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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 12, 1969] My country, right or… (November 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

Justice delayed

The new Supreme Court, whose prime continuity to the old one is the preservation of the name "Warren" in its Chief Justice, is now in session—minus one Justice…for now.

Warren Burger has taken over from Earl Warren, and one can already feel the rightward lurch of our nation's highest judiciary.  Now, President Richard Milhouse Nixon plans to careen the Supreme Court in an even more conservative direction.

Tricky Dick's nomination to fill the seat left when LBJ's nominee, Abe Fortas, didn't get the job, is Clement F. Haynsworth.  Haynsworth is currently a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Atlantic coast of the Upper South), a position he has held since being appointed their by Ike in 1957.  The Senate Judiciary Committee on October 9th approved 10-7 the consideration of Justice Haynsworth.

The road ahead is far from clement for Haynsworth, however.  For one, he bought 1000 shares of Brunswick (the bowling company) just before publishing a ruling he helped make on said company.  After the heightened scrutiny on ethics that accompanied the Fortas nomination, Haynsworth is under an intense microscope.  Labor groups maintained that he should have recused himself from a case involving a textile mill; he owned shares of a company that did business with the mill.

Critics of the storm say this is just tit for tat after the Fortas fight, rather than for any substantive reason.  What's really at stake is Haynsworth is a reactionary.  He affirmed the decision by local authorities to close the Prince Edward County schools to avoid integration, he upheld the constitutionality of school voucher programs used to fund segregated private schools, and he supported the management of the Darlington Manufacturing Company in South Carolina when it closed down to avoid its employees unionizing.

Will Haynsworth make it on the bench?  It's hard to imagine he will.  If a Republican minority was sufficient to deny Fortas a seat, then a Democratic majority will surely roadblock Haynsworth.  If and when this happens, the question is whether Nixon will double down or conciliate.  At stake this season are decisions on the tax exempt status of churches, the death penalty, punitive drafting of war protesters, and the rights of Black Americans.

Stay tuned…

Entertainment delayed

Just as we're playing the waiting game to see the direction jurisprudence goes in America, so the latest issue of Galaxy science fiction makes it clear that the future of SF, particularly in the pages of the former queen of the genre, is as yet uncertain.


by Jack Gaughan (as are, presumably, all of the other illustrations in this magazine)

Downward to the Earth (Part 1 of 4), by Robert Silverberg

The amazingly prolific Silverbob begins a serial that has elements of Delany (the incorporation of music and the choppy presentation…which may be a printing error knowing Galaxy) and Zelazny (the wild, decadent planet and weary protagonist).

Edmund Gunderson used to run Holman's World, a jungle planet with two sentient races—philosophical elephants and brutish apes—in order to collect the serpent worm venom that is a fundamental catalyst of tissue regeneration.

Ten years later, Holman's World is now Belzegor, reverted to the ownership of the pachyderm nildoror.  The human infrastructure is rapidly succumbing to tropical rot, and who knows how long humanity will keep contact with the world?

Amid this backdrop of decay, Gunderson returns to the planet he ruled…purpose unknown.  All we know is that his mission lies somewhere in the backwoods, and he requires nildoror permission to go there.  We find out Gunderson is a bigot who cannot quite abide the idea that the nildoror are sentient beings rather than animals, but he does seem to be trying to break free of his bigotry.  We also learn that the nildoror are now closely associating with the primate sulidor and even employing them as servants.  Finally, it is revealed that drinking raw serpent venom causes the brief transfer of souls between alien and human.  Whether this is imaginary or real is not yet known.

Silverberg has set up a lot of pieces, but not much has happened yet.  The writing is competent, though not gripping.  As with the Haynsworth decision, the jury is still out on this one.

Three stars.

Pennies, Off a Dead Man's Eyes, by Harlan Ellison

Old man Jedediah Parkman is dead at the age of 82, and all of the people he's helped over the years are coming to his funeral to pay respects.  This includes an alien with the power of camouflage and lethal envelopment, who is passing for human for his survival.  At the funeral, he witnesses a beautiful white woman (most out of place given the part of town and the race of Parkman and the other attendees) who takes the silver coins from atop Parkman's eyes.

What is her motivation?  Why is she there?  And just what connection does our storyteller have to Parkman?

This is one of the few Ellison stories that harnesses the writer's great talent to say something beyond what's on Harlan's mind/heart at the moment.  It's also real SF, unlike so much of his work.

Five stars.

The Dirty Old Men of Maxsec, by Phyllis Gotlieb

Outside: the City.  Cramped, stagnant, spartan.  Its only compensation: the citizens are immortal, thanks to "the J."

Inside: MaxSec.  A maximum security community populated by criminals whose only punishment is to be deprived of immortality.

The paradox: the people of MaxSec are reportedly happier, freer, and more innovative than the people of the City.

The story: Fenthree is a somewhat cynical citydweller, blackmailed into infiltrating MaxSec to find its secrets.  He is quickly found out and imprisoned, to be an unwitting vessel for MaxSec's revenge on the outside world.

From there, the perspective of the story grows, now including Corrigan, strongman of MaxSec who is the architect of the retribution plan.  To Linnaeus Ganzer, nearly 400 years old, developing the creeping death for Corrigan's plan.  To Luz, the last lovely woman in MaxSec, catalyst to plans within plans.

A meandering, occasionally flippant, occasionally opaque piece, Gotlieb's is an interesting counterpoint to last month's "The Rock", covering the concept of a coordinated prison exile a la Australia of a couple centuries ago.  That it also manages to make some interesting comments on the effects of immortality on society at the same time is impressive, although the two speculative threads do not interweave perfectly.

Three stars.

How to Kidnap a Moon, by Robert S. Richardson

Richardson is an astronomer whom we normally find in the pages of Analog.  This article details the energy concerns for bringing the two moons of Mars into orbit around the Earth for easier access.

There isn't much discussion of how one might practically arrange such things—it's all just orbital mechanics and erg tabulations.  It is also unclear how it would be easier to bring the rocks here for investigation rather than exploring them in situ.  On the other hand, if we're ever to mine Phobos and Deimos (or by extension, any of the asteroids), I suppose there might be merit to bringing the planetoids home.  If anything, they could be hollowed out and turned into natural space stations.

Anyway, three stars.

Broke and Hungry, No Place to Go, by Ron Goulart

A man whose job is to tell the computer which unnecessary mouths on the dole to eliminate (in the pursuit of efficiency) finds that he is now on the chopping block.

This is the kind of minor tale we might have found in one of the minor magazines last decade.  Ron is phoning it in.

Two stars.

For Your Information (Galaxy Magazine, November 1969), by Willy Ley

In this posthumous piece, Willy Ley discusses the suggestion that the death of the dinosaurs was caused by an excess of radiation—from the periodic flipping of the magnetic poles or the explosion of a nearby supernova.  He seems unconvinced, and he even goes so far as to say that the extinctions might not even have been that sudden.

Three stars.

Dead End, by Norman Spinrad

Another bleak man-on-the-dole story.  This time, a fellow who is dissatisfied with having nothing meaningful to do, decides to go to the last natural preserve in the country.  It is a 10 mile by 10 mile stretch of wilderness with none of the comforts of home.  When he decides he isn't enjoying being cold and hungry any more than he was enjoying being bored and fed, he tries to summon a recovery robot.  But his call bracelet doesn't work…may never have been designed to work.  A trap to weed out malcontents?

Mack Reynolds has extrapolated this kind of world with far more success, and Bob Sheckley has written satires like this with far more wit and barb.  Spinrad can be great, but this is lesser Spinrad.

Two stars.

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

Last up, a very short final installment of the third (or second, depending on how you count them) Dune book.  The plotters against Paul Atreides offer him a ghola (resurrected clone) of the newly dead Chani, Paul's true love.  Knowing this will make Muad'Dib a thrall to the shadowy interests of a myriad of anti-Imperial organizations, Paul refuses.  Then he goes out into the desert to die, as is the fitting end for blind Fremen.  The Emperor leaves behind a newborn pair of twins, one male and one female, both fully sapient in the same manner that Paul's sister was conceived, Alia's mother having been high on the spice melange at the time.

In the end, this is very much a bridge book.  All of its bits could have been condensed to a five-page faux encyclopedia article included at the beginning of the next book, with very little action and not a whole lot of interest, save the mildly engaging Duncan Idaho/Hayt bits in the last installment.

So, two stars for this bit and two stars overall.  Just read the summarizing precis (almost as long as this last installment!) and the few pages of the story in this issue, and you'll be fine.

A Cautious Look to the Future

It's even harder to read the tea leaves when it comes to the future of Galaxy.  On the one hand, by the numbers, this issue didn't crack three stars.  On the other, the Silverberg could become a knockout, the Herbert is (blessedly) over, the Gottlieb was interesting, if not stellar (and the first woman-penned piece in how long?), and the Ellison was unusually excellent.  Ley is dead, and that is a blow, but perhaps Richardson will replace him.  His article certainly seems like an audition, though it wasn't as good as other pieces by him I've read in, say, Analog.

So, for news on Haynsworth and news on Galaxy… I guess we're playing the waiting game!

See you then.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 12, 1969] Earthshaking (October 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

Time for a change

My local rag, The Escondido Times-Advocate, isn't much compared to, say, The Los Angeles Times.  But every so often, they are worth the subscription fee (beyond the TV listings and the funnies).  Take this article, for instance, which might well be at home in a Willy Ley column:

Basically, CalTech has a new timepiece with more precision, accurate to the hundredth of a second, so that when it is used in conjunction with a seismometer, earthquakes can be better mapped.  More excitingly, the new clock weighs just eight pounds—less than a tenth that of the hundred-pound monster it replaces.

Transistors have made it to geology.

We hear all about small computers and more efficient satellites, but this story really drives home just how quickly the miniaturization revolution is diffusing to all walks of life.  Is a computerized pocket slide rule or a Dick Tracy phone that far off?

Making waves


by Gray Morrow

A lot has happened this year at the old gray lady of science fiction, Galaxy.  They changed editors.  They lost their science columnist.  And as we shall see from the latest issue, things are starting to change, ever so slightly.

Tomorrow Cum Laude, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

The revolution does not begin with this piece, a direct sequel to "Kendy's World", which came out at the end of last year.  If you'll recall, Kendy was a boy during the National Emergency, a time of civil and racial strife that rocked the nation into a semi-permanent police state.  Kendy was recruited by a Mr. Smith, who gave him a scholarship at National University—which turned out to be a training camp for spies.  "Tomorrow Cum Laude" details Kendy's first mission.

He is sent to the University of Southern California to take pictures of a biological centrifuge.  Why he is sent on a domestic espionage mission when he has been trained in Russian is never explicitly stated.  Moreover, the overarching mystery remains: why did the first cosmonaut to Mars chicken out after finding…something…on Phobos, and why are the Soviets building a secret base on the Moon?  Did they find a monolith?  Two?

All of this is background to Kendy's personal story, his slow, jerky maturation into adulthood.  His growing feelings for his accidental roommate, the beautiful woman, Amani, from the southern Californian all Black city-state of Nairobi.  His conflicted loyalties to the government of the United States.

Aside from an overuse of the word "amble" (hint: try sprinkling in a "saunter" or two), it's not a bad story, actually.  It reads a bit like a juvenile except the subject matter is rather deep, and at one point, Kendy describes himself as, frankly, horny.

I'm enjoying this series more than his first one, about the Esks.

Three stars.

Truly Human, by Damon Knight

Here is where the change becomes noticeable.  Knight, who predates but has embraced the New Wave, offers up this interesting piece about triune aliens, who can only think as trios.  They abduct three humans to see if they can be adapted to their way of thought.  The test is, unfortunately, not altogether scientific.

The beginning and end are the most interesting bits, creatively rendered.  The middle part is wanly droll, though effectively conveyed.

Three stars.

The God of Cool, by J. W. Schutz

A smuggler is shot by fellow gang members on the steps of the hospital.  As he had willed his body to the organ banks, he finds life after death in a myriad of don-ee bodies.  There are three wrinkles:

  1. The recipients of his organs end up being members of his gang;
  2. The smuggler retains a degree of consciousness in his frozen state; and,
  3. The smuggler retains a degree of control over his scattered parts…

The setup sounds a little silly, but I actually found it quite an effective story.  It's not played for silly, as it might have been in F&SF, and it doesn't try to explain the psi in scientific terms, as might have happened if it had shown up in Analog.  It sure wouldn't work in Niven's universe as detailed in "The Organleggers" and "Slowboat Cargo", though!

Five stars.

Element of Chance, by Bob Shaw

Cytheron is a young being on the cusp of adulthood.  He fears maturity, afraid to lose his identity in the adult shared mind, so he flees to the edge of a quasar.  There, he believes he is free from pursuit as no information can leave the gravitational warping of the dead star/collection of stars.  But he is also trapped—and for him to be freed will require a minor supernova, one which might have an effect on a neighboring star system with a familiar number of planets.

It's a mildly cute story, but I am generally averse to Catastrophism in my science fiction.  The universe seems to work by general rules; our Sun is not unique.  In any event, the piece feels like a veneer of fiction on a science article Shaw happened to read recently, sort of how Niven's "Neutron Star" is based on an Asimov science fact article (I can't remember when it came out—probably '64 or '65).

Two stars.

The Soul Machine, by A. Bertram Chandler

Yet another tale of John Grimes, this one from early in his career when he was a Lieutenant in command of a tiny courier ship.  It is, in fact, the direct sequel to "The Minus Effect", which came out just two months ago.  Is a fix-up novel in the works?

In this tale, the exalted passenger isn't a chef-cum-assassin, but rather an amiable robot on a mission—to lead a mechanical movement that places humans on the bottom of the command chain for a change.  Luckily for Grimes, not all computers think alike.

As always, pleasant but not particularly memorable.  Three stars.

Ersalz's Rule, by George C. Willick


by Jack Gaughan

Two aliens have been playing a competitive sport for the last forty years.  Their playing pieces are one human being each, born at the same time.  The winner of the game is the one whose human survives longer.

At first, it seems one alien has all the advantages: his human can do no wrong, suffer no lasting malaise.  He is, however, bored and reckless.  The other alien's piece is a slob whom the breaks never favor.  These circumstances lead to the rare invocation of Ersalz's Rule, which affords the possibility of the two pieces switching places.  It's a Hail Mary gambit, but it's all the player's got at this point.

The problem with this tale, aside from its heavy handed clunkiness, is that everything is arbitrary.  The rules of the game are introduced such that there are no real stakes, and the ending is just kind of stupid.

Two stars.

Take the B Train, by Ernest Taves


by Jack Gaughan

On a train trip through France with his distant wife, a fellow discovers that his garage opener doesn't just trigger his door—it also swaps out his spouse with parallel universe versions of herself.  Investigating further, the man determines that the gizmo does a lot more than just that, and he ends up hip-deep in a temporal, spatial, and emotional trip from which he may never return.

This would have been a fantastic setup for a stellar novel, perhaps by Ted White.  As it is, I still enjoyed the romantic and fulsome writing of the the piece.  I also appreciated the protagonist's mixed feelings toward the various might-have-been marital partners.  Taves never does explain how how our hero acquired the device, though there are hints.

Four stars, but a bit of a missed opportunity.

For Your Information (Galaxy Magazine, October 1969), by Willy Ley

At the beginning of the century, there were just 92 "natural" elements.  Humanity has added 12 to the roster by dint of atom-smashing effort.  Ley talks about them and provides tables describing their stability (or lack thereof).

Asimov would have done it better (though we might not have gotten tables in F&SF).  Three stars.

Stella, by Dannie Plachta

A lonely man, perhaps one of the last, is sitting on the frozen surface of his world, watching as The Last Star rises.  He is alone, as his estranged wife has sought shelter and warmth underground.  Only a surgically implanted broadcast power receiver protects him from the elements.

Then Stella arrives on a dot of blue flame.  She is invisible, but she describes herself as desirable, and her voice and touch certainly indicate that she is.  When she begs the man for his receiver, he finds he cannot resist her entreaty, though it means his death.

It's all very unclear and metaphorical, and I suspect if I knew what Plachtas was trying to say, I might like it less than I did.  Nevertheless, I found it moving.  Maybe it's a Rorschach Test of a story and it hit me at the right time.

Three stars.

Dune Messiah (Part 4 of 5), by Frank Herbert

This was supposed to be the final installment of Dune Messiah, but the editor said he had just too much good stuff to fill the magazine.  Hence Part 4 rather than Part Ultimate.  Of course, having trudged through the prior three bits, I was not looking forward to yet another slog.

I was pleasantly surprised.  Oh, it's still a series of conversations.  Sure, not a whole lot happens.  But we do have an interesting situation set up and then resolved: Hayt, the resurrected ghola of Duncan Idaho, is mesmerized by Bijaz the Tleilaxi dwarf and given a frightful compulsion.  The tension of Part 4 is how this episode will play out, and Herbert manages it reasonably well.

Sure, there is way too much time spent on the now eyeless Paul and his frightening visions.  Yes, I could give two figs about Chani, Paul's true love, destined to die for the last two installments.  True, everything in the last 150 pages could probably be compressed to 50, and I'm still not sure if the payoff will be worth it.

That said, I was not disposed to skim, as had happened in each of the prior sections.  For that, Frank Herbert, you get…

Three stars.

Aftershocks

Thus, nothing Earth-shattering.  Nevertheless, there's a certain gestalt to this issue that feels a bit fresher than prior ones—even though almost half of the issue is devoted to continued serials!  Maybe it's because those authors are finally turning in better work than they have in a while.

Perhaps we are finally witnessing a moment of change for this fading pillar of SFnal fiction.  It would be pretty neat to see Galaxy transform itself into a leading magazine again.

Stay tuned!


Hopefully, the magazine will fare better than this Ocotillo Wells home that got damaged in last April's quake…




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 14, 1969] Twin tragedies (September 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

Murder in Hollywoodland

Senseless mass death is no stranger to the headlines these days.  We've had the Boston Strangler.  The Texas sniper.  The Chicago nurse murderer.  But this last week, southern California got a shocking introduction into this club.

At least seven were killed on the nights of the 8th/9th and then the 9th/10th, including Valley of the Dolls actress, Sharon Tate (pregnant with her first child), in two Los Angeles neighborhoods: ritzy Beverly Crest and SilverLake.  At first, the scenes were so grisly and bizarre that police suspected some kind or ritual.  Jay Sebring, the famous hairstylist who gave Dr. McCoy his "brainy" JFK-style hair-do, and Tate were found stabbed, tied up and hanging on alternate sides of the same rafter, both wearing black hoods.  Market owners Leon and Rosemary La Bianca, the SilverLake victims murdered on the second night, were similarly hooded, the latter with red X marks carved into her body.


Wheeling Sharon Tate from her home

Homicide squads are currently swarming the San Gabriel Valley, and while Inspector Harold Yarnell and medical examiner Thomas Noguchi had no insights to offer when they appeared before NBC's cameras on the 10th, police do see connections.  "Pig" was scrawled on the door of the Tate home, while "Death to Pigs" was found on the home of the La Biancas, formerly the residence of Walt Disney.  Police have not indicated whether they believe the homicides were done by the same person or persons, or if a copycat was inspired by the first murders.

It's shocking, senseless, and tragic.  While the murders took place in upper class homes (one of the deceased was heir to the Folger coffee fortune), the motive appears not to have been robbery.  Just angry, hateful death.  It's not a happy time in the Southland right now.

Death in New York

While not of the same magnitude, at least in terms of human misery, nevertheless the latest issue of Galaxy science fiction is so bad, that one wonders if someone is trying to put the institution down.


by Donald H. Menzel

Humans, Go Home!, by A. E. van Vogt


by Jack Gaughan

A married human couple, immortal but catching the death-wish that has killed most of humanity, has lived on the world of Jana for 400 years.  They have used that time to accelerate the development of the humanoid species there, urging 4000 years of technological advance in that time—in part through the use of Symbols, abstract concepts made real by the power of belief.  The Janans have their own problems: the women don't like procreation or children, and the men must rape them to propagate the species.

Eventually, the humans are put on trial for their efforts, and (I'm told) we learn there is a lot more to the setup than meets the eye, and that everything the characters believe is actually some kind of falsehood.

I found this first piece impenetrable, giving up about halfway through.  Thankfully, a friend of mine, who is fonder of Van Vogt, gave the piece a write up in his 'zine.  That's good, as I was dreading having to slog through this one and analyze it, as if it were a book report for a hated school-assigned novel.  At 50 years old, I'm allowed to pick my poison.

One star.

Martians and Venusians, by Donald H. Menzel


by Donald H. Menzel

Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at Harvard offers up his clairvoyant images of Martian wildlife, complete with pictures (q.v. the cover).  I wonder if Dr. Menzel has an eight-year old child who really wanted to get published, as well as some blackmail leverage on Galaxy editor Jakobssen, because I can't see any other way this peurile, pointless piece ever saw print.

One star.

Out of Phase, by Joe Haldeman

Braaxn the G'drellian is the adolescent member of an alien anthropological team.  He was selected to infiltrate the humans for his shape-changing abilities; unfortunately, the youth also has a racial fetish for the infliction and appreciation of pain—common to all of his kind at that age.

Can he be stopped before he unleashes a terror that will exterminate the entire human race?

An unpleasant, but competently written story.  Haldeman is new, so of course, there's a "clever" twist to finish things off.

Three stars

The Martian Surface, by Wade Wellman

Wellman's wishful thinking in poetry is that, despite the obvious hostility of the Martian surface, life could still somehow cling to it.  Written to coincide with the arrival of the new Mariners, it is no more or less accurate for their flyby.

Three stars.

Passerby, by Larry Niven


by Jack Gaughan

A ramscoop pilot stumbles upon a professional people-watcher in a park.  The "rammer" has a story to tell, a tale of being lost among the stars, and of the titanic alien he encounters in the blackness of space.

This is one of Niven's few stories not set in "Known Space", and it's a simple one.  That said, it reads well, particularly out loud, and there is the usual, deft detail that Niven imparts with just a few, well-chosen words.

Janice liked it, but thought it rather shallow.  Lorelei, on the other hand, loved that it had a philosophical message beyond the good storytelling.

So, four stars, and easily the best piece of the issue (not much competition…)

Citadel, by John Fortey


by Jack Gaughan

Aliens descend on Earth, erecting mysterious edifices and offering the secrets of the universe.  Twenty years later, most of humanity is under their thrall; those who enroll for alien "classes" invariably leave society and end up part of the worldwide hive mind.  One organization has a plan to infiltrate the extraterrestrials, to at least find out what's going on, if not stop them.

But can they handle the truth?

Answer: probably, especially if they've seen The Twilight Zone.

Nice setup, but a really novice tale.

Two stars.

Revival Meeting, by Dannie Plachta


by M. Gilbert

A "corpsicle" wakes up after a century, but instead of finding a cure for his disease, he finds he's been roused for a more sinister purpose.

This story doesn't make much sense, and it's also about the bare minimum one can do with the concept of frozen people (again, Niven's covered these bases pretty thoroughly with The Jigsaw Man and A Gift from Earth.

Two stars.

For Your Information (Galaxy, September 1969), by Willy Ley

For reasons that will shortly become apparent, it's a real pity that this non-fiction column is not one of Ley's best.  It's a scattershot on rocket fuel (well, the oxidizer one combines with the rocket fuel to make it burn), modern pictographic writing, and the latest crop of satellites.

It's just sort of limp and dry, a far cry from the scintillating stuff that helped make early '50s Galaxy such a draw.

Three stars.

Dune Messiah (Part 3 of 5), by Frank Herbert


by Jack Gaughan

It is astonishing how little Frank Herbert can pack into 50 pages. In this installment, Paul Atreides, Emperor, is trying to make sense of a recurring vision, that of a moon falling (his precognition having been hampered by the presence of a clairvoyant "steersman"—the spice-addicted navigators of the space lanes).

He visits the Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit, whom he has locked up in prison, to let her know that his consort, the Fremen Chani, is finally pregnant (despite Paul's wife, Irulan, furtively feeding her contraceptives for years).  But Paul also knows that the birth of the heir will mean Chani's death.

Then Paul heads out to the house of a desert Fremen, father of the girl who had been found dead by Alia last installment.  The Emperor heads out there at the girl's invitation—she's not actually alive, but rather, her form has been taken by a shapeshifting assassin.

At the home, Paul meets a dwarf who warns him of impending danger.  Whereupon, an atomic bomb explodes overhead.

Along with the endless viewpoint changes and the nonstop italicized thought fragments, we also have more of the innovation Herbert came up with for this book: repetition of dialogue through slightly different permutation.  Seriously, the whole story so far could have been a novelette, and we're almost done!

Anyway, I didn't hate Dune, but I felt it was overrated.  This sequel, however, is just wretched.

One star.

Credo: Willy Ley: The First Citizen of the Moon (obituary), by Lester del Rey


by Jack Gaughan

And now the real tragedy—Willy Ley is dead.  He was only 62.

I knew that he was a science writer who fled Nazi Germany.  I did not know how integral he was to the field of rocket science.  A key member of the German rocketry club, he was a mentor to Wehrner von Braun.  The key difference between the two is Ley immigrated to the U.S.A. rather than serve Der Fuhrer.  Von Braun did not.

Ley went on, of course, to be one of the most esteemed science writers—up there with Asimov, at least in his main fields, zoology and rocketry.  He died less than a month before Armstrong and Aldrin stepped on the Moon.  Denied the Holy Land, indeed.

I have no idea whether there are more Ley articles in the pipeline.  There was supposed to be a new, twelve-part series, but who knows if it was ever completed or submitted.

Sad news indeed.  Four stars.

Autopsy report

Galaxy hasn't topped three stars since the June hiatus accompanying editor Pohl's departure/sacking, but this is, by far, the worst issue of the magazine in a long time.  Was Pohl fired for his declining discernment?  Or did he accept a bunch of substandard stuff as a flip of the bird to the new ownership?

Whatever the answer, I certainly hope things improve soon.  Without Ley, without quality stories, Galaxy is heading for the skids, but quick.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 8, 1969] Nowhere fast (August 1969 Galaxy)

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It's Moon fortnight!

We are broadcasting LIVE coverage of the Apollo 11 mission (with a 55 year time slip), so mark your calendars. From now until the 24th, it's (nearly) daily coverage, with big swathes of coverage for launch, landing, moonwalk, and splashdown.

Tell your friends!

Broadcast Schedule

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

The Warm War

If you, like me, are a regular watcher of Rowan and Martin's Laugh In, you might be excused for having a rather simple view of the current situation in the Middle East.  According to that humorous variety show, Israel devastated the armies of its Arab neighbors in June 1967, and (to quote another comedian, Tom Lehrer), "They've hardly bothered us since then."

It's true that the forces of the diminutive Jewish state took on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, like David against Goliath, smiting armies and air forces in just six days, ultimately ending up in occupation of lands that comprise more area than Israel itself.

But all has not been quiet…on any front.  Hardly had the war ended that both Israelis and Arabs began trading significant shots.  A commando raid here, a bombing mission there, a naval clash yonder—none of it rising to the level of a mass incursion, but nevertheless, a constant hail of explosives.  Last summer, Egyptian President Nasser, eager to recover prestige he lost in the '67 debacle, declared a "War of Attrition".  The fighting has escalated ever since.

Just the other day, the Egyptians and Israelis exchanged artillery fire across the Suez Canal—the current de facto border between the nations—for twelve hours.  Two Israelis were wounded; the Egyptians are keeping mum about any of their losses.  Last month, Israeli jets buzzed Nasser's house in Cairo, which Jerusalem claims is the reason for the recent sacking of the Egyptian air force chief and also Egypt's air defense commander.


Israeli mobile artillery shells Egyptian positions

The United Nations views this conflict with increasing concern, worried that it might expand, go hot, and possibly involve bigger powers.  The Security Council this week is working on a resolution calling for an arms embargo against Israeli unless the state abandon its plans to formally annex East Jerusalem, taken from Jordan two years ago.

It seems unlikely that the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) or Prime Minister Golda Meir will buckle to foreign pressure, however.  Nor can we expect that President Nasser, Jordan's King Hussein, or the coup-rattled government of Syria to be particularly tractable either.  The beat goes on.

Same ol'

One generally looks to science fiction for a refreshing departure from the real world, but as the latest issue of Galaxy shows, sometimes you're better off just reading the funnies.


by John Pederson Jr.

The White King's War, by Poul Anderson


by Jack Gaughan

A while back, John Boston noted that Dominic Flandry, an Imperial Officer serving during the twilight of the intragalactic Polesotechnic League, has become a James Bond type, or maybe a Horatio Hornblower.  Basically, he's Anderson's stock character when he wants some kind of adventure story set against the impending Dark Ages of his interstellar setting.  The results are a mixed bag since the tales are less about Flandry and more about whatever nifty astronomical phenomenon Anderson wants to showcase this month.

This time, Flandry, who has just been promoted Lieutenant j.g.  On the backwater planet of Irumclaw, a two-bit crime boss named Leon Ammon offers him a million if he'll go out of his way to survey a planet reputedly rich in heavy metals.  Flandry takes the gig, and since Ammon insists on having one of his mooks accompany him, Flandry opts to have his chaperone be female.  The trip is more fun that way, you see.

The journey takes us to the hostile world of Wayland, a tidally locked moon of a big gas giant.  Airless, except for when the sun sublimes the methane and carbon dioxide ice that comprises Wayland's surface, it nevertheless (and surprisingly) teems with life.  Flandry's scout, Jake, is waylaid by birds and forced to land.  Now, Flandry and his companion, Djana, must trek across the frozen wastes of Wayland to reach an abandoned, sentient mining computer, which just might have the facilities needed to repair Flandry's vessel.

Along the way, we learn that the hostile "life forms" are really robots, and that the old computer just might be responsible for Wayland's unique "ecosystem"…

Unlike a lot of Anderson's work (and certainly the last Flandry story), this piece was pretty interesting.  Sure, the characters are paper thin, but again, this story isn't meant to showcase character.  If you want that kind of story in the same setting, try "A Tragedy of Errors" from last year.

Three stars.

Starhunger, by Jack Wodhams


by uncredited

Starships have been plying the local constellations for decades, but despite the investigation of 31 systems, nothing even vaguely Earthlike has been found.  One last expedition goes out with nought but a forlorn hope.  Even with three systems on the schedule, it is doubtful that the unlucky streak will end—especially since the scientists on board, who want to meticulously evaluate every inhospitable rock, are at odds with the star hungry Captain, who wants to find the next Earth.

This is not a great story, consisting mostly of repetition ad nauseum of the scientist/captain struggle.  However, I did like a couple of things:

1) The notion that terrestrial planets are actually rare.  That's not a common theme in science fiction, and I feel it more likely than the converse.

2) The conflict between a simple, focused mission and a balanced, scientific endeavor is something the Ranger Moon program suffered from, with Rangers 3-5 failing largely because they tried to do too much.  Once NASA focused on just hitting the Moon with a camera, they had three out of four successes.

Three stars.

The Minus Effect, by A. Bertram Chandler


by Jack Gaughan

Speaking of ongoing characters, John Grimes, the spacefaring alter-ego of author (Australian Merchant Marine Captain) A. Bertram Chandler, gets another chapter of his life fleshed out in this tale.  Well, sort of.

Lieutenant Grimes has gotten his first command: a Serpent class courier boat with a crew of six.  On this particular mission, he has been tasked with transporting a VIP.  Mr. Alberto is a strange person, an extremely talented chef, but also something of a cipher and very physically fit.  After Alberto is delivered to the planet of Doncaster, his unusual nature is revealed.

There's not much to this story, and there's no SFnal content at all—at least none that isn't discardable.  It could have taken place in the '60s as easily as the 3060's.

A high two stars.

When They Openly Walk, by Fritz Leiber


by Jack Gaughan

Ages ago, Fritz wrote a cat's-eye view story of Gummitch the suburban feline artist called Kreativity for Kats.  In this long-awaited sequel, we follow Gummitch and his adopted little sibling, Psycho the kitten, as they interact with their family and a bonafide UFO.

It's an adorable piece, spotlighting the inner life of housecats (and demonstrating what I've known my whole life: that cats are clearly Earth's other sentient race).  It reminds me a bit of an episode of Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro I caught in Japan last year, in which cats take over a village and are (properly) revered.

Four stars.

Life Matter, by Bruce McAllister


by Jack Gaughan

In the far future, mankind, mutated by hard radiation, has developed a sentient heart.  Normally, there is an Operation for humans who reach the 21st year of life, the year that the heart begins communicating with the mind in earnest.  The biological heart is replaced with a silent, artificial pump.

Some refuse to lose their heart, pursuing a life of coronary freedom.  But is it really the romantic prospect literature would have us believe?

Like most of Bruce's work, it's a lyrical, metaphorical piece, but not quite as moving as he'd like it to be.  Fans of Bradbury may be more impressed than I was.

Three stars.

I Am Crying All Inside, by Clifford D. Simak


by uncredited

This is a kind of mood piece reminiscent of James Blish's "Okie" stories.  In a flurry of starflight, the cream and even the bulk of humanity has left its homeworld, leaving behind a wretched refuse of humans and robots.  The folk left are essentially poor Appalachians.  The people, as the robots call themselves, are the antiquated and damaged specimens.  Crying is told from the point of view of one of the robots, a farmer, who is at once the lowest of the low, and also the highest.

Fine but incomplete.  Three stars.

For Your Information (Galaxy Magazine, August 1969), by Willy Ley

Our German expat educator explains how ELDO (the European Space Agency) is planning a Jupiter mission.  There are special considerations like how to power the probe so far from the Sun, and how massive the craft can be depending on the rocket.

Interesting, but short.  Three stars.

Dune Messiah (Part 2 of 5), by Frank Herbert


by Jack Gaughan

Last time began the continuation of the story of Paul Atreides, now Paul Muad'dib, Mahdi of a galaxy-wide crusade against the old Imperial order.  Paul, now thirty, sits unsteadily on the Arrakeen throne—endless factions are arrayed against him, and his favored Fremen consort has borne no heir, this the deliberate result of being unwittingly sterilized by Irulan, an Imperial princess, and Paul's other consort.

Foreseeing that a child of Irulan's will spell Paul's doom, he avoids consummating their marriage.  On the other hand, this makes him vulnerable to the allures of his…sister.  Yes, Alia, born a saint and fully sapient from being in the womb of her mother when she overdosed on the precognition-enabling spice "melange".  She's 15, fights mechanical foes in the nude, and is excessively nubile.  As it turns out, an incestuous coupling is exactly what Gaius Helen Moiham, Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit (the organization that is trying to dominate the galaxy through selective breeding) wants, as it foretells ultimate genetic victory.

Meanwhile, members of the Navigation Guild, whose members use spice to navigate hyperspace, want to break the Arrakeen monopoly on the stuff, so they're trying to sequester elements of the Dune planet's biology to start up their own production.

In a final twist, the resurrected form of Duncan Idaho, one of Paul's old sword-companions, begins an affair with Alia.  But this ghoule, who goes by the name Hayt, says he is to be the intrument of Paul's destruction, so maybe this isn't a great development either.

It's all so glacial and pretentious and filled with things that rub me the wrong way: aristocracy, eugenics, fantasy masking as science fiction.  (And it's printed in smaller type face to make it both less readable and more dense.) I really don't like this book.  Frankly, I'd give it one star, but I guess I appreciate how hard Herbert is trying. 

On the other hand, John Norman tries, too, and we don't even review his books anymore.

Two stars, but I'm guessing the work as a whole is going to get one when it's all over.  Bleah.

Rescue Team, by Lester del Rey

A vignette about first contact in a time when humans and robots have become one and the same species.

Kind of pointless.  Two stars.

The New New Frontier

Fred Pohl was editor of Galaxy for almost a decade, taking over from H. L. Gold when he got sick and couldn't do it anymore.  Now he's out, and I'm still waiting for the shoe to drop: to see how different Galaxy gets under the new regime of Ejler Jakobsson.  The biggest new thing is the Dune serial, but Pohl might have bought that anyway.  It's not as if Herbert has been absent from the mag.  I guess we'll see where things are in a year.

All I can say is I hope things get better.  As with the war in the Levant, the status quo is getting us nowhere fast…




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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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