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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 16, 1969] September 1969 Galactoscope

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[And now, for your reading pleasure, a clutch of books representing the science fiction and fantasy books that have crossed our desk for review this month!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

Ye Gods!

Two new fantasy novels, both with touches of science fiction, feature theological themes.  One deals with deities that are now considered to be purely mythological, the other relates to one of the world's major living religions.  Let's take a look.

Fourth Mansions, by R. A. Lafferty


Cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon.

The title of this strange novel comes from a book written by Saint Teresa of Avila, a Spanish Christian mystic of the sixteenth century.  This work, known as The Interior Castle or The Mansions in English, compares various stages in the soul's spiritual progress to mansions within a castle.  From what I can tell from a little research, the Fourth Mansion is the stage at which the natural and the supernatural intersect.

(I'm sure I'm explaining this badly.  Interested readers can seek out a copy of Saint Teresa's book for themselves.)

I understand that Lafferty is a devout Catholic, so this connection between his latest novel and what is considered to be a classic of Christian literature must be more than superficial.  Be that as it may, let's see if we can make any sense out of a very weird book.

Our hero is Fred Foley, a reporter who is said to be not very bright, but who seems to have some kind of special insight or perception as to events beyond the mundane.  (A sort of Holy Fool, perhaps.) He gets involved in multiple conspiracies of folks, who may be something other than just ordinary human beings, out to change the world.

There are four such groups, said to be not quite fit for either Heaven or Earth.  Each one is symbolized by an animal.

The Snakes, also known as the Harvesters, are a group of seven people who blend their psychic powers to influence the minds of others.  They are intent on bringing about a sort of hedonistic apocalypse.  Their connection to Foley and other characters allows for telepathic communication, and sets the plot in motion.

The Toads are folks who are reincarnated, or somehow take over new bodies.  (It's a little vague.) Foley's investigation into one such person starts the novel.  They intend to release a plague, wiping out most of humanity and ruling over the survivors.

The Badgers are people who are something like spiritual rulers of a kind of parallel world that most ordinary people can't perceive.  Foley pays a visit to a couple of these seemingly benign people for information.  In one case, this involves a trip to a mountain in Texas that shouldn't be there.

The Unfledged Falcons are would-be fascists, military leaders trying to take over the world by force.  Only one such person appears in the book, a Mexican fellow named Miguel Fuentes.  He gets involved when the Snakes try to influence an American named Michael Fountain (see the connection in names?) and wind up entering his mind by mistake.

I would be hard pressed to try to describe all the bizarre things that happen.  Lafferty has a way of describing extraordinary events in deadpan fashion.  (We're very casually told, for example, that one character brought a dead man back to life when he was a boy.  One very minor character is a demon, and another one is an alien.)

The book's combination of whimsey and allegory is unique, to say the least. There's a lot of dialogue that sounds like nothing anybody would ever say in real life.  Did I understand it all?  Certainly not.  Did I enjoy the ride?  Yep.

Four stars.

Creatures of Light and Darkness, by Roger Zelazny


Cover art by James Starrett.

Zelazny's recent novel Lord of Light offered a futuristic twist on Buddhism and Hinduism.  This one makes use of ancient Egyptian gods, as well as a bit of Greek mythology.  There are also a lot of original concepts, making for a very mixed stew indeed.

The time is the far future, when humanity has settled multiple planets.  Don't expect a space opera, however.

We begin in the House of the Dead, ruled by Anubis.  He has a servant who has lost his memory and his name.  Anubis gives him the name Wakim, and sends him to the Middle Worlds (the physical realm) to destroy the Prince Who Was A Thousand.  Meanwhile, Osiris, who rules the House of Life, sends his son Horus on the same errand.

You see, Anubis and Osiris keep the population of the Middle Worlds in balance, bringing life and death in equal amounts.  The Prince threatens this system with the possibility of immortality.  Although the two gods have the same goal, they are also rivals, so their champions battle each other as well as the Prince.

This is a greatly oversimplified description of the basic plot.  A lot more goes on, with many equally god-like characters.  There's a sort of scavenger hunt for three sacred items, with the protagonists hopping around from planet to planet in search of them. 

Zelazny experiments with narrative techniques, from poetry to a play.  There's some humor, as demonstrated by a cult that worships a pair of shoes.  (They actually play an important role in the plot.) The pace is frenzied, with plenty of purple prose.

Full understanding of what the heck is really going on doesn't happen until late in the book, when we learn the actual identities of Wakim and the Prince.  Suffice to say that this requires a lengthy description of apocalyptic events that took place long before the story begins.

Some readers are going to find this novel disjointed and overwritten.  Others are likely to be swept away by the richness of the author's imagination.  I'm leaning in the latter direction.

Four stars.


by Fiona Moore

Damnation Alley

Roger Zelazny’s been busy this month! His new novel Damnation Alley expands his novella of the same name into an action piece which is exciting enough but ultimately unsatisfying, a sort of postapocalyptic pony express with futuristic vehicles and implausible characters.

Cover of Damnation Alley
Cover of Damnation Alley by Jack Gaughan

The story is set in a relatively near-future USA after a nuclear war which has split it into isolated states within a radiation-ravaged wasteland, the only relatively safe passage through which is a corridor known as Damnation Alley. There are pockets of radiation, giant mutant animals and insects, tornadoes and killer dust storms. The descriptions of these is the book’s real strength, with some of them verging on the genuinely poetic. Our protagonist is Hell Tanner, a former Hell’s Angel who is offered a pardon for his crimes by the State of California, if he’ll deliver a shipment of vaccines to Boston, which has been hit by an outbreak of plague. Of course, this necessitates driving through Damnation Alley, but never fear, Tanner is also driving a super-tough vehicle bristling with weaponry.

The whole thing is almost laughably macho in places, and I say that as someone who really quite likes both cars and adventure stories. Tanner is that implausible archetype, the bad guy who nonetheless somehow has other people’s best interests at heart. However, there’s also some nice contrasts set up between Tanner and the criminal world he inhabits and the much more normal parts of society he encounters on his journey, where people seem to be on the whole generally decent and kind, making Tanner’s casual violence seem all the more out of place.

The book has a lot of problems. Some are clearly the result of padding it out to novel length, with several episodes which go nowhere and add little to the story. The characterisation of everyone aside from Tanner is weak to nonexistent. In particular, the main female character, Cordy, is a frustrating cipher: she is a woman who Tanner essentially abducts, and yet she shows none of the emotions one might expect under the circumstances, while Tanner seemingly comes to think of her as his girlfriend despite neither of them making any moves in that direction.

However, the biggest problem is that there are too many holes in the story for it to stay afloat. Despite the devastation of the land around it, the state of California somehow still has the resources to build giant armoured cars bristling with every kind of weapon from bullets to flamethrowers. Only two human beings are apparently capable of making the trip from California to Boston, which is surprising given the aforementioned level of technology and that there is clearly no shortage of young men with a death wish. Tanner makes it almost to Boston before encountering anyone who makes a serious effort to steal the vaccines, which I also find somewhat implausible. And so on, and so on.

Damnation Alley held my attention for the duration of a train journey and had nicely surreal, well-paced prose in places, but it was just too unbelievable for me to really enjoy it. Two and a half stars.

by Brian Collins

Since he returned to writing some half a dozen years ago, Robert Silverberg has tried to reintroduce himself as a more “serious” writer. This is not to say his rate of output has slowed down in favor of more refined work; if anything the past few years have been the busiest for him since the ‘50s. This year alone we have gotten enough novels from Silverberg that a bit of a catch-up is in order. The first on my plate, Across a Billion Years, hit store shelves a few months ago, from The Dial Press (I believe this is Silverberg’s first book with said publisher), and it seems to have flown under the radar—possibly because there’s no paperback edition, and also it might be aimed at younger readers. The second book we have here, To Live Again, is from Doubleday, and it too is a hardcover original; but unlike Across a Billion Years, To Live Again is a new release, fresh out of the oven.

Across a Billion Years, by Robert Silverberg

Two faces framed within a circle.
Cover art by Emanuel Schongut

It’s the 24th century, and humanity has not only spread to other worlds but encountered several intelligent alien races along the way. Tom Rice is a 22-year-old archaeologist on an expedition to find the ruins of a bygone race called the High Ones, who apparently lived a billion years ago (hence the title) but who have since vanished. Whether or not the High Ones have gone extinct is one of the novel’s core mysteries, although Silverberg takes his time raising this question. The novel is told as a series of diary entries, or rather messages Tom sends to his sister Lorie. In a curious but also frustrating move, Lorie is arguably the most interesting character in the novel, yet we never see or hear her, as she’s not only away from the action but stuck in a hospital bed for an indefinite period. Lorie is a telepath, and enough people are “TP” to make up their own faction, although telepathy only works one-way and Tom himself is not a telepath. The one positive surprise Silverberg includes here is finding a way to tie telepathy together with the mystery of the High Ones, but obviously I won’t say how he does it.

As for bad surprises, well…

Even taking into account that Tom is a young adult who also has personal hang-ups (his father wanted him to enter real estate), his treatment of his colleagues is abhorrent in the opening stretch. He dismisses the aliens on the team as mostly “diversity” hires and has a standoffish relationship with Kelly, the female android on the team, whom he more than once compares to a “voluptuous nineteen-year-old.” Why someone of Tom’s age would make such a comparison is befuddling…unless you were really a lecherous man approaching middle age and not a recent college graduate. There are a few other humans here, but the only human woman present is Jan, whom Tom gradually takes a liking to—just not enough to do anything when he sees Leroy, a male colleague, sexually assault Jan near enough that he could have intervened. This happens early in the novel, and I have to admit that Tom’s indifference regarding Jan’s wellbeing, a weakness in character he never really apologizes for, cast a cloud over my enjoyment of the rest of the novel. I kept wondering when the other shoe would drop. That Tom and Jan’s relationship turns romantic despite the former’s callousness only serves to rub salt in the wound. The bright side of all this is that while some of Silverberg’s recent work has bordered on pornographic, Across a Billion Years is relatively tame, almost to the point of being old-fashioned.

Indeed, this feels like a throwback to an older era of SF, even back to those years when Silverberg (and I, for that matter) had not yet picked up a pen or used a typewriter. In broad strokes this is a planetary adventure of the sort that would have been serialized in Astounding circa 1945. We’re excavating alien ruins on Higby V, a distant planet where High Ones artifacts have been supposedly found. During a drunken escapade one of the alien diggers stumbles upon (or rather breaks into) a piece of High Ones technology, something akin to a movie projector, not only showing what the High Ones look like but revealing a clue as to the location of their homeworld. This should sound familiar to most of us, and I suspect Silverberg knows this too, because this novel’s biggest problem and biggest asset is how it uses perspective. We’re stuck with Tom as he sends messages to Lorie, recounting events in perhaps more detail than he has to, knowing in advance that his sister won’t receive these messages until after the fact. As with a disconcerting number of Silverberg protagonists, Tom can be annoying, and honestly quite bigoted; and since he is the perspective character we’re never relieved of his oh-so-interesting remarks. But, and I will give Silverberg this, he does put a twist on the epistolary format very late in the novel, which does the miraculous thing of making you reevaluate what you had been reading up to this point.

In other words, this is not an exceptional novel, but it does have its points of interest, and with the exception of an early scene and its ramifications (or lack thereof), nothing here made me want to throw my copy at a nearby wall. For the most part this is inoffensive—possibly even decent. Three stars.

To Live Again, by Robert Silverberg

A minimalist drawing of a half-silhouetted faced.
Cover art by Pat Steir.

Those who want a bit more sex with their science fiction can do worse than this one, which looks to be the fourth (or maybe fifth—I’ve lost count) Silverberg novel of 1969. It’s the near-ish future, and the good news is that for those with enough money, death is not necessarily the end. Courtesy of the Scheffing Institute, a person can have their memories stored periodically, making copies or “personae” of themselves, which can be transplanted to the brain of a living host. The host and the persona will cooperate, lest the latter erase the former’s personality and become a “dybbuk,” using the host’s body as a flesh puppet.

The infamous businessman Paul Kaufmann has recently died, with his persona waiting to be claimed. Paul’s nephew, Mark, and Mark’s 16-year-old daughter Risa each see themselves as ideal candidates for Paul’s persona, but one of the rules at the Institute is that close family members can’t host each other’s personae: the implications of, for example, a teen girl hosting her grandfather’s persona, would be…concerning.

While we’re on the lovely topic of incest, let’s talk more about Risa, who must be one of the thorniest of all Silverberg characters, which as you know is a tall order, not helped by the fact that Silverberg describes, in almost poetic detail, every curve of this teen girl’s nude body—and she does strut around naked a surprising amount of the time. Risa is such a depraved individual, despite her age, that she at one point tries seducing an older male cousin and rather openly has an Electra complex (they even mention it by name), which Mark is understandably disturbed by—with the implication being that Mark has lustful thoughts about his own daughter. This is the second Silverberg novel I’ve read in two months to involve incest, which worries me.

The only other major female character is Elena, Mark’s mistress, whom Risa sees as a rival for her father’s affections and who (predictably) starts conspiring against Mark. Not content to ogle at just 16-year-olds, Silverberg also takes to describing the nuances of Elena’s body in wearying fashion, which does lead me to wonder if he was working the typewriter one-handed for certain passages. It’s a shame, because there’s an intriguing subplot in which Risa acquires her first persona, a young woman named Tandy who had died in a skiing accident—or so the official record claims. Tandy, or rather the persona of Tandy, recorded a couple months prior to her death, suspects foul play. Of the women mentioned, Tandy is the least embarrassingly written, but then she is only tangentially related to the plot and, what with not having a physical body, Silverberg is only able to ogle at her so much.

I’ve not even mentioned John Roditis and his underling Charles Noyles, business rivals of Mark’s who are clamoring for Paul’s persona. You may notice that this novel has more moving parts than Across a Billion Years, and certainly it’s the more ambitious of the two, the problem being that its shortcomings are all the more disappointing for it. Silverberg raises questions that he can barely be bothered with answering, and he alludes to things that remain mostly unrevealed. Much of To Live Again is shrouded in speculation, which is to say it uses speculation as a night-black cloak to cover things we sadly never get to see.

Another rule at the Institute is that a persona has to be of the same gender as its host, a rule that characters mostly write off as bogus. And indeed why not? Why should a male host and female persona not be able to coexist? Or the other way around. The prohibition has to do with transsexualism, which is certainly uncharted water for the most part. There has been very little science fiction written about transsexualism or transvestism—the possibility of blurring and even crossing gender lines. Unfortunately the novel does little with the ideas it presents. There are multiple references to religion and mythology (the word “dybbuk” refers to an evil spirit in Jewish mythology), including lines taken from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. There’s a minor subplot about white Californians appropriating Buddhist practices, in connection with the Institute, but this is so tangential that the reader can easily forget about it.

Finally, I want to mention that I was reminded eerily of another novel that came out this year, Philip K. Dick’s masterful and deranged Ubik, which I have to think Silverberg could not have known about when he was writing To Live Again. Both take cues from the Buddhist conception of reincarnation, although in Dick’s novel people who have died are kept in a state of suspended animation called “half-life,” whereas Silverberg’s characters die the full death, or “discorporate,” only that their personalities (up to a point) are kept intact. Not to make comparisons, but given that Silverberg’s novel is longer than Dick’s I have to say he does a fair bit less with the shared material. Of course, these are both talented writers, who at their best do very fine work indeed. Silverberg has become a major writer, but sadly he is not firing on all cylinders with either of the novels I’ve covered.

Hovering between two and three stars on this one.


by George Pritchard

The Glass Cage by Kenneth W. Hassler

The mockery for this book writes itself:

  • This book made me think of a Bulwer-Lytton novel for the Space Age.
  • This book could make Damon Knight take back everything he said about van Vogt.
  • This book made me long for the complexity of Commander Cody shorts.
  • This book’s style is so out of date that I think it fell out of the TARDIS.
  • This book wishes it had the character depth of a Lin Carter work.

And yet, I can't hate it the way I hated Light A Last Candle. That book was one mass of forgettable hate, but The Glass Cage is not hateful. It's incompetent at every turn, from line editing to plot development (I really don't know how it got the hardcover copy I received), but the overall effect is an oral record of a children's game.

There's this guy, Stephen, he’s twenty! He's a neophyte to the priests of the computer, TAL! It keeps life going in the city beneath its glass dome! Stephen is a perfect physical specimen, and his only flaw is being too curious about things. But that's because he’s secretly a spy for the Rebellion outside the glass dome!

The sentences are short and rarely have the benefit of internal punctuation. The characters are, generally, exactly how they appear — wicked characters with their close-together eyes, good characters with their strong jaws, straightforward manner, and perfect blonde hair. If this is chosen for adaptation, Tommy Kirk is made for the lead part.

The treatment of nuclear power seems to come from another time, where the leaders of interstellar development are in the Baltimore Gun Club rather than NASA. The giant computer, TAL, is attached to a nuclear bomb, to go off at a certain date, destroying the whole glass dome and the people within! No need to worry, though, Stephen and his various Rebellion people get most everyone out in time, except for the bad guy head priest of TAL, who is determined to die with his machine. Stephen and the gangster leader of the in-Dome Rebellion try to get him out, but to no avail! The nuclear bomb is about to go off, so the two of them hop on their air-sled, turn it skyward, and smash through the glass dome, just as the nuclear bomb goes off! Luckily, the nuclear bomb just pushes them a few miles away from the blast, where they are safe and unharmed.

One point of the book that is surprisingly forward-thinking is its treatment of one of the main characters being severely disabled. Despite being paralyzed from the neck down, he is a leader of the Rebellion, commanding through his immense psychic ability. But that cannot keep me from giving it…

Two stars

[A bit of a downer note to leave on, but at least there's some fine stuff upstream. See you next month, tiger!]




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 2, 1969] People, Machines, and Other Thinking Entities (October 1969 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Machine Language

Two events occurred today that demonstrate how computers can communicate with each other and with people.

At the University of California in Los Angeles, a gizmo called an Interface Message Processor (IMP) allowed two computers on campus to have a conversation, of sorts.  (I assume it was something like beep boop beep.) Plans are underway to set up another IMP at Stanford University, so the two institutes of higher education can share data.  One can imagine computers all over the planet chatting away, plotting to take over the world . . . well, maybe not that.


The thing that lets computers exchange information.  Don't ask me how it works.

The same day, a device replacing your friendly neighborhood teller appeared at a branch of the Chemical Bank in Rockville Centre, New York.  Apparently it can take your money, give you back your money, etc.  Is it just me, or does Chemical Bank seem like a weird name for a financial institution?  Not to mention the fact that the city doesn't know how to spell center. 


Possibly depositing some of the money his company makes from the robot teller.

Fittingly, the latest issue of Fantastic features machines and other things besides humans who are capable of communicating, and performing other activities that demonstrate intelligence.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

As usual these days, the cover image comes from a German publication.  It's not Perry Rhodan for a change.


Translated, this says The Ring Around the Sun.  This seems to be a version of Gallun's 1950 story A Step Further Out, with additional material from German writer Clark Darlton, one of the folks behind Perry Rhodan.

Editorial, by Ted White

The new editor talks about the cancellation of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour because of material CBS considered offensive.  He goes on to discuss the hypocrisy of some members of the older generation, and how science fiction and fantasy might help bridge the gap between young folks and their elders.  Pretty serious stuff.  He also admits that Fantastic is less popular than its sister publication Amazing, and promises to do something about that.

No rating.

It Could Be Anywhere, by Ted White

Maybe printing his own fiction is part of the editor's plan to improve sales of the magazine.


Illustrations by Michael Hinge.

The author spends half a page explaining the provenance of this story.  He was inspired by Keith Laumer's story It Could Be Anything (Amazing, January 1963.) Note the similar title.  My esteemed colleague John Boston gave this work a full five stars.

At first, White's tribute took the form of a novel called The Jewels of Elsewhen a couple of years ago.  The Noble Editor gave that book four stars.  Will this latest variation on a theme reach the same exalted level as its predecessors?


When the familiar becomes unfamiliar.

The narrator is a big guy who works as a private detective.  After a very long day, he tries to ride home on the subway in the wee hours of the morning.  A wino falls out of his seat.  When the gumshoe tries to help the fellow, he finds out that he's not really a genuine human being, but some kind of lifeless simulation.

The only other real person on the subway is a young woman.  (In the tradition of popular fiction, she's always called a girl.) When they get off the subway, they find out that the entire city is fake, just a bunch of empty buildings.

The premise reminds me a bit of Fritz Leiber's short novel You're All Alone, in which almost all people are mindless automatons.  There's an explanation, of sorts, for what's going on.  The characters are interesting, even if they are mostly passive observers of the situation.  The way in which the woman's ring plays a role in the plot struck me as arbitrary.

Three stars.

A Guide to the City, by Lin Carter

This was a big surprise.  I expect Carter to offer very old-fashioned sword-and-sorcery yarns or equally outdated space operas.  Who knew that he could venture into territory explored by Jorge Luis Borges or Franz Kafka?

The story takes the form of an article.  The author lives in a gigantic, possibly infinite, city.  A single neighborhood takes up hundreds of thousands of blocks.  Traveling such a distance is the stuff of legends.  The author explains why mapping the entire city is impossible.

This is not a piece for those who demand much in the way of plot or characters.  It's all concept, an intellectual exploration of an abstract, mathematical premise.  I enjoyed it pretty well; others may find nothing of interest in it.

Three stars.

Ten Percent of Glory, by Verge Foray

In the afterlife, people continue to exist based on how living folks remember them.  George Washington can expect to be part of the collective memory for a very long time; Millard Fillmore, maybe not.

The main character is an agent of sorts, who collects a percentage of the renown of his clients in exchange for promoting them in various ways.  The plot involves the motives of his secretary.

Stuck somewhat between whimsy and satire, this odd little tale winds up with an ending that may raise some eyebrows.  I'm still not quite sure what I thought of it.

Three stars. 

Man Swings SF, by Richard A. Lupoff

This is a broad spoof of New Wave science fiction.  It starts with an introduction by the fictional Blodwen Blenheim, which alternates lyrics from songs performed by Tiny Tim with a rhapsodizing about an exciting new form of speculative fiction coming from the Isle of Man. 

After this, we get a story called In the Kitchen by the imaginary author Ova Hamlet.  Like a lot of New Wave SF, it's hard to describe the plot.  Suffice to say that it's full of outrageous metaphors and features a doomed protagonist.  The piece ends with a mock biography and a ersatz critique of Ova Hamlet.

The (real) author is able to write convincingly in the style of some of the things found in New Worlds, with tongue firmly in cheek.  Amusing enough, even if it goes on a little too long for an extended joke.

Three stars.

A Modest Manifesto, by Terry Carr

This essay, reprinted in the magazine's Fantasy Fandom section, originally appeared in the fanzine Warhoon.  It wanders all over the place, but for the most part it deals with what the author sees as a cultural revolution, both in fantasy and science fiction and in the outside world.  Food for thought.

Three stars.

So much for the new stuff.  Let's turn to the reprints.

Secret of the Serpent, by Don Wilcox

This wild yarn first appeared in the January 1948 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

As I noted at the start of this article, we're going to run into a lot of entities that have as much sentience as human beings.  Would you believe that this one is a gigantic people-eating serpent?


Illustration by Jones also.

Let me back up a little.  The serpent used to be an ordinary guy, until he wound up on what the author calls a space island. If that means something other than a planet, it escapes me.

He encounters a huge two-headed cat (don't look at me, I don't make up this stuff) who used to be a woman.  The place is also inhabited by a bunch of pygmies, who used to be people living on Mars.  Not to mention some Mad Scientists.  Or the guy who is a giant skull on a small body.

Very long and complex story short, the formerly human serpent gets partly changed back, and he becomes a serpent with human arms and legs.  Somebody wants to turn him into a skeleton for a museum.  There's a revolution by the enslaved pygmies against the Mad Scientists.  A lot more stuff happens.

I hope I have managed to convey the fact that this is a crazy story.  Plot logic is thrown out the window in favor of action, action, and more action.  The only explanation for the weird transformations?  The water on the space island does it.

Nutty enough to hold the reader's attention for a while, but at full novella length the novelty soon wears off.  I got the feeling the author was pulling my leg at times, but there's not enough humor to make the story a parody.

Two stars.

All Flesh is Brass, by Milton Lesser

The August 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures supplies this grim tale.


Cover art by Walter Popp.

The Soviet Union has conquered Western Europe, and is now attacking the United States via Canada.  The story takes the form of the diary of a soldier.  He learns that some dead fighters are being replaced by robotic duplicates, who not only copy their bodies but also their minds.


Illustration by Ed Emshwiller.

The replacements don't even know that they're not human, until that fact becomes obvious in one way or another.  They are also designed to be eliminated within a couple of years after they're activated.  Let's just say that the situation doesn't work out well.

In addition to the plot, the story paints a vivid and realistic portrait of warfare, as seen by an ordinary soldier.  I was particularly impressed by the way the author handles the subplot concerning the female fighter encountered by the main character.  I wasn't expecting that to go in the direction it did.

Four stars.

According to You . . ., by Ted White, etc.

After an extended absence, the letter column returns.  I wouldn't bother to mention it, but it's odd in a couple of ways.  First up is a mock letter from Blodwhen Blenheim and Ova Hamlet (remember them?) thanking the editor for printing Hamlet's story.  A cute extension of the joke.

Next are a couple of letters asking for more sword-and-sorcery stories.  One reader includes a poem about Conan.  I probably shouldn't say anything about the quality of the verse.

Last is a missive attacking just about everything in the April issue.  The writer, if he's real, is in jail.  Hmm.

No rating.

Isolationist, by Mack Reynolds

This ironic yarn comes from the April 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones again.

The narrator is a cynical old farmer, suspicious of technology and of the modern world in general.  When an alien spaceship lands in his field, he thinks it's an American vessel of some sort.


Illustration by Julian S. Krupa.

The accents of the friendly inhabitants convince him they're foreigners, which makes them even less welcome than before.  Not to mention that they ruined part of his crop of corn.

This is a very simple story, with an inevitable conclusion.  The crotchety narrator is a decent creation, but there's not much else to it.

Two stars.

The Unthinking Destroyer, by Rog Phillips

The December 1948 issue of Amazing Stories offers this philosophical tale.


Cover art by Harold W. McCauley.

Two guys talk about the possibility of intelligent life being unrecognizable by human beings.  (Back to the theme with which I started this article.) In alternating sections of text, two beings discuss abstract concepts.


Illustration by Bill Terry.

It took me a while to get the point of this story.  It might be seen as a rather silly joke, or as something a bit more meaningful.

Two stars.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Francis Lanthrop

Leiber offers mixed reviews of a collection and a novel.  Lanthrop praises three books by Leiber about the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

No rating.

Worth Talking About?

This was a middle-of-the-road issue, with everything hovering around a three-star rating.  Not a waste of time, but not particularly memorable either.  Maybe someday a computer will be able to read it to you, so you don't have to turn the pages of the magazine.


The Parametric Artificial Talker (PAT), developed by the University of Edinburgh in 1956, was the first machine to synthesize human speech.




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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[August 26, 1969] A Bumper Crop at the Farm (Woodstock Music & Art Fair)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

A little more than a week ago, something remarkable happened in a small town in the state of New York.  Depending on your point of view, it was either a gathering of joyful people sharing fun and good music, or a mob of filthy hippies stoned out of their minds and destroying their hearing with loud noise.  Let's go back in time a little bit and try to figure out how this all came together.


Poster designed by Arnold Skolnick.

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place in Bethel, New York.  That's about forty miles away from the town of Woodstock.  Why the name?  Thereby hangs a tale.

Early this year, some business folks planned to hold a big concert in Woodstock.  They even called their company Woodstock Ventures.  Long story short, local residents rejected the idea.  The people running the thing tried other communities in the area.  The authorities of the towns of Saugerties and Wallkill nixed the idea as well.  What to do?

Enter a fellow named Max Yasgur.  He owns a six hundred acre dairy farm In Bethel.  He agreed to lease the use of his property for the festival in return for something like ten thousand bucks.


Yasgur's farm.

Some local residents were not pleased at all.  (Rumor has it that Yasgur is himself a conservative Republican.  Apparently that didn't prevent him from accepting money from members of the counterculture.)


A sign posted when the deal was announced.

Despite opposition, the authorities granted the necessary permits.  (By the way, the reason the poster shown above mentions White Lake as the scene of the festival is because White Lake is a hamlet within the town of Bethel, and is about three miles from Yasgur's farm.  Don't ask me; I'm only used to hamlet being the title of a famous play.)

It took so long to find a site for the festival that the folks running the thing didn't have time to put up fences or ticket booths.  Heck, they barely had a chance to put up the stage!  They'd already sold 186,000 tickets in advance (despite expecting only about 50,000 people to show up.)


Full admission price to the entire festival.  Expensive!

The big show was going to start in the early evening on Friday, August 15.  By Wednesday, the expected 50,000 folks had already shown up, with no way to find out if they had purchased tickets or not.  A lot more were on their way.  At its peak, the crowd was estimated at 450,000.

Roads leading to the area were jammed with would-be attendees.  Recent rain turned fields into seas of mud.  Lack of facilities — food and water, first aid stations, sanitation — added to the chaos. 

Three people died at the festival.  Two were from drug overdoses.  One teenager was run over by a tractor while he was in his sleeping bag.  Despite these tragedies, and many hundreds of people needing medical attention, one extraordinary fact stands out.  There was not one reported act of deliberate violence at the festival.

Think about that.  Close to half a million people living in close proximity, and in very stressful situations, without violence.  Makes you wonder if these Flower People are doing something right, doesn't it?

Enough background.  What about the music?  Thirty-two acts performed, from early Friday evening to late Monday morning.  Let's go over some highlights.


This advertisement doesn't list all the performers.  There were also changes in the schedule.  Sha-Na-Na didn't perform until Monday morning, and Iron Butterfly got stuck at the airport and didn't show up at all. Jeff Beck wasn't there, either.

Day One: Indian Summer

The opening speech was delivered Friday evening by Swami Satchidananda Saraswati, an Indian guru.  The first day was heavy on folk music performers, including Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez (who is six months pregnant, by the way.) For me, the outstanding act was Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar.


Shankar performs Evening Raga.

Day Two: The Big Names

Saturday afternoon until Sunday was when a lot of the most famous rock bands showed up.  Santana, Grateful Dead, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, etc., but the electrifying performance of Janis Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, in the wee hours of the morning, was the highlight.


Joplin belts out an hour of her hits.

Day Three: Past and Future

More rock music ended the festival, interrupted for about three hours by a thunderstorm.  Monday morning the concert ended with two strongly contrasting acts, one looking backward and one offering hints as to what tomorrow's popular music might be like.

Nostalgia act Sha Na Na brought a chance of pace by performing doo-wop songs from the 1950's.  (It's amazing how much pop music has changed in fifteen years or so!)


Performing oldie Book of Love in gold suits.

The final act was the amazing Jimi Hendrix, said to be the highest-paid rock musician in the world.  His music is so far out, that it seems to be coming from the 21st century.


And yet he paid tribute to the past, with the wildest version of The Star-Spangled Banner you'll ever hear.

Was it worth all the mud and chaos?  Despite the small number of tragic deaths, and hundreds of bad drug trips, most of the folks who were there would probably say it was.  And here are some other eyewitness reports for you.  Over to you, Walter…


Er… you're not Walter…

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Woodstock: when it wasn't hot, it was cold.  When you didn't have to pee, you were hungry.  If you were anywhere near the stage (as we were Friday night into Saturday morning), you were elbow to elbow with a hundred thousand other people.  I got less than 10 hours of sleep over the 72 hours of the event, and then I soldiered on to help clean up before crashing in the van.

It was the best weekend of my life.


Aftermath in Paradise

Look—I'm 50 years old.  I've done a lot in my day, but I've never really pushed myself.  I've never done drugs.  I go to sleep by 10pm.  I stay at home, except when I fly to Japan, and then I go first class…planes and hotels

For this adventure, there was none of that.  The biggest concession to comfort is that we drove to the event early, and thereby avoided the worst of the traffic.  And I surrendered my six square feet of ground near the stage to eat and excrete and nap in the comfort of our rented van (though I slogged back during the rainstorm Sunday afternoon and stayed through until the end of the event).  It was a test of physical and emotional fortitude greater than any I'd had before.

What made it all worth it?  The music and the people.  It's all a riot of memories right now, a kaleidoscope that refuses to resolve, probably won't resolve for weeks or months:

  • The sensitive, soulful passion of Richie Havens, strumming powerfully until I felt his fingers must bleed, singing his own songs and those of the Beatles, and finally some sort of ethereal impromptu folks are calling "Freedom".


    A snap from an 8mm I shot of the concert—we were that close on the first day!

  • The bombed out young group that wandered by our van on Saturday evening.  We shared our chicken and rice with them and pointed them in the direction of the main stage.  Did they ever make it back?  We'll never know.

  • The surreality of feeling the Earth's rotation, watching dusk turn to night then to dawn then to day, and then to night again…marked not by the sweep of wristwatch hands but the endless cavalcade of bands: Santana, John Sebastian, Mountain, the Creedence Clearwater Revival…


    Sunset on Day 3

  • The ethereal beauty and surprising charm of Bert Sommer, who bewitched all who espied him.


    Telephoto shot of Sommer

  • The one-two punch of Janis Joplin and Sly and the Family Stone—easily the high-water mark of the event—the former, a goddess; the latter, the Supreme Being.

  • Marla and Tim and their lovely kids, who were our site neighbors, and as luck would have it, are also practically our hometown neighbors.  You can bet we'll keep in touch.

  • The most hilarious retelling of the Book of Exodus, as told by a quite stoned Arlo Guthrie.


  • The soaring harmonies of Crosby, Stills and Nash (and occasionally Young), with counterpoint provided by Amber's snoring…the poor girl had lasted through the endless sets of Ten Years After, Johnny Winter, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears, only to founder at the shores of excellence.

  • The couple that broke up at the beginning of the event only to be compelled back together by the end of it.

  • The turgid endlessness of Canned Heat, the Grateful Dead, and (sadly) Jefferson Airplane.

  • The sublimity of Jimi, pinnacling in his fiery, bomb-laden rendition of the National Anthem.

  • The three demons of Woodstock: the blue acid, the mud, and the scaffold creeps who would not abandon the stage towers despite the constant admonitions of the velvet-voiced EMCEE, "Chip" Monck.

  • The three angels of Woodstock: Max Yazgur, the nice mensch who offered up his farm to host the event so as to bridge the generation gap; the ministering angels who provided food when the concession stands ran out; and the good-natured attendees who, for the most part, offered no hassles or bummers and kept things peaceful and brotherly.


    Max Yazgur prepares to speak

It was an event for the ages, squared, cubed, and beyond for being shared with all of my closest friends.  My life is forever punctuated into two eras: before and after Woodstock.

The papers already seem to be forgetting the festival, the city we built that, for a weekend, contained more people than the whole of Anza Highway corridor back home.  But I'll never forget.  We'll never forget.

We were there.


by Janice L. Newman

Even as we watched the opening acts, more and more and more people were pouring in, young and muddy and hungry. While others were focused on the stage, my mind couldn’t help but be consumed by something else: logistics.

How, I worried, were all these people going to get fed?

Fortunately, others had the same thought. By the time the second day was going strong, the Hog Farm commune, founded by Hugh Romney, Jr. (aka “Wavy Gravy”) had gone into action, requesting money from the concert organizers and using it to purchase thousands of pounds of rolled oats, sliced almonds, apricots, currants, bulgur wheat, wheat germ, and truckloads of fresh vegetables. “There’s plenty of food over at the Hog Farm,” a young woman told the audience. I had to see for myself.

So I left my spot near our van (I’d slept there through the first night, unable to stay awake even with Ravi Shankar and Joan Baez performing) and went to see what it was all about.

I spent the next four days going back and forth between Hog Farm and Woodstock, helping mix and serve muesli out of giant trash cans purchased for the purpose, handing out sandwiches, and watching as people patiently lined up and accepted their share, or stepped forward to volunteer to help, or passed food through the audience to their friends who refused to leave their spot near the stage. The food wasn’t hearty, but supplemented with the milk and yogurt from the dairy farm, it was enough.

I missed out on all the night concerts, even my twin-named Janis Joplin, but I was up early enough to catch The Who. The music was great, but more than that, I enjoyed the chance to be a part of something bigger.


Me at our campsite in the woods

The Age of Aquarius, one of brotherhood, peace, and universal love, has always seemed like a beautiful but naive dream. Yet we saw something like it over the course of four days. Not just in the young people who gathered, but the people who came together to help support, feed, and care for them and for each other. Even the US Army helped out!

Woodstock may not end up being a profitable endeavor after all that happened. It’s already being talked about in the papers as a boondoggle. And yet…it was something special. Something different. Something new.

The people in the audience weren’t just spouting words about peace and brotherhood, they believe it. In the face of such sincerity, cynicism melts away and hope can’t help but take its place.  Who knows? Maybe this generation really will be the one to end war for good

.

by Lorelei Marcus

"How was Woodstock?" A friend asked me recently.

I couldn't reply for a long while, because there is no one answer; there is no one holistic Woodstock experience. Woodstock comprises moments, measured in music acts, naps, and meals. It was a lifestyle, a lifetime balled up into four days. How does one reply when asked "how is living?"

"Good," is all I could reply at the time.

Now I've had a bit longer to reflect. I can say that overall, it was worth it. But what was it like?


Me and mom at the campsite

It was the most humanity I'll ever see in my life. Everything from the funny guy teaching me about mushrooms, to the girl crooning out ballads on her tiny guitar between sets, to the practical feeling of wearing nothing along with everybody else. At some times we were a mass, snoring in the sun, lining up for food, eating, clapping, tripping, slipping on mud. Sometimes I was alone, relishing the quiet moment in the woods while I squatted over a hole, dozing through the first hour of Hendrix's concert, leaning over a pot of oats and stirring until it was warm.

There's a through line that connects these disparate flashes: the music. Some was transcendent, some was boring, and on the drive home I realized what made the difference. There were a lot of jams at this concert, not unusual for the live blues and rock scene, but often I found myself wishing for a song to end rather than enjoying its ride. Some would blame that on the sleep deprivation, but really, it's that long jams are flawed in two big ways.

First, a jam interrupts the flow of the song and diminishes the complexity of the experience. I don't mind the band free styling, but usually to keep together, they have to stay on one chord. This leads to a monotonous meandering of guitar notes and drum fields piled on top of a stagnant melody. The sound and the rhythm quickly lose their way, and any meaning built into the flow and structure of the original song are quickly dispersed.

The second problem is that jamming is a private experience. Songs are a story that reach from the musician to the listener. Jams can be like that if played with intention (Hendrix does this well), but otherwise it's a connection with one's band or even their own instrument. An audience can watch and appreciate technique, but cannot join the musician in their reverie without invitation.

Such is the art of performance, and what made both Janis Joplin and Sly and the Family Stone's shows so powerful. Both performers poured out their energy into the audience, giving themselves and their music to foster a bond. You could feel the passion like electricity in your bones. It multiplied, and you poured it out back to them, only making it stronger, looping until the music isn't just heard, but felt, like it's part of both of you. It creates a togetherness that you can't get anywhere else.


Me and Trini near the stage

Really, that's what Woodstock was all about: being together. Sometimes it was overwhelming, sometimes otherworldly, and mostly it was wet and loud.

But I wouldn't trade it for anything.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 16, 1969] Soaring high and low (August 1969 Galactoscope)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Ladies of Darkness

Two very different novels by women fell into my hands this month. Just about the only thing they have in common is a downbeat mood. Even that, however, is treated in highly dissimilar ways by the authors. Let's take a look.

Shadows of Tomorrow, by Dorothy Daniels


Anonymous cover art. Woman running away from a mansion that has a light in one window? Must be a Gothic Romance.

The setting is Connecticut in 1895. The narrator is a nineteen-year-old woman named Cassandra whose mother has just died. Her father died soon after her birth, and she spent almost of all of her life in boarding school. Returning for her mother's funeral, she is dismayed by the fact that the only other mourners are her mother's second husband, who left her some years ago, and her mother's faithful Gypsy companion.

Her mother had the ability to predict the future. The villagers thought of her as a witch. Adding to their superstitious fear was a mysterious light that appeared in the sky at the time of her death.

Cassandra (an appropriate name, as we'll see) settles into the family home with the Gypsy and her stepfather. In true Gothic fashion, she wanders into the cellar in order to investigate a noise, only to barely escape being strangled by an unknown assailant. It soon turns out that Cassandra also has precognition, which she considers to be a curse rather than a gift.

Other Gothic elements include a séance conducted by the Gypsy, a secret room in the mansion, and a murder. Since this is also a Romance, we have a handsome young stranger show up.

The novel definitely follows the pattern of a Gothic Romance. Fans of that genre, or of the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows will find it satisfactory, if less than original. It's a quick, easy read, suitable for light entertainment of an enjoyable spooky nature.

Three stars.

A Sweet Sweet Summer, by Jane Gaskell


More anonymous cover art.

The narrator is a young man named Pelham, known as Pel. He is also called Rat. In a dystopian near future, he and his father run their home as a combination boarding house and brothel. His cousin Frijja shows up, having barely survived a brutal attack. You see, the aliens told him to take her in.

The aliens? Yes, it seems that gigantic extraterrestrial spaceships hover over the British Isles. A force field isolates the inhabitants from the rest of the world, leading to a breakdown in society. The aliens send messages to people in the form of small talking spheres, something like ball bearings. Failure to obey their orders leads to disintegration.

The aliens put various parts of London under the control of gangs, some Communist and some Fascist. Early in the book, Frijja defends the home from an invasion by the Fascists in a violent way. That doesn't prevent them from taking over pretty soon anyway.

The other major character is Connor, one of the Fascists. Pel is obsessed by him, although he tells the reader that it's not in a sexual or romantic way. (Frankly, methinks the fellow doth protest too much.) In turn, Connor is obsessed by Frijja. This triple relationship is complicated, blending love and hate in strange ways. It's also the heart of the book.

Without going into the myriad plot complications, let's just say that this unlikely trio goes on an odyssey through a transformed England. Along the way we get more violence, rape, sexual blackmail, and cannibalism.

This is a very grim book, as you can tell, although it's also got moments of bitter humor. Despite the aliens, who never show up in person, it's much more like A Clockwork Orange than Childhood's End. The narrative style is dense and eccentric, so this is a book that requires careful reading.

Five stars.

The Older Generation and the Newer Generation


by Jason Sacks

The Three Faces of Time, by Frank Belknap Long

I usually love writing for this column. I have tremendous fun exploring the work of promising new writers, or obscure works to which I can provide some attention, or even to celebrate the work of an acknowledged science fiction master.

But it provides me no joy to discuss The Three Faces of Time by Frank Belknap Long.

Mr. Long, born in 1901, has a long and distinguished career in science fiction and horror. He's published dozens of books which often sit in the uneasy and unsettling boundary between science fiction and horror. His many short stories were foundational in the golden years of the classic Weird Tales pulp, often sitting side by side in a given issue next to his close friend H.P.  Lovecraft and exploring similar mythos and settings.

I frankly love the classic work of Messers. Long and Lovecraft for their gothic, creeping horrors and their inescapable dark energy.

But that work was released 30 plus years ago, and I'm sad to say that Mr. Long, now well into his Social Security years, is no longer the writer he used to be. Or, more accurately, he's too much like the writer he used to be.

The Three Faces of Time is, frankly, a bore. The writing is turgid, characters are wafer thin, and the plot simply refuses to become interesting.

A flying saucer has landed in a small suburban town. When people go to investigate the thunderous sound the spaceship makes, they become lost in a maze of incomprehensible pathways and confusing signposts, which all serve to alienate all the people from their environments.

We follow Susan Wentworth as she tries to find her husband and her children in such a space, where she does eventually catch up with the family – and some mysterious aliens. The strange creatures then transport the humans thousands of years into the future in search of some sort of truth about human immortality – or something like that. I think that's what happened; my attention kept wandering as I tried to make my way through endless thickets of run-on sentences, inhuman dialogue and exhausting conceptual obtuseness.

This would be a fun book in the hands of a more modern writer like Ellison or Brunner, who would highlight the confusion or the characters' existential doubt. Dick would have made the leads more full of angst, and LeGuin would have chonicled the beauty of the aliens' worldview. But Long is not of the newer generation. He reads like a man who's 68 years old and who time, sadly, has left behind.

I regret I have to give this book 1 star.

The Wizards of Senchuria, by Kenneth Bulmer

After my frustrating experience with Mr. Long's book, I was anxious for something that felt fresh, breezy and contemporary.

The Wizards of Senchuria by Kenneth Bulmer was just what I needed.

I've had mixed experiences in the past in reading Mr. Bulmer's fiction. But this book was pure joy for me.

Senchuria is a breezy and bright story. It's a kind of updated version of the high-adventure stories which accompanied work by Lovecraft and Long in the old pulps, but updated for a more modern audience.


Scobie Redfern is a guy in his 20s on the way home from a game of tennis at a Lower Mahattan gym on a cold and snowy night. Scobie calls a cab, but at the same moment another man jumps into the taxi with him. The cabbie talks them both into sharing the vehicle, but quickly odd things start happening. Scobie catches a glimpse of a strange creature who seems to attack the car, and when his fellow passenger persuades Scobie to stop for a drink, a burger, and an explanation, so begins the wildest experience of Scobie's life.

Scobie soon finds himself in an adventure he hardly could have imagined, involving strange portals, terrifying creatures, love, hate, fear, battles on a grand scale, and the kind of nonstop adventurous life that would make a Robert E. Howard character feel exhausted.

This is one of those books where each chapter ends in a cliffhanger before the tension and silliness of the story rachets up even further, a wild, high-tension ride which gets much of its power from the reader wondering how much longer Bulmer can sustain his high-wire act.

Rest assured that everything in Kelly Freas's delightful cover actually happens in the book!

Maybe this book hit me so hard because I was so disappointed in the F.K. Long book above, but this was a thorough delight. The Wizards of Senchuria won't contend for a Hugo, but it's a nearly perfect half of an Ace Double.

4 stars.


by Victoria Lucas

The Edible Woman

Author Margaret Atwood and I are nearly the same age (she has a couple years on me). But she has published 5 books of poetry, and written a libretto–so far–and I'm sure she'll keep ahead of me. She has also just published this, her first novel. I've been wanting to read her work, especially since it (a) smacks of feminism at first glance, and (b) was written by a native of Canada, a country to which my husband and I aspire, and which we may yet reach as we slowly move north.


by John Schoenherr

I am a proud Stanford University alumna thanks to that university’s help finding me the money to go to school (student loan, job). As I understand it, the faculty have always believed that the school is not just there to teach about what students are going to do in life, but also help them discover what kind of person they will become. Clearly, as far as Atwood’s fictional alumna, Marian, is concerned, the school she attended (University of Toronto by the geographical and environmental clues) failed on both counts.

She is lost and feels formless, trying to understand what is required of her and fit into the molds offered. Every now and then she attempts to escape, finding some ease from the pressure of becoming a woman in today's society by running off the rails.

People in her life are mostly in a similar state of becoming and are extremely puzzled when she tries to run away–with one exception, a man she seeks without realizing she is looking for him. Clearly he has run off the rails himself and is possibly dangerous. But for Marian, sometimes danger is preferable to the destination of the tracks, perceived by her as motherhood (of which she is frightened) within marriage (although her roommate is at first set on motherhood alone), a job that is boring and expected to disappear with marriage, a life as a consumer of products such as girdles (worn by "vulcanized" women), and meals of real-life, killed animals.

Starting with strong reactions to types and cuts of meat reminiscent of the living beast, she begins crossing foods off her list of possible edibles as she tries to stay the course to the arms of her fiancé and their upcoming wedding. In a supermarket she “resents” the music because she knows it is only there to lull consumers like her into a euphoric state in which they will buy anything; her own fingers twitch to reach away from the market basket and pick up something–anything–with a "bright label." (I particularly identify with this: not only do I dislike the music itself, but I wish they would leave my mind alone, and I start talking to the speakers and gloomily thinking about bringing wire cutters and stair steps to the store.) After awhile, most foods are eliminated from her diet until she makes something she can eat.

Atwood’s book is funny with a dark humor, growing darker and funnier as Marian’s story unfolds. I give it 5 stars. Beautifully done.

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Out of the Mouth of the Dragon, by Mark S. Geston


by John Schoenherr

The Biblical book of Revelations foretells of the final battle between Good and Evil.  In this second book by Mark S. Geston (author of Lords of the Starship, which seems to be something of a prequel), Armageddon was just the first of climactic battles, subsequent ones being told of in the Book of Survivors, the Book of Eric, the Dialogues of Moreth.  Thousands of years later, the diminishing forces of Earth, spurred on by crusading fury, continue to clash.  The last ships, the remaining aircraft, the pitiful remnants of humanity are all drawn, sooner or later, to fight what will hopefully be the last fight at "The Meadows."

Born into this world is Amon VanRoarke, an aimless naif who finds motivation when the prophet Timonias comes to town on an ancient, motor-powered merchantman.  The holy man's words fill VanRoarke with the urge to sail to The Meadows, not necessarily to fight, but simply to discover what has happened to the battered Earth, what consumes men to combat to the end.

So he sails on the Garnet, along with the drunken and dying veteran, Tapp, the religion-crazed Yarrow, and the half-sane ex-librarian Smythe, the last of whom has some borrowed knowledge of what the world was, though not why it's become what it has.  Eventually, they arrive at The Burn that borders The Meadows, where a mighty army is encamped and ready to fight.  There too is the "rim army", a force of strangers, origin (as yet) unknown.  The stage is set for…something, but not what you expect.

Dragon is very much a mood piece, a commentary on the futility of war, and perhaps even of humanity (or at least, this cast of humanity).  If Ballard were to write a catastrophe book, where the catastrophe is the red-steeded Horseman of the Apocalypse, this might well be the result.  It's downbeat, descriptive, brooding, and more than a little surreal.  It reminds me a little of the endlessly warring tankers of the Great Plains in John M. Foucette's post-apocalyptic The Age of Ruin, but more compelling, more deliberately written.

It's not a happy book, but it is an interesting one, and I had no trouble tearing through most of it in a single reading.

3.5 stars—others might rate it higher.


by George Pritchard

Rip-Roaring and Rollicking

As I have heard mixed reports about Lin Carter, it gives me great joy to report that his newest collection, Beyond the Gates of Dream, is simply delightful. The collection is written as a deliberate throwback to serial fiction and the heyday of Weird Tales, and in that sector, Carter (what a suitable name!) thrives. In this era of the New, Carter's writing can often seem antediluvian, so it is a joy to see those fins and gills be used as they were meant to be.


by Jeff Jones

My favorite story was actually the first, “Masters of the Metropolis”. Written with Randall Garrett, it describes the main character going from New Jersey to New York City in the modern day, except that he has “Wonder-sense” — the ability to see the incredible wonder that exists all around us.
Four stars.

“Keru” is one of the shortest stories in the collection, a Floridian horror story right out of Weird Tales. It has one of two female characters in the book, which is both accurate to the era Carter is recreating, and to Carter's sensibility as an author. Its racial politics are somewhat muddled, but it is leagues ahead of what Campbell is putting out.
Four stars.

The closest to New Wave that Carter gets is in “Owlstone”, but it's firmly in the slow, thoughtful realm of New Wave, rather than anything close to sexuality and gender. I enjoyed it, particularly the ending. The story is from the perspective of a slave creature, who is used by the leader of Earth to fly through space and meet with the leaders of other planets. Called to communicate with the computer who commands the universe, the leaders discover they are being replaced by computers. But what will happen to the slave creatures?
Four stars.

“Harvey Hodges, Veebelfetzer” is an attempt at a SFF comedy epic short story. There is potential in it, but it is all so tangled up with early-author nonsense that should have been trimmed back long ago that even said author apologizes for its existence. It is not bad in a way that makes me angry, but it needed considerably more work, that it did not necessarily justify. It’s definitely the weakest of the lot.
Two stars.

There are two sections of unfinished stories, which I am not rating. The stories are not finished, so it does not seem fair to judge them just yet.

Admittedly, this collection is best taken in slowly, as Carter's joy coming through the pages can often be overwhelming if read for long periods. I was reminded of interacting with a particularly exuberant horse, or a large puppy, in book form. If frequent fannish winks, nods, and asides fill you with annoyance and dread, I do recommend avoiding this book. He writes such notes at the beginning and end of each story, and at the beginning and end of the book, like a joyful Rod Serling, from Worldcon rather than the Twilight Zone, and hopped up on PDQ chocolate powder.
3.5 stars if you like this sort of thing, one star if you don't.

But why shouldn't Carter be excited? He was allowed to finish a posthumous Conan story, and that tale, “The Hand of Nergal”, takes up the majority of the book. I enjoyed it as a Conan story, and was glad to see Carter avoid the numerous potential pitfalls that Howard set up in his world and writing style. This is a place where Carter’s weaknesses in the New Wave become strengths in the old. Lucky for the reader, despite Conan’s supposedly barbarous nature, he has little interest in the beautiful servant girl who briefly crosses his path, before going to destroy the demonic vampires threatening the world! I wonder if this is related to Conan’s mighty thews in any way, after the revelations in Sports Illustrated back in June regarding the significant use of steroids in professional sports.
3.5 stars.

”So close your waking eyes/And picture endless skies” — and wonder!

Four stars overall.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 16, 1969] Not all Jake(s) (July 1969 Galactoscope)

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by Brian Collins

Aside from the stray short story I have to admit I had not read any of John Jakes’s novels, of which there have been many as of late—so many, in fact, that we folks at the Journey have not been able to cover every new Jakes book. Just this year alone we’ve gotten three or four Jakes novels, with at least one more already in the can as I’m writing this. So consider this a bit of “catching up,” for the both of us. Jakes started a new science-fantasy series a couple years ago with When the Star Kings Die, and this year he has put out not one, but two more entries in this series. For the sake of not overwhelming the reader, though, let’s just keep it to the first two entries… for now.

When the Star Kings Die, by John Jakes

A man on a horse-like creature with a spaceship in the background.
Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

Humanity has spread across the stars in what is called II Galaxy, with a planet-spanning league of aristocrats called the 'Lords of the Exchange' (the titular star kings) keeping things in check. The star kings are supposed to live for centuries, being near-immortal, but something has been leading these long-lived aristocrats to early deaths. Maxmillion Dragonard (a name I certainly did not pull out of a hat) is a Regulator, one of the enforcers for the star kings, who starts out imprisoned for a bout of intensely violent behavior but is soon freed on the condition that he investigates why the star kings are dying young. He soon travels to the planet Pentagon, a backwater home to little in the way of technology or civilization, but which seems to house the answer to the mystery; and there he gets involved with a group of rebels who go by the 'Heart Flag'. Dragonard’s sense of loyalty gets split between his allegiance to the star kings, personified by a mischievous spy named Kristin, whom Dragonard quickly falls in love with, and the leaders of the Heart Flag group, Jeremy and his sister Bel.

If you read certain passages out of context you might think you’re reading an adventure fantasy yarn in the Robert E. Howard mode, which Jakes is no stranger to, but overall this is much more evocative of Leigh Brackett’s planetary adventures—low on scientific plausibility but high on swashbuckling action. We have swords and daggers, but also blasters and “electroguns,” not to mention spaceships. Another thing carried over from both Howard and Brackett is this heightened sense of sexuality—or to put it less charitably, the fact that there are only two female characters of note in this novel, and both of them want to jump Dragonard’s bones. Jakes also can’t help himself when it comes to focusing on the women’s breasts, especially Kristin’s. In fairness, Dragonard is a man who has just been broken out of prison, and ultimately this is not a very serious novel. When the Star Kings Die was published in 1967, although the Journey didn’t cover it then; but if not for the publication date you might think it was printed in 1947, possibly as a “complete” novel in the likes of Startling Stories and other bygone pulps. It seems deliberately retrograde, but it’s unobtrusive so far as that goes.

This is a short novel, such that I’m actually surprised Ace didn’t bundle it with another short novel or novella. Even so, with just 160 pages Jakes is able to give us a future world, somewhat believable power dynamics among the parties, a few good villains, and a climactic battle that manages to take up a good chunk of the text. Kristin, despite being Dragonard’s main love interest, is absent for much of the novel, but to compensate his growing admiration for Jeremy and budding affection for Bel are given ample room to develop. The trio’s tenuous but promising relationship at the end of the novel is undermined, however, by the fact that when we did get a follow-up to When the Star Kings Die it was not a sequel, but instead a distant prequel.

This novel does a few things well, but not exceptionally well; and, let’s face it, we’ve been here before. It’s fine, but nothing special.

Three stars.

The Planet Wizard, by John Jakes

A dark knightly figure holding a double-bladed weapon in each hand.
Cover art by Jeff Jones.

Jakes’s ode to the sword-and-spaceship adventures of yore continues with The Planet Wizard, published just this year, although given that it’s about the same length as When the Star Kings Die I’m still a bit surprised it was not released as one half of an Ace Double. The Planet Wizard has a more focused narrative, and more than its predecessor it heavily uses the fantasy elements of the pulp material it’s clearly taking cues from; but even so it feels less like a full novel (certainly now that we have behemoths like Dune and Stand on Zanzibar in the field) and more like a somewhat constipated novella. I very much enjoy novellas myself, but not so much when they look bloated and could use a laxative.

Say goodbye to all the characters from that first novel, since here we’re jumping back over a thousand years in time; conversely all the characters featured in The Planet Wizard will have been long and safely dead by the time we get to When the Star Kings Die. Some cataclysmic event has pushed civilization across planets almost back to medieval times, with the planet Pastora having only a semblance of civilized humanity, with its sister planet Lightmark faring even worse. Superstition has taken over the minds of the masses. Swords and daggers have replaced firearms. Instead of spaceships we have “skysleds.” Magus Blackclaw (another name I did not just pull out of a hat) is a middle-aged “wizard” who lives with his beautiful daughter Maya. The problem is that Magus isn’t really a wizard, for magic doesn’t really exist in this world. Whilst on the run the two cross paths with a tenacious swordsman named Robin Dragonard, who as you may guess is an ancestor of the Maxmillion Dragonard of the first novel. Magus gets captured and put on trial, as a fraud; but the High Governors, the pseudo-Christian religious leaders of Pastora, have a proposition for Magus: go to Lightmark and rediscover the fallen commercial house of Easkod, and maybe these charges will be dropped.

Not only does Magus have to deal with the “Brothers” of Easkod, a league of mutated and vicious humans who watch over Easkod City, but the job to exorcize Easkod of its “demons” quickly turns into a race. Philosopher Arko Lantzman wants his hands on Easkod as an alleged treasury of technology that got lost after the cataclysm, while William Catto, a descendant of one of Easkod’s higher-ups (so he claims), wishes to return the house to its former glory. Given that this is a prequel to When the Star Kings Die, and thus knowing the basic history of the star kings themselves, you can guess the broad trajectory of The Planet Wizard. Given also that Robin (who sadly lacks the charisma of his descendant) will contribute to a bloodline that persists over a thousand years later, it’s safe to guess as to his fate. What keeps the tension alive is that unlike some prequels, wherein we already know the fates of the cast (a kind of dramatic irony granted to the reader), we’re unsure if Magus and Maya will come out of this ordeal unscathed. While Robin is a flatter character than Maxmillion, Magus is a rather fun protagonist, being a middle-aged confidence man who nonetheless does care deeply for his daughter, and goes above and beyond to rescue her when she inevitably gets kidnapped.

In a sense The Planet Wizard complements its predecessor, and I’m not sure if Jakes intended one to be the other’s both opposite and equal. Not better, nor worse, but at least different enough to not feel like a repeat. I do recommend both—if you can find copies below the retail price.

Three stars.


by Victoria Silverwolf

Initial Response

Two rip-roaring novels of space adventure fell into my hands recently, both by authors who use two initials instead of first and middle names. (Yes, I notice trivia like that.) Let's take a look.

Escape Into Space, by E. C. Tubb

Prolific British writer Edwin Charles Tubb (E. C. to you!) has been reviewed several times by Galactic Journeyers, including your not-so-humble servant. He usually earns three stars, once in a while a bit more. Will his latest novel earn him another C or C+ on his report card?


Wordiest cover I've ever seen. Pardon the lousy image.
I must have held the cameras at a bad angle.

A project to launch the first starship is under way, funded by the American government. What the boys and girls in Washington D. C. don't realize is that the folks behind the project believe that humanity is doomed to be wiped out by radioactivity. (There are hints that there have been a few limited nuclear wars, as well as a lot of atomic tests.) They plan to escape and find a world to colonize.

Meanwhile, a would-be dictator and his followers plan to stop the starship, by force if necessary. Don't worry about this subplot, because the vessel manages to leave Earth very early in the book, not without a lot of bloodshed.

(This brings up an odd thing about the book. The protagonists are just about as bloodthirsty as the antagonists. They're ready to destroy an entire community in order to launch the starship. Besides that, a lot of the folks aboard were literally kidnapped, forced to be colonists against their will.)

Pretty soon the escapees find a livable planet, which they name (with heavy irony) Eden. In addition to huge, deadly animals, the place has something in the atmosphere that ensures that any woman giving birth and her child will die.

The book has still barely started. A lot more goes on. There's an attempt at mutiny. There's the mysterious disappearance of the first probe to land on the planet, and its equally mysterious reappearance.

The author throws a lot at the reader, often at random. Some subplots don't lead anywhere. For example, we've got an attempt to activate the brain of a dead scientist in order to extract his knowledge. This is just dropped, and doesn't change anything. The whole thing reads as if it were written as quickly as possible, with a completely improvised plot.

Two stars.

Secret of the Sunless World, by C. C. MacApp

American writer C. C. MacApp also has a fast hand at the typewriter, often showing up in If. He's been reviewed a lot here, generally getting three stars. Sometimes less, sometimes more. (Sounds a lot like Tubb, doesn't he?) Will his latest novel be below average, above average, or just plain average?


Cover art by John Berkey.

Wait a minute! I hear you cry. I thought we were talking about MacApp, not this Capps person!

Yep. C. C. MacApp is actually Carroll Mather Capps in real life. If you'll open the book, you'll see it's been copyrighted in the name of C. C. MacApp. Don't ask me why his real name is on the cover.

Anyway, our hero is an Earthman who caught an alien disease somewhere in space. Before killing him, it's going to make him blind. The good news is that some friendly, semi-humanoid aliens are willing to take him to a place where he can be cured, if he undertakes a mission for them. (The aliens recently arrived in the solar system and have the knowledge of faster-than-light travel, but haven't let humans in on the secret.)

His mission is to track down a renegade alien who kidnapped an alien scientist and stole a powerful piece of ancient technology from a species of extraterrestrials who vanished long ago. In order to do this, the aliens take him to a planet without a sun (hence the title) which is able to support life due to its internal heat.

His contact is a multi-tentacled space pirate with two snake-like heads. This roguish character takes him to a hospital, where a spider-like surgeon operates on his eyes.

Wouldn't you know it? There's a catch. The pirate blackmailed the surgeon into doing something to our hero's eyes so that he needs routine treatment with a certain chemical in order to keep his vision. As a side effect, the operation gave him the ability to see clearly in almost total darkness, even able to perceive radiation. This makes him a very useful tool of the pirate on this planet without natural illumination except starlight.

The guy goes along with the pirate, while also spying on him. Meanwhile, the local inhabitants of the planet spy on both him and the pirate. (There's a lot of spying in this book.) The renegade alien and the kidnapped victim show up, as well as other aliens intent on conquest.

I've only given you a synopsis of maybe half the novel. There are plenty of complications in store. The hero winds up on yet another planet, and finds out about the ancient vanished aliens.

The main difference between Tubb's book and this one is that McApp's is much more tightly plotted. There aren't any pointless subplots. As a bonus, the octopus-like pirate is an enjoyable character, usually several steps ahead of the hero. Not the most profound story ever told, but competent entertainment.

Three stars.


by Tonya R. Moore

The Palace of Eternity, by Bob Shaw

The Palace of Eternity is the first of Bob Shaw’s works that I’ve read. Shaw is a man of many talents, having worn a myriad of hats from taxi-driver to structural engineer and aircraft designer. He has added writing fiction to his repertoire with works such as The Two Timers, Night Walk, and his breakout short story, "Light of Other Days."

The Palace of Eternity is set in a distant and turbulent future where humanity has discovered FTL space travel, taken to the stars, and struggles to weather the onslaught of violent attacks from an alien species known as the Pythsyccans.

The protagonist, Mack Tavernor, is a battle-hardened former soldier who had been orphaned when the Pythsyccans devastated his childhood home. Naturally, Tavernor doesn’t view the Pythsyccans in a positive light but he also seems disillusioned enough with humanity to keep his own kind at arm’s length.

The Pythsyccans attack Mnemosyne, an idyllic, almost utopian world dubbed a haven for writers, artists, and other creators of varied talents. Tavernor, naturally, takes up arms against the invading enemy and dies in battle. This is where the story takes an interesting turn.

After shucking this mortal coil, Tavernor encounters the egons, a non-corporeal race of cosmic beings whose very existence is threatened by the proliferation of humanity’s FTL-ramjet technology, the Butterfly Ships. Tavernor, the newest egon, gets another lease on life, inhabiting the body of a newborn human child named Hal. The goal of his mission, to somehow interfere in the war between the humans and Pythsyccans in order to save the endangered egons.

The Palace of Eternity is a fantastic and eloquently written and fast-paced story that fires on all pistons where the things about science fiction that excite me are concerned. And yet…somehow, though, this book failed to move me. For all its eloquence and imaginativeness, I found myself unable to feel strongly about the characters and events of this story. It failed to fill me with a sense of wonder, even amidst the wondrous imagery. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on why.

It wasn’t just that much of the story felt glossed over—and probably should have been explored in greater detail. My main source of dissatisfaction was with the story’s main character’s development.

Mack Tavernor is admirable. He's truly a man's man in all the ways a man ought to be a man. Yet, I could not bring myself to either like or dislike him. At no point did I become emotionally invested in the things that happened to and around him. In short, as a protagonist, Mack falls flat. Lacking the kind of depth and complexity that makes fictional characters feel real in my mind, he is like soda pop that has lost its fizz.

Had Mr. Shaw given The Palace of Eternity the extent of thought and care it deserved, the book could have turned out to be a true phenomenon. It is, indeed, still an excellent and worthy read. Even so, I feel it's almost a tragic waste of the author's very clear intellect and truly wondrous imagination.

4 out of 5


by Jason Sacks

Rockets in Ursa Major, by Fred Hoyle & Geoffrey Hoyle

This is my first encounter with the fiction of the British cosmologist Fred Hoyle. A prominent astronomer with a long tenure at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, Hoyle is perhaps best known for a slew of rather controversial opinions. For instance, Dr. Hoyle has rejected the idea of the Big Bang, and for many years has promoted the idea that life on Earth began in the stars.

Yes, he is an eccentric, but Dr. Hoyle is quite a genius, really; a thoroughly unique figure and someone I would really enjoy meeting.

Dr. Hoyle is also a prominent science fiction writer. In collaboration with his son Geoffrey, he recently authored Rockets in Ursa Major, a thoroughly entertaining, if too brief, science fiction yarn reminiscent of the sort of thing which John W. Campbell might have published. If your kind of space fiction involves brilliant and fearless scientists battling bueaucracy and evil aliens, Rockets in Ursa Major is your kind of book.

I kind of giggled a bit when I realized the main characterof Ursa Major is a deeply accomplished and slightly eccentric scientist and that the book is told in first person – do you look in the mirror a bit too much, Dr. Hoyle?  As the story begins, the genius Dr. Richard Warboys is at a very boring professional conference when surprising news pops up on the telly: a spaceship which has been lost for thirty years has suddenly reappeared, streaming towards Earth’s atmosphere.

Only a brilliant scientist can help the ship land! And only a brilliant scientist can help discover the ship's great secret of invading alien species! And only a brilliant scientist can fly a seeming suicide mission to battle those invaders! And only a brilliant scientist can figure out a complicated way to use solar flares to defeat those invaders! And, you guessed it, only a brilliant scientist can then fly towards the sun, release those solar flares and save our planet.

Are you shocked if I tell you that scientist's name is Dr. Dick Warboys?

So, yes, the plot of Rockets in Ursa Major is pure wish fulfillment: the 54-year-old Dr. Hoyle cast a genius scientist aged in his mid-30s as the man who basically singlehandedly saves Earth. And it’s all rather silly.

Dr. Hoyle

But Rockets is all tremendously fun, too, in that marvelously light-hearted way one might imagine Campbell publishing next to a Heinlein juvie or van Vogt brain-twister. I’m not sure if it’s the influence of the younger Mr. Hoyle the author, but this book moves at a kinetic speed, with almost too many twists and turns in its breathless style (I’m not sure why we needed a sequence in which Dr. Warboys breaks into the research college by stealing a boat and running through tunnels, for instance).

At the end of this book, the Hoyles hint at the possibility of a sequel. I would enjoy another thoroughly light-hearted and thoroughly indulgent visit with Dr. Warboys.

3 stars.

Timescoop, by John Brunner

John Brunner is one of the most prolific science fiction authors of the latter half of this decade, to the extent that it sometimes feels hard to keep up with his work. I’ve always enjoyed Brunner’s work, which often manages to tread a fine line between smart concepts and exciting action. And I was a huge fan of his grand step into literary science fiction, the remarkable Stand on Zanzibar.

This month sees the release of a new Brunner, called Timescoop, but the zines are already reporting the autumn '69 release of another Brunner novel, called The Jagged Orbit [Actually, it's already been released—the Autumn release is a re-release (ed.)]. Based on the blurbs, Orbit sounds like another book of strong literary ambitions.

Timescoop, however, is not a novel of strong literary ambitions. It’s a goof, a novel in which Brunner played with some clever ideas and delivered a quick little satirical piece. Timescoop clears the palette between works of deep seriousness.

Our protagonist here is one Harold Freitas III, a self-obsessed inheritor of his family’s fortunes who is looking to live up to the legacy his father, recently deceased, has left to him.

Fortunately for Freitas, an amazing invention called the Timescoop has been invented, and he has control of it. The Timescoop can bring anything forward in time and allow it to live in the book’s present. Thus the Venus de Milo and Hermes of Praxiteles can exist  – with their original arms – and so can people.

Imagine the Hermes – with arms – in a private house near you!

Looking to make a mark with publicity, Freitas brings forward nine of his ancestors in time and brings them to a family reunion broadcast throughout the galaxy. After all, men of the past were men of great virtue and character and the future world can learn from their insights. But… as one character states prophetically… “How much do we really know about these people? One always looks at the past through rose-colored –"

So Freitas brings forward nine of his ancestors – a steadfast medieval king and a medieval Crusader and a 17th century British merchant and a fire-and-brimstone preacher and a female cowboy, among others – and readies them to face the world and make Freitas famous.

But be careful what you wish for, and especially be careful what you create. Because these ancestors are not the good people Freitas wishes they could be. They are pederasts and nymphomaniacs, gluttons who are covered with filth and who have ancient racist attitudes. One even indulged in the slave trade.

Mr Brunner

Most of this is played for laughs, and it’s easy to imagine someone like Peter Sellers or Alec Guiness playing all the roles in a film adaptation, taking on silly voices while someone like Peter Cook keeps rolling his eyes at the chaos.

But there is also a small element of satire, a small joy at bringing down the rich and pompous and allowing their obsessions to blow up in their faces.

Timescoop is another quick little novel, and at a mere 156 pages it doesn’t wear out its welcome. But this is clearly Brunner relaxing and doing a small warmup for his next literary work.

3 stars.

Light a Match


by George Pritchard

Light a Last Candle, by Vincent King

In my first conversations with the Traveller, I was warned that some of the works I would cover here would be unpleasant. This is my first, and it does not even have the decency to be memorably terrible (Ole Doc Methuselah by L. Ron Hubbard), or bland yet competent (One Against Herculeum by Jerry Sohl). Light A Last Candle is knockoff Heinlein, wrapped in knockoff Doc Smith and shot through with attempts at imitating Bester.

Our main character is one of the few remaining humans on a planet. There’s “Mods” — modified humans — which our main character doesn’t like. Like a low-energy Gully Foyle, he doesn’t like anyone or anything very much. He doesn’t have a name, our main character, nor does “the girl”. She’s lucky, as all other female figures are called Breeders. The character our main character can stand the most is an old, fatherly figure simply referred to as Rutherford. They are the only two original humans, Free Men, left on the planet, which is mostly under the mind control of the Aliens, and their Mod slaves…or are they?

Social commentary is attempted, as are twists, and like in The Devil’s Own by Nora Lofts, the revelations provided to the reader are ultimately shallow. The more they appear, the more insignificant they are revealed to be. The Devil’s Own is in fact a rather poor comparison; since that is a fine book. In truth, the story Light A Last Candle most reminds me of is Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), with its clunky twists, bland characterization, pervasive male chauvinism, and failing to convey travel in a story that is ostensibly all about traveling. Distance is compressed like an accordion, details are skipped over, days pass offhandedly when we could be learning more about anything we are reading. This ultimately becomes a paucity of both showing and telling, which certainly is new to me. Like Star Man’s Son by Andre Norton, the book centers around bringing the reader to encounter different cultures in this alien future. Like The Weirdstone of Brisigamen by Alan Garner, that travel also takes place in tight, dangerous caves. In both of those books, however, distance and time were characters in themselves. You felt the pressure of travel, the hard work the characters put in, their sense of purpose.

The only talent that really appears throughout the work is a pervasive sense of disgust, of fleshy horror that I know William Hope Hodgeson in The Derelict and Arthur Machen in The Three Imposters did better sixty years ago. I think it's this author's first book, but his grouchiness is beyond his years.

I am writing this review as quickly as possible, because after finishing this book less than a half an hour ago, it is rapidly leaving my mind. I have filled this page with references to other works, so that the reader may enjoy books much better than this one.

One star.




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Movies

[July 14, 1969] Odyssey On Two Wheels (Easy Rider)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

I've talked about my inexplicable interest in movies about motorcycle gangs a couple of times before.  Naturally, when I heard about a new biker film that's drawing a lot of attention, I had to take a look.

The fact that it won an award at the prestigious Cannes film festival gave me a hint that this wasn't going to be the usual trashy B movie about guys on choppers getting into fights.

Let's meet our two main characters.  I hesitate to call them heroes, because the first thing we see them do is buy cocaine in Mexico, then sell it to a rich guy in a limousine.  They hide the cash in a plastic tube inside the gas tank of one of the motorcycles.

Peter Fonda, who produced and co-wrote the film, plays Wyatt, often known as Captain America.  He usually plays it cool, not saying much, keeping a calm demeanor most of the time.

Dennis Hopper, who directed and co-wrote the movie, plays Billy.  He's much more emotional, often giggling and playing the clown, sometimes nervous and jumpy.

Once these two have their grub stake, they head out on a journey from Los Angeles to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.  Along the way they meet all kinds of people. 

The first encounter is with a friendly rancher and his family.  So far, everything seems just fine.  You can almost forget that these two are drug dealers.

After riding through some really gorgeous scenery in the American West, often accompanied by groovy rock music, they pick up a hitchhiker.  He's on his way to a hippie commune in the desert.

The place is full of young adults who have dropped out of society.  There are also lots of little kids.  To add to the chaos, there's also a troupe of mimes and other performers.

We see folks sow seeds of grain in what looks like bare ground.  Billy predicts that the commune is doomed to fail, while Wyatt is more optimistic.  After skinny dipping with a couple of young women, they move on.

In some little town they join a parade in progress, just for fun.  That gets them in trouble with the cops.  Thrown in jail for parading without a license, they meet the film's most memorable character.

Jack Nicholson plays the town lawyer, who's in the drunk tank.  You may remember him as the masochistic dental patient in The Little Shop Of Horrors.  He was hilarious in that low budget comedy, and he's as much of a hoot in this role.  I predict he'll continue to steal every film in which he appears as a fine comic actor.

After Nicholson gets the two bikers out of jail, he joins them on their trip to the Big Easy.  It seems he's heard about a fancy bordello in New Orleans and would like to visit the place.  Along the way they try to get a bite to eat at a little diner in some other small town.

The young women present admire them.  They dare each other to ask them for a ride on their bikes.

The men in the diner aren't so friendly.  They openly insult the trio.  Wisely, the three quickly head out the door, refusing to take the women along.  Despite their caution, things don't work out well.  Let's just say that Nicholson won't make it to New Orleans.

Wyatt and Billy wind up at the brothel, where they engage the services of two prostitutes.  As far as I can tell, they don't actually have sex with them.  Instead, they go outside to join the Mardi Gras celebration, then head out to the famous above ground cemetery of the Big Easy.

Among the tombs, the four share a dose of LSD Wyatt picked up from the hitchhiker.  This leads to our mandatory acid trip sequence, making use of all kinds of special effects in an attempt to portray the psychedelic experience.

Those of you who are like me, and rush out to see movies about today's longhaired, drug-using nonconformists (hipsploitation?), may be reminded of The Trip from a couple of years ago.  That one also starred Fonda and Hopper, and has a screenplay credited to Nicholson.  Like Easy Rider, The Trip uses visual distortion to convey the experience of dropping acid.  (Taking LSD, for you squares.)

The film ends in a melodramatic fashion.  Suffice to say that trouble arrives in the form of two guys in a pickup truck.

I said that Fonda and Hopper wrote the film, along with Terry Southern (best known for his work on Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) but I doubt there was much of a script at all.  Much of the action and dialogue seems improvised.  The mood varies, seemingly at random, from peaceful to comic to tragic.

There's not a lot of plot.  Much of the running time consists of the characters riding on their motorcycles with loud music on the soundtrack.  (In particular, the rousing number Born to Be Wild is destined to be played at full volume by lots of people on fast bikes or in fast cars.)

The cinematography, whether it be of desert wilderness, small towns, or the Big Easy, is excellent.  Some may consider Easy Rider to be shapeless, but I found it to be an intriguing portrait of the counterculture in opposition to the mainstream of society.  (See the recent article by my esteemed colleague Kris Vyas-Myall for a more profound discussion of the theme.)

Head out on the highway.

Five stars.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 10, 1969] Sex!  Now That I Have Your Attention . . . (August 1969 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Back In The U.S.S.R.

A few days ago, folks in the Soviet Union must have been surprised to see nudity on their television sets.  Nude scenes from the controversial new play Oh, Calcutta! and photographs of sex magazines appeared on one of the Soviet Central Television networks.

The intent was not to titillate the audience (although that may have been an accidental side effect) but to point out the decadence of American culture.


The Soviet station's logo.  You didn't expect me to show you the nudity, did you?

What does this have to do with the latest issue of Fantastic?  Keep your hat (and other clothing) on and you'll find out.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

As usual, the cover is (ahem) borrowed from a German publication.


The original always looks better.

Editorial, by Ted White

The new editor introduces himself.  He relates how he failed to produce a fancy, expensive magazine called STELLAR Stories of Imagination.  Some of the stories intended for that stillborn publication will appear in Fantastic and Amazing.  He also promises to provide what he calls different stories in the magazines.  We'll see.

No rating.

What's Your Excuse, by Alexis Panshin

Here's a tale that was supposed to appear in STELLAR. A professor plays a trick on a graduate student who is in his late twenties, but who appears to be in his teens.  The student has his own secret up his sleeve.

It's hard to say too much about this brief yarn, which depends entirely on its premise.  Is it different?  Yeah, I guess so.  Is it good?  Well, maybe not.  A trivial oddity.

Two stars.

The Briefing, by Randall Garrett

Another very short story.  The narrator is aboard a spaceship.  He's about to be sent down to a planet in disguise, in order to shorten an impending Dark Ages.

Without giving away anything, let's just say that you may be able to predict the twist ending.  Extra points for being a bit of a dangerous vision, at least.

Three stars.

Emphyrio (Part Two of Two), by Jack Vance

Taking up half the magazine is the conclusion to this new novel. 


Illustrations by Bruce Jones (obviously.)

We first met our hero, Ghyl Tarvoke, with his head literally cut open.  His brain controlled by those holding him prisoner, he was forced to tell the truth.

This led us into a long flashback, from Ghyl's childhood until he decided to run for mayor under the pseudonym of Emphyrio, the name of a semi-legendary hero.

Part Two begins with Ghyl losing the election, but coming in third.  That's enough to draw the attention of the authorities.  Ghyl's father was already in trouble with them, and the situation only gets worse.

After the death of his father, Ghyl agrees to join his friends in a plot to steal a starship from the Lords and Ladies who rule his world.  He makes them promise not to do any killing or kidnapping or pillaging after this single crime.  Don't expect any honor among thieves.

Ghyl winds up leading a group of Lords and Ladies through the wilderness of another planet.  The place is full of dangerous animals and people.


Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

He is eventually captured (leading back to our opening scene of interrogation) and sentenced to exile.  However, there are a lot more adventures ahead, as he discovers the truth about the Lords and Ladies, and about the real Emphyrio.

Last time I said that the novel was very good, but maybe a bit leisurely and episodic.  It turns out that incidents I thought were of little importance have great significance.  I underestimated the intricacy of the author's tightly woven plot. At least I acknowledged his ability to create complex, imaginative worlds and cultures.

Five stars.

On to the reprints!  They all come from old issues of Fantastic.  Apparently the new editor prefers to avoid taking things from Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, which may be a good thing.

Let's Do It For Love, by Robert Bloch

The November/December 1953 issue is the source of this farce.


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

A guy invents some stuff that makes folks love everybody.  The narrator is a public relations agent who tries to promote the wonderful chemical.  Too bad nobody wants universal siblinghood.


Anonymous illustration.

There's a touch of satire, of course, but this is mostly just a silly romp, full of wacky jokes and tomfoolery.  If that's your thing, fine.  The way the story deals with the inventor's shrewish wife may not please too many readers.

Two stars.

To Fit the Crime, by Richard Matheson

This ironic tale comes from the November/December 1952 issue.


Cover art by Barye Phillips.

A curmudgeonly poet insults his relations in creative ways as he lies dying.  In the afterlife, he faces an appropriate fate.


Illustration by David Stone.

There's not much to this except for the poet's way with words.  The unpleasant fellow's version of perdition may cause some amusement.

Two stars.

The Star Dummy, by Anthony Boucher

The Fall 1952 issue provides this lighthearted story.


Cover art by Leo Summers.

A ventriloquist imagines that his dummy talks to him.  Oddly, that's not really what the story is about.  It actually deals with a goofy-looking alien, newly arrived on Earth, looking for his vanished mate.  The extraterrestrial and the ventriloquist wind up helping each other.


Illustration by Tom Beecham.

This is mostly a comedy, of a very gentle sort.  One unusual aspect of the story is that it also deals with the ventriloquist's religious faith.  There's some discussion of science fiction itself as well.

Slightly eccentric, moderately entertaining.

Three stars.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Ted White

Leiber discusses three new novels that add explicit sex to science fiction plots.  (I told you I'd get to that!) For the record, the trio consists of The Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer, The Endless Orgy by Richard E. Geis, and Season of the Witch by Hank Stine.  Leiber gives them mixed reviews, but welcomes the new frankness with which they describe sexual behavior.

The editor offers a long, glowing review of Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny.  I liked it, too.

No rating.

The Hungry, by Robert Sheckley

Back to reprints.  This one comes from June 1954 issue.


Cover art by Ernest Schroeder.

A malevolent thing preys upon the negative emotions and physical suffering of a young married couple.  Only the baby of the family and the pet cat can see it.  The infant does what it can to help.


Illustration by Sanford Kossin.

Told from the viewpoint of the baby, this is an offbeat little story.  Minor, but nicely done.

Three stars.

The Worth of a Man,by Henry Slesar

The June 1959 issue supplies this grim tale.


Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

A veteran of a future war has much of his body replaced with metal parts.  He talks to a psychiatrist about his sense that somebody is out to hurt him.

Of course, his supposed paranoia is more than a delusion.  What happens to him is disturbing, which is apparently the author's intent.  I found it to be a powerful and all-too-plausible chiller.

Four stars.

Fantasy Fandom, by Ted White and Bill Meyers

I wasn't even going to discuss, let alone rate, this new column from the editor, in which he intends to reprint writings from fanzines.  However, the first one knocked me out.

First published in Void, White's own fanzine, the essay by Meyers relates the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien to the author's childhood.  It's a thoughtful, elegantly written piece, not so much about Tolkien as it is about the way that our early years influence how we react to literature.

I may be prejudiced in its favor, because Meyers grew up in the Chattanooga area, where I currently reside.

Five stars.

The Naked Truth

That was a very mixed bag of an issue.  One excellent novel, one excellent essay, stories old and new ranging from below average to above average.  You might want to skip some of the lesser pieces and go see a play instead.


The cast of Oh, Calcutta! You didn't expect me to show you the nudity, did you?

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Movies

[June 18, 1969] Sleazy Riders (The Sidehackers and Satan's Sadists)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

I've spoken before about my inexplicable interest in cheap, trashy movies about motorcycle gangs.  Two more films in this genre arrived this month.  Hop on the back of my chopper and let's take a ride into the wild world of weirdos on wheels.

The Sidehackers

The opening credits are odd.  The image is reduced to a tiny part of the screen, surrounded by black.


So is it The Sidehackers or The Side Hackers?

My sources in the movie biz tell me that this thing was originally called Five the Hard Way, which is also the name of the song we hear during the credits.  My guess is that they had to chop up the opening to squeeze in the new title.

Anyway, we soon meet a pair of young lovers as they frolic in the woods and fields.  Boy pushing girl in a swing, both of them running through flowers in slow motion, etc.  Corny stuff.


Diane McBain as Rita.  She was in The Mini-skirt Mob, too.


Ross Hagen as Rommell.  He was in The Hellcats AND The Mini-Skirt Mob!

We meet Rommell's married buddy, who tells him all about the wonders of matrimonial bliss.  This romantic domestic drama is interrupted by the arrival of a guy who makes a living by performing stunts on a motorcycle.  (We never actually see this.) He's accompanied by his girlfriend and his gang.


Claire Polan as Paisley and Michael Pataki as J. C.

Fans of Star Trek may recognize Pataki. (Hint: It should be hauled away AS garbage!)

Then we get some sidehacking.  Oh, you don't what that is?  Well, it's a sort of motorcycle racing in which a guy is hanging off the side of the bike on something like an open metal cage.  Don't worry, this has nothing at all to do with the plot, and we'll never see it again.


Sidehacking!

The plot gets going when the sadistic J. C. beats up Paisley, who then tries to seduce Rommell.  He's a one-woman kind of guy, so he rebuffs her.  In retaliation, she tears her clothes and tells J. C. that Rommell attacked her.

This sudden change in mood from romance and racing to violence is jarring.  Believe me, it gets worse.

J. C. and his goons beat Rommell savagely.  Much more shocking, they rape and kill Rita.  After some time goes by, Rommell assembles a crew and sets out for revenge.  Don't expect a happy ending.

Fans of action movies will be disappointed by how the film slows down to a crawl until we get to the final battle.  Pataki chews the scenery as the psychotic J. C., and everybody else is pretty bland.  (One of Rommell's army — that's probably why he's named for an infamous Nazi general, even though he's supposed to be, more or less, the good guy — is named Crapout.  He's our wildly inappropriate comedy relief, has a thick Southern accent, and is really annoying.)

One star for an odd combination of boredom and nastiness.  Cut out the most disturbing scenes and you might have something worth mocking with some buddies.

Satan's Sadists

This one jumps right into the vile stuff.  Before the opening credits, a motorcycle gang comes across a man and woman.  They rape the woman, then kill both of them.  This is just a hint of what's to follow.


The opening credits feature some interesting abstract animation, and may be the best thing in the film.

A married couple picks up a hitchhiker in the middle of nowhere.  He just got out of the Marine Corps after serving in Vietnam.  They wind up at a little restaurant/gas station in the desert.


From left to right, the waitress who is our heroine; the ex-Marine who is our hero; and the married couple.  Not shown is the owner of the place.

The motorcycle gang shows up and immediately starts making trouble.  The leader is a guy named Anchor.  His girlfriend (whom he abuses as much as J. C. did Paisley) is Gina. 

The other hoodlums each have some kind of gimmick.  One wears a hearing aid, one takes LSD all the time, one has only one eye, one is big and strong, and one is an Indian.  (The last is nicknamed Firewater, and is probably the least evil of the gang.  Naturally, he's played by a non-Indian, John "Bud" Cardos, a pretty well-known stuntman of Greek ancestry.)


Russ Tamblyn as Anchor.  You may remember him from lots of movies, such as West Side Story and The Haunting.

[Are you sure that's not Arte Johnson? He looks 'very interesting'. (Ed.)]


Regina Carrol as Gina.  She's married to Al Adamson, the director.  He also recently gave us Blood of Dracula's Castle.

The gang takes everybody prisoner.  All but two of them haul the married couple and the guy who owns the diner outside.  They rape the woman then kill all three of them.

Inside the place, the ex-Marine manages to overpower the two gang members left to guard them, killing both.  He and the waitress escape via dune buggy, but the vehicle soon breaks down.  It all leads up to a battle in the desert.

(As if this weren't horrible enough, the big chase scene is interrupted when the gang finds three young women on a geology field trip.  Of course, they torment, rape, and kill them.  This is when Firewater objects to the murders, proving that he's still got a tiny bit of decency hidden deep inside.  His disagreement with Anchor leads to a big fight scene, made more effective by the experience of stuntman Cardos.)

Boy, this is nasty stuff.  It definitely delivers all the shocks it promises, unlike the occasionally tepid The Sidehackers.  It's a lot more coherent than Blood of Dracula's Castle, or Blood of Ghastly Horror, another offering from Al Adamson.  For those reasons, I have to give it two stars.

After this double feature, it's time to take a long, hot shower.  Let's hope future motorcycle movies won't be quite so slimy.


Coming soon!  As the poster indicates, it's already been shown at the famous Cannes film festival.  Let's hope it's better than these two films.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 16, 1969] The Voyage to Net a Dolphin (June 1969 Galactoscope)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Whodunit?

As far as I know, there aren't a lot of science fiction mystery novels out there. The most famous, of course, are Isaac Asimov's tales of police detective Elijah Bailey and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. The Caves of Steel (1953) and The Naked Sun (1956) are classics in this specific combination of genres.

A new book continues the tradition of a detective investigating a murder case in the far future. Will it be up to the level of the Good Doctor's predecessors? Let's find out.

Deathstar Voyage, by Ian Wallace


Cover art by Richard Powers

Murder On The Altair Express

The novel takes place aboard a luxury starship on its way from Earth to Altair. On board is police lieutenant/doctor of psychology Claudine St. Cyr. Her job is to make sure that the king of a planet orbiting Altair gets home safely. This seems like an easy assignment, as the king claims that everybody on his world loves him. It turns out this isn't quite true.

After foiling an assassination attempt on the king, things start to go very badly indeed. Somebody has sabotaged the gizmo that allows the starship to travel faster than light. This threatens to make the whole darn thing blow up, killing hundreds of passengers and crew.

As if that weren't enough, both the captain and the second in command die in mysterious ways. Can St. Cyr solve the crime and save the ship?

Suspects? We've got plenty of 'em. Just about everybody we meet has some kind of secret, from the king to a shopkeeper who sells St. Cyr a wristwatch with a second hand that runs backwards.

Notable among the possible killers are a wild-eyed religious fanatic and a guy with telekinetic powers. It takes a while for the plot to get going, but towards the end the author throws in a ton of twists and turns.

As a murder mystery, it generally plays fair with the reader. There are lots of clues scattered here and there, from a mysterious message left near the sabotaged gizmo to the aroma of a certain brand of cigar. My one quibble with the whodunit plot is that some of the twists depend on people concealing information from St. Cyr (and the reader) for pretty weak reasons.

As science fiction, well, that's a different matter. There's a long discussion of the way the starship gizmo works that is pure doubletalk. We also learn a lot about the way telekinetic powers work; more than I wanted to know, really. Despite the far future setting, it feels more like we're aboard the Queen Mary during the golden age of cruise ships.

A word about St. Cyr as a character. She's highly skilled as a detective and as a psychologist. She is also very beautiful, and just about every male character in the novel falls madly in love with her. She isn't afraid to use her feminine wiles to get information out of these besotted fellows, and this gets to be a bit much at times.

Overall, a light piece of entertainment that passes the time pleasantly, but will fade from memory as soon as you reach the last page.

Three stars.

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

The Nets of Space, by Emil Petaja

I've only recently discovered Petaja, a Finnish-extraction author with a fantastical sense imbued in his writing and a penchant for incorporating themes from various mythologies. He's sort of a rip-roaring version of Thomas Burnett Swann, and I always enjoy (though not necessarily love) his work. His latest is no exception.


Cover art by Paul Lehr

The opening is a grabber: Don Quick is a technician bounced from the Alpha Centauri expedition at the last minute. The first scene of the book is a dream sequence in which he is in an enormous cocktail glass with dozens of other naked humans, glazed in brine, and they are one-by-one pulled out and dipped in sauce before being eaten by giant alien crabs.

When he awakens, Don finds himself back on Earth and recalls that he has been a mental patient for months. Is his dream a kind of clairvoyance? Or merely a kind of shell shock from the time he inhaled hyperspatial gas during a pre-launch accident involving the Centaur III? And why, when he falls asleep, does the dream continue sequentially and seem to portend an extraterrestrial invasion of the Earth?

Cervantes' classic Don Quixote figures strongly in this book; it is the external influence Petaja has chosen for his latest adventure. The whole thing is lighthearted enough that you're never too worried about Earth's possible impending disaster. Indeed, The Nets of Space is essentially a comic book in literary form—never mind the science or consistency. But it reads quickly: I finished it on a single flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka.

3.5 stars


by Jason Sacks

The Day of the Dolphin, by Robert Merle

The Day of the Dolphin is a work of fiction of great contradictions: it’s lighthearted and downbeat, escapist and embedded in the world; engaged in technological innovation and driven by characters; and written in manners both straightforward and elliptical.

If there ever was a book to drive a reader crazy, it’s this one.

At the heart of Robert Merle’s new novel is a fascinating concept. We all know that dolphins are smart animals. As this book reminds us, the brain size and complexity of the average dolphin is roughly analogous to those of a human brain. So what if a wise researcher was able to talk to dolphins in their language and teach dolphins to talk to us in ours? How would those dolphins navigate their learning, how would their approaches to the world be different from those of humans, and what would make those majestic creatures truly happy?

When Merle explores those ideas, The Day of the Dolphin leaps ecstatically like a dolphin leaping out of the water to shoot a basketball through a hoop. There’s a thrilling element of discovery as a secret government laboratory of scientists patiently work with a young dolphin to teach him a few words of English. When he starts to learn English, the scientists provide that dolphin a mate. And the courtship and love affair between the dolphin couple is fascinating and sweet and surprisingly moving. My favorite parts of the novel were the sections in which Merle shows the creatures change each other, drive their relationships and truly build a bond between themselves and the scientists who care for them.

But if a scientific agency is driving this research, you know there has to be some geopolitics involved, and of course there is. In fact, one character notes in a clever bit of metafictional dialogue the moment when the plot takes on Bond or Flint elements. There are human romances inside the research group. But there is also espionage, and secret taping, and a “dolphin gap” argument with the Soviets, and it is to sigh.

Mr. Merle

Because to me, all those moments of connection to the real world take away the most intriguing aspects of the book. The book pivots at its midpoint. At that point. The book swiftly changes from an intellectually absorbing exploration of science into an often dull, often by-the-numbers tale of espionage and intrigue. I predicted around page 20 that the dolphins would be sent on the mission they go on towards the end of this novel, and the impact of those actions were equally as obvious.

Merle writes much of this book in a kaleidoscopical style, full of long paragraphs with stream-of-consciousness approaches which kind of wander and meander from first person to third person, from grounded reality to revelations of emotion and often to outright gibberish. At first this style is thrilling or at least intriguing, but when Merle breaks up that approach with excerpts from letters or interviews conducted by government agencies, that break often feels like a necessary breath of fresh air. I kept finding my mind drifting as the characters’ minds drifted, ungrounded in reality or in this story but instead of my own thoughts about dolphins or work or the Miami Dolphins of the NFL.

It sounds like I hated this book but in truth I enjoyed The Day of the Dolphin for its brazen oddness and for Merle’s obvious passion for both the way he presents his story and the story itself. The more I read about them in this book, the more I wanted to read about our aquatic friends. I now have a nice stack of library books on my desk about Cetaceans because I find that species so interesting. I just wish The Day of the Dolphin had a bit more dolphin and a bit less human in its pages.

3.5 stars



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 16, 1969] Strange Dreams (May Galactoscope)

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[We've got another wonderful haul of books for you this month, many of which are well worth you're time.  Be sure to read on 'til the end—you'll definitely catch the reading bug!]


By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith by Josephine Saxton

The Heiros Gamos of Sam and An Smith Doubleday hardcover.

Josephine Saxton is British author so, of course, her first book is about apocalypses and sexual awakening. However, it's a particularly skilled one.

The story: an unnamed teenage boy is wandering across the desolated British landscape alone, after an unexplained event has killed off all the other people. He comes across a baby girl and decides to bring her up. Together they try to understand the world that was left behind and what it means to be an adult.

You might assume this is either the usual “New Adam and Eve” story, or some kind of shock piece. However, Saxton manages to negotiate between these two paths skillfully. She describes the sexual emergences of both of them in matter-of-fact terms, which grounds the story within the dream-like atmosphere they inhabit.

As we go through, their comprehension of the world changes from child-like to a clear understanding of the facts of life. Even though their eventual relations could come across as disturbing given the age difference between the two, and the fact The Boy brought her up like a little sister, Saxton manages to largely negate this. She is able to show the passage of time well and, more importantly, give us the thought processes of both our leads to show they have free-will and are fully in control of their choices. For example:

She studied this for some time, and came to the conclusion that this was a drawing of a penis, and at what she had read and seen, she became hot all over, and in an excitable state.

There is also a clear sense throughout the text about the importance of symbolism. The Boy is constantly dismissing the importance of words and symbols but The Girl slowly shows him that deeper meaning is important.

For me, the key message that is brought out here is that they need to wipe away the sins of the past. The things that brought this world into being. When The Girl is bathing she sings about washing away her troubles in the River Jordan. And, when she gives birth, she insists on doing it in a place of death “to eradicate the source of evil here”. There is a central concept that simply them growing up and continuing the human race is not enough. Things have to change.

I picked up this novel as I knew it was related to The Consciousness Machine, one of my favourite novellas of last year. The connection raises significant questions. However, to discuss this requires mentions of later revelations of both works. As such, if you want to avoid knowing these facts, please feel free to skip to the next review.

As the name suggests, the novella is about a machine, WAWWAR, that can take the images of the unconscious mind and display them on a screen. The technician Zona is trying to decipher the meaning of The Boy and The Girl’s journey. There is also another piece of material relating to the hunt for a wild animal. These secondary and tertiary narratives are completely absent from the novel, which only contains The Boy and Girl’s tale in its totality.

As such, the conclusion of the book version is not about Zona learning the nature of the Animus, but The Boy, The Girl and The Baby deciding it is time to go home. So, they get on a bus, pay the conductor and go back to a fully furnished suburban house. The Girl then decides to get an early night as there is nothing on television on Tuesdays and puts the baby to sleep.

Now, a simple explanation for this could be we are literally seeing the film that was recorded by the WAWWAR. However, no hint of that is given and I think that is too large a leap to expect the average reader to make.

But to read it purely as a science fiction tale causes just as many problems. This sharp turn is nowhere hinted at in the text and in fact contradicts several core points created. Even if you could somehow accept the idea that The Boy went to live in a town that has been uninhabited, how does he have a house? How has he never seen a fully grown adult woman before? How does The Girl know about contemporary television schedules? How is the home not only still available to them after decades away, but with the utilities on?

So, what are we to make of this strange choice? There is no reason I could imagine that would force Saxton to expunge this frame from the longer book form. And the novel is indeed a good bit more explicit than the novella. So, a choice we must assume it is.

I like to believe it is opening us up to the freedom to understand the text in our own way. Zona’s meta-commentary on the events is merely one way of understanding a dream. You could also just as easily contend that the explosion in the chemist, shortly before they leave the town of Thingy, actually killed them all, suburbia representing the afterlife and Zona being like the angels in 40s cinema, discussing their existence.

Or, perhaps, the Town of Thingy really does exist and is a time displaced retreat. Something akin to Hawksbill Station. Where couples facing marital difficulties can be de-aged, grow-up together, and learn how to become one unit again, before being brought back at the same moment they left. And then The Consciousness Machine is actually just a dream The Girl has after she goes to bed.

I don’t know what Saxton intended, but I also do not think it matters. The journey and feel of the novel is excellent and how you choose to view it is just as valid as those watching the WAWWAR.

A high four stars

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

None But Man, by Gordon R. Dickson

Humanity has made its first steps into interstellar space, settling the worlds of the Pleiades. In so doing, they have brushed across the domain of the mysterious Moldaug—a frustratingly humanoid but not quite human alien race with a fleet strength comparably to Terra's. After decades of peaceful coexistence, the Moldaug suddenly make claim to all the Pleiades. The Old Worlds of Earth, Mars, and Venus, reeling from a kind of space phobia, offer to relinquish their own claims to the Frontier. This only makes things worse for two reasons: 1) the Moldaug inexplicably find the offer offensive, and 2) the Frontier is not Earth's to give, for they had fought and won independence a dozen years prior! (For more on this story, see the novelette Hilifter.)


by Jack Gaughan (and cribbed from the novelization of Three Worlds to Conquer, as I learned from my friend, Joachim Boaz—the art makes much more sense for the original title)

Enter Cully O'Rourke When, the man most responsible for the Frontier's independence. When the veteran spacejacker returns to Earth to treat with the Old World's government, he is thrown into a floating prison with hundreds of other Frontiersmen, rendered impotent to cause more mischief. But in that very prison, he learns from an imprisoned anthropologist the explosive secret that foretells Armageddon between humans and the Moldaug…unless someone can bring the two races into true understanding.

Thus begins a tale that involves Cully's jailbreak, piracy on high space, and political turmoil in three realms.

This is a frustrating book because it has such potential, and there are many things to like in it. The gripping beginning, the well-realized triune nature of the Moldaug (each being-unit comprises three tri-bonded individuals), the subtle difference in morality between the two species (Right/not-Right vs. Respectable/not-Respectable—though one could argue that this is a thinly guised variation of the Japanese concept of "Face"), the rich setting, the final confrontation between Cully and the Moldaug Admiral Ruhn…these are all compelling.

But Dickson falls into the issues he had with his Dorsai series: one mastermind (our hero) knows every move and countermove, and everything breaks his way. As a result, the only drama comes in seeing the master plan unfold, not how said hero responds to adversity. In stories like this, one can see the author laying out the stepping stones, guiding a path so that the protagonist never makes a misstep.

The other issue is the virtual absence of women. I know people have given me grief for harping on this issue since I started this 'zine in 1958, but come on, people—it's 1969. We have women leading Israel and India. On Star Trek, a third of the crew of the Enterprise is female. A few years back, Rydra Wong led a crew of misfits to save the galaxy. So when the only human female character in all of the Frontier and the Old Worlds serves just to be a romantic foil (and to be ignored at the one juncture that she has critical information!), and she is the sole woman amongst a cast of dozens of men, the world Dickson builds starts to feel a little hollow.

A lesser work of Gordy's. Three stars.

by Brian Collins

News from Elsewhere, by Edmund Cooper

Edmund Cooper is a British writer who has been active since the '50s, and up until recently I've not had the pleasure to read any of his work. He put out a novel just a month or two ago, and now here he is again, with a short collection called News from Elsewhere, featuring eight stories, only one of which is original to the collection. It was published in Britain last year but only just now got an American edition, courtesy of Berkley Medallion. Overall it's a mixed bag, since it looks like Cooper likes to repeat himself (there are three or four stories here about space expeditions), but the strongest material does make me curious for more. Let's take a look.

Berkley Medallion paperback cover for News from Elsewhere, featuring a rocket ship.
Cover art by Frank Kelly Freas.

The Menhir

This is the only story to be first published in News from Elsewhere, and it’s… fine. It’s basically a fable, set in an icy and desolate world, about a young woman and her infant son as they travel with “the People of the Spur,” on a religious pilgrimage. The problem is that the woman’s son is a half-breed, a child-by-rape whose father is a “Changeling,” of a fellow humanoid race that whose members have hairy and thorny ridges on their backs. The woman tries to keep her son’s racial status a secret, but in trying to evade her people she literally falls into a chasm—and certain death. Cooper’s style here is almost childlike; there is barely any dialogue, and by the end it becomes clear what message we’re supposed to take from what is admittedly a harrowing adventure narrative. Cooper also saves the answer to the question “Is this science fiction or fantasy?” for the end, although I’m not sure why he treats it like a twist.

Three stars.

M 81: Ursa Major

Fantastic Universe cover by Frank Kelly Freas, featuring some antenna-like machine.
Cover art by Frank Kelly Freas.

We jump from the newest story to one of the oldest, first published as “The End of the Journey” in the February 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe. “M 81: Ursa Major” is a space opera that asks a rather troubling question: “How do we know when we’re dead?” Or, to phrase it less threateningly: “How can we tell the difference, subjectively speaking, between being dead and being unconscious?” An experimental ship uses scientific mumbo jumbo to skirt the fact that it’s impossible to travel at the speed of light. The results are tragic, but also very strange—not least for the deeply jaded captain, who has a hunch that things will go wrong indeed. This is a story with a loose plot and only one genuine character to speak of, but it’s anchored by a strong idea. It’s the kind of story that was commonplace a decade and a half ago, but which now strikes me as a bit refreshing. I almost feel nostalgic about this sort of thing.

Four stars, but I understand if someone reads it and is not as impressed.

The Enlightened Ones

This one originally appeared in Cooper’s first collection, Tomorrow’s Gift. It’s the longest in the collection, and frankly, I’m not sure the length was justified. Long story short, a team of space explorers makes first contact with a race of hominids, who at first seem like primitive humans but who turn out to have a major advantage over the humans—only the humans are too concerned with what to do with the hominids at first to notice anything amiss. It’s a trite premise, even by the standards of a decade ago, that’s elevated by Cooper’s acute pessimism with regards to the notion of human supremacy. In this distant future it’s said that the Eskimos, Polynesians, and some other indigenous groups on Earth have been driven to extinction. Certainly the Campbellian protagonists do not come off well for the most part, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that “The Enlightened Ones” (such an immediately ironic title) was printed in Fantastic Universe and not Astounding/Analog.

Three stars.

Judgment Day

First published in the 1963 collection Tomorrow Came, which may sound unfamiliar because it never got an American printing. “Judgment Day” is the most British-sounding of the lot so far, to the point where it reads like the late John Wyndham at a hefty discount. At first it doesn’t even register as SF. The narrator and his wife are in the park one day when people around them start having violent seizures—too many in one place for this to be a random occurrence. Soon the narrator’s wife falls victim as well, and for much of the story we may be wondering about not just the cause, but the context for all this. What does any of this mean? The narrator meets a soldier who promptly feeds him enough information to stun an elephant, the result being that we’re told about something important that basically happens outside the confines of the page and which has already come to an end by the time the narrator hears about it. It’s rather inelegant, never mind that the SFnal element already feels outdated somehow.

Two stars.

The Intruders

Fantastic Universe cover by Virgil Finlay, featuring a group of aliens around a flattened globe.
Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

This one first appeared as “Intruders on the Moon” in the April 1957 issue of Fantastic Universe. Yes, this surely does read like an SF adventure story from a dozen years ago. A team of explorers land on our moon to investigate the massive crater that is Tycho, for mining as well as the slim possibility of discovering intelligent life. (Something I wish to make clear at this point is that Cooper’s characters are not usually “characters” in the Shakespearian sense; they do not tend to have distinguishable personalities.) Miraculously, however, one of the crew discovers footprints in the sand near Tycho—rather large footprints with very long strides, indeed too much to be a human’s. The explorers go looking for this “Man Friday” of theirs, but they soon learn to regret it. “The Intruders” is pretty straightforward for how long it is, and while its quaint vision of man’s landing on the moon would have been acceptable last decade, I can’t imagine there being much interest in a story of its sort now.

Two stars.

The Butterflies

One of Cooper’s earliest stories, and a hand-me-down from Tomorrow’s Gift. A team of space explorers (oh God, not again) lands on “Planet Five,” where there doesn’t seem to be any organic life—save for a species of butterfly. The butterflies have a power over the human explorers they remain unaware of until it’s too late. But it’s not all bad: the explorers also have with them a smartass robot named Whizbang, who emerges as the story’s single genuine character. The autonomous robot comes off more human than the actual humans, although this may be Cooper’s intention, as he uses this disparity at the end of the story to somewhat chilling effect. I’m sensing repetition in the story selection, but I do tepidly recommend this one. If nothing else it comes close to “M 81: Ursa Major” in conveying Cooper’s thesis on the strenuous nature between human rationality and things in our universe which may be beyond human understanding.

A strong three stars.

The Lizard of Woz

Fantastic Universe cover by Virgil Finlay, featuring a couple of robots at a bus stop.
Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

This one first appeared in the August 1958 issue of Fantastic Universe, and it’s the crown jewel of the collection. “The Lizard of Woz,” aside from having an incredible title, is different from the others in that it is an outright comedy (albeit of a morbid hue), but it also is told from an alien’s perspective. Ynky is a member of a highly advanced race of alien lizards, who has been sent to Earth so as to determine if it is fit for “fumigation,” i.e., genocide on a planetary scale. The people Ynky comes into contact with (an American, then a Russian, then a third I would prefer to keep a secret) are caricatures, which is all well and good. Cooper pokes fun at both sides of the Iron Curtain, but overall this is a story about the absurdity of the notion of racial supremacy. We’re told constantly that the lizards of Woz are a superior race, yet they also have slave labor and are casually murderous with other sentient races, not to mention Ynky himself is rather slow-witted. Since this is a comedy, and a pretty silly one to boot, some people will be irritated by the antics, but I laughed several times over the span of its mere ten pages.

It’s ridiculous. I love it. Five stars.

Welcome Home

Finally we have “Welcome Home,” which first appeared in Tomorrow Came and so this marks its first American appearance. Looking back at that time, it seems now like the early ‘60s were simply an extension (or the semi-stale leftovers) of the ‘50s, at least with regards to SF, because this story reads as a few years older than it is. A team of explorers (for the last time, we swear it) land on Mars, which is suspected of possibly hosting life, but if so life on Mars would be far down on the evolutionary ladder. As it turns out, a mysterious pyramid, a sophisticated structure, has drawn the explorers’ attention. This is a first-contact story—of a sort. The twist, which I won’t say here (although you can safely guess it), seemed oddly familiar to me. As with a few other stories in the collection, “Welcome Home” is about the conflict between the West and the Soviets, although it’s not of a ham-fisted sort. It’s fine, but nothing special or surprising.

Three stars.


by Jason Sacks

The Sky is Filled with Ships by Richard C. Meredith

It's the year 979 of the Federation, or the year 3493 in the old calendar. Captain Robert T. Janas of the Solar Trading Company, Terran by birth and starman by occupation, is journeying back to his home planet at a time Terra is in great peril.

The Federation, long bloated and often brutal, is facing a massive rebellion among its vast and angry colonies. A truly titanic armada of thousands of warships from hundreds of solar systems is streaming to Earth via subspace wormholes to gain freedom for the colonies. Janas knows the defense of his home planet will be a futile gesture. There is no possible way even the enormous Terran space fleet can overcome the overwhelming odds and passions of the furious rebels and their massively armed fleet.

Janas knows, too, that a victory by the rebels will spiral mankind down to a new dark ages, just as brutal and destructive as that of Europe after the fall of Rome. Only Janas has the insight and plan to preserve a smidgen of the wisdom — not by saving Terra but by making the Solar Trading Company one of the few institutions to survive and preserve galactic knowledge.

I'm not familiar with the fiction of Richard C. Meredith, but I'm curious to read more by him based on this book. I was pretty intrigued by lead character Janas, who has a nice kind of fish-out-of-water feel to him as he wanders around Earth. That alienation presents a clever, illuminating aspect of the character. I enjoyed having a protagonist who is both a highly self-assured man and who also feels uncomfortable at times due to certain aspects of Earth's culture.

For instance, there's a slightly poignant feel to his annoyance at Earth fashions- like a colonial returned to his home only to find it dramatically different from the place he left. Janas is a stiff military man on a planet where the men dress like harlequins and the women wear fashions which leave them bare-breasted and proud.

But all that discomfort contrasts with the depiction of Janas as a man of action. Like a classic sci-fi hero, Janas brings his own plans and friends to the office of Al Franken, leader of the STC but too blinded by his own hubris to understand he is the problem. Captain Janas literally drags Franken into a plot which will ensure the fall of the ruling Franken family and the survival of Janas's beloved  STC.

Meredith adroitly alternates chapters of this palace intrigue with scenes of the armada flying through subspace and showing the massive devastation which the rebel fleet creates on its journey. Those invasion scenes have a breathless, telegraphical quality to them which convey a massive sense of urgency.

As the book winds up, Meredith also does a clever thing: in late chapters he shows brief snippets of events all around the planet Earth as the reality of the Terran apocalypse become clear. In East Asia an angry mob kills their governor and his whole family; in Australia, a cult climb a mountain and await their ends; a rural farmer stands at his barn door, shotgun in hand, waiting to do his small part.

Mr Meredith in his younger days

Mr. Meredith, just over the age of 30, has created a clever and fun novel. There are points in which The Sky is Filled with Ships reads like a pretty standard potboiler sci-fi actioner, with square-chinned heroes fighting for noble causes. In that way it feels a bit of a throwback to the golden John W. Campbell days.

But I appreciated how the actions of our hero were focused on preserving society, which gave him a nobility which stood out on the page. As well, the scenes of oncoming invasion are exciting and had me quickly turning the pages.

I finished this relatively slim novel in one night. And though Meredith is no John Brunner, Philip K. Dick, or Harlan Ellison, he makes no effort to create literary science fiction with this novel. The Sky is Filled with Ships achieves what Meredith set out to create: an intriguing, exciting novel which will make me seek out some of his shorter fiction while I wait for the next thrilling novel by him.

3½ stars.


by Victoria Silverwolf

The Four-Gated City, by Doris Lessing


Cover art by Janet Halverson.

This is the fifth in a series of novels under the collective title of Children of Violence. The others are Martha Quest (1952), A Proper Marriage (1954), A Ripple from the Storm (1958), and Landlocked (1965). I haven't read the others.

A little research reveals that they all deal with Martha, the child of British parents working on a farm in colonial Africa. She's born in about 1920. The four novels all take place in southern Africa. As a teenager, Martha leaves home to work in a city. As the years go by, she is married and divorced and married again. She has a daughter whom she leaves in the care of others. She becomes involved in leftwing politics.

None of the earlier books have speculative elements. The newest one is different. At well over six hundred pages, it's also roughly twice as long as any of the previous volumes.

The sheer length and the very large number of characters and incidents make it difficult to offer a brief summary. I'll do what I can. Keep in mind that I'm leaving out the vast majority of the content of this massive novel.

Martha is now in London in about 1950. She gets a job as a secretary/housekeeper for a man who is married to a woman who is in and out of mental hospitals. She winds up living in the same household for many years, becoming involved with many other members of his family and their acquaintances.

Just to pick one example out of dozens, the man's brother is a scientist who defects to the Soviet Union. He leaves behind his wife and young son. The woman is a Jewish refugee from the Holocaust. When her husband leaves, she kills herself.

That's enough of a dramatic plot for a complete novel, but it only takes up a small portion of the book. Rather than attempt to relate any other events of equal importance, let me try to give you some idea of what the novel is like as a whole. Taking my inspiration from its title, I'll consider it as four different kinds of book in one.

Psychological Novel

Much of the text consists of Martha's interior monologues. She often looks at herself as if she were an outsider. At times, she withdraws from the rest of the world and spends time in a meditative, introspective state.

Novel of Character

Although Martha is the most important character, we also spend a great deal of time with lots of other people. In one section, the point of view shifts to Martha's elderly mother, who leaves Africa in order to visit her daughter. All the secondary characters are described in detail. There are so many of them that I sometimes lost track of who was related to whom. A dramatis personae for this book would take up several pages.

Social Novel

A large number of social and political issues come up in the novel. Just off the top of my head, these include Communism and anti-Communism, psychiatry, post-war austerity evolving into 1960's hedonism, the youth movement, the relationship between the sexes, the media, the environment, the military, espionage, homosexuality, colonialism and anti-colonialism, and economics. At times the novel resembles a series of debates.

Science Fiction Novel

You were wondering when I'd get to that! They take a while to show up, but speculative themes eventually make an appearance. The novel suggests that people diagnosed as schizophrenic are actually clairvoyant and telepathic. They are treated as mentally ill because they have visions and hear voices.

More to the point, the book's lengthy appendix consists of documents, mostly letters from Martha and other characters, describing how the United Kingdom and other parts of the world are devastated by what seems to be a combination of pollution, accidental release of nerve gas, plague, and radiation from nuclear weapons. Martha ends up with a small number of survivors on a tiny island. In true science fiction fashion, children born there have highly developed psychic powers.

Giving this book a rating is very difficult. Some people are going to hate it, and find slogging through very long sentences and paragraphs that go on for a page or more not worth the effort. Others will consider it to be a major literary achievement of great ambition.

I have very mixed feelings. At times I found it highly insightful; at other times I found it tedious.

Three stars, for lack of a better way to rate it.


by Cora Buhlert

A Five and Dime James Bond: Zero Cool by John Lange

This weekend, I attended a convention in the city of Neuss in the Rhineland. Luckily, West Germany has an excellent network of highways, the famous Autobahnen, so the three and a half hour trip was quite pleasant.

I left at dawn and took the opportunity to have breakfast at the brand-new service station Dammer Berge. Service stations are not exactly uncommon – you can find them roughly every fifty to sixty kilometers along the Germany's Autobahnen. There's always a parking lot, a gas station, a small shop, a restaurant and sometimes a motel, housed in fairly unremarkable buildings on either side of the highway.

Dammer Berge, however, is different. Billed as the service station of the future, the restaurant is a concrete bridge which spans the highway, held up by two steel pylons. The structure is spectacular, a beacon of modernism, though sadly the food itself was rather lacklustre: a cup of coffee that tasted of the soap used to clean the machine and a slice of stale apple cake.

Service station Dammer Berge postcard

Service station Dammer Berge

But I'm not here to talk about architecture or food, but about books. Now the trusty paperback spinner rack at my local import bookstore does not hold solely science fiction and fantasy. There is also a motley mix of gothic romances, murder mysteries and thrillers available. And whenever the science fiction and fantasy selection on offer does not seem promising, I reach for one of those other genres. This is how I discovered John Lange, a thriller author whose novel Easy Go I read last year and enjoyed very much. So when I spotted a new John Lange novel named Zero Cool in that spinner rack, I of course picked it up.

Zero Cool by John Lange

Zero Cool starts with Peter Ross, an American radiologist who's supposed to present a paper at a medical conference in Barcelona. And since he's already in Spain, Ross plans to take the opportunity for a holiday on the nearby Costa Brava in the seaside resort of Tossa de Mar.

One of John Lange's greatest strengths is his atmospheric descriptions. His skills are on full display in Zero Cool in the descriptions of the rugged Costa Brava with its picturesque fishing villages turned holiday destination for package tourists from all over Europe. It's obvious that Lange has visited Spain in general and the Costa Brava in particular.

Tossa de Mar postcard

Tossa de Mar postcard

That doesn't mean that Lange doesn't take poetic licence. And so his protagonist Peter Ross notes that the beaches of the Costa Brava are full of beautiful women in bikinis with nary a man in sight. As someone who has actually visited said beaches, I can assure you that this isn't true. Like anywhere on the Mediterranean coast, the beaches of Tossa de Mar contain a motley mix of old and young, of men, women and children, of attractive and not so attractive bodies. And yes, there are women in bikinis, too. Ross has holiday fling with one of them, a British stewardess named Angela.

But in spite of what the cover may imply, Zero Cool is not a romance set in an exotic location, but a thriller. And so Ross finds himself accosted on the beach by a man who begs him not to do the autopsy or he will surely die. Ross is bemused—what autopsy? In any event, he is on vacation and besides, he's a radiologist, not a pathologist, dammit.

Not long after this encounter, Ross is approached by four men in black suits who could not seem more like gangsters if they wore signs saying "The Mob" 'round their necks. The men want Ross to perform – you guessed it – an autopsy on their deceased brother, so his body can be repatriated to the US. Ross protests that he is a radiologist, not a pathologist, but the men are very insistent. They offer Ross a lot of money and also threaten to kill him if he refuses.

In the end, Ross does perform the autopsy – not that he has any choice, because he is abducted at gunpoint. To no one's surprise, the four gangsters from central casting are not all that interested in how their alleged brother died, but want Ross to hide a package inside the body. Once again, Ross complies, since finding himself on the wrong end of a gun is very persuasive.

Up to now, Zero Cool seems to be a fairly routine thriller about an everyman who gets entangled in a criminal enterprise. But the novel takes a turn for the weird, when the body vanishes and people start dying horribly, mutilated beyond recognition. Ross not only finds himself a murder suspect – in a country which still garrottes convicted criminals – but other parties also show an interest in the missing body and the mysterious package inside. These other parties include Tex, a cartoonish Texan in a ten gallon hat, the Professor, a bald man who uses mathematics to predict the future and is basically Hari Seldon, if Hari had applied his skills to crime rather than to trying to save humanity from the dark ages, and – last but not least – the Count, a Spanish nobleman with dwarfism, who collects perfume bottles and lives in a castle with a mute butler, a flock of murderous falcons and a Doberman named Franco.

With its exotic locales (well, for Americans at least, since for West Germans the Costa Brava no longer feels all that exotic, when you can book a flight there via the Neckermann mail order catalogue), beautiful but duplicitous women and colourful villains, Zero Cool feels more like a James Bond adventure than a serious thriller. As for the mystery package, it doesn't contain anything as mundane as drugs (which was my initial suspicion), but a priceless emerald stolen by the Spanish conquistadores in Mexico. It all culminates in a showdown at the Alhambra palace in Granada, where Ross finds himself dodging bullets, poison gas and the razor-sharp talons of the Count's murder falcons.

Neckermann travel catlogue 1969

It's all a lot of fun, though it still pales in comparison to the James Bond novels and films, which Zero Cool is clearly trying to emulate. Because unlike the suave agent on her majesty's secret service, Peter Ross just isn't very interesting. He literally is an everyman, an American doctor – and note that John Lange is the pen name used by a student at Harvard medical school who is financing his studies by writing thrillers – bouncing around Spain and France. In fact, Ross is probably the least interesting character in the whole novel. Furthermore, the fact that Ross is a radiologist, though constantly brought up, contributes nothing to the resolution. He might just as well have been a paediatrician or a gynaecologist or any other type of doctor for all it matters.

But even a lesser effort by John Lange is still better than most other thrillers in the paperback spinner rack. If John Lange becomes as good a doctor as he's a writer, his patients will be very lucky indeed.

An outrageous adventure. Three and a half stars.

(As mentioned above, John Lange is a pen name. However, I have it on good authority that his real name is "Michael Crichton" and that he has just published a science fiction novel under that byline. I haven't yet read it, but my colleague Joe has, so check out his review.)


by Joe Reid

The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton

The story begins in the town of Piedmont, Arizona, in the United States. It’s a pretty unremarkable town, with one small exception: just about everyone in the town is lying dead in the street, all except for two men who traveled to Piedmont to recover some lost government property and an odd figure in the town of corpses who happens to be walking their way. Upon the apparent death of the two men, an investigation gets underway, ultimately led by a clandestine government group called Project Wildfire.

Project Wildfire is the brainchild of Dr. Jeremy Stone, a bacteriologist possessing so many awards and degrees that the story paints him as a modern-day Da Vinci, a man above men. His team includes Dr. Charles Burton, a pathologist; Dr. Mark Hall, a surgeon, and the only unmarried man on the team—the odd man as the story puts it; and lastly, Dr. Peter Leavitt, a microbiologist. The four men quickly fall into their roles as they uncover the cause of whatever killed an entire town full of people in one night and try to prevent it from spreading.

They do this working out of a secure, state-of-the-art research facility with a list of protocols to prevent the escape of diseases, viruses, and other deadly pathogens, longer than a football field. Part of the appeal of the story is the detailed descriptions of all the computers, machines, and medical facilities that the four doctors use in their quest. Crichton’s depiction of even the smallest details of the workings of every inch of the Wildfire facility give a grounded feel not only to the base but to the descriptions he provides of the microorganism at the heart of this story: the Andromeda Strain itself. Crichton beautifully has his characters follow the scientific method we all learned in grade school, as Stone and the others start with observation, then move to hypothesis, then experimentation. Every solution in the book is arrived at through the efforts of brilliant men under tremendous pressure. It is truly exciting to witness them work as each discovery and dead end leads to new discoveries and new dangers.

The pacing of The Andromeda Strain felt fitting to me. I never felt as if I was waiting for something to happen. Each scene in every chapter was packed with purpose and direction, each page wasted no space. Every character had a job to do, and each was one of the best in the world at that job. Regarding the characterizations, although the story is set in modern times, these men often felt as if they were the stoic men of bronze from 1950’s serials. The characters felt dated, but the problems they tackled were quite modern.

By the end of the book, the characters and the circumstances reached a good stopping point. The object of worry, the Andromeda Strain itself, proved a challenge that had taxed the heroes of the story to their very limits. Some issues are addressed, and others are left unresolved. In my own zeal for the story, I’ve taken great pains to avoid revealing too much of the plot. It is best experienced in real time. All I can say is that the journey this book takes you on is worth the time investment. It’s a stellar read.

But not a perfect one. This is a story that begins with the end in mind. With all the truly amazing events that unfold in the book, what stands out most are the constant reminders from the narrator that the story was already over. This was my first time reading a book written by Mr. Crichton. I don’t know if he employs this technique in his other works, but I would have preferred that he kept his internal monologuing to himself. In one instance, a character forgets to replicate an action that he had performed on some lab rats. Narrator: “Later we learned that was a mistake.” In another, a character makes assumptions about a biological process. Narrator: “That action wasted days of our time.” The narrator frequently shares tidbits of the future, a narrative tool I would call “Poor Man's Foreshadowing.” The Andromeda Strain is such an engaging and suspenseful tale that I wished to remain in the present throughout my reading without Crichton yanking me out of it, offering glimpses of a future I wanted to reach without shortcuts.

That minor gripe aside, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton is a thrilling mystery with high stakes. It is the kind of fact-based science fiction that I enjoy the most.

Four stars




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