.

Our hero, Dilvish the Damned, is riding his talking metal horse, for which he sold part of his soul, from the site of a lost battle, in order to carry the news to a city threatened by the advancing enemy. Along the way lots of foes try to stop him, but he escapes them all. A final encounter with a a knight wearing invulnerable armor tests the skills of Dilvish and his steed.

This lightning-paced tale is very well written, but it reads like a few pages torn out of a much longer story. I hope the author eventually tells us more about the Damned fellow.

Three stars.

The Repairmen of Cyclops (Part Two of Two), by John Brunner


Illustration by George Schelling.

As you may recall from the previous installment, the Corps Galactica finds evidence that the ruling class of the planet Cyclops is somehow restoring body parts for those lost by the wealthy; a thing which should be beyond their level of medical technology. As strongly hinted at last time, that's because they're buying them from some sinister folks who exploit the population of a planet unknown to the Corps.

The Bad Guys convince their victims that they're suffering from a terminal illness, take them away, and pay their families, pretending to be a sort of hospice. Of course, they really murder them in cold blood, and sell them to the physician on Cyclops who takes care of the elite.

In the concluding half of this short novel, the Corps figures out what's going on and tries to stop it. Complicating matters is the fact that the woman who is the de facto ruler of Cyclops orders the Corps to abandon their base on the planet, even though this will cause great economic hardship for her world. She has her own motive, which involves the physician and one of the innocent inhabitants of the secret planet. It all leads up to a daring raid on the evil doctor's lair by the heroine, a highly skilled and experienced agent of the Corps.

That makes the plot sound melodramatic, and, indeed, the climax resembles something from a James Bond novel. However, the characters are believable, the background is complex, and the combination of violent action and political intrigue always held my interest.

Four stars.

Winterness, by Ron Goulart


Also by George Schelling. I like the white-on-black effect.

Set in the early part of the Twentieth Century, this tongue-in-cheek yarn involves a spiritualist and a married couple, both of whom are novelists. The woman believes in the medium's powers, the man does not. At a seance for a newspaper editor and his mistress, the skeptic falls into danger, and dark secrets are revealed.

I've made the story sound a lot more serious than it is. Although the plot isn't a funny one, the characters, the dialogue, and the narrative style are all good for some laughs. I particularly liked a bit of satire on the writing game of years gone by, with the woman producing sentimental novels with titles like Venetia; or Led Where Love Compels and the man turning out muckraking works like Soil and Steam.

Three stars.

The Vamp, by Thomas M. Disch

The narrator is an old-time movie actor, going back to the silent days, who is now the host of a TV kiddie show. He sees his ex-wife on the street, acting like a flirtatious 1920's flapper to the men who pass by, who don't seem interested. That's not a big surprise, since she's more than sixty years old, with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, dead white skin, ruby lips, sharp teeth . . .

OK, you know where this is going, from the title if nothing else. The narrator never figures it out, so he invites her home for a very rare — in fact, bloody — steak. That leads to the story's joke ending.

The whole thing is just a trifle, but I liked it well enough. Maybe that's because the idea of turning a silent-screen star into a you-know-what tickled me. Or maybe because the story reminded me of the great old movie Sunset Boulevard. (I can definitely see a similarity between the Vamp and Norma Desmond.)

Three stars.

So Long, Farewell

Before I say goodbye, let me sum up my thoughts on this issue. Overall, it was pretty decent. No bad stories, although many of them were definitely minor works. That's a lot better than a magazine full of lousy fiction, so I won't complain when I read something good.

[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine! We work for egoboo…]




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 12, 1965] Last Minute Reprieve (the February 1965 Amazing)

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by John Boston

The Issue at Hand


Paula McLane

Well, what have we here?  A pretty decent issue of Amazing, not a common occasion at all, with some good and/or interesting material, one disappointing item by a big-name author, but no offenses against reason and decency!  Let us count our blessings, and proceed directly to their dissection.

He Who Shapes, by Roger Zelazny


George Schelling

Roger Zelazny’s two-part serial He Who Shapes concludes in this issue, and is the most pleasant surprise here: a capable writer taking on a substantial task and working hard to do a good job of it.  It features a psychiatrist specializing in neuroparticipation therapy: he projects hyper-realistic dreams into his patients’ minds and then stars in them, directing the action to the therapeutic end of his choice.  This is Render, the Shaper—a hokey note, but not misplaced, given the oratorical level of the whole. 

Neuroparticipation is a powerful tool, but sometimes double-edged: the therapist can lose control of the action and wind up in the patient’s movie, not his own.  Render is someone whose roots in his own reality are a little tenuous, by at least unconscious design: after the death of his wife, he maintains a determinedly superficial relationship with his mistress (sic) Jill, and a parental relationship with his son that is ostentatiously concerned (e.g., he changes the son’s school repeatedly) but seems emotionally arms-length.

So when another psychiatrist, brilliant, female, blind since birth, and of course also beautiful, asks Render to instruct her via neuroparticipation in visual imagery so she too can become a neuroparticipation therapist, the sophisticated reader can only think “Uh-oh.” I won’t go further; this is one that deserves to be read.  Not that it’s perfect by any means; unlike almost everything else in sight, it seems too short, and the end in particular seems rushed and underdeveloped.  But it’s a welcome sign both for the magazine and for the author, who seems to have moved from the “promising” column to the “delivering” one.  A strong four stars.

Far Reach to Cygnus, by Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber’s Far Reach to Cygnus, a sequel of sorts to The Goggles of Dr. Dragonet from Fantastic of a few years ago, is labelled a short story but at 23 pages is as long as many novelets in this magazine.  It’s a rambling, low-intensity sort of thing, agreeable enough while reading, but it compares badly to Leiber’s tighter and sharper pieces like Mariana (Fantastic, 1960), A Deskful of Girls (F&SF, 1958), or for that matter the short novel The Big Time (Galaxy, 1958). 

Here’s another psychological theme, of sorts.  To open, our first-person narrator is racing eagerly to Dr. Dragonet’s redoubt in the Santa Monica Mountains, lured by Dragonet’s promise of “a drug that is to mescalin and LSD as they are to weak coffee.” Upon arrival there is some byplay involving the police, a beautiful young woman, and a possibly illusory black leopard.

Our hero then enters a sort of seance featuring another beautiful young woman, recumbent in a long white dress, and already drugged, describing a scene on an extraterrestrial planet featuring blue grass and inhabited by elvish blue people who ride unicorns.  Also present are a Professor, a Father, a Sister, “a handsome crophaired sun-tanned suavely muscled” young Hollywood man in all-white garb, who is “the newest and most successful Brando-surrogate and homegrown Mastroianni” of the media, and of course Dr. Dragonet.

The drug, or “psionic elixir,” is brought in by a third beautiful young woman (now we have a brunette, a blonde, and a redhead, all of them Dr. Dragonet’s nieces, if I am keeping score correctly).  But first, several pages of debate about the mind-body problem!  Finally, sixteen pages in, the characters start to take the drug, one by one, leading into several pages of drug effects, not badly done—the drug, as advertised, is psionic, so each character is seeing through the eyes of all of them.

And of course the drug effects become very palpable and menacing (mind-manifesting rather concretely, one might say) and are banished, and the Brando-surrogate, who it turned out was pretty dangerous, is psychically neutralized, and the white-garbed sort-of-medium recites some appalling developments on the blue planet (invaders with flamethrowers), and the police show up again briefly and comically, and much is made throughout about how fetching the young women are and how aroused and frustrated the narrator is (cheesecake without pictures, one might say). 

But all of these (slowly) moving parts don’t really add up to much (the police and blue planet subplots in particular go nowhere), and certainly don’t disguise the fact that the story is no more than a facile pot-boiler with some trendy furnishings.  Two stars.

The Answerer, by Bill Casey

New writer Bill Casey contributes The Answerer, the sort of story that might have appeared in Unknown in the early ‘40s—a fantastic premise developed like SF—except that editor Campbell wouldn’t have dared publish it.  Suddenly, prayers are being answered.  Everybody’s prayers.  So what happens?  As one of the characters puts it: “There can be nothing more dangerous than a personal god who actively interferes in the lives of men.” Hint: what if a lot of mental patients started praying?  It’s not the vignette one might expect to see on this theme, but an actual story, with a suitably sardonic ending.  Four stars.

Reunion, by David R. Bunch

David R. Bunch, who mostly hangs out in Fantastic these days, has his first appearance here in almost two years.  His short story Reunion is more lucid and less precious than his usual.  The language is also more straightforward though the preoccupation remains the same: the lives of humans whose bodies have been largely replaced with machinery (“new-metal” held together with “flesh-strips”; I think “cyborg” is becoming the fashionable term).  The unnamed protagonist is visited in his Stronghold by his twin brother, who “went with the big Paper Shield” (i.e., became a minister) rather than the metal one.  Protagonist is much troubled about their relationship and the prospect of meeting again, and considers shooting him, but in the end puts on the dog for him, mechanically speaking.  A moment of epiphany follows, but once the brother leaves—back to business as usual, war with the neighbors.  Three stars.

The Gobbitch Men, by Alfred Grossman


George Schelling

There’s a different flavor of the surreal in The Gobbitch Men by Alfred Grossman, who we are assured is “a novelist of some repute” responsible for Acrobat Admits and Many Slippery Errors, which I haven’t read, but which I gather could be described as black humor with anarchist tendencies.  So what’s he doing in Amazing?  I think writers use the term “salvage market.”

Grossman’s protagonist Irving is an ineffectual, incipiently alcoholic graduate student of the future, working on his thesis on the unbearably tedious, advisor-dictated subject of popular music of the late twentieth century, when he is delivered by mistake some spools titled Population and Catastrophe and the like.  He asks questions, learns how things really are in his world, is warned that he should keep on the straight and narrow or else, but the or else is imminent anyway.  Oh, the title?  The gobbitch men make a big racket with the cans, but that’s to cover their more sinister covert errand, which has suddenly become highly relevant to Irving.

This one is an interesting try, a heavy-handed dystopian satire in the mode of early Galaxy, cartoony and overdone, but still quite well written, as befits “a novelist of some repute.” Three stars, and I wouldn’t mind seeing Mr. Grossman slumming here again.

S. Fowler Wright: SF’s Devil’s Disciple, by Sam Moskowitz

Sam Moskowitz soldiers on with the SF Profile series, this time with a less familar and more interesting subject than usual: S. Fowler Wright: SF’s Devil’s Disciple.  Wright is a particularly good subject for Moskowitz, who prefers writing about work of the ‘30s and ‘40s, since almost all of Wright’s SF work was published then or even earlier.  The best-known of his novels include The Amphibians (1924), The Island of Captain Sparrow (1928), Deluge (1928), Dawn (1929), The World Below (1929), Dream, or The Simian Maid (1931), The Adventure of Wyndham Smith (1938), and Spiders’ War (1954).

Titles to conjure with!  But not much else, since as far as I can tell, Wright’s SF is entirely out of print, at least in the US—suffering the fate of his ideas.  Wright, who is still around, 91 next month, is distinguished by his opposition to scientific progress generally and birth control in particular (no hypocrite he—he has ten children), and much of his work is dedicated to extolling the virtues of noble savagery.  Moskowitz’s denunciation of these views helps make this article rather livelier than many of its predecessors, and the unfamiliarity of his work lends it considerable interest.  Four stars.

Summing Up

So—not a bad issue of Amazing, something one doesn’t see more than once or twice a year.  There’s even a sort of unifying theme, psychology, if you count the ostentatiously neurotic protagonist of The Gobbitch Men.  Can Amazing do it again?  Maybe even make it a trend?  The public breathlessly awaits.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Magazine, Serial

[December 13, 1964] Save us from Yourselves (January 1965 Amazing)

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by John Boston

That Low

The uproar at the University of California at Berkeley continues, with student leader Mario Savio becoming instantly famous for his cri de couer: “There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”

Ever see that corny old silent movie Metropolis, with its oppressed workers desperately struggling against the gigantic levers of a future civilization’s industry?  Do you think Mr. Savio might have had those scenes in mind?  Is our culture now to be dominated by the imagery of old science fiction, recycled through late-night TV?  It can’t come soon enough for me.

The Issue at Hand


by Michael Arndt

Speaking of retrograde imagery, the January Amazing leads off with what seems a striking misjudgment.  Though it features the first installment of a serial by the up-and-coming Roger Zelazny, his longest work to date, the cover is a cartoony though well-executed depiction, by newcomer Michael Arndt, of an extraterrestrial boxer being knocked out of the ring, with a Damon Runyonesque audience looking on, clearly illustrating Blue Boy by the determinedly mediocre Jack Sharkey.  Zelazny’s story is relegated to smaller type above the magazine title, with his name hard to read against a bright background.  Amazing is clearly leading from the wrong side.  (Can’t anybody here play this game?)

He Who Shapes, by Roger Zelazny


by George Schelling

Promising as it seems, I will withhold reading and commenting on Zelazny’s serial He Who Shapes until the concluding installment is at hand, as is my practice.  A look at the first few pages indicates that the story involves psychiatric treatment by mental projection—not exactly a new idea (see Peter Phillips’s Dreams Are Sacred from 1948 and John Brunner’s more recent The Whole Man), but not overly familiar either.  Zelazny also seems to be making the most of his theatrical background in this one.  We will see the results next month.

Blue Boy, by Jack Sharkey

Blue Boy is even worse than I expected.  The protagonist, formerly involved in the boxing world, has been drafted, and is sent with a large crew on a mission to Pluto, where they encounter blue-skinned humanoids, whom they clap into the brig, and hastily head back towards Earth.  The Plutonians are quite muscular and have a knack for footwork, so our protagonist gets the idea of sneaking onto Earth with one and turning him into a boxer. 


by Michael Arndt

That’s about as far as I got (halfway) in this offensively stupid and also interminable screed (34 pages but seems like much more), which is written, and padded, in a stilted and circumlocutory style which seems pretty clearly intended as a pastiche of the above-mentioned Damon Runyon.  “Why?” one might cry, but the wind only whispers . . . “one cent a word.” One star.  No stars.  Heat death of the universe.  Cessation of all brain activity.  Bring back Robert F. Young!

A Child of Mind, by Norman Spinrad


by Virgil Finlay

We return at least to the semblance of sentience with Norman Spinrad’s A Child of Mind, a clever variation on a stock SF plot.  Three guys from Survey land on a planet which seems idyllic, but of course there’s something wrong; there always is.  This time, the majority of the females of the various local fauna have cell structures indicating they are really different organisms under the skin. 

Turns out they spring from “teleplasm,” an inchoate life form whose modus vivendi is, whenever a male of any species passes by, to discern and produce his ideal mate.  Why this all-female survival strategy?  As the hero, ecologist Kelton, Socratically explains to one of the other guys:

“Who pays for a wife’s meals?”

“Her husband, of—Oh my God!”

Er . . . that’s not always how it works.  If a lioness could speak, she would have a rather different account of things, as would many other females of other species.  But never mind, because, of course, very shortly, all three crew members have their own cocoon-grown dream girls: the thuggish one has an adoring slave, the mama’s boy has a sexy mama figure, and well-balanced Kelton has a merely supernaturally beautiful mate who understands his every desire.

This road leads nowhere, of course—to species extinction, since teleplasm doesn’t breed in the usual fashion, and not even to short-term satisfaction for Kelton, to whom

“. . . Woman had always been Mystery.

“And a creature of his own mind could hold no mystery for him, only the unsatisfying illusion of it.”

So Kelton does the only sensible thing, which you can probably guess.  While Kelton’s devotion to the autonomy of Woman may be creditable, there are hints of some pretty strange attitudes drifting through the story.  At one point, as Kelton is musing about how the teleplasm women are custom-made for their men, he thinks, “Swapping them would be like swapping toothbrushes.” Earlier, Spinrad quotes a “saying among Survey men: ‘Planets are like women.  It’s not the ugly ones that are dangerous.’”

Well, let’s reserve the psychoanalysis and give the author credit for a reasonably well-turned story—but meanwhile, Mr. Spinrad, you might think about putting some women on your space crews.  Three stars.

The Hard Way, by Robert Rohrer

Robert Rohrer’s growing competence suffers a setback in The Hard Way, a one-set psychodrama starring the sadistic Lieutenant Percy, who is delivering several prisoners from a penitentiary on Earth to one on Mercury.  Unfortunately they missed the turn towards Mercury and are heading towards the Sun, to die of heat on the way.  May as well have some fun with it! thinks the Lieutenant, and offers the prisoners a choice between slowly roasting to death and opening the airlock for a faster and cleaner exit.  Contrived, cliched, scenery-chewing.  Two stars, barely, and mainly to distinguish it from the abysmal Sharkey story.

The Handyman, by Leo P. Kelley


by George Schelling

Leo P. Kelley’s The Handyman is a pleasantly inconsequential dystopia about a small town where everything seems pretty nice except for the medical facility, the Hive, which spirits sick people away to its sterile and overlit premises and forbids any medical practice but its own.  Old Doc Larkin must ply his profession covertly, masquerading as a handyman and carrying his instruments concealed in a loaf of bread newly baked by his wife.  Three stars, also barely.

The Men in the Moon, by Robert Silverberg


by Virgil Finlay

The second of Robert Silverberg’s “Scientific Hoaxes” articles is The Men in the Moon, concerning the hoax perpetrated by journalist Richard Adams Locke, who published a series of articles in the New York Sun concerning the observations of profuse flora, fauna, and people on the Moon, supposedly made by famed astronomer William Herschel from his observatory at Cape Town, South Africa.  Herschel was indeed in Cape Town but of course made no such observations and didn’t know Locke was making these claims until years later.  Like its predecessor, it’s an interesting story capably told.  Three stars.

Summing Up

So: another dose of mediocrity from this historic magazine that hasn’t done much of anything for us lately, and owes us big time, at least those of us putting down good money for it each month.  Maybe the Zelazny serial will be its redemption.  Hope springs eternal, but it’s getting tired.

[Holiday season is upon us, and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), on the other hand, contains some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age.  And it makes a great present! Think of it as a gift to friends…and the Journey!




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 15, 1964] Veteran's Triumph (December 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Marching as to War

November 11 used to be the federally mandated holiday set aside for the honoring of World War I veterans.  After "The Great War" was eclipsed by later conflicts, the day's scope became more general, dedicated to veterans of all wars.  And so, parades like this one in Walla Walla, Washington, featuring soldiers from as far back as the Spanish American War, have become an annual tradition.

Of course, in Las Vegas, it was a day like any other.  Well, the show must go on…

It is no surprise that, given this particularly bloody century (which saw the American Civil War, two world wars, the Korean War, the Russian Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, the Chinese Civil War, etc. etc.) that war is a perennial theme in science fiction.  But where war was once portrayed in a patriotic light, or at least, merely as an exciting backdrop for adventure, we are now starting to see a decidedly cynical tinge to modern SF war stories. 

And there is no finer example of this trend than this month's superb issue of Galaxy.  Read on and find out why:

The Starsloggers, by Harry Harrison

The biggest military science fiction hits of the last five years run the gamut from novels like Heinlein's ultra-jingoistic Starship Troopers and Dickson's Hornblower-esque Dorsai! at one end, through the more nuanced "Joe Mauser" series by Reynolds and the latest Starwatchman, by Bova, to anti-war pieces like Dickson's Naked to the Stars.

But there has never been such a biting, such an accurate, and such an eminently readable satire of the veteran's experience as Harry Harrison's new novel, The Starsloggers.

Bill, a backwoods hick with dreams of becoming a Technical Fertilizer Operator, is shanghaied into This Man's Space Navy.  Thus ensues months of grueling, dehumanizing boot camp under the merciless lash of the fanged Drill Sergeant, Deathwish Drang.  But these torments are as nothing when the entire training division is drafted into an all-out war against the saurian "Chingers", whose greatest offense is that they exist. 

Bill is pressed into serving as a fusetender, sweating profusely while he watches for the big red band on the six-foot weapons fuse to turn black, and then replacing it with another monstrous device.  It's a position that normally takes the better part of a year to learn the intricacies of, but needs must, and somehow Bill and his brood learn the ropes in about fifteen minutes.

Along the way, Bill meets such notable characters as "Eager Beager", a perennially smiling chap who loves to shine everyone else's boots; Tembo, a proselytizing zealot who refuses offers to muster out; a nameless ship's chaplain who doubles as the laundry officer…and on and on.  All of them are ridiculous, yet strangely plausible.

Ultimately, Bill ends up in a Southeast Asia analog, fighting to preserve a 10-mile square postage stamp of land against a limitless enemy in the foggy jungle.  This is the kind of story where the protagonist is punished for bravery and rewarded for self-interest, and suffice it to say, by book's end, The Starsloggers earns the ironic subtitle: Bill, the Galactic Hero.

Satire is hard.  Comedic satire is harder.  It's easy for a story to devolve into silliness, and it's harder still to maintain the joke and readability throughout novel length.  Harrison manages to lambast every sacred cow in the military barn, all while making a story with just enough reality and interest to keep the pages turning.

The Starsloggers should be required reading for anyone who reads Starship Troopers, if anything to keep too many Eager Beagers from enlisting.  Five stars.

The Rules of the Road, by Norman Spinrad

In this, Norm Spinrad's second appearance outside of Analog, a death-defying mercenary is hired to explore an alien dome that has mysteriously appeared on Earth.  Nine men have gone in before; none came out.  Can the mercenary survive the strange geometries and lethal traps of the dome?  And what will he be when he comes out?

An interesting piece, though perhaps 20% too padded and without a great deal of consequence.  Three stars.

Ballad of the Interstellar Merchants, by Sheri S. Eberhart

The third poem from this author; a pleasant 24th Century space shanty.  I imagine someone will put music to it and we'll hear it at Westercon next year.  Three stars.

For Your Information: The Rarest Animals, by Willy Ley

The latest from Veelee, the good German, is a piece on endangered species thought to be extinct…but aren't!  It's quite good, except it just abruptly stops without any kind of conclusion.  I hope he didn't have a heart attack at the end!

Three stars.

The Monster and the Maiden Roger Zelazny

One of the genre's newer lights offers up this silly little piece, about virgin sacrifice and turnabout.  It's worth a chuckle.  Three stars.

A Man of the Renaissance, by Wyman Guin

Last time we saw Wyman Guin, he offered up a political piece set in a delightfully unique world.  With Renaissance, the author has outdone himself. 

The story is set on a water world, on whose oceans float islands of vegetation-lashed pumice.  Their dwellers are reduced to a resource poor and medieval existence.  But one latter-day Leonardo, Master of the Seven Arts, would risk love, limb, and life to effect a daring plan: to bind three small land masses together.  To accomplish this, he must overcome prejudice and adversity, and plain, hide-bound stubborness.

Renaissance starts a little choppily, confusing since the context only comes gradually, and I found the combat scenes a little inexpert.  But everything else, particularly the worldbuilding, is simply marvelous.  I tore through it in no time…and then found myself trying to figure out how to make a wargame out of the setting!

Four stars.

Let Me Call Her Sweetcore, by David R. Bunch

Bunch, of course, is best known for his tales of Moderan, where humanity has become increasingly roboticized.  Sweetcore seems to take place in an adjacent universe; it is a love story about an old man, his overly emotional robot, and the girl robot whom it falls in love with.

I both appreciated the story's juxtaposition of the maudlin machine and its emotionless master, while at the same time being annoyed with the stereotypical portrayal of love and marriage.

A low three stars.

To Avenge Man, by Lester del Rey

We end with another robot story, which is also a war story.  Sam, a sentient Mark I machine assigned to a small moonbase, is left behind when the scientific team is recalled to Earth.  Shortly thereafter, the planet flares into myriad pinpoints of brilliance before going dark.  Now Sam is truly alone.

The first half of the piece, where Sam becomes fully actualized after reading the base library, is quite compelling.  But the latter half, in which Sam looks for humanity's remains in vain, deduces that we were destroyed by Wellesian aliens, and leads a galactic crusade to punish them, is both redundant and revealed in the story's prologue.

Sadly, this reduces what could have been a four star story to readable three.

Yin's Yang

I lamented that this month's IF was decidedly subpar, and per Victoria Silverwolf, Worlds of Tomorrow wasn't much better.  But Galaxy, the old warhorse of Editor Fred Pohl's stable, remains a sterling example of how to do science fiction right.  Just the Harrison and the Guin would have made a full, 4.5 star issue of F&SF.  It's ones like these that have kept me a faithful subscriber for 14 years, and I don't see myself bugging out any time soon.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Magazine

[June 20, 1964] How low can you go?  (July 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

SFlying West

Once again, the Journey is brought to you from Japan!  Specifically, the nation's capital, Tokyo.  We've become old hands at making the trk across the Pacific, especially since Pan Am inaugurated direct 707 service from Los Angeles to Tokyo International.

This time, we stayed at a new hotel, in the shadow of the recently completed Tokyo Tower.  From the observatory deck of the hotel, the often elusive Mt. Fuji was clearly visible, thanks to a heavy rain that had occurred the night before.

Tokyo remains as it has been for the past 16 years (our first visit was in 1948!) Bustling, filled with energy and cigarette smoke.  There is a particular focus on renovation what with the Olympics coming to town soon.  Nevertheless, life otherwise goes on normally in the thoroughfares, wide and narrow.

TV cartoons have become a big deal here, with the recently debuted "Mighty Atom" inspiring tons of merchandise.

It's not all roses, though.  Up on the other side of the country, an earthquake struck off the coast of Niigata.  Then, a tidal wave swept in.  The property damage was immense and at least two dozen people have died.

More personally, though my tragedy hardly compares, this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction managed to limbo below the low bar recently set by Editor Avram Davidson (who fled Mexico and apparently now resides in my home state of California).

With a sigh, here we go again:

The Issue at Hand


by Ed Emshwiller

Cantata 140, by Philip K. Dick

It is said that too many cooks spoil a broth, and the SFnal corollary is that too many ideas spoil a plot.  Indeed, Dick's newest novella, the third in the "News Clown" series set late in the 21st Century, has so many handwaves that I could have used the magazine to fly to Japan.  The piece's 60 pages contain:

  • An overpopulated world with abortion but not Enovid (birth control medicine).
  • A satellite of prostitutes to relieve proceative tension.
  • A super cheap way to get to said satellite.
  • Precious few other satellites.
  • Teleportation.
  • Teleportation (accidental) to another world.
  • Suspended animation as the standard treatment for excess, unemplopyed population.
  • An American population that is more "Colored" than "Caucasian".
  • The Presidential campaign of the first "Colored" candidate (the "Event of 1993" caused the demographic shift such that Whites were outnumbered, yet it is not until 2080 that a Black candidate has a chance).
  • A two-bodied, one-headed mutant human crime lord.

For the most part, the plot follows Jim Briskin as he tries to become the first "colored" President of the United States.  Other things happen, including the "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" incident in which a balky teleporter somehow links Earth to a far-off, virgin planet.  It is very quickly taken as read that this is the solution to Earth's frozen overpopulation problem (creating the excuse for the rather esoertic title — it probably refers to Bach's "Sleepers wake!" composition).  I suppose if the story stuck to these two threads and developed them in a satisying manner, this could be a good read — especially since it's written by Dick, one of the genre's masters.  Instead, the piece is a jumbled mess, stuffed with clumsy jargon, and combining both implausible and contradictory elements with several overly conventional ones.

For example, race relations appear to be stuck in the 1960s even though the story takes place more than a century later.  The overpopulation angle makes no sense.  At first, I thought there might be moral objections to abortion and/or medical birth control, but given that state-assisted suicide is a sanctioned population stabilizer, I doubt it.  And how do the prostitutes not get pregnant?  And how do 5000 of them satisfy Earth's billions?

Inconsistencies aside, the narrative is neither interesting nor comprehensible.  If I can't have good SF, I'd at least like good satire.  If I can't have that, I'll settle for decent writing.

And if that's lacking, there's no rating I can give a story other than…

One star.

The Second Philadelphia Experiment, by Robert F. Young

From the lost pages of Ben Franklin's diary comes an account of the great scientist's further explorations into electricity.  It's a facile reproduction of Franklin's style but really just exists to set up a fairly flat joke.  I was feeling more charitable when I read it, but now I think it's fair to give it just two stars.

Balloon Astronomy, by Theodore L. Thomas

This month's nonfiction seed for science fiction articles suggests using balloon-mounted instruments to provide constant weather reports.  But don't they already do that?

Two stars.

The Scientist and the Monster, by Gahan Wilson

Wilson offers The Twilight Zone episode, "Eye of the Beholder" virtually unchanged except for a slightly improved moral message at the end.  Still just worth two stars.

A

The Happy Place, by Toni Heller Lamb

Ms. Lamb's first published story is a dark piece involving a young girl who finds the cemetery a more hospitable residence than any place of the living.  There is a nice final line, and the story is nice in a macabre sort of way, but otherwise it is unremarkable. 
Three stars.


by Ed Emshwiller

The End of the Wine, by C. S. Lewis

This poem, which follows a bedraggled Lemurian as he makes landfall in Stone Age Europe, is made all the more poignant by being the author's last creation (he died last year, same day as JFK).  Thus, the double whammy as we realize what we've lost as the man from Atlantis rues over same.

Four stars.

The Salvation of Faust, by Roger Zelazny

An interesting inversion of the Faustian Bargain, it entertains and then disappears.  Three stars.

All-Hallows, by Leah Bodine Drake

A tiny poem whose message is that nothing dies — it just becomes part of the world around you.

Three stars.

Nothing Counts, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor regales us with a nonfiction article on the evolution of Roman numerals and the utility of the zero.  It's well-written but there is very little useful information, and in particular, almost no history of the zero itself.

Three stars.

The Struldbrugg Reaction, by John Sutherland

New author Sutherland brings us a pointless Sherlock pastiche, the gimmick being that Holmes and Watson ("Bones" and "Dawson") are in their 90s and immortal (thanks to the Struldbrugg Reaction — see Gulliver's Travels to understand the reference). 

It's no Lord Darcy.  Two stars.

The Girl with the 100 Proof Eyes, by Ron Webb

Some schlubb decants a genie named Jeanie and coerces her to love him.  A delightful rape fantasy.  One star.

We Serve the Star of Freedom, by Jane Beauclerk

This final story, the first from Ms. Beauclerk, features a clever native of an alien world (inhabited by quite human extraterrestrials) who gets the best of traders from Earth.  It's a pleasant story, though more fable than SF.  Probably the best prose piece of the issue.  Three stars.

Summing Up

Good grief.  I do hope Avram Davidson's tenure at the helm of this once proud magazine will soon come to an end.  It's either that or my days of subscribing will.

Oh well.  At least I'm in Japan!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Magazine

[May 8, 1964] Rough Patch (June 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

I think I've got a bad case of sibling rivalry.  When Victoria Silverwolf came onto the Journey, she took on the task of reviewing Fantastic, a magazine that was just pulling itself out of the doldrums.  My bailiwick consisted of Analog, Fantasy and Science Fiction, IF, and Galaxy, which constituted The Best that SF had to offer.

Ah for those halcyon days.  Now Fantastic is showcasing fabulous Leiber, Moorcock, and Le Guin.  Moreover, Vic has added the superlative Worlds of Tomorrow to her beat.  What have I got?  Analog is drab and dry, Avram Davidson has careened F&SF to the ground, IF is inconsistent, and Galaxy…ah, my poor, once beloved Galaxy…

The Issue at Hand


cover by McKenna

To Build a World, by Poul Anderson


by Morrow

Wham!  Kaboom!  A giant drilling machine is sabotaged while releasing the gasses pent up under the Moon's surface.  A man dies, and the lunar terraforming project is thrown into jeopardy.  It is up to the drill team's foreman, Venusian Don Sevigny, to go to Earth and sniff out the plot…before his life is snuffed out!

Sixty pages of stilted exposition punctuated by standard action scenes ensue.  Moreover, overcrowded Earth has exactly one woman on it (at least that we ever see), and though she turns out to be a villain, she's far too good-looking to remain one.  Sigh.

Poul Anderson vacillates between brilliance and boredom, and To Build a World is a swing of the pendulum hard toward the latter extreme. 

Let's hope the thing doesn't get stuck there.  Two stars.

The King of the Beasts, by Philip José Farmer

Twenty years ago, this utterly predictable vignette might have made acceptable filler in Astounding.  Here and now, it's an embarrassing waste of space.

One star.

The Man from Earth, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Giunta

On the crossroads planet of Duhnbar, the Samarkand of the stars, a visiting human trader fails to observe a minor religious rite.  Duhnbar's all-powerful Director decides to make an example of the man, imposing a long-lapsed death penalty.  In a futile act of defiance, the man preserves his pride, if not his life.

This is a nicely written piece, and the setup is genuinely interesting, but the ending is a let down.  Three stars.

The Well-Trained Heroes, by Arthur Sellings


by Jack Gaughan (and not one of his best)

People often have the misapprehension that colonization reduced population pressure.  It doesn't; it increases it.  Colonies always fill up.  Passage is expensive.  Inevitably, home remains as crowded as ever, but the folks living there are all the more disgruntled for being stuck there.

In Heroes, Earth's citizens yearn to go to space, but barely one in a million make the cut to join the astronaut corps.  Tension builds, and town after town goes into unrest.  It is up to a pair of astronauts to defuse would-be rioters by convincing them that space isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Kind of a neat story, if a little meandering.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Anyone Else for Space?, by Willy Ley

After months of desultory articles, Willy Ley is back in form.  This month's column is nearly twice as long as it has been recently, and it's chock full of the latest news on rocket development outside the Big Two.  Having been to Japan's nascent launch facilities recently, it was exciting to hear about their latest developments (as well as those of the Europeans, the Israelis, the Egyptians, and the Indians!)

Five stars

Collector's Fever, by Roger Zelazny

Rock collecting is a fine hobby, provided the specimens aren't sentient and ready to deeble!  A slight, amusing piece that gets extra points for being told almost entirely in dialogue.

Three stars.

The Many Dooms, by Harry Harrison


by Nodel

On expeditions to hostile worlds, there is no margin of error.  When a cocky geologist's sloppiness threatens the lives of his crew-mates, fate (perhaps with a little push from human hands) deals with the problem.

I liked the writing on this one, and the subject matter is up my alley, but I found the ending both too straightforward and, quite frankly, disturbing.

Three stars.

An Ancient Madness, by Damon Knight


by John Giunta

On an island where breeding is artificial and strictly regimented, and romantic pairings are unheard of, one sixteen year old girl longs for a dramatic love.

A lot.  Loudly and repeatedly.  For twenty angst-infused, plot-stationary pages.  Then, in the final two paragraphs, she runs off with the Doctor to live happily ever after.

I'm not sure why this story was written.  I'm even less certain how I made it through the thing.

Two stars.

Men of Good Will, by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis

In the near future, the Cold War has spread to near-Earth space, occasionally sparking into moments of heat.  For some reason, however, the Moon seems to be a zone of armistice.  The Norwegian UN ambassador heads to the Earth's companion to find out the secret.

The secret (read no further if you wish to remain unspoilt): The Yanks and the Ruskies did shoot it out — once.  Those bullets achieved orbital velocity, and every 27 days, their orbit intersects with the bases, peppering them with new holes.  It's simply too dangerous to keep up the fight.

It's a cute premise, but of course, it makes absolutely no sense.  The periapsis of the bullets only intersects with the bases once out of 24 x 27 orbits; the rest of the time, the bullets should be hitting lunar hills.  They should have been stopped after the first grounding.

C'mon, Ben!  You're a science writer fer cryin' out loud.  Two stars.

The Sincerest Form, by J. W. Groves


by Cowles

Last up, we have a tale told from the point of view of imitative aliens, spore-like things that have no consciousnesses of their own, but which can become replicas of the beings they devour.  The process is imperfect, and the thought processes get a bit garbled.  In fact, it takes a while for the reader to figure out what's going on; it is only when the imitators encounter bonafide humans that things become clear.

I have to give Groves credit for an interesting concept, but the very trickiness of the idea meant that proper execution lay slightly beyond the author's ability.  Still, if he doesn't quite stick the landing, Groves does leave you with something to think about.

Three stars.

Summing Up

So, on the one hand, I am left grousing at my fate, stuck with a 2.7 star issue while Vic reviews the good stuff.  On the other hand, I'm not John Boston, resigned to review bottom-of-the-pack Amazing every month.  Plus, is that a new issue of Gamma I see peeking out from under the stack of bills?

I suppose I do have blessings to count!

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Magazine

[April 20, 1964] Play Ball! (June 1964 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Opening Ceremonies

Howdy, sports fans!

Baseball season just opened up here in the good old USA.  The New York Mets, relative newcomers to the sport, faced the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game held at Shea Stadium, their new stomping grounds.


The first day, and already the scoreboard is broken

The Mets lost, 4 to 3.  I know the young team has a pretty bad win-loss record, but that's got to hurt.  Opening day at your brand new stadium and the visitors beat you by one run.

Like a baseball team, the latest issue of World of Tomorrow features nine men.  (No women.) I'm counting editor Frederik Pohl as one of the players, as well as the coach and manager, since he provides the magazine's editorial — it's an interesting essay about C. P. Snow's book The Two Cultures and a Second Look, and how science fiction can build a bridge between science and the humanities.  After he provides a few practice swings, let's get down to the real ballgame.

Batter Up!


cover by Gray Morrow

On Messenger Mountain, by Gordon R. Dickson

A reliable player steps up to the plate with a tale of war and survival in deep space.

The men (no women) of the starship Harrier are having a really bad day.  After discovering an Earth-like planet, they run into an alien vessel.  In this dog-eat-dog picture of the future, the two ships immediately try to destroy each other.  Many men and aliens die, and both vessels have to make crash landings.


by Gray Morrow

The few human survivors find themselves at the foot of a gigantic mountain.  One of the aliens attacks them right away.  They manage to kill it, but not without more casualties.  The aliens are able to alter their body structures rapidly to accommodate changing conditions.

As if that were not enough of a threat, the men have no way to signal for help without carrying a piece of equipment to the top of the mountain.  Three of the crew set out on a long, difficult, and hazardous climb.  Adding to their woes is the fact that there may be another alien alive, and it might be able to disguise itself as a human being. 

Dickson creates a great deal of tension and suspense.  The mountain climbing scenes are vivid and full of realistic details.  The icy environment and shapeshifting aliens remind me of the classic story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. (but not The Thing From Another World, the movie loosely based on the story.) Dickson's aliens are described in more detail than Campbell's, and their ability to change their bodies is believable.

I could quibble with the assumption that first contact with aliens must inevitably lead to conflict, or with the story's ending, which promotes humanity as unique and superior.  These aspects of the story make it seem intended for the pages of Analog.  Overall, however, it's a very good adventure story.

Four stars.

The Twerlik, by Jack Sharkey

Batting second is a player who often strikes out, particularly when he's trying to be funny.  Sometimes he connects with the ball solidly, when he takes off his jester's cap and gets down to serious business.

The Twerlik is a very strange alien.  Its flat, monomolecular, multifilamented body extends over an area of ten square miles, but it only weighs one pound.  It survives on its cold, dark world by absorbing light from the planet's distant sun.  Humans arrive, bringing sources of light far greater than anything the Twerlik has ever known.  Grateful for the gift of energy from the strangers, and for all the new concepts it learns from them, it gives them what they most desire.

Although the themes of be careful what you wish for and the road to Hell is paved with good intentions have been used many times before, Sharkey handles them in a new way.  The alien is fascinating, particularly in the way it picks up novel ideas from the humans.

There's a small hole in the plot logic.  The alien does not even have the concept of self until people show up.  Why, then, does it think of itself as a Twerlik after they arrive?  The humans don't call it that, or even know that it exists.

Despite this tiny flaw, this is the best story by Jack Sharkey that I have ever read.

Four stars.

Short Course in Button Pushing, by Joseph Wesley

Instead of a seventh inning stretch, we get a break from fiction with this article from a writer who has published a handful of stories, mostly in Galaxy.  It starts off with a question that seems simple enough.

What is the range of one of our latest supersonic anti-air warfare Naval missiles?

The author goes on to show how a large number of variables make this impossible to answer.  Atmospheric conditions, the nature of the target; the factors involved are incalculable.  The article has a single point to make, and does it in an efficient, if not intriguing, manner.

Three stars.

Stay Out of Our Time!, by Willard Marsh


by Nodel

Back to the game with this satiric, semi-comic time travel story.

Hiram Wetherbee is a meek little fellow living in the late Twentieth Century.  In his time, it's as easy to visit the far future or the distant past as it is to take a trip to a vacation spot.  However, certain future centuries ban visitors from the past, blaming them for the way they ruined the future.  Hiram, a painter of mediocre talent, intends to travel to 1902, in order to impress the unsophisticated locals with modern art.  (His real motive is to seduce the women of the time, as he's not exactly a big success with the ladies.) A mix-up lands him in one of the forbidden centuries of the future, without enough funds to make his way back.  After some misadventures with the authorities, he gets a guided tour of the time from some friendly folks who find him a remarkable specimen.

I was never quite clear what the author was trying to say, in this portrait of a future without imagination.  Very few people have jobs.  Euthanasia is encouraged.  Abstract art flourishes, but realism is dead.  Hiram talks in clichés, and the people of the future think he's brilliant.  The story is readable, but wanders all over the place and never quite grabs the reader.

Two stars.

Lucifer, by Roger Zelazny

Next in the batting order is a player who is making a name for himself in the writing game.

A man returns to a city that lost all its inhabitants in some unexplained disaster.  He goes into the vast building that provided its power and restarts the generators.

That's the entire plot of this story, which has only one character.  Obviously, the author isn't going for pulse-pounding action.  It's all mood, description, and psychological insight.  On that level, it works very well.

Four stars.

The Great Doomed Ship, by J. T. McIntosh


by Gaughan

Up to the plate comes an old pro with a checkered career.  Although he always swings hard at the ball, he rarely sends it flying over the wall.

The biggest and fastest starship ever built is about to set out on her maiden voyage.  Because it is scheduled to leave exactly two hundred years after the Titanic disaster, some people think it is doomed.

There are other reasons to worry.  This is a time when some folks have premonitions about the future, although these are not always reliable.  A few people have vague feelings of impending disaster about the planned voyage.  Most troubling of all, the designer of the vessel is in a mental institution, having gone into a catatonic state.  Our hero, an investigator with some psychic ability, finds out that the mad engineer deliberately set the ship to blow up when it reaches a certain speed.  He fails to prevent the vessel from taking off, and there is no way to communicate with it.  Complicating matters is the fact that the investigator's sister, who also has extrasensory powers, is aboard.

As I was reading this story, I kept picturing it as a big budget Hollywood spectacular, in Technicolor and Cinemascope.  The characters all come from Central Casting.  Besides the hero, his sister, and the madman, we've got the stubborn head of the starship company; the hard-drinking co-designer of the ship; the sister's no-good boyfriend; the brave young captain of the vessel, who wins the affections of the sister; and so on. 

I have problems with some of the things McIntosh says about women in his stories, yet, paradoxically, he creates complex female characters who are often more capable than the men are.  The sister is a prime example.  Although she's in a destructive relationship with a faithless lover, her weaknesses never prevent her from winning the reader's sympathy. 

This cinematic epic was enjoyable, if hardly profound, until the end.  It falls completely apart, with an anticlimax that depends on a trivial change in the meaning of a certain premonition the sister has about her fate. 

Two stars.

The Realized Man, by Norman Spinrad

Here's a rookie with only a few credits to his name.  Is he ready for the big league, or should he go back to the minors?  Let's find out.

Derek Carmody is a man who has been mentally and physically enhanced to an extraordinary degree.  His purpose is to arrive alone, without special equipment, on a planet inhabited by primitive aliens, and prepare them for later human colonists.  He does this by becoming chief of the local tribe and offering them technological advantages over their rivals.  It all leads up to a final gesture that will make him a god in the eyes of the natives.

Although the way in which the protagonist uses his superpowers is quite interesting, the story suffers from a lack of suspense.  The author tells you in advance what the character is going to do at the end, and then he does it.  I was a little disappointed that the confident superman didn't get his comeuppance.

Three stars.

What the Dead Men Say, by Philip K. Dick


by Virgil Finlay

We go into the final inning with a novella from a prolific, award-winning, but sometimes controversial author.

Louis Sarapis may be the richest person in the solar system.  So rich, in fact, that not even the tax collectors know how much he's worth.  He is also dead.

In this future, that's not a huge handicap.  By keeping the recently deceased extremely cold, it's possible to temporarily preserve a low level of brain activity.  The so-called half-lifers can communicate with the living, albeit in a limited way.

Attempts to revive the mind of the dead man fail, for unknown reasons.  That would seem to be the end of the matter, except for one thing: messages that seem to be coming from the deceased arrive on Earth from deep in space.  Eventually they take over all forms of electronic communication.  You can't listen to the radio, watch television, or pick up the phone without hearing the dead man's voice.

The deceased's heir is his granddaughter, formerly a drug addict.  Because her grandfather is legally dead, although apparently quite active, she now runs his vast business empire.  She follows his orders from beyond the grave.  In particular, she promotes the political career of a politician who formerly failed to become President of the United States, convinced he can make a comeback and win the office.

There is much more to this long and complex story than I've indicated.  Many subplots appear, along with a wide variety of richly defined characters.  The author avoids his tendency to have disparate elements, not fully integrated, in his works.  The plotting is tight, with all of the seemingly mystical elements explained in a logical way.

(One trivial observation remains.  In passing, the story states that Richard Nixon revived his political career in the 1970's.  I know science fiction writers are supposed to come up with wild speculations, but that's really stretching things.)

Five stars.

The Box Score

Coach Pohl puts his big hitters at the front and back of the magazine, making up for a slight slump in the middle.  With all bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, slugger Philip K. Dick hits a home run.  It makes you want to root for the underdogs.  Go Mets!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Magazine

[February 23, 1964] Songs of Innocence and of Experience (March 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

I trust that the spirit of William Blake will forgive me for stealing the title of his 1794 collection of poems.  It seems appropriate, now that the Beatles have conquered America with a combination of sophisticated melodies and simple lyrics.  Maybe you were one of the millions who watched the Fab Four perform the Number One song in the USA on The Ed Sullivan Show a couple of weeks ago.

If not, don't worry about it.  You'll find plenty of innocence and experience in the pages of the latest issue of Fantastic.


Cover by Paula McLane

Iron, by Robert H. Rohrer, Jr.

The cover story takes place long after metallic aliens failed to conquer Earth.  One of the invaders escapes from an underground prison after one thousand years, finding a domed city inhabited by robots, but without people.  During a battle of wits between the alien and the robots, we learn what happened to the vanished humans.

This story has some interesting concepts, but presents them in an unsophisticated way.  The manner in which the alien and the leader of the robots deduce the truth about each other from a few vague clues strains credulity.  There are no surprises in the plot.

Two stars.

The Graveyard Heart, by Roger Zelazny

In the near future, a small number of the elite go into suspended animation, emerging for a day or so now and then.  They are all extremely wealthy, but money is not the only thing needed to join this exclusive set.  Their long slumbers alternate with brief periods of parties and other amusements.

The protagonist falls in love with a woman who belongs to the group.  He struggles to join the set, facing the arbitrary whim of an elderly woman who has the final say.  Complicating matters is a cynical, alcoholic poet.  A dramatic event brings the characters together, with unexpected results.

If the first story in this issue lacked style and elegance, this one has plenty — one would say it has too much!  There are elaborate metaphors and multiple allusions, some of which went over my head.  The tone is world-weary and decadent.  The hibernating hedonists remind me of the inhabitants of J. G. Ballard's Vermillion Sands.  Not all readers will care for the author's literary pretentions, but I appreciated them.

Four stars.

The Coming of the Little People, by Robert Spencer Carr

This month's Fantasy Classic comes from the November 1952 issue of Bluebook.  As the story begins, a feeling of optimism fills the world.  Simultaneously, strange lights appear on the most inaccessible peaks on Earth.  Although the possibility of spaceships or biological experiments comes up, it's clear from the start (and the title) what's really going on.  Mischievous but benign fairies arrive to aid humanity.  Not only do they end the Cold War, they help an army officer and his female sergeant admit their love for each other.

Readers with a low tolerance for sweetness and sentimentality had best stay away.  If Zelazny's tale was the epitome of Experience, this one is the exemplar of Innocence.  It feels cruel to blame the author for naivety, when he wears his heart on his sleeve so openly.

Two stars.

Training Talk, by David R. Bunch

We turn from pure light to complete darkness in the latest mordant fable from a controversial author.  A man makes his two young children bury dolls made from sausage and paper.  Six months later, they dig them up.  What happens next is very strange.

I'm not sure what the author is trying to say, but it has something to do with the man's broken marriage and a woman's death.  The frenzied narrative style makes for compelling, if confusing, reading.

Three stars.

Identity Mistaken, by Rick Raphael

An astronaut crashes on an inhabited planet.  Only his brain survives.  The local aliens rebuild his body, based on their monitoring of Earth's television broadcasts.  The whole thing is just a set-up for a joke about the popularity of Westerns.  You may get some slight amusement from the punchline.

Two stars.

Summing Up

Zelazny and Bunch represent one extreme of imaginative fiction.  They make use of avant-garde literary techniques, at the risk of alienating the audience.  The other authors demonstrate simpler, more traditional methods of telling a story.  They communicate with the reader clearly, but may seem stale and unoriginal.  It's impossible to say which approach is better.  Maybe writers of fantasy and science fiction can learn a lesson from the Beatles, and make use of both.

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