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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 20, 1968] Giants among Men (November 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Black Power

The politics of race have been an actively displayed part of the Olympics as long as I can remember.  Who can forget boxer Joe Louis defeating Max Schmelling at the 1936 Summer Games in Nazi Berlin?  So it should come as no surprise that, at a time when the race crisis in America has reached a fever pitch, that there should be an expression of solidarity and protest at this year's quadrennial event in Mexico City.

The fellows with their hands "clenched in a fist, marching to the [Mexico City] War" (to paraphrase Ritchie Havens) are medal-winning sprinters Tommie Smith (Gold) and John Carlos (Bronze) who had just won the 200-meter finals.  Peter Norman of Australia (Silver), while making no physical gesture, is wearing the same "Olympics Project for Human Rights" medal as his fellow winners.

Why did the winners present this display? I'll let Carlos speak for himself with his comments at a post-race, press conference:

We both want you to print what I say the way I say it or not at all.  When we arrived, there were boos.  We want to make it clear that white people seem to think black people are animals doing a job.  We want people to understand that we are not animals or rats.  We want you to tell Americans and all the world that if they do not care what black people do, they should not go to see black people perform.

If you think we are bad, the 1972 Olympic Games are going to be mighty rough because Africans are winning all the medals."

Carlos added, responding to press references to "Negro athletes" said,

I prefer to be called 'black'…If I do something bad, they won't say American, they say Negro.

Smith and Carlos, described by the Los Angeles Times as "Negro Militants", have been expelled from the Games by International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage.  This is the height of hypocrisy—how many times have we heard "we don't mind if Negroes protest; we just get upset when they riot and burn things"?  Yet, here we have two men, American sports heroes, who peacefully highlight the plight of the Afro-American in our fraught country, and they're the bad guys?

With anti-Brundage feelings piqued and the U.S. expected to win today in the 400 and 1,600 meter relay finals (with nary a white man on competing on the teams), it is quite possible further displays of solidarity will be presented during the playing of our National Anthem.

Right on, brothers.

Speculative Power

It is with this as backdrop that I finished this month's issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which also leads with a powerful image.  Does it deliver as striking a message?  Let's read on and see:


by Gray Morrow

Once There Was a Giant, by Keith Laumer

Ulrik Baird is an interstellar merchant carrying a cargo of ten flash frozen miners in need of medical attention.  In the vicinity of the low-gravity planet Vangard, his drive goes out, sending him hurtling toward the planet.  But the planet is quarantined, off limits to outsiders.  Nevertheless, Baird has no choice—a landing will happen one way or another; if it's a hard landing, the miners won't survive.  Grudgingly, interstellar traffic control grants him clearance and coordinates to touch down softly.  The approach is too fast for safety, and so Baird ejects, parachuting down, his frigid charges ejected safely in a separate, parachuting pod.

All according to Baird's plan.

Under the name of Carl Patton, Baird meets up with the last surviving man on Vangard, a 12 foot behemoth with the nickname 'Johnny Thunder'.  Together with his 7' mastiff, the giant insists on accompanying Patton to where the pod of miners landed somewhere in the frozen wastes.

Again, all according to plan.

The plan is, in fact, quite clever, and this story marks a rare return to form for Laumer, who has been phoning it in of late.  This is a story Poul Anderson would have woven liberally with archaicisms and mawkish sentiment.  Laumer plays it straight, sounding more like E.C. Tubb in his first (the good) Dumarest story.

What keeps the tale from excellence is its resolution.  Ultimately, Laumer provides the Hollywood ending, where everyone's a winner (more or less).  His moral is roughly the same as Dickson's in this month's Building off the Line: some men are Real Men to be envied.  The story even has a riveting travel sequence that takes up much of the story.  An interesting bit of synchronicity.

I think I like this one better than Dickson's, but I still would have prefered something more downbeat, more nuanced.  Four stars.

The Devil in Exile, by Brian Cleeve

Brother, here we go again.

Old Nick and his right-hand demon, Belphagor, were thrown out of the underworld by unionized hellions.  An attempt to get Jack O'Hara, formerly a common drunk, lately a crime boss, to cross the union lines to bring the Devil back to power backfired when O'Hara took charge of The Pit.

Now, down to their last pence, Lucifer and friend pose as upper crust Britishers and miraculously (is that the word?) become heads of the Ministry of Broadcasting.  Their debaucherous fare quickly wins over not just the terrestrial airwaves, but also those in Hell, and the Prince of Lies is restored to his rightful throne.  Finis.

This installation is as tiresome and would-be-but-not-actually funny as the other two.  Good riddance.

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Coins, by Leo P. Kelley

In the time of Afterit, decades after The Bomb poisoned the world with its radioactive seed, humans have given up making decisions.  After all, that's what brought about the Apocalypse, isn't it?  Men making decisions?  Instead, life is reduced to a series of 50/50 chances, each determined by the flip of a common coin.

Vividly written, but the premise (and the story's ending) are better suited to the comics.  Anyone remember Batman's nemesis Two-Face from the '40s?

Three stars.

A Score for Timothy, by Joseph Harris

Timothy Porterfield is one of the world's greatest mystery writers.  When he passes away after a long career, this seems to be the end—after all, does not death write the final chapter?  Perhaps not, with the help of a medium with a flair for automatic writing.  Nevertheless, there is still one final twist to the tale of Timothy…

Well wrought, atmospheric, and you're never quite sure how it will turn out.  I liked it.  Four stars.

Investigating the Curiosity Drive, by Tom Herzog

Curiosity killed the cat, but could it not also kill the human?  And if one's goal is to test to determine whether or not curiosity be the salient feature of any sentient being, isn't it vital that one pick a being who isn't wise to your test?

This is a silly story, ultimately building to a joke that isn't worth the trip.  Two stars.

The Planetary Eccentric , by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor discusses the discovery of Pluto and how it simply can't be the "Planet X" Percival Lowell was looking for.  He does not quite so far as to say that it's not a planet at all, however, as some have opined.

Good article.  Four stars.

Young Girl at an Open Half-Door, by Fred Saberhagen

The Museum of Art is haunted, it seems.  Every night, an elusive prowler sets off the alarms in two of rooms housing prize exhibits.  When a troubleshooter is dispatched, he finds the intruder is on something of a salvage mission, rescuing the art as insurance against an impending disaster.  More importantly, said troubleshooter finds love…

It's a well-told story, and the ending is suitably chilling, though I found the romantic elements a bit too rushed for plausibility.  Four stars.

The Kings of the Sea, by Sterling E. Lanier

In this, the second shaggy dog story of Brigadier Ffelowes, we return to 1938 Sweden for a brush with gods that make the Aesir look like Johnny-Come-Latelies.  It's sort of Lovecraftian and not as compelling as the first tale Ffelowes recounted, which took place in the Caribbean.  Not bad; just sort of pedestrian.

Three stars.

Stepping down from the podium

You know, it's nice to be able to step away from the real world for a while.  There are important things going on that one must keep tabs on, causes to support, but everyone needs a break.  Thankfully, this month's F&SF, while it presents no absolute stand-outs, nevertheless presents no real clunkers, and it finishes at 3.4 stars—well above the 3-star line.

And that's something to salute!




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[December 2, 1967] Women and Men (January 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

Small steps towards equality

It’s been almost 50 years since women in the United States were given the right to vote. But while things have come a long way, there’s still a long way to go for real equality for women, especially economically and financially. For example, it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible in some places, for a woman to have a bank account in her own name. It’s like that in most of the First World, so imagine how much worse off women are elsewhere. On November 7th, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously approved the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. It’s non-binding, but it has set the U. N. on the path towards improving the rights of women around the globe.

Closer to home, the Johnson administration has been taking steps to do something about the economic inequality of women. In October, the president issued an executive order which adds sex as a category that cannot be used as a basis for discrimination. This affects the federal government and contractors that work for the government and is much broader than the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and other civil rights legislation regarding sex discrimination. Then on November 8th, President Johnson signed a law which allows women in the military to be promoted to flag rank (generals and admirals) and eliminates caps on the number of women officers at all levels.

President Johnson signing the law allowing women to rise in the ranks.

Women actually doing things

Time was, lots of women wrote science fiction, and not all of them hid their sex behind their initials. In 1967, IF has published a grand total of four stories by women. Two were by fans with no or very few previous professional sales, and neither was all that good. The third was an average story by Andre Norton. The fourth is in this month’s issue (and that’s dated 1968). How was it? Read on to find out.

What are these people doing in these blobs? Art by Pederson

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[October 2, 1967] Switching Sides (November 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

Crossing the road

You probably know that, while much of the world drives on the right-hand side of the road with steering wheels on the left side of the vehicle, Great Britain and most of her former colonies do things the other way around, steering wheel on the right and driving on the left. A few other countries follow the British example, such as Japan, Indonesia, and Thailand. Up until a month ago, Sweden was among them.

A switch has been considered for a while and, although Swedes voted overwhelmingly against the change in 1955, it has now gone through. All of Sweden’s neighbors drive on the right, with something like 5 million vehicles crossing the borders with Norway and Finland (not to mention Danish and German tourists arriving with their cars by ferry). On top of that, roughly 90 percent of the cars in Sweden have their steering wheel on the left, which means that Swedish automakers have been building their cars that way for a long time.

The logo for the traffic changeover.

After four years of preparation and education, H-day (Dagen H for Högertrafik, which means right-hand traffic) came in the wee hours of Sunday, September 3rd. Road signs had to be moved or remade, new lines had to be painted on the roads, intersections had to be reshaped. Just as much effort went into educating the public. The logo was plastered on everything from milk cartons to underwear. There was even a catchy tune written for the event, “Håll dig till höger, Svensson” (Keep to the Right, Svensson). Everything seems to have gone off without a hitch, and traffic accidents have been down, probably because everyone is being extra careful. Iceland is planning on following suit next year.

This photo was staged several months ago as part of the education campaign. The real thing was much less chaotic.

Turncoats and breakthroughs

This month’s IF begins and ends with characters changing sides (or appearing to) while elsewhere the crew of a spaceship breaks on through to the other side.

A newcomer gets the cover. Does he deserve it? Art by Vaughn Bodé

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[July 4, 1967] Angels and Demons (August 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

The angels of our better nature…

It all started in January with a day of music and speeches called the Human Be-In in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Young people came from all over, and as many as 30,000 people attended. When spring break rolled around, more and more descended on the city’s Haight-Ashbury district and other places around the Bay Area. Alarmed by the growing “hippie problem”, the Mayor and Board of Supervisors tried to stem the tide, but only drew greater attention to the mass migration. The trickle has become a flood, and tens of thousands of “flower children” have come to San Francisco. In response to the city’s inaction, various groups and organizations formed the Council for the Summer of Love, creating a free clinic and helping newcomers to find food and housing.

The official poster created by Bob Schnepf

Music is important to the youth movement, and two events in the Bay Area proved very popular. On June 10th and 11th, radio station KFRC held the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival in the Cushing Memorial Amphitheater on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, with all proceeds going to the Hunter’s Point Child Care Center. Bands from the region and farther afield performed on two stages, while visitors could also wander through the arts and crafts fair in the woods around the theater. Some of the bigger names included Dionne Warwick, the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. The event appears to have gone off without incident.

The festival was delayed one week due to bad weather.

One week later, the Monterey International Pop Festival took place down the coast. Inspired by the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Big Sur Folk Festival, this brainchild of John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) and record producer Lou Adler was put together in just seven weeks. There was some overlap with the Fantasy Fair (Jefferson Airplane and the Byrds, for example), but there were some really big names as well, such as Simon and Garfunkel, the Animals, the Who, and of course the Mamas and the Papas. Sunday afternoon was given over to sitar player Ravi Shankar. The Who and Jimi Hendrix were afraid of being upstaged by the other, so they flipped a coin. Hendrix got to go second on Sunday evening, and after the Who finished their set by smashing their instruments, Hendrix topped them by setting his guitar on fire, smashing it and tossing the pieces into the audience.

This poster is a good example of the new psychedelic art style.

Summer officially begins with the solstice, when the sun reaches its northernmost point. In the pre-dawn hours on the 21st, a thousand or so hippies climbed the Twin Peaks in the heart of San Francisco to greet the sunrise with chants, drums and incense to inaugurate their hoped for Summer of Love. The sun even managed to burn through the fog around 7:00. Whether it really will be a summer of love or another long, hot summer like last year remains to be seen.

Hippie Randall DeLeon greets the sun and makes the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle.

… and the demons of our worst

This month’s IF is full of demons: personal, metaphorical and literal. But first, editor Fred Pohl makes the death of Worlds of Tomorrow official. The problem was distribution. Not enough news stands carried the magazine, and digests (unlike the slicks and their high ad rates) can’t get by on just subscription sales. So some of the features exclusive to Worlds of Tomorrow have been rolled into IF and the price is going up, both of which are reflected on the cover.

That’s not quite how black magic works in the new Blish novel, but it ought to be. Art by Morrow

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[May 2, 1967] The Call of Duty (June 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

[L]et us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.
– Abraham Lincoln, Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society

A duty to a higher power

On April 28th, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (whom many papers insist on calling by his former name, Cassius Clay) refused induction into the United States Army. In a matter of hours, the New York State Athletic Commission revoked his boxing license, and the World Boxing Association stripped him of his title. For those paying attention, Ali’s refusal came as no surprise. He had been classified as 1-Y (fit for service only in times of national emergency) due to his poor performance on the qualifying test, but when the army lowered its standards last year, he became subject to reclassification as 1-A. The draft board in Louisville Kentucky did so, and he appealed, seeking exemption as a Muslim minister (often incorrectly reported as conscientious objector status). The board denied the appeal in January, and Ali vowed to go to court. After moving to Houston, Texas, the champ again sought reclassification and was again denied.

Muhammad Ali is escorted from the induction center in Houston, Texas.

When called up, Ali appeared as ordered at the Houston induction center and participated in all the pre-induction activities. But when called to step forward for induction, he refused. He was taken aside and the consequences were explained, but he once again refused. After that, he signed a statement indicating his refusal and was escorted outside. He didn’t address the reporters and television cameras waiting for him, but handed out copies of a four-page statement indicating that he is aware of the penalties he faces, but that accepting induction is inconsistent with his “consciousness as a Muslim minister and [his] own personal convictions.” The case has been referred to the U. S. Attorney. If convicted, Mr. Ali faces a maximum of 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

A sense of duty

Like Muhammad Ali, almost everyone in this month’s IF is motivated by strong beliefs: their duty to king and country, humanity at large, or their own personal beliefs and obligations.

Uncle Martin and Tim (from My Favorite Martian) seem to have had a falling out. Actually, this is supposedly from Spaceman!
Art by Wenzel.

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[April 8, 1967] Swan Songs (May 1967 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

After the Ball is Over

According to my sources in the publishing world, the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is the last one that will be published. I can't say I'm completely surprised, given Frederik Pohl's juggling act of editing three magazines at once. Worlds of Tomorrow is the youngest of the literary siblings, and seems to have received the least attention. (The fact that it went from bimonthly to quarterly is a strong clue.)

While the band plays Goodnight, Ladies and my corsage begins to wilt, let's take one last waltz around the ballroom.

Save the Last Dance For Me


Cover art by Douglas Chaffee.

Stone Man, by Fred Saberhagan


Illustrations by Hector Castellon.

Here's the latest story in the author's Berserker series, featuring ancient machines bent on destroying all organic life. This yarn features a peculiar kind of time travel, which requires some explanation.

Humans settled a planet where some kind of weird space/time warp sent them into the remote past. It also wiped out their memories, so they pretty much started from scratch as cave dwellers. Many generations later, society evolved into one with advanced technology. Then the Berserkers showed up.

The planet's surface became a war-scarred wasteland, and the remaining population went underground. Making use of the same space/time warp, the Berserkers try to completely eliminate the human population by sending war machines to the past.


Our hero, a young cave dweller, and a Berserker device.

The main character sends his consciousness into an armored suit that goes back in time, in order to intercept the machines. (I will refrain from making a head 'em off at the past joke.)


A closer look at the enemy. The cave folk call it a stone-lion, and call their rescuer a stone-man.

It won't surprise you that our hero saves the day, after a very tough battle. (Let's ignore the fact that his body remains in the future while his mind inhabits the armor, so his life isn't really in danger. Anyway, if the Berserkers had won, he and the rest of the people on the planet would never have existed. Time travel is confusing, isn't it?)


He deserves to celebrate his victory.

What most impresses me about the Berserker series is that the author avoids repeating himself. (I wish I could say the same for the Gree and Esks series, or even Retief.) This is a pretty good story, but I have some quibbles.

There's a character I haven't mentioned yet, a young woman who suffers amnesia during one of the Berserker's attacks on the underground dwellers. (In the future, not the past. Are you still with me?) Her only role in the story seems to be to listen to the hero's expository dialogue. The premise is a complicated one, so I understand why the author needs to explain things to the reader via this character. However, like the plot itself, this strikes me as contrived.

I'd say a solid three stars for this one.

The Negro in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

Another article from the walking encyclopedia of fantastic fiction. As usual, this essay wanders all over the place, from dime novels of the Nineteenth Century to the present day. A lot of time is spent on obscure old stuff. The author seems to have his heart in the right place, decrying science fiction's failure to deal with modern issues of civil rights, but he also makes excuses for grotesque stereotypes from the last century. (As long as characters are on the side of the good guys, it doesn't seem to matter how they look, talk, or act.)

Two stars for a dull look at a very important topic.

Squared Out with Poplars, by Douglas R. Mason


Illustrations by Dan Adkins.

On behalf of the museum where he works, the protagonist journeys to the remote home of an eccentric fellow who intends to sell his collection of valuable artifacts. Along the way he runs into the elderly guy's beautiful granddaughter, who is headed the same way. After a difficult struggle to even reach the place, they discover the old man's bizarre secret project.


Dragging away one of the fellow's minions.

This is an odd story. I don't want to give away too much, but the premise involves truly weird technology that includes computers, human consciousness, and the trees that give us the title. In essence, it's a Mad Scientist yarn, with maybe a touch of James Bond. It's also written in an eccentric, affected style. The author doesn't seem to intend it as a comedy, but there are snide remarks from the hero all the way through it. At least it didn't bore me.

A wobbling three stars for originality, if nothing else.

The Uncommunicative Venusians, by David H. Harris


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

Forget the title. This is an article on symbolic logic, using syllogisms with science fiction elements that could have easily been replaced with something more mundane. The author seems to know what he's talking about, but his attempt to sugarcoat a math lecture with aliens and UFOs doesn't liven things up much.


The best thing about this piece is the above illustration, which adds a futuristic touch to Sir John Tenniel's original portrait of the Caterpillar from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Two logically derived stars for this homework assignment.

Base Ten, by David A. Kyle


Illustrations by Vaughn Bode.

A man in a spaceship comes across a derelict rocket on an asteroid. The relic is way out of date, so he knows it's been there quite a while. Surprisingly, there's still someone alive inside the thing, in very bad shape.


Studying the castaway's notes.

The survivor tells him an incredible story about running into small aliens on the asteroid. They were friendly enough, but didn't want Earthlings to know about their existence.


Examining the old rocket's complex operating system, which is an important part of the plot.

The older fellow, who is half-insane from many years of isolation, offers vague hints of why he wasn't able to leave the asteroid, although the rocket had plenty of fuel. Meanwhile, the younger man tries to figure things out from the survivor's records.


Including drawings of the so-called Redheads, who resemble potato/mushroom combinations with limbs.

Try as he might, the young fellow isn't able to keep the older man from suffering a tragic fate.


Giving in to despair.

At the end, he figures out why the survivor was unable to return to Earth.


Saying goodbye.

The beginning intrigued me, but the aliens are silly and the solution to the mystery is disappointing and implausible. I'm not sure why this minor puzzle story needed so many drawings, but I'm sure the artist was glad for the work.

Two heavily illustrated stars.

Syracuse University's Science-Fiction Collections, by Richard Wilson

There's not much to say about this article. It talks about the archive of books, magazines, manuscripts, and such mentioned in the title. It's good to know that scholars will have access to all this stuff, anyway.


A nifty example of the university's collection.

Two carefully indexed stars.

Whose Brother Is My Sister?, by Simon Tully


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

Some time after aliens arrived on Earth, the two species intermingled to such a degree that there are more extraterrestrials on the planet than humans. (The situation is said to be similar on the alien home world, but that's not really part of the plot.) The aliens are able to travel across the cosmos because they figured out that the current universe is absorbed by a new universe every instant.

(Don't worry if that doesn't make much sense to you. I felt the same way. And don't get me started on the debate as to whether the new universe is a lot smaller or a lot bigger than the old universe.)

The aliens have a chance to enclose the current universe inside some kind of so-called box, which will stop the passage of time. For some reason, they assume this will lead to an eternal paradise for everyone. Hardly anybody, human or alien, disagrees with this nutty scheme, except for a few religious folks.

Can you guess that things don't go as planned?


The arrow is a clue.

The best things in this story are the aliens. The author shows a great deal of creativity and imagination in describing their physical appearance, culture, and biology. (They have three sexes!) I would gladly read about their lives instead of all the nonsense about universes instantaneously eating up other universes, putting a box around the universe, and freezing time.

An ambiguous three stars.

The Throwaway Age, by Mack Reynolds


Illustrations by Gray Morrow. Notice the fine choice of reading material.

At some time in the near future, both the capitalist West and the communist East have expanded their territories, but the Cold War has cooled down considerably. So much so, in fact, that the best undercover agent for the West is reassigned from covert action behind the Iron Curtain to domestic snooping.


Sing along with me! There's a man who lives a life of danger . . .

The superspy, a fervent anti-communist (understandable, given his background) is bitter about what seems like a severe demotion. However, he accepts what he thinks will be a trivial assignment to infiltrate a very small and loose group of folks who want to change the economic system. They don't even have an organization, really, or a name for their movement. Harmless enough, but he runs into trouble along the way.


. . .With every move he makes/another chance he takes . . .

The members of this loose-knit bunch range from a gung-ho activist to a statistician to a ex-CIA agent. The one thing they have in common is the belief that both the West and the East are wasting resources and preventing humanity from reaching a higher level of civilization.

Did I mention that one of them is a pretty young woman, the daughter of the group's de facto leader, with whom the spy interacts in true Bondian fashion?


. . .Swingin' on the Riviera one day . . .

This is a manifesto disguised as a spy story, which in turn is disguised as science fiction. The futuristic elements, such as personal hovercars, are irrelevant. The espionage plot is just an excuse for lectures about socioeconomic issues.

I wish I liked this story more than I do. Reynolds is one of the few authors willing to deal with such topics, and he does so in a sophisticated way. He also has the rare virtue, for an American writer, of being cosmopolitan. His foreign settings and characters are authentic and vividly portrayed. Too bad this isn't really a work of fiction.

Two disappointed stars.

We'll Meet Again

I may have to take back what I said at the start of this article. Editor Pohl plans to continue the magazine for a while, or so he says.

That contradicts everything I've heard about the impending demise of the publication. We'll see which one of us is the better prophet.

Looking back on the magazine's history, it's a very mixed bag. There were a few excellent works of fiction, along with a lot of lesser pieces. Among the very best were All We Marsmen by Philip K. Dick (now available in book form as Martian Time-Slip; To See the Invisible Man by Robert Silverberg; The Totally Rich by John Brunner; The Worlds That Were by Keith Roberts; and The Star-Pit by Samuel R. Delany. I may have forgotten other outstanding stories. The frequent nonfiction articles were not as noteworthy.

Whether Worlds of Tomorrow shows up again in a few months or not, I am grateful that the Noble Editor gave me the opportunity to trip the light fantastic with it.


Let's tango!



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[August 2, 1966] Mirages (September 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

The popular image of a mirage is a shining oasis in a desert replete with shady palm trees and sometimes dancing girls. That’s not how mirages work. We’re all familiar with heat shimmer, say on a hot, empty asphalt road, casting the image of the sky onto the ground and resembling water. Less common is the Fata Morgana, which makes it look as though cities or islands are floating in the sky. But the popular idea of the mirage remains: something beautiful and desirable, yet insubstantial.

Heat Wave

July was a real scorcher in the United States as a heat wave settled in over much of the Midwest. A heat wave might make a fun metaphor for passion if you’re Irving Berlin or Martha and the Vandellas, but as the latest hit from the Lovin’ Spoonful suggests, it can be a pretty unpleasant experience. As the mercury rises, people get pretty hot under the collar.

On July 12th, the Black neighborhoods on Chicago’s West Side exploded. The sight of children playing in the spray of a fire hydrant is a familiar one, but the city’s fire commissioner ordered the hydrants closed. The spark was lit when, while shutting off the hydrants, the police attempted to arrest a man, either because there was a warrant for his arrest (according to them) or because he reopened a hydrant right in front of them (according to the locals). As things escalated, stores were looted and burned, rocks were thrown at police and firemen and shots were fired. There were also peaceful protests led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Mayor Daley called in the National Guard with orders to shoot. Ultimately, the mayor relented. Police protection was granted to Blacks visiting public pools (all in white neighborhoods), portable pools were brought in and permission was given to open the hydrants.


Children in Chicago playing in water from a reopened hydrant

As things wound down in Chicago, they flared up in Cleveland. On the 18th in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Hough, the owners of the white-owned bar the Seventy-Niner’s Café refused ice water to Black patrons, possibly posting a sign using a word I won’t repeat here. Once again, there was looting and burning and the National Guard was called in. Things calmed after a couple of days, but heated up again when police fired on a car being driven by a Black woman with four children as passengers. It appears to be over now and the Guard has been gradually withdrawn over the last week. City officials are blaming “outside agitators” for the whole thing.

These riots are a stark reminder that the passage of the Civil Rights Act two years ago didn’t magically make everything better, and that problems also exist outside of the South. We have a long way to go before racial equality is more than just wishful thinking.


National Guardsmen outside the Seventy-Niner’s Café

Pretty, but insubstantial

Some of the stories in this month’s IF are gorgeously written, but lacking in plot. Sometimes that’s enough, sometimes it isn’t.


This fellow’s having a very bad day, but he’s not in The Edge of Night. Art by Morrow

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[June 24, 1966] Increments: World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

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by John Boston

Donald A. Wollheim’s and Terry Carr’s World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966—second in this series—is here, so it’s time for the usual pontificating, hand-wringing, viewing with alarm, etc., as one prefers.  This one comes with not one but two blurbs from Judith Merril, their competitor, though the editors say nothing about her anthology series, the next volume of which is due at the end of the year.

The editors have regrettably pulled in their horns a little on the “World” front.  There are no translated stories in this volume, unlike the first; the editors claim that they read plenty of them, but them furriners just don’t cut the mustard.  More precisely, if not more plausibly, “what they have lacked is the advanced sophistication now to be found in the American and British s-f magazines.” Suffice it to say that there are virtues other than “advanced sophistication” and they may often be found outside one’s own culture. 


by Cosimo Scianna

Nor is there anything here from any of the non-specialist markets that have been publishing progressively more SF in recent years.  The only item here that did not originate in the US or UK SF magazines is Arthur C. Clarke’s Sunjammer, originally in Boys’ Life but quickly reprinted last year by New Worlds, and then by Amazing early this year.

So it’s a rather insular party.  But my main complaint last year was that too much of the material was too pedestrian, and the book excluded writers who are pushing the envelope of the genre, like Lafferty, Zelazny, Ellison, and Cordwainer Smith.  The editors seem to have been listening.  This year they’ve got Ellison and Lafferty, though they seem to have missed their chance at Smith, and Zelazny is still among the missing.  More importantly, the book as a whole is livelier than its predecessor.

This is not to say the pedestrian has been entirely banished.  Witness Christopher Anvil’s The Captive Djinn, the only selection from that rotten borough Analog, yet another story about the clever Earthman outwitting cartoonishly stupid aliens.  Anvil has written this story so often he could do it in his sleep, and most likely that is exactly what happened. 

There is a lot more of the standard used furniture of the genre here, but at least it’s mostly done more cleverly and skillfully than dreamed of by Anvil.  In Joseph Green’s The Decision Makers (from Galaxy), Terrestrials covet the watery world Capella G Eight, but it’s already occupied by seal-like amphibians with group intelligence though not much material culture.  Is this the sort of intelligence that should ordinarily bar colonization outright? The “Conscience”—a bureaucrat in charge of making these decisions—thinks so, but proposes to split the baby, allowing colonization but providing that the humans will alter the climate to provide more dry land for the amphibians.  Of course, behind the bien-pensant speechifying, a still small voice says, “We’re just now starting to get rid of colonialism here, and you want to start it up again?” And another: “Ask the American Indians about the promises of colonists.”

Less weighty thoughts are on offer in James H. Schmitz’s Planet of Forgetting (from Galaxy), involving a fairly standard space war scenario with chase on unknown planet, with the wrinkle that some of the local fauna seem to be able to make people briefly forget where they are and what they are doing.  At the end of this smoothly rendered entertainment, suddenly the wrinkle becomes a mountain range. 

Similar cleverness-as-usual is displayed in Fred Saberhagen’s Masque of the Red Shift (from If), one of his popular Berserker series, in which a disguised Berserker robot appears and wreaks havoc on a spaceship occupied by the Emperor of the galaxy and his celebrating sycophants.  But it is promptly outsmarted and done in by the Emperor’s brother, who is resurrected from suspended animation and lures the Berserker into the clutches of a “hypermass,” which seems to be what scientists are starting to call a “black hole.” (Though on second thought, I’m not sure that “cleverness” is quite le mot juste for a story that falls back on the dreary cliche that a galaxy-spanning human civilization will find no better way to govern itself than an Emperor.) Jonathan Brand’s Vanishing Point (If) is an alien semi-contact story, in which the functionaries of the Galactic Federation have created an artificial habitat, a sort of Earth-like theme park complete with human curator, for the human emissaries to wait in and wonder what is really going on.

Engineering fiction is represented by Clarke’s slightly pedantic Sunjammer (as noted, Boys’ Life by way of New Worlds), concerning a yacht race in space, and by Larry Niven’s livelier Becalmed in Hell (F&SF), whose characters—one of them a brain and spinal column in a box, with vehicle controlled by his nervous system—get stuck on the surface of Venus (updated with current science) and have to improvise a primitive solution to get home.

There are a couple of near-future satires representing very different styles and targets of the sardonic.  Ron Goulart’s Calling Dr. Clockwork (Amazing) is a lampoon of the medical system; protagonist visits someone in the hospital, faints at something he sees there, wakes up in a hospital bed himself attended by the eponymous robot doctor, and can’t get out as his diagnosis shifts and things seem to be falling apart in the institution.  Fritz Leiber’s The Good New Days (Galaxy) is a more densely populated slice-of-slapstick extrapolating the welfare state, with a family living in futuristic but cheaply made housing (“They don’t build slums like they used to,” complains one character), with the TV on every minute, and Ma trying to avoid the demands of the medical statistician who wants her vitals, and everyone struggling to get and keep multiple make-work jobs (the protagonist just lost his job as a street-smiler), and things are all falling apart here, too, and a lot of the sentences are almost as long as this one.  The two stories are about equally amusing, which means above standard for Goulart and a little below standard for Leiber.

So that’s the ordinary, and a higher quality of ordinary than last year. 

A few items are unusual if not extraordinary.  R.A. Lafferty’s In Our Block (If) is an amusing tall tale about various odd characters with unusual talents residing in the shacks on a neglected dead-end block, like the woman who will type your letters but doesn’t need a typewriter (she makes the sound effects orally), and the man who ships tons of merchandise out of a seven-foot shack without benefit of warehouse.  It has lots of slapstick but not much edge, unlike the best by this idiosyncratic writer.  Newish writer Lin Carter (two prior appearances in the SF magazines, a lot in the higher reaches of amateur publications), in Uncollected Works (F&SF), extrapolates the old saw about monkeys on typewriters reproducing the works of Shakespeare, in the direction of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God, leading to an unexpected and subtle conclusion.

In Vernor Vinge’s Apartness, from the UK’s New Worlds, the Northern War has destroyed the Northern Hemisphere, and generations later, an expedition from Argentina discovers people encamped in Antarctica, living in primitive conditions, who prove to be the descendants of white South Africans who fled from the uprising that followed the war and eliminated whites from the continent.  (Interesting that this American writer didn’t find a market for it at home.) They are not pleased to be discovered by darker-skinned explorers and try to drive them off.  The well-sketched background makes this more than an exercise in irony or just revenge.

On to the extraordinary—three of them, not a bad showing.  Traveler’s Rest, by David I. Masson, also from New Worlds, depicts a world where time varies with latitude, passing slowly at the North Pole (though subjectively very fast), where a furious—and possibly futile—high-tech war is in progress with an unknown and unseeable enemy.  Life proceeds more mundanely in the southern latitudes.  Protagonist H is relieved from duty, travels south, reorients himself to current society, establishes a career, marries and procreates over the years. He's known now as Hadolarisondamo, since names are longer in the slower latitudes.  Then, middle-aged, he is called back to duty, and arrives 22 minutes after he left.  This world’s nightmarish quality is highlighted by the dense mundane detail of the normal life of the lower latitudes; the result is a tour de force of strangeness.

Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin!” said the Ticktockman (from Galaxy) is a sort of dystopian unreduced fraction.  In outline, it’s a simple story of a future world where punctuality is all; if you’re late, your life can be docked.  One man can’t take it any more and dresses up in a clown suit and goes around disrupting things until he gets caught by the Master Timekeeper (the Ticktockman), brainwashed, and forced to recant publicly—though the end hints that his legacy lives on.  In substance, it’s business as usual; in style, it’s a sort of garrulous stand-up routine, and quite a good one.  It’s best read as a purposeful affront to the usual plain functional (or worse) prose of the genre (a reading consistent with the story’s theme) and a persuasive argument for opening up the field a bit stylistically.

The other outstanding item here—best in the book to my taste—is Clifford D. Simak’s Over the River and Through the Woods (Amazing), in which a couple of strange kids appear at a farmhouse in 1896 and address the older woman working in the kitchen as their grandma.  The gist: Ordinary decent person confronted with the extraordinary responds with ordinary decency.  It’s plainly written without a wasted word, deftly developed, asserting its homely credo with quiet restraint—a small masterpiece amounting to a summary of Simak’s career.  Simak is one writer who should ignore Ellison’s advice—and vice versa, no doubt.

The upshot: Not bad.  Better than not bad.  The field is taking small steps away from business as usual, and the usual seems to be getting a little better.  The kid may amount to something some day.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 2, 1966] Words and Pictures (April 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

For a lot of people, February tops the list as their least favorite month. In the northern hemisphere, it’s cold and dark, and spring seems a long way off. The only things to break up the monotony are Valentine’s Day, which isn’t for everybody, and (most of the time) Carneval or Mardi Gras, which in the United States only matters if you’re near New Orleans and for lots of practicing Christians is immediately followed by giving up something nice for Lent.

As I look over my notes of newsworthy events for the last month, I see the usual things – coups, politics and power plays – but nothing that really catches my interest. Oh, there’s a couple of things that might develop into something, but they need time to come to fruition. Fortunately for my purposes, Fred Pohl has accidentally given us a little artistic puzzle to talk about, but let’s save that for the end.

The Words

In this month’s IF, the big Heinlein serial draws to a close and a brand-new serial begins. As does a new non-fiction series on fandom. Plus a new Saberhagen story. It’s a lot to whet a reader’s appetite, even if the cover is a bit mediocre. But that’s where our art mystery begins.


Roan’s first day on the job isn’t turning out well. Art attributed to Morrow

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[December 2, 1965] Superiority Complex (January 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

Some people are objectively better at some things than everybody else. Sandy Koufax can pitch a baseball better than almost anybody, and Muhammad Ali is arguably the best boxer we’ve seen in his weight class in a long time.


The problem arises when that excellence in a specialized area leads to an assumption of excellence in other, unrelated areas. I certainly wouldn’t turn to either of the aforementioned men for suggestions on nuclear policy or to bring peace to South-east Asia. Worse still is when whole groups assume superiority over others based solely on an accident of birth.

Heart of Darkness

Last month, I discussed the difficulties faced by the United Kingdom in handing over power to the locals in Rhodesia due to an unwillingness on the part of the white government under Ian Smith and the Rhodesian Front to share power with Black Rhodesians. Alas, the situation has now collapsed completely. On November 5th, the colonial governor declared a state of emergency, blaming Smith and two African nationalist organizations, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union and the Zimbabwe African National Union.


Ian Smith signs the Unilateral Declaration of Independence

On the 11th, the Smith government unilaterally declared independence. Within hours, the United Nations Security Council condemned the action 10-0 with France abstaining. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson has been granted the authority to rule Rhodesia by decree, though what good that might do is hard to see. Wilson steadfastly refuses a military solution and expects economic embargoes to force Smith to capitulate. But with two neighboring nations, South Africa and the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, more than willing to ignore any embargoes, it is likely to be a long time before we see a resolution to this situation.

Conflicts Great and Small

Fittingly, there’s plenty of superiority, assumed and otherwise, in this month’s IF. Let’s get to it.


This art for “Cindy-Me” bears absolutely no relation to the story. Art by Morrow

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