Tag Archives: fred saberhagen

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 2, 1965] Gimmickry (November 1965 IF)

1 Comment


by David Levinson

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.


In orbit around a collapsed star. Art by Morrow

Tiger Green, by Gordon R. Dickson

Exploration Team Five-Twenty-Nine has run into more than they can handle on the second planet of Star 83476. There are communication problems with the natives, the jungle is trying to digest their ship and eight of the twelve men in the team have gone violently insane. Navigator Jerry McWhin can feel a berserk rage building in him. As tempers flare among the remaining crew, Jerry locks the others in sick bay and heads for the native village in a bid to resolve the situation.


Jerry and the natives attempt to cure his madness. Their ideas of what either of those terms means may differ. Art by Adkins

Despite its flaws, this is a pretty solid story. There was probably room for some cuts in the first third or so to improve the pacing, and the need for several pages of expository dialog to explain what happened is a real weakness. All of which have cost the story a fourth star. Nevertheless, Dickson seems to have matured into a very good writer. He does still need to work on his female characters (of whom there are none in this story), but otherwise I look forward to a lot more from him. Three stars.

Time of War, by Mack Reynolds

Atomic war has devastated the Earth. Handfuls of civilians struggle to survive in the few areas where the radiation isn’t lethal. Alex remotely operates a “beetle” from a base on the Moon, hunting and killing civilians who may or may not be from the other side. The enemy, the Comics, do the same, flying their manned buzz-fighters from a super-sputnik in orbit.

A rather bleak tale. I rather wonder if the two sides really would attempt to utterly wipe out enemy civilians, eventually not caring if their victims were on the other side or not. I also question if it would be possible to remotely operate an aerial vehicle on Earth from the Moon, let alone engage in dogfights. The time delay of over a second each way ought to make that virtually impossible. In any case, the gimmick here lies solely on the nature of the Comics. It’s clear what Reynolds was trying to do, but that’s not enough for this piece. It either needs a lot more plot or a lot fewer words. A high two stars.

Masque of the Red Shift, by Fred Saberhagen

Seven years after the Battle of Stone Place, Felipe Nogara, the ruler of Esteel and arguably the most powerful man in the galaxy, has brought his flagship Nirvana outside the galaxy to examine a collapsed star (sometimes called a black hole). The body of his half-brother Johann Karlsen, the hero of Stone Place, who recently put down a rebellion on Flammland has arrived in cryogenic suspension. Most believe Karlsen the victim of a plague, but Nogara has had him frozen, because he feared his brother’s growing popularity.

Meanwhile, a second courier – carrying Janda, the leader of the rebellion, brain-damaged by his treatment since his arrest, and his sister Lucinda – is captured by a new form of Berserker. The Berserkers will use Janda’s body to sneak a killing machine aboard the Nirvana to make sure that Karlsen is dead.


”We willingly bring in the semblance of the terror outside!” Art by Gaughan

Saberhagen continues to impress. The Berserkers could easily have become a simple gimmick for stories about space battles. Instead, he uses them as a backdrop to write stories about people. Another author might also have paralleled the Poe story which inspired this much more closely. It’s quite good, though not quite enough for four stars; a very high three stars.

Retief’s War (Part 2 of 3), by Keith Laumer

We left Retief crashed in the jungle and threatened with becoming dinner. Naturally, he manages to talk his way out of that and instead begins uniting diverse tribes of Quoppina to fight the Voion. An emissary sent out to parlay with “Tief-Tief” proves to be Groaci General Hish, disguised, like Retief, as a native. Upon learning that the human women who also crashed in the jungle have been captured, Retief allows himself to be taken prisoner. It turns out the women have escaped, so he does as well and trails them through the wilderness, making new allies along the way. He finally catches up with them, but the mysterious Fifi has left to try and reach the army forming to fight the Voion. To be concluded.


Retief makes a friend. Art by Gaughan

There’s really not much to this installment, just Retief bantering with various natives and General Hish. There’s a hint of humor in his escape, but it could have been a lot funnier. A low three stars.

The Lonely Hours, by W. I. McLaughlin

George Rock is fleeing through space from a creature that lives in the dark between galaxies. He has a plan to set a psychic trap for it using the corpse of a creature composed of ion sheets. This somehow involves visions of Ahab and burning witches.

McLaughlin is this month’s new writer. Fred must be desperate for stories from unpublished writers, because this is awful. None of it makes any sense, and the protagonist is unpleasant. One star.

The Doomsday Men, by Kenneth Bulmer

Robin Carver is a member of ridforce. If his team can get to the body of someone who died violently within 3 minutes of death, he can explore that person’s memories to find out how they died. He was once an agent of the Americas, but was declared unstable when his wife abandoned him and their infant daughter. While investigating the death of a “gaiety girl”, he thinks he sees his now teenage daughter at a wild party in the victim’s memory.

Carol Bursham is a scientist working for Whitcliffe, the man who invented the process that allows the investigation of the minds of the recently dead. They are trying to come up with a way of recording those minds, so that there will be less pressure on the few people who can handle immersing themselves in someone else’s mind. She and Carver discover a plot which threatens the Shield which seals the Americas off from the threat of atomic attack and the rest of the world. A plot which reaches into the upper echelons of society.


Carver makes a disturbing discovery in the mind of a murder victim. Art by Morrow

Line by line, the writing is sound and there are some interesting pieces here, but they fit together poorly. The ending also involves both a rather abrupt shift in attitudes that isn’t earned and an implication that doesn’t make much sense. Points for having a couple of female characters who actually do things and aren’t there just to be rescued. On the other hand, the way Carol thinks about men is very clearly written by a man. Still, it’s a reasonably decent read. Three stars.

Summing Up

Another issue that just sort of meanders around, deviating for the most part only slightly from average. The real problem here is the story from the first-timer. The IF First program is a seemingly good idea, but it could very easily turn into just a gimmick if the editors start sacrificing quality just to run a story from a new author. There’ve been some good stories to come out of the policy, but so far I think the only real success has been Larry Niven. Well, while there’s life, there’s hope.




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 22, 1965] Foul! (September Galactoscope)

1 Comment

This month's Galactoscope features a mixed bag of mixed bags: one Ace double and one Gamma that barely manages a solitary single…


By Jason Sacks

We, the Venusians, by John Rackham

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.

3 stars.

The Water of Thought, by Fred Saberhagen

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 the Venusians, 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:

Gamma Cover

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

Gamma
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

Gamma
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.

Three stars

Gamma
An ad for Jack Matcha’s “adult novel”

A Careful Man Dies, by Ray Bradbury

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

Gamma Image 5
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!

DON'T MISS IT!




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 2, 1965] Gallimaufry (August 1965 IF)

3 Comments


by David Levinson

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.


Retief makes his way across town. Art by Gaughan

Trick or Treaty, by Keith Laumer

Things are looking grim for the Terran cause on the planet Gaspierre. The planetary parliament is set to decide if they’re going to be neutral, on the side of the Terries, or support the warlike Krultch, and the presence of a Krultch warship heavily outweighs that of the CDT mission under Ambassador Sheepshorn. Anti-Terry riots are blowing up all over, and Krultch soldiers walk the streets with impunity.

We open with Retief using his usual good relations with the locals to get lodgings for a troupe of Terran entertainers (if four people can be said to constitute a troupe). On his way back to the embassy, Retief cripples a couple of Krultch soldiers (they did start it) and learns from the local police that the Terrans are confined to their embassy until the ambassador is due to make his speech to parliament. After a brief consultation with the ambassador, Retief escapes the embassy, makes his way across town and enlists the aid of the entertainers in tossing a monkey wrench in the Krultch plans. Will he succeed in tipping the balance in Earth’s favor? Of course, the only question is how. Will he win the favors of the lovely, red-headed acrobat with the tattoo? Unusually, no, or at least not on the page.


The Krultch captain gets the drop on Retief. Right where Retief wants him. Art by Gaughan

I’m on record as a fan of Retief, but even I have to admit that things are getting a little stale. To carry on with the stew analogy, this is an onion that’s gone a little spongy or a rubbery carrot. The means by which Retief and friends take the wind from the Krultch’s sails are deeply improbable, bordering on the ridiculous. On the plus side, Ambassador Sheepshorn is one of the best names Laumer has come up with in ages. Is that Sheeps-horn or Sheep-shorn? I suspect that the ambassador and the author have very different opinions on that. In any case, long-time readers of the series will likely find this one a bit dull, though newcomers might enjoy it more. However, it’s not the best entry point for the series. A low three stars.

Against the Odds, by John Brunner

On the planet Galrex, an apparent crank is making a scene outside the office of the Superintendent of Galactic Records, warning that the human race is in danger. Superintendent Motice Bain emerges from his office and agrees to listen to the man’s concerns.

Falkirk, as his name proves to be, once planned to make a career in archaeology studying the vanished civilization of the planet Gorgon. The story goes that the natives of Gorgon had learned to manipulate luck and ultimately bored themselves to death. The planet was originally found three or four hundred years earlier by one of the pioneering starscouts, Morgan Wade, who supposedly figured out the lost secret and ultimately became extremely wealthy. Eight or nine years before the time of the story and before Falkirk could go to Gorgon and begin digging, a starship made an emergency landing on the planet. It took several weeks for a needed spare part to arrive, but once the ship was repaired the crew managed to destroy all that was left of the ancient civilization when taking off. Now every member of that crew is the ruler of a planet. Falkirk is convinced that these ten men are going to take over the galaxy.

Using the example of the birthday problem, which shows that it takes a remarkably small number of people to ensure that two members of the group share a birthday, Bain points out to Falkirk that in a galaxy of two trillion people, it isn’t that unlikely for ten of them to become important. After a despondent Falkirk leaves, Bain gets down to business.

There’s a twist at the end of this tale that anybody who has been reading science fiction for more than a handful of years can see coming. It’s a reasonably well told story, but a far cry from the more modern sort of stories that Brunner is capable of writing. Apparently, IF is where he sends his more old-fashioned work. It’s not bad, it’s just not anything special. Three stars.

We Hunters of Men, by Bruce McAllister

Edmond Reud is out hunting scalps when he is attacked by another hunter. He kills the attacker and takes the other man’s scalp. Ignoring the “mind-prickling” that urges him to go toward the Minced Mountain, which touches the ocher-colored sky, he returns to the underground city to exchange his scalps for pellets. Eventually, he reaches the Minced Mountain and meets an old man trapped there by a broken leg. Without pellets, the old man has had his long-term memory return. Together, they solve the mystery of the “mind-prickling”.

Interspersed throughout this are naval communiques between a ship orbiting the planet Tinni and Base Roquefort. It seems that Tinni was one of twelve planets beset by the Judicians, who managed to close the planet in a charge field when they lost the war. The navy believes that the Judicans’ weapons were destroyed, but because they are physically weak they must have found some way to control the human population. They did manage to get a device through the field which will home in on charge field generators and send out cortex wave emissions to get humans to come and tinker with the generators.


The scalper scalped. Art by Giunta

This is McAllister’s second story, and it’s not very good. Clearly the pellets affect memory and are addictive, giving the Judicians a way to get the humans to kill each other, but I fail to see how the system was originally imposed. Further the tonal shift between the two narratives is rather jarring. That on the planet is somewhat grim and rather fitting to the circumstances, while the naval communiques are rather light and a bit jokey. On the other hand, McAllister is only 18 and does show some raw talent. If he spends some time working at his craft and honing his skills he could be a decent writer down the line. But this story? Two stars.

The Crater, by J. M. McFadden

Insurance investigator Johnny Andrews appears to be on vacation in Hawaii. Actually, he’s on the trail of a group that has hijacked two shipments of irillium somewhere between the asteroids (at a guess, it’s never specified) and landing at the docks in North Africa. Waikiki is a good spot to observe the ships entering parking orbit and firing their retrorockets for landing. He figures he’s on the right track, since a couple of suspicious characters have started watching him.

After observing the next hijacking from out beyond the surf line, he manages to get pictures of the two goons, but they grab him before he can contact his home office. He’s bundled into an interisland subway and taken to Wailuku, the main city on the rather rural island of Maui. Johnny escapes and takes refuge in Fenner’s Grill, the best Mexican restaurant in the islands run by a fellow of Chinese extraction who goes by the name Manuel. From Manuel (who is seemingly related to everyone on the island), Johnny learns of the mysterious group which has taken over the ranch in Haleakala crater. With Manuel’s help, he infiltrates the ranch and sets out to thwart the hijackers for good.


Manuel and Johnny discover some really high tech cattle ranching. Art by Nodel

McFadden is this month’s first-time author. According to Fred Pohl, he’s a former naval officer and has already sold another story to IF. Beginning authors are often advised “Write what you know.” I’d bet that McFadden spent a fair amount of time stationed in Hawaii and was likely a radar officer. Anyway, this one was a rather fun adventure tale with a good dose of humor. Maybe a bit of Keith Laumer influence here. Also Manuel is a great sidekick who feels like a real islander without being an offensive stereotype. Three stars.

Patron of the Arts, by Fred Saberhagen

As the Berserker fleet closed in on Sol, the artistic treasures of Earth were loaded aboard the museum ship Franz Hals to be carried to safety at Tau Epsilon. Aboard are a two man crew and famous artist Piers Herron, a man who has lost all interest in living and with it his ability to create. The ship is captured by a Berserker and the crew killed, but Herron is kept alive for observation. He attempts to paint the Berserker and he and the Berserker, using one of its smaller remote units, discuss the meaning of art on the basis of Titian’s Man with a Glove.

Herron tries to capture his captor, while the subject looks on. Art by Gaughan

I mentioned above that Retief is getting stale. Saberhagen has certainly avoided that problem in his Berserker series. Each of the stories has been very different, even when the settings have been similar, such as one or more people being held captive by the great killing machines. That’s most likely because these stories are really about people. In the hands of many other authors, this series would be one massive space battle after another, while with Saberhagen the one story that actually was about a space battle had a tight focus on some of the people involved.

This is an ambitious story, and while that ambition carries it a long way, it doesn’t quite hit the mark. There’s a subplot about a stowaway that really doesn’t work. If Roger Zelazny wrote a Berserker story, this might well be it, and he might have gotten all the way to where Saberhagen was trying to take it. A high three stars, and I mourn what could have given it that fourth.

Skylark DuQuesne (Part 3 of 5), by E. E. Smith

As DuQuesne watches, Dick Seaton launches a brutal counterattack against the mysterious force that struck at the end of the last episode. The Skylark of Valeron, grievously damaged, beats a hasty retreat, and DuQuesne slinks away toward Earth. Seaton has identified their attackers as Chlorans, the bad guys from the last book. Apparently, intelligent life which develops on any Earthlike (or Tellus-type, as Smith would have it) world will be human. They might be green or squat and hairless, but still human. Any intelligent life that develops on a world with a chlorine atmosphere will be Chlorans, and so on. Look, if you shout at every bit of nonsense science in this thing, you’ll lose your voice and probably frighten your neighbors. Just go with it.


The Skylark of Valeron takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Art by Gray Morrow

Seaton hatches a plan to find an enslaved human world in the Chloran controlled galaxy and find or create a resistance. That will give the Skylarkers a base of operations to fight the Chlorans. Naturally, all of the men volunteer to be the one to go down and carry out the plan while all of their wives object. They leave the choice of the best person to the ship’s Brain. It, of course, chooses Seaton. He goes down to the planet chosen by the Brain, meets the resistance, turns them into an effective fighting force and snatches the planet from the clutches of those humans who willingly serve their Chloran masters.

Meanwhile, DuQuesne returns to Earth and looks up Stephanie “Hunkie” de Marigny, brilliant scientist and the one woman who can come close to piercing the armor of cynicism and disdain he’s wrapped himself in. While his agents buy up all the materials he needs to build his own Valeron, Blackie and Hunkie go on a date (Dutch at her insistence). Afterwards, he hotfoots it off to the opposite side of the universe from the Chloran galaxy, finds an uninhabited Earthlike world and, using the plans he got from Seaton, builds his new ship, which he dubs the DQ.


Dick Seaton settles a labor dispute with his foreman. Art by Gray Morrow

Although the “wherefores” continue to fly, this installment is a small step up from last month. In fact, the stuff involving Seaton setting up his resistance movement actually isn’t all that bad. Of course, Smith crams a novel’s worth (or at least a novella’s) of material into 15 or 20 pages. DuQuesne also moves back toward being a slightly more complex villain than he was last time. Two stars.

Summing Up

So, what does the dish that Fred Pohl has given us look like overall? A couple of ingredients that aren’t as fresh as they might be, but are still acceptable; a couple of tasty morsels, not quite gourmet but good; one that’s not very good, but under normal circumstances would be drowned out by the other ingredients; and then there’s the giant lump of meat that’s really gone off at the end. Outside of Skylark, there does seem to be a slight uptick in quality over the way things have been over the last year or so. That or Skylark is making the rest of the stuff look good by comparison.

Every cloud, so they say, has a silver lining. Skylark has been a big black cloud lowering over IF for a while and will continue to do so for a couple of months. The demands it has made on space (originally intended to be just three installments) has made the editorial team take a look at some of their production procedures. Starting next month IF will have 32 more pages in every issue. Fred says that’s enough for two more novelettes, four or five short stories, a complete short novel, or an extra serial installment. Best of all, the price is staying at 50¢. Five months of Doc Smith is a heavy price to pay, and 32 pages isn’t going to make up for Amazing and Fantastic going bimonthly and running more reprints, but it’s a step in the right direction.




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Serial

[April 2, 1965] SPEAKING A COMMON LANGUAGE (May 1965 IF)

3 Comments


by David Levinson

The Common Tongue

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.


Art by Schelling

When Is a Robot? (Editorial), by Frederik Pohl

Normally, we don’t discuss editorials here (and when it comes to Analog that’s better for everyone’s sanity and blood pressure), but Fred touches on an interesting, science fictional and probably controversial topic that’s worth examining. He’s been reading The Semi-Artificial Man by Harold M. Schmeck, which discusses the ways in which doctors are using machinery to temporarily replace the functions of various organs. The example Fred offers is the dialysis machine which does the work of the kidneys, but other examples would be the pacemaker or the heart-lung machine.

Right now, these devices are mostly poor and, at best, temporary substitutes. But what happens when they offer better functions than the organs they replace? Electronic lungs that can breathe seawater or the noxious gases of Jupiter. Or prosthetic limbs that can allow their wearer to run faster or lift heavy things. Pohl introduces the term “cybernetic organism” or cyborg for short. The question he asks is if someone equipped with such replacements might become something other than human. Is there a point at which you become something other than you as your parts are replaced? This is related to what is known in philosophy the Ship of Theseus problem. You might be more familiar with the Grandfather’s Axe: This is my grandfather’s axe; my father replaced the handle and I replaced the head. In any case, it’s an interesting area of speculation, and there are probably several good science fiction stories to be told dealing with this.  [Nick Chooper a.k.a. The Tin Woodman has thoughts on the matter, too. (Ed.)]

Raindrop, by Hal Clement

Raindrop is a ten mile wide sphere of water orbiting the Earth. It was created by melting comets. At its core, is a rocky asteroid and whatever solids may have been contained in the comets. The water is protected from the vacuum of space by a self-repairing skin of genetically tailored algae. Because it came from comets, the water currently has a fairly high concentration of ammonia, which is slowly being broken down by algae, fungi, and various single-celled organisms. The original purpose of Raindrop was to find a way to produce food to help feed the 14 billion people on Earth, who are slowly crowding out arable land and facing a Malthusian catastrophe.

Orbiting nearby is a wheel-shaped space station which rotates to provide gravity for the scientists who come up to study Raindrop. There is only one permanent resident, Bert Silbert, who monitors and maintains both the station and Raindrop.

As the story opens, Raindrop has been purchased by a private group and a high-ranking member of the group, Aino Weisenan, has arrived with his wife Brenda and assistant Bresnahan (who never gets a first name). Silbert is showing Bresnahan around the Raindrop, providing tons of exposition and a couple of lessons in orbital mechanics. We learn that the Weisenans have brought lots of equipment and macroscopic life and are planning to settle Raindrop. Ultimately, we learn that they and the group they represent are the descendants of people who were illegally genetically tailored to live in low and zero gravity conditions. Bresnahan starts an argument with his boss about abandoning the original purpose of Raindrop, and he and Silbert find themselves abandoned at the core.


Aino Weisenan sets an anchor. Art by John Giunta

If you’re at all familiar with the work of Hal Clement, you undoubtedly are expecting a happy ending, and you won’t be disappointed. This is a very typical Clement piece, centered on one or two scientific principles and turning them into the solution to a problem. Unusually, he does make a small scientific error. There are a number of cargo loads, each weighing 1000 pounds on Earth. In the extremely low gravity of Raindrop, they weigh only a few ounces each, and the men handle them easily. But Clement has forgotten the difference between mass and weight. Those loads might only weigh a few ounces, but they should still have the inertia of a thousand pounds. Anyway, if you like Clement – and I do – you should like this. Three stars.

Guesting Time, by R. A. Lafferty

People suddenly begin appearing all over the world. The rate at which they appear increases exponentially until there are 10 billion of them in just two days. According to the arrivals, they are from Skandia, and they are shocked and saddened to see how few of us there are. They also announce that they are a token force just here for a short visit and haven’t brought their children with them.

We see the effects of this invasion largely through the eyes of the suburban Trux family and President Bar-John. Whole cities are built in people’s backyards — so many they carpet the ground, vehicular traffic is blocked, and pedestrian traffic is stacked five high, with people riding on each other’s shoulders. They start handing our fertility charms to help us with our obvious problems in having children.

Through all of this, most people seem to really like the friendly Skandians. The few dissenters appear as cranks and street-corner preachers. Aside from those, only government leaders try to do anything about the Skandians, but the visitors prove to be impervious to bullets. After a week, they begin to disappear, but promise to come back next week with the kids.

Although this story shares the theme of overpopulation with the previous story, there’s certainly nothing common about R. A. Lafferty and the language he uses. He’s a very odd duck. Generally speaking his stories and the ways he tells them should not work, yet they do. Not always and not for everyone, but enough so that his stories sell. I tend to find him a bit hit or miss, and this one comes very close to being a miss for me. I think my biggest complaint is that an additional 10 billion people scattered all over the world aren’t going to produce conditions that make Calcutta look like Wyoming. You can put it down to typical Lafferty hyperbole, but it nagged at me. Three stars, but just barely.

Sign of the Wolf, by Fred Saberhagen

A shepherd lad by the name of Duncan is having trouble with a wolf attacking the village sheep which are in his care. He is also hoping to have a mystical experience, which would allow him to attain adulthood. Through his wandering thoughts we learn that people are said to have come here from Earthland, which is somewhere in the sky, though most consider that to be allegorical. That dawn, he sees a bright flash in the sky and hopes that it is his vision.

The scene switches to a Berserker entering a star system. It is wary, because it senses defensive satellites in orbit around one of the planets. They should not be a problem, but if there are also planetary defenses, it could be destroyed. These are things it has learned during the centuries that Berserker and humans have been at war. As a test, it launches a missile at the planet, where it is destroyed by the satellites.

Duncan learns from a passing priest that too many people saw the flash for it to count as a private vision. Later he is visited by Colleen, a girl from his village. She stays too long and, after leaving Duncan, returns to him, because she can’t get home before dark. During her absence, Duncan has begun to hear voices from the ground, but following them would mean abandoning the sheep. Her return allows him to follow the voices to an unknown cave, where they are announcing that an attack is in progress and requesting a human to give “Order One.” Duncan’s response resolves the story.

This is interspersed with more scenes involving the Berserker. It continues to be wary, but remembers one other planet which had defensive satellites but no cities or radio, because the life there had gone to war with itself. Eventually, it sends down robotic units to begin eliminating life.

Saberhagen continues to keep these Berserker stories diverse and about a lot more than just killing machines and space battles. They’re about people. The parallels here between the wolf and the Berserker are pretty obvious, but they aren’t too heavy-handed. Indeed, Saberhagen handles it all with a fair amount of skill. A high three stars, with the obviousness of the parallel keeping it from that fourth star.

Way Station, by Irving E. Cox, Jr.

At Marstation, teacher Bruce Haywood is on trial for heresy against Orthodox Science. He has been telling his charges that it is safe to leave the airseal dome without a sacred helmet when performing the routines and rituals of the landing field. Through the trial, we get the story of his life through flashbacks. As a boy, he learned that the girders of the dome have neither glass nor an atomic energy field between them. As a student, he was allowed to read the actual works of St. Einstein and St. Darwin. In the end, he is cast out of the dome, though perhaps not to the fate he fears.


Honestly, this is the least ugly of the illustrations for this story. Art by Nodel

Irving Cox turned out quite a few stories during the 50s, averaging four or five a year. Most of them were sold to the lesser mags, but he had a few in Astounding and IF as well. His work has tapered off in the last few years, but he was never the sort of writer that would make you wonder “What ever happened to…?” A journeyman at best, and this continues that trend. Thing is, if you’re going to give your story the same name as last year’s Hugo-winning novel, then you had better hit a home run. At best, this is a bouncing single that got through because the shortstop was out of position. It’s not terrible, but I can’t find my way to giving it more than a high two stars. Maybe I was put off by the hideous art.

Strong Current, by David Goodale

Scout Ship 1014 is forced to make an emergency landing on the planet Toran. The three-man crew is barely able to escape the ship with a few supplies before it explodes. They know that the planet is inhabited, but the rest of the information was lost in the crash. They make their way to a coastal city, only to find it empty and its streets flooded. There don’t appear to be any ground-level doors, and there are a number of metal rods sticking out of the buildings, each of which gives off a strong electrical shock. Once they make their way into a building through the roof, they find many more metallic objects which give off shocks. Eventually, the youngest member of the crew figures things out, enabling them to make contact with the locals and to get in touch with the nearest base.

Goodale is this month’s new author, and he gives us a pretty good problem story, of the sort you might expect to find in Analog. In fact, I wondered why I wasn’t reading it there. Then I realized that 1) the person who solves the problem is a slender Asian, not one of the two brawny men of northern European extraction, and 2) the aliens are friendly, competent, and engage with the humans as equals. In any case, it’s a good story marred only by the author capping it off with a not very funny gag. A solid three stars.

The Altar at Asconel (Part 2 of 2), by John Brunner

When last we left our “heroes,” teenage mutant telepath Eunora was threatening to bend everybody to her will. Turns out she can’t. Not for any special reason. She just doesn’t have the power, which, frankly, is a rather poor resolution to a decent cliffhanger. In any case, Spartak then mentally browbeats her with the state she was in when she came aboard and all the awful things she would have to do in order to maintain her control if she had it. There’s that wonderful non-violence again. Vineta then takes over the girl and mothers her into joining their group and their cause.

Off they go to Asconel, deciding to bypass the resistance ensconced on an outer world of the star system. They land in secret on a small island, the only city of which has a temple to Belizuek, disguise themselves, and head for town. The brothers are distressed to see how far society has regressed in just a few years. We’re talking very far, from high-tech to pre-industrial, which seems like it ought to have taken decades.

Their entire plan consists of going to the local temple in order to find out why people have been so easily won over. During services they are exposed to a psychic vision of the galaxy and a mind of immense power. Spartak seems to have succumbed, but he’s just lost in thought about what he’s seen. Afterwards, they make contact with a man by the name of Tharl. By good luck and happenstance, he had served under Vix and has resisted Belizuek, because his wife and child were the first in their town to give themselves up for whatever unspeakable purpose people are being taken.

Spartak takes readings of the temple and discovers that the inner dome holds an atmosphere unlike that which humans can breathe. Unfortunately, they are caught. Spartak and Eunora escape, but Vineta is wounded and Vix and Tiorin are captured. A ceremony where they will willingly give themselves to Belizuek in the grand temple in the capital is announced and Spartak hatches a plan (involving, naturally, somebody else doing something violent) to free them and the rest of Asconel. Thanks to luck and coincidence, it succeeds.

In the end, Tiorin is the new Warden of Asconel. Spartak is planning to go out to the Big Dark, where humans are said to be building their own spaceships. Eunora will accompany him. Vix, unable to stay on the world where Vineta died, offers his ship and his services as pilot.


A montage of the heroes and villains. Art by Gray Morrow

It’s all really just fair to middling space opera. Not as much coincidence and excessive exposition as in the first installment, but some. There were also some dropped plot threads, like the injunction on Spartak to avoid violence and the loyal resistance on the outer planet. Neither really served any purpose in the story. I think I was most annoyed by the death of Vineta, more so because it happened off screen, so to speak. And apparently it was just so Vix would have a reason to go off with Spartak at the end.

I gave the first half a grudging three stars, and this half is better that the first, so I guess it gets three stars as well, as does the story as a whole. I’d probably feel less reluctant about that rating if this had been written by someone else. C. C. MacApp or J. T. McIntosh, for example. Brunner is a much better writer than this hackneyed stuff, and he fails to elevate it to something more. Alas, it seems like he has more of this story to tell.

Summing Up

A bit of a mixed bag of common elements this month: authors who’ve been around for a while, authors who are still fairly new, but have made names for themselves; two stories about overpopulation, two about societies that have lost their technological capabilities (two-and-a-half, if you count Asconel), a good, old problem story. It’s not as bad as last month, but it wasn’t that long ago that IF was one of the best magazines out there.


Speaking of space opera…

We had so much success with our first episode of The Journey Show (you can watch the kinescope rerun; check local listings for details) that we're going to have another one on April 11 at 1PM PDT with The Young Traveler as the special musical guest.  As the kids say, be there or be square!

3 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine, Serial

[March 4, 1965] OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES (April 1965 IF)

1 Comment


by David Levinson

“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.


Stanley Kubrick in the Dr. Strangelove trailer

What about IF?


Art by McKenna

Are we getting anything really new this month? Has Fred Pohl started to turn the decline in quality around? The answers are “A little” and “Not really”. As for the first question, five of the six authors in this issue are new enough that the Journey actually covered their first story. (Well, in the case of this month’s first time author you’ll have to wait a few paragraphs for that to be true.) For the second, read on.

The Altar at Asconel (Part 1 of 2), by John Brunner

Brother Spartak, a monk in a scholarly order on Annanworld, is just about to begin writing a history of his homeworld of Asconel, when he is interrupted by the arrival of his brother Vix. It turns out that these two are brothers to Hodath, the Warden of Asconel, who fell victim to a coup staged by the leaders of a cult (one of whom is a telepathic mutant) from the world of Brinze which worships Belizuek. Neither Brinze nor Belizuek is known to the monastery’s encyclopedic computer. The two leave, first to find their remaining brother, Tiorin, and then to make contact with the resistance in the Asconel system. But before leaving, Spartak is reminded by his abbot that he took a vow of non-violence and that committing a single violent act will forever bar him from returning.

Aboard his ship, Vix is attacked by an assassin. Spartak is able to stop the attack by rapidly reversing the ship’s artificial gravity. (Is slamming someone repeatedly into various surfaces not an act of violence, just because you only twisted a dial?) We also meet Vix’s mistress, Vineta, and learn that Vix is hot-headed and occasionally verbally abusive to her.


Art by Gray Morrow

They travel to Delcadore, hoping to get a lead on their brother. There, the ship is impounded by the Imperial bureaucracy and the brothers are dragooned into taking a telepathic mutant to the world of Nylock. They are psychologically conditioned to fulfill their assignment, but are able to delay take-off long enough to make contact with Tiorin and for him to come aboard. The delay is brought about by Spartak pointing a weapon at an administrator and threatening to shoot a bunch of people. (Is that an act of violence if he didn’t actually mean to go through with it?)

The mutant, a teenage girl named Eunora, is brought aboard in an artificially induced catatonic state. Spartak insists on bringing her out of it, and a few days later, she breaks the conditioning of the others. However, she has no interest in going to Asconel and is planning to condition them herself to take them where she wants to go. Once she figures out where that is.

That’s really not a lot of action for 47 pages. The rest is taken up by exposition. Some good, some of the “As you know, Bob” variety. We learn that there is a galaxy-wide human empire, but it is in decline, gradually contracting its borders. A few places that have left the empire, such as Asconel and Annanworld, have retained imperial values and systems, but others have lapsed into piracy and barbarism. The empire is nearly 9,000 years old and the ships are even older, created by an ancient vanished race and found by humans when they first ventured out to the stars.

John Brunner is the grand old man of this issue, having been writing since the early 50s. He has apparently written a couple of things in this setting before. The Brunner I’ve read before has been closer in tone to the newer British style. This is pure space opera. As is typical of space opera, the women characters don’t do too well. Vineta submits weakly to Vix’s abuse, though she may be developing an interest in Spartak, and there are at least some hints at a bit of depth. We don’t see much of Eunora, but she’s not off to a good start. The only other woman is the bureaucrat, described repeatedly as fat and foolish.

Despite the excessive exposition and reliance on coincidence, a tentative three stars for readability and some decent writing in spots.

What T and I Did, by Fred Saberhagen

An amnesiac wakes imprisoned in a Berserker. One eye is bandaged, and he assumes he is horribly disfigured, because the others trapped with him seem to be repelled by him.

It’s difficult to say much more about this without giving the whole thing away. If you read “The Stone Place” last month, the answer to at least some of the mystery will be obvious, but that’s far from the whole story.

This is Saberhagen’s fifth story about the dreaded Berserker killing machines. Clearly he does have more he can say with the Berserker stories, but I would like to see him stretch his legs a little more with something else. A solid, high three stars.

Across the Sea of Stars, by Jeff Renner

This is a poem which uses the title of at least one science fiction work in every line. The meter here (when the author sticks to it) is the sort of sing-song I associate with bad children’s poetry. The only good thing is that the poem is barely longer than the list of authors offered an apology. Renner had another bad poem in F&SF in March of last year. He shouldn’t quit his day job. One star for me, maybe two if you enjoy the game of figuring out how many of the referenced works you’ve read.

Gree’s Hellcats, by C.C. MacApp

Colonel Steve Duke is back. During a boring (for the reader) space battle, he learns that the Gree has a new species working for it. From pictures he took, the bird people figure out that these are “upgraded” animals. Col. Duke is once again sent behind enemy lines to investigate.


Art by Nodel

Once again, he spends some time in the bush. Once again, he waltzes into the enemy base by pretending to be wounded. After crawling around in the ductwork, he eventually locates some electronic devices being implanted in the creatures’ horns. He steals one and has the brilliant (read: blindingly stupid) idea of trying it out on himself. It proves to be some sort of computer-aided thinking device that also punishes thoughts against the Gree. Steve steals a spaceship with the aid of the device. The end.

Why hellcats? A reference to the Grumman F6F? The M18 tank hunter? The 12th Armored Division? Hellcats of the Navy starring Ronald Reagan? Mary Todd Lincoln? Who knows? Or cares? I’m not sure even the author does.

MacApp has written some decent stuff. “A Guest of Ganymede” comes to mind. Even the first of the Gree stories wasn’t bad, but this and the previous installment have been awful. If MacApp must write space opera, might I suggest a sequel to “Under the Gaddyl”? Two stars and no more Gree, please.

Our Martian Neighbors, by John McCallum

An astronaut has crashed in the Martian desert. After days struggling through the heat, he comes upon a glass dome. In it are two children and their mother. He can hear them speaking, but they can’t hear him desperately pleading for water.

McCallum is this month’s new author. He shows some skill, but the story is very unpleasant. Imagine a Mars story written by an evil Ray Bradbury. I’ve no idea why this got the cover. Well written, but only two stars for egregious cruelty and not really having a point.

White Fang Goes Dingo, by Thomas M. Disch

In 1970, the Masters, beings of pure energy, came to Earth. They took over the power grid and made pets of some humans, especially the beautiful and artistic. They use the Leash, some sort of electric stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain, and the pets are eager and glad for it. It is now a few generations later.

Our protagonist is known at various times in his life as Dennis White, White Fang, and Cuddles. He is the son of Tennyson White, who wrote a very popular book about Masters and pets through the allegory of dogs. A few years after White Fang’s birth, his mother left for another solar system and his father was captured and killed by wild humans, also called Dingoes. White Fang and his brother Pluto live in a poorly run kennel for a few years and are then adopted by a Master after meeting a human girl, Julie, on an abandoned farm. A decade later, White Fang and Julie are let off the leash while visiting Earth, but their Master never returns. Eventually, they are captured by Dingoes and get to see what is left of human civilization.


Art by Gaughan

You might expect this to be a broad comedy from the title. It isn’t. There is humor and satire here, but it’s subtle. The story is up to Disch’s usual standards, but might need more room to really develop. It’s either too long or too short. I can’t quite decide. A very high three stars; it’s missing that certain something to get a fourth.

Wrapping it up

So, are there signs of Pohl righting the ship? Not really. These are hoary old clichés for the most part. Space opera, a hostile but habitable Mars, humanity enslaved by aliens. Only Saberhagen and Disch do something new and different with them. Maybe Brunner will, too, but not this month. Come on, Fred. Don’t make me regret taking this gig.




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine, Serial

[February 6, 1965] Too much of a… thing (March 1965 IF)

2 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Monthly Muchness

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.

In any event, come read what you've missed:

The Issue at Hand


by McKenna

Stone Place, by Fred Saberhagen

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.

Meeting on Kangshan, by Eric Frank Russell

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?




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine

[July 6, 1964] Busy Schedule (August 1964 IF)

3 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

SFlying Eastward

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.

The Life Hater, by Fred Saberhagen

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.

Four stars.

Farnham's Freehold (Part 2 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

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…]




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[October 18, 1963] Points of View (December 1963 Worlds of Tomorrow)

4 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

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.

Goodlife, by Fred Saberhagen

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.

The Great Slow Kings, by Roger Zelazny

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.

All We Marsmen (Part 3 of 3), by Philip K. Dick

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. 




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[December 9, 1962] (January 1963, IF Science Fiction)

6 Comments

[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.

Podkayne of Mars (Part 2 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein

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.

Fortress Ship, by Fred Saberhagen

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.

6 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[May 3, 1961] Passing the Torch (June 1961, Galaxy, 2nd Half)

11 Comments

Something is changing over at Galaxy magazine.

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!

11 Comments Leave A Comment