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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 22, 1969] Unsmoothed curves (October 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Government by the Many

Every four years, Americans head to the polls to vote for who they want to lead the Free World.  At least, that's what they think they're doing.  What really happens is your vote determines if your choice for President wins your state.  And then, representatives of the states, the so-called "Electoral College", announce who they've been empowered to choose.  Technically, these representatives are not bound to uphold the will of the voter; in practice, bucking the election results has been for protest rather than consequence.

This means that the swingier the state and the bigger the state, the more attention it will get.  For instance, California, somewhat evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and currently the most populous state in the Union, is more important to a candidate than, say, a reliable and sparsely settled state like Arizona.

No more?  This week, the House passed a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would make Presidents directly electable.  This would mark the first major change to the system since 1803.

It looks like half the Senate is in favor, but it will take two thirds of that chamber plus three quarters of the states for the measure to go through.  Opposing such reform are representatives of small states and rural areas, as they wish to retain their outsized impact on the process.  With the rapid rate of urbanization, particularly on the coasts, this proposed amendment threatens to wipe out the electoral relevance of most of the central region of our country, from the Rockies to the Mississippi. 

But that's precisely why the time for such an amendment has come, its advocates propose.  People vote—not acres.

The bill faces an uphill battle, but it's an idea whose time has probably come.

Magazine by the Few


by Ronald Walotsky

Even with an Electoral College, with 50 states, you still get something approximating the will of the people.  With a science fiction magazine, you've only got six to fourteen pieces.  That means any individual story can dramatically affect your enjoyment of an issue, and the variations in quality can make for a wild ride.  Such was my experience reading the latest Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Feminine Intuition, by Isaac Asimov

Susan Calvin, renowned roboscientist, has gone into semi-retirement, passing the torch to the new generation.  Said successors develop a robot with flexible programming, one that can make free associations rather than rely on its own hard-coding.  Its designers, all male, decide that such fuzzy thinking could only be ascribed to a female, and so they built the robot with feminine curves and a sexy contralto voice.  JN-5, or "Jane", is a big hit with all the (male, of course) scientists and politicians.

Jane is employed to determine which of the 5500 stars with 80 light years of Earth would be most likely to be inhabitable so that humanity's limited interstellar capacity can be used most efficiently.  Jane fingers three candidates, but she and her maker are killed in a freak accident.  Only Susan Calvin can save the day.

The story drips with male chauvinism, but ultimately, that's the point.  It's an uncomfortable ride, but wait for the end, which redeems the story.

Three stars.

Come to Me Not in Winter's White, by Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny

A brilliant physicist discovers his wife has but one year to live.  He builds a room in which time goes much more slowly so that he will have more time to discover a cure.  When the wife gets lonely (since she's by herself for all of…what…a week?) the husband picks out a brilliant but plain woman to be his wife's companion.

Decades later, when the physicist discovers the cure, he returns to the room to find the two women making love.  Jealously, he locks the room and accelerates time, leaving his wife to die, his wife's lover to live out the rest of her life with the corpse, and for both of them to be out of the physicist's ken in the blink of an eye.

I didn't like the story much when I read it, and now, having to revisit it for this summary, I realize that I hate it.  Not just for the misogyny, but for the absurdity of the premise (there are no spinoff societal effects from inventing time control?!) and the laughability of the final insult—oh no! Wife is not only unfaithful but (whisper it) a homosexual!

One star.

The Movie People, by Robert Bloch

A perennial extra, veteran of 450+ films, spends most of his life at the Silent Movies.  He's not just reliving his glory days; it's how he can catch glimpses of his lost love, a fellow extra, who died in 1930, just as her career was beginning to take off.

The fellow knows every movie, every scene in which he and his girlfriend appeared.  So why does she start showing up in films she never appeared in before, some that even date to before her start in show biz?  And why does it seem she is mouthing messages for him alone?  Is she enjoying a kind of celluloid life after death?

A pleasant, sentimental story.  Three stars.

A Final Sceptre, a Lasting Crown, by Ray Bradbury

Once transportation via personal helicopter becomes a cheap and ubiquitous reality, everyone moves away from points north of 40 degrees latitude to reside in California, Florida, the Mediterranean, and other like climates.  This is the tale of the last man in England, and the friend who tries to convince him to join the other emigrés.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one—was the Earth growing cold?  Had their been a calamity in the Northern Hemisphere?  No.  People were just leaving wholesale out of personal preference.

Never mind that some people like seasons.  Never mind that the tropics can't fit all those people.  Never mind that Aleuts and Laplanders haven't left their ancestral homes despite the capability of moving to town if they want to.

Lots of folks like Bradbury.  Maybe I started on him too late.

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Worlds in Confusion, by Isaac Asimov

Wherein the Good Doctor takes on Velikovsky and his ridiculous, religion-cloaked-in-pseudoscience tome, Worlds in Collision.  Did Jupiter really eject Venus as a comet?  Did that rogue planet stop the Earth in its tracks, causing no ill effects beyond the Ten Plagues and the pausing of the day at the Battle of Jericho?  Do people really believe this claptrap?

Four stars.


by Chesley Bonestell

"Russian astronauts have arrived on the rim of Copernicus only to discover that the Americans have already been there …"

The Soft Predicament, by Brian W. Aldiss

A mission to Jupiter finds the gas giant teeming with life.  On the Moon, a giant black edifice (made by people, not aliens) sifts human dreams, becoming the repository for archetypes—the goal to find a solution to strife and hatred in the world.  On Earth, the globe is split between Communist, Free, and Black domains.  The "Free" world is highly regimented, with children taken from their parents after a decade, and marital partners divorced on the same schedule.

Our protagonists, such as they are, are neurotic Westciv citizens, adapted, but not adjusted, to the new way of life.  Their collected dreams represent the only way out of the mess technology has gotten us into.

What a lousy story this is.  Turgid, mock-momentous claptrap.  Budget Ballard.  Thoroughly unentertaining, its message buried, and not a lick of science to be found in this so-called science fiction.  I recognize that the definition of the genre now goes beyond nuts-and-bolts engineering stories to include softer sciences like psychology and sociology, and that the New Wave is an experiment in bringing a degree of literary-ness to SF, but this is too much of a thing.

One star.

The Man Who Learned Loving, by Theodore Sturgeon

A brilliant engineer-turned-hippie stumbles upon the principle of perpetual motion.  In order to keep the discovery from being used for evil, he leaves his life of Bohemian idyll, cuts off his hair, and Makes it Big.  Thus armored in respectability, he carefully manages the revolution's global introduction, ensuring peace and propserity for all humanity.

Upon returning to the backwoods town where he left his lady love and a life of languor, his erstwhile paramour chides him for selling his soul for progress when he could have had love.

This is the sort of story Lafferty or Davidson might have played more for laughs, Sheckley more for bitterness.  Sturgeon presents it completely straight, and as always, he writes pretty well.  His statement seems to be: rather than just be nice and preach love, actually do something to make the world better.

On the surface, he has a point.  Free love is all very nice, but aren't those dirty hippies really just parasites on real working society?  On the other hand, Sturgeon rigs the deck.  His hero discovers the patently impossible after a few days' work.  Moreover, there are plenty of believers in the hippie ethic who are working, giving, and improving the world.  It's a mentality, not a nationality.

Sturgeon, who predates the Swinging Sixties, obviously bears some resentment toward the new crowd.  Kicking straw men is not the answer.

Three stars.

The Electric Ant, by Philip K. Dick

Mr. Poole, executive of a powerful corporation, is in a flying-car accident.  When he regains consciousness, he finds he is not a human at all but an "electric ant"—an android.  Designed to be a figurehead, all of his memories are programmed, his life a lie.

He becomes determined to find the nature of his ongoing programming and discovers that there are no further limits on his thoughts and activities.  He does, however, discover a punched tape spool that controls his sensory input.  Poole begins fiddling with it, altering his subjective reality.  His ultimate goal is to experience everything in the universe at once, something he thinks, as a robot, he can handle better than a human might.

Dick once again turns in a story about a middle-aged man going through an existential crisis.  There is also the drug-use metaphor (Dick is into uppers, I understand).  It doesn't make the most sense—the ant's reality is subjective, but the external universe also exists, so what, exactly does the tape spool control? Poole is determined to find out, taking himself on a psychedelic, 2001-esque journey whose mission is to prove or disprove Solipsism. I feel Dick takes the easy, the obvious way out, at the very end.

Three stars.

Get a Horse!, by Larry Niven

Niven returns to the realm of fantasy, but this time, with a completely new character and setup.  Hanville Svetz is a hapless time traveler from more than a thousand years from now.  Hailing from a polluted, dictatorial future, he has been sent back to 1200 AD to find an extinct beast for the Secretary General's zoo—a simple horse.

What Svetz actually finds, and the troubles that befall him on his quest are interesting and delightful.  There is a deft, sardonic touch to this story, and room has been left for many follow-ups.  I look forward to them.

Four stars.

Science Fiction for the woodpile

As with last month, the latest F&SF finished on the wrong end of the 3-stars mark.  Though F&SF is the shortest of the SF digests, it took me the longest to finish.  I just wasn't looking forward to it.  I can see why my nephew, David, canceled his subscription a few years back. It's a pity that this twentieth anniversary issue is so dismal compared to the ones that came out when the magazine was young. That said, hope springs eternal, and I would hate to miss stories like Get a Horse!.

I just wish my job would let me skip the stories I don't like…




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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 24, 1969] Flying and dragging (September 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Flying

By the time this makes press, we'll already (hopefully) be on the flight back to San Diego.  As with most publications, though we try to hit the press as fresh as possible, there is a delay between writing and printing.  This is exceptionally unavoidable this time 'round because…

…we're off to Woodstock!

Specifically, the Woodstock Art & Music Fair, an "Aquarian Exposition" in White Lake, New York.  There's an art show and a craft bazaar and hundreds of acres of sprawl, but the main draw is the music: 27 bands, from Jimi Hendrix to Janis Joplin to Glen Beck to Sweetwater to Ritchie Havens, playing in 12-hour swathes, 1pm to 1am, every day (except the first—then, it's 4pm to 4am, apparently).

Well, we couldn't miss a chance to see something like this, so we booked tickets to Idlewild…er… JFK, chartered a bus, and we're headed for Max Yasgur's farm.  This isn't our first rodeo, so we've taken a few precautions:

1) We left early to avoid the rush.  With more than 100,000 expected to show up for this thing, there's going to be traffic jams;

2) We bought supplies in case we can't get what we want to eat;

3) We brought our own toilets!  A handy trick we developed camping up in Sequoia country: take a bucket, fill it a quarter way with Kitty Litter, and stick a toilet seat on top.  It works as well for people as it does for cats, and you don't have to dig latrines!

So, we're hopeful to get good seats and enjoy, as much as anyone can, three days of fun in the open air.  We'll have a full report when we get back!

Dragging


by Chesley Bonestell

Sweet Helen, by Charles W. Runyon

On a distant world, rich with export goods, yet another trader succumbs before his tour is up.  Two deserted.  One went native.  One shot himself.  The company sends a professional troubleshooter to find out what happened.

Somehow, the natives are the culprit.  The amphibian humanoids run twenty males to the female, and the female is in charge.  The men all compete for the honor of breeding with her; the rest die.  The females are humanoid and lovely… for a while.  They swell into enormous toads when it is time to become gravid. 

The troubleshooter is unable to determine the exact problem, until too late.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if they had sent a woman trader (probably).  And apparently women traders do exist in Runyon's universe, though they are rare enough to not be sent except by deliberate assignment.

Also, none of this would be an issue if the aliens weren't so uniquely humanoid and compelling to humans—a cliché I find tiresome these days.  Really, this is just a "women are dangerous" story in SF trappings, something done much better, and more creepily, in Matheson's "Lover When You're Near Me" almost two decades ago.

Two stars.

Bonita Egg, by Julian F. Grow

A riproarer of an adventure involving a middle-aged doctor, a young, East-Coast-educated Apache woman, and a dark-skinned alien named Mwando.  The last wants to abduct the former pair, but he is continually thwarted by his would-be captives' pluck, as well as the woman's outlaw uncle and tribal chief father.  Not to mention a platoon of Union artillerymen led by the bullheaded Winfield Scott Dimwiddie.

It's all rather silly and a bit long-winded, but it's not unreadable.  A low three stars.

Muse, by Dean R. Koontz

Leonard is a famed musician, or rather, he is when he's got Icky the symbiont alien on his back.  But anti-slug/human prejudice runs strong on old Earth, and his father wants Leonard to lose the connection for his own good.  Tragedy ensues.

Koontz is a pretty good writer, generally, but this story smacks of being an early, hitherto unsold work.  It's less artfully written, with repetitive phrasing in places.  The story is threadbare—if it's a metaphor for drugs, it's clumsy; if not, it needs a lot more development to be effective.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Patient, by Hoke Norris

This is the story of the first brain transplant, as told from the point of view of the doctors who performed it and the patient.  Much discussion of the ethics involved and the problems ensuing, particularly with regard to the families of the donor and donee.  The patient is unable to reconcile his past with his present and ultimately commits suicide.

Sorry to give things away, but this is really a tedious, stupid piece.  It is pedestrian and repetitive, a stark contrast to, say, Fiztpatrick and Richmond's Half a Loaf series, which covers the same ground.

Also, that the doctors performed their operation on a day's notice, and none of the legal or moral t's were crossed or i's dotted reminds me of how space travel used to be depicted: a guy would build a spaceship in his backyard and fly to the Moon.  You'd think a lot more infrastructure would be needed before such a thing could even be contemplated.

One star.

The Screwiest Job in the World, by Bill Pronzini

Phineas T. Fensterblau has an odd hobby: collecting unusual animals, particularly ones with the power of speech.  To this end, he has employed the resourceful Elroy, who travels the world, proving the veracity of the claims of those who would sell exotic beasts to the millionare eccentric.  In the course of his work, Elroy has uncovered ventriloquists, dwarfs in costumes, hidden transmitters, etc.  But when he is sent to the Alaskan wilderness on the trail of a talking Kodiak bear, Elroy finds something completely new.

This isn't a bad story, but since it is set up as a mystery, it would have been better if the reader had been filled in on the clues before their lumpy exposition near the end.  That could have raised the piece from three stars to higher.

The Man Who Massed the Earth, by Isaac Asimov

Dr. A continues his layman presentation of first semester physics, explaining what weight is and how Cavendish determined the gravitational constant "G".  It's actually pretty interesting, and there is an intuitive explanation as to why the weight of the Earth…is zero.

Four stars.

J-Line to Nowhere, by Zenna Henderson

In this non-The People story, Henderson tells the tale of a teen girl who gets an urge to see the world outside the crammed city-scraper she's lived her whole life in.  She succeeds, but can't figure out how to get back.

There's a lot of gushing thoughts, but not a lot of story to this one.  Three stars.

Finishing the trip

Well, that was dreary!  Remember the days when fiction took you to better places than reality?  Of course, I haven't gotten to Woodstock yet, so maybe it will be equally disappointing…but somehow I doubt it.

Stay tuned!

(and dig on what F&SF has got coming next month…I'm excited for the Niven, of course.)




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 20, 1968] A tale of two issues (September 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Split Personality

There's an interesting piece by Ted White in May's Science Fiction Review.  He talks about how the magazines are on a slow, inexorable decline due to a number of factors.  The biggest is that SF mags used to be just one subgenre of the myriad pulps, all of which had their lurid covers prominently displayed at every corner newsstand.  Sure, the SF pulps weren't exactly of a piece with their mystery, Western, and thriller brethren, but Joe Palooka didn't care, grabbing the most attractive issues.  So, SF thrived, making a profit even if it sold just 25% of a print run.


Note Astounding (now Analog) in the upper left and Amazing in the upper right

Then the pulps died in the 50s, partly due to changing tastes, mostly due to the collapse of American News Company, the main distributor for monthly mags (and comics).  The remaining SF mags were consigned to lesser shelves, all by themselves.  The average schmo got his entertainment from TV.

The profit mark has now risen to 50%–in other words, at least half of the issues printed must sell for the run to break even.  This makes it very risky for the mags to try to expand their market by printing more issues.  If they, say, print 50K and sell 35K, well and good.  But if they then print 200K and sell 96K…they've lost money on the run.

Add to that even SF people are losing interest in mags, lured by paperbacks and the new paperback anthologies, and dismayed (as I have been) by the declining quality of stories over the last ten years.  The only thing that keeps us subscribing is inertia and brand loyalty.  That'll wear off unless the magazines manage to turn the ship.

The magazines have been around for almost half a century.  Assuming they are around in the 21st Century, and if this trend continues, they will service an increasingly small fraction of the SF-interested community.  They will be like the horseshoe crab: living fossils, unchanged for 300 million years, clinging to life in a wildly different environment.

But that's all speculation.  For now, enough good stuff still comes out in the mags to keep me buying.  Though the high variability of the latest issue of F&SF may cause me to revisit that policy…

Over Hill and Dale


by Chesley Bonestell—this is the same nebula featured repeatedly in the Star Trek episode "The Alternative Factor"

Ogre!, by Ed Jesby

It's been four years since Ed Jesby offered up his first tale, Sea Wrack, which was so-so.  His sophomore tale, Ogre!, is an improvement.

Knut the Ogre takes a nap sometime in the Middle Ages.  When he awakes, covered in loam and with mushrooms growing in his ears, he finds he has slept clear through to the 20th Century.  There (then), the seven-foot beast befriends a timid bookie on the run from the Mob.  You see, Ogres are actually misunderstood creatures, quite nice and mild despite the calumny heaped upon them by humans.

Together, Knut and the bookie (and the bookie's seamstress pal) hatch a scheme to get the bookie off the hook and out of the business.  And of course, it involves horses:

To Harry the plan seemed to be basically sound: after all the way to make money was on the races; there was no better way. You took bets or you made them, all other ways of earning a living were mysterious, square, or the result of inheritance.

It's really a charming tale, and it put me in a charitable mood for the rest of the issue.  More fool me…

Four stars.

Butterfly Was 15, by Gilbert Thomas

A scurrilous German scientist has learned how to manipulate others with the judicious use of electrodes and remote transmitters.  He meets his match when he locks horns with a traditional psychologist with methods of his own.

This is supposed to be a funny piece.  I found its themes of mind control and Ephebophilia to be thoroughly repellent.

One star.

Sos the Rope (Part 3 of 3), by Piers Anthony

Once again, we turn to our friend, Brian, who will likely never volunteer for anything ever again…


by Brian Collins

We now find ourselves in the final installment of the latest F&SF serial, but unfortunately it’s so long as to encompass nearly half the novel. We run into trouble before we’ve even jumped into the story proper, as the recap section commits the grievous sin of telling us about things that we have not been able to read for ourselves. At the end of the previous installment you may recall that Sos and Sol are about to fight in the battle circle to see who takes custody of Sola and Soli, Sol’s wife and adopted daughter respectively. Apparently, between installments, Sos lost the fight, and is now journeying up “the mountain” to commit ritual suicide.

I do not understand how this happened. It could be that Anthony had turned in an early draft of the novel and had intended to write the fight scene between Sos and Sol, but all the same, this is such a glaring oversight as to show incompetence. I was confused at first because I thought I had somehow missed the ending of the previous installment, but no, I had not missed anything; it’s just that the fight and its immediate aftermath were kept “offscreen.”

Now up to date, we find Sos who, naturally, does not die on his way up this freezing mountain, but falls unconscious and is rescued by a small society of people who are somewhere between the crazies (the civilized people) and the nomads who roam the wasteland. We come across the second major female character of the novel (foreboding music plays), who, as you would expect, goes unnamed at first. She’s a short athletic girl whom Anthony repeatedly calls childlike and “Elfen,” but also attractive, which makes me wonder if Anthony might be appealing to a certain subspecies of male reader here. The girl steals Sos’s bracelet and makes him work for it, all but forcing him into taking her as his wife. As if the institution of marriage were not already filled with holes, the system presented in this novel may be fit for ants, spiders, and other small invertebrates, but not actual humans.

Since this is at least theoretically the last stretch of the narrative, in which we find our hero at his lowest point before he rises from the darkness, I need not go into great detail as to what happens next—except for one thing: Sosa (for that is her name now) reveals that she’s been desperate to find a husband, having gone through several men already, because she feels great angst at not being able to produce a child. Infertility is often sad news, to be sure, but in a world where contraception is presumably hard to acquire, I can’t imagine this strikes Sos’s ears as too sad; after all, he’s still committed to Sola in his heart.

Piers Anthony seems to understand women about as much as I understand the inner workings of a submarine.

Having given up his rope in his fight with Sol (another major detail we are not told about until after the fact), Sos has not only regained his confidence but taken up fists as his new weapon. I don't recall if we get his new full name (as men in the novel’s world have a monosyllable followed by their weapon of choice), but Sos the Fist sounds…….

Anyway, there is an inevitable rematch, and this time Sos is victorious. The ending here implies that there may be a sequel in the works, but I’m not waiting to see what Anthony does next. 1 out of 5 stars for this installment, and barely 2 out of 5 stars for the novel.


by Gideon Marcus

Faunas, by L. Sprague de Camp

Someone in the zines was complaining that magazines never run worthy poetry anymore, that back in the golden days of the 50s, most of the pieces were memorable.

Keeping up the trend, De Camp offers up a snatch of doggerel comparing the titanic beasts of yore with the primate beasts of now.  Pretty pat stuff.

Two stars.

Harry's Golden Years, by Gahan Wilson

It is amazing the lengths to which people will go to maintain a sinecure.  Harry Van Deventer is the richest man in the world, senile and filled with infantile rage and a teen's hormones.  His hangers-on can only manage him by keeping his surroundings perfectly controlled—a willing nurse here, an emergency surgery to fix a day's incaution there.  But even a 24/7 watch can slip up…

It's hard to imagine a man both so utterly terrible and yet so rich and powerful that so many would endure so much to keep him alive.  But I suppose venality trumps all.

Three stars.

The Evaporation of Jugby, by Stephen Barr

Wadsworth Jugby is a big zero, a department store Vice President-without-portfolio, mediocre in every way.  He finally gets the opportunity to live life from a different perspective when his friend, Dan Byron, invents a psyche-swapping machine.  Intoxicated by his exchange, he eagerly agrees to expand the scope of the experiment, round-robining with six other folks.  The end is…well, given away by the title.

Fluff, with one funny line:

"Jugby could suggest a puzzled frown without lowering his eyebrows-some monkeys can do this."

Two stars.

The Dying Lizards, by Isaac Asimov

Last month, the Good Doctor had a terrific article on the dinosaurs.  This month, unfortunately, he indulges in speculation, which never works out well.

The topic this time 'round is the sudden death of the dinosaurs.  He advances various climatic and medical hypotheses, discarding each one in turn.  He poopoos the idea of mammals being "superior" as we existed alongside dinosaurs for most, if not all, of their tenure on Earth.  Asimov leaves off with the suggestion that an external event caused it, specifically a nearby supernova that spiked radiation-induced mutations.

Again, I have trouble seeing how the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and icthyosaurs and pleisiosaurs could all have destructive mutations but not the birds and mammals.  I think Ike's cute idea that dinosaurs evolved intelligence and killed themselves with powerful weapons, which would have occurred in the blink of an paleontological eye and thus escape excavation, is more plausible.

Three stars.

A Scare in Time, by David R. Bunch

The demarkations of time, the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and centuries, have met in their onion dome.  Tired of being measured and metered by humanity, they plot their ultimate revenge…only to have it foiled by human ingenuity.

A cute modern fairy tale.  Three stars.

The Moving Finger Types, by Henry Slesar

Twilight Zone department: Legget couldn't figure out what was wrong with his life.  It was like his every move was laid down in a script, and he'd lost the page.  Little did he know, that's exactly what had happened.

A fun bit on predestination told in Slesar's competent screenwriter fashon.

Four stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Mixed feelings

You can see my problem.  If you read from either end of this issue, you've got a good 30 pages of material (and you can count Merril's book column, too, though I rarely agree with her assessments, and her tastes are drifting far afield of SF these days).  But if you read through the middle, that's a lot of one-star territory to slog through.  A lot.

Is half a loaf better than none?  More importantly, is it worth fifty cents a month?

Only you can decide…




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 30, 1968] (Partial) success stories (May 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Chertona Dyuzhina (Baker's Dozen)

Luna 14 is the Soviet Union's latest space success story.  Launched April 7, it slipped into lunar orbit a couple of days later and began relaying data.  Per TASS, the spacecraft is still working fine, returning space weather reports and mapping the moon's hidden contours through the wobbling of its path due to lunar gravity.

No pictures have been returned, nor has there been any mention of an onboard camera.  However, since Luna 12 (launched October '66) did have one, it is generally believed that Luna 14 has one too–and it broke.  We'll probably never know.

Campbell's Seven

The latest issue of Analog is also not an unmixed bag.  However, it's still the best issue of the mag by a long shot since January.  That's something worth celebrating!


by Chesley Bonestell

Satan's World (Part 1 of 4), by Poul Anderson

David Falkayn is back!  The fair-haired protoge of Polesotechnic League magnate Nicholas van Rijn has been sent to Earth to find untold fortune.  More specifically, to inquire at Serendipity Inc., storehouse of all the universe's lore, for the quickest route between Point A (Falkayn) and Point B (wealth).  It's amazing what can be done with computers in the Mumblethieth Century!


by Kelly Freas

To do so, he puts himself at the mercy of the board of Serendipity, becoming a guest on their lunar estate.  His crewmates, Adzel the monastic saurian who talks like Beast from The X-Men, and Chee, who talks like Nick Fury from Sgt. Fury, stay behind…and worry.

With good reason, for Falkayn has been shanghaied, purportedly in love with one of the Serendipity board, but probably brainwashed or something.  Van Rijn gives Adzel and Chee the green light to investigate.

Falkayn stories are always somewhere in the lower middle for Anderson–serviceable but unexciting.  Once again, the author utilizes some cheap tricks to move things along, even calling them out in text in an attempt to excuse them (the long explanation of Serendipity's modus operandi; the sudden coincidence of a call by a critical character, etc.) None of the characters is particularly interesting, perhaps because of the extremely broad brush with which they're described, particularly Van Rijn.

Nevertheless, mediocre is pretty good for a Falkayn story, and I'm kind of interested.  Plus, Anderson's astronomy is always pretty good.

Three stars so far.

Exile to Hell, by Isaac Asimov


by Kelly Freas

This story is remarkable for being the first time Isaac has appeared in Analog (the magazine was Astounding when wrote for Campbell).  It is otherwise unremarkable–this vignette is written in '40s style, with a hoary "twist" ending, which was already incorporated as one of many elements in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Two stars.

Conquest by Default, by Vernor Vinge


by Kelly Freas

This one surprised me: alien anarchists, who by their law are forbidden to have polities larger than 10,000 people, take over a recovering post-nuclear Earth.  The Terrans are worried that they will suffer a fate similar to that of the Cherokees–annihilation, assimilation, relocation, or a combination of all three. 

Told from the point of view of one the conquerers, it very much seems like this will be one of those fatuous Campbellian tales where it turns out that free enterprise and libertarianism are the superior forces, and that the solution to "the aboriginal problem" has a neat and obvious solution.

But the story has a sting in its tail.

I had not expected to find an anti-capitalist, anti-libertarian screed in the pages of Analog, much less an acknowledgement of the American genocide…yet there it is!  And because the viewpoint character is an alien (and a comparatively sympathetic one, at that), the full impact of the story is saved for the end.

Four stars.

His Master's Vice, by Verge Foray


by Kelly Freas

Prox(y)ad(miral) Elmo Ixton lands his patrol ship, the sentient craft, Rollo, on the planet of Roseate on the trail of a rebel proxad who has gone to ground and recruited a network of criminal accomplices.  The agoraphobic and irritable Ixton ingratiates himself with very few people, but he does get his man…in time for the tables to be turned when the renegade takes over his ship.

Luckily, Rollo is not about to become an unwitting accomplice.

Not bad.  I didn't much like the Gestapo methods with which the "good guys" extracted the truth from suspects, though.

Three stars.

Fear Hound, by Katherine MacLean


by Kelly Freas

In late 20th Century New York, the city seethes with a despair so palpable, it almost seems the echoes of one person's broadcast pain.  Indeed, that is exactly what it is.  And the Rescue Squad, a corps of intellectual empaths, are on the case to find the source before s/he perishes in anguish, and in the process, telepathically pushes hundreds, maybe thousands more, to the brink of insanity or even death.

There's a lot of neat stuff in this one.  Obviously, you have to buy telepathy as plausible (something Campbell obviously does).  Given that, the idea of a group of people tracking down injured folk by their subtle telepathic emanations, and the unconscious mass effects these have on others, is pretty innovative. MacLean writes in the deft, immediate style that has made her one of SF's leading lights for two decades; the dreamy, choppy execution fits the circumstances of the story.

On the other hand, the bits about smart people essentially providing the brain for dozens of sub-average IQ types through unconscious telepathic links was something I found distasteful. There are also a few, lengthy explainy bits that could have been better worked in, I think.

A high three stars.

Project Island Bounce, by Lawrence A. Perkins


by Kelly Freas

The alien Ysterii arrive on an Earth not unlike that depicted in Conquest by Default.  Here, the crisis is that the blobby amphibians prefer the archipelagos of Asianesia to the dry expanses of Eurica.  This is causing a trade imbalance that will ultimately not only destabilize the world, but potentially lead to a cut-off of peaceful relations with the galaxy altogether.

Perkins doesn't tell the story very well, especially compared to Vinge's writing, and the "solution" is dumb. Two stars.

Skysign, by James Blish


by Leo Summers

Carl Wade, a Berkeley radical type finds himself trapped on an alien vessel floating above San Francisco.  As memory returns to his headachey brain, he recalls the he was the one "lay volunteer" among dozens of men and women chosen as ambassadors for their various technical expertise.

Now, Carl and a hundred-odd humans are prisoners in the gilded cage of the ship, offered all manner of food and a fair bit of recreation.  But they are nevertheless under the control of the alien crew, humanoids in skintight suits, with the ability to teleport and put the human captives to sleep at any time.

That is, until Carl, with the help of the Jeanette Hilbert, a brilliant meteorologist, figure out how to wrest control of the whole system from the aliens.  That's only half the story, since Carl and Jeanette have differing ideas on what to do with absolute power.

I liked this story, and Blish does a good job of putting us in the boots of a not-entirely savory character.  I find it particularly interesting that our radical protagonist is something of a jerk; I originally thought that this might be a subtle, anti-leftist dig, but Blish is an outspoken peacenik, so I think he just wanted to create a nuanced character.

Four stars.

Batting Average

Analog thus ends up at a reasonable 3.1 stars–not stellar, but certainly worth the 60 cents you pay for it (less if you have the subscription, of course).  That puts it at the bottom of the new mags (vs. IF and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5), but better than the reprints (Fantastic (2.7) and Amazing (2.0)).  The magazine average for the month was 3.1.

All told, if you took the four and five star stories of this month and squished them into one mag…well, you'd need one and a half. That amounts to about 40% of all new fiction this month. Again, not bad.

The sad news is only one story this month was woman-penned, making up for 4.3% of the newly published works.  And that one was MacLean's, meaning Analog wins this month's pink ribbon in a mass forfeit.

Well, I suppose you take your victories where you find them.  At least we ended up on the positive side of the ledger this month…




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 18, 1967] Skål! (October 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Vicious Varangians

Reliving the Middle Ages "as they ought to have been" is all the rage now, from Renaissance Pleasure Faires to The Society for Creative Anachronism to The Byrd's song, "Renaissance Faire".  Not to be left out, our corner of San Diego has decided to put on its own Viking Fest, featuring axe-throwing, mead-drinking, and general revelry.

Of course, the seasoned time-traveling Journey crowd attended!

Something to cheer about

It's been a while since I've been able to report on a issue that's good from bow to stern (recognizing that such things are rare, of course–Sturgeon's Law ensures much of what anyone reads must not be the best).  I'm happy to report that this month's issue of Fantasy of Science Fiction was quite enjoyable.


by Chesley Bonestell; as usual, it doesn't illustrate any of the stories inside

Home the Hard Way, by Richard McKenna

Chief Biotech Skinner Webb of the Galactic Patrol Ship Carlyle is determined to jump ship.  The why: planet Conover is the loveliest world Webb has ever espied, and its richest denizens have offered him the moon…and a chance at love with a plump and gorgeous scion.

Sadly for Skinner, he's got a seven year hitch.  And so, he does his damndest to get out of it, going AWOL, starting fights, even consorting with a criminal element.  All it does it lose him stripes and put him under Vry Chalmers, his former adjutant and long-suffering friend.  Will Webb ever get to paradise?

Author Richard McKenna seems to write more now that he's dead than he did when he was alive.  I quite enjoyed this space-based yarn, and I particularly appreciated the frequent appearance of women in the navy–as high rated enlisted men, no less.  I don't think I've ever seen that particular touch in a story.  We've had women officers (q.v. Star Trek and Starship Troopers), but no women grunts.  Certainly, it's a rare thing.

Of course, as my wife notes, why anyone would fall for Skinner Webb, when he's something of a lummox, is a bit of a mystery.  But perhaps we just have an unsympathetic narrator.  In any event, this story gets an unreserved four stars.

The Inner Circles, by Fritz Leiber

The artful Leiber offers up this tale of a family that seems to create its own reality.  The father molds ebony companions out of shadow, with whom he converses over watered-down martinis.  The mother sketches fanciful worlds and imagines that the machines of the house talk to her.  And the son is an interstellar rocket jockey, aided by just a few toys as visual aids.

Notable for including the second use of the word "shit" in as many months in F&SF (will the mails stop carrying this trashy publication?) and for a surprising but welcome happy ending, this is another good piece.  Leiber, a veteran stage actor, has mastered the art of rendering the theatrical in his prose.  Four stars.


Speaking of Leiber…

Camels and Dromedaries, Clem, by R. A. Lafferty

Cleminger is a big man, one of the hottest traveling salesmen in the country.  In fact, he's a little too big: one day, he falls asleep in a hotel and splits into two beings–externally identical, but somehow each half a man.  The two go on to live separate lives, until their desirable and desiring wife, Veronica, demands an end to the intolerable situation.

Lafferty is always whimsical, but this piece feels a bit more grounded than most–more Ellison than Lafferty.  Once again, it's enjoyable from beginning to end.  That's three four-star stories in a row!

The Power of Every Root, by Avram Davidson

Now off to sunny Mexico, where Carlos Rodriguez Nunez, police officer of the municipality of Santo Tomas, finds himself increasingly afflicted with physical maladies, as well as furtively derided by his townsfolk.  Is it a disease?  A hex?  The doctor cannot help, and the witch doctor's advice seems spurious.  Surely his luscious wife, Lupe, is above suspicion…

Davidson, once editor of F&SF, fled to Mexico for a while after abandoning the helm of this magazine.  He clearly absorbed enough of the local color to vividly paint this tale.  While ably told and a beautiful travelogue, the plot itself is rather slight, so I'm afraid three stars is my limit for this one.

Corona, by Samuel R. Delany

I've often complained that everybody else gets to review Chip Delany's work but me.  Well, I got what's coming to me.  This story involves a troublemaking hulk of a blue collar man named Buddy, who forms a rapport with "the prettiest little colored girl" named Lee, afflicted with uncontrollable telepathy.  Said nine-year old has seen too much to want to live any longer.  But her love for the popular music of Bryan Faust, particularly sharing it with Buddy, may give her a new lease on life.

If it weren't for the sentimentality, I'd say this is more Analog than F&SF.  That said, despite the obvious attempts to be moving, I found myself curiously unmoved by this tale.

Three stars.

Music to My Ears, by Isaac Asimov

Speaking of music, Dr. A manages to take a potentially interesting topic–namely, the mathematical relationships between wave frequencies that underlie the fundamental scales of music–and make it not only dull as dishwater, but also virtually impenetrable.

And I have both a math and a music degree!

Two stars.

Alas, Poor Yorick! I Knew Him Well Enuff, by Joan Patricia Basch

Equity's a great gig.  It's virtually impossible to get canned from a show when you're equity, even if you're dead!  But what if you really need that not-dead skull who's a member of the guild to shut up so you can finish the damned play?

Basch has written a cute story, and it's likely to wring a grin or two from you, if nothing else.

Three stars.

Time, by L. Sprague de Camp

Poetry by a regular contributor of same, this time lamenting over the greats he'll never meet, and the fans he'll never know.

Three stars, I guess.

Cry Hope, Cry Fury!, by J. G. Ballard

We return to the crystalline seas of Vermillion Sands.  A yachter by the name of Melville is stranded when his sand boat blows a tire.  A wraith-like vision of a woman named Hope offers succor, but her obsession with an old flame (whom she may or may not have killed) belies the pleasant qualities of her namesake.

I tend to prefer Vermillion Sands stories to the more kaleidoscopic stuff Ballard has been turning in of late.  There's more of a through-line.  I also like the idea of photographic paints that depict ever-changing portraits of their subjects.

I don't think I'd give it four stars, but it's definitely interesting.

Praise be to Odin!

With no bad fiction and some solid hits in the first half of the mag, this issue of F&SF is definitely something to foray from home for (it's not as if the Vikings got home delivery of their sf mags.) That's something to toast to!

Here's looking forward to more of the same in the issues to come.


by Gahan Wilson

If you're here, you're obviously a big fan of classic fantasy and science fiction.  As you know, I founded Journey Press to revive lost classics and to bring into bring new works that evoke that same timeless quality.

I think you'll very much enjoy our newest release.  You've probably heard of Marie Vibbert, one of the biggest names in SFF magazines these days.  Her book, The Gods Awoke, is what I've been calling "a new New Wave masterpiece":

Do check it out.  You'll not only be getting a great book, but you'll be supporting the Journey!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 31, 1967] Canceling waves (August 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Phase shift

Every science fiction magazine has a stable of regular contributors.  Maybe there just aren't enough good writers to fill a magazine otherwise.  Perhaps it's a reflection of the conservative tendency to stick with what works.  Occasionally, you'll see a mag make an effort to recruit new talent, with mixed results.  Others, like Analog are famously steady.

Thus, it is usually with a heavy sigh that I open each new issue of John Campbell's mag.  It's not that his stable is bad per se.  But reading the same authors, month in and month out can get monotonous.  Also, because they are guaranteed spots, quality can be somewhat, shall we say, variable.

On the other hand, that variability means that it's rare that any single issue of Analog is all bad (or all good).  August 1967 Analog is no exception, with the bad turns being more than counteracted by the good ones.  Throw in an excellent science fact article from a newcomer, and this issue is one of the better mags of the month.

Interference pattern


by Chesley Bonestell

Starfog, by Poul Anderson

The latest Poul Anderson story inspired by a lovely Chesley Bonestell painting (this one of a planet around a red supergiant), is pretty neat.  The Makt, an incredibly primitive hyperdrive ship, makes planetfall at the farflung human colony of Serieve.  The crew are human, though of a somewhat radical type, far more resistant to radiation than baseline homo sapiens, and with a taste for arsenic salt.  More remarkable, they claim that their homeworld, Kirkasant, lives in another universe.  This universe is just a few hundred light years across, and jam packed with bright young stars.

Ranger Daven Laure and his sapient ship, Jaccavrie, are dispatched to Serieve to deduce just where Kirkasant is, and, if possible, to get the crew of the Makt home.  Easier said than done — how does one go looking for a pocket universe?  And if it posssess the properties described, then navigation in that electromagnetic hell would be virtually impossible.


by John Schoenherr

This is one of those highly technical stories that Anderson likes, but done with sufficient characterization that it doesn't require the Winston P. Sanders (Winnie the Pooh) alias that Anderson's lesser works go under.  Laure's solution to finding Kirkasant requires a bit too much overt hiding from the audience, but it is pretty clever, at least in a society of libertarian worlds motivated by little more than personal profit (a society that does make sense, in the context portrayed).

Four stars.

Babel II, by Christopher Anvil


by Rudolph Palais

Chris Anvil, on the other hand, is at a low ebb.  This piece is less of a story than a series of examples of how technical speak makes advanced technology all but inaccessible to anyone but the most arcane experts.  I suppose this is a point to be made, but I disagree with the conclusion that a user of technology must know everything about the technology.  That is, after all, the whole point of the new programming language, BASIC.  One can avail themselves of the nearest Big Iron computer and make sophisticated calculations without having the first clue how to IPL an operating system from a DASD.

Two stars.

The Misers, by William T. Powers

This month's science article is unusually excellent.  It's about the latest advances in digital imaging for astronomy, and how it might someday supplant the astronomical photograph.  Chatty and engaging, but not dumbed down, its only sin is length.  To be fair, there is a lot to cover.

Five stars.  An invaluable resource.

The Featherbedders, by Frank Herbert


by Leo Summers

Here's a real surprise: a Frank Herbert story I unreservedly like!

The Slorin are shapeshifters bent on infiltrating Earth's society for possibly sinister, but mostly benign purpose.  When a scattership breaks up before it can safely land, two members of the crew, Smeg and his son, Rick, go off looking for a rogue comrade who has gone native.

And how.  Using his mind control powers, this renegade has taken up residence in a small Southern town as a sheriff, maintaining order with an iron fist, thought control, and the use of hostages.  But when Smeg finally confronts the sheriff, he encounters an even deeper secret — one that threatens the entire Slorin operation.

Aside from the final twist, which I found a little superfluous, the only other off-putting issue is the use of the exact same poem that ends this month's F&SF story, Bugs.  One wonders if the poem was prominently featured a few months ago or something.

But all of Herbert's typical tics, including copious italics and ever-shifting viewpoints, are completely absent from the piece.  It's light rather than ponderous, but not overly frivolous.  I'd not have been surprised to find it in the pages of Galaxy in the first half of the last decade (when that magazine was at its zenith).

Four stars.

Cows Can't Eat Grass, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond


by Kelly Freas

Galactic Surveryor Harry Gideon (great surname, by the way) is marooned on a planet that should have killed him.  Somehow, he has managed to find sufficient edible foods to sustain himself until relief arrives.  But all of their tests show the alien life to be completely toxic.  What's Gideon's secret?

The Richmond combo has produced some of the worst stuff Analog's printed, but they've gotten better of late (and I quite enjoyed their first book, Shockwave.  This latest piece is on the good end of things.

Three stars.

Depression or Bust, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

Reynolds, on the other hand, offers up another one of his history lessons wrapped in a throwaway story.  When Marvin and Phoebe Sellers decide to return their brand new freezer, it starts a chain that results in a national depression.  The only way to fix it is by reversing the trigger.

This is not only a rather pointless piece, it is so clumsily exaggerated, the characters made of straw (the President has never heard of the Depression, and it must be explained to him by an adviser).  And Reynolds can't help making a dig at Indians.  Reynolds has an issue with Indians.

One star.

Plugging in the oscilloscope

What have we got?  Two clunkers, one decent piece, and two good long ones, not to mention a great article.  That puts us at 3.2 on the star-o-meter.  Not bad at all! That barely beats out Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.2) and roundly trounces Galaxy (2.9), IF (2.8), Famous Science Fiction #1 (2.7), Famous Science Fiction #2 (2.4), and Amazing (2.4).

Only New Worlds (3.3) and Famous Science Fiction #3 (3.4) score higher.

For those keeping score, women wrote 9% of the new fiction pieces this month (including all the back issues of Famous). 

Last week, I wondered if a copy of a copy could be better than the original.  Thus far, it looks like the answer is no.  Keep it up, Analog!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 20, 1967] Sag in the middle (February Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Tossing and turning

When I was a kid, I had (like everyone else) a cotton-filled mattress. In a lot of ways, I was lucky. I was a skinny kid so I didn't weigh much, and I was just as lief to sleep on the rug as in a bed, so I wasn't picky about where I lay down. Plus, bedbugs weren't a problem in sunny El Centro. They hated the lack of air conditioning as much as we did. So that ol' mattress did me fine.

But I got spoiled by my first innerspring in the 50s. That's sleeping comfort.

The only problem with coil mattresses, of course, is that after a while (unless you managed to stay teen skinny into your middle years) the middle sags. Eventually, you're in this little self-made pit. Oh your aching back!

The latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a bit like a saggy mattress.  It's great at the ends, but the middle is the absolute pits.

It started so well


by Chesley Bonestell

The Hall of the Dead, by L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard is having the best decade in a long time.  It's a pity he's not around to enjoy it, having passed away more than 30 years ago.  But his mighty thewed creation "Conan", warrior of Hyboria, has found new life in the hands of famed Fantasist L. Sprague de Camp.  In addition to compiling (and lightly editing) Howard's old stories for a pair of collections, which Cora will be reviewing in two days, Sprague has also taken unfinished pieces and raw outlines and given the bones flesh.

The Hall of the Dead was only a 650 word outline when Sprague found it.  It is now an intriguing new novelette in the Conan canon, one that I found every bit as exciting as the various pieces I've found in old pulps. 

It's a tale set very early in Conan's life.  He is on the run from the wicked city of Shadazar, a company of police soldiers on his tail led by the Aquilonian mercenary, Nestor.  Conan seeks refuge in the cursed dead city of Larsha.  There, he and Nestor must team up to face a variety of horrors, living and dead.  The reward if they succeed?  Treasure beyond imagining!

It's great, riproaring stuff.  More please.

Four stars.


by Gahan Wilson

A Walk in the Wet, by Dennis Etchison

The lone survivor of a spacewreck is haunted by more than the deaths of dozens.  For, as a telepath, he experienced the fatalites as well as witnessed them.  Now faced with the truth of how he became the mutant he is, the spacer has taken on a grisly mission…if only he can remain sober long enough to carry it out.

That summary makes this sound like a pretty good story.  It's not.  It's impenetrable and rather disgusting.  I suppose its lone virtue is that it's memorable.

One star.

The Next Step, by E. A. Moore

On an overcrowded world, the only hope for humanity is colonizing the stars.  It turns out that the inevitable leukemia that the settlers acquire on their relativistic jaunts is the key to their transcending their physical form and becoming one with the universe.

In addition to being rather amateurishly written, this story requires a lot of leaps of faith.  I have trouble buying the premise that cancer is actually a beneficial development.

Two stars.

The Song of the Morrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Ferman is really scraping the barrel if he has to go back 70 years for a piece.  In this vignette, wide-eyed princess meets a crone on a beach, is told many things that come true, and the maid ultimately becomes the next crone.

I like poetic stuff as much as the next person, but this one didn't do it for me.

Two stars.

The Intelligent Computer, Ted Thomas

As usual, Ted starts with an interesting premise (how do you copyright/patent something developed by a computer?) and utterly flubs it.  Mr. Thomas needs to write a real article or stop writing these half-efforts.

Two stars.

The Little People (Part 2 of 3), by John Christopher

The serial continues.  Last month took us to a run-down hostel in rural Ireland where a collection of eight neurotics discovered what they thought was one of The Little People.

In this chapter, we learn that the foot-tall girl and her friends are not faerie folk at all, but something much more sinister–the result of a Nazi experiment in longevity. 

I honestly have no idea where this story is going to end up.  I am still enjoying it, though perhaps not quite so much as last time.

Four stars.

Impossible, That's All, by Isaac Asimov

In this month's article (the Good Doctor's 100th… and we've covered all save the first!), Dr. A talks about why it's impossible to go faster than light, and why we should all just stop bugging him about it.

It's a good piece, particularly in talking about how our advancements in science serve to refine models rather than completely overthrow them (q.v. Newton to Einstein).  On the other hand, sometimes model changes are revolutionary.  Discovering subatomic particles didn't change the life of the average citizen…until we used the knowledge to make atomic bombs and reactors.  We now seem to be on the edge of a revolution in sub-sub-atomic physics as we speak, giving rhyme and reason to the veritable zoo of particles, just as subatomic theory made sense of Medeleev's periodic table.  Who knows if that will result in discoveries in previously impossible fields such as antigravity and faster than light travel?

Asimov is facile, but I suspect he's missing something.  Three stars.

Blackmail, by Fred Hoyle

The champion of out-of-date theories (e.g. "Steady State") offers up this bizarre little fantasy in which a fellow learns to communicate with animals.  Turns out all they want to do is watch people beat each other up on television.  Think of the effect on the Nielsen's!

Forgettable fluff.  Two stars.

Falling out

This sunken mess of a mattress garners a lousy 2.6 stars.  That's still better than most of the other mags out this month, which tells you how bad our job here at the Journey can be.

That said, between the Conan and the Christopher (not to mention Merril's column and Asimov's article), more than half of this month's issue is worth a read.

I'll just have to learn to sleep on the edges, that's all!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 31, 1966] Barriers to quality (January 1967 Analog)

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[Today is the last day you can sign up for next year's Worldcon if you want to be able to nominate Hugo candidates!  Sign up now!]


by Gideon Marcus

An argument for free trade?

Yesterday, Europe got a bit freer.  The nations of Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom–along with associate member, Finland, the constituents of the Europen Free Trade Association–removed all tarrifs on industrial goods sold between them.  These countries comprise Europe's "Outer Seven", in contrast to the "Inner Six" of the European Economic Community.  With this move, EFTA's economies may get a competitive boost against the traditional European powerhouses (France, West Germany, Benelux, and Italy).

The SF mag Analog is better suited to the EEC than EFTA.  With editor John Campbell at the helm, who personally reads and approves every item chosen from the slush pile, and who has a distinctive style (to the say the least), the magazine has really gotten itself into a rut.  Sometimes it manages to be good, but more often, as with this month, it's deadly dully.  Read on, and you'll see what I mean.

The issue at hand


by Chesley Bonestell

Supernova, by Poul Anderson


by Kelly Freas

David Falkayn, protegé of Nicholas van Rijn, returns in yet another astronomically interesting but utterly dull adventure.  This time, callow human Falkayn, and his trader team comprising the pacifist buddhist saurian, Adzel, the foul-mouthed racoon, Chee Lan, and the computer, Muddlehead, have visited a world about to be blasted by a nearby supernova.  The planet, at about a Year 2000 level of technology, is riven into several regional powers, and a system-wide crime syndicate has nation-like power.

Falkayn is struggling with determining who their team should work with to build a planetary shield when the decision is taken out of his hands: Chee Lan is abducted by the system's equivalent of the mob.  Falkayn's solution to his dilemma is supposed to be clever, but it feels obvious and uninspired.

Two stars.

A Criminal Act, by Harry Harrison


by Kelly Freas

Here's a piece inspired by the same Malthusian nightmare as the author's hit, Make Room, Make room.  A fellow and his wife have had three kids, one more than the law allows.  As a result, a kill-happy citizen is legally allowed to try to bump the dad off.  It's a duel to the death, either result of which will keep the population stable.

Bob Sheckley could have made this work.  Maybe.  In another magazine.

Two stars.

Bring 'Em Back Alive!, by Lyle R. Hamilton

The nonfiction article this month is about wind tunnels, heat shields, and retrorockets.  Not a bad topic, but Hamilton's overly breezy style doesn't quite work.

Three stars.

Amazon Planet (Part 2 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

Last time around, author Reynolds took us back to the world of the United Planets, a loose galactic confederation of humans in which each planet is allowed whatever government, culture, demographics it likes.  This time, the planet is Amazonia, ruled by women and with the cultural iconography of the famed Greek warrior women.

Guy Thomas was a mild-mannered trade entrepreneur hoping to stoke an iridium/columbum trade between Amazonia and Avalon.  But at the end of the last installment, we discovered he was actually a secret agent.  In Part 2, we find out he's a UP spy, sent when a man from Amazonia made an unprecedented escape from the planet and pleaded for refugee status.  It seems there's a widespread masculine revolutionary movement.

Unfortunately for Thomas, he is quickly captured by the technologically superior Amazons and made to reveal his true identity: he is none other than Ronny Bronston, part of the mysterious Section G, whose explicit purpose is to topple regressive governments–in flagrant violation of the Federation's constitution.  Under truth drugs, Bronston spills the beans.  But before he can give further info, he is rescued by a member of his original escort party, a female soldier who has taken a shine to him.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire!

My nephew continues to rave about this series, whereas I find it mostly an excuse to discuss political theory interspersed with some boilerplate action sequences (which, to be fair, Reynolds has made a good career of).

Barely three stars and sinking.

The Old Shill Game, by H. B. Fyfe


by Kelly Freas

A robovendor is programmed to have an edge on his daily rounds at the concourse.  With the aid of a team of robotic shills, it attracts the attentions of human commuters and makes a killing.  Thus ensues a war between the robovendor's programming team and that of their competitors, each iteration making the android vending machine a bit smarter.

The road to Mike from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is paved with capitalism.

There's a good idea here, but the execution is a bit muddled and the whole thing just not very satisfying.  Two stars.

The Last Command, by Keith Laumer


by Kelly Freas

From one sapient robot to another: Keith Laumer returns with his answer to Saberhagen's Berserker series, only Laumer's Bolos are tanks rather than ships, and they apparently used to work for people rather than against them.

In this installment, a long-dead machine comes to life deep underground, nearly a century after its last conflict.  Certain that it has been imprisoned by the enemy, it roars to life, slowly making its way toward a city that has sprouted since its deactivation.  An old veteran of the old battle thinks he has the key to stopping this indestructible weapon of war.

It's a bit less polished than previous entries in the series, but I found the end touching.

Three stars.

Doing the math

Running the Star-o-vac, I find Analog scored just 2.5 stars–the worst of the month!  But this has been kind of a lousy month in general, so it's not certain that open trade is the answer.  After all, the British mags, New Worlds (3.3), and Science Fantasy (2.9), are rumored to be on the edge of extinction.  Fantastic (2.6) wasn't good this month, even with decades of reprints available.  IF (2.8) was thoroughly mediocre.  And while I liked Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.2), no one else seems to be enjoying the new serial.

On the other hand, there was exactly one story by a woman this month, and it was one of the best ones.  Maybe, instead of free trade between the current magazine contributors, we need a campaign to tap the as yet fallow resource: women writers.

Crazy, I know, but it's a thought.

[Today is the last day you can sign up for next year's Worldcon if you want to be able to nominate Hugo candidates!  Sign up now!]



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Magazine

[June 16, 1966] Calm Spots (July 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Hot Times

Summer is looming, and it looks like we're in for another riot season.  I suppose it only stands to reason given that inequality still runs rampant in a nation ostensibly dedicated to equality.  This time, the outrage boiled over in Chicago, and the group involved was of Puerto Rican extraction.

Things started peacefully, even jubilantly: June 12 saw thousands gather for the Puerto Rican pride parade.  But after the festivities, the cops shot Cruz Aracelis, 21, and violence erupted.  For three days, police cars were overturned, property went up in flames, and people were hurt (and some died).  Despite the exhortations of the community's leaders, the rioting continued, and it was not until Mayor Daley promised much-needed reforms that the outbreaks lapsed, on June 15.

Tectonic shifts are rarely gradual. Similarly, we lurch toward progress with the accompanying devastation of an earthquake. Just as we're starting to build for seismic destruction in California, if we want to see riot summers a thing of the past, we'll need to build real systems for equality sooner rather than later.

Eye of the Storm

Chicago may burn, Kansas may be savaged by tornadoes, and Indonesia might be going to hell in a hand basket, but the latest Fantasy and Science Fiction is by comparison pretty mellow stuff.  Indeed, it's a pretty unremarkable issue even compared to recent issues of F&SF!  Still, there's good reading in here.  Take a break from the outside world's madness and join me:


by Chesley Bonestell

Founder's Day, by Keith Laumer

Retief author Keith Laumer departs from comedic satire for a reasonably straight story.  In a future borrowed from Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!, the only escape from Earth's 29 billion inhabitants is a five year journey in stasis to Alpha Centauri 3.  But what really lies at the end of a grueling journey that includes a savage boot camp and the stripping away of all humanity?

A competent piece, Founder's Day nevertheless is no more than that.  This story of friction between colonist and transport crew could have been set in 19th Century Australia as well as space.  Laumer doesn't really bring anything new, in concept or execution.

Three stars.

The Plot is the Thing, by Robert Bloch

Psycho author Robert Bloch doesn't do much fantasy these days, but his turns are always slickly done.  In this vignette, young heiress Peggy is the portrait of disassociation, abandoning reality for the Late Show, the Late Late Show, and the All Night Show — any program that will give her the horror flicks she craves.  But when drastic medical intervention rescues her at the brink of death, is it salvation, or merely the gateway to greater unreality?

No surprises but the usual excellent execution.

Four stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Experiment in Autobiography, by Ron Goulart

The best part of Goulart's latest story is the double-meaning in the title.  One gets the impression that the absurd lengths to which the protagonist, a free-lance writer, must go to collect his ghosting fee, is only slightly removed from reality.

Three stars for Goulart fans; knock one off for everyone else.

Brain Bank, by Ardrey Marshall

Sturm is a brilliant mathematician cut down in the prime of his life.  Too valuable to be left to molder, Sturm is brought back as a disembodied brain, forced to offer his expertise to all who request it: students, businessmen, colleagues.  He is a true slave with no human rights and the fear of being switched off perpetually hanging over him.  Especially when an old rival, now a tenured professor who made his reputation by stealing the work of his T.A.s and associates, becomes Sturm's latest client.

In setup, it's not unlike Calvin Demmon's vignette The Switch, which appeared in F&SF last year.  But the execution here is breezy, the story more of a potboiler.

I don't know if I buy the premise, but I can easily imagine a much put-upon sentient computer in the same situation.  The rather conventional adventure story overlies some thoughtful philosophy.

Three stars.

Man in the Sea, by Theodore L. Thomas

Is oxygenated water the solution to problems posed by deep sea diving?  What about direct oxygenization of blood?  Some neat ideas that I can't immediately poke holes in for once.

Four stars.

The Age of Invention, by Norman Spinrad

This flip piece posits that our current art culture, and the ease with which it is manipulated, is no new thing at all.  Indeed, it's been with us since we've been recognizably human.

Fun fluff.  Three stars.

Balancing the Books, by Isaac Asimov

The latest article from The Good Doctor is about conservation of charge and mass in the subatomic particles.  I suspect the material could have been covered in a piece as short as Thomas' column.  Padded to ten pages, it loses its punch.

Three stars.

Revolt of the Potato Picker, by Herb Lehrman

A spud farmer, one of the last dirt agriculturalists in a time of yeast and lichen hydroponics, buys a sentient tractor to do his harvesting.  All is well until the robot's sensitive side comes to the fore.  Instead of devoting its (her?) time to picking and peeling, all it (she?) wants to do is pursue artistic interests.

Meant to be a winking, nudging joke of a story, I found it both distasteful and also just kind of stupid.

Two stars.

The Manse of Iucounu, by Jack Vance

At last, the meanderings of Cugel the Clever come to a close.  Banished to the ends of the Dying Earth by Iucounu, the mage he was trying to rob, Cugel at last finds a way home with the treasure he was sent to find.  The key turns out to be a misadventure with sapient rats and a liaison with a sorcerer liberated from their clutches.

Like the rest of the series, it wobbles between wittily imaginative and routine, too episodic to really engage.  If anything, it feels like a modern day, rather adult Oz story.  With a thoroughly unpleasant though sometimes entertaining antihero.

Call it four stars for this entry and three and a half for the series as a whole.

Emerging from Solace

There are issues of F&SF that astound, leaving an indelible impression.  There have been others (not recently) that are better left to gather dust on the shelf (if not utilized for kindling next winter).  The July 1966 issue lies on neither extreme.  But if you find yourself wanting a quiet weekend away from the strife of the real world, this issue will be a fine companion.




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Serial

[May 31, 1966] Worth Remembering (June 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Decoration Day

First the war, then the licking of wounds.  Not all wounds are physical.  After the Civil War rent this nation in two, spring became a time for remembering the dead, their blood shed in almost incomprehensible numbers.  In 1868, the ritual honoring of fallen veterans became an official holiday known as Decoration Day (for the decoration of graves).  Over time, the name changed to Memorial Day, and last month, President Johnson proclaimed the custom's birthplace to be Waterloo, New York, the event first occurring a century ago.

The last Civil War veteran passed away in 1956, but this year's Memorial Day still found us licking our wounds.  Indeed, last week marked the bloodiest seven days for American soldiers since Korea: 966 casualties in Vietnam alone, 146 of them fatal.  Will next year's day of remembrance be worse?

The Issue at Hand

A cute segue would be in poor taste at this juncture, so I'll simply proceed to the review.  The latest issue of Analog drew my attention with its striking astronomical cover.  Let's turn the page and see what delights and disappointments Herr Campbell has for us this month.


by Chesley Bonestell

The Ancient Gods (Part 1 of 2), by Poul Anderson

In the letter column, Poul Anderson talks about discovering a beautiful painting by Chesley Bonestell.  It depicts a the night sky as seen from a planet perhaps 200,000 light years north of the Milky Way.  I would guess that this painting, as well as perhaps a viewing of last year's film, Flight of the Phoenix, provided the inspiration for the author's latest tale. 


by John Schoenherr

I shall give nothing else away save that those who know me know I'm a sucker for astronomically correct tales of exploration, and that Flight of the Phoenix got my nomination for the Best Dramatic Hugo.

Four stars so far.

Early Warning, by Robin S. Scott


by Stan Robinson

Lee is a big man, a skilled man, a man whose job is to throw monkey wrenches into supposedly foolproof systems like the D.C./Kremlin Hotline and Pentagon intelligence computers.  Is he a double-agent?  A mole?  Or something more?

There's really not enough to this story to engage; it feels more like a fragment of a Joe Poyer thriller than a complete piece.  Just some workmanlike action writing and a smug, Campbell-pleasing sting. 

Two stars.

CWACC Strikes Again, by Hank Dempsey


by Gray Morrow

"Hank Dempsey" (I have it on reliable information that this is a pseudonym for Harry Harrison, apparently trying to make the big lucre by pushing all of Campbell's buttons) is back with CWACC: the Committee for Welfare, Administration, and Consumer Control, last seen last year.  Pronounced "Quack," the goal of this two-person operation is the support and representation of eccentric inventors.  You see, to the scientific community, they're just kooks, but we all know that those industrious garage inventors produce way more of the world's innovation than the anonymous folks in white coats.  Right?

Anyway, in this episode, CWACC's administrator teams up with an enemy, the local kook-catching flatfoot, to rescue a CWACCer, whose invention is being used by con artists to sucker in, of all people, the police commissioner.  Along the way, "Dempsey" gets some pseudo-scientific shots in, like the assertion that the common cold can be defeated by sufficient vitamins in one's diet. 

Vaguely readable garbage.  One star.  I hope it was worth selling your soul for four cents a word, Harry!

Live Sensors, by Carl A. Larson

This nonfiction article started auspiciously, promising to compare the biological sensors with which animals are naturally equipped to the most refined artificial detectors.  The overall package is lacking, however.  There are lots of interesting tidbits on the capabilities of creatures, but they are interspersed with larder passages that don't do too much.  Never do we find out how we might utilize or at least learn from natural sensing devices. 

It would also help if Analog employed subheadings.  Three stars.

Stranglehold, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

My nephew David rang me the other day (on Sunday, when the rates are lowest) to tell me how much he enjoyed the new Chris Anvil story.  This may be a ringing endorsement (ha ha!) but I always take David's recommendations with a grain of salt, especially where Anvil is concerned.

A scout team following up on a lost comrade lands on a planet despite receiving a warning that such would be dangerous.  Once planetside, they find themselves subjected to illusion after terrifying illusion, only their unshakeable monitors telling the truth about reality (why wouldn't their perception of the monitors also be changed?)

Turns out the inhabitants have some kind of telepathy and can change their perception of reality and those of others.  After the team escapes with their rescued friend, they determine that a race with psychic phenomena cannot develop science since they fudge the results to their liking.  Contrarily, a race that chooses a scientific path atrophies psychic phenomena because…well, just because.

Therefore, all races, including humanity, have psychic potential, and it's only because we chose the path of science that spoonbending isn't more prevalent.  Q.E.D.

Gee, I wonder how this story got published.

What I really don't understand is what possible advantage the alien trait of mass hallucination affords.  If it were real transmutation being employed in this story, there might be something to it, but there isn't.  A being that thinks it is having its physical needs met when it is not quickly becomes a sick and/or dead being.  Maybe it's more of a reality enhancer, as in the first Cugel the Clever story, which I guess would make more sense.

Anyway, Stranglehold feels like what would happen if Bob Sheckley ever wrote for Campbell.

Two stars.

Escape Felicity, by Frank Herbert


by Kelly Freas

In Frank Herbert's latest, a lone interstellar scout plunges his ship deep into a nebulous cloud.  He is determined to fight off the "push" that causes all of his corps to return to Earth after a certain point.  But is the compulsion programmed in by BuPurs to keep scouts from going native?  Or is there an external agency involved?

I found this one of Herbert's more compelling pieces, though it falls apart a bit at the end.  And it feels like the title is a pun in search of a story; I can't figure out its applicability to this one.

Three stars.

Doing the Math

Thus, Analog ends up near the bottom of the pack with a 2.6 star rating, only beating out the mostly-reprint (and consistently lackluster) Amazing 2.5.  Ahead of Campbell's mag are New Worlds (3.1), Galaxy (3.1), Impulse (3.0), IF (3.0), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.8).

Worthy material comprised about an issue-and-a-half out of six this month.  Women produced 11.25% of the new fiction, at the high end of the usual range.

All told, June 1966 may not be remembered in times to come, particularly as impressive as last month was.  But, as noted at the beginning of the article, sometimes having to remember is painful.

Until next month…

If you need a mood-lifter now, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest and best hits!




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