![[June 17, 1970] Time and Again (June Galactoscope Part Two!)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/frolix-672x372.jpg)
So many books this month, and this time, we've got all superlatives. Check out the second June Galactoscope!
Continue reading [June 17, 1970] Time and Again (June Galactoscope Part Two!)
Tag Archives: book
![[June 16, 1970] <i>Solaris</i>, <i>Year of the Quiet Sun</i>…and a host of others (June 1970 Galactoscope #1)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/700616covers-672x372.jpg)
[June 16, 1970] Solaris, Year of the Quiet Sun…and a host of others (June 1970 Galactoscope #1)
This month saw such a bumper crop of books (and a bumper crop of Journey reviewers!) that we've split it in two. This first one covers two of the more exciting books to come out in some time, as well as the usual acceptables and mediocrities. As Ted Sturgeon says: 90% of everything is crap. But even if the books aren't all worth your time, the reviews always are! Dive in, dear readers…
![[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)
[June 12, 1970] Something Good! and Nothing Terrible (July 1970 Amazing)
by John Boston
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.
Continue reading [June 12, 1970] Something Good! and Nothing Terrible (July 1970 Amazing)
![[May 28, 1970] A pair of Saras: <i>Flower of Doradil</i> and <i>A Promising Planet</i>](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/ace_double-672x372.png)
[May 28, 1970] A pair of Saras: Flower of Doradil and A Promising Planet
by Tonya R. Moore
The latest Ace Double features stories by two authors who both write under pseudonyms. John Rackham is the pen name of electrical engineer and author, John Thomas Phillifent, whose works include three novels from the popular American spy fiction universe series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Phillifent was a prolific author, the majority of his works of science fiction published under the name John Rackham. The lesser-known Thomas Edward Renn’s singular novel was published under the name Jeremy Strike.
This Ace Double was my first encounter with the works of either author, yet I could not help but notice the distinct differences in literary experience and skill at the heart of each story.
Continue reading [May 28, 1970] A pair of Saras: Flower of Doradil and A Promising Planet
![[May 20, 1970] <i>Circus of Hells</i>, <i>Tau Zero</i>, and <i>Vector</i> (May 1970 Galactoscope #2)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/700520covers-672x372.jpg)
[May 20, 1970] Circus of Hells, Tau Zero, and Vector (May 1970 Galactoscope #2)
by Victoria Silverwolf
Cover art by Roy E. La Grone.
Henry Sutton is the pen name of David R. Slavitt, a highly respected classicist, translator, and poet. As Sutton, he wrote a couple of sexy bestsellers, The Exhibitionist and The Voyeur. Now he's turned his hand to a science fiction thriller. Let's see if he's as adept at technological suspense as eroticism.
The story begins with the President of the United States announcing that the nation will stop all research into the use of biological weapons. Instead, only defensive research will take place.
That sounds great, but it means very little. Figuring out how to defend oneself against such weapons means you have to produce them and study them.
Next, the author introduces a number of characters in a tiny town in Utah and at the nearby military base. Guess what kind of secret research goes on at the base?
Pilot error during an unexpected storm leads to a virus being released on the town. The deadly stuff causes Japanese encephalitis, a disease with a high mortality rate. Survivors often have permanent neurological damage. There is no cure.
When a number of people come down with the disease, the military seals off the town. The phone lines are cut. One character is shot in the leg while trying to leave. Meanwhile, politicians in Washington try to cover up the disaster.
Our lead characters are a widowed man and a divorced woman who happened to be out of town when the virus hit the place. (The disease is normally transmitted via mosquito bites rather than from person to person. That's why he gets away with a relatively minor set of symptoms and she isn't sick at all.)
Besides giving us the mandatory romantic subplot, these two figure out there's more going on than the military is willing to admit. The man manages to sneak out of town and sets off on a long and dangerous hike across the wilderness, looking for a place where he can make a phone call to a trusted friend with government connections.
This is a taut political thriller in the tradition of The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May. Like those bestselling novels, both adapted into successful films, it creates a cynical, paranoid mood. I can easily imagine Vector as a motion picture.
Less of a science fiction story than last year's similarly themed bestseller The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, Vector is a competent suspense novel. The narrative style is straightforward, meant for readability rather than profundity. The love story seems thrown in just to satisfy the expectations for mass market fiction.
Three stars.
Continue reading [May 20, 1970] Circus of Hells, Tau Zero, and Vector (May 1970 Galactoscope #2)
![[April 16, 1970] Junk Day for Ice Crowns (April 1970 Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/700420covers-672x372.jpg)
[April 16, 1970] Junk Day for Ice Crowns (April 1970 Galactoscope)
Tune in tomorrow morning (April 17) for FULL APOLLO 13 SPLASHDOWN COVERAGE!!!
by Victoria Silverwolf
The author is better known around these parts for his sword-and-sorcery yarns about Brak the Barbarian, firmly in the tradition of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan. This new novel is a horse of a different color.
Cover art by Richard Powers
The planet Missouri had a revolution some time before the story begins. Advanced technology and a bureaucratic form of government were replaced by nineteenth century ways of doing things and fierce individualism.
In other words, the place now resembles Hollywood's fantasy of the Old West. There are some so-called savages who play the role of American Indians. Towns are full of outlaws and dance hall girls. There are sheriffs around, supposedly to maintain law and order, but they aren't very effective.
Our long-suffering hero is Zak Randolph, a minor government worker who ekes out a living by supplying souvenirs (such as miniature outhouses) to tourists and staging phony shootouts to entertain visitors from other worlds. He also arranges to have local badmen sent to more civilized planets to amuse those who hire them.
This latter function gets him in trouble. One of the leased gunfighters heads back to Missouri before his contract runs out. Zak has to track him down or risk losing his position. (What keeps him on the wild-and-wooly planet at all are his girlfriend and the presence of native plants that supply minerals that can be made into jewelry. Otherwise, he's a peaceable sort who hates the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later culture of the place.)
Along the way, he has to deal with ruffians who despise him as a coward. There's also the mystery of a legendary gunfighter called Buffalo Yung. Zak isn't sure this terrifying figure really exists. Then he gets reports from various places that he's been shot dead, apparently more than once. And what does this have to do with the disappearing bodies of lawmen killed by Yung?
Continue reading [April 16, 1970] Junk Day for Ice Crowns (April 1970 Galactoscope)
![[April 6, 1970] Uncovered (May 1970 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/amz-0570-cover-672x372.png)
[April 6, 1970] Uncovered (May 1970 Amazing)
Apollo 13 coverage starts tonight and goes on for the next two weeks! Don't miss a minute. Check local listings for broadcast times.
by John Boston
Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye
The May Amazing presents a new face to the world. That is, the cover was actually painted for the magazine, as opposed to being recycled from the German Perry Rhodan. It’s not by one of the new artists editor White was talking up in the last issue, but rather by John Pederson, Jr., who has been doing covers on and off for the SF magazines since the late 1950s. Ditching the second-hand Europeans is a step forward in itself, though this particular cover is not much improvement: a slightly stylized picture of a guy sitting in a spacesuit on a flying chair with a disgruntled expression on his face, against an improbable astronomical background.
by John Pederson, Jr.
But it is an interesting development for a couple of reasons. First, in the letter column, White goes into more detail than previously about the European connection, in response to a question about why the covers are not attributed. White says: “The situation is this: an agency known as Three Lions has been marketing transparencies of covers from Italian and German sf magazines and has sold them to a variety of book and magazine publishers in this country, including ourselves. These transparencies were unsigned. One of our competitors credited its reprint covers to ‘Three Lions;’ we felt that was less than no credit at all. Therefore, unless the artist’s signature was visible, we omitted the contents-page credit. As of this issue, however, Amazing returns to the use of original cover paintings by known U.S. artists.”
So much, then, for Johnny Bruck, and a hat tip to the diligent investigators who have identified all his uncredited reprint covers as they were published. In addition to Pederson, White says, he’s obtained covers from Jeff Jones and Gray Morrow, and in fact a Jones cover is already on last month’s Fantastic. Further: “I might add that, beginning with our last issue, the art direction, typography and graphics for the covers of both magazines has been by yours truly.” So White has pried one more aspect of control of the magazine from the grip of Sol Cohen, presumably all to the good, though the visible effect to date is limited.
Continue reading [April 6, 1970] Uncovered (May 1970 Amazing)
![[March 14, 1970] <i>To Venus</i> and <i>Hell's Gate</i>… are we <i>Out of Our Minds</i>?](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/700314covers-672x372.jpg)
[March 14, 1970] To Venus and Hell's Gate… are we Out of Our Minds?
by Gideon Marcus
To Venus! To Venus!, by David Grinnell
cover by John Schoenherr
Warning: the latest Ace Double contains Communist propaganda!
The premise to David Grinnell's (actually Ace editor and Futurian Donald Wolheim) newest book is as follows: it is the 1980s, and the latest Soviet Venera has confirmed the initial findings of Venera 4, not only reporting lower temperatures and pressures than our Mariner 5, but spotting a region of oxygen, vegetation, and Earth-tropical climate.
And they're launching an manned expedition there in less than two months.
Continue reading [March 14, 1970] To Venus and Hell's Gate… are we Out of Our Minds?
![[February 18, 1970] <i>Time Trap</i>, <i>This Perfect Day</i>, <i>Whisper from the Stars</i>, and <i>The Incredible Tide</i>](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/700220covers-672x372.jpg)
[February 18, 1970] Time Trap, This Perfect Day, Whisper from the Stars, and The Incredible Tide
[We've saved the best for last this month—one of these books is sure to be a pick for the Galactic Stars. Read on about this remarkable quartet of science fiction tales…]
by Jason Sacks
Time Trap, by Keith Laumer
Sometimes a back cover blurb sells a book. “ABE LINCOLN IN AFRICA?” the cover reads in breathless bold sans-serif type. “He was seen – and photographed – in a Tunisian bazaar.” Hooked yet? How about the mention on the cover of “an ancient Spanish galleon, fully crewed with ancient Spaniards, was taken in tow off Tampa by the Coast Guard…”
Yeah, you probably thought, take my 75¢ plus tax, because that’s a book I have to read. Especially if it’s scribed by the always delightful Keith Laumer, he of the wildly satirical Retief series. At the very least, Time Trap has to be readable, right?
Well, yes, Time Trap is readable, very much so in fact. I flew through its 143 pages in near lightspeed. But there’s just no there there. Time Trap is like a Big Mac: enjoyable at the time but utterly devoid of any nutrition.
Laumer’s latest is fun, sure, but maybe it’s too much fun. Because the novel is just too silly, too whimsical, too full of absurd wordplay and pointless tangents and the sense that Laumer was scripting little bits of this story between partying with friends and warming up for his next, more serious novel.
cover by Richard Powers
![[February 14, 1970] <i>Spock must Die!</i>, <i>Starbreed</i>, <i>Seed of the Dreamers</i>, and <i>The Blind Worm</i>](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/700214covers-672x372.jpg)
[February 14, 1970] Spock must Die!, Starbreed, Seed of the Dreamers, and The Blind Worm
[For this first Galactoscope of the month, please enjoy this quartet of diverting reviews…which are probably more entertaining than the books in question!]
by Gideon Marcus
Spock Must Die!, by James Blish
Star Trek is dead. Long live Star Trek!
No sooner had Trek left the air at the end of last year's rerun season than it reentered the airwaves in syndication. And not just at home, but abroad: the BBC are playing Trek weekly, exposing yet more potential fans to the first real science fiction show on TV.
While new episodes may not be airing on television, new stories are being created. I am subscribed to a number of fanzines devoted to Trek. There aren't quite so many these days as once there were, but there's also been something of a distillation of quality. For instance, I receive Spockanalia and T-Negative with almost montly regularity. These are quality pubs with some real heavy hitters involved. They are crammed with articles and fiction. As to the latter, a lot of it is proposed fourth season scripts turned into stories—by people who really know the show. The stories by such Big Name Fans as Ruth Berman, Dorothy Jones, and Astrid Anderson (of Karen/Poul Anderson lineage) are always excellent.
There have been few commercial Trek books to date. You had Gene Roddenberry/Stephen Whitfield's indispensible reference, The Making of Star Trek, released between the 2nd and 3rd seasons, and Bantam has published three collections of Trek episodes turned into short stories by James Blish (rather sketchily, and not overly faithfully). There was Mack Reynolds' juvenile Mission to Horatius, which wasn't very good.
Now Bantam has released the first "real" Trek novel, one aimed at adults. It is also by James Blish, who liberally sprinkles footnote references to prior episodes he has novelized. The basic premises are two-fold: