Tag Archives: Frank Herbert

[March 31, 1970] Seed stock (April 1970 Analog)

March 31, 2025 GalacticJourney 4 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

It's the end of the month, and that means the latest Analog is on tap. This one starts and even mids with the usual drudgery… but the latter third breeds a little hope.

by Kelly Freas

Here, There Be Witches, by Everett B. Cole

Frequently, some author will tailor a story to Analog editor John Campbell's particular idiosyncracies hoping to get some of that sweet, sweet four-cents-a-word payout. In this case, Everett Cole has aimed at this kooky premise: the reason why humans didn't develop psionic powers (more than we have) is that true adepts were burned as witches.

And so, in this lead novella, we have a planet of exact humanoids going through their equivalent of the 17th Century. The nobles are finding witches right and left because bumping off the psychics (who, naturally, are doing a bit better than the average population) is a lucrative business. It's up to Hal Carlsen, agent of a galactic "Philosophical Corps", to alter the course of the planet's history.

by Kelly Freas

Obviously, Cole succeeded at his mission—securing a check for several hundred dollars. He does not accomplish much else, though. The tale is by-the-numbers, and the premise is dumb on multiple levels. Plus, I really didn't need several pages luridly describing the tortures that the accused had to endure.

Two stars.

Quiet Village, by David McDaniel

by Vincent DiFate

Three hundred years after The Plague eliminates most of the human population, pockets of America are slowly clawing their way back to civilization. Their progress is hindered by rats—bandits clad in bullet-proof "street suits" and wielding blasters. When a San Gabriel Valley community is threatened by a pack of rats, a contingent of Scouts is hired to flush them out.

Boy Scouts, that is.

This intriguing set-up quickly devolves into a competently told but otherwise uninteresting combat tale. I suppose the "moral" is that, in times of trouble, a unified, God fearing organization like the Scouts will keep America going, like the Catholic church in the Dark Ages. Or something.

A low three stars.

A Case of Overprotection, by Hazel Moseley

Ms. Moseley offers up a history of the Food and Drug Administration, notes its virtues, and decries its recent cautious slowness. I appreciated the data, but I disagree with the sentiment.

Three stars.

by David Pattee

The Siren Stars (Part 2 of 3), by Nancy and Richard Carrigan

by Kelly Freas

Here we are again with the bland adventures of bland adventurer John Leigh. This time around, after the failure of John's attempt to infiltrate his own base (as practice for a mission to investigate a Soviet facility which has received signals from an alien race), he meets up with Elizabeth Ashley.

She is a woman.

Oh! You want to know more about her? Well, in many ways, she is like every woman in the world: appreciates expensive clothes, startles easily, and has preternatural intuition. In other ways, she's most unlike women. For instance, she is very smart—despite being a very beautiful woman.

You think I'm being overly snide? Read this installment, if you can. Virtually every description and depiction of Dr. Ashley either emphasizes her femininity (explicitly) or contrasts this or that character trait with stereotypical femininity. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, Ashley is an astronomer who came up with the hypothesis that maybe the ultimate evolution of intelligence is the creation of sapient machines. And maybe said machines would conquer the universe by sending signals to other smart species that promise great technological increases. And maybe those technologies are actually a Trojan horse, and if they are built, the hapless dupes will realize too late that they've actually created alien robots, who will take over. Rinse. Repeat.

Well, Ashley obviously struck a nerve with that one—foreign mooks first try to kill her, then succeed in abducting her. Because nothing hides a cunning plan like offing the one person who has made casual surmises (without evidence, mind you) of the truth behind it.

The Carrigans also offer up some local color, showing off the places they have obviously seen personally. There are some truly insipid love scenes, including a very brief peek inside Ashley's thoughts, just so the reader knows she is genuinely attracted to John and isn't just some kind of enemy agent. We also get some Fleming-lite action sequences.

Things end with John now tasked to go to the USSR not to see which way their radio dish is pointed (it's a moot point—the Americans have also gotten the Lorelei signal; one astronomer has gone insane) but to destroy any technology derived from it. Also, to extract a (presumably beautiful, and definitely female) defector.

Well, at least the Carrigans acknowledged (tardily) that satellite photography was an easier way to see which way the Russkie dish was pointed…

Two stars.

Come You Nigh: Kay Shuns, by Lawrence A. Perkins

by Craig Robertson

A two-man fighter craft of the Tellurian International Space Force is disabled by a Zhobehr magnetic beam and left adrift in the solar system. This turns out to be a blessing in disguise as the crippled craft winds up near the enemy aliens' secret local base. But how to broadcast their findings to Earth without 1) giving away their position, and 2) letting the aliens know they've been found out?

The clue is in the title. It's a cute story that, thankfully, goes no longer than it needs to.

Three stars.

The Life Preservers, by Hank Dempsey

by Vincent DiFate

Here we've got another story about mechanical teleportation by "Hank Dempsey" (Harry Harrison in disguise). This time, it's set much further in the future. Teleporters have been situated on planets throughout the galaxy for so long that they've had time to be abandoned for centuries.

Preservers is the story of Emergency Plague Control, a corps of doctors whose job is to ensure the health of humanity. Alien planets have not spawned harmful diseases—the ecosystems aren't similar enough. But isolated groups of humans evolve new spins on old epidemics, and its up to the EPC to keep them in check.

And so, a team is dispatched to a primitive world, regressed for a thousand years, to do a check-up. Unwittingly, they bring death with them…

It's a pretty good tale, more nuanced than I had expected, and told in Harrison's taut style. Not brilliant, but worthy.

Three stars.

Seed Stock, by Frank Herbert

by Vincent DiFate

A few months ago, I attempted a book by Rex Gordon called The Yellow Fraction. The premise was that a colony world had divided into two factions: the Greens advocated terraforming the world to be a paradise for humans; the Blues said the settlers should adapt to the planet. (There was also a minority group that said the planet was no good, and they should just up and leave—the yellows.)

Frank Herbert's newest story presents the Green vs. Blue debate in a much terser, much more compelling fashion. It is told from the point of view of Kroudor, a laborer with an instinctive knack for the rhythms of their new world. While the highfalutin scientists struggle in vain to make their imported crops and livestock survive in increasingly difficult conditions, Kroudor and his wife, the technician Honida, find and cultivate local resources.

The result presages survival for the colony… if not quite that which had been envisioned when the group left Earth several years prior.

This is probably the best thing I've read by Herbert. I imagine he sold it to Campbell because it has a bit of the anti-egghead bias the editor enjoys so much, but it is a story that would have fit in any other mag.

Four stars.

The Reference Library, by P. Schuyler Miller

Schuy sings the praises, this month, of Poul Anderson's future history as told in the tapestry of his dozens of published tales. The occasion is the novel releases of Satan's World and The Rebel Worlds, both of which Miller liked, but we were less impressed with. He likes the new collection Beyond the Beyond, too, whose contents include many stories we've covered on the Journey.

There's a neat bit about how SF veteran Alan E. Nourse is chartering a flight to Heidelberg's Worldcon this August—might be worth it for you folks who want to hop the Pond to West Germany.

Of Eight Fantasms and Magics, a Jack Vance collection of works that fit in the gap between SF and Fantasy, Schuy says, "If you don't like this kind of thing, stay away from it. If you do, sample Vance: he is a master of the genre."

He also enjoys the 18th volume of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: "It's the best F&SF anthology in a long time." This tallies with our assessment—that magazine finished at the top of the heap last year when we awarded the Galactic Stars

Finally, he lauds the A. Bertam Chandler collection, Catch the Star Winds, and contemplates making an encyclopedia for all of the Galactic Rim stories (whose main protagonist is Commodore John Grimes).

Signs of sprouting?

a woman working at an IBM 2265 terminal

All told, this month's issue scores just 2.8 stars. The concluding pages were such a comparatively pleasant experience that I'm left with a bit of optimism. Sure, there's a Campbellian smugness that suffuses all that gets submitted; yet, the best authors seem to overcome that particular editorial tic. Of course, this also suggests that Analog would get even better with a different man at the tiller. That doesn't seem to be forthcoming any time soon…

As for the other sources of short fiction this month, we had a bumper crop. From best to worst, there was:

Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.8), Fantastic (3.1), Galaxy (2.9), IF (2.8), Nova 1 (2.7), New Worlds (2.5), Orbit 6 (2.4), and Vision of Tomorrow (2.2)…and Andre Norton's collection of old and new stories: High Sorcery.

Individually, no outlet was outstanding (except for F&SF), but there was enough 4 and 5 star work to fill three full digests. Also, women contributed 12% of the new fiction, which is on the higher side (again, thanks to Norton).

I suppose if you cast lots of seed, you're bound to get sprouts. It just takes a lot of stock for this strategy to work. And a lot of subscription fare!

Thank goodness books bought by the Journey are tax deductible.

Aren't they?

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

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 2, 1970] Par for the course (April 1970 IF)

March 2, 2025 David Levinson 5 Comments

by David Levinson

The Veep that couldn’t shoot straight

I’m no fan of golf (unless it involves little windmills), but a lot of people seem to like it. They show it on TV and not a week goes by without at least one golf joke in the funny pages. It also intersected with politics last month. February continues to be the month that gives me very little to talk about, so I guess this is it.

The Professional Golfers’ Association likes to start their tour early in the pleasant climes of Hawaii and California. One such event is the Bob Hope Desert Classic held on a variety of courses in the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs. The highlight of the tournament for many is the pro-am event, where the pros competing in the tournament are matched with (celebrity) amateurs for one day’s round.

Pro Doug Sanders—best known for his odd swing and dapper dress—found himself in a foursome with Bob Hope, California Senator (and former song-and-dance man) George Murphy, and Vice President Spiro Agnew. On his very first shot, the Veep managed to hook the ball so far to the left it ended up on the path for an adjacent fairway. (Probably the farthest left he’s gone since being elected governor.) Trying to get back to the right fairway, he then sliced hard to the right. (This whole thing is starting to sound like a metaphor for Agnew’s political career.)

Bob Hope and Doug Sanders were standing in the path of the ball. Hope managed to duck out of the way, but Sanders was struck on the head. The blow drew blood, which Hope mopped up with a towel. Agnew was duly apologetic, and Sanders played gamely onward. At the nine-hole break, he was examined by a doctor, and the wound was sprayed with a pain-deadener.

Wire photo of the aftermath.

Agnew went on to have a terrible day. He frequently missed putts and took penalties for giving up on a hole. As the AP put it, “Agnew chatted amiably with the fans when his ball landed in or near them, which was often.” Sanders didn’t do much better, though he was already having a poor tournament. He won $200, far less than the top prize of $25,000. Agnew rather crassly quipped that it should just about cover his medical bills.

Am I picking on Spiro Agnew? Yes. Yes, I am. After his recent attack on the press, he deserves all the opprobrium he can get. He’s already being talked about as the clear front-runner for the Republicans in 1976. Let’s nip that idea in the bud right now.

Down the fairway

When he took over as editor, Ejler Jakobsson got off to a strong start. Since then, there’s been something of a return to form, although those C+ to B- issues have felt fresher than they did in recent years under Fred Pohl. Has he sent this issue cleanly down the fairway, hit a hole in one, or—worst of all—smacked the reader in the head with an errant shot? Let’s find out.

Arrival at Ocean-Deep. Art for “Waterclap” by Gaughan

Waterclap, by Isaac Asimov

The long-standing lunar base and the new deep sea base at the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench must compete for the limited financial resources offered by the Planetary Project Council. After the first fatal accident on the Moon, safety engineer Stephen Demerest travels to Ocean-Deep, ostensibly to learn more about their safety procedures. His real purpose is to convince them to turn down any increase in funding at the expense of the Moon base, and he’s willing to take extreme measures.

Demerest makes his case. Art by Gaughan

This is a very unusual Asimov story. There’s no puzzle, the characters are a little more fleshed out than is typical, and the tone is a lot darker. He pulls it off quite well. It could be tightened up here and there, and Demerest’s real plans are foreshadowed a little too strongly, but all in all, it’s solid, with a maturity that’s often not in evidence in the Good Doctor’s work.

A high three stars.

To Touch a Star, by Robert F. Young

Angry at being rendered impotent as punishment for a crime he didn’t commit, Ben Powers steals the starship Mary and heads for the one place he can reverse his condition. Unfortunately for him, the ship’s computer is intelligent and programmed to combat theft.

The Mary being exposed to ChiMuZeta (whatever that is). Art uncredited

Science fiction editors have long rejected out of hand any story which ends with the characters becoming Adam and Eve. Can we extend that to include any Biblical figure? Just in the last couple of months, we’ve had Jesus, Jonah, and even God. It’s trite. Add in Young’s nonsensical science, and this is an awful story. Only the author’s ability to write halfway decent sentences keeps this from the bottom of the barrel.

A low two stars.

Spaceman, by Lee Harding

Facing a long layover on the planet Hydria, Captain Marnsworth takes the opportunity to find out why his best friend jumped ship there three years earlier. What he finds shocks him to the core.

Marnsworth can’t comprehend what he sees. Art uncredited, but obviously Gaughan

The back to nature movement is popular with young people, especially hippies. Star Trek even used it for a plot last year. Concern for how the technological life and separation from nature, especially life in space, will affect humanity is a worthy subject for SF to confront. This really could have been the story to do that; Harding doesn’t take sides, showing value in both approaches. But it’s too long. That or Marnsworth’s general confusion makes the narrative heavy going. Either way, it brings the story down.

Three stars.

Swap, by Ron Goulart

Ron Goulart give us another of his tales of technology gone very wrong. This time, it’s computerized spouse swapping sending the protagonist to the wrong part of town. It’s got that typical Goulart wackiness, but with a darker than usual undertone. If you’re familiar with Ron, you’ve got a pretty good idea whether you’ll like this or not; if you aren’t, this isn’t a bad place to start.

Three stars.

When blind dates go wrong. Art by Gaughan

Ride a Tin Can, by R.A. Lafferty

Two folklorists investigate a race of goblinesque creatures that most people don’t think are intelligent.

The Shelni hope to ride a tin can one of these days. Art by Gaughan

For me, the best Lafferty stories are those that actually don’t have much in the way of plot. This one has a bit, but not enough to spoil the essential Lafferty-ness of the whole thing. I could say the same thing here as I did about the Goulart story. I liked it.

Three stars.

Thou Spark of Blood, by Gene Wolfe

One hundred and thirty-five days into the first mission to Mars, the three astronauts aboard are cracking up. They’ve been out of contact with Earth for weeks, and most of the equipment for improving their quality of life has also broken down. When the man in the middle seat is found with his throat cut, tensions run high, with the two survivors accusing each other of murder.

How do you dispose of a body without a functioning airlock? Art by Gaughan

Gene Wolfe started out writing in a slightly New Wave style, but seems to have fallen into a more traditional form since—he’s not the better for it. I also saw the ending of this one coming. Despite this, I was originally prepared to give the story three stars, but the more I think about it, I can’t. There’s a massive flaw that I can’t really discuss without giving away the ending, but it renders the whole thing completely unbelievable.

Two stars.

Whipping Star (Part 4 of 4), by Frank Herbert

Saboteur Extraordinaire Jorj McKie and the Bureau of Sabotage race to prevent the death of the Caleban Fannie Mae. If she dies, almost every sentient being in the galaxy will die with her.

The final confrontation as the clock runs out. Art by Gaughan

Herbert manages to bring his novel to a fairly satisfying conclusion. There’s enough action and about as much tension as you can expect in a story like this. We also learn the true nature of the Caleban, though it may stretch credibility. If I have a complaint, it’s that Herbert never really engages with the interesting questions he raised in Part 1 about the problems of communicating without common references. It’s still an engaging read, which might read better over the course of a few hours than a few months, though I don’t find myself at all motivated to test that hypothesis.

Three stars for this segment and the novel as a whole.

Reading Room, by Lester del Rey

Lester del Rey turns his attention to two recent Buck Rogers books, one a retrospective on the long-running comic strip, the other a reprint of the original two stories by Philip Francis Nowlan. He uses the occasion to discuss Buck Rogers’ limited connection to SF as it is and its role in furthering the ideas of the Yellow Peril. He even asks if the comic might have played a role in the internment of Japanese Americans during the War by keeping those ideas alive.

A high three stars.

Summing up

That’s another issue in the books. No holes in one and maybe a couple of bogeys, but at least the reader never gets conked with an errant shot. The magazine seems to be drifting back into its old routine. The freshness I mentioned earlier that keeps it different from the Pohl era is still there, but it’s starting to get a little stale. Asking for a four or five star story every month is probably too much, but the magazine needs a real highlight every now and then to keep the reader interested. Fingers crossed for next month.

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

[February 2, 1970] Deceptive Appearances (March 1970 IF)

February 2, 2025 David Levinson Leave a comment

by David Levinson

The Super Fight

Back in 1967, a radio producer by the name of Murray Woroner came up with the idea of using a computer to work out who the best heavyweight fighter of all time is. He polled 250 boxing writers and came up with a list of 16. He then worked closely with a programmer to input everything that could be determined about each boxer into a computer.

Match-ups were set up as a single-elimination tournament to be broadcast as a series of radio plays. Each fight was run through an NCR 315 computer the night before broadcast to create a blow-by-blow account of the fight. Woroner and boxing announcer Guy LeBow would then “call” the fight as if it were really happening. In the end, Rocky Marciano beat Jack Dempsey and was awarded a championship belt worth $10,000.

The arbiter, an NCR 315.

Ali was not happy. The computer had him losing in the quarter finals to Jim Jeffries, a boxer he has little respect for. He sued for defamation of character, asking for $1 million. They settled when Ali agreed to take part in a filmed version of a computerized fight between him and Marciano in return for $10,000 and a cut of the box office.

Last year, Ali and Marciano got together and sparred for over 70 rounds, filming a few different versions of events that the computer might predict. Marciano dropped 50 pounds and wore a toupee so he’d look more like he did in his prime. Ali probably had to get back in shape too, since he’s been banned from boxing for refusing induction into the army. Instinct seems to have taken over for both men. Ali bloodied Marciano’s nose and opened cuts over his eyes (Rocky always bled easily); at one point, Ali was so exhausted he refused to go back into the ring (until he got another $2,000) and could barely raise his arms enough to eat breakfast the next day. Filming ended just three weeks before Marciano was killed in a plane crash last Labor Day.

Armed with hours of footage and the top secret computer result, Woroner and his team put together a film they dubbed The Super Fight. On January 20th, it aired in 1,500 theaters in the US, Canada, and Europe via closed-circuit television, with viewers paying a whopping $5.00 a head.

How did it turn out? Ali is not happy. The computer had him knocked out in the 13th round. He’s talking about another defamation suit. Maybe he’ll change his mind when he finds out that was only in the US and Canada. European viewers saw Ali win by TKO. The producers are also talking about destroying all the prints.

Movie poster for the event. That “LIVE!” is a little deceptive, which is something else Ali is complaining about.

It’s a rather science-fictional concept we’ve seen in other guises. Maybe Murray Woroner got his original idea from the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon.” Of course, any statistician will tell you that a single simulation doesn’t really say anything. Rolling a die once doesn’t tell you if it’s fair; it takes hundreds or thousands of repetitions to determine that. But when the computer needs 45 minutes to determine the events of one match, this is the best that can be expected. For now.

Not what it looks like

Authors like to counter readers’ expectations. It’s a good way to evoke a response, particularly in a genre that has a fair number of cliches and formulas. Sometimes, the surprise comes from the author doing something that’s not what you expect that particular writer to do or say. This month’s IF offers some of both.

Art actually for “SOS,” rather than just suggested by. Maybe because it’s by Mike Gilbert, not the overworked Jack Gaughan.

SOS, by Poul Anderson

Some 2,000 years from now, the Earth’s magnetic field is fading, prior to a reversal of the magnetic poles. The feudalistic Westrealm and the communist Autarchy of Great Asia compete for dwindling resources as they search desperately for a way to survive the pending catastrophe. The Autarchy secretly invades a Westrealm research station on the dark side of the moon, preparatory to a surprise attack on the West’s space fleet. It’s up to the scientists to find a way to prevent it.

The invasion arrives. Art uncredited

This feels like a fairly typical Anderson story of the well-done sort all the way through. But then he hits the reader with a punch to the gut right at the end. The ending and the commentary from the author are surprising in light of most of his work. It’s a good story, but weakened by two things: the title completely gives away the resolution; worse, there’s a couple of paragraphs at the beginning that undercut the emotional impact of the ending.

A high three stars, but could have been better.

Telemart 3, by Bob Shaw

Shaw gives us the tale of an unpleasant man who married for money and his wife who seems intent on spending all of it. The problem is made worse by the titular device, which allows her to buy things from the comfort of her living room with instant delivery. It’s probably meant as commentary on consumerism, but feels more like a sexist rant about women and money.

Two stars.

Matters come to a head. Art by Gaughan

The Thing in the Stone, by Clifford Simak

After a car accident that killed his wife and child and may have given him brain damage, Wallace Daniels retired to the countryside of south-western Wisconsin, where he has visions that seem to let him go walking in the geologic past. There’s also something alive buried deep in the limestone, not to mention an unpleasant and shiftless neighbor. Not everything is as it seems.

Daniels finds himself in the deep past, before life has truly left the ocean. Art by Gaughan

This story has almost everything I don’t like about Simak: the pastoralism, wandering back and forth over the line between science fiction and fantasy, the slow progression. I understand why people like him, but he just isn’t for me. If you like those aspects of his work, you may like this one a lot.

Three stars for me, might be four for Simak fans.

The Ethics of Trade, by Timothy M. Brown

This month’s (official) new author gives us a series of letters from the operators of a company that provides dangerous animals to zoos to one of their clients. There’s nothing really new here, but it’s done fairly well. Brown does a good job of calling the letter writer into question, even though we only hear his side.

Three stars.

Rigellian wombats are very, very dangerous. Art by Gaughan

In the Silent World, by Ed Bryant

Julie is a co-ed with telepathy. As far as she know, she’s the only telepath in the world. At least, until an overwhelming cry of loneliness prompts another to contact her.

Julie, I suppose. Art uncredited, but looks like Gaughan

Nothing about this story is bad, but nothing is particularly outstanding either. I saw the ending coming almost as soon as the other telepath made contact. There’s not much more to say about it.

Three stars.

Traps, by Jack Dann and George Zebrowski

Planet 3-10004-2 can’t be approved for colonization until all land animals have been properly classified; Rysling has taken the contract to capture the last unclassified species. He’s puzzled by the presence of another ship and the cryptic messages left by its pilot. Even more puzzling is the effect the creature he’s after seems to have on him.

Rysling’s not sure who or what he is. Art by Gaughan

Dann seems to be a new author, but Zebrowski had a story in a collection that came out last month, so this isn’t quite an IF first. The premise and the powers of the creature are hard to buy, but it’s told well enough. There’s enough talent here to make the story readable; we’ll see if either author has any staying power.

Three stars.

Whipping Star (Part 3 of 4), by Frank Herbert

Herbert’s tale of Saboteur Extraordinary Jorj McKie and his efforts to stop a “reformed” sadist from causing the death of an alien, thus triggering the deaths of nearly every sentient being in the galaxy, plods along. Last month, I said the story was holding my interest and praised the action. Neither of those things is true this month. This installment is nothing but conversations. There are a couple of brief bits of action, but neither is more than a flash.

I’m also getting a little bored. There may not be enough here for a novel. The idea of examining communication without a common perspective is sound, but the whole thing might have been trimmed to a longish novella.

Three fading stars.

The bad guys make an ineffectual attempt to eliminate McKie. Art by Gaughan

The Time Judge, by Dannie Plachta

A criminal is dragged through time and condemned by the title character to a fitting punishment.

Here come da judge. Art by Gaughan

Actually, we don’t know if the punishment is fitting, since we’re never told the nature of the crime, just of the judge’s disgust. For that matter, the punishment wasn’t all that uncommon in its day. As with nearly every Plachta story, the nicest thing I can say is that it’s very short.

Two stars.

Love Thy Neighbor, by E. Clayton McCarty

Jake Terrell starts seeing something out of the corner of his eye. Then it jumps into his head, and he begins behaving oddly.

It’s a stretch, but I see how this connects with the story. Art uncredited

Another story that’s like a piece of popcorn. You consume it without really noticing it, nor is there anything memorable about it, good or bad. A decently told piece of filler.

Three low, but not too low stars.

All Brothers Are Men, by Basil Wells

Three alien religious fanatics are part of a conspiracy to drive humans off their world. Two of them started out as the personality of the third implanted into mind-wiped bodies. The years apart have undermined their commonality, and two of them may no longer believe in the cause.

Not sure what the paper airplane is doing here. Art by Gaughan

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this story is that the humans aren’t really in it. They’re a distant, never seen presence affecting the characters’ society in ways they don’t like. For a guy who started out 30 years ago and probably spends more time writing mysteries and westerns than SF, Wells has managed to stay up-to-date. This is by no means a New Wave tale, but it still manages to have a modern sensibility.

A very solid three stars.

Miscellany

Elsewhere in the magazine, the letters were almost universally in praise of the savaging Ejler Jakobsson gave John Campbell in two editorials over the latter’s piece on race and IQ. I particularly liked the point made by one writer, who notes that Campbell’s premise is based tightly on statistical analysis of something poorly defined and understood, while he flatly rejects statistical evidence indicating clear connections between smoking and lung cancer and heart disease.

Summing up

Looking over what I’ve written, this seems like a weak issue, but it’s not as bad as I make it sound. The Simak is undoubtedly the best in the issue; it might even be a four-star story, but my own prejudices keep me from rating it that high. The Anderson and Wells are fine stories, if not outstanding. The rest are mostly just there. The only really bad story is the Shaw (Plachta’s not bad, just stupid). Frank Herbert might manage to salvage his novel in the final episode, but I’m not holding my breath.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 2, 1970] Under Pressure (February 1970 IF)

January 2, 2025 David Levinson Leave a comment

by David Levinson

Pressure Cooker

Every December, the American Geophysical Union holds its Fall Meeting in San Francisco. There, a number of papers are presented on a wide variety of topics in fields such as geology, oceanography, meteorology, space, and many more. Usually, it might produce a paragraph or two in the back pages of your newspaper on an attempt to predict earthquakes or some new information about the Moon, but this year’s meeting garnered headlines (hardly front page news, but more than just filler). Most of attention went to the proposal to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon to build up a seismological picture of our neighbor and the news that Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice as it rose into the skies above Florida. However, it was another article that caught my eye.

Most of the column inches went to a presentation by Dr. E.D. Goldberg of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. He spoke of the “complex ecological questions” raised by the amount of toxic substances we’re dumping into the ocean. The use of lead in gasoline results in 250,000 tons winding up in the ocean every year, over and above the 150,000 tons that are washed there naturally. Oil tankers and other ships discharge a million tons of oil into the sea annually, with the result that there are “cases of fish tasting of petroleum.” Mackerel had to be taken off the market in Los Angeles due to unacceptable levels of DDT, while in Japan 200 people were poisoned and 40 died before authorities traced the cause to mercury discharged into Minimata Bay by a chemical company. Dr. Goldberg asked, “Will [pollution] alter the ocean as a resource? Will we lose the ocean?”

Dr. Edward D. Goldberg of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California

That seems like the sort of pollution we can do something about. Perhaps more concerning is the warning provided by J.O. Fletcher of the Rand Corporation. Fletcher is a retired Air Force Colonel, best known for being part of the crew that landed a plane at the North Pole and for establishing a weather station on tabular iceberg T-3 (now known as Fletcher’s Ice Island), which is still in use. He called carbon dioxide the most important atmospheric pollutant today. It is responsible for one-third to one-half of the warming thus far in the 20th century. The human contribution may surpass that of nature within a few decades. Global warming could increase the melting of the polar ice caps and change the Earth’s climate.

Col. Fletcher (r.) on his ice island in 1952. This was the most recent photo of him I could find.

Fletcher’s warning was underscored by Dr. William W. Kellogg of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who stressed the need to educate people that “man has got to change his way.” He added that global climate is going to have to become a problem that can be managed.

Dr. William W. Kellogg of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado

If the warnings of Fletcher and Kellogg sound familiar, that’s because you read it in IF first. Back in the April, 1968 issue, Poul Anderson had a guest editorial talking about the dangers of increased warming. In the August issue of the same year, Fred Pohl had an editorial warning about increasing levels of carbon dioxide. [And Isaac Asimov wrote about it back in 1958! (ed.)] An article from UPI has a much wider reach than IF, and people are more likely to take working scientists more seriously than a couple of science fiction writers. Let’s hope they pay attention.

Pressure Tests

It’s not uncommon for authors to put their characters through the wringer, pushing them to or even past their breaking point. Some would argue it’s the best way to get a story out of a setting and characters. Several of the stories in this month’s IF have taken that approach, though one subject has an awfully low tolerance for stress.

Cover by Gaughan. Supposedly suggested by Whipping Star, but it looks more like it illustrates Pressure Vessel to me.

Pressure Vessel, by Ben Bova

Robert O’Banion is second in command on a mission into the depths of Jupiter, looking for life. Grieving over the loss of his wife, he only feels truly comfortable when he is connected to the ship and its computer, flying the vessel like it’s his own body. Add in a general sense of urgency and friction between the scientific and military members of the small crew, and there’s a lot of tension.

Art by Gaughan: O’Banion hooked up to the ship.

Bova has written a couple of stories about Dr. Sidney Lee, in which humanity is desperately seeking the aliens who built the strange machines on Titan, still working after millennia or even longer. Lee doesn’t appear in this story, but the protagonist’s wife knew Lee on Titan and fell in love with him there. There are some flaws in the tale—notably the protagonist’s psychological suitability for the mission—but it’s still very strong.

Four stars.

A Matter of Recordings, by Larry Eisenberg

Another of Eisenberg’s awful Emmett Duckworth stories. This time, Duckworth has come up with a way to record memories so they can be played back to anyone. The usual nonsense follows.

Two stars.

Can recordings made in a harem stop a revolution? Art uncredited, but probably by Gaughan

Prez, by Ron Goulart

Norbert Penner is looking forward to spending the winter alone with his girlfriend on her family’s palatial estate. Unfortunately, he doesn’t like her dog, the titular Prez. Worse, thanks to cybernetic enhancements, Prez can talk and has the intelligence of a 10-year-old. He’s able to make very clear that the feeling is mutual without having to pee on Penner’s leg.

Prez recharging his batteries. Art by Gaughan

This is a fairly typical Goulart comedy, though not as wacky as some. If you like those—and I do—you’ll like this one.

Three stars.

The Cube, by C.M. Drahan

Humans and the E-tees have been at war from the moment they first made contact. The Telepath chosen as humanity’s representative for the truce talks on a remote planetoid seems remarkably unsuited for the task.

Art by Gaughan

Drahan is this month’s new author. Unfortunately, there’s no biographical information, so I don’t know anything about the person behind the initials. It’s a decent debut. Bits of the story may come across as confused with a casual reading, but careful attention should make everything clear. This is an author I’m willing to see more from.

Three stars.

A Game of Biochess, by T.J. Bass

On a layover at a space station, tramp trader Spider meets Rau Lou during a chess game (biochess refers to a game against a biological opponent, rather than a computer). The two hit it off, but not on a sexual level. When Spider has a big score that will let him upgrade his ship to a two-person crew, Olga the ship’s computer suggests Rau Lou. However, she has disappeared, so Spider and Olga go looking for her.

Spider makes his way to the wreck of Rau Lou’s ship. Art by Gaughan

Bass is shaping up to be a pretty good writer. He still needs to work on throwing around medical terminology (Bass is a doctor), but he has reined it in this time. I only had to pull down my dictionary once. Otherwise, this is a fine story with a nice twist at the end.

A high three stars.

Hired Man, by Richard C. Meredith

A human mercenary working for an alien employer is the only survivor of a raid on a human settlement. The pay is excellent, and the offer for a six-month extension will set him up for a long time.

Power armor, but this mercenary is no Johnny Rico. Art by Gaughan

All the previous Meredith stories I can think of have been brutal war tales with depth. This one is no different. The ending hits the protagonist with a question the reader has probably been asking all along.

Four stars.

Fruit of the Vine, by George C. Willick

The smuggling of flora and fauna between the worlds of the Federation is punishable with death. Somehow, grape varieties suitable for wine-making have reached almost every world. This story weaves three threads together: the official search for the smugglers, a group known as the Entertainers, and a skid row bum staggering through a winter night.

Art by Gaughan

There are a lot of flaws in this story. It’s fairly obvious how two of the three threads tie together, the whole thing is too long, and the set-up is a little hard to believe. While the desire to keep potentially hazardous plants and animals from moving between worlds is commendable, are there really 49 habitable worlds where people can and are willing to eat the local produce from the moment they arrive? But it’s told well.

Three stars.

Dry Run, by J.R. Pierce

General Devlin, D.I.A., is a special adviser to the Prime Minister on the Panda War. In this case, D.I.A. stands for Demon In Attendance, not Defense Intelligence Agency. His job seems awfully easy.

Probably not Devlin. Art by Gaughan

This is a fun, little story that proposes something I’m sure many of us have thought at times. The Vietnam analog is obvious, but not overdone. While it might be trivial, the whole thing doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Three stars.

Whipping Star (Part 2 of 4), by Frank Herbert

The alien Caleban Fanny Mae has signed an unbreakable contract with the human Mliss Abnethe, allowing herself to be whipped. The flagellations are killing Fanny Mae, and if she dies nearly every sentient being in the galaxy will die with her. It’s up to Saboteur Extraordinaire Jorj McKie to stop Mliss.

In this installment, McKie tracks Mliss to an impossibly primitive planet, where he finds himself imprisoned. We also learn that there is someone else driving Mliss to do what she’s doing. Time travel may also be involved. To be continued.

McKie favors the Bond school of defusing traps by walking into them. Art by Gaughan

I’m not sure if I really like this story, but it is keeping my interest. In many ways, this feels more like the Frank Herbert who wrote The Dragon in the Sea than the navel-gazer we’ve seen of late. There’s more action in the first chapter of this installment than in the whole of Dune Messiah. It remains to be seen how well he handles the interesting questions he’s asked so far.

Three stars.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the magazine, Lester del Rey is back in form, offering actual criticism over mere review. He might be the best reviewer in the magazines right now. I’d say his only competition is Joanna Russ over in F&SF. Meanwhile, Ejler Jakobsson’s answers in the letter column offer quite a bit of news. Philip José Farmer is working on a Riverworld novel, the promised new issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is coming soon, and there will be news about the IF First program in the near future.

All in all, not a bad issue. A couple of excellent stories and only one clunker out of nine. Jakobsson is turning out to be a fine replacement for Fred Pohl.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 2, 1969] Communication Breakdown (January 1970 IF)

December 2, 2024 David Levinson 3 Comments

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

by David Levinson

Free press

American readers and those who follow American politics are no doubt well aware of President Nixon’s speech on the “Vietnamization” of the war in Indo-China. All three national networks carried the speech, of course, and followed it up with analysis and commentary. This apparently didn’t sit well with the White House.

On November 13th, Vice President Spiro Agnew addressed a regional Republican committee in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he attacked the networks, accusing them of political bias in their news coverage. He complained that the president’s speech had been subjected to “instant analysis and querulous criticism” without giving the American people time to digest the speech for themselves. Agnew accused “a small and unelected elite” of exerting undue influence on public opinion without any check on their power. He even called it a form of censorship.

Vice President Spiro Agnew addressing the Midwest Regional Republican Committee.

Some television executives accused Agnew of attempting to undermine the freedom of the press and intimidate a form of journalism that requires a government license in order to broadcast. I’d say the intimidation was at least partly successful, since all three networks carried the Vice President's speech. However, the networks are also fighting back. The CBS news magazine 60 Minutes devoted a full hour to rebutting Agnew’s charges.

When asked if anyone in the administration had an advance look at the speech, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler denied it. He also said that the White House would have no reaction to statements by other members of the administration and that Nixon and Agnew had not discussed the speech. That’s nonsense. A speech like this would never be made without approval at the highest levels, and if it had been, the White House would have promptly issued a statement distancing Nixon from the remarks or at least trying to soften them. I’d say the administration has fired a shot across the bows of the news media.

White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler

Seeking common ground

Carrying on the love theme from last month, this month’s IF offers us two romances. But the real focus is on learning to communicate, especially without a common point of reference. It also gives us two sequels to stories from several years ago.

Suggested by “This One”. Art by Gaughan.

Diary Found in the St. Louis Zoo, by Robert Bloch

Bob Bloch gives us his report on the Worldcon, held in St. Louis this year. It’s his typical mix of name-dropping and bad jokes. I generally enjoy Bloch’s fiction (I met him once, and he was very nice), but his humor is just awful. Unlike the delightful and funny drawings by Jack Gaughan that accompany this article. If you want to know what really happened in St. Louis, read the Traveler’s con report. It was timelier and much more informative.

Barely three stars.

A photorealistic portrait of Harlan Ellison. Art by Gaughan

Whipping Star (Part 1 of 4), by Frank Herbert

The ConSentiency is an interstellar society composed of several intelligent species. Among them are the Caleban, a strange people who seem to be only partially in this dimension. Only 84 of them have ever been seen, but they are very important, because they gave the ConSentiency jumpdoors, which allow people to travel vast distances. Now, 83 Caleban have vanished, leaving millions dead in the disappearance of each one.

Enter Jorj X. McKie, Saboteur Extraordinaire (the Bureau of Sabotage keeps government from becoming too efficient, so that nothing happens without due deliberation). He makes contact with the last Caleban, who calls herself Fanny Mae, and learns that she has entered a contractual relationship with the wealthy and sadistic Mliss Abnethe. In an attempt to treat her sadism, Mliss was conditioned so that she cannot stand to see another sentient suffer, but Calebans can barely be perceived and do not outwardly show suffering.

The problem here is that the flagellations are killing Fanny Mae, and if she undergoes “ultimate discontinuity,” every being that has ever used a jumpdoor—which is almost everyone—will die. To complicate matters, the BuSab is not allowed to interfere with private individuals, which seriously limits Jorj’s options. To complicate things even further, Fanny Mae declares that she has fallen in love with Jorj. To be continued.

Some Gaughan-esque abstractions. Art by Gaughan

We’ve seen McKie and the BuSab before, in the story “The Tactful Saboteur,” which the Traveler gave a mere one star. This installment is better than that, though it’s mostly just Herbert setting the scene. It can be difficult reading at times, thanks to Fanny Mae’s odd speech patterns and the difficulties she and Jorj have finding common referents to understand each other, but that appears to be the point of the story.

Three stars for now, mostly because of the interesting philosophical questions about language and understanding.

By the Falls, by Harry Harrison

Harry Harrison has written a J.G. Ballard story. There is an unexplained natural phenomenon—in this case a waterfall that makes Niagara look like a faucet with a slow leak—and a bunch of suggestive, but not obvious symbolism that is never clarified. Line by line, the writing is fine; I might have liked it if I had any idea what Harrison was trying to say.

Two stars.

By the falls, like it says on the tin. Art by Gaughan

If a Man Answers, by Richard Wilson

Doctoral candidate Walter Hurd takes a job in remote western New York, hoping to finish his dissertation. For an hour a day he beams messages into space, and for another hour he monitors reception. The isolation soon gets to him, and along with the mathematical formulas he starts sending poetry and, eventually, thoughts from his own journal. When he starts receiving a female voice sending out her thoughts, he quickly falls in love.

More abstracts. Art by Gaughan

Here’s our first love story. Parts of it are rather silly, especially the reason Walter’s Star Girl speaks English, but it doesn’t ignore things like the speed of light. It’s a bit long and highly improbable, however there is some nice writing.

A low three stars.

Child’s Play, by Larry Eisenberg

The deeply annoying Emmett Duckworth returns. This time, the implausible chemist has figured out how to create life, including a six foot tall rabbit. I do not like these stories. I’d sooner read the most formulaic of Retief stories or a full novel of Paul Atreides contemplating the grains of sand in his navel. That said, this is the least stupid story of the series. It almost makes sense, and is just readable.

A generous just barely three stars.

Aunt Sam? Art by Gaughan

This One, by James Sallis

A human linguist falls in love with an alien woman. They’re torn apart, and he must search the galaxy to find her again.

I keep trying to see more than one face here, but it doesn’t work. Art probably by Gaughan

Our second love story was highly touted last month. Call me hard-hearted and unromantic, but I hated it. It’s overwrought and melodramatic. With very few changes, it could be a Victorian tale of a man searching the seraglios of the Near East for his lost love.

A low two stars.

O Kind Master, by Daniel F. Galouye

Centuries ago, spherical energy beings conquered the Earth. Now, humans are pampered pets. A group of wild humans have a plan to destroy the Spheres, but they need to know if the tame humans can handle the loss of their masters.

A wild human dwelling with a city of the Spheres in the background. Art probably by Gaughan

This is a sequel of sorts to “The City of Force” from 1959. The Traveler thought that one was solid, but not outstanding (no star ratings in those days). I say this story is only a sequel of sorts, because in the earlier tale, humans were pests, not pets. That story also left humans with powers equal to the Spheres.

It’s all horribly old-fashioned, even by the standards of 1959. Add in a solution to beating the Spheres that should have been found back during the initial invasion and my general vague dislike of Galouye’s work, and I didn’t like this one.

Two stars.

The Story of Our Earth: The Coming of the Dinosaurs, by Willy Ley

Ley’s survey has reached the Triassic and the first dinosaurs. He starts off with a discussion of the importance of jaws in paleontology, and then runs through both early dinosaurs and the mammals of the period, as well as some marine creatures. Interesting, but a bit perfunctory.

Three stars.

Summing up

Maybe the worst issue that editor Ejler Jakobsson has overseen. Some of that may just be me being curmudgeonly. There’s also a lot that isn’t here. We’re told that there’s no letter column due to the length of Bloch’s con report. That may also be why there’s no preview for next month and why Lester del Rey’s book review column is barely more than a page, with little of the depth he usually has. There’s also no new author this month. I’ve liked Jakobsson’s work so far, so hopefully this is just an aberration. Fingers crossed for next month.

In lieu of a preview, have a fanigator. Art by Gaughan

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

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 12, 1969] Earthshaking (October 1969 Galaxy)

September 12, 2024 Gideon Marcus 2 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Time for a change

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

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

Transistors have made it to geology.

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

Making waves

by Gray Morrow

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

Tomorrow Cum Laude, by Hayden Howard

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

Truly Human, by Damon Knight

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

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

Three stars.

The God of Cool, by J. W. Schutz

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

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

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

Five stars.

Element of Chance, by Bob Shaw

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

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

Two stars.

The Soul Machine, by A. Bertram Chandler

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

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

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

Ersalz's Rule, by George C. Willick

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

Two stars.

Take the B Train, by Ernest Taves

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

Four stars, but a bit of a missed opportunity.

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

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

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

Stella, by Dannie Plachta

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

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

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

Three stars.

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

Aftershocks

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

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

Stay tuned!

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

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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 4, 1969] Plus ça change (October 1969 IF)

September 4, 2024 David Levinson Leave a comment

by David Levinson

Silly season

It’s considered a truism in journalism that nothing happens in August, so the papers run filler stories about silly things to make up their page count. Sure, Hurricane Camille killed hundreds as it raged from Mississippi to Virginia, and China and the Soviet Union are on the brink of war, but that doesn’t sell papers. Madison Avenue also has a truism: sex sells. Now, the two have come together.

Newsday columnist Mike McGrady was disgusted by the schlocky, sex-obsessed books that regularly make the best-seller lists, so he recruited a bunch of fellow journalists (19 men and five women, by one count) to write a deliberately bad, oversexed book. The result is Naked Came the Stranger, in which the editors worked hard to remove any literary value from the tale of a New York woman’s sexual escapades.

When the book sold 20,000 copies, McGrady and his co-conspirators decided they’d better come clean. Nineteen of them appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, being introduced as Penelope Ashe (the book’s purported author) and walking out to the strains of A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody. As a result of their confession and discussion of their motives, the book has become even more popular. And as of last Sunday, it’s on the New York Times list of best-sellers. You have to laugh to keep from crying.

Penelope Ashe, in part, with the cover model superimposed.

This puts me in mind of a similar literary hoax with a more sfnal connection. Back in 1956, radio host Jean Shepherd was unhappy with the way best-seller lists were being compiled and urged his listeners to ask their local bookstores to order I, Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing. He offered some vague hints about the plot, and many listeners who were in on the joke created references to the book elsewhere. Demand was so high, publisher Ian Ballantine convinced Theodore Sturgeon to knock out a quick novel based on an outline from Shepherd. Betty Ballantine wrote the last chapter as Sturgeon lay in exhausted sleep on the Ballantines’ couch after trying to write the whole thing in one sitting. The cover by Frank Kelly Freas is full of visual jokes and puns. The book is rumored to have gone to number one, but it doesn’t seem to have been on any lists, probably out of pique on the part of the list makers.

The pub sign features a shepherd’s crook and a sturgeon. Art by Frank Kelly Freas

New and old

I think we’re starting to see some of the influence of new editor Ejler Jakobsson. Editor Emeritus Fred Pohl doesn’t seem have ever had anything nice to say about the New Wave, while there is at least one story in this month’s IF with a nod in that direction. There’s a new printer, with a crisper typeface (though it seems better suited to a news magazine than fiction). No one’s mixed up their e’s and o’s, but instead of lines being printed out of order, some lines are just missing. Hopefully, that will be corrected in future issues.

Supposedly for Seeds of Gonyl. If so, it’s from later in the novel. Art by Gaughan

The Mind Bomb, by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert appears to have tried to write a Philip K. Dick story. There’s a computer that keeps changing the world in an attempt to carry out its function, an unhappy marriage, and an old man who gets a glimpse of why the world he lives in is the way it is.

Art uncredited, maybe by Gaughan

Unfortunately, none of it works. The lines of reality aren’t blurred; people know the computer is changing things, just not why. And the marriage isn’t as unrelievedly grim as in a Dick story (thank goodness). We’re left with none of the good things that either author brings, and the flaws of both.

Two stars.

By Right of Succession, by Barry Malzberg

A man named Carson shoots the occupant of a motorcade. As he leaves the building he fired from, he’s met by a policeman who escorts him to his next destination on a strict timetable. Eventually, all is explained. Sort of.

Is that Nixon? Art uncredited

Here’s our New Wave—or New Wave-ish—story. It’s fine for what it is, but I don’t quite see the connection between the events and the explanation.

Three stars.

None But I, by Piers Anthony

When last we saw him, interstellar dentist Dr. Dillingham had been accepted as an instructor at the galaxy’s top dental school. Now he’s off to cure the oral ills of a long-buried robot that has vowed to kill the person that frees it from 10,000 years of imprisonment.

Dr. Dillingham meets his patient. Art by Gaughan

Anthony is developing a reputation at the Journey, and not a good one. That’s largely down to the way he writes women. Fortunately, none of that is on display here, possibly because the only female character is a highly efficient secretary who looks like a giant spider. We’re left with an inoffensive and mildly entertaining story, whose only flaw is that it specifically makes note of the old tale it is clearly modeled on of a genie with a similar vow.

Three stars.

Survival, by Steven Guy Oliver

A day in the life of an old man living in the irradiated ruins of a city.

Ignore the blurb. These aren’t the last people on Earth. Art by Gaughan

This month’s new author offers us a grim tale of life after World War Three. It’s very well written, but also very depressing, what I believe kids these days call “a real downer.” I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing more from Oliver. But did I mention that the story is grim?

Three grim stars.

Down on the Farm, by W. Macfarlane

Three agricultural salespeople were brought from Earth to a distant planet. Now their contract is up, and the local autocrat who hired them struggles to find a way to pay what they’re due. Unbeknownst to him, they have ulterior motives.

Erasmus Ballod is having a bad day. Art by Gaughan

A bit old-fashioned, but otherwise an enjoyable enough story. Ask me what it was about a month from now, and I won’t be able to tell you, but it didn’t waste my time. For some reason, Macfarlane’s name was left off the first page; fortunately he was credited in the table of contents.

Three stars.

The Story of Our Earth: 2. The First Traces of Life, by Will Ley

The second part of Willy Ley’s sadly incomplete final book looks at the latest theories as to how life began. He discusses the idea of the “primordial ooze” and how and why it has fallen out of favor. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of continental drift.

While still very good, this chapter didn’t engage me quite as much as the previous did. I can’t say if that’s down to my interest in the subject matter or the quality of Ley’s treatment of it.

A very high three stars.

The Seeds of Gonyl (Part 1 of 3), by Keith Laumer

Jeff Mallory wakes up to discover that three months are missing, the house shows little sign of cleaning and maintenance, and his wife and two younger children are frightened and worn down. Worst of all, no one remembers his oldest daughter, and her room doesn’t even exist. He soon learns that the town has been taken over by things that are barely human, which force everyone to work on a mysterious project.

Remembering that his daughter was planning to stay with a friend who lives well outside of town, Jeff makes his escape. At the friend’s house, he finds only the friend and several unpleasant occupiers, who tell him that the United States has fallen to Russian forces and that his town is a bombed-out, plague-ridden ruin.

He and Sally, his daughter’s friend, move on and are arrested by Russian military. But the Russians are working together with Americans led by a Colonel Strang, who tells him that the Russians were called in to fight the real occupiers, the Chinese. As the installment ends, Jeff finds himself drafted into Strang’s army. To be continued.

Tonight, the role of Colonel Strang will be played by Ronald Reagan. Art by Gaughan

So far, so Laumer. He may be influenced by some of his work on those books he wrote based on The Invaders, what with people not believing in the invading aliens. Honestly, the main thing that stands out to me in this part is the way young Sally abruptly and quickly throws herself at our hero. Jeff put up at least a token resistance so far, though there is a vague paragraph that suggests things could be otherwise. It plays uncomfortably.

Three stars so far, if you like this sort of Laumer story.

To the Last Rite!, by Perry Chapdelaine

One-Girk-Two is undergoing a field test to see if he will be promoted to One-Girk-One. If he passes, he will become the thinking portion of a composite creature called a Unit.

Our hero. Art by Gaughan

This is probably the Chapdelaine story I’ve enjoyed the most. Unfortunately, like all of Chapdelaine’s work, it’s too long. On the other hand, it didn’t go where I thought it was going. Best of all, it has nothing to do with Spork.

Three stars.

Machines That Teach, by Frederik Pohl

Fred took a trip to Tennessee A. & I. In Nashville, where Perry Chapdelaine is a professor of mathematics and is running a lab researching computer aided instruction. There, through a computer in the lab, a computer at Stanford in California administered a test to measure competence in mathematics. Neat stuff, even if the headline is misleading. Maybe even more interesting is the simple fact that he was able to use a computer in Tennessee to interact with another computer a couple thousand miles away

Three stars.

Summing up

We’re starting to see some of the new editor’s influence, though things aren’t really that different. I’m wondering if Jakobsson is going to continue the IF first program, running a story from a new author every month. The issues he’s been in charge of have had such a story, but he hasn’t called attention to it the way Fred did.

The other thing that stands out to me is that the interior art is all uncredited. Where I’ve indicated it’s by Gaughan, it’s because his signature is visible either on the piece reproduced here or a different piece for the same story. I’m not too keen on all the art coming from just one artist (although if the alternative is “art” by Dan Adkins…). More importantly, they give out Hugos for art. If we don’t know who did it, how do we know who to nominate and vote for?

Tiptree is the only name that means anything to me. A bit of a coin flip as an author, but definitely improving with every story.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 14, 1969] Twin tragedies (September 1969 Galaxy)

August 14, 2024 GalacticJourney 6 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Murder in Hollywoodland

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

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

Wheeling Sharon Tate from her home

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

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

Death in New York

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

by Donald H. Menzel

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

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

One star.

Martians and Venusians, by Donald H. Menzel

by Donald H. Menzel

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

One star.

Out of Phase, by Joe Haldeman

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

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

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

Three stars

The Martian Surface, by Wade Wellman

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

Three stars.

Passerby, by Larry Niven

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

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

Citadel, by John Fortey

by Jack Gaughan

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

But can they handle the truth?

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

Nice setup, but a really novice tale.

Two stars.

Revival Meeting, by Dannie Plachta

by M. Gilbert

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

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

Two stars.

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

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

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

Three stars.

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

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

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

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

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

One star.

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

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

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

Sad news indeed. Four stars.

Autopsy report

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

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

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

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

July 8, 2024 Gideon Marcus 4 Comments

It's Moon fortnight!

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

Tell your friends!

Broadcast Schedule

by Gideon Marcus

The Warm War

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

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

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

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

Israeli mobile artillery shells Egyptian positions

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

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

Same ol'

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

by John Pederson Jr.

The White King's War, by Poul Anderson

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

Starhunger, by Jack Wodhams

by uncredited

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

The Minus Effect, by A. Bertram Chandler

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

A high two stars.

When They Openly Walk, by Fritz Leiber

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

Four stars.

Life Matter, by Bruce McAllister

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

Three stars.

I Am Crying All Inside, by Clifford D. Simak

by uncredited

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

Fine but incomplete. Three stars.

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

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

Interesting, but short. Three stars.

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

by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rescue Team, by Lester del Rey

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

Kind of pointless. Two stars.

The New New Frontier

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

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

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 10, 1969] Points West and Above (July 1969 Galaxy)

June 10, 2024 Gideon Marcus 10 Comments

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

The Orient

Thanks to centuries of tradition, we tend to think of the Far East as…well…east! But for us, going to Japan means a 12-hour flight west—literally into tomorrow, as we cross the International Date Line to do it.

This week marked the beginning of our fourteenth trip to Japan. How things have changed since we first went back in 1948, when flying via Northwest Orient meant an entire day of travel with multiple stops. Travel these days is practically instantaneous by comparison.

We were even able to hop on a same-day domestic flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka, which is where I'm writing this. I've been able to develop my first roll of color film, the results of which I am happy to share:

The Alient

The latest issue of Galaxy is, like this month's IF, the first under the helm of Ejler Jakobsson, and it's also a month late. Will it be more interesting than the rather dull IF? Well, it's certainly different. After all, the lead piece is one I would have expected to appear in Analog. Why wouldn't Campbell want the sequel to the incredibly popular and presumably lucrative Dune. Dunno… but here it is:

by Dan Adkins

Dune Messiah (Part 1 of 5), by Frank Herbert

by Jack Gaughan

And so we return to Arrakis, the Dune planet, the only source of the spice melange, which gives the power of prophecy, allows the navigators of the Guild to ply the hyperspace lanes, and is the only currency of note in the Empire.

Last time, Paul Atreides, son of the murdered Duke of Arrakis, had seized his destiny as the kwizatz haderach, leading his army of desert Fremen against the Padisha Emperor in a coup that placed the young general in charge of a galactic domain.

It is now twelve years later, and disparate factions are plotting to overthrow Paul, who has become a figurehead in an interstellar Jihad. The plotters include the Bene Geneserit, the sisterhood that manipulated Paul and his sister, Aria's, genetic destiny; the navigators' Guild, and Irulan, wife of Paul, and daughter of the cruel Baron Harkonnen, who wrested Arrakis from Paul's father.

We know there's a plot because it is the subject of an endless scene at the beginning of the serial installment. And because Paul then discusses the plot at length with his companins at an endless meeting of state in the latter part of the serial. The plot involves predestination, an heir for Paul (his true love, the Fremen Chani, is being kept secretly sterile by Irulan, who wants to beat the child), and the reincarnated form of Duncan Idaho, one of Paul's comrades in the last book.

There. Now you don't actually have to read this chapter, which is all for the best, as it's as deadly dull and motionless as the worst parts of Dune. At least the viewpoints don't change every five sentences.

Two stars so far.

Full Commitment, by Robert S. Martin

Senator Clint is on an investigative junket to Burma, where America is in an endless war against… the Capitalists? What happened to the Communists? And why do all the soldiers parrot the exact same line when explaining why they're there to fight?

Brainwashing, obviously…which is how Clint is ultimately disposed of.

A pointless story, poorly done. One star.

The City That Was the World, by James Blish

by Dan Adkins

James Blish tells the story of a man who makes Howard Hughes look like a piker. John Hillary Dane is a man with vision…or perhaps visions is more appropriate. First, he builds an enormous pair of telescopes four miles high in the Andes. Then he erects a mile-high skyscraper in Denver, the mile-high city. While the reason for the former is never really explained (other than the obvious reasons—the seeing is much better above the majority of the atmosphere), the purpose of the immense building is the point of the story.

I don't really want to spoil things, so I'll just say that the tale deals with time travel, Malthusian overpopulation, and the value (or lack thereof) of friendship. It's a good story, although few of the elements are really plausible.

Four stars (and the best piece in the issue).

For Your Information: Eugen Sanger and the Rocket-Propelled Airplane, by Willy Ley

Willy Ley's article is on Eugen Saenger, the Austrian cum German rocket scientists perhaps best known for his design of the America Bomber—a rocket-plane that would fly high enough to skip on the upper atmosphere until it reached New York. There's a lot of good information that probably can't easily be found elsewhere, since Ley relies on at least one personal source. That said, it's kind of a dull piece.

Three stars.

A Brief History of the Revolution, by David Lunde and James Sallis

In a piece that might well have come out in Fantasy and Science Fiction (or maybe the old Galaxy sister mag, Beyond), we have a young couple hounded by their animate furniture until they are effectively evicted. The cause of all this appears to be the wife's desire to have a child.

Not very good. Two stars.

The Kinsolving's Planet Irregulars, by A. Bertram Chandler

by Reese

Last up is the latest journey of Commodore John Grimes, the famed skipper of the Galactic Rim. In a direct sequel to The Rim Gods, Grimes and his First Mate (though likely not his first mate) Sonya head back to Kinsolving’s Planet. You may recall from the last story (or the review thereof) that the team Grimes escorted tried to exploit some time-space weakness to psionically summon Jehovah. Instead, they incarnated the Olympian pantheon.

This time, their efforts throw Grimes into a fantasy land populated exclusively by fictional characters, from a certain Baker Street detective to larger-than-life but real people like Oedipus and Achilles. Things get really weird when Grimes starts to question his own reality…

I always enjoy Chandler's Rim stories, but this one is just a bit too cute. It also looks like the author is tired of the Grimes series and would love to end it…if only the money weren't good.

Three stars.

Things that came and things to come

And that's that. Quality-wise, a thoroughly unremarkable issue. Indeed, the only real bit of note is how many of the stories seem to be in the wrong magazine. I confess I am kind of looking forward to the post-Pohl era. I want to see how things change for this venerable magazine.

Of course, I also know to be careful what I wish for…

(and stay tuned for more updates from Japan!)

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Galactic Journey

Tag Archives: Frank Herbert

[March 31, 1970] Seed stock (April 1970 Analog)

[March 2, 1970] Par for the course (April 1970 IF)

[February 2, 1970] Deceptive Appearances (March 1970 IF)

[January 2, 1970] Under Pressure (February 1970 IF)

[December 2, 1969] Communication Breakdown (January 1970 IF)

[September 12, 1969] Earthshaking (October 1969 Galaxy)

[September 4, 1969] Plus ça change (October 1969 IF)

[August 14, 1969] Twin tragedies (September 1969 Galaxy)

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

[June 10, 1969] Points West and Above (July 1969 Galaxy)

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction