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[December 20, 1969] Stars above, stars at hand (January 1970 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

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

Being #2… stinks

On the scene at the launch of Apollo 12, President Nixon assured the NASA technicians that America was #1 in space, and that it wasn't just jingoism—it was true!

Well, even a stopped clock, etc.  In fact, all accounts suggest the Soviet space program had some serious setbacks last year, the results of which will be felt through at least to 1971.  Schedules got shifted as large rockets were earmarked for purely military service in response to the escalating (now calmed) Sino-Soviet crisis.  But the biggest issue was reported in Aviation Weekly last month: apparently, the Soviets lost a Saturn-class booster on the launch pad before liftoff last summer.  I hadn't even heard that such a thing was in development!  The rocket's loss has set back the USSR's manned space program by at least a year, resulting in tepid non-achievements like their recent triple Soyuz mission rather than the construction of a space station or a trip to the Moon.

A rocket being launched into space.
This is actually the rocket from the Soviet film The Sky Calls (American title: Battle Beyond the Sun)

It didn't help that the Soyuz pads were occupied during the summer as the Soviets tried to match our lunar efforts.  It may well be that their Saturn was rushed to service too soon, and similar gun-jumping may have caused the loss of the Luna 15 sample-return mission.

Speaking of which, in September, the Soviets launched Kosmos 300 and 305.  Both of them were heavy satellites that went into the orbit usually used for lunar Zond missions.  And then they reentered shortly thereafter…in pieces.  It's not certain if these were to be circumlunar flights or retries of Luna 15.  Either way, they didn't work out, either.

Meanwhile, the Apollo mission moves blithely along.  Apollo 13 will go to the Moon next March to Fra Mauro, a landing site photographically scouted out by the Apollo 12 folks.  This chapter of the Space Race is well and truly over, won by the forces of democracy championed by such luminaries as Spiro Agnew.

That's a good rock

Speaking of Apollo 12, you may recall earlier this month I talked about analysis of the Moon rocks brought back by Apollo 11.  A similar report has come out about the rocks brought back by Conrad and Bean.  Dr. Oliver A. Schaeffer of New York State Univ. at Stony Brook says they are only 2.2 to 2.5 billion years old—1-2 billion years younger than the Armstrong and Aldrin's samples.  This means some kind of surface activity was ongoing on the comparatively quiet Moon—meteorite strikes and/or vulcanism, we don't know yet.


NASA astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad, commander of the Apollo 12 mission, holds two moon rocks he and Alan Bean brought back to Earth.  Taken last month at Manned Spacecraft Center's Lunar Receiving Laboratory.

Also, Dr. S. Ross Taylor of Australian National Univ. says the Apollo 12 samples contain about half the titanium as the Apollo 11 rocks and also more nickel, though otherwise, their chemistry is similar.  Thus, the Moon is far from homogeneous, and we have just scratched the surface (so to speak) of the mystery that is the Moon.  As we get more samples from more sites, a better picture will come together, but it will undoubtedly take time; imagine trying to contemplate all of Earth's geologic diversity from just two short digs?

Holiday Feast

Cover of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It announces the stories Longtooth by Edgar Pangborn and A Third Hand by Dean R. Koontz. The cover illustration shows a racecar driven by a robot on a desert landscape at night.
Cover by Mel Hunter

Longtooth, by Edgar Pangborn

Ben Dane is a widower with a bad heart, stranded by a blizzard at his friend Harp's house.  When the home is beset by a furry, anthropoid monster, the two give chase.  Is it a crazed lunatic?  An alien?  The Abominable Snowman?

Pangborn really lets you live inside his characters, vividly depicting the Maine land and farmscape as well as the personalities that populate his stories.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with the tale's telling, which takes its time, satisfied with the redolence of its scenery.  The real problem is the uninspired ending; what we have here, aside from the liberal sprinkling of four-letter words, is a piece that could have come out in Weird Tales thirty years ago.

Three stars.

Books (F&SF, January 1970), by Joanna Russ

Ms. Russ has come into her own as a columnist—her review of Day of the Dolphin was so funny that I was compelled to read it aloud to my wife.  She goes on to damn Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron with faint praise, agreeing only with the simple premise that all men have their price. Russ gives highest marks to Jack Vance's Emphyrio, which our Victoria Silverwolf enjoyed.

Indeed, Russ' opinions mirror those of our own staff, though Jason liked Dophin more than Joanna did.

Russ ends her piece with a tepid review of a tepid anthology: Best SF: 1968, edited by Harry Harrison.

A Matter of Time and Place, by Larry Eisenberg

The name "Emmett Duckworth" inevitably elicits a weary sigh, for this series following the offbeat adventures of an inventor are invariably stupid.

Such is the case here where Duckworth is pressed into service by the Pentagon to make a host of ambitious but unworkable weapons.  In the end, he discovers that there is a conservation of local entropy: the more domestic disorder in America, the more peaceful the world becomes.

Every scientific assertion in the story is ludicrous.  It doesn't even work as farce.  One star.

Drawn cartoon. It shows a man walking at the bottom of a swimming pool. The mass of water has split in two to let him walk on dry floor.
by Gahan Wilson

E Pluribus Solo, by Bruce McAllister

The last bald eagle, locked inside the Smithsonian for its protection, is under attack.  A mercenary with a vicious falcon sidekick has been hired to dispatch this American icon.  All that stands between them is one overmatched security guard…

This is a gruesome story, and I wasn't sure if I was going to like it, but the end is redeeming.

On the edge of three and four stars.  I guess I'll flip it to the latter.

Car Sinister, by Gene Wolfe

This is a genuinely funny piece.  A fellow takes his Rambler American to the seedy shop in his village to be serviced.  What he doesn't know until too late is that his car has been stud serviced by another vehicle…and his car is now pregnant.

The only failing to this story is that it doesn't end.  It just sort of trails off, either too soon or too long after the punchline is delivered.  The implied biology of cars is fascinating, though.  They seem to be like Gethenians from Left Hand of Darkness: all are capable of giving birth, but they can take on either sexual role.

Four stars.

A Third Hand, by Dean R. Koontz

A genetic freak dubbed Timothy is cooked up in a DoD lab.  Armless and legless, and with only one eye, he is nevertheless one of humanity's most gifted members.  That's because he has an IQ of 250+ and Gil Hamilton's ability to psionically manipulate small items at close range.  Eventually, he is given prosthetic arms and legs to give him a "normal" life—sort of a flip side to McCaffrey's The Ship Who… series (where deformed brains are turned into spaceship control centers).

But that's just setting up the character.  The story starts when Timothy witnesses the death of his guitarist buddy over the visiphone at the hands of a notorious crime boss.  The handicapped genius applies all of his resources toward bringing the fiend to justice.

Koontz throws a lot of interesting future tech into his story: home printers that reproduce daily photostatted newspapers; androids that uncannily imitate their owners; floating death machines called Hounds.  What he doesn't do is anything with his protagonist.  Timothy is unique in all ways except mindset, which is not only conventional, but not even particularly brilliant.  In the event, his main distinction is his limited telekinesis, and if you've read Niven's "The Organleggers", then you certainly won't get much out of this.

Three stars.

Ride the Thunder, by Jack Cady

Highway 150 is haunted, and all the cargo-haulers know it.  And it's because of a mean young cuss called Joe Indian, who runs an old Mack with a load of turkeys, transported in the most inhumane way possible.  What's his story, and how is the spectral visitation ended?  You'll have to read to the end to find out.

A fine ghost story, by a trucker for truckers, originally published in Overdrive, a trucker mag, in 1967.  Four stars.

Bughouse, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Two couples at a personal soirée.  One of the husbands suggests that they might all be a little mad, and he proposes to prove it by having them all eat an Oriental bug poison (which should have no effect on humans—unless they're "buggy").

A slight, but interestingly written, piece.  Three stars.

The Lunar Honor-Roll, by Isaac Asimov

This month's science article has a touching book-end: Ike's dad apparently lived long enough to experience not only the flight of the first aircraft but also the first lunar mission, passing away a couple of weeks after the flight of Apollo 11.  A fan of science fiction, he instilled a love of learning and educating that has served The Good Doctor well.  The meat inside the reminiscence is a nice piece on the naming of the Moon's prominent features.  Why are so many 16th Century, medieval, and Greek astronomers honored?  Why do we have Alps and Apennines on the Moon as well as lakes, seas, and an ocean?

Worth reading.  Five stars.

A Delicate Operation, by Robin Scott

Getting a brilliant doctor out of East Germany to freedom in the West is tough at the best of times.  A "white" operation, where a double is sent in so the target can escape, is considered unworkable because no suitable man can be found for the job.  A "black" op (smuggling out as hidden cargo) is planned, but when the latter fails, it seems all hope is lost.  That is, until Dr. Celia Adams, a supremely talented British biologist, takes matters into her own hands.  Can she succeed where the cynical, oversexed CIA veteran (the ostensible hero of our story) cannot?

This is a tight, fun story whose ending you'd likely only guess because you know it has to be SFnal given where it was published.  Much is made of the East German doctor being gay, which turns out to be fundamental to the plot.

Four stars.

Seasons Greetings!

Well that was a fine repast (even if the two cover authors turned in the lesser works).  And we're now up to a two-magazine streak.  Will 1970 be the year F&SF truly deserves the Hugo it won in August?  That would be something to celebrate, indeed!

Full-page ad showing a Hugo award. The text on the image says: F&SF Wins Hugo. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has been awarded the Hugo as best science fiction magazine of the year. This is the fifth time the magazine has been so honored, previous awards having been made in 1958, 1959, 1960 and 1962. The Hugo award —named after Hugo Gernsback, the father of modern science fiction— is the annual achievement award at the World Science Fiction Convention. The awards were presented at the convention's 27th annual meeting in St. Louis, based on the votes of its 1900 members. Other Hugos were awarded to authors John Brunner, Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson and Harlan Ellison; to artist Jack Gaughan; and to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The convention also gave a special Hugo to Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins for Best Lunar Landing, Ever. F&SF is proud of the honor; the award is received with gratitude and as an incentive for the future, in which we will continue to bring you the freshest, most stimulating entertainment in the field.

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


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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 20, 1969] You say you want a revolution… (December 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

When you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out

250,000 miles from Earth, the astronauts of Apollo 12 are circling the Moon, photographing Earth's neighbor for future landing sites before coming home.  And in the nation's capital, the city is still reeling from the footsteps of 250,000 protesters who marched on Washington in the largest anti-war event in American history.

This second "Vietnam Moratorium Day" followed on the heels of last month's nationwide protests, to which President Nixon responded with apathy and his November 4th speech, in which he touted his secret timetable for "Vietnamesation"—the turning over of defense of South Vietnam to President Thieu's government, and also played up his support from "The Silent Majority" of Americans.

The protest movements have still fallen short of the planned nationwide strike, and this latest one has been eclipsed by the Moon landings.  Nevertheless, they are making waves.  In addition to the quarter million in Washington D.C., 100,000 marched in San Francisco in the West Coast's largest peace demonstration in history.

That demonstration was, in fact, peaceful.  Not so the march on Washington, where extremists, protesting the trial of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and six "Yippies" for allegedly inspiring the Chicago Democratic Convention riots last year, clashed with police and were driven back by tear gas.

There is no word, as yet, if there will be a third Moratorium march in time for the Holidays, but one can probably expect more such outbursts from the Unsilent Minority so long as there is no end in sight to the Vietnam War, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Americans so far.

The say that it's the institution

Last year, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction won the Hugo for Best Science Fiction Magazine.  It was a bit of a surprise since 1968 was hardly one of the magazine's best years—but then, 1968 wasn't a consistently great year for any magazine.  However, if one were to judge F&SF's 1969 output solely on the basis of this month's issue, one's estimation of the magazine would, indeed, be justifiably high!  Read on with pleasure:


by Ed Emshwiller

Bye, Bye, Banana Bird, by Sonya Dorman

In the not too far future, the Earth is under a world government, humanity has a few extraterrestrial colonies, and the Planetary Patrol, thoroughly integrated by race and sex, keeps the peace both at home and among the stars.

This is the tale of Roxy Rimidon, a young "Pippa" recruit who goes through a rigorous Basic Training before receiving her first assignment: to the Dominion of Cuba to investigate the sabotage of banana shipments to the agricultural colony of Vogl.

It's light, interesting, suspenseful, and (refreshingly) from the female perspective—sort of Heinlein's Starship Troopers meets Pauline Ashwell's Lysistrata Lee stories.  What's not to like?

The only thing dragging this tale down is its lack of balance.  Half the story is boot camp, and the other half is the assignment.  On the other hand, if this novelette is merely setup for a clutch of Rimidon stories, then all is forgiven.

Four stars.

Hunting, by Robin Carson

Norman Hart is a deer hunter who, despite years of trying, has yet to bag a single buck.  This time, with the help of a grizzled huntsman, and a little magic, he just might get what he's after.

Even if it's not what he intended…

There are a lot of Twilight Zone-y ways this amiable piece could have ended, and I had to ruminate for a while to decide if I liked the one Carson chose.  Ultimately, I did.

Four stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Adventure of the Martian Client , by Manly Wade Wellman and Wade Welman

What if Arthur Conan Doyle's twin titans, Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger, worked together?  And what if the case they were on took place during the Martian conquest as depicted by H. G. Wells?

The result might be something like this, the first collaboration between SF veteran Manly Wade Wellman and his son.  The tone is right; the ending is a touch anti-climactic.

Three stars.

The Falcon and the Falconeer, by Barry N. Malzberg

A Christmas story: a bunch of naval personnel on the backwater Rigel XIV decide to hold a nativity pageant among the natives.  It was a natural fit, what with the indigenes all looking like, and having much the mental attitude, of terrestrial donkeys.  But between the aliens' telepathic abilities and the religious inclinations of the crewman chosen to play the Infant, an unintended miracle occurs.

'Tis the season, indeed!  A fun, nicely laid out piece, with properly rising tension and multiple viewpoints…but ultimately trivial and forgettable.

Three stars.

Lord of Sensation, by Leonard Tushnet

"Joe Roland was a modest man.  He disclaimed any great genius as the cause of his phenomenal success…but a genius he nevertheless was, if a genius is one who builds the germ of an idea into an overwhelming craze."

The secret to M.I.T. graduate Roland's success?  Capitalizing on the augmentation of the senses.  First, he electronically enhances the sound of The Murderers, a second-rate rock band, to leave club-goers in ecstacy.  But the extra vibrations cause long-term hearing and psychological damage, so Roland turns, one by one, to the other four senses, with both increasing victories and correspondingly deeper consequences.

A fun cautionary tale on the importance of doing research before experimenting directly on humans.

Three stars.

The Luxon Wall, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor offers up a fascinating discussion on tachyons, those hypothetical particles that only travel faster than light, and what that hyperluminal universe they inhabit might be like.

Dig it.  Four stars.

Formula for a Special Baby, by Julian F. Grow

Dr. Hiram Pertwee, late of Vermont, now somewhere out West, has yet another run-in with an extraterrestrial.  This one arrives on a flying teacup speaking German, dressed in lederhosen, and accompanied by a voluptuous cat-woman.  His mission is to go to Bavaria and whisper a strange incantation to a baby there.  Pertwee is shanghaied to be his guide.

Aside from being the first in the now four-part series of stories to reveal the exact year in which they occur (1879), the most that can be said for "Baby" is that it is another Pertwee tale.

Which isn't bad.  They're fun, if not literature for the ages.  Three stars.

We are doing what we can

What a pleasant issue that was!  Not a clunker in the bunch, and some fine reading besides.  Keep it up, Fermans père et fils, and you might just take another golden rocketship home again next Worldcon!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 24, 1969] How sweet it isn't (November 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Rats!

A study just completed by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has concluded that cyclamates may cause bladder tumors in rats.

How does this affect you?

Decades ago, it paid to be plump.  It was a sign of wealth and health.  It was attractive!  These days, we're in the Grape Nuts generation, and it's now all about fitness and being slender.  How to reconcile the popularity of fizzy sweet sodapop and the desire to cut sugar from our diets (despite the Sugar Council telling us it's good for us)?

Early this decade, a slew of soft drinks came out, sweetened not with sugar, but with a blend of artificial sweeteners—saccharin and cyclamates.  Diet Rite and Tab may not have tasted just like Coke and Pepsi, but they did the job and preserved the waistline.

But now, thanks to the HEW report, soft drink companies are all pulling their cyclamate sodas off the market as of February 1, 1970.  Grab your vintage colas while you can, because they won't exist come next spring!

What does the future hold for diet sodas?  Well, for now, saccharin is still legal, though by itself, it's a bit bitter (remember the "sach" tablets Winston Smith put in his coffee in 1984)?  There is talk of putting sugar back into diet sodas…just less of it.

And, since this is a science fiction 'zine, we can always speculate that new and better sweeteners will be developed.  Maybe even on purpose this time—did you know that both saccharin and cyclamates were discovered by accident?  Constantin Fahlberg was researching coal tar derivatives and forgot to wash his hands before going for lunch, when he discovered saccharine was discovered in 1879.  And grad student Michael Sveda was working on anti-fever drugs in 1937; some got on a cigarette, and when he took a drag, it tasted sweet.

Cue the commercials:

Bob: My cigarette just isn't doing it for me anymore.
Larry: Try mine!  It's new.
Bob: Hey! Not bad…sweet!
Larry: You better believe it.


by Jack Gaughan

Of course, with a lede like the one I just wrote, you can guess that the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is less than palatable.

The Mouse, by Howard Fast

Three-inch aliens descend to Earth in a teeny saucer and smarten up a little mouse to be their telepathic eyes and ears to scout out the world.  When the rodent's work is done, he is heartbroken to find that the aliens must leave, abandoning him to a life of loneliness, the sole example of his kind.  Despondent, he kills himself.

Not only is the story an unecessary downer (the mouse was exposed to the worst humanity had to offer, but also the best—couldn't he have found human friends to love?) but it's written clunkily, as though Howard dashed it off quickly, and didn't bother to correct it.  It's the kind of work I do if I neglect to read my work aloud before sending it in to a publisher.

Two stars.

A Feminine Jurisdiction, by Sterling E. Lanier

The latest Brigadier Ffellowes shaggy dog tale has him stranded just after the Nazi invasion of Crete (how timely!) on an Aegean island lost to time, housing a trio of mythical sisters.  One of them has, shall we say, a stony-eyed gaze.  Of course, we know the Brigadier will escape (how else could he live to tell the tale?) but the fun is in the how.

I could have done without the casual sexism.  World-traveler Ffelowes surely could not have forged his opinion on matriarchies solely on this one stacked-deck example.  Beyond that, the well Lanier plumbed for material is a little mined out.  Still, it's a competent and entertaining yarn.

Three stars.

Penny Dreadful, by Ron Goulart

A ghost writer cum secret agent (or is it the other way around?) is on one of the planets of the Barnum system, a frequent Goulart setting, mostly known from his Ben Jolson stories.  All he wants to do is collect his fee from deadbeats.  In the process, he ends up cleaning up local politics.

Goulart, at his best, does light, spy/detective stuff really well.  This is not his best.  Indeed, it's among his worst—incomprehensible and somehow incomplete.

Two stars.

The CRIB Circuit, by Miriam Allen deFord

A young computer operator, who died of cancer in 1970, is revived after five centuries of cold sleep.  But the Brave New World she wakes up into is not interested in welcoming her as a citizen, but only as a temporary subject of study before she is to be put down again.  Must keep the population constant, you see!  Can Alexandra come up with a way to extend her second life?

I had thought her solution would be a variation on the Scheherazade shtick from 1001 Arabian Nights, but it's actually a bit cleverer.  There's also a nice sting in the tail of the piece.  I should have seen it coming; that I didn't is a credit to DeFord's writing.

Four stars, and my favorite piece of the ish.

Come Up and See Me Some Time, by Gilbert Thomas

A pre-teen genius builds a psychic space ship and prepares to head off into another dimension, presumably to be reunited with his murdered mother.  But not before giving an ostentatious and horrific reply to his father, who we learn is responsible for his wife's death.

Told from the point of view of the father, the tale is just silly.  It's more of a mood piece than anything, and frankly, I didn't care enough about the schmuck to get into his head.

One star.

After the Bomb Cliches, by Bruce McAllister

Martin Potsubay is convinced The End Is Nigh.  So he builds a bomb shelter, and when the air raid sirens begin to blow, ensconces himself inside.  But the trumpets keep blowing, and in the end, there's no way to avoid Armageddon…or the heavenly recruitment officers!

This is definitely my favorite McAllister piece to date, bordering right between three and four stars.  On reflection, I think I'll finally give him the win.

Four it is (but I still like the deFord better!)

The Sin of the Scientist, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor takes Oppenheimer's "physicists have known sin" line and runs with it, defining "sin" in a scientific sense, and discussing which scientists have committed it.  His answer is an interesting one.

Three stars.

Diaspora, by Robin Scott

A catastrophe has rendered the Earth uninhabitable, and just one small colony of 400 humans is left.  Establishing themselves on a kind world, farm yields explode and the settlement prospers.  Yet, their puritannical leader refuses to loosen the reins of privation.  One rebellious type chafes under the tyrant, and so he plots an escape, establishing himself as an independent concern.  This proves instrumental to the colony's success…and as it turns out, all according to plan.

This story is decently written, but the overly deterministic nature of the premise is a turn-off.  The idea that the colony was founded with the expectation that it would need a malcontent to ensure its success, and that a ten-year agenda could be stuck to so as to carry out the plan, beggars belief.  It's the kind of thing I expect from Analog.

Three stars.

After the Myths Went Home, by Robert Silverberg

Future-dwellers get bored of reconstituting historical personages, so they turn to reviving mythical people.  After having their fill of hanging out with the whole panoply of (Western) legends, from Adam to Hercules to JFK, they banish them, too.  But the result is there's never a hero around when you need one…

Silverbob phoned this one in.  It has the veneer of literariness, but it just coats a hollow interior.

Two stars.

Ptui!

Like soda without sweetener, the latest F&SF was a bland mouthful.  Still, the two good pieces are enough to keep me going, albeit with ever fading enthusiasm.

But perhaps next year, the editors will find the right formula to spice up their wares…


by Gahan Wilson




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 22, 1969] Unsmoothed curves (October 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Government by the Many

Every four years, Americans head to the polls to vote for who they want to lead the Free World.  At least, that's what they think they're doing.  What really happens is your vote determines if your choice for President wins your state.  And then, representatives of the states, the so-called "Electoral College", announce who they've been empowered to choose.  Technically, these representatives are not bound to uphold the will of the voter; in practice, bucking the election results has been for protest rather than consequence.

This means that the swingier the state and the bigger the state, the more attention it will get.  For instance, California, somewhat evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and currently the most populous state in the Union, is more important to a candidate than, say, a reliable and sparsely settled state like Arizona.

No more?  This week, the House passed a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would make Presidents directly electable.  This would mark the first major change to the system since 1803.

It looks like half the Senate is in favor, but it will take two thirds of that chamber plus three quarters of the states for the measure to go through.  Opposing such reform are representatives of small states and rural areas, as they wish to retain their outsized impact on the process.  With the rapid rate of urbanization, particularly on the coasts, this proposed amendment threatens to wipe out the electoral relevance of most of the central region of our country, from the Rockies to the Mississippi. 

But that's precisely why the time for such an amendment has come, its advocates propose.  People vote—not acres.

The bill faces an uphill battle, but it's an idea whose time has probably come.

Magazine by the Few


by Ronald Walotsky

Even with an Electoral College, with 50 states, you still get something approximating the will of the people.  With a science fiction magazine, you've only got six to fourteen pieces.  That means any individual story can dramatically affect your enjoyment of an issue, and the variations in quality can make for a wild ride.  Such was my experience reading the latest Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Feminine Intuition, by Isaac Asimov

Susan Calvin, renowned roboscientist, has gone into semi-retirement, passing the torch to the new generation.  Said successors develop a robot with flexible programming, one that can make free associations rather than rely on its own hard-coding.  Its designers, all male, decide that such fuzzy thinking could only be ascribed to a female, and so they built the robot with feminine curves and a sexy contralto voice.  JN-5, or "Jane", is a big hit with all the (male, of course) scientists and politicians.

Jane is employed to determine which of the 5500 stars with 80 light years of Earth would be most likely to be inhabitable so that humanity's limited interstellar capacity can be used most efficiently.  Jane fingers three candidates, but she and her maker are killed in a freak accident.  Only Susan Calvin can save the day.

The story drips with male chauvinism, but ultimately, that's the point.  It's an uncomfortable ride, but wait for the end, which redeems the story.

Three stars.

Come to Me Not in Winter's White, by Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny

A brilliant physicist discovers his wife has but one year to live.  He builds a room in which time goes much more slowly so that he will have more time to discover a cure.  When the wife gets lonely (since she's by herself for all of…what…a week?) the husband picks out a brilliant but plain woman to be his wife's companion.

Decades later, when the physicist discovers the cure, he returns to the room to find the two women making love.  Jealously, he locks the room and accelerates time, leaving his wife to die, his wife's lover to live out the rest of her life with the corpse, and for both of them to be out of the physicist's ken in the blink of an eye.

I didn't like the story much when I read it, and now, having to revisit it for this summary, I realize that I hate it.  Not just for the misogyny, but for the absurdity of the premise (there are no spinoff societal effects from inventing time control?!) and the laughability of the final insult—oh no! Wife is not only unfaithful but (whisper it) a homosexual!

One star.

The Movie People, by Robert Bloch

A perennial extra, veteran of 450+ films, spends most of his life at the Silent Movies.  He's not just reliving his glory days; it's how he can catch glimpses of his lost love, a fellow extra, who died in 1930, just as her career was beginning to take off.

The fellow knows every movie, every scene in which he and his girlfriend appeared.  So why does she start showing up in films she never appeared in before, some that even date to before her start in show biz?  And why does it seem she is mouthing messages for him alone?  Is she enjoying a kind of celluloid life after death?

A pleasant, sentimental story.  Three stars.

A Final Sceptre, a Lasting Crown, by Ray Bradbury

Once transportation via personal helicopter becomes a cheap and ubiquitous reality, everyone moves away from points north of 40 degrees latitude to reside in California, Florida, the Mediterranean, and other like climates.  This is the tale of the last man in England, and the friend who tries to convince him to join the other emigrés.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one—was the Earth growing cold?  Had their been a calamity in the Northern Hemisphere?  No.  People were just leaving wholesale out of personal preference.

Never mind that some people like seasons.  Never mind that the tropics can't fit all those people.  Never mind that Aleuts and Laplanders haven't left their ancestral homes despite the capability of moving to town if they want to.

Lots of folks like Bradbury.  Maybe I started on him too late.

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Worlds in Confusion, by Isaac Asimov

Wherein the Good Doctor takes on Velikovsky and his ridiculous, religion-cloaked-in-pseudoscience tome, Worlds in Collision.  Did Jupiter really eject Venus as a comet?  Did that rogue planet stop the Earth in its tracks, causing no ill effects beyond the Ten Plagues and the pausing of the day at the Battle of Jericho?  Do people really believe this claptrap?

Four stars.


by Chesley Bonestell

"Russian astronauts have arrived on the rim of Copernicus only to discover that the Americans have already been there …"

The Soft Predicament, by Brian W. Aldiss

A mission to Jupiter finds the gas giant teeming with life.  On the Moon, a giant black edifice (made by people, not aliens) sifts human dreams, becoming the repository for archetypes—the goal to find a solution to strife and hatred in the world.  On Earth, the globe is split between Communist, Free, and Black domains.  The "Free" world is highly regimented, with children taken from their parents after a decade, and marital partners divorced on the same schedule.

Our protagonists, such as they are, are neurotic Westciv citizens, adapted, but not adjusted, to the new way of life.  Their collected dreams represent the only way out of the mess technology has gotten us into.

What a lousy story this is.  Turgid, mock-momentous claptrap.  Budget Ballard.  Thoroughly unentertaining, its message buried, and not a lick of science to be found in this so-called science fiction.  I recognize that the definition of the genre now goes beyond nuts-and-bolts engineering stories to include softer sciences like psychology and sociology, and that the New Wave is an experiment in bringing a degree of literary-ness to SF, but this is too much of a thing.

One star.

The Man Who Learned Loving, by Theodore Sturgeon

A brilliant engineer-turned-hippie stumbles upon the principle of perpetual motion.  In order to keep the discovery from being used for evil, he leaves his life of Bohemian idyll, cuts off his hair, and Makes it Big.  Thus armored in respectability, he carefully manages the revolution's global introduction, ensuring peace and propserity for all humanity.

Upon returning to the backwoods town where he left his lady love and a life of languor, his erstwhile paramour chides him for selling his soul for progress when he could have had love.

This is the sort of story Lafferty or Davidson might have played more for laughs, Sheckley more for bitterness.  Sturgeon presents it completely straight, and as always, he writes pretty well.  His statement seems to be: rather than just be nice and preach love, actually do something to make the world better.

On the surface, he has a point.  Free love is all very nice, but aren't those dirty hippies really just parasites on real working society?  On the other hand, Sturgeon rigs the deck.  His hero discovers the patently impossible after a few days' work.  Moreover, there are plenty of believers in the hippie ethic who are working, giving, and improving the world.  It's a mentality, not a nationality.

Sturgeon, who predates the Swinging Sixties, obviously bears some resentment toward the new crowd.  Kicking straw men is not the answer.

Three stars.

The Electric Ant, by Philip K. Dick

Mr. Poole, executive of a powerful corporation, is in a flying-car accident.  When he regains consciousness, he finds he is not a human at all but an "electric ant"—an android.  Designed to be a figurehead, all of his memories are programmed, his life a lie.

He becomes determined to find the nature of his ongoing programming and discovers that there are no further limits on his thoughts and activities.  He does, however, discover a punched tape spool that controls his sensory input.  Poole begins fiddling with it, altering his subjective reality.  His ultimate goal is to experience everything in the universe at once, something he thinks, as a robot, he can handle better than a human might.

Dick once again turns in a story about a middle-aged man going through an existential crisis.  There is also the drug-use metaphor (Dick is into uppers, I understand).  It doesn't make the most sense—the ant's reality is subjective, but the external universe also exists, so what, exactly does the tape spool control? Poole is determined to find out, taking himself on a psychedelic, 2001-esque journey whose mission is to prove or disprove Solipsism. I feel Dick takes the easy, the obvious way out, at the very end.

Three stars.

Get a Horse!, by Larry Niven

Niven returns to the realm of fantasy, but this time, with a completely new character and setup.  Hanville Svetz is a hapless time traveler from more than a thousand years from now.  Hailing from a polluted, dictatorial future, he has been sent back to 1200 AD to find an extinct beast for the Secretary General's zoo—a simple horse.

What Svetz actually finds, and the troubles that befall him on his quest are interesting and delightful.  There is a deft, sardonic touch to this story, and room has been left for many follow-ups.  I look forward to them.

Four stars.

Science Fiction for the woodpile

As with last month, the latest F&SF finished on the wrong end of the 3-stars mark.  Though F&SF is the shortest of the SF digests, it took me the longest to finish.  I just wasn't looking forward to it.  I can see why my nephew, David, canceled his subscription a few years back. It's a pity that this twentieth anniversary issue is so dismal compared to the ones that came out when the magazine was young. That said, hope springs eternal, and I would hate to miss stories like Get a Horse!.

I just wish my job would let me skip the stories I don't like…




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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 24, 1969] Flying and dragging (September 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Flying

By the time this makes press, we'll already (hopefully) be on the flight back to San Diego.  As with most publications, though we try to hit the press as fresh as possible, there is a delay between writing and printing.  This is exceptionally unavoidable this time 'round because…

…we're off to Woodstock!

Specifically, the Woodstock Art & Music Fair, an "Aquarian Exposition" in White Lake, New York.  There's an art show and a craft bazaar and hundreds of acres of sprawl, but the main draw is the music: 27 bands, from Jimi Hendrix to Janis Joplin to Glen Beck to Sweetwater to Ritchie Havens, playing in 12-hour swathes, 1pm to 1am, every day (except the first—then, it's 4pm to 4am, apparently).

Well, we couldn't miss a chance to see something like this, so we booked tickets to Idlewild…er… JFK, chartered a bus, and we're headed for Max Yasgur's farm.  This isn't our first rodeo, so we've taken a few precautions:

1) We left early to avoid the rush.  With more than 100,000 expected to show up for this thing, there's going to be traffic jams;

2) We bought supplies in case we can't get what we want to eat;

3) We brought our own toilets!  A handy trick we developed camping up in Sequoia country: take a bucket, fill it a quarter way with Kitty Litter, and stick a toilet seat on top.  It works as well for people as it does for cats, and you don't have to dig latrines!

So, we're hopeful to get good seats and enjoy, as much as anyone can, three days of fun in the open air.  We'll have a full report when we get back!

Dragging


by Chesley Bonestell

Sweet Helen, by Charles W. Runyon

On a distant world, rich with export goods, yet another trader succumbs before his tour is up.  Two deserted.  One went native.  One shot himself.  The company sends a professional troubleshooter to find out what happened.

Somehow, the natives are the culprit.  The amphibian humanoids run twenty males to the female, and the female is in charge.  The men all compete for the honor of breeding with her; the rest die.  The females are humanoid and lovely… for a while.  They swell into enormous toads when it is time to become gravid. 

The troubleshooter is unable to determine the exact problem, until too late.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if they had sent a woman trader (probably).  And apparently women traders do exist in Runyon's universe, though they are rare enough to not be sent except by deliberate assignment.

Also, none of this would be an issue if the aliens weren't so uniquely humanoid and compelling to humans—a cliché I find tiresome these days.  Really, this is just a "women are dangerous" story in SF trappings, something done much better, and more creepily, in Matheson's "Lover When You're Near Me" almost two decades ago.

Two stars.

Bonita Egg, by Julian F. Grow

A riproarer of an adventure involving a middle-aged doctor, a young, East-Coast-educated Apache woman, and a dark-skinned alien named Mwando.  The last wants to abduct the former pair, but he is continually thwarted by his would-be captives' pluck, as well as the woman's outlaw uncle and tribal chief father.  Not to mention a platoon of Union artillerymen led by the bullheaded Winfield Scott Dimwiddie.

It's all rather silly and a bit long-winded, but it's not unreadable.  A low three stars.

Muse, by Dean R. Koontz

Leonard is a famed musician, or rather, he is when he's got Icky the symbiont alien on his back.  But anti-slug/human prejudice runs strong on old Earth, and his father wants Leonard to lose the connection for his own good.  Tragedy ensues.

Koontz is a pretty good writer, generally, but this story smacks of being an early, hitherto unsold work.  It's less artfully written, with repetitive phrasing in places.  The story is threadbare—if it's a metaphor for drugs, it's clumsy; if not, it needs a lot more development to be effective.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Patient, by Hoke Norris

This is the story of the first brain transplant, as told from the point of view of the doctors who performed it and the patient.  Much discussion of the ethics involved and the problems ensuing, particularly with regard to the families of the donor and donee.  The patient is unable to reconcile his past with his present and ultimately commits suicide.

Sorry to give things away, but this is really a tedious, stupid piece.  It is pedestrian and repetitive, a stark contrast to, say, Fiztpatrick and Richmond's Half a Loaf series, which covers the same ground.

Also, that the doctors performed their operation on a day's notice, and none of the legal or moral t's were crossed or i's dotted reminds me of how space travel used to be depicted: a guy would build a spaceship in his backyard and fly to the Moon.  You'd think a lot more infrastructure would be needed before such a thing could even be contemplated.

One star.

The Screwiest Job in the World, by Bill Pronzini

Phineas T. Fensterblau has an odd hobby: collecting unusual animals, particularly ones with the power of speech.  To this end, he has employed the resourceful Elroy, who travels the world, proving the veracity of the claims of those who would sell exotic beasts to the millionare eccentric.  In the course of his work, Elroy has uncovered ventriloquists, dwarfs in costumes, hidden transmitters, etc.  But when he is sent to the Alaskan wilderness on the trail of a talking Kodiak bear, Elroy finds something completely new.

This isn't a bad story, but since it is set up as a mystery, it would have been better if the reader had been filled in on the clues before their lumpy exposition near the end.  That could have raised the piece from three stars to higher.

The Man Who Massed the Earth, by Isaac Asimov

Dr. A continues his layman presentation of first semester physics, explaining what weight is and how Cavendish determined the gravitational constant "G".  It's actually pretty interesting, and there is an intuitive explanation as to why the weight of the Earth…is zero.

Four stars.

J-Line to Nowhere, by Zenna Henderson

In this non-The People story, Henderson tells the tale of a teen girl who gets an urge to see the world outside the crammed city-scraper she's lived her whole life in.  She succeeds, but can't figure out how to get back.

There's a lot of gushing thoughts, but not a lot of story to this one.  Three stars.

Finishing the trip

Well, that was dreary!  Remember the days when fiction took you to better places than reality?  Of course, I haven't gotten to Woodstock yet, so maybe it will be equally disappointing…but somehow I doubt it.

Stay tuned!

(and dig on what F&SF has got coming next month…I'm excited for the Niven, of course.)




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 20, 1969] Today's the day! (August 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Live from the Moon

Four days ago, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy's Pad 39A, destination: Moon.  KGJ, our affiliated TV station, will be simulcasting CBS coverage of the landing and Moonwalk starting at noon, Pacific time, and going all day from then.

Please join us for this once-in-a-lifetime event!

The issue at hand

As excited as I am about this historic day, we must remember that today's scientific triumphs owe much to our science fictional musings.  Let's crack open the latest issue of The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy and see what the good folks there have dreamed for us this month!


by Ronald Walotsky

An Adventure in the Yolla Bolly Middle Eel Wilderness, by Vance Aandahl

Well, things don't start too good.

Big Foot is a girl, and she's in heat.  Lucky for her, an overtaxed young English teacher on sabbatical has just broken down in the backwoods near her lair.

My friend, Jean-Paul Garnier, who runs a science fiction bookstore out in Joshua Tree, describes the New Wave as:

Science fiction has always been concerned with technology and its repercussions.  The New Wave, at its best, includes in its speculation, the technology of language, both thematically and in praxis.

Aandahl's story is what happens when you combine the worst logorrhea of the New Wave with a per-word payment incentive mixed in with the latest craze for inserting sex into everything.  I think it's supposed to be satirical in its deadly earnest telling, or perhaps it just comes off as satirical because it's so ridiculous, its prose so contrived.  Like Zelazny passed out drunk and wrote a novelette before he woke up.

Two stars.

Books (F&SF, August 1969), by Joanna Russ

I have no comment on this column as I feel commentary on commentary is a bit superfluous.  I just note that Ms. Russ has graduated to full-time columnist, and that her views do not quite match up with mine (which is fine—no book reviewer's do, save for, in the main, P. Schuyler Miller and, of course, our own David Levinson).

The Shamblers of Misery, by Joseph Green

Alright, now we're talking.  This piece, by Britisher Joseph Green, is an example of one of my favorite science fiction subgenres: the evaluation of an alien race to determine its sentience (establishment of such generally meaning that the planet is marked off limits for exploitation).  The late H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy is a prime example.

The story: Allan Odegaard is a "Practical Philospher", one of a handful of humans qualified for the judge of alien sentience.  He is dispatched to the hot, humid planet of Misery, home to a race of extraterrestrials with a puzzling life cycle.  Their intelligence grows through childhood, but upon reaching puberty, their mental faculties slowly decay.  Eventually, they all succumb to trembling seizures that increase in severity until the final, fatal one.  Though capable of doing simple chores, like collection of a local and valuable spice, the adults fall short of true sapience.

The prime suspect for this malady is the addictive drug, made from the spice, that the human colonists give the alien workers.  But is that the true culprit?  Allan perseveres until he finds the truth.

This is a delightful story, straightforward and scientific, with a refreshing degree of sexual equality so often missing from modern science fiction.  Indeed, had I not read the byline, I might have guessed the story had been written by Paul Ash (actually Pauline Ashwell), who wrote the terrific The Wings of a Bat.

The only thing that knocks the story from five stars is I felt the solution was not quite set up sufficiently to be deduced by the reader, though in hindsight, perhaps it was.  But either way, it's a good, SFnal tale.

Four stars.

Next, by Gary Jennings

A tired, retired man, just turned 60, is driving along a one-lane road in the middle of Mexico when he has a terrible accident.  Miraculously, he survives and goes on to enjoy a streak of improbably good fortune that exposes the drabness of his life hitherto in stark relief.

I liked this story quite a bit, and the only reason I give it a high three rather than a low four stars is the ending.  Not that it's a bad one, but I recommend reading this piece and end at the bottom of page 61 (the penultimate page).  I thought the story had ended there, and I really liked the abrupt vividness of it, almost Ellisonesque.  The continuation on page 62 is superfluous.


by Gahan Wilson

Fraternity Brother, by Sterling E. Lanier

Brigadier Ffellowes is a character I'm always happy to see turn up.  He's the ruddy-cheeked ex-officer who frequents pubs and can always be relied upon to recount outlandish, fantastic tales of his earlier years.  This time, when asked which of the secret societies is the oldest, he responds with a story of his time in the Basque country during the Spanish Civil War.

What I love about the Brigadier is how unflappable he is, or at least the aplomb with which he imbues his former self (whether such is an accurate portrayal is, of course, a mystery).  And the telling of these tales is always pleasant. 

I'm not sure that I buy, as is asserted in the story, that the Basques can trace their ancestry all the way back, undiluted, to Cro-Magnon Man (my 1964 Collier's simply notes that the Euskara assert that they are pre-Celtic Iberians), but it is a pretty embellishment.

Four stars.

From the Darkness and the Depths, by Morgan Robertson

This ancient story was published in 1913, and it reads like something from the old copies of Weird Tales I've gotten my hands on.  With the framing device of a fellow discussing the possibility of an ultraviolet lantern as a way to penetrate fog to avoid a second Titanic disaster, this story is the recounting of an attack by an invisible creature from the deep.  The science-fictional element is the idea that a sea monster, transparent to visible light but apparent in UV, could evolve in the ocean depths.

Pleasant, if not outstanding, reading.  Three stars.

On Throwing a Ball, by Isaac Asimov

Dr. A. offers up a derivation for the famous equation: f=ma (force equals mass times acceleration—provided you use metric units).  I suppose it's nothing one couldn't find in any good physics textbook, but it's nicely conveyed.

Four stars.

The Money Builder, by Paul Thielen

Lastly, this trivial piece about a grifter with a wild story.  Seems that he teamed up with an alien to build a gravity repulsor such that he could now tamper with any sports game.  On his way to riches, his extraterrestrial partner was apprehended by his fellows, leaving him in the lurch when the big match went the wrong way.  Now, said grifter needs just $5,000 to repair his gadget and once again rig his way to the pink.

I suppose how you rate the story is based on how you buy the grifter's tale: as science fiction, the piece is kaka.  As the seductive pitch of a con man, it's not so bad.  That said, I found the tale kind of dull and old-fashioned.

Two stars.

The Main Event

So, all in all, a reasonably palatable issue of F&SF, though nothing special.  Certainly nothing to distract from the greatest spectacle the human race has every known: our first landing on another world.  For the moment, revel in science fiction become fact.  Save the fantasy for next week, and join us this afternoon!




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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 20, 1969] Where to? (July 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Nihon, banzai!

In just the last ten years of covering our trips to Japan as part of Galactic Journey, we have watched with amazement as Japan executed nothing short of a miracle.  As of this year, the country is now the third largest economy in the world, and "Made in Japan" is no longer a stamp of poor quality.  Datsuns are rolling off the assembly line by the thousands and ending up in American showrooms.  The sky is dark with industrial smog.  It's almost enough to eclipse the left-wing student protests that keep popping up around the nation.

Of course, Japan still has a ways to go, at least domestically.  Fully a fifth of its population still is minimally housed, squatting in one-room shacks and waiting for the government to make good on its five year plan to give everyone a decent home.

One family that has no such difficult is the Fujiis, our adoptive parents, who we last visited five years ago!  This trip was particularly exciting for reasons I shall detail shortly.

First, a picture of the flower shop on the way to their house.  The town is Amagi, an agricultural town that specializes in grapes and persimmons.

And now the estate.  It's laid out as a square with an internal garden.  What's significant is that it dates back to the 1840s—a time when Japan was still ruled by a Shogun.  The estate is essentially a relic, representative of a style that had not changed since Elizabethan times.  At a time when so many of these historic residences are being torn down or falling apart, this one stands as a living treasure.

Yuko, our adoptive mom, gave Lorelei a set of Japanese watercolors, which she employed to draw the garden as she saw it.

The architecture of the place, alone, is remarkable.  This is construction without nails, all of the timbers custom built and joined together.

What's inside is even more remarkable.  The back house used to house a pawn shop.  Even the boxes are more than a century old.

This dress was made by a princess.

And this kimono was hocked by a penniless samurai for a little cash.  Apparently, this happened a lot.

This is century-old paper, also sold by a samurai.  Among the sheets was a paper mock-up of a hakama, the armor the samurai wore.

This is in the house.  Yukio, Yuko's husband, was a Kyoto cop before he retired.  This relic, however, long pre-dates him—it's the kind of lantern used by police in the 19th Century!

I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the past.  Now for a trip into the future…and regions fantastic!

Leiber of the party

Every summer, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction dedicates an issue to science fiction luminary.  For the July 1969 edition, that fellow is Fritz Leiber.  His name is rarely mentioned in the same breath as, say, Heinlein or Asimov, though he is their contemporary (more or less), but when he's good he's very good.  Does he make this issue stand out?  Let's see!


by Ed Emshwiller

Ship of Shadows, by Fritz Leiber

First up, a brand new piece by the man, himself.  It stars Spar and his talking cat, Kim.  No, this isn't a fantasy, but a highly personal adventure of an old man living in weightlessness aboard some sort of spaceship.  Most of the folks onboard have forgotten about Earth, and there now appear to be eldritch beings aboard—werewolves and vampires—making prey out of those who remain.

Things I liked: the setup is revealed slowly, and it's the first story I've read from the point of view of someone who desperately needs glasses…but doesn't know it.  And there is that characteristic Leiber poesy to the writing.

Things I didn't like: the story moves glacially, and I didn't feel like it told anything new.  I kept finding myself distracted every two or three pages.

So…three stars, I guess.

Fritz Leiber (profile), by Judith Merril

Famed writer and anthologist (and book reviewer) Judy Merril gushes over her hero, Fritz Leiber.  Half biography, half hagiography, half history of SF, it's a worthy piece, especially if you want to be introduced to his early work (and happen, like me, to own a complete set of Unknown).

Four stars.

Demons of the Upper Air, IIX, by Fritz Leiber

A pretty good poem about our first interstellar astronauts, told from the point of view of someone stuck on the ground.

Three stars.

Fritz Leiber: A Bibliography, by Al Lewis

As it says on the tin—no more, and no less.

(no rating)


by Gahan Wilson

To Aid and Dissent, by Con Pederson

It's easy to get in trouble out Mars or asteroids way.  To that end, a fleet of sherpas has been bred—literally.  These rescue ships, which sacrifice themselves upon landing to deposit air and victuals, comprise a row of linked simian brains inside a spacecraft shell.  Think the ape version of The Ship Who… series.  Sherpa Bravo one day decides he's sick of being aynyone's monkey and launches a one-primate civil rights revolution.

Clunkily written and nothing special.  Two stars.

The Place with No Name, by Harlan Ellison

Norman Mogart was an Entertainment Liaison Agent.  Pfui.  He was a pimp.  When he gets into trouble with the law there's no way out of, he makes a deal with…well…not quite the Devil…and finds himself hip-deep in two of the biggest martyr legends of history.

The first half is excellent and pure Ellison.  The second changes the tone so sharply, beware of whiplash.  It ends poignantly enough, but the two halves don't quite mesh.

As is usually the case—Ellison consistently produces what are, for me, three-and-a-quarter star stories…round to four stars?

Transgressor's Way, by Doris Pitkin Buck

A knight errant proves to be anything but a knight bachelor—his modus operandi is to shamelessly seduce young maids and then bunk them all in separate towers for him to enjoy at his leisure.  But what if they should discover each other?

This story is told in too confusing a shorthand, and it is too frivolous in substance, to earn more than two stars from me.

A Triptych, by Barry N. Malzberg

An interesting, behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in the minds of the three astronauts who get sent in the Apollo.  It's not bad, but Barry isn't very well in touch with the actual space program.  One telltale: he assumes that the spacemen have little to do between TV shots.  In fact, they are kept too busy—indeed, both the Apollo 7 and 10 commanders cut pages out of their assignments because the astronauts were overworked and making mistakes (as anyone who regularly watched coverage of either of these flights should know – Ed).

Three stars.

Two at a Time, by Isaac Asimov

In which the Good Doctor explains how we measure the mass of planets by observing their effect on each other (specifically, the common elliptical focus around which they both orbit).  Several pages that could be reduced to one or two lines of formulae, but he looks to be setting something up.

Three stars.

Litterbug, by Tony Morphett

Finally, a fun piece about a fellow named Rafferty who invents a teleporter.  Problem is, he can't control where things go, and he can't bring them back.  Solution: market the thing as a garbage can.

Problem 2: What happens when aliens at the destination get annoyed at all the litter on their planet?

Three stars.

Lifeless

At least for me, my real life excursion was more interesting than the flights of fancy I took while riding the trains.  With the exception of Merril's piece, the rest is pretty forgettable.  Well, I suppose you won't forget the Emshwiller cover anytime soon.  Anyway, next time I'll be reading F&SF, it'll be in the endotic locale of my home town.  May the contents of the August issue be just as different from July's as the Orient is to Southern California.




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Magazine, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 20, 1969] Ad Astra et Infernum (June 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

To the Stars

Venus has gotten a lot of attention from Earth's superpowers.  Part of it is its tremendous similarity to our home in some ways: similar mass, similar composition, similar distance from the Sun (as such things go).  But the biggest reason why so many probes have been dispatched to the Solar System's second world (to wit: Mariner 2, Mariner 5, Venera 1, Veneras 2 and 3, and Venera 4) is because it's the closest planet to Earth.  Every 19 months, Earth and Venus are aligned such that a minimum of rocket is required to send a maximum of scientific payload toward the Planet of Love.  Since 1961, every opportunity has seen missions launched from at least one side of the Pole.

This year's was no exception: on January 5 and 10, the USSR launched Venera (Venus) 5 and 6 toward the second planet, and this month (the 16th and the 18th), they arrived.

Our conception of Venus has changed radically since spaceships started probing the world.  Just read our article on the planet, written back in 1959, before the world had been analyzed with radar and close-up instruments.  Now we know that the planet's surface is the hottest place in the Solar System outside the Sun: perhaps 980 degrees Fahrenheit!  The largely carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmosphere crushes the ground at up to 100 atmospheres of pressure.  The planet rotates very slowly backward, but there is virtually no difference between temperatures on the day and night sides due to the thick atmosphere.  There is no appreciable magnetic field (probably because the planet spins so slowly) so no equivalent to our Van Allen Belts or aurorae.

This is all information returned from outside the Venusian atmosphere.  Inference.  To get the full dope, one has to plunge through the air.  Venera 4 did that, returning lower temperatures and air pressures.  This was curious, but it makes sense if you don't believe the Soviet claim that the probe's instruments worked all the way to the ground—a dubious assertion given the incredibly hostile environment.  No, Venera 4 probably stopped working long before it touched down.

The same may be true of Veneras 5 and 6.  TASS has not released data yet, but while the two probes were successfully delivered onto Venus' surface, we have no way of knowing that they returned telemetry all the way down.  Indeed, the Soviet reports are rather terse and highlight the delivery of medals and a portrait of Lenin to Venus, eschewing any mention of soft landing.  The news does spend a lot of time talking about solar wind measurements on the way to Venus—useful information, to be sure, but beside the point.


The Venera spacecraft and lander capsule

Anyway, at the very least, we can probably hope to get some clarity on what goes on in the Venusian air.  It may have to wait until next time before we learn just what's happening on the ground, however.

To Hell

I bitched last month about the lousy issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Well, I am happy to say that the May issue is more than redeemed by this June 1969 issue, which, if not stellar throughout, has sufficient high points to impress and delight.


by Gray Morrow

Sundance, Robert Silverberg

Silverbob has a knack for poetic, evocative writing as well as rich settings.  He has successfully made the transition from '50s hack SF author to New Wave vanguard.  Which is why this rather forgettable tale is all the more disappointing.

It's about a Sioux spaceman named Tom Two Ribbons who is part of a terraforming contingent on a virgin planet.  Except what his compatriots call terraforming, he calls genocide, for the millions of indigenous Eaters that they are clearing out to make room for farms are, he claims, intelligent.  To prove his point, he goes out among the aliens, dancing their way and his way, hoping to avert catastrophe. 

But is any of it real?  Or is it all a figment of his traumatized mind?

I just found it all a bit hollow and affected, and also confusing.  Not bad, but nowhere near Silverbob's best.

Three stars.

Pull Devil, Pull Baker!, Michael Harrison

A Jewish dentist finds himself implacably hostile to an Aryan patient, and, to his dismay, finds himself wanting to cause him pain in the examination chair.  Turns out the two have a history that goes back centuries to another life, when the drill was in the other hand, so to speak.

So unfolds an age-crossing riddle, at the end of which lies a treasure of untold riches, if only it can be deciphered.

I dug this one.  Maybe I'm biased.  Four stars.

The Landlocked Indian Ocean, L. Sprague de Camp

De Camp offers himself up as a sort of half-rate Willy Ley, explaining why, for so long, the Indian Ocean was conceived of as a big lake rather than part of the world sea.  There's a lot of good information here, but it's not quite as compellingly presented as it could be.

Three stars.

A Short and Happy Life, Joanna Russ

Here's a great little prose-poem on ingenuity involving a barometer.  Good stuff.  Four stars.

A Run of Deuces, Jack Wodhams

Aboard a superluminary cruise ship, the bored passengers come up with a betting pool to relieve their ennui: the winner of the pot is whomever guesses at what distance from their destination the ship will pop out of hyperspace.

A lot of sex.  A lot of languour.  A predictable ending.  A low three (or a high two, if you're not in a good mood).

Operation Changeling (Part 2 of 2), Poul Anderson

Last month, we were (re-)introduced to the Matuchek family: Steve the werewolf, Virginia the combat wizard, Valeria the moppet, and Svartalf the familiar.  When Valeria was kidnapped by the agents of Hell, it was only a matter of time before her parents (and their cat!) would have to penetrate the perverse underworld to retrieve her.

Enlisting the aid of a pair of dead mathematical geniuses, in this installment, the trio warps into the infernal dimension, where they must face off against hordes of demons, baffling spatial topography, and the most evil of beings humanity has ever known.

There is good Anderson, there is boring Anderson, and there is middlin' Anderson.  This story is firmly in the "good" camp, with vivid descriptions, engaging (and often funny) characters, and the sort of light, fantastic adventure we haven't seen from Anderson since Three Hearts and Three Lions.  Poul does somber, dour, very well, so I think it's more work for him to keep things light—even as our heroes are arrayed against the forces of darkness!  It's never frivolous, but there's a fey quality that keeps things on the right side of horrific.

And that episode in Hell!  I've never read the like.  My only regret is that it's not longer, with a little more time for the Matuchek squad to come up with their novel solutions so that the reader can better follow along.  Perhaps it'll get expanded into a full length book at some point.  I hope so!

Four stars for this installment and the book as a whole.

The Fateful Lightning, Isaac Asimov

A boffo piece on the discovery of electricity.  It's good, although I found the explanation of how lightning rods actually work somewhat incomplete.

Four stars.

Repeat Business, Jon Lucas

A mom-and-pop boat charter take on a quartet of "travel agents" who are obviously (to the reader, at least) a bunch of aliens.  The E-Ts are sussing out the charterers and their sailing vessel to see if they might be a hit back home on Sirius or Spica or wherever they're from.

It's not a badly written tale, but it's so obvious, and the protagonists so clueless, that it feels sub-par.  Maybe this would have passed muster a couple of decades ago.  Now it's old hat.

Two stars.

Back to Earth

And there you have it: big news in the skies and in the SFnal pages of F&SF.  There's really no unpleasant reading at all in this month's mag, even if it isn't all novel or cutting edge, and the Anderson really ends with a bang—or a flash of brimstone, perhaps.  Combined with the exciting space news, and the recent launch of Apollo 10 (article to come!) I am really feeling over the Moon.

If you read this month's issue, and watch the ongoing Apollo coverage, I'm sure you will be, too!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 26, 1969] Downbeat (May 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

Impending collapse

The end may be near for the nascent would-be-state of Biafra.  For two years, the Nigerian breakaway has seen its land systematically (re)taken, and the eight million Biafrans, mostly Ibo people, have been crammed into ever small regions under Biafran control—just 3,000 out of an original 29,000 square miles.

Starvation rages, killing more than gunfire.  Yet the Biafrans remain unbowed, converting diesel generators to run on crude petroleum, keeping churches open (at night, anyway), and getting food via threatened air strips.

But on the 22nd, the capital and last Biafran city, Umuahia, fell to Nigerian forces.  Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, President of Biafra, has vowed he will continue the struggle in guerrilla fashion.  Only Gabon, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Zambia have recognized the secessionist state, although tacit assistance has been provided by such diverse states as France, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and Czechoslovakia. 

At this point, it's hard to imagine the Biafran experiment succeeding.  But surely there must be more that we can do apart from watch helplessly.  I wish I knew what it was.  Support the Red Cross, I suppose.

Impending mediocrity

I don't have a great segue from that bummer of a news item.  All I have is the lastest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  While it's not entirely unworthy (the opening serial is pretty good), the rest offers little respite from the bleakness of the real world:


by Jack Gaughan

Operation Changeling (Part 1 of 2), by Poul Anderson

Back in the '50s, Poul had a great series that took place on a parallel Earth.  Its history was not dissimilar to ours, but wizardry replaces technology in many regards.  It's a bit like Garrett's Lord D'Arcy series, but a touch sillier.  The stars of the series are a magical duo comprising a werewolf and a magic-using dragoon Captain.  In the latest story (a decade ago!) the two had gotten married.  In the latest installment, Ginny and Steve are the proud parents of a beautiful little girl.

Unfortunately, Valeria Victrix has been born into a difficult time.  Adherents of St. John, whose outwardly clement brand of Christianity hides disturbing cultist elements, are waging a war against authority and the military-industrial complex—including the defense contractor that employs Steve.  The Johnnites are essentially stand-ins for the current peace movements, albeit more sinister.

The conflict with the less-than-civil resisters recedes in importance, however, when on her third birthday, Valeria is abducted by no less than the demonic forces of Hell.  It is now up to Steve and Ginny to rescue their little girl before she is incurably corrupted…and to determine if the Johnnites are at all responsible!

Anderson has three main modes: crunchy, compelling science fiction; crunchy, dull-as-dirt science fiction; and lightish fantasy.  This short novel, despite the dark subject matter, promises to be the most fun romp since Three Hearts and Three Lions.

Four stars so far.

The Beast of Mouryessa, by William C. Abeel

A French sculptor is commissioned to create a replica of an obscene, demonic figure, unearthed recently in the Avignon region.  The original stone creature has a history of causing catastrophe to those who behold it, but the lovely matron who wants the copy seems unperturbed.  Of course, the sculptor has all sorts of ill feelings and second thoughts, but he does nothing about them.  In the end, he is possessed by the spirit of the thing, and awful stuff ensues.

Aside from all the sex and frequent references to the statue's enormous dong, this story is pretty old hat.  Lovecraft did this kind of thing better.

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

London Melancholy, by M. John Harrison

A host of eerie mutants roam post-apocalyptic London in this absolutely impenetrable, unreadably purple piece.

One star.

For the Sake of Grace, by Suzette Haden Elgin

Thousands of years from now, Earth and its solar colonies have organized into a patriarchal, caste-based system.  The Kadilh ban-Harihn has much cause for joy: four sons who have all passed the stringent test to become 4th degree members of the Poet caste.  But he also has a hidden pain; his sister was one of the rare women to dare entry into the coveted ranks of the Poets.  Her fate for failing was that of all women who fail—eternal solitary confinement.

'Unfair!' you cry?  Well, at least it keeps women from trying such a foolhardy endeavor.  Which is why it hits the Kadilh all the harder when he learns his youngest child, his only daughter, also has decided to try to be a Poet, a task of which she is most certainly incapable…

This is a scathing piece, a refreshing attack on sexism.  I'd give it higher marks if it had included even one poem, given the theme, but I still quite liked it.

Four stars.

The Power of Progression, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor explains why our current rate of population growth cannot go on—even if we manage to get off planet, that just means the universe will be clogged with humanity within the millennium. 

I appreciate the doomsaying sentiment, but there comes a point when exponents become specious, a masturbatory effort in mathematics.

Three stars.

Copstate, by Ron Goulart

I used to like the tales of Ben Jolson, lead agent of the shapechanging Chameleon Corps, but they've gotten pretty tired of late.  This last entry is the least.  Ben is tapped to infiltrate a tightly controlled security state to retrieve a revolutionary polemic.

Goulart is capable of writing funny, light, riproaring stuff, but this one is just a bust.

Two stars.

The Flower Kid Cashes In, by George Malko

Item two in the cavalcade of anti-utopian incomprehensibility.  Per a conversation I recently had with David and Kris:

Me: Can anyone explain the last story in this month's F&SF to me?
David: Not really.  Aging hippie survives after the Bomb falls and sort of commits suicide by staying true to his priniciples?  I think it was too concerned with being literary to mean something or be about anything.
Kris: I am not even sure if it is trying to be literary so much as "with it".  But either way it seems very hollow.

Your guess is as good as mine.  At least it's short.  Two stars.

The Body Count

Comparing the lastest F&SF to the Biafran tragedy is probably beyond the realm of good taste.  I'll just note that 2.7 stars is an inauspicious sign.  However, given that the first few issues of the year were significantly better, I don't think this lapse foretells a permanent downturn.

At least some things are salvageable.  See you next month.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 20, 1969] Going through the motions… (April 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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

What's the news across the nation?

And now for the man to whom the news wouldn't be the news without the news… here's Gidi!

Dateline: 1969

Apparently, President Nixon and Soviet head of government Kosygin have agreed not to blow up nuclear bombs on the ocean floor, of which there have been somewhere between zero and not many. This is being hailed as a tremendous accomplishment in the field of disarmament. The next great achievement will be banning test explosions on the 32nd day of every month.

I think the two deserve a Flying Fickle Finger of Fate, or the "Penetrating Pinky" as the producer calls it.

photo of a two men in suits (Dan Rowan and Dick Martin), the one on the right holding up a golden statuette of a hand with its index finger pointing and crowned by wings

Dateline: 1969

Britain is building a giant radio telescope to hear the beginning of the universe. Astronomers believe the cosmos apparently was once compressed into a tiny point, even smaller than Governor Reagan's brain, and when it expanded, the temperature of the stuff dropped, as it always does when you maintain the amount of matter but increase the volume of its container.

A temperature that was once immeasurably high has now gotten so low that it radiates at very low energy levels—detectable by super-sensitive antennas! I imagine the observatory will determine if this radio hiss is uniformly distributed or not. They're also looking for quasars, those objects that are super bright in the radio spectrum, but invisible to the naked eye, and which may be the most distant (and thus, the oldest) objects in the universe.

Of course, we all know the oldest thing you can get on the radio is Jack Benny…

Dateline: 1969

Two airliners were hijacked to Havana yesterday. That's the sixth time this year that there has been a "double-header" seizing. We must be running out of rebels and Communists by now—I would not be surprised to hear that the hijackers are just retirees looking for someplace cheaper than Miami.

Dateline: 1969

President Nixon is coming to San Diego tomorrow.  This will lay to rest any dispute, at least while he's here, as to the biggest Dick in town.

What's the news inside this issue?

I've just come back from a little bubble of time inside the roiling chaos that is the real world.  It was a little Los Angeles SF conclave called Escapade, filled with fans of all things fannish.  Keeping me company on this trip was the lastest issue of F&SF.  Although not quite such a rousing success as the con, the issue did have a couple of things to strongly recommend it.  Read on, and you'll see what they were:

illustrated
by Bert Tanner

Deeper Than the Darkness, by Gregory Benford

Greg Benford is a young man, part of an identical twin fannish duo, who I'm pretty sure lives right here in San Diego.  He was catapulted into the ranks of the professionals when he won an F&SF writing contest a few years back, and he's written a couple of pieces since then.

His latest is a space adventure involving Captain Clark, a tramp ship skipper impressed into navy service when the mysterious Quarm begin impinging on Terran star colonies.  Clark is one of the few men of caucasian ancestry left after the hot wars of the fraught centuries, and human civilization is now dominated by Asians and Polynesians.  Society is changed, too, more of a communal affair knitted together by cooperative social activies.  Prime among them is Sabal, also referred to as The Game, which is a sort of roleplaying exercise in which each participant offers up vignettes, epigrams, and other creative orations designed to complement rather than dispute the last speaker.  When fully harmony is reached, the Game is over.

It is frequent usage of Sabal that keeps the novice crew together as it reaches Regeln, a colony recently ravaged by the Quarm.  But Sabal is no defense against, and indeed, a exacerbator for, the particular malady spread by the aliens—a kind of extreme agrophobia that drives humans to literally burrow away from the light, from each other, from the universe.

This downbeat tale is readable, but its psychological and racial underpinnings are a little implausible and more than a little unsettling.

Three stars.

Some Very Odd Happenings at Kibblesham Manor House, by Michael Harrison

A WW2 veteran runs across a much aged and enervated war buddy.  Over beers, it turns out that the afflicted soldier has had an unfortunate run-in with the Celtic cult of Cybele, the Earth Mother.  Said sect, prominent two thousand years ago, demands great sacrifices of its adherents.  The male priests must scourge themselves, ultimately sacrificing that which most distinguishes them as men.

And Kibblesham, built on an ancient temple, infects all who inhabit it with Cybele's compulsion…

This is one of many old-fashioned pieces in the book, almost Lovecraftian in tone.  Not really to my taste.

Two stars.

line drawing of a man and woman picnicking, the trees around them false front props, and the man is saying,
by Gahan Wilson

Not Long Before the End, by Larry Niven

Some 12,000 years ago, before the final Ice Age, great magical societies were the rule.  One of the age's great sorcerers is a man simply known as Warlock.  In his 200 years of life, he has seen his powers wane several times, each instance compelling him to move on to a new locale, where his mana has been restored.  Upon investigation, Warlock determines a terrible truth, one which spells doom for his spell-based civilization.

In the meantime, a stupid swordsman named Hap, wielding the eldritch blade Glilendree (or is it the other way around?), shows up to challenge the wizard.  The ensuing battle is noteworthy, indeed.

This is one of Niven's only fantasies, and it's superb.  While "magic was common before the modern age" is a frequently mined lode, from Lord of the Rings to Conan to Norton's recent Operation: Time Search, Niven is the first, perhaps, to explain why the magic goes away.

Five stars.

Trouble on Kort, by William M. Lee

This is a police mystery set on the planet of Kort, on which a dozen outworlders have disappeared (kidnapped?) and a dozen natives have taken their own lives—all in the space of just a matter of weeks.  Peace Corps officer Jan Pierson is sent in to investigate.

It's a rather unremarkable tale, oddly juvenile in tone and occasionally tedious, but it's not unenjoyable.  I appreciated the love interest, the Kortian named "Marty", who did not get enough page time.

A low three.

The House, by P. M. Hubbard

A married couple, awarded a homestead plot in the bombed out fringes of London, tries to build a house amidst the rubble.  But the tumulus they choose as a foundation may already be occupied…

This tale is atmospheric but rather trivial, another of the throwbacks.  Two stars.

The Incredible Shrinking People, by Isaac Asimov

Last issue, the Good Doctor explained the pitfalls of neglecting physics when dealing with miniaturized or enlarged people.  This time, Isaac explains how he accounted for same while writing the novelization of Fantastic Voyage.

Neat stuff.  Four stars.

The Freak, by Pg Wyal

There are beggars and there are beggars.  The most deformed, crippled, and otherwise unordinary ones band together to form a union of sorts.  Tired of their low income, they go on strike, ensuring that the beautiful citizens of Gothopolis have no one to compare themselves to.

Soon, the "normal" Gothopolians go crazy, and their John Lindsay analog must come up with a drastic solution.

The build-up wasn't bad, but the message isn't as profound as Wyal (or editor Ferman) thought it was.

Two stars.

Say goodnight, Dick!

Just as the week's news was much of a muchness, so was this issue of F&SF more a marking of time than the making of a landmark.  Still, I am grateful for the Asimov and particularly the Niven, and the rest was not so much unpleasant as forgettable.

Good enough for now.  I look forward, as always, to next month's issue—and I hope you do, too!




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