Tag Archives: victoria silverwolf

Magazine/Anthology

[January 14, 1965] The Big Picture (March 1965 Worlds of Tomorrow)

3 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

Science fiction writers often have to deal with things on a very large scale. Whether they take readers across vast reaches of space, or into unimaginably far futures, they frequently look at time and the universe through giant telescopes of imagination, enhancing their vision beyond ordinary concerns of here and now.

(This is not to say anything against more intimate kinds of imaginative fiction, in which the everyday world reveals something extraordinary. A microscope can be a useful tool for examining dreams as well.)

A fine example of the kind of tale that paints a portrait of an enormous universe, with a chronology reaching back for eons, appears in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, from the pen of a new, young writer.


Cover art by George Schelling

World of Ptavvs, by Larry Niven


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan

Our story begins about two billion years ago. The character shown above is a member of a telepathic species with the power to enslave other sentient beings with their minds.


An example of a slave species that doesn't play much part in the story.


This slave species, on the other hand, has a big impact on what happens to its masters.

Kzanol the Thrint has a problem. On his way to the homeworld in his starship, the engine that allows it to make long-distance voyages explodes. The rest of the ship is unharmed, but Kzanol is stranded. Fortunately, he has a suit that slows time down to a crawl for the wearer. He can't reach his native planet with the power his ship has left, but he can crash into an uninhabited planet, where yeast is grown to feed slaves, after a couple of centuries. He stashes some valuables into a spare suit, puts on the other one, programs the ship for the slow journey, and goes into stasis, expecting to be rescued once enough time has gone by.


Kzanol in the stasis suit.

Cut to Earth, in a future of flying cars and interstellar travel. Larry Greenberg (now where have I seen that first name before?) is a telepath. Compared to an average Thrint, he has hardly any ability at all; but it's enough to get him a job communicating mentally with dolphins. This is really just a stepping stone to a real career of reaching the minds of aliens discovered on the planet humans call Jinx.

Scientists who have just invented a time-slowing device — sound familiar? — realize that the so-called Sea Statue, an ancient object found at the bottom of the ocean, is really an alien inside a similar stasis field. By placing it inside their own gizmo, they can deactivate it. Larry is along to pick up the thoughts of the alien. This works much too well.

Kzanol's mind takes over Larry's body. Although he still has human memories, he thinks he is really a Thrint, lost on a world of ptavvs (beings without telepathic powers.) He also believes that he is trapped in the body of a ptavv himself, because he is unable to control the inhabitants of the planet with his mind.


One of several genetically engineered species Larry/Kzanol remembers, adding greatly to the feeling of a richly imagined background. These are giant plants that use solar power as a defense mechanism.


These are dinosaur-sized, single-celled animals the Thrint use for food, feeding them on yeast. There turns out to be much more to them than meets the eye.


Racing animals, like horses or greyhounds on Earth.


The interiors of these trees act as rocket fuel.

At the same time, the real Kzanol escapes from his stasis suit. This leads to a wild chase across the solar system, as both Kzanol and Larry/Kzanol race to find the other stasis suit, which contains a telepathy-enhancing device that would allow the wearer to control all the minds on Earth. Both Earth-dwellers and the colonists who inhabit the asteroid belt head out after the pair. There's an economic cold war going on between Earthers and Belters, adding to the tension.


Kzanol thinks the other suit is on Neptune, but it turns out to be on Pluto, which used to be a moon of Neptune a couple of billion years ago.

This is a fast-moving, complex story with a richly imagined background. The author clearly did a lot of work creating his fictional universe and populating it with a wide variety of organisms. There are so many concepts thrown out that some readers may feel overwhelmed. Certain elements are not fully explored. (The slave that Kzanol throws into his spare suit seems to have no relevance to the plot. And what's going to happen to the colonists on Jinx? Maybe a sequel?) Overall, however, it's a fine novella, indicative of an important new talent.

Four stars.

Undersea Weapons Tomorrow, by Joseph Wesley

The first of a pair of nonfiction articles in this issue imagines naval warfare two decades from now. The scenario is similar to the Cuban situation, heated up quite a bit. The Good Guys set up a blockade of an unfriendly island. The Bad Guys use submarines to attack Good Guy shipping. The author considers the balance of wins and losses in this aquatic battle. (For example, how many ships do you need to sink to make up for the number of submarines lost in the process?)

He also discusses locating the enemy via spy satellites, very slow seagoing bases for aircraft, and porpoises as allies. It's a rather dry piece, with some interesting aspects.

Two stars.

Scarfe's World, by Brian W. Aldiss


Illustration by Gray Morrow

This starts like one of those corny old movies where cave people and dinosaurs live at the same time. There are a couple of odd things about this primitive world, however. Sometimes people just dissolve, and the male protagonist doesn't really understand why he wants to be near the female protagonist.

We soon find out that the humans and dinosaurs are miniature forms of artificial life, created for study. The process sometimes breaks down, explaining the dissolving, and the organisms don't reproduce, explaining the caveman's confused feelings.

There really isn't much to this story other than its basic concept. The last third returns to the point of view of the caveman, which pretty much rehashes what went on in the first third.

Two stars.

Phobos: Moon or Artifact?, by R. S. Richardson

Our second science article answers the question posed in its title right away. The author considers a Russian article from 1959 that suggested that Phobos is hollow, rejects it, and tells us why. The reasoning is highly technical. If I understand things correctly, when a moon is slowed in its orbit by something or other, it approaches the planet. Thus, although its velocity was decreased at first, it actually increases later.

Apparently Phobos increased its velocity due to this effect, but Deimos did not. One explanation for the observed effect would be if Phobos had an extremely low mass for its size; as if it were a hollow artificial satellite, for example. The author points out that there are several other explanations for the phenomenon, and that it really isn't that well established anyway. The whole thing will probably be of more interest to experts in orbital mechanics than the general reader.

Two stars.

By Way of Mars, by Ron Goulart

A guy falls for a girl, but she keeps standing him up at their dates. The Government Lovelorn Bureau tells him to forget her, but he doesn't give up that easily. Things rapidly get way out of hand, as the fellow gets in trouble with the cops, is shanghaied to Venus, escapes to Mars, and becomes the leader of a rebellion on the red planet.

I found the author's satiric portrait of a near future Earth, with suicide clubs and sex book plotters, more effective than the protagonist's interplanetary misadventures. The intent seems to be comic, although nothing particularly funny happens.

Two stars.

Pariah Planet, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.


Illustrations by John Giunta

A spaceman kills a man in a bar fight on a planet with an odd system of justice. Although it was self-defense, he is convicted of murder, and transported to a prison planet. The underground society of this world is ordinary enough, with a couple of exceptions.

There are two groups of citizens. Type A people wear all different kinds of clothing, but Type B people must wear black at all times. Type B citizens are also required to repeat the crimes for which they were convicted, with the Type A citizens as victims. The protagonist, for example, is told to murder one Type A person each week.


The Type A people aren't really bald, as shown here, but the illustration sort of clues the reader in on what's going on.

This leads to a crisis of conscience, as the unspecified consequences of failing to commit one's assigned crime are said to be very serious indeed. As time goes by, the main character grows more and more fearful of what fate awaits him, and finds himself tempted to kill one of the Type A people, who seem like perfect victims.


The protagonist in a brooding mood.

The contrived situation reminds me of the sort of thing that used to show up a lot in Galaxy in the old days, with some aspect of society reflected in a funhouse mirror. Here, of course, it's crime and punishment. You'll probably figure out the nature of the Type A people, and how this eccentric system of justice is supposed to work, long before the end.

Two stars.

That's About the Size of It

After a big start, the second half of the magazine shrinks into a collection of disappointing little stories and articles. Maybe it's just the contrast between Niven's wide-ranging imagination and much shorter, less ambitious pieces. In any case, the publication is large enough to accommodate losers as well as winners. What do you expect for half a buck, anyway?


A big coin for a big magazine.

[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…]




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 4, 1965] Madness: 2, Sanity: 1 (January Galactoscope)

3 Comments

[January's edition of the Galactoscope offers three novels in two books.  Be warned — there's madness afoot!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

Now that you've got the Doublemint Gum jingle running through your head, allow me to explain my reason for annoying you. The Ace Double Series has been going for more than a decade, offering two novels in one. Two short novels, to be sure; some are really novellas. Others are short story collections, as we'll see in today's review. The pair of mini-books are bound in what the printing industry calls dos-a-dos. (Sounds like a square dancing term to me.) That is, each half of the volume is upside down, compared to the other half. Sometimes both parts are by the same writer, sometimes not.

Let's take a look at Ace Double M-109, featuring G. C. Edmondson's first novel, as well as several briefer pieces from the same pen.

Mister Edmondson or Señor Edmondson y Cotton?

I can come up with no better way to introduce the author than by allowing him to speak for himself, in the blurb that comes with the book in question.

I don't know how seriously to take all of that, but it certainly makes for interesting reading. I hope the novel (yes, I'll get around to it eventually) proves to be at least as fascinating.

Appetizers Before the Main Course


Cover art by Jack Gaughan

Stranger Than You Think is a collection of all the Mad Friend stories that have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to date. Because our Noble Host has already reviewed these tales, I won't go into detail.

Suffice to say that they all feature the narrator and his Mad Friend in rural Mexico, and deal with time travel, alien probes, reincarnation, and such things. The tone is very light, and the stories are about ten percent plot and ninety percent local color. They remind me, a bit, of R. A. Lafferty and Avram Davidson. In general, the series is inoffensive but forgettable.

The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream


Also by Gaughan

I told you I'd get around to it.

Our hero is Ensign Joseph Rate, commander of the good ship Alice, a unique vessel in the United States Navy of the modern era. You see, Alice is a wooden sailing ship, although she also has a diesel engine for emergency use. The idea is that she can engage in countermeasures against enemy submarines without making sounds that would reveal her position.

At the moment, Alice is engaged in testing new equipment, requiring the presence of an elderly meteorologist and his young assistant. Unknown to his motley crew, Rate is also supposed to investigate criminal activities aboard her.

All of this fades into insignificance, when lighting strikes Alice at the same time the ship's cook is messing around with a new way to distill illicit booze. (Believe it or not, this plays an important part in the plot.)

Full Speed Backwards

If you've read the title of the novel, it won't come as a big surprise to discover that Alice gets zapped back in time a millennium or so, as well as leaving the warm ocean area near San Diego for colder waters, somewhere between Ireland and Iceland. A battle with a Viking raider ensues, followed by a slightly less violent meeting with a merchant ship. Among the cargo she's carrying is a Spanish Gypsy, enslaved by the Norsemen. She winds up aboard Alice, and serves as the novel's main source of sex appeal. Besides that, she's also clever and a tough cookie, so I'll give the author some credit for that.

Here We Go Again

Skipping over most of the first half of the novel, we reach a point where Rate tries to duplicate the circumstances that led to this situation. This doesn't work out very well, because Alice doesn't return to her home, but instead jumps back another thousand years, and winds up somewhere in the Mediterranean.

After encountering Arab slave traders who temporarily take control of Alice, the time travelers eventually wind up on a rocky island, populated by goats and several naked young women, who are more than willing to supply the crew with plenty of wine and other carnal pleasures. There's an explanation for what seems like a sailor's fantasy, which involves another inadvertent visitor from the future, this time the madame of a brothel/speakeasy in 1920's Chicago.

A lot more happens before we reach the end of the novel, including battles with Roman warships and the misadventures of the only religious fanatic aboard Alice, a male virgin who finds himself in intimate situations with more than one alluring lady.

Worth the Voyage?

Although it's impossible to take the novel's version of time travel seriously, the plot doesn't stop for a second, always keeping the reader's interest. As you may have guessed, there's quite a bit of sexual content, which tends to be more teasing than explicit. There's also a lot of violence, given the constant attacks on Alice by just about every vessel that meets her.

The tone of the book ranges from darkly comic to intensely dramatic, with a bit of satire in the form of the religious fanatic. This character may raise some eyebrows among readers of faith, although his version of Christianity is clearly of the extremist variety. The ending raises the possibility of a sequel, but whether such a book will ever appear is up to the tides of time.

Three stars.

A Little Mental Illness for the New Year (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich by Philip K. Dick)


by Jason Sacks

This is the fourth Philip K. Dick novel released in the last several months, and I’ve read them all. Clearly science fiction’s most surrealistic writer is in the midst of an unusually fecund period, one in which his astounding fiction seems channeled directly from the writer’s brain onto the printed page. And while that unfiltered creativity makes for fascinating reading, Dick’s latest fiction shows him to be wrestling with some intense personal issues, including dislocation and mental health concerns.

Those recent works (The Penultimate Truth, The Clans of the Alphane Moon, Martian Time-Slip and his most recently published novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich) share a lot in common with each other. All three books demonstrate a mind in constant motion, continually distracted and probing, with ideas seeming to spark from every page in a cascade which starts out as thrilling, becomes tiring, and ultimately proves to be overwhelming. Ideas, interesting and odd, bonkers and basic, philosophical and dully grounded, seem to flow from Mr. Dick as freely as the sweat which constantly seems to be on the foreheads of each and every one of his neurotic protagonists.

Eldrich starts from a template similar to his Dick’s other novels. Most Dick novels feature a neurotic protagonist, and this book is no exception. This time he is named Barney Mayerson and he is a wealthy man in a low-numbered conapt building (a major sign of status) with a great job as the New York Pre-Fash consultant at influential company P.P. Layouts. But Mayerson has problems – oh nellie does he have problems. As the book begins, the businessman wakes up with a hangover, a strange woman in his bed and, most frightening of all, a draft notice which will cause the UN to send him to Mars. That sounds like the beginning of a film noir, but as we follow Mayerson, he slips into a different sort of darkness than the doomed protagonists of our darkest films.

To help him escape the draft, Barney has purchased a robot named Dr. Smile, intended to help Mayerson avoid the draft by making him even more neurotic than he seems. But even the robot isn’t perfect; it calls him by the wrong name and doesn’t seem to pay close attention to Barney, adding to the seemingly endless list of degrading events Barney experiences in the first few pages — and far from the final humiliation he experiences in the book.

Like so many lead characters in recent Dick novels – poor doomed Norbert Steiner in Time-Slip and lovelorn, oblivious Chuck Rittersdorf in Alphane pop immediately to mind – Barney Mayerson is a confused man. He is neurotic, uncertain, perhaps mentally ill. He has tremendous problems relating to the women most important to him, especially his wife. He even gives up all hope of avoiding the draft and instead volunteers to go to Mars, simply to get away from a source of tangled neurotic pain. It is tough to spend time with Steiner, Rittersdorf or Mayerson, because they are so uncertain of themselves despite their apparent success. These are so conscious of their own flaws, their own massive insecurities, that we can understand why these feel rejected by the worlds which surround them. As readers, we want to reject them as well, want to follow characters with some measure of self-assurance, like Trade Minister Tagomi in Dick’s 1963 masterpiece The Man in the High Castle.

Taken one at a time, each of the recent Dick books provide an intriguing portrait of men whose own demons sabotage their own best aspirations. Seen together as a collection of books, it’s hard not to see some authorial autobiography flowing through these characters. After all, if Mr. Dick is writing his books so quickly, how can he avoid writing himself into his stories?

If we take that assertion as fact as part of my essay (and I would be delighted to hear counterarguments in the letters page), then Palmer Eldrich is the most frightening of all Dick’s novels so far. Because at its heart, and in the great thrust of its cataclysmic conclusion, is a break with peaceful reality that actually makes me worry about the author.

Without going too deep into the reasons why – part of the joy of this fascinating book lies in the ways Dick explores his shambolic but complex plot – Barney ends up on Mars and discovers that nearly all the Martian colonists are miserable and drug-addled. Their experience on Mars is so wretched and soul-crushing that only psychedelic drugs, shared among groups of colonists, provide a brief break from their mind-numbing lives.

Barney is responsible for helping a new drug to come to Mars, cleverly called Chew-Z, which promises better highs and more transcendent experiences. But as readers soon discover, the new drug also creates a schizophrenic experience, one in which the terrifying Palmer Eldrich comes to dominate Martian society – and much more – in a way that terrifies everyone who considers it. Eldrich is a terrifying creature, with steel teeth, a damaged arm, and an approach to the world which builds misery.

In truth, Barney Mayerson has unleashed a demon, and it’s not spoiling much in this book to say that by the end you will feel the same fear Barney and the rest of society begin to feel.

Eldrich, thus, is a deeply unsettling book, and fits Dick’s recent output in a way which makes me feel concerned for the author. It is the third out of the four recent novels to deal explicitly with mental illness (in fact, mental illness provides the central storyline of Alphane and a key secondary storyline in Martian Time-Slip). It’s intriguing that Dick sees in science fiction the opportunity to put the readers in the mindset of a man experiencing a schizophrenic break, a psychotic episode, or battling debilitating depression, but the continual presence of such ideas suggests a man whose life is also battling similar breaks.

If Mr. Dick is obsessed with mental illness, does he see that illness in himself when he looks in the mirror? And if we readers purchase Mr. Dick’s books in which mental illness takes a central role, are we aiding his therapy or abetting his continual wallowing?

Palmer Eldrich is not an easy book to read, not once it gets going and we start to realize the depths of Meyerson’s, and Dick’s problems. The plot ambles and wanders and is dense with philosophy and allusion. For a 200-page book, this is no quick Tarzan or Conan yarn. Instead, it is a deeply upsetting, deeply complex look into the disturbed psychology of both its lead character and its author. After consuming so many Dick novels all in succession, I’m craving something much lighter. Neuroses are exhausting.

4 stars




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine/Anthology, Serial

[December 23, 1964] Odds and Ends (January 1965 Fantastic)

2 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

A Hodgepodge of Happenings

It's the season for clearing out all that stuff you've got piling up in the closet, ready to greet the new year with a fresh start. With that in mind, and given the fact that no one news item dominated the headlines this month, allow me to throw out a few observations about what's been going on lately.

Italy joined the Space Age this month, with the launching of that nation's first satellite, as recently discussed in great detail by our own Kaye Dee.  Named the San Marco, the spacecraft rode on top of an American Scout rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Although this is primarily just a test flight, the satellite does carry a couple of instruments designed to study the ionosphere.


The San Marco is the striped, spherical object, shown here being loaded into the Scout rocket. It seems fitting that an object intended to soar into the heavens is named after a saint.

After months of surprisingly passionate debate over its design, a new flag will now symbolize the nation of Canada. Some English-speaking Canadians wanted to retain the Union Jack found in the old, unofficial flag, while many French-speaking Canadians objected. The current flag looks like a good compromise.


The old design, known as the Red Ensign. Besides everything else, it just looks messy.


The new design, which seems much more aesthetically pleasing to me.

The late Ian Fleming's master spy continues to draw moviegoers to the box office like flies to honey, as his latest cinematic adventure arrived in the USA this month.


I think that woman in the middle has been sunbathing too long.

A Miscellany of Music

Unlike some months earlier this year, December offered no overwhelmingly popular song at the top of the American charts. There were no less than four hits that reached Number One this month, and maybe we'll even hear from a fifth contender before 1965 arrives.

Spilling over from late November was Leader of the Pack by the girl group the Shangri-Las. I can't decide if this tragic tale of a romance ended by a fatal motorcycle accident is an example of a Teenage Death Song, or a tongue-in-cheek spoof of that macabre little genre.


These smiling ladies aren't saying one way or the other.

It would be hard to find a starker contrast with that bit of feminine adolescent angst than Lorne Greene's rendition of the cowboy saga Ringo. Obviously, the record is cashing in on the popularity of his hit television series Bonanza. Greene doesn't really sing so much as narrate this tale of the final confrontation between an outlaw and a lawman.


I wonder how many young people think this song is about the drummer for the Beatles.

It wasn't much later that Greene was outgunned by crooner Bobby Vinton, returning to the top of the charts with the tearjerking ballad Mr. Lonely.


The singer kindly provides the address of his official fan club right on the record sleeve.

Not to be outdone, the Supremes gave us their third smash Motown hit with the catchy little number Come See About Me.


And they're classy dressers, too.

A Smorgasbord of Stories

In a similarly generous fashion, the latest issue of Fantastic supplies a wide variety of short stories, as well as the first half of a novel.


Cover art by Emsh

The Girl in the Gem, by John Jakes


Interior illustrations also by Emsh

Here's another swashbuckling adventure of the mighty barbarian Brak, whom we've met many times before.

In unheroic fashion, our protagonist is passed out drunk in a seaside inn. A bunch of dwarfs rush in, armed with knives, but deliberately avoid hurting him. It's all part of a plot to frame him for robbery. You see, an earthquake tumbled the old palace into the ocean. Another one raised it up again. Meanwhile, the local king is dying. His daughter blackmails Brak with the threat of death for thievery if he doesn't undertake the dangerous task of rescuing her sister, who was imprisoned in a gigantic jewel, from the recently revealed palace. Of course, this means he has to defeat a hideous creature.


The mandatory monster

The author writes vividly and definitely keeps the action moving. This is the shortest tale of Brak yet, and it's got plenty of plot for its length. The characters are standard for the sword-and-sorcery genre, and a few incidents seem arbitrary. (Why are the royal servants who invade the inn all dwarfs?) Despite a lack of originality in some aspects, it's worth reading.

Three stars.

Journal of a Leisured Man, by Bryce Walton


Illustration by George Schelling

In a technologically advanced future, an accountant loses his job to a computer. Like many other people, he is forced to remain unemployed for the rest of his life. To add to his troubles, his faithless wife leaves him for another man.

The company that formerly employed the fellow makes automatons, in the form of animals, children, and adults. We witness some gruesome ways customers use these simulacra. In what seems to be at first an act of kindness, an employee of the company offers the man a synthetic duplicate of his wife, to do with as he pleases. You may predict the twist ending.

Although there are few surprises, the story has a certain grim power. It's not always pleasant to read, but is likely to remain in the memory.

Three stars.

On the River, by Robert F. Young

A man finds himself on a raft, floating down a river by day, staying at deserted inns on shore by night. He meets a woman in the same situation, and romance blooms. It soon becomes obvious that both of them attempted suicide, and that the river leads to death.

(The idea of an afterlife on a world dominated by a river also appears in the most recent issue of Worlds of Tomorrow. Given the delays in the publishing industry between writing a story and seeing it in print, this must be nothing more than a coincidence.)

I'm a sucker for this author's bittersweet love stories, so I enjoyed this one quite a bit. The conclusion may be obvious, but any other ending would have been inappropriate for a writer who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Four stars.

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


Illustrations by George Schelling

A little research reveals that this novel is set in the same universe as two previous works, each published as one-half of an Ace Double. The series as a whole deals with what are known as Zarathustra Refugee Planets. Many centuries ago, the star which the colony planet Zarathustra orbited went nova. The inhabitants, fleeing the disaster, wound up populating a large number of planets. The Galactic Corps watches over these worlds, making sure that outsiders don't interfere with their development, while refraining from becoming overly involved themselves.


Cover art by Emsh


Also by Emsh

In the style of Philip K. Dick, the author uses many different viewpoint characters, so it takes a while before the main thrust of the plot becomes clear. The story mostly takes place on Cyclops, a relatively poor planet, although there is a wealthy upper class. An agent of the Galactic Corps, who was, I believe, the protagonist of Secret Agent of Terra, reviewed by our own Rosemary Benton some time ago, arrives after twenty years of service. Her reward for two decades of unpleasant, thankless work is considerable. She will have her youth restored, and her life extended for two centuries.

The extremely advanced medical technology of the Galactic Corps is one reason why the ruler of the planet resents them. (Although the government of Cyclops is, in theory, representative, she wields the real power.) There is also the fact that many natives of Cyclops were killed by the inhabitants of another world when they tried to make slaves of them. (I think these events also appeared in Secret Agent of Terra. Castaways' World does not seem to be as closely related to this new novel.)

The ruler's lover is an ex-spaceman who lost a leg in an accident. Although it was replaced, he is no longer allowed to serve on spaceships. While hunting the gigantic shark-like creatures who live in the oceans of Cyclops, he loses the same leg. After a brief stay in the local Galactic Corps hospital, he is whisked back to the care of his lover and her doctor. This creates a mystery for the Galactic Corps; how was the man's leg replaced, given the limited medical technology of Cyclops, and how do they expect to do it again? The author soon reveals the answer in scenes that take place on another world, where a sinister conspiracy takes advantage of unsuspecting victims.

Although a bit melodramatic in parts, this is an intriguing novel, full of richly defined characters, many of whom I have not even mentioned.


I haven't talked about these people.


I also haven't brought up these folks.

The author balances scenes of violent action with necessary exposition. It's interesting to note that the characters who are, I assume, the main protagonist and the primary antagonist are both powerful women. The complex background is fully developed, without becoming overwhelming.

Four stars.

Make Mine Trees, by David R. Bunch

The magazine's most controversial writer returns with another dark and strange story. This one is more comprehensible than most, and the title definitely helps you understand what's going on. The narrator, who is clearly as mad as a hatter, used some kind of formula to change his wife and her lover into trees. Now his young son is undergoing the same transformation. Typical for the author, the plot is much less important than the eerie mood and the eccentric style.

Three stars.

Multiple Choice, by John Douglas

A trio of young men, who have undergone a series of tests to become part of the elite, wait in a room for their final examination. They hear gunshots and screams from outside. Each one has a different theory about what's happening. Is it a hoax, designed to test their nerves? Are those who fail the last exam shot to death? Is it even possible that everyone is killed? The story's ending is inconclusive, which may be the point. Many readers will find the lack of a full resolution frustrating.

Two stars.

Something For Everyone?

Although the overall mood of the issue is on the dark side, there are all kinds of imaginative fiction to be found between its covers. From a heroic fantasy set in a distant past that never existed, to an adventure in deep space in the far future, and from a romantic parable of love and death, to a cynical portrait of tomorrow's dystopian society, there is enough variety to please just about every reader of speculative literature. You won't enjoy every story, but I don't think you'll dislike all of them. (If you do, turn to Robert Silverberg's book review column for more recommendations.)


He mostly reviews anthologies and collections in this particular column, so you've got lots to choose from.

2 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 19, 1964] December Galactoscope #2

3 Comments

[The second Galactoscope for this month features a pair of new novels we felt we could not in good conscience leave unreviewed, particularly the latter. Enjoy this last review of books before the New Year!


by Victoria Silverwolf

The Day the Machines Stopped, by Christopher Anvil


Cover art by Ralph Brillhart

The Anvil Chorus

Christopher Anvil is the pseudonym of Harry C. Crosby, who published a couple of stories under his real name in the early 1950's. After remaining silent for a few years, he came back with a bang in the late 1950's, and has since given readers about fifty tales under his new name. His work most often appears in Astounding/Analog.

A typical Anvil yarn is a lightly comic tale about clever humans defeating technologically advanced but naive aliens. Perhaps his best-known story is Pandora's Planet (Astounding, September 1956), the first of a series of humorous accounts of the misadventures of lion-like aliens trying to deal with the chaos caused by those unpredictable humans.


Cover art by Frank Kelley Freas

The Day the Machines Stopped is his first novel. (At only 120 pages of text, I'm guessing it's well under 40,000 words, so it might be considered a long novella.) With its near-future setting, lack of space travel or aliens, and almost entirely serious tone, it's quite different from his usual creations.

The Eternal Triangle in the Science Lab

The first page of the book sets up a romantic conflict. Brian Philips, our protagonist, is a chemist for a research corporation. Carl Jackson is an electronics expert for the same company. They are both interested in Anne Cermak, who works with Brian. Carl is bigger, richer, and more used to getting his own way than his rival. Brian is a nicer guy, of course, and has the decency to admit that it's up to Anne to choose which of the two men, if either, she prefers.

Before we get too deep into this soap opera plot, we get our reminder that this is a science fiction novel. A news report on the radio reveals that a Russian scientist has defected to the West. He claims that an experiment in cryogenics at a Soviet facility in Afghanistan threatens civilization. It isn't very long before he proves to be right.

Who Turned Out the Lights?

Somehow or other, the experiment causes electricity to fail. Fully charged batteries provide no power. Automobiles stop dead in their tracks. (Diesel trucks still operate, but only when their electric starters are replaced by another kind of technology.) Working together despite their rivalry, Brian and Carl explore the surrounding area on bicycles. Things are the same all over, it seems.

The president of the research corporation, James Cardan, sees bad times coming. He manages to assemble firearms, provisions, and other supplies. His plan is to take his employees and their families, in a caravan of diesel trucks, to the northwest part of the United States, which he assumes will be safer than more populated areas.

Two Against Chaos

Without giving too much away, let's just say that circumstances cause Brian and Anne's father to miss the caravan. They set out on their own on bicycles, hoping to catch up to the others. (Due to frequent roadblocks caused by stalled cars, this isn't too unlikely. The diesel trucks are also slowed down by frequent stops for repairs.)

As expected, the breakdown in technology leads to bands of armed bandits, desperate for survival, battling over food. After many dangerous encounters, the pair of two-wheeled adventurers join Cardan's group.

Duking it Out

The caravan runs into a large, heavily armed, well-organized army, under the command of a man wearing a silver crown. He proclaims that the surrounding countryside, now known as the Districts United, is under his protection. He will punish those guilty of killing, arson, robbery, and bushwacking. (These specific crimes are listed under the acronym karb.) He calls himself the Districts United Karb Eliminator, or Duke. (This bit of satiric wordplay is one of the few traces of wit in the novel.)

Obviously, he's a megalomaniac, but he's a smart and effective one. Many survivors of the disaster are willing to place themselves under his dictatorship, given the alternative of fighting violent criminals. Brian, having few other choices, winds up working for the Duke, rebuilding steam engines, biding his time until he can escape with the rest of Cardan's group.

Worth Reading by Candlelight?

Anvil's style is plain and straightforward, so the book is very readable. His depiction of what would happen if electric power vanished is convincing, although the scientific explanation for why this happens is vague. The romantic subplot is less believable. The hero sometimes comes across as a ninny, given his willingness to trust someone who has already betrayed him. The ending comes as something of a deus ex machina. Overall, the novel is worth spending four dimes and two hours reading, but it's unlikely to become a classic.

Three stars.

By Rosemary Benton

The Other Human Race by H. Beam Piper

I could not be more happy with science fiction nowadays. On television we have shows like The Twilight Zone that are stretching the boundaries of story telling, and exploring new topics in a science fiction setting. In literature we have authors like H. Beam Piper who integrate a veritable cornucopia of academic fields into their stories about human exploration.

This is not the cut and dry kind of science fiction where it's us or them in a race for survival. Piper's books approach space exploration with a touching level of humanity and compassion. Alien and human language, diet, population demographics, social structures, and more are all examined and dissected by Piper's characters. His burgeoning "Little Fuzzy" series, following the success of his 1962 novel "Little Fuzzy", is a brilliant example of the ability Piper has to consider the humongous ramifications and complications of humanity contacting alien civilizations.

Fuzzies, Fuzzies Everywhere

"The Other Human Race" picks up mere weeks after the explosive conclusion "Little Fuzzy". Having been granted the universal recognition of "sapient", the fuzzies' home world of Zarathustra has been granted independence from the Chartered Zarathustrian Company. Word of the sensational trial has begun spreading like wildfire throughout human colonized space. But the fuzzies' new found notoriety has brought both altruistic and enterprising humans to Zarathustra.

On one side are the people who want to integrate the fuzzies into the wider galactic civilization while keeping their dignity and safety  in mind. This includes linguists, psychologists, nutritionists and other "Friends of the Fuzzies" who see value in the fuzzies as people, not animals. In contrast are those who would exploit the naive little people, as well as those who want to fill the power vacuum left by the CZC. Worst of all is the pressing concern about the kidnapping and enslaving of fuzzies to sell as pets in an illegal off-planet black market.

Things Just Got More Complicated

Piper balances that marvelous rush of scientific discovery in "Little Fuzzy" with a a weighty maturity in "The Other Human Race". While our protagonists take immense satisfaction with their continued study of the fuzzies, they bear a weighty responsibility. It inevitably comes down to them to make sure that the fuzzies’ quality of life is not sacrificed in humanity's drive to conserve the species.

Now that fuzzies have been made known to the universe, they face predators more devious and cunning than the native species of the planet. How can the Commission of Native Affairs go forward with plans to have humans adopt fuzzies and still protect them once a fuzzy is situated with a new human family?

The issue of the fuzzies' high infant mortality rate is also complicating things. To study why this is happening the group stationed on Zarathustra have to keep a miscarried fuzzy for study, despite the distress this causes the local fuzzy population. Their limited diet and off-balanced internal biology are also a tricky problem to study since the team can't just cut into a fuzzy and study its internal organs. Nor can they subject a fuzzy to a battery of tests to see how it reacts under certain stressors.

That same maturation is present in the character arcs of the cast. Those who were opposed to the recognition of the fuzzies as sapient in the first book are not permanently cast as evil. Instead, they change their attitudes towards the fuzzies with exposure to the little aliens. For instance, Victor Grego very early on in "The Other Human Race" comes across a fuzzy who has been scrounging around in his company's headquarters. After spending time with a member of the species that cost him access to the valuable resources on Zarathustra, Victor comes to realize that fuzzies are actually wonderful companions.

Our protagonists, including Jack Holloway and Ruth van Riebeek, must go through their own paradigm shift regarding those who were once their enemies. The grace with which some of these characters accept their former enemies as allies is laudable. Those employees of the now-charterless Zarathustra Company were acting in the interest of protecting their investments and livelihoods. But if they are willing to adapt and redeem themselves then, CZC or not, they should be congratulated and welcomed for their change of heart.

A Fragile New Sentience

H. Beam Piper's writing is altogether very touching. It's optimistic, but realistic in its acceptance that once something has been put in motion it will become infinitely more complicated. At the same time he seems to adhere to an inevitable sense of justice in his written worlds. Like a progressive modern scientist, Piper strongly advocates for the naturally given right people have to happiness and safety. All of his characters are entitled to it, and those who abuse or try to take away that right from others always get their just deserts.

Piper's writing continues to impress, and seems to be gaining more and more depth with each new novel. His "Little Fuzzy" series in particular has a lot of promise, and I hope to see more installations in the near future.

Five stars for Piper's well written sequel and masterfully built world.

[We are sad to have learned of H. Beam Piper's tragic passing just a few weeks ago. The genre has lost one of its brightest lights.]

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

3 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 21, 1964] Bridging the Gap (December 1964 Fantastic)

4 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

I'll Cross That Bridge When I Come To It

Citizens of the Big Apple now have a new way to travel between Staten Island and Brooklyn, with the official opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The structure is named for the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, said to be the first European to sail into the Hudson River, way back in 1524. It is the longest suspension bridge in the world, spanning a little over four-fifths of a mile.


Note to proofreader: The name of the bridge has one z, the name of the man has two. Go figure.

More than five thousand people attended the opening ceremony on November 21st, including New York City Mayor Robert Ferdinand Wagner II and New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Even President Johnson supplied a congratulatory speech.


The official motorcade crossing the bridge after the gold ribbon was cut. I don't think they had to pay the fifty cents that you or I would have to pay to get across.

If you'll allow me to stretch a metaphor to the breaking point, popular music can serve as a bridge between people of differing backgrounds, something we Americans could use during these times of racial strife. Case in point, as Rod Serling might say, is the fact that the Motown hit Baby Love, by the trio known as the Supremes, has been at the top of the US charts all month, and shows no sign of going away any time soon.


That makes the Supremes the first Motown act to reach Number One twice. Don't believe me? Ask any girl, or boy for that matter, who listens to Top 40 radio.

Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic features a lead novella about crossing the immense gap between the stars.

Why? To Get To The Other Side


Cover art by Lloyd Birmingham.

The Unteleported Man, by Philip K. Dick


All interior illustrations in this issue by George Schelling.

Rachmael ben Applebaum is a man with some serious problems. His father recently died, apparently by suicide. (There are hints that this may not be the case, but the question is never resolved.) Rachmael inherited the family business, which happens to involve faster-than-light starships. Not much faster, however; it still takes many years to reach their destinations.

Applebaum Enterprises is in ruins, because the rival company Trails of Hoffman has control over teleportation technology that reduces the travel time to minutes. In this future overpopulated world, millions of people have already paid a small fee to be zapped to Whale's Mouth, a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut. The teleportation machine only works one way, so nobody has ever returned. The sole evidence for what things are like on Whale's Mouth comes via broadcasts from the planet. They make the place sound like a paradise compared to Earth.


Two minor characters in the story, considering a long-distance move.

Trails of Hoffman deliberately became a major stockholder in Applebaum Enterprises, so Rachmael now owes them a huge debt. They also have the legal right to ownership of the only starship he still possesses. Desperate to find out what's really happening on Whale's Mouth, he engages the services of Listening Instructional Educational Services, derisively known as Lies, Incorporated. Despite the name, the organization is actually interested in the truth. They serve as a private espionage agency for their clients.

What follows is a complex tale of plots and counter-plots, involving not only the groups I've noted above, but the United Nations, which is now a powerful world government, dominated by a reunited Germany. After many adventures that could have come out of a very strange, futuristic James Bond novel, Rachmael manages to set out alone on his starship, willing to spend eighteen years getting to Whale's Mouth and another eighteen years on a return flight to Earth. Meanwhile, Trails of Hoffman, Lies Incorporated, and the UN have their own plans, not to mention the folks on Whale's Mouth.

As usual for this author, there's a complicated background, plenty of twists in the plot, and multiple viewpoint characters. Also typical is the fact that things are not always as they seem. It's obvious from the start that Whale's Mouth isn't the Utopia it claims to be, but it's also not quite what Rachmael fears it might be. One of the organizations mentioned above seems to be an enemy, but turns out to be an ally. Even the title of the story is misleading.

As I've hinted, the story has the flavor of spy fiction, mixed with a lot of science fiction concepts. Although the mood is serious, even grim, there's a touch of satire and absurdity. (One character fears losing his job to a trained pigeon.) The plot always held my interest, and the characters are intriguing. (Some meet with sudden, unpleasant ends, so don't get too attached to them.)


See what I mean?

My one quibble is that the novella stops in an open-ended fashion. Perhaps the author intends to expand it into a novel.

Four stars.

I Am Bonaro, by John Starr Niendorff

Here's an odd little story by an author completely unknown to me. A disheveled old man stumbles out of a boxcar, unable to speak, wearing a sign around his neck, bearing the words in the title. He wanders around, holding out a sponge to everyone he meets. Flashback sequences reveal his miserable childhood, when he developed the power to change himself into anything in order to escape his tormentors. The end explains his current condition, and the reason for the sponge. The whole thing is weird enough to be worth a look.

Three stars.

IT, Out of Darkest Jungle, by Gordon R. Dickson

Written in the form of a screenplay, this is a spoof of bad science fiction monster movies. You've got the young, handsome scientist, the beautiful assistant who loves him, the older scientist who makes an amazing discovery, and the monster. It's all very silly, and almost too close to what it's making fun of. (It makes me feel like I saw this thing on Shock Theater.) Readers of Famous Monsters of Filmland may get a kick out of it.

Two stars.

They're Playing Our Song, by Harry Harrison

In this very short story, a quartet of long-haired rock 'n' roll musicians, pursued by screaming teenage girls, turn out to be something other than ordinary superstars. This broad parody of the Beatles has an ending you'll see coming a mile away.

One star.

The Fanatic, by Arthur Porges


As the blurb suggests, sensitive readers may wish to skip this story.

The title character believes that alien invaders take the form of animals. He thinks he can detect them, because their behavior is slightly different from that of ordinary animals. He uses very disturbing methods in his quest to discover the truth. The conclusion is predictable.

I have to confess that there's a certain horrifying effectiveness to the narrative, but it's not one that most readers will enjoy.

Two stars.

Merry Christmas From Outer Space, by Christopher Anvil

Told through letters and interstellar messages, this is a comedy about Earthlings and aliens. Two rival extraterrestrial forces are hidden on Earth. One places a mind-disrupting device near the other's location. It turns out that the thing was pointed the wrong way, leading to a series of confused messages between a writer and a science fiction magazine.


I guess this is the machine that causes all the trouble.

You could easily take out the stuff about the aliens, and wind up with a mundane farce about miscommunication. Unless you find back-and-forth exchanges about payment and cancelled checks to be funny, I doubt you'll be amused.


Could this be the author having his story accepted by the editor?

One star.

Worth Paying The Toll?


OK, so this isn't the right bridge. Sue me.

By coincidence, a copy of the magazine costs just as much as crossing the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. (I doubt toll collectors will accept it instead of cash.) Making an analogy between the two, I'd say that the structure starts off strong enough, but the quality of the architecture drops off rapidly after that, ending with a big splash into a metaphorical ocean of poor-to-mediocre stories.

Of course, things could be worse, if you happened to be crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on November 7th of 1940.


The hopeful beginning.


The tragic end.

Let's just be thankful that reading a bad story isn't as dangerous as crossing a poorly designed bridge.

4 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 24, 1964] Nothing Lasts Forever (November 1964 Fantastic)

2 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

This Too Shall Pass

There is an ancient fable of Persian origin, retold many times over the centuries, about a monarch who asked the wisest sages in the realm for a statement that could apply to all possible situations. The answer, of course, is the title of this piece.

It is impossible to deny the ephemeral nature of all Earthly things, even if we speculate that the universe may be eternal. (The truth of that is still a matter of scientific debate, as to whether the cosmos will expand forever, or eventually collapse into itself.)

Evidence for the temporary nature of politics, for example, came with the unexpected fall of Nikita Khrushchev from power in the Soviet Union, as discussed by our host in detail.


Americans were caught by surprise, it seems.

Obviously, the most common evidence for the fragility of humanity is the universality of death. To mention just one recent example, Herbert Hoover passed away this month, at a more advanced age than any other former President of the United States.


Let him be remembered for his extraordinary work providing supplies of food to millions of starving Europeans during and after World War One, rather than his failure to deal with the Great Depression.

In a less sober way, the 1964 Summer Olympics, the first to be held in Asia, came to an end as well, with a memorable closing ceremony in the Tokyo setting.


Why summer games in October? To avoid the heat and typhoon season.

Few things are as short-lived as popular music, as shown by the fact that two songs reached the Number One position on the American charts this month. First came Oh, Pretty Woman, a tribute to feminine beauty by singer and guitarist Roy Orbison.


I'm used to seeing him with dark glasses.

This was quickly replaced by the nonsensically titled Do Wah Diddy Diddy by the British group Manfred Mann.


Confusingly, the name of the band is the same as the name of the keyboard player.

In Search of Eternal Life

Fittingly, the two lead stories in the latest issue of Fantastic deal with futile attempts to escape the ravages of time.


Cover art by George Schelling

The Knocking in the Castle, by Henry Slesar


Interior illustrations also by Schelling

We begin with a chilling tale set in modern Italy. A widow attends a party, during which the host suggests an excursion to a nearby castle, said to be haunted. The woman reluctantly goes along, only to scream in fear when a knocking emerges from within the dungeon. A flashback reveals the reason for her horror at the sound.

In the United States, she married a man whose ancestors built the castle. Once a year he goes back to the family estate, where his sister lives year-round, rarely emerging from seclusion. We soon discover that the man is well over two hundred years old, despite his youthful appearance. He returns to the castle for an annual dose of the liquid which keeps the siblings from aging.


The magical elixir, a few drops of which drives back the Grim Reaper.

A violent quarrel breaks out between brother and sister when the man wishes to share the potion with his bride. Driven to extreme measures, the sister hides the key to the chamber holding the supply of liquid in a particularly macabre way.


Extreme measures, indeed.

What follows is a grim account of the man's desperate attempt to find the key before time runs out. It all leads up to the frightening conclusion, explaining the woman's terrified scream.

I found myself imagining this story as one of those Italian Gothic horror movies that make their way to the USA in badly dubbed and edited form. That's one reason I enjoyed it, to be honest. I pictured Barbara Steele, veteran of such films, in the role of the mysterious sister. I could see the gloomy interior of the castle in glorious black-and-white, and hear the spooky violin music on the soundtrack.

From a fan of Shock Theater and Famous Monsters of Filmland, a very subjective four stars.

Elixir for the Emperor, by John Brunner


Illustrated by Virgil Finlay

Our second account of a quest for eternal life also takes place in Italy, but goes back thousands of years to the days of the Roman Empire. A general and a senator plot against the life of a popular emperor. Their subtle plan involves offering a large reward for an effective elixir of immortality, convincing the emperor that it really works, thanks to the deceptive aid of the ruler's trusted slave, and substituting poison.

Complicating matters is an old man, saved from death in the arena by the emperor's mercy. In gratitude, he manages to create a genuine potion granting endless life, but is too late to prevent the emperor from being murdered. He hatches his own plot against those who slew his savior.

This is mostly a story of palace intrigue and vengeance, with just a touch of fantasy. The ancient setting is convincing, and there's a bit of philosophical musing at the end. It's very readable, if not particularly memorable, and not quite up to the author's usual high standard.

A middle-of-the-road three stars.

The Man Who Found Proteus, by Robert Rohrer

The gods of mythology, with some exceptions, enjoy the freedom from death sought by the protagonists of the first two stories. This comic romp features the god Proteus, famous for being able to change into any shape.

A grizzled prospector encounters the deity, first as a moving rock, then in the form of a talking mule, and later as a series of letters appearing on the ground, allowing the god to announce his desires in writing. His wants are simple enough; he's eternally hungry, ready to devour anything the prospector can provide. As you might imagine, things don't work out well for the old sourdough.

For the most part, this is a silly comedy, more notable for a certain amount of imagination than for belly laughs.

A slightly amused two stars.

Seed of Eloraspon (Part 2 of 2), by Manly Banister


Illustrations by Schelling again

The hero of this thud-and-blunder yarn may not be immortal, but it sure seems that way some times. As you may recall from last month, he set out to find the ancient city of the long-vanished, technologically advanced inhabitants of an alien world, accompanied by a warrior princess, an enemy turned friend, and a fellow Earthling. After many battles with the wicked Tharn, and a strange encounter with their mysterious rulers, the Bronze Men, they were about to be killed by huge flying monsters.

The author cheats as badly as any old movie serial, by setting up a cliffhanger from which there seems no escape, and then offering a disappointing way out. It seems that the hero, because he's got the advanced mental powers of what the story calls a magnanthropus, is able to communicate with the creatures. It seems that they're on his side, and want him to fulfill his quest. (There's a weird explanation that the flying beasts, along with other beings on this world, are the incarnation of emotions. That seemed really goofy to me.)


A typical battle. I like the use of the circle.

After getting out of that scrape without any effort, our quartet of adventurers fight the Tharn, get captured, escape, and so on. Eventually the hero discovers the secret of the Bronze Men, which will come as no surprise to anybody who has ever read any science fiction, and triumphs over all challenges. This pretty much just involves pulling a lever, which is pretty anticlimactic.


A defeated Bronze Man, although it sure looks more like a stone statue to me.

I got the feeling that the author really rushed through this half of the story. Things move at a breakneck pace, but without much purpose or meaning. The whole thing just sort of fizzles out at the end, leaving the reader exhausted and unsatisfied.

A disappointed one star.

Hell, by Robert Rohrer

(The Table of Contents credits the story to somebody named Howard Lyon. As best as I can figure out, this is a pseudonym meant to disguise the fact that the author has two pieces in the same issue. Rohrer and Lyon, get it? The Table of Contents also lists the author of The Man Who Found Proteus as Robert H. Rohrer instead of plain Robert Rohrer, so I guess there was some confusion around the editorial offices.)

A man finds himself, as the simple title implies, in the infernal regions. He passes some damned souls lying immobile on a beach under a cloudy sky, then takes a ride across the water with a demonic boatman assumed to be Charon. The fellow has no fear of eternal punishment, because he feels ready to face any psychological torment Hell might provide. As you expect, his attitude turns out to be badly mistaken. In a way, he faces the worst kind of immortality, if only in a spiritual sense.

The ending of this brief tale is not surprising. I never did figure out what the point of the motionless bodies on the beach was supposed to be. The story is decently written, but there's not much to it.

A confused two stars.

The Mermaid and the Archer, by Barry P. Miller


Illustration by Robert Adragna

The title characters in this romantic fantasy are two department store manikins, unable to move but conscious and able to communicate through a kind of telepathy. They were crafted by a master puppet-maker, whose affection for his creations gave them life. A violent storm threatens their physical existence, but a painter is able to preserve their love in his art.

This gentle, bittersweet fable suggests a kind of immortality in the works of gifted artists. Written in a introspective, poetic style, it is sure to touch the reader's emotions.

A sentimental four stars.

Daughter of the Clan, by Wilton G. Beggs

A teenage girl, who was adopted as an infant, experiences a gnawing, unsatisfied hunger. An attempted rape leads to the discovery of her true nature, and she meets others of her kind. A particular kind of immortality is implied.

Despite a certain moody intensity in the author's style, this is a simple, predictable tale, which ends just when it starts to get more interesting. Like the lead story, it attempts to produce old-fashioned chills, but not as effectively.

An unsatisfied two stars.

From Here to Eternity

Although none of the stories in this issue are likely to win undying fame, a couple of them should remain in the reader's memory for quite some time, if not forever. It makes me wonder how long copies of the magazine are likely to exist; if not in paper form, maybe on microfilm or some other medium. Whether anybody will be reading this issue in the distant future is an unanswerable question. Let's just be grateful we can enjoy the best of it here and now.

[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…]




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Book

[October 18, 1964] Out in Space and Down to Earth (October's Galactoscope #1)

3 Comments

There were quite a lot of books to catch up on this month, but two of them stood out for their quality.  As a result, they're going to get full-length treatments, and the other books we read will be dealt with later.  So please enjoy these exciting offerings, reviewed by two of the Journey's finest writers…


by Victoria Silverwolf

No Man on Earth, by Walter Moudy


Cover art by Richard Powers

Mister Moudy, Mysterious Missourian

Here's a writer who is completely new to me. In fact, after doing a little research, I believe that he is new to all readers. As far as I can tell, this is his first published work of fiction.

Beyond that interesting fact, I have been able to discover very little about the author. He comes from the Show Me state; he's an attorney; and his middle name is Frank. The book is dedicated to his wife, Marguerite.

In a way, it's a good thing to approach a novel without any preconceptions about the person who wrote it. We predict that certain elements will appear in a work by Heinlein or Bradbury. I have no idea what to expect from Walter Frank Moudy, so I hope I can provide an objective look at this fledgling effort.

Child of Violence

If you were to tear off the covers of this book — not that I suggest actually doing such a horrible thing — and hand it to me without the blurbs that appear on front and back, it would take me quite a while to figure out that it's a science fiction novel. The first few chapters make it seem like a backwoods fantasy, something like a darker version of the stories of the wandering balladeer John, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for some time now. (They can also be found in the collection Who Fears the Devil?, published last year by Arkham House, if you can find a copy of this limited edition, and are willing to shell out four bucks.)


Cover art by Lee Brown Coye

The novel begins with a young woman about to give birth. Her painful memories tell us that she was raped by a man she thinks is a witch. Everything about the setting, and the woman's dialect, suggests that this takes place in a primitive settlement in the mountains. (At first I thought it was Appalachia, but later details make it clear that we're in the Ozarks.)

The villagers wait for the child to be born, intending to kill it as a unnatural monster. The woman's brother, and the local midwife, who has secrets of her own, manage to save the baby's life. The newborn boy seems to be perfectly normal, but he learns to speak by the age of six months, and grows into a super-intelligent preteen with strange powers. Both loved and hated by his mother, he runs away from home after she makes a feeble, tearful attempt to end his life.

Escape From the Reservation

We get our first hint that the novel is set in the future when we find out that the First World War took place a century and a half ago. What makes this even stranger is the fact that the mother believes it was the last war that ever took place. At this point, I wondered if the villagers were so isolated they knew nothing about recent history. That didn't make sense, because there's a school nearby with plenty of books. Was this some kind of alternate time line? The truth turned out to be quite different.

In fact, the villagers live in a reservation, separate from the rest of the USA in the late 21st Century, and are deliberately kept ignorant about the modern world around them. The midwife is actually an observer, studying their culture. The boy is the only resident ever to make his way out of the reservation, thanks to his superhuman intelligence. He manages to survive, and even thrive, in this strange new world, eventually becoming enormously wealthy, due to his ability to create highly advanced inventions.

Searching the Galaxy for a Father

The young man uses all his acquired money and power to build the world's first faster-than-light spaceship. This technology threatens to upset the balance of power, which could lead to Armageddon. (In this future world, there was a limited atomic war. After this disaster, both sides of the Cold War worked together to make sure that neither gained any advantage over the other. The FTL drive could destroy this uneasy peace.)

The protagonist wants to explore the cosmos, determined to find the humanoid alien who impregnated his mother. In order to ensure that he does not return the spaceship to Earth and reveal its secrets to either power, he is accompanied by a female Russian cosmonaut and a male American astronaut, each keeping watch over the other. Acting on the orders of the President of the United States, a Federal law official is also along for the ride. His mission is to ensure that the spaceship does not return at all, even if it means killing the young man, of whom he has grown very fond.

What follows is a series of encounters with several different alien species, mostly very similar to human beings. After many adventures, the main character eventually tracks down his father, leading to the dramatic conclusion.

A Very Mixed Bag

This is an unusual science fiction novel, not quite like anything else I've ever read. In addition to reminding me of Wellman, as I've mentioned, it also brought to mind traces of Philip K. Dick, A. E. van Vogt, and Theodore Sturgeon. That's a quartet of very different writers, and I'm probably greatly misleading you by mentioning their names.

The book consists of many highly varied sections, told from several points of view. One particularly interesting chapter consists of multiple first person narratives, relating how different alien societies, from primitive to advanced, react to the human visitors.

Despite its frequent changes of mood, the author manages to make the novel into a coherent whole. (One chapter, late in the book, can only be described as a bedroom farce. Even this lighthearted interlude turns out to be relevant to later events.)

The complex plot always kept my interest. The characters, for the most part, are fully developed and win the reader's empathy. (The fate of one character, whom I have not even mentioned, comes as a real shock, about halfway through the book.)

The story has a fair amount of sexual content, particularly for a paperback science fiction novel. This, by itself, shouldn't bother mature readers, but one scene repelled me. Without giving anything away, let's just say that it reminded me of the late Ian Fleming's James Bond novel The Spy Who Loved Me, which contains this statement from the female narrator.

All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful.


Cover art by Richard Chopping, for what is generally considered to be the worst Bond novel

Like this quote, the scene in question made my skin crawl, particularly after the author effectively conveyed the young woman's horror of being raped at the very start of the story. Readers are also likely to find the end of the novel disturbing, in a similar way.

Despite my serious concerns about the book's treatment of sexual violence, overall I thought it was a good novel, particularly for a first effort.

Four stars.


by Cora Buhlert

Davy by Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn has been writing science fiction under his own name for thirteen years at this point and was apparently writing under other names before that. However, none of his stories have been translated into German and the availability of English language science fiction magazines is spotty at best. Therefore, I had never encountered Pangborn's work before, when I came across his latest novel Davy in my local import bookstore.

Davy by Edgar Pangborn

Davy does not look like a typical science fiction novel. It's a hardback, for starters, with a plain cover enlivened only by a drawing of a man's hand holding a French horn. However, the cover is completely appropriate, because Davy is not your typical science fiction novel. Besides, a French horn plays an important part in the story.

Davy is set approximately three hundred years after a nuclear war, followed by various natural disasters, wiped out most of North America and threw what remained back into the dark ages. The North Eastern US has been reduced to small fiefdoms and walled towns besieged by mutated beasts that roam the wilderness. The Holy Murcan Church rules over all, hoarding forbidden knowledge from the "Old Time" and keeping the population in ignorance. Though the reader will have to infer this for themselves, because Davy takes the form of a memoir written by the titular character, with occasional footnotes and asides from Davy's wife Nickie and good friend Dion.

Coming of Age in the Post-Apocalypse

In a rambling and roundabout way, Davy tells us that he was born in brothel, which is why he has no last name, raised in an orphanage and eventually sold as a bond servant to an innkeeper. Though he has little formal education, Davy is intelligent. By his early teens, he begins to question church doctrine, though he wisely keeps his doubts to himself, as heretics are mercilessly executed. Davy dreams of running away and eventually does, after the stealing the French horn seen on the cover from a "mue" – a mutant Davy had befriended in defiance of church doctrine – accidentally killing a city guard and losing his virginity to Emmia, the innkeeper's daughter.

We get a blow by blow account of the latter event. As a matter of fact, Davy talks quite a lot about his sexual adventures, which frequently involve wrestling his partners into submission. Davy certainly gives a lot more room to sexual matters than is common even in the fairly liberal science fiction genre. Readers who are uncomfortable with such scenes may want to skip this novel.

After his escape, Davy falls in with a group of deserters from one of the many skirmishes between the various fiefdoms, finds his father and eventually joins a troupe of travelling entertainers named Rumley's Ramblers, where his self-taught horn playing skills come in handy. After his father's death, Davy sets out on his own and meets Nickie, the love of his life, who is not just an aristocratic lady posing as a man, but also puts him touch with a secret underground society of heretics who try to preserve "Old Time" knowledge. Via Nickie, Davy meets her cousin Dion, monarch of the nation of Nuin (which roughly corresponds to modern day Massachusetts). Both Nickie and Dion and much of the Nuin aristocracy are casually described as black, while Davy himself is white and redhaired, racial prejudice having thankfully died out along with the pre-apocalyptic world.

Together, Dion, Nickie and Davy try to introduce reforms and break the stranglehold of the church. They lose and are driven out of the country. A ship takes them and a few followers to the Azores, where they settle down and build a utopian colony. The memoir is written during Davy's time aboard the ship. The novel ends with Davy planning to sail to Europe, after Nicky has died in childbirth, giving birth to a mutated baby that did not survive either.

A Unique Narrator

Davy's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, for it is Davy's first person narration with all its charming idiosyncrasies that makes what could have been a standard post-apocalyptic yarn come to life. However, Davy is also given to digressions and if he decides to interrupt the ongoing story to talk about a storm at sea, the difficulties of making reading glasses without "Old Time" tools or to give us an overview of the various fiefdoms of his home region and their major cities, all of which bear the corrupted names of cities in the North Eastern US (which is probably more interesting to someone actually from the region, whereas I found myself constantly referring to a Rand McNally road atlas, trying to figure out what the names might stand for), the reader has no choice but to follow along. Many of Davy's digressions are fascinating, others are just dull. Furthermore, Davy also tends to skip over parts of his life – for example, he mentions taking part in a war to expel pirates from Cape Cod, but we never see this undoubtedly exciting episode.

Not Your Typical Science Fiction Novel

The Long Tomorrow by Leigh BrackettThe Chrysalids by John Wyndham

In the past fifteen years, nuclear war and its aftermath have become both a timely and popular subject for science fiction, resulting in such varied works as A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett, "That Only a Mother" by Judith Merril, On the Beach by Nevil Shute, Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank or The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. Davy shares some DNA with these works and borrows the post-apocalyptic theocracy trying to suppress knowledge from The Long Tomorrow and The Chrysalids and the state-sanctioned murder of mutants from "That Only a Mother" and again, The Chrysalids, while the tale of a young man from humble origins making his way in the world is reminiscent of the various juveniles of Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton. But in spite of superficial similarities with other works, Davy is its own thing, a science fiction novel that doesn't feel very science fictional.

Tom Jones movie posterThe Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth

At heart, Davy is a Bildungsroman, reminiscent of such 18th century novels as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding as well as last year's successful film adaptation thereof. If we are looking for a modern day literary comparison, Davy is far closer to John Barth's 1960 novel The Sot-Feed Factor (and indeed Pangborn tuckerises Barth as an author of forbidden texts from the "Old Time") than to anything found in the pages of Analog, even if parts of Davy appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in February and March 1962.

A highly enjoyable picaresque adventure in a post-apocalyptic New England.

Four and a half stars.

[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…]




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 24, 1964] Looking Backward (October 1964 Fantastic)

6 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

The Past is Prologue

The closing of two amusement parks in recent days caused many to look back nostalgically on the innocent fun of yesteryear.

Freedomland U.S.A., only four years old, shut its doors for good this month. Located in the Bronx, this Disneyland-with-a-New-York-accent featured several theme areas, including fun-filled, if not very accurate, recreations of the past and the future.


The world's largest, but not the most successful.

Only a few days later, the Coney Island attraction Steeplechase Park, which opened way back in 1897, received its last visitors as well.


Were you there six decades ago?

Popular music also turned to the past, as a new version of the folk song The House of the Rising Sun by the British rockers The Animals reached the top of the American charts early this month. It is still Number One as I type these words.


That's really lousy cover art for such a great song.

It's not unusual for a remake of an old number to become a hit, but this is an extreme example. Musicologists tell us the song's origins may go back as far as Sixteenth Century England, although this is a matter of debate. In any case, I was stunned, in a pleasant way, when I first heard this version. Eric Burdon's powerful vocals and Alan Price's compelling electronic organ solo make this a new classic, if you'll pardon the oxymoron.

In a similar way, the two longest stories in the latest issue of Fantastic seem to have come out of the yellowing pages of an old pulp magazine.

Gimme That Old-Time Sci-Fi, It's Good Enough For Me


Cover art by George Schelling

Beyond the Ebon Wall, by C. C. MacApp


Illustrations by Michael Arndt

This yarn starts off with the hero making a routine survey of a distant solar system. He finds a bizarre planet, half of which is missing, cut away from the other half by a black wall. Don't expect a hard SF story in the tradition of Hal Clement, with a scientific explanation for the weird phenomenon. Once the guy lands on the planet, the story becomes pure fantasy, of the sword-and-sorcery kind.

He meets four men, one of whom is an elderly fellow with a scarred face. There is also a pair of naked men fighting near the black wall. These two vanish into the wall, and the hero rather foolishly follows them. He finds himself trapped in another world, where he encounters another scarred old man, who seems to be the twin of the first one. We also get our first strong clue that we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto, when a magpie recites a prophetic poem to him.

What follows is an adventure story, full of action, and yet somehow leisurely. The hero is captured, and becomes the slave of a seafaring merchant who treats him decently. He becomes good buddies with a huge guy, who serves as our source of exposition. The two of them act as bait during the hunt for a dangerous animal. Surprisingly, the creature becomes as loyal to him as a friendly dog.


Does this look like a good house pet to you?

Stir in a pirate captain, a sorcerer, battles, escapes, and chase scenes. The hero eventually winds up where he started, and the story ends with a confusing time travel paradox.

The space exploration opening adds nothing to the plot, and even the time travel theme could have been the result of black magic. Other than the awkward blending of genres, this is an old-fashioned swashbuckler right out of Weird Tales. The hero and his giant pal are likable enough, but their adventures don't lead to very much.

Two stars.

The Grooves, by Jack Sharkey


Illustration by George Schelling

A foolhardy young man tells his grandmother that he's going to go into the underground lair of a troll and steal its gold. The old lady warns him that he must never kill a troll. We also find out that trolls have inverted souls, so they walk on the ceilings of their caverns. (No, that didn't make much sense to me, either.)

At this point, I thought that the trolls were going to turn out to be aliens, or maybe people in spacesuits. Nothing of the kind happens. The story is pure fantasy, and the plot is as simple as can be. The stupid protagonist discovers why he shouldn't kill a troll, and learns the meaning of a couple of marks on the wall of the cave, the secret of which is neither surprising nor interesting.

Two stars.

Seed of Eloraspon (Part One of Two), by Manly Banister


Illustration by George Schelling

Allow me to indulge in a little reminiscing of my own. My very first article for Galactic Journey, almost exactly three years ago, was about the October 1961 issue of Fantastic. Included in the magazine was the second half of the short novel Magnanthropus by Manly Banister. For reasons I cannot explain, this work was very popular with readers. Here comes the sequel.

In the first novel, the main character crossed over from a future Earth to the planet Eloraspon when the two worlds somehow collided with each other across dimensions. As far as he knew, Earth was destroyed. He also found out that he was a Magnanthropus, which is a kind of superman with special mental powers.

The sequel begins with the hero traveling from the northern continent of Eloraspon to the southern one, in search of the city of Surandanish, the ancient capital of an advanced civilization, now vanished. (His Magnanthropus powers direct him to seek out the place, for reasons not yet clear.) Along the way he meets the fairy-like beings we saw in the first story, although they don't have anything to do with the plot, so far.


The charming but irrelevant butterfly people.

He rescues a beautiful warrior princess from a monster and they fall in love so fast it'll make your head spin. Interfering with their romance are the Tharn, a bunch of nasty, ugly folks who live only to kill and enslave. The hero battles one Tharn who used to be a regular fellow, but who lost his good looks when he consumed some of the addictive substance that makes the Tharn so hideous and mean. (Take a look at the cover art for a portrait of a Tharn. The real thing isn't anywhere near that big, however, only a little larger than a non-Tharn.)

Defeated in battle, the Tharn-who-wasn't-always-a-Tharn becomes the hero's loyal companion. Together they set out after the princess, who was captured while they were fighting. They get thrown in a dungeon, but the hero uses his convenient Magnanthropus abilities to travel through walls and attack their captors.


Take that, Tharn scum!

He also acquires another ally, a fellow Earthman who tells him that the world wasn't really destroyed, although it was badly shook up. They meet the mysterious Bronze Men, who are supposed to be immortal, although the hero apparently kills one of them pretty quickly. Our trio of Good Guys wind up captured again, and this half of the novel ends as they are about to be slain by a flying monster, while the princess is held captive by the leader of the Tharn.

Like the lead novelette by MacApp, this is an old-fashioned fantasy adventure with some science fiction trappings. I suspect that fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs made up a good portion of those who praised the first novel, with a comment like they don't write 'em like that anymore. Frankly, I'm glad they don't.

Two stars.

Home to Zero, by David R. Bunch

Nobody will ever accuse this author of rehashing old-time stories. His latest offering is a typically opaque and depressing bit of prose, written in his usual eccentric style. As far as I can tell, it has something to do with a being who used to be a man, but is now all machine. He, or it, or possibly humanity in general, sent probes out to the ends of the cosmos. Now it, or he, seeks only nothingness. Maybe. Your guess is as good as mine. At least it's weird enough, and short enough, to avoid boredom.

Two stars.

Encounter, by Piers Anthony


Illustration by Robert Adragna

The protagonist lives in an ultra-urbanized future, where most people never leave their homes. He travels an incredibly long road through a deserted area, inhabited by packs of feral dogs and hordes of rats. Although the setting is the Atlantic coast of North America, he also encounters savage peccaries, and, most amazingly, a tiger. The man and the cat become wary allies in their mutual battle against the wild pigs.

It was a relief to read a story that was neither corny nor incomprehensible. It's a reasonably enjoyable little tale, which achieves its modest goals in an efficient, if unspectacular, way.

Three stars.

Midnight in the Mirror World, by Fritz Leiber


Illustration by Virgil Finlay

One of the easiest ways to look back at things is to gaze into a mirror. It's not a coincidence, I believe, that the word reflection can refer to an image seen in a shiny surface, or to the act of musing over one's experiences. Such were my thoughts, anyway, when I read the newest creation by a master of imaginative fiction.

The protagonist is a man in late middle age, divorced and living alone, who sleeps during the day and enjoys his three hobbies of astronomy, correspondence chess, and playing classical music on his piano at night. (Sounds like a pretty nice lifestyle to me, to tell the truth.)

As part of his nightly routine, each midnight he passes between two parallel mirrors on his way to the piano. As many of us have experienced, this creates the illusion of an infinite number of selves within the glass. One night, he sees a dark figure touching one of his reflections, which seems terrified. Each night the figure comes closer, until he recognizes it. Inevitably, the figure emerges, leading to a final encounter.

The synopsis I've provided makes this sound like a supernatural horror story, and that's certainly an accurate description. Will you believe me if I tell you that it's also a love story, and that the frightening ending can also be seen as a happy one?

Beautifully written, with the author's elegant style and gift for striking images on full display, this quietly chilling tale draws the reader into its world of darkness and light. The conclusion may not be completely unexpected, but it's a fine story nonetheless.

Four stars.

Nostalgia Ain't What It Used To Be

So how was this literary trip down memory lane? Disappointing, for the most part. I suppose it's only natural to yearn for the things one enjoyed at a much younger age, but science fiction and fantasy have progressed, I think, over the past several decades. It's no longer enough to have mighty heroes combating fiendish villains in an exotic setting.

The avant-garde writings of Bunch warn us, however, that's it's possible to go too far the other way, and throw out the baby of clarity with the bathwater of familiarity. Leiber, and to a lesser extent, Anthony, understand this, and manage to provide readers with something new, while paying the proper amount of tribute to literary traditions.

I wonder if, sometime in the Twenty-First Century, SF fans will look back at the stories of the Sixties with a wistful sigh, and crack open the brittle pages of an old magazine in an attempt to bring back the sensations that felt so new at the time.


An old science fiction classic worth revisiting.

6 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 16, 1964] The Waiting Game (November 1964 Worlds of Tomorrow)

1 Comment


by Victoria Silverwolf

Patience is a Virtue

If you're like me, you look forward to the arrival of the latest issues of your favorite magazines at the local newsstand. You carefully calculate the exact day they'll show up and get there ahead of time, eager to meet the delivery person who loads all the publications off the truck. There they are, ready for the metal wires that hold them together in bundles to come off so they can go on display.

You may understand my consternation, then, when Worlds of Tomorrow failed to make an appearance on the scheduled date last month. Since it's a relatively new magazine, I figured that, like so many other science fiction publications, it was out of business.

Imagine my delight when I saw it again, thirty days later. Why the delay? Let me hand the microphone to editor Frederik Pohl, who can explain the situation better than I can, and who will also offer us a preview of the next issue.

Thanks for clearing that up, Fred. Now let me take a look at the contents of the current issue.

Better Late Than Never


Cover art by George Schelling

Killer!, by Robert Ray


Illustrations by Gray Morrow

Taking up one-third of the magazine is a novella by an author new to me. The gentleman with the gun, pictured above, is trained as an assassin by the taller man standing next to him, his half-brother. There is no love lost between the two. The intended target is the newly arisen dictator of a planet populated by very human aliens. (The only important difference between the two species is that the aliens are all short, light-skinned, and fair-haired. In this future, almost all human beings are tall, dark-haired, and have black or dark brown skin. Our antihero happens to be one of the rare persons who resemble the aliens.)

The agency for which the half-brothers work believes that the dictator poses a threat to Earth, even though his species does not yet have space travel. If that seems paranoid, well, so do nearly all the characters in this grim story.


The target.

The assassin's mission is to disguise himself as an alien and use a local weapon to kill the dictator, so Earth won't be blamed. What he doesn't know, but the reader does, is that the agency planted a hypnotic suggestion in his brain, so that he will kill himself immediately after the assassination.


Surfing down to the planet.

As soon as he arrives on the alien world, things go wrong. The dictator's forces are far more powerful and technologically advanced than the agency thought, thanks to the secret intervention of another species of alien. (They aren't quite so human, thank goodness, so we can keep track of who's doing what.)


The hero in typical form, about to knock out an innocent bystander.

What follows is an extended series of captures, escapes, chases, and violent battles. The protagonist, formerly ready to murder without qualms, slowly develops a conscience after he kills several aliens.


Take that, alien scum!

He eventually figures out that he's been set up as a sacrificial lamb, and tries to carry out his mission while staying alive. It all leads up to a very dark ending.

This is a fast-moving, action-packed spy adventure, with plenty of twists and turns in the plot. It's a quick read for its length, although some of the author's sentences are a little clumsy. The story's cynical view of espionage reminds me of last year's bestselling novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John le Carré, although I certainly wouldn't say it's as good. Worth reading, but not a classic by any means.

Three stars.

Natural History of the Kley, by Jerome Bixby

This mock article deals with microscopic intelligent beings who live on animal hairs. Humans only find out about them after they've been wiped out by a substance that kills all animal parasites on Earth. The mood changes from black comedy and satire to sheer silliness, as the author treats us to a series of groan-inducing puns. It's inoffensive, and not as bad as a Feghoot, but that's about the best I can say.

Two stars.

The Long Way, by A. Bertram Chandler and Susan Chandler


Illustration by Norman Nodel

A male space explorer and a female artist at a nudist colony, not quite romantically involved, meet a fellow who believes in dowsing. He's able to demonstrate the procedure successfully. (It seems that dowsing works better when you're naked.) Convinced that there's something to it, the spaceman does his own dowsing, in order to find a missing earring for the artist. Because the earring is shaped like a star, and the man is thinking about interstellar travel at the time, they wind up very far from home indeed. They are able to make their way back to Earth by doing some more dowsing, but things don't turn out the way they hope.

This collaboration between a well-known author and his more obscure wife isn't very convincing, as you can probably tell from the above synopsis. The theme of dowsing makes me wonder if it was intended for the pages of Analog. I think even John W. Campbell, Jr., would reject the premise as too unbelievable. The twist ending adds another layer of implausibility.

Two stars.

The Kicksters, by J. T. McIntosh


Illustrations by Gray Morrow

A group of thrill-seeking teenagers, the sons and daughters of the wealthy, play dangerous games of chicken to see who's the bravest. Their latest competition, as shown above, involves free-falling from a great height while wearing a jet pack. The trick is to turn on the jets at the last possible moment, in order to avoid being smashed into a pulp.

The boldest of the gang is a girl named Peach. Bored with risking her life in the usual ways, she decides on an even more hazardous prank. She and her boyfriend, who tries to convince her to drop the whole thing all the way through the story, travel to the Moon under false identities. She sneaks into the main jet of a spacecraft ready to return to Earth. The ship doesn't use the main jet until it's about to land, so she'll be able to survive inside a spacesuit. The joke is to force the ship to turn around and land on the Moon again. (It doesn't need to use the main jet in the lesser gravity of the satellite.)


Peach, approaching the ship unseen.

The captain of the spacecraft hates spoiled brats, particularly female ones. Since he doesn't have absolute proof that anyone is inside the main jet, even though Peach's boyfriend, as planned, lets everybody know, he refuses to delay his journey to Earth. The second-in-command, desperate to save the girl's life, comes up with various plans, but all of them prove to be impossible. It seems as if Peach is doomed.

The sense that the laws of physics are conspiring to kill the heroine reminds me of the famous story The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. The story creates genuine suspense as to whether the protagonist is going to live or die. I'll admit that the situation is a bit contrived, but I have to give the author credit for thinking up all possible objections to the premise, and answering them in a logical fashion. Peach, although definitely foolhardy and selfish, also manages to be appealing in some ways. The captain and the second-in-command also turn out to be more complex characters than they might seem at first.

Four stars.

The Carson Effect, by Richard Wilson


Illustration by Norman Nodel

At first, this story seems to be nothing but a series of unrelated vignettes. A newspaper reporter struggles over the writing of an article about something that hasn't happened yet. A man, desperate for money to pay for his wife's operation, makes a feeble attempt at robbing a bank, only to have the teller give him much more cash than he demands, without a word of argument. A woman nervously asks her employer for a small amount of money to make up for the taxi she had to take to perform an errand, and winds up getting hundreds of dollars and the rest of the day off. A six-year-old boy thinks he can buy an extremely expensive brooch for his mother from Tiffany's, and the clerk gladly sells it to him for one dollar. The President of the United States resigns his office, turning it over to the Vice President, who is obviously unfit for the job.

We return to the reporter and discover the reason for these strange events, which I won't reveal here. I also won't talk about the ironic ending, which changes everything that happened before. Suffice to say that the story looks at a very big event from several very small perspectives, and does so in an effective manner.

Four stars.

The Fruit of the Tree, by Lester del Rey

This issue's non-fiction article speculates about the possibility of altering the genetic characteristics of living organisms. By 1980, the author believes, we'll be able to produce fruits and vegetables that will stay edible, without refrigeration, for many years, and even have flavors previously unknown. We'll be able to get edible nuts, maple and/or latex sap, and lumber, better than any used today, from a single tree. New kinds of animals will appear, supplying carnivores with novel cuts of meat. (Vegetarians, like myself, will have plants that taste exactly like meat. I'm not sure I want that.) Scientists will create replacement organs, grown from scratch, for those suffering from disease.

The author lets his imagination run wild, coming up with a lot of ideas for science fiction stories, if nothing else. I doubt I'll see all these wonders a mere sixteen years from now, but I could be wrong. Even if it's hard to believe everything this essay says, it makes for interesting reading.

Three stars.

Somewhere in Space, by C. C. MacApp


Illustrations by John Giunta

Some time before this story begins, people found alien teleportation technology on Mars. Since then, it's been used routinely, with few problems. Up until now, that is. Without explanation, folks without close relatives or friends disappear into thin air after using the teleportation device. The protagonist is a technician who accepts the dangerous but extremely lucrative assignment of figuring out what's going on. Not only does he know as much about the technology as any human being can, he's another loner, expected to vanish when he goes inside the machine.

He winds up on an unknown planet, naked and without any of his equipment. There to meet him is a very human alien, a young woman whose only differences from a human female are the fact that she has no thumbs, and that her skin is an odd color. She's one of the slaves that another group of aliens kidnap from all over, including Earth. (Our hero is very lucky that the slavers aren't around to grab him. They happen to be at some kind of celebration, getting drunk.)

With the help of the woman, the protagonist gets away from the slave facility, facing the challenge of surviving on a strange, alien world. Things get really weird when he reaches a mountain, which is really an ancient, all-powerful being, able to take on any form it pleases.


The ball of light the mountain uses to communicate with the man.

After many adventures, and falling in love with the alien woman, the hero battles the slavers against seemingly impossible odds, using only simple weapons like rocks and wooden spears. Can he possibly defeat the Bad Guys, return to Earth, and win the Girl? Well, maybe with a little help from a deus ex machina, in the form of a god-like mountain-being.


Chaos at the slave camp.

You might be able to tell from my tone that I found it hard to take this wild adventure seriously, although it's certainly not intended as a comedy. The nonstop mishaps that the hero faces kept me reading, even if I didn't believe a second of it. The mountain, alien, god, or whatever you want to call it, is the most interesting character. Although it reminds me of the lead novella in some ways, it's got a much more optimistic mood.

Three stars.

Worth Waiting For?

So, did the delay in receiving this issue have any effect on my reaction to it? Did I have high expectations that it failed to meet? Or, did I assume that the extra month would sour me on the magazine, so that I wouldn't be able to fully enjoy it?

None of the above, really. This is a typical issue. A couple of decent, if not great, adventure yarns; a couple of good stories; a couple of poor stories; and a so-so article. Good enough for half a buck, I'd say.

I guess biding my time until it appeared paid off. It's better than, say, waiting around for somebody who never shows up.

1 Comment Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 30, 1964] Are You For Real? (Simulacron-3 AKA Counterfeit World by Daniel F. Galouye)

6 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

Life is But a Dream

I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

— Zhuangzi, Chinese philosopher, 4th century BC

Science fiction writers have often pondered the nature of reality, and speculated about the ways in which appearances can be deceiving. Among the many stories making use of this theme, a few stand out as particularly thoughtful explorations of the real and the illusory.


Phillips didn't make the cover.

First published in Astounding half a dozen years ago, The Yellow Pill by Rog Phillips presents two characters with contradictory views of reality. Each believes the other to be hallucinating. The drug mentioned in the title changes their view of things, and it's up to the reader to decide who is right, if either. The story obviously had a strong impact on readers, as it has already been reprinted in anthologies in the USA and the UK, as well as being adapted into an episode of the British television series Out of This World.


Pohl did.

A few years earlier, Frederik Pohl tackled a similar idea in his story The Tunnel Under the World. The inhabitants of a small town live the same nightmarish day over and over again. It turns out that neither the community nor its inhabitants are what they seem to be. This powerful tale of deception and manipulation of reality must have struck a chord, as it was quickly adapted into an episode of the radio series X Minus 1.


Note that this was published not as science fiction, but as a novel of menace.

Philip K. Dick's novel Time Out of Joint explores related concepts in a surrealistic way. The protagonist thinks he lives in a typical American suburb in 1959, the year the book was published. The reader soon discovers that something is odd about this version of our mundane world, such as the fact that nobody has ever heard of Marilyn Monroe. Things get really bizarre when a soft-drink stand disappears, replaced with a small slip of paper bearing the words SOFT-DRINK STAND. Further weird breakdowns of a simulated reality lead the hero to discover the truth about the world and himself.

Bits and pieces of all three of these works came to mind as I read the latest novel from an author whose previous books won a great deal of praise from the Galactic Journeyers.

The Visionary From the Big Easy


The author at the time he started publishing science fiction.

Born in New Orleans, Daniel Francis Galouye served in the US Navy during World War Two, returning to work as a journalist. Fortunately for SF fans, he doesn't limit his writing to reportage. Ever since 1952, he's appeared frequently in the genre magazines. It took him a while to make the leap into novels, but when he took the jump he did so with a splash.

Galouye's first book-length work, Dark Universe, made a big hit with our host, as well as with Hugo voters. It nearly took the prize, bested only by the unstoppable juggernaut of Robert A. Heinlein's controversial novel Stranger in a Strange Land, which was not so popular around here.

Although it was not nominated for a Hugo, Galouye's second novel, Lords of the Psychon, won plaudits from a Galactic Journeyer. Will he continue this lucky streak with his newest effort? Let's take a look and find out.

Planet of the Pollsters


The American edition, with anonymous cover art.


The British edition, with no cover art.

Simulacron-3, known in the United Kingdom as Counterfeit World, takes place in the middle of the 21st century. It's a technologically advanced place, with flying cars, moving pedestrian sidewalks, and many other wonders familiar to readers of futuristic fiction. The most noticeable change in society is that opinion polls dominate commercial and political life. One-quarter of all employees are engaged in this line of work, and answering their questions is mandatory. So far we have a satiric portrait of the business world, similar to the sort of thing Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth offered in their novel The Space Merchants, but Galouye has something else in mind.

Leaving the Party Too Soon

The narrator, Douglas Hall, works for business tycoon Horace P. Siskin, as a computer expert for Reactions, Incorporated (REIN). Like so many other companies in this future, REIN studies consumer reactions in order to determine which products will sell. The book begins with Douglas attending a party at Horace's fabulous mansion. He is about to take control of the Simulacron-3 project from the recently deceased Hannon Fuller, killed in what seems to be a freak accident.

Simulacron-3 is a computer-simulated community, inhabited by artificial people who interact with each other and their environment as if they were real. By studying their reactions to various situations, it is possible to determine how living persons would behave under the same circumstances. This threatens to eliminate the need for pollsters, putting them all out of work.

Morton Lynch, the security chief for REIN, shows up in an agitated state. He claims that Hannon discovered something of critical importance that led to his demise. Not much later, he simply vanishes into thin air. Douglas reports the disappearance, but nobody else even remembers that Morton ever existed. Because Douglas suffers from occasional blackouts, he begins to doubt his own sanity.

It Takes All the Running You Can Do to Stay in the Same Place

With the help of Hannon's adult daughter Jinx, Douglas searches through her father's papers. They find a drawing of an ancient Greek warrior and a tortoise. This is, of course, a reference to the famous Zeno paradox, in which Achilles can never catch up to the slow-moving animal. The relevance of the sketch is obscure, but it seems to be a vital clue to Hannon's secret. Whatever it may mean, it disappears quickly, and Jinx denies that she ever saw such a thing.

Tensions mount between REIN and the powerful pollsters organization, leading to mass demonstrations and the possibility of a violent attack on the company. As if Douglas didn't have enough problems, Siskin plans to use Simulacron-3 to predict voting behavior, in order to make himself the leader of a one-party state. Add to this the fact that Douglas narrowly escapes being killed, by a flying car and then a bomb, and our hero is in plenty of hot water. Complicating matters is the presence of Dorothy Ford, Siskin's personal secretary/mistress, who uses her seductive wiles to keep a close eye on Douglas in order to make sure he doesn't spill the beans about her employer's political ambitions. There's also the possibility that the police suspect Douglas murdered Hannon. The guy just can't catch a break!

I've mentioned a lot of characters, but I've also left out quite a few. The story involves a lot of plots and counterplots, with the narrator never quite sure who's working for him and who's working against him. Up to now we have a science fiction suspense story, with a whodunit aspect, but things are about to get a lot different.

Stop! Read No Further If You Don't Want to Learn the Big Secret!

Almost exactly halfway through the book, Galouye throws in a major plot twist. Astute readers may anticipate the revelation that follows, but others may not.

Are you sure you want to find out? Last chance to turn back. OK, here we go.

Douglas finds out that his entire world is a computer simulation, and that he himself is no more than an artificial human being living inside it. The rest of the novel deals with his effort to escape into the real world, while avoiding the efforts of the unseen, unknown, god-like person running the simulation to eliminate him.

It's Safe to Read Again

Simulacron-3 (or, if you prefer, Counterfeit World) is a fascinating, cleverly plotted novel, full of intriguing concepts and plenty of fast-paced action. If some parts are melodramatic, and if other aspects seem implausible, those are minor flaws compared to the intriguing theme. I suspect it will earn more praise for the author, and I wouldn't be too surprised if somebody adapts it into a movie someday; maybe even more than once!

Four stars.

Until next time, try to keep a grip on what's real!


An advertisement for a drug invented a few years ago.

6 Comments Leave A Comment