Tag Archives: damon knight

Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 28, 1966] Garbage and Aliens (October 1966 New Worlds and SF Impulse)

9 Comments


by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

After last month’s changes, I must admit that I was really looking forward to this month’s issues. I was intrigued – would the change of editor at SF Impulse be noticeable yet? And could editor Mike Moorcock over at New Worlds manage to produce another stellar issue of the same standard as last month?

I’ll start with New Worlds.

Mike Moorcock’s Editorial is not-an-Editorial. Instead Mike extolls a writer, reviewing some of their work. This is usually something that I feel belongs in the reviews section of the magazine.

However, Mike this time tells us of the work of J G Ballard, last seen here last month (and will appear again, later). The Editorial is typically enthusiastic, claiming that Ballard is the “first clear voice” of a new movement in science fiction. To which I mused that his voice is clearly different, whilst his plots are rather obscure.

To the stories!


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Garbage World (Part 1 of 2), by Charles Platt

The cover story first. Platt tells of a future where Kopra, a world used by the rest of the Belt to dump its waste, has become increasingly unstable on account of the amount of waste dumped upon it. The people there strive to survive in a world with pollutive skies and garbage-covered landscapes.

However, the arrival of an official with a construction team to build a gravity generator, and deal with the problem before it becomes a hazard to others in the Belt, is greeted with suspicion. The general feeling is that the real motive is to get the locals off the planet and then steal their hoards of accumulated “wealth”.

This is made worse when Isaac Gaylord, the mayor of Kopra, has his wealth stolen and as his stockpile is a sign of his authority, he is deposed. Although suspicion immediately falls upon the construction team, Gaylord blames the nomads from outside of the village for taking advantage of the new situation. The work of the space constructors is also slowed by attacks on them, determined to stop the work. Lucian Roach, a Recorder for the Belt party, and Gaylord and his daughter Juliette go to meet the outsiders to get them to allow a restart of the gravity generator construction but also to get his hoard back and regain his status. Whilst travelling around a mud lake, their tractor breaks down and their radio is stolen, leaving us with a cliffhanger until next issue.

I quite liked the premise of this one. The story makes use of a valid environmental issue – with a growing population, what should we do with our litter in the future? Unfortunately, whilst the idea is interesting, the characterisation is poor and the plot unoriginal. In particular, the mayor, Isaac Gaylord, comes across rather like Ralph Richardson’s Boss of Everytown in the film Things to Come – a man of the people, yet ill-mannered and decidedly small-minded. There’s a weak love story begun here too. Reminiscent of an old-school “planetary explorer” story, this was readable, but won’t win any prizes for its telling. 3 out of 5.

To the Pure , by Damon Knight

An appearance of an American author here, who rather like James Blish I seem to know more for his criticism than his fiction. I enjoyed this one. It is a story of human-Antarian relationships, a boy-meets-girl-meets-alien kind of story. When Mr. Nellith, a big bird-like Antarian, arrives to fix the hyper-radio, human technician Jeff Gorman is aggrieved and does everything he can to make the alien’s life horrible. Despite all of Gorman’s boorish antics and general unpleasantness, Nellith completes the job and leaves the planet, taking Gorman’s wife in the process. Although this may sound unreasonable, Gorman is particularly nasty, which gives the reader the feeling that in the end justice was served. Another that is quite readable, though totally predictable. 3 out of 5.

The Squirrel Cage, by Thomas M. Disch

And no sooner do we have one story from this promising young writer, but we have another. I was impressed by Thomas’s debut here in last month’s New Worlds. As for this month, you know the idea that with enough time, monkeys could type out the works of Shakespeare? Well, here’s a slightly different version. This time it is the story of a man named Disch and a typewriter, locked in a lighted room. The man has no idea why he is there – is it an experiment or an observation? – and without knowing what day or time it is, is reduced to copying out or making up dreadful poetry and stories to pass the time. The writer eventually produces the theory that he is in a squirrel cage, where the typing is purely exercise for him, and he is perhaps entertainment in a zoo.

Almost but not quite as good as last month’s effort, I think. Still readable. The trains of thought throughout are logical and there is a faintly amusing tone throughout to give the impression that the writer is in on the joke as well as part of the joke. The attempts at poetry and short stories are deliberately awful. Are we to make fun of the writer or sympathise with him? Not sure – but this confirms my idea last month that Disch is an author to watch. 4 out of 5.

Be Good Sweet Man, by Hilary Bayley

Hilary’s return to fiction after some time as a book reviewer. Whilst the setting is science fiction, this is really a story of sexual politics: on Mars the Conservative and Reform Party has dared to replace its previous candidate with a man! The main idea of the plot is that, after the Third World War, it is felt that it is time to let women run the place – the men made such a mess, after all.

It is amusing to read what can happen with gender stereotypes reversed, although the story makes the mistake, in my opinion, of simply swapping the genders and then letting the women behave like the stereotype of men and presumably the men more like the original stereotype of women. It lacks complexity and depth. 3 out of 5.

Crab Apple Crisis, by George Macbeth (for Martin Bell)

Mike continues his determination to foist poetry upon the readers. I know that there are many who like it, but generally it is not my thing. Having said that, this is a poem of war: of how an accumulation of minor events, namely the stealing of crab-apples, can lead to a major incident. 3 out of 5.

Divine Madness, by Roger Zelazny

Another American big-hitter. Roger’s latest is about a person experiencing time going backwards. The result? Lots of things in reverse – drinking, smoking – and sentences as speech written backwards. The attention is held by knowing that the narrator is about to repeat something that was unpleasant in reverse. It’s a nice idea, though rather impractical, and the reason for this happening is not entirely clear. However, this is pleasingly different from what we’ve seen from Roger so far – a sign of a talent, I think. Not his best, but good. 4 out of 5.


Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Steel Corkscrew, by Michael Butterworth

Michael is a relatively new talent that we’ve met before with Girl in the May issue of New Worlds. Eight outcasts return to land on a dusty deserted Earth. A strange corkscrew spire is all that remains. Lots of discussion about what it is and where it came from, before the crew find a way in. Death and strange things happen. All seems a bit pointless, although that may be the point. All is death and pain, it seems. 3 out of 5.

The Greatest Car in the World, by Harry Harrison

Just in case you haven’t realised, here’s Harry to remind us that he’s not just an editor and a critic over at SF Impulse, but also a writer. A story for petrol-heads, though you do not have to be one to like it: American Ernest Haroway visits in Italy the Maestro Bellini, the reclusive elderly creator of Bellini sports cars. Haroway returns an item from a Bellini car involved in a previous motor race crash and is given a prototype to drive home in, Bellini’s last ever effort. The ending describes the modifications Haroway will have to make to adapt the car for the US market, in other words to turn the genius of a once-in-a-lifetime car into an inferior mass-production model. Lots of technical talk, which sounds real, although it may not be. 3 out of 5.

Three Days in Summer, by George Collyn

George is now probably a veteran of these here pages, being a regular essay writer, reviewer and story writer at New Worlds. This one’s relatively minor, a re-tread of Orwell’s 1984. A Whitehall romance in a future despotic state, combining bureaucracy and public hangings with a horribly humid Summer. Very similar initially to A Hot Summer’s Day by John Bell in the July issue of Impulse, but this one is perhaps a little more restrained. Like Bell’s story, 3 out of 5.

Prisoners of Paradise, by David Redd

A new writer, I think. Shaamon is an artist who can change form and creates art with light. She finds and merges with a dying creature in a spaceship. The knowledge she experiences she takes back to her Nest mind pool to add to the group consciousness. The group decides to try and find more like this creature, who is clearly human. The purpose of the story seems to be that even in paradise, you should not stop pushing boundaries and acquiring new experiences for the greater good. Whilst this is a debut story, the lyrical writing and vivid imagery suggests that this is a writer with promise. 4 out of 5.

Notes from Nowhere, by J. G. Ballard

No doubt to go with Moorcock’s glowing recommendation in this month’s Editorial, here we have J G’s article "to produce these notes explaining some of his current ideas."

I am of a mind that if an author has to explain himself then I question the validity of their work. Nevertheless, Ballard does try to capture the impossible here. Interesting reading, although I suspect it will leave some readers as confused as ever. Some nice name-checking, though.

Book Reviews

This month James Cawthorn covers a pile of Jack Vance stories now available here in Britain: the stories in The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph, and the novels The Languages of Pao, and The Blue World. All are generally liked, although there are some weaker stories in the story collection.

Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 also deals with languages, and is highly regarded, which ”only occasionally trips over its hyperbole”.

Frank Herbert, he of Dune fame, has two books reviewed this month. Destination: Void and The Green Brain seem to cover all the bases here – "Journeys also figure prominently… as do giant brains, highly-sexed heroines, religion and characters who endlessly analyse each other’s motives.” And if you didn’t want to read those books before, now you do!

No Letters pages again this month.

Summing up New Worlds

This is another one of those odd issues of New Worlds where I found a lot to like but not to love. Compared with last month’s issue, this is weaker and yet I can’t say I disliked it. Moorcock is using a broad range here and trying to introduce more relatively new writers alongside the established favourites. Will an article by Ballard be enough to persuade readers to buy? Or a story from promising new writer Disch? Not sure.

The Second Issue At Hand

And now to SF Impulse, under the rule of its new editor Harry Harrison.

With the feeling that there’s a sign saying “Under New Management” hanging off it, Harry in his Editorial sets out his stall. He acknowledges the work of previous editor Kyril and present Managing Editor Keith Roberts, promising much, calming troubled waters, and being positive about the future.

Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Another author who is also an editor. This one is a bit odd, as is perhaps befitting the New Wave. A story of genetics and boys not being boys and girls not being girls in a far future. It is also a love story, though Dora is seven feet tall and Don is a cybernetic man. The style is interesting – a story that is written in a conversational style and raises your expectations before contradicting them. I liked it: it doesn’t take itself too seriously, although it is however another reprint, from Rogue Magazine in the US. I guess that this might be where the sexual content was first suited. 4 out of 5.

The Inheritors by Ernest Hill

Ernest’s a New Worlds regular, last seen in the June issue with the not-great Sub-liminal. This time around, we are set in a future where food is processed and much of the work is automated. The overly stressed manager of this world spends most of his time on the verge of a mental breakdown. His attempt to escape the rat race is futile, leading to an inevitable, weak ending. Over-excited and yet predictable, this is another one that seems to be doing little but filling space. 2 out of 5.

Book Review, by Brian W Aldiss

And it would of course not be right to have a Harrison production without some input via Mr Aldiss. Just to make it clear, this is not a story named “Book Review”, but a book review of The Clone by Theodore L Thomas and Kate Wilhelm. Whilst the book under review seems to be nothing new, Aldiss’s review is entertaining , as usual.

Breakdown by Alistair Bevan

Keith Roberts’ nom-de-plume returns with another story set in Bill Frederick’s garage – you know, the one with the demonised car back in the August issue. This time Bill’s mechanical skills are put to the test when he is asked by a local to slow his car down as it has become too fast for him. Investigating further, we discover that the car, having broken down, was tuned up by an on-the-road mechanic to be better than ever before. The twist in the story is that the roadside rescuer is an alien, and Bill has to come to his rescue to fix his alien spaceship. It is all as silly as it sounds, but I liked the pleasingly breezy style to this story.

What is it with all the motor car stories, though? 3 out of 5.

Fantasy and the Nightmare by G. D. Doherty

G. D. Doherty is an academic who has written for the analytical fanzine SF Horizons before.

Here he discusses the point made by Ballard that the most important aspects of SF are really just Fantasy. Doherty unpacks the idea of what Fantasy is – or isn’t – and refers to Ballard, James Blish, Brian Aldiss, as well as non-genre works to make this point. Quite dense stuff that is different in tone and depth to the rest of the work in the magazine, although it is worth comparing to Ballard’s notes in New Worlds.

The Boiler by C. F. Hoffman

Following on from a discussion of Fantasy, we now have a reprint of a classic Fantasy story, first published in 1842. One of those creepy Weird Tales type of stories about Ben Blower, a seaman trapped in a boat’s boiler room during a heavy storm. Its style is quite out of step with the modern material in the magazine, and its olde prose quite jarring in comparison also. Effectively claustrophobic. 3 out of 5.

The Man Who Came Back by Brian Stableford

You might remember Brian for his illuminating attempt to define science fiction in the November 1965 issue of Science Fantasy, or his promising story in the same issue, Beyond Time’s Aegis co-written as “Brian Craig” with Craig A. Mackintosh. This time we look at the idea of identity through William Jason, a space pilot who wakes up in the form of something else. The big debate is whether he is still William or not. Short – I rarely say these things, but actually this one feels like it could do with being longer. 3 out of 5.

The Experiment by Chris Hebron

A new writer. Alfred is a child that like many others has been born with esper powers. The Race Purity League see this as a threat and are determined to destroy the mutants or at least limit them. Scientists try to investigate the matter further. Lots of talk about the importance of the espers' rights and their need to survive follows. Shades of Slan from over 25 years ago, or even John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos from 1957 show that this idea never goes out of fashion. 3 out of 5.

The Unsung Martyrdom of Abel Clough by Robert J. Tilley

This is basically a cowboy western in space. Alien Vat on his first solo Hunt crashes on an alien planet. He hopes to make good his error by capturing some of the human inhabitants of a village and attempts to disguise himself before going to the local bar. He fails. The humans, straight out of the Old West, manage to see through this. A weak ending. 3 out of 5.

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

The last part of this serial novel has a lot to live up to. In this last part New York’s Summer has given way to Winter. Where it was once a heatwave, it is now freezing. Sol, the friend of Police Detective Andy Rusch has broken his hip and is now recuperating in their shared flat, being looked after by Andy’s now-girlfriend Shirl.

The killer of crime boss “Big Mike” O Brien, Billy Chung, is forced to leave the Brooklyn Shipyards where he has been hiding with his vagrant-friend Peter.

The unremitting misery continues, even though there’s a change in the weather. (How do people in New York cope with this?) The story is still bleak. There’s much talk, especially from Sol, of a need for family planning and how uncontrolled births have led to the world as it is today.

I was interested to see if the story caught the murderer in the final part. I’m pleased to say that the ending is quite satisfying, although the demise of the killer is rather quickly wrapped up. It seems that that part of the story is not that important; the setting is most significant. Whilst it is enjoyable, I think that this part was not quite as good as the initial set up or last month’s part, so 4 out of 5. Nevertheless, this has been a notable story and one I’ll remember for a while.

Summing up SF Impulse

The first issue of a new regime, although with assistant editor Keith Roberts still doing much of the work. I can’t see that much of a difference, at least at the moment. Like this month’s New Worlds, there are a lot of stories here, and the issue gains by range if not really in depth. The Harrison finishes fairly well, but there’s a lot of filler here, including reprints. The introduction of more sf criticism is an interesting move, but the use of “classic” stories to fill space a negative one.

Summing up overall

A tougher decision to choose this month. Both issues are fair, and both have gone for range rather than depth. But with nothing particularly strong in New Worlds, though I quite liked Disch’s story, the winner this month for me is, I think, SF Impulse [the Editor's averaging of Mark's star ratings be damned! (ed.)]. It’s not perfect by any means, but it just shows that the magazine is going to keep on fighting – at least for now.

Until the next…

(Join us tomorrow at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next episode of Star Trek!)

Here's the invitation!



9 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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

6 Comments


by Cora Buhlert

Whale Hunt on the Rhine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All-new Anthology, All-new Stories:

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

Orbit 1, edited by Damon Knight

"Staras Flonderans" by Kate Wilhelm

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

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

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

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

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

Four stars.

"The Secret Place" by Richard McKenna

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

"How Beautiful With Banners" by James Blish

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

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

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

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

Two stars

"The Disinherited" by Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson is another author who needs no introduction.

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

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

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

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

Five stars

"The Loolies Are Here" by Allison Rice

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

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

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

Four stars

Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson

"Kangaroo Court" by Virginia Kidd

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

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

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

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

Three stars

"Splice of Life" by Sonya Dorman

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

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

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

Four stars

"5 Eggs" by Thomas M. Disch

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

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

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

Two stars

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

"The Deeps" by Keith Roberts

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

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

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

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

Three stars

Summary Judgment

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

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

Three and a half stars all in all

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

[August 24, 1965] 13 French Science Fiction Stories

1 Comment


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

A French Experiment

At Galactic Journey, we've devoted a great deal of space to, well, space — documenting each of the launches and satellite missions beyond Earth's atmosphere. But an equally exciting and unexplored frontier is the world's oceans. There is even some cross-over; this month, Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter left NASA to become an aquanaut and undertake missions beneath the waves.

This pioneering of the water frontier is an international effort. Famed French Ocean explorer Cmdr. Jacques Cousteau has been conducting a series of underwater experiments to see if humans can live in under sea habitations.

Conshelf 1
Conshelf I Design

In 1962 Conshelf I was setup ten metres down off the coast of Marseilles, where a selection of "Oceanauts" lived underwater for a week. The experiment was successful enough to warrant moving on to the next stage.

Conshelf 2
Conshelf II Design

In 1963 Conshelf II was a more ambitious project supporting a crew living at the bottom of the Red Sea for an entire month. This was also successful enough to move on to the next phase.

Conshelf III
Conshelf III Design

Starting in September a crew will live at an unprecedented depth of 100 metres, working on a submerged oil platform for three weeks. If this test proves successful it may well change the way we live in the years to come.

Looking to this French inspired future, it is a fortuitous time for Damon Knight to release his anthology of translated French science fiction, to see where we may be going.

13 French Science Fiction Stories ed. by Damon Knight

13 French SF Stories Knight

I am a bit of a Francophile but recent French science fiction, I must admit, has been a bit of blind spot. Whilst the more literary fiction and experimental cinema make their way over the channel, the work of science fiction writers does not. As such I was delighted to see Damon Knight, who has translated a lot of French stories for F&SF), put out this collection so I could help rectify this gap in my knowledge. I also liaised with my friend and French science fiction fan, C of The Middle Shelf fanzine, for some more background information on some of these.

So, without further ado, let us get on to the stories:

Juliette by Claude F. Cheinisse

Chienisse has been publishing Science Fiction for a while, but he is primarily known as a satirist due to his work on the controversial Hari-Kiri magazine. Juliette, a story of love between a Doctor and Juliette, his sentient car, has actually passed through the Journey before: in his previous review the Traveler gave it four stars. I would not be quite so generous with my rating. Whilst sensuous I found the style a little stiff, and I would have liked the author to state more clearly that he disagrees with the concept of women as disposable objects.

A low three stars

The Blind Pilot by Charles Henneberg

All three stories in this anthology by Charles Henneberg were written by Natalie Henneberg, using her husband’s name. She has published widely and is known as the “most read” science fiction writer in France. However, she is not without controversy: some of her work has been criticized for tending towards pseudo fascist themes. Whilst this criticism can also be levelled at a number of pieces of Campbellian fiction, I think it is still important to note going in.

In the first of these stories, Jacky, an adventurer who has fallen on hard times, has to pawn his robot porter to the owner of the titular shop. In the shop there are also several mutants, and strange events begin to unfold, as we hear via Jacky’s testimony.

Henneberg is well known for her mixes of science fiction and fantasy, and this definitely fits into this category, with a futuristic take on the Siren myth. This, however, is not a fun adventure but a much darker tale.

Another story that had appeared in a previously reviewed issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the magazine review declared this “well-nigh unreadable”. Whilst once again finding the style odd, I didn’t find it quite as bad. The bigger problem I have is that I don’t quite get the point of it. It is neither enjoyable nor particularly meaningful. And though it has a lot of interesting elements they don’t really seem to gel well.

Two Stars

Olivia by Henri Damonti

Henri Damonti is apparently a pseudonym for a writer of children’s radio plays. He has not been anywhere near as prolific as many of the other writers in this collection and so I could find little more than what Damon Knight put in his about the authors section.

In this story, we see a married man’s last days he falls in love with his neighbor Olivia and the lengths he goes to try to be with her.

This feels like it could be the kind of critically acclaimed movie you would see at artistic film festivals. Others may love it, but I find this trite and creepy in a bad way. But I guess it's competently written if you like that sort of thing.

Two Stars for my own subjective views.

The Notary and the Conspiracy by Henri Damonti

The second by Damonti, and one that has appeared before in F and SF. Here Mr. Duplessis receives an invite to a mysterious club, where it is claimed you can live a second life in the past. He selects the life of a notary in fifteenth century Florence. However, he finds himself drifting further away from his present-day life and becoming more concerned with the events in the past.

In a recent New Worlds issue George Collyn discussed how the treatment of fractured time by American authors was one of the most interesting developments of current science fiction. I think this story fits under this umbrella with the backwards and forwards in time being used to comment on the dangers of escapism to the past without considering the importance of being present, and how deadly the past could really be.

Unlike the Traveler, I did not find Knight's translation opaque at all. I actually found it one of the more readable pieces in this collection (or maybe I am just getting used to Knight’s way of writing?)

Four stars

The Vana by Alain Dorémieux

Alain Dorémieux has been the driving force of French science fiction over the last decade, publishing both the premiere French Science Fiction magazine Fiction and a series of original anthologies, as well as being a writer in his own right.

In Vana, to control the population men and women are not allowed to live together until they are thirty and are encouraged to get out their urges in “The House of Women”. Slovic, a twenty-five year old suburban jazz fan, is lonely and nostalgic for the twentieth century. So he decides to buy a Vana, an idle and vegetative extra-terrestrial lifeform who looks like a human woman but cannot get pregnant.

Whilst I have had to try to have a strong stomach for some of this anthology, this story is particularly disturbing and one I wish I hadn’t read.

One star.

The Devil's Goddaughter by Suzanne Malaval

Author, Suzanne Malaval is a young housewife in North Eastern France who started writing for Fiction at the start of the decade and has continued being published since.

The plot: When little Fanche is born the devil comes to claim her as his goddaughter. When she is fifteen she is taken to hell and must devise a way to escape.

When this story first appeared in F&SF the Traveller gave it three stars and complimented the riddles, but it did not work at all for me. This vignette seems to be related to some old folktales from the region but I am afraid I am unfamiliar with them, if so. Even accounting for that, I still found the treatment of rape and domestic abuse poor.

One Star

Moon Fishers by Charles Henneberg

Back to another previously published Henneberg: this time a test pilot is given a part in an experiment where his mind can travel through time. He ends up in Ancient Egypt where he meets an Atlantean called Nester. The whole thing sets off a kind of fantasy yarn.

Overly long rambling fluff that just gets wearisome. For once I am in total agreement with the earlier review.

One Star

The Non-Humans by Charles Henneberg

The final Henneberg piece (also previously published) and a slight improvement on the other two. This time she brings her style of science fantasy to renaissance Italy with a tale of a painter called Nardo and the strange woman he uses as model.

As pointed out in the prior review the twist at the end is kind of obvious (and has indeed been used in other works of science fiction) but this has a much better style and atmosphere than the other stories in this collection.

What also raised it up for me is that it correctly depicts 15th Century Florence as a cosmopolitan community of people of many different races living together. Compared with how often adventure serials will have the whole of Italy as lily-white, it was quite refreshing.

Three Stars

After Three Hundred Years by Pierre Mille

Pierre Mille is well known as a writer, but C of The Middle Shelf was surprised to discover he had written any fantastic fiction. This is the oldest story in the collection, from 1922, first published in Literary Magazine Les Ouvres Libres. Perhaps unsurprisingly it feels very Victorian.

In a future after an unnamed disaster, people are living in a society like the dark ages, most of our modern knowledge is lost and anything beautiful has been given up to survival.

The concept itself has been done better before and since, with much of this story seeming to be about how much women have a desire to wear pretty things.

One star

The Monster by Gérard Klein

Klein is another core figure of the Parisian science fiction scene. So far he has released 10 novels and collections along with being a regular contributor to Fiction and Galaxie.

In The Monster, Marion is waiting for her husband Bernard to return home when an alert is put out for an alien in the park.

This is an old-fashioned story but with a very deft writing style to make it more interesting. A prior review gave it four stars.  I am not quite there but very happy to give a strong three stars.

A Little More Caviar? by Claude Veillot

Veillot has recently come to public attention due to the adaptation of his novel Nous n'irons pas en Nigéria, filmed as 100 000 dollars au solei which was a box office hit and nominated for the Palme d’Or.

In this story, Mademoiselle Moreau is trying to teach a class on the planet Bisupek about Earth. The children are decidedly uninterested. In the course of the class we learn about why these people left Earth and what will happen in their future.

Unfortunately, the method of delivery made it tedious to me. One Star

The Chain of Love by Catherine Cliff

Probably the least famous writer in the collection, mostly known for being married to Jacques Sternberg, a major Belgian writer, she here produces a vignette where our unnamed narrator who is down on her luck gets into a relationship with an alien. The whole thing is disturbing but, at least in this case, I feel like it is supposed to be.

Two Stars

The Dead Fish by Boris Vian

Vian was (he passed away in 1959) a famous writer and is widely known in France, although not so much for his science fiction as for his poetry and detective novels.

In the final story of the collection, we get a very surreal satire that is hard to summarize, but I am going to try my best just so you can understand just how bizarre it is:

It opens with an assistant travelling on a train with a ticket from his boss; the ticket however is a forged one sold by the ticket inspectors, in order to catch people who would buy forged tickets. After paying the fine the assistant's boss' face appears between his toes, which the assistant dissolves by spitting on it.

He then attempts to go to his boss’ house but is attacked by a series of anti-burglary devices. Managing to get inside his boss bemoans the catch he is given. For the assistant is a fisherman of stamps (as in the sticky things you attach to envelopes to send mail); however the net he uses is old so the perforations are sometimes ruined. His boss does not accept these excuses and is also annoyed at him for not noticing the forged tickets or the anti-burglary devices so the assistant must sleep outside. Whilst sleeping in the doghouse, after fending off an attack from rogue stamps, an unnamed living thing cuddles with him and they console together.

The next day, a young woman selling pepper comes to the house, the Boss wants to look at her thighs but she insists he try the pepper first. It turns out she has poisoned him, forcing him to run around the house several times until he falls over, resulting in his feet being detached (but still running).

Coming back from another fishing trip, the assistant has plans to kill his boss, only to discover him already dead from the poison of the pepper seller. Angry that he cannot kill his boss, when the unnamed living thing comes over to console him, the assistant kills the living thing instead. Upset by this, the assistant then makes himself trip into a pool full of stamps whereby he is promptly eaten.

This all takes place over the course of 12 pages, and I have skipped over other bizarre incidents as well.

I have read this piece three times and I am still totally at a loss to what it is meant to be about. I like weird, but it needs to have something underneath it, otherwise it is just describing a bad dream you once had. This feels totally insubstantial and pointless.

One Star

So overall, there are a couple of good stories in here but mostly I was not a fan. In spite of this it is still good to be able to read science and fantasy from other countries and to get at least some understanding of what is happening with SFF on a more international scale.

One other thing to note: this collection is advertised as tales of love. This is most certainly not the case. The only one I would say really qualifies is The Moon Fishers; the rest that involve relationships are about abuse, control and rape. I am fan of love stories but I am not sure why the publishers decided to promote this as such. I think it would have been more true, and likely garnered more interest, if it had been labelled as “disturbing tales that challenge the boundaries of science fiction”.

Perhaps then I might at least have been prepared for what was inside…as you are now.




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 20, 1965] Ace Quadruple (June Galactoscope #1)

Leave a comment

[Kris Vyas-Myall and Cora Buhlert team up to cover two of the better Ace Doubles to have come out in a while. Enjoy!]


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The Ballad of Beta-2, by Samuel R. Delany, and Alpha, Yes! Terra, no!, by Emil Petaja (Ace Double M-121)

I have generally been disappointed by the Ace Doubles so far this year. Those I have read have seemed to me to be quite old fashioned and I had been wondering if they were going to be heading into a more conservative route with them this year. Thankfully, this new Double I have found has been one of their best:

The Ballad of Beta-2 by Samuel R. Delany

Ballad of Beta 2

I have been a fan of all four of Delany’s Ace novels, however I approached this with some excitement but also trepidation. For three of those former works were in the same Toron series and The Jewels of Aptor was also set in a similar post-catastrophe future. So, whilst I know he is an excellent writer I wondered how he would do with a generation starship story. I can definitively say he has not only succeeded but produced his best work to date.

This is an interesting take on the well-worn theme, where the generation starship became obsolete long before the crew reached their destination. The inhabitants found hyperdrive had resulted in the systems already being colonized and they themselves were outdated relics who were simply content to live on their ships. At the same time, it appears some form of reversion has taken place and those on board lack much of the knowledge they would have had at the start of the voyage.

Galactic anthropology student Joneny is forced to do an assignment on these Star Folk’s culture, specifically the titular “Ballad of Beta-2”. Originally Joneny assumes that the ballad is nothing but meaningless “cotton candy effusions”, but as he investigates further, he discovers this may hold the truth of what terrible fate befell the Star Folk on their long voyage.

This story starts off fairly leisurely and I assumed this was going to be a sedate academic kind of novel, travelling around exploring the starships. However, as it goes on you do discover that the terror listed on the front cover is justified, my heart pounding as I read some passages. And it should be said there are multiple unforeseen twists within its pages.

Delany clearly has a gift for poetry, with the ballad itself being a beautiful piece and with a clearer understanding of metre and imagery than may others in the fantasy field. He also uses a number of other clever literary devices which I loved, such as building up a mosaic story from framed narratives.

Throughout this Delany explores numerous interesting ideas. First is the value of the fantastic in storytelling and how easily it is dismissed by literary critics (something I am sure we have all seen).

Second is the problem of unchecked biases in academia. The only first-hand account Joneny can find is the original contact when the Star Folk entered the system and the Ballad was only picked up by sending in a robot to record, which the original anthropologist changed the lyrics he thought were clearly incorrect. It is off the back of this information that the common truth about the nature of the Star Folk is held.

Third is the danger of cultural assumptions. Thinking about who is civilized and what it truly means to be human. Throughout we are called on to challenge what we think we know and reassess that which we hold to be true.

Then this also acts as a reality check on the space romances, that see an ease to zipping around the universe, showing how hard this could really be. But then the story dives further into the dangers of anti-intellectualism and religious fundamentalism.

I could keep on about all the ways this work is fascinating. It should be noted this part of the Double is pretty short, only 96 pages, but within it he crafts a story with more depth than most writers manage in triple that time. And yet I would not say any of the concepts are treated at a surface level, he weaves it all together like a stout rope and you can see more ideas every time you look closer.

Needless to say, I fell in love with this short novel. I would recommend it for everyone, but it is not for the faint of heart or those looking for a light read. It is tough, intellectually challenging and really brutal at times.

Delany has once again proven himself to be one of the most exciting new voices in science fiction. If he is not to be my favourite writer of the year, someone else is going to have to produce something spectacular in the next six months!

Rating: Five Stars

Alpha Yes, Terra No! by Emil Petaja

Alpha Yes, Terra No!

Emil Petaja is an old hand of the genre but has been out of the writing game for almost a decade, only just beginning to sell new short stories and (I believe) this is his first novel. As such I was very curious what it would be like.

Humanity has fully conquered the Solar System and is preparing interstellar ships for further expansion. In Alpha Centauri they had been initially deflecting ships with their barrier, but the tribunal has decided it will be necessary to wipe out humanity completely.

The novel opens with an alien from Alpha Centauri arriving in San Francisco and ending up mingling with the homeless of the city. This person (who is initially called The Tourist but who will have more names as the story unfolds) has psychic powers and uses them to take a look at the differences in humanity and what life is like on Earth. However, his mission is not authorized, and a tracker has been sent to kill him.

Trying to summarize beyond this jumping on point seems like a fool’s errand as it become very complex. This story then evolves into a tapestry of life across the solar system, all of it linked together through a range of different characters, touching on ideas of power, mythology, belief and humanity.

Petaja makes a real effort to show what a future of ever-growing space colonization would be like rather than purely projecting the present into the future. This drive is leaving ordinary people’s lives in shambles as everyone has their eyes on space; crime and unemployment are rampant. Drug use is common. The natives of the planets that are being colonized are being exploited but it only manifests as power for a small number and as a means to fuel further expansion.

The author has an easily readable style which is useful as what he is doing could easily collapse under its own weight but somehow, he manages to juggle it. There were times when I would have to backtrack to check I was indeed following everything that was happening, but I never found myself becoming lost. I do think he could possibly have done more if this had been a full-length novel rather than squeezed down into one half of a Double, but he still works admirably with the page count he is given.

I expect this will be compared to Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (although that itself is an old concept, dating at least as far back as Montaigne’s Of Cannibals) but it is really doing something different. This more a dialogue on humanity’s future weighing up the optimistic and pessimistic views we have emerging in science fiction and considering whether there is something worth saving in us.

So overall, Petaja’s return has proved to be a welcome surprise and I will be interested to see what he comes up with next. He clearly has a great affinity with Finnish myths, so perhaps a book based around that would be welcome?

Rating: Four Stars


by Cora Buhlert

The Rithian Terror and Off Center by Damon Knight (Ace Double M-113)

Summer has come to West Germany, though you wouldn't know it by the wet and miserable weather we've been having.

Nonetheless, there are some good news. My hometown team Werder Bremen has won the West German football (soccer to our American friends) championship for the 1964/65 season.

Werder Bremen 1965 champion
The Werder Bremen team celebrates winning the 1965 West German football championship

The 83rd Kieler Woche, one of the biggest sailing regattas in the world, kicks off today in Kiel-Eckernförde. In addition to the sailing competition, there is also a parade featuring 23 tall ships from all over the world.

Kieler Woche 1965
The West German police boat SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN and the French tall ships ETOILE and BELLE POULE, the Swedish tall ships GLADAN and FALKEN and the Chilean tall ship ESMERALDA at the Kieler Woche.
Poster Kieler Woche 1965
This striking minimalist poster, designed by Michael Engelmann, advertises the 1965 Kieler Woche sailing regatta.

On to reading: In the spinner rack of my local import bookstore, I came across yet another Ace Double, No. M-113 to be precise. This one contained a novel as well as a short fiction collection by Damon Knight. In the past, I have enjoyed Damon Knight's works of literary criticism, so how would his fiction stand up?

Monster Hunt

The Rithian Terror and Off Center by Damon Knight

Quite well, it turns out. The novel The Rithian Terror starts out with Security Commissioner Thorne Spangler, currently the most important official in the Earth Empire, on the hunt for a monster. That monster, the titular Rithian terror, is a tentacled horror that can take on the appearance of anybody it wishes. Seven Rithians came to Earth, but only one is still at large.

However, Spangler is certain he has the monster cornered. After all, there are house by house searches and roadblocks on every street, where everybody has to pass through a scanner. This is the one test a Rithian can't pass, for the scanner detects human skeletons and Rithians have none.

Spangler is accompanied by Jawj Pembun, an official from Manhaven, one of Earth's colony worlds, which recently gained its independence. Manhaven has regular contact with the Rithians, so Pumbun was brought in as an expert.

Spangler clearly resents Pembun's involvement in what should be his moment of glory. For starters, Pembun comes from a small backwater planet, one that only gained its independence, because the Earth Empire with its 260 planets let them. Furthermore, Pembun speaks in heavy dialect, while the Empire prizes precise language. Finally, Pembun is a black man, descended from African and Caribbean colonists, and Spangler is the sort of person who is very bothered by this and not shy about expressing it.

I have to admit that after the first fifteen pages or so, I came close to throwing the book against the nearest wall. There are enough racists in the real world, so I really don't need to spend time with racist characters while reading. However, I quickly realised that Knight was a better author than that. For even though Spangler may be the POV character, we're not meant to sympathise with him or his Empire. After all, Spangler and the Empire he serves are rigid, overorganised, xenophobic, have a massive superiority complex and are racist to boot. Spangler is also unpleasant in his personal life, a social climber who only courts his girlfriend Joanna because she is a member of a patrician family and will be useful to him. At one point, he even hits Joanna.

As a result, I quickly found myself sympathising with Pembun and cheered as he deflated Spangler and his smug compatriots. For starters, those scanners at every roadblock that Spangler is so proud of won't work, for while Rithians don't have skeletons, they could just swallow one to pass the test. Also, if the Empire wants to capture a Rithian alive, then maybe shooting six of the seven Rithians who crashlanded on Earth dead is not the best idea. Finally, Pembun casually drops the bombshell that the Rithians have hypnotic abilities as well as a nasty sense of humour.

A Game of Spies

What began as the hunt for an alien spy quickly turns into a game of cat and mouse between Spangler and Pembun. Spangler decides that Pembun must be a traitor and wastes a lots of resources trying to catch him redhanded. But the meeting of supposed offworld insurrectionists Spangler has his forces storm only turns out to be a Christmas party, where Pembun hands out gifts to children while dressed up as a legendary figure called the Grey Parrot.

While Spangler fails at every turn due to his rigid mindset, Pembun's unorthodox methods get results. And so Pembun manages to unmask the Rithian two thirds through the novel, using the Rithian's sense of humour against him. It turns out that the alien is posing as a junior member of the very committee dedicated to hunting him down. However, in the attempt to apprehend the Rithian, the alien is killed and Colonel Cassina, the military official the Rithian had hypnotised into giving him access to the security headquarters, is grievously wounded.

However, the crisis is not yet over. For the Rithians have planted bombs on Earth as leverage against the Empire. The key to the location of the bombs is in Colonel Cassina's head, only Cassina will not talk. And once Spangler's people finally manage to extract the message, destroying the Colonel's mind in the process, it turns out to be useless.

For Pembun points out that even though language has frozen and standardised in the Empire with every word having only a single meaning, it continued to evolve on the colony planets, where the same term can have many different meanings. So the location given in the message could be anywhere on Earth. Spangler and his security forces have no chance of locating the bombs. The Empire is finished, destroyed by its own rigidity, and so is Spangler's career. However, Spangler and Pembun have developed a grudging respect for each other and Pembun offers him a place on his homeworld Manhaven. Spangler's girlfriend Joanna, who up to now had refused to marry him, knowing fully well that Spangler wanted her not for herself, but for her position, agrees to go with him.

A Tale with Multiple Meanings

As a linguist, I enjoyed that the solution to the central mystery of the novel lies in the ambiguity of language. Another thing I liked was that Pembun's native tongue, which he occasionally speaks throughout the novel, is a Creole based on French, Spanish and English. I have no idea if Knight used a real Creole language, but it certainly feels convincing enough.

Just like the solution of the linguistic mystery, The Rithian Terror is a novel with multiple layers and meanings. On the surface, it is a hunt for a literal bug-eyed monster that has infiltrated Earth. However, it is also a John Le Carré like spy novel about two agents, both nominally on the same side, trying to outmanoeuvre each other. Finally, The Rithian Terror is a novel about colonialism and the slow decline and death of empires.

It is this last aspect that is also the most topical, for in the past fifteen years, we have seen the once great colonial empires of Britain and France as well as smaller powers like Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy slowly fall apart, as more and more nations in Africa, South East Asia and the Caribbean gain independence. And it is certainly no accident that Pembun, the representative of a newly independent world, is also a black man speaking Creole, while his counterpart Spangler is an overly rigid white man with the proverbial stick shoved up his backside. Knight makes it very clear to which of these two very different men the future belongs.

Four stars.

Off Center

Of Immigrants and Dolpins

Off Center, the second half of this Ace Double, is a collection of five pieces of short fiction originally published between 1952 and 1964.

F&SF February 1959The first story "What Rough Beast?" is the story of a young immigrant named Mike Kronski trying to make his way in America. However, Mike is not the simple East European immigrant he appears to be. He comes from far further afield, from an alternate universe. He also has the ability to bend reality to his will and has accidentally changed his world into ours.

Through a series of misadventures, Mike meets a young woman called Anne with burn scars on her body. He uses his ability to heal Anne's scars, which causes Anne's father and a greedy friend to capture Mike to exploit him. Mike tries to run away and is shot. In his terror, he accidentally erases New York from existence. Only Anne remains. Mike takes her to a different version of New York, where she can feel at home, and then departs to a new reality, hoping that this time, he will fit in.

A touching tale about the alienation and profound sense of homesickness many immigrants feel. Knight captures Mike's voice and his imperfect English well. Our editor Gideon Marcus also loved the story.

IF, November 1963"Second Class Citizen" is the story of researcher Charles Craven and the subject of his studies, the dolphin Pete. Craven has taught Pete to understand and speak English, spell simple words and even do chemical experiments. While Craven patronisingly presents Pete to some visitors, we learn from background conversations that there is an international crisis going on. Craven is convinced that this crisis will blow over, like any other crisis before.

However, Craven is wrong, for shortly after the visitors have left, the TV program is interrupted for a special bulletin before dropping out altogether. Craven correctly deduces that war has begun and manages to dive to the underwater station of his research base just before heat bombs fall all around him. Craven survives the attack, but once his food runs out, he will be doomed, unless he manages to catch enough fish to survive. However, Craven has no idea how to catch fish. Then Pete appears, easily catching the fish. The roles are reversed now, the teacher has become the student.

An interesting story about the way humans treat animals, but too short to make much of an impact. Gideon Marcus feels the same in his review of the story.

Of Ghosts, Gods and Martians

Fantastic Universe September 1958The novella "Be My Guest" is the story of Kip Morgan, a young man who finds himself possessed by four bickering ghosts after a poisoning attempt gone wrong. Kip also has another problem, he as well as two women of his acquaintance have become invisible to everybody but each other.

The novella follows Kip through his increasingly desperate attempts to get rid of his unwanted tenants and solve his invisibility problem. Kip finally realises that everybody had multiple ghosts living inside them and that these ghosts influence their decisions. He also realises that his invisibility problem is a form of quarantine to keep Kip from talking about the ghosts. Eventually, he blackmails some very powerful ghosts inhabiting the body of a rich man into lifting the quarantine and make sure that he and the two women are given only beneficial and helpful ghosts. Finally free, Kip also realises that the woman he thought he loved is not the person who's really good for him.

"Be My Guest" is an fascinating attempt at a science fictional ghost story. Knight viscerally conveys Kip's growing desperation. It does feel a little long, though, and would probably have worked better as a novelette or short story.

Rogue, March 1964"God's Nose" is a short vignette that does exactly what it says on the tin. The unnamed narrator and his female friend debate what the nose of God would look like. Eventually, her lover Godfrey arrives. He has a very prominent nose.

Inconsequential without much in the way of plot or point.

 

Galaxy, March 1952The final story "Catch That Martian" feels very much like a mix between The Rithian Terror and "Be My Guest". Once again, we have a dangerous alien, the titular Martian, who can take on the appearance of any human being. And once again, we have people abruptly taken out of the real world and turned into "ghosts". A young police officer is determined to crack the mystery of the ghosts and catch the Martian in the act. He deduces that the ghosts must have annoyed the Martian somehow, mostly via making noise, and that the Martian has a taste for musical theatre. So the narrator traces the Martian to a Broadway theatre, determined to apprehend him. But before he can give chase, he falls into the orchestra pit, straight onto a bass drum.

Well written and Knight once again captures the distinctive voice of his first person narrator perfectly. However, the story is also slight and a little silly, particularly compared to the two similar stories in this Ace Double.

All told, Off Center is a nice collection that showcases Knight's writing skills, even though some of the stories are a little slight.

Three stars.

[Don't miss the next episode of The Journey Show, featuring singer-songwriter Harry Seldon.  He'll be playing a mix of Dylan, Simon, and some unique original compositions!]




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

[September 22, 1964] Fall back!  (October 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

6 Comments

[Don't miss your chance to get your copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age.  If you like the Journey, you'll love this book (and you'll be helping us out, too!)


by Gideon Marcus

To every thing there is a season

Even in timeless southern California, we have seasons.  In the Imperial Valley, it is joked, there are four: Hot, Bug, Stink, and Wind.  Here in San Diego, spring comes in summer, summer comes in fall, fall comes in winter, and winter not at all.

Yet here and there, we see a deciduous tree start to change color.  The end-of-summer mornings have a hint of chill in them.  Things proceed in an endless cycle.

The same is true of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Last month, I raved over a superlative issue, an increasing rarity under the current editorship of one Avram Davidson.  I am sad to report that things are back to form in this month's issue.

I think part of the problem is that, as Davidson cheerfully confesses, he's not really into science fiction.  He bounces off the truly hard stuff, like Martin Caidin's quite good Countdown and fills his magazine with fantastic fluff…and then has the temerity to complain that people don't sent him plain old rocket stories anymore!

On the other hand, the rumor has been confirmed — Davidson has moved to Berkeley from Mexico, and someone else is taking over the magazine.  I hear that Joe Ferman, currently publisher, will take the helm, but that his son, Ed, will do all the work.  I look forward to seeing what they bring to the table.

But first, let's take a look at what is possibly Davidson's last editorial effort, what he optimistically calls an "All Star Issue".

Autumn Harvest


by Chesley Bonstell

Once again, the cover is stunning — and utterly unrelated to the contents of the issue.  It's a depiction of an ion-drive propelled ship off of Mars, and it's from the book Beyond the Solar System, presumably available on bookshelves near you.

Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon, by Leigh Brackett

The first of the All Stars is the legendary Leigh Brackett, queen of pulp and accomplished screenwriter.  This tale actually began as a joke nine years ago, when a fictional title was created to represent the kind of fiction Brackett excelled at.  Purple Priestess is the author's attempt to turn a joke into reality.

It has all the hallmarks of a pulp Mars, from the thin air to the drying canals, the ancient natives who speak High and Low Martian.  And, of course, out in the frigid deserts lies an antediluvian evil so terrible that none can experience its presence and fail to gibber.

I enjoyed Lovecraft's stories well enough in the '30s , but I'm disappointed to find one presented unironically in what was once the premier SF mag.  Two stars.

The Pro, by Edmond Hamilton

The subsequent piece, by Brackett's husband (of similar vintage) is better.  One can't help but see a bit of the autobiographical in this story about a science fiction author who finally gets to see the rocketships he created in fiction become reality at the Cape.  Only the launching of the latest of them is not a joyous occasion, for the writer's child is the pilot.  Even if the mission goes well, it marks a final rift between father and son, one the writer is sure can never be bridged.

A bit maudlin but enjoyable.  Three stars.

Stomata, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas' latest short story idea disguised as a non-fiction article takes the idea of stomata, the pores that allow plants to respire, and posits an race that uses them for everything — breathing, eating, excreting.

I don't know how plausible the idea is.  On the other hand, Pinky the Blob, debuting in one of my upcoming books, employs exactly this mechanism.  Great minds think alike.

Three stars.

Maid to Measure, by Damon Knight

Five years ago, Damon Knight came out with What Rough Beast, a story so excellent that I'm reading it again in the Spanish edition of F&SF. 

Maid to Measure, a joke-ending vignette about a shape-changing girl, is as trivial as Beast is momentous.

Two stars.

Little Anton, by Reginald Bretnor

Bretnor is perhaps better known to the readers of F&SF as Grendall Briarton, composer of the recently finished series of "Feghoot" pun stories.  After reading this awful reprint, the story of an idiot savant inventor with a tedious Swiss accent and a penchant for pinching posteriors, I'm actually nostalgic for Briarton.

One star.

First and Rearmost, by Isaac Asimov

Doc A. turns in an above average science article this month, all about how gravity stacks up to the other three primal forces of the universe: electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force (his omission of love and money are probably deliberate).  It's all stuff I knew already, but he lays it out nicely for laymen.

Four stars.

The Year of the Earthman, by Hogan Smith

An old, radiation-scarred astronaut goes AWOL to marry a lovely extraterrestrial lass, dying just moments after he learns that they will have a son.  And then we learn the truth of the space traveler's existence.

Not a bad tale, though it makes little scientific sense.  Also, Hogan Smith is the opposite of an All Star — this is is first story!  But he's from San Diego, so all is forgiven.

Three stars.

In What Cavern of the Deep, by Robert F. Young

Robert F. Young's little autobiography at the front of Cavern is quite interesting.  Like me, he came into the genre by way of Burroughs and then Wells, and also like me, he tried making an honest living before deciding that writing is the most fun one can have with their hands — especially if one gets paid for it!

Young writes stories inspired by mythology and folklore, and while he has come out with some of my very favorite stories, his works from the last several years have been disappointing and mawkish.  His latest falls somewhere inbetween.

David Stuart is a poor young man made rich through inheritance from an uncle.  While investigating the deceased's estate, he comes across two swimming sisters and promptly falls in love with Helen, the blonder of them.  But the ensuing marital bliss is dashed by the revelation that Helen is growing taller by the week, approaching titanic proportions after just a year.  It's sort of an inverse of Richard Matheson's The Incredible Shrinking Man.  At the same time, David's wife becomes more and more enamored with bodies of water, swimming constantly and even growing gill slits.

Is Helen a beast of the sea?  An alien?  And is the story going to end horrifically (as set up in the prologue) with David hurtling five smooth stones to smite his monstrous love?

Cavern is a bit of a departure from Young's previous stories in that, though he makes conscious references to the biblical King David, this is more to obscure the plot than to outline it.  The piece is told with Young's usual excellent facility, and I found myself eager to get to the end.

On the other hand, the end is just a bit too pat, too clearly presented to be very satisfying.  What could have been a 4 or even 5 star story ends up on the high end of 3.

Empty Cornucopia

If this be Davidson's swansong, he picked a sad note to go out on.  Maybe he's got one issue more in him before he shuffles off F&SF's bridge — I'd like to have fonder memories of this phase of his career!

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




6 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine/Anthology

[August 3, 1964] Running hot and cold (August 1964 Analog)

3 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Summertime, but the livin' ain't easy

Summer is supposed to be the slow season, a time for relaxing away from school, hitting the beach, and soaking up the Sun.  Or sitting in the shade:

But as temperatures have risen, so have tempers.  On the heels of a landmark de jure victory in racial progress with the passing of the Civil Rights Act, the de facto conditions of segregation and discrimination still obtain across the nation. 

And so, sparked by decades of frustration and the still-distant prospect of true equality, riots have broken out in several of America's premier cities.  Some started as peaceful demonstrations, like the recent turmoil in New York City, sparked by the police shooting of 15-year-old student, James Powell.

Others needed just the tiniest of sparks, like the aimless violence that inflamed Rochester, New York last week.

These outbreaks began soon after Barry Goldwater, arch-conservative Senator from Arizona, was nominated as the GOP candidate for President at the Cow Palace convention in San Francisco.  Goldwater's position on civil rights compares starkly to the President Johnson's record, and there is justifiable fear that, should the Senator win the election, all recent progress could halt or even reverse.

To that end, the heads of the six major Black American organizations agreed last week that they would deprioritize civil rights demonstrations in favor of efforts to defeat Goldwater in November.  Whether this will damp the wave of rioting is an open question.

Interestingly, Johnson and Goldwater made a related pledge: neither will make civil rights a major talking point of the election. 

A Tepid Analog

But where the news is hot, Analog, the old warhorse of science fiction magazines, remains stubbornly lukewarm.  The United States struggles to make its way to the future; Analog is content to stick with the styles of the past.  This month's issue is no exception.


by John Schoenherr

How to Make a Robot Speak, by Dwight Wayne Batteau

The opening non-fiction piece is on engineering efforts to mechanically reproduce human speech.  Or perhaps to control robots through voice commands.  Or dolphins.  I really couldn't tell you — this article is more impenetrable than last year's matzah.

One star.

Genus Traitor, by Mack Reynolds


by John Schoenherr

A hundred years from now, Benjamin Fullbright, member of the first expedition to the Red Planet, stands trial before a world court.  His crime: giving the Martians the secret of interplanetary travel and laying the Earth bare to invasion.  But is the sole other survivor of the trip, Commodore Raul Murillo, telling the whole story of their trip?  And are the Martians really the bug-eyed aliens everyone thinks they are?

The latest from Mack Reynolds is reasonably engaging and often exciting, but definitely not at the high end of what the author can produce.

Three stars.

Satisfaction, by Damon Knight

I was surprised to see Knight's by-line here; his work tends to be more on the thoughtful,"softer" side of SF (though his awful The Tree of Time was straight pulp…and it appeared in F&SF of all places!) Satisfaction shows the lack of ambition that could become endemic should humanity get a hold of Artificial Reality technology, allowing them to live out their fantasies within a computerized simulation.

Knight does a decent job of conveying the lassitude of an addict, but his story doesn't go anywhere beyond that. 

Three stars.

Inter-Disciplinary Conference, by Philip R. Geffe


by John Schoenherr

If the name of Philip R. Geffe is familiar to you, you're either an engineer with an interest in electric filters (he literally wrote the book on the subject last year) or an amateur chess player.  Geffe's first science fiction story likely covers ground that is familiar to the author — an interdisciplinary conference at which scientists from several different fields fail to put the pieces of their research together to reach an externally obvious conclusion.

It's cute.  Three stars.

Sleeping Planet (Part 2 of 3), by William R. Burkett, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

When last we left this serial, the Llralan Empire had captured the Solar System of the 25th Century without a shot, its inhabitants having been rendered unconscious with a genetically tailored sleeping dust.  Now the "Larries" are holding half of the human race hostage as leverage in surrender negotiations with the Terran Federation.

The only fly in the ointment is James Rierson, an attorney and weekend hunter who is one of the nine souls who proved immune to the dust.  He has embarked on a one-man insurgency, which has been aided by the belief (spurred on by similarly immune truck driver Bradford Donovan) that Rierson is actually an avenging ancestor spirit with supernatural powers.  The added wrinkle in this installment is the army of sentient but subservient robots, also unaffected by the dust, who offer their services to Rierson.  It's a development that was not telegraphed earlier, and it comes out of nowhere.

The problem with Burkett's story is he can't decide if he's writing a farce or a serious SF book.  It comes off as too gritty for the former and too silly for the latter.  Still, it is readable.

Three stars.

Thermal Gradients

"It's readable" summarizes this latest issue of Analog, which is better than can be said for many of the mags this month.  Celle Lalli's (née Goldsmith) Fantastic and Amazing fared the worst, garnering abysmal 1.8 and 2.1 star ratings.  The once-proud F&SF got a lousy 2.3, and I hear it through the grapevine that its editor, Avram Davidson, is looking to leave his job.  On the positive side are Fred Pohl's digests, IF and Galaxy, both of which scored a solid 3.4, and which had the best individual stories, too.

For those keeping count, there were five women authors out of 34.  15% is actually a good month for that measurement.

So that's that for last month.  Next month, there's a new Lord D'arcy story.  God help me, I'm actually looking forward to Randall Garrett.,

And that's a hot one!

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




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology

[May 8, 1964] Rough Patch (June 1964 Galaxy)

10 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

I think I've got a bad case of sibling rivalry.  When Victoria Silverwolf came onto the Journey, she took on the task of reviewing Fantastic, a magazine that was just pulling itself out of the doldrums.  My bailiwick consisted of Analog, Fantasy and Science Fiction, IF, and Galaxy, which constituted The Best that SF had to offer.

Ah for those halcyon days.  Now Fantastic is showcasing fabulous Leiber, Moorcock, and Le Guin.  Moreover, Vic has added the superlative Worlds of Tomorrow to her beat.  What have I got?  Analog is drab and dry, Avram Davidson has careened F&SF to the ground, IF is inconsistent, and Galaxy…ah, my poor, once beloved Galaxy…

The Issue at Hand


cover by McKenna

To Build a World, by Poul Anderson


by Morrow

Wham!  Kaboom!  A giant drilling machine is sabotaged while releasing the gasses pent up under the Moon's surface.  A man dies, and the lunar terraforming project is thrown into jeopardy.  It is up to the drill team's foreman, Venusian Don Sevigny, to go to Earth and sniff out the plot…before his life is snuffed out!

Sixty pages of stilted exposition punctuated by standard action scenes ensue.  Moreover, overcrowded Earth has exactly one woman on it (at least that we ever see), and though she turns out to be a villain, she's far too good-looking to remain one.  Sigh.

Poul Anderson vacillates between brilliance and boredom, and To Build a World is a swing of the pendulum hard toward the latter extreme. 

Let's hope the thing doesn't get stuck there.  Two stars.

The King of the Beasts, by Philip José Farmer

Twenty years ago, this utterly predictable vignette might have made acceptable filler in Astounding.  Here and now, it's an embarrassing waste of space.

One star.

The Man from Earth, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Giunta

On the crossroads planet of Duhnbar, the Samarkand of the stars, a visiting human trader fails to observe a minor religious rite.  Duhnbar's all-powerful Director decides to make an example of the man, imposing a long-lapsed death penalty.  In a futile act of defiance, the man preserves his pride, if not his life.

This is a nicely written piece, and the setup is genuinely interesting, but the ending is a let down.  Three stars.

The Well-Trained Heroes, by Arthur Sellings


by Jack Gaughan (and not one of his best)

People often have the misapprehension that colonization reduced population pressure.  It doesn't; it increases it.  Colonies always fill up.  Passage is expensive.  Inevitably, home remains as crowded as ever, but the folks living there are all the more disgruntled for being stuck there.

In Heroes, Earth's citizens yearn to go to space, but barely one in a million make the cut to join the astronaut corps.  Tension builds, and town after town goes into unrest.  It is up to a pair of astronauts to defuse would-be rioters by convincing them that space isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Kind of a neat story, if a little meandering.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Anyone Else for Space?, by Willy Ley

After months of desultory articles, Willy Ley is back in form.  This month's column is nearly twice as long as it has been recently, and it's chock full of the latest news on rocket development outside the Big Two.  Having been to Japan's nascent launch facilities recently, it was exciting to hear about their latest developments (as well as those of the Europeans, the Israelis, the Egyptians, and the Indians!)

Five stars

Collector's Fever, by Roger Zelazny

Rock collecting is a fine hobby, provided the specimens aren't sentient and ready to deeble!  A slight, amusing piece that gets extra points for being told almost entirely in dialogue.

Three stars.

The Many Dooms, by Harry Harrison


by Nodel

On expeditions to hostile worlds, there is no margin of error.  When a cocky geologist's sloppiness threatens the lives of his crew-mates, fate (perhaps with a little push from human hands) deals with the problem.

I liked the writing on this one, and the subject matter is up my alley, but I found the ending both too straightforward and, quite frankly, disturbing.

Three stars.

An Ancient Madness, by Damon Knight


by John Giunta

On an island where breeding is artificial and strictly regimented, and romantic pairings are unheard of, one sixteen year old girl longs for a dramatic love.

A lot.  Loudly and repeatedly.  For twenty angst-infused, plot-stationary pages.  Then, in the final two paragraphs, she runs off with the Doctor to live happily ever after.

I'm not sure why this story was written.  I'm even less certain how I made it through the thing.

Two stars.

Men of Good Will, by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis

In the near future, the Cold War has spread to near-Earth space, occasionally sparking into moments of heat.  For some reason, however, the Moon seems to be a zone of armistice.  The Norwegian UN ambassador heads to the Earth's companion to find out the secret.

The secret (read no further if you wish to remain unspoilt): The Yanks and the Ruskies did shoot it out — once.  Those bullets achieved orbital velocity, and every 27 days, their orbit intersects with the bases, peppering them with new holes.  It's simply too dangerous to keep up the fight.

It's a cute premise, but of course, it makes absolutely no sense.  The periapsis of the bullets only intersects with the bases once out of 24 x 27 orbits; the rest of the time, the bullets should be hitting lunar hills.  They should have been stopped after the first grounding.

C'mon, Ben!  You're a science writer fer cryin' out loud.  Two stars.

The Sincerest Form, by J. W. Groves


by Cowles

Last up, we have a tale told from the point of view of imitative aliens, spore-like things that have no consciousnesses of their own, but which can become replicas of the beings they devour.  The process is imperfect, and the thought processes get a bit garbled.  In fact, it takes a while for the reader to figure out what's going on; it is only when the imitators encounter bonafide humans that things become clear.

I have to give Groves credit for an interesting concept, but the very trickiness of the idea meant that proper execution lay slightly beyond the author's ability.  Still, if he doesn't quite stick the landing, Groves does leave you with something to think about.

Three stars.

Summing Up

So, on the one hand, I am left grousing at my fate, stuck with a 2.7 star issue while Vic reviews the good stuff.  On the other hand, I'm not John Boston, resigned to review bottom-of-the-pack Amazing every month.  Plus, is that a new issue of Gamma I see peeking out from under the stack of bills?

I suppose I do have blessings to count!

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




10 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race

[December 21, 1963] Soaring and Plummeting (January 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

5 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

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

The Balloon goes Up

It's been something of a dry patch for American space spectaculars, and with projects Gemini and Apollo both being delayed by technical and budgetary issues, it is no wonder that NASA is hungry for any positive news.  So you can excuse them for trumpeting the launch of Explorer 19 so loudly — even if the thing is just a big balloon.  How excited can anyone get about that?

As it turns out, plenty excited.

Explorer 19, launched December 19, 1963, is a spherical balloon painted with polka-dots (they keep the sun from making it too hot or cold), and what it does is measure the atmosphere as it circles the Earth.  Not with any active instruments, but just by moving.  All orbiting spacecraft have an ideal route, one determined by Newton's laws.  If there were no air at all up there, the satellite would just keep orbiting in the same path forever (though the Moon and the Sun exert their own influences).  But there is air up there.  To be sure, the "air" up above 600 kilometers in altitude is hardly deserving of the name — it's a harder vacuum than we can make on the ground!  Nevertheless, the stuff up there is denser than what is found in interplanetary space, and we can tell its density from the slow slip of Explorer 19 in its orbit. 

If we want to know what kind of science we'll get from Explorer 19, all we have to do is look to Explorer 9.  Launched two years ago, it is a virtual twin.  Both Explorers were launched from cheap, solid-fuel Scout rockets.  Both have tracking beacons that failed shortly after launch.  The only way to get any data from these missions is to track the satellites by sophisticated cameras.

Explorer 9 has already contributed immensely to our knowledge of Earth's upper atmosphere.  Thanks to constant photographic tracking of the satellite, scientists have seen the expansion of the atmosphere as it heats up during the day as well as shorter term heating from magnetic storms in the ionosphere.  As a result, we are getting a good idea of the "climate" on the other side of the atmosphere over a wide range of latitudes. 

This is not only useful as basic science; the folks who launch satellites now have a better idea how long their craft will last and the best orbits to shoot them into, saving money in the long run.  It is one of the many examples of how the exploration of space bears immediate fruit and also extended benefits.

And that's something to be excited about!

The other shoe drops

On the other hand, the January 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction begins the year on the wrong foot.  It is yet another collection of substandard and overly affected tales (leavened by a few decent pieces that somehow manage to get through), something like what Analog has become, though to be fair, I'm really looking forward to Analog this month. 

But first…

Pacifist, by Mack Reynolds

The best piece of the month is Pacifist by the prolific, seasoned, and (on occasion) excellent Mack Reynolds.  On a world much like ours, but where the balance of power is held between the north and south hemispheres, an anti-war group determines that the only way to curb our species' bellicose tendencies is to frighten the war-wagers with violence.  But can you really quench fire with fire?

It works because of the writing, something Reynolds never has trouble with.  Four stars.

Starlight Rhapsody, by Zhuravleva Valentina

This curious piece, in which a young woman astronomer discerns intelligent signals being broadcast from the nearby star, Procyon, originated in the Soviet Union.  It was then translated into Esperanto, of all languages, and then found its way into English.  The result is…well, I'll let our Russian correspondent give us her thoughts:


by Margarita Mospanova

In Russian, Starlight Rhapsody is actually a very pretty story — melodic and full of poetry, literally and metaphorically. It’s fairly melancholy, with just a touch of underlying Soviet optimism, nothing too garish in this case. But the translation…

Man, the translation makes me want to tear my hair out. It’s awful. It misses entire paragraphs of text as well as actual poems in the beginning and in the end. And the prose itself in no way resembles the original. Hell, it’s as if the translator used some kind of computerized translation device and just removed the grammatical mistakes afterwards. I’m really disappointed because the original story is really unexpectedly good.


by Gideon Marcus

You can get a glimmer of the story's original strength even from the twice-butchered version that editor Davidson provides.  Thus, three dispirited stars.

The Follower, by Wenzell Brown

Witness the perfect match: A milquetoast who decides to make his mark on society by stalking someone, and a paranoiac who only finds satisfaction when someone really is after him.  But their game develops a twist when their twin psychoses create a third player combining the worst aspects of both.

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?  If it were better done or more profound in its revelation, it might have been.  As is, it straddles the line between two and three stars, leaning toward the former.

The Tree of Time (Part 2 of 2), by Damon Knight

The conclusion of last month's adventure, in which a not-quite-man from the future is abducted from our time by frog people from his and then left to die in an experimental dimension ship.

After a reasonably thrilling beginning, the book reverts to what it was from the start — a pointless pastiche of the worst elements of science fiction's "Golden Age."  Deliberate or not, it's no less unreadable for it.

One star.  Feh.

Thaw and Serve, by Allen Kim Lang

Lang explores an interesting idea: hardened criminals are quick-frozen and deposited two centuries into the future.  It is the ultimate passing of the buck.  Turns out the future doesn't know what to do with them either, choosing to dump them in the wilds of Australia.  There, they fight it out for the televised amusement of the future-dwellers.

Written and plotted with a heavy hand, it's not one of Lang's better works.  In fact, the best thing about the story is the biographical preamble (Lang's middle name was given to him by Koreans during the war).

Two stars.

Nackles, by Curt Clark

"Curt Clark" (I have it on good authority that it's actually Donald Westlake) offers up the chilling story of the creation of a deity.  In this case, it's Santa Claus' dark shadow, the child-abducting "Nackles," who is caused to exist the same way as any other god — through widespread promulgation of belief.

Deeply unpleasant, but quite effective.  Three stars (four if this is your kind of thing).

Round and Round and …, by Isaac Asimov

At long last, I finally understand the concept of the "sidereal day," as well as the length of such days on other planets.  Thank you, Doctor A!  Four stars.

The Book of Elijah, by Edward Wellen

If you haven't read First and Second Kings (or as the uninitiated might call them, "One and Two Kings"), Elijah was a biblical prophet, passionate in his service of the Lord, who ascended to Heaven in flame and is due to return just before the End Times.  Ed Wellen, best known for his "funny" non-fact articles in Galaxy, writes about what happens to Elijah during his sojourn off Earth.

The Book is written in pseudo-King James style and is about as fun as reading the Bible, without any of the spiritual edification.  One star.

Appointment at Ten O'Clock, by Robert Lory

Last up, we have the tale of man with just ten minutes to live…over and over and over again.  Ten O'Clock has the beginning of an interesting concept and some deft writing, but it is short-circuited in execution.  It reads like the effort of a promising but neophyte author (which, in fact, it is — this is his second work).  Three stars.

This is what the once proud F&SF has been reduced to: a lousy Knight serial (shame, Damon!), a disappointing translation, some bad little pieces, and a couple of bright spots.  And Asimov's column, which I read, even if few others seem to.

Oh well.  I've already paid for the year.  Might as well see it through.

5 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology

[November 19, 1963] Fuel for the Fire (December 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

5 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

The once proud golden pages of F&SF have taken a definite turn for the worse under the Executive Editorship of onef Avram Davidson.  At last, after two years, we arrive at a new bottom.  Those of you with months remaining on your subscription can look forward to a guaranteed supply of kindling through the winter.

The Tree of Time (Part 1 of 2) by Damon Knight

Gordon Naismith is professor of Temporal Physics at an early 21st Century university.  We quickly learn that this 35-year old veteran has lost all memory of his life prior to a crash that occurred five years ago.  Moreover, he keeps suffering blackouts, during which people close to him are killed, fried by unknown energies.  Who is he?  Is he even human?  And what is the nefarious scheme of the pair of froggy humanoids from the 200th Century who kidnap Naismith before the police can nab him?

Damon Knight, an ofttimes brilliant author, seems to have taken a bet.  His challenge: to recreate the hoariest, most cliche-ridden dialogue and style of the "Golden Age of Science Fiction," the sort of stuff A.E. Van Vogt did much better.  66 pages is far too much space to take up with a joke.  And this is only Part 1! 

Two stars.

The Court of Tartary by T. P. Caravan

A stodgy professor of the classics wakes up as a bull the day his herd is scheduled for the stockyard.  Attempts to convince the wranglers of his humanity prove fruitless, and in the end (as an astute reader will have figured out), we learn that his circumstances were not unique.

Some might find it droll.  I thought it pointless.  Two stars.

The Eternal Lovers by Robert F. Young

The same Robert F. Young who gave us the brilliant To Fell a Tree has been reduced to cranking out overly sentimental shorts.  This one stars the astronaut whose ship misses the moon and the adoring wife who shanghais her own craft to join him on his voyage to nowhere.

The story relies on the notion that astronauts cannot stand the mental rigors of being alone in space for "any length of time," an hypothesis clearly disproven by Comrades Tereshkova, Bykovsky, Nikolaev, Popov, and Titov (not to mention Captain Cooper).  The rest of the details are equally woolly.  Even for a poetic tale, it's lazy.

Two stars.

Pete Gets His Man by J. P. Sellers

Don Kramer is hounded by Pete Kelly, the most famous, most handsome, and most fearless detective in the world.  Is Don a criminal?  A jealous rival?  The answer to this question is the brilliant spot in an otherwise pedestrian tale of a descent into madness.  Three stars.

Roll Call, by Isaac Asimov

Like Willy Ley over in Galaxy this month, Asimov has decided to phone things in for his nonfiction article.  It's about the origin of the names of the planets.  Schoolboy stuff.  Three stars.

What Strange Stars and Skies, by Avram Davidson

Damon Knight is not the only one aping an out of date style in this issue.  Editor Davidson, in an impenetrable imitation of interwar British composition, writes the tale of a do-gooder Dame who is abducted by aliens to do-good elsewhere.

I'm sure my readers will point out that Davidson has done a perfect send-up of some 1920s writer or other, thus exposing me for the boor that I am.  Nevertheless, I was only able to soldier halfway through this dreck before skimming.

One star.

While I appreciate Mr. Davidson's earnest desire to augment his (dwindling number of) readers' coal supply, all the same, I think I'd rather have my favorite SF magazine back. 




5 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology

[November 9, 1963] Change and Constancy (December 1963 Galaxy)

6 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

If you've been following the papers this week, you can't have missed the biggest news: the tour of Madame Nhu, the sister-in-law of South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm, was pushed from the front page when a military coup toppled the Asian country's government and assassinated its head on November 2.

Rioting and looting followed but was quickly suppressed.  The American government took a few days to decide on a diplomatic policy, but given our investment in the region (8,000 troops now), formal recognition was inevitable.  It occurred on November 7, and a day later, the new South Vietnamese government divvied out top posts to leaders of the junta.

That a rebellion happened is hardly surprising given the arrogance and corruption of the Diệm administration.  For months, students and monks have been protesting by the thousands, some of the latter even choosing to immolate themselves to send a message.  But whether or not the new regime will govern any more acceptably is an open question (my prediction: no). 

Speaking of changes that aren't, a couple of years ago, Fred Pohl took the helm of Galaxy, relieving its founding editor, Horace Gold.  Though Pohl has made a mark with Galaxy's sister mag, IF, Galaxy remains a rather uninspiring shadow of its former self.  This particular issue, the December 1963 Galaxy features a host of familiar A-listers and, for the most part, their work is rather tired:

The Star King (Part 1 of 2), by Jack Vance

The creator of the near-superlative The Dragon Masters returns with a tale illustrating the intersection of personal vengeance and cosmic justice.  Thousands of years from now, the known universe is divided into two spheres: the inner worlds, where ambivalence and stagnation reign; and the great Beyond, where entrepreneurial spirit still lives, but so do a half dozen crimelords, who traffic in human misery.  Kirth Gersen is a space vigilante who has dedicated his life to combating evil.

This is just Part 1, but already I see indications that this won't be the hit Vance's last short novel was.  The first section is riveting, wherein Gersen meets Lugo Teehalt, a planet "locater" who (prior to the meeting) had discovered a planet more beautiful than Earth and, once he found he was working for Grendel the Monster, one of the crimelords, didn't want to expose the world to rapine.  I would have been perfectly happy to read a story set entirely on Smade's Planet (the setting of the meeting) which features naught but a landing pad and a Smade's tavern. 

Unfortunately, the remainder of Part 1 becomes a fairly standard Stainless Steel Rat/Retief-without-the-funny adventure story, the kind where the hero is always a two steps ahead of his adversary and explaining his methodology all the way.  Also hindering the story are the superfluous interstitial pieces, literally pages from cosmic encyclopediae.  I also found the lack of female characters particularly glaring.  In fact, we only meet one near the end, a romantic interest.  So unimportant is her own story that when we momentarily leave Gersen's viewpoint (which had been constant throughout) it is just to see what she thinks of Gersen! 

Three stars so far, and a hunch it won't get better.

The Big Pat Boom, by Damon Knight

As the old adage goes, "charge what the market will bear," and in this story, the market is a host of purple aliens with a lot of cash to burn who express a passion for cow turds.  So ensues a dramatic repurposing of the American cattle industry.

A fun ride that's very well told, but in the end, it doesn't quite manage to say anything.  A wasted opportunity, but worth three stars.

For Your Information, by Willy Ley

Galaxy's professor has been running on low energy for a while, and this article, on the origin of constellation names, scrapes the bottom of the topic barrel.  Only the Q&A offers tidbits of interest.  It's a shame since Ley's column was a big reason I originally got a subscription to the magazine…good God…13 years ago!  Two stars.

If There Were No Benny Cemoli, by Philip K. Dick

After Earth blows itself nearly to cinders, its colonies on Mars, Venus, and the surrounding stars come back to take over the planet's reconstruction.  They also want to bring the apocalypse's perpetrators to justice.  Such efforts are thwarted, however, when a revived sentient newspaper points the blame solely at a minor rabblerouser named Benny Cemoli, taking the heat off the real instigators.

I often like Dick, I sometimes love Dick, but this time around, I found the satire unfocused.  Moreover, the idea of a newspaper that can create headlines out of thin air without need for reporters is ridiculous (though it turns out that the paper was actually being manipulated by the perpetrators, the implication is that this was not always so).  Two stars.

Lullaby: 1990, by Sheri S. Eberhart

A song to be sung after the Bomb falls.  It worked for me.  Five stars.

And All the Earth a Grave, by C. C. MacApp

A coffin maker's marketing department finds its budget accidentally increased a hundredfold.  Since budgets are made to be used, unprecedented promotions follow, and the company's casket sales go through the roof.  And with all these coffins, you've got to find something to put in them…

Another manufactured demand story, like Knight's above, but not as good.  Two stars.

In the Control Tower, by Will Mohler

A poor man's 1984 following the ill-fated journey of an urban draftsman who tries to climb the mysterious floating tower in the center of his city.  It starts with a strong moodiness but degenerates into haphazard incomprehensibility — another experimental piece that trades substance for style.  Two stars.

No Great Magic, by Fritz Leiber

It's been a while since Leiber returned to the world of The Big Time, the war waged across time between the Snakes and the Spiders over humanity's history.  Here we catch up with Greta, a former Spider U.S.O. performer who has lost her memory and sought refuge with a Manhattan play company.  This troupe insists on exceedingly accurate costumage and manner, for reasons you'll quickly discern. 

Magic starts rough but picks up pace throughout.  It is aided by author Leiber's utter familiarity with the stage, and I found the female viewpoint refreshing.  Four stars.

I don't think this issue of Galaxy will inspire anyone to set themselves on fire, but neither will it inspire more than a tepid reaction from its readers.  Maybe it's time for a revolution…

6 Comments Leave A Comment