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Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 31, 1970] Seed stock (April 1970 Analog)

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

It's the end of the month, and that means the latest Analog is on tap.  This one starts and even mids with the usual drudgery… but the latter third breeds a little hope.

April 1970 cover of 'analog SCIENCE FICTION SCIENCE FACT' featuring a blue man in a large visor helmet with a single eye decal pointing over the shoulder of a hooded wizard writing in a notebook, wearing a large medallion. The caption reads HERE, THERE BE WITCHES EVERETT B> COLE
by Kelly Freas

Here, There Be Witches, by Everett B. Cole

Frequently, some author will tailor a story to Analog editor John Campbell's particular idiosyncracies hoping to get some of that sweet, sweet four-cents-a-word payout.  In this case, Everett Cole has aimed at this kooky premise: the reason why humans didn't develop psionic powers (more than we have) is that true adepts were burned as witches.

And so, in this lead novella, we have a planet of exact humanoids going through their equivalent of the 17th Century.  The nobles are finding witches right and left because bumping off the psychics (who, naturally, are doing a bit better than the average population) is a lucrative business.  It's up to Hal Carlsen, agent of a galactic "Philosophical Corps", to alter the course of the planet's history.

Black and white image of aclose up man in a goggle-like mask and helmet with antennae. His hands are raised and clasped and smoke raises from one of his fingers on the righthand page the sillouette of a vulture sits in front of the moon in front of a body of water. The caption reads HHERE, THERE BE WITCHES
by Kelly Freas

Obviously, Cole succeeded at his mission—securing a check for several hundred dollars.  He does not accomplish much else, though.  The tale is by-the-numbers, and the premise is dumb on multiple levels.  Plus, I really didn't need several pages luridly describing the tortures that the accused had to endure.

Two stars.

Quiet Village, by David McDaniel

Black and white image of a man perched on one knee with a futuristic looking blaster in his hand. He carries a bow on his back. The caption reads QUIET VILLAGE Force- like any other tool- is itself neither Good nor Evil. The purpose- not the thing- determines value! DAVID MCDANIEL Illustrated by Vincent diFate
by Vincent DiFate

Three hundred years after The Plague eliminates most of the human population, pockets of America are slowly clawing their way back to civilization.  Their progress is hindered by rats—bandits clad in bullet-proof "street suits" and wielding blasters.  When a San Gabriel Valley community is threatened by a pack of rats, a contingent of Scouts is hired to flush them out.

Boy Scouts, that is.

This intriguing set-up quickly devolves into a competently told but otherwise uninteresting combat tale.  I suppose the "moral" is that, in times of trouble, a unified, God fearing organization like the Scouts will keep America going, like the Catholic church in the Dark Ages.  Or something.

A low three stars.

A Case of Overprotection, by Hazel Moseley

Ms. Moseley offers up a history of the Food and Drug Administration, notes its virtues, and decries its recent cautious slowness.  I appreciated the data, but I disagree with the sentiment.

Three stars.

Black and white caroon drawing of two surgeons in front of a large body on a table, organs clearly visible. Caption reads: DEPARTMENT OF DIVERSE DATA GASTRO- INTESTINUS DIAPANUS or GLASS GUT E.T. from Polaris IV, quite friendly as long as you keep him well fed. A favorite object of research among E.T. biologists, since no X ray is required to study his metabolism.
by David Pattee

The Siren Stars (Part 2 of 3), by Nancy and Richard Carrigan

Black and white image of scantily clad male and female figures crawling among the weeds in front of a wooden house. A man in dark clothing and a large brimmed hat holding a large rifle stands in front of the structure. In the foreground is an overturned wooden boat. The caption reads THE SIREN STARS
by Kelly Freas

Here we are again with the bland adventures of bland adventurer John Leigh.  This time around, after the failure of John's attempt to infiltrate his own base (as practice for a mission to investigate a Soviet facility which has received signals from an alien race), he meets up with Elizabeth Ashley.

She is a woman.

Oh!  You want to know more about her?  Well, in many ways, she is like every woman in the world: appreciates expensive clothes, startles easily, and has preternatural intuition.  In other ways, she's most unlike women.  For instance, she is very smart—despite being a very beautiful woman.

You think I'm being overly snide?  Read this installment, if you can.  Virtually every description and depiction of Dr. Ashley either emphasizes her femininity (explicitly) or contrasts this or that character trait with stereotypical femininity.  It's ridiculous.

Anyway, Ashley is an astronomer who came up with the hypothesis that maybe the ultimate evolution of intelligence is the creation of sapient machines.  And maybe said machines would conquer the universe by sending signals to other smart species that promise great technological increases.  And maybe those technologies are actually a Trojan horse, and if they are built, the hapless dupes will realize too late that they've actually created alien robots, who will take over.  Rinse.  Repeat.

Well, Ashley obviously struck a nerve with that one—foreign mooks first try to kill her, then succeed in abducting her.  Because nothing hides a cunning plan like offing the one person who has made casual surmises (without evidence, mind you) of the truth behind it.

The Carrigans also offer up some local color, showing off the places they have obviously seen personally.  There are some truly insipid love scenes, including a very brief peek inside Ashley's thoughts, just so the reader knows she is genuinely attracted to John and isn't just some kind of enemy agent.  We also get some Fleming-lite action sequences.

Things end with John now tasked to go to the USSR not to see which way their radio dish is pointed (it's a moot point—the Americans have also gotten the Lorelei signal; one astronomer has gone insane) but to destroy any technology derived from it.  Also, to extract a (presumably beautiful, and definitely female) defector.

Well, at least the Carrigans acknowledged (tardily) that satellite photography was an easier way to see which way the Russkie dish was pointed…

Two stars.

Come You Nigh: Kay Shuns, by Lawrence A. Perkins

Black and white image of a man clad in white looking angrily at a sheet of paper in front of a desk of machinery.
by Craig Robertson

A two-man fighter craft of the Tellurian International Space Force is disabled by a Zhobehr magnetic beam and left adrift in the solar system.  This turns out to be a blessing in disguise as the crippled craft winds up near the enemy aliens' secret local base.  But how to broadcast their findings to Earth without 1) giving away their position, and 2) letting the aliens know they've been found out?

The clue is in the title.  It's a cute story that, thankfully, goes no longer than it needs to.

Three stars.

The Life Preservers, by Hank Dempsey

Black and white image of a futuristic two-turret tank with a castle drawn in the background.
by Vincent DiFate

Here we've got another story about mechanical teleportation by "Hank Dempsey" (Harry Harrison in disguise).  This time, it's set much further in the future.  Teleporters have been situated on planets throughout the galaxy for so long that they've had time to be abandoned for centuries. 

Preservers is the story of Emergency Plague Control, a corps of doctors whose job is to ensure the health of humanity.  Alien planets have not spawned harmful diseases—the ecosystems aren't similar enough.  But isolated groups of humans evolve new spins on old epidemics, and its up to the EPC to keep them in check.

And so, a team is dispatched to a primitive world, regressed for a thousand years, to do a check-up.  Unwittingly, they bring death with them…

It's a pretty good tale, more nuanced than I had expected, and told in Harrison's taut style.  Not brilliant, but worthy.

Three stars.

Seed Stock, by Frank Herbert

Dark image of a hand reaching to sow seeds on the surface of an obfuscated planet. A ship or satelite glows in the foreground. The caption reads 'seed stock'.
by Vincent DiFate

A few months ago, I attempted a book by Rex Gordon called The Yellow Fraction.  The premise was that a colony world had divided into two factions: the Greens advocated terraforming the world to be a paradise for humans; the Blues said the settlers should adapt to the planet.  (There was also a minority group that said the planet was no good, and they should just up and leave—the yellows.)

Frank Herbert's newest story presents the Green vs. Blue debate in a much terser, much more compelling fashion.  It is told from the point of view of Kroudor, a laborer with an instinctive knack for the rhythms of their new world.  While the highfalutin scientists struggle in vain to make their imported crops and livestock survive in increasingly difficult conditions, Kroudor and his wife, the technician Honida, find and cultivate local resources.

The result presages survival for the colony… if not quite that which had been envisioned when the group left Earth several years prior.

This is probably the best thing I've read by Herbert.  I imagine he sold it to Campbell because it has a bit of the anti-egghead bias the editor enjoys so much, but it is a story that would have fit in any other mag.

Four stars.

The Reference Library, by P. Schuyler Miller

Schuy sings the praises, this month, of Poul Anderson's future history as told in the tapestry of his dozens of published tales.  The occasion is the novel releases of Satan's World and The Rebel Worlds, both of which Miller liked, but we were less impressed with.  He likes the new collection Beyond the Beyond, too, whose contents include many stories we've covered on the Journey.

There's a neat bit about how SF veteran Alan E. Nourse is chartering a flight to Heidelberg's Worldcon this August—might be worth it for you folks who want to hop the Pond to West Germany.

Of Eight Fantasms and Magics, a Jack Vance collection of works that fit in the gap between SF and Fantasy, Schuy says, "If you don't like this kind of thing, stay away from it.  If you do, sample Vance: he is a master of the genre."

He also enjoys the 18th volume of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: "It's the best F&SF anthology in a long time."  This tallies with our assessment—that magazine finished at the top of the heap last year when we awarded the Galactic Stars

Finally, he lauds the A. Bertam Chandler collection, Catch the Star Winds, and contemplates making an encyclopedia for all of the Galactic Rim stories (whose main protagonist is Commodore John Grimes).

Signs of sprouting?

A dark haired woman is shown operating a large boxy computer, an IBM 2265 terminal.
a woman working at an IBM 2265 terminal

All told, this month's issue scores just 2.8 stars.  The concluding pages were such a comparatively pleasant experience that I'm left with a bit of optimism.  Sure, there's a Campbellian smugness that suffuses all that gets submitted; yet, the best authors seem to overcome that particular editorial tic.  Of course, this also suggests that Analog would get even better with a different man at the tiller.  That doesn't seem to be forthcoming any time soon…

As for the other sources of short fiction this month, we had a bumper crop.  From best to worst, there was:

Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.8), Fantastic (3.1), Galaxy (2.9), IF (2.8), Nova 1 (2.7), New Worlds (2.5), Orbit 6 (2.4), and Vision of Tomorrow (2.2)…and Andre Norton's collection of old and new stories: High Sorcery.

Individually, no outlet was outstanding (except for F&SF), but there was enough 4 and 5 star work to fill three full digests.  Also, women contributed 12% of the new fiction, which is on the higher side (again, thanks to Norton).

I suppose if you cast lots of seed, you're bound to get sprouts.  It just takes a lot of stock for this strategy to work.  And a lot of subscription fare!

Thank goodness books bought by the Journey are tax deductible.

Aren't they?

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]


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