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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 8, 1970] All Too Finite (Infinity One, edited by Robert Hoskins)

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A young white man with short hair wearing a navy P-coat, blue polo collar, and green t-shirt.
by Brian Collins

There must be a growing demand for original anthologies of science fiction, because they keep coming—both standalone titles and series. Infinity One is, going by its title, the first in yet another series of these, although notably there is one reprint between its covers (really two reprints, as you'll see), a story that many readers will already be familiar with. Robert Hoskins is an occasional author-turned-agent-turned-editor, whose high position at Lancer Books has apparently resulted in Infinity One. Will there be future installments? Does it really matter? We shall see.

The tagline for Infinity One is “a magazine of speculative fiction in book form,” which strikes me as a sequence of words only fit to come from the mouth of a clinically insane person. This is a paperback anthology and nothing more nor less. I mentioned in my review of Nova 1 last month that Harry Harrison claimed that he simply wanted to put together an anthology of “good” SF, although I’m not sure if Hoskins had even such a basic goal in mind.

Infinity One, edited by Robert Hoskins

Cover of Infinity One. Against a black background, an bubble-helmeted astronaut in silver dances in front of a stylized circuit board, flowing into the shape of a rocket above, and a red planet below. Beside this illustration, in an all-lowercase font, reads the following legend: 'introduction by isaac asimov/a short novel by poul anderson/infinity one/new writings in/speculative/fiction/edited by/robert hoskins/plus/anne mccaffery/robert silverberg/gordon r. dickson/r.a. lafferty/kris neville/k.m. o'donnell/ron goulart/katherine maclean/miriam allen deford/featuring/arthur c. clarke'. Clarke's name, and the title, are in yellow. The other names are in pink, red, and turquoise.
Cover art by Jim Steranko.

Introduction, by Isaac Asimov

This is a rambling introduction from someone who really loves the sound of his own voice, even when it’s in writing. Asimov talks about mankind’s future in possibly inhabiting the most inhospitable corners of the globe, and even in the depths of space. He goes on a rather mind-numbing tangent about baseball on the Moon, or “moon-ball” as he calls it. Looking at the copyright page reveals that “much of the material” in Asimov’s introduction first appeared in some mainstream publication I have never heard of a few years ago; it’s only in the last section, which feels stapled on after the fact, that he mentions Infinity One at all. Asimov is a lot of things, but he is not a lazy writer, which makes me think Hoskins is the one who was being lazy in not being able to procure an original piece from the Good Doctor.

No rating.

A Word from the Editor, by Robert Hoskins

Thankfully, Hoskins’s own introduction is much shorter than Asimov’s, although it somehow has even less to do with the book he has gosh-darn put together. We get a rather alloyed ode to the late Hugo Gernsback, not so much as an editor of magazines but as a gadgeteer who speculated on the potential real-world technology such as TV. Hoskins posits that, given how quickly TV has become ubiquitous as a commercial item, the likelihood of technology being nigh-unrecognizable in just a few decades is considerable.

No rating.

The Pleasure of Our Company, by Robert Silverberg

Yet again I am writing about Robert Silverberg, because I am unable to get rid of him. While Silverberg’s recent output has been mixed, his outing here is quite decent. Thomas Voigtland is the former president of a colony known as Bradley’s Planet, having been overtaken by a military junta and forced to flee in a spaceship—by himself. He has taken with him several “cubes,” which are really personality tapes replicating real-life people, including his wife and son, along with historical figures such as Ovid and the late Ernest Hemingway. Silverberg’s thesis is obvious, the story being about Voightland’s guilt and his decision to flee from the junta instead of staying and probably dying alongside his family and supporters. Most of Silverberg’s bad habits are absent here, which helps.

A high three stars.

The Absolute Ultimate Invention, by Stephen Barr

This is one of three “fables” in Infinity One. A scientist has made an age-reversing machine, which through some Looney Tunes logic is able to literally reverse the digits in a person’s age, so that a 41-year-old man would become 14. However, the machine does not quite work like how the scientist intended. Hilarity ensues.

Whatever, man. Two stars.

The Star, by Arthur C. Clarke

A cover of the magazine 'Infinity Science Fiction'. It shows a bride holding hands with a figure outlined only by its circulatory system. They are facing away from the viewer, towards a rocket on the horizon.
Cover art by Robert Engle.

I remember seeing this one in print some 15 years ago, in the November 1955 issue of a now-forgotten magazine called Infinity Science Fiction. “The Star” is pretty famous and even won Clarke a Hugo. I like this one more the older I get. An unnamed Jesuit has been accompanying a spacefaring team as its chief astrophysicist, but the discovery of a planet that only narrowly avoided being engulfed by an exploding sun has shaken his faith. It’s a mood piece; not much happens and there’s really only one character. Yet Clarke’s style, which normally is not much to write home about, is splendid here, and I have to say there’s something moving about it, regardless of one’s own religious standing. You probably already know the ending, but I dare not give it away.

Four stars.

Echo, by Katherine MacLean

A spaceship crash lands on a planet filled with vegetation, and said vegetation is apparently sentient. The plants and trees are not happy about the lone astronaut, whose existence they can barely comprehend. MacLean has played with perspective before, but “Echo” sees her most strongly resembling the A. E. van Vogt of yore; in fact “Echo” reminds me of a van Vogt story from about 20 years ago, called “Process.” This is by no means a point against MacLean. It mostly reads as prose poetry, but while it only has the bones of a story, you could find much worse examples of poetic style in SF—just open the latest Orbit.

A high three or low four stars.

The Great Canine Chorus, by Anne McCaffrey

Peter is a cop on the beat with Wizard, his K-9 unit, when they find a lonely and malnourished girl in a condemned building by herself named Maria. The girl turns out to be a telepath, albeit very young and weak, with her mother dead and her father on the run from the law. There’s a plot involving a gang leader and Maria’s almost supernatural ability to communicate with dogs. It’s too cute by half. Incidentally, this is the first story in Infinity One to not involve space travel or futuristic technology. McCaffrey has her audience, but I’m not part of that audience. Her style here is especially grating in its childishness.

Two stars.

Pacem Est, by Kris Neville and K. M. O’Donnell

Neville and “O’Donnell” (actually Barry Malzberg) come in with a short and moody story, about a war happening on an alien planet and a nun who got killed in the line of duty. Hawkins, the company commander, is trying to understand why this order of nuns would journey out to this hostile alien world in the first place. Putting aside for the moment the fact that “Pacem Est” is only SF insofar as it involves a war that could just as easily be the one in Vietnam, it’s a perfectly evocative piece that sees Neville and Malzberg in a less vicious and more introspective mood than is either author’s normal routine.

Three stars.

Keeping an Eye on Janey, by Rob Goulart

Goulart has been around for a while, and his experience shows with this story, which similarly to the McCaffrey story has to do with urban crime. The editor of a publisher that specializes in cheap gothic trash gets involved with a dimestore hood who’s due to be assassinated, as well as a robot private detective named Carnahan. The robot is at least endearing, despite talking mostly in detective cliches. Raymond Chandler must be rolling in his grave. There’s a bit of detective fiction, a bit of gangster action, a bit of satire on book publishing, but it’s simply not enough of any one element. The message ultimately seems to be that computers can’t be relied on for everything. No shit.

Two, almost three stars, for what it’s worth.

The Packerhaus Method, by Gene Wolfe

I’ve seen Wolfe’s writing evolve over the past few years, and he seems like he is on the cusp of making something truly special. He’s almost there. The premise of his latest story is that the dead have been brought back to life—although not quite. These are robotic replicas of the originals, with mechanical and rather circular minds that, while replicating the wants, fears, and verbal tics of the dead, are unable to process new information. The results are disturbing, although the story’s potential for horror is held back somewhat by almost nonstop expositional dialogue that can overburden the reader.

A light four stars.

The Water Sculptor of Station 233, by George Zebrowski

Zebrowski is one of the new generation of writers, and this here is a fine mood piece, if not much more than that. Two astronauts are stuck in space, each in his own station, due to some disgraceful prior incident. Life on Earth has gone to shit, but things are not much better in space when you have minimal contact with other humans and only so many things to occupy your time with. One of these astronauts has developed a unique method of sculpting, whereby he uses water, plastic, and the vacuum of space to make his art. The climax comes pretty suddenly, but maybe that’s the point.

A solid three stars.

Operation P-Button, by Gordon R. Dickson

Here’s the second of the three “fables,” and I really don’t understand the point of these things other than to pad out the book. Dickson recreates the story of Chicken Little with military higher-ups, complete with a report about the sky falling. That’s really all there is to it.

Only avoids being one star because it goes down quickly.

The Tiger, by Miriam Allen deFord

Bart Holland is a 20-year-old young man who craves adventure—only nothing too dangerous. He finds it when he meets a strange girl who seems to be a “foreigner,” along with her traveling sideshow, featuring the most docile Bengal tiger in existence. Even before reading this one, I suspected deFord would do a twist on the lady-and-the-tiger routine, and she sort of does. Unfortunately the two main characters, especially Holland, read as flat, and the SFnal element doesn’t really make any sense when one stops to think about it. As with a few other stories in Infinity One, including Asimov’s “introduction,” this feels hastily written.

A high two or low three stars.

Hands of the Man, by R. A. Lafferty

As with the Neville-Malzberg story, this one is only nominally SFnal. Hodl Oskanian, a “skyman” who consults the lines of his hands, is challenged to a game of cards, with a precious stone being the reward. I have to say I resent Hoskins basically giving away the story’s ending in his introduction, even if said ending is far from unpredictable. I also wish Lafferty had inserted more of what has become his trademark strangeness, leaving aside the obligatory nod to Catholic theology. “Hands of the Man” is a rather humorless tale that does not play to Lafferty’s strengths.

Two stars.

Nightmare Gang, by Dean R. Koontz

Koontz is very young, but he already has a few novels to his credit, plus quite a few short stories. “Nightmare Gang” is Koontz’s attempt at hopping on the biker gang bandwagon, and it’s honestly too dark for its own good. Louis, the leader of a biker gang, is a telepath who is able to coordinate with his gang members via mind control, but he also has a few other abilities that the narrator finds hard to explain. It’s gory and bleak, but also I don’t really understand what the point of it is, which is not helped by Koontz being such an inelegant stylist.

Whatever. Two stars.

These Our Actors, by Edward Wellen

I’m not familiar with Wellen, possibly because he hasn’t written much in the past decade. “These Our Actors” is really two vignettes, the first about an unnamed man on a hostile alien world and the second about an anxiety-ridden TV actor. Neither of these vignettes is substantive enough on its own, especially the first one, but how they’re connected is rather interesting. Unfortunately, given that he wrote something of a prose poem, Wellen is not fine enough a stylist to make it a consistently engrossing experience. The ending is pretty good, though.

Three stars.

Inside Mother, by Pat de Graw

A first story by a new author, one whom not even Hoskins knows anything about. Making good on the Freudian implications of its title, “Inside Mother” has to do with sex and adolescence, about a group of kids (teenagers?) who are evidently the survivors of a crashed satellite. The adults who ran the satellite did not give the kids names, so they go by numbers; and they also neglected to have the satellite’s computer teach the kids basic things like sex or how to build a fire in the wilderness. How these kids have survived up to this point is thus a mystery, bordering on nonsensical. I think I understand what de Graw is doing, but what he or she has written is too abstract and lacking in consistency for my liking.

Barely three stars.

The Communicators, by Poul Anderson

Hoskins, in his introduction for this story, gloats that he was able to get pieces from Asimov, Clarke, and Anderson, whom he considers the three most popular SF writers at the moment. Given that Asimov’s introduction apparently was not written for Infinity One, and that “The Star” is a reprint, that leaves only one original piece Hoskins was able to procure. He also calls “The Communicators” a “short novel,” which is being overly generous since I’m not even sure it’s long enough to qualify as a novella. Finally, and I do not mean this as an insult towards Anderson, since his work ethic is tremendous, but the man will basically write for anybody, so long as the paycheck is serviceable enough. For better or worse, he has been one of the most reliable workhorses in the field for the past couple decades.

As for “The Communicators” itself, it’s the kind of far-future speculative fiction that Anderson writes in his sleep, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Two members of the Communicators, a pseudo-religious order that forsakes race and national borders in the service of preserving human knowledge, meets with a colonel from the Domination of Baikal (an “Oriental” power whose real-life equivalent is probably supposed to be Maoist China) to discuss what seem to be alien signals coming from Kappa Ceti. Roban, the junior member of the Communicators, still holds a grudge over his homeland (clearly the United States) losing its status as a world superpower, a conflict with his position as a Communicator that adds spice to the debate. This might be Anderson’s response to Asimov’s famous Foundation trilogy, in which the protectors of human knowledge are beholden to a near-perfect series of predictions, whereas the Communicators, while being intelligent, are still prone to human foibles.

It’s quite readable. A high three stars.

The Man on the Hill, by Michael Fayette

This is the last story and also the last of the “fables.” It’s also easily the best, given that it does not insult my intelligence. The last human survivor of some hostile environment, having grown tired of living in solitude, decides to take off his helmet and breathe some fresh air for the first time in decades. It’s a perfectly fine little mood piece that does not demean the reader with bad jokes, and incidentally its sense of weariness captures my own feelings after having read all of Infinity One.

Three stars.

Conclusion

The increasing ubiquity of paperbacks has been a double-edged sword. Paperbacks are both more affordable and easier to handle than hardcovers, but that also means they tend to come cheap. I get the impression that Hoskins, seeing the success of Damon Knight’s Orbit books, as well as the growing paperback market generally, saw an opportunity to make a bit of extra money with relatively little effort. The best story here is unquestionably Clarke’s “The Star,” a Hugo winner from 15 years ago that you probably already have in a couple anthologies and/or collections. And maybe SF was better 15 years ago; certainly there were more authors active and more SF at short lengths being written back then. My point is that if the original anthology craze is to survive then we need to do better than Harrison’s Nova 1 from last month, which was middling, or Infinity One, which is even worse.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 12, 1970] It’s A Dog’s Life (Orbit 6)

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By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

In 1889, Oscar Wilde wrote “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life”. This month, London has proved that.

Passport To Pimlico 1949 Flm Poster showing photos of the cast's head on cartoon bodies running through London streets, with barbed wire in the foreground and police looking on

In the 1949 film Passport to Pimlico, a small area of London declares independence and it ends with the British government forced to negotiate to get them back. Actual negotiations for reintegration of the Isle of Dogs concluded on Monday.

Reconstruction taking place in the Isle of Dogs as a Victorian building is being demolished in the foreground and a high rise flat complex rises behind it.
Post-War Reconstruction taking place in Isle of Dogs

The Isle of Dogs is not a true island, but rather a low-lying peninsula that marks a massive bend in the Thames. As such in the Victorian era it became a part of the London Docklands. However, as ship size increased more ships were moved further down the river. The railway lines were closed and the area was devastated in the blitz.

In the last decade a large project of council flat building took place in the region, with 97% of the population in government housing. However, amenities did not keep up with the rise in the population Schools, hospitals and shopping areas were not included in the plans, yet only one bus route services the entire region.

Black and White photo of Joint Prime Ministers of the short lived republic, Ray Padgett and John Westfallen standing in front of the docklands but behind a rope.
Joint Prime Ministers of the new republic, Ray Padgett and John Westfallen

In order to bring awareness to their situation, on the 1st March around 1,000 residents of the Isle of Dogs, led by Fred Johns (their representative on the borough council), blocked the swing bridges to the rest of London. They announced that a Unilteral Declaration of Independence would be forthcoming if their demands were not met and taxes would not be paid.

Map of the Isle of Dogs from 1969 showing the Port of London Authortiy buildings in orange and the river Thames in blue.
Area map of the short-lived republic (orange are those buildings owned by Port of London Authority)

On the 9th March the official declaration of independence came with the setting up of a citizen’s council and two Prime Ministers to run each side of the island. They issued a demand to return taxes that they said belonged to the islanders, and started on plans to setup their own street market and turn a disused building into a school. This drove headlines all over the world, with even Pravda from the USSR sending in a reporter.

Small printed card that says: Entry Permit To Isle of Dogs. To Be Shown at Barrier. Independent State of London. John Westfallen. Prime Minister

After meeting with the Prime Minister, a plan was announced by Tower Hamlets Council for resolving the issues raised by the Islanders with a full consultation. The council, however, denied that this protest had anything to do with the timing of this announcement. Whatever the cause, the Republic of the Isle of Dogs has achieved its goals, so it seems that entry permits will no longer be required to travel in and out of the region.

Back in the world of SF publishing, we have our own odd little affair. That of Orbit 6, which contains some good, some bad and many just plain confusing tales:

Orbit 6

Orbit 6 Hardback Cover as drawn by Paul Lehr showing an open hand with a rocket launching from it where behind is a stream of half lit planets in a line against a starfield. Below the title the editor and authors are all listed.
Cover illustration by Paul Lehr

The Second Inquisition by Joanna Russ

In 1925, Bess’ family play host to an unusual guest. A coloured woman who is unusually tall, does not appear to have the social propriety of the era and is more than happy to share secrets with Bess. Is she a time traveller? Or just a teller of tall-tales from the circus?

Like many of these ambiguous tales that touch on the new-wave, this can be read in multiple ways. As such it is not the easiest story to get through or understand but one well worth exploring.

Four Stars

Remembrance to Come by Gene Wolfe

I am often not a huge fan of Wolfe’s style, but even putting that aside I am confused by this whole story. It seems to have something to do with a commentary on academic life, riffing on Proust and some kind of hooded figure haunting campuses that may be the lead character as well.

If it has a point, it is lost on me.

One Star

How the Whip Came Back by Gene Wolfe

I guess Wolfes really do travel in packs as we get a second story from him straight afterwards.

Miss Bushnan is an observer at the United Nations Conference on Human Value along with her robot servant Sal. She suddenly finds herself wined and dined by various delegates, as they wish to reinforce their proposition by having delegates vote on the motion: that of allowing the international buying and selling of imprisoned humans as slaves. Bushnan finds herself in discussion with The Pope on what she should do.

Scene from the film Fugitive From A Chain Gang showing a line of men in chained together breaking rocks in a quarry.
Scene from I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang

Anyone who has watched American cinema is probably familiar with how the Thirteenth Amendment in the United States has been used to allow for unpaid penal labour. Even though it seems to be in decline at the moment, there is no reason why it could not rise again. The idea that the widespread use of robots could allow people to get comfortable with slavery again is an interesting one.

Unfortunately, I feel that the idea is all this story has going for it. It is pages of long didactic conversations that are so boring I considered giving up halfway through. Add on to that Wolfe’s habit of putting in disparaging remarks about women for no apparent reason (such as that the Soviet delegate only got to her position by sleeping with the party secretary) and this was another swing and a miss from Wolfe.

A Low Two Stars

Goslin Day by Avram Davidson

I am afraid this is another story where I cannot explain the plot. It has something to do with terrible nature of today’s youth and the Kabbalah, with run-on-sentences so verbose and confusing it would make James Joyce blush. Per example:

In the agglutantive obscenities which interrupted the bang-crashes of the yuckels emptying eggshells orangerinds coffeegrounds there was (this morning, different from all other mornings) something unlike their mere brute pleasure in waking the dead.

One Star until someone can explain it to me.

Maybe Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, Was a Little Bit Right by Robin S. Scott

After the end of the world, a Moon Ship of three people returns to the desolate Earth to rebuild humanity. They are led by a Lamarckian biologist called Calder who is determined to ensure the widest genetic diversity possible.

A disturbing tale of sex and violence, with discussion of murder, familial rape and pedophilia. It is all supposed to have something to do with the Lamarckism but seems to me to be a story trying to just be shocking for the sake of it. I don’t consider myself a prude, but I was truly disgusted by the experience of reading it. 

One Star

The Chosen by Kate Wilhelm

What is an Orbit without a Wilhelm story?

Lorin and Jan are sent into the empty Earth of the future to see what minerals and food production could be used to help the resource poor present. However, Lorin doesn’t want to go back.

This is a tough one to review for two inter-connected reasons. Firstly, there is a massive shift in the final third that changes your perspective on the story. Secondly, there seems like there is meant to be some point to it all, but I am not sure what it is. The only thing I can devise from it is that maybe modern life is cruel, but even that doesn’t feel right.

Still Wilhelm style is good, and I enjoyed whilst reading it, even if I am still left scratching my head.

A Low Three stars

Entire and Perfect Chrysolite by R. A. Lafferty

There is only one World-Island, the Ecumene. All rumours of islands and other continents have been conclusively proven to be false. Sailing on the True Believer, six people, led by Shackleton and Boyle, conduct a séance, to see if they conjure up the legendary continent of Africa that exists below Libya.

17th Century Greek Map showing the Eurasian world with Greece at an enlarged size and Asia significantly smaller than actuality with Africa stopping at approximately the 22nd parallel.
17th Century map of the Greek conception of the world resembling the description of Ecumene

People that are familiar with my reviews know I am not Lafferty’s biggest fan (although given how often he appears in this series, I suspect Knight might be) so I may not be the best person to give my review on this. It is a reasonable yarn except I cannot see the point of it.

There are a bunch of curious touches: The leaders of the expedition are (presumably) named after famous Anglo-Irish people, and therefore from a country that cannot exist; the description of the world resembles some old maps; the suggestion they may just be a group of white people in our world on holiday in Africa that are high on dope. But it all seems to just come down to oddness for oddness’ sake.

Two Stars

Sunburst by Roderick Thorp

Johnny Loughlin is woken by his wife Cynthia to tell him that all television programmes have been replaced by the news. A wave of violence seems to be spreading around the world without an obvious cause.

This is a new author, at least to me, which is always nice to see. Unfortunately, this isn’t an auspicious start. It seems to just be another case of random violence for the sake of shock value. I am also miffed it equated an uprising against apartheid with someone committing arson for fun.

One Star

The Creation of Bennie Good by James Sallis

A surreal vignette involving a man offering a woman his foot.

Sallis has been one of the most reliable of Knight’s regular crew up until now. There is some delightful imagery, but it just feels like a subpar New Worlds reject to me.

Two Stars

The End by Ursula K. Le Guin

Lif was a bricklayer, but with the end of the world coming, no one wants anything built or repaired. What is he to do with all his old stock? How about building an underwater road?

Le Guin is one of the most exciting authors writing today, and this further cements her reputation. It still has the surreality of much of the rest of this anthology, but she mixes it with heart and melancholy to build something special.

A solidly constructed four stars

A Cold Dark Night with Snow by Kate Wilhelm

To answer my previous question “What is an Orbit without a Wilhelm story?”, it turns out to be an Orbit with two!

This is an experiment in fragmented narrative, telling the story of Maiya and her social ambitions, intersecting with former hippy Hank and his desire to concentrate on building something great.

The content is middling and only barely SFnal but the style is interesting enough to keep me engaged.

Three Stars

Fame by Jean Cox

Major Ralph Cargill travels out on the first solo interstellar voyage. By the time he returns to Earth over 100 years have passed. However, fame is a fickle thing, and his return may not be what he expected.

It has been 3 years since we saw Cox in an Science Fiction publication and here he delivers another solid story. Particularly good is the sense of isolation we get during Gilbert’s travels. The ending feels a little weak to me, but the journey is a good one.

A High Three Stars

Debut by Carol Emshwiller

A princess, kept blind by a mask, is led around by her sisters.

This is a another barely SFnal piece (there are mentions of fantastic elements, but they don’t seem to be key to the story) and I am not convinced by much of it. Some nice descriptions going on but that is all I can say it has going for it.

Two Stars

Where No Sun Shines by Gardner Dozois

Robinson drives across a US in the midst of a civil war. He sees scenes of horrible brutality as society breaks down.

Dozois was an If First four years ago but I haven’t seen him since. Much like Cox, this represents a solid return. The concepts in this story are hardly new but it is evocatively told.

A High Three Stars

The Asian Shore by Thomas M. Disch

John Benedict Harris is an American visiting Istanbul, to explore his thesis on the arbitrary nature of life. However, he keeps being mistaken for a Turkish man named Yavuz.

It is a curious tale that I am still not sure entirely how I feel about. At first it seems like it is going to be similar to Zoline’s The Holland of the Mind exploring the nature of a marital breakdown against a foreign city. But then it takes a darker turn towards transformation, as a person with prejudice finds himself becoming what he dislikes. I am still not sure how effective it really is. Perhaps one I need to chew on for longer.

A High Three Stars

It’s All Gone To The Dogs

In the 60s it seemed like anthologies were going to be the solution to the problem of magazines filled with mediocre short fiction. However, as their number has increased Sturgeon’s Law has come into play and we are already seeing many of these hardcovers filled with 90% crud.

Of all the original anthologies over the last 12 months, I would say only New Writings 15 and The New SF are better than the median issue of F&SF and so justify the higher price tag. However, as my old nan always says, Where There’s Muck, There’s Brass, and it's also true there are still those 10% of good stories to dig out.

A similar logic can also be applied to the Republic of the Isle of Dogs. Some may have considered the protest all a big joke, but if it made a difference to the residents does it matter. As former Prime Minister Ray Padget said:

I don’t care if people think I am silly. I’ll wear a red nose and a clown’s hat providing that the message about our complaints gets over.

If what you want is the higher average score per penny spent, then anthologies are generally not better than magazines. But if you are looking for that one story that makes you sit up and think, then maybe all the silliness around it is worthwhile?

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 4, 1970] Harry's Heroes (Nova 1, edited by Harry Harrison)

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A white man with dark short hair and a dark van dyke beard sits on a yellow couch reading a fantasy periodical.  A window in the background shows an empty suburban street.
by Brian Collins

It seems that between Harlan Ellison’s massive (that is, quite bloated) Dangerous Visions and Damon Knight’s Orbit series, original anthologies are here to stay; not only that, but we’re starting to see more of them, albeit thankfully not on the same scale as Ellison’s book. Harry Harrison is nothing if not knowledgeable of the field we share, and he’s also been involved in nearly every aspect of SF publishing that I can think of. It helps, too, that he’s already released an original anthology, just last month actually, titled The Year 2000. I have to admit that calling this new anthology Nova 1 is a bit presumptuous, since it implies a guarantee of future entries in this new series; but time will tell if the number is unfortunate or not.

Nova 1, edited by Harry Harrison

The cover of Nova 1.  The title is written vertically in a 3-dimensional font.  The fronts of the letters are white and the sides are blue with white clouds. The title descends at a slant from top left to bottom right over a black background with many white stars.  At the bottom behind the number 1 is part of a large red circle, probably representing a nearby star or planet.  Next to the title is written in a blue plain font: An Anthology of original science fiction stories by Robin Scott, Robert Silverberg, Ray Bradbury, Gordon R. Dickson, James Sallis, Donald E Westlake, Piers Anthony, Brian W. Aldiss, and others.  Edited by Harry Harrison
Cover art by Johannes Regn.

Introduction, by Harry Harrison

Harrison quickly goes over what he sees as the history of SF, something I think each of us has heard a hundred times before at this point; but he just as quickly goes into justifying the existence of Nova 1. This is not a themed anthology, but simply what Harrison considers good fiction, which with a couple exceptions he had commissioned specifically for book publication. He puts aside fears held by me and others who have become jaded with New Wave excesses, saying, “Not that the stories [in this book] are overly nasty or overly sexy—or overly anything. They are just—if just is the word—excellent stories by the best science fiction writers around.” We’ll see about that.

No rating.

The Big Connection, by Robin Scott Wilson

On 42nd Street, in New York, two guys, only known as the Hairy One and the Maha, have been toying with and selling “modern” art. The Hairy One is an artist, you know. One day the Hairy One tries to make art out of some odd scrap machinery, “some experimental failure from the Naval Underwater Sound Observatory.” The results are SFnal, really “outasight,” and I guess they’re supposed to be funny. The dialogue is so filled with ridiculous hippy lingo that I have to think Wilson meant it as parody, but if so, it’s a little too much for my taste. There is also some light commentary on the relationship between the artist (the Hairy One) and the capitalist (the Maha), but it’s too slight and deliberately goofy. This whole thing will age like milk in a few years.

Did not make me laugh or even chuckle, but it didn’t offend me. Two stars.

A Happy Day in 2381, by Robert Silverberg

Overpopulation has been a popular subject as of late, and Silverberg gives us a take on it here. Charles Matterns is a “sociocomputator” who gives a visiting (from Venus) colleague a tour of Shanghai—not the city we now know, but a series of floors in a thousand-story building. The “sanctity of life” that conservatives whine so much about has apparently been taken to its logical (or maybe illogical) conclusion, with Earth’s population now estimating 75 billion. Abortion and even birth control are strictly taboo. But, of course, Mattern insists the people who live in these city-buildings are very happy—except for a few “flippos,” those who do not conform. The dialogue is mostly expositional, and the plot is almost nonexistent. There are a few, I guess you could say Silverberg trademarks present, such as his concerning interest in teenagers having sex with full-grown adults, but these are not to the story’s benefit.

I sort of hated it. One star.

Terminus Est, by Barry N. Malzberg

Call it a hunch, but I think Malzberg is unenthusiastic about NASA. “Terminus Est” takes place after a semi-aborted colonization effort, “the Moon boondoggle,” with only about a hundred so-called bohemians staying. The narrator is an astronaut who travels between Earth and the Moon, and all too happy to be retiring in a few months. A certain incident, involving murder, darkened his view of the whole affair. Malzberg actually appears twice in this book, the other being under his not-so-secret pen name K. M. O’Donnell. Reading his first story here, I got the sense that somehow I had read this sort of thing before, but also it’s such a little (only half a dozen pages) fireball of hatred that I have to say I was almost impressed with it. Almost.

Three stars.

Hexamnium, by Chan Davis

Davis has not been around for about a decade, but those who are old enough or have good memories may remember the occasional Davis story in the ‘40s and ‘50s. “Hexamnium” starts as if it’s about to give us something hard-boiled, like Malzberg’s (first) story, but it ends up being much more bittersweet, about a teen boy from Earth being introduced to a team of fellow teens who have been raised from infancy to live in zero gravity. The mode of narration here, in which Emilio, one of the zero-gravity kids, narrates directly to the reader, takes some getting used to, but I think I understand the rationale behind it. This is a reasonably effective coming-of-age story, about a bunch of kids crossing the shadow-line into maturity, with some precious things being gained and other things, no less precious, being forever lost.

Four stars, and I hope this signals Davis’s return to writing SF.

And This Did Dante Do, by Ray Bradbury

This is a poem that was originally published in some magazine a few years ago, making it a reprint. Harrison, in his introduction, makes excuses for why Bradbury has barely written any fiction in the past several years, although he neglects to mention that he couldn’t even procure an original piece from the much overpraised writer. It strikes me as painfully obvious that the Bradbury who wrote The Martian Chronicles and The October Country has long since skipped town. Anyway, this poem, taken strictly as poetry, is bad, in that when read aloud it often grates on the ear. At least the punchline is cute and almost got a chuckle from me.

Two stars.

The Higher Things, J. R. Pierce

Stanley G. Weinbaum would be celebrating his 68th birthday next month, had cancer not taken him back in 1935. A recurring character of Weinbaum’s, the mad scientist Professor Manderpootz, emerges from hibernation thanks to Pierce’s story, which functions on the one hand as an exercise in mimicry, but also as an ode to the late Weinbaum. It’s effective—honestly, it works a lot better than it should. Manderpootz relates a story of how he traveled into the far future and encountered a humanity that had given up physical reality in favor of highly advanced psi powers, and I have to admit the whole thing sparked my own imagination. Pierce’s style here is “pulpy” and a bit stilted, but that is indeed the point.

Four stars.

Swastika!, by Brian W. Aldiss

Hitler is not only alive but enjoying “retirement” in Belgium, his suicide in 1945 having been faked. The narrator is a fellow named Brian (this detail took me out of the story for a bit), who is apparently a Nazi sympathizer and someone with connections. This is less a story and more of a Socratic dialogue, in which Aldiss uses Hitler to take pot shots at politicians and regimes he deems to have at least a touch of the Nazi in them. “President Nixon also has his better side,” says Hitler. Very funny, Aldiss. We also get shots at Reagan and Wallace, and the Soviets, the Cubans under Castro, and even the Israelis. The idea is that the Nazis may have lost World War II, but fascist militarism is alive and well. I’m sure Aldiss wrote “Swastika!” in an afternoon and hardly bothered to revise it, but it gets the job done.

Three stars.

The Horars of War, by Gene Wolfe

Harrison says in his introduction that Wolfe is a Korean War veteran, which I certainly find both believable and relevant to this story. Androids, or robots that both look like and think like (although not exactly like) humans, have mostly replaced soldiers in the future. There’s even a robot tank called Pinocchio. Despite the pun of the title (it’s military jargon or something) and the fairy tale connections, this is a rather serious and philosophical story, about the blurry dividing line between “us” and “the Enemy,” along with the line between humans and robots. While the last few pages, in which Wolfe finally lays all his cards on the table, are splendid, I do wish it was overall a more engrossing reading experience. Wolfe has the right ideas, but he needs to work on narrative pacing and really building up his characters. This is one of those stories that becomes fonder in one’s memory than when one is in the midst of reading it.

I would say three stars, but the premise and ending are strong enough that I feel compelled to bump it up. So, barely four stars.

Love Story in Three Acts, by David Gerrold

You may recall that Gerrold wrote arguably the funniest episode in the dearly departed Star Trek, “The Trouble with Tribbles.” He certainly has an ear for humor, but “Love Story in Three Acts” also sees him turn more to romantic sentiment. A middle-aged man’s wife orders a newfangled piece of computer machinery that would, get this, guide them in their sex life, because apparently the wife has been sorely disappointed with her man’s performance as of late. It’s not nearly as funny as the aforementioned Trek episode, and it also becomes a little too saccharine for my taste; but it certainly has its charm, and it’s that rare “modern” SF story that posits that maybe technology really can do good for the human spirit in some way.

Three stars, you could say one for each “act.”

Jean Duprès, by Gordon R. Dickson

French-Canadian settlers have become farmers and soldiers on the planet Utword, which has its own dominant sentient race, with their own customs and concerns about the intruders. The titular character is a human boy who was born on Utword, alongside the aliens, and thus is most understanding of their ways. Ah, but tragedy and battle ensue! I can’t think of titles off the top of my head, but I feel like Dickson has written just this sort of story before elsewhere—probably more than once. Colonizers bumping heads with alien (read: indigenous) populations is clearly a topic that strikes a chord with him, and while his assumptions about colonizers (that they’re basically good people who are simply tragically misguided, rather than people working within a framework that by its nature damages both mankind and the natural world) strike me as overly generous, even romantic, I understand the appeal. Still, it doesn’t help that this is the longest story in the book, and Dickson doesn’t really venture outside his wheelhouse.

Three stars.

In the Pocket, by K. M. O’Donnell

This is Barry Malzberg’s other story, under the not-so-secret pen name of K. M. O’Donnell. Anyway, as with “Terminus Est,” this one is brief but bleak. The narrator is a “messenger” who works to excise cancer from patients he’s been assigned to, so that he functions as a kind of orderly. He tells the story of when he cared for one elderly man, named Yancey, whom the narrator came to despise. In part this strikes me as a retelling of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but it does ask a few tough questions regarding a future in which cancer really can be removed via the touch of human hands. It’s a mood piece, one so dark and on-edge with so little really to latch onto that I could not bring myself to care about what was happening in-story, even as I was considering its philosophical weight.

Barely three stars.

Mary and Joe, by Naomi Mitchison

This is the other reprint to be included, except it’s even older than the Bradbury poem. The idea is that the titular characters are a married couple working to save their daughter’s life via an unlikely solution, which somehow works; how it worked out is thus saved for the final reveal, as opposed to whether the daughter lives or not. One positive thing I can say is that the science is believable, to the point where I’m convinced we’ll see something like Mitchison’s “solution” here in, say, the next 25 years or so. The problem is that “Mary and Joe” barely functions as a short story, and by the end I got the feeling that it’s incomplete somehow, as if ripped violently from a larger narrative. It’s a shame, because Mitchison is the only woman included here.

Frankly I don’t see much of a point to it. Two stars.

Faces & Hands, by James Sallis

As with the Wolfe story, this is about a war in the future, although this time it’s an interplanetary war, between Earth and Venus. There’s even an alien race of feathered humanoids, and that, combined with the melancholy tone of the whole thing, make me wonder if Sallis had already read the Margaret St. Clair 1951 story “Brightness Falls from the Air.” Sallis’s story unfortunately lacks the conciseness and grace of St. Clair’s, despite working with similar material. “Faces & Hands” is split into sections, taking place both before and after the war, and despite not being the longest story in Nova 1, it certainly feels the longest. Sallis is a very young writer, I think only 25, and he does show ambition, the problem thus being that his reach, at least for now, far exceeds his grasp.

A strong two stars, for what that's worth.

The Winner, by Donald E. Westlake

Revell is an anti-social man being held in a futuristic prison, a place that is supposed to be inescapable. We then follow his battle of wills with his overseer, Wordman, who’s set up traps so that Revell will have to give in and become a good obedient prisoner. This sounds a bit like that show The Prisoner, right? Granted, Westlake’s story is a lot less surreal and much smaller in scope than that series, but both are allegories about the institution versus the individual. In both cases, the author (or creator, in Patrick McGoohan’s case) very much sides with the individual. Only nominally SFnal, but it’s fine for what it is.

Three stars.

The Whole Truth, by Piers Anthony

Just last year, Anthony came in with Macroscope, which I still think is one of the best and most fascinating SF novels in recent memory. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re back to business as usual, because “The Whole Truth” is quite bad. Leo MacHenry is a space ranger who picks up a woman named Nevada, who may or may not be a spy working for a hostile alien race. Harrison’s introduction mentions the lady-and-the-tiger routine, but I was also thinking of Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations.” Leo is a pervert whose dilemma with how to handle Nevada mostly comes from whether he wants to kill her, take her prisoner, or have sex with her. I really could not stand either of these characters or their situation.

I loathed it, especially the ending. One star.

Conclusion

Harrison's idea was to start a new series of original anthologies, not based on a theme but simply to publish what he feels are some of the best short SF money can buy. Of course, all anthology editors want to collect only what they think is the best, unless they happen to be lazy; or you might have Damon Knight with the Orbit books, where he seems to think experimentation matters more than literary value. Harrison seems to have sympathies for both the New Wave and the "old guard," but if this Nova series is to be successful I think he should narrow his criteria for "good" SF a fair amount. Both of the reprints here being weak doesn't help either. If original anthologies are to have their own seat at the table that is the market, I think those in charge (and Harrison and Knight are very bright, talented fellows) should try to be more discerning.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 10, 1970] Thirty Years To Go (The Year 2000, a science fiction anthology by Harry Harrison)

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photo of a dark-haired woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

Clarke and Kubrick Minus One

A recent film has made many of us aware of the first year of the next century.  But what about the last year of this century?

(You do know that 2000 will be the last year of the twentieth century and not the first year of the twenty-first century, right?  I thought so.)

A new anthology of original science fiction stories attempts to offer a glimpse of that evocative year to come. 

The Year 2000, edited by Harry Harrison

Cover of the book The Year 2000, An Anthology Edited by Harry Harrison. The cover illustration is a lustrous white surface with half a crater visible at the top.
Cover art by Pat Steir.

Obviously, all the stories take place three decades from now.  Other than that, they have a wide range of themes and styles, from old-fashioned tales of adventure to commentary on social issues to New Wave experimentation.  Let's take a look.

America the Beautiful, by Fritz Leiber

The narrator is a poet and scholar who travels to the United States on an academic tour.  He stays with a typical American family and has an affair with the adult daughter of his hosts.  Despite the fact that pollution has been eliminated and racism is no longer a problem, there's something about the place that makes him uneasy.  Part of it has to do with the fact that the USA is still involved in small scale wars, similar to the current conflict in Vietnam. 

Although there is a fair amount of futuristic content (rocket transportation between North America and Europe, for example), this reads almost like a mainstream story, something that might be published in a future issue of The New Yorker.  It's impressionistic and introspective.  Given that it's by Leiber, it's no surprise that it's very well written.  Perhaps it's a bit too subtle for me.

Three stars.

Prometheus Rebound, by Daniel F. Galouye

An aircraft that uses the Earth's magnetic field gets in trouble.  The huge plane, which looks like a flying saucer, keeps gaining altitude, beyond the control of the pilots.  Can an elderly veteran flyer of World War Two help the crew save the lives of all aboard?

There's a ton of technical jargon throughout the story, the vast majority of which went way over my head.  The plot depends on a character doing something really foolish. 

Two stars.

Far from This Earth, by Chad Oliver

In Kenya, an area formerly used for raising cattle now serves as a wildlife preserve.  The main character is a warden who has to prevent elderly people from following their traditional ways by tending cattle in the region.  Part of the preserve is an amusement park, something like an African Disneyland.  The protagonist visits the space-themed part of the park, which offers hope for his son's future.

The story offers a thoughtful look at culture change.  The warden bitterly regrets what has been lost, but also welcomes improvements.  He's an ambiguous sort, not always sympathetic, which adds depth of characterization.  The author obviously knows the area and its culture very well, and depicts them vividly.

Four stars.

After the Accident, by Naomi Mitchison

The title disaster contaminated the Earth with radiation.  Genetic testing is used to find out which persons would be likely to produce offspring without mutations.  The narrator, a biologist and historian, meets a man who plans to send colonists to another world.  She becomes pregnant with their child, who will have mutations that will allow it to survive on the planet.

This is a quietly disturbing story.  The narrator's calm acceptance of the situation and decision to bear a mutant baby are the most chilling aspects of it.  The speculative biology is convincing, the stuff about colonizing another planet less so.

Three stars.

Utopian, By Mack Reynolds

A social activist who was in suspended animation wakes up to find that the world has become the kind of paradise he imagined.  There's no money, because everybody has everything they need.  The folks who revived him tell him what they need from him.

The fellow went into suspended animation only because the people in the year 2000 used a sort of mental time travel to take over his mind and make him abscond with funds from his organization and then freeze himself.  I found this aspect of the story gimmicky and implausible compared to the rest.  The impact of the piece depends entirely on its punchline.

Two stars.

Orgy of the Living and the Dying, by Brian W. Aldiss

A man leaves his wife in England to work for a United Nations famine relief agency in India.  He has an affair with a physician.  When the facility is attacked by bandits, he battles them in an unusual way.

This synopsis makes the story sound like mainstream fiction, without futuristic elements.  The main speculative premise is that the man hears voices, some of them seemingly precognitive.  Excerpts of what he hears alternate with the narrative portion of the text, giving the work a touch of New Wave. 

The author creates an evocative setting, if one that could easily be set today rather than in the year 2000.  The man's lust for the doctor causes him to force himself on her at one point.  It's hard to accept him as a hero later, when he comes up with a technological way to defeat the bandits.  (This technique, by the way, is the part of the story that most evokes the feeling of science fiction, even if there is nothing futuristic about it.)

Three stars.

Sea Change, by A. Bertram Chandler

(The book just calls the author Bertram Chandler, but we know better than that, don't we?  It's also no surprise at all that it's a sea story.)

A sea captain (of course!) who went into suspended animation for medical reasons gets thawed out, cured, and given a job commanding a gigantic, automated cargo ship.  When things go wrong, he has to make use of his experience with sailing ships to save the day.

Chandler can't be beat when it comes to describing nautical stuff, and in this case he doesn't even have to pretend that his vessel is a starship.  It may be hard to believe that a guy whose experience with ships is thirty years out of date would be given command of a futuristic vessel.  It may also raise a few hackles to learn that the ship's troubles are caused by a female member of the crew, who messes everything up.

Three stars.

Black is Beautiful, by Robert Silverberg

New York City is populated almost entirely by Black persons, with only a few White commuters and tourists.  The main character is an angry teenager who sees the mayor of the city as an Uncle Tom.  He stalks a White teenager out of a sense of injustice and seeks revenge.

A White author writing from the point of view of a Black radical is taking a big chance, I think, and could be accused of depicting Black stereotypes.  In this case, the gamble pays off pretty well.  The teenager is passionate but naive, the Mayor cynical but effective.  The story might be read as a debate between two styles of Black activism.

Four stars.

Take It or Leave It, by David I. Masson

Two sections of text alternate, both featuring the same characters.  In one, they face challenges like local crime bosses and being forced to move in a technologically advanced society.  In the other, they struggle to survive in a world devastated by a plague.

This reads almost like two different stories.  The first one is full of futuristic slang and nouns used as verbs.  (The word visited is replaced by visitationed, for example.) The second one has more direct language, but is very grim.  People hunt cats to eat them, for one thing. 

The tricks with language make the story difficult to read.  Given the title, I wonder if the author is saying that an imperfect future is a lot better than a horrible one.  This is one for New Wave fans.

Three stars.

The Lawgiver, by Keith Laumer

As a way to fight overpopulation in the United States, a controversial law makes it mandatory to terminate pregnancies unless the mother-to-be has a birth permit. (There's also the implication that she has to be married.) The Senator who pushed this law through Congress, against much opposition, confronts a woman made pregnant by his son. 

Given the fact that abortion is only legal under certain circumstances in a handful of states, it seems unlikely that it would often be mandatory a mere thirty years from now.  (And the story makes it clear that the procedure has to take place even if birth is imminent.)

The author doesn't seem to be making a case for or against abortion, as far as I can tell.  The plot is melodramatic, throwing in a car crash to add excitement (and maybe some dark irony.) Still, I have to admit that it held my attention throughout.

Three stars.

To Be a Man, by J. J. Coupling

A fellow is seriously injured in battle and has almost all of his body except brain, eyes, and part of his spinal cord replaced by artificial parts, indistinguishable from the original.  He returns from the war to confront his lover.

Much of the story consists of exposition, as the man explains in great detail how his new body works.  This makes for dry reading.  In sharp contrast to this is the sexual content: it seems that the fellow can be programmed to be a tireless sex partner.  This results in an outrageous scene in which all the nurses in a battleground medical facility have an orgy with the guy.  Pure male fantasy.

Two stars.

Judas Fish, by Thomas N. Scortia

A man works in a deep sea facility, altering the genetics of fish so that they will lead members of their species into the facility's chambers, to be processed into food for a starving world.  Squid-like beings, having intelligence at least as great as humans, steal the fish away.  The man's capture of one of the creatures leads to a strange transformation.

This is probably the most speculative story in the book, with a common science fiction theme that goes far beyond just extrapolating the next few decades.  Not overly plausible, but readable enough if you're willing to suspend your disbelief.

Three stars.

American Dead, by Harry Harrison

Black guerrillas wage open warfare against the United States government, making use of weapons stolen from the military.  An Italian journalist observes an assault by one of the Black commanders. 

This is a gruesome vision of the worst possible outcome of current racial tensions in the USA.  The manner in which the rebels fight is clearly based on tactics used by the Viet Cong.  A powerful and disturbing tale.

Four stars.

Worth Waiting Thirty Years?

Overall, the book is OK, if not great.  Some low points, some high points, mostly decent stories if not outstanding ones.  Worth reading once, but don't expect it to be in print three decades from now.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 16, 1970] Strange Reports (Vision of Tomorrow #5 and New Writings SF-16)

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By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

The news to start this decade seems to be unrelentingly gloomy. The crisis in Biafra is only worsening, Mainland China and the USSR are at each other’s throats, and, at home, the government appears paralyzed on how to deal with inflation or the Unions.

But I want to take a break from grim reality and talk briefly about one of my favourite new TV programmes of recent months, Strange Report.

Strange Report Title image featuring the three main characters smiling together with the words strange report across them as if on an ink stamp.

It stars the unlikely team of Anthony Quayle (regular star of war films) as retired police detective Adam Strange; Kaz Garas (relative newcomer) as student and jack-of-all-trades Hamlyn Gynt; and Anneke Wills (Polly from Doctor Who) as model and artist Evelyn McClean.

Image from the Strange Report where Evelyn is standing at the doors looking at Ham conducting scientific examination in the makeshift lab in Strange's flat.

Together the trio solve unusual crimes together. These have included such cases as a kidnapped Chinese diplomat, murders by witchcraft and the killing of a student demonstrator behind the Iron Curtain.

There are several reasons this appeals to me, and would to other SF fans I imagine. Firstly, even though it never becomes SFnal, the cases work from a viewpoint that feels very scientific. That no matter how odd things may seem, they will always have a rational explanation.

Secondly, the cases are willing to address complicated issues, without attempting to preach. Even in dealing with some clearly despicable characters, there is an attempt made to understand their point of view and give both sides of the argument. To me it feels like the writers have their own ideas but don’t want to patronise the viewer, we are encouraged to make up our own minds.

Image from Strange Report where Evelyn and Strange sit on a comfortable corner sofa in a fashionable flat discussing the case

Finally, is the dynamic between our triumvirate of heroes. Much like in Star Trek, you get the sense that, in spite of their different viewpoints they all clearly care for and respect each other. It would have been easy to have Strange constantly belittling Evelyn and her trying to show that women could do things for themselves. But, instead, there is a respect and a willingness to listen. Perhaps that is what the terrible world outside our windows really needs?

Back in the pages of SF publications, we have our own strange reports. One coming in from Vision of Tomorrow and the other from New Writings:

Vision of Tomorrow #5

Cover of Vision of Tomorrow #5, a painted colour image illustrating After Ragnarok showing vikings on a glacier approaching a recently landed spaceship.
Cover by Gerard Alfo Quinn

The only point of interest in the introduction is it labelling itself as Britain’s only original SF magazine. I guess it is a point of debate if New Worlds still counts as science fiction or not.

Dinner of Herbs by Douglas R. Mason

Black and white ink drawing of a robot sitting at a control panel, adjusting switches as it observes a rocket in flight.
Illustration by Jeeves

Fenella, a thought chandler at a dianetics lab, has gone to a villa to have a tryst with engineer Gordon Reid. Also staying with them is their domestic servant, a former psychologist android. But is three a crowd?

A darker and more complex tale than it first appeared. However, I think it would benefit from toning down the descriptive prose and upping the character work.

Three Stars

Technical Wizard by Philip E. High

Black and White ink drawing of a fleet of spaceships against a stellar background. Imposed behind them in the massive figure of a man in a spacesuit standing with arms folded and helmet off, looking into the distance.
Illustration by Alan Vince

Two empires in space have come into contact, the more technically advanced human empire and another larger one, populated by fox-like creatures. A single human is sent into the fox people’s empire on a broken-down old ship to warn them. A parapsychic plague has spread through the human empire almost destroying society. Gelthru and Feen have to determine if the human is telling the truth, or if it is all a magic trick to keep them from invading.

An interesting concept and I enjoyed how it made the human the other and the fox-people the protagonists. However, I feel like it needed some more editing to rise above the pack.

Three Stars

Flanagan's Law by Dan Morgan

Black and white ink illustration of a futuristic vehicle zooming across a desert landscape. It appears to be hovering and kicking up dust as it flies along.
Illustration by Jeeves

Capt. Terence Hartigan of the freighter Ladybug is finally given clearance to leave Calpryn, a planet where the main occupation, and entertainment, is lawsuits. However, five hours before blast-off O’Mara goes missing. Hartigan sets off to find him before they find themselves in more legal hot water, but the captain quickly becomes entangled in the planet’s labyrinthine bureaucracy.

I have previously failed to find Morgan’s satires either poignant or funny. This continues that trend but with the addition of some questionable Irish stereotyping.

One Star

Fantasy Review

Black and White illustration of an alien life form in a loin cloth and long boots holding a futuristic gun and old fashioned shield. Behind the sheild is a planet with swirling storms. To one side is the outline of a rocket and other futuristic equipment, to the other is desolate mountain and glistening stars.
Uncredited illustration

Kathryn Buckley reviews New Writings in SF-15, which she liked but not as much as I did, and John Foyster gives praise to The Black Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Outlaws of the Moon by Edmond Hamilton, Kavin’s World by David Mason and Needle by Hal Clement.

One of the Family by Sydney J. Bounds

Black & White ink illustration of a man staring at a small rocket that looks to be rather worse for wear. Around them to one side are alien plants and the other is a cliff face.
Illustration by Alan Vince

Having completed the terraforming of Phoebe-Four, Richard Daniels takes his wife Jane and son Kenny to the neighboring Phoebe-Five for a holiday. Whilst it is meant to be uninhabited they find an intelligent alien, who they call Alan. He quickly becomes like one of the family, but Dick finds his presence both annoying and a cause for concern.

A bit of an old-fashioned tale, but well-told and with a reasonable twist. Wouldn’t have looked out of place as an episode of The Outer Limits.

Three Stars

On Greatgrandfather's Knee by Jack Wodhams

A black and white ink illustration where the tile wends around the figure of a bored child on an old man's knee and an infinite queue of other old people extend into the far distance. Behind them are starfields where different types of rockets fly about.
Illustration by Dick Howett

Six-G GFM Frank (that is Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather on your mother’s side) tells Furn tales of early space travel. But with longevity meaning all the kids having over a hundred great relatives, these tales of adventure are a dull chore.

Whilst Wodhams captures well the boredom of kids having to visit older relatives, I am not sure what the point of it all is.

Two Stars

The Impatient Dreamers: Hands Across the Sea by Walter Gillings

Black and white ink illustration of the logo of Hugo Gernsbeck's science fiction league showing a small stout rocket ship flying through space with a small Earth in the distance, the name wrapped around the outside in a circle.
Insignia of Gernsbeck’s Science Fiction League, designed by Frank R. Paul

This month Gillings discusses Gernsbeck’s Science Fiction League’s branches in England, the early days of New Worlds, fanzine Scientifiction and Gillings' talks with publishers to get a new British SF magazine off the ground.

I continue to adore this series.

Five Stars

Incubation by Damien Broderick

Black and White ink illustration of a man in a shirt and trousers facing front as a woman stands behind clasping his shoulders in an embrace. Behind them is a starfield where an ominous black egg like object is coming in from the right hand side.
Illustration by Eddie Jones

Clive Soame notices a strange ad in the personals and concocts a scheme to sleep with a rich woman and take her money. However, the assignation Rogel and Silver were communicating about was much more complicated than he first thought.

Whilst not revolutionary, an interesting enough take on the lecherous man and alien conspiracy genre. Surprisingly, more than the science-fictional elements, I found myself enjoying the descriptions of Sydney. Very well painted.

Three Stars

Life of the Party by William F. Temple

Black and White ink illustration showing two men in shirt and ties in the midst of battle with a tentacle coming from the ceiling. One of them has sprayed it with paint to make it partly visible to the the human eye whilst the other has a tight grip on the tentacle. Behind them is the grey outline of a square tilted slightly to the side.
Illustration by Eddie Jones

In San Remo, business magnate Mannheim and reporter Don both notice a jet disappear in mid-air. Following its route, they find themselves on a strange coastline, with a giant white cube standing alone by a desert. Entering the cube, they discover a translucent liquid wall leading to a kind of theatre-cum-hotel. The missing jet passengers are there but aged and confused. Don and Manny assume it will be simple to escape, but some force is determined to keep the visitors from leaving.

Taking up over a quarter of the magazine, this is easily the longest piece here, but it makes good use of its length, creating an eerie sense of the uncanny. However, the story is a pretty old one (at times I was recalling The Odyssey) and I was disappointed with the way the women characters were written.

Evens out at Three Stars

After Ragnarok by Robert Bowden

A black and white ink illustration in an oval shape where a distant Earth is being orbited by a space station with two rotating wheels with four spokes to a central shaft.
Illustrated by Gerard Alfo Quinn

The final piece is from an author who I believe is new (at the very least I have not seen him covered by my GJ comrades). After Ragnarok, the world lays shattered. Ottar and Ragnar sail the seas in their ship powered by the ancient technology of the diesel engine. There is a rumour that long ago, some of the gods escaped across the Bifrost, also called Orbit. But could it be possible they are returning? And what will that mean for the world?

Yes, it is another piece of post-apocalyptic-medieval-futurism (try saying that after a few drinks!) However, it has a good style and I have a soft spot for this type of story. The level of cynicism involved also makes it appeal to me.

Four Stars

Tomorrow’s Disasters by Christopher Priest

Instead of our usual preview of next issue’s contents, Priest gives us a short review of Three For Tomorrow. Needless to say, he adores it.

So that is it for the relative newcomer to the scene, but what about the old hand?

New Writings in SF-16, ed. by John Carnell

Hardcover cover image of New Writings in SF-16, with an orange and white abstract image with a red square overlayed saying: Colin Kapp Christopher Priest Michael G. Coney Douglas T. Mason James White Sydney J. Bounds Edited by John Carnell Dobson Science Fiction

Even if we accept the contention that Vision of Tomorrow is the only British SF magazine, New Writings still helps keep up the national side with its regular doses of Carnellian science fiction. According to John Carnell, all the stories in this issue deal with problems that are galactic in scope. Let us see if that makes them Galactic Star worthy.

Getaway from Getawehi by Colin Kapp

Things don't get off to a great start with the return of Colin Kapp's Unorthodox Engineers. Here they are hired to help rescue a construction crew from Getawehi, a planet with an impossible orbit, where gravity is not perpendicular to the surface and 1+1=1.5079.

At almost fifty pages, reading through this was a major slog. These tales must have their fans, but I was personally glad when they disappeared from New Writings a few years back. According to our more learned editor, the concept is very, very, broadly viable, which raises it just above rock bottom for me.

A very low Two Stars

All Done by Mirrors by Douglas R. Mason

George Exton has developed a method of producing mirror images of himself, able to independently work on multiple tasks with the same degree of knowledge and skill as the original. But what is the cost to someone of doing this?

A well-worn trail is being beaten here, and not particularly effectively either.

Two Stars

Throwback by Sydney J. Bounds

Since the Great Change all humans have had the ability to connect via ESP. All that is, except for one person who is completely opaque to all psychic phenomena. Out of pity he is made the keeper of the Museum of Language, with access to all the books and knowledge of the world. Even though he gives weekly lectures, few care about anything other than the present. But when strange lights appear in the sky, only he can save the planet from total panic.

A tightly-told little tale. A bit obvious but enjoyable nonetheless.

Three Stars

The Perihelion Man by Christopher Priest

Capt. Farrell is grounded after an accident near Venus dulls his senses. Whilst pondering what to do with his life now, he is offered a unique opportunity to go back into space. 250 old nuclear satellites have been stolen and are now orbiting the sun, and Farrell may be the only person who can get them back.

This is Priest’s most impressive work to date. He has managed to skillfully produce an exciting adventure story that also has some interesting political elements. That is not to say it is as deep as a New Worlds piece, but it is a fun ride.

Four Stars

R26/5/PSY and I by Michael G. Coney

Hugo Johnson is an agoraphobe who has not left his apartment in two months and is believed to be at risk of killing himself. As such his psychoanalyst provides him with a roommate, robot R/26/5/PSY, or Bob for short. However, Bob is not designed to make Johnson’s life easier, not at all….

An interesting little psychological short. It felt like a combination of I, Robot, a Zola story, and The Odd Couple.

Four Stars

Meatball by James White

And we finish off with the return of White's Sector General and, as the name suggests, their continued explorations of the planet Drambo, nicknamed "Meatball". With the Drambons brought to the hospital station, they must now learn to interact with the numerous other species on board. At the same time Conway has to work out how to deal with the nuclear destruction taking place on the planet below.

It is possible that my memory is cheating me, but I don’t recall other Sector General tales focusing on a single case so much before. Maybe it is planned to be a novel fix-up? This piece definitely has the feel of a staging section, it spends a lot of time recapping earlier events and ends abruptly. Still rather interesting but does not stand alone or feel complete by the end.

Three Stars

Strange Brew, Read What’s Inside Of You

Evelyn and Strange sitting close to each other as they look at a piece of paper. Evelyn is in deep concentration as Strange looks at her.
Evelyn and Strange ponder what we have just read

Whether on the page or the screen, it seems that if you put a group of talented people together and ask them to deal with imaginative scenarios, they can often strike gold…or at least silver. Even if there is little here that is likely to win a Galactic Star, there is plenty worth checking out.

Here's to many more years of Vision, New Writings, and Strange Report. The seventies may not be looking much like a decade of peace and harmony, but it can at least be one of good solid entertainment.

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]


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[July 22, 1969] Let The Sunshine In (More July Books)

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By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

Over here in Britain the summer season is truly with us. Doctor Who is taking its annual break, the temperature reached 88 recently, and the free concerts in Hyde Park are in progress, having so far featured such performers as Donovan, Richie Havens, The Rolling Stones and the new merger of Traffic and Cream (tentatively called Blind Faith).

Black and white photo of Blind Faith performing live in Hyde Park in summer 1969.
Clapton, Baker, Grech and Winwood jam together in the park

In this kind of heat, I personally find there is nothing better than setting up a blanket in the garden and reading a short story collection. Thankfully, I recently got hold of two I was interested in.

I will start with the angriest young man of Science Fiction, Harlan Ellison:

The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by Harlan Ellison

Cover for the 1969 Avon edition of the Harlan Ellison collection, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

His introduction seems to be primarily aimed at critics that try to apply easy labels to his fiction like avant-garde, new wave, or sci-fi (this last apparently coming in vogue with mainstream critics over the more common SF from fan circles). Whilst I get his point that it can be reductive to simply group J. G. Ballard and Samuel R. Delany together as if the were two pulp hack writers pumping out the same work, I also think there is value to talking about how this new type of fiction differs from what came before.

I also think Ellison is just being his usual grouchy self.

The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World
The titular story in this collection was previously published in Galaxy last year. However, Ellison was so unhappy with his changes, he has vowed to never write for Pohl again. Then again, given that Pohl is not actually an editor anymore that seems like an easy promise to keep.

I have read the piece three times and I am not sure what to make of it. It seems to posit madness coming from somewhere outside of us, Crosswhen (which seems to be either alternate timelines or another dimension) but yet also at the beginning of the universe.

In addition there are only 2 very minor edits made between this version and the magazine. One is changing one word to give clarity of linear time, the other is a paragraph describing the creature being placed in amber. These clearly were meaningful enough to cause a major fallout between Pohl and Ellison but the reason for this is a mystery to me.

Two stars, I guess?

Along the Scenic Route
To the best of my knowledge this is original to this collection, although it may have appeared in one of the “adult” magazines he sometimes writes for.

In this future, the freeways have become a battleground, where drivers duel in customised cars. When an ordinary driver is annoyed by the top ranked duellist in the world, he becomes involved in the conflict.

As a non-driver, I rarely relate to stories involving cars and this is no exception. It seems to be saying something about the stress and competition of driving the L.A. freeways, but I am honestly unsure what.

Two Stars

Phoenix
From the March edition of If. Red travels across the desert, determined to complete the expedition with one member already dead.

A disappointing effort from Ellison that started out in an interesting literary style but became cliché driven and dull by the end.

David gave this a low three stars, but I will drop it down to two.

Asleep: With Still Hands
Once again, a piece emerging out of the pages of If (Last July). For six centuries the Sleeper has sat at the bottom of the Sargasso sea, keeping the peace of the world. Any thoughts of war can be stopped by his telepathy. However, a specially trained group are determined to free the world from this Sleeper.

This feels to me like a drawn out version of Harry Lime’s speech in The Third Man:

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Atmospheric but not as deep as Ellison clearly thinks it is.

In this case I will stick to David’s 3 stars, albeit a low one.

Santa Claus vs. S. P. I. D. E. R.
This came in last year’s festive themed issue of F&SF. To most people, Kris Kringle is a jolly fellow who makes toys, however he lives a double-life as a secret agent. He is brought in to bring down an extra-terrestrial threat taking over America’s top politicians, known only as S.P.I.D.E.R.

Joke stories are always going to be subjective. Whilst I understood the satirising going on, it didn’t really appeal to my sensibilities.

Two Stars

Try a Dull Knife
Continuing with Fantasy & Science Fiction, this one was published there in October. The internal thoughts of an empath as he decries his lot.

Standard mid-level Ellison.

I am with our editor on the rating of Three Stars.

The Pitll Pawob Division
From the December issue of If, it tells the story of an encounter with a strange egg.

Honestly just feels empty, over-described and lacking substance.

One Star

The Place with No Name
This one was only just published in last month’s F&SF. In order to escape from the law, Norman Mogart accepts a mission from an indescribable entity, which will involve him travelling into the jungle to a place with no name.

Not quite one that I would have expected from Ellison, instead what Philip K. Dick might have written for 1930s Weird Tales. Whilst a little odd, it still had a strong sense of atmosphere that pulled me along.

I agree with our esteemed editor’s ranking of Four Stars.

White on White
Apparently, this one was previously published in men’s magazine Knight, but is certainly new to me. I was also initially confused if it was meant to be linked to the prior story (but I do not believe so).

A gigolo is staying with the Countess on the Aegean when she decides to climb a mountain. Going to the top he finds a surprising example of true love.

A vignette lower on SF and high on taboos. Reminds me of the weaker stories in recent issues of New Worlds.

One Star

Run for the Stars
For the next few we are jumping back to the earlier days of Harlan’s career, with this tale from 1957. Earth is at war with the Kyban empire. Talent, a drug addict, is forced by the resistance into a desperate gambit to defeat the alien invaders. To be turned into a human bomb.

This is the second longest piece in the collection but it took me the longest to read because I found I would keep losing interest and just skim read over sections. It is not terrible and asks some interesting questions, but it is too long and his style is yet to mature.

Two Stars

Are You Listening?
I was surprised to see this 1958 story here as you can still get it in Earthman Go Home (the paperback title for Ellison Wonderland). Albert Winsocki wakes up one day to discover that people can no longer see or hear him, what has happened?

Ellison does good work creating the atmosphere of panic here, however the point is made very clumsily. Not one of his better works.

Three Stars

S.R.O.
We are finishing our late 50s trilogy with this tale from 1957’s Amazing. An alien spaceship lands in the middle of New York. But rather than invading, they appear to simply want to put on a show. Of course, there are always people on hand to make money from such an opportunity.

Similar to the previous tale, Ellison creates a good atmosphere but the points being made are nowhere near as skilful. Enjoyable in a 50s Galaxy kind of way.

Three Stars

Worlds to Kill
Back to more recent tales, with this one from If in March 1968. It follows crippled mercenary Jared and his battles around the universe.

As you would expect from Ellison, this is not John Carter of Mars. Instead, it is a dark and cynical take on the universe. It doesn’t quite have enough meat on its bones for me but is still pretty good.

Three Stars

Shattered Like a Glass Goblin
I reviewed this short less than a year ago when it first appeared in Orbit 4. To repeat my summary:

Rudy has finally gotten out of the army on medical, only to find his fiancée Kris in a marijuana-drenched squat in downtown LA. Is he just not “with it” anymore? Or is something more sinister going on?

This won a Galactic Star so clearly many of my fellow Journeyers believe it is a five-star story. Personally I am keeping it at Four Stars.

A Boy and His Dog
By far the longest story in the collection is an expansion of the novelette version published in New Worlds recently. In a post-nuclear world, a boy, Vic, and his canine meet a young woman, Quilla, and follow her to a secret underground city.

There is no real difference in the story other than verbosity. To take one example, here is the New Worlds text:

Blood and I crossed the street and came up in the blackness surrounding the building, it was what was left of the YMCA.

And here is the unedited text in this collection:

Blood and I crossed the street and came up in the blackness surrounding the building. It was what was left of the YMCA.
That meant “Young Men’s Christian Association”. Blood taught me to read.
So what the hell was a young men’s christian association. Sometimes being able to read makes more questions than if you were stupid.

The full text adds slightly more texture to the world but does not actually advance anything. So it probably depends if you like even more Harlan for your buck or prefer him in small doses.

Personally, I give both versions Four Stars.

So, whilst it may be Ellison’s biggest collection, these are not necessarily his best stories. What it does do well is it shows his range, from simple didacticism to the obscure. From only marginally SFnal tales to alien wars. Maybe he has a point that he isn’t just an avant-garde new wave sci-fi writer?

New Writings in SF-15, Ed. By John Carnell

Cover of hardback edition of New Writings in SF-15 ed. by John Carnell

With more volumes than many monthly magazines manage, New Writings continues on. This time the theme is psychological. How do Carnell’s crew deal with this one?

Report from Linelos by Vincent King
Probably my favourite writer from these pages returns with a more experimental story than usual. These are the tapes of two consciousnesses:

Consciousness A: The internal monologue of an energy being that believes itself to be a God

Consciousness B: A tale of Linelos, a strange world where Arthurian knights go on quests with machine guns, dodging napalm dropped from biplanes.

What do these two narratives have to do with each other? And what could they mean?

I am always happy to see authors stretch themselves. King continues with his trademark medieval-futurism but adds new stylistic touches to it. And even though the explanation at the end combines two of the standard twists of the genre, he does so elegantly, such that I did not suspect them before I was told.

Five Stars

The Interrogator by Christopher Priest
Whilst this young fan had appeared in a couple of issues of Impulse he recently declared his intention to focus on professional writing. If this story is anything to go by, he has a good career ahead of him

Dr. Elias Wentick was stationed in the Antarctic when a mysterious government man named Astroude approached him about identifying a strange jet fighter. Now he finds himself in an otherwise empty prison. He will occasionally be interrogated, with Astroude wanting the answer to apparently pointless questions.

As you can probably tell this draws a lot from Darkness at Noon and The Trial, but it has a great atmosphere and enough original touches to stand out.

A high four stars

When I Have Passed Away by Joseph Green
Green has been writing for the US magazines for the last few years; nice to see him back here.

At Outworld University on Earth, two humans, Halak and Caal, had become inseparable from two She’waan, Phe’se and Princess Sum’ze. One day, the two She’waan abruptly leave without explanation. Four years later, Caal receives a message from Sum’ze (now Queen) that she desperately needs his help.

With Phe’se’s help they work in secret on the matriarchal world of Achernar Six. All She’waan women over thirty transform into gaseous clouds, a fate Halak and Caal are determined to save Phe’se from. However, as Queen Sum'ze lies dying, different factions are fighting to claim the throne for themselves.

This is the briefest summary I can manage to give of this tale but there is a lot more going on. It represents a fascinating combination of old and new. I was really impressed with the sense of wonder Green manages to evoke, reminiscent of Clark Ashton Smith, and it involves a number of concepts from the pulp era. However, it is also focussed on the development of women’s bodies and works as an interesting metaphor on how women of a certain age are treated by society at large.

Four Stars

Symbiote by Michael G. Coney
To the best of my knowledge this is a debut piece from Coney, presaging what I hope will be a great career.

On an alien world the humans find the Chintos, monkey-like creatures that become incredibly popular as pets on Earth. Soon everyone has one riding on their shoulders. Centuries later humans have become like beasts of burden for their host Chintos, who now do all the thinking and humans all the movement. We follow census taker Joe-Tu as they arrive in a village that is faced with flooding.

This marks an interesting reversal of some conventional concepts of SFnal storytelling. Firstly, instead of humanity’s bodies being diminished by machines, it is our minds as that are diminished as the Chintos do our thinking for us and we simply play. Secondly, the Chintos are not parasitic invaders, but a result of mankind’s folly who feel sorry for and want to help us. The ending is a little weaker than I would like, but the piece is a very good first effort.

Four Stars

The Trial by Arthur Sellings
The late great author apparently still has a few stories left to be published. In this future the Galactic Council, largely run by Earth, controls many worlds. The only rivals to their power they have found are the Vyrnians, gangly purple humanoids nicknamed Hoppos. When one Vryn is arrested and put under a truth drug, he reveals himself to be a missing human space captain and is put on trial for treason. But how did this happen? And why?

This is a fascinating piece critiquing colonialism; however, your enjoyment of this will probably depend on how much you like courtroom dramas. Thankfully, I find great pleasure in them.

Five Stars

Therapy 2000 by Keith Roberts
Since the collapse of Science Fantasy/Impulse, the former sub-editor has remained largely absent from the SF scene. Even if he is not always my favourite author, it is nice to see him back.

In a world filled with noise, ad man Travers is obsessed with trying to remove auditory sensation from his life, even to the extent of damaging his ears and angering everyone around him.

I personally suffer when there is an intensification of external stimuli so I related to the character of Travers. Whilst this story posits a future where the silence is only available to the rich, in modern metropolitan life it can still be hard to find five minutes of peace and quiet. Roberts is able to show that very well with his vivid descriptions. One of his better works.

Four Stars

And so another New Writings triumph under Carnell’s belt. Like the sunny weather we have been experiencing, long may it continue.




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[September 24, 1968] Reconstructing The Past (The Farthest Reaches & Worlds of Fantasy #1)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Yesterday, in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, a huge celebration took place. International dignitaries attended, US Marines fired cannons, Local Choirs sang specially composed songs.

What was all this in aid of? The beginning of one of the strangest architectural projects of our time. The reconstruction of London Bridge.

An Abridged History

A painting of Old London Bridge, in the 18th Century. A stone bridge of many arches with georgian houses built on it as boatman sail underneath it.
Old London Bridge, in the 18th Century

Whilst there has been a bridge across the Thames for at least as long ago as The Romans, the longest lasting and one that has been immortalized in song is the medieval “Old London Bridge”, which was completed in 1205. As you are probably aware it was constantly beset with problems. After endless changes, removal of properties and attempts to shore it up, a committee in 1821 was formed to build the New London Bridge.

The ”New” London Bridge,early in the morning a granite bridge with arches, with a road, pedestrian walkways and a small number of cars
The ”New” London Bridge, at a less busy time

This new version was opened to the public in 1831 and has fared reasonably well for over a century. However, the increased volume of traffic has caused it to slowly sink. This was not as much of an issue in the era of the horse and cart, but with hundreds of tonnes of steel sitting on it every rush hour, and not prepared for the passage of millions of Londoners, a change had to be made.

New London Bridge with high volumes of traffic
Not made for this kind of weight

In order to recoup some of the costs for the destruction of the old bridge and construction of a new one, Ivan Luckin of the Common Council of the City of London, put it up for auction. After a promotional campaign, two dozen serious bids came in. In April, the winner was announced to be Robert P. McCullough of McCullough Motors, planning to rebuild it in Arizona.

“In The Modern House They Throw In A Few Antiques”

What does a motor company want with 100,000 tons of granite? To understand that you have to know a little more about where it is going.

Lake Havasu City as pictured from the air in the late 1950s
Not your typical holiday destination

In 1938, the Parker Dam was built on the Colorado River, providing water and power to Southern California. Behind it sits the reservoir of Lake Havasu. In 1942 the US government built an auxiliary airfield and support base there. What they were apparently unaware of was the land was not theirs to take but was actually owned by Victor and Corinne Spratt. After the war, the couple were able to get the land back and turn it into a holiday resort.

In 1958 McCullough enters our story. He was looking for a site to test onboard motors and convinced the Spratts to sell most of their land to him. He turned it from a resort into a city and set up a chainsaw factory there in 1964.

However, this is not exactly prime real estate. Lake Havasu City sits in the middle of the Mojave desert, around 40 miles from the Colorado River Reservation, a hundred miles from the Hoover Dam and almost equidistant between Las Vegas, Palm Springs and Phoenix. There is little else of interest, unless you like a lot of rocks. What could attract people? Maybe a piece of history…

Anglophilia

McCullough standing in front of the New London Bridge, arms spread wide
McCullough, now the proud owner of the world’s largest antique

Whilst this may be the strangest and, at over $2.4m, possibly the most expensive purchase of a piece of British design, it is not unique. The Queen Mary currently sits at Long Beach, California and the Church of St. Mary Aldermanbury was recently relocated to Missouri.

Will this grand venture pay off? It will take at least three years to complete the project, so we will see if in the mid-'70s people are coming from all over to see London Bridge, or if Lake Havasu City becomes another ghost town.

Ghosts of the Past

Talking of this kind of reconstruction project, this month, across two publications, I read 21 short stories, all of which are attempting to revive something of the past.

The Farthest Reaches
The Farthest Reaches hardback book cover
Joseph Elder is not a name I was familiar with before. He appears to be a fan of the old school, endorsing the “sense of wonder” over literary pretensions. As such he has asked his contributors to only include stories set in distant galaxies containing Clarke’s ideals of “wonder, beauty, romance, novelty”. Let’s see how they have done:

The Worm That Flies by Brian W. Aldiss
As these are sorted alphabetically, we of course start with Mr. Aldiss (at least until Alan Aardvark gets more prolific). And, just as obviously, it is one of the strangest in this volume.

Argustal crosses the world of Yzazys collecting stones to build his parapattener. When he is then able to communicate with Nothing, he hopes to answer the strange questions emerging about phantoms called “childs” and the dimension of time.

The ideas of this story are not particularly new and the mystery is reasonably obvious. However, what Aldiss manages to do well is create such a strange unnerving atmosphere, such that it carries the reader along and raises it up above standard fare of this type.

A low four stars

Kyrie by Poul Anderson
The spaceship Raven is sent to investigate a supernova, a crew consisting of fifty humans and one Auregian, a being of pure energy. This being, Lucifer, has its orders communicated telepathically by technician Eloise Waggoner.

I am not usually as much a fan of Anderson’s science fiction compared to his fantasy, but this one impressed me. It has an interesting mix of hard-science with psi-powers but a strong character focus. A compelling read.

Four Stars

Tomorrow Is a Million Years by J. G. Ballard
I am not quite sure why the cover claims these tales are never before published, as this one has been printed a number of times, including in New Worlds two years ago.

I don’t have much to add to Mark’s review, I will just say it is a strange, but wonderful piece.

Four Stars

Pond Water by John Brunner
Men attempt to create their ultimate defender, Alexander. The creation, indestructible and with all the knowledge of humanity, proceeds to invade and take control of more and more worlds. But what is Alexander to do when there are no more worlds to conquer?

This progresses well and Brunner shows us the scale of conquest vividly in such a short space. Unfortunately, the ending is so pat it wouldn’t even appear in the worst Twilight Zone episode.

Three Stars

The Dance of the Changer and the Three by Terry Carr
Forty-two men died on a mining expedition on the gas giant Loarra. According to a PR man who was there, the answer to what happened lies in an ancient myth of the native energy forms, The Dance of the Changer and the Three.

This is a very challenging story and you may need to read through a couple of times to fully understand it. However, it is definitely worth your patience. Carr really makes an effort to show the Loarra as truly alien, but not in an unknowably menacing way as Lovecraft does. Rather they have a completely different understanding of what life and reality is.

Five Stars

Crusade by Arthur C. Clarke
On an extra-galactic planet, a crystalline computerized creature sets out to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

What Clarke gives us here is a kind of fable about the dangers of biases and science for its own sake. A more cynical take than is usual for him; perhaps Kubrick's influence is rubbing off?

Four Stars

Ranging by John Jakes
Jakes’ tale is set centuries in the future, where generations range the universe, in order to map it and send back data. Whilst Delors wants to carefully explore as instructed, Jaim wishes to rebel and jump trillions of light years at a time.

This could have been an interesting take on exploration but it mostly descends into the two leads yelling at each other “you cannot understand because you’re just a man\girl”.

Two Stars

Mind Out of Time by Keith Laumer
Performing an experimental jump to Andromeda, the crew of the Extrasolar Exploratory Module find themselves at the end of space, where they start to experience reality outside of time.

I feel like Laumer was going for something analogous to the final section of 2001. However, he lacks the skill of Kubrick and Clarke, making what could be mysterious and profound merely serviceable.

A low Three Stars

The Inspector by James McKimmey
Steve Terry, hero of the planet of Tnp, went into orbit, walked out of his spaceship and suffocated. Forest and his team are sent to investigate why this happened, and why no one has attempted to retrieve the body.

This is the one story that does not conform to the brief—there is no particular reason this could not be set on Earth. In fact, there isn’t much need for it to be SFnal at all. With half a dozen small changes you could have it contemporaneously on a newly independent Caribbean Island.

Putting that aside, it is not a bad story, just rather pedestrian, where I had deduced the themes and mystery by the second page.

A low Three Stars

To the Dark Star by Robert Silverberg
Three scientists, a human man, a human woman altered to suit alien environments and a microcephalon, are sent to observe a star. One problem: they all hate each other.

Your feelings for this story will likely depend on how you feel about unpleasant protagonists. The narrator in this piece is incredibly so and the whole thing left me cold.

Two Stars

A Night in Elf Hill by Norman Spinrad
After 18 years of service, Spence is depressed that his travels in space will be over and he must choose a single planet to settle on. He writes to his psychologist brother Frank begging him to talk him out of going back to the mysterious city of The Race With No Name.

This is quite an impressive short story. Spinrad manages to seamlessly move from science fiction to fantasy to horror, creating a real emotional thrill. He also does it through a letter that has a unique tone of voice and gives a whole new sense to Spence’s descriptions.

It does sound like it might resemble what I have read of the Star Trek episode The Menagerie but I think Spinrad spins this yarn well enough that it doesn’t bother me.

Four Stars

Sulwen's Planet by Jack Vance
On Sulwen’s Planet, sit the wreckage of millennia old ships of two different species. Tall blue creatures, nicknamed The Wasps, and small white creatures, nicknamed the Sea Cows. A team of ambitious scientists departs from Earth, all determined to be the first to unravel these aliens' secrets.

Like Silverberg’s piece, this is also a tale of squabbling scientists, here primarily focused on the two linguists. Competent, enjoyable but forgettable.

Three Stars

Worlds of Fantasy #1

Worlds of Fantasy #1 Cover by Jack Gaughan depicting a human baby being bottle fed by a green amphibious creature
Cover and all illustrations by Jack Gaughan

After a 15-year hiatus Lester Del Rey returns to editing. He opens the magazine with a rambling editorial taking us from ancient firesides, through folktales, modern uptick in astrology, Tolkien, and theories of displacement, before concluding it doesn’t really matter as long as the stories are fun.

Well, are they? Let’s find out:

The Mirror of Wizardry by John Jakes
Brak the Barbarian shown on the floor after fighting the wizard
This marks the return of Brak the Barbarian, late of Cele Lalli’s Fantastic issues.

As Brak is fleeing from Lord Magnus he rescues a woman from rock demons. She reveals herself to be Nari, also fleeing but from Lord Garr of Gilgamarch and his wizard Valonicus, who can send forth shadow creatures after them with his magic mirror. Nari’s back is tattooed with a map to a treasure, one that could win or destroy a kingdom. Together the two attempt to flee across the Mountains of Smoke, but can they outrun such power?

This is a pretty standard story, full of the usual cliches of these kinds of tales. It probably would have managed a low three stars, except that it treats a rape victim very poorly. Brak does not seem to understand why a woman running scared would be wary of getting naked in front of a stranger who angrily badgers her for information about torture and sexual assault. And the ending is just disturbing in the wrong way.

A low two stars

Death is a Lonely Place by Bill Warren
Miklos Sokolos is a 68-year-old vampire who leaves his crypt in Parkline Cemetery to feed. But when he meets his latest potential victim, he is not sure if he can kill her.

I was originally surprised to see this here as it seemed like it would be more suited to Lowdnes’ Magazine of Horror, but, as it went on, I realized it was less a Lord Ruthven style tale, and more a meditation on how much of a curse the situation might be.

More thoughtful than expected.

Four Stars

As Is by Robert Silverberg
A turbaned man, descending on a rope from the sky with an oil can to aid another man standing by his car
Sam Norton is transferred from New York to Los Angeles, but his company will not pay moving costs. To save money he rents a U-Haul and buys an unusual secondhand car that was left for repairs a year ago but never returned to. Not long after Sam sets out, the prior owner returns and wants his vehicle back. How will he catch up with Sam before he reaches LA? By renting a flying horse, of course!

Eminently silly short.

Two stars for me, although car owners might give it three.

What the Vintners Buy by Mack Reynolds
Matt Williams is a hedonist who has tried everything twice but has grown bored. As such he approaches Old Nick to make a deal for the ultimate pleasure.

Yes, another “deal with the devil” story, a dull and talky example. I can’t help but wonder if this was a reject from The Devil His Due.

One Star

Conan and the Cenotaph by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp
Conan, arms up against a wall as he is attacked by a gelatinous creature
A young Conan “untampered by the dark deceits of the East” is working for the King of Turan, transporting back a treaty from the King of Kusan. Enroute their guide, Duke Feng, tells Conan of an ancient treasure hidden in a haunted valley and suggests together they can retrieve it.

This is another new tale of Conan from his biggest fans, however Carter and de Camp lack even a quarter of Howard’s skill. Over described, dull and the plot feels stretched even over these 10 pages. This would be bad enough but it, as you can probably tell from the quoted phrase above, invokes some horrible racism.

This can be seen most prominently in the villain of the piece. Duke Feng encapsulates every negative Asian stereotype, managing to somehow be both Fu Manchu and a sniveling traitorous coward. Whilst there are problems in Howard’s original work (the finer points of which my colleague Cora and I have expended much paper debating) this takes it many steps further.

One star

After Armageddon by Paris Flammonde
At the start of the “Final War”, Tom accidentally stumbles on the fountain of youth. Centuries later, after everyone else has died, Tom continues to wander the Earth.

This is another last man tale, the melancholic philosophical kind that used to fill the pages of New Worlds a few years back. This is not a great example and doesn’t add anything new to the already overused subgenre.

Two Stars

A Report on J. R. R. Tolkien by Lester Del Rey
The editor gives a look at the publishing history of The Lord of the Rings, the status of its planned sequels and the effect it is having on the industry.

Fine for what it is but, at only two pages, it does not delve into the why or give any information not already reported in multiple places.

Three Stars

The Man Who Liked by Robert Hoskins
A small man appears in the city dispensing joy to the residents. Who is he? And why is he being so generous?

A pleasant vignette, but one where you are continually waiting for the penny to drop. When it does, it is not where I would have predicted it going, but it works well.

Three Stars

Delenda Est by Robert E. Howard
The first printing of one of the many unpublished manuscripts that were left by the late author. This one is primarily a historical tale, set in the Vandal Kingdom of the Fifth Century. As King Genseric ponders his position, a mysterious stranger comes to convince him to sack Rome.

Howard clearly did his research and manages to explain the history of this much neglected period in an entertaining fashion. It also only contains a mild piece of speculative content (the rather obvious identity of the stranger), which is probably why it remained unsold.

Three Stars

However by Robert Lory
A large sea serpent peering over two men in a row boat
After having accidentally caused his boatman to be eaten, Hamper finds himself stuck in Grath. There, people are committed to only doing their profession, no matter how useless or obsolete it is. As such, getting across the water is to prove incredibly tricky.

Robert Lory has been writing for the main magazines for over 5 years, with some modern feeling pieces under his belt. This, however, feels like a reprint from the 19th century, one that might have been intended as a satire of mechanization but now reads as a tall tale.

Serviceable but silly and rambling.

Two Stars

A Delicate Balance

Artist's impression of What the New-New London Bridge may look like, a long steel structure only supported on either end
What the New-New London Bridge may look like

As can be seen, trying to do stories in an old style can be difficult work. Some, like Anderson and Warren, are able to use the ideas in a new way to make something profound. Others, such as de Camp and Carter, create an object of significantly less value. Whether constructing prose or pontoons it takes both skill and imagination few possess. However, those that do make the journey rewarding.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 6, 1967] Brotherly Love (Dangerous Visions, Part Two)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

A couple of months ago we looked at the first third of a massive new anthology of original science fiction and fantasy stories, put together by one of the most colorful figures in the field of imaginative fiction. Let's jump into the middle of the book and see if it maintains the same level of quality and controversy. As before, I'll provide traffic signals to warn you how dangerous each story might be.

Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison


Front cover by Diane and Leo Dillon.

Gonna Roll the Bones, by Fritz Leiber

A fellow with the incredible ability to throw small objects with extreme accuracy goes out to shoot dice at a very strange and disturbing casino. But is he ready to risk the ultimate bet with the Big Gambler?

I have to admit up front that I can't be objective here. I am head-over-heels, madly in love with this story. Leiber blends science fiction, fantasy, tall tale, horror, and every other kind of imaginative fiction you can name into a perfectly crafted work of art. Just read it.

Five stars. GREEN for fine writing.

Lord Randy, My Son, by Joe L. Hensley

A man dying of cancer has a very strange young son with seemingly miraculous powers. The boy observes a cruel world outside. What will he grow up to be?

The premise reminds me a bit of Jerome Bixby's story It's a Good Life and the Twilight Zone episode adapted from it. That was an out-and-out horror story, however, and this one is more ambiguous. Randy is capable of great good and great evil, and it looks like the people of Earth are going to get what they deserve. In a way, that's more chilling than Bixby's monster.

Three stars. YELLOW for religious references.

Eutopia, by Poul Anderson

The protagonist is from a parallel world in which Alexander the Great lived to a ripe old age, and the Hellenistic culture is dominant. They've colonized other planets, and have even figured out a way to visit alternate realities. (There are hints that the main character explored our own world, and found it utterly repulsive.)

In a North America inhabited by a mixture of Norse, Magyar, and Native American cultures, he violates a taboo and is pursued by folks out to kill him. He makes a desperate attempt to escape, eager to rejoin his beloved in his own, much more civilized world.

Anderson has obviously done his homework. The various parallel realities we learn about seem very real. The plot follows the action/adventure/chase structure we're familiar with, and which Anderson can write in his sleep. The only dangerous part of the story comes at the very end, when we finally figure out what taboo the protagonist violated. The revelation is more of a punchline, really, and not a major part of the story.

Four stars. YELLOW for the last line.

Incident in Moderan, by David R. Bunch

Here's the first of two brief tales from one of the most debated authors of speculative fiction. As the title indicates, it's part of his series about the dystopian future world he calls Moderan, a hellish place where people who have replaced almost all of their flesh with metal and who live in heavily fortified strongholds wage endless wars with each other. In this story, one of these hate-filled semi-humans meets a more normal person, barely existing in the no-man's-land between fortresses. Typical of the series, it's a dark and bitter satire of humanity's evils.

Three stars. YELLOW for grimness.

The Escaping, by David R. Bunch

Here's the other one. The narrator is imprisoned, and spends time imagining the rolling and unrolling of the sky. Something like that, anyway.

Two stars. YELLOW for surrealism.

The Doll-House, by James Cross

A guy who is up to his eyebrows in debt goes to his father-in-law for help. The old man isn't very sympathetic, but he gives his son-in-law a miniature house that contains a tiny, immortal oracle, who can answer all questions. Can you guess that this won't work out well?

This is an efficient fantasy story of the be careful what you wish for school. There's nothing particularly distinguished about it, for good or bad. Worth reading, anyway.

Three stars. GREEN for being a decent, typical yarn of its type.

Sex and/or Mr. Morrison, by Carol Emshwiller

The narrator is a rather strange woman who is obsessed with a very fat man who lives in the same building. She hides in his room, watching him undress, in order to find out if he's a human being or an Other.

You can interpret the plot as science fiction or as the delusions of the narrator. In either case, what it's really about is the human body, particularly those parts we're not supposed to expose or talk about. It's the kind of thing you expect to find in New Worlds.

Three stars. RED for New Wave writing and sexual content.

Shall the Dust Praise Thee?, by Damon Knight

God and his angels show up at the end of the world, just like it says in the last book of the Bible. The only problem is that there aren't any people around to witness the Apocalypse. A little digging around reveals a final message from humanity.

Knight is thumbing his nose at traditional religion here. This tiny little story is basically a grim joke. Don't show it to your local cleric.

Three stars. YELLOW for blasphemy.

If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?, by Theodore Sturgeon

A guy figures out that valuable stuff is coming from a planet that official records claim doesn't even exist. Folks who know it's real make it nearly impossible to get there. On another world where just about all activities are tolerated, somebody who shows up from that planet is instantly attacked and is likely to be killed. The guy finally reaches the place, and finds out what the big mystery is about.

It's hard to talk about this story without revealing too much about the premise, although the title gives you a clue. It breaks my heart to have to give a poor rating to a work by one of the true masters of speculative fiction, but this is really a lecture in lightly fictionalized form.

The climax is nothing but a long discussion as to why one of the strongest of cultural taboos should be broken. Sturgeon makes his point carefully and logically, to be sure, but forgets to engage the reader with an honest-to-gosh story. Inevitably, this work is going to compared to his groundbreaking tale The World Well Lost, but that one worked perfectly well as fiction, and not just as a debate.

Two stars. RED for advocating something most people would rather not think about.

What Happened to Auguste Clarot?, by Larry Eisenberg

This is a madcap farce in which the main character tracks down a missing scientist. There's a lot of slapstick and general silliness. It's really out of place in this anthology. Even Ellison's introduction jokingly says he was crazy to buy it. You may get a few chuckles out of it. With the French setting, I pictured Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther as the protagonist.

Two stars. GREEN for wacky hijinks.

Ersatz, by Henry Slesar

In a future world devastated by war, a weary soldier reaches one of the few places where he can rest for a while. All he can get there is fake food, fake tobacco, and something else that isn't real.

This very short story depends on its ending for its impact. It definitely creates a grim, dystopian mood.

Four stars. YELLOW for unrelieved gloom.

Middle of the Road

The central portion of this massive volume isn't quite as consistent as the first part, although Leiber's story is the best in the book so far. Sturgeon's polemic is a major disappointment, and there are some other pieces that don't really work for me. Maybe the last third of the anthology will be better. We'll see.



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