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[December 23, 1963] Ring Out the Old, Ring In the New (January 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

[Time is running out to get your Worldcon membership!  Register here to be able to vote for the Hugos.]

Ring Out the Old

Is it 1964 yet?


The caption says Happy New Year, Kids!

These happy young cosmonauts seem to think so.  That's a Vostok rocket they're carrying.  You remember Vostok, don't you?  The Soviet space program that sent the first man and the first woman into orbit?  No wonder they look so happy.

Here in the good old USA we do things a little differently.


It's not even Christmas yet, but this guy is ready.

No matter how you celebrate the holiday season, this is the time to remember the old and look forward to the new.  For Americans, of course, the most important change was the loss of a martyred President and the inauguration of a new one.  We are not likely to forget 1963 for a very long time.


Norman Rockwell pays tribute to the late JFK.

When it comes to space travel, yesteryear's new ideas turn old very quickly.  The X-20 program was cancelled this month, after seven years of development.  There goes $660,000,000 down the drain.  Looks like the proposed Dyna-Soar reusable spacecraft is now as dead as a dinosaur.


Now that's what I call a real spaceship!

The old British Empire continues to evolve into new, independent nations.  As of December 12, Zanzibar and Kenya are the newest members of the United Nations.

In the world of popular music, a new artist paid tribute to a man who lived more than seven hundred years ago.  Belgian singer-songwriter Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers, better known in the United States as the Singing Nun, holds the top position on the American music charts with her original composition Dominique. 

Deckers is a member of the Missionary Dominican Sisters of Our Lady of Fichermont, where she took the name Sister Luc-Gabrielle.  In her native land she is called Sœur Sourire (Sister Smile.) The song pays tribute to Saint Dominic (1170-1221), for whom the order is named.  You don't have to be Catholic, or understand French, to appreciate the Singing Nun's pleasant voice, or the cheerful melody of her song.


The second foreign language song to reach Number One in the USA this year.  At least the Americans didn't give it a silly name, the way they changed Kyu Sakamoto's lovely tune Ue o Muite Arukō into Sukiyaki.

Ring In the New

Fittingly, the latest issue of Fantastic (and the first dated in the coming year) features the first half of a new novel, but one that was born twenty-five years ago.


(cover by EMSH)

The Lords of Quarmall, by Fritz Leiber and Harry Fischer

You may not know the name Harry Fischer.  A new writer, perhaps?  Well, not exactly.  In fact, Fischer created the famous characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in a letter to his friend Leiber nearly three decades ago.  Since then, of course, the great fantasist has made the pair of adventurers his own.  In 1937, Fischer wrote about ten thousand words of a novel.  Leiber completed it, and it appears here for the first time.

Quarmall is a strange kingdom.  Its ruler lives in a keep above ground, but the rest of his realm lies deep down below.  He has two adult sons.  One reigns over the upper half of this underground land, the other the lower half.  The brothers are bitter rivals, each trying to destroy the other through treachery and magic.  They also plot against their father.  He, in turn, hopes to eliminate his sons and leave his kingdom to the unborn child of a concubine. 

Unknown to each other, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are each hired as a swordsman by one of the brothers.  When the king's archmage announces the death of his master, the conflict between the siblings explodes into open warfare.

As you would expect from Leiber, this tale of derring-do is full of vivid, exotic details.  The plot moves slowly, with much of the story taken up with the bored frustration of the two heroes.  Fafhrd's rescue of a lovely young slave doomed to be tortured provides some excitement.  No doubt the second half will provide plenty of sorcery and swordplay.  It's not a bad yarn, but hardly up to Leiber's usual standard.

Three stars.

Minnesota Gothic, by Dobbin Thorpe

Another new author?  Hardly.  Thomas M. Disch, who appears later in the magazine, hides behind this peculiar pseudonym.  The story is about a little girl named Gretel, but don't expect an old-fashioned fairy tale.  The time is now.  Gretel's mother leaves her in the care of a very old woman and her strange, bedridden brother.  Black magic is involved, but not the way you might expect.  This is a well-written, chilling little story.  I wouldn't advise reading it on a dark and stormy night.

Four stars.

The Word of Unbinding, by Ursula K. LeGuin

With four or five stories to her credit, LeGuin is still a relatively new voice in fantasy fiction, but her skill makes her seem like an old pro.  Her latest tale of enchantment begins with a wizard trapped in a prison made of darkness.  An evil sorcerer robbed him of his magic staff and locked him away.  Although the loss of his staff greatly diminishes his power, he still possesses the ability to transform himself.  He attempts to escape in many ways, only to be recaptured and made even weaker.  In order to defeat his enemy, he must pay the ultimate price. 

The author creates a dark fantasy of great imagination and vividness.  The reader is sure to empathize with the despair and heroism of the protagonist.

Four stars.

Last Order, by Gordon Walters

Like LeGuin, Walters is a writer with few published works. Sadly, he doesn't share her talent.  The story begins on an asteroid.  An undescribed being tries to protect its master from an attack by police robots.  When the master dies, it seeks revenge on all those who resemble the robots.  The scene shifts to Earth.  A detective with a fear of space travel receives an invitation to investigate the asteroid with his old partner, who left for space long ago.  It turns out that the vengeful being kills anyone who arrives on the asteroid.  After a dangerous encounter with the being, the truth comes out.

The characters frequently speculate about the possibility of a disembodied alien lifeform joining with spacemen in symbiosis.  This turns out to be a complete red herring.  The reader quickly learns that the spacesuits of the future are intimately connected to the bodies of their wearers, so the climax of the story is no surprise.  There's much too little plot for a novelette.

Two stars.

A Thesis On Social Forms and Social Controls in the U. S. A.,by Thomas M. Disch

The secret identity of Dobbin Thorpe emerges from disguise with this fictional essay.  It describes a nightmarish world of the future.  In the Twenty-First Century, China and the Soviet Union destroy each other in an atomic war.  Africa collapses into a state of permanent crisis.  Europe is under the control of the Vatican.  (Most Protestants move to the United States, which now includes Canada.) Only Australia emerges unchanged.

Disch begins with the famous dictums of George Orwell.  War is Peace.  Ignorance is Strength.  Freedom is Slavery.  To these, he adds two more.  Life is Death.  Love is Hate.  One by one, he describes how these principles apply to American society.  All adult males serve one year out of every five as a brutalized slave.  The other four years they indulge in unrestrained orgies of pleasure.  Women must care for the children they bear from multiple mates, or else serve as laborers or prostitutes. 

The author paints a terrifying portrait of a culture that deliberately chooses to be schizophrenic.  The essay's cold logic convinces the reader that such an insane world might truly exist.  The stories by Thorpe and Disch could not be more different, except for the fact that they both induce a strong sense of foreboding.

Four stars.

Summing Up, and a Bonus Review

The new year begins with a very pessimistic issue of the magazine.  From the sadistic Lords of Quarmall, to the insane world of the future, hardly a hint of hope appears in its pages.  Even the book review by S. E. Cotts deals with a novel haunted by doom.  I have read The Sundial by Shirley Jackson, discussed in the column.  It's a very strange book.  A group of eccentric people waits for the end of the world inside a weird house.  Like everything I have read by Jackson, it is unique.  I recommend it for reading by the fireplace on a dark night, waiting for the old year to fade away.

Five stars.

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[December 7, 1963] SF or Not SF?  That Is the Question (They came from mainstream, 1963 edition)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

A raft of non-SF SF

Readers of this column with long memories will recall that, at the end of 1962, we looked at major science fiction and fantasy novels and collections published as mainstream fiction.  The most important such work this year was Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, already discussed in detail by our own Vicki Lucas. 

Another was The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis, best known for his novel The Hustler, adapted into a major film a couple of years ago.  Once again, Ms. Lucas has provided a fine analysis of this book.


The novel is obviously about the game of pool.


The movie poster doesn't seem to have much to do with pool.

Here are two more books I think should be checked out by SF fans who might have missed them:

Planet of the Apes, by Pierre Boulle

A French import offers another example of the blurred lines between science fiction and the literary mainstream.  Pierre Boulle is famous for Le Pont de la Rivière Kwaï (translated into English as The Bridge over the River Kwai, and source of an award-winning movie, with a slight change in the title.)



Don't ask me how over turned into on

This year the author ventured into outer space, with his novel La Planète des singes, known in the United States as Planet of the Apes.

(My sources in the publishing world tell me that the book will be available in the United Kingdom next year, under the title Monkey Planet.)

Boulle's novel begins in the far future, with a couple traveling among the stars.  They discover an old manuscript.  This takes us into a flashback, set in the relatively near future.  Three men journey to an Earth-like planet orbiting the star Betelgeuse.  They discover that intelligent, civilized apes inhabit the world, along with naked, speechless human beings treated as lower animals.  Gorillas are police and military; orangutans are priests and politicians; chimpanzees are scientists and technicians.  The apes are at the same technological level as Twentieth Century Earth, with cities, automobiles, and firearms.  They even smoke tobacco.  The three astronauts meet different fates.  It all leads up to a twist ending.  The author's intent is satiric, showing the reader how little difference there is between people and other primates.  The story may not be very plausible, but it captures the reader's imagination.  Special notice should go to Xan Fielding, who translated both of Boulle's novels into very readable English. 

Three stars.

Glide Path, by Arthur C. Clarke

We've seen how mainstream authors venture into science fiction, sometimes successfully.  It doesn't often happen the other way around.  This year Arthur C. Clarke proved he is just as comfortable writing about the past as he is about the future, with his novel Glide Path.

The story takes place in England during the Second World War.  The protagonist is a young officer in the Royal Air Force.  He is a technician, working on a program known as Ground Controlled Descent.  GCD allows a pilot to land in heavy fog.  Using radar, a controller on the ground talks the pilot down.  The plot is episodic, involving both the new technology and daily life in the RAF.  The author creates a convincing portrait of the time and place, based on his own experiences.  Unlike most war novels, the book lacks scenes of battle.  This may disappoint readers looking for thrilling action.  The most dramatic sequence happens late in the story, when huge amounts of fuel fill the night sky with towering flames, in an attempt to burn off the fog. 

Three stars.

Boulle's science fiction novel is likely to be marketed to readers of mainstream fiction, just as Clarke's war story is likely to be promoted to science fiction fans.  Let us avoid relying solely on arbitrary divisions in literature, and instead keep our eyes open for good reading, no matter how it might be labelled.




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[November 21, 1963] Words for bondage (Laurence M. Janifer's Slave Planet)

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by Erica Frank

I opened Laurence Janifer's latest novel, Slave Planet with trepidation. Slavery is an intense topic whose abhorrent nature should not be open for debate, but using it in the title implies some kind of conflict related to it. I doubted the plot was, "noble hero discovers planet of slaves, destroys evil masters, frees the oppressed," especially since the tag line is "a world at stake in a deadly game of galactic strategy." Strategy plus slaves means a focus on profits-vs-ethics that any decent person should reject without thinking.

Sure enough, by chapter two, we have the background: Fruyling's world is the source of a rare and valuable metal, and on it lives a race of "uncivilized" aliens who are forced to work to mine that metal. Most of the human Confederation employees on Fruyling's are born and raised there; they cannot leave, lest the general public realize that their beloved government, in which personal rights and liberties are treasured, keeps a whole planet of alien slaves.

The aliens are an obvious homage to Walt Kelly's cartoon alligator:

"They were called Alberts, after a half-forgotten character in a mistily-remembered comic strip dating back before space travel, before the true beginnings of Confederation history. If you ignored the single, Cyclopean eye, the rather musty smell and a few other even more minor details, they looked rather like two-legged alligators four feet tall, green as jewels, with hopeful grins on their faces and an awkward, waddling walk like a penguin’s. Seen without preconceptions they might have been called cute."

The story follows a handful of characters. The most interesting is Dr. Anna Haenlingen, the head of the Psychological Division, who designs the programs that keep the slaves happy. She is ancient and formidable. She's also the only woman who talks about something other than the men: she's focused on the future of the world after the Confederation discovers its unsavory practices.

For the most part, the men talk about how to train the aliens and about the ethics of slavery and servitude. (The women mostly talk about the men; even Dr. Haenlingen's assistant, who speaks with her about Division plans, gets caught up in a romance.) The aliens mostly talk about how good it is to serve the masters, and how hard it would be to live any other way.  It is clear that the author is not promoting this idea, but showing how hard it is to argue against it with simple, easy-to-understand vocabulary.

These are, after all, the same arguments used nearly a hundred years ago to justify human slavery: the proponents claimed that the slaves "had a better life" than they would in their "savage" homelands, and that servitude and "correction" of mistakes or insolence was necessary to be able to keep "helping" the slaves. The fact that the slave owners got profits and the slaves didn't, and that a major industry relied on slave labor, which was cheaper than complex machinery, was conveniently left out of the discussion.

Janifer, fortunately, does not leave that out. It is mentioned that machinery was considered, but rejected for its cost, which would raise the cost of the metal throughout the Confederation. Most of the human characters are uncomfortable with the fact of slavery; however, the book portrays their discomfort as a form of suffering, as if slavery were equally damaging to the humans and the Alberts. Some of the characters in Slave Planet constantly give their justifications for slavery, and the tone is so dry and matter-of-fact that it's impossible to tell if this is intended to be ironic or if Janifer is actually claiming that ownership of sentient beings is a complex issue with many sides.

Some of the on-planet employees believe they're "helping" the natives by providing them with health care and infrastructure they would not otherwise have. Others are pretty sure that no, there is nothing about the company's activities that are motivated by altruism. Some of the Alberts believe that the masters are good since they supply food and shelter, and that following the humans' orders is the natural way of things. Some disagree, but since they have been raised to serve the humans, they don't even have the language to explain why freedom is important to them, nor why they feel slavery is wrong.

Dr. Haenlingen is the only one in the book who does not try to moralize or justify slavery. She is aware that it is an economic arrangement, and not one created for the benefit of the Alberts. At first, she comes across as refreshingly level-headed and quite practical. Later, she seems almost evil: she would be willing to go to great lengths to protect the system on Fruyling's world. Her practicality prevents her from doing so; she is the first to recognize that once the public learns of the Alberts and how they are treated, the entire regime will quickly fall.


Commemorative stamp to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

Overall, the book was a pleasant read, although the moralizing got a bit heavy-handed in spots. The book kept me interested. Although the ethical issues were straightforward, I could not guess what would happen next, even though there were no last-minute surprises. The world described in the opening chapters continues through the end. This is not a bleak story, but it is also not a cheerful one. The Alberts' philosophies were fascinating: they had arguments both for and against slavery in simple language, without the benefit of a well-rounded education. They did not seem stupid, just woefully lacking in vocabulary and a structure for their thoughts. The writing style is engaging and the characters distinct, but I rolled my eyes more than once at the human masters' claims that they were also victims. Most of the characters were a bit flat, but I would happily read an entire series about Dr. Haenlingen.

Three stars




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[November 17, 1963] Galactoscope (Three Ace Doubles!)

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by Gideon Marcus

Here at the Journey, we read virtually every piece of science fiction and fantasy published.  Our goal is not only to provide you with a complete encyclopedia of available works, but also to ensure we can make informed decisions come award-giving time.

Now, that's a lot of printed words.  It used to be that I would publish a separate article for each book, but with such a big backlog of books waiting to be reviewed, I decided it'd be best to do the queue all at once, like they do in the review columns of the various magazines (for instance, Amazing's "Spectroscope").

As it turns out, the volumes you'll hear about today are all Ace Doubles (published with two complete books back-to-back and reversed), so if you're a fan of these odd blue-and-whites, this will help you manage your 1963 shopping list.

Alpha Centauri or Die!, by Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett is a legend.  One of the relatively few women in the SFF arena, she is also a renowned scriptwriter, having penned the screenplay for The Big Sleep and Rio Bravo.  Brackett has managed to keep plugging along in Hollywood in spite of the prevailing opinion of the last decade that women just don't get "male" genres like crime dramas and westerns.

Her SFF works have been recommended to me with increasing volume and frequency so I was delighted to have a chance to enjoy her latest novel, luridly titled (as all Ace Doubles are) Alpha Centauri or Die!.  This book is really two stories in one: Part 1 involves a rebel movement on Mars led by the human, Kirby, and his love, the Martian humanoid named Shari.  They dare to steal a manually controlled space ark, filled to the brim with colonists eager to emigrate, and evade the robotic sentinel spaceships that patrol the solar system.  Their destination: an inhabitable planet in the triple Alpha Centauri system.

There's a lot of action and chases, both planetbound and in the black gulf between the stars, culminating in a an exciting scene in which a squad from the fleeing Lucy Davenport boards and deactivates a pursuing robot fighter ship.

Part 2 takes place on the newly colonized world, which shortly after settlement, is besieged by unseen, psionically equipped aliens that kidnap terrans via teleportation.  Will this diabolical race end the colony, or is it all a misunderstanding?

That the two sections are so different in subject matter and tone is no coincidence.  Alpha Centauri or Die! is a fix-up of two stories from the early 1950s, both published in Planet Stories.  I'd only previously read The Ark of Space (on which Part 1 is based) so I can't tell you if the two tales were ever meant to be linked.  In any event, the resultant novel is not a great introduction to Brackett's works.  Particularly frustrating is the short shrift the women characters get, even at the hands of a woman author.  With the exception of Shari, they are a herd of complaining housewives.  The Martian heroine fares a bit better, joining the raiding party against the robot starship and using her esper powers to help deduce the nature of the beasts of Alpha Centauri, but her exploits point out just how alone she stands in representation of an entire gender.

Aside from that, Alpha Centauri or Die! is a competent but not groundbreaking action piece, slightly less than the sum of its parts, not progressing far from the pulp era in which Brackett made her first appearances.

Three stars.

Legend of Lost Earth, by G. McDonald Wallis

It's common practice in SFF for women to initialize their first names (or flat-out take on male pseudonyms).  I have been told vociferously by one of my readers that this practice has nothing to do with any bias against women in the genre; nevertheless, it is puzzling that men don't seem to do it.  In any event, the "G." stands for Geraldine, and this is her second Ace Double, the first being The Light of Lilith, which I have not read.

Lost Earth takes place on the dusty, red world of Niflhel, its atmosphere foul with the soot of a million mines.  Even the memory of Earth, destroyed by a human-caused catastrophe, is taboo.  But Giles Chulainn is seduced by the teachings of a secret society that keeps the half-remembered dream of their home planet alive.  A cat and mouse game ensues, with Giles taking on the role, by turns, of a subversive, a double, and then a triple agent. 

The true nature of the barren colony world and its connection with the lost verdant fields of Earth is ultimately revealed, though by the time you get there, you might not care, having been increasingly bombarded with a bamboozle of pseudo-scientific mysticism, Celtic legend, and plot incoherence. Nevertheless, Lost Earth does have a strong first half and a nice flavor throughout.  Three stars.

Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany

Delany is another author I'm catching on his second Ace book, the first being The Jewels of Aptor, which came out last year.  He is noteworthy for being the first black SF novelist (I believe; correct me if I'm wrong).

Captives of the Flame takes place on a blasted Earth, the remnants of humanity confined to just one city and its adjacent shoreline and islands.  Around it lies a radioactive barrier that has constricted over the years: just two generations before, it engulfed the city's neighboring polis, forcing its inhabitants to flee.  It is implied early on that the barrier is not of human origin.

The novel details the efforts of a mismatched band of heroes, including an exiled member of the royal family rendered invisible by the radiations, a young woman acrobat/thief, and an ambitious Duchess, to determine the true nature of the alien incursion and to use the extraterrestrials' powers to right the bellicose, corrupt human government. 

On the plus side, the novel features an interesting world and a refreshingly varied set of characters, male, female, and alien.  On the red ink side of the ledger, the plot is sketchy, and viewpoints shift with little warning or context.  I have to wonder if this is the author's fault or simply a result of Ace's hatchety editing style. 

Three stars.

The Psionic Menace, by Keith Woodcott

Those in the know are aware that "Keith Woodcott" is a pseudonym for English writer, John Brunner.  And those who have followed this column since the arrival of author Mark Yon will soon find that The Psionic Menace is an Ace-style retitling of Crack of Doom, which appeared under the Woodcott name in two issues of New Worlds last year.  It's about a universe-spanning psychic distress call, and the efforts humanity takes to decipher it.

It is word for word the same book, which means you will enjoy it as much (or little) as the serialized version.  Mark gave it three stars.

The Rebellers, by Jane Roberts

What a beginning on this one!  Gary Fitch is an artist on a crushingly overpopulated Earth.  His job is to take old classics and make copies as vehicles for conveying government propaganda.  He and his colleagues live under lock and key in a barracks, barely receiving enough sustenance for survival.  Yet their situation is the enviable one for outside their prison walls lies the teeming masses of humanity, hungrier and denied access to the books and artworks the painters have.

One day, rioting plebeians storm the prison walls, providing Fitch an opportunity to escape — from the frying pan into the fire.  The artist hooks up with an insurgent organization, "The Rebellers" (why not simply "The Rebels?") but their motives aren't as simon-pure as advertised.  Worse yet, a virulent plague is spreading, threatening to wipe out the human race once and for all.  Can Fitch take over the remnants of local government to avoid complete catastrophe?

Roberts' book starts out strong but resolves abruptly and rather implausibly.  For instance, it is discovered that the plague largely affects pregnant women and mandatory birth control becomes the linchpin on which combating the virus turns.  If birth control is so ubiquitous and effective, why wasn't it in common use before our planet was choked with people? 

This is the first novel by Roberts, whose short fiction I've greatly enjoyed.  While this book is a mixed success, she may get the hang of the form in time for her next effort.  In any event, it's nice to see her back after a four-year hiatus.

Three stars.

Listen!  The Stars!, by John Brunner

Last up is the novelization of John Brunner's Listen! The Stars!, a novella that appeared in Analog last year.  The tale of the "Stardroppers," who use extra-dimensional telescopes to plumb the unknown depths of the universe was one of my favorites from Brunner.  In fact, I gave it a Galactic Star.

Unlike The Psionic Menace, this Ace version is significantly revised.  The story's no different, and all the same scenes are there, but Brunner (or the editor) has padded every paragraph with enough extra words to fill 96 pages.  Or maybe Analog's editor, John W. Campbell, had cut the original to fit the pages of his magazine.

In any event, both versions are good, worthy of five stars.  If you want a shorter read, find the magazine, and if you want something lengthier, well, you get this and the Roberts novel, too.

So there you have it, a typical grab bag of Ace production.  A good half of it was scoured from the pages of the magazines, and only the Brunner (under his own name) really hits it out of the park.  Still, at 20 cents a novel (40 cents for a double), all of it at least readable, you could do a lot worse.

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[November 11, 1963] An integral future (Yevgeny Zamyatin's We)

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by Margarita Mospanova

Hello, dear readers!

Do you have books that you’ve always wanted to read but never got the chance to? Books that you’ve heard so much about they’ve long since made their place in your bookish plans and budgets, but haven’t quite managed to reach your hands?

The reason these books remain unopened still might be lack of time. Not quite full wallet. Or simply their absence from the nearest bookstore. But in my case, the reason often was censorship.

It won’t come as a surprise to many of you, but being a published author in the USSR almost unfailingly meant having to obey various rules and regulations of the people in power, written or unwritten. As such, many of the titles that I undoubtedly would have greatly enjoyed at the time were rebuffed by the editors before they even saw the light of day.

Now that I no longer reside in the Soviet Union, obtaining Soviet books is even harder. However, some of them were fortunate enough to trickle through the borders, with or without their authors. And here we come to the subject of this humble review.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin written in 1921 and first published in English in 1924 in New York, is still very much forbidden in USSR. The original Russian edition only came out in 1952 and, again, only in New York.

Having read the book, I can certainly see why.

The story is set far in the future, at least a thousand years or more, with the world having been conquered by a so called United State. As the name implies, there are no other countries or nations, though that might be attributed to the fact that a war wiped out more than 99% of the planet’s population several centuries earlier.

Curiously enough, though perhaps not unexpectedly at all, the war was fought over food and resulted in the creation of a petroleum-based substance that took its place on the people’s plates. The more conventional meals were slowly forgotten.

The nation, meanwhile, is governed by a single person, called the Well-Doer, who is overly fond of mass surveillance and standardizing his subjects. Names have been replaced by given numbers. People live in glass, completely transparent, apartments, and cannot draw down the curtains unless they have, ah, received the pink permission slip. Yes, it means exactly what you think it means.

When they go to sleep, they no longer dream, as dreaming is an illness and has been cured long ago. At breakfast, they chew exactly 50 times per each bite. On the streets, they move as one, marching in lines, wearing the same uniforms. Confusing emotions and imagination gave way to logic and reason. To formulae, equations, and science. There is no freedom. The people are happy.

They are also planning to build a space rocket (with the appropriate mathematical name, "The Integral") to share their way of life with any extraterrestrial life forms they might encounter.

The story follows one of the lead builders working on the rocket. A model citizen, D-503, decides to start a journal, depicting his daily life and thoughts, and then put it onto the rocket. Enlighten the aliens, so to speak.


the author

I will let you, dear readers, read for yourself exactly what we learn through each of D-503’s entries, but suffice it to say, action, drama, and (really, really awkward) romance abound. As well as, at times, rather confused ramblings of a man who has never before been confronted with illogical feelings.

Naturally, I read the novel in Russian. However, I did take time to peruse the 1924 English translation as well. On its own, it seems to be a fairly good read, but I’m afraid it falls somewhat short of the source. In the Russian We the writing is uneven, full of short bursts and ragged edges, that seem to be smoothed or faded when one opens up the English copy. And I’m not talking about the length of the sentences, but rather the structure and choice of words. Still, that slight demerit only really matters if one makes it a point to compare the two versions. If you have the chance (and ability) read it in Russian. Otherwise, the English copy will serve perfectly well.

The style of prose itself is very much in tune with the character, never straying too far from what we might expect, and yet delivering a gripping account of D-503’s deconstruction of his own world. The contrast between the mathematical precision of some parts and emotional upheavals of the others works nicely to highlight the faults of the world Zamyatin built.

Despite the bleakness and sheer uniformness of the United State, the characters we meet throughout the novel are vibrant and very much alive. Every single one of them has something to say, and every single one of them is worth listening to. The characters are the novel’s strongest side, and after finishing the book, I caught myself wanting to know what happens to them next.

In fact, the characters have quite possibly outshone any and all possible allusions to USSR and its problems for me. The satire and criticisms are plain, don’t get me wrong, but considering that Zamyatin wrote the book when the Soviet Union was only in its infancy, the impression they left with me is not quite as deep as one might expect. 

I greatly enjoyed We, for all its dystopian gloominess. This is a book that has now become a permanent fixture on my bookshelves and I foresee many rereads in its future. And so, dear readers, I invite you to try it out for yourselves. I promise it will not disappoint.

I give “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin five integrals out of five. 




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[October 22, 1963] A Whole New Fantasy (Andre Norton's Witch World)

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by Rosemary Benton

Andre Norton (a common name for me now) released her new book into the wild of the science-fiction section of local book stores earlier this month! Being October and therefore the prime time to read anything horror or fantasy related, I didn't spend much time dithering about adding Witch World to my pile of literature by the bookstore register.

For this adventure, veteran story teller Andre Norton starts by introducing her audience to disgraced U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Simon Tregarth as he flees on his last leg from some unsavory business associates. After a chance meeting with a renowned people smuggler, he bargains for passage from our reality to one which he is promised to be “attuned" with. Skeptical, but figuring that his only other option is death at the hands of thugs, he agrees to what is supposedly a one way passage off of Earth. After successfully traveling through the supposed Siege Perilous, he jumps to the aid of a ragged woman pursued by hounds and soldiers. He quickly learns that the person he has saved is a witch (also referred to as one of the Women of Power) of the besieged land of Estcarp. Jump forward a time and Simon has almost seamlessly integrated himself into this strange new world of sword, guns and fickle sorcery.

Over the course of the story he travels over the known world, coming face to face with oddly advanced machinery within what is otherwise a medieval society. Ultimately he learns of forces and enemies which he and the native people within the realms barely grasp. The book wraps up with Simon and his allies winning the day against their mutual enemy, the Koltar. However, in doing so the extent of his adopted world's vulnerability from other realities begins to become clear, and with that realization the story ends with an uneasy sense of dread.

The plot of of Witch World is passable, but unfortunately the enjoyment of the novel is not to be found in any thrilling exploits of its characters. Overall their personalities do not come with anything particularly remarkable, and unfortunately that translates into character arcs that are alright, but not unexpected. The real reason to read Witch World is the vivid plethora of mythos and the fantastical history which shapes Norton's world. It's absolutely brimming with potential that I hope Norton will take advantage of in future stories.

Despite the bizarre whimsy of the cover by Jack Gaughan which prominently features a gun wielding man in a blue leotard with a comical bird beak sticking far out from his forehead, the cultures and environments of Witch World are filled with intense, gritty peoples who have distinct traditions and garb best suited to their rough lives. Spandex is pretty much the opposite of what anyone in Witch World wears. This is a high fantasy world with magic and chain mail, medieval feudalism and tribalism, and primitive, cruel ideas about a man and woman's roles. At the same time, however, there is deliberately juxtaposed science-fiction technology thrown in. Robotic birds, surgically and chemically induced mind control, and guns spring up with little preamble.

The way in which Norton merges a handful of advanced technology with a deeply structured fantasy culture struck me as distinct from other genre bridging stories. Previous sci-fi/fantasy stories I have pored through seem to favor the merger of the two genres almost equally. Some novels seem to use magic merely as another word of misunderstood science. Consider, in John Brunner's Secret Agent of Terra, the isolated people of Planet 14 who are not privy to exactly how an ancient food processor works and consider the domestication of animals to have mystical origins. The visitors from Earth do know how to work the old technology and are well aware of the planet's history of animal husbandry, yet they feed this misconception so as to not disturb the planet's natural evolution from magic believers to scientific pioneers. And therein lies the rub – for every “spell" there is a hidden keep of exposition.

When the subject of magic is approached in any of Norton’s writing there is never any easy solution lying right below the surface. Her flaire for piecing out information and not revealing more than what the characters themselves know keeps the reader on edge, as well as humble. This sense that there are always bigger forces at play, yet are never fully explained, teases the rational mind of the reader and allows for there to be doubt that anything “magical" can be easily quantified by rational, scientific method. It's very disquieting when Norton's established and venerated forces, like the witchcraft of the Women of Power and the Axe of Volt, are threatened by something indefinable that is even older and more powerful – travel across dimensions.

To belabor the point, Norton's book is in desperate need of a new front cover in future editions to better advertise this unease, since it is by far one of the biggest things the reader takes away from the novel. That and, of course, the potential for more stories of branching off of Witch World. The expansiveness of Norton's world is, frankly, astounding. The potential for twists and turns in future stories is greatly aided by the dimension travel that Norton subtly echoes back to again and again.

Andre Norton's Witch World has a spark of something much bigger, and while this first foray into its world was rather standard in terms of the main plot, the visible layers and grandiosity of Witch World just begs to be explored. It's hard to give a book like this a rating. Was it fun to follow the exploits of Simon Tregarth, Koris, Briant, and Jaelithe? A little, but they were not really the most interesting aspect of the novel. Did the story achieve what it set out to do in terms of world building? Absolutely. Did it make me want to read more? If any further Witch World books can make me as riveted to the history of this world as much as this book did, then absolutely. Ultimately I would say this was a three and a half star book. Well worth reading for the intricacy and intrigue of the universe Norton has created, but with characters who were outshined by their surroundings.

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[September 25, 1963] The Old School (Margaret St. Clair's Sign of the Labrys)

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by Gideon Marcus

Just ten years after the coming of a virulent yeast-based plague, nine tenths of the world's human population and much of its wildlife is gone.  What's left of humanity survives on vast stores of canned food and spends its time burying the dead and still dying.  The disease has altered our race physically and psychologically, rendering us unable to stand each other's company for a great length of time.  Only the plum-uniformed agents of the FBY make any attempt to impose order on this shambling parody of society.

Enter Sam Sewell, an unprepossessing soul who dwells in the upper levels of a vast set of subterranean shelters designed to house the American leadership in the event of war — now, it is a decaying home to thousands, offering rude shelter and sustenance.  One day, an FBY man calls on Sam, desperate to know the whereabouts of the mysterious and beautiful Despoina, who may have the cure not just for the lingering plague but for the social maladjustment it has wrought. 

This triggers Sam's descent into labyrinthine shelter complex, each successive level containing encounters more dangerous and weird than the last: mad scientists, herds of white rats, and countless blind alleys filled with technological and human detritus.  Underneath this monument to the old world lies evidence of a world older still, one that preserves the ancient pagan teachings of Wicca first promulgated at the mosaiced halls of Minos.  In his journey through the maze, Sam finds himself not just seeking out Despoina, high priestess of the Wiccans, but also his forgotten Wiccan identity that is the key to humanity's revival.

Author Margaret St. Clair is one of the titans of SFF.  Under both her name and the pen name, Idris Seabright, she has enriched several magazines and publishing houses for two decades.  Her work is powerfully and uniquely written, never quite striking familiar chords.  Sign of the Labrys, St. Clair's latest, displays her talents in full.  She perfectly captures Sam's initial disaffection with spare, detached prose.  Later, as Sam first explores the labyrinth and suffers from an unknown fever, St. Clair conveys with dreamlike prose the protagonist's loosed hold on reality.  The settings the author created, both the moribund world above ground and the fascinating den of mysteries beneath, are vividly drawn.

But about halfway through, the car begins to wobble on its rails.  The skein that holds the book together is woven from Wicca, a modern-day myth cobbled in the last decade from various sources by Englishman, Gerald Gardner.  It features nature worship, a god and goddess pair, and it claims the ill-fated witches of the 17th century as earlier practitioners.  In Labrys, Wicca's adherents gain all sorts of superpowers, from clairvoyance to invisibility.  I don't know if St. Clair personally buys into this old/new religion, but given Wicca's recent surge in popularity, I wouldn't be surprised if Labrys isn't intended as a kind of introduction to the creed. 

Some may find the mythology at the heart of Labrys refreshing and delightful, quite different from the wells fantasy generally draws from.  I found it a distraction, particularly by the end.  After all, this book was billed as science fiction, and the first half of it gives no indication that it is anything but.  The latter half is so larded with occult magic as well as superscience like anti-gravity and matter transmission that it becomes a comic book.  A very well-written comic book.

And to be fair, one is told what they're going to get right on the back of the novel:

Wow.

Now, that's some awfully sexist language, and it has caused justified outrage.  On the other hand, I can almost understand (if not excuse) its provenance.  Sign of the Labrys is a weird, woo-woo book, and whomever wrote the blurb was clearly trying to make lemonade from the lemons.  I haven't seen this ridiculous tack used to advertise any of the other woman-penned stories this year, so I feel safe in concluding that this cover is (thankfully) not typical.

Copy-writing blunders aside, I did enjoy this book from cover to cover.  As a showcase of St. Clair's ability to turn a compelling phrase, Sign of the Labrys is as good as any of her works.  Had I known what I was getting into, I might well have been less off-put by the book's ultimate direction.  Maybe.  The fact remains that the novel isn't science fiction, despite its trappings and its billing.  Moreover, any book that suggests that humanity is doomed, and that only one cult has the key to its salvation, is going to turn me off — whether it be Sign of the Labrys, Dianetics, or the New Testament.

Three and a half stars.

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[September 3, 1963] An unspoken Bond (Ian Fleming's On Her Majesty’s Secret Service)

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By Ashley R. Pollard

Last month I talked about spies. Spies that were cool, and those who betrayed their country. With the Profumo affair still rattling around the news, I opined that spies and spying would sweep into the public consciousness. Scandals have a habit of doing that.

So, please excuse me, while I take the time to talk about another spy-centric non-SF book for this month's episode on Galactic Journey.

With the success of last year's film adaptation of Ian Fleming's Dr. No., I continue to predict that the next James Bond film, From Russia With Love, which is coming this October, will further raise the public's interest in the heady delights of techno-thrillers featuring spies. So far all I’ve seen are a couple of stills from the set, so it’s hard to make any judgment on the adaptation of the story by the filmmakers.

But until the film arrives on the big screen we have a new Bond novel to sate our appetites.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the tenth James Bond novel, a sequel to the previous novel (once removed), Thunderball. I was lucky to get hold of a copy of OHMSS when it came out at the beginning of April, because both the first and second print runs, totaling over 60,000 copies, sold out in the first month. This should give readers some insight into how popular James Bond has become in Britain.

Since OHMSS is a sequel to Thunderball, a quick reprise of the former novel's plot is in order.

Thunderball centred on the theft of two atomic bombs stolen by a shadowy organization called SPECTRE: SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.  SPECTRE is the replacement for SMERSH, MI-6's nemesis organization that appears in the earlier novels. These villains were originally loosely based on the real life Soviet counterintelligence organization SMERSH.

The name is a Russian portmanteau, created by Stalin from the words SMERt and SHpionam. Translated it means "Death to Spies."

Why the change? My understanding is that the film producers and Fleming decided to make the villains apolitical. In an interview Fleming said that he wanted to show that the cold war had thawed and changed the name to reflect this.

This criminal organization is led by the nefarious villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who returns in OHMSS to cause our hero more pain and suffering. This time round Fleming fleshes out his hero with some fascinating revelations about Bond's character. For example, he discloses that Bond visits the grave of Vesper Lynd every year.  Lynd was a character that appeared in Fleming's first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, where she kills herself rather than betray Bond.

James Bond's relationship with women also breaks new ground, but I don't want to spoil the plot by giving anything away. All I'll say is that OHMSS deals with grief and loss. And most affecting it is too.

As is usual in an Ian Fleming novel, real places are used to add verisimilitude to the narrative, though some of the names are changed. In this case, the description of Piz Gloria makes clear that it is based on the Nazi German eugenic research facility Schloss Mittersill.

Its inclusion as a setting for the plot therefore adds a certain emotional darkness to the story. It's a chilling foreshadowing of the reveal about the purpose of the centre. We later discover that the villain is brainwashing young women he's treating for food allergies. Blofield's plan is to send them home to Britain where they will release a bioweapon to destroy our crops.

Cue loud cackling.

OK. That was probably a tad unfair of me, but the plan strained my credulity to its limits. James Bond stories are not subtle. However, OHMSS is a lot of fun to read. Once I started I had to keep turning the pages to find out what happened next. OHMSS demonstrates Fleming's increasingly assured touch and storytelling confidence.

I will freely admit that the SF trappings are not strongly in evidence in this novel. However, the machinations of the plot are driven by technological developments driven by science. Had this novel been written before the war, it would have been derided for its fanciful SF trappings. Ideas that SF fans take as a given, like rockets, robots, and ray-guns, are now taken for granted.

All right, perhaps not ray-guns, but the terms that used to mark out the genre are now increasingly appearing in everyday usage. In a few short years, SF ideas have moved from the pages of the Pulps and post-war magazines into everyday life. Therefore, in the wake of the success of Ian Fleming's "Bond", what I predict we will see is more techno-thrillers, spy stories with futuristic trappings.

After all, why should Ian Fleming have all the fun?


The Jamaica home where Fleming wrote OHMSS during the filming of Dr. No

[Want to talk to the Journey crew and fellow fans in real-time?  Come join us at Portal 55! (Ed.)]

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[August 18, 1963] The Grass is Redder in the Future (Yefremov's Andromeda: A Space Age Tale)

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[The Journey always delights at the opportunity to broaden its coverage of current science fiction.  So you can imagine how blessed we felt when we discovered a stunning new talent fresh from the city of Leningrad.  We are certain you will enjoy what we hope will be the first of many articles from 'Rita…]


by Margarita Mospanova

A journey of a thousand books begins with a single page, a single sentence, a single word. And happy is the reader that can travel more than one language in his lifetime. Often, your journey happens without you taking a single step, but sometimes it can lead you halfway around the world, a single suitcase and a loudly hammering heart in tow.

The Iron Curtain may not be a physical thing but it is a perfectly tangible one nevertheless. Especially when you’ve lived your whole life on the Soviet soil and the thin trickle of Western literature could hardly slake your bookish thirst for science fiction and fantasy.

So, dear readers, you can imagine my joy when I first stepped off the ship in an American harbor and felt my literal literary horizon expanding before my eyes. A friend of a friend of a friend, that so courteously provided me with lodgings while I tried to get my wits around me and carve myself a piece of Western life, had only been too happy to encourage me.

I have to confess that in beginning I practically devoured the bookshops, without much care to what I read as long as it was halfway interesting. But that initial fever has long since faded and, several new favorite books richer, I can now take a breath and approach the shelves at a more sedate pace.

And in a corner of a small bookshop of which I have a particular fondness, I encountered several copies of this very magazine that you’re holding in your hands right now. Delighted, I read them almost in one sitting and wrote to the editor to express my appreciation. A short and exciting exchange later, I was asked to share my thoughts on the state of Soviet science fiction.

Oh my, I thought. That would be easy, I thought. There are so many to choose from, I thought.

Well, dear readers, I’m very unhappy so say that reality does so like to burn and salt the bridge before you can even step on it. Because while Soviet science fiction and fantasy books are indeed many, the number of them translated into English is… far from desirable.

Still, Lady Fortuna was on my side. The same friend that welcomed me to America has managed to procure a translated edition of Andromeda: A Space Age Tale by Ivan Yefremov, a book I finished reading just before my rather unplanned one way journey to the west.

Almost a year ago, the Journey covered a collection of short stories by Soviet authors, featuring The Heart of the Serpent also by Ivan Yefremov. Both stories belong to the same universe, and while the timing is a bit tricky, Andromeda seems to be set slightly earlier. The novel was first published in 1957 and later translated into English in 1959 by George Hanna and printed by Moscow’s Foreign Language Publishing House. And despite my expectations, the translation itself is done fairly close to the original text, retaining its slightly cumbersome style.

The story, while not quite action driven, still has a few tense moments that might have you gripping the pages in excitement. But overall the author focuses more on the social and cultural sides of his characters’ lives, preferring to use the future Communist utopia as a background for various social and philosophical issues.

It has been several millennia since our time and the world has changed. Earth has joined the Great Circle, a collection of sentient races capable of space travel and communication, but more often than not, not yet advanced enough to meet their neighbours face to face. The spaceship travel takes centuries and faster than light speeds are still out of the scientists’ grasp.

One of the plot lines follows the crew of a spaceship sent to investigate another planet after it goes into complete and sudden radio silence. On the way back home they run out of fuel and have to make an emergency landing on a planet shrouded in heavy darkness.

I will refrain from spoiling their struggle for survival, but will say that for me that part of the novel is easily the most engaging. But that is most likely my fascination with horror stories rearing its misshapen head.

The second plot line is centered around the Director of the Outer Stations of the Great Circle (a mouthful, that’s for sure) and his life after he leaves the post to his successor and struggles to find a new job for himself. His deep and enduring love for space makes the search much more difficult than it might seem at the first glance.

The cast of principle characters also includes a historian that is also an archaeologist, a psychiatrist, a scientist, and a biologist.


In the preface the author warns the reader that the novel is full to the brim with science terms, ideas, and details. And, boy, he wasn’t kidding. If anything, he understated the technical aspects of the book. The characters spend almost half of the book going on various science-themed tangents or engaging in discussions of philosophy, sociology, or how the grass was definitely not greener back in our times.

Still, the world Yefremov built is wonderfully bright and optimistic. Despite my… differences with the regime of my home, Andromeda’s future is one I would be happy to live in.

The novel’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness, in my opinion, is its extreme attention to details. It is easy to get buried under all the little things Yefremov includes to paint the future, but the same small brush strokes eventually form a rich and fascinating world, that I, for one, would grab a chance to explore.

And I advise you to do the same. Andromeda is a book that might leave you with mixed feelings, but it will not let you remain unaffected. It challenges you to think and evaluate the world we live in today, draw your own conclusions, and imagine what your own utopian future might look like.

I give Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale four iron stars out of five.

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[August 10, 1963] The Future in a Divided Land, Part 3 (An Overview of Science Fiction in East and West Germany)

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by Cora Buhlert

In the last two entries in this series, I gave you an extensive overview of West German science fiction. Now let's take a look across the iron curtain at what is going on in East Germany. For while the inner German border may be nigh insurmountable for human beings, mail does pass through. A lot of us have family in the East, including myself, and are in regular contact with them via letters and parcels. Parcels from West to East Germany usually contain coffee, nylons, soap, canned pineapple and all sorts of other consumer goods that are hard to come by in Communist East Germany.

Unfortunately, we cannot send books and magazines, cause they will probably be seized at the border for fear of "dangerous" ideas spreading. East Germans, on the other hand, are free to send books and magazines to relatives and friends in the West. And since my love for reading in general and for "space books" in particular is well known to my aunts in East Germany, the occasional science fiction novel from beyond the iron curtain has found its way into my hands.

The collaborations of authors Lothar Weise and Kurt Herwarth Ball mostly seem to be fairly straightforward science fiction adventures aimed at a younger audience. Eberhardt del'Antonio's 1959 novel Titanus is set in a utopian Socialist future where humanity is united and war has been abolished. A spaceship with a multinational crew, commanded by a Russian, of course, leaves for a distant planet, only to realise that the aliens are in the middle of preparing for a devastating attack against their neighbours.

Our heroic space travellers proceed to warn the intended targets only to learn that the aliens have a defence system in place that will destroy the attackers, for war is bad. I certainly can't argue with that sentiment, though the novel itself is rather wooden and unimaginative.

Als die Götter starben (When the gods died) by Günther Krupkat, which only appeared this year, is a variation on the ancient astronaut concept. An alien spaceship is found on the moon and records indicate that the aliens first landed on Earth in Mesopotamia millennia ago. It's not exactly an original idea, but it is certainly well told.

The ancient astronaut idea certainly seems to be popular in East Germany, for another science fiction novel published this year, Der Blaue Planet (The Blue Planet) by Brazilian born author Carlos Rasch, used the same concept. Two years ago, Carlos Rasch also published Asteroidenjäger (Asteroid hunters), an enjoyable romp featuring a spaceship with a multinational crew that is supposed to clear the asteroid belt, when the ship receives mysterious signals that might be evidence of alien life or might be something else.

What makes Asteroidenjäger remarkable is that there is an interracial romance on board between a white German doctor and a black African mathematician. Somehow, I don't see something like this happening in American science fiction anytime soon.  

However, the most exciting of those voice from beyond the iron curtain is not German at all, but a Polish writer, Stanislaw Lem, whose work I encountered via East German translations. I particularly enjoy Lem's humorous stories about the adventures of a space traveller named Ijon Tichy, which have been collected as Die Sterntagebücher des Raumfahrers Ijon Tichy (The Star Diaries of the Spaceman Ijon Tichy).

Lem's more serious works include the novels Eden with its fascinating portrayal of a truly alien society, Planet des Todes (Planet of Death), which was even filmed in 1960, and the generation ship story Gast im Weltraum (Guest in Space), which is currently being filmed in Czechoslovakia.

When comparing East and West German science fiction, the most striking thing is that in spite of all the superficial differences, the underlying themes and concerns are remarkably similar. Of course, West German science fiction tends to be set in capitalist futures, which somehow have managed to abolish all the negative side effects of unfettered capitalism, while East German and East European science fiction tends to be set in utopian Socialist futures, which have somehow managed to abolish all the negative side effects of real existing Communism.

However, it is notable that both East and West German science fiction tends to feature spaceships with multinational and multiracial crews, that it is set in futures where the world and humanity are united as one, where war and strife are but a distant memory. Whether it is Perry Rhodan single-handedly ending the Cold War and uniting humanity or Stanislaw Lem's and Eberhard del'Antonio's space travellers horrified by the relics of past wars they encounter in outer space, German (and Polish) science fiction clearly expresses the desire for peace and unity, a desire that is only too understandable in our divided country.

And that's it for now. In a future article, I will take a look at science fiction film in East and West Germany, where we are currently seeing some very exciting developments.

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