When I was a boy, a gimmick was either much the same thing as a gadget or the sort of device a crooked casino owner would use to make sure the roulette wheel comes up 22. These days, of course, it means an ingenious new angle or a trick to draw attention in advertising. It can also be the sort of thing that makes a story work or at least that the author hopes will make the story interesting.
America’s Pastime
Baseball is no stranger to gimmicks. From sending midgets up to bat to exploding scoreboards, owners and general managers will do anything to get fans to come out to the park. After starting the season by losing 21 of their first 26 games, the Kansas City Athletics have been mired in the cellar all season. Desperate to get people into the stands as the season winds down, owner Charlie Finley came up with a couple of gimmicks in the last month. September 8th, was Campy Camp Night and regular shortstop Bert “Campy” Campaneris played all nine positions in a single game. Up against the Los Angeles Angels (or I guess California by that time, speaking of gimmicks), Campy started at shortstop and moved from position to position each inning. In the eighth, he took the mound and even switch pitched, throwing right-handed to right-handed batters and left-handed to left-handed batters. Alas, while catching in the ninth, Campy was injured in collision at the plate and had to sit out a few games.
On the 25th, Finley invited several old player from the Negro Leagues to be present when Satchel Paige took the mound against the Boston Red Sox. At 59, he’s the oldest person ever to play in the big leagues (and at 34 Athletics’ manager Haywood Sullivan is the youngest manager). Satch sat in a rocking chair in the bullpen between innings, being served coffee by a “nurse”. He pitched three innings, giving up only one hit. He came out to the mound to start the fourth, but as planned he was removed. The lights were dimmed, and the crowd held up lighters and lit matches and sang “The Old Gray Mare” as Paige walked off.
Left: Bert Campaneris. Right: Satchel Paige, with “nurse”
Baseball also saw a couple of milestones. On September 9th, Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitched a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs. (For non-baseball fans, that means Koufax and the Dodgers did not allow a single opposing player to get on base through any means.) Pity Cubs pitcher Bob Hendley, who gave up only one hit in the game. Four days later, on the 13th, San Francisco Giants player Willie Mays became the fifth player and first Black player to hit 500 career home runs. Congratulations to both men, whose teams, at the time of writing, are still vying to see which will make it to the World Series. Good luck to both (though I’m rooting for the Dodgers).
Left: Sandy Koufax. Right: Willie Mays
Gimmicks good and bad
This month’s IF is not without its gimmicks. Let’s get to it.
I picked up the latest Ace Double Novel at my local Woolworth's the other day, and had to share my opinions of the two novels with my fine science fiction friends.
On one side of the double was the deliriously wacky cover shown below, which actually is a scene in John Rackham's meandering but intriguing new novel. By my reckoning, this is at least the third Ace double this prolific author has delivered over the last two years, and though I haven't read either Watch on Peter or Danger from Vega yet, this slim novel – a true Ace double at 137 pages – makes me want to try them out too.
The main character of We, the Venusians is Anthony Taylor, a man who feels himself out of place on a future version of Earth. Though the timing of that future isn't revealed in the novel, it's clear he lives in a bit of a dystopian world. Advertising is pervasive and unavoidable, commerce and greed rule the world, and the arts are trivialized and mocked.
This all matters because Taylor is an accomplished musician and the owner of a small club in which he plays Liszt, Schubert, Bach and the other classical artists to an ever-diminishing tribe of listeners. He is truly a man on the outside of his time. That's why he has a mixed reaction when a strange man wanders into Taylor's club and offers an obscene amount of money to travel to the Terran colony on Venus to play music, Taylor is both intrigued and repulsed by the opportunity. He is intrigued by chance to get rich quick and the chance to make a new start. Taylor is also repulsed by the idea because he has a secret he fears will be revealed on his new home: though his skin appears human color, he is actually a Greenie, a green-skinned Venusian native.
Through a series of plot machinations, Taylor does end up journeying to Venus along with two other musicians, one of whom, named Martha Merrill, is a beautiful woman who possesses an unbelievable singing voice. They also discover that the human colonists have enslaved thousands of apparently mindless Greenies to do menial labor in order to keep the colony buzzing along. Taylor and Merrill escape the human domes into the native lands, and both performers literally go native – Martha is also secretly a Venusian.
Though Merrill soon dies, Taylor finds his destiny among his own people and ends up becoming a force for revolution among his adopted people against the colonists.
One of the most intriguing elements of the book is the beans which grow on Venus and provide nutrition and energy for the people living there. While the Venusians protect their precious resource carefully, the humans try to exploit the beans and export the incredibly valuable food back to Terra. This element of the plot had an intriguing post-colonial feel to it. It's easy for the reader to substitute tobacco or silk as the exploited resource in our own history. It's a smart choice by Rackham to bring in that idea, as it adds resonance and contrast to the human/greenie struggle.
We, the Venusians is full of interesting ideas, from its resonances to the Civil Rights movement of today to its treatment of Indians in the west to the ways pop music overwhelms classics. Rackham keeps his story focused on character, and that keeps the reader involved in this novel. I enjoyed reading how Anthony Taylor grows and changes as this book goes along, and that growth gives this book a lot of its energy.
That said, the book rambles and wanders a bit too much and seems to frequently lose its focus. I know it's anathema to us fans of Ace doubles, but another 20 pages of meat would have made this book's bones stronger.
Fred Saberhagen is another science fiction writer who has settled into a journeyman status at this point. He's appeared in a number of the science fiction magazines in recent years, and his "Berserker" stories have started to gain more attention from aficionados. My colleague David Levinson has praised Saberhagen's ability to pull off modern fiction within the framework of space opera, and that skill is well on display in The Water of Thought.
Like We, the Venusians, Saberhagen's novel takes place on an alien planet on which native peoples are in conflict with Terrans. The planet Kappa is a kind of garden of Eden, a paradise and perfect place for rest and relaxation for exhausted Space Force planeteers. It's also the home to native peoples and a type of water which provides amazing changes in people. When a planeteer named Jones samples the water, he goes crazy and disappears from the colony. Planeteer Boris Brazil must follow to investigate.
Jones becomes megalomaniacal under the influence of the "water of thought", and rapidly becomes an addict. Jones is constantly seeking his next drink, like a heroin addict looking for his next fix. When Jones forces Brazil to drink the water, it has a different effect on him. Brazil is nearly paralyzed and loses his free will while in proximity to Jones, but does not become addicted. The battle between the two men, and the story of the humans and natives caught in the middle, is an important part of the book.
Like We theVenusians, this book has a natural resource as a key point of conflict between humans and Kappans as the water is seen by some as a resource to be exploited for personal gain. The human mayor of Kappa sells the water as a drug, trying to earn a neat profit off of a local resource. Meanwhile a human scientist has slightly more noble goals: he believes the water may help the local hominid species gain intelligence and gain their freedom from slavery by the natives.
The Water of Thought is a more complex book than it seems at first glance, and reveals some of the shallowness of Rackham's world. Where Rackham draws a pretty clear line between humans and greenies on Venus, Saberhagen presents Kappa as a more complex world. Kappa is a place where the lines between hero and villain are somewhat unclear, where everybody is exploiting each other in some ways, and in which the precious natural resource has ambiguous effects.
This book adroitly shows Saberhagen's skills at mixing space opera elements with a psychological and philosophical elements. The Water of Thought feels contemporary for our year of 1965, a time in which the smartest people are embracing ideas of the past but providing new approaches to those ideas.
4 stars.
Gamma #5: The Worst Sci-fi Magazine Ever Published?
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
Back in the early 1950s, when the market was flooded with magazines, there used to be plenty of forgettable magazines that would crank out terrible stories. Whilst it may be possible my memory is cheating me, I cannot recall a single issue as awful as this issue of Gamma:
This terrible issue of Gamma starts as it means to go on with another lurid cover from John Healey. I had hoped the style from the last issue was just due to it being a special edition calling back to the 30s, apparently this is the direction the magazine is going, with it illustrating the lead novella.
John Healey himself is a talented artist apparently working on shows like Johnny Quest, so I more question the editorial choice than his skill.
Now, take a deep breath, and let us all work together to get through this issue:
Nesbit, by Ron Goulart
Taking up nearly half the magazine, the perpetually disappointing Ron Goulart returns as, apparently, the editors simply cannot resist his writing. Once again, I find my eyebrow raised at this assertion.
This novella follows an attempt to shoot a pilot for a “jungle series”. When the Hollywood lot turns out to be in use Tim McCarey goes to visit Vincent Belgraf’s estate, to convince him to let them use his transplanted jungle for the shoot. However, on arriving he cannot get ahold of Mr. Belgraf and the other residents tell him it is not for rent.
Tim believes something else is amiss and finds a gorilla running around the estate in a soldier’s outfit. It turns out that this is Nesbit Belgraf. After being attacked by his own private army he had his brain transplanted into that of a gorilla, so he will be strong enough to become emperor of the United States and battle the unseen forces secretly controlling everyone’s lives.
Whilst Tim does not agree with this fascist conspiracy-minded gorilla and his family, he agrees to help with his propaganda efforts in exchange for being able to use part of the jungle for filming. However, Nesbit is very emotional and has difficulty keeping his cool.
I have trouble working out what Goulart is trying to do with this piece. If it is a satire on fascism and right-wing conspiracy theories, it fails. For, apart from Nesbit being a gorilla, it feels more like a documentary piece, as I am fully aware of the existence of those who believe in Jewish-Communist conspiracies controlling the world. It never does anything to really contradict what the Brelgrafs say, nor even to particularly suggest that their plans to put all non-white people into concentration camps or exterminate them, is as horrific as it really is.
If it is trying to be just an adventure story, it also fails. Intelligent gorilla stories are two-a-penny in comic books but are usually mindlessly enjoyable. This is incredibly dull and padded, full of side details that another might make charming, yet Goulart makes unbelievably tedious.
I could imagine many interesting ways a more skilled writer could have taken this piece, but instead Goulart produces something truly dreadful.
An exceptionally low One Star.
Policy Conference, by Sylvia Dees and Ted White
Peter and The Chief meet in the latter’s office to discuss how they could improve “interregional relations” for their boss Old Nick (I offer no prizes for guessing who that actually is).
Whilst this story is more supernatural than science fictional it weirdly has the same conceit as the previous tale, of someone having to work on PR for a monster. It just helps highlight how unoriginal a concept this is. Mercifully, this one is very short.
One Star
We get the return of the unrelated sketches. Depressingly they are better than the actual text.
Auto Suggestion, by Charles Beaumont
Returning from the earlier issues of Gamma (publishing the best story in issue 1) The Twilight Zone writer brings a story of automobiles. Unfortunately, this is definitely not his best work.
Abnar Llewellyn, a nervous driver, suddenly finds his car talking to him and it encourages him to be a more aggressive on the roads. It also starts to interfere in other areas on Abnar’s life, asking out women for him and instructing him on how to commit crimes.
I have gone on record saying I am no lover of cars, and so tales like this generally leave me cold. However, even accounting for that, I felt the story was bad. It is painfully overwritten to the point of being juvenile:
A truck’s air horn began some car lengths away. A frightening sound, a terrible sound, like the scream of a wounded elephant, and it led other smaller cars to renew their anger, shrill now beneath the dump-truck’s might below, shrill and chittering, like arboreal creatures gone mad.
Even Lovecraft would probably tell him he needed to cut out some description!
It also ends up not doing anything particularly interesting, just being a story where the protagonist does unpleasant things and may or may not be insane.
One Star
Welcome to Procyon IV, by Chester H. Carlfi
This is not a new writer to these pages but, rather, another story by longtime editor Charles E. Fritch, contributing his 4th story to the magazine.
In this vignette, Jameson and his wife are the last people left alive on the dead world of Porycon IV, with humans having wiped out the natives and disease killing the rest of the human population. On his ancient radio Jameson hears a human expedition coming but when they come to in to his cabin they discover a terrible truth about Jameson’s wife.
This feels like a pale imitation of Ray Bradbury’s Martian stories. It is more competent than the previous two pieces in the magazine, but a lot remains heavily unexplained. Also including a genocide in one line without any further thought left a bad taste in my mouth.
One and a half stars
Interest, by Richard Matheson
Cathryn is to be married to Gerald Cruickshank, yet find his parents and their house terrifying. However, she cannot work out why that is.
As stated in the introduction, this is a Poe-esque tale, although the purpose of it escapes me. Feels more like a derivative work you would find in a bad fanzine.
One Star
Another sketch, holding my interest much more than Matheson’s story did.
Lullaby and Goodnight, by George Clayton Johnson
In the aftermath of a nuclear war, an outpost of shelters is setup outside of an unnamed city. Our narrator (also unnamed) talks about the trouble Sarah Hartman is having with trying to keep her baby Adam alive in the radiation-soaked world.
This vignette marks a short foray into the New Wave from the usually conservative Gamma. It is not the best example, but the melancholic atmosphere raises it above the rest of the stories here.
This is a reprint from New Detective Magazine from almost 19 years ago and, unfortunately, it shows.
It narrates the story of a haemophiliac author, named Rob, who keeps being sent sharp objects in the mail, in an attempt to stop his book from being published.
I know Bradbury is popular right now, but do we have to reprint everything he did in his early days? The truth is he has evolved as a writer and most of his work before 1950 is simply not that good!
This is not really a science fiction or fantasy piece, but I suppose it could be classified as uncanny horror. Unfortunately, it lacks anything interesting, it seems more like a sequence of unusual events, like reading someone’s disconnected nightmare.
The story is written in a pale imitation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled style along with a second person narration. Whilst I do like experimentation this one fails for me.
Two stars
The Late Mr. Adams, by Steve Allen
Another reprint, this time from the publisher’s own collection, Fourteen for Tonight. This is my first experience with Mr. Adams' writings myself, although I hear he is big television personality in the United States.
This is a very silly life-story of a man who is always late. Really, that is all there is to it.
One Star
Wet Season, by Dennis Etchison
Etchison is generally a middling new writer. Shows promise but I am still waiting for a story that astounds me. Unfortunately, this is not it.
In a town there have been an unusually high number of drownings and the women seem to be acting strangely. At the same time rainfall levels are apparently increasing. After Madden’s daughter dies his Brother Bart comes to tell him of his suspicions.
Etchison really seems to like his Puppet Masters style stories and this is another one in that mold. I am willing to concede that it has a good atmosphere but that is all I am going to give.
A low two stars
I love this illustration. Why couldn’t this have been one of the pieces inside?
Summing Up
This issue of the magazine is truly terrible. Some stories are not as bad as the others, but it would be a stretch to say anything is actually good.
I am beginning to feel foolish that I took out a subscription from issue 2, as I have already paid for more of these. However, if the quality continues like this, I find it hard to imagine this magazine continuing much beyond that.
That's all for today, folks! Join us next month for another exciting Galactoscope!
and…
Our next Journey Show: At the Movies, is going to be a blast!
A gallimaufry is a kind of stew. Like any stew, it’s composed of a bunch of things thrown together and so has also come to mean any sort of hodge-podge. Since I haven’t been able to come up with some sort of overarching theme this month (and perhaps because, as I write this, I skipped lunch and it’s a couple of hours until dinner), let’s just look at the mish-mash of things that caught my eye (and ear) this month.
The British Invasion continues
On June 12th, the Beatles were named Members of the British Empire. That’s the lowest level of honor granted by the British government, but unsurprisingly a lot of old fuddy-duddies are unhappy with popular musicians being so honored. Member of the Canadian House of Commons Hector Dupuis complained, “British royalty has put me on the same level as a bunch of vulgar numbskulls.” According to my research, apart from seven and a half years in the Canadian Parliament, Mr. Dupuis’ main contribution to society is selling insurance. I’m not sure he’s the one who ought to be complaining about the comparison.
James P. McCartney, George Harrison, John W. Lennon and Richard Starkey showing their medals. You didn’t think his parents named him Ringo, did you?
Sticking with music for the moment, lately I’ve really been enjoying For Your Love by the Yardbirds. It’s a catchy little number that’s been moving up the charts the last few weeks and unusually features a harpsichord. The band took over as the house band at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, England when the Rolling Stones went on to bigger things and then acted as the backing band for Sonny Boy Williamson when he toured Great Britain in early 1964. They’ve had a bit of airplay with some old blues numbers, but this is their first real hit. Alas, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. One of their guitarists, a young man by the name of Eric Clapton, has left the band, unhappy with the move to a more commercial sound. He’s since been replaced by Jeff Beck. Let’s hope that Mr. Clapton is content with the relative obscurity of the blues scene.
The Miracles of Technology
On June 14th, a test planned by American and French doctors and communications experts sent an electrocardiogram from a ship at sea to a hospital in France. The ECG was taken from a passenger aboard the SS France in the Atlantic Ocean and transmitted via facsimile machine first to Cornell University hospital, then RCA Communications, Intelsat, D'Liaisons Radiotelephotographiques de France and then to Boucicaut Hospital in Paris. The image that arrived in France was clear enough for doctors to use for diagnosis. Look for this technique to be used in earnest in the future.
Facsimile technology has been used in meteorology for several years. Its use in remote diagnostic medicine shows promise.
Eppur si muove
The British journal Nature dated June 19th included a paper by astronomers Gordon Pettengill and Rolf Dyce titled "A Radar Determination of the Rotation of the Planet Mercury". They have determined that the planet Mercury is not tidally locked to the sun, but rather has a rotation period of approximately 59 days. That means a day on Mercury is about two-thirds as long as its year. Bad news for Larry Niven, whose very first story, “The Coldest Place”, hinged on the planet always showing the same face to the sun, but those are the breaks in the science fiction game.
An IFfy stew
Speaking of science fiction (and the magazine Niven first appeared in) what is Fred Pohl putting on our plate in this month’s IF? Let’s take a look at the ingredients.
March 7th was the first Sunday of Lent. It's a particularly special event this year as Catholics can now hear mass in their local language, rather than Latin. Pope Paul VI marked the occasion by conducting services in Italian at a small church near the Vatican. Mass in the vernacular is not required, but it is encouraged. This is one of the reforms instituted last year as a way to get parishioners more involved in the Catholic faith.
In Living Color
Color television appears to be moving beyond the fad phase. And for that to happen the broadcasters and receivers need to “speak the same language.” The signal the antenna on your roof receives carries a lot of different information. Most of it tells the TV set how bright to make each phosphor dot, some of it tells the speaker what sound to make. The color information is a subset of the brightness information.
In the United States, a standard was developed about a decade ago by the National Television System Committee, commonly known by the committee’s initials, NTSC. It works pretty well, but under poor transmission conditions the colors can shift. (The joke among signal engineers is that NTSC stands for “Never the same color.”) Europe is subject to geographic and weather conditions which are bad for NTSC and so the governments of Western Europe have been looking for a new system better suited to Europe. Two have been developed: the French SECAM (Séquentiel couleur à mémoire or sequential color with memory) and the German PAL (Phased Alternating Line).
Rectangular screens. That’s a big improvement.
On March 22nd, the France announced that they had signed an agreement with the Soviet Union under which the Russians will use a slightly modified form of SECAM. Two days later, a conference opened in Vienna to discuss a common system for Western Europe. Ultimately, the conference chose PAL. The French however are sticking to their guns, so while most of Europe will be using PAL, France and the East Bloc will be going with SECAM. So much for commonality.
Speaking of Common
This month’s IF certainly delivers a heap of the familiar, from old, familiar faces to old, familiar themes.
“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt
When Gideon contacted me about taking on the reviews for IF, I took President Roosevelt’s words to heart and said, “Yes.” It’s tougher than it looks. I’m stretching some mental muscles I haven’t used in some time.
New Beginnings
March is a good time for new beginnings. Spring isn’t quite here yet, but its promise is apparent. Depending on where you live, the crocuses may have started to bloom, or at least the snowdrops. And until Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar almost exactly 2,000 years ago, it was the first month of the year (which is why our ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months are named Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten). It even stuck around as the first month for some into the Eighteenth century under the Old Style.
So what’s new? Well, we have another new country: The Gambia. This tiny nation on the west coast of Africa was granted independence by Great Britain on February 18th. It closely follows the lower course of the Gambia River to its mouth on the Atlantic and is surrounded on three sides by Senegal. I wouldn’t rush out to buy a new map or globe any time soon. There are still plenty of colonies in Africa and elsewhere around the world seeking their independence.
The Duke of Kent at the official opening of Gambia High School during the independence celebrations
There’s also a new measles vaccine. Unlike the current vaccine, which requires a series of shots, this requires only a single injection. Fewer injections are bound to be a relief to children and their parents.
A little closer to the interests of the Journey, MGM has announced that Stanley Kubrick (Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove) is working on a science fiction film, tentatively to be called Journey Beyond the Stars. There isn’t much information at this time. It will be shot in Cinerama, and Arthur C. Clarke is apparently involved in some fashion. Maybe we can dare hope for more than ray guns and schlocky monsters.
We're at a bit of a lull here in early February. Not that things haven't been exciting, but they've been familiar headlines. For instance, Sheriff Clark and his merry men locked up nearly 3000 Afro-American demonstrators who were marching in Selma, Alabama for their voting rights.
In Laos, one of the two right-wing factions supporting the neutralist government tried to coup the neutralist government. It was defeated by the other right-wing faction. Meanwhile, the Pathet Lao Communists continue to fester in the margins.
And China, a new member of the nuclear club, maintains its fracture with its Communist brethren to the north, the USSR (although the current meeting of Soviet Foreign Minister Kosygin and Chinese Head of State Zhou Enlai may thaw things).
Similarly, the March 1965 IF offers nothing particularly outstanding, as has been the case for several months now. I really think editor Fred Pohl should consider returning IF to a bimonthly schedule. Or perhaps Worlds of Tomorrow needs to be retired so that IF can get choicer stories.
First up is the latest in Saberhagen's Berserker tales. If you've been reading IF for a while, you know that this series involves enormous, sentient battleships that hate life, destroying human fleets and colonies wherever they can. The author has done a good job developing the unearthly logic of the alien destroyers as well as written good yarns about the victories Terrans have managed to pull off against them.
Stone Place is the final battle. The Berserkers have pulled together all two hundred of their ships scattered throughout the galaxy. In counter, the Terrans have assembled a nearly equivalent armada. The problem is that the human ships do not all owe allegiance to a central government, and there is friction aplenty. Can humanity unite for long enough to defeat a threat to the entire species?
by Jack Gaughan
A few things make this latest outing a comparative disappointment: the beginning is slow, the politics are frustrating, and the cruelty of the Berserkers shockingly lurid. Moreover, the tactics employed against the Berserkers are somewhat glossed over, making the ultimate result feel informed rather than earned. I wish such a momentous chapter in the saga had been given a novel's worth of development. Without the nuance and cleverness of the prior stories, and because of the heightened nastiness, three stars is all I can award Stone Place.
On an interstellar cruise liner, one of the veteran ship's officers makes the acquaintance of a grizzled, cantankerous marine. Conversation ensues.
And that's about it. I'm not sure what the point was. Two stars.
All We Unemployed, by Bryce Walton
Written as half screenplay, half epistolary, All We Unemployed details the horrors of being the last employees in a automated factory that has decided that human elements are undesirable. It's a pretty dumb story, saying nothing new (and in fact, feeling queerly familiar).
One star.
Of One Mind, by James Durham
by Gray Morrow
James Durham is the novice writer of the issue. He offers up a piece in which humanity discovers barrier-less telepathy before it is ready, with disastrous results. Very few survive the ensuing massacre, including the protagonist, an astronaut on his way to Mars.
There are some nice bits in Mind, particularly its realistic portrayal of space travel. But on the whole, it doesn't hang together well at all. It might make a decent novel, if the writer develops his chops some more.
Three stars
Million-Mile Hunt, by Emil Petaja
By contrast, Petaja is an old hand, a veteran of the pulp era. However, he's been on hiatus for more than a decade…and it shows. Hunt, about an ornery space prospector and the odd alien who dogs him mercilessly, just trying to help, is outdated stuff. The solar system is home to half a dozen alien species, and people zip from setting to setting as if driving from block to block of a city. The revelation at the end is weird and not particularly well-joined with the narrative.
Two stars.
Starchild (Part 3 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson
by Gray Morrow
And finally, we come to the end of this three-part serial, sequel to The Reefs of Space. At last, we will find out who the mysterious Star Child is, and how the rebels living in the reefs that gird our solar system have been able to subvert Earth's authoritarian Planning Machine and even blink out the Sun.
Except, we don't. Instead, we're treated to forty pages of exposition that tell us that the ultimatum made to Earth (by whom? some mystical stellar force centered about the star, Deneb? it's not clear) to overthrow the Plan of Man involved dozens of years of perfect timing that indicate the outcome was predestined. See, before the Sun went out, all of the nearby stars winked in succession. Since light travels at a finite rate, that meant the scheme required not only synchronization of efforts on a galactic scale, but also knowledge that it would work (since they only made plans to do it once).
Plus, it was apparently child's play for the Denebians(?) to take over not only the Planning Machine on Earth, but its copy that was sent to the reefs on the Earth vessel, Togethership. In any event, none of the characters are given anything to do but watch. Not Boysie Gann, the putative protagonist. Not the stubborn Earth general bent on recovering the Togethership. Not Quarla, the young woman from the reefs who sails from plot point to plot point on her seal-like fusorian, as the story requires.
It's the worst kind of pulp space opera. Not even the settings are interesting, and setting is all we have at this point. The first story of the series was fair, with an exciting middle. This second installment had promise but quickly went to the dogs.
One star, and please let's not have another.
Summing Up
Wow, that was a stinker. It's clear Pohl is shoving all of his junk into one drawer, including the stuff he probably couldn't sell anywhere else (Starchild). And Pohl is touting that we've got novels from Schmitz and Doc Smith to look forward to. Given that those two produce stuff in the same vein as Starchild, I am really not looking forward to the next several months.
Perhaps it's time I passed on the mantle. Any volunteers?
Today saw the Journey in the wilds of Utah, attending a small science fiction conclave out in the lovely summer desert of Deseret. What could have impelled us to make another plane trek less than a week after having returned from a long sojourn in Japan?
Well, we were invited. The things one does for egoboo…
Nevertheless, duty continues, and so I find myself pounding the typewriter keys early in the morning (to the chagrin of the folks in the neighboring rooms, no doubt) so you can read all about the first SF digest of the month, the August 1964 IF.
The Issue at Hand
by Fetterly
The big news is that IF is a monthly now after years and years as a bimonthly. Lord knows where editor Fred Pohl is getting the material for this increased frequency, especially given that he also helms the sister books, Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow. Let's see how the new mag holds up under the compressed schedule:
The Slaves of Gree, by C. C. MacApp
by Gray Morrow
Young Jen wakes up spluttering in a pounding sea, his memories forgotten, with the trace of a foreign name in the back of his mind. Who is "Steve Duke" and what is his relation to Jen? The hapless jetsam of a man is rescued by his own kind, fellow slaves to the great Gree. Jen soon gets back his memories, remembering that he belongs to the happy, harmonious Hive, a burgeoning galactic power.
Or does he?
Turns out Jen is a double-agent, quite literally. He has two personalities, which swap as needed. One is one of the Hive's most promising subalterns, a puissant veteran of the space corps. The other is Major Steve Duke, a rather unsavory Terran sent to topple the Hive from within.
There are the makings of a great story here, but it needs a lot of polish. So much of the tale is told mechanically. At one point, I counted ten sentences in a row beginning with "He [verbed]…" Plus, I kept expecting a twist at the end, but instead, it's just a straight adventure story with (I felt) the wrong personality winning.
Two stars, just shy of three.
A as in Android, by Frances T. Hall
A middle aged rebel against the system encounters an android with his face and imprinted with his memories – memories he'd sold for some quick cash a decade and a half before. Has the robot, who was exiled to the hell planet called Cauldron, come for revenge or something else?
Frances Hall's first SF story (to my knowledge) is a solid triple. Four stars.
The Prince and the Pirate, by Keith Laumer
by Nodel
The latest Retief story sees our favorite interstellar diplomat/super spy thwarting the topple of a monarchy. Neither the best nor the worst of the stories in the series, it entertains reasonably. Three stars.
How do you convince a machine that biological life is superior? And in the parley between human and sentient, life-hating battleship, who is playing who?
Fred Saberhagen continues to impress with his excellent tales of the Berserkers — sentient dreadnoughts who scour the galaxy, ridding it of biological infestations.
Last up is the latest installment of Heinlein's most recent novel. Last time, Hugh Farnham, a libertarian, nudist cat-lover (no resemblance whatsoever to his creator!) ducked into a bomb shelter with his family when the Russkies started to nuke America. Instead of dying in the holocaust, however, Farnham et. al. found themselves transported to a virgin version of their world, one in which people had never existed. Or so they thought.
At the beginning of this month's narrative, other people show up — technologically advanced black men who enslave the Farnhams (except for their house servant, Joe, who is black) and bring them to the Summer Palace of Ponse, Lord Protector of the region. It turns out that this isn't an alternate universe, but rather some two thousand years in the future. Descendants of the Africans now rule the world in a static society in which the whites are slaves. Hugh must use his wits to carve a place for himself in this society before he is eliminated (or worse!) for trespassing.
This second part holds up a lot better than the first. Near the end, we learn that there are still free savages hiding in the Rocky Mountains, an Part 3 will likely feature some kind of Farnhem-led insurrection. All very patriotic and appropriate for Independence Day.
Four stars.
Summing Up
Truth to tell, I'd been dreading the Heinlein and leery of the rest of the issue. In the end, though, Pohl managed to put together a readable (if not stellar) 132 pages of SF. I will definitely be keeping my subscription!
Let's just hope that he…and I… can keep up this busy schedule.
[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…]
Philosophers have long debated the nature of reality. Are things what they seem to be, or do our senses deceive us? Do you and I perceive the world in the same way, and is there any way to know? Although there will never be a final answer to such questions, speculation about these matters can lead to intriguing works of fiction. The latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow features many stories dealing with different perceptions of the universe: biased, distorted, ambiguous.
The Trouble with Truth, by Julian F. Grow
In the middle of the next century, Earth is united under a government run by computer. News is restricted to the listing of confirmed data, with no human-interest stories allowed. The narrator works for the world news agency. His job is to prevent advertisers from planting misleading articles, and to ensure that only verifiable facts are presented in the media. This leads to conflict with his fiancée, who runs a small monthly publication (barely tolerated by the authorities) which is not so restricted in its contents. One of the odd things about this society is that marriage is not the same as matrimony. The two main characters have gone through the first, but not the latter. Another notable fact is that the woman is pregnant, and the couple will be able to choose the sex of their unborn child. When a little girl and her father report a strange happening to the news agency, it leads to a change in the way the ruling computer views reality.
This story reminds me of Ray Bradbury in the way it promotes the importance of imagination over cold, hard facts. The world it creates is an interesting one, but many of the futuristic details are irrelevant to the plot. There's also a lot of expository dialogue. How you feel about the ending, which makes use of a very famous essay from the past, depends on your tolerance for sentimentality. It exceeded mine. Two stars.
The Creature Inside, by Jack Sharkey
This is the newest entry in the author's Contact series, previously published in Galaxy, in which the protagonist's consciousness enters the bodies of aliens. In this adventure, he has a very different assignment. A man is placed in a room that allows him to experience his fantasies as if they were real. The room also has a device that can manufacture whatever he wants from any raw material. The intent is to treat the man's inferiority complex. Unfortunately, he actually suffers from delusions of grandeur. The problem is to get him out of his imaginary world, where he would be able to survive indefinitely. The hero enters the room, where he encounters various illusions, as well as dangers that are all too real.
Although nothing very surprising happens, the hallucinations are vividly described and the story holds the reader's interest. The protagonist learns something about his own desires, adding a nice touch of characterization to an otherwise unmemorable hero. Three stars.
The God-Plllnk, by Jerome Bixby
Two alien beings witness a strange object land on Phobos. They assume it is a god, because it resembles a gigantic version of themselves. They presume that the creatures emerging from it are similar to the parasites that plague their own bodies. Unfortunate consequences follow.
This is a brief story about what can happen when events are misinterpreted. The outcome is predictable. The author's use of unpronounceable alien words doesn't help. Two stars.
This is a sequel to Fortress Ship, which recently appeared in the pages of If. Three people survive an attack on their spaceship by a gigantic warship known as a berserker. One is near death from his injuries. The computer brain of the berserker orders them to come aboard so it can study humans. They agree, desperately hoping for an opportunity to destroy the relentless machine. Living alone on the berserker is a man, conceived from cells taken from human prisoners. He has never known anything but a life of slavery, with severe punishment for failure to obey the berserker. At first, he is terrified by the arrival of other people. The berserker commands him to co-operate with them, knowing it has already deactivated the bomb they brought with them. What follows is a tense cat-and-mouse game, with the humans learning something new about the origin of the berserkers.
This is a suspenseful tale, with a great deal of insight into the psychology of the berserker's slave. His distorted view of humanity provides much pathos. The journey through the interior of the enormous machine is awe-inspiring. The ending is sudden, but otherwise satisfying. Four stars.
Science and Science Fiction: Who Borrows What?, by Michael Girsdansky
This is an informal article, which makes the obvious point that SF writers are inspired by the discoveries of science, and vice versa. It wanders all over the place, from legends of Atlantis to Project Ozma. The most interesting detail, discussed in a single paragraph, is the fact that MIT students were required to design products for an imaginary alien species. Two stars.
Far Avanal, by J. T. McIntosh
For reasons not entirely clear, the population of future Earth consists of three times as many men as women. This leads to a society in which women pick their husbands as they please, and many men go without wives. The protagonist loses his intended to another man, an event that is all too common. He receives an offer to journey to a colony planet, where the sexes are evenly matched. The drawback is that he will have to travel through space in suspended animation while decades go by. If he decides to return to Earth, an option he insists upon when he accepts the offer, he will be an anachronism, half a century out of date. Things don't turn out as expected, and he must change his assumptions about his new world and the people who inhabit it.
I have mixed feelings about this story. The premise is contrived, but the author presents the consequences of it in a convincing way. Although some of the women are selfish and vain, another is by far the most intelligent, competent, and sympathetic character in the piece. At the start, the main character is suspicious to the point of paranoia; he eventually learns to overcome his distorted view of others. This touch of psychological depth makes the story worth reading. Three stars.
Two aliens rule over their planet as monarchs, although their only subject is a robot. The sole remaining members of their species, they think, speak, and act extremely slowly. A single conversation lasts for centuries. They decide to send the robot on a spaceship in order to bring back members of another species as subjects. The relative swiftness of their captives leads to complications. The way in which the aliens have a completely different view of time than their new subjects, possibly supposed to be human beings, made this a droll little story. Three stars.
When You Giffle . . ., by L. J. Stecher, Jr.
This is the third tall tale from the captain of the starship Delta Crucis, previously seen transporting an elephant, then a cargo of valuable plants. In his wildest adventure yet, he winds up lost, in an unknown part of space. Two little boys, calmly swimming in the vacuum between the stars, help him find his way, as well as enabling him to carry a whale that is much too big to fit inside his spaceship. The children, with their god-like telekinetic abilities, may be intended as a parody of the kind of psionic supermen found in Analog. In any case, this is a silly story, providing only broad comedy. Two stars.
The latest work from an author who recently won the Hugo for his novel, The Man in the High Castle concludes. This installment falls somewhere between the realistic narrative style of the first third and the jarring surrealism of the middle portion. A meeting between a schizophrenic repairman and an avaricious head of the Martian water union, which was previewed in multiple, distorted ways in Part Two, takes place. The repairman has no memory of it at all. The union leader vows to take revenge on the repairman, whom he believes failed and betrayed him. Following the advice of his Martian servant, he sets out on a pilgrimage with an autistic boy to a sacred site of the natives. His goal is to use the boy's ability to perceive and manipulate time to change the past, so he can claim ownership of a seemingly worthless piece of land, which will be valuable in times to come. The boy has a terrifying vision of his future as an old man, trapped in a nursing home, most of his body missing, kept barely alive by machines. The novel returns to its opening scene, as the union leader relives his first encounter with the repairman, and the characters meet their fates.
The climax of this complex, difficult novel is dramatic. The ambiguous nature of reality, shown through the union leader's mental journey through time, is vividly portrayed. Readers who have been patient with its downbeat mood will be pleased with a touch of hope at the end. The characters have the complicated personalities of real people. (Even the union leader, who is definitely the novel's villain, is sometimes sympathetic.) I recommend reading all three parts together. Waiting two months between installments weakens the impact of the circular structure of the plot. (If it is published in book form, perhaps the title will be changed to something more appropriate.) Four stars.
As these stories show, science fiction can help us appreciate the way that others might see reality. Perhaps, by looking through the eyes (or other sense organs) of different people (or other lifeforms) through the pages of our favorite magazines, we may come to have a empathy for those with other viewpoints, to be more tolerant of beliefs that don't match our own.
[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]
by Gideon Marcus
Ah, Winter. That sleepy time of the year when the air gets chillier (such as it ever gets chilly in Southern California), work slows down a bit, and shopping for the holidays picks up. The first night of Hannukah is the 21st, and then, of course, there's the big mid-Hannukah holiday (named after Chris, the patron saint of presents).
And it's when I renew my subscriptions for science fiction magazines since they generally offer Christmas discounts!
December marks the new year, at least as far as periodicals go. January-dated issues show up the month before, so I've already gotten a sneak preview into the next year. First up is is the January 1963 IF, and if this be a harbinger, then next year will probably be a decent one:
The Five Hells of Orion, by Frederik Pohl
I have to wonder if Pohl gets paid the same rate as everyone else for stories he writes, given that he is the editor. Of course, he should. Pohl has been a writer for decades, and he produces good stuff. Orion follows the tale of an young astrogator shanghaied across a thousand light years by aliens bent on forging an alliance with humanity. The first half is very good. The spaceman must navigate a set of intelligence tests and we gradually come to understand the intentions of the extraterrestrials. The payoff is rushed, however; perhaps this would have made a better novel. Three stars.
The Shipshape Miracle, by Clifford D. Simak
An atypical piece by Simak in which an incorrigible criminal crosses paths with the brother to The Ship Who Sang, to his ultimate dismay. Well-written, like everything Simak does, but unexceptional. Three stars for the story, but five stars for the excellent art!
This Way to the Egress, by Andrew Fetler
Fetler returns to IF with his second vignette, a subtle piece about the last hours of a social deviant. I suspect Fetler has a day job given the paucity of work he's published in our field. Three stars.
Essay in Coherence, by Theodore Sturgeon
This piece on LASERs (single-wavelength light beams of incredible intensity) shows that Sturgeon may soon give Asimov a run for his money with science articles. It's witty and informative, and probably will be the genesis of countless short stories involving this brand-new technology. Five stars.
Part II of Heinlein's new juvenile(?) about Miss Poddy Fries and her space jaunt from Mars is a bit more readable than the last one, but it's still overwritten and gets bogged in detail. This is the spiritual successor to The Menace from Earth I'd hoped to share with my daughter, but I don't think it's quite good enough. Three stars for this installment.
Road Stop, by David Mason
A ghost story involving a haunted car…in a future when all cars are haunted by design. The tale isn't plausible, in and of itself, but the world it paints feels like a possible tomorrow. Three stars.
Now here's an interesting one, by a newish author who's already turned out some good stuff. Fortress introduces the concept of the "Beserker," giant automated robot ships created as doomsday weapons. They roam the galaxy, relics of a forgotten war, reducing populated planets into ashes. It takes extraordinary courage and, more importantly, wit to defeat them. But it is possible… Four stars.
Captain of the Kali , by Gary Wright
The "IFirststory" competition netted a piece from freshly minted author Gary Wright. A futuristic C.S. Forester is recruited to serve as guest admiral on an alien fleet of sail-driven warships. A good first effort, though greater length and a few more sf trappings would have been nice. Three stars.
When Whirlybirds Call, by Frank Banta
Last up is a satirical piece about a laconic big-game hunter and the coocoo-downdraft-peoplehawk-whirlybirds he is contracted to exterminate. Cute while it lasts. Three stars.
It's rare that I go from beginning to end of a mag and find no lousy stories. This month's IF is solid (if not exceptional) entertainment, and as the cheapest of the digests (at 35 cents), it is definitely a bargain.
Horace Gold, Galaxy's editor, started the magazine in 1950, near the beginning of the post-pulp digest boom. He immediately set a high bar for quality, with some of the best authors and stories, and including a top-notch science columnist (this was before Asimov transitioned from fiction). Galaxy only once won the Best Magazine Hugo (in 1953, and that one it shared), but it paid well, eschewed hoary cliches, and all-in-all was a pillar of the field. It was the magazine that got me into reading science fiction on a regular basis.
Warning bells started to clang in 1959. The magazine went to a bi-monthly schedule (though at a somewhat increased size). Author rates were slashed in half. Gold, himself, suffering from battle fatigue-induced agoraphobia, became more erratic. This new Galaxy was not a bad mag, but it slipped a few rungs.
Fred Pohl came on last year. He was not officially billed as the editor, but it was common knowledge that he'd taken over the reigns. Pohl is an agent and author, a fan from the way-back. I understand his plan has been to raise author rates again and bring back quality. While he waits for the great stories to come back, he leavens the magazines with old stories from the "slush pile" that happen not to be awful. In this way, Galaxy showcases promising new authors while keeping the quality of the magazine consistent.
The June 1961 Galaxy is the first success story of this new strategy.
Last issue, I talked about how Galaxy was becoming a milquetoast mag, afraid to take risks or deviate far from mediocrity. This month's issue, the first that lists Pohl as the "Managing Editor," is almost the second coming of old Galaxy — daring, innovative, and with one exception, excellent.
Take Cordwainer Smith's Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons, in which an interplanetary ring of thieves tries to steal from the richest, and best defended planet, in the galaxy. Smith has always been a master, slightly off-center in his style; his rich, literary writing is of the type more usually seen in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Kittons is ultimately a mystery, the nature of the unique (in name and nature) "kittons" remaining unknown until the last. A brutal, fascinating story, and an unique take on the future. Five stars.
Breakdown is by Herbert D. Kastle, one of the aforementioned novices. Despite his green status, he turned in an admirable piece involving a farmer who finds the world increasingly differing from his memories. Is he sliding across alternate universe? It is a cosmic prank? A gripping story, suitable for adaptation to The Twilight Zone. Four stars.
The one dud of the issue is Frank Herbert's A-W-F Unlimited: thirty pages of pseudo-clever dialogue and inner monologue set in a mid-21st Century ad agency as its star executive attempts to fulfill a recruiting drive contract for the space corps. I got through it, but only by dint of effort. 1 star.
Poul Anderson has another entry in his Time Patrol series, though My Object all Sublime does not betray this fact until the end. It's a slow, moody piece; the reflections of a man from the far future, flung into the worst areas of the past as punishment for a nameless crime. In one thought-provoking passage, the condemned man notes that being from the future in no way guarantees superiority in the past, for most people are not engineers or scientists with sufficient knowledge to change the world. Moreover, they arrive penniless, and who can make a difference without money?
This is actually a problem I've considered (i.e. what I'd do if ended up stuck far back in time). While I probably wouldn't recognize salt-peter if I smelled it, I suspect just introducing germ theory and Arabic numerals would be enough to carve a niche. Zero must be the most influential nothing in the history of humanity… I rate the story at four stars.
Rounding out the issue is Fred Saberhagen's The Long Way Home. Two thousand years from now, a (surprisingly conventional) man and wife-run mining ship discovers an enormous spacecraft out among the planetoids near Pluto. How it got there and where it's going pose enigmas that should keep you engaged until the end of this competently written tale. Three stars.
In sum, the June 1961 Galaxy weighs in at a solid 3.5 stars. If you skip the Herbert, you end up with a most impressive regular-length magazine. Given that Pohl also edits Galaxy's sister mag, IF (also a bi-monthly, alternating with Galaxy), I am eagerly looking forward to next month!
![[October 2, 1965] Gimmickry (November 1965 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/1965-11-IF-cover-645x372.jpg)
![[September 22, 1965] Foul! (September Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/650922covers-656x372.jpg)
![[July 2, 1965] Gallimaufry (August 1965 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/IF-cover-1965-08-649x372.jpg)
![[April 2, 1965] SPEAKING A COMMON LANGUAGE (May 1965 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/IF-April-cover-647x372.jpg)
![[March 4, 1965] OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES (April 1965 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/IF-march-cover-655x372.jpg)
![[February 6, 1965] Too much of a… thing (March 1965 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/650204cover-672x372.jpg)
![[July 6, 1964] Busy Schedule (August 1964 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/640706cover-672x372.jpg)
![[October 18, 1963] Points of View (December 1963 <i>Worlds of Tomorrow</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/631018cover-485x372.jpg)
