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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 18, 1969] A new look at dragons… (Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight)

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by George Pritchard

I warn you all that I am not the most up-to-date person when it comes to SFF. But a friend recommended this book after seeing I had a dragon-shaped object d’art, and thought I might like this. Soon after, I encountered the Traveller, who has kindly granted me a space here.

Far from our mutual friend’s reviews of its Analog run [q.v. for the plot synopsis], I found it an extremely engaging story, able to play in the waters of both science fiction and fantasy. I have occasionally run across McCaffrey’s work before, it seems—going back through reviews indicates I have indeed read one or two of the Helva stories in the past, though I have not revisited them. Not because they were bad, but like so many stories, they ended in a way that seemed comfortably complete.

In Dragonflight, not only was I engaged and fascinated the whole way through, but I wanted to reread it immediately upon finishing it. One of my favorite things was that there were so many stories, interlocking and existing beside each other. That was something that frustrated me about Dune: the characters seemed to not exist off of the page. It reminds me of a professor I had in college, pure Boasian, and he said that no people are truly illogical, but they work from a specific logic of their own. The rules that are there are not truly arbitrary, but are created for a reason, and once we understand that reasoning, we can move into asking whether the rule should be kept or not.

The author seems to be doing this as well, adding what works as need be, and removing what doesn’t. Depending on your feelings, this can be either exciting and intriguing, seeing what’s kept on versus scattered to the winds. This is a warning to the reader—Dragonflight has a variety of continuity errors, most notably between the first two sections. At least one off-page character switches gender, for instance. The threat and impact of perpetual violence comes up in the first section, but afterwards, there is a stronger emphasis on peaceful (or at least nonviolent) solutions. If you enjoyed Andre Norton’s Star Man’s Son / Daybreak – 2250 AD, I think you will enjoy this book very much.

In my opinion, what makes Dragonflight more of an SF novel than a fantasy one is how essential problems are solved. What SF truly is or is not will always be debated, but one of the main differences between SF and fantasy is based on the way things are solved. Fantasy tends to rely on outside intervention to carry the day, while SF relies on knowing how things work in order to experiment and negotiate a solution — in other words, applying the scientific method. What does it matter, then, if the characters wear tunics rather than spacesuits?

Beyond the dragons (and the watch wehrs), my favorite thing about Dragonflight was actually the various songs included in the story, and that things are largely taught through poems recited or sung. In my time, I have read many, many terrible poems crowbarred into stories, and I assure you, these are not bad at all. In fact, I have found myself singing many of the Dragonflight songs to myself since I started reading the book (to melodies of my own devise.)

Our mutual friend has made it clear what he dislikes about Dragonflight in his reviews of the Analog series, and I hope I have shed some light on what I loved about it. In the same way that the often disagreeing characters of Dragonflight compare and contrast the information that they have to contribute to the common good of their planet, I believe that our differing reviews can combine to provide a more complete picture of the book. In addition, it is my understanding that the serial omitted some of the book's material, and it's for certain that Campbell added a few editorial touches of his own—so if you're going to try Dragonflight out, please read the original!

4.5 stars.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 31, 1967] Surprise, surprise!  (January 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Evitability

There are some things you can count on in life: death, taxes, the North Vietnamese violating their own Christmas truce more than a hundred times.

But sometimes, life deals you surprises.  For instance, who knew that Hubert Humphrey was still alive?  Yet he must be kicking for he is currently in Africa on a goodwill tour of the continent.


And, as a fellow exclaimed when I gave him a preview of my thoughts on this month's issue of Analog, "A five star story in Analog?  Really?"

Well, it's true.  Read on and find out how it happened!

Expect the unexpected

The Bugs That Live at -423°, by Joseph Green and Fuller C. Jones

First off, a very long article on the teething troubles faced by the developers of the Centaur rocket.  This powerful second stage is used atop Atlas and Titan missiles to send big payloads to Earth's orbit and beyond.  To do so, it uses liquid hydrogen as a fuel, which entails a whole host of problems.

There is a lot of good information in here, but as is often the case in Analog science articles, its presentation is confusing.  There are no section breaks, so the whole thing runs together such that even I, a professional space historian, found my eyes glazing over.

I've no idea if "Joseph Green" is the same one who writes science fiction for UK magazines.  Probably not.

Anyway, three stars.

There is a Tide, by R. C. FitzPatrick and Leigh Richmond


by Kelly Freas

A couple of years ago, R. C. FitzPatrick started a series of stories about a surgeon who has perfected the technique of human brain transplants.  The first story was mildly interesting but prolonged, and the second veered heavily into the uncomfortable zone of eugenics.  After all, the transplant of a healthy brain requires a donor body…and it's hard to find ones that aren't inhabited, and don't even the feeble minded have the right to their own corpus?

Tide is the third story in the series, and by far the best.  There are two parallel, intersecting plots.  One involves a brilliant young physicist with inoperable cancer, who comes to the surgeon's sanatorium to wait for a suitable "transplant" candidate.  The second pertains to a self-styled "Duke" of organized crime.  Intelligent, ruthless, and aging, the mob boss wants a healthy body to get a new lease on life.  Surprisingly, the surgeon is willing to take the Duke's case, even before the mafioso breaks out the threats.

There are some important distinguishing characteristics between Tide and its predecessors.  For one, it is now stressed that only the truly brain-dead are eligible "donors".  It's not a matter of finding more value in a smart brain and a moronic one; only a virtually untenanted body is acceptable.  The writing is far more compelling in this piece, too, with lots of interesting asides that flesh out the characters and the world they inhabit.

But most importantly, the ethical issue is confronted head on.  It doesn't matter if the AMA or politicians or ethicists oppose the technology of brain transplants.  Once that genie is out of the bottle, someone will take advantage of it–if not the scrupulous, then the unscrupulous.  As the first (somewhat) successful human heart transplants of this month have shown, this technology is no longer a pipe dream.  We will someday have to face this issue.  I felt this story did a better job of addressing this problem than Niven's (still pretty good) The Jigsaw Man, which came out a couple of months ago.

So how did FitzPatrick manage to write such a good story when his others were middling or worse?  You'll notice the second name in the byline.  I have a strong suspicion that Leigh Richmond is responsible for most of this piece.  Certainly, she's the new variable.

Five stars.

… And Cauldron Bubble, by Bruce Daniels


by Kelly Freas

Of course, what goes up…

Bubble is a piece in epistolary form about a near future in which the United States has scientifically developed dowsing and other hocus pocus into a full cabinet department.  This would be a frivolous but diverting piece in F&SF, but knowing as I do that Analog's editor, John Campbell, actually believes in the efficacy of dowsing, well, it reads like propaganda.

Two stars.

The System, by Ben Bova

Bova offers up this two-page cautionary tale about the dangers of overdirection of scientific development.  It kind of steps on its own toes to make its message, though.

Two stars.

Such Stuff As Dreams …, by Sterling E. Lanier


by Kelly Freas

A dashing young space navy commander signs up to join a top secret spy organization that has the real power in the galaxy.  He is subjected to a number of tests, mostly to try his patience, before being given the final exam: a test of survival on an alien world.  The dangers are of monstrous, almost unbelievable proportion, and the candidate wonders why.

Of course, the title of the piece gives it away.

Competent but forgettable.  Three stars.

Dragonrider (Part 2 of 2), by Anne McCaffrey


by Kelly Freas

Lastly, the conclusion to what will likely be a three-part fixup novel.  The planet of Pern is faced with deadly peril: the Red Star approacheth, and with it, onslaughts of deadly rhysome "threads" that despoil all living things that they touch.  The only defense is fire-breathing, telepathic dragons flown by specially selected riders.  The problem is only one of the six dragonrider weyrs is still in operation, and that one is woefully understaffed.

F'lar, the head rider, thought he had a solution to this problem when he learned that Lessa, the rider of the dragon queen Ramoth, discovered the ability to ride her mount through time.  Last installment, the weyrleader sent his brother and a team back in time ten years to raise a new crop of dragons.  Unfortunately, living more than once in the same time is detrimental to one's health, and the endeavor was largely a failure.  Now, the only hope lies in the past, and an historical ballad about the wholesale departure of five weyrs some four hundred years ago–to destinations unknown…

There are the bones of an interesting novel here, although the gratuitous use of time travel as a plot point usually creates more problems than it solves.  Also, By His Bootstraps stories tend to be dull since you already know what's going to happen.

But the biggest problem here is that McCaffrey just isn't quite up to the story she's trying to tell.  A fine teller of short stories (The Woman in the Tower and The Ship Who Sang being standout examples), she struggles with the longer format.  Her characters are shallow and unpleasant.  The "romantic" relationship between Lessa and F'lar is disturbing when it isn't annoying.  Lessa's theme song might well be, "He Shook Me, and It Felt Like a Kiss", and the only ones privy to F'lar's love for Lessa are the readers since the weyrleader is determined never to show affection for his lady.  Ugh.

The doggerel that prefaces each chapter completes the mask of mediocrity on this promising tale.  Perhaps a combo of Jack Vance and Rosel George Brown (R.I.P.) could have done Dragonrider justice.  And maybe, as my colleague David suggests, a story between the first and second parts could have smoothed the transition (something to be fixed pending novelization?)

It really is a shame since it's rare to get a sweeping epic from the perspective of a woman, and the first part made me hopeful.  As is, this last segment, and the three-part story as a whole get three stars.

Doing the math

When you put it all together, the January 1968 issue of Analog ends up at 3.1 stars, just on the positive end of the ledger.  That actually puts it at the #2 spot for the month, just edging out IF (3.1), and losing to Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3).  The rest of this month's mags finished below the middling mark, with Fantastic at 2.9, New Writings at 2.8, and the abysmal new Beyond Infinity garnering just 1.5.  As a result, though six magazines were released, you could fill just two of them with four and five star stories.

The big surprise, though, is the resurgence in feminine participation.  Women contributed 13% of the new short fiction produced this month.  While still a low number, it is comparatively enormous.  And more surprisingly, the bulk of the woman-penned work (at least by pages) was published in Analog.

If even fuddy duddy Campbell can produce a progressive mag, I think we've got good times in store as the calendar turns to 1968!  Happy New Year indeed…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 30, 1967] One door closes… (December 1967 Analog and Australia joins the Space Race!)

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by Gideon Marcus

Mags or paperbacks?

The latest issue of Yandro has got a nice piece from Ted White reviewing the latest (and best?) tome on science fiction by Alexei Panshin.  The best part of White's article is his gentle but lengthy disagreement over the status of magazines versus paperbacks.  Both White and Panshin agree that the paperback novel format is The Next Big Thing (indeed, it's already here), but they disagreed on their role and prospects.

Panshin sees the science fiction digests as a continuation of the pulps, with all the negative connotations attached thereto.  He thinks they will eventually die.  White strongly disagrees.  Firstly, he notes that pulp does not equal bad–many extremely talented authors got their start cranking out a half million words for the old mags.  Indeed, White says magazines are now populated by a stable of established writers who have perfected their trade while the paperbacks, since they are a buyer's market, will publish anything.  Essentially, the books have taken the role the magazines had in the glut days of the early '50s.

White goes on to say that paperbacks are great, but 1) mags are the main outlet for short stories, and some authors are just better at the short form, and 2) editors keep mags going for the love of it.  This means they are likely to survive longer than purely economic considerations would suggest.

It's a good piece.  I'd give it a read.

The issue at hand

Speaking of which, should you give the strikingly covered latest issue of Analog a read?  Well, if you're one of the 30,000 subscribers who gets it delivered, sure go ahead.  If you're eyeing it at a newsstand, you'll want to read further…


by John Schoenherr

Dragonrider (Part 1 of 2), by Anne McCaffrey

In Weyr Search, the first installment of this serial-in-all-but-name, we were introduced to planet Pern.  It is a fraught former Earth colony, severed from its homeworld for thousands of years and ravaged periodically by rhizomic attacks from a nearby world.  The only defense against the "threads" are fire breathing dragons ridden by telepathically connected humans.

The problem is it's been four centuries since the last attack and the "weyrs" of dragronriders have been allowed to go fallow.  Only Benden Weyr is left, and it is woefully undermanned and underdragoned.

This latest installment in the saga of Pern opens up sometime after the last.  Lessa, heir to the Hold of Ruatha and now Weyrlady by virtue of her communion with the dragon queen Ramoth, has shacked up with the F'lar, head of the dragonriders.  Not because the two like each other, but because that's the law: Weyrladies and Weyrleaders must get hitched.

The thread has begun to fall, and the dragons are sorely taxed to meet the challenge, teleporting in and out of the frigid between to intercept the alien spores.

(Note: What do you call it when a dragon relieves itself between?  An ICBM!)

Despite the perseverence of F'lar's crew, the thread has the upper hand–until Lessa accidentally discovers that dragons not only can teleport and telepath, but they can also time travel, too!  (telechron?) As one might expect, this changes the whole equation…but maybe not for the better.


by John Schoenherr

I dunno.  I was expecting a rousing Battle of Britain story, with never so much being owed by so many to so few.  The thread would start gradually, the brave fighters would fight to their limits, and through ingenuity and tenacity, eventually win.  The story would get extra points for being by and from the viewpoint of woman, a rare thing in science fiction, particularly in the mag that Campbell built.

Instead, the story is badly paced, lurching from scene to scene.  There is no build-up to the thread strike, no mounting of tension; it is just suddenly upon them.  McCaffrey throws psionic conceits against the wall to see which ones stick (Lessa not only discovers time travel, but she is the only one who can communicate with all of the dragons–unlike the other riders, who can only communicate with their bonded dragon).

Beyond that, the two main characters are thoroughly unlikeable, by turns yelling and sardonically sniping at each other.  An element of violence suffuses their interactions, with F'lar and Lessa's couplings being referred to as not less than rape.  It all feels very Marion Zimmer Bradley.  I've said before that Lessa feels like a wish-fulfillment character for the author.  This hypothesis is only becoming more concerning.

What's frustrating is I feel there could be an interesting story here in the hands of someone else.  Jack Vance has already written a thematically similar tale with his The Dragon Masters.  It's clear that Campbell wants Pern to be the next Dune, complete with striking Schoenherr covers.  Thus far, I'd say McCaffrey isn't up to the task.

I was originally going to give the installment a bare three stars, but I think I've talked myself out of it.

Two stars.

The Destiny of Milton Gomrath, by Alexei Panshin

In this short short, an orphaned garbage collector spends his life convinced that his existence of drudgery is a mistake, and that someone, somehow, will rectify the mistake some day.

Turns out he's right, but that may not be a good thing.

This could be the start of a mildly entertaining Laumer novel.  Instead, it ends right after the first punchline.

Blink and you'll miss it: three stars.

Whosawhatsa?, by Jack Wodhams


by Kelly Freas

Picture a world where a sex change is as complete and easy as an appendectomy…and reversible, to boot!  Now picture the most complicated legal case possible involving a married couple seeking a divorce, both parties of which have swapped genders.  And there are children involved, multiple paramours, probate issues, and a Strong Public Interest.

On the one hand, this story is a drag.  The attempts to make it "funny", mostly consisting of endless scenes in which the judge assigned the case contemplates suicide rather than attempt presiding, are a flop.  Also, one gets the feeling that if women's lib had advanced in the story as much as medical science, most of the legal issues and many of the social ones would be irrelevant.  Particularly if 1) we could extend the legal rights currently afforded women in the federal government to all women, and 2) we could approach homosexuality with a less than medieval attitude.

That said…

There is very interesting exploration of what it means to change genders and the motivations that underly the desire to make such a transition.  While the situation is made as ludicrous as possible, the subjects, for the most part, are taken seriously.  I actually found the piece remarkably progressive, especially for Analog.  Certainly, I've never read anything like it before.

Three stars.

Beak by Beak, by Piers Anthony


by Kelly Freas

An alien spacecraft orbits the Earth, neither communicating nor responding to communications.  Meanwhile, a red parrakeet arrives at the home of a bird-keeper and joins his avian pet family for a time.

This is a pleasant pastoral piece that tries a little too hard to get its message across.  Still, I'll read something like this a thousand times before I'll read Chthon again.

Three stars.

Venus and Mercury—Locked Planets? by R. S. Richardson

Dr. Richardson writes so-so science fiction, but I generally quite like his science fact articles.  This one talks about the newly discovered rotation rates of Venus and Mercury, as well as what they might mean in relation to the history of the solar system.

On the one hand, I learned a bit, and that's significant given that I know a lot of astronomy.  On the other, I felt the pictures were worth a thousand words, and I found myself skimming a lot of the text.  In other words, maybe 20 pages wasn't necessary to make the point (God help us–next month's science article will be 10,000 words!).

Still, four stars.

A Question of Attitude, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

A recruit for the interstellar patrol finds himself in an increasingly difficult series of imaginary tests, ones that stick him in mortal peril in a simulated alien planet environment.  He seems to fail each one, ending up "dead", yet the Lt. Colonel in charge of training seems to think he has promise.

Normally, Anvil and Campbell are a toxic combination.  This time around, the story is kind of interesting.  I also rather enjoyed the nihilistic suggestion that the recruit's success is measured in the degree of his failure, and also that passing the tests only means his life is about to get worse.  It fits with the whole zeitgeist of our current engagement in Vietnam.  Even if Joseph Heller did it better.

Three stars.

Psi Assassin, by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

Lastly, yet another of Reynolds' tales of Section G, the interstellar agency whose job is to make sure no human planet ends up too backwards, lest the race become prey to an ominous but yet unmet alien menace.  This time, a psionic assassin is sent to kill the head of a Latin dictatorship.  The problem: agent Ronny Bronston has already dispatched said leader and taken his identity!

We have all the hallmarks of a Reynolds Section G story: endless historical lectures (that never seem to have any object lessons beyond the mid-20th Century), flippant personalities that leach the story of any gravitas, the lone female agent (Reynolds never lets us forget her sex), and a happy ending.

Reynolds has done decent work with this series, but less often than not.

Two stars.

Doing the math

So who's right?  Alex or Ted?  Based on this month, I'd give the nod to Ted.  While Analog was on the mediocre side, managing just 2.8 stars, other magazines fared much better.  Both Galaxy and New Worlds scored 3.2 stars.  Fantasy and Science Fiction was also pretty good (3.1).  If was a bit tired, but par for the course (2.8), and while Amazing's 2.7 score puts it at the bottom of the pack, it actually is on an upward trend.

You could fill two magazines with all the superior stuff that came out this month, which is a good crop.  Sadly, McCaffrey wrote the only woman-penned piece, and it wasn't very good (though it was better than Poul Anderson's novella in Galaxy).

I give magazines at least a few more years…

But that's not all we have for today.  All the way from Australia comes this exciting stop press in the world of space news!:


by Kaye Dee

“Australia Joins the Space Club!”

Although Australia has supported American and British/European space efforts over the past decade, just yesterday, on 29 November we finally gained our own membership of the Space Club by placing our first satellite, WRESAT-1, into orbit. I’ve written articles previously about the first satellites of France and Italy, so it gives me great pride to report on Australia’s own satellite launch.


WRESAT-1 under construction in at the WRE

WRESAT-1 (WRE Satellite) has been a joint project of the Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) and the University of Adelaide, with significant support from the United States. In 1966, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) offered Australia a spare Redstone rocket from the ARPA-led Project Sparta programme at Woomera as a satellite launcher. Sparta has been the final phase of a US/UK/Australian re-entry physics research programme commenced in 1960, investigating radar-echo phenomena created by re-entering missile warheads. The Sparta team even offered to prepare and fire the Redstone for the WRE.

“A Rush Job!”

The scientists and engineers involved in the Australian upper atmosphere research programme took advantage of the proposal to move their instruments from sounding rockets to satellite. However, the Sparta launch offer placed the satellite project on a very tight schedule, as the spacecraft would have to be ready for launch by the end of 1967, when the Sparta project would be complete and the Americans returning home. So, in just 11 months Australia’s, WRESAT has been designed, constructed, tested and was finally launched on 29 November. Its development has been an example of local “make-do” ingenuity, as much of the testing equipment needed was not available in the country.

Australia’s first satellite has been designated WRESAT-1 because my WRE colleagues hope that it will have many successors. Australia doesn’t yet have a space agency like NASA, but the WRE is putting a proposal to the Australian Government for a national space programme, and we hope that it will be funded, with the WRE formally designated as the Australian national space agency.


Diagram showing the internal layout of WRESAT’s systems and scientific instruments

Given the short development period, WRESAT’s scientific payload consists of instruments similar to those already flown in the Australian sounding rocket programme conducted in conjunction with the University of Adelaide Physics Department. The university team has developed a suite of instruments to study solar and ultra-violet radiation, atmospheric ozone and molecular oxygen density, as well as measuring the temperature of the solar atmosphere.

“Going Up From Down Under”

After an aborted launch attempt on the 28th, the Redstone lifted-off flawlessly on the 29th to place WRESAT into a polar orbit, where it is being tracked, and its telemetry signals recorded, by NASA’s Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition Network – a service also generously provided free to Australia.


WRESAT soars on its way to orbit from Launch Area 8 at Woomera

Because of its short development time, a solar array could not be designed for WRESAT, and the satellite is only battery-powered. This means it will have a very short operational lifespan, but we expect it to gather a large amount of data on the upper atmosphere that will provide a check on the data already gathered by sounding rockets.

Let’s hope that WRESAT-1 marks the start of Australia’s true Space Age, and that this country will soon “shine as brightly as the Southern Cross”, as President Johnson has put it in his congratulatory telegram on our first national launch!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 30, 1967] Ain't that good news! (October 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

End of Summer

The long, hot summer is over, and with it a general cooling across the country, both in temperature and in tension.  While San Francisco enjoyed a summer of love, with folks as disparate as Eric Burdom and Scott McKenzie coming to just be-in, the rest of the nation was rocked by civil strife, strikes, and protest.


Ashes in Cambridge, MD


Teachers on strike

And why not?  The cities have been bubbling kettles for a long time, and too many mayors and councilmen are ignoring the problem.  Too many workers have been stiffed and neglected.  Too many young men, too young even to vote, have lost their lives in Vietnam.

Now, the strikes are largely settled in the workers' favor.  The racial problems, well they're still there, but harder to ignore, and with the departure of sultry weather, tempers are a little less frayed.  Vietnam…well, they had a free election didn't they?  Surely things must be getting a little better.

Surely.

In any event, enjoy the respite.  We're going to need our strength.

So goes the nation…

The nation of science fiction, that is.  SF had a rocky summer, with a slew of lackluster magazines, inconsistent books, and of course, endless reruns on TV.  I'm happy to report that the dog days are over, at least for now: not only has it been a good month for SF mags in general, but the latest issue of Analog is the best in more than a year and a half.


by John Schoenherr

Weyr Search, by Anne McCaffrey


by John Schoenherr

Jack Vance and Frank Herbert have made sweeping, quasi-fantastic tableaus the in thing.  Universes that feel thousands of years old, with venerable, somewhat tattered institutions vying for power in a decadent setting.  Now Ann McCaffrey, best known for her The Ship Who series, has tossed her hat in the ring.

Pern is a planet somewhere in the galaxy, once settled by Earth, but long since forgotten.  It is a verdant, pleasant world save for one feature.  Every few hundred years, a rogue planet comes close enough in its eccentric orbit to launch deadly spores of "thread".  These burrow into Pern's soil, destroying native life, scourging farms and people.

To combat them, humans formed a sort of treaty with the native intelligent life: sapient dragons, with whom their riders bond telepathically.  These dragons not only breathe fire, but they can teleport.  This makes them formidable defenders, indeed!  Clearly, they once dominated Pernian politics.  Long ago, there were six "Weyrs"–barren fortresses wherein lived the dragons and their human brethren.  From these strongholds, Pern was kept safe from the baleful "red star".

But humans have short memories, and when Weyr Search begins, it has been several centuries since the last orbital conjunction.  Human politics have supplanted other concerns, and the "Holds", fortresses against human incursion, reign supreme.  Only one Weyr, called Benden, remains in operation–a shabby shadow of itself.

Nevertheless, with the rogue planet approaching, and the queen of dragons recently dead, it is imperative that the Benden riders find a new rider for the next queen, one who has the requisite psychic talents and the necessary strength of character.  Can any such person exist in these fallen times, when even proud Ruatha hold, whose royal family's blood once ran with a strong vein of dragon talent, has become a wreck under the cruel ministrations of Lord Fax of the High Reaches?

Well, of course the answer is yes.  It's obvious from the first page, told from the point of view of Lessa, Ruathan scullery girl, who is secretly scion of the dead lineage.  Weyr Search is not a story to surprise, a tale of twists and turns.  It is not even really a complete story; it is clear there will be sequels.  What it is, however, is an intriguing setup for a story.

As such, it really succeeds or fails on its writing.  McCaffrey is better at her job than Herbert, whose reach regularly exceeds his grasp.  She is less talented than Vance (who wrote a somewhat reminiscent tale several years ago called The Dragon Masters).  The first portion of the story is a bit stiltedly told, and Lessa comes across as something of a caricature, a wish-fullfilment vehicle akin to Cinderella ("I may seem a nothing, but I'm really a secret princess-queen!") Not that this kind of character can't work–after all, look at Roan in Earthblood, but Laumer and Brown did a better job with it.  And, of course, there are the tics that sold the work to Campbell: psionics and the idea of people being genetically special.

Nevertheless, the writing gets better as it goes along, and the concepts are interesting.  I've read some great stuff by McCaffrey, and I've read some tepid stuff by McCaffrey.  This installment gets four stars.  We'll see how the serial (in all but name) does as a whole when its done.

(Note: There's a bit in the prologue where Pern's "Yankee" colonists are mentioned.  I'll bet my bottom dollar this was a Campbell edit, as nowhere in the rest of the story is the race of the colonists suggested.  Heaven forbid anyone but WASPs settle the galaxy…)

Toys, by Tom Purdom


by Leo Summers

I'm always happy to see a piece from my good friend, Tom.  This one involves a cop duo (male and female) taking on a gang of pre-teenage kids, who have taken their families hostage using a host of homegrown weapons: genetically engineered apes and tigers, chemistry-set psychedelic drugs, erector-set shock guns.  The work of the police is complicated by their standing directive to minimize casualties.

A little insight from the author:

I have a lot of thoughts on Toys. I gave a talk on it at a Philadelphia Science Fiction Society meeting this month.

Basically, it's built around three ideas.

The first came from a John Campbell editorial I read around 1950 or 51.  What are you going to do, Campbell asked, when an angry teenager can blow up a city merely by twisting a pair of wires in a certain way?  It's a thought experiment that gets at the heart of some of the issues raised by technology.  I reduced the problem to a world where children have access to all kinds of potentially lethal technologies.

The second big idea is economic growth.  I got interested in that years before, and it figures in many of my stories. The standard of living in the industrialized nation has been doubling two or three times per century since about 1700.  The children in my story are lower middle class or might even be considered poor, but they have access to things like home genetic kits.  They are poor in land, however, living in a five story house on a narrow plot.  And lots of other kids have a lot more.

The third element is a Utopian police force.  In a world with so much potential for violence, you need a first class police force and a society willing to pay for highly trained, well educated cops.  Edelman [the viewpoint character] understands that he is supposed to resolve this situation without harming the kids.  He takes bigger risks than he has to because he is responsible for the kids' welfare.

Thus, both utopian and anti-utopian predictions.  Purdom excels at these concepts, painting a future world with realistic touches.  For instance, complete equality of the sexes (exemplified by the cop partners), and one of the few stories that takes monetary inflation into account ($50,000 a year is a poor salary; $200,000 is pretty good.)

Where Tom always has trouble is combat scenes.  It's no coincidence that his best works, like I Want the Stars and Courting Time, focus on people rather than fighting.

Toys is essentially a non-stop fight sequence.  Thus, three stars.

Political Science—Chinese Style, by Research Group of the Theory of Elementary Particles, Peking

Editor Campbell offers up the preamble to a Chinese paper on subatomic particles, the realm of the "quark".  The actual paper is not included; instead, we get many pages of explanation as to the philosophy that let to the composer's discoveries–all guided by the pure thought of their leader Mao Tse Tung.

It's pretty obvious that such folderol is necessary to get anything published in China.  I'm sure the Nazi and Stalinist publishers had to do the same.  What's special about this paper is that the science is reportedly "first-class".  Which makes me sad that the whole paper wasn't included.  Subatomic physics is fascinating stuff.

Anyway, it's short and interesting for what it is.  And given the quality of fiction in this mag, I didn't miss the (hit and miss) science column too much.

Three stars.

The Judas Bug, by Caroll C. MacApp


by Kelly Freas

C.C. MacApp, using his first name rather than an initial for some reason, offers up this tale of a colony in peril.  Two settlers of a new planet have been found dead in the field, their faces, throats and hands gnawed away.  The fauna of the planet just don't seem harmful enough to be the culprit; Mechanic James Gruder worries that a human conspiracy is involved.

This is a perfectly competent story, although I found the resolution a little rushed.  Three stars.

Free Vacation, by W. Macfarlane


by Leo Summers

I really liked the concept behind this story: Terran convicts are offered a choice–imprisonment, or teleportation to a roughhewn world as conscripted explorers.  Day Layard, a brand new draftee, is paired with an old hand, who proves invaluable in keeping him alive.  It turns out Layard's partner is particularly happy with his lot in life; it gives him the opportunity to seek out signs of the "Prodromals", the race of beings that preceded humanity in the galaxy.

This is another tale that runs along just fine until the somewhat rushed ending.  An extra page or two would have perhaps garnered a fourth star.  As is, a pleasant three.

Pontius Pirates, by J. T. McIntosh


by Leo Summers

The planet of Molle is a rich, advanced world, with nothing to hide.  So why is it the moment Jack Sheridan makes planetfall from Earth, he is under 24 hour surveillance?  Nothing formal, mind you–just subject to the attentions of four jovial fellows eager to get him drunk, and a pretty young girl employed to spend the night with him…or at least tell him she did when he wakes up with no memory of what went on the previous day.

Could it be that Molle is actually the home base for the piratical Buccaneers, and the surveillance is to make sure no one gets too close to the secret? That's certainly why Sheridan, actually an Interstellar Patrolman, was dispatched to the planet.

On the surface, this is just a secret agent thriller.  The plot is interesting, but nothing noteworthy.  The average reader will probably enjoy it and move on.

As a writer, I found much to admire.  The thing is, Jack Sheridan is never wrong.  He has his working theories, he tests them, and they always turn out to be more or less as expected.  There are plenty of stories with characters like these, from Retief to James Bond, and they quickly run into one or both of two issues:

1) When you know the hero is always right, where's the tension?

2) When the hero knows he's always right, he tends to become insufferable.

McIntosh, who has been writing for two decades now, neatly avoids both pratfalls.  The mystery is unfolded piece by piece, and at each juncture, Sheridan is plagued with doubt.  He doesn't know if he's right, he lists all the reasons he could be wrong, and he explains what he'll do in that event.  The thing is, he isn't some schnook like Bond who stumbles upon the truth.  He lands on Molle with enough information to be pretty sure it's the Buccaneer base.  After that, it's logical and plausible deduction.

We also learn a lot about Sheridan, his character and his values, without ever explicitly being told about them.  It's a lovely piece of oblique writing, all showing and no telling.

So, well done, Mr. McIntosh.  Perhaps others in Campbell's stable can learn from your example (*ahem* Chris Anvil).  Four stars.

Doing the math

With a star-o-meter rating of 3.4 stars, Analog tops its competition.  But competition it did have!  New Worlds and Fantasy and Science Fiction both scored 3.3, and even Amazing got 3.0.  Only IF and
Galaxy lagged, with 2.8 and 2.7, respectively.

If you took all the four and five star stories, you could fill two slim digests.  The only really sad statistic is that, out of 33 new pieces of fiction, just one was written by a woman.  Looks like women have struck out for books and screenplays, where the money's better.  A smart move, but not a happy sign for magazines in general.

Nevertheless, let's dwell on the positive.  Good job, Analog, and thanks for a happy punctuation to the month of September!

Speaking of books by women…

You've probably heard of Marie Vibbert, one of the biggest names in SFF magazines (of the far-future year 2022).  Her book, The Gods Awoke, is what I've been calling "a new New Wave masterpiece":

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




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