Tag Archives: barry n. malzberg

Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 4, 1968] Sign Me Up (January 1969 Amazing)

2 Comments


by John Boston

In this January's Amazing, on page 138, there is an editorial—A Word from the Editor, it says, bylined Barry N. Malzberg—which suggests a different direction (or maybe I should just say “a direction”) for this magazine.  First is some news.  There will be no letter column; Malzberg would rather use the space for a story.  Second, “the reprint policy of these magazines will continue for the foreseeable future,” per the publisher, but “A large and increasing percentage of space however will be used for new stories.”


by Johnny Bruck

Pointedly, the editor adds, “it is my contention that the majority of modern magazine science-fiction is ill-written, ill-characterized, ill-conceived and so excruciatingly dull as to make me question the ability of the writers to stay awake during its composition, much less the readers during its absorption.  Tied to an older tradition and nailed down stylistically to the worst hack cliches of three decades past, science-fiction has only within the past five or six years begun to emerge from its category trap only because certain intelligent and dedicated people have had the courage to wreck it so that it could crawl free. . . .  I propose that within its editorial limits and budget, Amazing and Fantastic will do what they can to assist this rebirth—one would rather call it transmutation—of the category and we will try to be hospitable to a kind of story which is still having difficulty finding publication in this country.”

Sounds good to me!  This brave manifesto is only slightly undermined by the familiar production chaos of the magazine.  It is not acknowledged on the table of contents, and does not appear in the usual place for an editorial, at the beginning of the magazine.  Instead, there appears a piece labelled Editorial by Robert Silverberg, S-F and Escape Literature, which (though touted as “NEW” on the cover) actually dates from six years ago, when it appeared as a guest editorial in the August 1962 issue of the British New Worlds.  Silverberg is also listed as Associate Editor.

Silverberg’s piece briskly disposes of the “escapist” critique of SF, pointing out that all literature is escape literature; it’s just a matter of where you’re escaping, and how well the escape is executed.  “The human organism, if it is to grow and prosper, needs change, refreshment, periodic escape.”

The other non-fiction in the issue includes another Leon Stover “Science of Man” article (see below).  There is the by-now-usual book review column, attributed to James Blish on the contents page, with reviews by his pseudonym William Atheling, Jr. (mixed feelings about Clarke’s 2001 novelization, praise for D.G. Compton and Alexei Panshin); by Panshin (praise for R.A. Lafferty); and by editor Malzberg (praise for the new edition of Damon Knight’s In Search of Wonder, mixed feelings about Alva Rogers’s fan tribute A Requiem for Astounding).  There is also a movie review, by Lawrence Janifer, of Rosemary’s Baby; he finds it well done but dull, and—in an unexpected juxtaposition—quotes Virginia Woolf: “But how if life should refuse to reside there?”

We All Died at Breakaway Station, by Richard C. Meredith


by Dan Adkins

The major piece of new fiction is Richard C. Meredith’s We All Died at Breakaway Station, first part of a two-part serial.  As usual I will read and review it when it’s complete; a quick rummage reveals it’s a space war story whose plot would probably have been right at home in Planet Stories, but which looks much grimmer than the pulps allowed.

Temple of Sorrow, by Dean R. Koontz

Dean R. Koontz’s novelet Temple of Sorrow is a breezily parodic procession of stock genre elements—the protagonist with a mission (“My name is Mandarin.  Felix Mandarin.”—from “International,” we later learn), accompanied by Theseus, his Mutie bodyguard (actually a bear, “developed” in the Artificial Wombs), to pierce the veil of a powerful religious cult (with overtones of the one in Heinlein’s “—If This Goes On,” such as the omnipresence of Naked Angels, female of course).  In this post-nuclear war world, the Temple of the Form predicts the Second Coming of the Form (the mushroom cloud), and it seems is bent on bringing it about by stealing the world’s last atom bomb.


by Jeff Jones

Felix is caught and reduced to near-mindless servitude, but his conditioning is broken by his realization of the Bishop’s sadistic plans for the Angel who has caught Felix’s fancy.  Rejoined by Theseus, who had fled to the wilderness but returned just in time, Felix and the Angel Jacinda fight their way to the Temple’s Innermost Ring (cameo appearance by a giant spider along the way).  And there’s super-science!  Felix figures out that the Innermost Rings of all the many Temples worldwide are interdimensionally connected, so if the Temple bigs can set off a bomb in one Ring, the explosion will be replicated in all the others!  Conservation of energy be damned.

So they hasten from Ring to Ring, find the bomb, and disarm it.  “Any child could disarm an A-bomb if he has read his history and had an instructor in P.O.D. who allowed him to practice live on dummies.” Felix proposes to the Angel Jacinda.  Theseus has somehow gained human intelligence during the interdimensional trek.  Exit, wisecracking.  Or, as the editor put it: “Tied to an older tradition and nailed down stylistically to the worst hack cliches of three decades past . . . .” Good sarcastic fun.  Three stars.

How It Ended, by David R. Bunch

And here is the writer half the readership has long seemed to hate, in his second consecutive issue—David R. Bunch.  Editor Malzberg says, “I think that Bunch is one of the twenty or thirty best writers of the short-story in English.” I might pick a slightly higher number, but I’m happy he is again welcome here.  But this one is called How It Ended—“it” being Moderan, scene of a procession of stories about the Strongholders, their new-metal enhancements held together by the flesh-strips that are all that remain of their human bodies, fighting their endless wars in splendid isolation from each other.  Can it really be the end?  Time will tell whether Bunch can resist returning to the scene. 

But to the matter at hand: during the Summer Truces following the Spring Wars, someone looses a wump-bomb, which is strong stuff indeed.  This sets off a new war which is only ended when the narrator releases the GRANDY WUMP (sic), which puts an end to Moderan entirely.  This is his confession, rendered onto a tape which may or may not ever be listened to, complete with his litany of self-justification.  The inexorable logic leading to complete destruction may be familiar to those who frequent newspapers and government briefing papers.  It’s Bunch as usual and you either like it or you don’t.  I mostly do, with qualifications, but this one goes on a little too long for my taste.  Three stars.

Confidence Trick, by John Wyndham


by Henry Sharp

Moving to the reprints, John Wyndham is here with Confidence Trick (from Fantastic, July-August 1953), about some people going home on a commuter train who discover that it is the train to Hell.  They escape their fate only through the loudly expressed disbelief of one abrasive young man, after which the whole illusion falls apart.  It is suggested that social institutions such as the banking system are not too different from religions in their reliance on unquestioning faith.  It’s smoothly written but becomes a bit heavy-handedly didactic after its comic beginning.  Two stars.

Dream of Victory, by Algis Budrys

In Algis Budrys’s Dream of Victory (Amazing, August/September 1953)—a “complete short novel” at 26 large-print pages—a war has left the world devastated and depopulated.  Androids were developed to provide a work force.  They are apparently human in all respects except for standardization of features (which they can pay to have fixed), and they can’t reproduce.  Fuoss, an android, is not happy about this, or about the fact that there seems to be growing discrimination against androids; he can get jobs but somehow always loses them, and his successful android lawyer friend tells him the creation of androids has now stopped.


by Ed Emshwiller

Fuoss has a recurring dream about a woman bearing his child.  He finds his situation so frustrating that he acts in progressively more self-destructive ways, driving away his android wife, in part because he flaunts his affair with a human woman. Then he loses his latest job, drinks a lot, and his girlfriend throws him out.  When he comes back and finds out she has taken up with somebody else, he smashes a whiskey bottle and cuts her throat after she dismisses his delusional babble that she will have his child.  His lawyer friend (ex-friend by now) visits him in jail and chastises him for the harm he has done to the android cause.  “ ‘Is she dead?’ he asked hopefully.”

I’m not sure what to make of this story.  Budrys has commented on it in the introduction to his second collection, Budrys’ [sic] Inferno (UK edition retitled The Furious Future): “Dream of Victory is the first novelette I ever wrote. . . . Dream of Victory, as I was writing it, seemed a free-wheeling piece of technical bedazzlement.  Happily, most of the experimentation in it was elevated to more comprehensible levels by Howard Browne, the quietly competent editor who bought it and with his pencil made me look a little more mature than I really was.  There is a certain temporary value to a young writer in coming on as a prose innovator and pyrotechnician; I think there is more for the reader and, in the course of time, more for the writer in letting the story speak for itself.”

So, all procedure and no substance about this story in which the protagonist responds to his emotional travail by murdering his girlfriend.  I wonder if it is supposed to be a displaced commentary on race relations, especially since the plot seems to bear some similarity to that of Richard Wright’s Native Son (a book I haven’t read and know only second-hand).  Did Budrys have it in mind?  Probably not.  Probably this is just another example of a writer who can’t think of a more imaginative way to resolve the situation of unbearable frustration he has created than with hideous violence against women—not altogether unrealistically, I have to acknowledge, since I do read the newspapers. 

It’s tempting to say “nice try,” but it really isn’t; the best thing to say is that Budrys got better later, at least a lot of the time, in finding better resolutions (or accepting no resolution) for the intolerable situations he was so good at coming up with.  One star for substance, three for execution (though as Budrys says, much credit goes to editor Browne for that).  Split the difference.

Don't Come to Mars, by Henry Hasse


by Leo Morey

Henry Hasse’s Don’t Come to Mars (Fantastic Adventures, April 1950) is a large comedown from his goofily grandiose classic He Who Shrank, reprinted in the last issue.  Dr. Rahm awakes to see himself walking out the door, and looks down to see he has a whole new tentacled body.  Aiiko the Martian has borrowed his by long-distance projection.  Turns out Aiiko is trying to sabotage Dr. Rahm’s life work developing space travel to Mars so humans will avoid the terrible fate that has befallen the Martians.  It’s routinely executed and reads more like a story from the ‘30s than one from 1950.  Two stars.

Science of Man: Lies and the Evolution of Language, by Leon E. Stover

Leon E. Stover’s “Science of Man” article is Lies and the Evolution of Language, which displays Stover’s faults even more prominently than his earlier articles.  The subject is certainly interesting, but the article is mostly a turgid mass of assertions with very little attempt to convince the reader to believe them or to provide any basis to assess them.  This is less of a problem when he is addressing current or recent times, of which most readers will have some direct knowledge or experience.  But consider: “Without a doubt the first humans replayed the action of the day around the campfire at night in an unabashed display of ceremonial boasting.  And doubtlessly manly valor was an entrance requirement into the hunting team, all the more incentive for a male to boast about what he had seen and done so as to be allowed to become ‘one of the boys.’ ” Certainly plausible, makes sense, but “without a doubt”?  Without more support than Stover provides, I’ve got a doubt.

Some of Stover’s assertions are more than doubtful, such as his claim that animals cannot lie.  In fact there is considerable deception in the animal world.  For example, some birds feign broken wings and walk away from their nests, apparently seeking to distract predators from their eggs or young.  Stover might have an argument that that behavior is not linguistic enough to be relevant to the discussion.  But he doesn’t make it, or acknowledge the question. Two stars.

Summing Up

So, another mixed-bag issue of Amazing (excluding the serial, to be assessed next time), but one that is promising—a word I must have used a dozen times about this magazine, but this time there's an actual promise about what the new editor plans to do with it.  As always, we'll see.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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

[October 8, 1968] Probing the future (November 1968 Galaxy)

4 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Professional opinion

Fred Pohl opens up this month's issue of Galaxy with a summary of the letters he's received from readers on how they would, in 100 words or fewer, successfully resolve the war in Vietnam.  He has great faith in the power of harnessing a bunch of smart folks to spit out solutions to problems.  I honestly don't know how useful someone's cursory stab at peace in Southeast Asia can be, even if it's from the pen of a clearly clever person like Judith Merril or Larry Niven.

He did, however, talk about a different kind of brain-tapping, one that has me very excited.  There's something called Sigma, which is a scientific way of presenting scenarios to people and assessing their likelihood, feasability, and desirability.  A consensus can then be reached and a mass-mind prediction derived. 

And as it turns out, I recently was sent a copy of Probe a 14-volume compilation of technological predictions made by the folks at TRW's Space Technology Laboratories—the folks who gave us Pioneers 0, 1 and 2, Explorer 6, Atlas Able, Pioneer 5, the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, and parts of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module.  I've only just started perusing it, but it makes for fascinating reading.  Of course, only time will tell if their predictions are accurate, or if they're even asking the right questions.

Of course, science fictioneers have been predicting the future in their own way for half a century.  And while the stories in this issue may not depict situations that ever come to pass, I have to say that are, at least, quite entertaining!


by Sol Dember, illustrating Building on the Line

Perris Way, by Robert Silverberg


by Jack Gaughan

I had not expected a continuation of the story, "Nightwing," but "Perris Way" is a direct sequel.  The tale picks up with our nameless Watcher, whose profession of scanning the skies for alien invasion, is no longer relevant as the invasion has come and succeeded, heading toward Perris (Paris) with his companion, the former Prince of Roum.  That latter, a member of the Dominator caste, was blinded during the invasion by the alien-in-disguise Gormon for forcing himself upon the Flier, Avluela, whom Gormon loved.  The two arrived at France's former capital to become members of the guild of Rememberers.

The erstwhile Watcher becomes an apprentice, and during his training discovers the true history of Earth and the hubristic crime that warranted the alien invasion.  His halcyon half-year with the Rememberers is abruptly terminated when the Prince shames the guild with a tactless act.  The Watcher, caught on the horns of a dilemma comprising the remedy to a Rememberer's anger versus (perhaps misplaced) loyalty to the Prince, comes up with a solution that ultimately pleases no one.  It also leaves room for a Part 3, which, if a novelization be forthcoming, is probably necessary to reach the appropriate length.

Silverbob's language is exquisite.  His poetic SFnal prose is probably even better than Zelazny's, and more approachable than Delany's.  His history of Earth is as fascinating as any that has been drawn.  On the other hand, he never treats his women well, and they are always sex objects, one way or another.  Contrast that with James Schmitz's Dr. Nile Etland, showcased just last month in Analog, lest someone want to lecture me on how "this is just the way things are."  Women do not exist just to be scenery, as much as those who hum "I'm a Girl Watcher" and hound the bosomy New Yorker Francine Gottfried on the way to work might like to think so.

It's still terrific stuff, but I can't give it more than four stars.

Keep Moving, by Miriam Allen deFord

Science fiction stories often play with the premise, "If this goes on…"  DeFord, one of the genre's most venerable authors, offers up a 22nd Century in which freeways pave virtually every square inch of the planet, and commuter culture has become the norm.  People don't even have homes anymore—they simply live in their cars, driving constantly to obtain food, entertainment, and presumably working while moving.

One man decides he's had enough and founds the "Live-In" movement, boldly staying put in one place over night.  This crazy idea wins the casual endorsement of dozens and the fervent support of one particular woman, a rather famous poet.  The ensuing partnership proves unstoppable.

Absolutely silly, but also quite charming.  Three stars.

Building on the Line, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Gray Morrow

Clancy and Plotchin are mismatched, feuding workers on the Line, a galaxy-spanning set of teleporter stations.  The two are building a set of Starlinks on the hostile world of XN-4010 when its incorporeal, gibbering race of "hobgoblins" unleashes a meteorite storm upon them.  Plotchin is incapacitated, maybe dead, but there is hope that an experimental cryogenic unit in the man's suit might be sustaining him.

Clancy decides that staying put and waiting for rescue is less desirable than making the 36-mile trek back to the main exploration ship.  And so, with Plotchin in his arms, he begins the brutal trek through the ice and near-vacuum of XN-4010, the hobgoblins nibbling at his psyche the entire way.  This bit is truly thrilling, reminiscent of the middle section of Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel when our heroes are making a similar journey across the frozen wastes of Pluto.

The denouement, however, is a rather windy extolling of the virtues of heroic men expanding the horizons of mankind.  It all felt a little hollow, especially as it is intimated that the hobgoblins may not be malicious but simply trying to defend their world from an onslaught of human tourists.  That, to me, was the more important point, and it was tossed aside.  Framed differently, Line's premise could have made an excellent novel, with themes similar to those explored brilliantly in Silverberg's The Man in the Maze.  Alas.

Still, it's beautifully written, and the first two thirds are a wild ride.

Four stars.

For Your Information: My Friend, the Nautilus, by Willy Ley

This is quite a neat piece, definitely a throwback to Willy's better days.  It's really the evolutionary history of mollusks, with an eventual focus on nautiloids and their relatives, the ammonites.  No, this is not a Pennsylvania religious sect but a prolific family of shelled mollusks that thrived during the Age of Dinosaurs.

Given that octopuses (Ley calls the plural 'octopi', tsk tsk) are shockingly intelligent, and ammonites were advanced nautiloids, I think stories about sapient Mesozoic shellfish would be fascinating.  Be sure to credit me with the idea if you use it.

Four stars.

The Market in Aliens, by K. M. O'Donnell

An unscrupulous fellow runs a brisk trade in sapient aliens.  He has occasional twinges of guilt, but he perseveres, nevertheless.

This is a dark, ugly story.  Looking back on it, I think I have to give it four stars.  It says a lot with a little.

Locust Years, by Douglas R. Mason


by Brock

In the not too far future, universities literally recreate the past, casting lines through time to reel in prehistorical happenings for student viewing.  But when a construction accident summons a wounded mastodon and opens up a time vortex, no one is safe—up to and including humans from other time frames!

This is an interesting story, if initially difficult to apprehend.  Probably the best thing the author has written to date.  Three stars.

The Tell-Tale Heart-Machine, by Brian W. Aldiss

This one's about bitter, middle-aged man, reeling from the recent loss of his wife and his ejection from the board of the company that made his fortune.  Said company has discovered the secret of synthetic life, starting with the recreation of dinosaurs, and with the aim of creating complete humans.  Ostensibly, the man hates his father-in-law, erstwhile partner in the endeavor, for his lack of morality, and for the coldness he has hitherto shown his family.  In fact, there is something deeper going on, and a rift that may not be mendable, even as the father-in-law attempts to attone.

I found myself moved by this one.  Definitely one of Aldiss' better efforts of late.

Four stars.

Eeeetz Ch, by H. H. Hollis


by Dan Adkins

I had gone into this one expecting from the title some sort of joke story.  It's not.

Dolphins are hot news this decade.  From Flipper to People of the Sea to World of Ptavvs, the idea of porpoises being partner sapients is catching on in a big way.  Hollis' story details the visit of the junior Senator from Hawaii, Ramon Coatl (presumably of Filipino ancestry), to a Caribbean research center.  There, the dolphin called Andy but really named Eeeetz Ch is being fitted with artificial hands and tested on advanced machinery.  But the tests go both ways—the two scientists working with him (a man and a woman, the woman being the senior engineer; Silverbob, take notes) are fitted with artificial gills that plug into a plate surgically embedded in their sternums.

There's doesn't exactly seem to be a plot to the whole thing, until it's done, and you understand the stakes of Coatl's visit.  Hollis says a lot about intelligence and handicaps, about technology and ethics, without spelling it out too heavy-handedly.  Most impressively, all of the characters are extremely well realized.  Andy the dolphin, in particular, is an alien.  A likeable, sympathetic one, but not human.

This is my favorite story of the issue.  It's both conventional and new, prosaic and profound.  It made me laugh a couple of times.  It kept me riveted.

Five stars.

Like, wow!

What a contrast, huh?  Last month, Galaxy finished at a dismal 2.4.  This month, we're at 3.9, probaby the best mag of the year.  It reminds me of the old Gold days of the early '50s.  Of course with a spread like that, it's hard to make any solid predictions, but at least there's always a chance every month that Galaxy will knock it out of the park like it did this month.

That's something to look forward to!

(oh, and dig the cool offer on the back of the mag—Trek is everywhere!)




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

[October 6, 1968] Snail on the Slope? (November 1968 Amazing)

5 Comments


by John Boston

Suspicions confirmed—this November Amazing names as Editor Barry N. Malzberg, who was listed last issue as Associate Editor.  Sol Cohen is now merely the Publisher.  Oddly, though, the editorial is by Harry Harrison, now listed as Associate Editor (though most likely gone).  Go figure, or just say it’s more Sol Cohen chaos.

Johnny Bruck is back as the cover artist; this one (from Perry Rhodan #109, published in 1963) looks even more cliched and perfunctory than his earlier covers, making me wonder if they are really getting worse, or if I am just getting more tired of them.


by Johnny Bruck

“New” is sprinkled across the cover wherever possible to distract from the fact that once again, reprints dominate.  Four new short stories take up 36 pages, just under 25% of the magazine. And the prize: “plus stories by: RAY BRADBURY (Winner of the Aviation Space Writers Association’s Top Award). . . .” Does Bradbury need that kind of boosting? 

One of the new stories, interestingly, is a collaboration between Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany.  When Delany appeared with a novel excerpt in the issue before last, his name was misspelled about half the time; this issue, it’s misspelled “Delaney” everywhere—on the cover, on the contents page (twice), on the first page of the story, in the book review column.  Well, small mercy, it’s spelled right in the blurb for the story. 

There are worse production botches, discussed when I get to them.

Harrison’s editorial, Science Fiction and the Establishment, is superficial and banal: the Establishment doesn’t like SF, it’s a problem all over, but it’s starting to get better, someday it will be gone.  The book review column continues interestingly but incestuously, with James Blish as William Atheling reviewing Larry Niven, and Samuel R. Delany reviewing Blish.  Leon E. Stover contributes another in his “Science of Man” series, discussed below.

Despite all the above kvetching about the magazine’s presentation, the good news is that the new short stories are as interesting a batch as we’ve seen in Amazing for a while, and the reprints are all readable or better, unlike many of their predecessors. 

Power of the Nail, by Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany

Ellison and Delany’s Power of the Nail reads like what Ellison was publishing in the SF magazines around 1957, polished up by a smoother writer.  Robert Zagaramendo and his wife Margret are Ecological Observers on the planet Saquetta, and boy howdy is Margret pissed: “You promised me better than this, somewhere.” Robert’s not too thrilled either, especially with Margret.  Bickering is constant.

Saquetta features the Saquettes, mole-like aliens who are not at all cute, but have the interesting trait of being reincarnated when they die naturally, which is most of the time.  But the vibrations of the “phase-antenna of the automatic ecology equipment” that the humans are burying in various locations draw the Saquettes away from their usual hideouts to places where they are vulnerable to attack by giant predatory birds, called molloks because that’s what the Saquettes scream when they’re being hunted.


by Dan Adkins

After further conflict with his wife, including a near-rape, Robert sets up “ecology equipment” near an especially large Saquette colony, complete with lurking molloks, and goes back later to find, as expected, hundreds of dead Saquettes.  He builds little round coffins for them and nails them together, then goes back and tells Margret that they’re going home—and shortly, suffers a terrible and fatal punishment that is not clearly explained, though one may surmise it is related to the operation of the "automatic ecology equipment."  (Compare David H. Keller's The Doorbell if you've ever read it.) In the moral universe of the story, it’s obviously because he decided to sacrifice hundreds of Saquettes in order to escape an emotionally intolerable situation.

It's a very vivid and readable story, which goes some way towards compensating for its ultimate obscurity.  Three stars.

The Monsters, by David R. Bunch

The formerly prolific David R. Bunch, who has not appeared in Amazing since Sol Cohen took over, is back with The Monsters.  It’s short as usual for Bunch, and on a familiar theme: the need to harden one’s small children against the brutalities of life by brutalizing them pre-emptively.  (See Bunch’s earlier story A Small Miracle of Fishhooks and Straight Pins, Fantastic June 1961, and thence to Judith Merril’s annual “year’s best” volume.) Here, the threat the children are to be prepared for is a bit trite, but the writing is brisk and economical.  Three stars.

Try Again, by Jack Wodhams

Jack Wodhams is new to me, though the Journeyer-in-Chief has not thought highly of his work in Analog.  His Try Again is surprisingly good.  Pyler, a psychiatrist, is having a session with the precocious five-year-old Tommy, who says he has lived before and remembers it.  But this isn’t quite the same life as before, since with adult memories he acts differently the second time around.  Tommy is much burdened by his knowledge of future events and the question whether he could do anything about them (it’s 1935, Mussolini has just invaded Ethiopia; and Tommy knows what comes later).  Shortly he is kidnapped to Germany.  An alternative history, even worse than the real one, is telegraphically unfolded.  Tommy, who has disappeared from the plot after his interrogation, reappears at the terrible end.  Four stars—maybe a bit crude, but powerful.


by Jeff Jones

The reading experience is undermined at the end by Amazing’s production values, or lack of them.  The story stops on page 29 in the midst of a sentence with no “continued on” notice, and the reader is left to rummage through the magazine to find the rest of the text on page 138.

This Grand Carcass, by R.A. Lafferty

R.A. Lafferty’s This Grand Carcass is, typically, told in high Tall Tale mode, and it is also clearly a moral tale, though the precise moral may be a bit obscure.  Mord comes to Juniper Tell offering to sell a device cheap that will allow Tell to “own the worlds.” So why is he selling it?  He’s dying. Tell bites and is the new owner of Gahn, for Generalized Agenda Harmonizer Nucleus, which soon enough is outdoing and dominating all the other “general purpose machines.” Shortly, it is a full partner with Tell (in Tell and Gahn—get it?). 

Before long, Tell, like Mord, is almost, er, gone, and Gahn (whose power inputs have been revealed as dummies) candidly admits: “I use you.  I use human fuel.  I establish symbiosis with you.  I suck you out.  I eat you up.” So Tell sells Gahn on to the next high-rolling sucker.  Moral, did I say?  Machines are the Devil?  Anything that makes humans’ work too easy is damnation?  Something along those lines, I’m sure.  This is not one of Lafferty’s best; it is simultaneously obvious and vague and less deliciously absurd than Lafferty at his best.  But it’s amusing enough, good for three stars.

The Dwarf, by Ray Bradbury

In Ray Bradbury’s The Dwarf (Fantastic, January/February 1954), Mr. Bigelow, a dwarf, visits the carnival daily, forks over his dime at the Mirror Maze, and heads straight for the mirror that makes him look large.  Aimee, a carnival worker, hangs out in the booth with ticket-seller Ralph when her business is slow.  She is sympathetic to Mr. Bigelow’s plight.  Ralph isn’t, and makes fun of him, and of her.  Aimee discovers that Mr. Bigelow makes a living writing detective stories, which reveal his inner torments.  Ralph plays a nasty trick on him, proving that Ralph is nasty, which we already knew.


by Sanford Kossln

Rather abruptly, end of story.  Or is it?  There’s no “Continued on . . .” at the end.  As with Try Again, I rummaged through the magazine, but found no loose piece of the story.  So I checked the original 1954 Fantastic . . . and there’s an entire page of text at the end that is omitted from this reprinted version.

No rating, since the full text doesn’t actually appear in the magazine.  It’s not one of Bradbury’s better stories to my taste, but it’s a whole lot better complete than truncated.  Sheesh.

The Traveling Crag, by Theodore Sturgeon

The Traveling Crag, from the July 1951 Fantastic Adventures, is a silly confection by Theodore Sturgeon—a non-trivial category of his ouevre.  On the other hand, silliness by Sturgeon is more palatable than that from less accomplished hands.

Cris is a literary agent with an assistant, Naome, who is obviously in love with him, though he is oblivious.  Cris has received a story, The Traveling Crag, from an unknown, Sig Weiss, which “grabs you by the throat, shakes your bones, puts a heartbeat into your lymph ducts and finally slams you down, gasping, weak, and oh so happy,” and incidentally makes a lot of money fast.  But Weiss sends no more stories.  Cris visits to find out why, and the local storekeeper warns him, “Meanest bastard ever lived,” a judgment Weiss lives up to in the flesh.


by Lawrence (L. Sterne Stevens)

When Weiss finally submits another story at Cris’s urging, it begins: “Jets blasting, Bat Durston came screeching down through the atmosphere of Bbllzznaj, a tiny planet seven billion light-years from Sol.” This is the beginning of a notorious subscription ad that ran in Galaxy, headlined YOU’LL NEVER SEE IT IN GALAXY!, designed to distinguish Galaxy’s policy from that of lowbrow pulp magazines like . . . Fantastic Adventures and Amazing Stories.  So to perpetrate this in-joke, Sturgeon must have convinced not only Galaxy editor H.L. Gold, but also Fantastic Adventures editor Howard Browne, to allow it.

But I digress.  The point is that Weiss has turned in a bunch of crap, continuing his mean-bastard performance.  Meanwhile, Cris meets Miss Tillie Moroney, who is offering a reward for an “authentic case of devil into saint,” and eventually tells him a story—“a science fiction plot”—about a humanoid race that has developed the ultimate weapon, one of which has apparently been lost on Earth for thousands of years.  And she wants Cris to get Weiss to write another blockbuster story and then find out how and where he wrote it.

So Weiss produces another story that makes everyone cry, and Cris and Tillie head out to see him, but Naome the assistant contrives to get there first, and the ultimate weapon, a small object found after a rockslide, proves to have been the key to Weiss’s transformation, but it gets triggered, and one of Tillie’s blouse buttons emits communications from the humanoids, who explain to them all telepathically that the ultimate weapon was one that stops useless conflict, and now a reaction is propagating through the atmosphere to bring the weapon’s benefits to all the world (it’s science!), and by the way Naome has paired off with Weiss, and Nick with Tillie.  “Outside, it was a greener world, and all over it the birds sang.”

It's all just Too Much, but rendered so smoothly as to disarm even the house misanthrope’s ire.  Three stars for this feat of making fatuity charming.

He Who Shrank, by Henry Hasse

“Years, centuries, aeons, have fled past me in endless parade, leaving me unscathed, for I am deathless, and in all the universe alone of my kind.  Universe?  Strange how that convenient word leaps instantly to my mind from force of old habit.  Universe?  The merest expression of a puny idea in the minds of whose who cannot possibly conceive whereof they speak.  The word is a mockery.  Yet how glibly men utter it!  How little do they realize the artificiality of the word!”

Yes!  Rave on!  Here is a fine specimen of the peak of cosmos-spanning rhetoric occasionally reached by early (pre-Campbell) SF, and what follows lives up to it in naïve grandeur.  It is the first paragraph of He Who Shrank, by Henry Hasse, a novella from the August 1936 Amazing.

The plot is essentially that of The Man from the Atom run backwards.  Atoms are solar systems and galaxies are molecules, and the Professor has devised a substance (called Shrinx!) that will reduce humans to subatomic dimensions so they can explore the sub-universes.  When his unnamed assistant is unenthusiastic about making this one-way trip, the Prof stabs hin with the needle.  As he shrinks, the Prof drops him onto a block of Rehyllium-X (sic!), where he descends into a microscopic scratch on its surface and is chased around by a germ, fearsomely portrayed by illustrator Morey.


by Leo Morey

Soon enough, our hero finds himself surrounded by luminous masses—nebulae!—and then, as he shrinks further, stars and planets.  He alights on one occupied by gaseous intelligences, shrinks further to a planet of cave-dwellers, and then (in a powerful passage) to a planet of machines gone out of control.  Their birdlike creators have fled to the world’s moon, as their mechanical heirs maniacally tear down the remains of their civilization and remake the world closer to their circuits’ desire. 

Our hero continues downward, or smallward, through universes he cannot bring himself to recount except in the most summary form (“Suns dying . . . planets cold and dark and airless . . . last vestiges of once proud races struggling for a few more years of sustenance . . . [etc.]”) But then . . . he is mysteriously attracted to a tiny, distant spark of yellow, which on approach proves to be circled by planets including a tiny blue one that twinkles invitingly, so he approaches, descends, and finds himself in . . . Cleveland!

Well, actually, he lands in Lake Erie, flooding much of Cleveland as well as nearby Toledo.  Upon attaining dry land, he is accosted by aircraft shooting at him, which he finds annoying.  He is bundled into a vehicle and taken to Cleveland, to a building where scientists assemble to interrogate him, but are unable to understand his thoughts, though he can read theirs.  He is not impressed by them, or humanity.  He escapes and flees into the countryside, where he is drawn to an isolated house occupied by a writer, of science fiction of course, who is sufficiently enlightened to be capable of receiving his thought, and to whom the shrinking man tells his tale before continuing his apparently endless and by now wearisome voyage.

In one sense this is an odd story for Amazing to reprint, since it appeared in the 1946 anthology Adventures and Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas—one of the oldest stories in the book, and the only one from Amazing.  That book is so well known that stories included in it are much more likely to be familiar to current Amazing readers than most of Sol Cohen’s other reprints.  I read that anthology when I was a kid and wondered what this old-fashioned story based on scientific nonsense was doing in the company of Heinlein, Asimov, et al.  But I’m younger than that now and can better appreciate its hokey majesty.  Four stars, allowing for its age.

Henry Hasse (b. 1913) began publishing SF in 1933; this is his third published story.  Aside from it, he is best known for collaborating with Ray Bradbury on a few minor early stories.  None of his other work, which has appeared sporadically over the decades, has garnered the recognition that this story has. 

One side note: This story presents a very early occurrence of what later was named Tuckerization, after its heavy use by Wilson Tucker: giving fictional characters the names of real members of the SF community.  The Cleveland writer to whom the shrinking man tells his story is named Stanton Cobb Lentz, obviously a reference to Stanton A. Coblentz, a prolific SF writer mainly of the late ‘20s and ‘30s, whose work is nowadays most charitably described as quaint. 

The Last Day, by Richard Matheson


by Robert Kay

In Richard Matheson’s The Last Day (Amazing, April/May 1953), the Sun is about to destroy Earth (it’s swollen and red and much too hot).  Protagonist wakes up after the last night, which he and friends have spent in drunken, lustful, and/or senselessly destructive pursuits.  He decides this approach to the end is unsatisfactory, and after wrestling with his conscience reluctantly heads to his parents’ house (shooting an attacker en route).  He has avoided this visit for years because of his mother’s excessive piety.  But on this final hot day, she’s cool, and they hang out waiting for the end.  The editor blurbs: “Waxing philosophical is like waxing a floor; it is powerful easy to fall on your face while trying it.” Matheson does not.  Four stars, mainly for keeping just on the right side of bathos as he renders the conventional sentiments.

Science of Man: War Is Peace, by Leon E. Stover

Leon E. Stover is back with another of his “Science of Man” articles, War Is Peace, written in his usual dogmatic style.  He takes on the likes of Konrad Lorenz (of On Aggression), arguing that aggression is not a mode of behavior that we must sublimate or otherwise redirect, but a goal-directed extension of human social organization.  He says: “The ethologists have nothing to offer that can improve on what Karl von Clauswitz said of war in the 19th century: that it is an extension of politics carried on by different means.” And he concludes: “There is no magic solution to be found in animal behavior studies, psychology, or biology.  Do not be misled.  The only solution is better politics.  But we have to know that to want it.” Well, maybe—he has no suggestions for how we get there in practice.  But Stover recounts much entertaining anthropological lore along the way.

Three stars.

Summing Up

Well, that wasn’t bad at all.  The new material is lively and interesting, and even the reprints are all readable or better, with nothing grossly stupid or incompetent.  Admittedly, that shouldn’t be the standard, but in Sol Cohen-world it does make a difference.  This issue is a magazine that one might actually purchase for enjoyment and not as a duty, a change not to be sneezed at.  Can it continue?

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




5 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 22, 1968] Shades and Shadows (August 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

7 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Hail to the Chief

I mentioned a few months back that Tony Boucher, one of the original editors for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction had passed away.  Because of the vagaries of publication, it took this long for F&SF to solicit eulogies for Tony and get them in print.  But a finer tribute, I can't imagine.

Some of SF's greatest luminaries pay their respects: Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Randall Garrett, Philip K. Dick, Avram Davidson…but what impressed me even more was how many prominent women authors appear, too–Judith Merril, Mildred Clingerman, Margaret St. Clair, Miriam Allen DeFord.  It is fitting that so many of the fond rememberers are women; F&SF, particularly in the Boucher years, was by far the biggest SF publisher of woman-penned SFF.

Those were great days, the Boucher reign, when virtually every issue was a winner (sort of like the Gold days at Galaxy).  And half the stories we picked for our anthology of SF by women from 1953-57, some of the very best science fiction of the time, came from the pages of F&SF.

It is a shame that the appearance of these names from yesteryear evoke a pang of loss perhaps greater than the passing of Mr. Boucher.  Except for a few notable rallies, F&SF has been on a slow, inexorable downward trend since 1959, it's last superlative year.  This issue is no exception.  While it is not crammed with wholly unworthy material, nor is it anywhere near the standards it used to maintain.

Let me show you…


by Gahan Wilson

The House that Tony Built

The Devil and Jake O'Hara, by Brian Cleeve

I was less than enthusiastic about Brian's last story about Old Nick, in which Satan is cast out of hell along with a lowly sidekick when the souls of Hell unionize and go on strike.  This one is a step downward.

All Lucifer needs to break the strike is one measly member of the damned who will cross the picket lines and turn the power back on in the underworld.  He sets his eyes on an Irish lush who sells his soul for a bottle of quality whiskey.  His daughter adds a few amendments to the deal, but it doesn't really matter.  Ultimately, the sot goes to Hell, though the result is not what the Prince of Darkness wants.

There's just too much affected dialect, meandering, and oh-so-cleverisms.  What could be a workable premise is, instead, tedious.  And this is from someone who likes Deal-with-the-Devil stories.

Two stars.

Sos the Rope (Part 2 of 3), by Piers Anthony

[As with last time, Brian has graciously offered to stand in so I don't have to suffer through Anthony's latest "masterpiece"…]


by Brian Collins

To show once again that democracy is a flawed system, Piers Anthony is now a Hugo nominee! I can scarcely fathom some people’s enthusiasm for his debut novel Chthon getting nominated for Best Novel. His second novel, Sos the Rope, may redeem itself by the final installment, but the chances of it recovering are not high. There is one positive that can be said of this middle installment immediately: it’s short.

Not much happens here, and at only about 25 pages there isn’t much opportunity for Anthony to bless us with his worst habits, all involving women. To recap, it’s America a good century after a nuclear catastrophe, and two rogues, Sos and Sol, agree to a one-year partnership while the latter builds a tribe, one combatant at a time. The two are good friends and respect each other as warriors, but Sos is weaponless while Sol is unable to beget children of his own. Their friendship is complicated when Sol’s wife in name only, Sola, takes a strong liking to Sos and the two eventually have sex behind Sol’s back, leaving Sola pregnant with Sos’s child. This is unfortunate for everyone, including the reader. But by now the one-year contract has run out and Sos and Sol agree to part ways, with Sos returning to a crazy-run hospital where he grew up and where he learned to read.

Another positive thing I can say is that since Sola is virtually absent in this installment, and since Sol only appears at the beginning and end, we’re taken away from the plot to be given more of an explanation as to the workings of this post-apocalyptic world. It’s during his time away from Sol’s tribe that Sos finally decides to take on another weapon—this one the long heavy rope of the title. It’s about halfway through the novel that we finally get the weapon that would become part of the hero’s name. I still cannot properly describe how much I object to the naming system Anthony concocted here. It only gets more aggravating when Sos eventually returns to the tribe and finds that Sol now has a daughter named—wait for it—Soli. Sos and Sola still want each other but the latter refuses to give up Sol’s name and Sol himself refuses to give up his adoptive daughter. A fight in the battle circle, possibly to the death, ensues!

Anthony still cannot write compelling action scenes, and he still cannot write women above the level of depicting them as instigators of doom. A recurring implication here is that Sos and Sol would turn out fine, at worst going down different paths amicably, if not for Sola’s meddling. At the same time I was not offended so much this time.

If I turn my head on its side I might be able to stretch this installment to 3 stars, because it is a relatively painless experience and even mildly enjoyable in a few places, but that implies a tepid recommendation and I can’t lie to readers like that. Strong 2 out of 5 stars.


by Gideon Marcus

The Twelfth Bed, by Dean R. Koontz


by Gahan Wilson

This one takes place in a futuristic rest home, where the aged are confined in their last years under the beneficent but iron care of robot wards.  One day, a young accountant is checked into the home by mistake.  Try as he might, he can't get out…until he brews a revolt.

Koontz is a writer with a lot of promise, and he did manage a 4-star tale last month, but most of his stories have some kind of issue.  For this one, it's that the setup is a bit too contrived to really engage sympathy.  Maybe it's supposed to be satire, but again, it plays things to straight if that's the case.  Moreover, I read a similar (and better) story in Fantastic three years ago (Terminal, by Ron Goulart).

Anyway, three stars, and keep trying Dean!

2001: A Space Odyssey, by Samuel R. Delany and Ed Emshwiller

Two of my more favorite people provide reviews of Kubrick/Clarke's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.  They are interesting perspectives, one from a vivid fictioneer, and one from a gifted illustrator and artist. 

Chip (Delany) actually favored the original three-hour version that was cut within a week of its premiere, asserting that the irony of the HAL segment is sharper, and the disorientation of the weightlessness scenes settle in more viscerally.  I don't know if that kind of glacial pacing would have been an improvement, but on the other hand, the only time I felt even slightly restless when I watched the film was during the transit scene near the end, so maybe I missed out.

Emsh praises the effects and spends most of his time discussing them rather than the story, which he seems to find serviceable, if not stellar.

It's a better pair of reviews than, say, Robert Bloch's blistering affair (in which Bob calls the monolith a "cylinder" for some reason–sadly, I can't remember where I saw it.  A fanzine, I think.)

Four stars.

Death to the Keeper, by K.M. O'Donnell

This piece is book-ended by the protestations of a producer of a television program, disclaiming all responsibility for what ensued on his show, Investigations.  It seems he hired a has-been actor to re-enact the recent assassination of a public figure (presumably, echoing the murder of JFK).  The actor went meshuginnah and actually assured that he actually got killed in a sort of expiation of public sins.  We know this from the interminable, raving diary the actor left behind explaining his motivations.

I really don't know what to make of this story.  While I'm not the biggest fan of J.G. Ballard, I found his utlization of the Kennedy assassination (and other cultural touchstones) to be more effective.  Certainly more readable, despite the outré nature of his composition.  O'Donnell just seems like he's trying too hard.

And as with his earlier story satirizing war, it's clear he believes in writing ten words when two would suffice.

One star. 

A Sense of Beauty, by Robert Taylor

It is the last night of a short-lived affair, for the male half is leaving.  And not just away from his lover, but from Earth.  You see, he is an alien, sort of, a member of an extraterrestrial race of humans, and Earth is doomed to soon be consumed in a natural nova.  He was sent to our world to gather our finest art treasures, these to form a legacy of our lost race.

The tale is reasonably well executed, but its effectiveness is reduced both by the mawkishness of the scenario and that of its participants (the woman is hysterical, the man poor at communicating), as well as the fact that, again, this feels like a story I've read before, one that was done better.  I just can't remember which one it was…

Maybe Taylor, who is a novice, will realize his potential with a more original story next time out.  For now, three stars.

The Terrible Lizards, by Isaac Asimov

I was just thinking that I wanted a nice survey on what we know about dinosaurs in 1968, and the good Doctor has presented one.  As a bonus, he tell us some horrible things about Sir Richard Owens, a preeminent dino-hunter in the last century.

I enjoyed learning the greek roots of the various dinosaur names as well as the relationship between dinosaurs, mammals, birds, crocodiles, and turtles.

Four stars.

Soldier Key, by Sterling E. Lanier

Lanier is another newcomer, but this is his second story, and he seems to have found his footing very quickly.  This is the tale of a British Brigadier, the sort with decades of experiences and a knack for storytelling.  Apparently, Lanier has a whole treasure chest of stories that the Brigadier will tell, which we'll get to see as F&SF publishes them.

This particular piece involves the time the Brigadier went Caribbean island-hopping in a small boat with his friend, Joe, and two local seamen, Maxton and Oswald.  They learn of Soldier Key, a little spit of land inhabited by the queerest of ex-Britishers, dedicated to an unholy church and with an unhealthy adoration for giant hermit crabs.

The plot is Lovecraftian, but without the undercurrent of racism (indeed, the story is quite anti-racist).  I found it engaging, thrilling, and also satisfying.  Not just horror for horror's sake, but threaded with light–the light provided by decent human beings remaining human in the face of inhumanity.

Four stars.

Urban blight

Well, that wasn't all bad, thankfully.  Still, 2.4 is a pretty dismal aggregate.  Compare that to the 3.3 average for 1959.  Also, for all the female participation in the eulogizing, there are no fiction stories from women this issue.  In fact, there have been only six stories by women this entire year.

We could stand to go back to the '50s in more ways than one…


Tony Boucher, with friend, in 1954




</small

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

[March 20, 1968] Missed opportunities (April 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

4 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

A week is a long time in politics

The British Prime Minister Harold Wilson is fond of noting that a lot can change in just seven days.  In American politics, the last seven days have witnessed a lifetime of tumult.

It was just last year that President Johnson was polling in the 70s.  When Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, stand-offish, brainy, tepid in his commitment, took to the field last November, few took his insurgent, Anti-Vietnam-War campaign seriously.  Least of all, President Johnson, who did not even apply to be on the ballot in New Hampshire's primary, scheduled for March 12.

Then the Tet Offensive happened, giving lie to the idea of slow but steady progress in Southeast Asia.  The Credibility Gap between the populace and the President became a canyon, and when the dust had settled, Senator McCarthy had garnered just 230 votes less than LBJ in the year's first Democratic primary.

Just a few days latter, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who had last year demurred from running, referring anti-war supplicants in McCarthy's direction, decided to throw his hat in the ring.  The Democratic insurgency has become a full-on party civil war.

Johnson's complacence reminds me of Georges Ernest Boulanger, who in January 1889 was elected deputy for Paris and seemed on the verge of leading a personal coup against the Third Republic.  But on the fateful day of January 27, when the crowds roamed the streets and chanted his name, the would-be despot was nowhere to be found.  Turned out he had missed his moment, lost in the arms of his mistress rather than under arms with his supporters.

Who knows where all this is headed?  It just goes to show that even the most promising candidate can fail for lack of sufficient focus on the goal.  And this leads me into discussion of this month's issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.


by Bert Tanner

Burned batch

Have you ever been careless in the kitchen, not so much as to ruin dinner, but to render it far less palatable than it could have been?  All of the stories this month are missing something.  Their imperfection lies in missing some quality, or in some cases, an overcooking of sorts.  The result is a handful of ideas that could have been good in others' hands, or perhaps with more expert editing, or more time and care in production.

Flight of Fancy, by Daniel F. Galouye

After a long hiatus, the author of the brilliant Dark Universe returns to the pages of science fiction with this, probably the best piece of the issue.

Frank Proctor is an ad man, miserable in his career and his life, shackled to a beautiful woman who insists on tormenting him with affair after affair.  But he stubbornly refuses to divorce her, knowing it means financial ruin.  His only solace is his recurrent dreams in which he has the ability to fly.  He knows it is a stress reaction, but at least it is a moment's surcease.

A greater balm arises: at a company beach party, Frank falls asleep by the shore and immediately begins to soar in his dream.  While apparently still in slumber, he meets a lovely young lady, who also possesses the ability to fly.  Happily, she is still there when he wakes, and he assumes he must have been sleeping with his eyes open for her to infiltrate his sleep.

Of course, romance is inevitable.  But what of his Frank's scheming wife, and will the pictures she took of him and his new love put him over a barrel?  The ending is ultimately a happy one, if a bit pat.

This is a well-crafted and vivid story.  My only real issue is it feels a bit like wish-fulfillment, and I have to wonder if Galouye just went through a messy divorce.

Four stars.

Dead to Rights, by R. C. FitzPatrick

Crime boss Angelo Amadeo is rubbed out by his second.  When the instrument of Angelo's death turns stoolie, the second's devotees enlist a surgeon to recall Angelo to life, reasoning that if Angelo is not dead anymore, then he never could have been murdered.

The problem is, Angelo's body is brought back to life, but the soul inside is most definitely not his.  Instead, the reborn inhabitant preaches love of fellow man and everlasting life in the adoration of God.

You can see where this is going.

Too much effort is made to make this a "funny" piece, and the conclusion is obvious from the start.  Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Without a Doubt Dream, by Bruce McAllister

Antonio and his lovely wife, Alba, wake up one day to find their pine-ensconced villa suddenly surrounded by endless desert.  Worse, the insinuating sands are slowly creeping in, destroying all that they touch.  Antonio reasons that only his psychic ability is shielding them, but his doubt in the same talent is causing him to lose the battle.

McAllister describes this all in an earnest, somber tone, and he successfully captures the feeling of a pair of foreign protagonists.  However, the piece ends rather abruptly, and without a great deal of evolution of the story.  Moreover, the tone is a bit too one-dimensional.

Thus, for this third piece by this promising, 19-year old author, I give three stars.

Demon, by Larry Brody

Pinchok, a simple blue-collar worker who happens to be the denizen of another plane, is summoned to Earth in a pentagram by a would-be three-wisher.  When Pinchok turns out to be rather useless as a genie, the summoner decides maybe Pinchok should devote his talents to crime…for the benefit of the human, of course.

The concept of demons just being aliens in another dimension, and the art of demonology more a kind of kidnapping (with the implication that it might work the other direction, too, with humans becoming the demons) is an intriguing premise.

This tale, while pleasant enough, just doesn't do enough with it, however.  Three stars.

The Superior Sex, by Miriam Allen deFord

William, an astronaut, finds himself the newest member of an all-male harem, subject to an imperious and beautiful mistress.  He cannot recall how he got there, but he can recall being from a world dedicated to the principle (if not the assiduous practice) of equality between the sexes.  Thus, he rankles at his new role, and in an interview with his mistress, exclaims that he would rather die than live subjugated.

Of course, the truth of his situation is more complex than it first seems.

This is almost a great story.  DeFord, an ardent women's libber before the phrase was coined, has a promising message in this piece that is then muddled by its ending.  Too bad.

Three stars.

The Time of His Life, by Larry Eisenberg

One of science fiction's few writer/scientists offers up this tale of a middle-aged scientist resentful of forever being in the shadow of his Nobel-winning father, who covets his son's wastrel youth.  Said elder has now invented a kind of time travel, but it ages or youthens the traveler rather than sending him elsewhen.  In the end, both father and son get what they want.

A decent Twilight Zone-esque piece.  Three stars.

The Dance of the Sun, by Isaac Asimov

This month, the good Doctor discusses the phases of the inner planets with respect to the Earth.  He also notes that Dr. Richardson had done a similar piece for Analog a few months back.  Frankly, I was more impressed with Richardson's; I found Asimov's dry and difficult to follow.  And astronomy was my major!

Two stars.

Muscadine, by Ron Goulart

Mr. Muscadine is an android programmed to produce great books.  The secret to his success is the idiosyncrasies fundamentally coded into his electronic brain.  But as his eccentricities spin out of control, his agent finds himself conspiring with the android's programmer toward a drastic solution.

Goulart can write well, and he can also write funny.  He does neither here.  Two stars.

Final War, by K. M. O'Donnell

Finally, an anti-war piece in the vein of Heller's Catch 22.  It features a Private Hastings, a war-addled First Sergeant, and an indecisive Captain, whose unit spends three days a week capturing a forest, three days a week being driven from the forest, and Mondays resting.  What follows is the usual silliness of war, including friendly fire, endless red tape, and general insanity.

Harrison did it MUCH better in his Starsloggers.  This one meanders for way too long in a singular vein.  Two stars.

Expected results

With a limp offering like this, it's no surprise that this issue ends up on the wrong side of three stars.  It's a shame.  Joe/Ed Ferman's mag is often one of the frontrunners in the field.  But with a month like this, I suspect Mercury Publishing is going to have an upset when compared against its competitors for April 1968.

Luckily, science fiction is an endless primary, and a month is a very very long time.




</small

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

[July 8, 1967] Family lines (August 1967 Galaxy)

8 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Royal Families

The news always likes to focus on heads of state, especially when they are flashy or glamorous in some way.  From Princess Grace of Monaco to Crown Prince Akihito of Japan, these leaders are instant idols, somehow more compelling for having the reins (and reigns) of nations even though they presumably put their pants/skirts/obis on the same way as the common folk.

This week scored a triplet of spotlights.  For instance, in the island nation of Tonga, Taufaʻahau Tupou IV was crowned monarch in a ceremony that included a feast of 71,000 suckling pigs!  And that, by itself, tells you all you need to know about the current Jewish/Moslem population of Tonga…

Closer to home, El BJ, chief of the United States, has got his first grandson.  Patrick Lyndon Nugent is the newborn child of First Daughter Luci Nugent (neé Johnson).  There is no word, as yet, whether his toddler status will grant him deferment in the lastest draft lottery.

Finally, junta chairman General Nguyen Cao Ky, the flamboyant leader of South Vietnam since 1965, has decided not to run for President in the upcoming democratic (perhaps) September elections.  Premier Thiệu has been backed by the junta for the top role, instead, with Ky getting the Vice Presidential nod.  It's all a lot of musical chairs, anyway. After all, Ky has asserted that the only politician he admires is Hitler, which tells you all you need to know about the state of democracy in that country (and its current Jewish population…)

Watching Big Brother

Fred Pohl, one of the original Futurians and a pillar of the SF community, has had his hands full for nearly a decade.  After he took over the reins of Galaxy and the newly acquired IF from H. L. Gold, rather than sit on his laurels, he looked for new worlds to conquer.  Thus, Worlds of Tomorrow was launched in 1963.  But juggling three mags (plus a few reprint-only titles) was a challenging job, often resulting in uneven quality and occasionally right-out flubs.  For instance, last year's issue of Worlds of Tomorrow where the pages got all mixed up.

One would think, with WoT going out of publication, that things might be less hectic over at the Guinn Co. mags.  But, in fact, this month's issue of Galaxy is even more higgledy-piggledy, making reading a real challenge.


by Sol Dember

Which is a shame, because there's some quite good stuff in here (mixed with some mediocre stuff, to be sure).  Thankfully, you've got me to be your guide.  Just grab your compass, or you might get lost.

Hawksbill Station, by Robert Silverberg


by Virgil Finlay

One-way time travel is developed in the early 21st Century.  Since humanity is deathly afraid of creating paradoxes, the new portals are used by the totalitarian regime for just one purpose: shipping undesirables into the far past, a sort of Paleozoic Botany Bay.

Hawksbill Station is the one reserved for male subversives, established sometime in the late Cambrian (Silverberg repeatedly gives a date of two billion years ago, but of course, the Cambrian went from about 600-500 million B.C.) Our perspective is that of Barrett, the de facto head of the more than 100 settler/prisoners on the coast of what will one day be the Atlantic Ocean.  It is a community slowly decaying as its denizens age along with no greater purpose in life.  That is, until a new young convict arrives from the future, one who appears to be a government spy…

This is more of a travelogue than a story, and the ending comes on a bit abruptly.  But the characterization, the details, the setting are all so gripping that I tore through the novella in no time, despite the labyrinthine page distribution.

Four stars, and if it ever gets expanded into a novel, it could make five.

Angel, Dark Angel, by Roger Zelazny

In another future-set tale, society is maintained by a sort of corporate Angel of Death who, with the help of ten thousand teleporting assistants, brings death to citizens after they have made sufficient contribution to humanity (and are, perhaps, on the verge of being detrimental).

One noteworthy woman has cultivated the aesthetic race of spirules (depicted on the cover) as an antidote to the cold, mechanistic technology of her time.  A subordinate angel is sent to dispatch her, but things prove more complicated.

This is a middlin' Zelazny story, not an empty poetic suit like some, but not a near masterpiece like some of his other works.  Three stars.

We're Coming Through the Window, by K. M. O'donnell

Throwaway vignette about a fellow who keeps duplicating himself due to time travel and needs Fred Pohl's help to get out of it.

Cute.  Three stars.

Ginny Wrapped in the Sun, by R. A. Lafferty

Ginny seems to be a precocious four year old, but in fact, is actually just a baseline human, maturing at age 4 and going on as an upright monkey.  It's the rest of us who are evolutionary aberrations, having five times as many heartbeats that a creature our mass should have.  Inevitably, Lafferty suggests, we'll all go ape.

This tale doesn't really work, and it's a bit more impenetrable than Lafferty's usual fare.  Two stars.

For Your Information: A Pangolin Is a Pangolin, by Willy Ley

Ley's article on the strange mammal that is neither aardvark nor anteater nor armadillo is interesting, but not much more than you might get from a rather good encyclopedia entry.

Three stars.

9-9-99, by Richard Wilson

Two wizened old characters are determined to settle an old score since both have outlived their wagered death dates, the bet having been made back in the 30s.

Whether it is even possible for them to collect given the state of the Earth in the late '90s is another matter…

Good enough, I guess.  Three stars.


by Wally Wood

Travelers Guide to Megahouston, by H. H. Hollis


by Wally Wood

This is a very long, somewhat farcical account of a 21st Century evolution of the Astrodome, in which domes enclose whole cities.

Pretty dull stuff.  Two stars.

The Being in the Tank, by Theodore L. Thomas

An alien being materializes in the heart of a hellish hydrazine factory and demands to speak to the President.  But is he the real deal?

Forgettable, but inoffensive.  A low three stars.

Hide and Seek, by Linda Marlowe

A childhood game is adapted into a method of population control.  It has shock value, but little else.

Two stars.

The Great Stupids, by Miriam Allen deFord

Mad scientist makes everyone under 50 a mental moron, all in service of a rather lame joke at the end.  DeFord was once one of the stars of the genre, but her light has waned over the years.  Here's hoping she's a Cepheid variable and not a dying dwarf.

To Outlive Eternity (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


by Jack Gaughan

It is fitting that the final long piece of the issue is a sort of mirror image of Silverberg's novella in terms of strengths and weaknesses.  As we read in last month's installment, the ramscoop colony ship Leonora Christine suffered damage to its decelerators while traveling at near light speed on the way to Beta Virginis.  The solution: to accelerate to terrific velocities instead, plunging through the heart of the galaxy and out into the comparative emptiness of intergalactic space where repairs might be effected.

In this half, event after event conspires to force the Christine to travel ever faster and faster, ultimately spanning the lifespan of the universe and beyond in a matter of months.  The story is told as a series of problem-solving conversations spread out over the weeks, and each character largely exists solely to have these conversations.  Except for the women, of course, who are almost universally hysterics or hangers-on…except for the First Officer who ultimately whores herself out for the good of the crew.

In short, the setup and ideas are really neat, but its a plot outline, not a novel.  And where Poul Anderson does try to characterize, it's with quick stereotypes, and usually not agreeable ones.  As for setting, there really isn't one.  The crew of the Christine might as well be floating heads in blank spaces for all we really get to experience the ship.

Readable, but badly flawed.  Three stars.

Matrix Goose, by Jack Sharkey

Last up, some very familiar nursery rhymes as they might be rendered by robots–after the demise of humanity.  It's cute.  Three stars.


Perhaps my favorite example, art by Gray Morrow

Cross-eyed Kin

And so, Galaxy ends up a largely enjoyable, but unremarkable read — just under 3 stars in ranking.  Perhaps, with the demise of Worlds of Tomorrow further in the rear-view mirror, Pohl will be able to concentrate on (and concentrate the best stories into) his remaining mags.

On the other hand, perhaps he hasn't learned his lesson.  He's got a new magazine is coming out next month…



8 Comments Leave A Comment