War is something of a constant in human history, with nearly every generation facing at least one. Fifty years ago, the great powers of Europe – with a late assist from the United States – fought the “war to end war” (a phrase probably coined by H. G. Wells). Twenty years later, we got to do it all again. And ever since, brushfire wars have flared up around the globe almost continually. War permeates our language and culture even in times of peace. In his State of the Union address last year, President Johnson referred to his Great Society program as a “war on poverty”. It even shows up in our entertainment: war movies are popular; there must be half a dozen TV shows in the new fall line-up set during the War or with military themes (more if you count spy shows); and one of the current best selling novels is a barely fictional account of the U. S. Army’s special forces, The Green Berets. Sometimes it’s enough to make you believe we really are on the Eve of Destruction.
The rawness of the recording makes it that much more powerful
The War in Viet Nam
On August 5th, America got a rather shocking look at the war in Viet Nam. CBS reporter Morley Safer accompanied a Marine unit to the village of Cam Ne, where they came under sporadic fire from the Viet Cong. Communist forces soon withdrew as the Marines advanced. As they entered the village, the Americans found a number of entrenchments and a few booby traps. Their orders were to destroy any village from which they received fire, so the villagers were herded into the nearby fields, and the Marines set fire to the homes with flamethrowers and cigarette lighters. Despite the villagers’ pleas to be allowed to remove their personal belongings, everything, including all the rice stores, was destroyed. Four old men who couldn’t understand the soldiers’ English were arrested. The public is understandably outraged. Alas, most of the ire seems to be directed at CBS and Mr. Safer. President Johnson is also said to be livid.
A Marine uses his lighter to set fire to a peasant hut
War at the foot of the Roof of the World
On August 5th, several thousand Pakistani soldiers crossed into Indian-controlled Kashmir disguised as civilian locals. The belief was that the local Muslim population would rise up and welcome their coreligionists. Instead they reported the intruders to the Indian authorities. Ten days later, the Indian army crossed the ceasefire line. Thus far, both sides have made progress. As this is written, India has captured the Haji Pir pass, roughly 5 miles inside Pakistani territory, though there are also reports of a massive push by Pakistani forces. Hopefully, another ceasefire can be brought into effect and a long-term peaceful solution can be found.
Indian forces in the Haji Pir pass
War across time and space
War is also a prominent feature of this month’s IF. As one war ends, another begins, along with a couple more and a very uneasy peace negotiation.
There are three living being depicted here. Art by Gaughan
It seems like the world gets a little smaller every day. Jet planes are gradually replacing larger propeller-driven planes in the passenger market, reducing the time it takes to get from one place to another. As they become more ubiquitous even the middle class may be able to travel like the jet set. Communications satellites are making it possible for news to spread faster, and we can even see some events on television as they happen on the other side of the world.
On the other hand, the world seems to be getting bigger, too. We hear constantly about remote places where this conflict or that independence is taking place. The wealth of human knowledge is growing so fast, it’s almost impossible to keep up. Growing, shrinking, let’s look at some things that have done one or the other lately.
A long shortcut
France and Italy are now closer. Not diplomatically, and it’s not conclusive proof of continental drift, but the time to travel between them has shrunk thanks to the opening of a tunnel underneath Mont Blanc. The two countries agreed on building the tunnel in 1949, but excavation didn’t begin until a full decade later, with a company from each country drilling from their own side. The excavations met on August 4th, 1962, with an axis variation of a mere 5 inches. The tunnel was inaugurated at a ceremony on July 16th, attended by French President Charles de Gaulle and Italian President Giuseppe Saragat, and opened to traffic three days later.
At 8,140 feet below the surface, the two-lane highway tunnel is the deepest operational tunnel in the world, and at 7.2 miles, it is also the longest highway tunnel, some three times longer than the previous record holder, the Honshu-Kyushu tunnel in Japan. The travel distance from France to Turin is now 30 miles shorter, and the distance to Milan is 60 miles shorter.
Presidents de Gaulle and Saragat in front of the Mont Blanc tunnel connecting Chamonix to Courmayeur during the official inauguration
Flash!
Kodak made a big splash when they introduced the Instamatic camera two years ago. Like the venerable Brownie, the Instamatic makes it easy for amateurs to take snapshots. There’s even a model with a built-in flashgun that takes so-called peanut bulbs. The problem with those is that bulbs have to be removed before you can take another shot with the flash, and they get very, very hot. Kodak, working together with Sylvania Electronics, has come up with a solution: the flashcube.
As the name suggests, it’s a cube with a mount that connects to the camera on the bottom, and four flashbulbs around the sides. Trigger the shutter, the flash goes off, the cube rotates 90° and it’s ready for another picture immediately. Plus, by the time you’ve taken the fourth picture, parts of the cube should be cool enough to touch, so you can replace it right away. This should mean lots more candid snaps and a lot less dragging everybody outside to squint into the sun at family gatherings. A big innovation in a very small package.
$100 is a little pricey, but there are less expensive models, and we are talking about a lifetime of memories
An electrifying performance
The folk world had their horizons expanded last week, perhaps to their dismay. Despite his bad boy antics off stage last year, Bob Dylan was the most eagerly anticipated act at this year’s Newport Folk Festival, but his performance was met with a chorus of boos. It seems young Mr. Dylan felt that Alan Lomax was rather condescending when introducing the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at a workshop on Saturday the 24th and decided he would play electric to prove to the organizers they couldn’t keep it out. He hastily assembled a band from a couple of members of the Butterfield Band and some others and spent Sunday afternoon rehearsing. The crowd was shocked at the sight of Dylan accompanied by an electric band, and the short set of “Maggie’s Farm”, “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Phantom Engineer” was met with both boos and cheers. MC Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary) dragged Dylan out for a quick acoustic encore of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. The crowd exploded and begged for another encore.
So why the booing? Ask three different people and you’ll get four different answers. Some say it was folkies mortally offended at the mere presence of electric instruments or a rock sound, others that fans were upset at the shortness of the set and the fact that the band used most of their allotted 15 minutes for tuning and switching instruments and/or poor sound quality. Some will tell you it was definitely the fans booing, others blame the press or even the organizers. We may never know the truth of the matter, but there’s no question that Bob Dylan has made another big impact on music.
Dylan with electric guitar and harmonica. Completely different from his usual acoustic guitar and harmonica. (Band not shown)
The Mysterious Doctor X
If you drop by your local library and take a look at the Sunday New York Times for July 25th (assuming they carry it and it has already come in) and flip to the list of best sellers, you’ll see a new title, Intern by Doctor X. It is, by all reports, a rather harrowing account of a young doctor’s period of interning at a hospital a few years ago, taken from his daily journal. The names, as Jack Webb would say, have been changed to protect the innocent, and the doctor has chosen a pseudonym to further protect confidentiality. “What has that got to do with science fiction,” you ask. Well, a little bird told me that Doctor X is in fact a reasonably well-known science fiction writer. Since he has good reasons for concealing his identity, I won’t give it away, but I will say that I once thought he was a pseudonym for Andre Norton and that his last name closely resembles a different medical profession mostly practiced by women.
Another hint: It’s not Murray Leinster or James White
It’s bigger, but is it better?
As promised last month, IF is now 32 pages longer, making it the same size as its bi-monthly sister publication Worlds of Tomorrow. Fred Pohl claimed that’s enough for two more novelettes, four or five short stories, a complete short novel, or an extra serial installment. How well did the editorial team make use of that extra room this month? Let’s take a look.
A gallimaufry is a kind of stew. Like any stew, it’s composed of a bunch of things thrown together and so has also come to mean any sort of hodge-podge. Since I haven’t been able to come up with some sort of overarching theme this month (and perhaps because, as I write this, I skipped lunch and it’s a couple of hours until dinner), let’s just look at the mish-mash of things that caught my eye (and ear) this month.
The British Invasion continues
On June 12th, the Beatles were named Members of the British Empire. That’s the lowest level of honor granted by the British government, but unsurprisingly a lot of old fuddy-duddies are unhappy with popular musicians being so honored. Member of the Canadian House of Commons Hector Dupuis complained, “British royalty has put me on the same level as a bunch of vulgar numbskulls.” According to my research, apart from seven and a half years in the Canadian Parliament, Mr. Dupuis’ main contribution to society is selling insurance. I’m not sure he’s the one who ought to be complaining about the comparison.
James P. McCartney, George Harrison, John W. Lennon and Richard Starkey showing their medals. You didn’t think his parents named him Ringo, did you?
Sticking with music for the moment, lately I’ve really been enjoying For Your Love by the Yardbirds. It’s a catchy little number that’s been moving up the charts the last few weeks and unusually features a harpsichord. The band took over as the house band at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, England when the Rolling Stones went on to bigger things and then acted as the backing band for Sonny Boy Williamson when he toured Great Britain in early 1964. They’ve had a bit of airplay with some old blues numbers, but this is their first real hit. Alas, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. One of their guitarists, a young man by the name of Eric Clapton, has left the band, unhappy with the move to a more commercial sound. He’s since been replaced by Jeff Beck. Let’s hope that Mr. Clapton is content with the relative obscurity of the blues scene.
The Miracles of Technology
On June 14th, a test planned by American and French doctors and communications experts sent an electrocardiogram from a ship at sea to a hospital in France. The ECG was taken from a passenger aboard the SS France in the Atlantic Ocean and transmitted via facsimile machine first to Cornell University hospital, then RCA Communications, Intelsat, D'Liaisons Radiotelephotographiques de France and then to Boucicaut Hospital in Paris. The image that arrived in France was clear enough for doctors to use for diagnosis. Look for this technique to be used in earnest in the future.
Facsimile technology has been used in meteorology for several years. Its use in remote diagnostic medicine shows promise.
Eppur si muove
The British journal Nature dated June 19th included a paper by astronomers Gordon Pettengill and Rolf Dyce titled "A Radar Determination of the Rotation of the Planet Mercury". They have determined that the planet Mercury is not tidally locked to the sun, but rather has a rotation period of approximately 59 days. That means a day on Mercury is about two-thirds as long as its year. Bad news for Larry Niven, whose very first story, “The Coldest Place”, hinged on the planet always showing the same face to the sun, but those are the breaks in the science fiction game.
An IFfy stew
Speaking of science fiction (and the magazine Niven first appeared in) what is Fred Pohl putting on our plate in this month’s IF? Let’s take a look at the ingredients.
May's second Galactoscope reviews the latest works by two of the field's titans. Sadly, it looks like their best contributions are behind them, as the following article will demonstrate:
Andre Norton is a gem among authors. She is able to write everything from short stories to novels in quick succession, continues to be picked up by publishers (no small feat in the writing world), and has been able to carve out a reputation for herself as an author who can write extensive background lore into her stories.
That being said, I feel like Norton is in a bit of a writing funk lately. It hasn’t slowed her down, but her writing is starting to feel unbalanced. In particular, the trait that once was her strength – world building – is starting to weigh down her work. By the end of Three Against the Witch World, the third and newest short novel in the Witch World series, Norton successfully introduces better character development with respect to the earlier entries, but the world building is still too overpowering.
The Next Generation
Three Against the Witch World begins with a very condensed introduction to the early lives of Simon Tregarth and Lady Jaelithe's triplets. Told from the first-person narratives of the children, we learn that the first two decades of life have not been easy for anyone in the nation of Estcarp.
After the destabilization of Karsten at the conclusion of Web of the Witch World, a warlord stepped up to fill the power vacuum left by the former ruler Yvian and his extra-dimensional allies, the humanoid beings called The Kolder. Between the Alizon nation, the remains of Karsten and the formidable Falconers, Estcarp is locked in a long term guerrilla war that is slowly bleeding them dry.
Amazingly, despite marrying Earth man Simon Tregarth and thereby disavowing her role as a Witch, Lady Jaelithe still retains traces of the innate magic known (allegedly) only to be accessible in select virginal women. Unsurprisingly, given that Simon is also a Power user (albeit one from another planet), the couple's triplets Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea are also born with strong magical tendencies.
They are soon left on their own after their parents depart on vague and mysterious missions. Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea must contend not only with the front-line defense of the Estcarp nation, but with the jealousy and hostile machinations of the power hungry Witch Council. The Women of Power are determined to undermine the influence of Simon and Jaelithe, and the best way to do that is to take their daughter Kaththea for their own ranks.
By 20 years old the triplets are adrift in a highly unstable time with no nearby allies in all of Estcarp. Upon the ruthless kidnapping of Kaththea by the Witches, Kyllan and Kemoc decide to journey forth into the larger world to gain information and allies crucial to reclaiming the safety of their family.
What follows is a journey across all mapped nations, even into the twisted and nebulous eastern regions of the world – a massive mountain range interspersed with magically tainted creatures. It is literally a place which people are incapable of imagining due to a powerful collective compulsion in the human population. It's a race against time to save Kaththea, save Estcarp and prevent a horrific ancient accident from being repeated in the name of protecting their homeland.
The Witch World Lives On
Sounds like an amazing story, right? It's certainly an interesting premise with a solidly entertaining, if grandiose, climax. But is it a good read?
As I've noted in my review of Norton’s Witch World(1963) and its subsequent installment, if you like fiction liberally layered with lore and societal structures you will find this series intriguing. But just like before, Three Against the Witch World leaves the audience wanting a deeper connection to the main characters.
My, Oh My, Is It Ever So Dry
Stories that sacrifice character development for world building only engage their audience for so long before boredom begins to surface. With Kyllan, Kemoc and Kaththea as the beacons through Three Against the Witch World, it is a comparatively less tedious task to read through the extensive world history of Norton's realm. Three is still massively overwritten, but at least we have the enjoyment of seeing some of the cast grow instead of remaining stagnant cardboard cutouts.
Admittedly the triplets are not completely unique. They are rather standard fantasy warrior, scholar and sorceress/witch characters, but they are given more individuality than the previous protagonists of the series. Kyllan and Kemoc's strategics get much keener via increasingly difficult obstacles they face. Limitations are realized for Kemoc as he pieces together the knowledge held in Lormt, ancient bastion of scholarship, and Kaththea has to adapt to her increasing power.
However, Norton continues to hold her characters at arm's length. Her writing in general has been suffering of late because of this tendency: she is much more prone to showing her characters in action rather than letting us into their heads. Thus, the changes we see the triplets go through still have but a superficial connection with the audience. In short, within Three Against the Witch World we see that the series is still tripping over itself to engage with its audience.
Three Strikes and You're Out
At three entries into the series, the Witch World books continue to feel like Norton is far more interested in telling us about the mechanics of her world rather than the people living within it.
For existing Witch World fans, Three Against the Witch World offers new races and mysterious god-like entities, and I did appreciate Norton's attempts at expanded characterization. Nevertheless, that's not enough to save the series. After reading three books in the same series, I should have more than the shallowest of connections with the main characters. I should have a strong desire to continue to read further installments about their lives. The fact is, after reading Witch World, I don't. I know that Andre Norton is capable of better as a word smith and a story teller. Unfortunately, Three Against the Witch World is only worthy of a two and a half star rating.
Okay, that’s kind of unfair. It’s not that I read the man’s work and didn’t like it. Instead, I decided at a relatively early age that I didn’t want to read his juvenile sci-fi novels.
While some of my closest sci-fi loving middle school friends loved Smith’s Galactic Patrol stories, I never read any of his work, and the one time I borrowed one of his books from a friend I just never got around to cracking the cover. Maybe I felt an odd sort of aversion because I wanted to defy my pal Danny Alvarado’s deep love for Smith – you know, the way boys create friendly rivalries over nothing.
But that may be psychoanalysis after the fact. More likely I didn’t read Smith because I always wanted to read above my age group. Why read juveniles when there was so much great material being published by the likes of Asimov, Dick and Clarke?
Since I had never read any Smith as a kid, now seemed the perfect time to try out ol’ Doc’s work. I’ve grown older and mellowed a bit in my tastes in the last few years. So when my fine editor offered to have one of us staffers review a limited edition publication of Smith’s latest novel, Subspace Explorers, I jumped at the chance. Why not try a classic author, albeit one in the twilight of his career? I could either validate my pal Danny’s passion or smugly smile at myself that I made the right choice to skip Smith.
Well, young Jason is vindicated.
The rather bland cover of Doc Smith's latest novel
Subspace Explorers is an odd book. It’s breakneck space opera sci-fi juxtaposed against a sort of exploration of psionics which in turn is juxtaposed against a kind of screed about a battle between virtuous business leaders and corrupt trade unionists. If you’re wondering how these odd elements all fit together in the space of some 200 pages, well, the answer is that they don’t.
The sci-fi and psionic stuff works the best in this book. The first chapter sets the stage with a disaster in space and the few survivors of that battle. This section speeds along in a kind of hurtling, breathtaking tumble of events in which the action seems never to stop, no matter that readers don’t have much of an idea who these characters are.
Once all the action begins to play out, we find there are nine survivors of the accident: four mafiosos, a genius, two officers, and two women. One of the women has the amazing psionic ability to detect any metal in space. After the mobsters are defeated, the women and officers very quickly get married and each of the couples have a baby after a pregnancy which is elongated by their time in space. Their kids inherit the psionic abilities and form a union of explorers who drive the rest of the book.
Right there in that quick summary of the crazily energetic beginning, you can see the joys and flaws of this book. It’s got energy and thrills. It’s got oddball ideas and puzzling events. It’s got thin characters and arbitrary plotlines. It’s got a lot of good and a lot of bad and I’m not sure I want to get into the discussions of labor unions which might embarrass Barry Goldwater in their stridency.
Even there, I might have enjoyed this book either as a grouchy polemic or the rambling of “an old man screaming get off my lawn,” as they say. But the shambolic plot, which seems assembled from several half-finished novels with the barest plot threads to connect them all, left me more baffled and annoyed than thrilled. If Doc wanted to produce a fun throwback space opera, why add the strange political notes, and if he wanted to write a screed, why include classic cardboard characters with psionic powers to muddy the waters?
Doc himself
Publisher Canaveral Press is well known for their lovely Edgar Rice Burroughs reissues, most with lovely art by Roy Krenkel and J. Allen St. John. This book boasts of the same high production values as the Burroughs books. It’s just too bad this book isn’t nearly a match for those classics.
Maybe Smith can pull his disparate storylines together if he writes a sequel to Subspace Explorers, but for a book released in hardcover in a limited edition with a matching grand cover price, this is a tremendous disappointment. Sorry Danny. Hope we can still have lunch together and discuss more pleasant things.
Science fiction is generally considered to be literature that looks ahead. Much of Western culture also seems to be fairly obsessed with the miracles of progress and moving into a brighter future. Even communism, though less materially oriented, talks a good game about a better tomorrow. But there are also those who look to the past for better times, longing for the “good old days.” We can see the clash of these two world views in one form or another nearly every day in the newspapers. Perhaps the most obvious example can be seen in the Old South, where progress is resisted with fire hoses and police dogs. There, at least, we can hope that the moral arc of the universe is rather shorter than is its wont.
Looking Backwards
Details are still sketchy, but it appears that a coup was prevented last month in Bulgaria. Emboldened by the fall of Nikita Khrushchev and possibly influenced by the rhetoric of Mao Tse Tung, hardliners in the Bulgarian military and Communist Party denounced General-Secretary Todor Zhivkov for revisionism and opportunism due to his de-Stalinization of Bulgarian communism. Arrests between April 8th and 12th, as well as at least one suicide by a high-ranking general, seem to have prevented a major step back into the bad old days of Stalinism in Bulgaria. State-controlled media, of course, are denying the whole thing, but rumors abound.
Inside Baseball
On April 9th, the Houston Astros inaugurated their new stadium in an exhibition game against the Yankees. “Who?” you ask. For the last three seasons, they’ve been known as the Colt .45s. Now the sole owner, Judge Roy Hofheinz changed the name to the Astros to reflect Houston’s important role in America’s space program, and the new stadium will be called the Astrodome. What’s so noteworthy about all this? As you might have gathered from the name, the Astrodome has a roof. Over 700 feet in diameter, the dome consists a grid of semi-transparent panes of Lucite, and the field is covered with grass specially bred to be able to grow under the lower light conditions.
The Eighth Wonder of the World may be Texan hyperbole, but it is impressive
As any science fiction fan will tell you, innovations often produce unexpected consequences. That’s what half the stories in the field are about. As Victoria Silverwolf reported a couple of weeks ago, the problem in this case is that on bright, sunny days – and Houston has a lot of those – the glare from the roof panels and the grid of shadows caused by the support structure are causing players to lose routine fly balls. The decision has been made to paint the Lucite panes white, and a couple of sections have already been covered. The question now is if the grass will still get enough light to grow.
There was another experiment at the Astrodome that seems unlikely to be repeated. A catwalk structure hangs from the top of the dome. I don’t know how far above the field it is, but the peak of the dome is 208 feet above the playing surface. On April 28th, Mets radio broadcaster Lindsey Nelson was persuaded to call the game from the gondola. He was too scared to stand up until the seventh inning, getting the play-by-play via walkie-talkie from his producer. When he finally did get to his feet, he realized he couldn’t tell one player from another or a pop fly from a line drive. He refused to go up again, and it seems unlikely that anybody will follow in his footsteps. It might offer an interesting angle for a television camera, though.
Space Opera and Superscience
Lately, it has felt like science fiction has been doing a fair bit of looking back, too, what with the Edgar Rice Burroughs revival, Sprague de Camp putting Conan back in print, John Jakes’ Conan pastiche Brak, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth. The three magazines under Fred Pohl’s leadership, in particular, seem to have been on a real space opera kick for a while. This month’s IF is no exception.
This supposedly illustrates Skylark DuQuesne. If so, it’s not a scene in this month’s installment. Art by Pederson
Everybody's got to have an angle these days to stand out. Volkswagen cars are tiny and cute. Avis, being number two, tries harder. In your heart, you know Goldwater's… right?
Science fiction magazines are no strangers to gimmicks. Fantasy and Science Fiction has "All-star issues" with nothing but big-name authors (though they often turn in second-rate stuff). Analog is trying out a run in "slick" 8.5" by 11" size.
And this month, IF has gotten extra cute. Every story in the issue is written by a guy named "Smith." It's certainly a novel concept, but does it work?
Leading this month's issue is the latest from Doc Smith, who almost single handedly developed the genre of space opera. In many ways, this affable chap is still stuck in the '30s, with simplistic storylines and swashbuckling adventure. On the other hand, he also has basically ignored the stultifying '50s with their ossified gender roles, which is refreshing.
Stars is about an interstellar circus troupe, the Flying D'Alemberts, who are really a batch of superspies. They hail from the three-gee heavy planet of Des Plaines, and in addition to being stunningly gorgeous, they are all super strong and agile. Jules and Yvette D'Alembert, the creme de la creme, are tapped to ferret out an Empire-wide network of traitors led by a bastard pretender to the Throne of Stanley. Join them as they rollick and banter across the galaxy, slaughtering dozens of goons along the way, in the service of the throne!
by Gray Morrow
Stars reads sort of like a kid's version of Laumer's Retief stories, or maybe a light-hearted version of what might have happened if Kerk and Meta from Deathworld had decided to become covert agents. It's fun, frothy stuff, utterly inconsequential, and inordinately admiring of absolute monarchy.
I most enjoyed the complete parity of status women shared with men in the D'Alembert universe; if anything, Jules is the sex object! Again, Doc Smith seems not to have bought into the notion of more recent years that women don't make good heroes. Good for him.
Three stars.
Fire, 2016!, by George O. Smith
by Nodel
I was looking forward to this one as fire is, by far, the greatest natural threat that faces the San Diego region. Sadly, this piece about the quest for novel firefighting techniques 52 years hence is a dud, dull, and (ironically) highly conventional. In brief: a young firefighter candidate wants to, in order to woo the daughter of the local Fire Marshall, find a replacement for water as a fire combatant. It turns out there isn't one, but using computers, he is able to optimize the amount of water used in putting out a blaze.
It sounds a lot better written out like that, but it's really not very good — better suited to Analog…and Mack Reynolds' typewriter.
Two stars.
The Final Equation, by Jack Smith
This first piece by Jack Smith is a vignette, in which a professor has the hubris to declare his Godhood after deriving the equation for everything. The real God takes umbrage.
It didn't work for me. One star.
The Store of Heart's Desire, by Cordwainer Smith
by John Giunta
Ah, but then we come to the Cordwainer Smith, which is worth double the price of the entire magazine.
I lamented that the Smith "short novel", that had appeared in last month's Galaxy, stopped just as it was getting interesting. In The Boy Who Bought Old Earth, we met Rod McBan, scion of the McBan house of the planet, Norstrilia. His family was rich with the growing and selling of stroon, an anti-aging compound. But he was psychically crippled and, on the eve of adulthood, at risk of being destroyed for his handicap. With the aid of a canny computer, Rod leveraged his fortune into the biggest sum of capital ever amassed, and he used it to buy all of the original home of Man: Old Earth.
At the end of the novel, McBan had made it to Earth disguised as a cat person, one of the many under-races formed in human image but treated like animals. At the starport, Rod meets C'Mell, the cat woman who so poignantly took up the cause of her people in Smith's 1962 classic, The Ballad of Lost C'mell. She is there to protect Rod from those who would seize him for his wealth.
That's where it ends, with Rod on the verge of exploring Old Earth, of doing something with his prize. It was a very unsatisfactory stopping point.
The Store of Heart's Desire is Part 2.
Without giving a thing away (for you really must read this), Cordwainer Smith weaves together every thread of the Instrumentality universe, finally giving flesh to the tiny bits of bone we've seen over the years. The rising discontent of the underpeople, the Reawakening of Man, the Starport, Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, Lord Jestocost, and of course, C'Mell, Old North Australia and Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons.
It is the task of science fiction authors to paint a future. Not the future, for writers are not seers, but a plausible tomorrow. I have yet to see anyone create a setting so vivid, so alien, and yet so accessible as Cordwainer Smith. His world lives, described with a minimum of words and yet with profound depth. And C'Mell is simply the best hero one could want. Getting to see the rest of her story is truly a gift.
Five stars for this segment, and since the Journey is mine and I can do as I please, a retroactive increase of the first part's score to four stars. Four and a half for the whole, and if the resulting full novel doesn't win the Hugo next year, it'll only be because too few people had subscriptions to both magazines in which the serial appeared.
Summing Up
In the end, the Smith experiment was something of a wash. Given Editor Pohl's crowing over the upcoming Heinlein serial, more Smith, and a piece by A.E. Van Vogt, I can't but wonder if the magazine is going backwards. Still, I cannot praise the Cordwainer Smith story enough. Even if this be the last good issue IF ever prints, I'm glad we got this one.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
There is an interesting rhythm to my science fiction reading schedule. Every other month, I get to look forward to a bumper crop of magazines: Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog, and the King-Sized Galaxy. Every other month, I get F&SF, Analog, and IF (owned by the same fellow who owns Galaxy).
IF is definitely the lesser mag. Not only is it shorter, but it clearly gets second choice of submissions to it and its sister, Galaxy. The stories tend to be by newer authors, or the lesser works of established ones. This makes sense — Galaxy offers the standard rate of three cents an article while IF's pay is a bare one cent per word.
That isn't to say IF isn't worth reading. Pohl's a good editor, and he manages to make decent (if not extraordinary) issues every month. The latest one, the January 1962 IF, is a good example.
For instance, the lead novelette is another cute installment in Keith Laumer's "Retief" series, The Yillian Way. I've tended not to enjoy the stories of Retief, a member of the Terran Interstellar Diplomatic Corps. Laumer writes him a bit too omnipotent, and omnipotent heroes are boring, as they have no obstacles to overcome. The challenges presented in Way, however, both by the baffling alien Yills and Retief's own consular mission, are all too plausible…and charmingly met. I am also pleased to find that Retief is Black (or, perhaps, Indian). Four stars.
There's not much to James Schmitz's An Incident on Route Twelve. In fact, if not for the engaging manner in which it's written, this rather archaic story of alien abduction would be completely skippable. As presented, it reads like a fair episode of The Twilight Zone. Three stars.
If there is a signature author for IF, it's Jim Harmon. This prolific author seems to be in every other issue of the mag (and quite a few Galaxy issues, too). Harmon is to Pohl what Randy Garrett is to John Campbell at Analog: a reliable workhorse. Thankfully for Pohl, Harmon is better than Garrett (not a high bar). The Last Place on Earth is not the best thing Harmon has ever written. In fact, the ending seems rushed, and the plot doesn't quite make sense. That said, this tale of a fellow being hounded by a malevolent alien presence, is powerfully told. Another three-star piece.
Usually, alien possession a la Heinlein's The Puppet Masters is portrayed in a negative light. But what if the society taken over is an intolerant dictatorship, and the foreign entity promotes love and brotherhood? The Talkative Tree by H.B. Fyfe won't knock your socks off, but it is a pleasant little read. Three stars.
Last of the short stories is 2BR02B (the zero pronounced "naught") by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Like his latest in F&SF, Harrison Bergeron, it is a cautionary tale written at a grade-school level. This time, the subject is the ever-popular crisis of overpopulation. With Vonnegut, I vacillate between admiring his simplistic prose and rolling my eyes at it. Three stars.
That's the last of the short stories. Not too bad, right? A solid couple of hours of reading pleasure there. But then you run headlong into the second half of the serial, Masters of Space, and that's where the wheels come off of this issue. E.E. Evans was a prolific writer for the lesser mags between the late '40s and his death in 1958. I know of him, but I haven't read a single thing by him. There is another, more famous "E.E." That's E.E. Smith, the leading light of pulpish space opera from the 20s and 30s. He had largely stayed hidden under the radar for the past couple of decades, but he resurfaced not to long ago.
Some time between his passing and this year, "Doc" Smith got a hold of a half-finished Evans work and decided to complete it. The result is a almost skeletal, decidedly old-fashioned novel, something about humans who once straddled the stars but were coddled to senescence by the android servants they created. Millennia later, the descendants of the old Masters pushed out into the galaxy again, only to face the indescribably sinister Stretts. Masters isn't bad, exactly. It's just not very good. Smith's writing holds no appeal for me. I recognize Smith's importance to the field of science fiction, but time has not been kind to his work, nor have Doc's skills improved much over the years. I made it about 60% through this short novel, but ultimately, I simply have better things to do with my time. Two stars (and I revised my opinion of the previous installment, too).
In many ways, IF is the anti-Analog. That magazine usually has great serials and mediocre short stories. Oh well. At least they both have something to offer.
Coming soon: the next installment in an ongoing series. Don't miss this Galactic Journey exclusive!
A long time ago, back in the hoary old days of the 1950s, there was a science fiction magazine called Satellite. It was unusual in that contained full short novels, and maybe a vignette or two. Satellite was a fine magazine, and I was sorry to see it die at the end of the last decade.
Novels still come out in magazines, but they do so in a serialized format. This can be awkward as they generally extend across three or four magazines. Several magazines have started publishing stories in two parts, a compromise between Satellite and the usual digests. Fantasy and Science Fiction does that, but it also hacks the novels to bits, and they suffer for it.
IF, which is Galaxy's sister magazine, had not flirted with this format until this month's, the November 1961 issue. This means a novella-sized chunk of a story and a handful of shorter ones. That makes for a briefer article than normal this time around, but I think you'll still find it worth your time. Let's take a look!
Masters of Space, the aforementioned two-part novel, is an interesting throwback, stylistically. That shouldn't come as a surprise given its provenance: E.E. "Doc" Smith, possibly the brightest light in space opera of the 20s and 30s, is one of its two authors; the other is E. E. Evans, another old hand who passed away in 1958. Masters stars a crew of Terran colonist/scientists that encounters a race of androids, immortal servants of a prior offshoot of humanity that had once conquered the stars. The novel is told in a flippant sort of shorthand, a bunch of banter reminiscent of 1940s film dialogue. The colonists are evenly divided by sex, and much of the book is devoted to their romantic escapades. It's weird and anachronistic writing, which I enjoyed for the first forty pages, but which is increasingly wearing thin. Two stars.
Albert Teichner brings us Sweet Their Blood and Sticky, a subtle mood piece about an atomically razed Earth and its one remaining monument to humanity: an automated taffy-making machine. It's just long enough to make its point, and it's a good sophomore effort for this new writer. Three stars.
At The End of the Orbit is the latest by Hugo-winning Arthur C. Clarke, who has been writing quite a lot lately. Orbit starts out like an episode of Michener's TV show, Adventures in Paradise, featuring a South Seas pearl diver. Things go in a decidedly dark direction when said aquanaut discovers a Soviet capsule at the bottom of the ocean. Four stars, but it's not a happy piece.
by Gaughan
Patrick Fahy, like Teichner, turns in his second story (at least to my knowledge), The Mightiest Man. Alien race conquers humanity and, as in Wells' classic, is laid low by microbes. But not before empowering one traitorous man with immortality and the ability to control minds. His fate, and that of those he encounters, comprise another unpleasant (but not unworthy) tale. Three stars.
Fortunately, for those who like happy stories, like me, the next story is Keith Laumer's Gambler's World. It's another installment in the adventures of Retief, the Galaxy's most irreverent and capable diplomat/super spy. Can Retief foil a coup attempt on a provincial planet? Can he best the most fiendish games of chance ever devised? Can he make you laugh with his antics? I think you can guess the answer. This is my favorite Retief story to date. Four stars.
The issue wraps up on a lame note with Kevin Scott's brief Quiet, Please which I, frankly, did understand or particularly enjoy. Two stars.
All told, that's 3.11 on the Star-o-meter, which is pretty good for IF these days. Pretty good for anyone, really, and good enough to remain among my subscriptions.
Stay tuned for an unusual super-powered article in just a couple of days…
As a writer, and as a reader who has plowed through thousands of stories over the past decade, I've developed a fair idea of what works and what doesn't. Some writers cast a spell on you from the first words and maintain that trance until the very end. Others have good ideas but break momentum with clunky prose. Some turn a phrase skillfully, but their plots don't hold interest.
I find that science fiction authors are more likely to hang their tales on plot to the exclusion of other factors. This is part of the reason our genre is much maligned by the literary crowd. On the other hand, the literary crowd tends to commit the opposite sin: glazing our eyes over with experimental, turgid passages.
A few authors have managed to bridge the gap: Theodore Sturgeon, Avram Davidson, Daniel Keyes. And, in general, I think the roster of science fiction authors, as they mature, are turning out better and better stuff.
Sadly, Astounding is rarely the place you'll find them.
After last month's decent issue, I had looked forward eagerly to this one, the July 1960 edition. It's not unmitigatedly horrible, but it does sink back into the level of quality I've come to expect from Campbell's magazine. Let's take a look:
Poul Anderson, with whom I've had a rocky relationship over the last decade, begins a new serial called The High Crusade. It's about a 14th century English town that gets attacked by an alien scout ship. Surprisingly, the "primitive" residents manage to overpower the alien crew and commandeer their ship, which they then sail across the suns to another alien outpost, where they defeat a contingent of the more technologically advanced aliens.
Now, this is the kind of story editor Campbell loves: plucky humans defeating inferior space aliens. I suspect that the humans in Crusade will face increasingly ridiculous odds, always coming out on top.
This should bother me. On the other hand, the story is really quite well written, with an excellent use of archaic language, a fair depiction of the age, and compelling characters. Moreover, I have the faintest suspicion that Anderson is satirizing Campbell's fetish, hence my prediction that the story will be ever more over-the-top.
Sadly, this incomplete tale is the high point of the book. Chris Anvil is up next with The Troublemaker. It starts out promisingly, involving an interstellar cargo ship and the seditious new cargo inspector who joins the crew. The fellow has a knack for dividing and conquering, causing friendships to disintegrate and morale to plummet. But the Captain's solution for the problem comes out of nowhere and is thus unsatisfying. Which brings me back to my preface. Writer tip #1: Foreshadowing is important. No one likes a mystery novel where the murderer is not presented before the detective explains whodunnit. A good writer introduces concepts earlier in the story if they are to be used later.
Onto the next story. Its author, Dean McLaughlin, has been writing for various digests over the past decade. I know I've read a few of his stories, but they do not stand out in my memory. In any event, his The Brotherhood of Keepers leaves much to be desired. In this case, characterization is utterly subverted to an involved, somewhat odious plot. There is a race of near-sapient upright seals on a harsh alien world. They are on the brink of becoming sentient, and a human outpost has been established on their planet, despite the uncomfortable conditions, to watch the transition. There are three main characters, all made of the same grade of carboard.
You have the fatuous, bleeding heart animal rights activist who wants to bring an end to the suffering of the "floppers," both at the hands of their environment and the scientists (who employ them as slaves and vivisect them every so often). You have the xenophobic scientist who pushes all of the activist's buttons in the hopes that this will bring about a relief mission, allowing the floppers to be "saved" before they become truly sentient. Finally, you've got the outpost chief. He grieves for the cruel plight of the floppers, but he feels it would be more cruel to deny them their destiny of intelligence.
On the face of it, this could have been a very interesting story. Aside from the truly hackneyed portrayal of the characters, I took umbrage with the way the floppers were treated by the humans. Granted, the most egregious comments made by the scientist character ("they're only animals," he says of creatures smarter than chimpanzees) were probably designed specifically to goad the activist, but they must reflect, at least in part, the deeply held sentiments of his fellow researchers. As any sociologist would tell you, the best way to study a society probably does not involve murdering its members.
Asimov has a fair sequel to his article on animal phyla, published month before last. This one is called, appropriately enough, Beyond the Phyla. The good doctor makes some interesting speculation on the next evolutionary steps humanity might take. They will not involve physical adaptations, he opines, but rather a level of social cohesion that will transform our race into a larger, integrated whole.
It's a pity that Isaac doesn't write fiction anymore; I imagine folks will be lifting his non-fiction ideas and turning them into stories soon.
Finally, we have Subspace Survivors, by the renowned Doc Smith, himself. All due respect to an admitted titan of the field, this is not a very good story. It's something of a relic from the pulp era, this tale of nine survivors on a wrecked interstellar vessel, four of whom are psionically gifted (of course). Writer tip #2: Description should be incorporated seamlessly into a narrative, not obtrusively inserted in-between bits of action.
There are two women in this story. They acquit themselves rather well against two of the castaways, who turn out to be bad men, but for the most part, they are content to be submissive child incubators, comforted in times of distress by their lantern-jawed officer husbands. Feh.
I recently exchanged letters with a fan who expressed his dislike for magazines with only a few, longer stories. I told him that I didn't mind them so long as the stories were good. But, I am starting to take his point.
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