Tag Archives: astounding

Magazine

Let's do the numbers (June 1959 Astounding; 5-23-1959)

Leave a comment

I'm about half-done with this month's Astounding, but since that half largely comprises the second third of Dorsai!, and because I don't want to give anything away before it's complete, there's not much fiction on which to report today.

But that doesn't mean I'm out of material… 

Four months ago, I wrote about Astoundings unique habit of publishing the results of reader surveys of fiction appearing in the magazine.  I then compared what the readers thought of the November and December issues of Astounding and what I thought.

The numbers are out again, this time for the January and February issues, and the results are similar.  Let's take a look, shall we?

When I reviewed the January issue, I noted that, with the exception of To Run the Rim, and Seedling, the magazine had been awfully unimpressive.  The problem with Editor Campbell's scoring system is that it only compares the stories to each other rather than on an absolute scale.  That said, on my card, I put Rim first and Seedling second. 

Well, the rest of the readers agreed that Seedling was #2, but they put the tedious Study in Still Life on top.  I just can't wait for Campbell to put more turgid "funny" tales in his mag.  To Run the Rim finished fourth, behind the fatuous Deadlock; Robin Hood's Barn and By New Hearth Fires came in a distant fifth and sixth.  The fact that the highest scoring story only got a 2.84 suggests that, as with the December issue, readers were unimpressed with the crop and were voting ranking based on the story they liked least (rather than which one they liked most).

The February issue was a better one, and the readers' opinions were more in line with my own.  Murray Leinster's Pirates of Ersatz (Part 1) was the favorite at 2.03 followed closely by Silverberg's Hi Diddle Diddle!.  As you'll recall from my review, I actually liked that story quite a bit despite it being Silverberg, and despite it being one of the "funny" stories.  Within two paragraphs, I am found out as a hypocrite.  Ah the shame.

The jingoistic but good Stoker and the Stars came in a solid #3, while the medicore Missing Link and Accidental Death round out the list at a distant 4th and 5th.  Sadly, Leonard Lockhard's satirical look at patent law, The Professional Touch, did not even make the list.

I'll be very interested to see the numbers for the April issue, which demonstrated a marked increase in quality.  Then we'll really see how the ratings compare.

In the meantime, I'll have more on this month's Astounding in a few days, and by then, all of July's issues should have arrived in my mailbox.  Here's hoping I'll have more space shots to discuss, too.

(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)


This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered (May 1959 Astounding, second part; 4-24-1959)

Leave a comment

Sorry about the wait, friends, but I promise to make it up to you.  I had a lovely night at the drive-in that precluded my fingers hitting the typewriter keys, but I'll have movies to discuss in short order as a result.

In the meantime, let's wrap up this month's Astounding. shall we?  After all, new issues come out in just a couple of days, and I have to have the boards clear before pressing on.


(illustrated by Martinez)

George O. Smith, science fiction's A-lister of latin descent, turns out a fine story for animal lovers with History Repeats.  In the far future, canis familiar has been given enhanced intelligence to rival that of humanity's, but their loyalty to their bipedal companions remains undiminished.  In this tale, Terran agent, Peter, and his furry companion, Buregarde, are sent to Xanabar, a sort of latter-day Byzantium, to rescue a kidnapped damsel in distress.  It's worth reading just for Buregarde–Smith always writes a fun, poetic story.


(illustrated by van Dongen)

Operation Haystack, by Frank Herbert, is an interesting political thriller set about a thousand years from now.  It involves a centuries-old plot by the descendants of nomadic Arabs to seize political control of the galaxy.  What makes the story special is that the orchestrators of the plot are women–and they pretty much win in the end.  That said, it's a little disappointing that these powerful women generally rule through their husbands, who hold the political offices (though the women pull the strings).  I'd like to think that the future lies in the equality of the sexes rather than the eternal struggle, with one side or the other side enjoying supremacy for a while.  Still, I suppose Herbert's is as plausible a future as any, and at least the women are getting their say in it.


(NASA photo)

Philip Latham's Disturbing Sun is written in the form of an interview, the kind of transcription you often find in NASA press releases.  It's one of those non-non-fiction pieces, and it is not un-clever.  Psychologist Dr. Niemand describes the untoward effects increased sunspot activity has on the psyches of people during the sunlit hours.  Given that we still don't know what sunspots really are (well, we know they are cool spots, but we don't know why they exist or how they're made), I suppose Latham's fancies are to disprove.  Interestingly, Latham (who appears in the story as the interviewer) is actually the alter-ego of real-life astronomer Robert Richardson; Richardson was even the technical advisor on Destination: Moon, so I imagine he knows whereof he speaks.  Even if you don't buy the sunspot/neurosis connection (I doubt Richardson does either), the style is captured with verisimilitude and is a fun read.


(illustrated by Summers)

Last up is Hex by Larry M. Harris.  This is a story I would have expected to find in Fantasy & Science Fiction (that's a compliment) dealing as it does with witchcraft, a do-gooder welfare worker with fine intentions but creepy, eldritch methods, a scheming Russian ex-patriate who wants to bilk the system rather than be magically compelled to find work, and a gypsy witch in over her head.  Interesting, whimsical, disturbing.  Good stuff.

Gosh, where does that leave us?  I guess this really wasn't a bad book, all told.  3.5 stars?  Worth getting, particularly if you want to catch Dorsai in serial form.

Next up: The last issue of Satellite!  Stay tuned!

(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)


This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

With a grain of salt… (May 1959 Astounding, first half; 4-21-1959)

Leave a comment

The penultimate magazine offering this month, at least that has made it into my house for review, is Astounding.  As always, my bar is pretty low with that mag, though last month's issue made me dare to hope.

In fact, I'm not quite sure how I feel about the May issue.  This may come out rather stream of consciousness, so bear with me!

Gordy Dickson, who has written much I like, starts a new serial this month uninspiringly called Dorsai! I am both enjoying it and somewhat off-put by it.  It's the story of a young mercenary from a planet whose primary export is mercenaries.  It is written in this sober, manly style, and there is lots of posturing and fighting.  At the center of it all is the sole female character, who is bound by contract to a rather odious fellow, and whom it appears the protagonist is trying to save, somehow.

Story-wise, it's not really my cup of tea.  Yet it is well written, and I've seen enough of Dickson's work to know that he is facile in a number of styles (i.e. he must be writing this way for a reason) so I'm going to go with it and see where it takes me.  I will send you postcards along the way.

We didn't do anything wrong, hardly, by Roger Kuykendall (of whom I know nothing) might well be called I didn't write anything, hardly.  Children build a space ship out of spare parts and snag a Russian satellite.  I guess Campbell is reduced to buying Danny Dunn rejects these days.

(Please note that Mr. Kuykendall has given me permission to distribute his story, but Mr. Campbell has not.  If he expresses his displeasure, I shall let you know.)


by EMSH

Cum Grano Salis isn't bad.  Of course, I had to get past the distaste that just comes naturally from seeing "Randall Garrett" on the byline (or, in this case, his nom de plume, David Brown).  In this tale, a colonizing team (all men, natch) are stuck on a planet with too few provisions to survive until relief.  All of the food on the planet tests poisonous.  Yet one crewmember, a hypochondriac with a supply of nostrums, manages to eat the local fruit and thrive.  The solution is interesting.

(Again, I have distribution permission from the author, not the editor.)

So that takes me exactly half-way through the magazine, so I will leave the other half (including a rather good tale by George O. Smith) for day-after-tomorrow.  Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think!

(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)


This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

Anderson breaks the mold! (April 1959 Astounding; 3-18-1959)

Leave a comment

Good gravy!  Two good Andersons in a row?

This month's Astounding opens with Wherever you are, by "Winston P. Sanders."  If it wasn't the swashbuckling yet science-adoring prose, it was the heroine protagonist's name and ethnicity (Ulrica Ormstad–couldn't get more Swedish!) that suggested Mr. Sanders might well be the well-known nordic science fiction writer, Poul Anderson.  A quick checking of sources confirmed the suspicion.

Well, it's really good.  The fierce soldier, Major Ormstad, gets to be the viewpoint character for half the novelette, whereupon her meek and brainy shipmate, Didymus Mudge, becomes the reader's eyes.  Both have become marooned on an alien planet, an ocean away from the local Terran base.  Ship's instruments have been destroyed, and constant cloud cover and a lack of a magnetic pole preclude navigation.  It is up to Mudge to puzzle out a way home, and up to Ormstad to deal with the fierce mini-Tyrannosaurs so as to secure transportation.  My favorite line of the story goes to Ormstad, who initially thinks little of Mudge yet deigns to speak to him anyway:

"For one honest human conversation, in any human language, she would trade her soul.  Make it Swedish, and she'd throw in her sidearm."

On to the next story.  When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was John Dough and the Cherub, by L. Frank Baum, sort of a Wizard of Oz side story.  In one of the chapters, the story's heroes (John Dough and Chick the Cherub) are captured and threatened with execution.  However, this execution is delayed when Chick the Cherub begins to tell the tale of "The Silver Pig."  So entranced are the heroes' captors that they delay the execution every night so as to hear more of the pig's adventures.  Of course, the story is designed to be endless so as to forestall the execution long enough for John Dough and the Cherub to escape.

I learned much later that this had been the plot to 1,001 Arabian Nights, and the cliché has been used a myriad of times since then.  Usually, the set-up is that sentence of death will follow some religiously or legally prescribed ritual, with the sentenced to have some choice as to the format of the ritual.  Virtually every story has the same format–the reader is informed that our hero has worked out the puzzle to prolong his/her life, but we don't get to find out the solution until the end.  Since classic science fiction favors the "gotcha" ending, I've seen this kind of story a lot in my literary travels.

So it is with Now Inhale, by Eric Frank Russell.  I didn't much care for his last story, but this one is fine.  A Terran is imprisoned for suspected espionage on an alien world.  Condemned to death, he is allowed one final game of his choice before strangulation.  The trick is to prolong the game, to neither win nor lose.  The record was 17 days.  Our hero beats this record a dozen-fold and is prepared to play the game forever, if need be.  Can you guess the game?

I'm afraid the rest of the ish meanders into mediocrity (which is perhaps above par for Astounding these days.  Chris Anvil's The Sieve is nothing special–on a brand new colony world, half the pioneers take up smoking the local marijuana and become lazy and shiftless.  The rest of the colonists decide to let them starve over the winter.  Reefer madness, indeed.

Gordy Dickson turns in a disappointing performance with The Catch, in which a galactic federation fairly begs humanity to retake the reins after thousands of years of retirement.  It seems those darned aliens just can't stand the burden of leadership.  And it turns out they got all of their technology from humanity the last time we were ascendant.  Poor little primitive aliens. 

Definitely a story after Campbell's heart.

Finally, we have Set a Thief by H. Chandler Elliott, a Canadian brain doctor whose stuff I've never before read.  It's an interesting first contact story, though told in a flip off-hand manner I didn't much care for.  Is it a set of thieves' tools or a lady's handbag?  An interesting case of convergent evolution, to be sure.

The rest of the ish is the final installment of The Pirats of Ersatz so there's nothing more to report for this month.  My hands are throbbing, so I may take a break until March 24.  I'll have lots to write about by then, though.

Thanks for reading!

(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)


This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

No comments Leave A Comment
Book

A Free Gift! (The Pirates of Ersatz; 3-12-1959)

Leave a comment

And now, my gentle readers, a free gift.

As you know, I am well-acquainted with Mr. Murray Leinster, science fiction writer extraordinaire.  His newest novel, The Pirates of Ersatz has just finished its serial run in this month's Astounding, and the nice fellow has given me permission to distribute it freely amongst my readers.

That's right.  This book is yours entirely free of charge!

Now, the question is, should you read it?

I suppose that depends.  As I said a couple of months ago, it's set in the same universe as the Med Series, but with a completely different protagonist. 

In brief, young Bron Hoddan is an engineer from a family of pirates.  Where Hoddan's from, it's almost respectable, even.  But Hoddan wants to make his mark in the clean world and so heads to squeaky-clean Walden… where he runs afoul of the law for trying to improve on paradise with an upgraded power generator. 

Fleeing for his life to the crude medieval planet Darth, he then runs afoul of the local aristocracy for… well.. just about everything.  Yet, so resourceful is Hoddan that he manages not only to survive but to thrive, getting the best of the petty nobles and winning the admiration of the plucky heroine, Lady Fani.

That's only the first half.  How Hoddan turns a ragtag fleet of colony ships into a phoney piracy concern and manages to steal from the rich and somehow make everyone richer, is rollicking adventure.

Now, I don't think this is the best Leinster I've ever read.  He likes to write short sentences.  His sentences have few words.  They can be repetitive.  He abuses this trait a little overmuch to my liking.  The story is also a bit disjointed (dare I say "episodic"?), particularly in the Darth section. 

That said, there is also much to like.  I happen to really like the decentralized Med Series universe with its range of interesting, unique planets.  The story also makes it quite clear that a strong heroine is far more compelling than a trophy, and it is always clear who is in the driver's seat in the Fani/Hoddan courtship.

Most interestingly, in the course of his travels, Hoddan invents an independent landing device small enough for installation on starships.  This is huge as, until this book, ships could only land on planets that had erected mammoth landing grids that projected magnetic tractor beams to guide vessels to the ground.  I wonder if we'll see the fall-out of this invention in later stories.

So try it.  The price is right, and it will definitely get you from point A to Z with a smile on your face.  3.5 stars out of 5.

See you on the 14th!

(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)


This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

The shoe drops.. (March 1959 Astounding wrap-up; 2-14-1959)

Leave a comment

Now that you've all read Despoilers of the Golden Empire, I imagine you'll want to know my thoughts.

I feel as if I waited an inordinate amount of time for the shoe to drop only to be hit in the ear with a wet sock.

As I read Garrett's piece, I kept thinking to myself, "All right.  This is clearly modeled on Pizarro's trek through Peru.  What's he going to do with it?"  Was he going to reveal his feelings about intolerant imperialism, either favorably or unfavorably?  Was his protagonist going to bring about the ironic ruin of the father Empire through hyper-inflation?  I mean, what's the point of an analogy without a point?

And then I got to the end, and there was no analogy at all.  It was the literal story, and the only reason one might think it was supposed to be science fiction was the fact that appeared in a magazine called Astounding Science Fiction.

Perhaps Garrett's work was supposed to be a dig against inferior science fiction. After all, H.L. Gold opened up Galaxy by denigrating the "space western."  Maybe this piece was made to show how easy it is to dress up non-science fiction as science fiction with the minimum of trappings.

Somehow, I don't think so.  I think this was an early April Fool's prank, and not a very clever one.  Here Garrett was leading us to think there was going to be a trick ending to the story… and there actually wasn't (though he might argue that was the trick all along).

Oh well. 

The rest of the book is pretty unimpressive, too.  George O. Smith's Instinct, is about the abduction of an Earther by aliens who have tried seven times to smash humanity back into the Stone Age only to have us come back as world-beaters every time.  The aliens want to know what makes us tick so they can stop us once and for all or peacefully integrate us into their galactic federation.  Their plan backfires in the biggest of ways.  Not badly written, but not much of a story.

Silverbob's Translation Error is really bad.  It's not the concept–meddling alien returns to Earth 50 years after having ended the Great War early hoping to find a backward but peaceful world.  Instead, he finds that none of his historical changes took, and the resultant world (our world) is on the brink of nuclear war and the threshold of space.  I like alternate histories.  The problem with this one is there are about three pages of story and ten more pages of recapitulation.  It is poorly written, repetitive stuff with a conclusion so obvious, one wonders why it was written at all.  This is the worst story, technically, that I've read in Astounding.  Interestingly enough, my 17 year-old nephew, David, loved this story.  There's no accounting for taste.

The only bright spot (aside from part 2 of Murray Leinster's serial, which I have not yet read, and which I shan't review until next month along with part 3) is Algis Budrys' The Man who did not Fit.  It's another in the genre where an advanced civilization has figured out how to determine the ideal employment for each of its citizens.  Of course, the few who do not fit in to the system are destined to rule.  Seen it.  Read it.  Many times.  But this one is nicely done with a rich setting: a conquered Earth at the crossroads of interesting interstellar politics.  The protagonist is the son of the Terran government-in-exile (a bit of self-insertion by the author, whose father was the consul general of the Lithuanian government-in-exile after the Soviet take-over).  Not a brilliant story, but a good one, and it shines in comparison with the rest.

Thus, excluding the Leinster, the issue barely manages to cross the 2 star mark.  I suppose that if you enjoyed Part 1 of The Pirates of Ersatz, you should pick up this issue for Part 2, but there's precious little else for you in the March 1959 Astounding.

Happy Valentine's Day, by the way.  If you want to recommend any appropriately romantic science fiction, I'm all ears! 



(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

A challenge to you (Despoiler of the Golden Empire; 2-12-1959)

Leave a comment

Today's article is going to be quite brief, not because I don't have much to say, but because I want your input, and saying anything about the topic at hand will spoil it.

Suffice it to say, I have schlepped the March 1959 Astounding with me to Hawai'i in back (and the paper, as I left, mentioned that the territory is already planning a big party for its impending, but yet unscheduled, statehood).  Yet I only got around to start reading it yesterday. 


Illustration by Kelly Freas

The lead novella is Despoiler of the Golden Empire, by David Gordon (really the beloved Randall Garrett in disguise).  Now, I want you to read this story, not because it is amazing, but because Randall is trying to do something here, and I want to know if you think he succeeded.  I'll give my thoughts in the next article so you have time gather and communicate your thoughts.

"But I don't have the March 1959 Astounding!" I hear you wail.  Fear not.  I have graciously been granted permission by the author to freely distribute this piece.  It thus follows this column entirely uncut and unexpurgated.

Despoiler of the Golden Empire by Randall Garrett.

Don't worry–there is no brutalization of women in this one.  There are, in fact, no women.  It's probably better that way.



(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

Par for the course (February 1959 Astounding; 1-19-1959)

Leave a comment

It is still truly a man's world, at least between the covers of Astounding magazine.  I recognize that we live in a culture where men aren't allowed to take cooking or shorthand classes (these are women's topics, after all), but I'd like to think that science fiction writers are more progressive.

Perhaps I'm the one who's wrong, however.  Maybe women will remain "separate but equal" into the foreseeable future…

Ahem.  Where was I?  Ah, yes.  The rest of February 1959's Astounding.  To be fair, the remaining four stories actually range from decent to good.  They are typical in their construction: an interesting set-up, a presented conundrum, and then a "gotcha" ending, but the execution is generally competent.  Each had an interesting tidbit that stood out to me, a place where the writer dared to dream–or failed to do so.  I'll point each one out as I go.

Hi Diddle Diddle is by Calvin M. Knox (Robert Silverberg–why he needed a pseudonym, I'm not sure; perhaps Campbell wants us to think more than one person writes for his magazine).  I think Campbell would call it a "funny" story, but it's pretty decent stuff about the crew of a small moonbase trying to come up with a way to synthesize food for provisions on the moon.  There are no women in the small crew, of course, though there is a line to suggest that is not always the case.  And, of course, everybody smokes.  Even on the moon, where air is (presumably) at a premium.

What I found compelling was Silverberg's conjecture that, by 1995, there would be eight moon bases: three American, three Soviet, one Chinese, and one Indian.  Moreover, by then, the Cold War will have thawed considerably.  I'm happy when any writer remembers there is more to the world than the Eagle and Bear, and I think the timeline is quite plausible.  As for the story, well, as I said above, it's pretty formulaic, but competently written.  Like all of Silverberg's stuff.

So far as I can tell, Peter Baily, author of the next story, Accidental Death, has not written anything else.  That would set up alarm bells that he is someone's pseudonym, but none of my reliable sources can tell me if that truly be the case.  In any event, Baily's tale is of Earth's first interstellar ship, and the first contact it makes with a race of creatures that possesses the ability to adversely affect probability.  A "Jinx" race, if you will.  Not a bad story, but the part that stuck out to me is when the protagonist, dictating his last thoughts for posterity, suggests that his memoir would make big news if someone could get it to a radio station or a newspaper office.  Baily's story takes place in a future with starships, but media is stuck in 1940.  It just goes to show that science fiction writers need be careful to avoid the intrusion of current (or even latter)-day items and technologies lest they kill the verisimilitude.

Frank Herbert is a newish writer.  His Missing Link is nothing special.  A Terran spacer is involved in first contact with an alien race with delusions of superiority.  The Earther soon puts the alien in its place with go ol' Terran ingenuity.  Lest I forget what magazine I'm reading.

Finally, The Professional Touch by "Leonard Lockhard" (actually the duo, Charles L. Harness and Theodore L. Thomas) is a fascinating, satirical piece on patent law, and its many current deficiencies.  It's worth reading just as a treatise on the subject, particularly on the topics of "obviousness" and "flash of genius," and just how arbitrary are those tests that determine the worthiness of a patent. 

All told, 3 stars.  Nothing terribly offensive.  Nothing strikingly original.  I'm looking forward to further installments of the Leinster series, though.



(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

No comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

Send the Marines! (1-17-1959)

Leave a comment

It's time for a little timely flag-waving.

Last year, around the time I started this column, Operation Blue Bat wrapped up.  It was one of our better moments, foreign policy-wise.  Who'd even heard of Lebanon before 1958?  But when that country came to the brink of civil war in the aftermath of the Iraqi revolution, American troops, particularly the Marines, were dispatched to help keep the peace.  Their mission successful, the last of them came home on October 25.

Now, I'm as cynical as the next person.  I know our action in Lebanon was political more than humanitarian.  We were calling the bluff of the Soviets, who insisted we not interfere.  We were protecting the pro-west Christian government from the pro-Soviet Arab government.  As Tom Lehrer put it in a recent song, "They've got to be protected, all their rights respected, 'til somebody we like can be elected."

And yet, I still have to applaud the avoidance of bloodshed, as well as appreciate the now-concrete evidence that the Soviets and the U.S. will not come to blows over petty conflicts (the Suez Crisis of '56 was the first proof of that.)

So it's timely that the next story I read in the February 1959 Astounding was The Stoker and the Stars by John A. Sentry (Algis Budrys' Anglic pen-name).  In this story, Earth had been roundly trounced after an interstellar war, and all of humanity had been confined to our own Solar System.  Only limited trade was allowed.  One proud Marine, defeated but not beaten, became the lynchpin to earning the respect of our cordoning aliens.  It's an old-fashioned piece, a reminiscence of a space merchant remembering how he'd known the great man "back in the day," when they had shipped together on one of the last Terran cargo vessels; destination: occupied Alpha Centauri.

It's jingoistic.  It's a little maudlin.  It plays into Campbell's penchant for Terrans-uber-alles stories.  I recognize that.  But the memories of Iwo Jima and Lebanon are still fresh, and a good Marine friend of mine only recently returned from his station in the Middle East. Whatever your politics, it does not hurt to recognize that there are some fine people in the service, and I saw a little of my friend in the hero of Sentry's story.

Oribtal Cold War department:

Remember Sputnik III?  This was the first "real" Soviet satellite following the bare-bones Sputnik I (which went beep-beep) and the rather stunt-like Sputnik II (which carried the Muttnik, Laika).  Weighing in at over a ton and carrying a dozen experiments, it was certainly a feat of Soviet engineering.

It was also the only Soviet satellite launched throughout all of 1958.  Thus, while the American Vanguard I continues to chatter happily away from orbit, and Explorer IV is also still up there, albeit silent since October, Sputnik III remains the sole Soviet sentinel in orbital space.  So I can just imagine the consternation in the Kremlin when Sputnik III's signal started to decay and warble like a drunkard's whistle.  Since December 17, Sputnik III has probably been of little use to anybody.

But the day before yesterday, radio eavesdroppers in Napa, California announced that the poor space lab had recovered (perhaps with fuzz on its geiger counters and the need for some strong tomato juice).  The current theory is that Sputnik III gradually got tipped out of alignment so that its solar cells were no longer getting sufficient charge.  The probe has finally returned to a favorable tilt, and is happily back on the wagon. 

Thus, what began with an American flag-waving has ended with some Soviet flag-waving.  All in the spirit of fairness, of course.


(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

Tabulating the data (February 1959 Astounding; 1-15-1959)

Leave a comment

It's Astounding time again!

One thing I like about Astounding is that editor John Campbell publishes the results of his reader surveys in the magazine's "Analytical Laboratory."  Thus, he (and we) can all see what the reading faithful think of the prior issue's stories.  Of course, while the technique can be good at better-pleasing your audience, it also runs the risk of specializing oneself into oblivion.  After all, the percentage of your readership who will respond to a reader survey is generally a minority, and often a quirky one at that.  Appealing to your die-hard fans may please them (if they can be pleased at all), but may also narrow the potential audience.

In other words, one picks up Astounding because one knows what to expect.  One avoids it because one knows what's in it and doesn't want it.  The feedback loop between conservative fan and conservative editor potentially leads to ossified content.  Perhaps it's no surprise that Astounding is the most conservative of "the Big Three," particularly in its outlook on other cultures and on the portrayal of women.

That said, let's see how the opinions of the readers of Astounding compare to those I've published earlier in this column.  The results, and the lessons Campbell learns from them, are interesting.

For the November 1958 issue:

Stimulus, by Andrew Salmond, came far away in first place.
Unhuman Sacrifice by Katherine MacLean, was number two, followed closely by
Part One of A Bicycle Built for Brew by Poul Anderson.
Goliath and the Beanstalk, by Chris Anvil, came in fourth.
Gifts, by Gordy Dickson, was number five.

This is interesting.  I thought the MacLean was a clear number 1, Salmond's piece being just all-right.  On the other hand, the latter three were so minor (not exactly bad, just utterly mediocre), that I'm not surprised they competed for last place. 

So far, so good.

For the December 1958 issue:

It was clear the fans had trouble picking a favorite given the scores.  Either they were disappointed with the magazine or they loved them all equally.  Campbell's commentary (more on that below) suggests the former.

Part Two of A Bicycle Built for Brew straggled to the top of the charts.
The Queen Bee, by Randall Garrett, possibly the most offensive story I have read in Astounding, came in second.
Ministry of Disturbance, by H. Beam Piper, was number three.
Triggerman, by R.T. Bone was a solid fourth.
Seller's Market by Chris Anvil was a clear fifth.

Mack Reynold's Pieces of the Game didn't even make the chart, even though I thought it was decent.  I quite enjoyed Ministry of Disturbance and Triggerman.  Seller's Market wasn't great, but it was surely better than the drek voted #1 and #2.

Campbell describes Queen Bee as "humor" along with Ministry of Disturbance, Triggerman and A Bicycle Built for Brew.  He wonders aloud if the comedic content of these stories resulted in their lower rating (with the exception of Queen Bee, which did well).  Of course, Bicycle finished strongly in the ratings.  Campbell wonders if comedy serials just take time to win over their audience.

Campbell also calls Queen Bee a "strong story."  I suppose editors must love their children universally, so I wouldn't expect him to publicly denounce Garrett's atrocity.  That said, it certainly seems like Queen Bee is the kind of story Campbell wants in his magazine and, moreover, it's the kind of story his readers (at least the ones who fill out the cards) want in his magazine.

Which means, I suppose, we all have much more of the same to look forward to.  Unless Campbell decides that "humor" doesn't sell.


(Confused?  Click here for an explanation as to what's really going on)

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth, where it has comment count unavailable comments. Please comment here or there.

No comments Leave A Comment