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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 8, 1966] Flesh and Blood (January 1967 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Burning Curiosity

It's probably just my morbid imagination, but it seems to me that the most intriguing, if horrifying, event in recent days was the demise of Doctor John Irving Bentley earlier this month. The elderly physician was reduced to a pile of ashes (except for part of one leg) in what some people are calling a case of spontaneous human combustion.


The scene of the fire. Notice the large hole in the floor caused by the flames. I have deliberately avoided sharing more gruesome photographs.

Church Music

After that piece of news, it's a relief to turn to a piece of light entertainment. The unique novelty song Winchester Cathedral by some British folks calling themselves the New Vaudeville Band, currently at the top of the American music charts, is a deliberately old-fashioned number. It sounds like something Rudy Vallee might have offered in the 1920's, complete with singing through a megaphone and a finishing chorus of oh-bo-de-o-do.


Rumor has it that the song was recorded by session musicians hired for the occasion, and that the band was hastily put together when it became a hit.

Well, that got me to thinking about all the folks buried in Winchester Cathedral. (There's that morbid imagination at work again.) The most familiar one — to me, at least — is the great author Jane Austen.


It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a dead woman in possession of a good reputation must be in want of a lengthy epitaph.

Gore on the Pages

Given my grim mood, it's appropriate that the
latest issue of Fantastic is full of violence, horror, and bizarre manipulations of the human body.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul, stolen from the back cover of the March 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.


The original, with brighter colors. The Reptile Men (no women?) are cute.

The Ultimate Gift, by Bryce Walton

We begin our journey into the macabre with the magazine's only original work.


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Aliens arrive at the Moon. They seem ready to conquer the world, but are hesitant about humanity's ability to put up a fight. They allow envoys to pay a visit, but kill them for some unknown violation of protocol. The dying words (thoughts, really, but let's not get into that subplot) of the most recent victim lead to an unusual choice for the next diplomat.

The so-called Basket Man was born without arms or legs. After years of misery, he winds up as a sideshow freak, making use of advanced technology to move around and manipulate things. In his bitterness, he refuses to have artificial limbs attached to his torso. A representative from the United Nations, based on the hint noted in the paragraph above, convinces him to acquire robotic arms and legs, and to head to the Moon to meet the aliens.


The fact that they're reptilian, sort of like the creatures on the cover, is relevant.

A little knowledge of zoology may lead you to predict the reason for the aliens' violent reaction to their visitors. As you may have guessed from my description, this is a ghastly little story, with a particularly disquieting scene near the end. It has a certain raw power, I suppose. Given the infamous thalidomide tragedy of not so many years ago, the premise may strike many readers as being in poor taste.

Two stars.

The People of the Black Circle, By Robert E. Howard

Dominating the issue is a bloody sword-and-sorcery adventure, featuring a hero who seems to be making a comeback of sorts. This novella was originally serialized in three parts, in the September, October, and November 1934 issues of Weird Tales.


All cover art by Margaret Brundage.


Brundage often painted scantily clad young ladies for the magazine.


Two scantily clad young ladies.

Before I get into the story itself, let me talk about the revival of interest in Robert E. Howard and his most famous creation. The tales of Conan were left in the yellowing pages of old pulp magazines until specialty publisher Gnome Press starting collecting them in several volumes.


Cover art by David A. Kyle. The novella under discussion appears in this book, number two in the Gnome Press series, from 1952.

Earlier this year, the story appeared in a paperback collection. (It should be noted here that L. Sprague de Camp completed some of Howard's unfinished works about Conan.)


Cover art by Frank Frazetta.

The setting is an imaginary ancient past. There are clues that this takes place in a fantasy version of the Afghanistan/Pakistan/India region. (Some of the hints are a bit too obvious, such as a chain of mountains called the Himelians.) We begin with a king whose soul is about to be stolen by evil sorcerers. Rather than allow this to happen, he orders his sister to kill him.


Illustrations by Hugh Rankin.

This opening scene is just a hint of the carnage to follow. The plot is a complex one, with various factions scheming against each other, betrayals, allies becoming enemies, and foes forced to work together. Frankly, I had some trouble following it. In brief, the sister wants to force Conan, now the leader of a group of hill people, to wreak revenge on the sinister forces that attacked her brother. This involves several of his men who have been taken prisoner by another realm. (It's complicated.)

Instead, Conan kidnaps the sister, hoping to exchange her for the freedom of his men. This plan is ruined when a sorcerer, betraying the dark forces for whom he was working, works with the sister's disloyal servant on their own scheme to rule the land, which results in the death of Conan's men. (I said it was complicated.)


Conan, his captive, and a horse.

After a whole bunch of wild adventures, with plenty of killings, the pair wind up at the mountain where four powerful sorcerers dwell, along with their less powerful minions and one ultra-powerful sorcerer. By this time, the sister's hatred for Conan has turned to love, just in time for her to be kidnapped from her kidnapper, if you see what I mean.


One of the many torments to which the sister is subjected.

I hope this gives you some idea of the breakneck pace, non-stop action, and frequent plot twists in this story. I lost count of how many people are slaughtered by sword or magic. (At one point, Conan acquires a magic item that protects him from deadly sorcery. This seems awfully convenient.) There are even battle scenes, with hundreds or thousands of warriors massacring each other.

There's plenty of weird magic as well, which may be the most interesting part of the story. I was particularly impressed by the floating cloud on which the four sorcerers travel.

Howard had an undeniably important influence on sword-and-sorcery fiction, and his imitators continue the tradition. (Brak the Barbarian, created by John Jakes, comes to mind.) The raw intensity of Howard's style and the bloodthirstiness of his plots aren't for all tastes. Personally, I prefer the wit and elegance of Fritz Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Three stars.

The Young One, by Jerome Bixby

From the April 1954 issue of the magazine comes this supernatural yarn.


Cover art by Augusto Marin.

Jerome Bixby is probably best known to SF fans for his chilling tale It's a Good Life and the memorable episode of Twilight Zone adapted from it. He has also dabbled in screenwriting, coming up with the kind of B movies I enjoy, such as It! The Terror From Beyond Space.


Illustration by Sanford Kossin.

A young boy meets a fellow his own age, newly arrived in the United States from Hungary. He seems nice enough, but all animals hate him. What's even stranger is that his parents eat raw meat and have very sharp teeth. (You can already see where this is going, can't you?)

The immigrant boy says he absolutely has to be back home before seven at night. The American kid tricks him by taking him into a cave, then pretending to be lost, so the Hungarian lad can't return until after his strict curfew. You can probably guess what happens.

It's an decent story, if predictable. (The exact way the plot is resolved may be a little bit unexpected.) The description of the cavern is intriguing, if nothing else.

Three stars.

The Ambidexter, by David H. Keller, M.D.

This Kelleryarn comes from the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Leo Morey

The world's two greatest surgeons, one American and one Chinese, have a meeting. The American has a brain tumor, so he wants the Chinese physician to remove part of his brain and replace it with part of a brain from another person. Can you guess that this is going to go very badly wrong?


Illustration by Leo Morey also.

This tale of Mad Science reminds me of old horror movies, the kind that show up on Shock Theater. In particular, the transplant theme brings to mind things like Mad Love, although that was about hands and not brains.

The partial brain transplant concept is unique, as far as I know, and Keller's background as a physician makes the crazy idea seem somewhat plausible. The character of the Chinese surgeon reeks of the old Yellow Peril stereotype, unfortunately. Replace him with, say, Boris Karloff and you might have the basis for a decent black-and-white chiller. I don't think the censor would care for the ghastly ending, however.

Two stars.

Mad House, by Richard Matheson

The January-February 1953 issue supplies this reprint.


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.

Like Bixby, Matheson is associated with Twilight Zone and has written screenplays for feature films. His movies are too many to list, but a couple worth mentioning are the Jules Verne adaptation Master of the World and The Last Man on Earth. (Apparently Matheson wasn't happy with this version of his novel I am Legend, so he used the pseudonym Logan Swanson for his share of the screenwriting credit. I actually thought it was pretty good.)

As with Howard's novella, Matheson's story has already been reprinted in a couple of collections. The first one is named after his first published story, already considered a classic.


Cover art by Mel Hunter.

The second one is sort of a reduced version of the first one, omitting some stories.


Cover art by Charles Binger.

This psychological horror story features a frustrated writer who ekes out a living as a poorly paid instructor of literature. He's nearly always boiling over with anger about his inability to be published, lashing out at his students and just about everyone else. Fed up with his rage, his wife leaves him.


Illustrations by Bill Ashman.

He also fights a daily battle with inanimate objects around the house. They seem to be conspiring to harm him. An acquaintance — he can't be called a friend, given the fact that the main character is as nasty to him as he is to everybody else — suggests that the house is sort of absorbing his anger.


Chaos ensues.

Like other stories in this issue, it leads to a blood-soaked conclusion. It's also similar in that it's pretty predictable. The best part of it is the author's style, full of short, rage-filled sentences that really get you into the main character's head. That's not a very nice place to be, of course.

Three stars.

Worth All That Suffering?

The magazine ends with this appropriately macabre anecdote, which I offer without comment.


I don't believe it. Oh, wait a minute, that was a comment, wasn't it? Sorry about that.

Not a great issue, although a bare majority of the stories were at least worth reading. The Conan story is of historical importance, anyway. I suppose the magazine would be enjoyable enough if you happen to be in a situation where you need to be waiting around.


Cartoon by somebody called Salame, from the same issue as the Matheson story.

[Join us tonight for the next episode of Star Trek — airing at 8:30 PM Pacific and Eastern!]




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 16, 1966] Only the Lonely (November 1966 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf
with apologies to Roy Orbison

Solitary Confinement

To be a citizen of a nation inside another nation must be a very lonely feeling. Italy contains two of these countries, the tiny nations of San Marino and Vatican City. A third member of that exclusive club came into existence on October 4, when the former British colony of Basutoland won full independence, changing its name to the Kingdom of Lesotho. Lesotho is completely surrounded by the nation of South Africa.


King Moshoehoe II, constitutional monarch of Lesotho.

A Song for the Sorrowful

You don't have to be living in any of those three countries to feel lonely, of course. People experiencing that painful emotion might obtain some solace from the current Number One song on the American popular music charts. The Four Tops have a smash hit with their powerful ballad Reach Out (I'll Be There), with lyrics that are clearly aimed at a lonesome listener.


They seem to be reaching out to the record buyer.

Fiction for the Forlorn

Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic is full of stories featuring characters who are literally, or metaphorically, isolated.


Cover art by Bob Hilbreth, stolen from the December 1946 issue of Amazing Stories.


The original, illustrating a story that was part of the infamous Shaver Mystery.

Broken Image, by Thomas N. Scortia


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

The only new story in this issue features a protagonist who feels himself estranged from those around him, human or not.

His name is Baldur, and he has been surgically altered to resemble one of the humanoid aliens inhabiting a planet for which Earthlings have plans. It seems that humanity has evolved beyond sectarianism and violence, and seeks to bring the blessings of peace to other worlds.

(If I sound a little sarcastic, that's because the story's view of humanity is somewhat ambiguous. Baldur is completely loyal to the idea of Man as a perfect being, but his vision of the species is, as we'll see, a little distorted.)

One group of aliens oppresses another, going so far as to execute rebels in a particularly gruesome way.


Such as this.

The plan is to have Baldur act as a messiah for the lower class. Highly advanced technology allows him to perform healings and other miracles.

(At this point, you've probably figured out that Baldur is intended as a Christ figure. The oppressors are kind of like the Romans, the lower class is sort of like the Judeans, and so on. Given that analogy, some of what happens won't surprise you. The character's name also suggests an allusion to myths about the Norse god Baldr, sometimes spelled Balder or — a ha! — Baldur.)

There's a human woman, also in disguise, to help Baldur in his role as the savior of the oppressed. However, it turns out that she's hiding something from him, and that the folks in the starship orbiting the planet have schemes of which he is not aware.

This is a pretty good story, which held my interest all the way through. The Christian metaphor might be too blatant, and there's a twist ending that made me scratch my head. It explains why Baldur thinks of humanity as superior to other species, but I'm not sure if it really works.

(One interesting thing is that Baldur is not only physically changed, but mentally as well. His memories seem to be slightly distorted. Since we see everything from his point of view, although the story is told in third person, he serves as what some literary critics are starting to call an unreliable narrator. This all goes along with the twist ending.)

Three stars.

You're All Alone, by Fritz Leiber


Illustrations by Henry Sharp.

There's a title that suggests loneliness, for sure.

Before I get into the story itself, let me go over the rather complex history of the text. It seems that Leiber intended it to appear in Unknown, the fantasy magazine edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. as a companion to Astounding. Unknown died before the story could be published.

Leiber expanded the work from about forty thousand words to approximately seventy-five thousand, hoping to have a book publisher accept it as part of their fantasy line. The company stopped publishing fantasy before it sold.

Back to the drawing board! Leiber next sent it to Fantastic Adventures, who agreed to buy it if — guess what? — it was cut back to forty thousand words. It finally appeared in the July 1950 issue. That's the version that's been reprinted in the current issue of Fantastic.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

We're not done yet! The seventy-five thousand word version wound up as one half of a double paperback, under the name The Sinful Ones. The publisher came up with the suggestive new title, altered the text slightly to make it racier, and added sexy chapter titles like The Strip Tease and Blonde Prostitute, trying to convince the reader that it was hot stuff.


Anonymous cover art. The companion novel, about a lady bullfighter, looks . . . interesting.

Back to the story itself. (At forty thousand words, it actually justifies, if just barely, its label by the magazine as a Complete Novel.)

Carr Mackay works at an employment agency in Chicago. A frightened young woman comes into his office, followed by a big blonde woman. The younger woman is obviously terrified of the blonde, but tries to ignore her. She talks to Carr, pretending to have a job interview, and asking him if he's one of them.


By the way, the blonde woman has a big, vicious, scary pet dog, but it's not anywhere near as large as shown in this illustration, or the cover of Fantastic Adventures!

Before leaving, she scribbles a note warning him to watch out for the blonde and her two male companions, and leaving a cryptic message to meet her at a certain location if he wants to learn more.

Of course, this all sounds like the paranoid ravings of a lunatic. Things get weirder when the blonde slaps the young woman across the face, and she forces herself not to react. Then a co-worker shows up, acting as if he's introducing Carr to somebody, but there's nobody there. Some kind of practical joke?

It's hard to deny that something strange is going on when Carr shows up at his girlfriend's place, and she goes through the motions of greeting and kissing him, but he's not where she apparently thinks he is. She ignores the real Carr, and continues to interact with an imaginary one.


She should really be smooching the empty air instead of a ghostly figure, but that's artistic license for you.

Although he's reluctant to accept the truth, Carr realizes that almost all humans are mindless automatons, just going through the motions like wind-up toys. Only a very few, like the young woman, the blonde and her companions, and himself, are conscious beings. He meets with the woman, leading to dangerous encounters with sinister folks and wild adventures in a world full of clockwork people and those who take advantage of the situation.


A moment of happiness in a public library after hours. I like the subtle hint that the light above their heads is an eye watching them.

The premise is a fascinating one, and the author conveys it in a convincing manner. There's some philosophical depth to the idea, too. Who among us hasn't felt like a cog in a big machine? It moves very quickly, almost like a Keith Laumer novel. (Maybe the longer version allows for more exploration of the concept.)

I could quibble that not everything about the plot is completely logical. Inanimate objects sometimes act as if they're part of the mindless mechanism of life, and sometimes don't. The conscious people are able to knock off the hats of the automatons, for example, and steal their drinks, but the keys of a piano move by themselves when the person supposed to be playing them isn't there.


The floating hands are more artistic license.

Despite this tiny flaw, and the fact that the ending seems rushed, it's an enjoyable short novel. As you'd expect from Leiber, it's well-written. As a bonus, it provides a vivid portrait of the city of Chicago, in all its bright and dark aspects.

Four stars.

Breakfast at Twilight, by Philip K. Dick


Cover art by Clarence Doore.

From the July 1954 issue of Amazing Stories comes this tale of a family isolated from their own time.


Anonymous illustration.

Mom, Dad, and three kids are enjoying a typical morning at home, although there's some kind of fog or smoke outside, and the radio isn't working. The lone boy heads off for school, but quickly comes back. There are soldiers everywhere blocking his way.

It turns out that their home is now seven years in the future. The Cold War has heated up, leading to a dystopian society. (Apparently a bomb caused the time travel effect.) The soldiers are stunned to see a woman and children out in the open, and are even more amazed at the food available in the house.

A political officer (another sign that the United States government has become authoritarian, along with the casually mentioned book burning) suggests that they wait for another bomb to send them back to their own time.

Although the plot is simple enough for an episode of Twilight Zone, this is a powerful story, sending a clear warning of the dangers of escalating world conflicts. (The theme seems even more relevant today, with the situation in Vietnam, than it did just after the Korean War.)

Four stars.

Scream at Sea, by Algis Budrys


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

The January-February 1954 issue of the magazine provides this example of extreme loneliness.


Illustrations by Ernie Barth.

A man survives an explosion that destroys his ship. He manages to hang on to a piece of the vessel that's got some canned ham and water, so it serves him as a sort of raft. The ship's cat happens to escape the disaster as well.


The only other character in the story.

The author manages to create a true sense of isolation and desperation. It's not a bad piece, but there isn't a trace of science fiction or fantasy at all! There's a twist in the tail that would have been more appropriate for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine than Fantastic.

(By the way, the editor's blurbs for the last two stories are backwards! I guess that's a sign of how little the publisher cares for these poorly funded magazines full of unpaid reprints.)

Three stars.

Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Artists Behind Him, by Anonymous

Serving as a coda is this portfolio of illustrations for stories by ERB that appeared in Amazing years ago.


For The Land That Time Forgot (1918, reprinted 1927), illustration by Frank R. Paul.


Same credits as above.


For The City of the Mummies (1941), illustration by J. Allen St. John.


For Black Pirates of Barsoom, same year, same artist.


For Goddess of Fire, same year, same artist.

I don't have much to say about these old-fashioned pictures. They're OK.

Three stars.

Some Solace For Solitude

If you're feeling lonesome, picking up a copy of this issue might provide some relief for a few hours. All the stories are worth reading, and a couple of them are better than average. If that doesn't raise your spirits sufficiently, visiting your neighbors might do the trick.


That astronaut won't be lonely. Cartoon by Frosty from the same issue as the Budrys story.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 26, 1966] All that glitters: in praise of Cele Goldsmith Lalli

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by John Boston

Gone but not Forgotten

SF editors come in highly assorted makes and models and evoke equally varied reactions. Some are revered as movers and shakers (though not always unanimously); a few are reviled as debasers of the field; some are barely noticed at all. A few have earned sympathetic respect for making something out of nothing, or close to it. Before World War II, Frederik Pohl edited several pulp magazines with a budget of zero, and he had to beg for stories from his friends. Robert Lowndes had little more than zero to work with, but managed to publish three at-least-readable magazines through the 1950s, occasionally coming up with something excellent. (And he’s at it again with Magazine of Horror.)

Another in this mode was Cele Goldsmith, later Lalli, who joined Ziff-Davis in 1955, straight out of Vassar. First, she was editorial assistant to Howard Browne, then to Paul Fairman when Browne left, with promotions along the way to associate editor and managing editor. At the time she was hired, she had read no SF beyond Verne and Wells. When Fairman left at the end of 1958, she inherited the editor’s mantle. During that time, the magazines were firmly, and intentionally, stuck in a rut of formulaic stories. Most of them were produced almost literally by the yard by a small number of regulars (among them Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, Stephen Marlowe (nee Milton Lesser), and Howard Browne, joined in midflight by Harlan Ellison and Henry Slesar) under various pseudonyms and house names as well as their own names. Though more outright fantasy did appear in Fantastic than in Amazing, overall there was not much difference between their contents, and in fact the label Science Fiction appeared on Fantastic at times.

Things changed quickly under the new editor. (Hints of these changes were already apparent in the last months under Fairman, when Goldsmith was assuming progressively more responsibility). The contents pages gradually became more various, with respectable middle-grade writers from outside the regular crew appearing more and more frequently—some of whom, like Cordwainer Smith and Kate Wilhelm, became much more prominent later. Though some of the regulars—Silverberg, Garrett, Slesar, Ellison—continued to appear, the pseudonyms vanished.

Goldsmith’s most audacious coup in her first year as editor was the November 1959 Fantastic, which consisted entirely of five stories by Fritz Leiber. No SF magazine had previously devoted an entire issue to one author (though some issues of Amazing and Fantastic had probably come close, with authors’ identities obscured by pseudonyms.) Most notable among the stories was "Lean Times in Lankhmar," the first new entry in a number of years in Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery series featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, which signaled a revival of a style of fantasy that had fallen badly out of favor.

Fantastic November 1959

By 1960, the magazines had been reestablished as having some claim to merit, a welcome counter-trend to the rapid disappearance of other SF magazines. (No fewer than 15 magazines ceased publication from 1958 to mid-1960.) Amazing’s and Fantastic’s roster of contributors quickly became more impressive. Frank Herbert, James Blish, James E. Gunn, Damon Knight, and Clifford Simak all appeared during 1960, and Fritz Leiber made multiple contributions to both magazines. Other signs of an enterprising editor included the resumption in Fantastic of Sam Moskowitz’s articles on early figures in SF and fantasy, which had been running in Satellite when it folded; pieces on Lovecraft, Stapledon, Capek, M.P. Shiel and H.F.Heard, and Philip Wylie appeared in 1960. (The series was later continued in Amazing with more recent writers as subjects.) Amazing began a selection of reprints from its earliest days, selected and introduced by Moskowitz. Fantastic published a “round robin” story titled "The Covenant", with chapters by Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Robert Sheckley, Murray Leinster, and Robert Bloch, modelled on similar stories published in the 1930s. On the outside as well, the magazines improved, with the covers of Fantastic in particular becoming steadily less cheesy and more imaginative.

Goldsmith’s most often recognized achievement is the significant number of excellent writers whom she discovered and who went on to considerable success. The list speaks for itself: Keith Laumer, Neal Barrett, Jr., Roger Zelazny, Sonya Dorman, Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Phyllis Gotlieb, Piers Anthony. She also provided a home for David R. Bunch, who had been publishing in semi-professional and local markets throughout the ‘50s, but who became a regular in Amazing and Fantastic, albeit to decidedly mixed reception. Similarly, she was the first American editor to publish J.G. Ballard, who had made a substantial reputation in the British SF magazines but had not previously cracked the US magazines. Lalli’s lack of background in SF before she came to Ziff-Davis may have served her well by leaving her more open than other editors to departures from genre business as usual.

That’s the good news—the straw-into-gold part. But the magazines were not all gold by any means. Being at the bottom of the market in terms of pay rates meant that the stories Goldsmith received from the most prominent writers would be those that had been rejected everywhere else. She could (and had to) take a chance on new writers who might or might not pan out, and in some cases she had to take work that she probably would rather have avoided. Many of the serialized novels were quite weak. Jack Sharkey’s disastrous Amazing serial The Programmed People comes to mind. Overall, the bag was especially mixed in Amazing. Most issues of the magazine included some stories that were variously crude, inane, or otherwise barely readable. Reading Amazing month by month was a perpetual bait-and-switch game, with expectations raised by impressive issues and dashed the following month.

Nevertheless, by the end of the Ziff-Davis era, the Goldsmith/Lalli Amazing had put up an enviable score of memorable stories. There are too many to list here, but the highlights include Arthur C. Clarke’s Before Eden (June 1961); J.G. Ballard’s startling run including The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista (March 1962), Thirteen to Centaurus (April 1962), and The Encounter (June 1963); Mark Clifton’s scarifying Hang Head, Vandal! (April 1962); Roger Zelazny’s Moonless in Byzantium (December 1962); Keith Laumer’s It Could Be Anything (January 1963) and The Walls (1963); and Philip K. Dick’s The Days of Perky Pat (December 1963). The last half-dozen issues amounted to a crescendo towards oblivion, featuring Zelazny’s serial He Who Shapes (January-February 1965), Frank Herbert’s Greenslaves (March 1965), Clifford D. Simak’s brief and elegant Over the River and Through the Woods (May 1965), and Zelazny’s exuberantly shameless performance The Furies (June 1965). Fantastic offered among others Jack Vance's The Kragen (July 1964), Thomas M. Disch's chilly Descending (the same issue!), Ursula Le Guin's April in Paris (her first story!), and the renewed series of Gray Mouser/Fafhrd stories by Leiber.

It’s not clear whether Lalli had the option of staying with Amazing and Fantastic when they were sold, but if so, it’s just as well she didn’t take it. Life under the Sol Cohen almost-all-reprints, negligible-budget regime, shortly to be compounded by a boycott by the Science Fiction Writers of America when Cohen refused to pay for reprints, could scarcely have been anything but miserable. She wisely slipped sideways into Ziff-Davis’s Modern Bride, there to purvey a different sort of fantastic literature, while the Sol Cohen magazines’ editorials and letter columns rang with surly bad-mouthing of her time at the helm of Amazing and Fantastic. Something tells me that her decade’s foray into SF and fantasy will be well remembered long after her successor is forgotten.

Cele Goldsmith and the Sword and Sorcery Revival


by Cora Buhlert

When Cele Goldsmith took over editing duties at Amazing and Fantastic in 1958, sword and sorcery was not just dead – no, the type of historically flavoured adventure fantasy with a good dose of horror that was pioneered by writers like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner or Nictzin Dyalhis in the pages of Weird Tales some thirty years ago did not even have a name. A few stalwarts were holding up the flame in the fanzine Amra, but commercially the subgenre was dead and those who'd written it during its brief flourishing in the 1930s had either passed away (Howard, Kuttner, Dyalhis) or had retired from writing (Moore and Smith).

One of the few writers from the genre's heyday who was still around and still writing was Fritz Leiber, who had published several stories about a pair of adventurers called Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in Unknown and other magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. The last Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story "The Seven Black Priests" appeared in Other Worlds Science Stories in 1953. For all intents and purposes, the two rogues from the city Lankhmar, though dear to Leiber's heart, were permanently retired, as the market had moved away from the sort of swashbuckling fantasy that characterized their adventures.

Enter Cele Goldsmith and the Fritz Leiber Special Issue of Fantastic in November 1959. Of the five stories Leiber wrote for that issue, two were part of his Change War series (a novel in that series, The Big Time, had just won the 1959 Hugo Award for Best Novel), two were standalones and one, "Lean Times in Lankhmar", was the first new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story in six years.

Fantastic May 1961
The May 1961 issue of Fantastic, illustrating a memorable scene from Fritz Leiber's "Scylla's Daughter". There's also a reprint of a Robert E. Howard story.

 

"Lean Times in Lankhmar" is one of the best and definitely the funniest story in the entire series, a satire of organized religion that manages to be sharp but not offensive. The story must have struck a chord both with Cele Goldsmith and the readers of Fantastic, for over the next six years eight new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories appeared in Fantastic, more than had been published in Unknown, where the series originated in 1939.

Fantastic October 1962
Ed Emshwiller's striking cover illustration for Fritz Leiber's "The Unholy Grail".

In 1961, the still nameless genre that was about to undergo a revival finally got a name, when Fritz Leiber proposed "sword and sorcery" in an exchange with Michael Moorcock in the pages of the fanzines Amra and Ancalgon. The alliterative term stuck, so now there was finally a name for stories like the adventure of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Robert E. Howard's Conan.

Fantastic May 1964
Ed Emshwiller's portrait of Ningauble of the Seven Eyes, patron wizard of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, adorns the cover of the May 1964 issue of Fantastic, which reprinted Fritz Leiber's "Adept's Gambit".

Cele Goldsmith had only just been born during sword and sorcery's first heyday in the 1930s and certainly did not read Weird Tales in the crib, but she knew a rising genre when she saw one. So she began publishing more sword and sorcery stories by other authors.

Roger Zelazny is one of Cele Goldsmith's great discoveries. His first professional story "Horseman!", which appeared in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic, was a sword and sorcery story. It wasn't even the only sword and sorcery story in that issue. The title story "Sword of Flowers" by Larry M. Harris a.k.a. Laurence M. Janifer as well as "The Titan," a reprint of a 1934 story by P. Schuyler Miller, were sword and sorcery as well.

Fantastic August 1962
Roger Zelazny debuted in the August 1962 issue of Fantastic which also featured sword and sorcery by Laurence M. Janifer and P. Schuyler Henstrom. The cover is by Vernon Kramer.

Zelazny has since branched out, but he keeps returning to sword and sorcery once in a while, for example in the haunting Lord Dunsany-inspired stories of Dilvish the Damned, three of which have appeared in Fantastic to date.

Fantastic June 1965
Roger Zelazny's Dilvish the Damned story "Thelinde's Song" is the cover story of the June 1965 issue of Fantastic, which was also the last issue edited by Cele Goldsmith-Lalli.

Though only in his thirties, John Jakes is already a veteran writer who has been publishing across various genres since 1950. An admitted fan of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories from the 1930s, Jakes created his own Conan-like character in Brak the Barbarian, who has appeared in four stories in Fantastic between 1963 and 1965.

January 1965 Fantastic
Ed Emshwiller's iillsutration for "The Girl in the Gem" by John Jakes.
Fantastic March 1965
Gray Morrow's cover for the March 1965 issue of Fantastic illustrates "The Pillars of Cambalor" by John Jakes.

 

British writer and editor Michael Moorcock has been a prolific contributor to the fanzine Amra and also pushed the sword and the sorcery genre into new directions with the adventures of Elric of Melniboné, an albino elven warrior who depends on drugs to survive and fights evil with his cursed sword Stormbringer. The majority of Elric's adventures have appeared in the pages of Science Fantasy, but "Master of Chaos" appeared in the May 1964 issue of Fantastic alongside a reprint of Fritz Leiber's 1947 Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story "Adept's Gambit."

Since Amazing and Fantastic were sold to Sol Cohen and Cele Goldsmith Lalli left for the greener pastures of Modern Bride, the appearances of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Dilvish the Damned and Brak the Barbarian have become rare in the pages of Fantastic (and what stories there did appear were likely leftover from Goldsmith's tenure). However, the sword and sorcery revival is still in full swing and Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, which started it all back in 1932, are set to be reprinted later this year.

One day in the future, when the history of sword and sorcery is written, Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock and John Jakes will be remembered as pivotal figures in the revival of the genre in the sixties. However, I hope that any history of sword and sorcery will also make room for Cele Goldsmith, who championed the genre when it had neither a name nor a market and without whom the sword and sorcery revival may well have been strangled in the crib.

Modern Bride, December 1965
No more mighty muscles in Cele Goldsmith Lalli's new stomping grounds, though at least the gothic castles and maidens in white gowns remain.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 10, 1966] Dollars and Cents (September 1966 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Render Unto Caesar

There's a new way to lose your money when visiting Las Vegas. A hotel, showroom, and casino called Caesars Palace (no apostrophe) opened a few days ago. As the name implies, it has an ancient Rome theme rather than the Western theme found in most gambling dens in Sin City.


A showgirl advertises the grand opening. I don't think that's an authentic costume of the time.

The inauguration ceremony is said to have cost one million dollars, including money spent on huge amounts of caviar, filet mignon, crabmeat, and champagne.


A page from a brochure advertising the place. Or possibly an illustration for a time travel story.

The Deuce Gets Loose

Speaking of losing money, today the United States Department of the Treasury announced that it would no longer print two-dollar bills. (The U.S. Mint hadn't actually printed any since June 30, but now they're going to stop completely.)


Thomas Jefferson looks glum about the situation. At least he'll still be on the nickel.

Two-dollar bills only make up a tiny percentage of the paper money in circulation. Some folks think they're unlucky. They're welcome to give any they don't want to me.

Wild Success

One thing you can do with a two-dollar bill is buy a couple of 45 rpm single records, and maybe even have a little change left over. A lot of people are shelling out a buck or so for the current Number One smash hit Wild Thing by the British band the Troggs. This raw, energetic tune was originally recorded last year by an American group called, appropriately enough, the Wild Ones, but failed to reach the charts.


It's the only rock 'n roll hit I can recall that features an extended ocarina solo.

You Pays Your Money And You Takes Your Choice

If you've only got fifty cents to your name, you can still purchase a copy of the current issue of Fantastic. That's less than one-third of a cent per page, so it sounds like a pretty good deal.

Of course, as my esteemed colleague John Boston recently pointed out, both Amazing and Fantastic are publishing lots of reprints without paying the authors. Whether you want to support these publications or boycott them is your choice. As for me, duty calls.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

Of course, the image on the front is also a reprint, and I doubt it was paid for either. In any case, it comes from the back cover of the April 1942 issue of Amazing Stories.


Here's the original painting, titled City of the Future. Looks a lot better this way, doesn't it?

For a Breath I Tarry, by Roger Zelazny

As the cover announces, here's the author's newest story.

Wait a minute! Haven't I read this before? Let me see, where could it have been?

Oh, yeah, it appeared in the March issue of New Worlds, and was reviewed by my esteemed colleague Mark Yon just a few months ago. I hope the author got paid twice.


Anonymous cover art.

I cannot hope to match the quality of this outstanding article. I will simply offer my own views, for whatever they might be worth.


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Long after humanity has disappeared, Earth is controlled by machines. Orbiting the planet is the supreme ruler, Solcom. Dwelling deep underground is a rival machine, named Divcom. (An allegory with God and the Devil seems intended, and some of the story reminds me of the Book of Job. However, the plot is completely original, and not merely a retelling of the Bible story.)

Solcom creates a machine to rule the northern hemisphere, calling it Frost. The ruler of the southern hemisphere is Beta. Frost makes a hobby of studying what little remains of humanity's relics. A machine named Mordel, in the service of Divcom, comes to Frost with a supply of ancient books. These excite Frost's curiosity, and it sets out on a quest to understand human emotions; in fact, to become a human being. Mordel offers Frost a deal. It will give Frost all the aid it requires to achieve this goal, but if Frost comes to realize that the task is impossible, it will have to serve Divcom forever.

(An allusion to the legend of Faust also seems intended. Note the similarity in names.)

Frost travels to the southern hemisphere, in order to witness one of the last places where people dwelled. This act is in defiance of Solcom's will, leading to a conflict between creator and created. (We are told that a temporary malfunction in Solcom's operation, at the time it made Frost, caused Frost to be unique among machines. Perhaps this is a form of original sin.)


What Frost wants to be.

I have barely touched the surface of a remarkable story. I haven't mentioned, for example, the giant ore-digging machine that carries the remains of the human being it accidentally killed within itself, causing all the machines it encounters to listen to its story. The fact that it bears parts of a dead human is enough to make other machines obey it, a subtle and important point. I also haven't talked about the role Beta plays in the plot. Go see for yourself.

Five stars.

"You Can't See Me!", by William F. Temple

If we allow the Zelazny tale to be considered new, our first reprint comes from the June 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Walter H. Hinton.

A fellow discovers that the people around him are happily conversing with folks he can't see. At first, a few others witness the same peculiarity, assuming the chatterers are crazy. Soon everybody succumbs to the delusion, and only the protagonist doesn't have an imaginary companion.


Illustration by Gerald Hohns. I assume all the reprinted drawings failed to earn the artists any new money, just like the writers.

Of course, there's an explanation for this strange happening. It's a pretty weak one, unfortunately, and the story just kind of fizzles out toward the end. Although it's not really a comedy, the fact that the main character has the unlikely name Zechariah Zebedee Zyzincwicz, and that this unusual moniker is relevant to the plot, tells you that you shouldn't take it too seriously.

Two stars.

Carousel, by August Derleth

This chiller comes from the April 1945 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by R. E. Epperley.

A little girl lives with her father and a wicked stepmother, straight out of a fairy tale. The evil woman is insanely jealous of the man's affection for his daughter, and would even be happy to see her dead.


Illustrations by Robert Fuqua.

A few years before the story begins, a mob lynched a carnival worker, leaving behind a wrecked merry-go-round. The child often goes to play in the ruins, claiming to be friends with a black man. The wicked stepmother takes advantage of the situation to make sure the girl is punished for her actions, whipping her severely. She follows her to the merry-go-round, hoping that the dangerous machinery will cause the child to suffer a fatal accident. (The implication that the woman intends to cause the accident is pretty clear.) Things don't work out the way she expects.


The haunted carousel.

As you can probably tell from this synopsis, there are no surprises at all in the plot. It's a pretty ordinary horror story, of the supernatural punishment variety. Although the murder of the carnival worker is obviously due to racial hatred, this isn't really relevant, which lessens the story's impact.

Three stars.

The Little People, by Eando Binder

This fantasy novella first appeared in the March 1940 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

A scientist, his adult daughter, and her boyfriend are in a cabin somewhere in a remote area. The gruesome discovery of a cat with its throat cut is the first hint that something weird is going on. The next odd happening is the disappearance of a gold watch.

We find out right away that a community of fairies, or whatever you want to call them, is located nearby. One of them went into the cabin to steal the watch as a sign of bravery, in order to win the hand of the woman he loves, and had to kill the cat to escape.


Illustrations uncredited. They might be by Robert Fuqua again.

A rival for the fairy woman's affection tries to outdo the other by stealing a pair of binoculars. He gets caught by the scientist, who wants to exploit the little people as a scientific curiosity. The two young people are more sympathetic to their plight. The rival acts as a traitor to his kind, helping the scientist capture others.


Happier times, before the big people trap them.

The fairy man who stole the watch undertakes the dangerous task of rescuing his people from their captor, as well as defeating the treacherous rival.

I may as well mention here that Eando Binder is a pseudonym, used by brothers Earl (deceased) and Otto Binder. They're best known for a series of stories about the robot Adam Link. My sources tell me that this story is the work of Otto alone. In any case, it's not a bad fairy tale, if not outstanding in any way. Animal lovers should be warned that the cat is not the only creature to fall victim to the diminutive hero.

Three stars.

The Psionic Mousetrap, by Murray Leinster

The March 1955 issue of Amazing Stories is the source for this Cold War thriller.


Cover art by Edward Valigursky.

Our hero parachutes into the Soviet Union on a suicide mission. His grim task is to kill a kidnapped scientist before he can reveal the secrets of powerful psionic technology to the Reds.


Illustration by Paul Orban.

Things go badly right from the start. The hero winds up in the hands of the enemy. They force him to complete the work of the captured scientist, which turns out to be their undoing.

I didn't get much out of this spy yarn. The plot depends on the fact that the Commies are too materialistic to believe in psionics, which was a little hard to swallow. The story's conclusion strains credulity as well. You'd expect something like this in a mediocre issue of Astounding, given the fact that psionics is pretty much just another word for magic.

Two stars.

No More Tomorrows, by David H. Keller, M.D.

Here's a Kelleryarn (as they used to call the works of this author) from the December 1932 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Leo Morey.

The narrator develops a substance that destroys the part of the brain that allows one to imagine the future. He plans to sell the secret of this stuff to a trio of Soviet agents for a ton of money.


Illustration by Leo Morey also.

He rather stupidly whips up a vial of the substance, as well as a vial of plain water, in order to brag about his plot to the woman he wants to marry. (He figures that being a multimillionaire will win her hand.) Predictably, she winds up switching the two vials, so the narrator is hoist by his own petard.

This story has an intriguing premise, but it isn't developed very well. As I've indicated, the switching of the two vials requires that the narrator act like a complete fool. (There doesn't seem to be any reason at all to have a vial of water around.) The three Soviet agents are bizarrely deformed, as the illustration indicates. I guess the author really hates Communism, but this makes the whole thing seem ridiculous.

Two stars.

Rocket to Gehenna, by Doris Piserchia

At last! A story that hasn't appeared anywhere else. It's the author's first publication, too. It's a comic tale in the form of a series of letters. (A work of epistolary fiction, for those of you with highfalutin vocabularies.)

It seems that Earth sends the bodies of the deceased to the supposedly uninhabited planet Gehenna. It turns out that the place is occupied by a caterpillar-like alien and a very naïve human boy. Since they have the power to transport anything from one place to another, they start sending bodies back to Earth. The boy also captures a woman, because he thinks he needs a wife, although he doesn't even know the basic anatomical facts of life.

This is all very silly stuff. It's obviously trying to be a wacky farce, but I didn't find it very amusing. Let's hope the author does better work in the future.

One star.

Did You Get Your Money's Worth?

The Zelazny story, all by itself, is worth the four bits you'll pay for the magazine. The rest of it goes downhill at a rapid pace. If you have half a buck to spare, you might want to give it a try.


That isn't exactly what I had in mind.

A copy of Rosel George Brown's new hit novel, Sibyl Sue Blue, is worth every penny! Buy one today!




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 10, 1966] Summer Reruns (July 1966 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Old Series Never Die, They Just Fade Away

Summertime is right around the corner, here in the Northern Hemisphere, and all patriotic Americans know what that means; reruns on television. Not only does this save the production companies money, it allows defunct programs to continue to appear on TV screens long after they're gone, like ghosts haunting a house. (Of course, they're easier to exorcise than traditional specters; just pull the plug.)

Two popular, critically acclaimed, and long-running series recently cast off this mortal coil, ready to enter the monochromatic afterlife of reruns.

Late last month, the courtroom drama Perry Mason slammed down the gavel for the last time with The Case of the Final Fade-Out. The story involved a television studio, so a large number of crew members made cameo appearances, pretty much as themselves. There was also a very special guest star.


That's executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson on the left and Hollywood columnist Norma Lee Browning on the right. The fellow in the middle? That's bestselling author Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, dressed up for his role as a judge in the final episode.

At the start of this month, The Dick Van Dyke Show came to a conclusion with the appropriately titled episode The Last Chapter. Van Dyke's character, television writer Rob Petrie, finishes the book he's been working on for five years, and looks back on his life.


Because The Last Chapter was really just an excuse to reuse sequences from previous episodes, I'm offering you this scene from the penultimate episode, The Gunslinger. Surrounding Van Dyke in this Western parody are cast regulars Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Deacon.

I'm sure that both of these hit series will be reincarnated in American living rooms for quite a while.

Not all summer television programming consists of reruns, to be sure. There are so-called summer replacement series as well. In a week or so, we'll enjoy (or avoid) the first episode of The Dean Martin Summer Show (not to be confused with The Dean Martin Show, which has been going on since last year. Are you still with me?) It will be hosted by the comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin.


Rowan on the left and Martin on the right, in a scene from their 1958 Western spoof Once Upon a Horse. I wonder if they'll have any success as TV hosts.

A Home Run The First Time At Bat

Although it's not unknown for popular songs of yesteryear to return to the charts — auditory reruns, if you will — listeners are usually searching for something original. Newcomer Percy Sledge offers an notable example with his smash hit When a Man Loves a Woman. This passionate, soulful ballad, currently Number One in the USA, is not only the first song recorded by Sledge, it is the first song recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a city famous for its music studios, to reach that position.


Your fans mean it, Mister Sledge.

I've Seen This All Before

The reason I've been talking about reruns, before I get to the contents of the latest issue of Fantastic, isn't just the fact that they've been filling up the magazine with reprints for some time now. As we'll see, many of the old stories in this issue have reappeared several times before. Reruns of reruns, so to speak. Whether fans of imaginative literature will be willing to spend four bits for fiction they may have already read in collections or anthologies remains to be seen.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

Predictably, the front cover is also a rerun.


The back cover of the June 1943 issue of Amazing Stories. It looks better in the original version.

Before I get to the reruns, however, let's start with something new.

Just Like a Man, by Chad Oliver


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Three men are in an aircraft, flying over the surface of an Earth-like planet. A sudden storm forces them to abandon the vehicle, stranding the trio in an area resembling an African savannah. Because the place is full of leonine predators, they hightail it to the relative safety of a nearby rainforest.


Climbing one of the planet's gigantic trees in order to get away from the hungry cats.

They wind up far above the ground, among an unsuspected community of highly intelligent primates. These mysterious creatures help them survive, and even offer the possibility of reaching their home base, located five hundred miles away across uncharted wilderness.


Among the primates, who are not as hostile as shown here.

This is a decent tale of adventure, and the enigmatic primates are interesting. The planet is so similar to Earth — the feline predators are pretty much just lions — that you might forget you're reading a science fiction story. Overall, it's worth reading, if not outstanding in any way.

Three stars.

The Trouble With Ants, by Clifford D. Simak


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

From the January 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures comes this final story in the author's famous City series. (By the way, the title of this work was changed to The Simple Way when it appeared in book form.)


Illustration by Rod Ruth. From this point on, all the illustrations are reruns from the original appearances of the stories.

In the far future, people are gone from Earth, with the exception of one fellow in suspended animation. Long ago, humans increased the intelligence of dogs, gave them the power of speech, and built robots to serve their needs. The canines, in turn, taught other animals to speak.

Complicating matters is the fact that a man caused ants to develop technology of their own, including robots the size of fleas. Now the ants are constructing a building, for an unknown purpose, which threatens to take over the planet.

An ancient robot returns from humanity's new home in a mysterious fashion. It seeks out the man in suspended animation as part of its quest to understand the ants.

Brought together as a fix-up novel in 1952, the City series won the International Fantasy Award the next year. It is usually considered a classic of science fiction, and has been reprinted many times.


One of the many editions of this work. Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

Highly imaginative, and with a sweeping vision of the immensity of time, Simak's tales also have a gentleness and intimacy that touches the reader's heart. The mood is one of quiet melancholy, and the acceptance of the fact that all things will pass away.

Although SF fans are likely to have read this story before, its quality makes it a welcome repeat. (One can rarely say the same thing about television reruns, or else viewers would stay glued to their screens.)

Five stars.

Where Is Roger Davis?, by David V. Reed


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

Let's take a break from stuff that has already been reprinted multiple times, and take a look at the first reappearance of this yarn, taken from the yellowing pages of the May 1939 issue of Amazing Stories. (The author is unknown to me, but I have discovered that he also writes for comics, particularly Batman. Apparently a couple of episodes of the new television series are based on his scripts for the comic book.)


Illustrations by Julian S. Krupa.

Two young men working for a New York City tour bus encounter an invisible, telepathic Martian. One of them is seduced by the alien's plot to take over the world, and soon becomes a megalomaniac.


The fact that the Martian makes robbing a bank as easy as pie is another factor in his decision.

The other fellow has to figure out a way to keep the Martians from conquering Earth.

The mood of the story changes drastically from light comedy at the start to grim tragedy by the conclusion. Given the year it was written, I wonder if the dictatorial intentions of the first man were influenced by the rise of Fascism.

The author claims that this story is a true account, sent to him by the second man. There are also bits of imaginary news articles scattered throughout, in an attempt at verisimilitude. These don't work very well, particularly the long one at the end. The only thing I found mildly intriguing, if implausible, was the way the hero manages to plot against beings who can read his mind.

Two stars.

Almost Human, by Tarleton Fiske


Cover art by Harold W. McCauley.

The introductory blurb makes it clear that the author of this story, reprinted from the June 1943 issue of Fantastic Adventures, is really Robert Bloch, using a rather absurd pseudonym. (As is common practice, this was done because he had another story in the same issue under his own name.)


Illustration by Rod Ruth.

A hoodlum makes his way into the secret laboratory of a brilliant scientist. His moll has been working for the guy, so the crook knows the genius has created a robot. The machine is being educated like a child. The gangster teaches it to be an invincible criminal, and to kill without mercy. As you'd expect, things don't work out very well.

This piece reads like hardboiled fiction from a crime pulp. The final scene is particularly gruesome, in typical Bloch style. The author shows a certain knack for the Hammett/Chandler mode, but that's about all I can say for it. Not that great a story, but somebody thought it was worth reviving for an anthology.


Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

Two stars.

Satisfaction Guaranteed, by Isaac Asimov


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

Speaking of robots, here's one of several stories about the robopsychologist Susan Calvin by the Good Doctor, from the April 1951 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustration by Enoch Sharp.

Calvin only plays a minor part in this story, which focuses on a rather mousy, insecure housewife. Her husband works for the same robotics firm as Calvin, so he brings home a test model of a new machine. It looks like a handsome young man, and is designed to be helpful around the house in many different ways. The husband goes off on a business trip, leaving his wife alone with the robot.

The housewife is frightened of it at first, but soon learns to accept it. It even helps her with home decorating, clothing, and makeup, so she learns self-confidence. A final, unexpected gesture on the part of the machine, seemingly out of character for a robot, wins her the envy of her snobbish acquaintances. Susan Calvin explains why the machine's action was a perfectly logical way of obeying the famous First Law of Robotics.


Anonymous cover art for a British edition.

The author must be fond of this tale, because he has already included it in two different collections of his work. The one shown above, as the title indicates, includes stories that take place on Earth rather than in space, despite the misleading illustration and blurb. The story also appears in an omnibus that brings together his two robot novels as well as several shorter works.


Cover art by Thomas Chibbaro.

Besides that, it is also included in the same Roger Elwood anthology as Bloch's story. My sources in the television industry tell me that it is being adapted for the British series Out of the Unknown, and should appear late this year. (Will there be American reruns? One can only hope.)

Is it worth all this attention? Well, it's not a bad yarn, if not the greatest robot story Asimov ever wrote. The housewife is something of a stereotype of an overly emotional female, dependent on a man for her happiness. (This is in sharp contrast to the highly intelligent and independent Doctor Susan Calvin.) At some point you may think that the author is violating his own rules about robot behavior, but it's all explained at the end.

Three stars.

A Portfolio – Virgil Finlay

I'm not sure if I should even discuss this tiny collection of illustrations by the great artist, but at least I can share them with you.


For The New Adam (1939) by Stanley G. Weinbaum. The magazine calls it The New Atom, which is an egregious error.


For Mirrors of the Queen (1948) by Richard S. Shaver.


For The Silver Medusa (1948) by Alexander Blade (pseudonym for H. Hickey.)

What can I say? His work is stunning.

Five stars.

Satan Sends Flowers, by Henry Kuttner


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.

The January/February 1953 issue of Fantastic is the source of this variation on an old theme.


Illustrations by Tom Beecham.

A man sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for immortality. (The premise is similar to that of the Twilight Zone episode Escape Clause, but the twist ending is different.) He ensures that he will remain young, healthy, and all that, so Satan can't play any tricks on him. Obviously, he figures he'll never have to pay up.

The Devil demands surety in the form of certain subconscious memories the fellow possesses. After assuring him that he won't even know he's lost anything, the man agrees. Unafraid of either earthly punishment or damnation, he lives a life of total depravity.


His first crime is the murder of his mother.

Eventually, he persuades the Devil to give him back what he lost, even though Satan warns him that he won't like it. This turns out to be a bad idea.

Like most other stories in this issue, this one has already appeared in a book. (It acquired the new title By These Presents.)


Back and front cover art by Richard Powers.

I should mention that the husband-and-wife team of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore almost always collaborated, even if the resulting story appeared under only one name. Whoever might have been responsible for whatever parts of this work, it's a reasonably engaging tale. I'm not sure I really accept the explanation for what the man's unconscious memories represent, but I was willing to go along with it.

Three stars.

The Way Home, by Theodore Sturgeon


Cover art by Barye Phillips.

This quiet story comes from the April/May 1953 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustrations by David Stone.

A boy runs away from home. Along the way he meets a wealthy man and his glamourous female companion, in their fancy car; a man with an injured hand who has been all over the world; and a pilot in a beautiful airplane. Without giving too much away, it's clear from the start that these men represent possible future versions of himself.


Is this the road to the future, or to home?

Like Asimov's story, this piece has already appeared in two of the author's collections, but with a slight change in the title.


Cover art by Mel Hunter.

(I'm not sure if I should really count these as two different collections, because all the stories in Thunder and Roses already appeared, along with others, in A Way Home. Such are the vagaries of the publishing industry.)


Cover art by Peter Curl.

In any case, this is a beautifully written little story, subtle and evocative. To say much more would be to ruin the delicate mood it creates.

Five stars.

Worth Tuning In Again?


Cartoon by somebody called Frosty, from the same magazine as Satan Sends Flowers.

I wouldn't call this issue bad at all, although there were a couple of disappointing stories.  It's no big surprise that the Simak and the Sturgeon were excellent, and Finlay's art is always a delight.  It's enough to make you want to tear yourself away from all those reruns on television and turn to some literary reruns instead.


In the world of cuisine, reruns are known as leftovers.

Tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest and best hits!  Even the reruns are great!




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 8, 1966] Search Parties (May 1966 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Keep Watching the Skies!

The good citizens of Michigan were recently reminded of the warning I've quoted above, from 1951's The Thing from Another World (a loose cinematic adaptation of John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There?).


Father and son describe what they saw.

Folks in Washtenaw County (just look for the city of Ann Arbor on the map, and you're smack dab in the middle of it) reported seeing strange lights in the sky last month. Supposedly, a UFO even landed in a swampy area near the tiny community of Dexter Township.


Looks like a classic flying saucer to me.

About one hundred people witnessed these phenomena. Naturally, the federal government got involved. They sent astronomer J. Allen Hynek to the area to check things out. Reportedly, he thinks at least some of the sightings can be explained as swamp gas. One politician isn't so sure.


Note that the article uses the phrase marsh gas. One person's swamp is another person's marsh, I suppose.

Gerald R. Ford is a United States Congressman from the Grand Rapids district of Michigan, so this situation strikes close to home for him. (He's a Republican, and the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. Maybe this event will make him famous.)

Here's a picture of Representative Ford and wife Betty on a recent fishing trip, so you'll recognize him if his face shows up in the news in times to come.

It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier

While some Americans are tracking down UFO's, others are searching for ways to justify their nation's involvement in the conflict in Vietnam. As a counterpoint to the many demonstrations against the war, a patriotic song celebrating the heroism of the Army Special Forces has been at the top of the charts for several weeks. The Ballad of the Green Berets, sung by Sergeant Barry Sadler, seems to have struck just the right note with many conservative music lovers.


Personally, I prefer the Tom Lehrer song I have alluded to above.

Hunting Through the Pages

Meanwhile, I've been searching for good reading. Take, for example, the latest issue of Fantastic. Fittingly, many of the stories feature characters who are on quests of one kind or another.


Art by Frank R. Paul.

(I might add that I had to search through piles of old pulp magazines to find the original source of the magazine's cover art. It turned out to be the back cover of the September 1944 issue of Amazing Stories.)


Confused? We'll get to an explanation of this weird scene later in the issue.

The Phoenix and the Mirror, by Avram Davidson

Let's begin our journey with a new novella from the former editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

The author's introductory note explains that the ancient Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid, was depicted as a sorcerer in legends of the Middle Ages. (Davidson prefers the spelling Vergil, which I will use for the name of the fictional character in this story. He also prefers nigromancer to necromancer and Renascence to Renaissance, but that's typical erudite eccentricity on his part.) He also notes that this tale is the first part of a series to be called Vergil Magus.

Anyway, we begin in medias res, with Vergil trying to escape from an underground labyrinth full of malevolent manticores. (These are not the lion-scorpions of myth, but something more like large, clever weasels.) He manages to get out, winding up at the palace of an aristocrat with magical powers. She forces him to undertake the extremely difficult quest of creating a very special enchanted mirror, so she can see where in the world her daughter might be. He can't say no, because she steals one of his souls.

You read that right. People in this world have more than one soul, it seems. Losing one isn't fatal, but it seems to be so traumatic an event that Vergil feels compelled to undertake the nearly impossible task. He has to obtain unrefined tin and copper ore from the far ends of the known world, and then form the mirror through a long and laborious process. After many struggles, with the help of his alchemist sidekick, he manages to complete this onerous undertaking.


The mirror in use.

That isn't the end of his troubles, however. After instantly falling in love with the daughter after one glimpse in the mirror, he treks through desert wastelands, with an enigmatic Phoenician at his side, to rescue her from a Cyclops.


The lady and the cyclops.

This isn't the typical brutal, dimwitted Cyclops from mythology, but an intelligent, even sensitive creature. Multiple plot twists follow, and we find out why a phoenix is mentioned in the title.

Davidson keeps his baroque writing style under control here, and the plot is cleverly crafted. The background, which is kind of a mixture of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, with a strong dose of pure fantasy, is unique and interesting. Some readers may be impatient with several pages describing in great detail the exact method of creating the mirror, but I found it fascinating.

My one major complaint is that Vergil's lengthy and dangerous voyage to obtain copper ore is skipped over almost entirely, related in just a few sentences of flashback. I would like to learn more about his adventures there. Maybe Davidson plans to expand this novella into a novel, as authors of science fiction and fantasy often do. Otherwise, I greatly enjoyed this witty and imaginative excursion into a past that never existed.

Four stars.

Seven Came Back, by Clifford D. Simak


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

As usual, the rest of the magazine is filled up with reprints. Let's start with a tale from the pages of the October 1950 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustrations by Arthur Hutah.

The setting is Mars, the favorite world of SF writers. Like many fictional versions of the red planet, this is a place where humans can survive without spacesuits. It's still a very dangerous environment, however, with all sorts of deadly creatures living in the endless desert.

The protagonist is on a quest to find the fabled lost city of the nearly extinct Martians. He hires a couple of tough guys to guide him through the wasteland. As we'll see, this turns out to be a big mistake.

Six Martians show up at their camp. It seems that they're the last of their kind, and they think that the men can lead them to a seventh. The Martians have seven sexes, you see, and this is their last chance to reproduce. (That must certainly make things complicated.)

If the humans help them out, they'll take them to the city, which is supposed to be full of fabulous treasures. The two roughnecks take off on their own, leaving the protagonist alone in the deadly desert.

Things get a lot stranger after this, and I don't want to give too much away. Suffice to say that the main character manages to survive, wins an unexpected ally, and has a mystical experience at the city.


The lost Martian city.

At first, I thought this was more or less a science fiction Western, with the hero heading for a showdown with the no-good polecats who left him to die. I have to admit that the plot went in completely unexpected directions. I'm still pondering the meaning of the ending. The author mixes space adventure with his usual warmth and concern for all living things and a touch of Bradbury's magical Mars.

Four stars.

The Third Guest, by B. Traven

The mysterious author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre offers a fable of life and death that appeared in the March-April 1953 issue of Fantastic.


Cover art by Richard Powers.

Like everything else about the author, the provenance of this story is puzzling. As far as I have been able to determine, it was written under the title The Healer, was first published in German in 1950 as Macario, and somehow wound up with its current title when it showed up in Fantastic.


Illustrations by Tom O'Sullivan.

One of the few facts known about the author is that he — or she? — lives in Mexico, the setting for most of his — or her? — fiction. This tale is no exception. It takes place when the region was still known as New Spain, during the colonial period.

Macario, a dirt-poor woodcutter, barely manages to feed himself, his wife, and their many children. For most of his life, his greatest dream has been to eat an entire roast turkey by himself. Over several years, his wife saves the tiny payments she receives for doing chores for slightly less poverty-stricken folks. She buys a turkey, prepares it exquisitely, and presents it to her husband, telling him to go into the woods and devour it alone.

Before he can enjoy the delicious feast, however, three strange visitors show up. The first is a sinister fellow, richly dressed. He offers Macario enormous wealth for a share of the turkey. Macario refuses.


The first guest.

The second one is poorly dressed, gentle, and saintly. Despite his kindly manner, Macario again refuses to share his meal. The visitor blesses him anyway.


The second guest.

The third guest, as the title suggests, is the one most vital to the plot. Macario knows he cannot refuse this cadaverous figure, so he at least manages to keep half of the turkey for himself. In exchange, the guest gives him an elixir that will cure all ills, but only if the visitor chooses who will live and who will die. The rest of the story follows Macario as he wins a reputation as a great healer. A summons from the Viceroy of New Spain, whose child is dying, leads to a final confrontation with the third guest.

This is a remarkable fantasy, with the simplicity of a folktale but the sophistication of great literature. It appeared in The Best American Short Stories 1954 (edited by Martha Foley), so I'm not alone in my opinion. It was even made into a Mexican movie in 1960, which you might be able to catch at your local arthouse cinema, if you don't mind subtitles.

Five stars.

The Tanner of Kiev, by Wallace West

The last time we met this author, it was with a reprint of the antifeminist dystopia The Last Man, to which my esteemed colleague John Boston awarded one star. Even if we ignore that story's political stance, it's poorly written. Will this tale, from the October 1944 issue of Fantastic Adventures, be any better? It could hardly be worse.


Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

The first thing to keep in mind is that this is a story about World War Two, written and published during the height of the conflict. You have to expect Our Side to be heroic Good Guys, and Their Side to be sadistic Bad Guys. In particular, the Soviets are definitely on the side of the angels here.


Illustrations by Malcolm Smith.

The hero parachutes behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. His mission is to deliver a radio transmitter to the underground resistance. Things get weird pretty quickly, as he runs into an immortal magician from Russian folklore.


The wizard and his pets.

Next thing you know, he's at the chicken-legged hut of the legendary old witch Baba Yaga. None of this supernatural stuff seems to bother him, and soon he's on his way into Kiev. He contacts the Russian guerillas, including the pretty female one with whom he falls in love. With the help of the warlock and witch, as well as a talking squirrel and a were-rat, the brave Soviets overcome the craven Germans.

Given the fact that, inevitably, a wartime story is going to paint things in black and white, this isn't a bad yarn at all. It's pretty well written, and the wild and wooly plot held my interest. The changes in mood from whimsical to romantic to horrific are disconcerting, and the love story is a little sappy, but's it worth a read.

Three stars.

Wolf Pack, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.


Cover art by Leo Summers.

The Second World War is also the background for this story, from the September-October 1953 issue of Fantastic, but this time the battle rages in Italy instead of the Soviet Union.


Illustrations by Bernard Krigstein.

The main character is the pilot of an American bomber who has already flown nearly fifty missions, raining destruction from the skies. He has recurring dreams about a alluring woman he thinks of as La Femme, or just La. It would be easy to dismiss this as a predictable fantasy for a young man deprived of female company for an extended period of time, or as an idealized image of his girlfriend back home. Yet she seems very real, and he appears to be in some kind of telepathic communication with her, even while awake.


The woman known as La.

During his latest bombing run, he nearly aborts the mission, terrified that he might destroy her. The other members of the crew have to physically restrain him to complete their gruesome task.


A bomber's world.

The author was a radio operator and tail gunner during World War Two, participating in as many bombing missions over Italy as the story's protagonist. It's no surprise, then, that the details of life as a bomber pilot are extremely realistic and convincing.   Miller took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino in 1944, which certainly had an influence on the writing of his award-winning novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), already considered a modern classic.

Unlike the previous story, which, understandably, was full of gung-ho patriotic glory (much like Sergeant Sadler's hit song, come to think of it) this is a somber, emotionally powerful account of the way that war turns men into machines, and how the innocent suffer as much as the guilty.

Five stars.

Betelgeuse, in Orion: The Walking Cities of Frank R. Paul, by Anonymous

I wasn't sure if I should even bother discussing this little article, but what the heck. It originally appeared under the slightly different title Stories of the Stars: Betelgeuse in Orion, supposedly by a Sergeant Morris J. Steele in the September 1944 issue of Amazing Stories. This is probably a pseudonym for the magazine's editor, Raymond A. Palmer, but I can't prove that.


Cover art by Julian S. Krupa.

Anyway, after some facts about the giant star, we get wild speculation about the beings who might live there. It's pretty much just a way to fill up some space.

Two stars.

The End of the Search

Well, my search for enjoyable fiction certainly paid off! This was an outstanding issue. Even the worst story was pretty good, and the best were excellent. It makes me ponder my skepticism about reprinting old stuff. After all, I don't complain when an movie from yesteryear shows up on television, as long as it's a good one.


Check your local listings to see if this decade-old classic will be showing in your area any time soon.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 12, 1966] Past?  Imperfect.  Future?  Tense. (March 1966 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Straight From the Horse's Mouth

The Noble Editor and my Esteemed Colleagues always do a fine job of informing our fellow Journeyers about what's happening on Earth and in outer space. There is one small piece of news, however, which seems to have escaped notice.

The last episode of Mister Ed appeared on American television screens last week. For those of you fortunate enough not to be familiar with this program, it's about a talking horse.


The star of the program. I believe there are some human actors as well.

I find it remarkable that a show with a premise that does not lend itself to a large number of variations has lasted for more than five years. For those of you who are counting, that's five times as long as the excellent, groundbreaking series East Side/West Side.


George C. Scott as New York City social worker Neil Brock. He doesn't seem happy about being outdone by a loquacious equine.

To add insult to injury, Mister Ed wasn't even original, but an obvious imitation of a series of low budget movies about Francis the Talking Mule, who appeared in no less than seven films from 1950 to 1956.


In Hollywood, changing a talking mule to a talking horse is known as creativity.

How Green Was My Valley

If the success of Mister Ed proves that entertainment was less than perfect in the recent past, a new novel suggests that the future of popular literature may lead to some tension among sensitive readers.


Every Night, Josephine! is a nonfiction book about the author's dog. I can't seem to get away from animals, can I?

Jacqueline Susann's first novel, Valley of the Dolls, appeared in bookstores a couple of days ago. The word on the street is that it is quite racy. I expect the author will earn a fair amount of greenbacks from this fledgling work of fiction.

A Songbird Flies Back

In the world of popular music, even a song a few weeks old can seem dated. A little more than a year ago, multilingual British singer Petula Clark had a Number One hit in the USA with her upbeat number Downtown, which I quite like. I might even say her past success is far from imperfect.

Now she's back with another smash hit. It makes me a little tense to realize that My Love isn't as good a song as Downtown, but I have to admit that the lady can sing, and I wish her more success in the future.


You're going to the top of the charts, dear.

Half a Century for Half a Buck

Given the fact that Fantastic and its sister publication Amazing are now filling their pages with lots of reprints, not all of them classics, we have plenty of evidence that speculative fiction's past hasn't always been perfect. The latest issue goes back in time nearly fifty years, but also features a couple of new works. Appropriately, many of the stories deal with threats from the distant past, while the only futuristic tale describes a tense situation that may confront the people of tomorrow.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul, reprinted from the back cover of the November 1940 issue of Amazing Stories, as shown below.


I don't think this is a very accurate picture of what the surface of the moon Titan might be like.

The Bells of Shoredan, by Roger Zelazny


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

We've already met Dilvish, a warrior who escaped from Hell, a couple of times before. He returns to the material world to defend his homeland, with the aid of a being that takes the form of a steel talking horse. (There's that again! Francis and Ed, what hath thou wrought?)

In this adventure, he journeys to the ruins of an incredibly ancient, seemingly deserted citadel. His quest is to ring enchanted bells that will summon soldiers from the limbo where they have been trapped for an immense amount of time. Along the way, he acquires a temporary companion in the form of a priest.


The unlikely pair witness a ghostly battle.

Dilvish is an intriguing character, and the author gives readers just enough information about his past to make them want to know more. This sword-and-sorcery yarn is full of imaginative supernatural happenings and plenty of action. I could quibble about the author's attempt to sound archaic — he has a habit of inserting the word did before verbs in order to sound old-fashioned — but that's a minor point. Overall, it's a solid example of the form. I'd place it somewhere between Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, and a little bit higher than John Jakes.

Four stars.

Hardly Worth Mentioning, By Chad Oliver


Cover art by W. T. Mars.

From the pages of the May/June 1953 issue of the magazine comes this tale of unexpected rivals of humanity from the mists of prehistory.


Illustrations by Ernie Barth.

A team of archeologists digging in rural Mexico discovers a plastic disk in a layer of soil from pre-Columbian times. The apparent paradox leads the protagonist to discover that another humanoid species, distinct from Homo sapiens, has been directing human history since the beginning. They even have the ability to travel in time, in order to correct little mistakes, like leaving the plastic disk where it could be found centuries later.


An army of the time travelers arrives in an ancient Indian village.

When the archeologist discovers the truth, the humanoids hurt him in the worst way possible. Knowing that he cannot fight them directly, he resolves to protect the future of humanity in a different way.

The author is an anthropologist by profession, so his portrait of the related field of archeology is completely convincing. The price the protagonist must pay for learning too much carries a powerful emotional impact. I was pleased and surprised to find out that the story avoids a melodramatic battle between the two species, but instead ends in a quiet, hopeful, bittersweet fashion.

Four stars.

Axe and Dragon (Part Three of Three), by Keith Laumer


Illustration by Gray Morrow.

In the first two parts of this novel, we journeyed with our hero, one Lafayette O'Leary, into another reality, that he seemed to create through self-hypnosis. After many wild adventures, he wound up getting blamed for the disappearance of a beautiful princess. Now he sets out to rescue her from a legendary ogre and his dragon.

This segment starts off with an even more comedic tone than the others, bordering on the just plain silly. Lafayette meets with some folks who are obviously intended to be cartoon versions of Arabs. They remind me of a famous novelty song from a few years ago, Ahab the Arab, by comic singer Ray Stevens. As an example of the goofiness, at a feast they not only consume Chinese and Hawaiian dishes, but bottles of Pepsi.

Anyway, Lafayette goes on to acquire a loyal steed in the form of a friendly dinosaur, and finally meets the ogre. The ogre has a very strange brother indeed. After an unexpected scene of bloody violence in such a lighthearted story, Lafayette returns to the palace. He meets an old rival, learns the truth about the king's mysterious wizard, saves the princess, discovers who was behind her kidnapping, finds out about his own special background, and gets the girl (although maybe not in the way you'd expect.)

The whole thing moves at a furious, breakneck pace, so that you don't realize it doesn't always make a whole lot of sense. Lafayette's ability to change reality, for example, seems to come and go, depending on how the author needs to propel the plot. There's a scientific explanation, of sorts, from the so-called wizard about what's really going on, but it might as well just be pure magic. It's entertaining enough to keep you reading, but hardly substantial.

Three stars.

Keep Out, by Fredric Brown


Cover art by Clarence Doore.

The March 1954 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this brief tale, from a master of the short-short story.


Illustration by John Schoenherr.

From birth, a group of people are bred to survive on the surface of Mars. The narrator is one of these folks, and reveals their plans.

Some of Brown's tiny tales are masterpieces of a very difficult form. This one is not. I saw the twist ending coming. Maybe you will, too.

Two stars.

The People of the Pit, by A. Merritt


I have been unable to find out who drew this cover.

We jump back to the January 5, 1918 issue of All-Story Weekly for yet another yarn about danger from the remote past. It was reprinted in the March 1927 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

Some folks head for a remote part of the Arctic in search of gold. A man who is nearly dead crawls to their campsite and relates his strange story.

It seems that there is an immense pit, bigger than the Grand Canyon, beyond a chain of mountains. Not only that, but a gigantic set of stairs, carved in the remote past, leads down into it.

The fellow descends into the pit, and encounters bizarre beings who enslave him. He tells how he finally escaped, and managed to crawl his way back up to the surface.


Illustration by Martin Gambee.

This story reminds me of H. P. Lovecraft, with its unimaginably old structures and creatures who are almost beyond the ability of the human mind to conceive. Given the original date of publication, I presume Lovecraft was influenced by it. The author creates a genuine sense of weirdness and menace. The old-fashioned use of a narrative-within-a-narrative slows things down a bit, and it's mostly description rather than plot, but it's not bad at all.

Three stars.

Your Soul Comes C.O.D., by Mack Reynolds


Cover art by Leo Summers and Ed Valigursky.

Once you get beyond the face of Joseph Stalin on the front of the March 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures, you'll find the original appearance of this variation on a very old theme.


Illustration by Leo Summers.

A guy intends to summon a demon in order to exchange his soul for a good life. Before he can even perform the necessary ritual, however, a being appears, ready to make a deal. The man gains forty years of true love, prosperity, and a happy family. When it comes time to pay the price, he finds out what he bargained for.

A story like this depends entirely on the twist in the tail. I have to admit that the author took me by surprise and came up with a new version of the sell-your-soul premise.

Three stars.

How Did You Enjoy Today's Grammar Lesson?

Example of the past imperfect: I was reading Fantastic magazine yesterday.

Example of the future tense: I will finish this article today.

Well, that may not be the best way to study the structure of English, but it gives me something to think about while I sum up my feelings about this issue. For the most part, it was pretty good. Only the Fredric Brown reprint was disappointing, because I expected more from him. There was a good old story, and a good new story. The rest of the stuff was decent filler.

If you don't care for the way I'm acting like a language instructor, maybe you'd prefer something a little more technologically advanced.


Don't blame me if you don't like math.

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well! If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article! Thank you for your continued support.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 14, 1965] Expect the Unexpected (January 1966 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's . . . a Meteor? A Satellite? A Flying Saucer?

Things got off to a bang earlier this month, in a most unexpected way. On the evening of December 9, folks in Canada and the United States saw a fireball in the sky. According to witnesses, something crashed in the woods near the town of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.

(Cue eerie theremin music.)

The US military and state troopers sealed off the area and began a search. So far, they haven't reported finding anything.

(That's what they want you to think.)


Isn't this the way The Blob started?

After eliminating things like a plane crash, the authorities seem to think the most likely suspect is a meteor that exploded in the atmosphere. (Vocabulary lesson for today: A very bright meteor, particularly one that blows up spectacularly, is known as a bolide.) It might possibly be debris from a satellite, some suggest. Of course, you and I know it's really little green men . . .

Another Song of Solomon?

Almost as surprising as a blazing visitor from outer space is a modern pop song with lyrics that are a couple of thousand years old. The Byrds are currently at the top of the American music charts with their version of Turn! Turn! Turn!

Composed by folk singer Pete Seeger, almost all the words are taken from the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes, supposedly written by King Solomon. The exceptions are the title, repeated several times, and the closing line I swear it's not too late, emphasizing the song's antiwar message.


She don't care about grammar either, I guess.

What Do You Expect For Four Bits?

Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic is full of unexpected happenings.


Cover art by James B. Settles, taken from the back cover of the August 1942 issue of Amazing Stories.


The best copy I can find of the original. Please excuse the tiny print. I doubt this is a very accurate representation of the planet Uranus anyway.

Six and Ten Are Johnny, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.


Cover art by Barye Phillips and Leo Summers.

From the very first issue of Fantastic comes this tale of an unexpected encounter on a distant world.


Illustrations by Virgil Finlay.

A shuttle carries a survey team from a starship down to the surface of the planet. The crew has an uneasy feeling about the place, for no obvious reason. They land on a plateau above a dense jungle. They are shocked to meet Johnny, who claims to be the sole survivor of a lost starship. Things get even weirder when some of the crew members vanish, and the others claim that they never even existed.


Officers from the starship join the survey team in an attempt to figure out what's going on.

Everybody seems to be in a dazed condition, except the protagonist. That's because he's got a metal plate in his head, which protects him from having his mind controlled by the alien organism that makes up the jungle.


The wild-eyed madman in this picture is actually our completely sane hero, who is trying to protect a colleague from the creature's telepathic powers.

This is a grim little science fiction horror story with a feverish, eerie mood. I'm not sure I believe the way the alien organism works, or if the behavior of the crew is plausible. (Would you really bring a bunch of dogs on a starship to test if a planet's atmosphere is breathable? Of course, the real reason they're present is so they can go crazy and bark wildly, like in any scary movie.) Not the most profound story in the world, but a competent spine chiller.

Three stars.

Wonder Child, by Joseph Shallit


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.

The January/February 1953 issue of the magazine supplies this account of an invention with unexpected effects.


Illustrations by Ed Emshwiller (better known as Emsh.)

A married couple would like to have a child, but they don't want to deal with all the work of raising it from infancy. They happen to know a scientist who has created a gizmo that will speed up the nerve growth of a fetus in the womb. Their son develops rapidly, sparing them a lot of trouble with things like toilet training.


He also develops a precocious interest in sex.

Despite some problems with teachers, neighbors, and other kids, things seem to be going pretty well. What they don't know is that their acquaintance is a classic Mad Scientist, who has also given the child increased aggression. It's not hard to see that things won't work out for the best.

I found both the technology and the behavior of the characters implausible. The ending of the story left a bad taste in my mouth. I suppose the author does a decent job portraying a pair of self-centered bohemian parents, but they're not much fun to read about.

Two stars.

Axe and Dragon (Part Two of Three), by Keith Laumer

Let's take a break from reprints and turn to the latest installment in this new novel.


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

As you may recall, the improbably named Lafayette O'Leary wound up in a strange, supposedly imaginary world through self-hypnosis. He has some control over things, creating food, drink, clothing, shelter, and the like. However, the place has a stubborn reality of its own.

After surviving a duel in a slapstick fashion, he winds up being framed for the kidnapping of the land's beautiful princess. Much running around follows, with O'Leary even creating a secret door for himself, so he can escape into it.


He also briefly returns to the so-called real world, where he runs afoul of the law.

Determined to clear his name, he sets out to rescue the princess from a fabled giant and his supposed dragon. Complicating matters is the king's magician, who has more advanced technology than you'd expect in this steam-powered world, and who seems to know more about what's going on than he admits.


There's also a big guy.

The mood remains very light, with even more comedy than the first part.  The breakneck pace of events holds the reader's attention.  Even if the whole thing could be dismissed as much ado about nothing, it provides adequate, forgettable entertainment.

Three stars.

What a Man Believes, by Robert Sheckley


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

Back to reprints with this tale of the afterlife, from the November/December 1953 issue.


Illustrations by Henry C. Pitz.

A guy who didn't expect anything after death winds up in an oddly accommodating Hell.  It seems he has a choice of eternal punishment: he can undergo physical torture, fight wolves, or drift in a boat.


He can also climb a mountain.

Predictably, he selects the boat, preferring endless boredom to unending agony.  This leads to an ending that, well, didn't make a lot of sense to me.  I suppose some irony is intended, but it falls flat.

Two stars.

Three Wishes, by Poul Anderson


Wraparound cover art by Richard Powers.

A nice old man makes an unexpected discovery in this yarn from the March/April 1953 issue.


Illustration by Dick Francis.

The elderly fellow is Papa Himmelschoen.  If that sounds familiar, you're probably thinking of Papa Schimmelhorn, a character created by Reginald Bretnor in the story The Gnurrs Come from the Voodvork Out back in 1950.  Anderson's old man has a similar thick accent, so I assume this is a deliberate allusion.

Anyway, the kindly Papa mends a pair of pants for a neighbor, and gets a little statue of a fairy as payment.  It comes to life when, in a burst of gaiety, he kisses it.  His reward is three wishes.  Since he's completely happy with his life, he doesn't know how to use his wishes.  The solution to his problem isn't completely satisfying, and involves a bit of circular reasoning.

This is a trivial work from a talented writer.  The mood is pleasant enough, and Himmelschoen is a lot less obnoxious than Schimmelhorn, but it doesn't add up to much.

Two stars.

Phoney Meteor, by John Beynon


Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

From the yellowing pages of the March 1941 issue of Amazing Stories comes this piece, by an author better known as John Wyndham.


Illustration by Jay Jackson.

Neatly wrapping up the magazine with an incident similar to the one I mentioned at the start of this article, this story involves a mysterious object falling to Earth.  Since the setting is England during the Second World War, the local folks treat it as a possible Nazi weapon. 

Alternating sections of narration reveal that it's really a spaceship, carrying a large number of aliens from their dying world.  It's obvious from the start, and the illustration, that they're tiny beings, so Earth seems like a planet full of giant monsters.

That's about all there is to the story.  Beynon/Wyndham writes well enough, but I found the accounts of life in England during the Blitz more interesting than the science fiction stuff.

(Everybody seems very coolheaded when faced with this potentially deadly object.  I suppose that's a bit of wartime propaganda, to maintain morale.  Keep Calm and Carry On, and all that.)

Two stars.

Did It Meet Your Expectations?

I wasn't expecting this issue to be so weak, ranging from so-so to below average.  I can understand the financial reason for using so many reprints — I believe the publishers have full rights to the stories and art, so they don't have to pay anything for them — but it results in a lot of disappointing early work from well-known writers.  If I were in a worse mood, I'd be tempted to tell the editor exactly where he can go with all these old relics.


Cartoon by Ray Dillon.  It's a reprint, too, from the same issue as Poul Anderson's story.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 22, 1965] Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (November 1965 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Days of Our Lives

I'm stealing the name of a new soap opera, due to premiere on NBC next month, because it sums up the way that past, present, and future came together in the news this month.

Yale University put an item known as the Vinland Map on public display on October 12. This is a map of the world, said to date back to the Fifteenth Century, which seems to indicate that Norsemen visited the Americas long before Christopher Columbus. In case you're wondering about the date, it was Columbus Day, in a nice bit of irony.


A detail of the Vinland Map. That's Greenland to the right, and a chunk of North America to the left.

As you might expect, there's controversy over whether this is the real thing or a forgery. Today, nobody knows for sure if this visitor from yesterday is genuine, but maybe we'll find out tomorrow.

If authentic, the Vinland Map is a voice from the past. In a similar way, folks in the present are trying to send a message to the future.

On October 16, the penultimate day of the New York World's Fair, a time capsule was lowered into the ground. (A similar object was buried nearby, during the 1939 World's Fair.) It is scheduled to be opened in the year 6939. (I'm a little skeptical as to whether such a thing can really survive and be found nearly five thousand years from now, but I like the idea.) The contents include . . . well, see for yourself.


People in that distant era will also know that we weren't very careful about spelling.

The Beatles seem destined to represent the artistic achievements of our time, if somebody actually finds the time capsule, opens it, and figures out how to play a record. They are once again at the top of the American popular music charts this month, and show no signs of leaving that position any time soon.

The latest smash from the Liverpool lads is, appropriately, called Yesterday. Unlike their other hits, it's a slow, melancholy song about lost love. Paul McCartney plays acoustic guitar and sings, backed by a string quartet. The other Beatles do not perform on the record, so it's really a McCartney solo performance.


By the way, Act Naturally is a remake of a Number One song by Buck Owens. The Beatles go Country-Western!

Flipping Through the Calendar

Given the peculiarities of the publishing business, it's no surprise that I'm reading the November issue of Fantastic in October. With their policy of filling about half the magazine with reprints, it's also not a shock to discover that we go back in time to fill up the pages. First up, however, is a new story set in a strange world that mixes up the past and the present.


Cover art by Julian S. Krupa. It's actually taken from the back cover of the July 1939 issue of Amazing Stories.


Look familiar? We'll hear more about the Space Devastator later.

Axe and Dragon (Part One of Three), by Keith Laumer


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Our hero is one Lafayette O'Leary, an ordinary working stiff, living in a crummy boarding house. He has a lot of intellectual curiosity, performing experiments in his tiny room and reading obscure books. He happens to find a Nineteenth Century volume on hypnotism, and learns about a technique whereby he can experience a dreaming state, while remaining aware that he is dreaming, and exercising some control over it.

(This isn't so crazy a premise as it might seem. More than fifty years ago, the Dutch psychiatrist Frederik Willem van Eeden coined the term lucid dream for such states of mind.)

Of course, he gives it a try. He winds up in a world that seems to be a bit medieval, a touch Eighteenth Century, a tad modern, and partly straight out of a fairy tale. The limitations on his ability to alter this dream world — if that's what it is — show up when he tries to give himself a set of fancy modern clothes, and winds up dressed like somebody in a swashbuckling movie.


Lafayette, ready for action.

At first, he enjoys the situation, happily replacing the lousy wine in a tavern with fine Champagne. Thought to be a wizard, he gets mixed up with the local equivalent of the cops. Still thinking this is just a dream, he tries to disappear, with only partial success.


Our hero tries to vanish, but can't quite do it.

Lafayette winds up in the palace of the King, where he is thought to be a prophesized hero, destined to save the realm from an ogre and a dragon. He also meets the King's magician, who seems to know more about what's going on than he admits. For one thing, he's responsible for the steam-powered coaches and electric lights in this otherwise nontechnological world.


The magician looks on as Lafayette admires himself.

Eventually, our hero meets the King's beautiful daughter, as well as the master swordsman who is her current boyfriend. Jealousy rears its head, and a challenge to a duel arises.

Lafayette assumes that his opponent, like everybody else in this world, is just a product of his imagination. Therefore, he reasons, the foe can't really be any better with a sword than he is. It looks like he might be in for an unpleasant surprise.


Tune in again for the next exciting chapter!

So far, at least, the tone of this novel is very light. Laumer almost seems to be parodying his own tales of the Imperium, with the protagonist finding himself in alternate realities. Unlike those serious stories, this one is a comedy. The people inhabiting the dream world speak in a mixture of archaic language and modern slang. The police are about as effective as the Keystone Kops. It's entertaining enough to keep me reading, but hardly profound.

Three stars.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Ray Bradbury

The rest of the magazine consists of stuff from the old days, both the prose and the art. First we have a piece with a title that is fitting for my chosen theme. It comes from the May 1947 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones, for what looks like a very odd story.

The protagonist is a would-be writer, reduced to pawning his typewriter due to his failure to find his way into print. (Surely based on the author's own early years, I assume.) He comes home to find a strange device. It sends him messages from the far future.


Illustration by Virgil Finlay.

Tomorrow's world is a dreary place, under the rule of a brutal dictator. A woman sent the machine back in time, insisting that the writer kill the remote ancestors of the tyrant. If he doesn't, the woman will be executed. If he does, the future will change, and she won't remember him at all. Since he's fallen in love with her, he will lose her either way. Besides this dilemma, he faces the moral crisis of murdering two innocent people.

This early work shows Bradbury developing his style, although it is not yet fully formed. You may think that's a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, it's got some emotional appeal, some passages of poetic writing, some implausibilities, and some lapses in logic. The ethical problem at the heart of the story — would you kill Hitler's ancestors? — is an important one, but here it's mostly used as a plot point.

Three stars.

I'm Looking for "Jeff", by Fritz Leiber

From the Fall 1952 issue of Fantastic comes this horror story, created by a master of the macabre (and other things.)


Cover art by Leo Summers. The Capote story is his very early work Miriam, which is a fine, eerie tale.

A bartender claims that a mysterious woman shows up regularly, although the owner of the joint can't see her. The reader is aware right from the start that she's a ghost.


Illustration by Emsh.

She uses her feminine wiles to pick up a customer, offering her affection in return for a promise to do something particularly violent to somebody named Jeff. The fellow, entrapped by her seductive charms — even the scar that runs across her face doesn't mar her beauty — agrees. He encounters Jeff, and makes a terrifying discovery.

There are no surprises in this variation on the classic theme of vengeance from beyond the grave. What elevates it above the usual ghost story is truly fine writing. The woman's first appearance, when she is a barely detectable wisp, is particularly fascinating.

Four stars.

Wild Talents, Inc., by Robert Sheckley

The September/October 1953 issue of Fantastic supplies this comic yarn.


Cover art also by Leo Summers, what little you can see of it.

As you'd expect, the company named in the title deals with people who have psychic powers. It's pretty much an employment agency for such folks. Their latest client presents a problem.


Illustration by Emsh

It seems the fellow can observe anyone, at any location. Unfortunately, he's very much an oddball. His only interest is in recording their sexual activities in excruciating detail. The guy in charge of the company has to figure out a way to protect the public from this Peeping Tom, while making use of his peculiar ability in an acceptable way.

The whole thing is pretty much a mildly dirty, mildly clever, mildly amusing joke. You might see it as a spoof of the kind of psi-power stories that appear in Analog far too often. A minor effort from an author who is capable of much sharper satire.

Two stars.

Tooth or Consequences, by Robert Bloch

Another comedy, this time from the May 1950 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Arnold Kohn

It starts off like a joke. A vampire walks into a dentist's office . . .. It seems even the undead need to have their cavities filled. The vampire also swipes blood from the supply kept refrigerated in the same medical building. When the red stuff is then secured under lock and key, to prevent further thefts, the vampire tells the dentist he better get some of it for him, or else. There's a twist at the end you may see coming.

I suppose there's a certain Charles Addams appeal to the image of a fanged monster sitting in a dentist's chair. Otherwise, there's not much to this bagatelle.

Two stars.

The Eye of Tandyla, by L. Sprague de Camp

We go back to the May 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures for this sword-and-sorcery yarn, one of a handful of stories in the author's Pusadian series. (The best-known one is probably the novel The Tritonian Ring, also from 1951.)


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones

The setting is far back in time, long before recorded history. (The story goes that de Camp wanted to create a background similar to the one appearing in Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan, but in a more realistic fashion.) A wizard and a warrior must steal a magical gem from the statue of a goddess for their King, or be executed. Their plan involves disguising themselves with sorcery and sneaking into the place.


Illustration by Virgil Finlay.

To their amazement, it proves to be really easy to grab the jewel. So simple, in fact, that they smell a rat. They cook up a scheme to put the gem back in its place, steal a similar one from another place, and present that one to the King instead. Complications ensue.

You can tell that this isn't the most serious story in the world. The plot resembles a farce, with its multiple confusions and running back and forth. It's got the wit often found in Fritz Leiber's work of this kind, but not quite the same elegance. I'd say it's above the level of John Jakes, or even — dare I say it? — Howard himself, if not quite up to the very high standard of Leiber.

Three stars.

Close Behind Him, by John Wyndham

The January/February issue of Fantastic is the source of this chiller.


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg. The so-called new story by Poe is actually Robert Bloch's completion of a fragment.

Two crooks rob the house of a very strange fellow. The guy catches one of them in the act, so the hoodlum kills him.


Illustration by Paul Lundy.

The pair make their getaway, but are followed by blood-red footprints wherever they go. You can bet things won't go well for them.

This is a pretty decent horror story, nicely written, although — once again! — not up to the level of Fritz Leiber, particularly since we've got an example of his excellent work in the field of tales of terror in this very issue.

Three stars.

Space Devastator, by Anonymous

I'm not sure if I should even mention this tiny article, excerpted from the pages of the July 1939 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

Anyway, it's less than a page long, and speculates about a huge station in orbit, equipped with a bunch of big mirrors.


Illustration by Julian S. Krupa

The notion is that such a thing could destroy entire populations from space by focusing the sun's rays and burning up cities. Casual mention is made of the fact that it could supply solar energy as well. I suppose it's imaginative for 1939, but it's so short — the original version was probably somewhat longer — that you can't get much out of it.

Two stars.

What Day is Good for You?

Today comes out a big winner over Yesterday and Tomorrow in this month's Fantastic. Leiber's contemporary ghost story is clearly superior to tales set in the future or in the legendary past. Otherwise, this isn't that great an issue, ranging from OK to below average.

You might well get more entertainment out of an award-winning film, such as this Italian comedy, which got the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film last year. Sophia Loren plays three different women, and Marcello Mastroianni three men, in a trio of lighthearted tales of love.


For some reason, every poster I've seen for this movie features Loren in her underwear. I wonder why that might be.

And you'll definitely enjoy the next exciting musical guest episode of The Journey Show, October 24 at 1PM Pacific!




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Book

[September 10, 1965] So Many Thews (Lin Carter's The Wizard of Lemuria)

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by Erica Frank

A Bewildering Epic of Tiny Proportions

ACE Books is practically synonymous with "science fiction," but they also put out quite a bit of fantasy (for instance, most of the works of Andre Norton). The newest addition to their stable of fantasy authors is Lin Carter. His first foray into book-length (barely) work is, shall we say, ambitious…

The book is titled The Wizard of Lemuria but we don't meet the wizard until Chapter 4. There are 12 chapters. The first quarter of the novella-length book is spent introducing our hero, Thongor of Valkarth. He is, although a lowly barbarian mercenary, both mighty and honorable.

The book opens on the aftermath of a wager on a zamph race. Jeled Malkh—an officer and swordmaster—lost the wager, and attacked Thongor rather than pay up. Thongor quickly overcame him, shrugged off the bet, and offered to drink away their differences. Jeled refused and fought dirty, yet Thongor overcame him again, and again, offered him peace.

Very mighty. Very honorable. A man who doesn't like to kill other men, even cheating men.

Jeled Malkh accepted his offer of peace—then betrayed Thongor, stabbing him and throwing him in a cell. Thongor spends a lot of time in cells. Mighty he may be; clever he is not.

Cover for The Wizard of Lemuria
Gray Morrow's cover shows Thongor fighting a grakk from his air boat made of urlium, the weightless metal.

Thongor has friends, though, and one of them got him out of the cell. On his way out of town, he managed to steal an alchemist's experimental airboat. Thus equipped with exotic and fast transport, he aimed for the distant land of Kathool and promptly fell asleep.

He awoke to an attack by lizard-hawks, which battle you may see depicted on the book cover. Thongor did mightily well against them, as is his wont, but the boat was unmoving because its rotors had run down. Also, the winds had blown the boat far into the great jungle of Chush, and below him was one of the mighty dwarks, a jungle-dragon. In the ensuing fight, the boat crashed and he became lost in the jungle.

What would he do during the long watches of the night, still many hours away, when every dreaded predator of the jungles would be out roaming for food? How could he protect himself from the swift-footed poa that could out-race even a trained zamph—or from the man-eating zemedar with its six great arms—or the gigantic flying spiders?

His situation by night would be doubly dangerous, for due to the prevalence of slith in the trees, he would not be able to climb them and avoid the beasts.

By 25 pages into this story, I already had to keep track of twelve species, seven locations (not counting Lemuria itself), three status-related titles, and two deities. Four of these things would never be mentioned again.

Map of Lemuria
Not labeled on the map: the rivers Ysaar and Saan; the Mountains of Mommur surrounding the Dragon Isles; Sharimba, the "mightiest" mountain the range; Zharanga Tethrabaal, the Great Ocean; Neol-Shendis, the "Inner Sea" where the Dragon Isles lie.

Chapter 4 is where the actual plot began. Thongor was rescued by the Great Wizard of Lemuria, Sharajsha, who offers him a job: Help the wizard re-forge the great dragon-slaying sword and take on the remnants of the Dragon Kings, who are due to rise again and attempt to destroy the universe.

Fortunately, Sharajsha is wise, clever, talented, and resourceful, all traits that Thongor lacks. (Thongor, however, has mighty thews—iron thews, we are told—which is exactly what Sharajsha needs to face down the Dragon King hordes.) Sharajsha fixed up the damaged flying boat, and added a new mechanism, so that when one spring winds down, it winds up the other, so it will never again be left without power. With this perpetual motion machine neatly handwaved into existence, they set off on their journey together.


John Keely and one of his fraudulent perpetual motion motors, c. 1890

During their travels, Thongor acquires an ally, a Tsargolian nobleman named Karm Karvus, who was always referred to by both names, and princess/queen/Sarkaja Sumia, a beautiful woman whose throne had been usurped by evil priests.

I'm going to bypass the bulk of their adventures. The recurring sequence of events is: When Thongor gets himself captured (again), his allies in the flying ship look for the biggest scene of carnage and mayhem in the city to find and rescue him. 

Musical Interlude

Each chapter of the book begins with an excerpt of poetry (save one that opens with literature). These are Epic Tales of Battle and Legendary Feats of Yore. They are obviously intended to be sung, or at least recited with something of a tune, to make them easy for a non-literate culture to remember. I do not know what tunes Thongor and his friends may have used for them, but I have found music that works for each of them.

The War Song of the Valkarthan Swordsmen, Thongor sings in battle; he must be formidable indeed if he can hack and stab his way through swarms of enemies while keeping enough breath to belt out a tune.

"All day our swords drank deep and long
Of blood wine-red, of blood wine-strong!
Tonight in the red halls of hell
We'll feast with foes and friends as well!"

As you can clearly see, this sings beautifully to "Greensleeves," and I choose to believe that the tune is much older than originally believed.

Thongor's Saga is presumably written after the conclusion of the book.

"The sliding hiss of scales on stone,
Weird green-flame eyes in shadows black,
When Thongor faced the slorgs alone
And cold steel drove the nightmares back!"

This works nicely with "Greensleeves" as well, which is fitting, as Valkarthians probably don't have the imagination to use different tunes for their war-songs.

Diombar's Song of the Last Battle describes how the Dragon Kings were defeated several thousand years ago.

"From wild red dawn to wild red dawn
    we held our iron line
And fought till the blades broke in our hands
    and the sea ran red as wine.
With arrow, spear and heavy mace
    we broke the Dragon's pride,
Thigh-deep in the roaring sea we fought,
    and crimson ran the tide."

This is more complex, and needs a tune with more variety. It scans wonderfully to the theme song from Gilligan's Island.

The Rituals of Yamath, chanted while making offerings to the God of Fire:

"The naked virgins on thine altars plead
As scarlet flame on pallid flesh doth feed!
Lord of the Fire, drink down young lives like wine—
Hearts, limbs and breasts—their very souls—are thine!"

This was harder to track down, as iambic pentameter is common for poetry, not songs. However, I did verify that "Battle of New Orleans" works nicely. The sacrifices in the book happened long before 1814, so they must have originally used a different tune.

The Scarlet Edda, which contains the prophecy the wizard fears.

"Lords of Chaos dark the sky:
All the Sons of Men shall die.
Dragon-rune and blood of men:
Portals ope—to close again?
Naught can make the Portals fade,
Save the Sword by lightning made."

As is appropriate for such an otherworldly subject, it can be sung to "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me."


Now you, too, can sing along with Sharajsha as he describes the impending doom of Lemuria.

Words of Wizardry

The vocabulary is downright dizzying. Five of "the nineteen gods" are mentioned by name; one is a goddess. At least 12 cities are mentioned; more than half of them are only mentioned once or twice, and they are not visited. The vorn is a measure of distance: 5,555 "strides," claimed to be roughly the same as our mile. You might expect that distances are only measured in vorn, but no: while the Mountains of Mommur are "a stupendous wall of rock almost two thousand vorn in length," the Inner Sea is "[l]ocked in by miles of mountains"—those exact same mountains.

The various species and cultures of Lemuria are more interesting than Thongor's adventures, which can be summarized as, "Thongor meets great danger; Thongor kills great danger; Thongor is overwhelmed by even greater danger but his friends come to his aid; Thongor then slays the source of the great danger."

A Lemurian Bestiary and Herbarium

Three different creatures have the honor of being the worst monster in Lemuria: the grakks, the drawks, and the zemadar. The grakks and drawks are tied for "fiercest and most deadly fighters," while the "man-eating" zemadar is "the most dreaded." (I don't know why they're called "man-eating." It seems that all the creatures and some of the plants eat men.)

Note: Some creatures are italicized. Some are not. I could not find any pattern in this.

Bouphar, animal: Possibly cow-like. Common food animal, often roasted; also used for leather. The meat is called "beef."

Dream-Lotus, plant: A flower with sedative properties; it works on men and beasts. "One grain [of the dust] will transport a man to the dreamworlds… for many hours."

Dwark, animal: Giant forest dragon found in Chush: 200' long armored body, 60' long neck, and teeth longer than Thongor's sword.

Grakk, animal: Lizard-hawk, a giant predatory flying creature, with 40' batlike wings and a barbed tail. The young are called grakklets.

Lotifer, plant: Huge trees in Chush, sometimes 200 yards tall. All seem infested with slith

Photh, animal: Its skin is used for making scarlet leather pouches.

Poa, animal: Fast predator in the jungle of Chush

Sarn, plant: Berries found in the jungle of Chush, used for making a wine popular in Thurdis.

Slith, plant: Deadly vampire flowers that cover the trees in Chush; they are used for executions in Thurdis. They have "soft petals like a yawning mouth, laying bare the triple rows of hollow fangs."

Slorg, animal: Dreaded woman-headed serpent of Lemuria's deserts. These are near-mindless beasts, that attack in swarms. They have green flame eyes.

Spider, giant flying, animal: Yet another danger in Chush. This one does not make an appearance.

Waterfruit, plant: Fruit from Chush, small enough to be eaten by the handful.

Wolf, green, animal: Sharajsha has a book bound in the fur of a green wolf.

Zamph, animal: Somewhat-draconic creature used for riding or racing. It is a descendent of the triceratops, and somewhat resembles a rhinoceros. The reins are attachehed to iron rings that pierce the ears, the only portion of it that is sensitive to pain. Sharajsha's is wide enough to seat two people.

Zemadar, animal (also spelled zemedar): The shape is never described. It has six arms (plus some number of legs), a triple row of foot-long fangs with poison that instantly paralyzes, a barbed tail, and is very fast; described as a "crimson juggernaut." One of these was the "Terror of the Arena" in Tsargol. It is only vulnerable at the eyes.

But is it any good?

The book is surprisingly readable considering how packed it is with specialized vocabulary, including terms that are only mentioned once. Thongor's story, although rather predictable, contains powerful imagery; this book would do well converted to a movie or comic series.

As a book, however… the plot is cliched; the men are stereotypes; the woman is devoid of personality; the outcome is exactly as expected. Two stars, and half of one of those was probably the fun of singing Diombar's song to "Gilligan's Island."

[Speaking of books, Journey Press now has three excellent titles for your reading pleasure! Why not pick up a copy or three? Not only will you enjoy them all — you'll be helping out the Journey!]




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