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[August 2, 1963] Sinister Geometry (Daniel F. Galouye's Lords of the Psychon)

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by Rosemary Benton

Whenever we read the newspaper, listen to the radio or watch Walter Cronkite's trustworthy complexion on CBS, we are looking for answers to some very basic but very important questions that will help us break down and normalize that which we don't understand. In much of science fiction, that which we don't understand comes hurtling at us because some dramatic change and the utterly unearthly have collided. In equal parts fear and curiosity the characters react, but ultimately and almost unerringly, logical thinking and scientific reasoning are then able to parse out what the characters should do in reply.

But what if the shift in humanity's daily life is beyond explanation, bordering on paranormal? And what if the alien force that is bringing about that change is so far removed from known biology that it appears extra-dimensional? Daniel F. Galouye's new book, Lords of the Psychon, takes the reader to that terrifying reality with an invader that is unnervingly simple – a large, floating, metallic sphere – and their mission which can be surmised as absorbing compatible human minds and letting the rest die in the grip of mind shredding madness.

As the last aging remnants of humanity squeak out an agrarian living in sporadic villages, the remaining ranks of the US military are trying everything to disrupt the geometric cities made of “pink stuff" that are growing like tumors all over the Earth. There is little to nothing known about the aliens save for odd ritualistic behavior, namely The Selection, The Chase and Horror Day.

The free moving agents of these alien city structures, fittingly named Spheres, are regarded with terror. Not only will they defend themselves with bolt of electricity if intercepted, but they are seen as the harbingers of death. Seemingly at random, a person will be selected by a Sphere for absorption. The Sphere will proceed to hover slowly after them until it has driven them to exhaustion or death. What happens once the victim passes through the floating orb and reemerges a corpse is unknown. If the Spheres, the expanding cities, and the annual occurrence of Horror Day can not be stopped then humanity will be completely hunted down or driven mad within a few decades. But how do you fight an enemy that seems to be capable of warping the very fabric of reality?

Like H. P. Lovecraft, Galouye's signature style for science fiction leans heavily on pitting humans against a threat that can weaponize the evolutionarily lacking perceptions of humanity. In his previous novel Dark Universe (1961), it is reasoned that an underground-dwelling humanity would have no use for sight and instead perfect their sense of smell, touch and hearing to compensate for the loss of sight. Predators, both animal and competing branches of humanity with evolutionarily adventitious infrared perception, could gain an upper hand on distracted, sightless humans. But a human who had plenty of experience listening, feeling and tasting the air of the world around them could adapt to better survive.

In both Lords of the Psychon, as well as the short story that spawned it, The City of Force (Galaxy, 1959), a humanity that hasn't the innate mindset and will to manipulate the structural substance called “pink stuff" or “psychon" is powerless to stop an entity that is so far evolved beyond physical form that it can traverse space and dimensions. It is via self administered meditation and strict perception training that this difficult task can be achieved, and while not everyone who manipulates the psychon does so exceptionally well, their alternative option is too dire to leave much of a choice. 

This story progression through learning and self education is an aspect of Lords of the Psychon that is very true to Galouye's style. In any of his writing Galouye does not initially arm his characters with much innate experience and knowledge. In the very first chapter of Lords of the Psychon we follow Jeff Maddox and his team into an alien “City of Force" on a self described suicide run to desperately try and do something to damage the aliens. The language and brevity of sentence structure only serves to drive home the desperation of the situation and how little they know compared to the knowledge they will need to again:

“On the Eve of Horror Day, 1993, Geoffrey Maddox, Captain, USA, lead a suicide detail from Headquarters, Third Army."

Some authors would have their protagonists win the day through cleverness, observation, and scientific evidence, and to be sure Jeff Maddox and the young lady, Eddie, do employ this formula for success against their alien invader. But it is due to not just cleverness, but an unmatched, almost panicked dash to save the human species that allows Galouye's protagonists to methodically gather information so that they may teach themselves how to stave off extinction. Galouye's message is clear – adapt or perish.

His progress in emotionally manipulating his readers is far reaching, even in his characterization. Jess Maddox makes a much more likable, empathetic and individualized protagonist over Jared from Dark Universe. Likewise, Eddie is a much more logic-driven, quirky but intense personality than Jared's betrothed, Della. But it is that specific flavor of almost-defeat and near panic that Daniel F. Galouye is cultivating which is making his work consistently worth reading. It thrums beneath Lords of the Psychon and I hope to see it again in his next book. As an example of the author's improvement as a writer, Lords of the Psychon shows a bright future for Galouye, especially if he keeps up with the speed at which he is currently writing.

Four and a half stars.

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[July 16, 1963] New old hand (Harlan Ellison's Ellison Wonderland)

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[A printing error in the first few paragraphs of this article led to some embarrassing apparent mis-statements as to who Mr. Ellison's English professor was.  If you read this article before 4:30PM Pacific Time, I recommend trying again!]


by Gideon Marcus

Until last month, I'd hardly known of Harlan Ellison.  Oh sure, his outsized personality and less-sized stature made him (in)famous in the fan community in the early '50s, but when he went pro in a big way around 1956, he mostly got published in SF mags I didn't read.  So I was delighted at the opportunity to catch up on what I'd missed with his latest book, a collection of science fiction work from his first eight years, amusingly titled Ellison Wonderland.


(at Worldcon in '55 [courtesy of Fanac])

This is what I know about the fellow: He went to Ohio State for a few semesters, where taught English professor Doris Pitkin Buck, one of the few members of academia who has managed to also have a thriving career in our genre (under her own name, at least).  Unfortunately, the English professor he got was a Robert Shedd, who told Harlan that he had no talent for writing. 

So Harlan dropped out of school and moved to New York in '55 to become a writer (I have a similar story — that's how I became a writer).  NYC adopted him, and he adopted it, and the two are now inextricably linked.  Over the next few years, he sold a raft of stories and not just to the SF mags.  In fact, the bulk of his work went into the mainstream and under-the-counter venues. 

He served in the Army for one hitch, came back, kept writing, and last year, he moved to Los Angeles to make it in Hollywood.  I understand Charles Beaumont helped get him on his feet by connecting him with the TV folks he knew. 

Ellison reminds me a bit of Robert Sheckley.  Both were in the military, both are Jewish, both were and are no longer married.  Their format of choice is the short story, often cynically humorous.  But Ellison's got more of a literary touch to his stuff, more affinity for the macabre.  It'll stand him in good stead as a screenplay composer, I think.

Anyway, his first collection is quite good, particularly in the latter half (the stories are not arranged chronologically, so I suspect he saved his better stuff for last).  You may have seen his stories when they were first published, but it's worth picking up the book for the introductions.  Here's what there is:

Commuter's Problem
from Fantastic Universe, June 1957

The longest piece deals with a salary man who takes the wrong train during his morning commute — and ends up across the galaxy.  A fair flight of fancy, but it never got in the groove for me.  Three stars.

Do-It-Yourself
from Rogue, February 1961

It seems you can get a kit for anything these days, including murder.  See all the ways Madge Rubichek tries to rid herself of her deteriorating husband.  Dark and sly, it's perhaps the Sheckleyist of the stories.  Four stars.

The Silver Corridor
from Infinity, October 1956

Dueling returns in the future, enabled by a fantastic machine that allows two opponents to fight in an unlimited variety of virtual settings.  But in a pure test of mental will, best make sure your convictions are strong!  A neat story, a bit like The Dueling Machine in a recent Analog — but Ellison does it better.  Four stars.

All the Sounds of Fear
from The Saint Detective Magazine, July 1962

The latest story published by Ellison (at least, at the time of the book's compilation) is a mature piece about an actor who really gets into his role.  Such is the danger of being a schizoid — latch onto the wrong model, and you're in for a world of pain.  Four stars.

Gnomebody
from Amazing Stories, October 1956

High school slacker makes a deal with a gnome, but his request is taken a bit too literally.  This is the most trivial piece in the collection, which fits given its early date of creation.  Three stars, barely.

The Sky Is Burning
from IF Science Fiction, August 1958

Why did the aliens fling themselves against our planet, committing suicide by immolation like so many cosmic lemmings?  And what terrible meaning does this have for humanity?  A bit overdone for my tastes — it just doesn't mean as much as it means to.  Three stars.

Mealtime
from Space Travel, September 1958

A trio of spacemen, representing all that is distasteful about our planet, are eaten by a sentient planet.  Indigestion results.  Three stars.

The Very Last Day of a Good Woman
from Rogue, November 1958

Arthur Fullbright is cursed with clairvoyance on the eve of the Earth's destruction.  Worse yet, he's never gotten laid.  That's a set-up for a wacky, slight piece.  This isn't either of those.  Five stars.


(also from Worldcon '55 [courtesy of Fanac])

Battlefield
from Space Travel, November 1958

Some people are career military.  That's all well and good, but what happens when war becomes just another profession, its soldiers a bunch of apathetic commuters doing pitched battle nine-to-five on the Moon (where civilians don't have to see or endure any of that messy killing business)?  If ever there was an argument for conflict to be well televised, this is it.  Three stars.

Deal from the Bottom (written with Joe L. Hensley)
from Rogue, January 1960

A stupid man makes an even dumber deal with the Devil…or at least, one of his understudies.  Cute.  Three stars.

The Wind Beyond the Mountains
from Amazing Stories, January 1957

Harlan Ellison found that, despite having schlepped from one end of the country to the other in his early life, New York was the town for him.  So strongly did he come to this conclusion that he wondered how he survived before he got there…and how he might fare upon having to leave.  Some can handle the disruption.  Others may find it fatal.  This moving story, about a band of interstellar explorers and the aliens they discover, explores that pain of dislocation.  Four stars.

The Forces That Crush
from Amazing Stories, December 1958

Some nebishes amount to too little to be noticed by the world.  One fellow, name of Winsocki, disappears from the ken of humanity altogether, to his chagrin.  I don't know why, but I love this story.  Five stars.

Nothing for My Noon Meal
from Nebula Science Fiction, September 1958

A spacewrecked astronaut finds salvation but tragic disfigurement upon encountering the fluhs, one of the few lifeforms on a barren planet.  But is the change such a curse?  Another story with staying power.  Five stars.

Hadj
from Science Fiction Adventures, December 1956

It's easy to think our species is pretty hot stuff, particularly once we develop space travel and all that jazz.  But it's entirely possible that the reaction we get from the galactic citizenry will be some variant of (as my nephew is fond of saying) "Siss on you, pister — you ain't so muckin' fuch."  Cute, but clearly an early story.  Three stars.

Rain, Rain, Go Away
from Science-Fantasy, December 1956

The third story Ellison ever wrote, it was inspired by the torrential rain storm that accompanied the first week of his arrival in New York.  It seems you can wish for the rain to leave…but it's a loan, not a gift.  Too fantastic for American magazines, it was eventually published across The Pond.  Three stars.

In Lonely Lands
from Fantastic Universe, January 1959

Last up, appropriately, is the story of a dying man and the alien who joins him for his final years as manservant and companion.  It's a lovely, haunting piece.  Four stars.


(a recent pic, from Westercon, with Poul Anderson [courtesy of Fanac])

There you have it — not a clunker in Ellison's first collection, and some instant classics, to boot.  Based on these and the few works of his I've managed to catch elsewhere, I think it's safe to conclude that here is a talent of the first rank, one who will go far no matter which coast he ends up on. 

Buy his book!

[P.S.  Did you take our super short survey yet?  There could be free beer/coffee in it for you!]

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[June 10, 1963] Foma: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Cat's Cradle)

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by Victoria Lucas

When a friend lent Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s newest novel, Cat's Cradle to me, I thought, “Oh, I know this book!" because I saw, as I flipped through it, the "ice-nine" and "Bokonon" I'd heard people buzzing so much about.  So I was glad to read it and understand the phenomenon.

But that's where my joy ended.  Vonnegut is a fine writer.  His style is idiosyncratic, askew; this is a novel novel.  But no one would accuse him of being optimistic or hopeful about the human future.  No Pollyanna he.

So in this account of the immediate future of our species, not only is there "The Bomb" to worry about, but there is a complex web of events that involves a new Doomsday Machine (ice-nine) and a new prophet (Bokonon), as if we didn't have enough of both of those.

The narrator, John, was recently divorced by his second wife because, as an optimist, she found it impossible to live with him, an ostensible pessimist.  He has writer's block ("loafing") on a book about the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (title: The Day the World Ended), and slowly he is drawn into the events of the story by actions he has taken to get to know members of the Hoenikker family, children of the "father" of the bomb.

It is hard to say what Vonnegut means by pessimism, because nearly every time something happens in the book, good or bad John seems surprised.  I thought pessimism meant expecting the worst in all situations.  On the other hand, he is surprised when one of the few good things in the book happens: the music Hoenikker's daughter plays is not just good but exquisite.  Just when he thinks he has the world figured out as a terrible place, there it is–beauty!  "I shrieked at Julian Castle, who was transfixed, too, 'My God–life!  Who can understand even one little minute of it?'" Obviously not John. 

And this turns out to be part of his religion, the belief system written by a black man named Boyd Johnson but called Bokonon in the dialect (of what language?) used on an island called San Lorenzo — an island on which events will shortly cause the whole world to end.  The author quotes The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, with the title "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?"  The Fourteenth Book answers in one word: "Nothing."

In case I haven't already made it clear, this is a work of apocalyptic fiction.  In explaining how the doomsday tangle of vectors one might call a "cat's cradle" occurred and how attempts to untangle it failed, John uses a new vocabulary invented by Bokonon that has a certain ring to it.

For instance, Boku-maru is an act of intimacy and worship performed by two people placing the soles of their feet together.  The members of John's (or any) group who are fated to act together in something important are a "karass."  I particularly like "granfalloon," the word for an imaginary connection that (unlike the linkage of a karass) has no real significance (alumni of a school, for instance, or people from a particular state). 

"Foma" are "harmless untruths" to be distinguished from the "damned lies" of politicians and corporations which Mark Twain (or Benjamin Disraeli) placed in his famous phrase in my title.  As for the statistics, John mentions his two wives, 250,000 cigarettes, and 3,000 "quarts of booze" preceding the events of the book. 

About "foma," Vonnegut's epigraph reads, "Nothing in this book is true.  'Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.'  The Books of Bokonon.  I: 5" Of course the existence of the "Books of Bokonon" is also fictional, but several of the quotations from it, when not black humor or bordering on it, seem almost optimistic.  This one, for instance, asserts that a person can believe in lies that make one happy.

This book of foma didn't make me particularly happy, but, dripping with irony, it was entertaining, and it has probably stirred up the college students all over the US as it has on my campus, so I'll give it a 4 out of 5.  I recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor who doesn't mind feeling slightly depressed about prospects for human peace and a long and healthy human future.

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[May 14, 1963] Behind the times (Ace Double F-195)

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by Gideon Marcus

This morning, Gordo Cooper's Faith 7 Mercury spacecraft didn't blast off into the heavens.  It's the kind of disappointment that makes one look in science fiction for a bit of solace.  And so, I have for you, that reliable well of SF adventure (and often mediocrity), the latest Ace Double.  This particular one features two wildly different tales, and yet, both have an air of age about them (in a creaky-jointed way, not a venerable one) that ensures that neither will be stories for the ages.  Nevertheless, they scratch an itch while we wait for NASA to get its act together.  Let's take a look:

Battle on Venus, by William F. Temple

A lone spaceship descends through the thick clouds of the Venus, humanity's first expedition to the Second Planet, only to land in the midst of a planetary war.  Automated torpedo ships, mini-tanks, and oversized buzzsaw wheels terrorize the barren landscape, which is strangely devoid of people.  When the terran spacecraft is damaged in the fighting, wet-behind-the-ears crewman, George Starkey, is sent off in a helicopter to find assistance.  At the end of the grueling trek lies maturity, love, and revelation of the source of the madness that's afflicted the misnamed Planet of Love.

Several factors make Battle on Venus feel like a throwback.  For one, Temple's Venus is wildly archaic in conception, with a breathable atmosphere and comfortable temperatures.  Its inhabitants are human in all but name.  And the romantic subplot could have been lifted (like virtually everything else) straight from a Burroughs novel — all it needed was a scene in which the characters exclaimed that they'd always loved each other; they were just certain the other party didn't return their feelings.

That said, two things make Venus work as a story, if not as science fiction.  For one, the British Temple writes in a mildly droll manner that makes the book feel like a deliberately ironic satire.  Some of the conversational exchanges are genuinely funny, and occasionally even border on profound.  Temple may not conform to the rules of science, but there is internal consistency, in plot and in style. 

But the big selling point for Venus is Mara, a Venusian native who is clever, resourceful, well-developed, and (miracle of miracles) even gets to be the viewpoint character for a decent portion of the book.  She is the real protagonist of the story, far more than the rather hapless George, and you can't help but like her. 

It takes a little while for Venus to engage, but once it does, it's a fun (if frivolous) read.  Three stars.

The Silent Invaders, by Robert Silverberg

After ten long years among the stars, Major Abner Harris is coming home to Earth.  Except the Major is actually Aar Khiilom of the galaxy-spanning Daruu, and his mission is to covertly make humanity allies of his race against the squamous Medlin.  His disguise as a human, which runs surgically deep is perfect — too perfect.  He quickly falls in love with a terran named Beth Baldwin…who turns out to be a Medlin in similar disguise.

It turns out that not only are the Daruu the bad guys of the galaxy, but that the Medlin have been coaxing the birth of a new generation of humans, ones with such telepathic and physical prowess that they will be come the new masters of the galaxy, ending the petty existing squabbles.  Aar must choose between carrying out his mission or becoming a traitor to his people.

Robert Silverberg ("Silverbob") wrote the first version of Invaders five years ago, publishing it in the October 1958 Infinity shortly before that magazine disappeared forever.  That original was a third the length of the novelization.  The plot is identical, however, and 90% of the language was carried over verbatim.  The novel adds local color and ratchets up Aar's uncertainty, both of which don't hurt the story.

What does hurt the story is Silverberg's immature style.  He wrote the bulk of this in his 20s, before he'd obtain much life experience, and it shows.  The emotions don't ring true, and there is an amateur quality to the writing.  Moreover, while the setup is interesting, the introduction of the race of superhumans is a handwave too far.  The book just isn't big enough for two big revelations. 

As a piece of far future worldbuilding, particular with regard to technology, Invaders is something of a success (I particularly liked a scene in which a cabbie is unsure as to the location of an address, so he asks his computer to guide him).  But as a story, and as a piece of literature (such as it is), it's barely fair.  2.5 stars.

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[Apr. 19, 1963] One way Via (Wallace West's book, River of Time)

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by Gideon Marcus

Time travel.  It's been a fixture of science fiction ever since H.G. Wells wrote the seminal work, The Time Machine.  And what could be a more seductive topic?  Instead of being confined to our plodding day-by-day, one-way march to the future, one could take great leaps in any direction — forward and back.

Wells' book dealt only with trips to the far future, a feat that is both more technologically feasibly and less fraught with challenges than journeys to the past.  After all, it would just take a sophisticated suspended animation system and a timer, and one could sleep one's way to a different time.  Going backwards requires a direct confrontation with a host of physical laws. 

Moreover, any trip you take to the past brings you face to face with your own history.  Your very presence inserts a variable that wasn't there before, one with endless possibilities for destroying your present.  Take the classic Grandfather Paradox: You go back in time and kill your grandfather. before he has children.  How do you still exist?  And if you don't exist, how do you kill your grandfather?

Some books take the premise seriously.  John Brunner's Times without Number, for instance, has all the time jaunts causing an increasingly unstable timeline, ending in the un-invention of time travel, itself!  Such would seem the inevitable fate of any universe in which time travel is possible.

Wallace West's new book, River of Time takes a different, more fanciful tack.  Instead of needing a machine to sail the time stream, instead, the past and present have something of a symbiotic relationship.  When times are troubled, a gateway to the past is formed to a similar crisis in the past.  Resolution of one fixes the other.

So it is that Ralph Graves, an overweight, under-achieving 23 year old with a Master's in Physics and a lowly news-writing gig, ends up driving his car into the Revolutionary War.  The 1964 he left was in the midst of a Cold War on the verge of heating up.  This dire situation is mirrored in 18th Century America, where the rebels are in dire straits. Returning to the present, Graves channels Paine, writing a stemwinder of a speech that gets picked up and rebroadcast across the country, raising national morale.  The result: supplies reach the ragged colonials in time for them to withstand the onslaught of the Redcoats, and the Revolution is saved.

This is just prelude to the novel's main story-line, one that teams Ralph with thin and nervous chemist, Larry Adams, all-American fighter jock and engineer, Hugh Woltman, and temperamentally stable psychologist, Mary Peale.  Just as tensions snap between East and West and the bombs begin to fall, the mother of all time rents appears sending Ralph and his group back to a crisis of similarly great proportion: just after the assassination of Julius Caesar.  Can this misplaced modern squad save the Roman Republic and, thereby, the 20th Century?

First things first: River of time is a fun book, and if its premise be fantastic, so much the better.  West has a deft, light style that paints complete pictures with enviable economy of words.  The book moves.  The first third of the book comprises two enjoyable self-contained bits that were published as short stories in 1950 and 1954.  They're a lot of fun, and the second piece is remarkable in that it conceives an effect of time travel I've not seen before or since.

As good as the earlier sections are, the book really shines when present meets past on the steps of the Senate.  Our heroes cleverly parlay their collection of parcels from 1965 into a better order for the Mediterranean in a rewarding romp.  I particularly loved the abundance of strong female characters: level-headed Mary; Publia, canny wife of Cicero; and Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile.  All are vital to the success of the enterprise. 

Alas, while I would love to give my highest rating to West's latest, I'm afraid there's a component that mars the package.  It is demonstrated early on that Mary Peale is highly susceptible to suggestion, and even though she does many important and vital things throughout the story, much of what she does, and her ultimate fate, are influenced by factors beyond her control.  I found her lack of agency disturbing.

To sum up, River of Time is a quick and enjoyable read, a worthy addition to the ever-growing library of time-travel related stories.  Four stars.

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[March 6, 1963] Generation Gap (Ace Double F-177)

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[While you're reading this article, why not tune in to KGJ, Radio Galactic Journey, playing all the current hits: pop, rock, soul, folk, jazz, country — it's the utmost…]


by Gideon Marcus

It was only a few years ago that Drs. Watson and Crick discovered DNA, that magical double-helix of protein molecules that are the blueprints for our genetics.  Now we know that our biology is coded, like so many punch cards, and that's why people are people, puppies are puppies, amebae are amebae.  An embryo with human DNA cannot grow up to be a horse.  A bear-coded blastula won't transform in utero into a giraffe.

There is a coding that runs almost as deeply as that in our chromosomes.  It derives from the society in which we are raised and the circumstances under which we grew.  Thus, a Dixiecrat is not wont to clamor for Civil Rights, and no one in my family is likely to abandon shul for Mass. 

Science fiction authors have their own genetic code.  While writers can be more flexible than politicians or religionists, they nevertheless tend to remain of a type, composing in a style forged early in their career by the prevailing trends and markets at the time. 

As evidence of this, I submit to you two short novels by a pair of authors whose output couldn't be more different despite appearing bound together within the pages of the recent Ace Double, #F-177. 

The Star Wasps, by Robert Moore Williams

The world of the 21st Century is a tidy, orderly place.  Free will is an illusion.  People live for their jobs and medicate for their moods.  Commerce and society hum along smoothly under the control of one Erasmus Glock, a shadowy figure whose hold on the strings of power is absolute. 

There is a fly in the ointment, however — John Derek is a man who would set society free.  With his base on the Moon, a cadre of die-hard loyalists, and his little glass spheres that instill a yearning for freedom, he is poised to lead a revolution.

Unfortunately, the ointment also has a wasp in the form of an invasion of interstellar killers called "the viral."  Incorporeal blue creatures, invisible to most humans, have been inadvertently teleported to our planet by the well-meaning scientist, Dr. Cotter.  These shimmering aurorae bring death to anyone they touch, and their numbers grow by the day.  This plague threatens both the stultifying profiteering of Glock and the freedom-fighting agenda of Derek.  Glock and Derek must work together, along with Cotter and Derek's new recruit, Jennie Fargo, to defeat the alien foe.

Robert Moore Williams was first published in the pre-Campbell days of Analog.  He has since written more than a hundred stories for a variety of magazines, but his DNA was baked in the Golden Age of science fiction.  The future world of The Star Wasps is an archaic, mechanistic one.  Society simplistically hinges on the activities of a half-dozen people.  There is a Resilient Woman Character whose primary role is to be the Love Interest.  After the intriguing set-up, Wasps degenerates into a figurative car chase, with people running around and pulling levers until the enemy is defeated.

Also, Williams writes like he's still getting a penny a word, writing in a redundant manner that only gets worse as the story drags.  Gems like:

As Jennie watched, with terror tightening the band around the bottom of her heart, the circle changed and became a ball of tiny dancing blue lights.

Under other circumstances, she would have thought the lights and the changing form and the color were beautiful. 

Now she knew they were death.

Was death beautiful?  Not to her.  She wanted life.

The Coelacanth fish, thought to be long-extinct until a specimen was hauled out of the Indian Ocean in 1938, is what's known as "a living fossil."  The Star Wasps is a similar relic from a time long passed.  I'd throw it back.  Two stars.

Warlord of Kor, by Terry Carr

The flip-side of F-177 is an entirely different matter.  Terry Carr is a new writer, as well as a Big Name in the fan community.  He is one of a new wave of authors steeped in the more nuanced works of the Digest Era of science fiction that began in 1949. 

Kor is set on a dusty world at the edge of Terran settlement, the site of humanity's first encounter with living sentient aliens.  The Hirlaji are a dying race of telepathic saurians, their once burgeoning culture reduced to a mere handful of aged specimens due to an unknown catalytic event thousands of years prior. 

Lee Rynason is the archaeologist tasked to discover the mystery of this societal sea change.  Why did the shift happen so abruptly?  Why is Horng, possessor of the Hirlaji's race memory, so reluctant to divulge this secret? 

Rynason's efforts are hampered by the ambitions of his superior, Rice Manning.  Manning has designs on the governorship of the planet and is willing to scapegoat the Hirlaji as a threat to do so — especially when it appears that the aged reptiles might somehow be related to The Outsiders, a long-vanished alien civilization that left its traces throughout the galaxy. 

Sketched in thumbnail, I suppose the plot of Warlord of Kor doesn't sound much better than that of The Star Wasps.  The lurid title doesn't help either (Ace loves its lurid titles).  But Kor is no pulpy tale.  It is the sensitive story of first contact, of discovery, of racial understanding, and of morality — of a piece with Bone's The Lani People and Piper's Little Fuzzy in illustrating the worth and importance of other, different cultures.

Plus, the characters are beautifully drawn with a spare efficiency that Williams would have done well to emulate.  In 97 pages, we learn far more about Rynason and Manning, as well as the other pivotal characters — the quietly strong colony quartermaster Mara Stephens, and the cynical heretic Rene Malhomme — than we do about William's characters in 126 pages.  It doesn't hurt that Kor has a very satisfying ending. 

If there's any drawback to Kor, it's that Rynason and Stephens seem a little slow on the uptake.  I was always a step or two ahead of them in solving the mystery, even when they had access to the same clues as the reader.  That's a small quibble, though.  Warlord of Kor is an excellent, quick read, and it's worth the 40 cent book price all by itself.  Four stars.

Speaking of collections of old and new, this month's Galaxy is a collection of stories by veterans and novices alike.  Come see how this amalgam of generations fares in the Journey's next article.  Stay tuned!

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Your ballot should have arrived by now…]




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[December 26, 1962] Diversions. (Ace Double F-161: Brunner's Times without Number, Grinnell's Destiny's Orbit)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

Ace Doubles are like an insurance policy for scientifiction readers.  Hungry for a decent yarn after a couple of lousy mags?  Want something more filling than a short story but that requires less commitment than a novel?  Did you miss a serial when it debuted across several issues of an sf digest?  Ace Doubles are what the doctor ordered: back-to-back dual publications, attractive in their lurid colors and never too intellectually demanding.

One of 1962's latest, F-161, is a particularly representative example.  Highly recommended by fellow Journeyer, John Boston, it kept me smiling throughout December…though not always for the reasons the authors intended…

Times without Number, by John Brunner
(or Worlds of the Imperium, the unauthorized sequel)

Sideways-in-Time stories have become very popular of late.  Just in the last few years, we've seen Andre Norton's Crossroads of Time, Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, and Keith Laumer's Worlds of the Imperium.  Joining them now is the latest from a new British author who has stormed out of the gate with some excellent work.

Times without Number, a fix-up compilation of three stories, looks as if its inception was strongly influenced by Imperium.  If you'll recall, the premise of Laumer's work was that an infinity of parallel timetracks existed and could be traversed with Maxoni-Cocini cross-time vehicles.  The Earth of our timeline is something of an isolate, the neighboring universes having almost all been blighted by runaway vehicle reactions.  In fact, one has to go about 400 years back in time to find a stable point of divergence that doesn't result in catastrophe.

And in fact, the milestone of difference in Times is a successful Spanish invasion of England in 1588 (just about four centuries ago).  The resulting present sees an ascendant Hapsburg Empire, a powerful China, an antagonistic Turkish Sultanate, and a series of petty states from the Vistula to the Gobi.  Technologically backward in many ways, the denizens of this world possess the secret of time travel.  In the Spanish lands, this power is protected by the Licentiates of the Order of Time, a brotherhood that acts something like Poul Anderson's Time Patrol, ensuring the sanctity of history.

Don Miguel Navarro, one of the Licentiates, fulfills the role that Bayard did in Imperium, engaging in a series of increasingly high-stakes adventures to preserve his timeline in a kind of temporal Cold War, to the point of (as in Laumer's book) treating with treasonous members of his time-traveling fellowship.  Brunner even goes so far as to provide for Don Miguel a strong-willed Scandinavian partner/girlfriend named Princess Kristina (an analog of the noble Swede, Barbro, from Imperium). 

Nevertheless, despite the superficial similarities in setting and style, Brunner's story breaks new ground, particularly at the end.  In fact, Brunner's commentary on the ultimate fate of a universe that allows time travel is, alone, worth the price of admission.

3.5 stars, especially if this kind of thing is your bag.

Destiny's Orbit, by David Grinnell

Ajax Calkins, spoiled young scion of the Calkans industrial empire, weeps for having no more worlds to conquer.  The Earth has been thoroughly explored and settled, from Antarctica to the ocean depths.  Mars is also crowded, there by an harmonious consortium of benevolent aliens.  Venus is a hellish wasteland, and the asteroids are under the firm grip of the Earth Mars Space Agency (EMSA).  Beyond Jupiter, the outer reaches of the solar system lie under the domination of the nefarious and inhuman Saturnians.  Only the fifth planet and the worlds of its orbit remain up for grabs, a sort of neutral zone between the two space powers.

And so, when Calkins is approached by asteroid miner, Anton Smallways, with dreams of colonizing a Trojan asteroid (named Ajax, no less!), he is more than happy to lend his vast resources and the use of his space yacht to the cause.  But is Smallways really just a meek servant?  Can Ajax the First and Last of the Kingdom of Ajax maintain a third-way between EMSA and the Saturnians?  And what of the meddling of the plucky EMSA agent, Emily Hackenschmidt, who is single-mindedly determined to end Calkins' schemes? 

Let's be clear — Destiny's Orbit is as subtle as a brick, a brick that was thrown out of the Society of Bricks for lack of subtlety.  It is juvenile space opera with as much moment as a two-inch crowbar.  It raids from the same larder as Leinster's The Wailing Asteroid and The Alien, by Raymond F. Jones, not to mention Burroughs and Doc Smith, etc.  It makes sense – "Grinnell" is really former Futurian Donald Wolheim, a pulp era editor and writer whose sensibilities were baked during the Golden Age [and, as John Boston informs me, this story was originally printed in the early 1940s!]

That said, Destiny's Orbit makes for easy reading as it is thoughtfully broken up into bite-sized chapters, and the content is pleasantly undemanding.  Moreover, the real star of the piece is the resourceful Emily, who is always fun (heroines paradoxically were given more to do "back then;" what I would have given for her to have been the viewpoint character!) So while I may scoff at the content and literary level of Wolheim's work, I did enjoy it. 

2.5 stars, objectively, but in my heart, it's a three-star work.

[P.S. If you want the chance to nominate Galactic Journey for Best Fanzine next year, you need to register for WorldCon before the end of the year! (or have registered last year… but then you can only nominate, not vote.) The Journey will be at next year's WorldCon, so don't miss your chance to meet us and please help put us on the ballot for Best Fanzine!]




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[December 2, 1962] They Came From the Mainstream (SF Books Not Published As SF)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

Science fiction is a marketing category.  Readers who enjoy this genre look for familiar names and for covers featuring rockets and robots.  Our esteemed host has done an excellent job reviewing nearly all the books published as science fiction this year.  But what about those which contain speculative content, but which are not marketed that way?

As the year draws to an end, let's take a look at some of this camouflaged science fiction:

Two new collections of translated stories by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, Ficiones and Labyrinths, contain many tales which will appeal to SF fans.  In Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, for example, the author describes an alien world.  An entire universe, consisting of every possible book, is the setting for The Library of Babel.  These and other elegantly written stories appeal more to the intellect than the heart.

Prolific British author Anthony Burgess offered two very different visions of dystopian futures this year.  A Clockwork Orange is narrated in futuristic slang by a teenage criminal.

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening . . .

Disorienting at first, this Russian-influenced language of tomorrow becomes clear through context, and is brilliantly used by Burgess to take us into a frightening world of random violence and government mind control.

Overpopulation leads to repression of heterosexuality, pregnancy becoming a crime, war used as a form of population control, and cannibalism in The Wanting Seed.  The language of this novel is not as difficult as A Clockwork Orange, but it deals with many important themes which require careful reading.

Russian-born writer Vladimir Nabakov, best known for his controversial novel Lolita (toned down somewhat in this year's film adaptation), creates a very unusual structure in his new book, Pale Fire.  It consists of a poem of 999 lines by an imaginary poet, followed by footnotes written by an equally fictional critic.  Read together, the poem and footnotes come together to form a plot of impersonation, exile, and murder.  What makes this a work of science fiction is the fact that it takes place in a world different from our own.  The story deals with the deposed king of the European nation of Zembla.  It takes place in an alternate version of the USA, which contains the states of Appalachia and Utana. 

Although all of these books were published as literary fiction, science fiction fans should not dismiss them, in Hamlet's words, as "caviar to the general."  They are all well worth reading, and produce the special sense of wonder that comes from our favorite genre. 




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[November 6, 1962] The road not taken… (Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

What if the good guys had lost World War 2?

Imagine a United States split in three pieces: the East Coast is a protectorate of the Reich.  The West has been colonized by the Japanese.  A rump free state sprawls across the Rockies and western Plains.  The Holocaust has extended to Africa, and the two fascist superpowers are locked in a Cold War with stakes as high, if not higher than in our real world.

Philip K. Dick has returned to us after a long hiatus with a novel, The Man in the High Castle.  It is an ambitious book, long for a science fiction novel.  Castle's setting is an alternate history, one in which the Axis powers managed to defeat the Allies…somehow (it is never explained).  Dick explores this universe through five disparate viewpoint protagonists, whose paths intertwine in complex, often surprising ways:

Major Rudolf Wegener: An agent of the Abwehr, the German foreign espionage service known for its subversive, anti-Nazi activities. Wegener is desperate to make contact with the Japanese government to inform them of a German plan to turn the Cold War hot – a conflict the Japanese cannot win.  His contact intermediary is…

Nobusuke Tagomi: Head of the Japanese trade mission in San Francisco, a deeply spiritual and traditional man who abhors violence.  Like many Japanese posted in the former United States, he has an outsized fancy for American antiques such as those provided by…

Robert Childan: A prissy antiques dealer, who accepts the superiority of the ancient civilizations of the Far East, having adopted the Japanese mindset almost entirely.  He is resolved to dismantle the cultural heritage of his nation one little treasure at a time – that is, until he discovers a new American culture growing like a flower in a footprint, a culture represented by the art whose creator is…

Frank Frink: Formerly a forger of American historical artifacts, he has turned his expertise to the creation of exquisite modern jewelry.  He is a Jew in a world where being a Jew is a capital crime.  He is married to but long-separated from…

Juliana Frink: A ravishing beauty and Judo expert living on her own in the Rocky Mountain States.  She links up with a mournful Italian truck driver who turns out to be an SD (Nazi secret police) assassin tasked with murdering the author of…

The Grasshopper lies heavy: A sort of sixth character that unites the protagonists.  It is a novel of alternate history in which Germany and Japan lost the Second World War.  Banned in the Reich and Reich-controlled countries, it is a best-seller elsewhere.  Its window on a world in which fascism did not triumph offers a scrap of hope, a vision of a world where sanity prevailed.  It is interesting to note that the timeline of Grasshopper is not that of our universe, but one in which the British and Americans are the post-war superpowers. 

There is a strong suggestion that what makes the world of Grasshopper so compelling is that it is, in fact, the real world.  This goes beyond wishful thinking.  At one point, Tagomi actually wills himself away from Castle's timeline.  Castle's author, Hawthorne Abendsen confesses that he did not so much write Grasshopper as simply draft it per the dicta of the I Ching, an ancient Chinese oracle book whose use is widespread in the Japanese-influenced regions, and which Abendsen consulted throughout the writing of his book.

Castle takes a good third of its length to really get started.  Ostensibly a thriller of an alternate Cold War, it is really a character study focused on the myriad minutiae of interaction.  How do conqueror and conquered interact?  How complete can cultural assimilation be?  What is the character of pride in a defeated race?  These are all good questions, and Dick does a decent job giving his take on their answers.

There are significant problems with Castle, however.  For one, it suffers from lazy worldbuilding.  The book is an opportunity for Dick to draw a wide cast of characters and depict their complex web of interactions.  But the underpinnings of the world they inhabit are implausible.  First and foremost, it would have been impossible, logistically, for the United States to have fallen to the Axis Powers.  For that matter, I have doubts that the Soviet Union was ever in existential danger.  Certainly the Reich never came close to making The Bomb – their racial theory-tinged science wouldn't have allowed it.  It is sobering when you realize that the Allies managed to fight two world wars and develop the most expensive and powerful weapon ever known all at the same time.  An Axis victory in World War 2 resulting in the conquest of the United States is simply a nonstarter.

Setting that aside (since we'd have no book otherwise) the Nazi feats in Castle, accomplished in just 17 years and including the colonization of Mars, Venus, the moon; as well as the damming of the Mediterranean(!) are just silly.  In fact, a clever touch would have been to suggest that those feats were actually purely propaganda.  They might well have been, but Dick plays it straight in the book. 

Dick also seems to have not done much homework before writing Castle.  The politics and depictions of Nazi characters could have been (and likely were) derived from a cursory read of Shirer's recent instant classic, Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, without much elaboration or extrapolation.  Fair enough.  Dick spends most of his time in the Japanese-occupied Pacific States of America, anyway, so he doesn't need to develop the German side too much. 

There again, however, we have no depth.  The inner monologues of the Japanese (and the most Nippophile of subjects, Childan) are distinguished mostly by Dick's eschewing of the definite article.  In other words, there is no "the" and precious few pronouns.  That is technically how the Japanese language works, but it's not as if those concepts don't exist – they're simply implied.  Moreover, it doesn't make sense that Childan would speak and think this way.  The execution is clumsy.  It makes the Japanese come off as pidgin-speakers, incapable of erudition in English.

The Japanese and Easternized Americans also exhibit a painful stiffness, and utterly spartan adherence to the ancient arts and ways.  It's as if Dick had read Suzuki's Zen and Japanese Culture (one of the recent wave of books the Japanese have released to rehabilitate the image Westerners have of them) and took it as representative of all Japanese culture.  I've been to Japan ten times.  I've studied Japanese for two decades.  I have a great many Japanese friends.  They are as varied as any other set of people, and this monodimensional portrayal does them no favors – nor does it interest particularly. 

Add to this the sterile, detached atmosphere of the book, as if the words were cloaked in gauze, and it makes for an often sloggish read.  I understand that the style underscores the bleak hopelessness of life in the new America, but there should have been some variation among the characters.  They all think similarly.  A sort of cynical weariness.  It's even justifiable, but it's oppressive and monotonous. 

The reason for Dick's long absence from the science fiction genre (alternate history is not strictly science fiction; one of Dick's characters even says as much in Castle, but let's not split hairs) is that he, like Sturgeon and many others, tried to make it big with a mainstream book.  Like Sturgeon, he was not successful, so it appears he has tried to bridge the gap between SF and the mainstream by picking a particularly popular topic.  Shirer and Suzuki have certainly plowed the field for Dick, and early buzz around Castle is strong. 

But unlike Heinlein's mainstream success, Stranger in a Strange Land or Sturgeon's less successful (but better) Venus Plus X, I find it difficult to discern an overall message in Castle.  I find myself comparing Castle unfavorably with Orwell's 1984, a book that was not only an excellent novel, but also a profound cautionary tale against Communism and the pursuit of power for power's sake.  Castle doesn't really say much other than "life under the Japanese would be pretty lousy, albeit better than under the Nazis."  The interesting relationships between characters, and what Dick tries to convey through them, are subverted by the lack of plausibility of Dick's alternate 1962 and by the flawed and flat portrayals of those who live in it. 

Of course, maybe these flaws are intentional.  The ending suggests that the world of Castle isn't even real, just some sort of half-baked flight of fancy.  One might conclude that all of the stereotypes, all the shallow history, the mind-numbing sameness of the characters are just beams to support the structure of a colossal cosmic joke.  That Castle really is just a Dickian daydream set to paper, and that the styling of its components is designed to underscore the unreality of the story's proceedings.  Seen in this light, Castle would be subtly brilliant.

However, I suspect that gives Dick too much credit.  I think Dick was really just throwing vague ideas out there and hoping we'd Rorschach them into something coherent.  Castle is a readable book, a well-timed book, and it knits a number of characters together somewhat entertainingly, at times profoundly.  But it's also a sensational, shallow book.  An overwrought, affected book.  It's not bad – Dick is never bad – but it is not the masterpiece I think many people feel it is destined to be. 

Three stars and a half stars.

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[Oct. 25, 1962] The Cold War is all wet (Dean McLaughlin's Dome World)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

There is one singular difference between the Cold War and all conflicts that have preceded it: for the first time in history, both adversaries have the power to wipe each other out utterly.  Direct conflict is madness, and indeed, while we may rattle the sabers incessantly, it is this mutually assured destruction that may preserve the peace for longer than in any era before it.  Perhaps the Chinese and Indians, whose border is seeing the greatest conflict in the world since Korea, need their own atomic bombs.  On the other hand, the deployment of Russian nukes in Cuba, and the responsive blockade, may well turn our Cold War hot any day now, so the jury is still out on the deterrent value of the weapons.

As luck would have it, the Cold War has crept into my SF reading, too.  Dean McLaughlin describes a new variety of the conflict in his new (and first!) science fiction book, Dome World.  Deep sea dome cities have been set up by the world's new superpowers — the United States of the Americas and the African Union.  Their tenuous peace is deteriorating fast as both powers escalate claims over the rich mineral deposits on the ocean floor.  The fragile domes are vulnerable to even the slightest attack.  As the warships start to circle overhead, what can anyone do to preserve the existence of the undersea communities?

Dome World is really two stories in one, the second half taking place some time after the first.  Part I was originally the March 1958 Astounding novelette, The Man on the Bottom — a piece of which I have no recollection whatsoever.  Set at the beginning of the above-described conflict, it is up to Mason, the manager of the American Wilmington dome to find a middle path between the nuclear Sympleglades on either side of the Atlantic.

Part II is entirely original to the novel.  Years after Mason's solution, conflict is brewing again.  This time, it is between newly independent domes and those settled by Mainlanders.  Macklin, a producer of private bathyscapes with a bad heart, is tapped to negotiate a peaceful settlement to end the increasing Mainlander raids on seabottom dwellings.  Can he succeed before time runs out…for his community and himself?

Mclaughlin's undersea world is beautifully detailed, a logical extrapolation of the Aquanaut exploration of the ocean floor that began just this year.  His protagonists are weary, guilt-soaked men thrust into positions of moment by history — or are they in those positions because they are great men to begin with?  Neither Mason and Macklin asked for the responsibility of saving their respective peoples, and neither relish their positions.  Yet, they feel compelled to act, nevertheless.  The Journey's editor recently observed that leaders are those for whom the drive to act is greater than the fear that they might be taking the wrong action.  That fear acts much like an atomic barrier — an electron jumps levels only in extraordinary circumstances, and similarly, it takes an extraordinary person to jump out of her/his level to the next.

Dome World's stories are really quite good.  Unfortunately, McLaughlin tends to get in his own way.  Perhaps because he didn't have enough material to fill a novel, he frequently repeats himself.  His sentences are redundant.  He says the same thing in slightly different words.  Often.  At first, this feels like a deliberate attempt to convey the ponderous inexorability of the upcoming war and the bone-tiredness of Mason.  It's constant throughout the book, however, and smacks of padding.  Also, as William Atheling, Jr. pointed out in the August issue of AXE, McLaughlin also has a perverse aversion for the word "said."  I'm as much a fan of creative dialogue as anyone, but McLaughlin takes it to extremes.  Particularly bad are the questions that characters "wonder" to others rather than say.  Wondering is something I take to be internal, not spoken.

In any event, if you can tolerate these literary tics, Dome World actually moves pretty briskly, and the two mysteries that are Mason and Macklin's solutions are worth waiting for.  Three and half stars.

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