Tag Archives: Brian W. Aldiss

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 26, 1967] The Shock of the New II – Sex and the Modern British SF Reader New Worlds, September 1967

2 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

The strange evolution of the ‘new’ New Worlds continues this month. Be warned – it’s not an issue to loan to minors!


Cover by Peter Phillips

Let’s go to the issue!

This month’s “Leading Article” looks at our fascination with predicting the future – relevant to science fiction, of course! – but then uses this idea to analyse and review a book named The Art of Conjecture by French writer Bernard de Jouvenal. The future is less known than the past and is therefore more uncertain. Usual food for thought, but this seems less a thought experiment and more an editorial review.

Illustration by Zoline

Camp Concentration (Part 3 of 4) by Thomas M. Disch

In this third part, the fact that Louis Sacchetti is now fully infected with the Pallidine bug, and as it has been known to cause madness before death, leads to more madness and “ramblings”, as Louis puts it. Result: lots of religious iconography and internal ponderings in very short extracts ensue. Questions posed such as “Who is there to answer to the sky?” and vivid descriptions such as “My entrails are trodden down in the mire” may give you a clue where we’re going here.

The clever part is that there is a purpose to the madness. Much of the enjoyment here is in reading Disch’s well-constructed paragraphs and trying to determine what the meaning of it all is. It is very Ballardian, in that try-and-connect-the-deliberately-disjointed-paragraphs-together kind of way.

And yes, also in that Ballardian way, it is all starting to fall apart. More prisoners die. Sacchetti is both sicker and scoring higher than ever on the psychometric tests. Dr Busk seems to have run away from Camp Archimedes, and is replaced by Bobby Fredgren, who conducts more tests on Louis. We are also introduced to Skilliman, a person who seems like they’re straight out of Doctor Strangelove and on whom most of the story is spent describing and making up strange fictions about. I suspect that the reasons for this may become more important and more obvious next time. However, the omens are not good for a happy ending next month. 4 out of 5.

Still Trajectories by Brian W. Aldiss

Another month, another Aldiss, still telling us of a near-future Europe that has experienced psychedelic drugs as a result of Russia dropping hallucinogenic bombs in the Acid Head War. Last time it was about Charteris’s travelling around the English Midlands and becoming Saint Charteris, a god-like personality that is worshipped and adored. This time, we begin in Holland with Speed Supervisor Jan Koninkrijk, who describes the kind of decaying place Colin Charteris did in Multi Value Motorway last month. Lots of talk of cars and highways and speed, because we’re still channelling J G Ballard, but also with its talk of a depressed wife with no personality and the presence of ‘omnivision’ I think there’s a little bit of an homage to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

The story steps up a gear (motoring analogy!) when it is revealed that Colin Charteris, the Mad Messiah last seen in England, is due to visit Jan’s home town of Aalter, on what could be seen as a Crusade in a convoy of cars. In his capacity as future-traffic-cop, Koninkrijk picks up Charteris and his girlfriend Angeline. Strange poetry ensues. Jan is affected by what he hears, and at the end abandons his mundane, routine life. The crusade rumbles on.

Like before in previous stories, there’s lots of vivid imagery and wordplay, not to mention things that are meant to mean a lot. Allegories of cars, speed, and crashing abound, although the poetry lost me a bit. Memorable though this story is, these Charteris stories do feel like little more than cut-up sections of a book, a serial in disguise. 3 out of 5.

Article: Psychological Streamlining by Christopher Finch

This month’s ‘artycle’ (I’ll keep saying it because I like it) examines the work of Peter Phillips, which combines Pop Art sensibilities with technical method. Lots of customisation and American imagery as a result.

I’m still not sure whether these articles are mind-blowing or just self-obsessed clap-trap with delusions of grandeur. Some of the sentences here are just ripe for parody. And yet I must admit that they’re showing me things I had never considered before, which I guess is partly the purpose of art. 3 out of 5.

Masterton and the Clerks by John T. Sladek

Here’s that story delayed from last month.

A sort of Kafka-esque satire which seems to be about the mindless routines and meaningless existence of bureaucracy in the modern office as seen through the observations of Henry on his fellow workers and in particular his boss, Mr. Masterton. As is now de rigueur for much of the New Wave stuff, it’s written in that cut-up style, with diagrams, memos and the like. It’s meant to be amusing, but feels also rather pointless and depressing, filled with people that you wouldn’t want to spend time with, never mind reading about in a far-too-long story. But that may be its point.

Unfortunately, or perhaps appropriately for a story set in an office, it reads like a copy of something else or something that we’ve seen before. It almost feels like Disch has written it. Not convinced that this one was worth the wait, to be honest. File in the “Life’s dull and then you die” filing cabinet, albeit perhaps with a faint smile on your face. 2 out of 5.

Article: A New Look at Vision by Christopher Evans

The return of Dr. Evans, who to me still feels a little like a British version of The Good Doctor Asimov. This month he’s looking at new developments in optics, a much-needed development for those of us who are short-of-sight. (I’m tempted to throw in the joke about “If only I could read the small print”, but I shall refrain.) It begins with facts I didn’t know about the eye, before discussing how contact lenses work, and finally explains the experiments on pattern, form and process that allow us a greater understanding of how our brain works. Another informative article on something I didn’t realise I needed to read about. 4 out of 5.

Book Reviews

You may have noticed, like I have, that there seems to be a trend in New Worlds at the moment about stories involving religion. Not sure why, but I am noticing many stories about God/Gods, religious icons, theology and all the rest of it. Perhaps they’ve always been there and I’m only just noticing them? Anyway, the detailed review this month by C. C. Shackleton is of a book by Alex Comfort, The Anxiety Makers, which initially examines the concepts of  New Theology and New Mysticism.

All well and good. The article then links these concepts to Dr. Comfort's book to make the point (I think) that many of today's anxieties are related to ideas from Victorian times that doctors  are obsessed with dealing with. It then goes into some detail on the origins of these anxieties, referred to as the “four horses of the nineteenth-century apocalypse” – masturbation, sexual intercourse, birth control and constipation. I can safely say that these are topics I would never have expected to read of in New Worlds, although to be fair it examines these issues in a rather matter-of-fact manner.

Some of the ideas examined here are quite complex. I'm not even sure that I got them, as there seems to be an assumption that I know something about the topic already. (I do not.) As a result, I'm not really sure of its relevance here, although as an article perhaps meant to shock, I guess it might sell a few more copies. Personally, though, it makes me feel like my copy of New Worlds should be hidden behind the newsagent’s counter… can’t see it being widely promoted on the shelves of my local W H Smiths.

The other reviews this month by James Cawthorn are less titillating and more genre based. Keith Laumer’s A Plague of Demons “moves along briskly, achieves some neat lines of hard-boiled humour and is, above all, entertainment.” Brief mention is also made of Robert Silverberg’s To Open the Sky (religion, again), but this is mainly descriptive rather than analytical.

Summing up New Worlds

Another wide-ranging issue, some of which is on topics I didn’t expect. I feel that the fiction is a minor part of the magazine this month, although it can’t be denied that the magazine seems to be going all out to broaden its readership. The Disch is becoming more obtuse, John Sladek’s Masterton and the Clerks was a disappointment, although I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting.

In short, a solid issue, but not an outstanding one. With the emphasis on articles, I have a feeling that whilst trying to gain new reader’s interest, the staff may be losing their traditional readership. I do wonder what the New Worlds readers of the 1950’s would make of this issue. There’s no denying that there’s science, but where’s the science fiction? Even the fiction seems more literary and less science-fictional than what has gone before.

And I realise that that may be the point.

In this brave new world of New Worlds there may be less space for spaceships and more room for sex – or at least adult topics. This fits in with the brief that Moorcock made his intent years ago, to modernise and adult-ise science fiction, and what the Arts Council want their grant to be used for, but based on what I’m seeing here I’m not sure that it means the magazine has found, or will find, a bigger, more interested audience.


A 21st anniversary issue – has it really been around that long?

Until the next!



2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 28, 1967] The Shock of the New – Rabbits, Hedgehogs and Kazoos (New Worlds, August 1967)

6 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

After last month’s impressive resurrection of New Worlds, I’m quite intrigued this month to see whether editor Mike Moorcock’s vision of the future of British science fiction magazines can be upheld. Let’s go to the issue!


They say "sex sells". This may be the reason for this cover! Cover by Eduardo Paolozzi

This month’s “Leading Article” is one of those that examines an idea – not always related to science fiction, at least not at first. This month the connection seems obtuse, about creativity and theories of art by focusing on the work of Anton Ehrenzweig.


Again, I think we’re aiming at the new readers drawn to New Worlds by the Art Council rather than by science fiction.


Mind-bending Art meets Philosophy!

It does make you think, though, even if I feel that it is a little too introspective myself. I could be wrong, but this does not feel like a Moorcock editorial, but perhaps rather an Associate Editor Langdon Jones article.

Camp Concentration (Part 2 of 4) by Thomas M. Disch


Illustration by Zoline. This makes sense in the story, honest!

And so to the continuation of the big event story.

A quick recap. Conscientious objector Louis Sacchetti has been imprisoned in Camp Archimedes and given the task by prison commander Humphery Haast of observing other prisoners who are being experimented upon by Doctor Aimee Busk. The group are being given an experimental drug, Pallidine, which will hopefully improve intelligence.

We left the story last time where one of the prisoners, George Wagner, had become ill during a camp performance of Faustus. The group’s ringleader, Modecai Washington, had explained to Louis that the drug only gives them months to live.

Continuing this month, Louis, inspired by the revelation that the prisoners will die, is spurred on to write after months of writer’s block. George Wagner dies. There is a funeral. Sacchetti is admonished by Busk for using the prison library to do a little research of his own.

We discover that Pallidine is a spirochate bug, in actual fact the initiator of syphilis. In the past syphilis has been known to cause madness before death, something which Sacchetti is made very aware of. With this in mind, much of the story becomes increasingly bizarre as the effects of the virus on the infected person’s brain takes hold.

Mordecai’s infection is clearly very advanced and Louis spends much of the beginning of this story listening to Mordecai explaining how little time he has left and explaining how the cumulative effects of syphilis progress, in some vivid detail. This is emphasised by the point that Mordecai has three ‘familiars’ – rabbits infected with the disease – because the effects of Pallidine on rabbits are the same as humans, but happen much faster. (This also explains the strange pencil illustrations of rabbits seen over these two first parts.)

The intense intellectual discussions and the increasingly surreal events he experiences inspire Louis’s writing of a play entitled Auschwitz: A Comedy, which he describes as “fantastic”.

However much of the last part of the story describes Sacchetti’s observation of the prison performance of Faustus – a very odd, quasi-religious performance, involving camp commander Haast as a Messianic figure wearing a 'crown of thorns' made up from an electrocardiograph machine on stage. Before the performance reaches its ending though, Mordecai dies.

That night Louis has strange yet vivid dream of a conversation with Saint Thomas Aquinas. As a result, upon waking, he realises that he is as much of a prisoner as the other inmates.

Shocked yet? You’re meant to be.

In a lot of ways, this second part of the story continues what happened in Part One, but in understandably more extreme ways. The decay of the physical body and the brain, combined with the increasingly bizarre degeneration of the mind, is quite well done, although this means that much of the plot is pseudo-intellectual talk, lengthy yet meaningful diatribes and random navel-gazing. We have much talk of philosophers and art, alchemy, James Joyce and religion as the disease takes hold.

Consequently, I found that much of this part of the story was intellectual fluff and provocative imagery that, although interesting, did little to progress things. It was challenging and thoughtful, yes, but also long-winded and even a little dull. It felt more like a university philosophy lecture than anything else, rather like the author was showing off his knowledge rather than portraying anything of actual purpose.

Don’t get me wrong, Camp Concentration is still fascinating and often gripping, even as it becomes increasingly odd and remains incessantly downbeat. I’m still interested to see how this continues in the next issue. 4 out of 5.

The Green Wall Said by Gene Wolfe

And now a much shorter and simpler story from a new author to me, American Gene Wolfe. This is a story of aliens abducting humans to ask for help. I found it to be an interesting one in that I think it is written in a style that shows a slightly different take on what is now seen as British New Wave.

It is "cut-up", having two narrative threads running side-by-side, but more linear and more straightforward than say, the works of Disch and Ballard. As a result, it is more memorable for me. I like the ambiguity of the ending! I would be interested to read more from this writer. 3 out of 5.

Article: Language Mechanisms by Christopher Finch

This month’s ‘arty’ article (artycle?) examines the work of sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, a person I was not aware of before reading this article but makes fascinating reading here. Paolozzi seems to integrate inspirations from wide-ranging sources such as writer William Burroughs, the Dadaism movement and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, which fit right into the sort of material the magazine is currently writing about. Lots of pictures too, to illustrate.

I’d be interested to hear what other readers make of this as part of New Worlds though. Is this something that is genuinely new and adds to the magazine’s appeal, or is it instead a case of the artist disappearing into a self-imposed balloon of introspection? Putting it simpler: is it mind-blowing or just self-obsessed clap-trap with delusions of grandeur? And does it deserve a place in New Worlds? One I might need to think about more myself. 4 out of 5.

Kazoo by James Sallis

A new writer to me, writing here in a faux-hip style that seems both terribly new and yet terribly dated at the same time. Reminds me of Samuel R. Delany, William S. Burroughs and Anthony Burgess – deliberately, I think – with its made-up language and hipster-style prose.

It seems like a day in the life of Ferdinand Turnip, and uses John Lennon-eque turns of phrase to describe a set of strange events. Turnip is first attacked on an urban street, but then the two agree to have lunch. He then goes to the blood bank, joins in with a street band, (Guess what – he plays a kazoo) goes to his artist’s studio and drinks turpentine, then meets his partner Bella who breaks up with him. I’m fairly sure the last line is meant to be an ‘amusing’ double-entendre, but it’s difficult for me to tell, if I’m honest.

It’s OK as a stylistic piece, although tries too hard to be clever for me. But at least it is a little different from what all the other stories seem to be trying this month. One for the hip cats, which I am clearly not. 3 out of 5.


No, I don't know what this means, either!

Mars Pastorale, Or, I’m Fertile, Said Felix by Peter Tate

Allegorical tale about the self-aware growth of a plant juxtaposed with the story of Felix Jimpson, and his partner Velvet, recently arrived on Mars. I could be wrong, but it seems to be about the dichotomy between modern technology and nature on Mars.

Perhaps best summed up with a quote from the story: “What else is a poet or any other writer except a hedgehog trying to find a voice to yell at oncoming death?” which will either intrigue you or make you want to run for the hills. It is so ridiculous it makes me think that the story is meant to be satire.

Another deliberately obtuse, rather pretentiously symbolic tale. I may have read the satire wrong, but generally it seems to be trying too hard and worse, it feels like it has been done before. 2 out of 5.

Multi Value Motorway by Brian Aldiss

Another interesting experiment from Brian as he continues to channel his inner-Ballard. This feels like part of a story, more so when I realised that it involved Colin Charteris, who I last encountered in Just Passing Through, a story in the February issue of SF Impulse . It continues the idea that much of Europe has experienced psychedelic drugs as a result of Russia dropping hallucinogenic bombs in the Acid Head War. Last time it was about Charteris’s experiences of Western Europe. This time it is a splintered story of Charteris’s travels around the English Midlands, observing pop culture, teenagers, sex and motorway crashes creating art, and ending with Charteris becoming Saint Charteris, a god-like personality that is worshipped and adored. Perhaps best described as “If Aldiss wrote Ballard”, or perhaps more fittingly, “If Ballard wrote Aldiss”, as it is less cut-up than J.G.’s usual work.

Still intriguing, though, even if it feels like only part of a story. 4 out of 5.

Article: New Directions in Medicine by Brig.-Gen. Thomas H. Crouch

Another article, this time on how new science, often developed by the military, has led to innovations being taken up in the wider world.

Laser beams for surgery! Robotic prosthetics! Velcro closure tape! I found it interesting to read how new ideas are becoming generally available in the real world.

Science fiction is often seen as “the fiction that predicts the future”, and this article seems to confirm that (even if I think that it's not always true, myself!) I suspect that we will see most of these being commonly used in the future. 4 out of 5.

Concentrate 1 by Michael Butterworth

Michael Butterworth has appeared in New Worlds before, last time in October 1966 with The Steel Corkscrew. His work seems to be liked because it is different, and so is this. Concentrate 1 is more of a prose poem than prose or a poem, a mercifully short piece on – well, I’m not sure what. More seemingly disjointed ramblings, with some nicely written prose but deliberately no linear narrative. I understand that his writing is popular, but I still can’t shake the general feeling that the author wants to be Ballard and is not as good. This month’s “not for me” piece. 2 out of 5.

Book Reviews

The detailed review this month is by already-mentioned author Thomas M. Disch, of Harry Mathews’s Tlooth. (No, I hadn’t heard of it either.) Despite Disch’s claims that his enthusiasm for Mathews’s work borders on the “evangelical”, and his thoughtful and detailed analysis of this novel, I was less impressed. The book sounds very Disch-like, and I can see why he likes it, although I feel that it is not something I want to spend time with.

Brian Aldiss reviews Jeremy Seabrooks’s social history novel The Unprivileged. No, I’ve not heard of that one, either, but Aldiss seems impressed with the honest telling of the history of the Seabrook family from 1779, although it does sound to be filled with poverty, punishment and hardship.

Elsewhere James Cawthorn reviews Norman Spinrad’s story of cannibalism in The Men in the Jungle, Fritz Leiber’s “erotic interlude” The Wanderer, the “admirable” The Best from Fantasy & SF 16 and the “dull” Extrapolasis by Alexander Malec.

Summing up New Worlds

Another good issue on the new magazine that is New Worlds. Whilst John Sladek’s Masterton and the Clerks, advertised last month, hasn’t appeared, the Disch still impresses. It does not seem quite as strong as it started, but is still one of the most memorable stories I’ve read in years.

The rest seems to be settling down into this new format impressively. Science, art, philosophy – all are covered, although at the expense of fiction, perhaps. Regarding the fiction, I liked the Wolfe and can see how, like Disch and Sladek, this American author’s story may be influenced by this British New Wave.

However, many of the stories in this issue feel like variations of the same style, echoing Ballard and the like, and as a result the issue’s fiction is more demanding to read than many earlier issues, but less varied in style. Perhaps a little more worrying, what once gained traction by being new, original and shocking is now surprisingly less so, with the influence of Burroughs and Ballard looming large and throughout. It is clear that the editor and his assistants like what they publish – but do the readers?

As a reader, I can see that in future me not liking everything (or is that understanding everything?) in New Worlds is going to be a regular comment. However, at the moment there is enough to keep me better informed, interested and entertained – even if the new New Worlds feels more like a University magazine than an SF digest.

Until the next!



6 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 26, 1967] Change is Here (New Worlds, July 1967)

8 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

It’s been a while, but I’m pleased to finally receive a copy of the new New Worlds. (Note: no longer with sf impulse.)

And it is new, and different.

The first noticeable change was heralded by the slap of the magazine landing on my doormat. Clearly designed to compete with the big glossies on the newsagent’s shelves, New Worlds has changed from the paperback size (7 inches x 4 ½ inches) to something that is 11 inches by 8 ½ inches. It reminds me of that change that Analog Magazine tried a couple of years ago.

As fellow Traveller Kris explained back in March, the magazine now has funding from the UK Arts Council – the rumours seem to suggest somewhere in the region of £120 000. So we now get bigger (in size, if not in the number of pages) and glossier, determined to impress. But is it enough? Let’s go to the issue!

Another change. The “Editorial” has now become the “Leading Article”. Presumably this is to let other writers than the editor Mike Moorcock to do some of the writing. This issue states that the article is by Moorcock with “editorial contributions and assistance from Thomas M. Disch and (Mrs Moorcock) Hilary Bailey” on the contents page.

Other than that, the message is pretty much the usual – change is here and this magazine reflects that change. There is an emphasis on social change and the social sciences, “imperfect as they are” being the new place to go to examine the human condition as it is – and by looking at the past how the human condition has changed. To do this, the writers cover a broad range of ideas, from Victorian melodrama to religion, Freud, Kafka and Viet Nam. All good stuff and thought-provoking, not to mention controversial – I suspect Analog readers might have something to say on the matter!

Really though, it is the usual ideas that we’ve seen in recent Editorials in New Worlds, albeit for a potentially new audience.

Illustration by Zoline

Camp Concentration (part 1 of 4) by Thomas M. Disch

And so to this month’s big event story.

The story is told in a diary format. As the narrator, Louis Sacchetti, begins his tale we discover that he is in Springfield prison with a five year sentence for being “a conchie”, a conscientious objector to the war the US is fighting. (There are deliberate parallels here with Viet Nam, I think.) Without warning, writer Sacchetti finds himself being taken from Springfield to Camp Archimedes, where he is to be an observer and write as if to an outsider what the Camp is like. He is well looked after, although the reason for this is initially unknown.

He meets fellow prisoners George Wagner and Mordecai Washington, the nominal leader of the prison inmates, and Doctor Aimee Busk, who explains that George is part of an experimental group at Camp Archimedes attempting to enhance intelligence.

Sacchetti meets more of the prisoners. Like in some bizarre alternate version of a WW2 prisoner-of-war film, Sacchetti agrees to help set up a theatre production by the prisoners, that of Marlowe's Faustus. During the performance George becomes violently ill. Mordecai explains to Sacchetti that it is a side-effect of being given Pallidine, a drug that rots the brain and gives the person months to live whilst hopefully improving intelligence.

The drug enhancement made me think that Camp Concentration is like Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon, but for a more grown-up, more worldly-wise and drug-aware audience. The whole story (so far, anyway!) is dark, unsettling and decidedly adult, more Aldiss than Asimov. Filled with cultural and literary references, we are a long way away from the traditional space opera here, although I can see that this nearly continuous name-dropping may be wearisome in the long-term.

Last time, in the "Up and Coming" advertisement for this issue,  Moorcock declared Camp Concentration to be the finest sf novel we have ever published. I was a little wary of the hyperbole, personally, but I must admit that this is actually pretty good, a more contemporary version of Orwell’s nightmarish autocratic vision in 1984, perhaps.

It’s not always easy reading, and some of the language used is quite shocking and not for everyone, but this is big, bold science fiction and a story for our modern times. I can’t wait to see where it goes next. 5 out of 5.

The Death Module by J. G. Ballard

Appropriate illustration for the cut-up world of J. G. Ballard. Illustration by Douthwaite.

Leading the British sector of the so-called New Wave, where would we be without a contribution from England’s “Mr Chuckles”, J. G. Ballard? Irony aside, this is typically anti-utopian stuff made up of the usual cut-up snippets and dense yet precise prose we expect from Mr. Ballard.

Regular readers of his work will find characters from previous work reappear – Karen Novotny, Coma, Kline, Xero, Ralph Nader, J. F. Kennedy, Harvey Oswald – now joined by the three dead (and thankfully unnamed) astronauts of the recent Apollo disaster, though to what exact purpose is under debate. Images of sex, pornography and crashing vehicles proliferate in this collage of moments. As baffling as ever, fans will appreciate more of the bleakness and the dour mood that typically suffuse Ballard’s work. Intellectually disconcerting. 4 out of 5.

1937 A. D. ! by John T. Sladek

John Sladek has been appearing a lot in the British magazines lately. Whilst not quite as noticeable as Disch or Zelazny, he has been known to be creating readable stories of interest. This is another one, a time-travel story that in its setting and lighter tone has the feel of a Bradbury rather than a Wells – or perhaps a Clifford Simak. Amusing and well done, if nothing really new. 3 out of 5.

Article: Sleep, Dreams and Computers by Dr. Christopher Evans

This heralds the return of science articles to New Worlds. Dr. Christopher Evans is known here for his articles on computers. He’s not Isaac Asimov, admittedly, but his article on computers, sleep and machine intelligence (they are connected here!) is accessible and written in a prose that is not intimidating. 4 out of 5.

The Heat Death of the Universe by P. A. Zoline

Zoline is perhaps known for her art – there is some of it in the magazine! – but here her prose “does a Ballard” and is presented in small, easily digestible chunks. 3 out of 5.

Not So Certain by David Masson

The return of David Masson brings me mixed feelings. When his work is good, it is very, very good – see his story Traveller’s Rest, for example, back in the September 1965 issue.

However, some of his more recent stories have been less impressive – often still ambitious, but for me lacking something.

The good news is that I enjoyed this one a little more than some. Not so Certain deals with one of Masson’s interests that has appeared in his stories before – that of linguistics and syntax. It is pleasantly complex, although overall the story feels like a lecture, heavy on its didactics. As a result, it is rather like Ballard’s work to me – complex, intelligent and yet rather mystifying. There’s some effort made here, but it does feel rather dull, with a cop-out ending. 3 out of 5.

Article: Expressing the Abstract by Charles Platt

The first page of the Escher article, showing how the magazine is taking advantage of its new quality printing and bigger layout. 

And talking of lectures, here’s an article from the magazine’s newly-employed Art Director (you may also remember him for his prose too!) that examines the work of abstract artist E. M. Escher. This accounts for the eye-catching cover this month, but also explains that – wait for it! – there is more to Escher than meets the eye! (Sorry.) An interesting and enlightening article, that I suspect is here because it fits the wider brief given to the magazine by the Arts Council. 4 out of 5.

The Soft World Sequence by George MacBeth

Poetry. Glass eye in groin. Cucumbers. 2 out of 5.

In the House of the Dead by Roger Zelazny

Lyrical Fantasy from Roger. Strange, gruesome, experimental dream-like images… the sort of thing now expected from the New Wave. An apocalyptic tale of gods and Masters, it is more obtuse than most of the recent material I’ve read of his. Thus, I liked this a little less, but it is still quite good.  4 out of 5.

Book Reviews

Brian Aldiss continues to provide book reviews in this new New Worlds. This month, Brian has two descriptions of non-fiction books about the Hiroshima atomic bomb and a discussion on the consequences of such an event. Douglas Hill reviews Judith Merril’s The Year’s Best S-F, 11th Annual Edition. James Cawthorn (here as “J. Cawthorn”) reviews Samuel R. Delany’s The Einstein Intersection, Roger Zelazny’s Four for Tomorrow, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and Robert Bloch’s collection, Pleasant Dreams / Nightmares, amongst others.

I like the more in-depth reviews, with Aldiss clearly the star of the show this month – even if they’re reviews of books I’m not tempted to read or buy myself.

Another change – there’s a little potted history of all of the contributors at the end of the magazine. I liked it – it’s a nice classy touch, and introduces the authors to those who may not know them from previous incarnations.

Summing up the new New Worlds

If I had to predict what I thought the new New Worlds would be like, this issue would be it. A wide-ranging mixture of science articles, articles on art, book reviews, poetry and yes, some science fiction, but a literary science fiction that is of “the now”, rather than something that harkens back to the past.

Comparing this to earlier Moorcock issues and especially the John Carnell era issues of a mere couple of years ago, this is a revelation, although regular readers may feel that this is what we’ve been leading up to.

More importantly, I think that this issue is the closest we’ve got so far to Moorcock’s vision for New Worlds. It is eclectic, abstract, big, bold and experimental. I feel that this issue is designed to show everyone what a science fiction magazine can offer – and, in my opinion, it mainly delivers. Ballard is Ballard, whilst the Disch is designed to shock – and does a pretty good job.

Whilst many of the authors are those we have read before, Moorcock clearly picking favourites to highlight the potential of his magazine, the presentation of a package of diverse material makes it seem new. It feels deliberately determined to prod, cajole and create controversy. You may not like everything here (and I didn’t!), but I think that that is the point. Is it science fiction and fantasy for the masses, though? Time will tell.

For me, Mike has impressed with this issue – now all he has to do is keep up this quality on a regular basis.

Until the next!



 

8 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 26, 1967] Changes Coming New Worlds and SF Impulse, April 1967

8 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

So I’m now having to get used to receiving just one issue of the British magazines a month. The deal made with the Arts Council last month means that I was guaranteed this issue, which I understand will be the last in this paperback format. It is less but is it a case of "less means more"? Let’s go to the issue!

Editor Mike Moorcock is clearly busy this month, and as a result we have a Guest Editorial from the much-plaudit-ed Samuel R. Delany, who I know is making quite an impact in the US with his novels (Babel 17, amongst others).

Though it is well written, it’s another editorial discussing the future of science fiction. Editors Moorcock, Harrison and Bonfiglioli have all covered this in various issues in the past few years, and this isn’t really anything new. It may, however, be for new readers. It is unsurprisingly positive and embraces the change that we’ve seen in recent years.

To the New Worlds/SF Impulse stories.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

Daughters of Earth by Judith Merril

Judith Merril is currently writing reviews for the Magazine of Fantasy & SF and editing The Year’s Best SF anthology. In between her work on those, she also found the time to revise one of her pieces from December, 1952.

Allowing for the fact that it's a reprint, Daughters of Earth is a cracker in that it takes a lot of old-fashioned science fiction ideas but gives them a modern, different twist. It is the story of future human space exploration but instead of the usual future being determined by men, this is told through successions of generations of women in one family. It is a deliberate subversion of the usual science fiction cliches.

To emphasise this, the story begins in an almost-Old Testament style: “Martha begat Joan, and Joan begat Ariadne. Ariadne lived and died at home on Pluto, but her daughter, Emma, took the long trip out to a distant planet of an alien sun. Emma begat Leah, and Leah begat Carla, who was the first to make her bridal voyage through sub-space, a long journey faster than the speed of light itself”. We go from the Earth to the Moon with Joan, from the Moon to Pluto with Ariadne and from Pluto with Emma to Ullern, a planet reached on the spaceship Newhope through FTL travel. There the colonists meet aliens.

It is an epistolary story, initially told through letters written for Carla, a future descendant, and for future generations on Ullern.

This may sound like a typical space-exploration story as humans expand their influence to the stars. However, it is different in that although it is clearly writing a history, it shows the female of the species in a more positive and pro-active light than usual, even when at times it regresses to soap-opera. With that in mind, the story is perhaps proto-feminist and shows that the future is not just male heroism and gung-ho histrionics, but also about love, family, and personal sacrifice, as well as coming to grips with the fear created by travel into the unknown.

Pleasingly refreshing, this makes me think that this is the sort of story that Heinlein would like to write, but can’t quite reach. It is an example of how traditional science fiction can be given a modern update. 4 out of 5.

Aid to Nothing by P. F. Woods

And then a step down, from the author also known as Barrington J. Bayley. A story of conflict when a Martian tribe, the Sussorr, meets colonising humans. The Sussorr are receiving telepathic vibes from their neighbours the Tuaranth. The beginning reminds me of A. E. van Vogt’s The Black Destroyer, but it soon degenerates into a story where other parts read like a cut-rate Edgar Rice Burroughs. The sympathy is clearly with the peaceful Martians, emphasised by the cartoonish war-loving humans, led by a man annoyingly named Bungleton. 2 out of 5.

Three Short Stories by Thomas M. Disch

The return of Mr Disch, who recently exploded into the British magazines (and was perhaps most recently noted by our Noble Editor for his expletive-laden story in this month’s Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction), started well and yet recently has had stories published that to me felt like his writing is running out of steam.

The title tells it all – there are three stories. The first is a story told by a man to another about a girl he knew before she committed suicide. The storyteller is shot by a secret agent once he has told the story. In the second part, Thadeus and Diane are looking to move into a dilapidated New York apartment, where they discuss life and love before leaving. In the third piece, Mrs. Neary is on a ship that is sinking.

Lots of metaphor and clearly sentences that are meant to mean something, but the point of the stories seem to have passed me by. I’m sure that the stories means something to somebody, and that the three stories are connected in some way, but if they are it is all a bit beyond me. Disch can write – but this is still a bemusingly metaphorical disappointment.3 out of 5.

Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Key of the Door by Arthur Sellings

Arthur is an author much liked by Moorcock, so the return of this writer to New Worlds is not entirely a surprise. His last story was That Evening Sun Go Down in the September 1966 issue of New Worlds.

I had better just check, though. Are you aware in the US what the phrase “Key in the Door” means to us Brits? Just in case you’re not (and apologies if you are!) here it’s a turn of phrase to describe the rite of passage, reached at the mighty age of twenty-one, when according to the adage, the person is symbolically given the key of the door to a property. It really means that they are now an adult, with the freedom to do what they want in their future. Here such matters are turned into a light-hearted time-travel story that’s moderately humorous and not to be taken too seriously.

Victorian Godfrey is discovered to be using his father’s time machine, travelling to 1985 and 2035. There he saw his father dancing with a young lady, but is reluctant to tell his father this. To his father’s horror, Godfrey’s travelling has changed things in the future. As you may know, humour is very divisive and usually for me doesn’t do too well. This one is… fair. It provides a bit of lighter counterbalance to the rest of the issue. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews

I’m pleased to see the return of a book review column, even if it is for only one book! Guest reviewer Brian Aldiss reviews I. F. Clarke’s (no, not that one!) book, Voices Prophesying War 1763 – 1984. Brian goes through the book in some detail, pointing out the (mostly) positives and negatives of the book. It rather sounds like the sort of thing Olaf Stapledon was doing with First and Last Men – quite dry, but full of science-fictional ideas. Might be worth a look.

Summing up New Worlds / SF Impulse

Really this is a holding issue, in that it is the last before we get the new New Worlds in its new form, whatever that is. Whilst it is not quite the same as the “What do we have left?” issue of last month, it is still a little underwhelming. As you might expect, the Merril short novel dominates the issue at about 70 pages and is as good as I had hoped for, but it is a (revised?) reprint. The rest of the issue is lesser material. Even the Disch felt like sub-standard work.

And as is clearly explained in the beginning, that’s that.  Goodbye SF Impulse, hello New New Worlds!

It looks like Mr. Disch may be important. I’m hoping that this new material may be better than his recent efforts, good though they can be.

Until the next – whenever that is!



8 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 20, 1967] Vistas near and far (April 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

7 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

I see you!

We have now entered a phase of the Space Race where there's enough stuff in orbit that other stuff in orbit can take pictures of it.  Not just deliberate rendeszvous' like dual missions of Gemini 6 and 7, but snapshots of opportunity, like Gemini 11's photo of the Soviet Proton 3.

Last week, NASA released perhaps the most extraordinary example of this nature: the first snapshot of a spacecraft sent to the Moon…by a spacecraft sent to the Moon!  Lunar Orbiter 3, launched early last month, has been busily mapping our celestial neighbor, searching for the choicest landing spots for Apollo (whose first manned mission, I've just learned, has been delayed until next year due to the Apollo 1 fire.) In the course of its surveying, Lunar Orbiter 3 caught a glimpse of Surveyor 1, the first American soft-lander.  It all makes the Moon feel that much closer.

While the newspaper brings us tales of science fiction-made-fact, the stf mags continue to provide the visions of science-to-be.  The latest edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction offers several visions of the future: some poetic, some bleak, and some not really worth reading.  Good thing I'm here to tell you which is which, huh?

A pail of tomorrows


by Gray Morrow

Dawn, by Roger Zelazny

Lord Siddhartha, the Buddha, arrives as the capital for a bit of revelry.  There, he is greeted with honors, for he is a prince of this land, redolent with the smells of spice, the bustle of medieval commerce, the prayers of the devoted.  At first glance, Dawn seems as if it will be a pure fantasy in a richly drawn world.  But there are signs that underneath the veneer of ancient India lies a strictly scientific core.

Indeed, we learn quite soon that Siddhartha is actually Sam, one of the original colonists on this world, a planet whose technology has been deliberately restrained by the cabal of the Firsts and their lackeys, the Masters.  Their firm grip lies in their stranglehold on immortality, facilitated by their ability to transmigrate souls from body to body at will.

Sam wants to bring progress to the world.  Can he and his band of rebels undo the work of centuries?

Zelazny's latest novella is reportedly the first part of a longer work, to be titled "Lord of Light".  If it is as expertly rendered as this fine start, then it'll be a good read, indeed!

Four stars.

The Two Lives of Ben Coulter, by Larry Eisenberg

"The greatest disappointment of Ben Coulter's life was his inability to play the violin well."

So begins the tale of a fellow who turned instead to engineering for the purpose, failing to find it there until he co-developed a technique for the remote control of a living being.  Perhaps, at last, he could program mastery into himself.

Most science fiction authors take inspiration from the science news of the day.  Some, like Doc Smith, are actually scientists.  Larry Eisenberg is perhaps unique in the SF community for extrapolating a scientifiction application of his own invention, the remote controlled pacemaker.

His story, if not quite as personally affecting as his crowning scientific achievement, is a pleasant little piece, nonetheless.

Three stars.

Cloud Seeding, by Theodore L. Thomas

In this fictionless vignette, Thomas suggests combining cloud seeding with chemical distribution.  After all, if you're putting stuff in the sky to make rain, why not use fertilizer or poison of what have you.

Thomas forgets that the seeds for the raindrops are necessarily uselessly tiny.  I almost feel as though these little exercises are not to present interesting ideas, but are puzzles for the reader: spot the fallacy and win a hundred dollars!

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Problems of Creativeness, by Thomas M. Disch

The 21st Century is an overcrowded, socialist paradise.  Everyone is on the childless dole, unless they can prove themselves exceptional, finish college, or join the guerrila forces.  Birdie Ludd, the least exceptional of young men, doesn't want to do any of these things.  But for the love of Milly, pretty enough almost to be a movie star, he was willing to endure almost anything.

Less a story and more a slice-of-life from the perspective of an indolent youth, Problems relies mostly on a vivid stream-of-consciousness style and copious use of the first profanity I've read within F&SF's pages.

Three stars, I guess.

The Sword of Pell the Idiot, by Julian F. Grow

Farquhar Orpington-Pell, late a subaltern in Her Majesty's Own Midlothian Dragoons, falls in with a Western doctor on the late 19th Century range.  Their crooked path takes them to a subterranean complex inhabited by aliens.  Things Happen.  Supposed-to-be-funny-but-just-tedious things, capped off by the rather insulting punchline that the transpirings inspired a much better, well known set of books.

Feh.  One star.

"Virtue. 'Tis A Fugue!", by Patrick Meadows

An advanced world refuses the entreaties of humanity to join a terran federation.  Professor Thomas Gunn, a musicologist, provides the key to reaching the hearts of the aliens.  Their language is the culmination of tonality, you see, each sentence its own song.  Our hyper-efficient, sound-codified speak was too declassé to appeal.

It's all a lot of "mun, mun" to me, and in any event, the revelation came out of nowhere.  Indeed, Gunn's story and that of the contact team are completely unrelated until he suddenly appears on the planet in the story's last scenes.

Two stars.

A Matter of Scale, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor goes way out with his latest article.  You know those "the sun is a beachball, and the planets are various small fruit several hundred feet away" models you read in all the science books for kids?  He's decided to go one better, substituting atomic analogs so the distances can be more relatable.

I'm sure it was a fun exercise for him.

Three stars.

Randy's Syndrome, by Brian W. Aldiss

Lastly, another tale of the next, shoulder-to-shoulder, anti-utopian 21st Century.  The foetuses of the world go on strike, refusing to be born into such an awful place.  But is it really a mass strike of the unborn, happy in their womb world of racial memory and distorted, second-hand sensory inputs?  Or is it some kind of planetary neurosis of the mothers?

Whatever it is, it's not science fiction, more a modern myth.  Some might find it clever.

Two stars.

Under the Moon

After such a bright beginning, the April 1967 F&SF stumbles to a finish.  I recognize that science fiction is cautionary as well as aspirational, but I feel one needs to say more than "this future we're heading toward is gonna stink..and by the way, the future is now." 

The Zelazny is worth your time, however.

And, hey, at least the newspaper brings us pretty pictures!



7 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 18, 1967] From Both Sides of the Curtain (New Writings in S-F 10 & Path into the Unknown)

Leave a comment


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The House That Socialism Built

21 years ago this month, Winston Churchill gave his famous lecture “The Sinews of Peace” at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Where he declared that:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Atlantic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent…this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of the permanent peace.

The safety of the world requires a new unity in Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast.

Today Europe remains divided not just down the middle, but with the Northern states kept out of EEC, and right-wing dictatorships remaining in place on the Iberian Peninsula. However, so far warfare has remained largely absent from the continent and the debates within the Soviet Union do not seem all that different from those in Britain.

New council estate in Basford, England
New council estate in Basford, England

In the USSR, it has been announced 22 million people moved into new communal housing, but many of these higher paid workers are opting for new resident owned cooperatives instead. Whilst in England council house building has reached its highest level at 364,000, but that has been equalled by the boom in private housing.

New Khrushchyovkas in Moscow
New Khrushchyovkas in Moscow

Yet even with all this house building too many ordinary people have trouble getting a decent place to live. In Russia the necessity for putting up so many “Khrushchyovkas” is due to housing having been so poor for so long. In a survey in 1957, only 1% of the structures in Leningrad were given the highest rating by building inspectors, with more than half given the lowest. Whist in Kiev over 70% were given the lowest rating. In the UK the problem of the current housing crisis is perfectly illustrated by the harrowing recent film, Cathy Come Home.

Similar debates seem to be taking place in other areas, whether it is in as wages, healthcare and food prices. More and more it seems that sabre rattling and arguments over the best system of government are not dominating the headlines but, instead, how best to balance equality and pragmatism in the different economic systems.

With this alignment between the countries seemingly appearing, it is worth comparing two new anthologies, one from the UK and the other of writers from the USSR:

New Writings in S-F 10

New Writings in S-F 10

Carnell does not cite a theme for this collection, instead talking about breadth of ideas on display. For me, however, these all seem to be dealing with perspective and the nature of reality in some form. Unfortunately, these are not the best examples of this type of work.

The Imagination Trap by Colin Kapp

This is a sequel to Lambda One (which was also adapted for Out of the Unknown’s most recent season) where we get to see Bevis and Porter work on a new problem in Tau Research. Apparently not put off by the problems they encountered last time, a project is going ahead for “Deep Tau”, to use the same principle used to travel through inter atomic space within the Earth, to allow for a form of interstellar travel.

After last time, why would they agree to an almost suicidal trip into Deep Tau? On the Lambda II no less? Because of the titular 'imagination trap', which says that an expert in a field will always be compelled to follow a problem, no matter how dangerous to themselves. This kind of logic is the sort of thing which annoys me about this story, it continues to throw scientific mumbo-jumbo and ideas at you for almost 50 pages that don’t actually hold up to any scrutiny and expect you to go along with it.

My esteemed colleague Mr. Yon liked the original story significantly more than I did so there is clearly a market for what Colin Kapp is trying to do. But for me I will only give it two stars.

Apple by John Baxter

As a result of an unspecified war, all humans are now really tiny. Billings is a Moth Killer who goes into the tunnels inside an apple to slay the insect.

These kind of perspective stories have been with us throughout science fiction’s existence. From Voltaire’s Micromegas, through A. Bertram Chandler’s Giant Killer to Doctor Who: Planet of the Giants. And whilst this is very descriptive, I don’t see what this adds to the millions of other tales of this type.

Two Stars

Robot's Dozen by G. L. Lack

Unfortunately, G. L Lack continues to live up to their name with another disappointing story. In epistolary mode, we learn that Arthur Willis of Bath hires a robot duplicate of himself to watch his house whilst he is on holiday. The robot apparently takes to staring at the neighbours and so Arthur is forced to hire the robot again to prove it was not him. However, the robot rather insists on staying.

An obvious tale where the ending can be seen coming from the first paragraph.

Two Stars

Birth of a Butterfly by Joseph Green

For a century, humans have been exploring the galaxy trying to find intelligent life without success. However, it is a child travelling with his parents that discovers a unique form of intelligent life, small sentient stars that seem to resemble butterflies.

This could easily have been unreadable, but it ends up being a fascinating look at first contact with a totally alien form of intelligence and a rather sweet set of family dynamics. If nothing else, a definite relief after the first half of this anthology.

Four Stars

The Affluence of Edwin Lollard by Thomas M. Disch

Mr. Disch’s recent trip to England certainly seems to have been a success in terms of sales, for here is yet another tale from him appearing in a British publication. Unfortunately for us, this is not one of his best.

We follow the trial of the titular Edwin Lollard, who has fallen in love with the idea of poverty and a simple life of reading. However, in an affluent society obsessed with consumption this is hard to achieve and has to go to great lengths to try to get it.

This is the kind of dystopic satire I would expect to read a decade ago. You can see echoes of it in Brave New World, The Midas Plague, Fahrenheit 451 and a dozen similar works. The twist in the tale and courtroom proceedings aren’t bad but I cannot give it more than two stars.

A Taste for Dostoevsky by Brian W. Aldiss

Always a delight to see something new from Aldiss as, even if not successful, it will usually be different. This is a very strange type of time travel tale where someone seems to be jumping between different bodies throughout history or into alternative histories. Or possibly he is just an actor getting so involved in his roles he cannot determine the difference between fact or fiction?

This is certainly interesting, but I am also not sure what to make of it. Possibly if I was more a fan of Dostoevsky and familiar with the Freudian analysis of the texts that it seems to draw from I would possibly understand better what Aldiss was trying to say. Add into that that his attempts to explore ideas of race in it end up coming off as clumsy rather than profound, it ends up being a more middling tale to me.

Three Stars

Image of Destruction by John Rankine

Dag Fletcher first appeared in the opening two volumes of New Writings, but his subsequent adventures have been published in novel format. This picks up some time later in the series where Dag is now the chairman of Northern Hemisphere Corporation and is doing more work from behind a desk. The Interstellar Three-Four, captained by Neal Banister, is sent to Sabzius, a planet where the Commissar has recently disappeared. In order to oversee the situation, Dag heads to Sabzius with a skeleton crew.

This is 47 pages long, but it felt to me like 300. The prose was like wading through treacle and the story just kept dragging on. This could have been the kind of tense political thriller I enjoy but it didn’t go anywhere interesting and I failed to see any point to it.

I found the original stories dull and old fashioned so have not bought any of the continuing tales. This has not changed my opinion on this series.

One Star

So not such a good score from the capitalist society. Let’s see if the communist one can do any better:

Path into the Unknown: the best Soviet SF

Path into the Unknown: The best Soviet SF

The Conflict by Ilya Varshavsky

In a society where intelligent robots are employed as nannies, Martha feels threatened that her son Eric seems to prefer the robotic helper Cybella.

This is the kind of satirical vignette you would see as a space filler in F&SF. Add in that it is all layered with messages about a woman’s role and maternal instincts, and I found this to be a very poor start to the anthology.

One Star

Robby by Ilya Varshavsky

Another android tale from the same author. Here the narrator relates how he was given a self-teaching robot, Robby, on his fiftieth birthday, which he tries to use for household chores. However, it proves too literal minded for the tasks, cleaning shoes with jam if not given exact Cartesian coordinates or being unable to divide a cake into three because of recurring decimals. As Robby learns more about humans, he becomes increasingly difficult to live with.

This is a slightly longer story than the previous piece but no better. It is an incredibly simplistic machine logic narrative, more one I would expect in a children’s comic strip than as a piece of adult science fiction.

One Star

Meeting My Brother by Vitaly Krapivin

Three hundred years ago the Magellan photon space cruiser, captained by Alexandr Sneg, set off for another star system hoping to find an earth-like planet. They were never heard from again and assumed to be lost.

One of Alexandr’s descendants, Naal Sneg, is an orphan who sees the ship returning. With time only passing at one tenth the speed in cosmic space, Naal hopes to meet his ancestor and gain a brother he never had.

This is a slow meditative story, told in multiple parts, covering different facets of the tale to uncover the whole truth. I really liked it, if Robby feels like a story from a children’s comic, this feels like a strong novelette from Impulse.

Four stars

A Day of Wrath by Sever Gansovsky

A secluded laboratory developed a new kind of creature, the bear-like Otarks. They have a high degree of logic and intelligence but lack compassion, so will think nothing of attacking children, if the risk is not high, or just eating each other when hungry. Journalist Donald Belty is sent to investigate these creatures and to see whether they qualify as human.

This is an odd story. It is quite an engaging piece as it goes along but I struggle to understand quite what the point of it is. A criticism of unfeeling science, a satire on capitalism, or just a supposition extrapolated out? Whatever it is, the ending left me feeling quite uneasy and I am not sure if the author intended that or not.

A low three stars

An Emergency Case by Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky

The Strugatsky Brothers will be familiar to long time journey readers as we have covered their material twice before. This is first of two tales dealing with alien life.

After dropping off supplies to Titan, Victor Borisovich discovers a fly on board their ship. Initially the crew are uninterested but when Malyshev, the ship’s biologist, recognises it has eight legs he realizes it is an undiscovered extra-terrestrial life form. Soon, though, the ship is overrun in these flies which seem to be resistant to insecticide. Can they contain or destroy them before the crew runs out of air?

Once you accept the unlikely life form they encounter, it is quite exciting monster science story that reminded me a bit of Vogt's Space Beagle tales. What lifted it up more is the excellent character work done, where each of the scientists has their own personality and are believable individuals in a small space of time.

A strong three stars

Wanderers and Travellers by Arkady Strugatsky

This is predominantly a conversational piece. Stanislav Ivanovich and his daughter Masha are marking Septapods, a type of freshwater cephalopod, with a supersonic tracking device to try understand their behaviours. They meet an astro-archaeologist, Leonid Andreevich, who tells them about the problem of “the Voice of Empty Space”, an impossible sound that is picked up by auto-wirelesses on space voyages.

I feel like there are some interesting ideas touched on here, but it doesn’t really go anywhere, except to suggest that the universe is perhaps illogical and unknowable. If that is the point, I believe it could be presented in more interesting ways than as a trialogue.

Two Stars

The Boy by G. Gor

A surprisingly intelligent schoolboy named Gromov writes the stories of the sole child on a long interstellar voyage. When these are read out to the class, all the other students highly entertained by them, but are they just fiction? Or do they have some connection to his father’s discoveries of alien artifacts.

This is an incredibly complicated piece of fiction involving narratives about narratives, theoretical physics, music, identity and perspective. And yet, it is also a story of friendship, where two lonely children form a bond. Really impressed with this and I hope more works from this author are translated soon.

Five stars

The Purple Mummy by Anatoly Dnepov

An interstellar signal has been decoded and used to reconstruct what appears to be the body of a woman albeit all in purple. The head of the Museum of Regional Studies in Leninisk comes to Moscow and shows the team holding the mummy that (apart from the colour) it is the mirror image of his wife. This appears to prove the theory that this signal came from a mirror universe of anti-matter, and it may also contain the secret of how to save his wife’s life.

As you might expect from the title, this reads like one of reprints from the Gernsback era you might find in Amazing or Famous these days. Even discarding how nonsensical it all is, no one’s reactions felt realistic to me and the plot with the illness is poorly handled.

One Star

Two systems, similar problems

Brezhnev Dancing
Brezhnev, dancing for joy at Soviet success

Whilst this represents an overall win for Soviet architecture, in this case, both collections have their highs and lows, and there are definite areas for improvement. We will have to see if the next releases from either the UK or the USSR can build better structures.



No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 24, 1967] Changes Coming (New Worlds and SF Impulse, March 1967)

5 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

In the world of British SF magazines, things have moved since last time we spoke. In the comments on my review of SF Impulse last month, my colleague Kris here at Galactic Journey gave me the news from the BSFA magazine Vector that despite the publishers going bankrupt, Brian Aldiss has managed to secure a deal with the British Arts Council for funds. This has propped up New Worlds for a while. But notice – the funding is just for New Worlds.

So something has had to give. As a result, the two magazines have merged from this issue, hence the new banner heading (even if sf impulse is in much smaller type – expect to see that disappear soon!)

To be fair, though, I have noticed over the last few months that the magazines have become very similar to each other anyway – both have had book reviews, letters pages and even the same roster of writers flitting between the two magazines. It almost makes me wonder if the editors Mike Moorcock and Keith Roberts (with a helping hand from Harry Harrison) had an inkling…

Anyway, all of this is explained in Moorcock’s editorial, entitled “Changes Coming”. Understandably, lots of praise for Aldiss and all of those who fought for New Worlds with the Arts Council. It looks like the magazine may have survived (again) – at least for a while.

To the New Worlds/SF Impulse issue.


Report on Probability A by Brian W. Aldiss

And after the praise already heaped upon Brian, here’s some more.

According to Moorcock’s Editorial, Brian has donated his story to the magazine. Knowing that funds are tight (ie: non-existent) Brian, like all of the other contributors this month, have given this complete novel of over 100 pages for free (or at least a minimal amount.)

That’s the plus-point. Readers may be less happy knowing that, like last month’s Just Passing Through in SF Impulse, this is Brian in experimental mode. Anyone expecting a humourous Aldiss story or a more-straightforward science fiction story may be disappointed.

Mr and Mrs Mary are being observed from three different perspectives by ex-employees of Mr and Mrs Mary, which make up this report. G is a gardener who watches Mr and Mrs Mary from a summerhouse. S is an ex-secretary who does the same from an outhouse in the back garden. C, the ex-chauffeur, is in the loft of the garage close to the Mary’s house. We have a story divided up into different perspectives and written in three different sections (The number three seems important here!) It is a story of surveillance, about observation and effect of being observed. Therefore, lots of meticulous descriptions of what the observers and Mr and Mrs Mary are doing follows.

The reason for this observation slowly becomes apparent when we realise that the observers and the observed are being watched themselves by Domoladossa and Midlakemela, aliens who think that this observation of “Probability A” is important. (It seems that the universe has a number of probabilities, of which this is just one.)

And then we get to the point that Domoladossa and Midlakemela, who are watching the observers watching Mr. and Mrs. Mary, are being watched themselves by The Distinguishers, who are in turn being watched…. confused yet?

It is easy in some ways to see why not a lot happens – although that seems to be the point. The dialogue reminded me a little of Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter in its stylistic brevity and manner – something that with Aldiss’s literary bent I am sure is no coincidence. It is also weirdly voyeuristic – much of what is described seems mundane and of little consequence, yet I found myself wanting to keep reading.

I guess that the reason for these descriptions of the obvious, whilst they may seem very boring to me/us, is that the world of the Mary’s and their observers is being described for those who have never seen it before. It shows us our world as others see us. Together these viewpoints create a mosaic of often rather mundane events – lots of talk of processed fish, factory strikes, the weather (especially rain.) It’s all rather British and summarises perhaps how others see us.

Interestingly, the constant watching and the events observed makes the whole thing feel claustrophobic and unsettling. Have you ever felt you’ve been watched? Here you are!

There are a lot of unanswered questions. Whilst we are told that ‘it’ may be important, what is the purpose of the surveillance? Is it just to observe? And why is it the Mary family that are being observed? Mrs. Mary is described at one point to perhaps being “the key to everything”, although we are not always clear what “everything” is. Is it something creepy or even malicious?

This may not be to everyone’s tastes – despite Moorcock pointing out on the back cover that it is “perhaps his most brilliant work to date”, the lack of a plot makes it rather against the usual grain. I suppose that it is this that has made the novel a hard sell – I understand that this story has been around a while before being published – but it is one that kept me thinking. Does feel a tad too long, though. Nevertheless, it has stayed with me since reading, a sign that the story has made an impact. 4 out of 5.

The Ersatz Wine by Chris Priest

A story of multiple narratives all chopped up into a jumbled tale. A story of nothing turned into a confusing nothing that plays with form but is probably a story where the form is more important than the narrative. 3 out of 5.

The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race by J. G. Ballard

Ah – the now predictable scenario of J. G. using contemporary people and elements to tell his downbeat cut-up tale. Before we’ve seen included JFK, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe amongst others. However, I’m not sure about this one where the events of the assassination are turned into a motor race. For example, Oswald starts the race by firing his gun, Kennedy is disqualified at the hospital for taking a turn for the worse, Johnson takes the lead and wins the race.

Although it happened a good 18 months ago, Kennedy’s assassination still feels quite recent to me, and perhaps too recent to become something of amusement. It feels wrong, like making a joke about the poor Apollo astronauts recently would be. Is the use of JFK here to shock, to be controversial? Possibly. As satire, I guess it can be seen to be puncturing the balloon of pretentiousness that often surrounds public figures. Does it work? Not sure… despite the description on the back cover (see below) about it being witty and filled with deeply-considered comment, I really get the impression Ballard finds this all very funny, but if it is, to me it’s a one-trick joke stretched too far. 3 out of 5.

Hunger’s End by Robert Cheetham

Another recently emerged writer in these pages. An odd allegorical tale that deals with expense, perfection and beauty and how a hunger for what you desire may be more important than mere functionality. Well, that and a sea sponge that bites a woman’s finger off. 2 out of 5.

No Book reviews or letters pages this month.

Summing up New Worlds / SF Impulse

As the back cover shows, there’s clearly a need to advertise the magazine this month. Obviously, I am pleased to see anything from New Worlds / SF Impulse. There was a point where I didn’t expect anything. With all of that stuff going on in the background it is rather difficult to judge the magazine purely on its written material. Brian’s novel is oddly memorable, but I’m not entirely sure that it works. Praise should be given in that it epitomises the brave new world of the New Wave, but like most of that work I suspect that it will receive as much criticism as praise. The Ballard is typical Ballard, but – dare I say it – not perhaps his best. Priest still underwhelms and Cheetham’s story, by comparison with the Aldiss and Ballard, is very much a lesser item in the issue.

But I guess we should be grateful to read ANYTHING this month. As we will be next month.

Until the next!



5 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 24, 1967] Absenteeism and Making Do SF Impulse, February 1967

2 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

So generally, post-Christmas and in the cold of winter, 1967 is settling into a routine, I guess. Except in the British magazines, where things are rather more turbulent. My suspicions were raised when the postman only delivered a copy of SF Impulse this month.

Now it is possible that New Worlds has been delayed in delivery–y’know, Winter!–but after the recent rumours and rumblings that things were not well at the magazines, I did a little rummaging and asked around to see if I could find out what was going on.

Whisper it quietly, but it seems that things are really bad financially–even for New Worlds, which has the higher circulation of the two–to the point that the publishers are seriously considering closing not one, but both magazines.

More as I get it, but frankly, it’s not looking good.


Cover illustration by Agosta Morol

To the SF Impulse issue. There are also signs here that things are not good.

The Managing Editor (interesting phrase!) Keith Roberts points out at the start that the Editor-in-Chief Harry Harrison is “absent, having made tracks for Philadelphia”. Is this rather ambiguous statement just a case of Harry being busy? As a writer, critic and editor Harrison does have a lot of fingers in pies, to be honest, which is presumably why Roberts does most of the leg-work here at SF Impulse.

But all I can think of is that the last time this happened, with editor Kyril Bonfiglioli taking time off to go stargazing(!), the magazine changed from Science Fantasy to Impulse not long after. The phrase “Rats deserting a sinking ship” also springs to mind, though that would be most uncharitable–Harrison is most certainly not a rat! But it is worrying that things may be changing behind the scenes.

But at least this Editorial space gives Roberts the opportunity to step up, as he has been doing for a while, admittedly, and give his opinions in the Editorial on the material in the issue, which he does. All good, even if (like much of the magazine this month) it feels a little like space-filler.

Might be something to read after you’ve read the stories, though.


Illustration by Keith Roberts

The Bad Bush of Uzoro by Chris Hebron

After last month’s story Coincidences, from Chris, we begin with a story I liked more. This one has a Weird Tales vibe, in the form of a story of a haunted mission in Africa as told by a Catholic priest–it even mentions Lovecraft. Not bad, though, and endearingly different with its mentions of African culture, even if there is an element of imperialistic “fear the foreigner” to this one. 4 out of 5.

Just Passing Through by Brian W. Aldiss


Illustration by Keith Roberts

Harry Harrison may not be about much this month, but his friend Brian Aldiss is (Again: when do we ever see the two together?)

This is unusual for Brian: a style that is almost Ballardian, filled with ennui and decay. Colin Charteris is in France on his way to England. His general musings on his stop-over through a mouldering French town also reveals to us that this is a future after the superpowers have released psychedelic drugs in what is being called the Acid Head War. The result is that many of the population are insane, locked away in their own heads as much as they are in institutions. The remainder, such as those seen here in France, seem to live a transitory existence. Whilst this intriguing situation is slowly revealed, the point of the story is less clear, and just as the reader is reeled in, the story ends. More of a mood piece than an actual story, I think.

Brian deserves credit for deliberately pushing the experimental side of science fiction in this story. It is a lot more serious than much of his work, but it feels very much like it is the beginning of a longer story. Nevertheless, it is unusual enough and odd enough for me to give it 4 out of 5.

Inconsistency by Brian M. Stableford

Don’t be fooled by the “new writer” comment given at the top of this story. We have met Brian before, both as Brian Stableford in the October 1966 issue and as co-writer Brian Craig back in the November 1965 issue–not to mention his letters to Kyril back in the same issue. Here he’s writing a fantasy story with a deliberately allegorical touch. Characters live around a village slowly disappearing in the sea. They have no idea of why they are there or how they got there. At the end the sea covers all. BUT WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN? Another symbolic puzzle which will either be appreciated or cause befuddlement. 3 out of 5.

The Number You Have Just Reached by Thomas M. Disch


Illustration by Keith Roberts

More from Mr. Disch this month, on the creepier side. It is about Justin Holt, the last man in the world who, staring out from his fourteen-storey apartment, receives a telephone call from someone who may be the last woman in the world. But is she real or is she a figment of his imagination? A story of fear and claustrophobia that doesn’t end well. This one’s fine, but I didn’t like it as much as some of his more recent stories. 3 out of 5.

The Pursuit of Happiness by Paul Jents

Another story from the often-underwhelming Mr. Jents, who last appeared in the June 1966 issue. Krane lives on Aligua, a distant planet which has spurned technology due to once being enslaved by computers, but have integrated circuits implanted in their heads to cope with their lives. Another story that deals with what is real and what is imaginary. One of Paul’s better stories, but really nothing special. 3 out of 5.

It’s Smart to Have an English Address by D.G. Compton

D.G. is a writer who tends to make me think of Fred Hoyle, strangely. Not sure why, other than he has this very British tone. And so it is here. Paul Cassevetes goes to meet his old friend Joseph Brown, a concert pianist (see also Hoyle’s October the First is Too Late where the main character is a composer). Doctor McKay and Paul try to get Joseph to record brain patterns whilst playing one of his finest pieces to give listeners a better experience. Joseph is resistant, feeling that such techniques do not get to the essence of a performance. At the end Joseph suffers a stroke, which makes the process rather redundant. A story of friendship and rather elegiac, if a little bit convenient at the end. I liked it but could see some thinking the story is mawkish. 3 out of 5.

Impasse by Chris Priest

Chris is one of our new young writers beginning to make an appearance in the magazines: last time it was with his Ballardian pastiche Conjugation in the December 1966 issue of New Worlds. This one seems to be an attempt to write short satirical Space Opera and shows the futility of conflict. Insults and threats are made between a Denebian and the Earth Field-Marshal which escalate until one of them shoots the other. Not sure I really get the point. 2 out of 5.

See Me Not by Richard Wilson

Another returning writer. He is popular, I understand, though his stories rarely register with myself for some reason. So the fact that Keith Roberts mentions in his Editorial that this is a “long, complete story” made my heart sink. But I was surprised, even if we are reusing old ideas here. This time it is about invisibility–thank you, Mr H. G. Wells! (Actually, I’ve only just realised that this may have been written as a result of that recent centennial celebration of Mr Wells’s birth.)

Avery wakes up to find himself invisible. Much of the rest of the story is about how he deals with this situation with his wife, Liz, his children, Bobby and Margie, and his doctor, Mike Custer. Lots of social issues ensue. The scientists try to work out what has happened and why. At the end of the story, Avery and Liz, who also becomes invisible, walk off together to live happily ever after it seems.

This is an attempt to write a lighter version of Wells’s tale, but ends up something more akin to an episode of your TV series Bewitched than the original Wells story. Although nowhere near as good as Wells’s version, for me this is a better story from Richard. 3 out of 5.

Keith Roberts rereads ‘The True History’ of Lucian of Samosatos


Illustration by Keith Roberts

And talking of Keith Roberts… This is space-filler of the highest order, as the writer gives us his interpretation of an ancient Greek classic. Not quite sure of its purpose, although Roberts writes well enough and brings to light an old classic that may be worth a second glance. Made me yearn to read a Thomas Burnett Swann story, which may not really be the point of this piece. 2 out of 5.

Book Fare (Reviews)

Book reviews from Alistair Bevan, also known as Keith Roberts. There are reviews of Planets for Man by Stephen H. Dole and Isaac Asimov, Other Worlds Than Ours by C. Maxwell Cade, Colossus by D. F. Jones, Window on the Future edited by Douglas Hill, Ten From Tomorrow by E. C. Tubb and The Machineries of Joy by Ray Bradbury.

Letters to the Editor

Last month I said that the ongoing discussion about Sex in SF that E. C. Tubb started a couple of issues ago felt like it was an attempt to generate mock outrage. With hindsight I now realise that the magazine probably has enough drama going on. Anyway, this month the Letters pages have a spirited defense of “WSB”, better known as William S. Burroughs to you and me, and a discussion of the meaning of Science Fiction, a competition that Harry opened when he first took over from Kyril. There is a winner, step up Peter Redgrove!

Summing up SF Impulse

Keith Roberts is clearly working above and beyond the usual here and should be credited with pulling together an issue even if some material was not up to the usual standard. Let’s hope that the magazine continues, although the signs are doubtful.

An advertisement on the last page of the issue. Is this an omen or a cryptic clue? Is there life after death for New Worlds or SF Impulse?

Until the next (hopefully!)



2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 28, 1966] Ice Worlds, Telepathic Martian Mice and Echoes (New Worlds and SF Impulse, January 1967)

6 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

As we’re in that strange time between post-Christmas and pre-New Year I’m pleased to type that my copies of both New Worlds and SF Impulse have manged to arrive amidst all of the Christmas mail.

Thank you, postie!

And I am pleased that I actually got two magazines. The rumours of the magazines' decline are still about, although I have no further news. I am still hopeful that 1967 will see them continue. More news when I get it.

With that over, let’s start with New Worlds.

A Guest Editorial this month, from Mr. Brian W. Aldiss, no less. Clearly Mike’s taken time off, and Brian has stepped up – which means that the two issues this month have the Editorial-ship of Aldiss and Harrison. (Where have I seen those two names together before?)

Here Aldiss extols the virtues of the sf pioneer H. G. Wells. Shouldn’t be too surprising, though, as amongst his other many talents Brian is the Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society, founded nearly 7 years ago. Moorcock last month said that they had hoped to run a piece on Wells’ centenary. I am assuming that this was the (delayed) piece.

It’s an expectedly congratulatory piece – Mr. Aldiss has come here to praise him, not bury him! – but as ever Brian’s writing is always lively and entertaining. There’s a good case made here to celebrate Wells.

To the stories!

Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Day of Forever, by J.G. Ballard

Another melancholic tale from Mr. Ballard. This one has Dying Earth vibes, described as “a world of Nordic gloom” as it posits a future where the Earth has stopped rotating. As a result, in the town of Columbine Sept-Heures, it is a never-ending twilight. This creates for the few survivors a dream-like setting and consequently there’s a lot of stuff here about dreams, or rather not-dreaming, in a surreal setting, as well as Ballard’s usual musings on entropy and time. Here Halliday meets odd characters and dreams of a woman he has seen. More of a mood piece than anything else, I feel. Not a lot happens but the prose is appropriately dream-like in this surreal situation. 4 out of 5.

Saint 505 , by John Clark

A new author to me, with an oddly-styled story of a glowing computer and its creation and management by a mad scientist. Almost poetry but not quite. 3 out of 5.

Sun Push, by Graham M. Hall

Trench warfare that wouldn’t be out of place in the First or Second World Wars – except that this one’s in Britain. Unremittingly grim, Private Time St. John Smith with his Battalion companions Eamus and Sergeant Trelawney fight their way across Southern England. Nasty things happen – “War’s a filthy business”, one of the characters says and that seems to be the main point of this story. To prove it there are a number of atrocities that occur here – for example, captured prisoners are put into brothels, sedated and forced to 'perform', amongst other indignities, something our shell-shocked characters accept and take advantage of. War is hell, etc etc. 3 out of 5.

Illustration by James Cawthorn

Coranda, by Keith Roberts

Onto better stuff. Roberts continues to sell his fiction to the companion magazine of the one he is currently editing. As if this wasn’t enough interaction between the two magazines, the banner tells us that this story was inspired by New Worlds editor Mike Moorcock’s serial novel, The Ice Schooner, currently being serialised over at SF Impulse. So this is another ice-rimmed Fantasy, part Konrad Arflame, part Conan – or is it Elric? The aloof Coranda demands a dowry for her hand in marriage – a unicorn’s head. Rich suitors experience many hardships and not all survive, to win Coranda’s prize, at a cost.

Roberts' tale is grim and yet floridly written, and quite enjoyable, but borrowing Moorcock’s setting and being rather Edgar Rice Burroughs or Conan in style means that it is somewhat derivative. Nevertheless, an interesting alternative take on Moorcock’s idea that I actually enjoyed more than Moorcock’s this month. 4 out of 5.

Illustration by James Cawthorn

Sisohpromatem, by Kit Reed

I had to read that title more than once in order to type it! A story about life from the perspective of a cockroach that wakes up human. No explanation is given for this, but I quite liked it. It shows us that life can be just as weird if you are an insect instead of a human.

Memorable – not just for the title! 4 out of 5.

The Silver Needle, by George Macbeth

Another drug culture related tale but this time in the form of a poem, filled with sex and drug references, and perhaps designed to shock, provoke and amuse. Not as exciting as that summary suggests. 3 out of 5.

Echo Round His Bones (Part 2 of 2), by Thomas M Disch

Captain Hansard continues his life between matter transmitters. Having been rescued at the end of the last part by Bridgetta, the wife of Panofsky, the inventor of the transmitter, we begin this part surrounded by multiple Panlofsky’s and Bridgettas. It seems that every time someone passes through the “manmitter” (ugh) a copy, or echo, is made.

Hansard finds himself unable to go back to his previous world, but is instead offered marriage by Panofsky to one of the copies of his wife. This is not a Heinlein story, right? Or Doctor Strangelove? There are times when it seems very much so. There’s a lot of talk by Panofsky of religion, suicide and souls at this point. And, of course, all of the copies of Bridgetta are wonderful at what they do.

There’s also the pressing issue that the world is about to destroy itself in days… or rather worlds, for it is from Mars that the missiles are about to be launched. Remember – that was Hansard’s original mission, to take a message to Mars.

Confused yet? This is a story that seems to throw everything in at this stage, and as a result it didn’t quite work for me. Clever, yes. And complicated. But I did feel it was trying to spin too many plates at once at the end. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews

This month Judith Merril takes a step away from her reviewing in the Magazine of Fantasy & SF to review for us Brits. Here she mentions in some detail C. Maxwell Cade’s Other Worlds Than Ours, although as she puts it, “with a touch of my own professional bigotry” to be more impressed than she thought she would be.

James Cawthorn, more briefly, reviews Thomas Burnett Swann’s Day of the Minotaur, Cordwainer Smith’s Quest of the Three Worlds, Roger Zelazny’s The Dream Master, Poul Anderson’s The Corridors of Time and a non-fiction book on archaeology, Approach to Archaeology by Professor Stuart Piggott.

No Letters pages again this month. They all seem to be writing for SF Impulse instead (see below.)


Ballard of a Whaler , by J. Cawthorn

We’ve met James as an artist already this month as a reviewer, but here he is widening his repertoire for the magazine by writing a short tale which also makes use of Moorcock’s Ice Schooner setting. Its purpose isn’t really clear, other than to try and be funny. Who said SF readers don't have a sense of humour?  Sigh.   2 out of 5.

Summing up New Worlds

In some ways we seem to have been put into a routine at New Worlds. It is little different from the last issue – more Disch, more Ballard, more Keith Roberts, the appearance of Aldiss…nothing wrong with that and the stories are generally good. Kit Reed’s is perhaps my favourite in this month’s issue. With all this homage to The Ice Schooner, it's almost as if echoes have been created from the original story! But it does feel a little like this issue could be the November issue just as easily. And so, as last month, a very good issue but not an outstanding one.

The Second Issue At Hand


And now to SF Impulse. Oooh look: nakedness from Keith Roberts. Are we trying to be controversial? (See Letters pages, later.)

The Editorial is a return to that subject we’ve discussed many times before: What is Science Fiction? – before reviewing Gordon Dickson’s Mission to Universe. Harrison likes it.

Illustration by Keith Roberts

Mantis by Chris Boyce

The return of Chris after his fair-but-not-terrific The Rig in the September issue. One again, fair-but-not-terrific, and certainly not as good as the magazine would have me believe. Far too much magazine space (32 pages!) is taken up with the story of sculptor Eric Summerscale, who finds himself being investigated by Condominium Security because his wife Ursula is suspected of being a spy for the Conclavists. Despite its attempt at breeziness, almost becoming a Robert Heinlein story, Mantis feels long, too long, to the point of dullness. Not a promising start; this one tries so hard and yet feels like filler. 3 out of 5.

Green Eyes by Richard Wilson

And then it gets worse, as the laboured Battle of the Sexes idea is continued by Richard. His first story in this series was Deserter in the first issue of Impulse in March and I felt that it was the weakest element of an otherwise strong issue. This is just as awful. The key character in this war is Phoebe, a man in women’s clothing. If it is meant to be funny, it is not. Otherwise, it is another laboured space filler, covering similar ground to Mantis. 2 out of 5.

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor this month continue the discussion of Sex in SF that E. C. Tubb started a couple of issues ago. Chris Hebron, who seems to be all over this issue, responds, as does New Worlds’ Assistant Editor Langdon Jones. The Editor (presumably Harrison, but could be just as easily Keith Roberts) points out at the end how pleased he is for the magazine to have its first real controversy. To me it feels like an attempt to generate mock outrage. Never have these magazines seemed more interchangeable.

Brian Aldiss reviews Thomas M Disch’s The Genocides

A long and thorough review of Disch’s novel. According to Aldiss, the book’s not perfect but there’s enough positives to make me want to read it.


Illustration by Keith Roberts – look, more boobs!

The Shrine of Temptation by Judith Merril

An anthropological story, telling of the strange culture seen by a scientific study through the native Lallayall (aka Lucky). It draws you in, this one. Reminds me a little of Chad Oliver’s writing, but with the usual high standard of Judith. Revelations abound! The first decent story of the issue. 4 out of 5.

Coincidence by Chris Hebron

Another returning author, and not just from his appearance in the Letters Pages this month. Chris was last seen in SF Impulse in October. It’s an epistolary tale, told through communication between two academic researchers. Like the Merril story, there are anthropological elements, although here we also have weird happenings that seem more like witchcraft, with strange images, sex fantasies and things only the narrator can see and hear. Fritz Leiber would like this one, I think. There’s mention of breasts in a vain attempt to grab my attention – this seems to be a theme this month! –  and even shock me in a story that had trouble maintaining my interest. Can’t see the American magazines wanting this one, though. 3 out of 5.

Grutch by Pete Hammerton

Another story that is meant to be amusing (the banner says that it is “a delightfully funny episode from a new and zany talent”), but did not stir me. Some sort of sub-Dickensian style story in a science-fictional, future setting. Luke Varm claims to talk telepathically to mice from Mars who need his help to return home. As silly as it sounds, and once again, this one feels oversold. I am always wary of stories where I am told “this is funny”, because they rarely are. 2 out of 5.

Scary Illustration by Keith Roberts

The Ice Schooner (Part 3 of 3) by Michael Moorcock

Our journey across a frozen world with Konrad Arflame concludes this month. When we left it last month, Konrad and his group of Ulrica Ulsenn (who Konrad has secretly slept with), her arrogant husband Janek, Ulrica’s cousin Manfred and the harpoonist Long Lance Urquart were on the Ice Maiden, heading North to find the legendary New York and possibly the mystical Ice Mother. They were approaching an icebreak.

The boat survives, although there is increased tension as the boat nears volcanoes. Konrad is told by Ulrica that First Officer Petchnyoff and Janek Ulsenn plan to kill him. Before this can happen, though, the boat is attacked by barbarians. Petchnyoff is killed and Konrad is wounded. The weather turns foggier and colder, and the morale on the boat worsens but this changes when eventually the boat approaches New York.

However, the boat is damaged when it hits a wreck and there is another raid on the ship by the barbarians. In an attempt to escape the raiders, the boat is destroyed. The survivors are captured by barbarians riding polar bears and are taken to New York. They are told that the ice is melting. Urquart persuades the barbarians that Arflame should be taken to the Ice Mother’s court. For this, Urquart has made a deal to make a blood sacrifice to the Ice Mother. Manfred is castrated and eventually dies. Urquart is killed in combat by Arflane.

In New York they meet Peter Ballantine, who explains to them the origins of the city and how the people there have invented machinery to keep the ice at bay. Ulrica decides to stay, thinking that this is the future, whilst Konrad leaves alone to find the Ice Mother.

I still enjoyed the setting, though this part feels uneven and even a bit of a downer. Its melancholic nature signals that things must change and yet some cling to the traditions. Will Konrad find the Ice Mother? It looks like we’ll never know. 3 out of 5.

Summing up SF Impulse

A very middling kind of issue this month that seems to be filling space without any real impact, dominated by the dull and predictable Chris Boyce story. The Moorcock was fine but seemed to fizzle out a little, and the Merril was good, but overall this issue feels like it is trying too hard, filled with material that was at the bottom of the pile, or at least full of New Worlds cast-offs.

Summing up overall

After a run of SF Impulses that have been better, from my comments above it may be unsurprising, yet pleasing, for me to say that there’s no contest this month – New Worlds is by far the better issue, even when both magazines seem to be in some sort of slight slump.

Worrying signs aside, we do at least have something to look forward to: this is at the end of the New Worlds issue:

Until the next (forward, 1967!)…



6 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 26, 1966] White Boats, Whales and Disch, New Worlds and SF Impulse, December 1966

5 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

In a follow-on from last month’s comments, the rumours of falling sales on both Brit magazines seem to be holding water. This is worrying, especially when both magazines seem to be on a roll, but the one I like most is the lesser-selling of the two. New Worlds definitely presses buttons, but SF Impulse is the one I remember most.

More news as I get it.

Let’s start with New Worlds.

Mike Moorcock’s Editorial this month begins with the sad bit of news that Cordwainer Smith has died and then goes onto write of an aborted attempt to celebrate the centenary of H. G. Wells’ birth.

It is perhaps the last part that may be of interest to regular readers, as Mike (or is it Assistant Editor Langdon Jones?) lets slip some of the findings of the latest New Worlds reader’s survey. Unsurprisingly, the results reflect the changing state of the genre, something that regular readers will not be unaware of.

To the stories!

Echo Round His Bones (Part 1 of 2), by Thomas M Disch

Mr. Disch is everywhere in the Brit magazines at the moment. This month, for example, we have a serial novel and an interview from him over in SF Impulse (more later.) We’ve had poetry, horror stories, science fiction stories, funny stories and weird stories, all in the last six months or so. And here we have the first part of a novel, which takes up almost half of the issue.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The story is one that uses a lot of science fictional cliches but blends them up into a modern tale. In the near future scientist Panofsky has invented an instantaneous matter transmitter (Star Trek fans, take note.) Captain Nathan Hansard is a United States officer who is transferred with his platoon from Camp Jackson Pensylvania base to Camp Jackson Mars via the transmitter known as The Steel Womb. However, there is an unfortunate side effect. Hansard discovers that whilst being transferred he becomes left in limbo in some sort of in-between realm. As a result, although he is still on Earth, he is like a ghost in that he can walk through walls but cannot communicate easily with people in the ‘normal’ world.

As if that wasn’t strange enough, he also finds out that there are others stranded in this space who can interact with him normally. This is not always good, nor easy – Hansard finds himself pursued by his own soldiers, for example. Much of the middle section of this part of the story is about how Hansard comes to terms with his new environment and survives. He visits his ex-wife and son, only to find that he has become a voyeur and cannot communicate with them. He also has dreams of himself being a soldier and being involved in horrible acts in an unnamed place which looks and sounds like China.

At this point Hansard is rescued by Bridgetta, who we then discover is the wife of Panofsky, the inventor of the transmitter.

It’s a little wobbly to start with. Hansard does not come across well in the first couple of chapters — arrogant and generally unpleasant, which is not an ideal start of a character described as “a hero”. There’s also the odd major dollop of exposition in a tell-not-show kind of way. However, once the plot settles, it is exciting and memorable, shocking and interesting. The fact that there were points where I honestly couldn’t tell where this one was going makes this a good thing. 4 out of 5.

Conjugation, by Chris Priest

We’ve met Chris here before, in the May 1966 issue of Impulse with The Run. This one is different, attempting to be like Ballard’s recent work, cut up into initially disparate sections: a newspaper report, part of a speech for the President, a transcript of a videotape, an entry in an emergency-log and so on, with the verbiage kept to a minimum. Its plot is typically unclear, more an exercise in style but seems to be about an astronaut involved in an accident which seems to involve some sort of implosion. Whilst I liked the fact that the writer is trying to push the genre envelope a little, it didn’t really work for me. In the end no one does this sort of thing like Ballard. 3 out of 5.

The White Boat , by Keith Roberts

Now this was a surprise. This is a Pavane story, a series recently published in Science Fantasy, and to all intents and purposes finished. Admittedly, it was very well regarded and not just by me.

This one is a smaller vignette piece, focussed on a young teenage lobster fisherman named Becky. One night she sees a White Boat out at sea. She becomes obsessed with it and on its return ends up on it. The boat is a smuggler boat, bringing forbidden technology from France to England. Becky is returned to where she lives, to watch as the boat is shot at by soldiers of the Pope.

There’s a lot of the usual Roberts-in-more-serious-mood touches, which I liked, and even some odd vaguely sexual ones, which felt a little out of place. To be honest, the link to the world of Pavane is minimal, but there are connections if you know what to look for to connect this story to the rest.

So why is this coda piece being published in New Worlds? I’m not really sure, but with Roberts acting as Managing Editor, artist and teller of Anita stories (see later) in SF Impulse, perhaps another Roberts story there this month would have been just too much.

I liked it but did not come away quite as impressed as I was with the other stories in the series. 3 out of 5.

Lost Ground, by David Masson

How often have you heard about the weather being oppressive, moody or unsettling? In this story David makes “mood-weather” a reality in the future, where the weather does affect people’s moods, something which future generations pop pills like crazy to alleviate.

It’s good to see the return of an author who made such an impact with his first story published last year, even if more recent tales have been less impressive. However, this one I liked, perhaps because it deals with that most British of conversation topics!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The rest of the story though does not quite live up its potential. TV reporter Roydon Greenback goes to find his wife Miriel lost in a time-storm, which leads to him being sixty-one years in the future from his original point. It doesn’t end well. Nothing especially wrong with this, it is just a bit predictable.

This one’s more like The Transfinite Choice (New Worlds, June 1966) than Traveller’s Rest (New Worlds, September 1965.) in that it has interesting ideas but not always used well. It does however introduce new words that could be scientific or just made up – chronismologists and poikilochronism, for example. Again, not his best work but far from his worst. 4 out of 5.

The Total Experience Kick, by Charles Platt


Illustration by Unknown Artist

The latest from Platt goes back to the land of The Failures (New Worlds, January 1966), which was all pop-culture and alternative lifestyle drug culture. Our hero is an industrial spy whose Total Experience machine can be used to intensify emotions through music. He is sent to infiltrate the opposition and see their latest development, with a girl involved to complicate things. It’s fun but a bit predictable, rather like rather Jerry Cornelius meets The Beatles, based around some sort of Heath Robinson contraption. I’m assuming that this story may be the inspiration for the cover picture this month. 3 out of 5.

Tomorrow is a Million Years, by J. G. Ballard

Illustration by Unknown Artist

The latest from Mr Ballard is a reprint (see Argosy, October) and also due out as part of a collection soon, I gather. Glanville and his wife Judith are able to travel time and space. They go to the fictional ship Pequod and see Ahab and his crew and talk of Glanville being The Flying Dutchman before the story turns into one of revenge. Still dark and moody but a surprisingly straightforward tale from J. G. It makes me think that this was written a while ago – it is more reminiscent of his Vermillion Sands story collection than more recent work like The Terminal Beach. 4 out of 5.

Book Reviews

This month Hilary Bailey covers a lot of books. This includes Roger Zelazny’s This immortal, Shoot at the Moon by William F. Temple, Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, Mandrake by Susan Cooper, Damon Knight’s The Other Foot, Sybil Sue Blue by Rosel George Brown, Shepheard Mead’s provocatorily-titled The Carefully Considered Rape of the World, Digits and Dastards by Frederik Pohl and The Fiery Flower by Paul I Wellman. Mike Moorcock also reviews and lists some, very briefly.

No Letters pages again this month.

Summing up New Worlds

Lots of returning authors this month. The Disch is the standout for me, although not perfect, whilst the rest are good but not great overall.

The Second Issue At Hand


And now to SF Impulse. The cover pushes the artwork to one side this month to herald the writers and point out that there is a new Editor-in-Chief, if you didn’t know.

The Editorial is mainly Harry’s version of what happened at the Trieste Film Festival, which Francesco Blamonti reported on last month. In short, the Italians are very enthusiastic about their sf, perhaps more so than us undemonstrative Brits. Does read a little bit like an essay entitled “What me and Arthur C Clarke did on our holidays.”

Inside Out by Kenneth Bulmer and Richard Wilson

The first story this month is co-written by a duo with a long pedigree here in Britain. Ken Bulmer is a prolific author who has been published since the 1950s, but whom you might not know in the US, and Richard Wilson similarly but since the 1940s. As you might expect then this is a straightforward SF tale of the “old-school” variety.

Petty crook Duke Walsh steals a metal box full of money from an alien here on Earth in secret. The box however is not just a storage box, but a replicator, which can replicate almost anything you want. However, Duke, not realising what the box is, takes the money and throws the box away. Short yet memorable. 3 out of 5.

Three Points on the Demographic Curve by Thomas M. Disch

A story from the seemingly ever-present at the moment Mr. Disch. In the overcrowded future of 2440 (I can see why Harry likes this!), Darien Milkthirst (great name!), Investigator, is given the task of finding 56 470 kidnapped children. The kidnapper, Prosper Ashfield, appears and tells Darien that he is from the future. As the Last Man on Earth he is collecting children to repopulate the future Earth. However, the children are indolent and look upon Prosper’s robot companions as their natural superiors. Frustrated, Ashfield begins to select children from throughout history to try and redress the issue. He then goes into deep-freeze to allow the robots to continue their work.

It’s all told in the jaunty manner that the story banner describes as “wry humour”. More good stuff from Mr Disch, that reminds me a little of Robert Sheckley – not a bad thing. 4 out of 5.

The Familiar by Keith Roberts

Illustration by Keith Roberts-  the author!

Another Anita the teenage witch story! Well, not quite, as the focus this time is upon Granny Thompson’s cat. I said that Anita’s last story felt like it was the series coming to an end and this story almost proves it. Anita is a popular character, but I think Keith is starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel with this one. Nevertheless, this is very different to Keith’s other offering in New Worlds this month. As ever with the Anita stories, The Familiar is fun and not to be taken too seriously, but not the strongest Anita story I’ve read. 3 out of 5.

Hell Revisited: An Interview with Kingsley Amis by Thomas M. Disch

Kingsley Amis is a respected author and commentator here in Britain. Harrison in his Editorial describes him as a “friendly critic”, and I would say that this is fair. His book New Maps in Hell has been seen as a critical work in recent years, extolling the virtues of sf to critics who would otherwise sneer at it.

With this in mind then, Disch’s interview is rather revelatory. Amis decries the recent writings of New Wave authors, claiming that to meet mass appeal it has lost some of its key characteristics. All of the authors hallowed in New Maps – Clarke, Pohl, Sheckley and Blish – are now criticised and of the new crowd, Messrs Aldiss, Budrys and Ballard have all disappointed. Even “run-of-the-mill science fiction is even more run-of-the-mill than it used to be”. All of this sounds a bit grumpy, yet Amis puts his points across amiably and logically. Kurt Vonnegut and Anthony Burgess come out of this well. Interesting and thought provoking.

The Real Thing by Eric C. Williams

Another returning author, last seen in Science Fantasy (whatever happened to that ?) back in August 1965. A story of what happens when Holt Mannering hires the spaceship Magpie and her crew for a day to get research for his next book. This involves getting as much realism as possible, which makes the trip rather dangerous. All written in a light-hearted manner – Heinlein it ain’t! 3 out of 5.

The Plot Sickens by Brian W. Aldiss

If the last story was amusing, this one is a lot more fun! In typical Aldiss manner, Brian takes the conceit begun by George Hay in his Synopsis story in Impulse 4 (June 1966) of writing reviews for imaginary science fiction novels and then spoofs it up even more. For example:

Beware the effect of an unbridled Aldiss! Makes its point whilst not savaging the genre, and a nice counterpoint to the Amis interview. Made me grin a lot. 4 out of 5.

The Ice Schooner (part 2 of 3) by Michael Moorcock

Illustration by James Cawthorn

The first part of this story I described last month as a “post-apocalyptic Norse fantasy” introduced us to Konrad Arflane in a future Earth covered in ice. There a man Konrad rescued, Pyotr Rorsefne of Friesgalt, had said that he would like Konrad to take his ship, the Ice Maiden, and sail to the North to find the legendary New York and there the mystical Ice Mother.

The second part this month deals with the exciting but gruesome hunting of whales, and is straight out of Moby Dick. Before the journey North, Konrad has agreed to take Pyotr’s daughter Ulrica (who Konrad fancies), her arrogant husband Janek Ulsenn, and Ulrica’s cousin Manfred whale hunting, along with the legendary harpoonist Long Lance Urquart.

However, the crew of the vessel are inexperienced in whale hunting and the ship is destroyed. Manfred rescues Ulrica but Manfred receives a broken arm and Janek’s legs are broken. Arflane finds himself more and more attracted to Ulrica. Despite her being married and Konrad being warned off by both Janek and Manfred they begin an affair.

The group return to find Pyotr has died. There is a funeral. The will splits the estate between Ulrica and Manfred, with Konrad receiving the command of the Ice Spirit. If he takes on the journey to find New York, the ship and any cargo become his. It is a further condition that Ulrica and Manfred go with Arflane on this quest. Urquart goes too.

With the journey begun, the relationships between the group are strained. After Ulrica’s initial enthusiasm, she now acts coolly towards Konrad. In return, Arflame is moody as a result of Ulrica’s rebuttal. Such taciturn emotions to those around him lead the crew to begin to rumour that Konrad brings a curse with him. There are enormous difficulties faced on their journey, and the story ends as the ship encounters an ice break.

So, lots of excitement. The pace of the first part is maintained this time around. The whale hunt is particularly gruesome, although that is to be expected. Generally, this second part is nearly as good as the first, although there is a dreadfully done sex scene and an utterly convenient plot point that takes the story down a notch. At one point, it all becomes rather like a science fiction version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which may be intentional.

Despite this, the story is intriguing and I still like the setting. 3 out of 5.

The Voice of the CWACC by Harry Harrison

Although this is the first time the CWACC have appeared here, there have been previous stories in this series (last seen in the June 1966 issue of Analog – traveller Marcus really didn't like it.) Personally, I am always a little dubious of editors publishing their own work in their magazine – it either displays a great deal of confidence in their own worth or conveniently fills up a gap, neither of which usually bode well. I’m not quite sure which this shows!

It’s a slight tale, meant to be amusing, of scientists (the CWACC) with a new invention – an aircraft recognition system to be used for ground defence. Because of the “highly secret, unpatented, incredibly artful components” it has, it is very successful. The new twist is that the machine is worked internally by a rat – take that, Daniel Keyes! Not bad – energetically silly and fairly forgettable. And no, I still don't know what CWACC stands for! 3 out of 5.

No Letters to the Editor this month.

Summing up SF Impulse

I like the Moorcock, even if it is not quite as good as the part last month. Disch impresses (again) and both the Anita story and Aldiss’s story made me laugh – not easy to do.

Summing up overall

New Worlds is a solid issue from regular writers. SF Impulse impresses more with its stories. Disch or Moorcock? Aldiss or Harrison? Keith Roberts or… Keith Roberts? Hmm. Both issues are good, but I’m going with the SF Impulse (again) this month.

Someone say "Christmas?" All the compliments of the season to you.

Until the next (forward, 1967!)…



5 Comments Leave A Comment