Tag Archives: David Mason

[May 12, 1970] War and Peace (June 1970 Fantastic)

black and white photo of a dark-haired white woman with vampiric eyebrows
by Victoria Silverwolf

These are troubling times.

We are all still recovering from the shock of the killing of four students and the wounding of nine others by Ohio National Guard troops at Kent State University on May 4.  A mere four days later, construction workers and office workers clashed with anti-war protestors in New York City.

A black and white photograph of a group of white men marching down a city street.  Some are are chanting and/or holding poles.  The poles extend out of frame so we can't tell if they have signs or flags attached.  Some of the men are wearing construction outerwear and hard hats, others are wearing dress shirts and ties.
Due to the distinctive headgear worn by some of the construction workers, the incident has become known as the Hard Hat Riot.

In the chaos that ensued, with an estimated twenty thousand people in the streets near Federal Hall, the counter-protestors attacked the anti-war demonstrators while police did little to stop the violence. 

The pro-war crowd later marched up Broadway and threatened to attack City Hall.  They demanded that the building's flag, flown at half-mast in commemoration of the Kent State killings, be raised to full mast.  In an example of grim irony, the hard hats and their allies also attacked nearby Pace University, a conservative business school.

About one hundred people were injured, including seven police officers.  Six people were arrested.  Only one of them was a construction worker.

With all of this going on, it's tempting to escape from the real world and allow our imaginations to run wild.  As we'll see, however, the latest issue of Fantastic contains as much violent conflict as reality.

The cover of Fantastic magazine. The title appears near the top in yellow-green block capitals.  Above, Always the Black Knight: A new kind of Fantasy Novel by Lee Hoffman is written in orange serifed font.   Down the left of the cover are listed the short stories included, with authors in orange and titles in yellow: Into the Land of the Not-Unhappies, by David R Bunch; I of Newton, by Joe W. Haldeman; Communication by Bob Shaw; Psychivore, by Howard L. Myers; The Time, by David Mason; The Prince of New York, by Benford & Littenberg.  Underneath is written Beginning in this issue: Science Fiction in Dimension, a new column by Alexei Ranshin.  To the right of the short stories list is a picture of a the Black Knight against an orange background. He is wearing black armor and gauntlets and a face-concealing helmet that resembles an insect head with pincers at mouth level. The main part of the helmet is black. The face has red decorations in an X shape that crosses at the nose and ends in the pincers.  The eyes are also outlined in red and above the X there are two small red circles on the forehead. he is  holding a sword out toward the viewer, held upward in salute. In the bottom right corner two much smaller people are looking up toward the Black Knight as though he is on a giant poster. One is a white woman with brown curly hair wearing a short burgundy tunic and belt.  Her legs are bare.  She is holding her right hand to her mouth in surprise.  Behind her, a brown-haired white man in a short yellow tunic is staggering in shock.  His right arm is against his forehead in a fainting pose, and his left hand is clutching the upper arm of the woman in front of him.
Cover art by Gray Morrow.

Continue reading [May 12, 1970] War and Peace (June 1970 Fantastic)

[January 30, 1963] Escape Velocity (February 1963 Analog)

[If you live in Southern California, you can see the Journey LIVE at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego, 2 p.m. on February 17!]


by Gideon Marcus

The latter half of January was filled with fanac (Fan Activity), and oh what a joy it was.  The third weekend in January, the Journey once again attended ConDor, San Diego's SFF convention.  And once again, we were guests, presenting on the state of current science fiction both Saturday and Sunday.  It was a chance to meet up with old friends and make new ones.  ConDor is always a fun event.

The highlight of that weekend, however, was a Saturday night trip up to San Juan Capistrano to watch Dick Dale and his Del-Tones perform.  If you're not familiar with the King of the Surf Guitar by now, he is easily the most exciting instrumental musician these days.  He puts on a hell of a show.

If the January's fanac was superlative, the February 1963 Analog, though beautifully illustrated by Schoenherr, was anything but.  Not that the stories were bad, mind you.  They just all had some significant flaw that kept them from being truly good. 

Code Three, by Rick Raphael

For those not in the know, "Code Three" is police-speak for a high speed chase.  It's an appropriate title for this Highway Patrol tale of the future, when North America is criss-crossed by mile-wide superhighways whose cars zoom at speeds of up to 400 miles per hour.  Raphael writes in a lovingly technical fashion that is oddly compelling but gives short shrift to its three human characters, who are so much cardboard.  I don't find Raphael's futuristic freeways particularly plausible, either, but they are fun to read about.  Three stars.

Hilifter, by Gordon R. Dickson

This is five sixths of a great yarn about a futuristic spaceship hijacker, who relies on daring and ingenuity to pull off a caper against all odds.  Dickson portrays his protagonist deftly and with subtlety, but the ending… hoo boy.  I'm not sure if Dickson wrote the expositional fatuity for editor Campbell, of if the editor sliced the original ending to bits, but it is the mustache on the Mona Lisa.  Three stars.

Something Will Turn Up, by David Mason

Stories with a lot of Beat jargon can often fall flat, but Mason does a good job of writing a poet/TV-repairman who pits forces against a hexed idiot box.  Cute.  Three stars.

"The Sound of Gasping", by Mel Sturgis

If you read (as I do) Aviation Week, then you're familiar with technical advertising.  It's made with the slick standards of any Madison Avenue product, but the subject matter is abstruse engineering.  Sturgis' piece is presumably on the growth and importance of technical advertising, as well as his experiences observing same at the recent convention, WestCon.  But if you get anything out of this article, you're doing better than me.  One star. 

(The title is an obscure reference indeed — a riff on Isaac Asimov's article The Sound of Panting in the June 1955 Astounding (that being this magazine's name before it became Analog).  The article was on the difficulty of keeping up with current technical literature.)

The Topper, by Arthur Porges

Cockroaches made sentient by radiation?  It must be a joke… right?  Well, probably.  A bit of improbable fluff, just long enough to entertain rather than annoy.  Three stars.

With No Strings Attached, by David Gordon (Randall Garrett)

A fellow markets an amazing new power source as a battery (it isn't, and you should know what it is right off) to prevent poaching and ensure exclusivity.  I've been around long enough to recognize most of Randy Garrett's pseudonyms, so I cracked into "David Gordon's" latest with trepidation.  Turns out Strings isn't bad (just devoid of women, like most Garrett stories).  Three stars.

Space Viking (Part 4 of 4), by H. Beam Piper

This last installment of Piper's latest is arguably the best of the bunch.  It contains the payoff of Prince Trask of Tanith's quest to forge a civilized empire out of the wreckage of the Old Federation.  Though Trask started as a Space Viking, plundering half-civilized planets, by the end of the book, his league of planets has surpassed the feudal Sword Worlds whence he came and is a local power center.

As I've stated in prior reviews, the problem with Viking is its sketchiness.  We hardly get to know any of the characters, interesting episodes are glossed over, giant spans of time are leaped without transition.  This is an epic series of books compressed to a novel-length outline.  I hope Piper gets a chance to expand on this genuinely interesting saga at some point, or perhaps open up his universe to collaborative efforts (has that ever been done before?)

As is, this is a four-star installment of a 3.25-star book.

Now it's time for the best part of the month, where we get to add up the numbers!  Galaxy is a clear winner at 3.3 stars, followed by F&SF with 3.1.  All of the other mags fell below the 3-star mark with Fantastic at 2.9, Analog at 2.8, Amazing at 2.4, and New Worlds at 2.3. 

But all of the magazines, with the exception of New Worlds, had at least one four-star story.  In fact, if you collected all the four and five-star stories, you could almost fill two magazines — twice as much material as last month. 

Finally, women wrote 3.5 of 37 fiction pieces.  Not a good showing, but again — better than last month.

Speaking of showings, next week I'll let you know if The Twilight Zone is worth watching in its new format (hint: so far, not so good…)

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Check your mail for instructions…]




[December 9, 1962] (January 1963, IF Science Fiction)

[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

Ah, Winter.  That sleepy time of the year when the air gets chillier (such as it ever gets chilly in Southern California), work slows down a bit, and shopping for the holidays picks up.  The first night of Hannukah is the 21st, and then, of course, there's the big mid-Hannukah holiday (named after Chris, the patron saint of presents). 

And it's when I renew my subscriptions for science fiction magazines since they generally offer Christmas discounts!

December marks the new year, at least as far as periodicals go.  January-dated issues show up the month before, so I've already gotten a sneak preview into the next year.  First up is is the January 1963 IF, and if this be a harbinger, then next year will probably be a decent one:

The Five Hells of Orion, by Frederik Pohl

I have to wonder if Pohl gets paid the same rate as everyone else for stories he writes, given that he is the editor.  Of course, he should.  Pohl has been a writer for decades, and he produces good stuff.  Orion follows the tale of an young astrogator shanghaied across a thousand light years by aliens bent on forging an alliance with humanity.  The first half is very good.  The spaceman must navigate a set of intelligence tests and we gradually come to understand the intentions of the extraterrestrials.  The payoff is rushed, however; perhaps this would have made a better novel.  Three stars.

The Shipshape Miracle, by Clifford D. Simak

An atypical piece by Simak in which an incorrigible criminal crosses paths with the brother to The Ship Who Sang, to his ultimate dismay.  Well-written, like everything Simak does, but unexceptional.  Three stars for the story, but five stars for the excellent art!

This Way to the Egress, by Andrew Fetler

Fetler returns to IF with his second vignette, a subtle piece about the last hours of a social deviant.  I suspect Fetler has a day job given the paucity of work he's published in our field.  Three stars.

Essay in Coherence, by Theodore Sturgeon

This piece on LASERs (single-wavelength light beams of incredible intensity) shows that Sturgeon may soon give Asimov a run for his money with science articles.  It's witty and informative, and probably will be the genesis of countless short stories involving this brand-new technology.  Five stars.

Podkayne of Mars (Part 2 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein

Part II of Heinlein's new juvenile(?) about Miss Poddy Fries and her space jaunt from Mars is a bit more readable than the last one, but it's still overwritten and gets bogged in detail.  This is the spiritual successor to The Menace from Earth I'd hoped to share with my daughter, but I don't think it's quite good enough.  Three stars for this installment.

Road Stop, by David Mason

A ghost story involving a haunted car…in a future when all cars are haunted by design.  The tale isn't plausible, in and of itself, but the world it paints feels like a possible tomorrow.  Three stars.

Fortress Ship, by Fred Saberhagen

Now here's an interesting one, by a newish author who's already turned out some good stuff.  Fortress introduces the concept of the "Beserker," giant automated robot ships created as doomsday weapons. They roam the galaxy, relics of a forgotten war, reducing populated planets into ashes.  It takes extraordinary courage and, more importantly, wit to defeat them.  But it is possible…  Four stars.

Captain of the Kali , by Gary Wright

The "IFirststory" competition netted a piece from freshly minted author Gary Wright.  A futuristic C.S. Forester is recruited to serve as guest admiral on an alien fleet of sail-driven warships.  A good first effort, though greater length and a few more sf trappings would have been nice.  Three stars.

When Whirlybirds Call, by Frank Banta

Last up is a satirical piece about a laconic big-game hunter and the coocoo-downdraft-peoplehawk-whirlybirds he is contracted to exterminate.  Cute while it lasts.  Three stars.

It's rare that I go from beginning to end of a mag and find no lousy stories.  This month's IF is solid (if not exceptional) entertainment, and as the cheapest of the digests (at 35 cents), it is definitely a bargain.