So, Britain has a new Prime Minister. Edward “Ted” Heath (not the conductor). He couldn’t be more different from the last Conservative Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Hume. Heath is the son of a carpenter and a chambermaid. He worked in banking, is unmarried and has a passion for sailing yachts and playing the organ.
Edward Heath moves into his new house
One of the first orders of business for him, as it would have been for Wilson, is a meeting with The Six, AKA the leaders of the six members of the European Economic Community, in order to discuss the possibility of Britain’s entry into the Common Market. This is a particular passion project for Heath, who is a known Francophile and whose previous negotiations in this era led to the press declaring him “Lord Heath of Brussels”.
In fact, Britain is not the only country trying to join. Ireland, Denmark and Sweden have all made applications to join and these have been going on for some time. There is however a reason this year will be different. That is the absence of Charles de Gaulle. Central to French politics over the last decade, he used his power to oppose any enlargement of the EEC.
The December Hague Summit
With his retirement and replacement by Pompidou, who has switched his approach to appeal to more liberal voters, the calculus has changed. Following the Hague Summit in December negotiations have officially begun again in Luxembourg. There are a number of points that are still subject to negotiation, but things appear to be moving forward.
In the pages of Vision of Tomorrow, Europhilia is on display and it is time for me to negotiate my way through six stories: some about major nations, some involving small grand duchies, but all will be covered with sufficient weight:
The July Amazing is fronted by John Pederson, Jr.’s second cover, an agreeable Martian-ish scene, reminiscent of nothing so much as . . . Johnny Bruck on a good day. So maybe the new commitment to domestic artists isn’t quite the boon I thought it was. We’ll see.
by John Pederson, Jr.
The non-fiction this month is a bit less gripping than usual. White’s editorial recounts his unsatisfactory encounter with a woman who wanted to write an article about SF fandom, but apparently never did (or it never got published). He then segues to a discussion of Dr. Frederic Wertham and his campaign against comic books which culminated in his book The Seduction of the Innocent. Then, finally, to the point: Wertham is now saying he too will write about SF fandom and White doesn’t think it will be any good. He’s probably right, but until we see what Wertham produces, discussing it is a little pointless.
The letter column remains contentious but is getting a little repetitive; at this point it’s hard for anyone to say anything new about New Wave vs. Old Farts, and no more inviting topic has emerged. The fanzine reviews are as usual, and the book reviews . . . are missing, damn it! To my taste they have been about the liveliest part of the magazine. I hope the lapse is momentary.
But speaking of SF fandom, I’ll take this lack of much to talk about as an occasion to mention something fairly striking about the magazine’s contents under Ted White’s editorship: there is an unusually large representation of Fans Turned Pro, authors who have—like White—been heavily involved in organized SF fandom. This issue features Bob Shaw, a leading light of Irish fandom and heavy contributor to the celebrated fanzines Slant and Hyphen, who later won two Hugo Awards as best fanwriter among other distinctions; he also had a story in the second (7/69) White-edited issue. Greg Benford (once a co-editor with White of the also-celebrated fanzine Void) has one of his co-authored “Science in Science Fiction” articles (the fifth) in this issue, and three stories to boot in White’s eight issues, as well as regular appearances in the book review column. Robert Silverberg, who published a slightly earlier well-known fanzine Spaceship, supplied an impressive serial novel and has a story in this issue. Terry Carr, another renowned fan editor, had a story in the last issue. Alexei Panshin is not to my knowledge a fan publisher but has won the Best Fan Writer Hugo for his prolific contributions to others’ fanzines. Harlan Ellison (short story in 9/69 issue) published the legendary Dimensions in the 1950s. Joe L. Hensley (same) is a member of First Fandom and published a fanzine in the 1940s.
And what does it all mean? The floor is open for sober analysis and wild speculation.
Due to the distinctive headgear worn by some of the construction workers, the incident has become known as the Hard Hat Riot.
In the chaos that ensued, with an estimated twenty thousand people in the streets near Federal Hall, the counter-protestors attacked the anti-war demonstrators while police did little to stop the violence.
The pro-war crowd later marched up Broadway and threatened to attack City Hall. They demanded that the building's flag, flown at half-mast in commemoration of the Kent State killings, be raised to full mast. In an example of grim irony, the hard hats and their allies also attacked nearby Pace University, a conservative business school.
About one hundred people were injured, including seven police officers. Six people were arrested. Only one of them was a construction worker.
With all of this going on, it's tempting to escape from the real world and allow our imaginations to run wild. As we'll see, however, the latest issue of Fantastic contains as much violent conflict as reality.
Back in 1967, a radio producer by the name of Murray Woroner came up with the idea of using a computer to work out who the best heavyweight fighter of all time is. He polled 250 boxing writers and came up with a list of 16. He then worked closely with a programmer to input everything that could be determined about each boxer into a computer.
Match-ups were set up as a single-elimination tournament to be broadcast as a series of radio plays. Each fight was run through an NCR 315 computer the night before broadcast to create a blow-by-blow account of the fight. Woroner and boxing announcer Guy LeBow would then “call” the fight as if it were really happening. In the end, Rocky Marciano beat Jack Dempsey and was awarded a championship belt worth $10,000.
The arbiter, an NCR 315.
Ali was not happy. The computer had him losing in the quarter finals to Jim Jeffries, a boxer he has little respect for. He sued for defamation of character, asking for $1 million. They settled when Ali agreed to take part in a filmed version of a computerized fight between him and Marciano in return for $10,000 and a cut of the box office.
Last year, Ali and Marciano got together and sparred for over 70 rounds, filming a few different versions of events that the computer might predict. Marciano dropped 50 pounds and wore a toupee so he’d look more like he did in his prime. Ali probably had to get back in shape too, since he’s been banned from boxing for refusing induction into the army. Instinct seems to have taken over for both men. Ali bloodied Marciano’s nose and opened cuts over his eyes (Rocky always bled easily); at one point, Ali was so exhausted he refused to go back into the ring (until he got another $2,000) and could barely raise his arms enough to eat breakfast the next day. Filming ended just three weeks before Marciano was killed in a plane crash last Labor Day.
Armed with hours of footage and the top secret computer result, Woroner and his team put together a film they dubbed The Super Fight. On January 20th, it aired in 1,500 theaters in the US, Canada, and Europe via closed-circuit television, with viewers paying a whopping $5.00 a head.
How did it turn out? Ali is not happy. The computer had him knocked out in the 13th round. He’s talking about another defamation suit. Maybe he’ll change his mind when he finds out that was only in the US and Canada. European viewers saw Ali win by TKO. The producers are also talking about destroying all the prints.
Movie poster for the event. That “LIVE!” is a little deceptive, which is something else Ali is complaining about.
It’s a rather science-fictional concept we’ve seen in other guises. Maybe Murray Woroner got his original idea from the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon.” Of course, any statistician will tell you that a single simulation doesn’t really say anything. Rolling a die once doesn’t tell you if it’s fair; it takes hundreds or thousands of repetitions to determine that. But when the computer needs 45 minutes to determine the events of one match, this is the best that can be expected. For now.
Not what it looks like
Authors like to counter readers’ expectations. It’s a good way to evoke a response, particularly in a genre that has a fair number of cliches and formulas. Sometimes, the surprise comes from the author doing something that’s not what you expect that particular writer to do or say. This month’s IF offers some of both.
Art actually for “SOS,” rather than just suggested by. Maybe because it’s by Mike Gilbert, not the overworked Jack Gaughan.
My local rag, The Escondido Times-Advocate, isn't much compared to, say, The Los Angeles Times. But every so often, they are worth the subscription fee (beyond the TV listings and the funnies). Take this article, for instance, which might well be at home in a Willy Ley column:
Basically, CalTech has a new timepiece with more precision, accurate to the hundredth of a second, so that when it is used in conjunction with a seismometer, earthquakes can be better mapped. More excitingly, the new clock weighs just eight pounds—less than a tenth that of the hundred-pound monster it replaces.
Transistors have made it to geology.
We hear all about small computers and more efficient satellites, but this story really drives home just how quickly the miniaturization revolution is diffusing to all walks of life. Is a computerized pocket slide rule or a Dick Tracy phone that far off?
Making waves
by Gray Morrow
A lot has happened this year at the old gray lady of science fiction, Galaxy. They changed editors. They lost their science columnist. And as we shall see from the latest issue, things are starting to change, ever so slightly.
Aside from the stray short story I have to admit I had not read any of John Jakes’s novels, of which there have been many as of late—so many, in fact, that we folks at the Journey have not been able to cover every new Jakes book. Just this year alone we’ve gotten three or four Jakes novels, with at least one more already in the can as I’m writing this. So consider this a bit of “catching up,” for the both of us. Jakes started a new science-fantasy series a couple years ago with When the Star Kings Die, and this year he has put out not one, but two more entries in this series. For the sake of not overwhelming the reader, though, let’s just keep it to the first two entries… for now.
Humanity has spread across the stars in what is called II Galaxy, with a planet-spanning league of aristocrats called the 'Lords of the Exchange' (the titular star kings) keeping things in check. The star kings are supposed to live for centuries, being near-immortal, but something has been leading these long-lived aristocrats to early deaths. Maxmillion Dragonard (a name I certainly did not pull out of a hat) is a Regulator, one of the enforcers for the star kings, who starts out imprisoned for a bout of intensely violent behavior but is soon freed on the condition that he investigates why the star kings are dying young. He soon travels to the planet Pentagon, a backwater home to little in the way of technology or civilization, but which seems to house the answer to the mystery; and there he gets involved with a group of rebels who go by the 'Heart Flag'. Dragonard’s sense of loyalty gets split between his allegiance to the star kings, personified by a mischievous spy named Kristin, whom Dragonard quickly falls in love with, and the leaders of the Heart Flag group, Jeremy and his sister Bel.
If you read certain passages out of context you might think you’re reading an adventure fantasy yarn in the Robert E. Howard mode, which Jakes is no stranger to, but overall this is much more evocative of Leigh Brackett’s planetary adventures—low on scientific plausibility but high on swashbuckling action. We have swords and daggers, but also blasters and “electroguns,” not to mention spaceships. Another thing carried over from both Howard and Brackett is this heightened sense of sexuality—or to put it less charitably, the fact that there are only two female characters of note in this novel, and both of them want to jump Dragonard’s bones. Jakes also can’t help himself when it comes to focusing on the women’s breasts, especially Kristin’s. In fairness, Dragonard is a man who has just been broken out of prison, and ultimately this is not a very serious novel. When the Star Kings Die was published in 1967, although the Journey didn’t cover it then; but if not for the publication date you might think it was printed in 1947, possibly as a “complete” novel in the likes of Startling Stories and other bygone pulps. It seems deliberately retrograde, but it’s unobtrusive so far as that goes.
This is a short novel, such that I’m actually surprised Ace didn’t bundle it with another short novel or novella. Even so, with just 160 pages Jakes is able to give us a future world, somewhat believable power dynamics among the parties, a few good villains, and a climactic battle that manages to take up a good chunk of the text. Kristin, despite being Dragonard’s main love interest, is absent for much of the novel, but to compensate his growing admiration for Jeremy and budding affection for Bel are given ample room to develop. The trio’s tenuous but promising relationship at the end of the novel is undermined, however, by the fact that when we did get a follow-up to When the Star Kings Die it was not a sequel, but instead a distant prequel.
This novel does a few things well, but not exceptionally well; and, let’s face it, we’ve been here before. It’s fine, but nothing special.
Jakes’s ode to the sword-and-spaceship adventures of yore continues with The Planet Wizard, published just this year, although given that it’s about the same length as When the Star Kings Die I’m still a bit surprised it was not released as one half of an Ace Double. The Planet Wizard has a more focused narrative, and more than its predecessor it heavily uses the fantasy elements of the pulp material it’s clearly taking cues from; but even so it feels less like a full novel (certainly now that we have behemoths like Dune and Stand on Zanzibar in the field) and more like a somewhat constipated novella. I very much enjoy novellas myself, but not so much when they look bloated and could use a laxative.
Say goodbye to all the characters from that first novel, since here we’re jumping back over a thousand years in time; conversely all the characters featured in The Planet Wizard will have been long and safely dead by the time we get to When the Star Kings Die. Some cataclysmic event has pushed civilization across planets almost back to medieval times, with the planet Pastora having only a semblance of civilized humanity, with its sister planet Lightmark faring even worse. Superstition has taken over the minds of the masses. Swords and daggers have replaced firearms. Instead of spaceships we have “skysleds.” Magus Blackclaw (another name I did not just pull out of a hat) is a middle-aged “wizard” who lives with his beautiful daughter Maya. The problem is that Magus isn’t really a wizard, for magic doesn’t really exist in this world. Whilst on the run the two cross paths with a tenacious swordsman named Robin Dragonard, who as you may guess is an ancestor of the Maxmillion Dragonard of the first novel. Magus gets captured and put on trial, as a fraud; but the High Governors, the pseudo-Christian religious leaders of Pastora, have a proposition for Magus: go to Lightmark and rediscover the fallen commercial house of Easkod, and maybe these charges will be dropped.
Not only does Magus have to deal with the “Brothers” of Easkod, a league of mutated and vicious humans who watch over Easkod City, but the job to exorcize Easkod of its “demons” quickly turns into a race. Philosopher Arko Lantzman wants his hands on Easkod as an alleged treasury of technology that got lost after the cataclysm, while William Catto, a descendant of one of Easkod’s higher-ups (so he claims), wishes to return the house to its former glory. Given that this is a prequel to When the Star Kings Die, and thus knowing the basic history of the star kings themselves, you can guess the broad trajectory of The Planet Wizard. Given also that Robin (who sadly lacks the charisma of his descendant) will contribute to a bloodline that persists over a thousand years later, it’s safe to guess as to his fate. What keeps the tension alive is that unlike some prequels, wherein we already know the fates of the cast (a kind of dramatic irony granted to the reader), we’re unsure if Magus and Maya will come out of this ordeal unscathed. While Robin is a flatter character than Maxmillion, Magus is a rather fun protagonist, being a middle-aged confidence man who nonetheless does care deeply for his daughter, and goes above and beyond to rescue her when she inevitably gets kidnapped.
In a sense The Planet Wizard complements its predecessor, and I’m not sure if Jakes intended one to be the other’s both opposite and equal. Not better, nor worse, but at least different enough to not feel like a repeat. I do recommend both—if you can find copies below the retail price.
Three stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
Initial Response
Two rip-roaring novels of space adventure fell into my hands recently, both by authors who use two initials instead of first and middle names. (Yes, I notice trivia like that.) Let's take a look.
Prolific British writer Edwin Charles Tubb (E. C. to you!) has been reviewed several times by Galactic Journeyers, including your not-so-humble servant. He usually earns three stars, once in a while a bit more. Will his latest novel earn him another C or C+ on his report card?
Wordiest cover I've ever seen. Pardon the lousy image.
I must have held the cameras at a bad angle.
A project to launch the first starship is under way, funded by the American government. What the boys and girls in Washington D. C. don't realize is that the folks behind the project believe that humanity is doomed to be wiped out by radioactivity. (There are hints that there have been a few limited nuclear wars, as well as a lot of atomic tests.) They plan to escape and find a world to colonize.
Meanwhile, a would-be dictator and his followers plan to stop the starship, by force if necessary. Don't worry about this subplot, because the vessel manages to leave Earth very early in the book, not without a lot of bloodshed.
(This brings up an odd thing about the book. The protagonists are just about as bloodthirsty as the antagonists. They're ready to destroy an entire community in order to launch the starship. Besides that, a lot of the folks aboard were literally kidnapped, forced to be colonists against their will.)
Pretty soon the escapees find a livable planet, which they name (with heavy irony) Eden. In addition to huge, deadly animals, the place has something in the atmosphere that ensures that any woman giving birth and her child will die.
The book has still barely started. A lot more goes on. There's an attempt at mutiny. There's the mysterious disappearance of the first probe to land on the planet, and its equally mysterious reappearance.
The author throws a lot at the reader, often at random. Some subplots don't lead anywhere. For example, we've got an attempt to activate the brain of a dead scientist in order to extract his knowledge. This is just dropped, and doesn't change anything. The whole thing reads as if it were written as quickly as possible, with a completely improvised plot.
American writer C. C. MacApp also has a fast hand at the typewriter, often showing up in If. He's been reviewed a lot here, generally getting three stars. Sometimes less, sometimes more. (Sounds a lot like Tubb, doesn't he?) Will his latest novel be below average, above average, or just plain average?
Cover art by John Berkey.
Wait a minute! I hear you cry. I thought we were talking about MacApp, not this Capps person!
Yep. C. C. MacApp is actually Carroll Mather Capps in real life. If you'll open the book, you'll see it's been copyrighted in the name of C. C. MacApp. Don't ask me why his real name is on the cover.
Anyway, our hero is an Earthman who caught an alien disease somewhere in space. Before killing him, it's going to make him blind. The good news is that some friendly, semi-humanoid aliens are willing to take him to a place where he can be cured, if he undertakes a mission for them. (The aliens recently arrived in the solar system and have the knowledge of faster-than-light travel, but haven't let humans in on the secret.)
His mission is to track down a renegade alien who kidnapped an alien scientist and stole a powerful piece of ancient technology from a species of extraterrestrials who vanished long ago. In order to do this, the aliens take him to a planet without a sun (hence the title) which is able to support life due to its internal heat.
His contact is a multi-tentacled space pirate with two snake-like heads. This roguish character takes him to a hospital, where a spider-like surgeon operates on his eyes.
Wouldn't you know it? There's a catch. The pirate blackmailed the surgeon into doing something to our hero's eyes so that he needs routine treatment with a certain chemical in order to keep his vision. As a side effect, the operation gave him the ability to see clearly in almost total darkness, even able to perceive radiation. This makes him a very useful tool of the pirate on this planet without natural illumination except starlight.
The guy goes along with the pirate, while also spying on him. Meanwhile, the local inhabitants of the planet spy on both him and the pirate. (There's a lot of spying in this book.) The renegade alien and the kidnapped victim show up, as well as other aliens intent on conquest.
I've only given you a synopsis of maybe half the novel. There are plenty of complications in store. The hero winds up on yet another planet, and finds out about the ancient vanished aliens.
The main difference between Tubb's book and this one is that McApp's is much more tightly plotted. There aren't any pointless subplots. As a bonus, the octopus-like pirate is an enjoyable character, usually several steps ahead of the hero. Not the most profound story ever told, but competent entertainment.
The Palace of Eternity is the first of Bob Shaw’s works that I’ve read. Shaw is a man of many talents, having worn a myriad of hats from taxi-driver to structural engineer and aircraft designer. He has added writing fiction to his repertoire with works such as The Two Timers, Night Walk, and his breakout short story, "Light of Other Days."
The Palace of Eternity is set in a distant and turbulent future where humanity has discovered FTL space travel, taken to the stars, and struggles to weather the onslaught of violent attacks from an alien species known as the Pythsyccans.
The protagonist, Mack Tavernor, is a battle-hardened former soldier who had been orphaned when the Pythsyccans devastated his childhood home. Naturally, Tavernor doesn’t view the Pythsyccans in a positive light but he also seems disillusioned enough with humanity to keep his own kind at arm’s length.
The Pythsyccans attack Mnemosyne, an idyllic, almost utopian world dubbed a haven for writers, artists, and other creators of varied talents. Tavernor, naturally, takes up arms against the invading enemy and dies in battle. This is where the story takes an interesting turn.
After shucking this mortal coil, Tavernor encounters the egons, a non-corporeal race of cosmic beings whose very existence is threatened by the proliferation of humanity’s FTL-ramjet technology, the Butterfly Ships. Tavernor, the newest egon, gets another lease on life, inhabiting the body of a newborn human child named Hal. The goal of his mission, to somehow interfere in the war between the humans and Pythsyccans in order to save the endangered egons.
The Palace of Eternity is a fantastic and eloquently written and fast-paced story that fires on all pistons where the things about science fiction that excite me are concerned. And yet…somehow, though, this book failed to move me. For all its eloquence and imaginativeness, I found myself unable to feel strongly about the characters and events of this story. It failed to fill me with a sense of wonder, even amidst the wondrous imagery. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on why.
It wasn’t just that much of the story felt glossed over—and probably should have been explored in greater detail. My main source of dissatisfaction was with the story’s main character’s development.
Mack Tavernor is admirable. He's truly a man's man in all the ways a man ought to be a man. Yet, I could not bring myself to either like or dislike him. At no point did I become emotionally invested in the things that happened to and around him. In short, as a protagonist, Mack falls flat. Lacking the kind of depth and complexity that makes fictional characters feel real in my mind, he is like soda pop that has lost its fizz.
Had Mr. Shaw given The Palace of Eternity the extent of thought and care it deserved, the book could have turned out to be a true phenomenon. It is, indeed, still an excellent and worthy read. Even so, I feel it's almost a tragic waste of the author's very clear intellect and truly wondrous imagination.
This is my first encounter with the fiction of the British cosmologist Fred Hoyle. A prominent astronomer with a long tenure at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, Hoyle is perhaps best known for a slew of rather controversial opinions. For instance, Dr. Hoyle has rejected the idea of the Big Bang, and for many years has promoted the idea that life on Earth began in the stars.
Yes, he is an eccentric, but Dr. Hoyle is quite a genius, really; a thoroughly unique figure and someone I would really enjoy meeting.
Dr. Hoyle is also a prominent science fiction writer. In collaboration with his son Geoffrey, he recently authored Rockets in Ursa Major, a thoroughly entertaining, if too brief, science fiction yarn reminiscent of the sort of thing which John W. Campbell might have published. If your kind of space fiction involves brilliant and fearless scientists battling bueaucracy and evil aliens, Rockets in Ursa Major is your kind of book.
I kind of giggled a bit when I realized the main characterof Ursa Major is a deeply accomplished and slightly eccentric scientist and that the book is told in first person – do you look in the mirror a bit too much, Dr. Hoyle? As the story begins, the genius Dr. Richard Warboys is at a very boring professional conference when surprising news pops up on the telly: a spaceship which has been lost for thirty years has suddenly reappeared, streaming towards Earth’s atmosphere.
Only a brilliant scientist can help the ship land! And only a brilliant scientist can help discover the ship's great secret of invading alien species! And only a brilliant scientist can fly a seeming suicide mission to battle those invaders! And only a brilliant scientist can figure out a complicated way to use solar flares to defeat those invaders! And, you guessed it, only a brilliant scientist can then fly towards the sun, release those solar flares and save our planet.
Are you shocked if I tell you that scientist's name is Dr. Dick Warboys?
So, yes, the plot of Rockets in Ursa Major is pure wish fulfillment: the 54-year-old Dr. Hoyle cast a genius scientist aged in his mid-30s as the man who basically singlehandedly saves Earth. And it’s all rather silly.
Dr. Hoyle
But Rockets is all tremendously fun, too, in that marvelously light-hearted way one might imagine Campbell publishing next to a Heinlein juvie or van Vogt brain-twister. I’m not sure if it’s the influence of the younger Mr. Hoyle the author, but this book moves at a kinetic speed, with almost too many twists and turns in its breathless style (I’m not sure why we needed a sequence in which Dr. Warboys breaks into the research college by stealing a boat and running through tunnels, for instance).
At the end of this book, the Hoyles hint at the possibility of a sequel. I would enjoy another thoroughly light-hearted and thoroughly indulgent visit with Dr. Warboys.
John Brunner is one of the most prolific science fiction authors of the latter half of this decade, to the extent that it sometimes feels hard to keep up with his work. I’ve always enjoyed Brunner’s work, which often manages to tread a fine line between smart concepts and exciting action. And I was a huge fan of his grand step into literary science fiction, the remarkable Stand on Zanzibar.
This month sees the release of a new Brunner, called Timescoop, but the zines are already reporting the autumn '69 release of another Brunner novel, called The Jagged Orbit [Actually, it's already been released—the Autumn release is a re-release (ed.)]. Based on the blurbs, Orbit sounds like another book of strong literary ambitions.
Timescoop, however, is not a novel of strong literary ambitions. It’s a goof, a novel in which Brunner played with some clever ideas and delivered a quick little satirical piece. Timescoop clears the palette between works of deep seriousness.
Our protagonist here is one Harold Freitas III, a self-obsessed inheritor of his family’s fortunes who is looking to live up to the legacy his father, recently deceased, has left to him.
Fortunately for Freitas, an amazing invention called the Timescoop has been invented, and he has control of it. The Timescoop can bring anything forward in time and allow it to live in the book’s present. Thus the Venus de Milo and Hermes of Praxiteles can exist – with their original arms – and so can people.
Imagine the Hermes – with arms – in a private house near you!
Looking to make a mark with publicity, Freitas brings forward nine of his ancestors in time and brings them to a family reunion broadcast throughout the galaxy. After all, men of the past were men of great virtue and character and the future world can learn from their insights. But… as one character states prophetically… “How much do we really know about these people? One always looks at the past through rose-colored –"
So Freitas brings forward nine of his ancestors – a steadfast medieval king and a medieval Crusader and a 17th century British merchant and a fire-and-brimstone preacher and a female cowboy, among others – and readies them to face the world and make Freitas famous.
But be careful what you wish for, and especially be careful what you create. Because these ancestors are not the good people Freitas wishes they could be. They are pederasts and nymphomaniacs, gluttons who are covered with filth and who have ancient racist attitudes. One even indulged in the slave trade.
Mr Brunner
Most of this is played for laughs, and it’s easy to imagine someone like Peter Sellers or Alec Guiness playing all the roles in a film adaptation, taking on silly voices while someone like Peter Cook keeps rolling his eyes at the chaos.
But there is also a small element of satire, a small joy at bringing down the rich and pompous and allowing their obsessions to blow up in their faces.
Timescoop is another quick little novel, and at a mere 156 pages it doesn’t wear out its welcome. But this is clearly Brunner relaxing and doing a small warmup for his next literary work.
In my first conversations with the Traveller, I was warned that some of the works I would cover here would be unpleasant. This is my first, and it does not even have the decency to be memorably terrible (Ole Doc Methuselah by L. Ron Hubbard), or bland yet competent (One Against Herculeum by Jerry Sohl). Light A Last Candle is knockoff Heinlein, wrapped in knockoff Doc Smith and shot through with attempts at imitating Bester.
Our main character is one of the few remaining humans on a planet. There’s “Mods” — modified humans — which our main character doesn’t like. Like a low-energy Gully Foyle, he doesn’t like anyone or anything very much. He doesn’t have a name, our main character, nor does “the girl”. She’s lucky, as all other female figures are called Breeders. The character our main character can stand the most is an old, fatherly figure simply referred to as Rutherford. They are the only two original humans, Free Men, left on the planet, which is mostly under the mind control of the Aliens, and their Mod slaves…or are they?
Social commentary is attempted, as are twists, and like in The Devil’s Own by Nora Lofts, the revelations provided to the reader are ultimately shallow. The more they appear, the more insignificant they are revealed to be. The Devil’s Own is in fact a rather poor comparison; since that is a fine book. In truth, the story Light A Last Candle most reminds me of is Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), with its clunky twists, bland characterization, pervasive male chauvinism, and failing to convey travel in a story that is ostensibly all about traveling. Distance is compressed like an accordion, details are skipped over, days pass offhandedly when we could be learning more about anything we are reading. This ultimately becomes a paucity of both showing and telling, which certainly is new to me. Like Star Man’s Son by Andre Norton, the book centers around bringing the reader to encounter different cultures in this alien future. Like The Weirdstone of Brisigamen by Alan Garner, that travel also takes place in tight, dangerous caves. In both of those books, however, distance and time were characters in themselves. You felt the pressure of travel, the hard work the characters put in, their sense of purpose.
The only talent that really appears throughout the work is a pervasive sense of disgust, of fleshy horror that I know William Hope Hodgeson in The Derelict and Arthur Machen in The Three Imposters did better sixty years ago. I think it's this author's first book, but his grouchiness is beyond his years.
I am writing this review as quickly as possible, because after finishing this book less than a half an hour ago, it is rapidly leaving my mind. I have filled this page with references to other works, so that the reader may enjoy books much better than this one.
Samuel Johnson described second marriages as the triumph of hope over experience. It is tempting to say something similar about changes of editor at Amazing. But that impulse is at least postponed by the upbeat mien of this July issue.
by Johnny Bruck
That sky is about as blue as any I've seen on a magazine cover, and more importantly, the cover goes some way to answer the cry for a good cover by Johnny Bruck, whose hackneyed spaceships and guys with guns have become so tiresome on recent issues. This one is a bit cartoonish, but at least it’s clever and amusing—a spaceport scene with some impressive-looking spacecraft, but the people on the ground have eyes only for the bright yellow futuristic automobile, with huge tailfins, a transparent dome over the passenger compartment, and whitewall tires. Oh, it has side fins too. Maybe it flies.
The magazine’s contents also lean in a promising direction. Almost half of the magazine (70 of 144 pages, excluding the front and back covers) is devoted to the first part of Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line. It’s rare for magazines to give that big a chunk of available space to a serial installment, but it makes sense in a bimonthly magazine. As a side benefit, it leaves less room for the reprints, which take up only 27 pages. The book review column is back, with substantial reviews by William Atheling, Jr. (James Blish) and editor White. The letter column is here again, and the promised fanzine review column has now appeared, nine pages worth, by John D. Berry. White’s editorial says that the fan feature in Fantastic will be reprints of selected fanzine articles. The guest editorials in Amazing will be gone—the editorial spot’s going to be his. It all gives a sense of an energetic editor getting a quick start at implementing his desires.
A more dubious innovation is the new typeface. Multiple typefaces are nothing new at Amazing, but Silverberg’s serial, Leon Stover’s article, and the book and fanzine reviews and letter column are set in a tiny typeface that challenges my ill-made eyes (see the glasses in my photo?). Microscopic type for things like letter columns is an old tradition—just check your copies of the Hugo Gernsback Amazing if the silverfish haven’t gotten to them—but for this much of the magazine it spells headache for me and I suspect many others.
The biggest deal in this issue is of course Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line. Silverberg, formerly a capable journeyman magazine-filler, has in recent years become a much more powerful and original writer. In just the past two years he has produced four novels that put him in a different league entirely than did his earlier work: Thorns, To Open the Sky, Hawksbill Station, and The Masks of Time, with several more out or on the way this year.
by Dan Adkins
Per my practice, I will hold off reviewing and rating Up the Line until it is finished. But a quick peek reveals that it is a time travel story, told in the first person by a young man at loose ends who joins the Time Couriers—not the Time Police, the Couriers’ nemesis—and that it is a considerable departure from the relatively serious recent works mentioned above. Parts of it suggest that the author wrote with the stage in mind. The vaudeville stage, that is. E.g., as the protagonist explains to his new friend the Time Courier why he abandoned his budding career as law clerk to a Judge Mattachine:
“My uncle is Justice Elliott of the U.S. Higher Supreme Court. He thought I ought to get into a decent line of work.”
“You don’t have to go to law school to be a law clerk?”
“Not any more,” I explained. “The machines do all the data retrieval, anyway. The clerks are just courtiers. They congratulate the judge on his brilliance, procure for him, submit to him, and so forth. I stuck it out for eight days and podded out.”
“You have troubles,” Sam said sagely.
“Yes. I’ve got a simultaneous attack of restlessness, weltschmerz, tax liens, and unfocused ambition.”
“Want to try for tertiary syphilis?” Helen asked.
“Not just now.”
So Mr. Silverberg appears to be having a good time. Reading a little further confirms that he also seems to be trying to offend everyone in sight, which may explain why this new novel by a fast-rising author is appearing in the field’s lowest-paying magazine, rather than in the more stately mansions of Pohl, Ferman, or JWC, Jr. In any case, I look forward to completing these scabrous revels.
Only Yesterday, by Ted White
Editor White’s Only Yesterday is a more somber time travel story, in which the ill-at-ease protagonist Bob approaches a young woman as she gets off a train, asks if he can walk with her, says he’s a friend of a friend (she suggestibly supplies the friend’s name, and he agrees), and she invites him in for refreshments and to meet the family. He hits it off with her and her brothers and her parents, and offers to tell her fortune—a futuristic vision which turns into nightmarish war. She’s shocked and disturbed, and he quickly says he was making it up, offers a more palatable vision, and beats a hasty retreat. Revelation of who he is and why he’s there follows. It’s smoothly written and well visualized, but the ease with which Bob inserts himself into the family setting is too implausible to overlook. Still, nice try, very readable, three stars.
Hue and Cry, by Bob Shaw
Bob Shaw’s Hue and Cry is about as far as one can get from his very well received Light of Other Days. It's a cartoonish story in which a spaceship full of humans lands among sentient carnivorous reptilians who think of them only as food, scheme to eat them all, and are thwarted with a silly gimmick. Two stars, generously.
Poison Pen, by Milton Lesser
The reprints in this issue are a mostly malodorous batch from the doldrums of the mid-1950s. The best that can be said for them is that they don’t take up much space.
Milton Lesser’s Poison Pen (from Amazing, December 1955) is a silly botch of a story. For thirty years, humanity has been under the thumb of the extraterrestrial Masters. Now they’ve left, and people are dancing in the streets. The main thing we know about the Masters is that they made people keep diaries and read from them in neighborhood gatherings, and that practice continues. Why? Dr. Trillis says it’s because the Masters taught everyone “from the cradle” to be compulsive exhibitionists (how?) so they could control people, “and the older generation either had to go along with it or feel left out.” So people ought to stop with the diaries and the readings, he says. But they don’t. Worse, they start stealing other people’s diaries and making fake entries in them—false confessions of having been “co-operationists.” Executions begin. Our hero helps Dr. Trillis escape and they wind up in a settlement of people “who somehow haven’t been contaminated,” in New Jersey.
by Paul Orban
If the description sounds sketchy and incoherent, that’s because the story is. It’s an insult to the readers, pretty clearly dashed off without a thought of anything but a quick check. One star.
No Place to Go, by Henry Slesar
by Erwin Schroeder
Henry Slesar’s No Place to Go (Amazing, July 1958), by contrast, is at least a competent piece of yard goods. A crack team of astronauts goes to the Moon, takes a look outside, and sees Earth blow up, leaving them alive but stranded. Shortly, some of the astronauts are blowing up too. But wait—April fool! It was all a test! They were drugged with a hypnotic chemical, visions planted in their heads while they slept! The captain then tells the guy who didn’t blow up that he’s now second in command, and he’ll be going to Mars. It's cliches wrapped around a gimmick, but unlike Lesser’s story, it doesn’t reek of contempt for the readership. Three stars, generously.
Note that in our crude rating system, what I’ve just described as “cliches wrapped around a gimmick” gets the same grade as White’s much more capable effort. Just remember that there’s a lot of space between 3.0 and 3.9.
Randall Garrett’s Puzzle in Yellow (Amazing, November 1956) is a trivial gimmick story on that ever-popular theme, the Stupid Alien. Extra-terrestrial Ghevil is scoping out Earth for invasion and pillage by the “hordes of Archeron.” He wants to check out an isolated military installation, so he finds a remote building with big walls and turrets, and figures he’s found what he’s looking for. He kills the first person he sees emerge from the building, and disguises himself in the man’s uniform. He tries to enter and is shot dead. Take a wild guess what the installation he tried to enter actually is. The yellow of the title, by the way, refers to Ghevil’s blood. Two stars, barely.
The Pendant Spectator, by Leon E. Stover
Leon Stover’s “Science of Man” article this month is The Pendant Spectator, a phrase he got from Samuel Johnson’s novel Rasselas, which means, more or less, someone with a view from a height. “Spaceship Earth” is also invoked. Stover seems to have abandoned his project of educating us all about anthropology. Here we have a protracted editorial on the necessity for humanity to get its act together and get right with the biosphere, limiting population, developing energy sources (i.e., the sun) that will neither pollute the atmosphere like fuel combustion nor overheat the place like nuclear power, engaging in international cooperation, accepting a degree of coercive regulation in these and other causes, etc. It’s hard to argue with any of it, but it’s also hard to imagine that the SF readership is who needs to hear it, so it seems a bit pointless. This series seems about ready to die a natural death. Two stars.
Summing Up
So the harbingers seem to be blowing in the right direction, even if the actual fiction contents, possibly excepting Silverberg, are not much changed from the recent norm. “Looking good” would be premature, but “looking like it might look good” would fit. Or—as I’ve said more times than I can count about this magazine—promising.
The Cassiopeia Affair by Chloe Zerwick & Harrison Brown
In Redo Valley, Virginia, a radiotelescope complex in the late 20th century hunts for extra-terrestrial intelligence. One night Max Gaby detects a signal coming from Cassiopeia 3579. Inside there is a two-dimensional picture being sent out via binary.
Can you solve the binary-code puzzle?
This provides proof of an alien intelligence.
At the same time, conflict is brewing between Russia and China, one that could plunge the world into nuclear war. Is this evidence of intelligent life among the stars the greatest hope we have for peace?
Yes, this is yetanotherstory of RadioAstronomy. These are now becoming as regular in science fiction as space adventures and superhuman mutants, but this stands out as a wonderful example. I believe this is the first fiction from the pair, with Zerwick being primarily a visual artist and Brown being a scientist. Together they have created something masterful.
Although much of the novel is taken up by discussions of scientific theories or information on how to programme radio telescopes, it is raised up by excellent writing and a real understanding of character. Whilst Judith Merrill criticised it for being dull, I never found it so. It was a book I was dying to pick up whenever I got the opportunity. It is a testament to the authors that it never felt dry.
Regarding the characters, it is a huge cast, but one where they all feel considered and with depth, not merely props for discussion. These include Max Gaby as the wide-eyed believer, Barney Davidson the grouchy cynic, Rudolph Calder the Machiavellian hawk and Adam Lurie the disillusioned drunk who is secretly sleeping with Gaby’s wife.
Throughout there are little moments that make it feel real, such as Gaby calling Adam up at 4 am about a possible sighting and Adam grumpily insisting on having his shower and coffee first, or when someone tries to bribe Davidson and he threatens to kill him.
The characters are not perfect either, we regularly change perspective and sometimes see that they are downright unpleasant. But it is made clear we are not meant to sympathise with everyone’s point of view, rather to gain an insight into their motivations.
It also tries to consider the politics of the situation carefully. It demonstrates how different factions will react and what they will want to do with this information. A particularly interesting, if depressing, touch is that the hawks on both sides of the Iron Curtain distrust Gaby as he is a refugee from Hungary in 1956. This element gives it both a sense of excitement and verisimilitude that is often missing from these heavier works.
These kinds of harder science fiction stories are not usually the ones that appeal to me. However, I was enthralled. It may be even more enjoyed by fans of Clarke and Niven and I would not be surprised to see it on the Hugo ballot next year.
This is the third in a series of novels dealing with alternate universes. The first was Worlds of the Imperium. The Noble Editor gave it a moderately positive review.
Both books featured a fellow named Brion Bayard, a man from our own universe who went on to be an agent for the Imperium, a British/German empire that dominates another version of Earth.
Bayard plays a small but important role in this new novel, but the main character is a man named Johnny Curlon. He's also the narrator. Let's say hello to him.
Johnny is a big, strong guy who lives in Florida and runs a fishing boat. The story starts off with some tough hoods trying to intimidate him, but he deals with them easily. At this point, I thought I was reading one of John D. MacDonald's Florida-based suspense novels, particularly those featuring Travis McGee, a big, strong guy who owns a houseboat.
(If you haven't read them, give 'em a try. They're really good.)
Anyway, we find out this is a science fiction novel when Johnny gets rescued from his floundering boat, which the bad guys have sabotaged, by our old pal Brion. He carries Johnny around in a vehicle that can not only travel between universes, but is able to pass through solid matter and become invisible. Mighty handy little gizmo.
Naturally, Johnny is confused by all this. It seems that he's the key to preventing lots of universes from being wiped out by something called the Blight (capital letter and all.) There are antagonists eager to use Johnny for their own purposes.
At this point, Johnny's knife, which is actually part of an ancient sword handed down to him by his ancestors, gets reunited with another part of the ancient weapon. That's our first hint that this SF novel is going to seem a lot like a fantasy adventure.
Johnny winds up working with a fellow who is very obviously the main bad guy. (Obvious to the reader, anyway, although it's quite a while until Johnny catches on.) They travel to a universe whose only human inhabitant is a stunningly beautiful woman, straight out of a sword-and-sorcery story. She even has a pet griffin, and there's a giant around.
(This middle section of the book reminds me of Robert A. Heinlein's novel Glory Road. That was science fiction disguised as fantasy. This one is fantasy disguised as science fiction, to some degree.)
After leaving that magical place with another piece of the sword, the villain takes Johnny to the universe he wants to rule. It's a place where Richard Lionheart didn't die in battle, but lived to be a weak ruler. He wound up surrendering his kingdom to the French, so France is still in control of England, which is called New Normandy.
(Brion already told Johnny that he was the last descendent of the Plantagenets, so it all ties together, sort of.)
The bad guy's plan would come at the cost of destroying a bunch of universes. (You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, I guess.) Can our hero set things right? (Go ahead, take a guess.)
In typical Laumer fashion, this is an action-packed yarn that moves at a dizzying pace. It's not as tightly plotted as some, and I'd say it's the weakest book in the Imperium series. The middle section — you know, all that fantasy stuff — seems to come from another novel entirely. There's a lot of pseudoscientific blather trying to explain what's going on, and none of it makes any sense.
Nine years ago John Breton nearly lost his wife. Now, a decade later, he and Kate are drifting apart, their knives out at every opportunity, their marriage a fast cooling ember. John has thrown himself bodily into his geological consulting business, and his wife has picked a hobby John has no interest in, befriending Miriam Palfrey, an automatic writer. At a typical crashingly dull dinner party with the Palfreys, characterized by endless sniping, John decides only profound drunkenness will get him through the night.
Whereupon he receives a call:
"You've been living with my wife for almost exactly nine years–and I'm coming to take her back."
Because nine years ago, Kate had died. Two years into their marriage, a stupid fight had compelled Kate's husband to stay home, while she trooped through the night, headed for a party she would never attend, intercepted by a brutal rapist and killer.
John, calling himself Jack at the time, was devastated, wracked with guilt. More than this: he began to be unhinged from time, taking trips weekly to the scene of the crime. Jack resolved to stop Kate's murder, even if it meant rending the very fabric of space and causality.
Two timelines were created: Timeline A, in which Jack led a lonely, monomaniacal life, and Timeline B, in which a sleek and unappreciative John enjoyed his misbegotten wife, the fruits of the labor of his alter ego.
Thus, Jack hatched a plan–move sideways to Timeline B…and fill John's shoes, whether he liked it or not.
But the law of conservation of energy is a hard fact, in the multiverse as well as the universe. Jack Breton's actions threaten not only the rocky relationship of Kate and John, but also the whole of humanity.
According to the book's blurb, this is Shaw's third book, but the first to achieve wide distribution. I don't know what his first book was, but I read his second, Night Walk last year. Between that and his short stories, it was clear Shaw was a gifted author just waiting to grow out of his adolescence.
With The Two-Timers, he has done so.
I picked the book up just before bed and had to force myself to put it down. Eight hours later, it was in my hands again, and it did not leave until I'd finished the story come lunchtime (it was a welcome companion as I waited in the courthouse for a jury duty that never materialized).
The characters are vividly, deeply realized, all of them evolving throughout the story. We initially hate John and sympathize with Jack, but neither of the Bretons is wholly irredeemanble, nor sympathetic. And Kate is no prize to be won; she is an independent entity with her own virtues, failings, and feelings. Shaw reminds me a bit of Larry Niven, drawing people with quick, deft strokes. But Shaw has a sensitive style, working more with emotions than hard science. It's the people that matter in this piece; the SFnal content is exciting, necessary, but secondary.
The pacing in the book is exquisite, from the painful depiction of a marriage gone sour at the beginning, to the arrival of Jack, through the resolution of the resulting triangle. The interspersed scenes of the slow collapse of the physical universe around them are deftly handled, as is the closing in of Lieutenant Blaize Convery, the detective who knows Breton saved his wife nine years ago; he just can't figure out how.
As Lorelei (who picked up the book on my recommendation and tore through it in short order) notes, aside from the poetic writing, the real triumph of the book is that you get so many viewpoint characters, and so many changing perspectives on these characters, and none of it is confusing. It's just masterfully done.
It's a hard book to read in parts. The emotions here are fraught ones, and there are some rather unpleasant (though never gratuitous) scenes. Nevertheless, these are emotions that must be explored, and thankfully, the mystery and the brilliant writing carry you past them, as well as the satisfying resolution of the threesome's story. My only quibble is that the end doesn't quite work, logistically, though it makes sense thematically. And as Lorelei notes, it's a touch rushed.
Nevertheless, The Two-Timers is a terrific work, definitely a strong contender for my Hugo ballot next year.
We Americans love a good revolution story. After all, our nation was founded by a rebellion, and the appeal of an underdog throwing off an oppressor has been popular since David threw a rock at Goliath.
C.C. MacApp takes a stab at the theme with his latest book, Omha Abides, a tale of the 35th Century. 1500 years before, the Gaddyl had conquered the Earth. The amphibian aliens did not succeed without a fight, but their advanced technology, particularly their craft-shielding Distorters, proved decisive. Human civilization was shattered, the population reduced to a bare fraction, many of them condemned to slavery. Meanwhile, the Gaddyl build their own fiefdoms amidst the ruins of the human cities and built an interstellar teleport transit hub in Arizona.
Now Earth is a hunting preserve, humanity largely quiescent. The North American continent is home to just 25 million people…and half a million overlord Gaddyl. The humans who are not slaves roam in bands or live in primitive statelets. They have no hope of taking back the planet, until a series of events precipitously brings success in their reach.
Our hero is Murno, a freed man who lives with his family in Fief Bay, once known as San Francisco. A new, cruel lord has ascended to the fief throne, and he has decided that no longer shall free humans be off limits to hunting parties.
At the same time, Murno is contacted by the underground. He is entrusted with three items, two of them Gaddyl, and one of ancient human make, which he is tasked to take east, beyond the Sierras, beyond the mysterious Grove, even past the mighty Rockies, to where the mythical deity named "Omha" waits.
If you had a subscription to the recently defunct magazine, Worlds of Tomorrow, you may have read about half of this book. Victoria Silverwolf reviewed Under the Gaddyl Tree, which comprises about the first third of the book, and Trees Like Torches, which contains bits from the middle. Victoria gave both stories three stars and felt they were competent, but nothing special.
Often, the expansion of stories into a novel results in something less than the sum of its parts. The opposite occurs in this case. Now, instead of just being isolated, mildly interesting adventure stories, now Murno's encounters with Gaddyl, blue mutant humans, a giant grove of telepathic trees, and so on, gird a compelling plot. Humanity shouldn't have a chance against the Gaddyl. But neither should an electron, per classical physics, be able to jump energy levels. But thanks to quantum physics and the Uncertainty Principle, given a short enough period of time, an electron can possess abnormal amounts of energy.
Similarly, a confluence of circumstances makes for a successful rebellion opportunity. Because humanity had been waiting for its chance. The telepathic Blues had spies in pivotal places. There was an underground poised for action. There really is an Omha (and you can guess what its nature is early on, which will also clue you in on how to pronounce the word).
Add the trigger of the Gaddyl getting a bit too complacent and a bit too cruel, as well as the theft of some vital technologies, and a human victory becomes plausible.
The pacing of the book is a little off. Much of the human victory isn't even detailed until the last 25 pages of the book (though it turns out that's not really too short a span; MacApp pulls it off). Also, much reference is made to Murno baffling his alien pursuers with "trail puzzles", a phrase with which I'm not familiar, and whose meaning I still don't apprehend. Occasionally, the story does lapse into conventional adventure fare–more like a tale of the American West than the American future.
But, it's a book with real cinematic quality to it; the scenes in California were particularly resonant for me, a Golden State native. The Gaddyl are portrayed perhaps a touch too human, but I appreciated the range of types, from scoundrel to honorable enemy. And as an American, I suppose I've got as much a soft spot for overthrowing tyranny as anyone.
Four stars.
by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele
Last year's pairing of E.C Tubb and Juanita Coulson's has gotten an encore. In fact, both novels are sequels. My esteemed colleague and editor had favorable reviews of both, so I was excited to read them:
Earl Dumarest, the itinerant interstellar provocateur and do-gooder from The Winds of Gath returns in Derai, hunting news of Earth. On his way he takes a job escorting the Lady Derai of the House of Caldor back to her family on the planet Hive. He soon determines that Derai is a telepath. Her father sent her to the college of Cyclans to treat the constant fear and nightmares brought on by hearing the minds of those around her. Derai ran away from the college, where Cybers (once-humans with emotion and sensation excised who now can connect to a collective mind) wanted to use her genetics, turning her into a mindless vessel to bear telepathic children. Her home planet has its own risks – her uncle wants to take over the House, planning to assassinate her father and half-brother, and marry Derai to her cousin to gain legitimacy.
Dumarest keeps much of his thoughts to himself, both from the other characters and the reader, but cannot keep his developing feelings for Derai from her telepathic ability. He carries himself as a man who has seen too much. He inspires loyalty, and in those he has helped that is understandable, but it also comes from some who have only just met him. One man he meets through a mutual friend takes the chance of being burned to death to get a blade to Dumarest in a deadly maze arena.
Dumarest almost seems to resist the plot, needing to be pushed into each new quest. At times, his struggle as a character made him feel like a disparate individual, one side grim and withdrawn, another altruistic at great cost to himself; it's as if author Tubbs had two distinct directions for the novel in mind, and was unable to find the balance between them. Dumarest's staid demeanor only allows him to rebuff so much, and he is, if reluctantly, still prompted to aid disenfranchised travelers, save a gambler from himself, and compete in a tournament to prolong the head of Caldor House's life. Each time he intends to leave the House to its own devices, his feelings for Derai bring him back.
Tubb has a lurid, graphic style of description. It's equally evocative of beauty and violence. In a particularly unsettling set of scenes, Dumarest barely escapes being eaten alive like his companions by bird-sized bees. For how memorable the depictions of the insects were, I anticipated them playing a larger role in the overall story. The scenes stuck with me for several days due to the excessively grisly details.
Something else that ate at my brain: thanks to medical advancements and travel stasis Dumarest and Derai are chronologically far older than they seem, but Derai was described as childlike far too often for my liking. Tubb could have left it at one use of "nubile".
Geoff is a member of the Federation, the galactic government introduced in Coulson's Crisis on Cheiron. He embarks on what could be a suicide mission to the protectorate of Deliayan, Pa-Lüna. Both humans and Deliyans have been exploiting the people of Pa-Lüna, tricking them into indentured servitude. When a man is murdered right in front of him over a stone, Geoff investigates, finding the stone in question has strange, enchanting properties. He and Tahn, a Pa-Lünan, set out for the protectorate, and they meet Nedra, priestess of a mysterious goddess.
From the outset, he is on a clock: a past planetary mission left his team dead, and him with the lingering impacts from a past poisoning that flares, causing him pain and debilitating him with growing frequency. The nature of his sense of duty and outlook, framed by his limited lifespan, is compelling.
Geoff is a skeptic, both of motive and means. He views the people of Pa-Lüna with a mix of respect and condescension, but Geoff witnesses the tangible effects of the stones of song. They induce a euphoria and they, or their "goddess", can heal the sick and injured and strengthen her followers over time. Does the Goddess bestow gifts freely or are her worshipers trading one form of servitude for another, framed in a softer light? Are the powers of the Stones and the goddess's telepathic messages divine or an advanced, but still mortal mechanism?
I appreciated the exploration of what is becoming a new trend in sci-fi–rejecting overt military intrusions and favoring a system that furthers a newly-contacted culture's sovereignty. It's not a bad direction to go, though authors vary in degrees of patronizing the native people of these worlds, from treating them roughly as equals to regarding them as "primitive" beings who need protecting. And it does say something that it takes someone from outside the system to truly put things in motion, no matter how long change has been brewing. Having the fight be against not just an alien threat but also a human, institutional threat asks if human expansion is truly helping, needs tempering, or if it is causing more harm in the end.
All in all, a solid book. Had I not recently read several other books with a similar premise I would have liked it even more. However, I can't fault Coulson for the trends of this year. She created a rich tapestry and I would be happy to explore her worlds and characters in future stories.
"Fans are Slans", or so the legend goes. Inspired by the psychic supermen in A. E. Van Vogt's Slan, the notion is that SF fans are a breed apart. Better than the average Joe, who are comparative Palookas. And why not? We're obviously smarter, given our intellectual proclivities, and our favored choice of fiction has all the answers. A problem is presented, our brilliant heroes hatch a solution, and we live happily ever after.
How else to explain Fred Pohl's call for Galaxy readers to submit solutions (in 100 words or fewer!) to the Vietnam war? Never mind that the problem has occupied our greatest minds for two decades, with no solution in sight. Indeed, ever since the Tet offensive, things have gotten more complicated.
You see, according to the Pentagon (per Aviation Weekly and Space Report), we won the Tet offensive. Handily. And that onslaught was actually a desperate 'Hail Mary'–Soviet and Chinese advisors had told the North Vietnamese that they were losing, big-time, and they had to do something to shatter American and South Vietnamese morale, no matter the cost.
And it worked! It induced LBJ to throw in the towel, declare a bombing holiday, and start a peace process, the only tangible effect of which has been to allow the communists to resume logistical deliveries down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and to offload shipments of Soviet materiele in the port of Haiphong, which had been interdicted by the U.S. Air Force.
That's not the only setback to the Allied cause–Khe Sanh, that forward Marine base that held out against siege for a full season, has been abandoned. No good explanation has been forthcoming.
Now, I'm not defending our presence in Vietnam, and I'm not arguing against the peace process. I'm saying no science fiction writer, no matter how brainy, is going to have an answer. Not even an easy one. I don't think there is one.
But so long as easy solutions exist in our science fiction, we Slans will keep thinking there is. Certainly, this month's issue of Analog is chock full of solvable problems, a bunch of scenarios that might well have been developed by high school or college professors as logic puzzles for their students.These are the kind of stories you find most often in Analog, which aims at the clear-thinking, black-and-white engineering set.
Now, that's fine. Analog's job is to make money, and it has the most readers of any SF mag, so it must be doing something right. It's certainly not editor Campbell's job to disabuse fans of their Slan aspirations.
Nevertheless, as someone who isn't an engineer, I find Analog often to be a slog. I like to have more story in my stories. Sometimes Campbell lets a compelling tale slip into his pages; more often he does not. The proportion of story types usually determines whether I give an issue more or fewer than three stars.
Given the tone of this preamble, you can probably guess what kind of issue this will be…
by Kelly Freas
Logic Puzzles
The Baalim Problem, by Bruce Daniels
by Kelly Freas
Problem posed: the human race has spread throughout the stars, setting up all sorts of empires, nations, and leagues. They have never encountered evidence of aliens–until now: a putatively nonhuman distress beacon has gone off over an independent human world. Two polities, an extremely libertarian nation and a group-thinking bureaucracy, have, at their computers' recommendations, sent single representatives to investigate.
The beacon leads them both to a hostile world, one beyond the means of either of scouts to handle alone. So, these adversaries must work together to escape the planet and bring back news of what they've found.
And what they find is that the "alien" evidence is an obvious hoax, developed by…someone…for…some purpose. Who might have hatched the scheme and why is the puzzle to be deciphered by the reader. Or, if the reader be lazy, to simply read about as the characters in the story explain the answer to each other.
The sentiment is nice, but I'd rather have had the thing play out narratively rather than in narration.
Three stars.
The Fuglemen of Recall, by Jack Wodhams
by Leo Summers
Problem posed: a number of people seem to have lost their minds, convinced they are someone else. The Feds investigate and determine the common factor was that each had just had an engagement with Lidlun Spacial Electronic Enterprises. Some kind of mind/memory transfer hocus pocus is clearly afoot. But when they apprehend the President of Lidlun for interrogation, is he really who he seems?
I suppose the lesson of this tale is that cops should always have a picture of the person to prevent a false arrest.
Unfortunately, Wodhams had to write a bit too obliquely and clumsily, and also had to make the investigators morons, to make this puzzle a challenge for the reader.
Two stars.
How the Soviets Did it in Space, by G. Harry Stine
Problem posed: how did the USSR so handily beat us to orbit, and why did they keep scoring space spectaculars earlier than us?
If you've got a subscription to Aviation Weekly, you know the answer, but rocketry popularizer Stine does an excellent job of summarizing all the tidbits that have been leaked over the last few years. Now we know that the Soviets had a Saturn-class rocket from the beginning while we were still piddling around with Thors, Jupiters and Atlases.
So why didn't the Russkies keep their lead? Well, we don't know that another Soviet spectacular isn't around the corner. But assuming it isn't, I would guess it's because our Saturn 1 was the beginning of a family of superboosters whereas their Vostok/Luna/Zond launcher has already topped out its potential.
On the other hand, their new Proton rocket seems to be operational, and something launched Soyuz 1…
Great schematics, and I appreciated the strong line drawn between the development of ICBMs and the almost incidental exploitation of the rockets for civilian applications.
Four stars.
Appointment on Prila, by Bob Shaw
by Leo Summers
Problem posed: a gray terror, an alien being that can mimic anything perfectly, is trapped on a hostile cinder of a world when a Terran survey team arrives. Six self-contained pods leave the human mothership to conduct a geodetic survey; seven return. Worse still, the alien has the ability to take over any organic mind that it finds. Is there anything the team can do to withstand this menace?
Well, as it turns out, no. Indeed, the humans do precious little, and salvation relies on factors already baked into the scenario. I will confess that I had the ending spoiled for me before I started, so that might have diminished things.
That said, Shaw is a sensitive and evocative author, and this work is the highlight of the issue.
Problem posed: Serendipity Inc., a knowledge broker for the loose knit Polesotechnic League of stars, is actually an intelligence-gathering front for the Shenn, an up-and-coming race of rapacious beings. Plenty of stuff happens as a lead up to this, the fourth installment in the serial, but most of it is inconsequential. This particular instance is concerned with the following questions:
1) Who are the Shenn, and how, with their frankly primitive, impulsive, and aggressive mindset, did they get control of an advanced, robotic civilization?
2) How can one reconcile their above racial habits with the fact that they are herbivores, who tend toward peaceful, communal societies?
3) How did the six human members of Serendipity's board end up in thrall to the Shenn, and how is that the linchpin to dealing with the seemingly implacable aliens?
These are all fine questions, and they are all answered tidily, in pages and pages of explanation that might well have been copied from a 30th Century encyclopedia. As often happens with Poul's work, he's created an interesting universe, only developed a plot for half of his story, and employed uninteresting caricatures to carry it out.
I'm sick of Nicholas van Rijn and his lusty Dutch oaths. I'm tired of the Buddhist dragon-centaur Adzel and the irritable (though admittedly adorable) Chee Lan, and the callow Davy Falkayn. Again, I want stories, not historical tracts of Anderson's future universe.
Two stars for this installment and 2.5 for the book as a whole.
Specialty, by Joe Poyer
by Kelly Freas
Problem posed: Tupac Araptha is an Alto Plano Peruvian, adapted to low pressure from birth. As a result, he is uniquely qualified to work on the moon. He can operate his suit at lower pressures, which means less resistance to movement, meaning he can work eight hours a "day" (twenty-four hour cycles are arbitrary on the moon) whereas lowlanders can barely manage three. How does Kelly, the local mining boss, handle the interpersonal jealousy that springs from this issue?
This story would be better served if it weren't set in the same timeline as "Spirits of '76", in which a dozen moonshiners (pun intended) establish a libertarian "republic" on the moon; it makes the context sillier, when the story is rather serious. I was also annoyed that Kelly's first solution was to suggest that Tupac beat up his rival in a manly display (on the moon? Surrounded by high vacuum?!), and when Tupac demurs, Kelly's next solution is to…take a leave of absence.
There could have been an interesting story here, but there ultimately isn't.
Two stars.
Harsh reality
Doing the math, Analog finishes at a mediocre 2.7. As uninspiring a finish as this is, it actually consitutes a median: Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.4) was worse, as were Fantastic (2.3) and Orbit 3 (2.3). IF (2.8) was a near tie.
The saving graces of this month were Famous Science Fiction (3.5), though that was mostly reprints, and Galaxy (3.9), which I seemed to like more than everyone else. Well, that's my privilege!
Despite the low aggregate ratings, there was actually enough good stuff to fill two decent sized magazines. Women contributed 10.5% of the new fiction this month, which sounds better than average, but all but one of the tales was in Orbit, which is technically a paperback rather than a magazine.
Bringing things full circle, the issue of getting more women in print has been a perennial one, one that has defied solution (or even the notion that it's a problem that needs solving). Since the magazines won't or can't fix the situation, women have moved to other media. So we see women in anthologies like Orbit. We see women like A. M. Lightner and Madeleine L'Engle writing "young adult" (the new term for juvenile) series. We see women prominent in the writing and production of science fiction shows like Star Trek.
I think it's fandom's loss when the SF mags become stag parties. I remember the salad days of Galaxy and F&SF back in the early '50s, and part of what made them great was the diversity of stories, the range of viewpoints and styles. I'd hate to lose that to other venues (though the mags' loss is obviously other media's gain).
How do we get more women back into the mags? How do we get folks to recognize the value of women in the mags? I wish I knew. After all, I'm no Slan, just a man…
Books seem to be published faster than ever these days, and many are worth a gander. Please enjoy this triple-whammy featuring SEVEN sciencefictional titles…plus a surprise guest at the end!
Shaw recently made a big impact with his Hugo-nominated short story, Light of Other Days, and I've enjoyed everything he's come out with. So it was with great delight that I saw that he'd come out with a full length novel called Nightwalk.
I went in completely blind, and as a result, enjoyed the twists and turns the story took far more than if I'd known what was coming. Thus, I give you fair warning. Avoid the following few paragraphs if you wish to go into the book completely unaware.
by Frank Frazetta
Sam Tallon is an agent of Earth based on the former colony and now staunch adversary world, Emm Luther. In-between are 80,000 portals through null-space. Would that there could be but one, but hyperspace jumping is a blind affair, and the direct route between portals is impossible to compute. Only trial and error has mapped 80,000 matched pairs whose winding, untrackable route bridges the two worlds. Luckily, transfer is virtually instantaneous.
Literally inside Tallon's head is the meandering route to a brand new world. Given the dearth of inhabitable planets, both overcrowded Luther and teeming Earth want this knowledge. Before Tallon can escape with it, he is captured by the Lutheran secret police, tortured most vividly and unpleasantly, and sent for a life sentence to be spent at the Lutheran version of Devil's Island, the Pavillion.
Oh yes–in an escape attempt, the sadistic interrogator whom Tallon fails to kill on his way out zaps his eyes and leaves him quite blind.
Tallon is not overly upset by this development. At this point. he is quite content to spend the rest of his life in dark but not unpleasant captivity…except the wounded interrogator is coming for a visit, and Tallon knows he won't survive the encounter. Luckily, he and a fellow prisoner have managed to create a set of glasses tied into the optic nerve and tuned to nearby glial cells. They will not restore a man's sight…but they will allow him to tune in to the vision of any animal about him. With this newfound advantage, Tallon must make the thousand mile trek back to the spaceport, and then traverse the 80,000 portals to Earth.
Alright–you can read again. Nightwalk is 160 pages long. 60 of the pages, the first 30 and the last 30, are brilliant, nuanced, full of twists and turns, and genuinely exciting. The 100 pages inbetween comprise a well-written but forgettable thriller. I will not go so far as to agree with Buck Coulson, who wrote in the latest Yandro: "pulp standard; described by Damon Knight as "putting his hero in approximately the position of a seventy-year-old paralytic in a plaster cast who is required to do battle with a saber-tooth tiger and there being no place to go from there, kept him in the same predicament throughout the story, only adding an extra fang from time to time." But the assessment is not completely inapt.
Nevertheless, the book kept me reading, and if you can keep momentum through the middle, the whole is worthwhile.
3.5 stars.
ACE double H-34
Another month, another "ACE double". They seem to increasingly becoming my province these days, or perhaps I'm becoming the resident Tubb novel reviewer. Either way, I'm thoroughly amenable to the relationship!
I originally covered this novel when it appeared in the pages of Analog. Long story short: it's a history lesson disguised as an SF story–Reynolds doesn't even bother to color his nations, which retain their stock names of Alphaland and Betastan, as if this were an Avalon Hill wargame or something.
Not one of his better efforts, and it doesn't even have the benefit of Freas' nice art. A low three stars.
Three centuries from now, England is still recovering from "the Debacle", an atomic paroxysm that all but destroyed the world in the 1980s. Society has calcified into an oligarchic, capitalist nightmare, with a few rich entities ultimately controlling everything: the loan sharks, the power generators, and the hypnotists. In many ways, it is the last group that is the most powerful, for a generation after the Debacle, they fostered a pervasive belief in reincarnation. With their guidance (or perhaps suggestion), all (save the rare odd "cripple") persons can Breakthrough to their past lives). So universal is this belief in multiple lives that many have become "retrophiles", living out their lives in the guise of a former existence, even to living in towns constructed along archaic lines.
Into this world are thrust three bonafide time travelers, put in stasis in the 1970s to await a cure for their radiation-caused illnesses. Not only are they exiles in an age not theirs, but they have also amassed a tremendous debt in their centuries asleep. Brad Stevens, an atomic physicist born in 1927, is determined to free himself and his 20th Century comrades from the fetters of financial obligation. Thus ensues a rip-roaring trip through an anti-utopian Britain, filled with narrow escapes, exotic scenery, and a few interesting, philosophical observations.
Tubb has already impressed me this year with his vivid The Winds of Gath, and he does so again with this adventure. Indeed, Tubb is such the master of the serial cliff-hanger that I found myself quite unable to put the book down, reading it in two marathon sessions. Of particular note are his observations on faith, on the seductiveness of nostalgia, and on the pernicious nature of laissez-faire capitalism, which inevitably degenerates into anything but a free market.
What keeps this story from a fifth star is precisely what garners it a fourth: it is quick, excellent reading, but it doesn't pause long enough to fully explore all of its intriguing points. Thus, it remains like Ted White's Jewels of Elsewhen–beautifully turned, but somewhat disposable.
Still, I'm not sorry I read it, and neither will you be. Four stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
From the L File
Two new science fiction novels with titles that begin with the twelfth letter of the alphabet fell into my hands recently. Other than that trivial coincidence, they could hardly be more different. Let's look lingeringly, lest literature lie listlessly languid.
The first thing you'll notice when you open the book is a map. With that, and the title, I wonder if the author and/or the publisher is alluding to J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings, which has recently become quite popular here in the USA. That series has a map too.
Map by Jack Gaughan
Given the size of a paperback, it's darn hard to see everything on the map, which has a lot of detail. Fortunately, it's not really necessary. I'll point out a few landmarks as we go along.
A Public Works Project
We start in the middle of the map. At first, you might think the novel takes place in the past, with horse-drawn vehicles and such. We soon find out that it's thousands of years in the future. Our own technological society is nearly mythical, lost in the mists of time. There are bits and pieces of it here and there, left in ruins.
It seems that humanity lost its spirit long ago. Civilization has stagnated. A military officer has a plan to deal with that, and he explains it to a government official.
Take a look at the extreme southwest corner of the map, right next to the compass. That's a place where gigantic remnants of the glory days of yesteryear lie wasting away. The officer's scheme is to build a huge starship from what's left and carry its passengers to a new, better world.
If that sounds crazy to you, you're on the right track. There is no real intent to complete the project. Instead, it's just a trick to get the population excited about something, and working together for centuries. Think pyramids and cathedrals.
The first step is to launch a series of bloody wars, so the folks in the middle of the map can make their way to the coast, conquering and slaughtering along the way. Make no mistake; there are a lot of gruesome battle scenes in this book.
Many years later, society is divided into a small number of elites, who know the truth about the phony starship, and the ordinary people, who do not. The latter come to almost worship it. Under the leadership of a charismatic figure, they revolt against their rulers.
We're still not done with bloodshed. Without going into details, suffice to say that the naval fleets of the islands off the eastern coast (look at the map) get involved. This leads to a conflict that makes everything else that happens in the book look like minor skirmishes. Then we get a wild twist ending that really pulls the rug out from under you, making you rethink everything you thought you knew about what's going on.
This is a strange book. There are no real protagonists. The plot takes place over a couple of centuries or so, and characters come and go very quickly. This accelerates in the latter part of the novel. Some chapters consist of only one sentence, and read like excerpts from a history book. (The author is a history major, still in college.)
It's also a dark and cynical book. From the deception that starts the story to the completely unexpected revelation that ends it, it's full of sinister plots, secretive government agencies, and human lives sacrificed for the schemes of others.
A sense of despair and resignation to fate fills the novel. The commander of the naval fleet I mentioned above knows that building up his ships for the upcoming war will take eighty years, and also knows that wholesale destruction will be the outcome of the conflict, but accepts the situation as inevitable.
It's an intriguing work, but one that's very hard to love.
There's no map in this book, but it does have what must be the world's longest dedication. See for yourself.
I don't recognize everything on that massive list — The Ears of Johnny Bear? — but I am familiar with much of it. What do those things have in common? Unless I am mistaken, none of them are very recent. Keep that in mind.
Next we get the book's basic premise.
I get the message. It's that darn Youth Culture everybody is talking about. I suppose that's because a lot of post-World War Two babies are in their teens and early twenties now. Mods, hippies, bikers, protestors; they're all young folks, aren't they? The two authors of this novel don't seem too happy about the situation.
Don't Trust Anyone Over Twenty-One
(Apologies to political activist Jack Weinberg for stealing and distorting his famous quote. The original number was thirty.)
Something like a century and a half from now, people are only allowed to live to the age of twenty-one. We get an explanation late in the book as to how this happened, but never mind about that. Most folks go along with this, but some try to escape. These rebels are called — you guessed it — Runners.
There's a special police force that kills Runners. They're known as Sandmen. Our hero, Logan 3, is a Sandman near the end of his assigned lifetime. He gets a gizmo from a dying Runner that is supposed to lead the person who holds it to the fabled refuge known as Sanctuary. Determined to find and destroy the place, he pretends to be a Runner himself. The dead man's sister, Jessica 6, is also a Runner. You won't be surprised to find out she's the love interest, too.
Most of the book consists of the pair's wild adventures all over the world as they try to find Sanctuary. Feral children in a decaying part of a city; an inescapable prison at the North Pole; rebellious young folks who ride around on what seem to be flying motorcycles; robots recreating a Civil War battle; and much, much more. The plot moves at an insane pace, and you probably won't believe a minute of it.
Meanwhile, a Sandman named Francis 7 tracks down the two. He's kind of like Inspector Javert from Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables or Lieutenant Gerard from the TV series The Fugitive. Cold-blooded and relentless, he never gives up. He's also got a secret of his own, leading to a surprise ending.
I get the feeling that the co-authors threw wild twists and turns at each other, shouting Top This! as they tossed pages of the manuscript back and forth at each other. It's a wild ride indeed. As I've indicated, it's got a lot of implausible aspects. The one that really stood out for me was when Logan and Jessica instantly — and I mean instantly — fall in love when they pose nude for a ice sculpture carved by a half-man/half-robot. (Long story.)
If you like lightning-paced action/adventure novels with a touch of satire, you'll get some fun out of this one. Just don't expect serious speculation about where the younger generation is taking us older folks.
Three stars.
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
Not Quite What We Were Tolkien About!
Whilst it has been delayed by the legal shenanigans around the paperback edition of The Lord of The Rings, we are going to be getting the next installment in Tolkien’s Middle Earth series, The Silmarillion, very soon. Cylde S. Kilby was helping Professor Tolkien over the summer and gives some details in a recent edition of The Tolkien Journal, including that this is going to borrow a lot from Norse Myths around the creation of Midgard. Sounds like an epic and complex work for sure.
However, in the meantime, we have a new tale from him, not related to Middle Earth. In some ways, it is a more traditional fairy story, but with many fascinating elements that make it well worth your while.
Every twenty-four years, in the village of Wootton Major, there is held the feast of Twenty-Four where a great cake is made by the Master Cook and shared with Twenty-Four children. The current Master is not particularly skilled in his job and often relies on his apprentice. However, he ignores it when the apprentice tells him not to add the Faery Star to the cake, which ends being eaten by young Smith.
On Smith’s tenth birthday, the star begins to glow on his forehead, and he has many adventures, including into Faery itself.
One of Pauline Baynes many beautiful illustrations in the book
As you can probably tell, Smith of Wootton Major is not an epic quest narrative filled with battles and doom (as you may expect if you have only read The Lord of The Rings). Instead, this is a more charming and quiet work of his, resembling more closely Leaf by Niggle or The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
I don’t want you to get the impression from this it is boring or frivolous. If the Middle Earth novels are like your eighth Birthday Party with all your best friends, this is like snuggling up by a roaring fire with a mug of cocoa and a wonderful book. Different but can be equally enjoyable.
As anyone at all familiar with him will tell you, Tolkien is an absolute master of language and can use it multiple ways to create whatever effect is needed. Here he creates an effortless amiability about the whole thing, introducing wit and joy without seeming forced or conceited. The story is just a marvelous experience.
Apparently, this story came from another project, specifically as an introduction for a new version of George MacDonald’s The Golden Key. He wanted to explain about Faery using this as a kind of metaphor; however, this ended up being expanded into a story in its own right, one I am very glad to have.
It seems odd that Dodie Smith’s latest novel The Starlight Barking has flown under the radar.
It is written by a great novelist who is beloved by mainstream literary publications, and whose play Dear Octopus is currently a hit in the West End. It has been praised by luminaries such as Christopher Isherwood. Moreover, it is the sequel to a beloved children’s classic, the movie version of which was the first movie ever to earn more than $100 million in the cinemas.
And yet, it is also a very odd illustrated novel. Though I find much to recommend in the work, I can understand why it seems not to have grabbed the public imagination as much as the work to which it is a sequel, The Hundred and One Dalmatians.
Picking up shortly after the first book, The Starlight Barking finds the protagonist Dalmatians Pongo and Missis living in Suffolk. One night, all living beings other than dogs fall into a deep magical sleep. The dogs also discover that they can fly, communicate across long distances, and operate machines.
Each dog takes on the jobs of their owners. Having been adopted by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Cadpig (the runt of the litter from the first book) is therefore now in charge of the country. She summons her family to London to help.
A subsequent scene in which the United Kingdom Cabinet goes to the dogs is a highlight of the book. Followers of British politics will note the well-drawn satire of Secretary of State George Brown depicted as a clumsy but cosmopolitan Boxer, and Minister of Transport Barbara Castle depicted as fussy and officious poodle. (Is the refusal of James Callaghan to devalue the Pound the reason that his dog is shown as being less mathematically inclined than the other dogs?)
Back in Suffolk, Cruella de Vil’s Persian cat — who helped the dogs escape in the first novel — turns out to be unaffected by the sleeping illness as she was named an “honourary dog.” The cat suggests that Cruella must be behind the plague of sleep, and therefore must be killed. But when the dogs find Cruella, she is asleep like the rest of humanity. So they spare her.
An alien, Dog Star Sirius, appears at the top of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square. He admits that he is behind the sleep, and that he has come to Earth to save dogs from an impending cataclysmic nuclear war.
Sirius invites all dogs everywhere to join him in the sky, and gives them a day to decide. Pongo is given the final choice. I won’t spoil the ending, but let me be completely up-front here: it doesn’t get less weird.
This is a flawed and chaotic short novel. But it is that chaos of a childhood flight of fancy; unbounded by expectation, and brimming with whimsy. Dodie Smith’s writing alternates between compelling action writing, and something poetic and magical. Her evident affection for dogs in general leads her to make them very lovable characters.
Given that the only animated movie that Disney has released since 101 Dalmatians was a critical and commercial flop (The Sword In The Stone earned just $20M), they may try to film this sequel. If and when they decide to do so, I hope they have the ambition and the audacity to stay true to this novel.
I would wager that if there were a Hugo Award category to celebrate works geared for younger readers, The Starlight Barking would be a strong contender for that shortlist.
![[July 14, 1970] Hit For Six (<i>Vision of Tomorrow #11</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/VOT3-324x372.png)
![[June 12, 1970] Something Good! and Nothing Terrible (July 1970 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/amz-0770-cover-672x372.png)
![[May 12, 1970] War and Peace (June 1970 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/COVERSMALL-672x372.jpg)
![[February 2, 1970] Deceptive Appearances (March 1970 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/IF-1970-03-Cover-479x372.jpg)
The arbiter, an NCR 315.
Movie poster for the event. That “LIVE!” is a little deceptive, which is something else Ali is complaining about.
Art actually for “SOS,” rather than just suggested by. Maybe because it’s by Mike Gilbert, not the overworked Jack Gaughan.![[September 12, 1969] Earthshaking (October 1969 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/690912galaxycover-397x372.jpg)
![[July 16, 1969] Not all Jake(s) (July 1969 Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/690716covers-672x372.jpg)
![[June 6, 1969] Blue Skies (July 1969 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/amz-0768-civer-490x372.png)
![[August 24, 1968] Here, There, and Nowhere (August 1968 Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/680824galactoscope-672x372.jpg)
![[July 31, 1968] No easy answers (August 1968 <i>Analog</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/680731cover-672x372.jpg)
![[November 18, 1967] Escape Velocity (November Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/671120covers-672x372.jpg)
