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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 10, 1969] Points West and Above (July 1969 Galaxy)

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

The Orient

Thanks to centuries of tradition, we tend to think of the Far East as…well…east!  But for us, going to Japan means a 12-hour flight west—literally into tomorrow, as we cross the International Date Line to do it. 

This week marked the beginning of our fourteenth trip to Japan.  How things have changed since we first went back in 1948, when flying via Northwest Orient meant an entire day of travel with multiple stops.  Travel these days is practically instantaneous by comparison.

We were even able to hop on a same-day domestic flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka, which is where I'm writing this.  I've been able to develop my first roll of color film, the results of which I am happy to share:

The Alient

The latest issue of Galaxy is, like this month's IF, the first under the helm of Ejler Jakobsson, and it's also a month late.  Will it be more interesting than the rather dull IF?  Well, it's certainly different.  After all, the lead piece is one I would have expected to appear in Analog.  Why wouldn't Campbell want the sequel to the incredibly popular and presumably lucrative Dune.  Dunno… but here it is:


by Dan Adkins

Dune Messiah (Part 1 of 5), by Frank Herbert


by Jack Gaughan

And so we return to Arrakis, the Dune planet, the only source of the spice melange, which gives the power of prophecy, allows the navigators of the Guild to ply the hyperspace lanes, and is the only currency of note in the Empire.

Last time, Paul Atreides, son of the murdered Duke of Arrakis, had seized his destiny as the kwizatz haderach, leading his army of desert Fremen against the Padisha Emperor in a coup that placed the young general in charge of a galactic domain.

It is now twelve years later, and disparate factions are plotting to overthrow Paul, who has become a figurehead in an interstellar Jihad.  The plotters include the Bene Geneserit, the sisterhood that manipulated Paul and his sister, Aria's, genetic destiny; the navigators' Guild, and Irulan, wife of Paul, and daughter of the cruel Baron Harkonnen, who wrested Arrakis from Paul's father. 

We know there's a plot because it is the subject of an endless scene at the beginning of the serial installment.  And because Paul then discusses the plot at length with his companins at an endless meeting of state in the latter part of the serial.  The plot involves predestination, an heir for Paul (his true love, the Fremen Chani, is being kept secretly sterile by Irulan, who wants to beat the child), and the reincarnated form of Duncan Idaho, one of Paul's comrades in the last book.

There.  Now you don't actually have to read this chapter, which is all for the best, as it's as deadly dull and motionless as the worst parts of Dune.  At least the viewpoints don't change every five sentences.

Two stars so far.

Full Commitment, by Robert S. Martin

Senator Clint is on an investigative junket to Burma, where America is in an endless war against… the Capitalists?  What happened to the Communists?  And why do all the soldiers parrot the exact same line when explaining why they're there to fight?

Brainwashing, obviously…which is how Clint is ultimately disposed of.

A pointless story, poorly done.  One star.

The City That Was the World, by James Blish


by Dan Adkins

James Blish tells the story of a man who makes Howard Hughes look like a piker.  John Hillary Dane is a man with vision…or perhaps visions is more appropriate.  First, he builds an enormous pair of telescopes four miles high in the Andes.  Then he erects a mile-high skyscraper in Denver, the mile-high city.  While the reason for the former is never really explained (other than the obvious reasons—the seeing is much better above the majority of the atmosphere), the purpose of the immense building is the point of the story.

I don't really want to spoil things, so I'll just say that the tale deals with time travel, Malthusian overpopulation, and the value (or lack thereof) of friendship.  It's a good story, although few of the elements are really plausible.

Four stars (and the best piece in the issue).

For Your Information: Eugen Sanger and the Rocket-Propelled Airplane, by Willy Ley

Willy Ley's article is on Eugen Saenger, the Austrian cum German rocket scientists perhaps best known for his design of the America Bomber—a rocket-plane that would fly high enough to skip on the upper atmosphere until it reached New York.  There's a lot of good information that probably can't easily be found elsewhere, since Ley relies on at least one personal source.  That said, it's kind of a dull piece.

Three stars.

A Brief History of the Revolution, by David Lunde and James Sallis

In a piece that might well have come out in Fantasy and Science Fiction (or maybe the old Galaxy sister mag, Beyond), we have a young couple hounded by their animate furniture until they are effectively evicted.  The cause of all this appears to be the wife's desire to have a child.

Not very good.  Two stars.

The Kinsolving's Planet Irregulars, by A. Bertram Chandler


by Reese

Last up is the latest journey of Commodore John Grimes, the famed skipper of the Galactic Rim.  In a direct sequel to The Rim Gods, Grimes and his First Mate (though likely not his first mate) Sonya head back to Kinsolving’s Planet.  You may recall from the last story (or the review thereof) that the team Grimes escorted tried to exploit some time-space weakness to psionically summon Jehovah.  Instead, they incarnated the Olympian pantheon.

This time, their efforts throw Grimes into a fantasy land populated exclusively by fictional characters, from a certain Baker Street detective to larger-than-life but real people like Oedipus and Achilles.  Things get really weird when Grimes starts to question his own reality…

I always enjoy Chandler's Rim stories, but this one is just a bit too cute.  It also looks like the author is tired of the Grimes series and would love to end it…if only the money weren't good.

Three stars.

Things that came and things to come

And that's that.  Quality-wise, a thoroughly unremarkable issue.  Indeed, the only real bit of note is how many of the stories seem to be in the wrong magazine.  I confess I am kind of looking forward to the post-Pohl era.  I want to see how things change for this venerable magazine.

Of course, I also know to be careful what I wish for…

(and stay tuned for more updates from Japan!)




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 6, 1969] Blue Skies (July 1969 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Samuel Johnson described second marriages as the triumph of hope over experience.  It is tempting to say something similar about changes of editor at Amazing.  But that impulse is at least postponed by the upbeat mien of this July issue.


by Johnny Bruck

That sky is about as blue as any I've seen on a magazine cover, and more importantly, the cover goes some way to answer the cry for a good cover by Johnny Bruck, whose hackneyed spaceships and guys with guns have become so tiresome on recent issues.  This one is a bit cartoonish, but at least it’s clever and amusing—a spaceport scene with some impressive-looking spacecraft, but the people on the ground have eyes only for the bright yellow futuristic automobile, with huge tailfins, a transparent dome over the passenger compartment, and whitewall tires.  Oh, it has side fins too.  Maybe it flies.

The magazine’s contents also lean in a promising direction.  Almost half of the magazine (70 of 144 pages, excluding the front and back covers) is devoted to the first part of Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line.  It’s rare for magazines to give that big a chunk of available space to a serial installment, but it makes sense in a bimonthly magazine. As a side benefit, it leaves less room for the reprints, which take up only 27 pages.  The book review column is back, with substantial reviews by William Atheling, Jr. (James Blish) and editor White.  The letter column is here again, and the promised fanzine review column has now appeared, nine pages worth, by John D. Berry.  White’s editorial says that the fan feature in Fantastic will be reprints of selected fanzine articles.  The guest editorials in Amazing will be gone—the editorial spot’s going to be his. It all gives a sense of an energetic editor getting a quick start at implementing his desires.

A more dubious innovation is the new typeface.  Multiple typefaces are nothing new at Amazing, but Silverberg’s serial, Leon Stover’s article, and the book and fanzine reviews and letter column are set in a tiny typeface that challenges my ill-made eyes (see the glasses in my photo?).  Microscopic type for things like letter columns is an old tradition—just check your copies of the Hugo Gernsback Amazing if the silverfish haven’t gotten to them—but for this much of the magazine it spells headache for me and I suspect many others.

Up the Line (Part 1 of 2), by Robert Silverberg

The biggest deal in this issue is of course Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line.  Silverberg, formerly a capable journeyman magazine-filler, has in recent years become a much more powerful and original writer. In just the past two years he has produced four novels that put him in a different league entirely than did his earlier work: Thorns, To Open the Sky, Hawksbill Station, and The Masks of Time, with several more out or on the way this year. 


by Dan Adkins

Per my practice, I will hold off reviewing and rating Up the Line until it is finished.  But a quick peek reveals that it is a time travel story, told in the first person by a young man at loose ends who joins the Time Couriers—not the Time Police, the Couriers’ nemesis—and that it is a considerable departure from the relatively serious recent works mentioned above.  Parts of it suggest that the author wrote with the stage in mind.  The vaudeville stage, that is.  E.g., as the protagonist explains to his new friend the Time Courier why he abandoned his budding career as law clerk to a Judge Mattachine:

“My uncle is Justice Elliott of the U.S. Higher Supreme Court.  He thought I ought to get into a decent line of work.”

“You don’t have to go to law school to be a law clerk?”

“Not any more,” I explained.  “The machines do all the data retrieval, anyway.  The clerks are just courtiers.  They congratulate the judge on his brilliance, procure for him, submit to him, and so forth.  I stuck it out for eight days and podded out.”

“You have troubles,” Sam said sagely.

“Yes.  I’ve got a simultaneous attack of restlessness, weltschmerz, tax liens, and unfocused ambition.”

“Want to try for tertiary syphilis?” Helen asked.

“Not just now.”

So Mr. Silverberg appears to be having a good time.  Reading a little further confirms that he also seems to be trying to offend everyone in sight, which may explain why this new novel by a fast-rising author is appearing in the field’s lowest-paying magazine, rather than in the more stately mansions of Pohl, Ferman, or JWC, Jr.  In any case, I look forward to completing these scabrous revels.

Only Yesterday, by Ted White

Editor White’s Only Yesterday is a more somber time travel story, in which the ill-at-ease protagonist Bob approaches a young woman as she gets off a train, asks if he can walk with her, says he’s a friend of a friend (she suggestibly supplies the friend’s name, and he agrees), and she invites him in for refreshments and to meet the family.  He hits it off with her and her brothers and her parents, and offers to tell her fortune—a futuristic vision which turns into nightmarish war.  She’s shocked and disturbed, and he quickly says he was making it up, offers a more palatable vision, and beats a hasty retreat.  Revelation of who he is and why he’s there follows.  It’s smoothly written and well visualized, but the ease with which Bob inserts himself into the family setting is too implausible to overlook.  Still, nice try, very readable, three stars. 

Hue and Cry, by Bob Shaw

Bob Shaw’s Hue and Cry is about as far as one can get from his very well received Light of Other Days.  It's a cartoonish story in which a spaceship full of humans lands among sentient carnivorous reptilians who think of them only as food, scheme to eat them all, and are thwarted with a silly gimmick.  Two stars, generously.

Poison Pen, by Milton Lesser

The reprints in this issue are a mostly malodorous batch from the doldrums of the mid-1950s.  The best that can be said for them is that they don’t take up much space.

Milton Lesser’s Poison Pen (from Amazing, December 1955) is a silly botch of a story.  For thirty years, humanity has been under the thumb of the extraterrestrial Masters.  Now they’ve left, and people are dancing in the streets.  The main thing we know about the Masters is that they made people keep diaries and read from them in neighborhood gatherings, and that practice continues.  Why?  Dr. Trillis says it’s because the Masters taught everyone “from the cradle” to be compulsive exhibitionists (how?) so they could control people, “and the older generation either had to go along with it or feel left out.” So people ought to stop with the diaries and the readings, he says.  But they don’t.  Worse, they start stealing other people’s diaries and making fake entries in them—false confessions of having been “co-operationists.” Executions begin.  Our hero helps Dr. Trillis escape and they wind up in a settlement of people “who somehow haven’t been contaminated,” in New Jersey.


by Paul Orban

If the description sounds sketchy and incoherent, that’s because the story is.  It’s an insult to the readers, pretty clearly dashed off without a thought of anything but a quick check.  One star.

No Place to Go, by Henry Slesar


by Erwin Schroeder

Henry Slesar’s No Place to Go (Amazing, July 1958), by contrast, is at least a competent piece of yard goods.  A crack team of astronauts goes to the Moon, takes a look outside, and sees Earth blow up, leaving them alive but stranded. Shortly, some of the astronauts are blowing up too.  But wait—April fool!  It was all a test!  They were drugged with a hypnotic chemical, visions planted in their heads while they slept!  The captain then tells the guy who didn’t blow up that he’s now second in command, and he’ll be going to Mars.  It's cliches wrapped around a gimmick, but unlike Lesser’s story, it doesn’t reek of contempt for the readership.  Three stars, generously.

Note that in our crude rating system, what I’ve just described as “cliches wrapped around a gimmick” gets the same grade as White’s much more capable effort.  Just remember that there’s a lot of space between 3.0 and 3.9.

Puzzle in Yellow, by Randall Garrett


by Leo R. Summers

Randall Garrett’s Puzzle in Yellow (Amazing, November 1956) is a trivial gimmick story on that ever-popular theme, the Stupid Alien.  Extra-terrestrial Ghevil is scoping out Earth for invasion and pillage by the “hordes of Archeron.” He wants to check out an isolated military installation, so he finds a remote building with big walls and turrets, and figures he’s found what he’s looking for.  He kills the first person he sees emerge from the building, and disguises himself in the man’s uniform.  He tries to enter and is shot dead.  Take a wild guess what the installation he tried to enter actually is. The yellow of the title, by the way, refers to Ghevil’s blood.  Two stars, barely.

The Pendant Spectator, by Leon E. Stover

Leon Stover’s “Science of Man” article this month is The Pendant Spectator, a phrase he got from Samuel Johnson’s novel Rasselas, which means, more or less, someone with a view from a height.  “Spaceship Earth” is also invoked.  Stover seems to have abandoned his project of educating us all about anthropology.  Here we have a protracted editorial on the necessity for humanity to get its act together and get right with the biosphere, limiting population, developing energy sources (i.e., the sun) that will neither pollute the atmosphere like fuel combustion nor overheat the place like nuclear power, engaging in international cooperation, accepting a degree of coercive regulation in these and other causes, etc.  It’s hard to argue with any of it, but it’s also hard to imagine that the SF readership is who needs to hear it, so it seems a bit pointless.  This series seems about ready to die a natural death.  Two stars.

Summing Up

So the harbingers seem to be blowing in the right direction, even if the actual fiction contents, possibly excepting Silverberg, are not much changed from the recent norm.  “Looking good” would be premature, but “looking like it might look good” would fit.  Or—as I’ve said more times than I can count about this magazine—promising.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 2, 1969] The ever-whirling wheel (July 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

A change is gonna come

Regular readers of Galactic Journey or of SF magazines in general may have noticed that neither Galaxy nor IF published last month. With a bit of detective work, I’ve put together what happened.

The clues are on the masthead. Editor Fred Pohl is now listed as Editor Emeritus, while the editor is Ejler Jakobsson. The publisher is no longer Robert M. Guinn, but Arnold E. Abramson, and Galaxy Publishing has been replaced by Universal Publishing. (That last worried me for a moment, but I quickly remembered that Amazing and Fantastic are put out by Ultimate Publishing under Sol Cohen.)

There’s also an editorial from Fred, talking about the changes. Most importantly, he’s stepping back to focus more on writing. That and the fact that he’s sticking around to look over the new editor’s shoulder (Fred’s words) for a while suggests his departure is voluntary and doesn’t suggest any misgivings about the new ownership on his part. Plus, we should be getting new stuff from him more often.

Who is Ejler Jakobsson? He had a few horror stories back in the late 30s, cowritten with his wife Edith, but if his name sounds familiar, it’s most likely because he was the editor for the revival of Super Science Stories from 1949-1951. Coincidentally, that magazine had been edited by Fred Pohl before it was shut down by wartime paper shortages.

What changes can we expect? Fred prefers to let us see them as they happen, but the promo for next month hints at some. IF is getting a book review column by Lester del Rey. That may or may not mean the end of his “If… and When” column. We’re also getting a twelve part series by Willy Ley, “The Story of Our Earth.” That might suggest some changes over at Galaxy.

Of course, the biggest question is what sort of stories Jakobsson will buy. It will be a while before we get a good feel for that, since there’s bound to be a backlog of stories selected by Pohl. It took several months for the Fermans over at Fantasy and Science Fiction to change the course set by Avram Davidson, but Ted White has wrestled Amazing and Fantastic into a new direction almost immediately. We’ll see, but we should have a good idea by the time we start the new decade.

A bang or a whimper?

Since this is the last issue under Fred Pohl’s leadership, it’s fair to ask what sort of note he goes out on. Will he put out a strong issue, go out on a high note and remind us why this magazine has won three straight Hugos? Or will it be utterly awful and make us glad he’s gone? Not to ruin the suspense, but the July issue is really just another typical, middle-of-the-road example. There’s some good stuff and some not so good. Let’s start with the cover.

Art credited only as couresy of Three Lions, Inc. but actually by German artist Johnny Bruck.

You may recall that the last issue had a similar uncredited cover that Robert Bloch apparently used for his story Groovyland. Once again we have a Johnny Bruck cover, originally for Perry Rhodan #102, which an American author has used for inspiration. This time Keith Laumer has come up with a story much more clearly based on the art than Bloch’s was. I’m not keen on this trend, though it’s slightly better than what they do over at Amazing and Fantastic.

Here’s the original art by Johnny Bruck.

The Towns Must Roll (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Long-time readers of Mack Reynolds’s work will be familiar with his stories of People’s Capitalism. That appears to be giving way to what he calls the Meritocracy. The biggest difference so far is the replacement of every citizen’s ten shares of Inalienable Basic with a Negative Income Tax.

In Mack’s latest novel, the NIT enables people to pick up and move to places anywhere in the world where the cost of living is lower. They often gather in rolling towns that consist of mobile homes that make the fanciest Airstream trailer look like a pup tent. Our protagonist is Bat Hardin, a man of mixed race who provides police services to a town on its way to South America. After crossing into Mexico, the town encounters unexpected hostility from the locals, including credible threats of extreme violence. Meanwhile, Bat’s authority in the town is being threatened by an extremely racist, newer resident. To be concluded.

Bat has been kidnapped to deliver a message: Gringos go home. Art by Gaughan

This is typical Reynolds of the better sort. He’s not just rehashing the same tired plot points, and while there’s the usual lectures on history and economics, they’re reasonably concise and to the point. Mack is quicker to point out the flaws in the system, but also subtler than usual. As a man who thinks he has no future in the Meritocracy because an Army test rated his IQ as 93, Bat is an interesting character, though he seems much brighter than that; we’ll see if whether that will be relevant to the plot or just Reynolds not being able to write someone of low average intelligence. Plus, we’ve got a tense situation. I look forward to seeing how this all plays out.

A solid three stars.

On the Dead Star, by Jack L. Austin

An explorer aboard a one-man scout, with only the ship’s computer intelligence for company, discovers an impossible structure on the surface of a Black Dwarf.

This month’s new author gets off to a good start. The writing was sound and the situation intriguing. Unfortunately, Austin loses his way. The story just goes on too long; it could easily have been half the length. As is often the case in such tales, the conclusion winds up being rushed. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, but the whole thing wraps up in a couple of paragraphs, with the action taking place off-screen. It could be better, but Austin is only 20 and has room to grow. I’ll give him a chance.

A low three stars.

Autohuman 14, by Bruce McAllister

This story of policeman Grabe Massel is hard to summarize without giving away the big mid-point revelation (though you’ll probably see it coming). Let’s just say he has a very close relationship with his car.

There’s probably a really good story to be told with this set-up, but I’m not sure this is it. There’s some excellent writing here, particularly the use of engine noise, but it also feels like there’s a barrier that dulls the impact of the narrative on the reader. Still, it may be the best thing McAllister has written. He may finally be getting close to a breakthrough.

Three stars.

Spork Conquers Civilization, by Perry Chapdelaine

Tarzan… er, Spork is back. This time he and the Ayor travel to a human-occupied planet and deal with an evil dictator. Along with the mix of A.E. van Vogt and Edgar Rice Burroughs that the previous stories have offered, this one has a large dollop of Doc Smith. There’s probably more to come, since Spork appears to be Lord Greystoke… er, a lost prince, but I’m not looking forward to seeing any of it.

Barely three stars.

Spork and an Ayor. Art by Reese

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Robert Bloch

In this month’s interview, Robert Bloch talks about discovering science fiction, learning his trade with the Milwaukee Fictioneers, particularly Stanley Weinbaum, and making ends meet during the Depression. I would have liked a few words about his relationship with H.P. Lovecraft, but it’s a good interview overall.

Three stars.

Portrait by Gaughan

The Half Man, by Keith Laumer

Long cut off from the rest of humanity, the planet Meries is being considered for reintegration into the human community. At some point in the past, the people and domestic animals of the planet became acquatic through genetic manipulation. Part of the team assessing the planet is Gon, the son of an itinerant trader and a local woman. Gon was raised on Earth and is having trouble making contact with the locals. He finally does so on the last day of the mission.

Gon has an encounter with a descendant of Earth dogs gone wild. Art by Barr

Keith Laumer tends to write stories that are either meant as humorous satire or two-fisted Competent Man adventures. Once in a while, though, he writes something deep and thoughtful. This is one of those rare occasions, despite the fact that it was written based on art created for another story in another language. Actually, it’s probably weaker for using that Johnny Bruck cover as the climax of the story. Still, it’s one of Laumer’s better pieces.

A high three stars.

A Day for Dying, by Charles Nuetzel

Charles Travers is arrested on false charges of treason and condemned to participate in the Tele-Games. His odds of survival are practically nil.

Nuetzel is unknown to me, but he’s apparently sold a few stories to a minor publisher and the semi-pro zine Spaceway. This story is fine, but nothing special. There’s a sting in the tail, but it doesn’t bite as hard as I think Nuetzel wanted it to.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

How common is life in the universe? That’s a question that has had many answers over the years. Del Rey looks at those answers and how they’ve changed, along with the experiments and scientific findings that have caused those changes.

Four stars.

Where the Beast Runs, by Dean R. Koontz

Three hunters go after a creature that has killed several other groups just as experienced as they are. One of them will also have to confront a traumatic experience from his childhood.

The beast reflects Andy’s trauma back at him. Art by Adkins

With a few changes, this could have been a straight adventure set in Africa or South America. Like Bruce McAllister, Koontz shows a lot of promise, but never quite crosses the threshhold to being really good. He keeps getting close and does so here, but doesn’t quite get there.

Three stars.

Summing up

There it is. The last IF that is fully Fred Pohl’s. There’s nothing spectacularly good, but nothing spectacularly bad. As for the future under Ejler Jakobsson, we’ll have to wait and see. I’ll miss If… and When if it gets dropped for another book column. There’s also no letter column this month, but that might be to make space for some longer pieces as well as be an artifact of Pohl’s departure from the big chair. We are getting a new issue of Worlds of Fantasy in a few months. Let’s just hope that for IF and Galaxy all this, to paraphrase President Kennedy, symbolizes a beginning as well as an end, “signifying renewal as well as change.”

A sign of the changes to come. At least the Chapdelaine doesn’t look like more Spork.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 10, 1969] Low (May 1969 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Here’s the May Amazing, the latest installment of the dreary soap opera that this magazine has become.  The well-qualified Ted White is the new editor, the fourth in ten issues.  Though he’s listed as Managing Editor, and Sol Cohen as Editor and Publisher, White’s editorial makes it clear that he will be running the magazine—within the constraints of Cohen’s policies, of course, most notably the reprint policy.


by Johnny Bruck

As a debut issue, this one does not impress, but that’s probably not a fair judgment.  Given the abrupt departure of White’s predecessor Barry Malzberg, it was likely a scramble to get any issue at all together from available parts.  The fiction contents include an Edmond Hamilton story in a series that has run in Amazing and Fantastic for several years, publication no doubt foreordained; one very short new story; and the usual heavy load of reprints, all from the 1950s consistent with recent practice.  The non-fiction includes, as usual of late, a Laurence Janifer movie review (Barbarella—he likes it!) and a Leon Stover “Science of Man” article.  The only identifiable change is a letter column.  The book review department is missing, one hopes temporarily, since it has been one of the magazine’s brighter aspects.

As for future plans, White provides a rather carefully argued editorial, which starts by analogizing the “New Thing” in science fiction to the ongoing innovations in popular music, noting that despite the “sudden flowering” of rock music, it isn’t forgetting its roots.  After some commentary on the New Thing, sympathetic but cautionary (“One J.G. Ballard can be important, but ten little Ballards?”), White asserts that most of the “New Wave” writers have not neglected their predecessors, citing Zelazny and Delany, noting particularly that Delany has absorbed and transformed old Planet Stories-style space opera plots. “It is my conviction that the science fiction field needs a magazine in which the old and the new can exist side by side, each thriving from its proximity to the other.  And that is what I intend for Amazing: Something of the old (the reprints) and of the new (the best of the new writers). . . .” And he concludes by adding that this issue’s “Star Kings” novelet by Edmond Hamilton exemplifies exploration of the genre’s roots—but next issue we can expect a “new and very different novel by Robert Silverberg.”

It’s all gracefully done, touching the necessary bases with plausible conviction, and starkly contrasting with Harry Harrison’s pandering editorial of February 1968, which made essentially the same substantive points but which struck me as “a disappointingly smarmy exercise in having it both ways.”

The letter column is divided among sober commentary on current SF, the pleasures of letter columns and fanzine reviews, and a quite long letter contesting Stover’s “Science of Man” article War and Peace, which White says he cut down from 14 pages.  Shades of Brass Tacks!  This feature will require some tightening up but White clearly takes it seriously.  As for the reference to fanzine reviews, White promises “fan features” in both Amazing and Fantastic.

And up front—though looking backward—is another cliched cover illustration by Johnny Bruck.  Last issue, fellow Journeyer Cora Buhlert wished that Amazing would use the good Bruck covers rather than the dull ones.  Yes!  If there are any.

The Horror from the Magellanic, by Edmond Hamilton

The lead story is Edmond Hamilton’s “short novel” (33 pages), The Horror from the Magellanic, latest in his series of sequels to his 1947 novel The Star Kings.  I won’t repeat my previous jaundiced comments on the whole enterprise, but will leave it at a couple of samples:

“ ‘Highness, they’ve come out of the Marches.  The Counts’ fleet.  They’re more than twice as strong as we expected . . . and they’re coming full speed toward Fomalhaut!’
“Chapter Two
“Gordon felt a chilling dismay.  The Counts of the Marches were throwing everything they had into this.  And whether their gamble succeeded or not, in the dark background brooded the unguessable purposes and menace of the H’harn.”

And:

“. . . Gordon sat for a long time looking past the moving lights and the uproar and clamorous confusion of the great city, toward the starry sky.  A star kingdom might fall, Narath might realize his ambition and sit on the throne of Fomalhaut, and he, John Gordon, and Lianna might be sent to their deaths.  And that would be a world tragedy as well as tragedy for them.
“But if the H’harn succeeded, that would be tragedy for the whole galaxy, a catastrophe of cosmic dimension.  Thousands of years before they had come from the outer void, bent on conquest, and only the power of the Disruptor, unloosed by Brenn Bir, had driven them back .  Out there in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud they had brooded all this time, never giving up their purpose, filtering back gradually in secret plotting with the Counts, plotting with Narath, making ready some new tremendous stroke.
“Doomsday had come again, after those thousands of years.”


by Dan Adkins

To my taste, this is all an idea whose time has passed.  No disrespect to Hamilton—a working professional writing in a mode he virtually invented—especially since he has shown he can work quite capably in styles other than this bombastic costume drama (see his 1960 novel The Haunted Stars).  Three stars, acknowledging the craft involved, even if I can’t get interested.

Yesterdays, by Ray Russell

The new short story (very short), Ray Russell’s Yesterdays, couples two ancient themes, time running backwards and mad scientists; it’s clever and facile, as one would expect from the long-time fiction editor of Playboy, but no more. Three stars.

The Invaders, by Murray Leinster

The longest story in the issue is Murray Leinster’s The Invaders, from the April/May 1953 issue of Amazing, the first in its short-lived experiment in paying more in order to get better material from more well-known authors.  Leinster shared the contents page with Heinlein, Sturgeon, and Bradbury.  Unfortunately his story begins well but undermines itself, unusually for this professional of decades’ standing.


Uncredited

The scene is set in terms of purest Cold War paranoia.  The protagonist, surveying in Greece, flees an unacknowledged incursion by Bulgarian soldiers, and the author observes:

“It was not the time for full-scale war.  Bulgaria and the other countries in its satellite status were under orders to put a strain upon the outside world.  They were building up border incidents and turmoil for the benefit of their masters.  Turkey was on a war footing, after a number of incidents like this.  Indo-China was at war.  Korea was an old story.  Now Greece.  It always takes more men to guard against criminal actions than to commit them. . .  This was cold war.”

In the midst of this covert crisis, the protagonist discovers powerful evidence of infiltration by extraterrestrials in human guise—but what to do?  Who will believe him?  Leinster builds an atmosphere of suspense and suspicion at first, but it is quickly dissipated by hints that something different and more benign is going on, and by the end there’s no suspense or surprise.  Three stars, barely; it’s at least slickly readable, as usual for Leinster.

King of the Black Sunrise, by Milton Lesser

Milton Lesser’s King of the Black Sunrise is an entirely more rancid kettle of fish.  It’s from Amazing, May 1955, in the midst of the Howard Browne/Paul Fairman era of calculated formulaic mediocrity, and shows it.  It reads like the result of a barroom bet over how many egregious cliches the author could cram into a single story. 

Kent Taggert, fugitive from justice on murder charges (but of course he’s innocent), is tracked down on the obscure planet Argiv by a woman who wants to hire him for a dangerous assignment.  “I looked at her for the first time.  She was beautiful.  So damned beautiful and so damned sure of herself.  I felt like poking her one.” A bit later: “I could smell her perfume, not the kind that slams two sexy fists into your nostrils but the subtle kind, like the girls can buy only on Earth.”


Uncredited

The woman (named Helen, we later learn) discloses that the World Bureau of Investigation is on his trail, and like clockwork, a guy “who was trying too hard not to look like law” shows up at the bar where this conversation is occurring.  Taggert decides he’d better take Helen’s proposition—to guide her party to find and plunder the treasure of the Black Sunrise. 

See, Argiv has three suns—per the natives, the Green God, the Yellow God, and (“greatest of all”) the Purple God.  They all rise and set at different times, but occasionally they are all below the horizon at the same time.  That’s the Black Sunrise, even though it’s really a sunset.  During the Black Sunrise, the barrier to the natives’ treasure cave opens up, and new offerings are deposited to make sure the three Gods come back.  No one who has sought to steal this treasure has emerged alive.

So our freebooters hire some native bearers (“big flabby purple-skinned Argivians”) and march into the jungle (“King Solomon’s Mines, a hundred parsecs out in deep space,” muses Cotton, the hotheaded jerk of the party).  But soon enough the bearers become fearful and desert, and the humans must push on without much of their equipment.

It goes on in similar vein, but recounting it is even more tedious than reading it.  One star.

Wish It Away, by Frank Freeman

Frank Freeman’s Wish It Away (Fantastic, January-February 1954) is a jokey vignette so inane it almost hurts to describe it.  Protagonist Mervin sees a monster every night, psychiatrist tells him to “wish it away,” next night the psychiatrist sees the monster, who says, “Mervin sent me.  I hope it’s all right.” Now nobody else has to read it.  One star.

Race-Zoology and Politics, by Leon E. Stover

The “Science of Man” article by Leon E. Stover suffers the faults of its predecessors, magnified.  Race-Zoology and Politics is an outright polemic, with Stover taking up the cause of Carleton S. Coon, author of The Origin of the Races, who was denounced as a racist a few years ago by the president of the American Anthropological Association.  Stover says Coon “has simply become a ‘non-person’ to the profession,” but: “It is a dead certainty that Coon sometime in the future will be rehabilitated and recognized for the great work he has done, which has been to complete the uncompleted work of Darwin.”

Well, maybe.  Stover proceeds to argue Coon’s case about the evolution of human physical types in his familiar assertively dogmatic fashion.  This one-sided partisan presentation concerning what is apparently a hot ongoing argument in the profession is of little use to the lay reader trying to understand more about the underlying science.  Not rated—it’s just out of place here.

Summing Up

This is the most discouraging issue of Amazing in recent memory.  The magazine continues to limp along under the weight of the reprint policy, and this issue’s batch of them is the worst in some time.  Notably, the original notion of reacquainting the current SF readership with forgotten classics of the field—or at least interesting period pieces—has largely been lost as the reprints have come more frequently from Amazing’s more recent periods of outright mediocrity, mostly ranging from routine to awful.  Will yet another new editor be allowed to make it better?




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[April 6, 1969] The Weight of History (May 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

A simmering conflict

There’s trouble brewing in the east. The border between the Soviet Union and China has long been a point of contention, going back over 100 years when the Czars imposed a border treaty on a weakened imperial China. All the socialist brotherhood in the world wasn’t enough to fix the problem in the post-War years (admittedly, the Nationalist government complicated things), and things haven’t gotten better since the Sino-Soviet split.

An agreement was almost reached 1964, but some impolitic comments by Mao got out and prompted Khrushchev to block the deal. Sino-Soviet relations got very tense during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia last summer, and the Chinese have been poking at the border, seemingly trying to get the Soviets to overreact.

The chief hot spot has been a small island in the Ussuri river claimed by both sides. Called Chenpao by the Chinese and Damansky by the Russians, it’s only 0.29 square miles; that’s a little over 185 acres or 17.5 American football fields. On March 2nd, a Chinese force surprised (or ambushed, depending on who you ask) a Soviet force on the island. After fierce fighting, both sides declared victory and withdrew. On the 15th, the Chinese shelled the island, pushing the Soviets back, but the afternoon saw a Soviet counterattack with tanks and mechanized infantry, which drove the Chinese off the island. The next day, the Soviets returned to recover their dead, which the Chinese allowed, but when they tried to recover a disabled T-62 tank (one of their newer models) the day after that, they were driven off by Chinese artillery. On the 21st, the Soviets sent a demolition team to destroy the tank, but the Chinese drove them back and recovered the tank themselves.

A map showing the location of Chenpao/Damansky Island

China is reportedly ignoring diplomatic overtures by the Soviets, and the situation remains tense. There are signs that China is preparing for a potential invasion by the Soviets, but the U.S.S.R. seems less inclined to escalate. It’s easy enough to want to sit back and watch a couple of powers hostile to the West fight, but both sides have the Bomb, and even a limited nuclear exchange could have severe consequences for the northern hemisphere.

Chinese soldiers pose with their captured Russian tank

Confronting the past

Though set in the future, most of the stories in this month’s IF have characters dealing with the events of the past. Or even experiencing them. But first a word about the art.

The cover illustrates Groovyland and is credited as courtesy of Three Lions, Inc., but see below

From what I can find out, Three Lions is a photo agency. If you want a picture of a boy eating ice cream or someone famous (they have a large collection of JFK photos from before he ran for president), they’ll license one to you. Apparently, they’re branching out into art. This is a reasonable illustration for the Bloch story in this issue, and I suspect Bloch used it as inspiration for his story. However, it was originally done by Johnny Bruck for the German magazine Perry Rhodan #216. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Bruck’s work has been repurposed many times as cover art for Amazing and Fantastic. I hope Galaxy Publishing isn’t going down the same road.

Here’s the original art by Johnny Bruck.

Groovyland, by Robert Bloch

An out of work screenwriter runs into a young woman at the employment office who offers him a place to stay. On the way back to her place, they hit a little green man, who says he’s here to conquer the world.  When they find out he can replicate any song he hears once, including harmonies and instruments, they and their housemates offer to help him. Things kick off at the titular Groovyland, a theme park in the desert west of Los Angeles. Unfortunately, everybody has their own agenda.

The entrance to one of Groovyland’s main attractions. Art by Gaughan

Humor is subjective, and I said in the teaser last month that I find Bloch’s humor to be hit or miss. Never before have I read a story, even a much shorter story than this, where almost every paragraph expects a rimshot. And the paragraphs that don’t want a rimshot are more than made up for by those that want multiple rimshots. Some of the satire works, a couple of the band names are mildly amusing, and there’s a decent story in there somewhere, but it’s all drowned out by jokes that deserve a chorus of boos and a hail of rotten vegetables.

Barely three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at the way the growth of scientific knowledge has gradually depopulated the science fiction solar system. In doing so, he also looks at the sort of things life needs to flourish, not just air and water, but energy as well. Luckily, it’s almost certain that life exists somewhere in the galaxy.

Three stars.

Mad Ship, by C.C. MacApp

Aboard a generation ship on its way to a distant star, something went horribly wrong (as things tend to in science fiction stories) and the personalities of various crew members that had been transcribed in to the ship’s computers fought a war among themselves. The people of Sinus B only have contact with the personality of Captain Gerlik who is mad, but keeps them alive. Now Pryboy Thorp finds himself making a perilous journey to the Nose Cone, for what reason he isn’t sure.

Pry makes a mad dash past a pairbot under the mad captain’s control. Art by Fedak

MacApp is a pretty good writer, and stories like this make me regret all the time he wasted on those awful Gree stories (some of which actually weren’t bad, and there weren’t anywhere near as many of them as loom in my memory). This is one of his better tales. Its biggest flaw is the description of the ship; I never felt like I understood how things were laid out. However, that doesn’t detract much from the enjoyment of the story.

A high three stars, falling just short of four.

Spork and the Beast, by Perry Chapdelaine

Spork is a human raised among the alien Ayor, whom he guided to a new way of living in the previous story. The crash of a ship bearing other humans leads to the Ayor exploring their solar system and encountering a grave danger on one of the inner planets.

Spork and one of the Ayor have lost their ship. Art by Reese

The adventures of Spork continue, and it looks like there’s more coming. The comparison to Tarzan is inevitable, but it’s Tarzan written by A.E. van Vogt in one of his more esoteric moods. If that sounds interesting to you, you might enjoy it. Unfortunately, neither of those things appeals to me very much, the combination even less so.

A low three stars.

Destroyer, by Robert Weinberg

The Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride again, and Destruction is their fifth. Or is that an illusion created to keep the mind of a man implanted into a killing machine sane and functioning?

Making his first professional sale, Bob Weinberg is an active fan with a special interest in the pulps. You may have encountered the reader’s guides he created last year for the works of Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. His freshman effort feels more like Zelazny than the pulps, but there’s a bit of Howard woven in there, too. It’s a good start, and I look forward to more from him.

A high three stars.

Toys of Tamisan (Part 2 of 2), by Andre Norton

In Part 1, dreamer Tamisan took Lord Starrex and his cousin Kas into a dream based on an alternative version of the history of their world. Unable to break the dream without both companions, she found Starrex, but now Kas is not where they expected to find him. She will have to enter a dream within a dream, in the hope of getting them all home.

Starrex fights to keep Tamisan safe while she tries to break the dream. Art by Adkins

I said last month that I’m not a fan of this kind of story, and this didn’t do anything to change my mind. It’s not Norton; give me some Time Traders or the Solar Queen, and I’ll happily read it. Even so, this is objectively not one of her better works. It’s never made clear whether they’re in a dream or have slipped into a parallel world, and the answer to that question has a big effect on the meaning of the ending. At least, apart from that issue, Norton writes well and entertainingly.

A low three stars.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Lester del Rey

This month’s interview must have been easy to get, since del Rey is right there in the office. He expounds on his career, science fiction in general, critics, TV and movies. But Lester, you’re too young to be such a curmudgeon.

Three stars.

Portrait by Gaughan

Summing up

IF continues rolling down the middle of the road. Even that’s shaky. The three longest pieces are a low three stars at best. At least we got a good, if not great, MacApp story and a very promising new writer, if he’s not another one-shot wonder as so many of the IF firsts have been.

A new Reynolds novel could go either way, but that title invites comparisons to Heinlein.




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[March 10, 1969] Speed (April 1969 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

High Velocity

Vehicles travelling very rapidly were in the news this month, both in a good way and in a bad way.

On March 2, the French/British supersonic airplane Concorde made its first test flight in Toulouse, France.  At the controls was test pilot
André Édouard Turcat.


Up, up, and away!

The plane reached a speed of 225 miles per hour (far below the speed of sound) and stayed in the air for twenty-seven minutes.  Just a test, but expect a lot of sonic booms in the near future.

The same day, tragedy struck the Yellow River drag racing strip in Covington, Georgia.  Racer Huston Platt was at the wheel of a car nicknamed Dixie Twister when it smashed through a chain link fence and hurdled into the crowd at 180 miles per hour.


Image of the disaster from a home movie taken by a spectator.

Eleven people were killed instantly.  One later died in the hospital.  More than forty were injured.

All this rushing around is likely to induce vertigo.  Appropriately, the Number One song in the USA this month is Dizzy by Tommy Roe, a catchy little number that captures the feeling perfectly.


Even the cover art makes my head spin.

Speed Reading

With no less than thirteen stories in the latest issue of Fantastic, it's obvious that several of them are going to be quite short, resulting in quick reading. 

The new stories slightly outnumber the reprints, at seven to six, but the old stuff takes up more than twice as many pages.  Apparently today's writers like to finish their works at a quicker pace than their predecessors.  Or maybe it's just a lot cheaper to buy tiny new works and fill up the rest of the magazine with longer reprints.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

As usual, the cover is also a reprint.  It appeared on the German magazine Perry Rhodan a few years ago.


Also as usual, the original looks better.

Characterization in Science Fiction, by Robert Silverberg

This brief essay by the Associate Editor promotes more depth of character in the genre, and praises new authors Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delany, and Thomas Disch for their skill in that area of writing.  Can't argue with that.

No rating.

In a Saucer Down for B-Day, by David R. Bunch


Illustration by Dan Adkins.

The magazine's most controversial writer returns with a tale that is closer to traditional science fiction than most of his works.  The narrator is an Earthman who is returning to his home planet with an alien.  He wants to show the extraterrestrial Earth's big annual celebration.

The author makes a point about a current social problem, maybe a little too obviously.  Even if this had been published anonymously, it would be easy to tell it's by Bunch from the style.  (Just the fact that the narrator says YES! more than once is a strong clue.) More readable than other stuff from his pen.

Three stars.

The Dodgers, by Arthur Sellings

A sad introduction tells us the author died last September.  This posthumous work features an engineer and a physician who land on a planet where many of the alien inhabitants are suffering from weakness and green blotches on their skin.  As soon as the humans arrive, a bag full of gifts for the extraterrestrials vanishes.  The mystery involves an unusual ability of the aliens.

I hate to speak ill of the dead, but this isn't a very good story.  The premise strains credibility, to say the least, and the ending is rushed.

Two stars.

The Monster, by John Sladek


Illustration by Bruce Eliot Jones

A fellow eager to be a space explorer replaces a guy who's been the only person on a distant planet for a long time.  The world turns out to be a dreary, boring place.  The environment is so bad that our protagonist can't go outside for more than a moment.  His only company is a robot in the form of a woman. 

The author makes his point clearly enough.  You're likely to see it coming a mile away.  Still, it's not a bad little yarn.

Three stars.

Visit, by Leon E. Stover

The Science Editor for Fantastic and Amazing (which must be an easy job; do they ever have any science articles?) gives us this account of aliens landing in Japan.  The American military officers present consult with a science fiction writer and a cultural anthropologist.  After a lot of discussion, the aliens finally come out of their spaceship.

For a story in which not much happens this sure goes on for a while.  Much of the text consists of references to other SF stories.  The ending is anticlimactic.  It left me thinking So what?

Two stars.

Ascension, by K. M. O'Donnell

The introduction reveals that O'Donnell is a pseudonym for the editor.

But which editor?

Glancing at the table of contents, you see that the Editor and Publisher is Sol Cohen, and the Managing Editor is Ted White.  Cohen or White?

Trick question!  It's actually Barry N. Malzberg, who was very briefly editor for Fantastic and Amazing.  (My esteemed colleague John Boston goes into detail about the situation in his article about the March issue of Amazing.)

Obviously this issue was assembled under the auspices of Malzberg.  Nobody ever said the publishing industry was fast.

Anyway, this is a New Wave yarn about a future President of the United States.  (The 46th, which I guess puts the story somewhere around the year 2024 or so.) Civil liberties are thrown out, the President has an advisor killed, he gets kicked out by the opposition and shot, the cycle goes on.  Something like that.

You can tell it's New Wave (with an acknowledged nod to J. G. Ballard) because sections of the text are in ALL CAPITALS and it ends in the middle of a sentence.  I suppose it's some kind of commentary on American politics.

Two stars.

The Brain Surgeon, by Robin Schaefer

Guess what?  This is yet another pseudonym for Malzberg.  Must have had trouble filling up the issue.  (No surprise, given the miserly budget.)

A man sends away for a home brain surgery kit that he saw advertised on a matchbook cover.  He gets the instruments and an explanatory pamphlet in the mail.  But what can he do with it?

Something about this brief bit of weirdness appealed to me more than it should.  There's not much to it, really, but what there is tickled my fancy.

Three stars.

How Now Purple Cow, by Bill Pronzini

A farmer sees a (you guessed it) purple cow in his field.  There's some talk of UFOs in the area.  Then there's a twist at the end.

Very short, without much point to it.  A shaggy dog (cow?) story.  A joke without a punchline. 

One star.

On to the reprints!

The Book of Worlds, by Dr. Miles J. Breuer

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear with this pre-Campbellian work of scientifiction from the pages of the July 1929 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Hugh Mackay.

A scientist discovers a way to view the fourth dimension.  This allows him to see a enormous number of worlds similar to our own Earth, at stages of development from the first stirrings of life to the future of humanity.  What he perceives has a profound effect on him.


Illustration by Frank R. Paul.

I have to confess that I wasn't expecting very much out of a story from the very early days of modern science fiction.  This was a pleasant surprise.  The author clearly has a point to make, and makes it powerfully.  What happens to the scientist at the end may strike you as either poignant or silly.  Take your pick.

Three stars.

The Will, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

The January/February 1954 issue of the magazine supplies this moving tale.


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

The narrator's teenage foster son is dying of leukemia.  The boy is obsessed with a television program about a time travelling hero called Captain Chronos.

(No doubt this was inspired by the author's work on the TV show Captain Video not long before the story was first published.)


Illustration by Jay Landau.

The boy has a plan, involving his collection of stamps and autographs.  But does he have enough time left?

Just from this brief description, you probably already have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen.  Despite the fact that the plot is a little predictable, however. this is a fine story.  The emotion is genuine rather than sentimental.  The ending is both joyful and sad.

Four stars.

Elementals of Jedar, by Geoff St. Reynard

Hiding behind that very British pseudonym is American writer Robert W. Krepps.  This pulpy yarn comes from the May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by H. J. Blumenfeld.

A spaceship captain with the manly name of Ken Ripper and his motley crew of aliens from various worlds are in big trouble.  Forced to land on a planet said to be inhabited by living force fields of pure malevolence, they have to figure out a way to escape with their lives.


Illustration by Rod Ruth.

Boy, this is really corny stuff.  I have to wonder if it's a parody of old-time space opera.  When the hero curses by saying Jove and bounding jackrabbits!, it makes me think the author is pulling my leg. The fact that one of the aliens on the spaceship is a humanoid twelve inches tall makes me giggle, too.  Even if it's tongue-in-cheek, a little of this goes a long way.

Two stars.

The Naked People, by Winston Marks

This story comes from the September 1954 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Ralph Castenir.

The combination of a sore ear and a fight in a tavern sends the narrator to the hospital with a brain infection.  When he comes out of his coma, he is able to see the ethereal figure of a unclothed man.  The lecherous fellow is able to solidify himself sufficiently to have his way with a pretty nurse while she's unconscious and under his control.


Illustration uncredited.

Then a female ghostly being shows up, with an obvious interest in our hero.  It seems that these folks have been hanging around, unperceived by normal people, since the dawn of humanity.  They materialize enough to steal food and, to put it delicately, act as incubi and succubi.

I get the feeling that the author didn't quite know how to end the story.  The hero fends off the advances of the lustful female being and saves the pretty nurse from the male one.  He even marries her.  But the naked people are still around, with all that implies.

An unsatisfying conclusion and a slightly distasteful premise make for a less than enjoyable reading experience.

Two stars.

And the Monsters Walk, by John Jakes

This two-fisted tale comes from the July 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures. 


Cover art by Walter Popp.

The narrator starts off aboard a ship bound for England from the Orient.  Burning with curiosity, he investigates the secret cargo hold, although the captain warned the crew this was punishable by death.  He finds boxes containing humanoid creatures.

Barely escaping with his life, he makes his way to shore.  Mysterious figures are out to kill him.  On the other hand, a Tibetan mystic and a beautiful young woman try to help him.  In return, they want his aid in combating a conspiracy to destroy Western civilization by using demons to slaughter world leaders.


Illustration by David Stone.

John Jakes is best known around here for his tales of Brak the Barbarian.  Those stories proved that he had studied the adventures of Conan carefully.  This yarn convinces me that he is also very familiar with the pulp magazines of the 1930's.

I'll give him credit for not being boring, anyway.  The action never stops, although you won't believe a minute of it.  The author's intense, almost frenzied style keeps you reading.

Three stars.

I, Gardener by Allen Kim Lang

Our last story comes from the December 1959 issue of the magazine.


Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

The narrator pays a visit to a prolific writer.  He speaks to a very strange gardener, who proves to be something other than what he seems.

I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to give away too much about the simple plot.  You may be able to figure out who the model for the writer is, given the title of the story and the fact that the character's name is Doctor Axel Ozoneff.  (The introduction to the story makes it obvious, so I'd advise not looking at it.)

Not a great story.

Two stars.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Alexei Panshin

Leiber looks at novels by E. R. Eddison, and Panshin has kind words to say about The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.

No rating.

Quickly Summing Up

Another average-to-poor issue, with only Miller's story rising above that level.  At least most of the pieces make for fast reading, although a couple of the worst ones may make you furious at their lack of quality.  You may be tempted to watch an old movie on TV instead.


From 1954, so it should show up on the Late, Late Show sometime soon.




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[March 2, 1969] Dreams and reality (April 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

A different kind of colonialism

When the Indian subcontinent gained independence, the Muslim and Hindu regions went their separate ways, contrary to the hopes of Gandhi. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, and there have been several conflicts between India and Pakistan over the border. But there is another problem which is beginning to make itself felt.

There are two Muslim regions of the subcontinent separated by India, and so Pakistan is split into East and West Pakistan—but unlike East and West Germany, they are a united country. The west comprises the Punjab and points west to Afghanistan, while the east is made up of eastern Bengal and the Ganges delta. West Pakistan holds a majority of the population and almost all of the political power.

East Pakistanis have felt increasingly marginalized in the twenty-two years since independence. As an example, the only official language is the western Urdu, which uses the Arabic script, while Bengali, with its own script and long literary history, is ignored. Civil unrest in the east has grown, led by the Awami League under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. They aren’t asking for full independence, merely autonomy with Pakistan becoming a federation of two nations with joint defense and foreign policy.

President Ayub Khan’s rule is becoming increasingly shaky. It is widely believed that the 1965 election was fraudulent and he actually lost. The military now supports Zulifikar Ali Bhutto, and there have been massive student protests in the last couple of years. Ayub Khan thought he had a way to regain support, but it seems to have blown up in his face.

Ayub Khan greets LBJ in Karachi in 1967.

In January of last year, the government announced they had uncovered a plot for the secession of East Pakistan with the help of India. Over a thousand people were arrested, among them Sheikh Mujib. Originally, the plan was for a court-martial, but President Khan later opted for an open trial, perhaps thinking he could move public opinion his way before next year’s elections. As a result, the number of accused was reduced to 36.

The trial was set to begin in Dacca on February 6th, but public unrest resulted in a delay. Then on the 15th, Sergeant Zahurul Haq was shot and killed in his prison cell. When word got out, East Pakistan exploded. The rioters tried to set fire to the State Guest House where the judges and chief prosecutor were staying. The officials escaped, but some of the evidence was destroyed. A week later, the government dropped all charges, and the prisoners were released.

It’s a huge embarrassment for Ayub Khan, and it’s hard to see how he survives this politically. Meanwhile, Sheikh Mujib and the Awami League are riding high. Let’s hope that a peaceful resolution can be found.

Sheikh Mujib (center) emerges from prison.

Science fantasy

And now, this month's first magazine, featuring (like the Pakistans) a single entity with two names—Worlds of IF and Worlds of Tomorrow.

Once upon a time, the term science fantasy was another name for science fiction. These days, it usually refers to work that combines elements of both science fiction and fantasy. Spaceships and magic, that sort of thing. This month’s IF runs strongly in that direction, starting with a new serial from one of that movement’s most prominent authors.

Like I said, swords and spaceships. Art by Adkins

Toys of Tamisan (Part 1 of 2), by Andre Norton

At the urging of his cousin Kas, Lord Starrex buys Tamisan, a powerful action dreamer. Seeking to craft a dream that will impress a former adventurer, she hits on the idea of setting her creation in a place where the history of their city and world turned out differently. Before she can finalize her plans, Starrex demands her services, and Tamisan learns that both he and Kas will be sharing this dream, which has never been done before. The dream appears to be all too real, and Tamisan discovers that she can’t break out of it unless both of the other dreamers are with her. She finds Starrex, but Kas seems to be aboard the approaching spaceship. To be continued.

A spaceship approaches to meet a different welcome than it actually did. Art by Adkins

As you might expect from Norton, this is a well-written adventure, but it’s just not my cup of tea. The mix of science fiction and fantasy is similar to her Witch World books, and I haven’t really enjoyed those. The casual acceptance of Tamisan’s slavery—even if it’s not called that—is also very off-putting.

Three stars for now, but those who like this kind of thing might rate it higher.

Starbright, by E.G. Von Wald

Starbrights are gemstones that take ambient light and emit a color characteristic to the individual stone as long as the wavelength of the stone’s light is longer than that it takes in. Gem collector Sean Macnessa has come to the Aldebaran system, following a rumor of seven rare red starbrights. His search will involve him with local politics, a missing princess, and a Golden Ruberg.

The story is a trifling adventure tale, but it’s fun. It’s not overly long, the humor works, and the reader is given just enough information to work out the solution.

A solid three stars.

A Report on the Sixth International SF Film Festival, by Luigi Cozzi

What it says on the tin: a quick rundown of the festival held in Trieste, Italy. 2001 was naturally a big hit and the only film we covered here at the Journey. The big winner, though, was the British film The Sorcerers, which took awards for the film and its stars, Catherine Lacey and Boris Karloff (who died at the beginning of February).

Three stars.

That Season, by Lawrence Mayer

Humans are rare, maybe unique, among mammals in that they don’t have mating seasons in which females go into heat and males compete violently for access. But what if that changed? That’s the question new author Mayer asks, looking at the events right before, during, and immediately after one season a few generations after such a change. I’m not sure I agree with his conclusions—once could even argue he presents a best-case scenario—but he tells it well, particularly in exposition provided by showing us things rather than “As you know, Bob” conversations.

Three stars.

Spork of the Ayor, by Perry Chapdelaine

Expectations can have a large effect on how you feel about what you read. Where I grew up, “spork” was a humorous name for a spoon with tines on the end (spoon+fork=spork), so I was expecting a farce. Instead, Chapdelaine gives us a straightforward tale of a human raised among intelligent beings not of his kind, who must use his innate human skills to save his adoptive people.

Spork learns to use direct action against the Tepen. Art by Reese

From that picture and the title, you can probably tell that this is basically Tarzan, just with aliens and mental powers. It’s fairly typical of other Chapdelaine stories I’ve read: decently written, but much too long. From the loose threads at the end, it looks like we’ll be getting more. Unfortunately, I’ve never been a fan of Tarzan.

A low three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at the brain and sleep. He starts with electronarcosis, which may be able to cure insomnia and treat schizophrenia. He then discusses the idea of recording dreams and playing them back for others. Lester is making good use of his time in the Galaxy Publishing office. This is the third month in a row in which his article has directly referenced a story in the current issue of either IF or Galaxy. I like it; it gives the article a bit of extra relevance to the reader.

Three stars.

The Light Bearer, by William M. Lee

Pete Coghill is a biochemist with a knack for finding flaws in other people’s research. It hasn’t made him many friends, but management loves him. After accidentally dosing himself an LSD derivative, he has a strange encounter with a prominent scientist. It changes his life for the better, but he will have to pay for it one day.

This story isn’t what it looks like, or what Pete thinks it is. It’s actually quite fun and turns the whole concept on its head.

A high three stars.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Jack Williamson

An interesting interview with an interesting man. Some of that’s down to the life he’s led so far, but some of it probably due to his being a university lecturer who knows how to engage his audience. This is the first time the interview has been with someone who isn’t in the issue, which contrasts with what I said about the del Rey article.

Jack Williamson. Art by Gaughan

Four stars.

Tourists Welcome, by Roger Deeley

The sleepy British town of Maxcombe Parva has been hit with a spate of car thefts in one night. Police sergeant Slocombe wonders if local poacher and con man Geoff Rye might know something. It’s not his style, but he has been known to sell tourists something he doesn’t actually own.

An amusing little tale, though it takes a dark turn right at the end.

Three stars.

Retief, the Long-Awaited Master, by Keith Laumer

The diplomatic mission Retief is on runs afoul of the Groaci, and it’s up to him to save everybody’s career and reputation. I’m going to keep a copy of that sentence on file; it will save time when reviewing the next Retief story.

Retief and Magnan meet the locals. Art by Gaughan

When this story was teased last month, I wondered if enough time had passed for it to feel fresh. The answer is no. Laumer isn’t just going through the motions, the way he was a few years ago, but these are all stamped out by the same cookie cutter. Only the frosting is different.

Three stars, but only recommended if you’re new to the series or are a really big fan.

Summing up

This is a typical middle-of-the-road issue. Rather than rehashing what I usually say at the end of theses articles, let’s talk about art. There’s not much of it, with only three stories being illustrated. No one seems to have paid much attention to it during layout either. The piece reproduced here for “Toys of Tamisan” ran on page 93 for “Spork,” and the piece reproduced here for that story ran on page 27 for “Tamisan.” You’d think somebody would have noticed that even the robots are posed much too naturally and dynamically to have been drawn by Adkins. The magazine really needs to do better with its art.

Bloch could be good or bad. His humor is hit or miss.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 8, 1969] So Much for That (March 1969 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Last issue, new editor Barry Malzberg declared that “the majority of modern magazine science-fiction is ill-written, ill-characterized, ill-conceived and so excruciatingly dull as to make me question the ability of the writers to stay awake during its composition,” and proposed to use Amazing and Fantastic to promote the “rebirth—one would rather call it transmutation—of the category.”


by Johnny Bruck

Now, in this March Amazing, Barry is gone.  Sol Cohen, listed as Publisher last issue, is now Editor and Publisher.  Laurence M. Janifer is listed as Associate Editor, and contributes a guest editorial and a movie review.  Ted White, new to the masthead, is listed as Managing Editor.  Most likely he will actually be editing the magazine, having been Assistant and then Associate Editor at Fantasy and Science Fiction until mid-1968.

But as a great philosopher said, you can predict anything but the future.  What we have right now is the last issue of the Malzberg editorship, credited or not, which we know since the new stories are the ones he announced in the last issue. 

So why his sudden departure?  I had a conversation with Barry, and he reported that it had nothing to do with the direction he proposed for the magazine’s fiction or his jaundiced account of the state of the field.  Rather, he bought a cover, which he understood he was authorized to do, and said he would quit if Cohen did not allow him to run it.  Cohen responded, "I don't know anything about stories but I do know about art and I can't run this cover.  [Pause] You're fired."  Barry adds, on reflection, that Cohen was right, and there’s no resentment on his part.

But back to the issue before us.  Overall, it’s business as usual: another tiresome cover by Johnny Bruck, four new short stories (mostly very short) and the conclusion of a new serialized novella, and three reprinted novelets.  There is the usual "Science of Man" article by Leon E. Stover, and the usual book review column, credited as before to William Atheling, Jr., the not-at-all secret pseudonym of James Blish–though the review of The Making of Star Trek is bylined Blish (who is also the author of several Star Trek paperbacks).  Janifer’s above-mentioned movie review is about Hot Millions, a scientific heist film in which Peter Ustinov, as an embezzler, goes up against a giant computer.  (Before long, I am sure, there will need to be a name for such a villain.  Computer . . . hijacker?  Nah, too cumbersome.)

We All Died at Breakaway Station (Part 2 of 2), by Richard C. Meredith

Richard Meredith’s two-part serial novella, We All Died at Breakaway Station, concludes here.  It may well be the most downbeat space opera ever published.  Earth is at war with the Jillies.  Protagonist Captain Absolom [sic] Bracer has been killed in battle and resurrected, and is now hideously disabled and disfigured and patched up with mechanical parts, since there are no replacements to allow him to return to Earth for more seemly regeneration.  Also he is tormented by phantom pain from the missing parts, as well as the psychological impact of his mutilated condition.  His fellow officers are all in similar shape. 


by Dan Adkins

Bracer is charged with escorting a hospital ship full of other casualties back to Earth for better treatment.  But he learns that the relief ships from Earth to Breakaway, a barren planet where the essential faster-than-light communications link to Earth is located, are days away from arriving.  He decides to delay departure so he and his subordinates will be around to protect Breakaway from the expected Jillie attack.  This set-up of course leads to a lot of slam-bang action, with continuing death, destruction, and angst (though a note of glee does creep in here and there), and then the probably obligatory tragic but uplifting ending. 

The writing is amateurish in places but quite readable even as one is noting that Meredith is going on much too long about things that don’t advance the narrative, playing silly games with chapter divisions (there are 36 of these in 79 pages, one of which is four lines long), and writing dialogue some of which seems lifted from World War II B-movies.  But there’s actually a story here, the author is clearly having a good time, and it’s infectious as long as you manage your expectations.  Three stars.

The Invasion of the Giant Stupid Dinosaurs, by Thomas M. Disch


by Bruce Jones

Thomas M. Disch, whose career started in Amazing and Fantastic, makes his first appearance here of the Sol Cohen era.  The Invasion of the Giant Stupid Dinosaurs is a short jokey First Contact story involving a spaceship landing on the property of a small town church.  It is archly told in a fussily stilted style possibly meant to remind the reader of The War of the Worlds (though Wells was generally not arch, stilted, or fussy).  It’s well turned, as always with Disch, but trivial.  Three stars, mostly for style.

The Aggressor, by John T. Sladek

John T. Sladek’s The Aggressor is also short, highly surreal, and seemingly an exercise in dream logic or a satire on the very idea of a story.  Or maybe—since the main character (loosely speaking) is the head of a large computer corporation—it’s supposed to be the output of a defective computer, or perhaps a very advanced one that is unexpectedly beginning to achieve consciousness. Sometimes Sladek’s humor escapes me entirely, and this is one of them.  This dog is too damn shaggy!  Two stars; at least the guy can write.

Prelude to Reconstruction, by Durant Imboden

Durant Imboden is an assistant fiction editor at Playboy, says the blurb to his story Prelude to Reconstruction, with one prior SF magazine appearance.  The story is a slightly rambling farce about a future authoritarian USA in which the work is all done by robots, who are supervised by the Ministry of Slaves.  The robots have to be kept in line lest they get funny ideas about slaving for humans; so Cerebra-1, a giant computer, is devised to monitor their loyalty quotients and reorient those needing it. 


by Bruce Jones

But now Cerebra-1 is getting balky, spitting out ancient political slogans, and things only get worse fast for humans (and the story ceases to be so farcical).  Problem is Imboden hasn’t quite caught on to “show, don’t tell,” so most of the story is the author recounting events after the fact without dialogue or even on-stage characters for stretches of it.  There’s also very little background on exactly what the robots’ and Cerebra-1’s capabilities and limits are, so the analogy to American human slavery (which becomes explicit at the end) falls flat, and there’s not much to be interested in conceptually.  Two stars.

In the Time of Disposal of Infants, by David R. Bunch

David R. Bunch, an avowed editorial favorite, is here again with In the Time of Disposal of Infants, listed among the new stories, but in fact new only to professional publication.  It first appeared in the fanzine Inside #13 (January 1956) along with five other Bunch stories.  It is much more sedate stylistically than his later work, but outrageous enough in content.  The title says it; the story is narrated by a garbage collector whose team finds a four-year-old among the refuse—surprisingly, since if they last that long, the parents usually keep them.  Three stars.

The Man in the Moon, by Mack Reynolds

The first of the acknowledged reprints is Mack Reynolds’s The Man in the Moon (from Amazing, July 1950) , a very early story (his eighth, appearing three months after the first).  It amounts to a tutorial about early space flight, now thoroughly outmoded and a bit boring.  Protagonist Jeff Stevens and two of his fellow trainee astronauts are bundled off to the Moon in separate ships; their voyage was preceded by some unsuccessful (i.e., fatal) tries, and by a number of unmanned ships carrying supplies and materials. 


by Leo Summers

Only Stevens makes it, and he proceeds (despite a broken arm) to assemble several of the unmanned ships into a base.  Human, as opposed to mechanical, interest is provided by the repeated reminders that Stevens is sensitive about being short, and by the fact that his sometime girlfriend left him for one of the other astronauts, who died on an earlier expedition.  But it’s all right, because he finds that astronaut’s body where he expired in his spacesuit in the line of duty.  “’Last Brenschluss, spaceman,’ he whispered.” Hackneyed, maudlin, two stars, generously.

Ask a Foolish Question, by Milton Lesser

Milton Lesser’s Ask a Foolish Question (Fantastic Adventures, June 1952) is a slickly rendered dystopian story.  In this world, most people work long hours for low pay, living in barracks, in order to support the space colony Utopia, where, it is said, everybody lives a lot better.  That’s OK, since the Earth dwellers regularly get the chance to take examinations to see if they can qualify to space out, and some win and depart.


by Tom Beechem

But Citizen Gregory Jones has been notified by the Department of Prognostication that he is to die in five days.  After some plot maneuvers not worth recounting, he winds up killing a government employee, faking his own death a day early, and then impersonating the government man.  But in that fake role, he is given the choice of dying when Jones would have died, or going to Utopia with the lucky exam-winners, since the government can’t allow anyone to stick around who knows that a prognostication didn’t occur on schedule.  Of course, he chooses Utopia, and the next events show that Lesser has clearly taken note of The Marching Morons.  And there's another twist before the end.  Derivative but well turned; three stars.

Death of a Spaceman, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

In Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s Death of a Spaceman (Amazing, March 1954), Old Donegal is a retired spacer bedridden and dying of cancer, though nobody but him acknowledges it, and he goes along with the pretense that he’ll be well before long.  Going to space is a pretty rotten blue-collar job (it killed his son-in-law), his pension and his daughter’s widow’s benefits are lousy, but Donegal can’t let go of it—he wants to stay alive long enough to hear the evening rocket blasting off from the nearby spaceport, demanding that his space boots be put on for the occasion after the priest has come by to administer the last rites. 


by Ernest Schroeder

It’s well written and clearly heartfelt (though thankfully less febrile than the other early Miller stories Amazing has reprinted (like Secret of the Death Dome and The Space Witch), but thoroughly maudlin and hard to take too seriously, especially by comparison with the much better stories Miller was already known for (e.g., Conditionally Human and Dark Benediction).  Three stars.

Science of Man: Apeman, Superman —Or, 2001's Answer to the World's Riddle, by Leon E. Stover

Leon E. Stover’s “Science of Man” article this issue is Apeman, Superman—or, 2001’s Answer to the World’s Riddle, which eschews the usual anthropology for a long synopsis of the film, superfluously I suspect to most readers.  Stover’s interpretation: humans spreading into space will be good (contra C.S. Lewis), we’ll leave all the bad stuff behind along with our bodies, sort of like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin explains: “the gathering force of mind that has come to envelope the surface of the planet Earth must eventuate in a projection into space as a purely spiritual component that will converge ultimately at the Omega point in one single entity, the very stuff of God.  But once all the consciousness of the universe has accumulated and merged in the Omega point, God will get lonely in his completeness, and the process of creation must begin again by way of arousing conscious creatures to reach out once more for closure in one collective identity.” Ohhh-kay, whatever you say, chief.  Next, Stover quotes Nietzsche, and adds: “Now that the theologians tell us that God is dead, it appears that the burden of theology is upon SF.” Three stars, it’s amusing and probably harmless, but Stover should probably get back to writing what he knows.

Summing Up

At Amazing, the beat goes ever ever on, ever more wearily, with some worthwhile material, but burdened by the weight of mostly lackluster reprints.  The ambitious new editor is gone.  The apparent new editor is well qualified, but will he be allowed to give the magazine the makeover it needs?  Yet again, wait and see.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 4, 1968] Sign Me Up (January 1969 Amazing)

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by John Boston

In this January's Amazing, on page 138, there is an editorial—A Word from the Editor, it says, bylined Barry N. Malzberg—which suggests a different direction (or maybe I should just say “a direction”) for this magazine.  First is some news.  There will be no letter column; Malzberg would rather use the space for a story.  Second, “the reprint policy of these magazines will continue for the foreseeable future,” per the publisher, but “A large and increasing percentage of space however will be used for new stories.”


by Johnny Bruck

Pointedly, the editor adds, “it is my contention that the majority of modern magazine science-fiction is ill-written, ill-characterized, ill-conceived and so excruciatingly dull as to make me question the ability of the writers to stay awake during its composition, much less the readers during its absorption.  Tied to an older tradition and nailed down stylistically to the worst hack cliches of three decades past, science-fiction has only within the past five or six years begun to emerge from its category trap only because certain intelligent and dedicated people have had the courage to wreck it so that it could crawl free. . . .  I propose that within its editorial limits and budget, Amazing and Fantastic will do what they can to assist this rebirth—one would rather call it transmutation—of the category and we will try to be hospitable to a kind of story which is still having difficulty finding publication in this country.”

Sounds good to me!  This brave manifesto is only slightly undermined by the familiar production chaos of the magazine.  It is not acknowledged on the table of contents, and does not appear in the usual place for an editorial, at the beginning of the magazine.  Instead, there appears a piece labelled Editorial by Robert Silverberg, S-F and Escape Literature, which (though touted as “NEW” on the cover) actually dates from six years ago, when it appeared as a guest editorial in the August 1962 issue of the British New Worlds.  Silverberg is also listed as Associate Editor.

Silverberg’s piece briskly disposes of the “escapist” critique of SF, pointing out that all literature is escape literature; it’s just a matter of where you’re escaping, and how well the escape is executed.  “The human organism, if it is to grow and prosper, needs change, refreshment, periodic escape.”

The other non-fiction in the issue includes another Leon Stover “Science of Man” article (see below).  There is the by-now-usual book review column, attributed to James Blish on the contents page, with reviews by his pseudonym William Atheling, Jr. (mixed feelings about Clarke’s 2001 novelization, praise for D.G. Compton and Alexei Panshin); by Panshin (praise for R.A. Lafferty); and by editor Malzberg (praise for the new edition of Damon Knight’s In Search of Wonder, mixed feelings about Alva Rogers’s fan tribute A Requiem for Astounding).  There is also a movie review, by Lawrence Janifer, of Rosemary’s Baby; he finds it well done but dull, and—in an unexpected juxtaposition—quotes Virginia Woolf: “But how if life should refuse to reside there?”

We All Died at Breakaway Station, by Richard C. Meredith


by Dan Adkins

The major piece of new fiction is Richard C. Meredith’s We All Died at Breakaway Station, first part of a two-part serial.  As usual I will read and review it when it’s complete; a quick rummage reveals it’s a space war story whose plot would probably have been right at home in Planet Stories, but which looks much grimmer than the pulps allowed.

Temple of Sorrow, by Dean R. Koontz

Dean R. Koontz’s novelet Temple of Sorrow is a breezily parodic procession of stock genre elements—the protagonist with a mission (“My name is Mandarin.  Felix Mandarin.”—from “International,” we later learn), accompanied by Theseus, his Mutie bodyguard (actually a bear, “developed” in the Artificial Wombs), to pierce the veil of a powerful religious cult (with overtones of the one in Heinlein’s “—If This Goes On,” such as the omnipresence of Naked Angels, female of course).  In this post-nuclear war world, the Temple of the Form predicts the Second Coming of the Form (the mushroom cloud), and it seems is bent on bringing it about by stealing the world’s last atom bomb.


by Jeff Jones

Felix is caught and reduced to near-mindless servitude, but his conditioning is broken by his realization of the Bishop’s sadistic plans for the Angel who has caught Felix’s fancy.  Rejoined by Theseus, who had fled to the wilderness but returned just in time, Felix and the Angel Jacinda fight their way to the Temple’s Innermost Ring (cameo appearance by a giant spider along the way).  And there’s super-science!  Felix figures out that the Innermost Rings of all the many Temples worldwide are interdimensionally connected, so if the Temple bigs can set off a bomb in one Ring, the explosion will be replicated in all the others!  Conservation of energy be damned.

So they hasten from Ring to Ring, find the bomb, and disarm it.  “Any child could disarm an A-bomb if he has read his history and had an instructor in P.O.D. who allowed him to practice live on dummies.” Felix proposes to the Angel Jacinda.  Theseus has somehow gained human intelligence during the interdimensional trek.  Exit, wisecracking.  Or, as the editor put it: “Tied to an older tradition and nailed down stylistically to the worst hack cliches of three decades past . . . .” Good sarcastic fun.  Three stars.

How It Ended, by David R. Bunch

And here is the writer half the readership has long seemed to hate, in his second consecutive issue—David R. Bunch.  Editor Malzberg says, “I think that Bunch is one of the twenty or thirty best writers of the short-story in English.” I might pick a slightly higher number, but I’m happy he is again welcome here.  But this one is called How It Ended—“it” being Moderan, scene of a procession of stories about the Strongholders, their new-metal enhancements held together by the flesh-strips that are all that remain of their human bodies, fighting their endless wars in splendid isolation from each other.  Can it really be the end?  Time will tell whether Bunch can resist returning to the scene. 

But to the matter at hand: during the Summer Truces following the Spring Wars, someone looses a wump-bomb, which is strong stuff indeed.  This sets off a new war which is only ended when the narrator releases the GRANDY WUMP (sic), which puts an end to Moderan entirely.  This is his confession, rendered onto a tape which may or may not ever be listened to, complete with his litany of self-justification.  The inexorable logic leading to complete destruction may be familiar to those who frequent newspapers and government briefing papers.  It’s Bunch as usual and you either like it or you don’t.  I mostly do, with qualifications, but this one goes on a little too long for my taste.  Three stars.

Confidence Trick, by John Wyndham


by Henry Sharp

Moving to the reprints, John Wyndham is here with Confidence Trick (from Fantastic, July-August 1953), about some people going home on a commuter train who discover that it is the train to Hell.  They escape their fate only through the loudly expressed disbelief of one abrasive young man, after which the whole illusion falls apart.  It is suggested that social institutions such as the banking system are not too different from religions in their reliance on unquestioning faith.  It’s smoothly written but becomes a bit heavy-handedly didactic after its comic beginning.  Two stars.

Dream of Victory, by Algis Budrys

In Algis Budrys’s Dream of Victory (Amazing, August/September 1953)—a “complete short novel” at 26 large-print pages—a war has left the world devastated and depopulated.  Androids were developed to provide a work force.  They are apparently human in all respects except for standardization of features (which they can pay to have fixed), and they can’t reproduce.  Fuoss, an android, is not happy about this, or about the fact that there seems to be growing discrimination against androids; he can get jobs but somehow always loses them, and his successful android lawyer friend tells him the creation of androids has now stopped.


by Ed Emshwiller

Fuoss has a recurring dream about a woman bearing his child.  He finds his situation so frustrating that he acts in progressively more self-destructive ways, driving away his android wife, in part because he flaunts his affair with a human woman. Then he loses his latest job, drinks a lot, and his girlfriend throws him out.  When he comes back and finds out she has taken up with somebody else, he smashes a whiskey bottle and cuts her throat after she dismisses his delusional babble that she will have his child.  His lawyer friend (ex-friend by now) visits him in jail and chastises him for the harm he has done to the android cause.  “ ‘Is she dead?’ he asked hopefully.”

I’m not sure what to make of this story.  Budrys has commented on it in the introduction to his second collection, Budrys’ [sic] Inferno (UK edition retitled The Furious Future): “Dream of Victory is the first novelette I ever wrote. . . . Dream of Victory, as I was writing it, seemed a free-wheeling piece of technical bedazzlement.  Happily, most of the experimentation in it was elevated to more comprehensible levels by Howard Browne, the quietly competent editor who bought it and with his pencil made me look a little more mature than I really was.  There is a certain temporary value to a young writer in coming on as a prose innovator and pyrotechnician; I think there is more for the reader and, in the course of time, more for the writer in letting the story speak for itself.”

So, all procedure and no substance about this story in which the protagonist responds to his emotional travail by murdering his girlfriend.  I wonder if it is supposed to be a displaced commentary on race relations, especially since the plot seems to bear some similarity to that of Richard Wright’s Native Son (a book I haven’t read and know only second-hand).  Did Budrys have it in mind?  Probably not.  Probably this is just another example of a writer who can’t think of a more imaginative way to resolve the situation of unbearable frustration he has created than with hideous violence against women—not altogether unrealistically, I have to acknowledge, since I do read the newspapers. 

It’s tempting to say “nice try,” but it really isn’t; the best thing to say is that Budrys got better later, at least a lot of the time, in finding better resolutions (or accepting no resolution) for the intolerable situations he was so good at coming up with.  One star for substance, three for execution (though as Budrys says, much credit goes to editor Browne for that).  Split the difference.

Don't Come to Mars, by Henry Hasse


by Leo Morey

Henry Hasse’s Don’t Come to Mars (Fantastic Adventures, April 1950) is a large comedown from his goofily grandiose classic He Who Shrank, reprinted in the last issue.  Dr. Rahm awakes to see himself walking out the door, and looks down to see he has a whole new tentacled body.  Aiiko the Martian has borrowed his by long-distance projection.  Turns out Aiiko is trying to sabotage Dr. Rahm’s life work developing space travel to Mars so humans will avoid the terrible fate that has befallen the Martians.  It’s routinely executed and reads more like a story from the ‘30s than one from 1950.  Two stars.

Science of Man: Lies and the Evolution of Language, by Leon E. Stover

Leon E. Stover’s “Science of Man” article is Lies and the Evolution of Language, which displays Stover’s faults even more prominently than his earlier articles.  The subject is certainly interesting, but the article is mostly a turgid mass of assertions with very little attempt to convince the reader to believe them or to provide any basis to assess them.  This is less of a problem when he is addressing current or recent times, of which most readers will have some direct knowledge or experience.  But consider: “Without a doubt the first humans replayed the action of the day around the campfire at night in an unabashed display of ceremonial boasting.  And doubtlessly manly valor was an entrance requirement into the hunting team, all the more incentive for a male to boast about what he had seen and done so as to be allowed to become ‘one of the boys.’ ” Certainly plausible, makes sense, but “without a doubt”?  Without more support than Stover provides, I’ve got a doubt.

Some of Stover’s assertions are more than doubtful, such as his claim that animals cannot lie.  In fact there is considerable deception in the animal world.  For example, some birds feign broken wings and walk away from their nests, apparently seeking to distract predators from their eggs or young.  Stover might have an argument that that behavior is not linguistic enough to be relevant to the discussion.  But he doesn’t make it, or acknowledge the question. Two stars.

Summing Up

So, another mixed-bag issue of Amazing (excluding the serial, to be assessed next time), but one that is promising—a word I must have used a dozen times about this magazine, but this time there's an actual promise about what the new editor plans to do with it.  As always, we'll see.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 10, 1968] Ratings (December 1968 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Alphabet Soup

On the first day of this month, a new movie rating system created by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) went into effect. Although the system is voluntary, filmgoers in the USA can expect to see a letter of the alphabet accompanying almost every movie.

This is very old news to those living in the United Kingdom, where a similar system has been in place since 1912. There have been some changes over the years, but currently the British ratings are:

U for Unrestricted (everybody admitted)

A for Adult content (children under 12 must be accompanied by adults)

X for Explicit content (no one under 16 admitted)

The new American system uses different letters, although they kept the scary X.

G for General audiences (everybody admitted, no advisory warnings)

M for Mature audiences (everybody admitted, but parental guidance is advised)

R for Restricted (persons under 16 not admitted without adult parent or guardian)

X for Explicit (no one under 16 admitted)

Gee, Magazines R Xciting!

In the spirit of the MPAA, let me experiment with offering my own similar ratings for the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic, in addition to the usual one-to-five star system of judging their quality.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

As with previous issues, the cover art for this one comes from the German magazine Perry Rhodan.


Hell Dance of the Giants, or something like that.

The fine print under the table of contents reveals that former editor Harry Harrison is now the associate editor, and former associate editor Barry N. Malzberg (maybe better known under the authorial pen name K. M. O'Donnell) is now the editor.  I have no idea if this swapping of job titles really means anything.

The Broken Stars, by Edmond Hamilton


Illustrations by Dan Adkins.

As the cover states, this is a sequel to Hamilton's famous space opera novel The Star Kings, from 1949. (I believe there have been a couple of other yarns in the series, published in Amazing.) However, it's certainly not a short novel. By my reckoning, it's a novelette, not even a novella.

I haven't read The Star Kings (mea culpa!) so it took me a while to figure out what was going on. (The fact that several paragraphs near the start are printed in the wrong order doesn't help.)

Three guys escape from a planet in a starship stolen from aliens. One fellow is the main hero, a man of our own time who somehow wound up in a far future of galactic empires and such. Another is a man of that time. So is the third one, but apparently he used to be the Bad Guy in previous adventures. Now he's working with the two Good Guys for his own self interest.

It turns out there's an alien on the ship as well. It can control human minds, but only one at a time. The trio solves this problem by crashing into a planet.


Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The place is inhabited by nasty winged reptile aliens, who are part of an army of various extraterrestrials being collected by a Bad Guy to invade a planet ruled by the woman our time-traveling hero loves. Can he find a way to save her? Can he trust his former enemy? And what about those pesky mind-controlling aliens? Tune in next time!

This slam-bang action yarn reads like a chapter torn out at random from a novel. Besides starting in medias res, it stops before reaching a final resolution.

Hamilton is an old hand at writing this kind of space opera (they don't call him The World Wrecker for nothing!) so it's very readable. The former Bad Guy is the most interesting character (and he seems a lot smarter than the two Good Guys.) Too bad the story doesn't stand very well on its own.

Three stars.

Rated G for Good old scientifiction.

Ball of the Centuries, by Henry Slesar

Here's a brief tale about a guy who uses a crystal ball to see into the future. He warns a couple about to get married not to go through with it. Of course, they don't listen to him. Years later, they have the argument he predicted. The husband tracks down the guy and finds out the real reason he warned them.

That sounds like a serious story, but it's really an extended joke, with a double punchline. It's OK, I suppose, but nothing special, and a very minor work from a prolific and award-winning writer of fantasy, mystery, television, and movies.

Two stars.

Rated M for Matrimonial woes.

The Mental Assassins, by Gregg Conrad


Cover art by H J. Blumenfeld.

From the pages of the May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures, this story is the work of Rog Phillips under a pseudonym.


Illustration by Harold W. McCauley.

People who have been horribly maimed in accidents are kept alive and made to experience a shared dream world. The trouble begins when three of the twenty people develop evil alternate personalities. (As usual, the story thinks that schizophrenia literally means split personality.)

The physician in charge of the project asks the hero to enter the dream world and kill these doppelgängers. (This won't actually harm the real people, just eliminate their imaginary wicked doubles.) He gives it a try, but finds the experience so unpleasant he backs out of the deal.

The story then turns into a sort of hardboiled crime yarn, as the hero gets mixed up with a couple of mysterious women, a hulking bouncer, and two cab drivers who know more than they should. A wild back-and-forth chase ensues, partly on a spaceship, followed by a double twist ending.

You may be able to tell what's really happening as soon as the hero exits the dream world, but I don't think you'll guess the other plot twist, which is rather disturbing. This yarn reminds me of Philip K. Dick's games with reality, although it's not quite as adept.

Three stars.

Rated R for Really shocking ending.

The Disenchanted, by Wallace West and John Hillyard


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

This fantasy farce comes from the January/February 1954 issue of the magazine.


Illustration by Sanford Kossin.

The ghost of Madame de Pompadour shows up at the apartment of a publisher. Present also is the author of a novel about the famed mistress of King Louis XV. The ghost objects to what the writer said about her in the book, and demands that it not be printed. When the publisher refuses, she has her ghostly buddies uninvent things, leading to chaos.

Strictly aiming for laughs, this featherweight tale ends suddenly. As a matter of fact, because the usual words THE END don't appear on the last page, I have a sneaking suspicion part of the story is missing. [Nope. It's that way in the original, too! (ed.)] Be that as it may, it provides a small amount of mildly bawdy amusement.

Two stars.

Rated R for Risqué content.

The Usurpers, by Geoff St. Reynard


Cover art by Raymon Naylor.

The January 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures is the source of this chiller by Robert W. Krepps, an American author hiding behind a very British pen name.


Illustration by Leo Summers.

The narrator is a one-armed veteran of the Second World War. An old comrade-in-arms shows up and tells him a bizarre story.

It seems the fellow recovered from a serious eye injury. When his vision was restored, he saw that about half the people around him were actually weird, horrifying monsters in human disguise. He reaches the conclusion that beings from another dimension are infiltrating our own, intent on displacing humanity.

Things go from bad to worse when some of the creatures realize the guy can perceive them. They try to kill him, while he destroys as many of them as he can, leading to the violent conclusion.

This shocker is most notable for the truly strange and creepy descriptions of the monsters, each one of which has a different form. As an ignorant American, I found it convincingly British, although somebody from the UK might disagree. Overall, a pretty effective horror story.

Three stars.

Rated R for Revolting creatures.

The Prophecy, by Bill Pronzini

Like Henry Slesar's piece, this is a miniscule bagatelle about a prediction. A prophet who is always right announces that the world will end at a certain time on a certain day. When the hour of doom arrives, the unexpected happens.

Even shorter than the other joke story, this tiny work depends entirely on its punch line. I can't say I was terribly impressed. I also wonder why the magazine printed two similar tales in the same issue.

Two stars.

Rated G for Goofy ending.

The Collectors, by Gordon Dewey


Cover art by Barye Phillips.

My research indicates that somebody named Peter Grainger is an uncredited co-author of this story from the June/July 1953 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustration by Harry Rosenbaum.

A very methodical fellow, who keeps track of every penny, tries to figure out why a small amount of money disappears every day. He runs into a woman who experiences the same phenomenon. It seems to have something to do with a vending machine.

The editorial introduction dismissingly says this story is . . . no classic, to be sure, it isn't even a minor classic . . . which seems like an odd way to talk about something worth printing. I thought it was reasonably intriguing. In this case, the open ending seems appropriate.

Three stars.

Rated M for Mysterious conclusion.

Unrated

As I mentioned above, the MPAA rating system is voluntary.  No doubt a few movies will be released without one of the four letters.  In a similar way, the stuff in the magazine other than fiction isn't really appropriate for rating.

Editorial: The Magazines, The Way It Is, by A. L. Caramine

Brief discussion of the rise and fall of science fiction magazines, with an optimistic prediction that they're on the way up again.  A note at the end states that A. L. Caramine is the pseudonym of a well-known science fiction author.

Digging through old magazines, the only reference I can find to A. L. Caramine is as the author of the story Weapon Master in the May 1959 issue of Science Fiction Stories.


Cover art by Ed Emshwiller.

A glance at the magazine tells me that, in addition to a story by Robert Silverberg under his own name, there are book reviews by the same fellow under his pseudonym Calvin M. Knox.  Given the way that single authors often filled up magazines with multiple pen names, I suspect that the mysterious A. L. Caramine is Silverberg as well, although I don't have definite proof of this.

2001: A Space Odyssey, by Laurence Janifer

One page article that praises the film named in the title, and says that Planet of the Apes is lousy. Just one person's opinion, take it or leave it.

The Rhyme of the SF Ancient Author or Conventions and Recollections, by J. R. Pierce

Parody of the famous Coleridge poem mocked in the title. It says that science fiction writers shouldn't go chasing money by writing other kinds of stuff. Pretty much an in-joke, I guess.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber

Mostly notable for a glowing review of Picnic on Paradise by Joanna Russ. May be the best-written thing in the magazine!

Good? Mediocre? Rotten? Xcruciating?

All in all, this was a so-so issue. The two star stories weren't that bad, the three star stories weren't that good. Not a waste of time, but you might want to listen to the current smash hit Hey Jude by the Beatles instead.


David Frost introduces the Fab Four as they perform the song on his television program.

Rated G for Groovy.




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