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[March 28, 1967] At last, a drop to drink (April 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Back to Basics

Our family recently went to the movies to see the latest war epic, Tobruk.  It's the story of a British commando unit teamed with a company of German Jews charading as a unit of the Afrika Korps.  Their goal: to destroy the supply depot at Tobruk and stop Rommel in his tracks.

The first half was decent, but the second devolved into Hollywood schlock.  Particularly when one knows one's history: there was such a raid, but it ended in abject failure.  Tobruk is not so mind-numbingly mediocre as TV's Rat Patrol, but they are in the same genus.

How to get the taste out of my mouth?  As it turned out, local channel 9 was airing the old Bogart movie, Sahara, filmed in 1943 as the war was going on.  I'd seen it when it first premiered, and so I knew to circle the listing and bake the popcorn so my family and friends could enjoy it with me.  If you haven't had the pleasure of this amazing saga of a lone M3 tank in the African desert, and its ragtag crew it collects from nearly a dozen different nations, well, give it a watch next time it airs.

Old Standby

Just as I found the antidote to modern bloat in a classic production of the '40s, this month, the answer to the rather lackluster science fiction being turned out of late was found not in a magazine of the '40s, but in one that, for many, peaked in that "Golden Age."  Indeed, the April 1967 Analog was one of the finest examples of Campbell's editorial output in a long time.


by John Schoenherr

To Love Another, by James Blish and Norman L. Knight

First, a case of eating words.  Please pass the mustard.

James Blish and Norman L. Knight have composed a number of novellas in a particular setting.  A few centuries from now, humanity is bursting at the seams, shoulder to shoulder on a severely overcrowded planet.  The science of tectogenetics has created a new race of humans, the Tritons, one perfectly at home in the oceans.  Against this backdrop, the asteroid "Flavia" is on a collision course with Earth, threatening tremendous damage when it hits.  Efforts are being made to minimize its impact (pardon the pun).

Two stories have been set in this timeline: The Shipwrecked Hotel and The Piper of Dis.  I rated both of them two stars.  They were dull, plodding tales, and after the last one, I stated, "I hope this is the last piece in the series."

I take it back.


by Kelly Freas

To Love Another is a vivid tale of love between Dorthy Sumter, head of Submarine Products Corporation, and her lieutenant, the Triton Tioru.  It's hard to describe it as having a plot, in the strictest sense of the word.  Rather, it is a pair of viewpoints at a particular juncture in humanity's history, one of its most momentous.  It is a gentle adventure that runs from the depths of the ocean, to the hive of a Habitat '67-type city, to… well, to the place In-Between.


Habitat '67 in Montreal

Not quite five stars, but excellent stuff.

The Enemy Within, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

What's a mother to do when her eager little boy winds up locked inside a psuedo-intelligent spacecraft, and all her efforts seem only to make the problem worse?

This is an effective, well-drawn tale by Mr. Reynolds, though if there is anything to be taken away from it, it's that spanking is an outdated punishment that ultimately does more harm than good.

Three stars.

The Feckless Conqueror, by Carl A. Larson

If humans are to settle other planets, they will either have to adapt to new environments or adapt their enivronments.  Larson examines the adaptibility of the human species, noting our tolerance to oxygen pressure, heat, cold, gravity, and magnetic fields.

It's pretty good.  Three stars.

To Change Their Ways, by Joseph P. Martino

On the planet of New Eden, where the men grow wheat and the women…turn it into bread and noodles…famine threatens.  Seems the hardheaded farmers refuse to give up their tailored grain, which cannot tolerate the seasonal cooling that is gradually chilling the planet (seasons last decades on this long-orbit world).  A sector administrator is sent to help out the planetary coordinator, mostly to harangue him about being tougher with the recalcitrants.

If ever there was a story with no drama, no plot beats, no there, it's this one.  Two stars.

The Time-Machined Saga (Part 2 of 3), by Harry Harrison


by John Schoenherr

Last month, I was a little hard on Harrison's newest serial, in which a time machine is put to work for cheap on location shooting in the 11th Century.  It's better this time around, as the production of the film goes underway.  The beefcake hack of a star gets a broken leg and refuses to work.  Luckily, Ottar, the native Viking, is more than willing to work for a bottle of whiskey a day and a silver mark a month.  And he's a natural for the part!

But while the scenes filmed in Norway and the Orkneys go well enough, a wrinkle is introduced when it is discovered that there are no colonies in Vinland–not in the 11th Century or ever.  Only one solution for that: found Vinland (with cameras rolling, of course).

It's rollicking fun with a lot of good encyclopaedic data.  My only quibble is that the timeline of Harrison's book is clearly all of a piece; the first installment had the film crew seeing themselves from a "later" time trip in the past.  But if the timeline exists with all travels baked in, why didn't they find themselves filming the landing at Vinland?  Perhaps this will be explained next chapter.

Either way, it's still worth four stars.

Ambassador to Verdammt, by Colin Kapp


by Kelly Freas

Imagine a race of aliens so bizarre that the human mind can barely register their existence, let alone make meaningful contact.  The science team on Verdammt knows the Unbekannt are intelligent beings, but prolonged interchange leads to a psychotic break.  It will take a very special kind of ambassador to bridge the species gap.

This is a story that would have fared better in the hands of a true master, a Delany or a Cordwainer Smith.  As it is, there's a bit too much artificial delaying of shoe-drops to heighten drama.  The scenes from the perspective of the character meeting the Unbekannt lack the lyricism to really make them shine. 

That said, it is a neat idea, it is at least competently rendered, and it made me think. That's what an stf story's supposed to do, right?

So, a solid three stars.

Compare and Contrast

For the second time this year, Analog has topped the pack of magazine (and magazine-ish) offerings, clocking in at 3.2 stars.  Thus, it beats out New Worlds (3.1), IF (3), Path into the Unknown (2.6), Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.5), Galaxy (2.3), New Writings #10 (2.2), and Amazing (2.1).

It was a pretty peaked month, in general, with the best thing outside this issue probably a fourteen-year old reprint by Judith Merril (which was, in fact, the only piece published by a woman this entire month).

Still, it's nice to know that oases can still sometimes be found, even this often bleak desert of a modern magazine era.  Here's hoping it the hot spring doesn't turn into a mirage next month…



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Serial

[July 8, 1966] South Pohl (August 1966 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Big Bang

The Americans and Soviets have signed onto a Partial Test Ban Treaty, restricting nuclear tests to deep underground. The Chinese and French are under no such obligation, however.  Not only have the Chinese detonated two (or was it three?) atomic devices in the open air, but now the French have begun their own series of above-grown tests.

These big bombs are being burst on the French Polynesian atoll of Moruroa.  I don't know what the indigenous South Seas population thinks of the blasts, but I imagine their opinions will sour as quickly as their strontium-90 laced milk.

The Big Fizzle


by Gray Morrow

The French may be making a big noise in the Southern Hemisphere, but Fred Pohl, editor of IF, Worlds of Tomorrow, and the formerly august Galaxy, has barely been squeaking by.  Indeed, the August 1966 issue of Galaxy is the most feeble outing I've read in a long time.

The Body Builders, by Keith Laumer


by Nodel

Opening things up, Keith Laumer extrapolates a future that is a straight-line evolution of our current boob tube culture.  Since so many of us are content to live vicariously, eyes plastered to the small screen, why not take things a few steps further?  And so a large portion of humanity lives flat on their backs, plugged into life support machines.  Their senses are hooked into humanoid surrogates of plastic and metal, optimized for task, emphasized for beauty. 

Our protagonist is a prize fighter, or at least, he remote controls a synthetic boxer.  Another artificial being provokes our hero into a duel while he's inhabiting his sport model body rather than his brawler suit.  So he goes on the lam.  Troubles, high jinks, and happy endings ensue.

Elements remind me of Robert F. Young's Romance in a Twenty-First Century Used-Car Lot (shuttling around in personally molded chassis) and Steel (human boxer steps into the ring against a robotic opponent), but this is a nice new spin.

Three stars.

Heresies of the Huge God by Brian W. Aldiss

A giant creature, thousands of miles long, crashes into the Earth.  Its bulk causes tremendous damage, alters our seasons, and thoroughly discombobulates our society.  This after-the-fact chronicle of the millennium following the alien's arrival is both unsettling and rather funny.

Four stars.

For Your Information: Scheherazade's Island by Willy Ley

This month's science column details the unusual creatures that inhabited Madagascar until quite recently: Big birds, giant lemurs, and other exotics.  They may, indeed, yet live there in remote areas of the enormous island.

Interesting topic but bland presentation.  Three stars.

The Piper of Dis by James Blish and Norman L. Knight


by Gray Morrow

Authors Blish and Knight return us to the overcrowded world of 2794 on which ten trillion humans live.  In this installment, the asteroid Flavia is headed toward Earth, where it will cause tremendous damage.  Millions of North Americans must be evacuated to the spare town of Gitler.  There are two wrinkles: 1) a convention of the Jones family is currently occupying the city, and they must be evacuated out before refugees can be evacuated in; 2) an insane criminal member of the Jones family, Fongavaro, doesn't want anyone in the city lest he be extradited back to his home in Madagascar.

Actually, there's another wrinkle: it's a dreary potboiler of a story in an implausible world.  I hope this is the last piece in the series.

Two stars.

Among the Hairy Earthmen by R. A. Lafferty

What if the Renaissance was really the work of bored aliens?  In this typically whimsical piece, a band of seven humanoid cousins arrive at medieval Europe and make history their plaything. 

This one of those tales that's all in the telling, and the telling is pretty charming.  Three stars.

The Look, by George Henry Smith

Women, hare-brained slaves to fashion that they all are, succumb to trends so horrendous that no man can bear to look at them.  It's the plot of a pair of homosexual fashion designers to ensure they have all of mankind to themselves.  Or so we're meant to think.  The "twist" is that it's actually a ploy of Alpha Centaurians to depopulate the Earth.

If we had a negative counterpart to the Galactic Stars, this would win the prize. One star.

Heisenberg's Eyes (Part 2 of 2) by Frank Herbert


by Dan Atkins

Last issue, we were treated to the first half of Frank Hebert's latest short novel.  It takes place in a far (like tens of thousands of years from now far) future in which the human race has completely stagnated in technology, society, and biology.  The "Optimen", sterile ubermenschen who are essentially immortal, rule over the mostly sterile humans whose offspring are all produced out of womb and with scrupulous surgical control.

Last installment, the Durant couple had stolen their embryo from under the noses of the Optimen with the help of the Cyborgs, a competing sub-race of humanity that has traded their emotions for computerized sturdiness.  The Durant embryo, due to some unexplained quirk, is the first bog-standard human to be spawned in millennia.  Able to reproduce, it may hold the key to toppling the static society of humanity.

This installment begins with the Durants stealthily escaping the megalopolis of Seatac. This takes up most of the part, and is ultimately pointless as the triumvirate of rulers is aware of their attempt the entire way.  The Durants, their assisting Cyborgs, as well as Svengaard, the surgeon they had taken hostage, are summoned before a full council of the Optimen for punishment.  Violence breaks out.  Two of the triumvirate are killed.  Calapine, the impulsive, simpering woman of the ruling trio, is both outraged and excited by the new feeling of mortality.  Nevertheless, she is committed to destroying her captives before they destroy the current order.

Until it is pointed out that the order is just its own kind of death, a sentence of eternal boredom.  In any event, it's doomed to failure since even the immortals need increasing doses of enzymes to stay alive, a situation that is quickly becoming untenable.

There is a solution!  It turns out that being implanted with an embryo produces all the enzymes one needs to stay alive indefinitely.  So women (and men) can be installed with pre-tykes that are made to gestate for thousands of years, and that will keep them alive forever.  Thus, humanity can return to some sort of natural (if prolonged) rhythm.

Never minding the utter implausibility of, well, everything about this book, all of the above could probably have been written in about 20 pages.  But when you're paid by the word, and you're one of the hottest authors in the genre (I can imagine a half century from now that Dune will replace The Bible as the most-read book in the world; there ain't no justice), I suppose sentences must flow.

Two stars for this part, two and half for the whole book.

Who Is Human? by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Starting in medias res, we have the latest story of the Esks: people who look like Eskimos, but are actually born in a month and raised to adulthood in five years.  In this installment, which really does not stand alone as a separate story, we learn that the Esks have been artificially created by alien visitors.  We are meant to believe that 1) the Esks pose an intolerable risk to the human race as we will soon be outbred and replaced by them, and 2) no one will actually believe our protagonist, Dr. West, when he explains the true nature of the Esks.  Everyone maintains they're just plain ol' Eskimos.

This is the silliest, most contrived set of premises.  The Esks are already starving due to overpopulation, and thus applying for relief.  Once free food starts being doled out, the unnatural increase in population will be known.  This may spell adversity for the real Inuit (and the Canadian budget) but it hardly threatens world domination.  And it's not like we have a Puppet Masters situation here; the Esks don't possess other humans.  They just live alongside them. 

Maybe there will be a better explanation down the road.  Two stars.

Summer Slump

It's a pretty sad affair when Galaxy clocks in at a bare 2.5 stars.  On the other hand, as Michael Moorcock informed us last month, it is not uncommon for magazines to save their weakest material for the summer, when readership is at its lowest.  Let us hope that's what is going on here!

Ah well.  At least the summer music is good:

Tune in to KGJ, our radio station!




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Magazine

[July 8, 1965] Saving the worst for first (August 1965 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Milestones

Galaxy has now finished 15 years of publication, two thirds of it under the tenure of H. L. Gold and the last five years with Fred Pohl as editor.  If Analog (ne Astounding) is representative of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and Fantasy and Science Fiction represents the literary fringes of the genre, then Galaxy is emblematic of Science Fiction's Silver Age. 

Now, in the editorial for this month's issue, Pohl notes that Galaxy has evolved with the times and is a different magazine from the one that debuted with an October 1950 cover date.

I'm not sure I agree.  The magazine still looks largely the same, there's still a Willy Ley article in the middle, and the contents still feel roughly within the same milieu: a bit "softer" than the nuts and bolts in Analog, a little meatier than the often light fare of F&SF.  Certainly nothing so avant-garde as what we're seeing from the "New Wave" mags in the UK.

In any event, Pohl undercuts his own assertion by trumpeting next month's issue, which will feature nothing but alumni from the early days of the magazine.  I'm quite looking forward to it, and clearly Pohl is, too.

And after reading this month's issue, boy can I see why…

Recipe for Disaster


by Gray Morrow

Do I Wake or Dream?, by Frank Herbert

The creator of Dune and other lesser titles dominates the current issue: a full 119 pages are devoted to this short novel.  I was dreading it last month, and my dread was well-founded.  Here's the premise:

A giant sphere of a ship, the Earthling, is headed out of the solar system toward Tau Ceti.  On board are six normal human crew, two thousand frozen and dehydrated people, and a thousand embryos.  The humans are all genetic duplicates (with full memories, natch) of actual people, and their main job is to tend the ship-controlling disembodied human brains of "defectives" that have been integrated and trained for the task since birth (a la McCaffrey's The Ship who Sang or Niven's recent series starring Eric the Cyborg).

One by one, the three brains go nuts and either commit suicide or have to be shut down.  Two of the tending crew are murdered in the process.  Now the remaining four have to decide whether to turn back or not.  Complicating the decision is the fact that running the ship without a built-in brain is virtually impossible — the ship has been designed to be extremely delicate to handle, even to the point of having artificial crises pop up just to keep the crew on their toes!

Ultimately, the crew decides to thaw a frozen doctor (so they have, you know, one woman in their ranks) and then, together, create an artificial computer brain to run the ship.

And if that's not enough random factors to juggle, it is also noted that the Earthling is the seventh ship to have its brains all give up.  So this problem has happened twenty one times (what is it that Einstein is reputed to have said about the definition of madness?) And the last time humanity tried to build a sentient computer, the computer, the installation in which it was developed, indeed the entire island disappeared off the face of the Earth into some other dimension, destination unknown.

Herbert is nothing if not ambitious.


by John Giunta

He is, however, also a lousy writer.  I said as much after reading the sprawling, tedious, and humorless Dune World and its second half, Prophet of Dune.  One of my readers suggested that Herbert's third-person omniscient perspective, switching viewpoint characters almost every line, accented by (often superfluous) musings in italics was a deliberate stylistic choice to render the telepathic resonance shared by users of the spice melange.  But he uses the exact same style in Do I Wake, and there is nothing supernatural in this book.

I also found the overt anti-woman prejudice annoying, with the woman doctor character starting out pumped full of anti-sex drugs to keep her from being too excited all the time (one of the men debates taking some, himself, because he worries he'll be too attracted to the doctor; he decides against it because they reduce intelligence.  Fine for her, though.) Even the drawing of the doctor features her tawdrily topless.

Then there is the endless technical jargon that is not only gibberish, but often archaic gibberish: describing the ship's computer's "relays" (as opposed to transistors or microcircuits) is anachronistic for modern times, more so for machines of the future.

So, not only is Do I Wake a distinct displeasure to read, but it also is utterly implausible every step of the way.  At the Journey, we attempt to review everything in the genre that gets put to print, but we refuse to do it to the point of mortification.  I gave up on page 40, and you should feel no shame if you follow suit.

One star.

Peeping Tommy, by Robert F. Young

Yet another Robert F. Young reworking of a fable.  It keeps you engaged until the end, which is typically terrible.

Two stars.

The Galactic Giants, by Willy Ley

The one bright spot in the issue is Ley's competent science article, the majority of which is devoted to giant stars.  The rest deals with tape as a medium for data storage.

Interesting stuff.  Four stars.

Please State My Business, by Michael Kurland

A traveling salesman from the future ends up in the wrong century.  High jinks ensue.  Well, given that the story starts with a sexual assault and ends with a whimper, the jinks are rather low.

Two stars.

The Shipwrecked Hotel, by James Blish and Norman L. Knight


by Gray Morrow

Seven hundred years from now, the Earth houses One Trillion Humans in relative comfort.  This piece details the unfortunate saga of the "Barrier-hilthon", a beach-ball shaped hotel loosely anchored in the South Pacific.  Thanks to some literal bugs in the system, it becomes unmoored, ultimately crashing into an undersea mountain.  A rescue follows.

Hotel could have made an excellent novel by Arthur C. Clarke — a cross between A Fall of Moondust and Dolphin Island.  As is, it's not only surprisingly amateur, but it's also just sort of lifeless, more plot thumbnail than story.

I was a bit surprised as Hotel's expository style did not feel like James Blish at all (I don't know who Norman L. Knight is).  Then I got to the end where it says the story was by James H. Schmitz and Norman L. Knight.  I'm not sure whether its Blish or Schmitz, but Schmitz makes a lot more sense.  Schmitz is often good, but he's also often not, and in just this sort of way.

Two stars.

Galaxy Bookshelf, by Algis Budrys

I don't normally devote inches to the book columns. Nevertheless, I've given Budrys a long rope since he came on few months ago, and I can now say with certainty that not only is his judgment orthogonal to mine, but his writing is impenetrable, too.  This is a pity.  I've liked much of the fiction Budrys has written (at least long ago when he was writing consistently), and I used to greatly value Galaxy's book reviews. 

All Hope Abandoned

Wow.  That was just dreadful.  The only faint praise I can damn with is that the Herbert novel was so bad, it meant I didn't have to waste time on 80 pages of the magazine.  This is, without a doubt, the most worthless issue in the Galaxy series.

At least the bar to clear for next month is nice and low!

If you need to get the bad taste out of your mouth (and I know I do!) come register for this week's The Journey Show! 

We'll be discussing the latest fashion trends of 1965, and we have some amazing guests including the founder of Bésame Cosmetics.  Plus, you'll get to see the Young Traveler show off her newest outfits!

DON'T MISS IT!




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