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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 28, 1966] Messiahs and Resignation (New Worlds and SF Impulse, September 1966)

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

An interesting month for the Brit magazines, as there seems to be changes going on – again. More of which later, but I’m going to change convention this month and start with New Worlds, simply because it arrived first!


Terrific cover by Keith Roberts

The magazine is here.

Having had time off from writing the Editorial for a couple of months, editor Mike Moorcock’s back and clearly on a mission. His Editorial this month sets out his stall from the beginning as it once again tackles the often-taboo subjects of sex and religion in SF.

Regular readers will know that really this is actually nothing new – Moorcock’s mentioned these topics before, and often.  My first review of New Worlds was of an issue with the Harry Harrison story The Streets of Askelon in it, which is mentioned here as an example of a controversial story. However, this time the stories are being used to provoke ‘head-on’, with Mike baldly stating in this Editorial that he is out to shock – ”… we anticipate a certain response to the stories in this issue…” .

Do they really shock, though? Whilst there are undoubtedly aspects that will be surprising and even be actively disliked by some readers, most of the stories cover themes and ideas already touched upon in both New Worlds and SF Impulse in recent months. The Streets of Askelon was published four years ago, and there have been similarly controversial stories since. (Langdon Jones's story I Remember, Anita is also mentioned, which I thought I hated, but actually liked!) In the last few issues there has been a regular trend of stories with a religious element to them, usually not positive, although at least they are often looking at it from a different angle.

Anyway, with the proverbial stall set, let’s get to the stories!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

Behold, The Man, by Mike Moorcock

And to the big story of the month, given a dramatic cover by Keith Roberts. (I know I have been quite dismissive of some of Keith's previous covers, but this one I really like.)

Some may regard the story as deliberately provocative, a sensation-piece written with little purpose other than to gain attention and sales by means of creating outrage. The sort of thing that if it were in the newspapers would generate that “Did you read that?” response, followed by the outcry which then gets others to read it.

Personally, I am much more forgiving. If you’ve read any New Worlds or Impulse over the last year or so, you will find the main religious theme of this story there already.

Time-travelling Karl Glogauer lands in 29AD aiming to find the Nazarene Jesus Christ. He meets John the Baptist, and eventually  Jesus. To Gloghauer’s horror, he finds that the Jesus he encounters is not the one expected from the Scriptures but instead a gibbering imbecile. Reluctantly Karl realises that he must take on the role and the responsibility and become what people in the future expect Jesus to be, even though he knows what will happen to him.

Having berated New Worlds for the clumsy story Look On His Face last month which covered similar ground, it would be easy to do the same here, but for the fact that this is a much superior tale. The character is nuanced, the story engaging and most of all surprisingly respectful towards the idea of religion. Although religion is undoubtedly central to the story, it also looks at loyalty, responsibility and duty, as well as the effect of symbolism and idolism on a mass of people to create a memorable story. I suspect that this is a story that will be remembered for a long time, even outside of the initial outrage. Another 5 out of 5. (That’s two in two months… a worrying habit!)

That Evening Sun Go Down, by Arthur Sellings

And then back to Earth with a bump. Another appearance of a regular author here, though one who’s rarely impressed me. That Evening Sun Go Down begins with something written in the style of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange before telling us it is another – yes, another post-apocalyptic tale. Space-filler, sadly. 3 out of 5.

Signals, by John Calder

A new name to me. The story of a scientist with a scientific discovery of “interatomic communication”, based around the atom, but instead of telling it like it would be in an Asimov story this keeps veering into talk about sex, which fits with the brief of the magazine but to me feels tacked on, presumably in an attempt to be controversial. Not really sure whether this is meant to be parody, but in places it does feel like it.  2 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

A Taste of the Afterlife, by Charles Platt and B. J. Bayley

This is an intriguing one, as a collaboration between two regulars. Platt is now recognised by the magazine as “Designer”, I see. The story is set in the future as Fairweather, our narrator, is given an assignment in some future Cold War – installations have been destroyed, apparently by some sort of interference beam or covert saboteurs, and it is his job to discover the cause. To do this, Fairweather must exist in the Afterlife, which involves killing him in order to travel there. An intriguing idea, but it all boils down to being James Bond-type stuff. It does sound a little like the movie Fantastic Voyage, which I gather was just released in the US – Jason has talked about it already. The novel is reviewed in SF Impulse this month, more of which later. 3 out of 5.

The Atrocity Exhibition, by J. G. Ballard

And on to a big-hitter with the return of J. G. Ballard. The title alone suggests that we’re back in Ballard-territory. Bleak, disparate, odd, memorable, peppered throughout with references to cultural and religious icons – the Madonna, Nagasaki, Elizabeth Taylor, Garbo. Really defies explanation, but this feels more like a return to form after the last couple of lack-lustre efforts. Nearly as good as the Moorcock story for me, although I am starting to feel that what once was startlingly original in style is now a little tired. 4 out of 5.

Another Little Boy, by Brian W. Aldiss

What! Another Aldiss story?

Interestingly, this one has an introduction from Aldiss that explains that it was inspired by a previous story by J. G. Ballard. Whilst I’m never a fan of authors having to explain their story, this one actually is not bad, and gives a whole new meaning to that phrase “Make Love, not War!” as in the future the commercialisation of sex and industrialisation of contraception has created a quite-different society to what we have now. Determined to celebrate the beginning of this enlightened age, the characters decide to re-enact the dropping of an atom bomb over Nagasaki. Sounds barmy – and it is! – but you can never accuse Aldiss of writing the same thing over and over. Silly, but entertaining. 4 out of 5.

Invaded by Love, by Thomas M. Disch

And talking of love, here’s another story involving it. Although he has been around a while, I think that this is my first read of material from another American who like Roger Zelazny is making waves with his New Wave stylings. This one fits Moorcock’s theme this month as it tackles religious belief head on and adds to this a drugs element. In the story an alien preacher arrives on Earth, attempting to sign humans up to his Universal Brotherhood of Love. As part of this the alien offers little yellow pills which eliminate violence and feelings of anger. As more and more people globally take the drug, war is eliminated but it also leads to unintended results such as world-wide famine as humans refuse to slaughter animals as well.

There is some resistance. An attack by the human resistance on the alien’s orbiting spaceship simply leads to the arrival of an alien fleet, which there is now no urge to attack. Eventually the world succumbs to this alien invasion.

This is a surprisingly dark tale, which reminded me a little of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, without quite so much of the hectoring, or perhaps Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End. Am sure Philip K Dick is writing similar stuff too, of whom more in a moment. The idea that invasion occurs not through war but by peace is an intriguing one. At times the story is a tad unsubtle, but overall, the story is quite impressive – I expect to read more from this promising writer. 4 out of 5.

Book Reviews

After his skewering of Goddard’s film Alphaville last month, John Brunner returns to criticise novels this month by exploring the work of Philip K Dick, who I’ve mentioned already this month.

As PKD is regarded as one of the New Wave of writers, perhaps unsurprisingly Brunner is also a fan of all of PKD’s work and as a result this month’s analysis is less eviscerating and more complimentary. It is well explained and detailed with an exhaustive list of novels mentioned at the end. Putting my cards on the table, I must say that personally Dick is an author I admire but not love. I generally prefer his short stories to his novels, but this article might even get me to try some of those PKD novels I haven’t tried yet.

James Cawthorn then covers a trilogy of books all dealing with planetary exploration. This includes Hal Clement’s Close to Critical, John Rankine’s Interstellar Two Five and Trivana 1 by R. Cox Abel and Chas. Barren. He also reviews John Carnell’s New Writings in SF 8 and a couple of Compact SF publications (the publisher of this magazine coincidentally), including The Deep Fix by a certain James Colvin.

Lastly, Hilary Bailey reviews lots of items in brief this month. This includes Night of Light by Philip Jose Farmer, Bow Down to Nul by Brian Aldiss, Henry Kuttner’s Fury, Merril and Kornbluth’s Gunner Cade, Clash of Star Kings by Avram Davidson and rather weirdly, a non-fiction book The Family and Marriage in Britain by Ronald Fletcher. Well, I guess that it fits in with the theme of sex in the issue!

There are no Letters pages this month. It’ll be interesting to see how the mail-bag fills after this determinedly controversial issue.

Summing up New Worlds

I said last month that I thought New Worlds was one of the best for a long time. This one is, if anything, better. The Moorcock story is most memorable, but then the rest of the register – Ballard, Aldiss – is not too shabby either, and Disch is particularly impressive if a little unsubtle. The Editor’s insistence on including new names is still admirable, but also means some expectedly lesser efforts, but even there I have read worse. A very good issue overall, even if it is not as controversial as the Editor would like us to believe.

The Second Issue At Hand


Another cover by Keith Roberts

And after all that hullabaloo, let’s go to SF Impulse. Here there’s also controversy, as editor Kyril Bonfiglioli is stepping down. His editorial is short and brief – I’ll show it here.

Must admit, I felt that this was on the cards, although I expected the ending would be a little more graceful. I have said in recent issues how much Kyril seemed to be treading water, and this might explain it. Or perhaps it was the title-change to SF Impulse last month that was the last straw.

Harry Harrison in his new Editor role writes in Critique of the novelisation of the movie Fantastic Voyage, which I’ve already mentioned this month. He’s not a fan of the novelisation, although he is keen not to place blame solely with the “good doctor” Asimov.

The Rig by Chris Boyce

An odd one, which is partly science fiction horror and partly allegorical, I think. A strange lily plant grows in the North Sea, and Jalovec, a scientist, is sent to a nearby oil rig to determine what it actually is. It seems that the plant is telepathic and generates emotional responses in those humans around it. When the plant’s effect spreads to Britain, catastrophe ensues. I did wonder if this was a take on the social drugs movement and “flower power”. At a more visceral level it reads like a psychedelic version of Day of the Triffids.

I was more intrigued by the claim at the top on the banner that Boyce’s last story, George in the June issue of Impulse was popular, as I didn’t like it. But then what do I know? I’m not sure I love this one, either. 3 out of 5.

Martians at Dick’s End by Daphne Castell

Good to see the return of a female regular here, but as the title suggests, the story is a parody. Martians crashland near a remote farm at Dick’s End – cue lots of low-level sniggering – and the narrator tells of how their blacksmith grandfather and his fellow villagers help the Martians fix their ship. In the meantime these white furry aliens acclimatise by speaking with quotes from television, and learn pub games like shove ha’penny.

As I’ve said before, these either work for you or they don’t. For me, they usually don’t, although this one I found gently amusing. I must admit that it does bring a degree of levity after the rather po-faced Boyce story, although it would never happen in The Archers (a British radio soap opera, been running about 15 years now). 3 out of 5.

Timothy, by Keith Roberts

And the return of the ever-so-busy Mr. Roberts, who seems to be keeping the magazine going almost solo at the moment. Many will be pleased at the return of Keith’s Anita, the naughty teen witch of many a previous issue.

Personally, the Anita series has varied in quality for me – usually depending on how much Anita’s Granny is in the story – but they are often entertaining. This latest story tells of Timothy, a scarecrow Anita made last Spring and who she has now decided to bring to life. As expected, chaos ensues when Timothy falls in love with her. It reads rather like a British version of Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Fantasia. Light and inoffensive, but might just satisfy the demand for more Anita stories. 3 out of 5.

The Writing Man by M. J. P. Moore

A new name to me here. It is one of those experimental stories that reads as a stream of consciousness until the twist at the end, which I saw coming from a long way away. It’s been done before, perhaps too many times. 2 out of 5.

Audition by Fred Wheeler

A new name. A mercifully short story.

Jodrell Bank receives a communication from space, which it replies to. Other countries then attempt their own responses, which leads to the killer last line. (Not.) More filler. As a brief story it reads more like a joke told in a pub. It is OK but you’ll never remember it once you’ve finished the magazine. 2 out of 5.

Make Room! Make Room! (Part 2 of 3), by Harry Harrison

Last month, I gave the first part of this a 5 out of 5 rating, something I don’t think I’ve ever done before. Admittedly, whilst it is basically a detective story set in a future dystopian setting, I was impressed by the nuanced characters and the descriptions of shabbiness and squalor in a world of overcrowded excess, crime and with a lack of resources.

This time around, Police Detective Andy Rusch is still investigating the death of crime boss “Big Mike” O'Brien. However, his relationship with O'Brien’s mistress Shirl has become complicated to the point where she moves in with Andy and his older friend Sol. The perpetrator of the crime, teenager Billy Chung, leaves the city and escapes to the decrepit Brooklyn Navy Yard where he meets Peter. Peter is another vagrant who is convinced that the world will come to an end at the oncoming millennium, but despite this the two find solace in looking after each other.

The story is still bleak. Much of it is about the situation around Andy and Shirl, which shows us unremitting squalor and decay. Whilst the O'Brien investigation is ongoing, it seems to take a step back here for the story to concentrate on other aspects. None of the characters come out of this well, yet their reasons for being like this in a dog-eat-dog world are clear.

I was interested to see if the story maintained its high score from last month, and I’m pleased to say that mainly because of the vivid imagery it still does. So again, 5 out of 5. We still have the murder to solve in the final part – I am interested to read how this one ends.

Summing up SF Impulse

This is not a bad issue. It could have been Kyril’s attempt to throw in anything left in the slush pile, but under the steering hands of Keith Roberts, it’s not that different to normal. Which raises the question of how long Roberts has been doing this for, with Kyril taking the credit.

In short, it’s another middle-mark issue overall, with some very good (e.g. the Harrison) and some not to my tastes. It’s not a disaster, which it could have been, but it is clear that there’s some filler here. My response is tempered by the fact that I realise how much hard work is going on behind the scenes to get an issue – anything like an issue – out on time.

Summing up overall

With everything going on this month, it perhaps shouldn’t be too much of a surprise for me to suggest that New Worlds is the significant ‘winner’ this month. Like Harrison’s novel for SF Impulse last month, the Moorcock story alone is almost enough to guarantee a win, but to which is also added a Ballard and an Aldiss which I thought were superior fare. More importantly, New Worlds shows a coherence and a quality that SF Impulse seems to lack. It is perhaps not surprising, though. It’ll be interesting to see if future issues of SF Impulse alter much with the change in management.

Until the next…



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 18th, 1966] Reawakening the Inner Child (Black and Blue Magic)

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by Robin Rose Graves

When my young niece came to visit last month, I immediately ran to my bookshelf, perusing some browning pages I’ve kept since childhood. Stories that had fed my growing imagination that I longed to pass along to my niece. My excitement was quickly doused. Of the titles I picked, none were suitable for a young girl of eight years old. I’m afraid I am terribly out of touch with the milestones of childhood, having no kids of my own, nor plans to have any. Perhaps I needed to forget about the outdated stories I’ve loved and turn my attention to more modern titles.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder is a name that has recently come to my attention. While I missed out on her first two publications, Season of Ponies and The Velvet Room, I decided to give her most recent book, Black and Blue Magic, a chance. The clincher was that the main character is named Harry Houdini Marco.

As a child I gobbled up any sort of book about Harry Houdini. Magicians were the closest thing to actual magic and perhaps a small part of me believed if I mastered the art, I would become magical. However, my plans were foiled by my awkward co-ordination and fear of public speaking. The former, the main character and I have in common. Hence the title: “Black and Blue Magic.”

Harry Houdini, the Magician…not our child protagonist

Harry Houdini Marco was named thus by his talented magician father, who hoped young Harry would grow up to be the greatest magician of all time. What added to his high expectations was a prediction that Harry would possess a most unique type of magic — something Harry’s dad interpreted as proof that his wish would come true.

Now that his father has passed, Harry lives with his mother in a boarding house she runs. He still feels pressure to measure up to his dad’s dreams for him, but Harry has given up on trying to learn magic. As summer starts, he laments over how boring it will be with his best friend moving to another neighborhood and his Mom’s plans to treat them to a vacation having been foiled by a tenant moving out. More than anything, Harry wants his mom to find love and remarry, so she won't have to work so hard. He also dreams of leaving San Francisco behind and living on a farm.

Harry’s luck changes when he encounters a strange and clumsy man. After the man accidentally leaves his suitcase behind, Harry carries the case back to him and offers him lodging at the boarding house.

Days later, Harry is surprised to find the man has accepted his invitation. After a few nights of spying on him, Harry discovers Mr. Mazeeck is more than just a salesman — he’s also a once powerful, now disgraced and cursed wizard who sells magical items. After all the help Harry has given Mr. Mazeeck, the wizard thanks him by giving Harry an item from his suitcase — a small potion that when applied to his back and the magic words are uttered, allows Harry to sprout wings.

Just because Harry has wings doesn't mean he's any less clumsy

With his newfound magic, Harry spends every night of summer flying around San Francisco. He has misadventures each night such as landing in the monkey exhibit at the zoo only to be chased away by the animals, being mistaken as an angel by a drunkard, and stepping in to stop the corner store from being robbed. Without meaning to, Harry impacts the lives around him for the better. After sighting Harry, the drunkard quits drinking, and a grouchy neighbor turns kind after thinking an angel has been landing on her roof.

But as summer nears its end, Harry has yet to figure out how to set his mom up with one of the kindly residents. And his potion is about to run out…

Harry as a character is extremely likeable. He is average and unremarkable, yet incredibly altruistic with his newfound magic. Harry never passes up the opportunity to help another out. Like ripples, his actions unintentionally bring good to those around him.

While an upstanding example of a kid, he does not come across as unrealistic. He chases what he finds fun and has a sense of humor, which he shares with both his mom and the man he wants her to marry. Scenes between the two, and later, the three of them are warm and charming. The story truly made me believe that Harry loves his mom and wants what’s best for her — his hope that she can marry and no longer have to work the boarding house surpasses his desire to leave the city.

This book has the excellent message that our actions, what we do for those around us, matter. There is just a touch of magic added to give the story wonder; the desire to fly is just as human a quality as loving and helping one another.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder

While speeding through the book in two days, I can imagine this will be a book to be read one chapter a night to children. Each chapter is a small adventure. Though they sometimes leave off on a cliffhanger, these are quickly resolved within the first lines of the next chapter, defusing the tension. For example, one chapter ends with Mr. Mazeeck telling Harry that next time he’ll be in the city, Harry will be dead. This raised many exciting questions in my mind. Is this a warning that disaster is coming for San Francisco? Does Harry have an enemy that will soon emerge? Then I turned the page to the next chapter, and Mr. Mazeeck explains that this is because he’ll next visit San Francisco in 200 years. Being that Mr. Mazeeck is a wizard with a longer lifespan, he’ll simply outlive Harry by the next time he’ll visit. It's a simple explanation that quickly ruins any sort of tension created in the chapter before.

I understand, to some extent, why it’s written this way. In-between the question being raised and the answer quickly given, my head swam with imagination. It transported me back to my childhood, when ending the night on a cliffhanger chapter would fill me with wonder as I churned over ideas in my mind of where the story would go next, only too eager for the next night to read more. Such things incite imagination, one of the purposes of reading as a child. I did find it to be a let down with this book when the actual answer was rather bland compared to my own assumptions.

Nevertheless, it’s the ending that brought the book together for me. It is as sweet and full of wonder as the rest of the book, and brings several plot points spread throughout to a close in a more than satisfying way. Black and Blue Magic left me feeling happy and spoke to the inner child. I think it will be a more than suitable read for my niece, as well as something that will hold the test of time.

4 out of 5 stars.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 16, 1966] All Shook Up (Catastrophe Planet by Keith Laumer)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

With apologies to Elvis Presley.

Retief and Company

Prolific author Keith Laumer was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1925. He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War Two, then in the renamed US Air Force from 1953 to 1956, and again from 1960 to 1965, reaching the rank of captain. Between those latter two hitches in the military, he was with the US Foreign Service, stationed in Burma.


Appropriately, this recent photograph makes the writer look both serious and playful.

Laumer's time spent as a diplomat shows up in his many stories about James Retief, an agent for the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne, who tends to solve problems of interspecies relations with fists and trickery. These are comic tales, often venturing into slapstick. On a more serious note, his recent mainstream novel Embassy reflects his experiences in the Far East.


Cover art by Darrell Greene.

In addition to these works, he also writes fast-paced adventure stories, both serious and lighthearted. His new novel Catastrophe Planet is definitely one of the former.

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On


Cover art by Richard Powers.

Our hero and narrator is Malcome (Mal) Irish. He lives in a near future of flying cars and other such technological wonders. More importantly, a shift in the Earth's crust has led to worldwide disaster. There are frequent earthquakes, a enormous increase in volcanic activity, and vast changes in the world's geography. The northern part of Florida, for example, is underwater, and the southern half is an island. (At this point, I'm reminded of the pretty good science fiction movie Crack in the World, although Laumer's apocalypse doesn't actually threaten to destroy the whole planet.)

His adventure begins in a small, deserted town in Georgia. (The US state, not the Soviet republic.) A dying man tells him a bizarre tale. During a secret operation in Antarctica, designed to stop the shifting of the crust, he and other military men discovered a frozen mastodon deep under the ice. That's unusual enough, but what makes it really weird is the fact that the ancient beast was wearing a harness. Add to that the body of a Neanderthal carrying what seemed to be a ray gun, along with other seemingly impossible relics, and they had a real mystery on their hands.

Before they could explore any further, however, strange men attacked and wiped them all out, except for the dying man, who managed to escape and make his way back to the United States. Mal has to battle similar men himself. They seem to be oddly emotionless, yet relentless in their attempts to kill him. Fortunately, they are also very poor fighters, and Mal manages to eliminate them, although he's never killed anyone before. (I'll warn you right now that a lot of people get killed in this book.)

Coin of the Realm

With his last, dying breath, the man tells Mal to take something out of his pocket. It turns out to be a gold coin, inscribed with writing in an unknown language. Mal travels to Miami, where he stays at the luxury hotel run by an old friend. (Although the city has undergone some damage from the disaster, it is fairly intact, and life goes on almost as it did before.) There's a convention of numismatists going on at the place, so he shows them the mysterious coin. It's pretty clear that this is more than just a meeting of coin collectors. They are all middle-aged men (likely enough), seem to have no interest in the partying at the convention (improbable), and are oddly emotionless (sounds familiar).

Damsel in Distress

Mal tails some of the men, and winds up saving a woman they try to attack. (She's a tough cookie herself, and manages to save him, too.) She speaks an unknown language, wears a strange metallic jumpsuit, and seems unacquainted with certain aspects of everyday life. (She doesn't recognize bread as food, for example.) Mal manages to figure out that her name is Ricia. They hide out in a cheap hotel for a while, where he also learns that she doesn't mind being completely naked in front of him.

While Mal is out on an errand, the bad guys kidnap Ricia. Desperate to track down her abductors, he heads to Crete, based on the solitary clue that the coin looks like something from that island. By good luck, he has already managed to find a seaworthy boat equipped with lots of supplies, including the guns that will come in handy in the book's battle scenes. (Mal finds the owner's corpse on the vessel, so he figures the dead guy won't mind.)

The City in the Sea

After sailing across the Atlantic, and crossing the new land bridge that now cuts the Mediterranean Sea in half, Mal meets an old buddy in Crete. With the help of a rather shifty fisherman, he finds out that some of the emotionless men paid the fellow to take them to a spot in the ocean, where they jumped in without diving suits.

Mal dons the proper scuba equipment and goes to the place, where he finds the entrance to an underwater building. Inside is a grotesquely huge man lying in a luxurious bed, protected by his slavish minions. It seems that Ricia was kidnapped for nefarious purposes, although perhaps not in the way you might expect. Mal and Ricia escape, but our story is far from over.

Out of the Wet Frying Pan and Into the Frozen Fire

Besides suffering from the bends after rising to the surface quickly, Mal gets captured by the bad guys, who have taken over the ship from which he dove. (They don't know that Ricia is hidden inside the decompression chamber of the vessel.) They take Mal to Antarctica, where he is to be subjected to questioning that he cannot resist, so they can find the woman. It all leads up to our two star-crossed lovers being reunited, and the discovery of the shocking secret of the immense ruler of the emotionless men.

Shaken, Not Stirred

Well! Our protagonists certainly go through enough dangers to shake anybody up. This rollercoaster of a thriller moves at a lightning-fast pace, with enough action to satisfy any fan of, say, James Bond. You won't have time to ponder the fact that the plot may not always make perfect sense, or that the whole thing is wildly implausible. The writing is vivid, and the hero, although highly competent, doesn't come across as unbelievably superhuman. You won't have any profound emotions stirred by the outrageous plot, but it's an enjoyable way to spend a few hours, maybe while you're sipping something to drink.

Three stars.


Shake it up, Baby!

For more exciting science fiction adventure, pick up a copy of Rosel George Brown's new hit novel, Sibyl Sue Blue, today!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 28, 1966] Cat People and Overpopulation (SF Impulse and New Worlds, August 1966)

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

After my brief mention at the end of last month about England and the soccer World Cup, I had better start by congratulating them on their tournament win since last time we spoke. The country does seem to have got behind them – indeed, there’s been little else talked about here since they won. Whilst I’m not a fan of football (soccer to you!) particularly, I must curmudgeonly admit that the mood of the country has been rather pleasant.

In this spirit of optimism and change, there’s also been some interesting changes with the British magazines. At the moment I’m not sure whether these changes have been made for good reasons or bad, but they might just stir life into the magazines that have rather been treading water on the whole over the last few months.


Cover by Keith Roberts – again!

To Impulse first.

Or rather SF Impulse. Notice the subtle change? The magazine seems to be trying to attract the interest of traditional readers by nailing its genre roots firmly to the mast. Interestingly, I understood that this was something the editor Kyril Bonfiglioli was keen not to do when the magazine changed its name to Impulse.

In fact, where is Kyril? The magazine has no Editorial at all this month, instead going with a “Critique” by Harry Harrison instead. This was mentioned in last month’s issue, although I was rather expecting Kyril to be about as well. Has he been deposed? Perhaps after his complaints about not knowing what an Editor does in the last few issues this leaves Kyril with more time to – you know – edit.

Let’s move on. To this month’s actual stories.

Make Room! Make Room! (Part 1 of 3), by Harry Harrison

When this was mentioned as coming up, I was very pleased. The magazine was going to have to do something big to cap Keith Roberts’ Pavane series for me, and this was clearly it.

Mind you, I have been less impressed with Harrison’s last two serialised novels, Plague From Space and Bill, the Galactic Hero (shudder.) But this one sounded great.

Whereas this is just the first part for us in Britain, being in the USA fellow Galactic Journey-er Jason Sacks has had the chance to read the whole novel, lucky thing. His wonderful review goes into much more depth and detail than I would here. So I will point out his review, with thanks, and say that so far I agree with everything he has said.

This is the best Harrison I’ve read in ages, if not one of the best stories in Impulse to date. Admittedly, its scenes of shabbiness and squalor are rather depressing, but its description of a world of overcrowded excess, crime and a lack of resources is done with imagination and flair. The situation is entirely possible and the characters appropriate for that setting. I hope the quality continues. I was so impressed, I’m awarding it 5 out of 5 – my first, I believe.

Wolves by Rob Sproat

After such a great start it would be difficult to maintain such a standard, and so we go from the great to the typical “Bonfiglioli filler”, had Kyril been here. This is the third story we’ve had in the magazines from Rob, none of which have particularly impressed me, sadly. And so it is again here. A story of creatures that have haunted Mankind for millennia and yet are rarely seen. When their presence is noted by a drunken man, he is killed. Lots of talk here about Ancient Ones that doesn’t seem to mean much. A weak horror story that is bleak and yet strangely predictable. 3 out of 5.

The First, Last Martyr by Peter Tate

Another relatively new author, who seems to be liked by many readers. His last story was The Gloom Pattern, in the June 1966 issue of New Worlds. This one is a tale of Hubert Flagg, a window dresser whose occupation makes him part of the pop-culture and yet inwardly he hates it. As an act of rebellion against current trends and to become a celebrity, Flagg attempts to kill people at a concert by the current pop favourite The Saddlebums, which I guess is not just a comment on society but also a bit of a dig at bands like The Beatles. On a good day this could have been a satire in the same vein as Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius, but instead it just seems odd, and not in a particularly good way. 3 out of 5.

Disengagement, by T. F. Thompson

Another surreal ramble through the viewpoints of various characters. Think of it like an inferior Frankenstein story from multiple perspectives, a similar re-tread of clichés that seems all too similar to Robert Cheetham’s The Failure of Andrew Messiter in last month’s New Worlds. (Are new ideas really that hard to come by?)

It seems more like a Hammer Horror film than the “really chilly horror” the banner attempts to persuade me it is. Although actually I like Hammer Horror movies… this less so. Some of the characterisation is awful. Any story that has a character named “Doctor Dog” and tries to make a joke out of it deserves not to be taken seriously. Marks for effort, not originality. 2 out of 5.

A Comment by E. C. Tubb

E C Tubb returns with an opinion piece on the state of science fiction, rather akin to Harrison’s Critique at the beginning of the issue. Here Tubb takes on the thorny issue of sex in science-fiction, pointing out that it has been around longer than sf and it is wrong for the New Wave to “dwell on it”. To quote, “The more sex you put in a story the less action, characterisation, futuristic background, scientific content and plain, old, entertainment value you leave out.”

Whilst I understand the author’s point of view, it does read a little like one of the oldsters complaining about the new kids on the block.

The Scarlet Lady by Alistair Bevan

Lastly, back to the stories. Here we have the return of Alistair, a regular author but who is also author/editor/artist Keith Roberts. Both names have appeared regularly in these magazines.

Here Alistair continues an ongoing theme of motor car stories. His last was a rather excitable story of future traffic congestion, road rage and restrictive laws in the story Pace That Kills back in the May 1966 issue of Impulse. By contrast, this is a tale that attempts to emulate Weird Tales in its story of a possessed car and its effect on two brothers and their respective families. No reason is given for the automobile’s actions, which show a constant drain on the owner’s monetary funds and a taste for blood. Whilst it is – please pardon the expression – as cliched as hell, I must admit that I quite enjoyed it for all of its silliness. Some of the passages reminded me in style and tone of Roberts’ version of contemporary lifestyle as read in The Furies in July – September 1965. It is too long, but was a fun read. Much better than the last story, for all of its limitations. 3 out of 5.

Summing up Impulse

And that’s it for SF Impulse this month. At over 80 pages most of the magazine is taken up with Harrison’s novel, which is its selling point. As a result, I liked the issue a lot, even when the rest of the material suffers by comparison. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the Bevan story, even if it is repeating old cliches.

And with this, onto issue 165 of New Worlds, hoping that it is also better this month.

The Second Issue At Hand


Cover by Keith Roberts – him again!

Like last month’s New Worlds the Editorial is not by editor Moorcock, but a film review by a guest reviewer. Last month, La Jetee was praised by J. G. Ballard as something extraordinary.

This month, Alphaville directed by Jean-Luc Godard has a rather different response. Guest reviewer John Brunner begins his review with “Let’s get one thing straight to begin with. Alphaville is a disgracefully bad film, reflecting no credit to anybody – especially not on those critics who have puffed it as a major artistic achievement.” Well, that should certainly grab the reader’s attention!

To be fair, Brunner makes some good points, although the review really reminds me that all reviews are little but opinions and in this world the New Wave will gain as much criticism as praise. Our own Kris Vyas-Myall reviewed Alphaville, for example, and had a very different response. Interestingly, Brunner does add that La Jetee, reviewed by Ballard last month and seen by Brunner as a double-bill, completely overshadows Alphaville.

Brunner’s writing is entertaining, though, and as a deliberately provocative read is a much more interesting read than any of the other Editorials of late.

To the stories!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

Amen and Out, by Brian Aldiss

Another appearance from Harry Harrison’s friend Brian Aldiss, who was also here last month. (Again: has anyone ever seen the two of them in one room together?) The cover describes this story as ”Irreverent, thought-provoking stuff that only Aldiss can do well”, which I agree with, although I would further qualify by pointing out that such irreverence can also lead to wildly uneven material from Mr. Aldiss.

(Where has “Dr. Peristyle” gone to, by the way? Just a thought.)

The good news is that this one is not quite as madcap as it could have been. Amen and Out is a story of a future where a number of characters with different backgrounds are at the Immortality Investigation Project – one is a supervisor of the immortals, one a young assistant, one an acid head itinerant and the other a doorman. They each communicate with their Gods, and are all consequently given instructions with various consequences for themselves and the Immortals held in the Project. The twist in the story is that the Gods are actually an AI. It’s good fun, and feels like Aldiss wrote it with a permanent grin on his face, though will no doubt offend anyone seriously beholden to a religion. A 4 out of 5.

The Rodent Laboratory, by Charles Platt

Charles Platt’s been a regular here for a while. This is a story of rats in a laboratory being observed as a group social experiment, and what can happen when the rats develop new behaviour and the scientific community watching them are put under stress. It gains points from me for being a ‘proper’ science-experiment-based story with a touch of the laboratory experiment pulp stories of the 1930s, although the ending is almost something out of Weird Tales. Overall, it reads well enough but feels like minor-league stuff, nothing we’ve not read before. 3 out of 5.


With a lack of artwork this month we have instead this quote, which seems to have inspired the story.

Stalemate in Time, by Charles L. Harness

I’ve mentioned in the past of Charles being a veteran author who seems to be trying to embrace the New Wave of writing. If sales of his novel The Rose are anything to go by, this has been popular, if met with varying degrees of success.

Here we have a reprint. The story was first published as Stalemate in Space back in 1949. Now renamed, it does feel like an old-style piece of pulp fiction. This is clearly intentional – the story begins with a purple-prosed quote from Planet Stories which seems to sum it up nicely. I’m not quite sure what Mike is trying to do here. Is this one of those examples to show that ‘the old stuff’ is still worth reading, as he did with Harness’s Time Trap back in the May 1965 issue? Or is it just filler? Whatever the reason, Stalemate in Space is an engaging if dated Space Opera story, which makes up with enthusiasm what it lacks in logic – but I wish the magazines would stop trying to sneak reprints to bulk out their issues. 3 out of 5.

Look On His Face, by John Kippax

William Kibbee is a Christian priest on a mission to the planet of Kristos V. Unsubtle, heavy-handed religious allegory. 2 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Transfinite Choice, by David Masson

The return of recent genre superstar David Masson whose sudden and dramatic appearance in these magazines has been stellar, although with slightly diminishing returns. Here is the story of Naverson Builth, who finds himself transported from 1972 to the year 2346. Lots of difficulties with language, which seems to be a Masson specialty, before we discover that Naverson finds himself working for a world government known as Direct Parameter Control. There are some interesting concepts put forward to Builth in this future, and some in turn suggested by Bulith, before the story crashes to a halt with a poor ending that we’ve come across before. Masson’s writing is still readable and still involves ambitiously big ideas, but I rather feel David has passed his peak. A slightly disappointing 3 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Keys to December by Roger Zelazny

I have repeatedly said that I think that Roger is one of the best American writers of recent years to have taken on the New Wave of science fiction and run with it. He keeps producing quality stories which are thoughtful, readable and also genuinely original. His last story here, For A Breath I Tarry, has been rightly nominated in this year’s Hugo Awards. So any return to these Brit magazines is something to be pleased about, I think.

And this is another cracker. The key premise is that in this future people can be adapted pre-birth in order to cope with the environment they will live on. It is different to the usual Zelazny fare, beingless philosophical and surprisingly hard-science-based, something that I could see Poul Anderson or Hal Clement writing.

To this Roger sets up a situation that Jarry Dark, a homeless Coldworld catform, his betrothed Sanza and his friends in the December Club who have put up the money, move to a planet where they will terraform the planet into something they can use. Whilst reconnoitring the planet they observe a species that they call Redform that even though thousands of years will pass to allow for adaptation will be unable to adapt in the face of their impending catastrophic event.

Knowing that the intelligent species will die but at the same time being unable to do anything about it sets up the sort of dilemma that challenges both the reader and the characters, and at the end gave me an emotional reaction akin to Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations.

Surprisingly different for Zelazny, both elegaic and emotional, I can see this one being nominated for future awards. A high 4 out of 5.

Letters and Book Reviews

We begin this month with Bill Barclay giving a potted biography of writer and anthologist Sam Moskowitz and then reviewing Moskowitz’s latest book of biographical essays. It does sound interesting.

James Colvin (aka Mike Moorcock) then covers a broad range of material. A highlight this month is Colvin being rather unsurprisingly unimpressed with Asimov’s novelisation of the movie Fantastic Voyage. The subtitle for this review, Per Ardua Ad Arteries did make me laugh, as well as the clinical evisceration of the novel.

The shorter reviews, all written by initialled reviewers, include story collection The Saliva Tree by a certain Brian W Aldiss, many of which have appeared in these magazines, Judith Merril’s 10th edition of The Year’s Best SF and the 15th volume of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction. All are liked – Zelazny comes out particularly well – though these three books show me the divide in style and content opening up between the old style stories and the so-called New Wave. Things are still changing….

Lastly there is a great review for Edgar Pangborn’s A Mirror for Observers, which ”stands head and shoulders above most sf”.

Very pleased to see the return of Letters pages this month. Generally detailed and thought-provoking, though generally still raking over the same themes of "What is SF?" and "What is this new SF?"

Summing up New Worlds

A stellar line up, with many of Moorcock’s favourite writers here. Whilst I could quibble and say that some of these stories from writers with a proven track record are not the author’s best, there are many that are very good. Aldiss is good but, unsurprisingly, Zelazny’s story is better. It’s not quite perfect (Kippax, I’m thinking of your story), but there’s a great deal of range and a good deal of quality. One of the best issues of New Worlds for a long time.

Summing up overall

A tough choice this month. Harrison’s novel is the best thing I’ve read here and dominates Impulse, quite rightly, although most of the rest are unmemorable. By contrast, the stories in New Worlds are not quite as good, but the range of the quality is greater. Zelazny’s story in New Worlds is as good as Harrison’s and this is the best New Worlds I’ve read for a few issues.

So – very pleased to say that both magazines have (thank goodness!) improved enormously this month. Whilst Harrison’s serial novel seriously impresses in the new SF Impulse, the range and breath of quality makes New Worlds the best this month. Let’s hope this continues. Must admit, the next New Worlds sounds good…

Until the next…



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[July 14, 1966] October's Judgment (July Galactoscope)

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This month's Galactoscope features a pair of tales from two of the genre's bigger names.  Just the sort of mid-summer pick-me-up to get you through the Dog Days… Siriusly!"


by Gideon Marcus

October the First is Too Late, by Fred Hoyle

Fred Hoyle, a prominent British astronomer and also a popular science fiction author (recently of A for Andromeda fame) has come out with quite an interesting little novel.  October the First is Too Late is several things in one, which I suppose makes sense given the subject.

The story begins in modern day.  Our protagonist, Richard, is a rather prominent composer coming off a disappointing show in Germany.  He meets up with an old college buddy, a brilliant physicist (John Sinclair), and the two head off to the Scottish Highlands for a trek.  It's a pleasant jaunt with one odd episode: halfway through, John disappears for 30 hours, and when he turns up, he is missing a birthmark he's had all his life.

Coincident with this, the interplanetary rocket for which John prepared some of the experiments has detected odd emanations from the Sun.  Perhaps they are modulations of an extraterrestrial beacon system, or maybe their tremendous energies have a more sinister purpose.  Sinclair and our viewpoint character head to Hawaii to process the latest data — only to find themselves hurled into a crazy, splintered world.  Hawaii is alright, and Fiji, and maybe England.  But the rest of the world has become a jumble of different timezones, assembled like a strange jigsaw puzzle. 

Why has this happened, and if it be an artificial occurrence, who is responsible?

October is a strange, meandering piece.  It hardly does anything for 52 pages, then becomes an exciting voyage of discovery.  The last third is something else yet again, something like G.C. Edmondson's The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream.  It shouldn't work, with its chatty digressions and frequent scientific/philosophical expositions…and yet it does.  October is a highly readable, breezily intelligent novel.  It's one I can see myself picking up again for a few more reads, and I imagine it could appear on next year's Hugo ballot.

Four stars.

The Judgment of Eve, by Edgar Pangborn


by John Boston

Edgar Pangborn is one of the finer writers and more luminous spirits to grace SF’s disreputable precincts.  After winning the International Fantasy Award for his second SF novel, A Mirror for Observers (1954), he took a detour and published a historical novel, Wilderness of Spring (1957), and a contemporary novel, The Trial of Callista Blake (1961).  But in 1964 he returned to SF with Davy, a post-nuclear-war story which made the Hugo ballot and to my taste probably should have won.

Davy portrayed a world centuries after nuclear war in which our present society's knowledge has mostly been lost, and the remainder forbidden by a repressive church.  That is, absolutely nothing original; the book was made by the characters and by the vivid detail in which Pangborn imagined a world whose outlines have grown all too familiar during the post-Hiroshima course of SF.  The frame is that Davy is writing a memoir of his picaresque adventures, with a goodly dollop of libertarian philosophizing along the way.  The result is sometimes reminiscent of Mark Twain, though hints of Jubal Harshaw drift in occasionally.


by Lawrence Ratzkin

Pangborn’s new novel The Judgment of Eve is another, and less satisfactory, kettle of fish.  It is set about 30 years after the war, which it turns out involved few actual bombs, but a long siege of plagues, greatly depopulating the world but not irradiating it.  Eve Newman, 28 years old, lives with her elderly and blind mother in a farmhouse far down a gravel side road; they’ve had no contact with other humans for many years, except for Caleb, seemingly a half-witted mutant.

Then three guys show up at the door, fleeing from a repressive settlement, and of course they are all smitten by young Eve, and she is smitten by the idea of having a mate.  But she has to make a choice, obviously (at least in this book’s moral universe).  So she sets them all a task: go forth and figure out what love is, and report back at the beginning of October, a few months away.  The rest of the book consists of the separate accounts of what each suitor does and finds before their reunion at Eve’s place.

Sounds like a fairy tale, and if you don’t figure it out on your own, the point is rubbed in by a brief reading from Grimm before Eve issues her orders.  Further, this purports to be a critical edition of the Judgment of Eve legend by scholars of later centuries, meaning that as you read the novel, obtrusive commentary pops up all too frequently concerning the relative plausibility of this and other versions, with occasional bursts of sarcasm concerning competing scholarly points of view.

It’s unusual to see a writer so gifted get in his own way so conclusively.  Pangborn is an unassumingly graceful stylist and a compelling story-teller, with a special talent for portraying physical settings and for convincingly developing the inner life of his characters.  The supposed critical commentary here has about the same effect on the reading experience as auto horns honking outside the window, while the fairy-tale frame distances the reader from the otherwise engaging story and characters. 

But still, most of the time it’s a pleasure to read.  Pangborn’s failure is more worthwhile than many writers’ successes.  Three and a half stars.




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[July 10, 1966] Froth, Fun, and Serious Social Commentary (Sibyl Sue Blue)

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by Janice L. Newman

Sibyl Sue Blue was not what I expected.

Set in the futuristic year of 1990, Rosel George Brown’s Sibyl Sue Blue takes place in a world both like and unlike today’s world of 1966. Sibyl is a tenacious and smart detective working for the city’s homicide department. When a series of bizarre ‘suicides’ start plaguing the city’s youth, she’s called in to investigate. As she follows the clues, she’s drawn into increasingly strange events, from trying alien drugs to being invited to join a spacefaring millionaire on an off-world jaunt.

Sounds like fun, right? Yet when Judith Merril told me the other day that she’ll be reviewing it in an upcoming issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, she mentioned that “…under all the froth and fun and furious action, there is more acute comment on contemporary society than you are likely to find in any half dozen deadly serious social novels.”

She’s right!

Cover of the original Sibyl Sue Blue
The cover of Sibyl Sue Blue shows her smoking her signature cigar.

That’s not to say that Sibyl Sue Blue is dry, boring, or preachy. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of these things. But, as Merril promised, beneath the wild ride exists a sharp yet understated criticism of both modern racial tensions and treatment of women in science fiction.

Let’s take racial tensions, for example. When I say that SSB offers subtle commentary on race relations, I’m not talking about the obvious parallels between the story’s alien Centaurians and modern day Black people. That analogy is obvious to anyone with half a brain: places where the ‘aliens’ have moved in have become ghettos, they smoke strange cigarettes, and they are generally distrusted by the native human population – but if you’re a cop, you don’t dare say so.

I’ll admit, it threw me for a loop at first. What was with this heavy-handed analogy? It wasn’t until I read further into the story that I got it. The subtlety comes into play in Sibyl’s interactions with Centaurians, as well as Brown’s portrayal of them. Throughout the story Sibyl treats Centaurians the same way she treats humans. Though she warns her colleague not to get caught saying he doesn’t like Centaurians, never once does Sibyl herself express dislike or distrust of a Centaurian simply because they are Centaurian. In fact, though the story opens with her being attacked by a Centaurian, her sharp mind is already searching for the reason behind his actions.

Then, too, Brown’s portrayals of Centaurians are as variegated as her portrayals of humans. They’re not saints, but they’re no worse than anyone else, and better than many. And like humans, they can be coerced, manipulated, and used by people or entities more powerful than themselves.

There’s a certain cynicism coloring everything. The good-hearted and earnest “Jimmy” says things like, “Gee, it’s a shame about Centaurian prejudice,” and sounds hopelessly naive. Yet only a couple of chapters later, Sibyl doesn’t hesitate to invite her Centaurian friend, contact, and occasional lover over for some info and an intimate pick-me-up. The contrast between Sibyl’s attitude and Jimmy’s is telling. It’s not enough to criticize prejudice, Sibyl (and Brown) seems to be saying. You need to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. And Sibyl walks it – boy, does she!

Rosel George Brown
Rosel George Brown, author of Sibyl Sue Blue.

Speaking of walking the walk, another thing that startled me, at least until I got what Brown was doing, was the story’s ‘romantic’ subplot.

Multiple science fiction magazines and occasional science fiction novels, TV shows, and movies are released every month in the USA and the UK. In a good month, maybe ten percent of the fifty or sixty stories published are penned by women. In a bad month, none of the stories are written by a woman. The average usually falls somewhere in-between.

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise, then, that so few protagonists of science fiction tales are women. Whether written by men or women, whether they’re complex and interesting or shallow and flat, main characters are overwhelmingly white men. When women do show up, they’re often relegated to the role of helpmate, something in need of rescuing, or the prize the man wins after overcoming his trials – sometimes all three!

Obviously, there are plenty of exceptions, but in terms of trends, if a beautiful woman is introduced into a story (or a TV show, or a movie) in the first act, chances are she’ll fall in love with the male lead by the end. This is true regardless of how unappealing, uninteresting, or unlikeable the man is.

This cliché is another that Sibyl Sue Blue turns on its head. What is it like to be the woman who seemingly inexplicably falls for a rich, handsome, clever, yet completely terrible man? What happens when a woman who is herself independent, interesting, and already has her own life suddenly gets caught up in the implacable tide of the plot?

Traditionally, the woman marries the man after he solves the case and the two live ‘happily’ ever after. But as I found when I kept reading, if the woman is someone like Sibyl Sue Blue, nothing will turn out the way you expect!

Sibyl is fascinating. She’s small but powerful, repeatedly shown as able to hold her own in a fight, even against men who are bigger than she. Yet she’s also unapologetically feminine. She enjoys wearing nice dresses, applying makeup, and accessorizing. Far from being stoic, when something terrifying and grotesque happens, she screams. When she’s overwhelmed, she cries.

And then she gets up and keeps going. Like so many women throughout history, when faced with circumstances far beyond her control, when she’s sick and exhausted and frightened, she keeps pushing forward.

Rosel George Brown and her children
Rosel George Brown and her children.

Sibyl Sue Blue has silver stripes in her hair and a daughter in high school. She’s strong and vulnerable and smart. She enjoys a startling amount of sexual freedom, unhesitatingly inviting handsome men to her bed as a matter of course. Above all, she is herself – not an easily categorized and dismissed ‘helpmate’, ‘damsel in distress’, or ‘prize’. She’s human and messy and makes mistakes and is sometimes clever. She’s as complex and interesting as the best of the male leads, and maybe even more than any of them.

Because I’ve read the stories of a lot of white men, but I’ve never met a character like Sibyl Sue Blue.

Get your copy of Sibyl Sue Blue from Journey Press today!

An ink drawing Sibyl Sue Blue
Custom bookplates with art by The Young Traveler available at a bookstore near you!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 28, 1966] Scapegoats, Revolution and Summer Impulse and New Worlds, July 1966

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

This month I am trying to be more optimistic about the British magazines. Now that the sun is out, why wouldn’t I be? But to be honest, the last couple of issues have rather underwhelmed on the whole. That’s not to say that there haven’t been great moments but much of the material has seemed – well, predictable.

To Impulse first.

An interesting cover this month, with polymath and Associate Editor Mr. Keith Roberts illustrating the last part of his Pavane series. Where does he find the time?

After a month off, Kyril’s Editorial this month continues his recent ruminating that he doesn’t know what to write about as an Editor. It’s a sadly oft-repeated theme, and makes me think that Kyril really has lost interest in the job. The only thing of note here is that Harry Harrison’s latest novel, Make Room! Make Room! (recently reviewed by my colleague Jason HERE for Galactic Journey) will appear here from next month, which I am looking forward to.

Of more interest, the Editorial is followed by an essay by the “Guest Editorial” writer from last month, Harry Harrison. With that in mind, it shouldn’t be too surprising that the “Critique” (as it is called) rather reads as if it should be the Editorial rather than an essay. It is the first of a regular monthly essay, in which (as Kyril puts it) “…untrammelled by fear or favour, he will praise the best, trounce the worst, review current science / fantasy / fiction and cope with any reader’s letter which strikes a spark in his great soul.”

In other words, Harry is doing what an editor should do. As to be expected, the article, once again, makes good points about the state of British sf and the need to grow up, but it is nothing new. I like the fact that Harry has asked for definitions of sf, with the winner being offered a year’s free subscription. (This, of course, assumes that Impulse will last for at least a year!)

Let’s move on. To this month’s actual stories.

Pavane: Corfe Gate, by Keith Roberts

The fifth story from Roberts’ alternate History takes us back to a place we visited last month – Corfe Castle, which last time was the home of Robert, Lord of Purbeck and where Robert took Anne Strange. This time the hints of change made before, suggesting that we may be on the way to revolution, seem to have come true.

Several decades in the future, Corfe Gate continues this story of rebellion and change by telling the story of Lady Eleanor, who refuses to pay the tithe demanded by the Roman Catholic Church because the people of Corfe Castle would starve in order to do so. As King Charles is away in the New World, this leads to Lord Henry of Rye and Deal turning up on her doorstop ready to fight on behalf of Pope John of Rome. Eleanor refuses to yield, believing that King Charles would never allow his people to suffer. The revolution spreads, until King Charles arrives at Corfe Castle and the matter is resolved.

Around this story, much of the narrative tells us about Eleanor’s life and how she got to this point.

As the final part of this series, this is where the different elements seen so far come together. Corfe Gate is really the story of Eleanor, the daughter of Robert and Anne Strange, who were in the last story. In Corfe Gate we see the power wielded by Parliament and the Roman Catholic Church, of whom we found out about in the second story, with the semaphore system of the Royal Signallers who we found out about in the first story also playing a part. We even have the brief return of the Lady Anne, the steam tractor of the second part.

But most of all we read of a young woman in a patriarchal world determined to do their best for her people, against the forces of conservatism and inertia equally determined to crush her rebellion before it becomes something bigger.

It is a story where we are undoubtedly meant to feel for Eleanor, and it is to the writer’s credit that I did. Corfe Gate is a powerful story that caps the series wonderfully. 4 out of 5.

The OH in Jose by Brian W Aldiss

Once again, where Harry Harrison goes, Brian Aldiss follows – not the first time the two have appeared in the same issue of New Worlds or Impulse/Science Fantasy. Can we be sure they are not the same person? Nevertheless, the story is a typical piece of Aldiss whimsy – that is to say, on the mildly humorous side but with a point to make.

A number of travellers make up wildly different stories about the origin of the word “Jose” carved into a rock, before the truth is revealed. A much-needed lighter story after the darkness of Roberts’s Pavane. Another that has already been published, however. 3 out of 5.

The White Monument by Peter Redgrove

A new author. This one is subtitled “A Monologue” and is the tale of a man who, annoyed by the sound coming from his house’s chimney, creates a monument for his wife who is entombed by his efforts to fill the noisy chimney with concrete. Lyrical and experimental yet as silly as it sounds. Another story that has appeared elsewhere before – this time as a radio play on the BBC’s Light Programme. 2 out of 5.

The Beautiful Man, by Robert Clough

Another new author. Three goatherders discover skeletons in a cave, and a crucifix. A twist in the tale story that suggests that this is a post-apocalyptic world. Pretty predictable. 3 out of 5.

Pattern As Set by John Rankine

The return of an author last seen in the May 1966 issue, with the rather underwhelming story of The Seventh Moon. This time I was slightly more impressed – perhaps the shorter length plays more to John’s strengths. Mark Bowden is a pilot on the Cyborax, a spaceship on a hundred-years-long journey, where one at a time members of the crew are unfrozen to do their duty. Borden spends most of the beginning of the story lusting after teammate Dena. The story becomes more interesting when Bowden tries to defrost the next crew member to find that they have died. The end is a disappointment, in the manner of “so…it was all a dream!” 3 out of 5.

A Hot Summer’s Day by John Bell

What's this? A story about Summer, published in Summer? We’ll be getting Christmas stories in December next!

A new author, but this is a satisfactory enough tale of a day in a future London, where getting to work via private or public transport is a significant challenge. It begins with descriptions where traffic is at a standstill, riots on the London Underground are common, people are invariably late for work and the resulting stress levels make London a miserable place to be. As if this wasn’t enough, the story then piles on descriptions of overcrowded sweatiness and grumpy employers, to the point where the story ends with parts of London being razed to the ground by rioters. Seems a little extreme, but rather inevitable as the story ramps things up to its ending. It was fun to read of Tube stations being places of chaos and disorder. One for the commuters, I guess. 3 out of 5.

The Report by Russell Parker

Another new author, but a story of little consequence. Written in the form of a report, it tells of a post war world where thirteen months ago nations released nuclear weapons on each other and wiped out most cities. So far, so predictable.

The point of the story seems to be that the war seems to have started by accident – not with an attack on cities like London (if there’s any of London left after the previous story, of course!) but with a meteor strike on Norfolk! (For non-British readers, Norfolk is an area of flat, mainly rural countryside which I’m tempted to describe as a British equivalent of the Florida Everglades, if cooler.) 3 out of 5.

Hurry Down Sunshine by Roger Jones

By contrast to the chaos of A Hot Summer’s Day, Hurry Down Sunshine is a story of a supremely organised future, from another new author. In this future, the clinically clean world feels deliberately Kafka-esque, and is not helped by the point that the efficient government is run from the sidelines by the rather Dr. Strangelove-like Dr. Holzhacker, who sacrifices everything in the name of efficiency.

Towards these ends, in order to reduce mental instability in a country free of crime, Smith is promoted from anonymous office drone to be the nation’s scapegoat (an Official National Criminal), upon whom all grievances can be laid. Said scapegoat is placed on the much-maligned and mostly unused national railways, the last in existence in the world. In this manner, Smith not only fulfills his duty in comparative safety (for no one rides the train to vent their frustrations on the scapegoat) and the railways get an extra lease on life — after all, they can't be shut down while they have such an important customer on board. Our randomly selected stooge rides the rails for eighteen months, during which a Report is produced which includes Smith’s unpublished letters to The Times newspaper. This becomes a bestseller. As Smith pulls into a station, a mob of angry citizens arrived determined to make Smith pay for his ‘crimes’. But they assail the wrong train, and Smith, rather hurt at not being able to fulfill his scapegoat duty, is whisked to Bletchley.

Subdivided into sections like a J. G. Ballard story, this is another satire, like Ernest Hill’s story Sub-liminal in last month’s New Worlds – but better. It is good fun, although still rather silly. 3 out of 5.

Summing up Impulse

Well, I’m pleased to type that I generally enjoyed this one – more than last month’s anyway. Admittedly, it’s not perfect. Whilst I’m pleased to see new writers given their moment in the sun alongside the big-hitters, some of the material (again) shows inexperience and banality or even extreme and bizarre mood changes. They lack the subtlety of quality writing, although they are good efforts overall. With the exception of Corfe Gate, there’s nothing really memorable here, although they’re all entertaining enough.

And with that, onto issue 164 of New Worlds, hoping that it is better.

The Second Issue At Hand

Like last month’s Impulse, the Editorial in New Worlds is a Guest Editorial. Instead of Moorcock this month, we get his friend J. G. Ballard making another appearance. (Is it Editor’s Holiday time, I wonder? What is going on?)

Ballard being Ballard, this is not an Editorial as such but a review of a film – La Jetee, directed by Chris Marker. (Why this couldn’t be later in the issue as a review, rather than as the Editorial is a mystery.) Anyway, Ballard loved it – unsurprisingly, as it appears to be a film tailored to Ballard’s own interests. It is entirely made up of black-and-white photographs but put on film. The film is bold and experimental – and even has an sf theme.

Might be worth a look, but not for everyone – rather like Ballard's own writing!

To the stories!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

In Passage of the Sun, by George Collyn

George is a regular contributor to the magazines, both as a writer and as a critic/reviewer. This has an intriguing first line – “You can have no idea of what it was like in those last days of Earth.” – before settling into post-apocalyptic Space Opera shenanigans. Our ‘hero’ is taken from the overcrowded domes of Earth in the ongoing war between humans and the lizard-like Throngians, and is then put into a war not only between the humans and the Throngians but also a political battle between the King and other factions.

In some ways In Passage Of The Sun was old-school, old style Space Opera, in that it is really old ideas rehashed into something not terribly new.

The main difference I guess is where an old story of this type would try to show Humanity succeeding against all the odds, this one suggests little but backstabbing, meaningless slaughter and misery. The first part of the story seems to revel in grime, sweat and dead bodies – a typically British dystopian story! It did get a little better after that, but as the lead story of an issue, it is wildly uneven. I felt that it really wasn’t cover story material.

Which rather makes me worry about the quality of the rest of the issue. Are we scraping the barrel a bit, here?

A low 3 out of 5.

The Other, by Katherine Maclean

The return of an author who has had stories steadily published from the 1950’s. The Other is the story of Joey, who we discover is an artificially constructed being, and “The Other”, a voice inside Joey’s head. After a psychiatric meeting with Doctor Armstrong and Joey we find that The Other may be more than we at first expected. As expected from a veteran writer, the story is short but memorable, even if it feels like only part of a bigger story. It’s not Maclean’s best but it stands out in this issue. 4 out of 5.

Sanitarium, by Jon DeCles

A newcomer to me, though I understand he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction before. A strange story about a strange future, where even sexual satisfaction is provided by the State. It is mainly about people in the Sanitarium, who are generally unpleasant. Nearly three-hundred-year-old Romf Brigham is invited by his strange neighbours to a party to celebrate Mrs. Christopher Carson’s absence for six months and becomes involved in the investigation. The story loses momentum though as we are told from the start where she is. An attempt at satire in a decadent future, which seems to celebrate decadent excess and languor. I found it pretty unpleasant. 3 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Way to London Town, by David Redd

Nancy arrives in Sacaradown, observes the people there and meets Walther, who collects “strange people”, who Nancy seems to be. He becomes obsessed with finding out more about eleven-year-old Nancy, and Nancy says that she wants to collect enough money to visit places earlier in time, like London before the war that destroyed it. It’s a clumsy plot device to allow the writer to fill in background. We discover that Nancy is a mutant who can travel through time at will.

I suspect that this will be the first of a series, rather like Keith Roberts’ Anita was. This shares some similarities to those stories – an unusual outsider, seemingly innocent, for example. But whereas Anita was often charming, in places this unsubtle story comes across as creepy and odd. It gets better towards the end, but by then the damage is done. 2 out of 5.

The Outcasts, by Kris Neville

One of those lyrical, allegorical stories that Moorcock loves. This one is about a Los Angeles, full of pushers and strange women. No real story to it, the writer seems to be more interested in writing interesting prose and create vivid imagery rather than have the narrative go somewhere. Not for me, I’m afraid. 2 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The God Killers (Part 2 of 2) by John Baxter
I said last month that I thought that John Baxter’s story was too provocatively titled, but that I enjoyed it. I was even more interested to read further when last month’s New Worlds heralded this part of John Baxter’s story as “bizarre”.

A quick reminder – we were told last issue of the planet of Merryland, where the people actively worship Satanism. Young David Bonython finds in his farm’s attic forbidden technology – a matter transmitter from a heretic age whose storage threatens death or torture for David, his friends and family.

Through this arrived Hemskir, a rogue Proctor wanted for offences against Federal law.

The story finished last time with David spending the night with his stepsister Samantha Padgett at some kind of Christian ritualistic orgy. When David returned to the Padgett farm the next day, he found Hemskir dead and the farm on fire.

The farm has been set ablaze by the Examiners, the local justice force who have been tipped off by Elton Penn, the leader of the Christian group. David rescues Samantha at the farm, who goes with him, albeit reluctantly, to the city of New Harbour. There they are captured by Penn, but escape. David realises that Penn is searching for the place of origin of the green crystal that is so rare, but by looking at a map he and Samantha, now lovers, sail to a research station where they find a lake of the stuff. The green crystal is malleable to their will – basically if they can think it, the crystal will turn into it – solid, liquid or gas. Penn has followed them there in a spaceship and there is the inevitable showdown.

There’s some nice descriptions of the world in decay here and some nice ideas of ancient forbidden technology that I liked, but to counterbalance this there’s also some honking howlers in prose – try “She began to cry, savagely, as if forcing grief out of her like vomit”, or even “Love and the water turned them into beautiful animals…” All in all, despite the attempts to make it worth my reading, The Godkillers is not very surprising if you’ve read Ballard’s Crystal World, nor actually very good. Disappointing. A low 3 out of 5.

The Failure of Andrew Messiter, by Robert Cheetham

Cheetham’s first story here since A Mind of My Own in December 1965. It’s another fairly predictable story of scientific experiments in inner space. Dr. Messiter and his team of Wendy Lardner and Bill Maine conduct an experiment where, in order to prove that paranormal powers such as telekinesis exist, Messiter agrees to become what is basically a brain in a body, not connected to any of the traditional five senses. This is so that the latent powers without the usual senses working can then be goaded into action and show themselves.

Over the next year, whilst love blooms between Lardner and Maine, there are no signs of life in Messiter. Maine decides to do what he and Messiter agreed they would do if there was no activity and injects a poison into the body, leaving the couple to go and pursue their affair further. The twist in the story is that Messiter is alive and aware and only just beginning to show the means of contact they wanted before he dies. It’s readable, but not without flaws, such as the awfully awkward romance. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews

A lot of reviews again this month. As ever, the reviews are colourful and entertainin,. prompted by the proliferation of new material, anthologies and reprints. As well as his Editorial/review earlier in the issue, J.G. Ballard contributes reviews of two books, Surrealism by Patrick Waldberg and The History of Surrealist Painting by Marcel Jean. As they clearly echo some of Ballard’s own ideas in his version of sf, they are, unsurprisingly, both liked.

Equally predictably, James Colvin (aka Mike Moorcock) then positively reviews in some detail J. G. Ballard’s The Crystal World, which I’ve already mentioned this month but was also serialised here a while back.

Hilary Bailey (Mrs. Moorcock to you and me) tackles the briefer reviews, covering Harry Harrison’s Plague From Space, also recently serialised in New Worlds (she likes it more than I did), Rick Raphael’s Code Three, William Tenn’s collection Time in Advance and The Eighth Galaxy Reader, all of which get generally positively reviews. However, she finds Poul Anderson’s Three Worlds to Conquer impossible to finish and dislikes his Virgin Planet enormously.

R. M. Bennett writes an essay on satirical sf, which seems to echo my own view that it is hard to write and rarely successful. Nevertheless, there are suggestions there for the reader to try.

Bill Barclay writes of new titles by a publisher admittedly unknown to me, Ronald Whiting and Wheaton. Whilst the article can come across as little more than an advertisement, there are books mentioned there that whet my appetite, including work by James White and a A Science Fiction Anthology written to commemorate the sadly-departed Cyril Kornbluth.

We still have no Letters pages this month.

Summing up New Worlds

I’m not sure why, but this month’s issue feels slightly different than usual, in its choice of content and its general tone. Is this an attempt to be different, or is it because it feels like New Worlds has had a different hand on the helm? Whilst James Colvin has made an appearance, the magazine itself seems filled with unmemorable material or stories that are just not worth shouting about. The Collyn is rather uneven, the Maclean good but not one of her best and even the John Baxter novel ends disappointingly. Has Moorcock taken his hand off the wheel? It does feel a little bit like it.

Summing up overall

So: despite my hopes, more disappointing issues this month. Not just one but both issues rather feel like there is no one at the rudder, and that the willing but exhausted subordinates have taken much of the strain. Again, they’re not bad, but there’s little that is memorable in either issue.

A tough choice then in choosing “the best”. In the end I’ve opted for Impulse again as my favourite, simply for Roberts’s Corfe Gate which is by far the best thing I’ve read this month. However neither magazine should be showered with glory this month.

But next month's New Worlds sounds better:

As I type this, we are about to begin a World Cup soccer tournament, with England being the host nation. Although football is not something I have much of an interest in, I feel that it would be wrong of me not to exhibit some sort of nationalistic pride on this global event. So – come on, England, etc etc.

(Moment over.)

Until the next…



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 24, 1966] Increments: World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

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by John Boston

Donald A. Wollheim’s and Terry Carr’s World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966—second in this series—is here, so it’s time for the usual pontificating, hand-wringing, viewing with alarm, etc., as one prefers.  This one comes with not one but two blurbs from Judith Merril, their competitor, though the editors say nothing about her anthology series, the next volume of which is due at the end of the year.

The editors have regrettably pulled in their horns a little on the “World” front.  There are no translated stories in this volume, unlike the first; the editors claim that they read plenty of them, but them furriners just don’t cut the mustard.  More precisely, if not more plausibly, “what they have lacked is the advanced sophistication now to be found in the American and British s-f magazines.” Suffice it to say that there are virtues other than “advanced sophistication” and they may often be found outside one’s own culture. 


by Cosimo Scianna

Nor is there anything here from any of the non-specialist markets that have been publishing progressively more SF in recent years.  The only item here that did not originate in the US or UK SF magazines is Arthur C. Clarke’s Sunjammer, originally in Boys’ Life but quickly reprinted last year by New Worlds, and then by Amazing early this year.

So it’s a rather insular party.  But my main complaint last year was that too much of the material was too pedestrian, and the book excluded writers who are pushing the envelope of the genre, like Lafferty, Zelazny, Ellison, and Cordwainer Smith.  The editors seem to have been listening.  This year they’ve got Ellison and Lafferty, though they seem to have missed their chance at Smith, and Zelazny is still among the missing.  More importantly, the book as a whole is livelier than its predecessor.

This is not to say the pedestrian has been entirely banished.  Witness Christopher Anvil’s The Captive Djinn, the only selection from that rotten borough Analog, yet another story about the clever Earthman outwitting cartoonishly stupid aliens.  Anvil has written this story so often he could do it in his sleep, and most likely that is exactly what happened. 

There is a lot more of the standard used furniture of the genre here, but at least it’s mostly done more cleverly and skillfully than dreamed of by Anvil.  In Joseph Green’s The Decision Makers (from Galaxy), Terrestrials covet the watery world Capella G Eight, but it’s already occupied by seal-like amphibians with group intelligence though not much material culture.  Is this the sort of intelligence that should ordinarily bar colonization outright? The “Conscience”—a bureaucrat in charge of making these decisions—thinks so, but proposes to split the baby, allowing colonization but providing that the humans will alter the climate to provide more dry land for the amphibians.  Of course, behind the bien-pensant speechifying, a still small voice says, “We’re just now starting to get rid of colonialism here, and you want to start it up again?” And another: “Ask the American Indians about the promises of colonists.”

Less weighty thoughts are on offer in James H. Schmitz’s Planet of Forgetting (from Galaxy), involving a fairly standard space war scenario with chase on unknown planet, with the wrinkle that some of the local fauna seem to be able to make people briefly forget where they are and what they are doing.  At the end of this smoothly rendered entertainment, suddenly the wrinkle becomes a mountain range. 

Similar cleverness-as-usual is displayed in Fred Saberhagen’s Masque of the Red Shift (from If), one of his popular Berserker series, in which a disguised Berserker robot appears and wreaks havoc on a spaceship occupied by the Emperor of the galaxy and his celebrating sycophants.  But it is promptly outsmarted and done in by the Emperor’s brother, who is resurrected from suspended animation and lures the Berserker into the clutches of a “hypermass,” which seems to be what scientists are starting to call a “black hole.” (Though on second thought, I’m not sure that “cleverness” is quite le mot juste for a story that falls back on the dreary cliche that a galaxy-spanning human civilization will find no better way to govern itself than an Emperor.) Jonathan Brand’s Vanishing Point (If) is an alien semi-contact story, in which the functionaries of the Galactic Federation have created an artificial habitat, a sort of Earth-like theme park complete with human curator, for the human emissaries to wait in and wonder what is really going on.

Engineering fiction is represented by Clarke’s slightly pedantic Sunjammer (as noted, Boys’ Life by way of New Worlds), concerning a yacht race in space, and by Larry Niven’s livelier Becalmed in Hell (F&SF), whose characters—one of them a brain and spinal column in a box, with vehicle controlled by his nervous system—get stuck on the surface of Venus (updated with current science) and have to improvise a primitive solution to get home.

There are a couple of near-future satires representing very different styles and targets of the sardonic.  Ron Goulart’s Calling Dr. Clockwork (Amazing) is a lampoon of the medical system; protagonist visits someone in the hospital, faints at something he sees there, wakes up in a hospital bed himself attended by the eponymous robot doctor, and can’t get out as his diagnosis shifts and things seem to be falling apart in the institution.  Fritz Leiber’s The Good New Days (Galaxy) is a more densely populated slice-of-slapstick extrapolating the welfare state, with a family living in futuristic but cheaply made housing (“They don’t build slums like they used to,” complains one character), with the TV on every minute, and Ma trying to avoid the demands of the medical statistician who wants her vitals, and everyone struggling to get and keep multiple make-work jobs (the protagonist just lost his job as a street-smiler), and things are all falling apart here, too, and a lot of the sentences are almost as long as this one.  The two stories are about equally amusing, which means above standard for Goulart and a little below standard for Leiber.

So that’s the ordinary, and a higher quality of ordinary than last year. 

A few items are unusual if not extraordinary.  R.A. Lafferty’s In Our Block (If) is an amusing tall tale about various odd characters with unusual talents residing in the shacks on a neglected dead-end block, like the woman who will type your letters but doesn’t need a typewriter (she makes the sound effects orally), and the man who ships tons of merchandise out of a seven-foot shack without benefit of warehouse.  It has lots of slapstick but not much edge, unlike the best by this idiosyncratic writer.  Newish writer Lin Carter (two prior appearances in the SF magazines, a lot in the higher reaches of amateur publications), in Uncollected Works (F&SF), extrapolates the old saw about monkeys on typewriters reproducing the works of Shakespeare, in the direction of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God, leading to an unexpected and subtle conclusion.

In Vernor Vinge’s Apartness, from the UK’s New Worlds, the Northern War has destroyed the Northern Hemisphere, and generations later, an expedition from Argentina discovers people encamped in Antarctica, living in primitive conditions, who prove to be the descendants of white South Africans who fled from the uprising that followed the war and eliminated whites from the continent.  (Interesting that this American writer didn’t find a market for it at home.) They are not pleased to be discovered by darker-skinned explorers and try to drive them off.  The well-sketched background makes this more than an exercise in irony or just revenge.

On to the extraordinary—three of them, not a bad showing.  Traveler’s Rest, by David I. Masson, also from New Worlds, depicts a world where time varies with latitude, passing slowly at the North Pole (though subjectively very fast), where a furious—and possibly futile—high-tech war is in progress with an unknown and unseeable enemy.  Life proceeds more mundanely in the southern latitudes.  Protagonist H is relieved from duty, travels south, reorients himself to current society, establishes a career, marries and procreates over the years. He's known now as Hadolarisondamo, since names are longer in the slower latitudes.  Then, middle-aged, he is called back to duty, and arrives 22 minutes after he left.  This world’s nightmarish quality is highlighted by the dense mundane detail of the normal life of the lower latitudes; the result is a tour de force of strangeness.

Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin!” said the Ticktockman (from Galaxy) is a sort of dystopian unreduced fraction.  In outline, it’s a simple story of a future world where punctuality is all; if you’re late, your life can be docked.  One man can’t take it any more and dresses up in a clown suit and goes around disrupting things until he gets caught by the Master Timekeeper (the Ticktockman), brainwashed, and forced to recant publicly—though the end hints that his legacy lives on.  In substance, it’s business as usual; in style, it’s a sort of garrulous stand-up routine, and quite a good one.  It’s best read as a purposeful affront to the usual plain functional (or worse) prose of the genre (a reading consistent with the story’s theme) and a persuasive argument for opening up the field a bit stylistically.

The other outstanding item here—best in the book to my taste—is Clifford D. Simak’s Over the River and Through the Woods (Amazing), in which a couple of strange kids appear at a farmhouse in 1896 and address the older woman working in the kitchen as their grandma.  The gist: Ordinary decent person confronted with the extraordinary responds with ordinary decency.  It’s plainly written without a wasted word, deftly developed, asserting its homely credo with quiet restraint—a small masterpiece amounting to a summary of Simak’s career.  Simak is one writer who should ignore Ellison’s advice—and vice versa, no doubt.

The upshot: Not bad.  Better than not bad.  The field is taking small steps away from business as usual, and the usual seems to be getting a little better.  The kid may amount to something some day.

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




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 14, 1966] Aliens, Housewives and Overpopulation: Orbit 1, edited by Damon Knight

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by Cora Buhlert

Whale Hunt on the Rhine

Moby Dick on the Rhine
Moby Dick swims past the Duisburg copper smelter.

All of West Germany is currently kept on tenterhooks by Moby Dick. No, I'm not talking about the classic novel by Herman Melville, but about our very own re-enactment thereof on the river Rhine.

On May 18, the skipper of a Rhine barge reported having seen "a white monster" in the polluted waters of the Rhine near Duisburg. The river police initially assumed that the man was drunk, but other sightings were reported as well. The unfortunately named Dr. Wolfgang Gewalt (his surname literally means "violence"), director of the Duisburg Zoo, identified the creature as a beluga whale, which had somehow managed to swim 450 kilometres upstream.

Hunting Moby Dick
Dr. Gewalt and his crew hunt Moby Dick with stun guns and bow and arrow.

Discovering his inner Captain Ahab, Dr. Gewalt decided to capture the white whale and have it transported to his brand-new dolphinarium. However, he was about as successful as his literary counterpart and so Moby Dick, as the whale was nicknamed by the locals, repeatedly eluded the traps laid for him, with the aid of some people who believe that the whale should be free back to swim the ocean and not imprisoned in a too small basin.

Diving bell vessel Carl Straat
The specialist diving bell vessel "Carl Straat" with a tugboat on the Rhine. The "Carl Straat" was built in 1963. My Dad designed the handling gear for the diving bell.

Eluding his would-be captors, Moby Dick even swam as far upstream as the West German capital of Bonn, where he interrupted a parliamentary press conference, most likely to protest the treatment he had suffered at the hands of the West German police as well as the heavy pollution of the Rhine, which turned the pristine white skin of a whale a splotchy grey. However, there is a happy ending, because Moby turned around and made it back to the North Sea unharmed.

Moby Dick in Bonn cartoon
A cartoonist's impression of Moby Dick interrupting the parliamentary press conference, much to the chagrin of Chancellor Ludwig Ehrhard.

All-new Anthology, All-new Stories:

Moby's adventures are enough to keep the entire country at the edge of their seats. But nonetheless, I still found the time to read the new science fiction anthology Orbit 1, edited by Damon Knight, which I picked up from the trusty spinner rack at my local import bookstore. The blurb on the backcover promised nine brand-new stories by the best science fiction authors working today, so how could I resist?

Orbit 1, edited by Damon Knight

"Staras Flonderans" by Kate Wilhelm

Kate Wilhelm is not only one of the best up and coming science fiction authors, she also happens to be married to Orbit editor Damon Knight. That said, Knight wasn't playing favourites here, because Kate Wilhelm's contribution to the anthology is a genuinely good story.

A scout craft with a three person crew, two humans and the alien Staeen, approaches a derelict starship. The lifeboats are gone and the ship was abandoned by her crew in a hurry. However, our three brave explorers have no idea why, since the ship was in perfect working order. Nor is this the first time something like this has happened; other ships have been found abandoned as well.

Kate Wilhelm explores the mystery of the abandoned starship not through the eyes of the two human crewmen, but of the alien Staeen, who is described as looking like an inverted tulip at one point. Staeen is a truly alien creature, who can survive on land, underwater, in deep space and in high radiation environments. He is an empath, several millennia old and humans are ridiculously short-lived to him. In fact, Staeen's people, the Chlaesan, refer to humans as "Flonderans", which means "children" in their language. Staeen's human crewmates, two big, burly spaceman that would be at home in any issue of Analog, clearly have no idea how their comrade views them.

Staeen uses his empathic abilities and realises that the crew abandoned the ship in a fit of irrational panic. But whatever caused that blind panic is still out there, as our three brave explorers are about to find out…

At its heart, this story is a neat mystery in space that would have been at home in Planet Stories or Thrilling Wonder Stories twenty years ago. What sets it apart is Staeen's uniquely alien view of the world as well as Kate Wilhelm's writing skills.

Four stars.

"The Secret Place" by Richard McKenna

I wasn't familiar with the work of Richard McKenna, who passed away two years ago at the way too early age of fifty-one. So "The Secret Place", which was found among his papers after his death, is my first exposure to his work.

First-person narrator Duard Campbell recounts his strange wartime adventures. As a young geology student, Campbell was part of a team that was supposed to track down a uranium mine in the Oregon desert. For in 1931, a boy named Owen Price was found dead with claw marks on his back as well as some gold ore and a piece of uranium oxide in his pocket. When uranium suddenly becomes vitally important with the onset of WWII, the US Army sends a team to locate the source of the uranium oxide. The chief geologist Dr. Lewis believes that this venture is futile, because the area in question is a volcanic high plateau, where uranium does not naturally occur.

When the team departs, only Campbell is left behind. He wants to prove Dr. Lewis wrong and find the uranium vein. So he hires Owen's sister Helen, who can see things no one else can see, as his secretary to pry the secret of the uranium mine out of her. But the game Campbell plays with Helen quickly becomes dangerous for them both.

I enjoyed the vivid descriptions of the Oregon countryside, though I have no idea how accurate they are. The ending is a bit abrupt, though, and the central mystery is not really resolved, probably because McKenna died before he could finish the story.

Three stars.

"How Beautiful With Banners" by James Blish

James Blish needs no introduction to the readers of the Journey.

Dr. Ulla Hillstrøm is a scientist who runs into problems when her living spacesuit merges with a native creature, described as a floating cloak, during a research mission of the Saturn moon of Titan.

Dr. Hillstrøm realises that the cloak is trying to mate with her spacesuit. She notes a second cloak creature and deduces that it might be jealous, so she tries to use the second creature to separate the cloak creature from her spacesuit. However, she is only partly successful, because the separation destroys the spacesuit. The last thing Dr. Ulla Hillstrøm sees before she freezes to death is the mating dance of the cloak creatures.

Beautifully written, but inconsequential. The stereotype of the icy female scientist who never knew love and companionship is overused. Science fiction writers, please go and meet some actual women scientists.

Two stars

"The Disinherited" by Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson is another author who needs no introduction.

The government of an overpopulated future Earth ends the galactic exploration program and recalls scientific personnel and spaceship crews. Understandably, no one is very happy about this.

"The Disinherited" follows two characters. Jacob Kahn is a starship captain and has been for a very long time due to the time dilation effect of travelling at lightspeed. Kahn is also an Israeli Jew, something which should not be unusual, considering how many science fiction writers are Jewish, but which sadly still is. Kahn's first mate is Native American, his chief engineer is from India, the assistant chief engineer from Africa. Anderson presents us a still all too rare future populated by people other than white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, though most of them are still male.

David Thraikill is a scientist whose family has been living on the planet Mithras for three generations now and who has never been to Earth. As a result, Thraikill and the rest of the scientists do not want to leave Mithras, because this is their home now. Kahn tries to persuade them to leave by explaining that the human inhabitants of Mithras cannot maintain a high level of technology in the long run and that there will also be conflicts with the native population of Mithras, a race of peaceful kangaroo-like beings. Because as history shows, this is what always happens when one group of humans comes in contact with another group and colonises their homeland…

Considering how prolific Poul Anderson, it's no surprise that his works can be hit and miss. "The Disinherited" definitely falls on the "hit" side and offers a look at the dark side of colonialism, something our genre rarely explores.

Five stars

"The Loolies Are Here" by Allison Rice

Allison Rice is the only unfamiliar name in Orbit 1. However, the biographic note explains that Allison Rice is a joint penname used by Jane Rice, whose stories have been brightening up the pages of Unknown, Astounding and F&SF for more than twenty years now, and Ruth Allison, a mother of five and new writer.

The first person narrator – we later learn that she shares the name the authors have chosen to publish this story under – is a harried housewife and mother of four, who is dealing with a torrent of bad luck, appliances breaking down, children and pets misbehaving, etc… One day, she finds tiny footprints on the floor and wonders whether the loolies – mischievous goblins whom her sons blame for their own misbehaviour – are not real after all. Eventually, the narrator sees a bonafide loolie in the bathroom during a massive storm. But even though the loolie causes chaos, he does help the narrator get even with her useless husband.

"The Loolies Are Here" is very much a humour piece and the voice of the harried housewife and mother certainly rings true. In many ways, this story reminded me of Shirley Jackson's collection of semi-autobiographical short stories Life Among the Savages. It's a good story, but as a humorous domestic fantasy story, it doesn't really fit into what is otherwise a science fiction collection.

Four stars

Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson

"Kangaroo Court" by Virginia Kidd

Virginia Kidd is a well known name in genre circles as a member of the Futurians, poet, magazine publisher, literary agent, former roommate of Judith Merril and former wife of James Blish. Now she can also add short fiction writer to her resume.

A future Earth, where war is a thing of the past and space travel has been outlawed, receives strange messages from outer space, followed by the landing of a spaceship. A military officer named Tulliver Harms puts himself in charge of dealing with the alien Leloc, whom he is convinced must be dangerous – after all, they're aliens. Harms plans to annihilate the Leloc.

The only potential obstacle to this plan is the newly appointed liaison officer Wystan Godwin, who had no idea what is going on due to having spent the past few months on a retreat in monastery in Tibet. Harms does his best to keep Godwin busy and in the dark, but eventually Wystan gets to parley with the kangaroo-like Leloc, who are not just very alien, but who also believe that Earth is their long lost colony. Wystan has to muster all his diplomatic skills to avoid genocide or all-out war.

"Kangaroo Court" is an amusing story about how diplomacy rather than violence wins the day, featuring some truly alien aliens. However, it also goes on far too long and particularly the expositional sections in the middle about kangaroos, marsupials and the impossible nature of the Leloc spacedrive made my eyes glaze over like the gizmospeak in a bad Analog story.

Three stars

"Splice of Life" by Sonya Dorman

Sonya Dorman burst onto the scene a few years ago and has since established herself as one of our most exciting new writers.

"Splice of Life" opens with a young woman – she's only ever addressed as Miss D. – coming to after a car accident, just in time for a doctor to stick a hypodermic into her eyeball. The eye was injured in the accident and Miss D. worries that she may lose it. The doctors and nurses reassure her, but both Miss D. and the reader realise that something is not quite right in this hospital.

A neat tale of medical horror with a ending that packs a punch.

Four stars

"5 Eggs" by Thomas M. Disch

Thomas M. Disch is another newish author, who was one of Cele Goldsmith-Lalli's discoveries back when she was editing Fantastic and Amazing.

The unnamed writer protagonist of "5 Eggs" has been left by his lover Nyctimene on the eve of their engagement party. Gradually, we learn that Nyctimene was not quite human, but some kind of bird alien, as the reference to the figure from Greek mythology suggests. However, Nyctimene has left something behind: a basket of eggs. But leaving eggs lying around the house can be quite dangerous.

This story is well written, but there isn't much of a plot and the final twist is not as shocking as Disch probably thinks it is. The recipe for Caesar salad sounds good, though.

Two stars

Pure Food-Oil ad
If you're planning on making Thomas M. Disch's recipe for Caesar salad, mind the eggs.

"The Deeps" by Keith Roberts

British writer and artist Keith Roberts has been gracing the covers and pages of Science Fantasy and New Writings in SF for several years now, though this is his first US publication, as far as I know.

"The Deeps" starts with the by now familiar dystopian vision of an overpopulated Earth (for another recent take on this theme see Make Room, Make Room! by Harry Harrison, reviewed here by our own Jason Sacks). This time around, the ingenious solution to the overpopulation problem is cities on the ocean floor.

Mary Franklin is a suburban housewife living in one of those undersea cities. One day, her teenaged daughter Jen goes off to a dance and doesn't come home. Mary goes searching for her, wondering whether the children who grow up under the sea are not becoming steadily more fishlike.

"The Deeps" is well written. Roberts captures both Mary's frustration with her husband and her fear for Jen, though I wonder whether a frantic mother searching for her missing child would really spend two pages describing the infrastructure of undersea living. Atmospheric, but not a whole lot of plot and marred by long stretches of exposition.

Three stars

Summary Judgment

The Orbit anthology series is certainly off to a good start. The quality of the stories varies, but they do offer a good overview of the range of science fiction writing today.

Of the nine stories in this anthology, four are written by women. If we count Jane Rice and her collaborator Ruth Allison separately, we have five male and five female authors. Of course, women make up fifty-one percent of the Earth's population, so an anthology with fifty percent male and fifty percent female contributors shouldn't be anything unusual. However, in practice there are still way too many magazine issues and anthologies that don't have a single female contributor, so an anthology where half the authors are women is truly remarkable.

Three and a half stars all in all

Café on the Bremen market square
Enjoying the summer sun with a cup of coffee, a slice of snow mousse cake and a good book on Bremen's market square.
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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 6, 1966] The World is Ending (Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison)

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by Jason Sacks

The Earth is starting to collapse.

Smog fills the air of our greatest cities, species are dying throughout the world, and the global population continues to increase geometrically, threatening our very existence as human beings on this planet. Half the people in the world live in extreme poverty while most of the other half worry about falling into poverty. Famine threatens much of the world, even as the world’s arable land decreases due to over-farming.

If things keep going as they have been, we will be facing unparalleled destruction by the end of the century.

Rachel Carson and her important book

Our great thinkers are stepping up to warn us about global destruction. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring is a terrifying description of environmental degradation, while Ralph Nader’s 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed is a timely reminder the government doesn’t always look out for the interests of everyday people. John Kenneth Galbraith stated the roots of the problem well in his 1958 book The Affluent Society, most people are blind to the destruction we’re creating:

The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered, and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wire that should long since have been put underground. They pass into a countryside that has been rendered largely invisible by commercial art… they picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American genius?

Galbraith’s fictional family is all too real, all too likely to overlook the terrible ways we’re destroying our planet. The worst part of his scenario is a sad truth: all these issues are likely to compound, to become worse and worse over time. Eventually these trends will become so powerful, there will be no way to reverse them. If we don't reverse them, our planet is doomed.

Population growth vs the rate of food production, from a Malthusian perspective

Add to those problems the massive impact of the Mathusian theory of population growth, which states (to simplify it dramatically) that population growth is exponential while increases of food, water and other key commodities is linear. Anyone extrapolating out Malthus’s theories will discover our world population is fast outstripping our ability to feed and clothe them. Malthusians believe we’re facing a ticking population bomb – and they also believe too many people are ignoring that bomb.

A new science fiction novel has come around to remind us of that the bomb exists and is ticking.

Make Room! Make Room!

Make Room! Make Room is a major departure for author Harry Harrison. Harrison is probably best known for his Stainless Steel Rat series, which are light and silly action-adventure stories. In this book he shows his versatility with one of the most compelling and downbeat speculative fiction novels I’ve ever read.

Harrison takes the destruction of the planet to its logical conclusion. By 1999, on the edge of the new millennium, Earth is ravaged. Thousands of species of animals have gone extinct. The world’s population has exceeded 7 billion and continues to grow. Meat and vegetables are commodities more precious than gold. All the oil has been mined from the planet and all the trees have been chopped down.

As Make Room! Make Room! begins, we learn New York City is massively overpopulated. Some 35 million people live in the metropolis, and thousands of people living on the streets. Thousands more live in abandoned cars, now made useless by the lack of oil in the world. Police officers are barely paid, and they live in tiny apartments powered by batteries whose generator is a man riding a bicycle.

Only a small wealthy class of people continue to live in the city, residing in air conditioned, spacious apartments, showering with rare and precious clean water and enjoying the occasional cherished strip of black market steak.

In this world we follow police officer Andrew Rusch as he tries to track down the murderer of a rich man who lives in one of those spacious apartments. We watch Rusch fight through his wretched world to find the killer, find a new love, lose an old companion, and fight like hell to acquire even the most basic things he needs to survive. Even the pathetic SoyLentil steaks are a rare, delicious luxury. Harrison puts us in the well-worn shoes of his characters, forcing us to understand their privations and pain on a personal level.

Make Room! Make Room! is a combination cautionary tale and hard-boiled detective novel, as if Raymond Chandler and Rachel Carson had a child who they gave to Philip K. Dick to raise. Like Dick’s brilliant Dr. Bloodmoney (my favorite book from 1965), Make Room! Make Room! takes place in an anti-utopian society which has experienced a profound collapse in every one of its structures. Unlike Dick’s masterpiece, however, there is little or no catharsis or heroism in Harrison’s book. Everything is misery in Make Room! Make Room!.

Every aspect of Harrison's world brings emotional, financial, or physical pain to the people who live there. The mere act of existing in this anti-utopia is pure torture. And the true sadness of this book is that Rusch and his new girlfriend Shirl only sometimes see this world for the hellhole it is. Other times they wander through the world, like goldfish never seeing the water they’re swimming in.

Young Mr. Harrison

Harrison does a compelling job of extrapolating out the effects of environmental degradation, and he does a masterful job of portraying governmental breakdown. Despite the presence of police, the world seems nearly lawless, with civil servants shown as woefully unable to help in the world and with rebellions cutting off aqueducts into the city. While politicians argue endlessly about stupid things, bureaucrats cut back on food and water rations. Rioting breaks out in the streets and the police are unable to do anything about it. I’m not sure if Harrison is a libertarian, but his portrayal of government here shows a deep distrust of the net the current presidential administration has endeavored to create for all of us.

Another of Harrison’s main ideas is the blindness most people have to the events they’re part of. In one powerful scene late in the book, the government orders a large family to move into the apartment Andy and Shirl are sharing. The family is huge, with ten kids, a couple who have died and a few more on the brink of death. The family are filthy and pathetic, loud, obnoxious and self-involved. They have no class, which bothers Andy and Shirl deeply. But more than class or loudness, the family is horrible to live with because they are representative of the larger, broken society in which they live.

They have too many kids. Those kids get a maximum of three years education. Nobody can find a job. The family live on government rations. They have nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive for, no reason to think things will ever improve for them. Life is misery and eventually you die. If you’re rich and connected, perhaps the police will track down your murderer. If not, you’ll just die like the hundreds who die each day, unloved, unmourned, just another boring statistic in this Malthusian wasteland.

Make Room! Make Room! is a professionally written, powerful novel which took me to a place I don’t want to visit again. Harrison creates a rich and compelling anti-utopia extrapolated from the pages of The New York Times. He shows us a frightful future that seems all too likely to happen. Maybe this book will do a little bit to spur readers  to fight for our ecology and to keep population growth low. Malthus would approve.

3.5 stars.

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