Tag Archives: Edward Wellen

Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 14, 1970] Take this spaceship to Alpha Centauri (May 1970 Venture)

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Coverage of the Apollo 13 crisis continues!

TUNE IN!


by David Levinson

Skyjacked

Until recently, it seemed like there was at least one major airplane crash every month. That’s one of the reasons almost every airport has a place where you can buy short-term life insurance for your flight. But crashes seem to be giving way to a new risk: hijacking (or skyjacking as headlines writers would have it; the term will never stick). Last year alone, there were roughly 100 incidents around the world. That’s worse than crashes ever were.

In the U.S., the hijacker usually demands to be taken to Cuba. It’s mostly an inconvenience for the passengers, who get to their destination much later than planned and don’t even get to see any of Cuba. It’s become so common that it’s the subject of jokes and skits. But these incidents are taking on a more violent turn.

My colleague Cora recently reported on two failed hijacking attempts in Munich, one of which left one dead and ten injured. Not long after that, Swissair Flight 330 was destroyed by a bomb. Those three attacks have been attributed to a Palestinian terrorist organization. On March 1st, a bomb was found on board an Ethiopian Airlines flight before it left Rome. On the 17th, a gunman aboard an Eastern Airlines shuttle flight wounded the pilot and fatally wounded the co-pilot after being told the plane had to refuel in Boston. Fortunately, the co-pilot was able to wrest the gun away from the hijacker before succumbing to his wounds, allowing the pilot to land the plane safely. To date, this is the only airplane hijacking in America to end with a fatality.

On March 31st, a Japanese group calling themselves the Red Army Faction hijacked a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka and demanded they be flown to Cuba. After being told the plane was incapable of flying that far, they demanded they be flown to North Korea instead. While refueling in Fukuoka, they released 23 passengers, mostly children and the elderly. An attempt was made to land the plane in South Korea and trick the hijackers into believing they’d reached Pyongyang. Unfortunately, they realized what was going on after the plane landed. Following some tense negotiations, the Japanese Vice Minister for Transportation, Shinjiro Yamamura, traded himself for the rest of the passengers and the plane flew on to North Korea. The hijackers were granted asylum and the plane and crew were allowed to return to Japan (not necessarily a given with North Korea) a few days later, arriving in Tokyo on the morning of April 5th.

That’s a lot in less than two months. But in the midst of all that, airplane hijackings and bombings also made it to the movies. March 5th saw the premiere of Airport. Depending on who you ask, it’s either a disaster or a hit; either way it’s star-studded. Take a look at the poster.

Promotional poster for the movie Airport. It shows the faces of twelve actors around a prominent list of their names: Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy, Helen Hayes, Van Heflin, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson, Lloyd Nolan, Dana Wynter, Barbara Hale.You probably know who most of these people are.

Based on the 1968 novel by Arthur Hailey, the film is about the operations of an airport crippled by a blizzard and dealing with a wrecked plane on the tarmac and an inbound flight with a suicide bomber aboard, plus lots of soap opera stuff. While critics almost universally panned the book, it spent 64 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, 30 at #1, and was the biggest selling novel of 1968. The critics are no kinder to the film (“dull” seems to be one of the nicer things they say), but once it went to wider release, it promptly spent two weeks as number one at the box office and is still in the top five. There must be something in the water. Or the air.

Spacejacked

The hijacking theme continues in this month’s Venture, which is dominated by Edward Wellen’s new novel. It’s normal for Venture to give most of its space to a condensed novel, but it feels like more space than usual is taken up this time.

Cover of Venture Science Fiction. It announces Hijack, a novel by Edward Wellen. The illustration is a handful of humanoid figures running while rockets lift off and a gigantic sun burns in the background. The figures are highly stylized and the colors are angry red and yellow.I’m still not sold on Tanner’s covers, but this one is better than most. Art by Bert Tanner

Hijack, by Edward Wellen

The Mafia gets wind of a large, secret government project involving some sort of space platform. They learn that the sun is expected to go nova soon, and the “space platform” is a starship to take 5,000 people—mostly government officials and their families—to Proxima Centauri. What follows is a 30 day race to make sure that the people on board that ship are mafiosi and their families.

Drawing of a pair of soldiers pointing a gun at people inside a computer room.Nice mission control ya got here. Shame if somethin’ happened to it. Art by Alicia Austin

On the one hand, this is a moderately entertaining, though highly improbable, action story. On the other hand, it’s plagued by massive problems from one end to the other. There’s a twist at the end that deals with many of those problems, but brings in some of its own. I won’t say I saw it coming, but I did consider it as a possibility before dismissing it. Just don’t think about it too hard, because it falls apart after half a second of thought.

Wellen’s research seems to have been limited to reading The Godfather without taking notes. His gangsters are walking cliches who call each other “goombah” all the time. The Black militants they have to deal at one point with aren’t much better.

The biggest problem, however, is this: at its base, this is a heist. Now, most people enjoy a good heist story, but for it to work, the protagonists have to be lovable underdogs up against some clearly bad people. Wellen gives us clearly bad people up against a faceless U.S. government. It’s hard to root for ruthless killers.

A low three stars, maybe a firmer three if you like schlocky movies and can turn off your brain and throw metaphorical popcorn at the screen.

The Evergreen Library, by Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey Wallmann

A lawyer goes to inspect the estate of a late client before handing it over to the organization it has been left to. He makes a mind-shattering discovery.

Photograph of a tall houseplant with books stuck in its branches.Books don’t grow on trees. Photo uncredited

This is more or less an old EC Comics tale. I can clearly see the final paragraph as the last panel of a comic in that EC style. It takes a little too long to get where it’s going, and there’s no indication that the protagonist is deserving of his fate, but it’s otherwise fine.

Three stars.

Books, by Ron Goulart

Drawing of an open book, with futuristic architecture in the background.Art by Bert Tanner

Ron Goulart has decided that most of the novels he’s sent for review fall into the category of “SF Novel As A Major Author Might Have Written It,” and he thinks that’s boring, so he won’t review them. Instead, he looks at a new biography of H.G. Wells—which he likes, but finds overpriced—Crime Prevention in the 30th Century, which he found middling, slightly under what the Journey’s Cora Buhlert thought, but not by much—and The Standing Joy, by Wyman Guin, about which he has little good to say.

He also looks at the big, new collection of Buck Rogers comics and has nothing good to say, because he hates the source material. He’s a lot less generous than Lester del Rey was last month. On the other hand, he really liked the new Krazy Kat collection. Honestly, it’s big news when Ron likes anything at all.

The Big Fight, by C.G. Cobb

Cobb tells the story of Benson, a hauler working for an interstellar trading company and one of the best back-alley brawlers around. This is the barroom tale of his one true defeat. It’s a trifle that hinges on an unnecessary bit of word play. Competently told, if a little longer than it really needs to be.

Three stars.

The Scarred Man, by Greg Benford

Another barroom tale, this time told second-hand about a mysterious stranger and how he came by his awful scar. It would be forgettable except for one detail. The title character was a computer programmer who ran afoul of a powerful corporation. He and a partner scammed the company by inserting a hidden program they called VIRUS onto the company’s machines that then replicated itself and transmitted the new copy to other machines.

Drawing of geometric lines forming intricate patterns, except for a big blank area in the shape of a hand.It’s not much of an illustration, but it’s nice to see Emsh. Art by Ed Emshwiller

It’s an interesting idea based on an article by John von Neumann from a few years ago. Too bad it has such a prosaic and tired setting.

Three stars, almost exclusively for the idea.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the magazine, this month’s Feghoot isn’t bad. A bit contrived, but then they always are. It’s less of a stretch than so many have been in past issues.

Thanks to the inclusion of a condensed novel in every issue, Venture lives and dies by the quality of that novel. Hijack is easily the worst that the magazine has run in its new incarnation. None of the others has been truly outstanding, but in every case I was able to see that any problems might have come from the Reader’s Digest treatment. There’s no fixing what’s wrong here with more material.

The supporting stories also don’t do much to prop up the issue. Unlike previous issues, there aren’t any clunkers, but there aren’t any really good ones either. I can’t say for sure, but it also seems like the novel takes up a lot more of the issue than usual, so there’s less overall. Venture readers deserve better.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 8, 1970] All Too Finite (Infinity One, edited by Robert Hoskins)

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A young white man with short hair wearing a navy P-coat, blue polo collar, and green t-shirt.
by Brian Collins

There must be a growing demand for original anthologies of science fiction, because they keep coming—both standalone titles and series. Infinity One is, going by its title, the first in yet another series of these, although notably there is one reprint between its covers (really two reprints, as you'll see), a story that many readers will already be familiar with. Robert Hoskins is an occasional author-turned-agent-turned-editor, whose high position at Lancer Books has apparently resulted in Infinity One. Will there be future installments? Does it really matter? We shall see.

The tagline for Infinity One is “a magazine of speculative fiction in book form,” which strikes me as a sequence of words only fit to come from the mouth of a clinically insane person. This is a paperback anthology and nothing more nor less. I mentioned in my review of Nova 1 last month that Harry Harrison claimed that he simply wanted to put together an anthology of “good” SF, although I’m not sure if Hoskins had even such a basic goal in mind.

Infinity One, edited by Robert Hoskins

Cover of Infinity One. Against a black background, an bubble-helmeted astronaut in silver dances in front of a stylized circuit board, flowing into the shape of a rocket above, and a red planet below. Beside this illustration, in an all-lowercase font, reads the following legend: 'introduction by isaac asimov/a short novel by poul anderson/infinity one/new writings in/speculative/fiction/edited by/robert hoskins/plus/anne mccaffery/robert silverberg/gordon r. dickson/r.a. lafferty/kris neville/k.m. o'donnell/ron goulart/katherine maclean/miriam allen deford/featuring/arthur c. clarke'. Clarke's name, and the title, are in yellow. The other names are in pink, red, and turquoise.
Cover art by Jim Steranko.

Introduction, by Isaac Asimov

This is a rambling introduction from someone who really loves the sound of his own voice, even when it’s in writing. Asimov talks about mankind’s future in possibly inhabiting the most inhospitable corners of the globe, and even in the depths of space. He goes on a rather mind-numbing tangent about baseball on the Moon, or “moon-ball” as he calls it. Looking at the copyright page reveals that “much of the material” in Asimov’s introduction first appeared in some mainstream publication I have never heard of a few years ago; it’s only in the last section, which feels stapled on after the fact, that he mentions Infinity One at all. Asimov is a lot of things, but he is not a lazy writer, which makes me think Hoskins is the one who was being lazy in not being able to procure an original piece from the Good Doctor.

No rating.

A Word from the Editor, by Robert Hoskins

Thankfully, Hoskins’s own introduction is much shorter than Asimov’s, although it somehow has even less to do with the book he has gosh-darn put together. We get a rather alloyed ode to the late Hugo Gernsback, not so much as an editor of magazines but as a gadgeteer who speculated on the potential real-world technology such as TV. Hoskins posits that, given how quickly TV has become ubiquitous as a commercial item, the likelihood of technology being nigh-unrecognizable in just a few decades is considerable.

No rating.

The Pleasure of Our Company, by Robert Silverberg

Yet again I am writing about Robert Silverberg, because I am unable to get rid of him. While Silverberg’s recent output has been mixed, his outing here is quite decent. Thomas Voigtland is the former president of a colony known as Bradley’s Planet, having been overtaken by a military junta and forced to flee in a spaceship—by himself. He has taken with him several “cubes,” which are really personality tapes replicating real-life people, including his wife and son, along with historical figures such as Ovid and the late Ernest Hemingway. Silverberg’s thesis is obvious, the story being about Voightland’s guilt and his decision to flee from the junta instead of staying and probably dying alongside his family and supporters. Most of Silverberg’s bad habits are absent here, which helps.

A high three stars.

The Absolute Ultimate Invention, by Stephen Barr

This is one of three “fables” in Infinity One. A scientist has made an age-reversing machine, which through some Looney Tunes logic is able to literally reverse the digits in a person’s age, so that a 41-year-old man would become 14. However, the machine does not quite work like how the scientist intended. Hilarity ensues.

Whatever, man. Two stars.

The Star, by Arthur C. Clarke

A cover of the magazine 'Infinity Science Fiction'. It shows a bride holding hands with a figure outlined only by its circulatory system. They are facing away from the viewer, towards a rocket on the horizon.
Cover art by Robert Engle.

I remember seeing this one in print some 15 years ago, in the November 1955 issue of a now-forgotten magazine called Infinity Science Fiction. “The Star” is pretty famous and even won Clarke a Hugo. I like this one more the older I get. An unnamed Jesuit has been accompanying a spacefaring team as its chief astrophysicist, but the discovery of a planet that only narrowly avoided being engulfed by an exploding sun has shaken his faith. It’s a mood piece; not much happens and there’s really only one character. Yet Clarke’s style, which normally is not much to write home about, is splendid here, and I have to say there’s something moving about it, regardless of one’s own religious standing. You probably already know the ending, but I dare not give it away.

Four stars.

Echo, by Katherine MacLean

A spaceship crash lands on a planet filled with vegetation, and said vegetation is apparently sentient. The plants and trees are not happy about the lone astronaut, whose existence they can barely comprehend. MacLean has played with perspective before, but “Echo” sees her most strongly resembling the A. E. van Vogt of yore; in fact “Echo” reminds me of a van Vogt story from about 20 years ago, called “Process.” This is by no means a point against MacLean. It mostly reads as prose poetry, but while it only has the bones of a story, you could find much worse examples of poetic style in SF—just open the latest Orbit.

A high three or low four stars.

The Great Canine Chorus, by Anne McCaffrey

Peter is a cop on the beat with Wizard, his K-9 unit, when they find a lonely and malnourished girl in a condemned building by herself named Maria. The girl turns out to be a telepath, albeit very young and weak, with her mother dead and her father on the run from the law. There’s a plot involving a gang leader and Maria’s almost supernatural ability to communicate with dogs. It’s too cute by half. Incidentally, this is the first story in Infinity One to not involve space travel or futuristic technology. McCaffrey has her audience, but I’m not part of that audience. Her style here is especially grating in its childishness.

Two stars.

Pacem Est, by Kris Neville and K. M. O’Donnell

Neville and “O’Donnell” (actually Barry Malzberg) come in with a short and moody story, about a war happening on an alien planet and a nun who got killed in the line of duty. Hawkins, the company commander, is trying to understand why this order of nuns would journey out to this hostile alien world in the first place. Putting aside for the moment the fact that “Pacem Est” is only SF insofar as it involves a war that could just as easily be the one in Vietnam, it’s a perfectly evocative piece that sees Neville and Malzberg in a less vicious and more introspective mood than is either author’s normal routine.

Three stars.

Keeping an Eye on Janey, by Rob Goulart

Goulart has been around for a while, and his experience shows with this story, which similarly to the McCaffrey story has to do with urban crime. The editor of a publisher that specializes in cheap gothic trash gets involved with a dimestore hood who’s due to be assassinated, as well as a robot private detective named Carnahan. The robot is at least endearing, despite talking mostly in detective cliches. Raymond Chandler must be rolling in his grave. There’s a bit of detective fiction, a bit of gangster action, a bit of satire on book publishing, but it’s simply not enough of any one element. The message ultimately seems to be that computers can’t be relied on for everything. No shit.

Two, almost three stars, for what it’s worth.

The Packerhaus Method, by Gene Wolfe

I’ve seen Wolfe’s writing evolve over the past few years, and he seems like he is on the cusp of making something truly special. He’s almost there. The premise of his latest story is that the dead have been brought back to life—although not quite. These are robotic replicas of the originals, with mechanical and rather circular minds that, while replicating the wants, fears, and verbal tics of the dead, are unable to process new information. The results are disturbing, although the story’s potential for horror is held back somewhat by almost nonstop expositional dialogue that can overburden the reader.

A light four stars.

The Water Sculptor of Station 233, by George Zebrowski

Zebrowski is one of the new generation of writers, and this here is a fine mood piece, if not much more than that. Two astronauts are stuck in space, each in his own station, due to some disgraceful prior incident. Life on Earth has gone to shit, but things are not much better in space when you have minimal contact with other humans and only so many things to occupy your time with. One of these astronauts has developed a unique method of sculpting, whereby he uses water, plastic, and the vacuum of space to make his art. The climax comes pretty suddenly, but maybe that’s the point.

A solid three stars.

Operation P-Button, by Gordon R. Dickson

Here’s the second of the three “fables,” and I really don’t understand the point of these things other than to pad out the book. Dickson recreates the story of Chicken Little with military higher-ups, complete with a report about the sky falling. That’s really all there is to it.

Only avoids being one star because it goes down quickly.

The Tiger, by Miriam Allen deFord

Bart Holland is a 20-year-old young man who craves adventure—only nothing too dangerous. He finds it when he meets a strange girl who seems to be a “foreigner,” along with her traveling sideshow, featuring the most docile Bengal tiger in existence. Even before reading this one, I suspected deFord would do a twist on the lady-and-the-tiger routine, and she sort of does. Unfortunately the two main characters, especially Holland, read as flat, and the SFnal element doesn’t really make any sense when one stops to think about it. As with a few other stories in Infinity One, including Asimov’s “introduction,” this feels hastily written.

A high two or low three stars.

Hands of the Man, by R. A. Lafferty

As with the Neville-Malzberg story, this one is only nominally SFnal. Hodl Oskanian, a “skyman” who consults the lines of his hands, is challenged to a game of cards, with a precious stone being the reward. I have to say I resent Hoskins basically giving away the story’s ending in his introduction, even if said ending is far from unpredictable. I also wish Lafferty had inserted more of what has become his trademark strangeness, leaving aside the obligatory nod to Catholic theology. “Hands of the Man” is a rather humorless tale that does not play to Lafferty’s strengths.

Two stars.

Nightmare Gang, by Dean R. Koontz

Koontz is very young, but he already has a few novels to his credit, plus quite a few short stories. “Nightmare Gang” is Koontz’s attempt at hopping on the biker gang bandwagon, and it’s honestly too dark for its own good. Louis, the leader of a biker gang, is a telepath who is able to coordinate with his gang members via mind control, but he also has a few other abilities that the narrator finds hard to explain. It’s gory and bleak, but also I don’t really understand what the point of it is, which is not helped by Koontz being such an inelegant stylist.

Whatever. Two stars.

These Our Actors, by Edward Wellen

I’m not familiar with Wellen, possibly because he hasn’t written much in the past decade. “These Our Actors” is really two vignettes, the first about an unnamed man on a hostile alien world and the second about an anxiety-ridden TV actor. Neither of these vignettes is substantive enough on its own, especially the first one, but how they’re connected is rather interesting. Unfortunately, given that he wrote something of a prose poem, Wellen is not fine enough a stylist to make it a consistently engrossing experience. The ending is pretty good, though.

Three stars.

Inside Mother, by Pat de Graw

A first story by a new author, one whom not even Hoskins knows anything about. Making good on the Freudian implications of its title, “Inside Mother” has to do with sex and adolescence, about a group of kids (teenagers?) who are evidently the survivors of a crashed satellite. The adults who ran the satellite did not give the kids names, so they go by numbers; and they also neglected to have the satellite’s computer teach the kids basic things like sex or how to build a fire in the wilderness. How these kids have survived up to this point is thus a mystery, bordering on nonsensical. I think I understand what de Graw is doing, but what he or she has written is too abstract and lacking in consistency for my liking.

Barely three stars.

The Communicators, by Poul Anderson

Hoskins, in his introduction for this story, gloats that he was able to get pieces from Asimov, Clarke, and Anderson, whom he considers the three most popular SF writers at the moment. Given that Asimov’s introduction apparently was not written for Infinity One, and that “The Star” is a reprint, that leaves only one original piece Hoskins was able to procure. He also calls “The Communicators” a “short novel,” which is being overly generous since I’m not even sure it’s long enough to qualify as a novella. Finally, and I do not mean this as an insult towards Anderson, since his work ethic is tremendous, but the man will basically write for anybody, so long as the paycheck is serviceable enough. For better or worse, he has been one of the most reliable workhorses in the field for the past couple decades.

As for “The Communicators” itself, it’s the kind of far-future speculative fiction that Anderson writes in his sleep, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Two members of the Communicators, a pseudo-religious order that forsakes race and national borders in the service of preserving human knowledge, meets with a colonel from the Domination of Baikal (an “Oriental” power whose real-life equivalent is probably supposed to be Maoist China) to discuss what seem to be alien signals coming from Kappa Ceti. Roban, the junior member of the Communicators, still holds a grudge over his homeland (clearly the United States) losing its status as a world superpower, a conflict with his position as a Communicator that adds spice to the debate. This might be Anderson’s response to Asimov’s famous Foundation trilogy, in which the protectors of human knowledge are beholden to a near-perfect series of predictions, whereas the Communicators, while being intelligent, are still prone to human foibles.

It’s quite readable. A high three stars.

The Man on the Hill, by Michael Fayette

This is the last story and also the last of the “fables.” It’s also easily the best, given that it does not insult my intelligence. The last human survivor of some hostile environment, having grown tired of living in solitude, decides to take off his helmet and breathe some fresh air for the first time in decades. It’s a perfectly fine little mood piece that does not demean the reader with bad jokes, and incidentally its sense of weariness captures my own feelings after having read all of Infinity One.

Three stars.

Conclusion

The increasing ubiquity of paperbacks has been a double-edged sword. Paperbacks are both more affordable and easier to handle than hardcovers, but that also means they tend to come cheap. I get the impression that Hoskins, seeing the success of Damon Knight’s Orbit books, as well as the growing paperback market generally, saw an opportunity to make a bit of extra money with relatively little effort. The best story here is unquestionably Clarke’s “The Star,” a Hugo winner from 15 years ago that you probably already have in a couple anthologies and/or collections. And maybe SF was better 15 years ago; certainly there were more authors active and more SF at short lengths being written back then. My point is that if the original anthology craze is to survive then we need to do better than Harrison’s Nova 1 from last month, which was middling, or Infinity One, which is even worse.

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


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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[Oct. 31, 1969] Struggling to get out (November 1969 Analog)

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Science Fiction Theater Episode #10

Tonight (Oct. 31), tune in at 7pm (Pacific) for our special, Halloween-themed episode!

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

Inside Lebanon

Feel that?  It's the calm before the storm.

For the past week, the nation of Lebanon has been rocked from within by "Palestinian" guerrillas.  Yesterday, at the behest of leaders in Cairo, Damascus, and Tripoli, the raiders settled down, awaiting what looks like will be a significant negotiation between Arab power brokers.

I'm no expert on the issue, but here's what I've gleaned.  When Israel declared independence in 1948, a significant percentage of the Arab population within the nascent nation's borders left the former mandate of Palestine.  Some fled violence, like that inflicted by classy folk such as Menachem Begin of the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group.  Others left at the exhortation of their Arab brethren, who proclaimed that they were about to drive the Jews into the sea.

Hundreds of thousands of Arabs ended up in neighboring countries: Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon.  Indeed, exiled Arabs now comprise 12% of the population of Lebanon—fully 300,000 people.  They live in camps administrated by the draconian Lebanese Deuxième Bureau.

The "Palestinian Liberation Organization", founded in 1964 with the goal of "the liberation of Palestine", initiated terrorist attacks against Israel after The Six Day War in 1967.  Such are being carried out from enclaves in other countries with more or less tacit permission from those countries' governments.

The recent irruption in Lebanon arose from the Lebanese cracking down on these raids.  The violence, thwarted from heading southward, flooded internally—into Beirut, Tyre, Lebanese Tripoli, and other major cities.  Egypt, Syria, and Libya all leaned hard on the Christian Arab nation to let loose the reins on the guerrillas.  Lebanon has relented, and the negotiations will proceed shortly.  Participants will be Dr. Hassan Sabri El Kholi, personal envoy of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Libyan Interior Minister Mousa Ahmed, and guerrilla chief Yasser Arafat.  While there's no telling what the outcome will be, one has to imagine the Palestinians will be allowed to resume their raids into Israel again.

With the War of Attrition occupying Israel on its western and eastern fronts, it now looks as if the Jewish state is about to be busy defending from the north, too.  Most folk are betting on the Israeli Defense Force, but can the country survive under siege forever?

Time will tell.

Inside Analog


by Vincent Di Fate

Like Lebanon, the crisis facing Analog comes from within, as evidenced by the latest issue.  From without, the magazine looks like it always has—handsome, professional.  But within, one can see the rot.  Not that it's all bad; indeed, much of it is decent.  But what works is stagnant, and what doesn't work is very much the sort of thing we expect from long-toothed editor John Campbell.

Gottlos, by Colin Kapp

Starting off, we have what looks like a Bolo story—one of those Keith Laumer tales featuring a sentient, super-tank.  Unlike Laumer's stories, this one has a lot of action, with the Fiendish mauling dozens of opposing vehicles, overruning a command post, and then meeting its match with the arrival of the ebony Gottlos.

After Fiendish is destroyed, we learn that it was actually a remotely controlled tank.  Its pilot, Manton, had so thoroughly melded with the machine, that the result was a gestalt personality, one motivated by violence and vengeance.  With his vehicle destroyed, Manton falls into an apparent funk, shaken by the appearance of a more powerful machine.  The real terror of Gottlos is that it seems to need no radio controls at all.  Is it autonomous?  A kind of cybernetic beast?

Kapp has written more of a philosophical than predictive piece, describing how a society might decay under the strain of endless war and complete mechanization.  I appreciate Kapp's skill with English, but the story itself seemed a bit implausible in its setup.

Three stars.

Telepathy – Did It Happen?, by J. B. Reswick and L. Vodonik

Oh boy.  A pair of cranks conducted a telepathy experiment.  Here's the notion: telepathy is only reliable about 1-2% of the time.  But what's really happening, they suppose, is that there's just so much interference that the message gets clogged with static. If one conducts thousands of tests using a simple message, the errors will be reduced, and the message will stand out.

The setup they used involved a binary message and transmitter.  After many trials, the experimenters determined that had gotten the error down low enough to show that something had objectively been transmitted.  Of course, the researchers admitted that their data only supported this conclusion if you read the results backwards (i.e. if the 1s of the original message were logged as 0s and vice versa.)

Given the thin margins of success, if you gotta flip the results on their heads to get any kind of answer, I suspect it's all bogus.  Which is how I'm beginning to feel about psionics in general.

One star.

Weapon of the Ages, by W. Macfarlane


by Leo Summers

Humanity is hounded by vicious extraterrestrials when they try to go to the stars.  One pilot crashlands on a neutral world, is conducted to a mysterious weapon, and manages to wipe out a set of local marauders.  The weapon's use has side effects, one which the owner's race is prepared for, but not the human who fired it.

Macfarlane is trying for a cute sting-in-the-tail story, but the whole thing is nonsensical, so it lacks the desired impact.

Two stars.

The Ambassadors, by as by J. B. Clarke


by Leo Summers

A set of three disparate aliens makes contact with the galactic organization of which the humans are a member.  Said aliens claim to be vastly superior to our federation, but they say they'll be generous and give us a few technological wonders—if only we'll give them an example of one of our best starships, so they can gauge our level of progress.  Since homo sapiens has (per the story) an unique ability to sniff out a scam, a human is sent to investigate to see if the aliens are on the level.

Things that suggest the aliens are hoaxing: they showed up in a borrowed spaceship, no one has ever heard of their stellar confederation, and their "capital" planet is a smoggy wasteland.  Points in their favor: the three wear a common uniform and despite profound apparent racial differences, work together in perfect harmony.  Conclusion, they must represent an ancient and tight-knit federation!

Much is made of the fact that most species in the galaxy are bi-sexual.  Not that you'd know from this story, whose only female human is a "pert secretary."  The leader of the alien delegation is a female, to the surprise of the humans receiving them.  Cue the snide comments about how women always have to speak for the menfolk (the implication being that such arrogance is misplaced).  In the end, the gender of the aliens is the key to unpuzzling the obvious hoax.

Clarke spends a lot of time setting up a puzzle whose solution is apparent from nearly the beginning.  The characters have to be obtuse to make the story work.  Obtuse and sexist. 

One star.

Shapes to Come, by Edward Wellen


by Vincent Di Fate

A scientist in an isolated base on the Moon has completed his work: he has perfected a spore that will inject itself into any alien genetic structure, instilling an irresistible trust of the human form.  By seeding the stars with this spore, when we meet any extraterrestrials, they will necessarily greet us with love and affection.

But before the spore can be deployed, an alien armada shows up.  Can you guess what completely unexpected result ends the tale based on the story's setup?

This is comic book level stuff.  Two stars.

The Yngling (Part 2 of 2), by John Dalmas


by Kelly Freas

Concluding the two-part serial begun last ish, The Yngling latter half is choppy but worthy.

When we last left our hero, the psi-adept Nordic warrior, Nils Ironhand, he had been sent into the lion's den.  More specifically, to the domain of Kazi, an immortal (through soul transferrence into new bodies) who reigns through unbelievable cruelty.  His armies are poised at the doorstep of Europe, and in short order, more than thirty thousand of his "orc" hordes will sweep through the Balkans bent on rapine and ravagery.

Nils presents a condundrum to the psionic tyrant as his signature trait is the lack of an internal monologue.  Thus, his mind cannot be read, barely even sensed.  He also is completely without guile.  Interestingly, while this wordless mentality is portrayed as an unique characteristic, and perhaps a side effect of Nils' psi powers, it can't be that rare in the real world.  Indeed, one of the Journey's very own, Tam Phan, possesses this trait.  Now, Tam is also a fantastic warrior, so there may be a connection.


Tam and familiar faces at a local gathering of Vikings

In any event, after Nils gets to witness some particularly gruesome examples of Kazi's barbarism, he escapse, makes it back to Hungary, and organizes a resistance comprising Magyar, Ukrainian, Polish, and Bohemian knights…as well as hundreds of his kinsman, who have just crossed the Baltic, fleeing the impending Ice Age.  The resulting battle is lengthy, desperate, and strategic in detail.  Of course, you can guess who wins.

This is a tough book to rate!  It's firmly in the genre of magical post-Apocalypse, along with Omha Abides, Spawn of the Death Machine, Out of the Mouth of the Dragon, and so on.  I happen to like this genre, and while I'm growing to loathe psi stories, in these settings, I can just pretend it's a kind of magic, or maybe lost technology.

The key to writing this genre well, and Dilmas does, is to bathe it in sensuality and adventure.  In many ways, Nils is more akin to Conan than any scientifical hero you'd expect to find in Analog.  I also greatly appreciate that Dilmas manages to convey the most unspeakable of tortures completely obliquely.  A few artful words can chill far more than pages of explicit gore.

Too, I enjoyed the grand depiction of the battle, complete with fog of war and the uncertainty that accompanies it.  So vivid is this portion of the novel, that one could probably adapt a cracking wargame from it.  Jim Dunnigan, are you listening?

It's not all roses, of course.  As in the first half, the various sections of the novel don't quite hang together well, like bricks without mortar.  Much is bridged in shorthand.  Also, Nils having to retell the same story to half a dozen European lords to rally them against the orcs was a bit tiresome.  Perhaps all of these things will be smoothed when this story inevitably gets picked up by Ace.  Or maybe not—they like their books short.

Anyway, I'd give this installment four stars, three-and-a-half for the whole.  Fans of this sort of thing, like my nephew, David, may notch up their assessments a touch.

Doing the math

Boy, Analog has been bad lately.  I know it seems like I just keep saying it over and over again, but until these doldrums end, I'll have to find creative ways to repeat myself.

At 2.3 stars, Analog is by far the lowest in the pack.  IF got 3.1; Vision of Tomorrow got 3.2; even Amazing got 3.2; Galaxy got 2.9; so did Venture; Fantasy and Science Fiction got 2.7; and New Worlds got 2.8.

Women wrote about 10% of what was published this month, and you could fit all the four and five star stuff in two digests.  Given that eight came out for November, that's a pretty weak showing.

Perhaps if Ted White, Ed Ferman, Charles Platt, and Ejler Jakobsson went over to Condé Nast headquarters for a negotiation, Campbell might loosen the reins on his writers.  Couldn't hurt!




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 2, 1969] Merging streams (August 1969 Venture)

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by David Levinson

Joining the mainstream

Every Sunday, the New York Times publishes a list of the best selling books of the last week. It tends to be a mix of high-brow, literary novels and potboilers—especially spy thrillers—along with the occasional gothic romance and a mystery once in a blue moon. But to the best of my knowledge, it’s never had a science fiction novel prior to this year. As of the latest list, it has not one but two, both of which have been reviewed here at the Journey. There’s even a third that could be said to have sfnal elements if you stand on your head and squint a bit.

In its tenth week on the list and slipping one spot to number six is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Of course, Vonnegut is none too happy about his work being labelled science fiction. Meanwhile, Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain hit the list for the first time in eighth place. The potential third novel is Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor, which seems to be set on an Earth exactly like ours with a slightly different history or on a counter-Earth on the other side of the sun. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much science fiction in the plot, so I’m not really inclined to include it.

Does this mean our beloved genre has finally hit the big time? Probably not. As I said, Vonnegut doesn’t want to associate with us, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Crichton thinks of his book as a thriller. (I could be wrong, but that’s how it’s being marketed.) 2001 did all right at the box office, but was panned by critics (including some SF critics). Star Trek has been canceled, leaving Land of the Giants—a show so bad it makes Lost in Space look smart—the closest thing to SF on television. But just maybe the boundaries are weakening, even if we wind up having to sneak in the back door with those who won’t acknowledge us.

Sophomore or sophomoric?

The second issue of Mercury Publishing’s second attempt at Venture SF is on the stands. How is it? Well, before we crack it open, let’s look at the outside.

More geometric shapes and color washes. Art by Bert Tanner

If the last issue could be mistaken for a horror magazine, this one could easily be taken for a mystery. That’s probably the eye. Dell used to use an eye looking through a keyhole as the logo for their mysteries (and maybe still do; it’s been a while since I bought one), and this is very reminiscent of that. The best thing about the outside of the magazine continues to be the title logo.

The League of Grey-eyed Women, by Julius Fast

Diagnosed with terminal cancer, a desperate Jack Freeman will grasp at any straw. A Canadian doctor has had some small success injecting rats with artificial DNA, but his studies are nowhere close to being ready for human experimentation, no matter how much Jack begs. His beautiful, pale-eyed assistant, however, is willing to bend the rules, since she and the many women with gray eyes she knows have their own agenda. The treatment may cure Jack’s cancer, but it may kill him in other ways. It will certainly change his life.

This confused mess makes sense if you’ve read the book. Art by Bert Tanner

If the name Julius Fast sounds familiar, you may have read one of his well-received mysteries or one of his non-fiction books such as the one on Human Sexual Response by Masters and Johnson or last year’s book about the Beatles. (That or you’re thinking of Howard Fast, who wrote Spartacus, among many other things.) He’s not a complete stranger to SF, so he doesn’t make a lot of the mistakes that many mainstream authors do when trying to write our stuff.

That said, there are parts that don’t hold up if you think about them too hard. Some of those may be better propped up by things that were cut from this condensed version; others make no sense at all. Still, the narrative pulls the reader along, even despite Jack being a fairly unpleasant person early on. There’s enough here to make it worth reading, but you might want to see if your local library has a copy rather than spending your own money.

A solid three stars. The complete novel may come in a little higher, but probably not enough for another star.

With Ah! Bright Wings, by Edward Wellan

Pollution seems to be in the news more every day. In the last two weeks alone, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire (and not for the first time) and a pesticide spill in the Rhine caused a state of emergency in West Germany and the Netherlands. What if there’s more behind it than just industrialization and a lack of concern by the government and the companies producing most of the pollution? It’s an old theme in SF, but Wellan has come up with a moderately new twist. Unfortunately, the telling is as dry and dusty as the two UN bureaucrats who are the story’s protagonists.

A high two stars.

Bradbury on Screen: A Saga Perseverance, by F.E. Edwards

It’s no secret that Ray Bradbury loves the movies. He’s written a few, and several of his stories have been adapted for the big screen, but many more have never made it into or out of production. Those that do have not served the source material well. This article follows the career of Bradbury and his work in Hollywood. Interesting but inconsequential.

Three stars.

Dragon in the Land, by Dean R, Koontz

Over the years, the focus of the military has shifted to biological warfare. A virus escaped from a Chinese lab and is so devastating it brought down the Communist government. The American doctor heading the Analysis and Immunization team that is part of the military intervention in the country must struggle with his own sense of inadequacy, which stems from growing up in the shadow of his Nobel laureate father.

Plumbing the depths of the bombed-out lab. Art uncredited

Imagine if The Andromeda Strain had ended badly and someone had to enter the ruins of the lab to find the original team’s notes; that’s the action of this story in a nutshell. I don’t think Koontz has cribbed from Crichton. The timing of the two stories makes that nearly impossible, but it implies that both men have done their homework.

I keep saying that Koontz is getting close to breaking through. This might be it. It’s certainly the best thing he’s written so far. If he can maintain this level of depth and quality, he’s going to be a big name.

Four stars.

Project Amnion, by Larry Eisenberg

A story in the style of a magazine article on efforts to teach children in the womb, it ignores countless aspects of human physiological development, not just in the brain, but the whole body. Eisenberg has apparently never met a baby. The nicest thing I can say bout this one is that at least it’s not an Emmett Duckworth story.

A low two stars.

Pithecanthropus Astralis, by Robert F. Young

A caveman questions the wisdom of the elders and breaks the rules. While this piece lacks the saccharine romantic elements that have often led me to complain about Young (who has been largely silent in the last few years), it also lacks the positive elements that his past stories have had.

Two stars.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the issue, there’s a weak Feghoot and a word scramble to see how well you know your -ologies. The condensed novel is decent, and there’s one other good story, but the rest is trivial to terrible. The cover is bad and not designed to sell the magazine, and there still isn’t much in the way of promotion over in F&SF. If things don’t turn around soon, this incarnation of Venture isn’t even going to last as long as the 10 issues of the first go-round. Let’s hope things improve in the fall.




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Magazine/Anthology

[November 19, 1964] Ding Dong (December 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Avram is Gone

Way back in March 1962, Robert Mills left the editorship of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  He turned over the reins to a writer of repute, a man who had published many a story in this and other mags: Avram Davidson.

It seemed auspicious — after all, who better for the most literate of SF periodicals than one of the more literary authors in the genre.  Instead, the last two and a half years have seen the decline of the once proud magazine continue apace.  Certainly, there have been standout stories and even issues (for instance, Kit Reed's To Lift a Ship came out in that first Davidson issue — and I liked it so much, I included it among the fourteen stories in Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963).

But successes aside, F&SF is mostly a slog these days, filled with uninspired and/or overly self-indulgent stories.  The only thing that kept my going was the rumor, confirmed this Summer, that Avram had decided to give up the editorship to focus more on his writing.  And so, we have this month's issue, the first in what may be called "The Ferman Era". 

Mind you, I'm sure most of the stories were picked by (and certainly submitted to) Davidson, so I don't expect miracles.  Join me on the tour of the newest F&SF, and let's see what, if anything, has changed!


by Jack Gaughan

Buffoon, by Edward Wellen

For the most part, Ed Wellen is a mediocre writer, mostly turning in lamentable stuff, occasionally contributing acceptable though not brilliant fare.

This time around, we have the story of an alien who poses as an Aztec at the time of Montezuma.  His goal is to become a thrice-sold slave so that he can ultimately be the blood sacrifice made every 52 years.  It's all part of an elaborate prank on the indigenes, which is explained in the story's last page.

Despite the seeming light nature of the plot, it's actually rather humorless, a sort of "you are there" piece on the Aztecs.  Something one might sell to National Geographic, but with a veneer of SF to make it salable to F&SF.  I vacillated between three and two stars; there are some nice turns of writing in there, lots of historical detail, but the whole thing was more tedious than enjoyable.  It certainly lacked the charm of the Aztec-themed serial that recently came out on England's Doctor Who.

So, a high two.

The Man with the Speckled Eyes, by R. A. Lafferty

Mr. Lafferty often turns in fun, whimsical tales.  But this one, about a mad-eyed fellow who claims to have invented anti-gravity, and who makes disappear the corporate bigwigs who dismiss his claims, doesn't really go anywhere.  There're some vivid scenes, some Hitchcock Presents-type horror, and then roll credits.

An ending would have been nice.  Two stars.

Plant Galls, by Theodore L. Thomas

Our resident scientific "expert" waxes rhapsodic about stimulating plant galls (think vegetable callouses) with new carbohydrate sprays.  Imagine!  Like magic, all you have to do is spray a field and you get a giant, cancerous mass of food!

Except Mr. Thomas has forgotten about the second law of thermodynamics — it takes resources to make the spray, doesn't it?

One star.

From Two Universes …, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Of Univacs and Unicorns, which have never met.  This poem is the seed for an F&SF-sponsored context: write a story involving both, and you might win $200!

Three stars, I guess.

On the Orphans' Colony, by Kit Reed

Abject loneliness can make one do crazy things.  On a hostile world, a young orphan opens the barred doors of his commune, seduced by the maternal sirensong of an otherwise repulsive being.  But what horror has he unleashed upon his barracks-mates?

Vivid.  Three stars.

Wilderness Year, by Joanna Russ

After the bomb, the sub-surface survivors only go above ground as a rite of passage.  Of course, they are given the most advanced devices to ensure their safety.

This is a throwaway joke tale, which the punchline nicely arranged to occur at the top of the page turn where it can be most effective.  Certainly not the best Joanna Russ can offer, but not bad.

Three stars.

Somo These Days, by Walter H. Kerr

A poem about sensory deprivation becoming the new, hip rage with all the kids.  I imagine it's a commentary on how our teens are plugged into their transistor radios these days, ignoring the outside world. 

Silly.  Two stars.

A Galaxy at a Time, by Isaac Asimov

Strangely uncompelling piece by Dr. A about close-packed galaxies wracked by mass supernovae.  It just didn't grab me like his articles usually do.

Three stars.

Final Exam, by Bryce Walton

A variation on the Last Man/Last Woman cliche.  In this one, Last Man doesn't want to commit until a battery of psychological tests determines the potential pair's compatibility.

Forgettable: 2 stars.

The DOCS, by Richard O. Lewis

This would-be Lafferty tale is about a guy whose attainment of multiple doctorates is undercut by his lack of empathy.  Facile, with a dumb ending.

Two stars.

The Fatal Eggs, by Mikhail Bulgakov

Ah, but almost half the book is taken up by a gem.  The Fatal Eggs is a reprint from the early days of the Soviet Union, an arch piece about a scientist who discovers a mysterious red ray.  Said ray not only stimulates the reproduction of animals, but the resulting creatures are fearsome and enormous.

I would not have thought that a 40 year-old piece, translated from Russian, could be so compelling, so colloquially humorous, and delightfully satirical (and thus banned, though our Soviet correspondent, Rita, also read and enjoyed it). 

Definitely a four star piece, and I am sad to learn (at the very end) that this is a condensed version!  With Bulgakov's story, the journey is as fun as the plot, and I would have enjoyed more comedic scenes of life in 1920s Russia.

Four stars.

All things must pass

Well, we made it.  On the one hand, half of this month's issue represents a nadir for the magazine.  On the other, The Fatal Eggs is wonderful.  On the third hand, it's an aged reprint.  Well, any constipation requires time to relieve itself.  I'm willing to give Joe Ferman, our new editor (and the owner's son) a chance to prove himself. 

How about you?

[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…]




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Book, Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race

[December 21, 1963] Soaring and Plummeting (January 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

[Time is running out to get your Worldcon membership!  Register here to be able to vote for the Hugos.]

The Balloon goes Up

It's been something of a dry patch for American space spectaculars, and with projects Gemini and Apollo both being delayed by technical and budgetary issues, it is no wonder that NASA is hungry for any positive news.  So you can excuse them for trumpeting the launch of Explorer 19 so loudly — even if the thing is just a big balloon.  How excited can anyone get about that?

As it turns out, plenty excited.

Explorer 19, launched December 19, 1963, is a spherical balloon painted with polka-dots (they keep the sun from making it too hot or cold), and what it does is measure the atmosphere as it circles the Earth.  Not with any active instruments, but just by moving.  All orbiting spacecraft have an ideal route, one determined by Newton's laws.  If there were no air at all up there, the satellite would just keep orbiting in the same path forever (though the Moon and the Sun exert their own influences).  But there is air up there.  To be sure, the "air" up above 600 kilometers in altitude is hardly deserving of the name — it's a harder vacuum than we can make on the ground!  Nevertheless, the stuff up there is denser than what is found in interplanetary space, and we can tell its density from the slow slip of Explorer 19 in its orbit. 

If we want to know what kind of science we'll get from Explorer 19, all we have to do is look to Explorer 9.  Launched two years ago, it is a virtual twin.  Both Explorers were launched from cheap, solid-fuel Scout rockets.  Both have tracking beacons that failed shortly after launch.  The only way to get any data from these missions is to track the satellites by sophisticated cameras.

Explorer 9 has already contributed immensely to our knowledge of Earth's upper atmosphere.  Thanks to constant photographic tracking of the satellite, scientists have seen the expansion of the atmosphere as it heats up during the day as well as shorter term heating from magnetic storms in the ionosphere.  As a result, we are getting a good idea of the "climate" on the other side of the atmosphere over a wide range of latitudes. 

This is not only useful as basic science; the folks who launch satellites now have a better idea how long their craft will last and the best orbits to shoot them into, saving money in the long run.  It is one of the many examples of how the exploration of space bears immediate fruit and also extended benefits.

And that's something to be excited about!

The other shoe drops

On the other hand, the January 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction begins the year on the wrong foot.  It is yet another collection of substandard and overly affected tales (leavened by a few decent pieces that somehow manage to get through), something like what Analog has become, though to be fair, I'm really looking forward to Analog this month. 

But first…

Pacifist, by Mack Reynolds

The best piece of the month is Pacifist by the prolific, seasoned, and (on occasion) excellent Mack Reynolds.  On a world much like ours, but where the balance of power is held between the north and south hemispheres, an anti-war group determines that the only way to curb our species' bellicose tendencies is to frighten the war-wagers with violence.  But can you really quench fire with fire?

It works because of the writing, something Reynolds never has trouble with.  Four stars.

Starlight Rhapsody, by Zhuravleva Valentina

This curious piece, in which a young woman astronomer discerns intelligent signals being broadcast from the nearby star, Procyon, originated in the Soviet Union.  It was then translated into Esperanto, of all languages, and then found its way into English.  The result is…well, I'll let our Russian correspondent give us her thoughts:


by Margarita Mospanova

In Russian, Starlight Rhapsody is actually a very pretty story — melodic and full of poetry, literally and metaphorically. It’s fairly melancholy, with just a touch of underlying Soviet optimism, nothing too garish in this case. But the translation…

Man, the translation makes me want to tear my hair out. It’s awful. It misses entire paragraphs of text as well as actual poems in the beginning and in the end. And the prose itself in no way resembles the original. Hell, it’s as if the translator used some kind of computerized translation device and just removed the grammatical mistakes afterwards. I’m really disappointed because the original story is really unexpectedly good.


by Gideon Marcus

You can get a glimmer of the story's original strength even from the twice-butchered version that editor Davidson provides.  Thus, three dispirited stars.

The Follower, by Wenzell Brown

Witness the perfect match: A milquetoast who decides to make his mark on society by stalking someone, and a paranoiac who only finds satisfaction when someone really is after him.  But their game develops a twist when their twin psychoses create a third player combining the worst aspects of both.

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?  If it were better done or more profound in its revelation, it might have been.  As is, it straddles the line between two and three stars, leaning toward the former.

The Tree of Time (Part 2 of 2), by Damon Knight

The conclusion of last month's adventure, in which a not-quite-man from the future is abducted from our time by frog people from his and then left to die in an experimental dimension ship.

After a reasonably thrilling beginning, the book reverts to what it was from the start — a pointless pastiche of the worst elements of science fiction's "Golden Age."  Deliberate or not, it's no less unreadable for it.

One star.  Feh.

Thaw and Serve, by Allen Kim Lang

Lang explores an interesting idea: hardened criminals are quick-frozen and deposited two centuries into the future.  It is the ultimate passing of the buck.  Turns out the future doesn't know what to do with them either, choosing to dump them in the wilds of Australia.  There, they fight it out for the televised amusement of the future-dwellers.

Written and plotted with a heavy hand, it's not one of Lang's better works.  In fact, the best thing about the story is the biographical preamble (Lang's middle name was given to him by Koreans during the war).

Two stars.

Nackles, by Curt Clark

"Curt Clark" (I have it on good authority that it's actually Donald Westlake) offers up the chilling story of the creation of a deity.  In this case, it's Santa Claus' dark shadow, the child-abducting "Nackles," who is caused to exist the same way as any other god — through widespread promulgation of belief.

Deeply unpleasant, but quite effective.  Three stars (four if this is your kind of thing).

Round and Round and …, by Isaac Asimov

At long last, I finally understand the concept of the "sidereal day," as well as the length of such days on other planets.  Thank you, Doctor A!  Four stars.

The Book of Elijah, by Edward Wellen

If you haven't read First and Second Kings (or as the uninitiated might call them, "One and Two Kings"), Elijah was a biblical prophet, passionate in his service of the Lord, who ascended to Heaven in flame and is due to return just before the End Times.  Ed Wellen, best known for his "funny" non-fact articles in Galaxy, writes about what happens to Elijah during his sojourn off Earth.

The Book is written in pseudo-King James style and is about as fun as reading the Bible, without any of the spiritual edification.  One star.

Appointment at Ten O'Clock, by Robert Lory

Last up, we have the tale of man with just ten minutes to live…over and over and over again.  Ten O'Clock has the beginning of an interesting concept and some deft writing, but it is short-circuited in execution.  It reads like the effort of a promising but neophyte author (which, in fact, it is — this is his second work).  Three stars.

This is what the once proud F&SF has been reduced to: a lousy Knight serial (shame, Damon!), a disappointing translation, some bad little pieces, and a couple of bright spots.  And Asimov's column, which I read, even if few others seem to.

Oh well.  I've already paid for the year.  Might as well see it through.

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Magazine/Anthology

[April 23, 1963] Double, Double (May 1963 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

It might be my imagination, but it seems that events came in pairs this month. 

On April Fools' Day, two new medical soap operas premiered on American television.  I'm not fond of that genre – give me Route 66 or Alfred Hitchcock Presents when I want something other than science fiction and fantasy – so I don't know if General Hospital or The Doctors will catch on.


Can you tell which one is which?

A pair of accidents involving nuclear submarines happened only two days apart.  On April 10, the United States vessel Thresher sank, with the loss of all aboard.

More fortunate was the Soviet submarine K-33, which collided with the Finnish merchant ship Finnclipper on April 12.  Although severely damaged, both vessels managed to reach port safely.

Remaining at the top of the American music charts for double the number of weeks of most hit songs, He's So Fine by the Chiffons filled the airwaves with its memorable background chant doo-lang doo-lang doo-lang.

Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic contains stories that fall into pairs, as well as a hidden doubling of two authors.

Devils in the Walls, by John Jakes

The magazine opens with a pair of sword-and-sorcery stories.  The first is the more traditional of the two.  A mighty barbarian, who will remind you of Conan, falls victim to slave traders.  A beautiful woman purchases him.  If he will venture into the haunted ruins of her father's castle to retrieve a great treasure, she will set him free.  He must overcame natural and unnatural menaces to win his freedom.  It moves briskly, and there are some good descriptions, but it is a typical fantasy adventure.  Three stars.

The Cloud of Hate, by Fritz Leiber

The creator of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser relates another tale of this pair.  A supernatural mist made out of hate possesses four of the worst murderers in the magical city of Lankhmar.  The two adventurers must use all their skill to defeat them.  Although this is not the most important incident in the lives of the daring duo, the author adds style, wit, and imagination to the genre.  Four stars.

The Message, by Edward Wellen

In ancient China, a naked man with green skin appears out of nowhere.  A woodcutter takes the man into his hut and educates him.  Eventually he becomes one of the most important persons in the land, and is responsible for some of the great events in Chinese history.  The reasons for his actions are unexpected.  This is mostly a work of historical fiction, with a touch of speculative content.  Although not without interest, I thought it was a bit too long.  Three stars.

Threshold of the Prophet, by Roger Zelazny

A man named Crane appears from nowhere (another doubled theme of this issue) in New York in the far future.  The Brooklyn Bridge is destroyed and falls into the Hudson River.  Crane, who seems to have god-like powers, retrieves it and tries to sell it to an old man in the country.  Without the story's literary allusions (clarified by the editorial introduction), it would be meaningless.  Two stars.

Anything for Laughs, by Ron Goulart

The first of a pair of comedies in this issue is about an unemployed man who is pressured by his girlfriend into entering a job lottery.  He winds up as a court jester on a planet ruled by a dictatorship.  Somebody uses his name on revolutionary pamphlets, and his troubles begin.  Some readers may find this more amusing than I did.  Two stars.

One False Step, by David R. Bunch

A specialist in dystopia offers a grim tale of a man who made one mistake.  His job was a gruesome one.  When he fails at it, his punishment involves tending metallic plants, one of the many unpleasant aspects of this bleak future world.  This story will not be to the taste of all readers, but I found it powerful.  Four stars.

The Screams of the Wergs, by Jay Scotland


John Jakes is the first of two repeated authors in this issue, both hiding under pseudonyms containing the names of nations.  Extraterrestrials experience extreme pain when tourists take flash photographs of them.  A human who tries to protect them goes to extreme lengths.  It turns out that things are not what they seem.  This science fiction story never grabbed me.  Two stars.

Monologue for Two, by Harrison Denmark

As readers of Cele Goldsmith's pair of magazines know by now, this author is really Roger Zelazny.  Only two pages long, this story offers one side of a conversation.  Through it we see a man who suffered at the hands of another obtain great power, and win his revenge.  It's an effective narrative gimmick.  Four stars.

Professor Jonkin's Cannibal Plant, by Howard R. Garis

The second comic story in the magazine is a reprint from the August 1905 issue of Argosy.  A scientist greatly increases the size of an insect-eating plant by feeding it large pieces of meat.  As you might imagine, this is a bad idea.  Nothing surprising happens, and it's not particularly funny.  Two stars.

Love Story, by Laurence M. Janifer

This is a satiric story that begins as light comedy, but turns into something quite different at the end.  A man who truly loves other people causes the Earth to rotate in only four hours.  A scientist, frustrated by his failure to find a rational explanation for this phenomenon, solves the problem in the most direct way possible.  The last two paragraphs makes the reader reconsider the author's intention.  Three stars.

Do all these pairs double your pleasure and double your fun?  More importantly, do they justify the magazine's new price of fifty cents?  Maybe you should enjoy a stick of gum while you consider these questions.

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Magazine/Anthology

[February 20, 1963] A merry chase (March 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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[While you're reading this article, why not tune in to KGJ, Radio Galactic Journey, playing all the current hits: pop, rock, soul, folk, jazz, country — it's real now, man…]


by Gideon Marcus

If you've been reading the papers this week, you've no doubt been avidly following the improbable trip of the Anzoategui.  This Venezuelan freighter was hijacked by Communist dissidents who wanted to embarrass Venezuelan prime minister Betancourt such that he wouldn't visit the United States.  Several navies chased the purloined vessel as it steamed 'round the eastern hump of South America, ultimately finding sanctuary in Brazil.

The editorial helm of F&SF was recently taken over by Avram Davidson, and like the poor freighter, the magazine has been a captive to its new master and his whims.  Quality has declined steeply, and were it not for Asimov's article and the excellent tale at the end, this issue would barely be fit to warm a stove.

But, those two pieces are the saving grace of the March 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction…

Seven Day's Wonder, by Edward Wellen

This un-shocking tale of an electric New Testament missionary will fail to galvanize you, either with its ponderous pace or its puny puns.  Honestly, this is the sort of thing Avram Davidson (now F&SF's editor) used to make work.  Sadly neither Wellen nor Davidson are Davidson anymore.  Two stars.

The Day After Saturation, by D. K. Findlay

If overpopulation compel us to settle the seas, is de-evolution toward our aquatic ancestry the next inevitable phase?  Probably not, and this, Findlay's first work, is overwrought.  Two stars.

The Sky of Space, by Karen Anderson

Not a bad poem on the changing understanding but unchanging characteristics of outer space.  Three stars.

The Question, by Donald E. Westlake and Laurence M. Janifer

Hot enough for you?  Be careful what you take for granted.  It might just disappear.  Three stars.

The Importance of Being Important, by Calvin Demmon

Second in a matched pair on solipsism (also from a new author), it explores the perfect life of a fellow whose existence is merely another's convenience.  Pointless.  Two stars.

The Journey of Ten Thousand Miles, by Will Mohler

It's the end of the world, and Tyson St. J Tyson III desperately wants to leave his tomb of a house and go on a sea cruise — only the sea isn't there anymore.  Three pages of a story inflated five-fold to no one's profit.  One star.

Captain Honario Harpplayer, R.N., by Harry Harrison

Overblown, unfunny pastiche of C. S. Foreseter's work.  I've often said that I have trouble distinguishing Harrison and Laumer, but Laumer is funnier when he tries.  1 star.

Game for Motel Room, by Fritz Leiber

When a three-brained, too-silky centenarian beauty with a homicidal husband comes a flirtin', best you send her packing sooner rather than later.  Decently written, but disturbing and kind of dumb.  Two stars.

You, Too, Can Speak Gaelic, by Isaac Asimov

I love pieces on etymology, and the Good Doctor does a fine job of explaining the (not) Celtic roots of para-dimethylaminobenzaldehyde.  Four stars.

Zack With His Scar, by Sydney Van Scyoc

When the world of the future is perfect, the only imperfect thing…is you.  And the only therapy is being saddled with someone worse.  I don't know that I liked this story, but I found it interesting.  Three stars.

Hunter, Come Home, by Richard McKenna

I put off reading the final novelette for days, given how lackluster the rest of the issue had been.  But this story makes up for them all.  It's sort of a cross between Deathworld and Hothouse — a planet with a single, planet-spanning and omnivariate lifeform is under attack by a group of rapacious colonists bent on scouring the native biome and replacing it with terrestrial plants and animals.  The rationale of the invaders is plausible (if distasteful), the depiction of the native life is profound, and the characterization is superb.  Five stars.

And there you have it.  Mediocrity and downright lousiness followed by a burst of talent.  Let's hope Asimov and McKenna don't disembark at Brazil, never to be seen again…

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Your ballot should have arrived by now…]




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Magazine/Anthology

[August 12, 1962] FEH (the September 1962 Amazing)

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by John Boston

This September Amazing continues the magazine’s slide into mediocrity after the promise of the year’s earlier issues. 

Keith Laumer’s serial A Trace of Memory concludes, and it’s quite disappointing, in part because it compares so poorly to last year’s Worlds of the Imperium, in part because it seemed to start so well.  The protagonist, who is down and out after a sequence of ridiculously bad luck, is pulled out of the gutter (well, out of a police station) by a strange rich guy called Foster who seems to have lived for centuries, has an indestructible old journal to prove it, but doesn’t remember who he is or how he got here.  Also, it turns out, he is being stalked by even stranger, and dangerous, globular creatures, who catch up to him as the protagonist joins him, leading to a chase across country, and ultimately across the ocean, to escape them and track his origins. 

That first half was quite fast-paced and well-written if a bit over the top.  However, the second half takes the protagonist to Vallon, Foster’s home planet (not a vital part of the plot; it’s telegraphed from the beginning), which has degenerated to a sort of cartoony gangster feudalism, against which backdrop the protagonist performs ever more preposterous feats of physical and mental prowess, dissipating the momentum of the earlier parts and quickly becoming tedious.  Also: upon seeing the July cover illustration of Stonehenge, I joked at the time that I feared winding up in Atlantis.  That doesn’t happen, but Laumer reveals another legendary motif which is just about as silly. 

Speaking of legends, early on, the protagonist introduces himself: “ ‘My name’s Legion,’ I said.” OK, stop right there.  As everybody in this Bible Belt town knows, even me, when Jesus was confronted by a man possessed by an “unclean spirit” and asked his name, the guy said, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” (Mark 5:1-5:9) So Laumer’s protagonist is in effect claiming to be a horde of demons.  I’m thinking of Chekhov’s dictum that if there’s a gun on the wall in Act One, it should be fired in the next act.  Those demons never do get fired.  Two stars (and if it had gone on longer it would have worked its way down to one).

The cover story is Edmond Hamilton’s short story Sunfire!, which continues Hamilton’s transition from Space Opera to Mope Opera.  Space explorer Kellard has slunk home to Earth and moved back, alone, into his ancestral house, refusing all contacts with his colleagues at Survey, because something happened on Mercury and two of his fellows died, and it’s so terrible he can never talk about it.  So Survey comes after him, having not accepted his resignation, and packs him off back to Mercury even though—or maybe because—he still won’t say a word about what happened there. 

It’s actually not much of a secret to anyone who has looked at the cover and seen the fiery aliens, looking like crude but imaginative Hallowe’en costumes.  They’re telepathic, too, and Kellard got a full dose of how free and playful they are, traversing the universe and frolicking among and in the stars.  “No, the ecstacy was one that men would never know except at secondhand through this brief contact!  The glorious rush together of the star-children through the vast abysses, drinking up the energy of the radiation about them.” Etc. It makes being human and tramping around on cold and too, too solid planets seem pointless, and Kellard is never going to burden anyone else with this awful knowledge. 

Sorry, I don’t buy it, and neither does the head of Survey, who gets Kellard’s point once he too meets the aliens, but doesn’t think just having the planets of the universe is such a bad deal.  Like any sensible person he’s ready to tell the world about this rather interesting discovery.  Despite the artificiality of its problem, the story is well turned and, with this and Requiem from the April issue, Hamilton is clearly working hard at making the transition to a less obsolete kind of SF than the space opera he is better known for.  Splitting the difference between good intentions and lack of plausibility, three stars.  If you can believe in Kellard’s reaction, you’ll like it better than I did.

Edward Wellen’s Apocryphal Fragment is a mildly clever vignette (so labelled on the contents page) in which Doubting Thomas encounters a jinni in the Negev.  Something this slight should be rated in asteroids rather than stars, but if I must . . . two stars.

The other short story is Whistler, by David Rome (reputedly a pseudonym for one David Boutland); it’s the first US appearance of an author who has published nine stories in little more than a year in New Worlds and its companions in the UK.  Unfortunately it is an insipid though well-meaning message story about the evils of bigotry in the space lanes, almost as short as Wellen’s.  One star.

That leaves the Classic Reprint, The Ice Man by William Withers Douglas, from the February 1930 Amazing.  The narrator is an ancient Roman citizen brought to the New York of 1928 through a classical version of suspended animation.  He expects this account to be transmitted to his countrymen back home, in hopes that someone will rescue him from the insane asylum where he has ended up.  It recounts his initial captivity by a rather annoying if not quite mad scientist, and his observations of modern times—fire engines, women’s fashion, etc. etc.—once he has made his escape.  It’s reasonably well written, and any two or three pages of it are quite amusing.  Unfortunately there are 34.  Two stars.

Ben Bova has another installment of his series on extraterrestrial life, The Inevitability of Life, which reviews what’s known (or believed to be known) about the origins of life in chemical evolution and physical processes.  There’s a good case that the chemical and physical components of life arise inevitably through natural processes, though Bova is a little hazy on how the deal is closed and organic chemicals become living matter.  Nonetheless, three stars for lucid exposition of interesting material, particularly welcome in an issue where there’s not much else of interest.

Benedict Breadfruit abideth.

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 4, 1962] Cleft in Twain (June 1962 Galaxy, Part 1)

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by Gideon Marcus

A few years ago, Galaxy Science Fiction changed its format, becoming half again as thick but published half as often.  196 pages can be a lot to digest in one sitting, so I used to review the magazine in two articles.  Over time, I simply bit the bullet and crammed all those stories into one piece – it was cleaner for reference.

But not this time.

You see, the June 1962 issue of Galaxy has got one extra-jumbo novella in the back of it, the kind of thing they used to build issues of Satellite Science Fiction around.  So it just makes sense to split things up this time around.

I've said before that Galaxy is a stable magazine – rarely too outstanding, rarely terrible.  Its editor, Fred Pohl, tends to keep the more daring stuff in Galaxy's sister mag, IF, which has gotten pretty interesting lately.  So I enjoyed this month's issue, but not overmuch.  Have a look:

The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass, by Frederik Pohl

Instead of an editor's essay, Pohl has written a cute vignette on overpopulation without remediation.  Old Man Malthus in a three-page nightmare.  Apparently, good old Phineas didn't think to pack Enovid when he brought perfect health back in time to the Roman Empire.  Anyway, I liked it.  Four stars.

For Love, by Algis Budrys

Budrys strikes a nice balance between satirical and macabre in this post-alien-invasion epic.  The last remnants of Homo Sapiens, driven underground after a tremendous ET tetrahedron crashes into the base of the Rockies, launch a pair of daring attacks against the invaders.  But at what cost to their humanity?  Four stars.

The Lamps of the Angels, by Richard Sabia

I viciously panned Sabia's first work, I was a Teen-Age Superweapon; his latest is an improvement.  A thousand years from now, the human race is on the verge of reaching out for the stars, and one Mexico City-born pilot is selected for the honor of scouting Alpha Centauri.  But if humanity was meant to explore beyond the sun, surely God would have given us hyperdrives at birth.  A bit clunky in that "translated foreign languages way" (and I can be guilty of the same charge), but also compelling.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Names in the Sky, by Willy Ley

Every now and then, Ley returns to his former greatness and gives us a really good article.  This one, on the origins of the names of planets and stars is filled with good information pleasantly dispensed.  Of course, I'm always more kindly disposed towards articles that deal with etymology and/or astronomy… Four stars.

On the Wall of the Lodge, by James Blish and Virginia Blish

The latter portion of the magazine takes a sad turn for the worse.  Lodge is an avante garde piece about (I believe) a fellow whose life takes place in a television show.  It tries too hard and doesn't make a lot of sense.  More significantly, it lost my interest ten pages in.  Thus, I must give it the lowest of scores: one star.

Dawningsburgh, by Wallace West

A cute piece about a callow tourist on Mars, who resents the other callow tourists of Mars, and the attempts to revive departed Martian culture with robots, to make a few bucks for the callow tourist industry.  Three stars.

Origins of Galactic Philosophy, by Edward Wellen

Wellen's Origins series has deteriorated badly.  This latest entry, involving a space entrepreneur and the robot society he finds, is utterly unreadable.  One star.

Dreamworld, by R. A. Lafferty

Last up is a whimsical piece on a literal nightmare world with an telegraphed ending made tolerable by Lafferty's unique touch.  Worth two or three stars, depending on your mood (and on which side of the bed one woke).

***

I'll save The Seed of Earth, by Robert Silverberg, for next time.  Here's hoping it is in keeping with the first third rather than the second third of the magazine.  In the meantime, stay tuned…and try not to get drafted.

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