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[June 20, 1965] Ace Quadruple (June Galactoscope #1)

June 20, 2020 Kris Vyas-Myall Leave a comment

[Kris Vyas-Myall and Cora Buhlert team up to cover two of the better Ace Doubles to have come out in a while. Enjoy!]

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The Ballad of Beta-2, by Samuel R. Delany, and Alpha, Yes! Terra, no!, by Emil Petaja (Ace Double M-121)

I have generally been disappointed by the Ace Doubles so far this year. Those I have read have seemed to me to be quite old fashioned and I had been wondering if they were going to be heading into a more conservative route with them this year. Thankfully, this new Double I have found has been one of their best:

The Ballad of Beta-2 by Samuel R. Delany

I have been a fan of all four of Delany’s Ace novels, however I approached this with some excitement but also trepidation. For three of those former works were in the same Toron series and The Jewels of Aptor was also set in a similar post-catastrophe future. So, whilst I know he is an excellent writer I wondered how he would do with a generation starship story. I can definitively say he has not only succeeded but produced his best work to date.

This is an interesting take on the well-worn theme, where the generation starship became obsolete long before the crew reached their destination. The inhabitants found hyperdrive had resulted in the systems already being colonized and they themselves were outdated relics who were simply content to live on their ships. At the same time, it appears some form of reversion has taken place and those on board lack much of the knowledge they would have had at the start of the voyage.

Galactic anthropology student Joneny is forced to do an assignment on these Star Folk’s culture, specifically the titular “Ballad of Beta-2”. Originally Joneny assumes that the ballad is nothing but meaningless “cotton candy effusions”, but as he investigates further, he discovers this may hold the truth of what terrible fate befell the Star Folk on their long voyage.

This story starts off fairly leisurely and I assumed this was going to be a sedate academic kind of novel, travelling around exploring the starships. However, as it goes on you do discover that the terror listed on the front cover is justified, my heart pounding as I read some passages. And it should be said there are multiple unforeseen twists within its pages.

Delany clearly has a gift for poetry, with the ballad itself being a beautiful piece and with a clearer understanding of metre and imagery than may others in the fantasy field. He also uses a number of other clever literary devices which I loved, such as building up a mosaic story from framed narratives.

Throughout this Delany explores numerous interesting ideas. First is the value of the fantastic in storytelling and how easily it is dismissed by literary critics (something I am sure we have all seen).

Second is the problem of unchecked biases in academia. The only first-hand account Joneny can find is the original contact when the Star Folk entered the system and the Ballad was only picked up by sending in a robot to record, which the original anthropologist changed the lyrics he thought were clearly incorrect. It is off the back of this information that the common truth about the nature of the Star Folk is held.

Third is the danger of cultural assumptions. Thinking about who is civilized and what it truly means to be human. Throughout we are called on to challenge what we think we know and reassess that which we hold to be true.

Then this also acts as a reality check on the space romances, that see an ease to zipping around the universe, showing how hard this could really be. But then the story dives further into the dangers of anti-intellectualism and religious fundamentalism.

I could keep on about all the ways this work is fascinating. It should be noted this part of the Double is pretty short, only 96 pages, but within it he crafts a story with more depth than most writers manage in triple that time. And yet I would not say any of the concepts are treated at a surface level, he weaves it all together like a stout rope and you can see more ideas every time you look closer.

Needless to say, I fell in love with this short novel. I would recommend it for everyone, but it is not for the faint of heart or those looking for a light read. It is tough, intellectually challenging and really brutal at times.

Delany has once again proven himself to be one of the most exciting new voices in science fiction. If he is not to be my favourite writer of the year, someone else is going to have to produce something spectacular in the next six months!

Rating: Five Stars

Alpha Yes, Terra No! by Emil Petaja

Emil Petaja is an old hand of the genre but has been out of the writing game for almost a decade, only just beginning to sell new short stories and (I believe) this is his first novel. As such I was very curious what it would be like.

Humanity has fully conquered the Solar System and is preparing interstellar ships for further expansion. In Alpha Centauri they had been initially deflecting ships with their barrier, but the tribunal has decided it will be necessary to wipe out humanity completely.

The novel opens with an alien from Alpha Centauri arriving in San Francisco and ending up mingling with the homeless of the city. This person (who is initially called The Tourist but who will have more names as the story unfolds) has psychic powers and uses them to take a look at the differences in humanity and what life is like on Earth. However, his mission is not authorized, and a tracker has been sent to kill him.

Trying to summarize beyond this jumping on point seems like a fool’s errand as it become very complex. This story then evolves into a tapestry of life across the solar system, all of it linked together through a range of different characters, touching on ideas of power, mythology, belief and humanity.

Petaja makes a real effort to show what a future of ever-growing space colonization would be like rather than purely projecting the present into the future. This drive is leaving ordinary people’s lives in shambles as everyone has their eyes on space; crime and unemployment are rampant. Drug use is common. The natives of the planets that are being colonized are being exploited but it only manifests as power for a small number and as a means to fuel further expansion.

The author has an easily readable style which is useful as what he is doing could easily collapse under its own weight but somehow, he manages to juggle it. There were times when I would have to backtrack to check I was indeed following everything that was happening, but I never found myself becoming lost. I do think he could possibly have done more if this had been a full-length novel rather than squeezed down into one half of a Double, but he still works admirably with the page count he is given.

I expect this will be compared to Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (although that itself is an old concept, dating at least as far back as Montaigne’s Of Cannibals) but it is really doing something different. This more a dialogue on humanity’s future weighing up the optimistic and pessimistic views we have emerging in science fiction and considering whether there is something worth saving in us.

So overall, Petaja’s return has proved to be a welcome surprise and I will be interested to see what he comes up with next. He clearly has a great affinity with Finnish myths, so perhaps a book based around that would be welcome?

Rating: Four Stars

by Cora Buhlert

The Rithian Terror and Off Center by Damon Knight (Ace Double M-113)

Summer has come to West Germany, though you wouldn't know it by the wet and miserable weather we've been having.

Nonetheless, there are some good news. My hometown team Werder Bremen has won the West German football (soccer to our American friends) championship for the 1964/65 season.

Werder Bremen 1965 champion — The Werder Bremen team celebrates winning the 1965 West German football championship

The 83rd Kieler Woche, one of the biggest sailing regattas in the world, kicks off today in Kiel-Eckernförde. In addition to the sailing competition, there is also a parade featuring 23 tall ships from all over the world.

Kieler Woche 1965 — The West German police boat SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN and the French tall ships ETOILE and BELLE POULE, the Swedish tall ships GLADAN and FALKEN and the Chilean tall ship ESMERALDA at the Kieler Woche.

Poster Kieler Woche 1965 — This striking minimalist poster, designed by Michael Engelmann, advertises the 1965 Kieler Woche sailing regatta.

On to reading: In the spinner rack of my local import bookstore, I came across yet another Ace Double, No. M-113 to be precise. This one contained a novel as well as a short fiction collection by Damon Knight. In the past, I have enjoyed Damon Knight's works of literary criticism, so how would his fiction stand up?

Monster Hunt

Quite well, it turns out. The novel The Rithian Terror starts out with Security Commissioner Thorne Spangler, currently the most important official in the Earth Empire, on the hunt for a monster. That monster, the titular Rithian terror, is a tentacled horror that can take on the appearance of anybody it wishes. Seven Rithians came to Earth, but only one is still at large.

However, Spangler is certain he has the monster cornered. After all, there are house by house searches and roadblocks on every street, where everybody has to pass through a scanner. This is the one test a Rithian can't pass, for the scanner detects human skeletons and Rithians have none.

Spangler is accompanied by Jawj Pembun, an official from Manhaven, one of Earth's colony worlds, which recently gained its independence. Manhaven has regular contact with the Rithians, so Pumbun was brought in as an expert.

Spangler clearly resents Pembun's involvement in what should be his moment of glory. For starters, Pembun comes from a small backwater planet, one that only gained its independence, because the Earth Empire with its 260 planets let them. Furthermore, Pembun speaks in heavy dialect, while the Empire prizes precise language. Finally, Pembun is a black man, descended from African and Caribbean colonists, and Spangler is the sort of person who is very bothered by this and not shy about expressing it.

I have to admit that after the first fifteen pages or so, I came close to throwing the book against the nearest wall. There are enough racists in the real world, so I really don't need to spend time with racist characters while reading. However, I quickly realised that Knight was a better author than that. For even though Spangler may be the POV character, we're not meant to sympathise with him or his Empire. After all, Spangler and the Empire he serves are rigid, overorganised, xenophobic, have a massive superiority complex and are racist to boot. Spangler is also unpleasant in his personal life, a social climber who only courts his girlfriend Joanna because she is a member of a patrician family and will be useful to him. At one point, he even hits Joanna.

As a result, I quickly found myself sympathising with Pembun and cheered as he deflated Spangler and his smug compatriots. For starters, those scanners at every roadblock that Spangler is so proud of won't work, for while Rithians don't have skeletons, they could just swallow one to pass the test. Also, if the Empire wants to capture a Rithian alive, then maybe shooting six of the seven Rithians who crashlanded on Earth dead is not the best idea. Finally, Pembun casually drops the bombshell that the Rithians have hypnotic abilities as well as a nasty sense of humour.

A Game of Spies

What began as the hunt for an alien spy quickly turns into a game of cat and mouse between Spangler and Pembun. Spangler decides that Pembun must be a traitor and wastes a lots of resources trying to catch him redhanded. But the meeting of supposed offworld insurrectionists Spangler has his forces storm only turns out to be a Christmas party, where Pembun hands out gifts to children while dressed up as a legendary figure called the Grey Parrot.

While Spangler fails at every turn due to his rigid mindset, Pembun's unorthodox methods get results. And so Pembun manages to unmask the Rithian two thirds through the novel, using the Rithian's sense of humour against him. It turns out that the alien is posing as a junior member of the very committee dedicated to hunting him down. However, in the attempt to apprehend the Rithian, the alien is killed and Colonel Cassina, the military official the Rithian had hypnotised into giving him access to the security headquarters, is grievously wounded.

However, the crisis is not yet over. For the Rithians have planted bombs on Earth as leverage against the Empire. The key to the location of the bombs is in Colonel Cassina's head, only Cassina will not talk. And once Spangler's people finally manage to extract the message, destroying the Colonel's mind in the process, it turns out to be useless.

For Pembun points out that even though language has frozen and standardised in the Empire with every word having only a single meaning, it continued to evolve on the colony planets, where the same term can have many different meanings. So the location given in the message could be anywhere on Earth. Spangler and his security forces have no chance of locating the bombs. The Empire is finished, destroyed by its own rigidity, and so is Spangler's career. However, Spangler and Pembun have developed a grudging respect for each other and Pembun offers him a place on his homeworld Manhaven. Spangler's girlfriend Joanna, who up to now had refused to marry him, knowing fully well that Spangler wanted her not for herself, but for her position, agrees to go with him.

A Tale with Multiple Meanings

As a linguist, I enjoyed that the solution to the central mystery of the novel lies in the ambiguity of language. Another thing I liked was that Pembun's native tongue, which he occasionally speaks throughout the novel, is a Creole based on French, Spanish and English. I have no idea if Knight used a real Creole language, but it certainly feels convincing enough.

Just like the solution of the linguistic mystery, The Rithian Terror is a novel with multiple layers and meanings. On the surface, it is a hunt for a literal bug-eyed monster that has infiltrated Earth. However, it is also a John Le Carré like spy novel about two agents, both nominally on the same side, trying to outmanoeuvre each other. Finally, The Rithian Terror is a novel about colonialism and the slow decline and death of empires.

It is this last aspect that is also the most topical, for in the past fifteen years, we have seen the once great colonial empires of Britain and France as well as smaller powers like Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy slowly fall apart, as more and more nations in Africa, South East Asia and the Caribbean gain independence. And it is certainly no accident that Pembun, the representative of a newly independent world, is also a black man speaking Creole, while his counterpart Spangler is an overly rigid white man with the proverbial stick shoved up his backside. Knight makes it very clear to which of these two very different men the future belongs.

Four stars.

Off Center

Of Immigrants and Dolpins

Off Center, the second half of this Ace Double, is a collection of five pieces of short fiction originally published between 1952 and 1964.

The first story "What Rough Beast?" is the story of a young immigrant named Mike Kronski trying to make his way in America. However, Mike is not the simple East European immigrant he appears to be. He comes from far further afield, from an alternate universe. He also has the ability to bend reality to his will and has accidentally changed his world into ours.

Through a series of misadventures, Mike meets a young woman called Anne with burn scars on her body. He uses his ability to heal Anne's scars, which causes Anne's father and a greedy friend to capture Mike to exploit him. Mike tries to run away and is shot. In his terror, he accidentally erases New York from existence. Only Anne remains. Mike takes her to a different version of New York, where she can feel at home, and then departs to a new reality, hoping that this time, he will fit in.

A touching tale about the alienation and profound sense of homesickness many immigrants feel. Knight captures Mike's voice and his imperfect English well. Our editor Gideon Marcus also loved the story.

"Second Class Citizen" is the story of researcher Charles Craven and the subject of his studies, the dolphin Pete. Craven has taught Pete to understand and speak English, spell simple words and even do chemical experiments. While Craven patronisingly presents Pete to some visitors, we learn from background conversations that there is an international crisis going on. Craven is convinced that this crisis will blow over, like any other crisis before.

However, Craven is wrong, for shortly after the visitors have left, the TV program is interrupted for a special bulletin before dropping out altogether. Craven correctly deduces that war has begun and manages to dive to the underwater station of his research base just before heat bombs fall all around him. Craven survives the attack, but once his food runs out, he will be doomed, unless he manages to catch enough fish to survive. However, Craven has no idea how to catch fish. Then Pete appears, easily catching the fish. The roles are reversed now, the teacher has become the student.

An interesting story about the way humans treat animals, but too short to make much of an impact. Gideon Marcus feels the same in his review of the story.

Of Ghosts, Gods and Martians

The novella "Be My Guest" is the story of Kip Morgan, a young man who finds himself possessed by four bickering ghosts after a poisoning attempt gone wrong. Kip also has another problem, he as well as two women of his acquaintance have become invisible to everybody but each other.

The novella follows Kip through his increasingly desperate attempts to get rid of his unwanted tenants and solve his invisibility problem. Kip finally realises that everybody had multiple ghosts living inside them and that these ghosts influence their decisions. He also realises that his invisibility problem is a form of quarantine to keep Kip from talking about the ghosts. Eventually, he blackmails some very powerful ghosts inhabiting the body of a rich man into lifting the quarantine and make sure that he and the two women are given only beneficial and helpful ghosts. Finally free, Kip also realises that the woman he thought he loved is not the person who's really good for him.

"Be My Guest" is an fascinating attempt at a science fictional ghost story. Knight viscerally conveys Kip's growing desperation. It does feel a little long, though, and would probably have worked better as a novelette or short story.

"God's Nose" is a short vignette that does exactly what it says on the tin. The unnamed narrator and his female friend debate what the nose of God would look like. Eventually, her lover Godfrey arrives. He has a very prominent nose.

Inconsequential without much in the way of plot or point.

The final story "Catch That Martian" feels very much like a mix between The Rithian Terror and "Be My Guest". Once again, we have a dangerous alien, the titular Martian, who can take on the appearance of any human being. And once again, we have people abruptly taken out of the real world and turned into "ghosts". A young police officer is determined to crack the mystery of the ghosts and catch the Martian in the act. He deduces that the ghosts must have annoyed the Martian somehow, mostly via making noise, and that the Martian has a taste for musical theatre. So the narrator traces the Martian to a Broadway theatre, determined to apprehend him. But before he can give chase, he falls into the orchestra pit, straight onto a bass drum.

Well written and Knight once again captures the distinctive voice of his first person narrator perfectly. However, the story is also slight and a little silly, particularly compared to the two similar stories in this Ace Double.

All told, Off Center is a nice collection that showcases Knight's writing skills, even though some of the stories are a little slight.

Three stars.

[Don't miss the next episode of The Journey Show, featuring singer-songwriter Harry Seldon. He'll be playing a mix of Dylan, Simon, and some unique original compositions!]

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[May 24, 1965] Two faded stars (May Galactoscope #2)

May 24, 2020 Rosemary Benton 1 Comment

May's second Galactoscope reviews the latest works by two of the field's titans. Sadly, it looks like their best contributions are behind them, as the following article will demonstrate:

by Rosemary Benton

Mind Barriers and Mental Talents (Andre Norton's Three Against Witch World)

Andre Norton is a gem among authors. She is able to write everything from short stories to novels in quick succession, continues to be picked up by publishers (no small feat in the writing world), and has been able to carve out a reputation for herself as an author who can write extensive background lore into her stories.

That being said, I feel like Norton is in a bit of a writing funk lately. It hasn’t slowed her down, but her writing is starting to feel unbalanced. In particular, the trait that once was her strength – world building – is starting to weigh down her work. By the end of Three Against the Witch World, the third and newest short novel in the Witch World series, Norton successfully introduces better character development with respect to the earlier entries, but the world building is still too overpowering.

The Next Generation

Three Against the Witch World begins with a very condensed introduction to the early lives of Simon Tregarth and Lady Jaelithe's triplets. Told from the first-person narratives of the children, we learn that the first two decades of life have not been easy for anyone in the nation of Estcarp.

After the destabilization of Karsten at the conclusion of Web of the Witch World, a warlord stepped up to fill the power vacuum left by the former ruler Yvian and his extra-dimensional allies, the humanoid beings called The Kolder. Between the Alizon nation, the remains of Karsten and the formidable Falconers, Estcarp is locked in a long term guerrilla war that is slowly bleeding them dry.

Amazingly, despite marrying Earth man Simon Tregarth and thereby disavowing her role as a Witch, Lady Jaelithe still retains traces of the innate magic known (allegedly) only to be accessible in select virginal women. Unsurprisingly, given that Simon is also a Power user (albeit one from another planet), the couple's triplets Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea are also born with strong magical tendencies.

They are soon left on their own after their parents depart on vague and mysterious missions. Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea must contend not only with the front-line defense of the Estcarp nation, but with the jealousy and hostile machinations of the power hungry Witch Council. The Women of Power are determined to undermine the influence of Simon and Jaelithe, and the best way to do that is to take their daughter Kaththea for their own ranks.

By 20 years old the triplets are adrift in a highly unstable time with no nearby allies in all of Estcarp. Upon the ruthless kidnapping of Kaththea by the Witches, Kyllan and Kemoc decide to journey forth into the larger world to gain information and allies crucial to reclaiming the safety of their family.

What follows is a journey across all mapped nations, even into the twisted and nebulous eastern regions of the world – a massive mountain range interspersed with magically tainted creatures. It is literally a place which people are incapable of imagining due to a powerful collective compulsion in the human population. It's a race against time to save Kaththea, save Estcarp and prevent a horrific ancient accident from being repeated in the name of protecting their homeland.

The Witch World Lives On

Sounds like an amazing story, right? It's certainly an interesting premise with a solidly entertaining, if grandiose, climax. But is it a good read?

As I've noted in my review of Norton’s Witch World(1963) and its subsequent installment, if you like fiction liberally layered with lore and societal structures you will find this series intriguing. But just like before, Three Against the Witch World leaves the audience wanting a deeper connection to the main characters.

My, Oh My, Is It Ever So Dry

Stories that sacrifice character development for world building only engage their audience for so long before boredom begins to surface. With Kyllan, Kemoc and Kaththea as the beacons through Three Against the Witch World, it is a comparatively less tedious task to read through the extensive world history of Norton's realm. Three is still massively overwritten, but at least we have the enjoyment of seeing some of the cast grow instead of remaining stagnant cardboard cutouts.

Admittedly the triplets are not completely unique. They are rather standard fantasy warrior, scholar and sorceress/witch characters, but they are given more individuality than the previous protagonists of the series. Kyllan and Kemoc's strategics get much keener via increasingly difficult obstacles they face. Limitations are realized for Kemoc as he pieces together the knowledge held in Lormt, ancient bastion of scholarship, and Kaththea has to adapt to her increasing power.

However, Norton continues to hold her characters at arm's length. Her writing in general has been suffering of late because of this tendency: she is much more prone to showing her characters in action rather than letting us into their heads. Thus, the changes we see the triplets go through still have but a superficial connection with the audience. In short, within Three Against the Witch World we see that the series is still tripping over itself to engage with its audience.

Three Strikes and You're Out

At three entries into the series, the Witch World books continue to feel like Norton is far more interested in telling us about the mechanics of her world rather than the people living within it.

For existing Witch World fans, Three Against the Witch World offers new races and mysterious god-like entities, and I did appreciate Norton's attempts at expanded characterization. Nevertheless, that's not enough to save the series. After reading three books in the same series, I should have more than the shallowest of connections with the main characters. I should have a strong desire to continue to read further installments about their lives. The fact is, after reading Witch World, I don't. I know that Andre Norton is capable of better as a word smith and a story teller. Unfortunately, Three Against the Witch World is only worthy of a two and a half star rating.

Subspace Explorers, by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

By Jason Sacks

I was never a fan of E. E. “Doc” Smith.

Okay, that’s kind of unfair. It’s not that I read the man’s work and didn’t like it. Instead, I decided at a relatively early age that I didn’t want to read his juvenile sci-fi novels.

While some of my closest sci-fi loving middle school friends loved Smith’s Galactic Patrol stories, I never read any of his work, and the one time I borrowed one of his books from a friend I just never got around to cracking the cover. Maybe I felt an odd sort of aversion because I wanted to defy my pal Danny Alvarado’s deep love for Smith – you know, the way boys create friendly rivalries over nothing.

But that may be psychoanalysis after the fact. More likely I didn’t read Smith because I always wanted to read above my age group. Why read juveniles when there was so much great material being published by the likes of Asimov, Dick and Clarke?

Since I had never read any Smith as a kid, now seemed the perfect time to try out ol’ Doc’s work. I’ve grown older and mellowed a bit in my tastes in the last few years. So when my fine editor offered to have one of us staffers review a limited edition publication of Smith’s latest novel, Subspace Explorers, I jumped at the chance. Why not try a classic author, albeit one in the twilight of his career? I could either validate my pal Danny’s passion or smugly smile at myself that I made the right choice to skip Smith.

Well, young Jason is vindicated.

Subspace Explorers by E.E. Smith — The rather bland cover of Doc Smith's latest novel

Subspace Explorers is an odd book. It’s breakneck space opera sci-fi juxtaposed against a sort of exploration of psionics which in turn is juxtaposed against a kind of screed about a battle between virtuous business leaders and corrupt trade unionists. If you’re wondering how these odd elements all fit together in the space of some 200 pages, well, the answer is that they don’t.

The sci-fi and psionic stuff works the best in this book. The first chapter sets the stage with a disaster in space and the few survivors of that battle. This section speeds along in a kind of hurtling, breathtaking tumble of events in which the action seems never to stop, no matter that readers don’t have much of an idea who these characters are.

Once all the action begins to play out, we find there are nine survivors of the accident: four mafiosos, a genius, two officers, and two women. One of the women has the amazing psionic ability to detect any metal in space. After the mobsters are defeated, the women and officers very quickly get married and each of the couples have a baby after a pregnancy which is elongated by their time in space. Their kids inherit the psionic abilities and form a union of explorers who drive the rest of the book.

Right there in that quick summary of the crazily energetic beginning, you can see the joys and flaws of this book. It’s got energy and thrills. It’s got oddball ideas and puzzling events. It’s got thin characters and arbitrary plotlines. It’s got a lot of good and a lot of bad and I’m not sure I want to get into the discussions of labor unions which might embarrass Barry Goldwater in their stridency.

Even there, I might have enjoyed this book either as a grouchy polemic or the rambling of “an old man screaming get off my lawn,” as they say. But the shambolic plot, which seems assembled from several half-finished novels with the barest plot threads to connect them all, left me more baffled and annoyed than thrilled. If Doc wanted to produce a fun throwback space opera, why add the strange political notes, and if he wanted to write a screed, why include classic cardboard characters with psionic powers to muddy the waters?

Publisher Canaveral Press is well known for their lovely Edgar Rice Burroughs reissues, most with lovely art by Roy Krenkel and J. Allen St. John. This book boasts of the same high production values as the Burroughs books. It’s just too bad this book isn’t nearly a match for those classics.

Maybe Smith can pull his disparate storylines together if he writes a sequel to Subspace Explorers, but for a book released in hardcover in a limited edition with a matching grand cover price, this is a tremendous disappointment. Sorry Danny. Hope we can still have lunch together and discuss more pleasant things.

2 stars.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 6, 1965] Back To Our Roots (New Writings in SF4 & Over Sea, Under Stone)

May 6, 2020 Kris Vyas-Myall 2 Comments

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

A Musical Introduction

Bob Dylan is in the middle of his sellout tour of England and folk revival is hitting the mainstream as a result. Dylan himself has 2 singles and 4 albums in the charts.

Also accompanying him on tour is Joan Baez who has reached mainstream attention with We Shall Overcome. Then we have home grown efforts such as the Iain Campbell Folk Group and Donovan, already proclaimed by some as The British Dylan.

At the same time Country is doing pretty well with King of the Road sitting at number 2 and Jim Reeves continuing his presence with Not Until Next Time.

Whether this foreshadows a more permanent move away from the kind of pop music we have seen in the last few years remains to be seen. However, this is also true in today’s reviews, where the two books of May's first Galactoscopes represent a norm and a departure from it: Carnell presents us with a selection of tales representing many of the traditional themes of science fiction and we get a fantasy novel that is very much part of an older tradition.

New Writings in SF4 ed. by John Carnell

John Carnell continues his quarterly anthology series, with another solid but unremarkable edition. Whilst he talks in his editorial about each edition having a particular flavour, it seems to me that they are pretty much of a piece. In fact the main difference here from last time is the presence of a slightly higher number of reprints.

High Eight by David Stringer

This is not a new author but rather a new pseudonym for Keith Roberts, the ridiculously prolific writer for every British SF publication. In this piece Rick Cameron, a line maintenance boss at Saskeega Power, is investigating a series of deaths by electrocution, where people are apparently going too close to the lines. But is something else happening?

Unlike many I am not highly enamoured with Mr. Roberts' writing and the seeming combination of hard-boiled speech and use of offensive terms such as “halfbreed Indian” put me off this tale particularly.

Even putting that aside the main aim of this story seems to be to make electricity scary but doesn’t really succeed in doing it any more than it naturally is. It is certainly not the thought-provoking tale Carnell promises in his introduction.

One Star

Star Light by Isaac Asimov

The first of our reprints is this short vignette from the good doctor, originally appearing in Scientific American. Trent and Berenmeyer have stolen a fortune in Krillium, used to make robot brains, but now need to make a hyperspace jump to escape the police pursuing them.
I get the sense of Asimov writing on auto-pilot. It is not actually bad but if I was to get someone to write an imitation of his work it would end up something like this.

A high two Stars

Hunger Over Sweet Waters by Colin Kapp

On Hebron V, Blick and Martha are both stranded at floating processing stations after the power goes down and they set about working out how to survive.

The introduction says that Colin Kapp is “fast becoming one of our most popular sci-fi writers”, which is certainly news to me. Like The Dark Mind I thought this was fine, just a little old fashioned. This is the kind of problem story which would have looked at home in Astounding a decade ago. Well written, enjoyable but forgettable.

Three Stars

The Country of the Strong by Dennis Etchison

Our second reprint, this one from Seventeen magazine. This is a short evocative piece exploring a landscape after some kind of an apocalypse (probably a nuclear war from the description). Doesn’t have much meat to it but some good bones.

A high three stars

Parking Problem by Dan Morgan

A more silly satirical piece from another of the old New Worlds regulars. In the late twentieth century a solution to parking problems in inner cities is resolved by the development of extra-dimensional parking garages. Crunch and Pulver, two small-time criminals, attempt to break into one of these to steal high-priced vehicles.
Things end up taking a more surreal turn as it goes along and I found it quite sharp in the end.

Three and a half stars.

Sub-Lim by Keith Roberts

It seems you can never just have one Keith Roberts story in any issue, though this one appears without any pseudonym. Here he takes on subliminal messaging where drawings seem to be able to control people’s minds.

Whilst the subject matter is a rather well-trodden theme Roberts brings a great style to it and has an excellent twist ending.

Four Stars

Bernie the Faust by William Tenn

As noted in the introduction this piece, originally from Playboy, has already been reprinted in one of Judith Merrill’s excellent 'best of the year collections' (which I highly recommend), and it is easy to see why. Bernie is a salesman who has an unusual man, Mr Ogo Eskar, come into his store asking to buy increasingly more ridiculous things and thinks he is on to a great deal. But ends up regretting his choices.

As the name suggests, this is a modern take on the Faust story but with a nice twist and a real understanding of human psychology.

Four Stars

On the whole, a solid issue which got better as it went along. The only real disappointment was High-Eight and that could well be due to my aversion to some of Roberts’ work.

One other note. Paperback editions have started coming out for these from Corgi which, at 3/6 much more reasonable than the hardcover editions, at 16 shillings. Whilst I wouldn’t recommend picking these up over a copy of Science Fantasy and New Worlds, these are still very much worth the price.

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

Whilst I had more books as a child than many people I knew, with a school teacher for a mother, juvenile fantasy was not as big as it is today. We had Edith Nesbit’s, TH White’s and Mary Norton’s stories, along with The Hobbit, but primarily I read more adventure stories in the style of The Famous Five or Swallows and Amazons.

It seems since the release of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe there has been an explosion in excellent British fantasy stories from the pre-teen market. These include Roger Lancelyn’s Green take on King Arthur, Tom’s Midnight Garden, the Green Knowe and Alderley Edge stories, as well as more unusual works like Stig of the Dump or the Paddington books.

I now have a twelve-year-old sister and a nine-year-old brother who live in rural Ireland. As such they do not tend to see many of these books, so I like to try to find the best ones and send them over. This one certainly does not seem to be doing anything particularly new but looks like it could be another enjoyable series for the pre-teens.

We start off in the same mode as is traditional for British fantasy at least as far back as Nesbit, with a group of children (Simon, Jane and Barney) going to visit relatives in the countryside, this time their great uncle Merry in Cornwall.

The children decide to pretend to have a treasure hunt in the house they are staying in. In doing so they find first a secret attic filled with strange artifacts, then hidden within that, an ancient map. Taking it to their great uncle Merry they are told this relates to King Arthur, the battle between Good and Evil, and the Holy Grail.

In spite of the ominous tones that suggests for the story, it is actually rather an old fashioned jolly jape. Whilst there is a threat from another interested party, much of the time is spent with the three children (and a dog named Rufus) wandering around the countryside searching for clues. As such there is little doom and gloom but instead a real sense of fun.

One disappointment is the children feel rather thinly sketched here. In each of the Narnia books whoever is in the adventures has a distinct personality. Here it often feels Barney, Jane and Simon are interchangeable, merely serving the story function.

I am also trying to work out the time period this is meant to be set in. The children refer to the old fashioned way of speaking of some of the people in Cornwall but the main family still sound like they are from my childhood. Cooper was apparently inspired to write this story in response to a competition to write in the style of Nesbit so maybe this is an intentional artistic choice?

But in spite of my quibbles this is still an enjoyable story. What Cooper manages to do just as well as Blyton or Ransome have ever done is capture the joie de vivre of being a child having adventures in the English countryside and cast me back to my own young trips to Cornwall and Devon, clambering around Glastonbury or Tintagel hoping I might find the Sword in the Stone or a knight’s tomb. Certainly one I will be posting to my siblings when it comes into paperback and an author I will be keeping my eye on.

Rating: Three and a half stars

Coda

Is this a good direction for science fiction and fantasy? Honestly I think it can depend more on what the writer does with it. Both of these are enjoyable but not revolutionary publications. What I would like to see more of is works doing new things with these themes, as Tenn does with the Faust myth, rather than wholesale revivals as Doc Smith seems to be doing currently in If.

Whilst I wait to see which side it comes down on, I will join with the rest of the listeners of Big L in trying to guess what the actual the lyrics to Subterranean Homesick Blues are. Did he really sing "clients are in the bed book"?

Our last three Journey shows were a gas! You can watch the kinescope reruns here). You don't want to miss the next episode, May 9 at 1PM PDT, a special Arts and Entertainment edition featuring Arel Lucas, Cora Buhlert, Erica Frank…and Dr. Who producer, Verity Lambert! Register today and we'll make sure you don't forget.

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[April 14, 1965] Furious Time Travel (April Galactoscope)

April 14, 2020 Jason Sacks 2 Comments

This month's Galactoscope features a triplet of tales, all of which have something to recommend them…

The Fury Out of Time , by Lloyd Biggle Jr.

By Jason Sacks

The Fury Out of Time is an fun page turner, with some clever ideas and some wacky plot machinations. It's a delight to read author Lloyd Biggle, Jr. playfully juggle interesting ideas around time paradoxes, odd alien creatures and the Mesozoic era while keeping his story roaring and skidding through the clouds like a runaway UFO.

The book focuses on Bowden Karvel, a retired Air Force Major, discharged from the astronaut corps because of his artificial leg and organically confrontational attitude. Karvel lives just outside the gates of his former Air Force Base, quietly drinking and marking time. One day Karvel wanders down to Whistler’s Country Tavern to bend his elbow. As Karvel is sitting on the tavern patio looking over the nearby valley, something very strange happens. Trees start being knocked down in a widening spiral and Karvel is mildly injured in what feels like a natural disaster but actually is far from that simple idea.

Taking on efforts to lead the recovery effort after this apparent hurricane hits, Karvel begins barking out orders, and finds himself becoming inexorably dragged into a mystery which will take him to the moon and across tens of thousands of years of history. He will literally become a new version of himself, emotionally, physically and spiritually, will encounter creatures he scarcely could have imagined existing, and will uncover the mystery which knocked him off his feet in the first place. By being knocked off his feet, Bowden Karvel eventually finds himself able to truly stand on his own two feet once again.

The cause of the disaster is a flying saucer, which Biggle cleverly calls a UO (as opposed to a UFO), which readers slowly learn was created by time travelers from the future – though those travelers may actually be from the past. It’s complicated, and we get to learn how complicated as we dig further into this wacky book.

Part of the fun of this novel comes from Biggle’s clever depictions of different societies in this book. It seems obvious that the author served in the military based on his humorous depictions of the crazily dysfunctional Air Force leadership. Biggle's strong imagination is also on display in the future world in which the bodies of mankind's descendants have evolved in clever ways. In that future world, people are taller and balder than people today, have flatter feet and they even an odd fetish about beards, of all things. I enjoyed Karvel’s inner monologues about that world, and how he wonders about standards of beauty and enslavement.

Similarly, when Karvel travels to a past era when dinosaurs walk the earth, he encounters a race of Hras, very strange creatures with six arms, no faces and stomachs in their bellies. These creatures become Karvel’s allies, but their relationship is complicated. That relationship is surprisingly three-dimensional compared with the classic imperialist-styled science fiction of the past. The way Biggle depicts the relationship between Karvel and the Hras, it’s not clear who the wiser hero is – the one who charges into the middle of a group of dinosaurs or the one who’s too scared to journey far into a world full of predators.

Since we see everything through Karvel’s eyes, I suppose it’s a little wrongheaded to complain the book feels a bit shallow at times. There’s a decided focus on action, and it’s fun to see a middle-aged, slightly disabled guy at the center of trying to figure out the strange worlds in which he finds himself. The thing is, Karvel is smart and clever. He’s not a headstrong James Bond type, always ready for action. He’s an older, slightly broken man who constantly finds his basic value system challenged by the strange circumstances in which he finds himself. It's in the way Karvel reacts that we readers see ourselves and which ultimately pushes this novel ahead.

I didn’t expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. I wasn’t familiar with Biggle's work and was concerned that a book with a UFO at its center would be full of clichés. Instead this book was a light, breezy, and fun ride, a delightful little book which moves along like the Road Runner.

Three stars.

A Man of Double Deed, by Leonard Daventry

by Gideon Marcus

A fringe benefit of having so many fellow writers on the Journey is the ability to read more of the science fiction that's coming out every month. Contrary to forlorn declarations of the doom-sayers, the genre is far from dead. Moreover, new authors are coming into SF all the time.

To wit, Leonard Daventry has just released his first book, A Man of Double Deed, and it's surprisingly mature for a first effort.

Here is the plot, in brief:

Claus Coman is a "keyman," part of a network of powerful telepaths living on Earth in the year 2090. In this far-future time, humanity has already had and recovered from an atomic conflagration that left the planet in ruins. We have spread among the stars, meeting several alien races, though they do not figure in this story. What does figure is a burgeoning plague of violence spreading among the young and disaffected populace. Whether it is a genuine biological malaise or simply a reaction to a society that has become too staid to endure is not known. Coman supports a proposal to emigrate these malcontents to a new world, one where they can create a society to their liking.

But there are forces that strongly oppose this proposal, and keymen in general. Forces with murderous intent. Coman must navigate attempts on his life as well as bigger political currents to see the proposal through.

What makes Deed so distinctive is its unique vision of the future. It's definitely a "New Wave" book with unorthodox depictions of romance and sexuality. In the future, "free love" is the norm, and committed relationships viewed as quaint aberrations. Coman's polyamory, involving two women, is particularly deviant. On the other hand, same-sex pairings are not so much as blinked at.

Daventry does an excellent job of incorporating the third-person omniscient viewpoint, subtly sliding into many characters' minds. This is a trick that doesn't usually work, particularly in Frank Herbert's Dune, where it simply comes off as amateurish. But it's effective in Deed, suggestive of the telepathic contact Comay has with everyone he interacts with. I also appreciate how Daventry describes in a sentence or two scenes of violence and/or sexual relations, conveying a subject vividly but not luridly, effectively invoking the reader's imagination.

Deed is by no means a perfect book. It starts well but loses steam in the final third. Worse, it doesn't really have an ending; the plot is left open only halfway through its course. On a more personal note, as progressive as some aspects of the depicted future may be, it still seems a highly male-dominated world. Women are definitely in a second class, both in their agency, and screen-time. Part of that seems intentional, underscoring the conservative nature of 2090's Earth, but part of it also seems to be the result of Daventry's own instincts.

On the other hand, if Deed be part of a series, like Delany's Toron trilogy, then I may have to revise my opinion. For the nonce, I give it three and a half stars.

And here's a special entry submitted by a fan of the Journey. The book dates back to 1959, but I understand it has been recently reprinted. Since the Journey did not cover it upon first release, we are remedying this omission…

Ossian's Ride, by Fred Hoyle

by Chuck Litka

I happened on Ossian's Ride in the drug store’s spinning book rack. I will occasionally find a science fiction book there, but Neldner’s Card Shop in the Point Loomis shopping center is my go to place for the latest sf books from Ace, Pyramid, Ballantine, and Berkley. The cover of Ossian's Ride showed a hand with an open pocket watch. Inside the watch is a rather artsy illustration of a fellow about to throw a flaming molotov cocktail at a cottage with two silhouettes in the window. And oh, yes, there appears to be a body at his feet. In fact, the only science fiction thing about the cover, is “Fred Hoyle the author of A For Andromeda.” Still, having read his The Black Cloud, I picked it up to see what this one was about.

The back blurb read:

“…breathtaking in its suspense… romantic adventure in the true grand manner”
– New York Herald Tribune

The time is 1970. Thomas Sherwood, a young Cambridge scientist, is recruited by British Intelligence to go to western Ireland to learn the origin, nature, and purpose of I.C.E., the mysterious and powerful Industrial Corporation of Eire. I.C.E., hidden behind its own Iron Curtain, is an elite industrial complex that in only ten years has solved many of the major scientific problems the rest of the world is still grappling with. The great nations fear I.C.E. as a menace to the delicate balance of world power and must discover whatever they can about it. Sherwood is immediately caught up in a world of desperate violence among spies and counterspies, the pursued and the pursuing. So, should I gamble 50¢ on Ossian's Ride? Now, 50¢ is not an insignificant amount of cash when living on a three figure allowance – counting both sides of the decimal place. 1970 is only five years from now, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of science fiction in the description either. Still, it’s Fred Hoyle. Oh, why not?

Ride is interestingly framed, beginning with the British prime minister, who has Thomas Sherwood’s report on his desk. It appears that Sherwood reached the heart of the mystery, but then defected to I.C.E. And yet, he has sent this report that purports to reveal the deepest secret of I.C.E. The P.M. wonders if he should believe it. Well, we can read Sherwood’s report for ourselves, and draw our own conclusions. The story then becomes the first person narrative of the amateur secret agent, Thomas Sherwood. With a forged visa, he sets out for Ireland posing as a student on a holiday with £15 (all that a real student on a holiday would carry), a rucksack and some books. Things don’t go well right from the start. But Sherwood is a resourceful fellow, with a streak of James Bond in his makeup, so we are treated to a nonstop series of mysteries, murders, captures, and escapes across a countryside overrun with ruthless agents of all sorts. Against all odds, and with an unwavering determination to get to the heart of the mystery, Sherwood works himself into I.C.E. And once inside, into its secret heart. Only to joint them, as we knew from page one. Having read his full report, do you believe him? Do you blame him?

I wasn’t disappointed with the book — well worth my two quarters. Perhaps what I liked most about the story is its air of being an authentic true life adventure. It feels like it was written by someone who has put on a rucksack and tramped the Irish countryside himself. And because of that, it remained believable despite the rush of life and death adventures that fill its 182 pages. Like the book’s cover, there is not, however, a lot of science fiction in Ossian's Ride. Five pages worth, maybe. And I have to say that the ending left me with questions, questions that could have been more satisfactorily answered with another page or two. Still, all in all, it was an exhilarating ride. And since I read science fiction more for adventure than as explorations of a future world shaped by some marvelous scientific invention, I would rate Ossian's Ride 4 stars.

That's all for today, folks! Join us next month for another exciting Galactoscope!

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[February 26, 1965] Dare to be Mediocre (February Galactoscope #2)

February 26, 2020 GalacticJourney 2 Comments

This second Galactoscope for February involves entries from both sides of the Atlantic. It also introduces our newest writer, a most interesting Briton who we are most grateful to have; there's so much going on in the UK these days!

Dare by Philip Jose Farmer

By Jason Sacks

I’ve become a big fan of Philip Jose Famer over the years. Which is why I’m frustrated I didn’t enjoy his newest book, Dare, as much as I wanted to.

Like most of you, I became familiar with Farmer when I first read his famous short story “The Lovers.” I was captivated by Famer’s smart prose, his intriguing depiction of love between a human and alien, and most of all by his focus on human emotions while exploring thoroughly unique alien worlds.

Farmer has continued to build that reputation over the last decade, culminating in (at least to me) his imaginative world building with his outstanding 1964 novella “The Day of the Great Shout”, which was set in his fantastical and intriguing Riverworld. With that story, it began to feel like Farmer was on the verge of taking his next leap forward as a writer, fulfilling the promise he showed during his first fecund period, during the 1950s, when he was nominated as Most Promising New Talent.

Unfortunately, Dare doesn’t quite demonstrate the virtuosity one expects from our current group of budding science fiction masters.

Oh, Dare has elements of uniqueness and sparks of something special. The world Farmer creates is broad and diverse, with clues dropped of the same sorts of cosmic chessmasters who might have created the Riverworld.

The planet Dare is a fantastical place, part utopia and part dystopia, inhabited by a heady and fascinating mix of humans and fantasy-like creatures.

In one of the most interesting twists (which doesn’t pay off in the book) the humans on this planet are the members of the original Jamestown settlement on Earth, who landed in Virginia at the dawn of the era of colonization and then disappeared before the next boatload of Brits landed in America. Farmer answers the lingering mystery of their disappearance in the most science-fiction way possible: these settlers have been kidnapped to that aforementioned alien world, in which they find themselves attempting to survive and continue the way of life for which they left England in the first place.

As happens with every generation, where parents set rules, the children will defy the rules. Love will find its way, even if the love is between two different species.

The other inhabitants of the planet are a curious mix of creatures which seem to emerge from Terran mythology. There are mandrakes and talking dragons and annoying unicorns – a clever running gag of the book paints unicorns as stupid, emotional animals and far from childrens’ fantasies – and a group of satyr type creatures. Naturally the satyrs cavort about in the nude and naturally the human boy falls in love with a female of the species named R’li.

A triple novel?

Dare really reads like three books – or maybe three short stories – under one cover.

The first third of the book dwells mainly on the romance between Jack and R’li. This section is sweet and a bit sexy and reminds me of a variant on “The Lovers”. Much of the middle third of the book shows the humans’ fury at the boy’s indiscretion, and is full of action and intrigue. However, the charm of the first third is tossed away for more of a violent, action-adventure story, and the transition between those two sections happens awkwardly, making the book feel like it’s arguing with itself. In the last third, Farmer takes the plot into more of a science fiction battle territory as a ship arrives and changes everything on the planet.

None of these storylines cohere well with the others. There’s a feeling that Farmer wrote three short stories set in this world and then just grafted them together, never mind that the tone shifts wildly and the book doesn't effectively build to a satisfying conclusion. A reader finishes this book a bit stunned, unsure what to make of the mysterious mélange Farmer has delivered.

More than that, there’s just so much here that feels underdeveloped. I wanted to learn more about the dislocation the Virginians felt, to understand more about the alien society, and to understand what force brought all these creatures to the planet. Unusually for Farmer, this book felt more about the surface and less about the depth, making for a jarring and ultimately frustrating read.

I still hope for good things from Farmer, but Dare represents a step backwards on the road to mastery.

Rating: 2 stars

New Writings in SF 3

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

If you've been a science fiction fan in Britain anytime in the last decade you likely know John Carnell. He was an editor on Britain’s first fanzine, New Worlds, before the war and revived it as a professional fiction venue in the '40s. He then further expanded to Science Fantasy and Science Fiction Adventures, becoming rather like Britain’s version of Frederik Pohl.

However, with the latter shutting down last year and declining sales on the other two titles, Carnell decided to take another leaf from Pohl’s book to move away from publishing magazines and become a literary agent, and to try his hand at publishing original anthologies.

His stated aims in the first publication were as follows:

Only publish either original stories or those not likely seen by the vast majority of readers
Introduce new short fiction to the general public rather than just science fiction afficionados
Introduce new styles, ideas and writers to the genre

I can definitely say he has been successful in the first one and probably in the second, but I am not so sure on the final point.

Firstly, most of the writers had already been writing for New Worlds; the only truly new ones so far have been John Rankine & G. L. Lack. And I would not say this work is that experimental — rather it has been solid in established fields. Ironically these aims seem like they might be being better achieved by Moorcock and Bonfiglioli in their new management of Carnell's old magazines.

What we have had in the previous two issues of New Writings are solid stories of the type we would expect from these writers, even those like Brian Aldiss (whose work I always love). I would never place these works among their top range, but even the lower tier authors brought over from Carnell’s last years on New Worlds are still producing readable work for the first two volumes as well as #3, which I shall now discuss:

The Subways of Tazoo, by Colin Kapp

In our first story we follow an archeological dig as they attempt to uncover an extinct civilization on a hostile world. The story is largely told through rather unnatural conversation, but the way it unfolds and gives us more information about the Tazoon is rather interesting. A low three stars.

The Fiend, by Frederik Pohl

Speaking of Pohl, his influence appears again with this reprint from Playboy (described wonderfully by Carnell as “an American magazine devoted to the broadest of broad policies of masculine appeal”). Here Pohl attempts a dark tale of an interstellar voyage captain’s obsession with a frozen passenger, but comes across as creepy in the wrong way. Two stars for me but one that may appeal to other new wavers.

Manipulation, by John Kingston

The first of two stories by regular Science Fantasy contributor Keith Roberts (under, what I believe is, a new pseudonym) where he gives us a stylish and evocative tale of a man dealing with having psychic powers. This fresh take, whilst not as highly experimental as is being published by Moorcock, represents the closest to the fulfillment of Carnell’s stated aims. Four stars.

Testament, by John Baxter

The return of another New Worlds regular with this vignette on survival in a dying world. These kinds of apocalypses are very much in vogue right now but Baxter manages a deft and memorable work. Four stars.

Night Watch, by James Inglis

A second very short piece in a row. This one treads over some well-worn ground but does it well. A solid three stars.

Boulter's Canaries, by Keith Roberts

In his second story for the anthology Roberts asks, is there a scientific explanation for ghosts? The resulting answer is less satisfactory than other recent attempts. Two stars.

Emreth, by Dan Morgan

This is a story from an old hand returning to SF writing after a four-year hiatus. It has incredibly strong and memorable moments but doesn't tie well enough together for me to get beyond three stars.

Space Master, by James H. Schmitz

Schmitz, as a longstanding and prolific American author, seems like an odd fit to finish out this collection. If you like the kind of work he does you may enjoy this story, I personally do not. Two stars.

In Conclusion

So overall this is pretty much down the middle. None of the stories within seem destined to be all-time classics but none are truly awful; even those I disliked I can see they may well appeal to others. Solid and competent work.

By all accounts these collections have been pretty well received by the science fiction buying public over here, and along with increasing sales on New Worlds and Science Fantasy, it seems like British Science Fiction is in safe hands.

Like Watching a Movie

by Gideon Marcus

Another month, another Ace Double. This one is designated M-111, and like most of the rest of the books in the series, it offers two mildly interesting adventure stories. In this case, I felt the writing exceptionally vivid; both books would make good film adaptations, I think.

Fugitive of the Stars, by Edmond Hamilton

by Jack Gaughan

Horne, 1st Navigator on the Vega Queen, makes landfall on the Fringe planet of Skereth. Skereth is on the verge of accepting an invitation to join the galactic Federation of planets, and they are sending the envoy, Morivenn, to effect the union. In a back alley on Skereth's capital, Horne and his 2nd Navigator are beset by hoodlums, and the latter crewman is rendered unable to work. Luckily, an eager-beaver Skerethian named Ardric is a qualified 2nd Navigator.

He's also an anti-Federation agent, and he manages to destroy the Vega Queen, killing most of its passengers and crew before getting away. Horne is courtmartialed for negligence, but he flees justice before he can be sentenced. Now on the hunt for Ardric, his goal is to clear his name — and discover what secret makes Skereth is so hell-bent on staying out of the Federation.

If this plot sounds familiar, it may be because you read the novella on which it's based (basically the latter two thirds of the book) came out as Fugitive of the Stars in one of the last issues of Imagination more than seven years ago.

by Malcolm Smith

Thus, there's no way the title is meant to evoke the current TV show staring David Janssen (The Fugitive, natch). In any event, Edmond Hamilton (Mr. Leigh Brackett) does a fine job with this riproaring space opera, and the expansion into a full-length novel only improves the story. The best exchange in the book is this one, while Horne and Morivenn's daughter, Yso, are dogfighting Ardris' goons in hover cones:

Yso: "What's the matter? Haven't you ever seen a woman fight before?"

Horne: "When I was in the Navy, some of my best men were women. Are you Navy?"

Yso: "Skereth Planetary."

Three and a half stars.

Land Beyond the Map, by Kenneth Bulmer

by Jerome Podwil

Rollie Crane, a listless dilettante millionaire, had a traumatic experience as a child. On a road trip through Ireland, his father, using a strange half-map, drove his family's car into a strange alternate dimension. Therein, the ground heaved with chaos, clanking treaded things chased them, and strange towers bisected the horizon. All of this lay half-forgotten until the stormy night that Polly Gould arrived at Crane's mansion with stories about a similar map, which had swallowed her former boyfriend and his new love many years prior.

The two decide to return to Ireland and search every antique bookshop until they find the map. But what will they find when they reach the uncharted zone? And who is this sinister McArdle character who shows up to warn them off their task? Worst yet, what are these floating baleful eyes that burn with golden fire and vaporize at a glance?

I have to say that prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer had never really impressed me to date. Land, on the other hand, is a fun romp. In many ways, it feels like an Edgar Rice Burroughs story, with little reliance on technology, captivating scenery, and two strong characters who clearly fancy each other but can't confess their feelings until the very end.

Where the tale falls down is the conclusion, in which Crane has no real role. He watches lots of exciting things happen, but he affects them not at all. It's a shame and something of a cheat; surely Bulmer could have given Crane and/or Gould something to do at the climax.

So, three and a half stars for a pleasant time whose imagery will stay with you even if the plot doesn't.

(by the way, I've now learned that this story is also a reprint of sorts, an expansion of Map Country from the February 1961 Science-Fantasy. It seems largely the same — just fuller.)

by Brian Lewis

That's it for February! March promises to be a light month for books — good thing since we've been flooded with magazines! Stay tuned…

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[February 4, 1965] Space Prison of Opera (February Galactoscope #1)

February 4, 2020 Rosemary Benton 4 Comments

Please enjoy this duet of stories by a pair of veterans (both the authors and the reviewers!)

by Cora Buhlert

The Escape Orbit by James White

When I spotted The Escape Orbit by James White in the spinner rack at my local import store, what first attracted me was the cover, showing two humans fighting a tusked and tentacled monstrosity. But what made me pick up the book was the tagline "Marooned on a Prison Planet". Because stories about space prisons are like catnip to me.

Though the space prison in The Escape Orbit is rather unconventional, housing human prisoners-of-war in the sixty-one year war with an alien race called "Bugs", because nobody can pronounce their real name.

At the beginning of the novel, the surviving officers of the battlecruiser Victorious ("erroneously named," the narrator Warren muses) are taken prisoner and dumped on what they assume is an uninhabited world. They are proven wrong, when one Lieutenant Kelso appears. Kelso informs the newcomers that the Bugs have dropped off half a million human prisoners-of-war on the planet with only scant supplies. Escape is supposed to be impossible. If the humans manage to flee anyway, there is a guardship in orbit. Kelso also insists that the newcomers are in danger.

It turns out that the human prisoners on the planet are divided into two groups. The Escape Committee, led by Kelso, who focus all their efforts on escaping, and the Civilians, led by one Fleet Commander Peters, who have resigned themselves to their fate and set up villages. The Civilians and the Committee are hostile towards each other and on the verge of fighting. The newcomers are expected to side with one group. But before making a decision, Warren wants to listen to both sides. And since he was Sector Marshall before he was captured, that makes him the highest ranking officer on the planet.

Warren and psychologist Ruth Fielding realise that the situation on the prison planet is volatile. The Committee is losing members, so those who remain become ever more fanatical. Ruth points out that the Committee are chauvinists, because most female prisoners join the Civilians and then seduce Committee members. Warren fears that as the Committee becomes more fanatical, they may try to take over the planet and cause a civil war. To prevent this, Warren decides to use his position to keep things calm. He joins the Escape Committee as a counterweight to Fleet Commander Peters and the Civilians.

The Great Escape… in Space

Warren takes over the Committee, learns about the escape plan and schedules the escape for three years in the future. He starts a good will initiative towards the Civilians to persuade them to help. Warren also tries to squash the not so latent male-centered prejudice among the Committee and appoints Ruth Fielding to his staff.

Warren may be no chauvinist, but he doesn't know much about women and people in general. And so he is surprised that the Civilians are forming families and having children. At this point, one suspects Warren needs a crash course in human biology. Furthermore, Warren also manages to bungle the chance at a relationship with Ruth Fielding – twice.

Once Warren succeeds in winning many Civilians over, the bulk of the novel focusses on the preparations for the escape. However, Warren also furthers the progress of technology, improves the communication network as well as the distribution and preservation of knowledge and even organises the colonisation of another continent.

As the escape draws closer, tensions erupt both between Civilians and Committee members as well as within the Committee itself. Things come to a head when a new group of prisoners arrives a few days before the escape. Hubbard, one of the new prisoners, reports that the war is over, because humans and Bugs have managed to battle each other to a standstill and both civilisations are falling apart. Even if the escape succeeds, it will be futile, because there is no military to return to.

Warren imprisons Hubbard and goes ahead with the escape anyway. The attempt succeeds and Committee commandos manage to hijack both the enemy shuttle and the guardship. The surviving Bugs are taken prisoner and sent to the planet, while their ship is crewed by the most loyal Committee members.

Warren returns to the planet once more to explain his true plan. For he had realised even before the arrival of Hubbard that the human military would collapse and that there was little hope of rescue. Warren also realised the prison planet was on the verge of civil war and would regress to savagery within a few generations.

By giving everybody a shared purpose, Warren managed to smooth over the tensions, preserve knowledge and create a stable society. Furthermore, he also used the escape to separate potentially violent Committee members from the general population. Warren announces that he will take off with the Committee members deemed unsuited to peaceful life and leave the rest of the former prisoners behind to rebuild civilisation. He also admonishes them to communicate and cooperate with the Bug prisoners, so future wars can be avoided.

I'm usually pretty good at gauging where novels are headed, but The Escape Orbit surprised me. Initially, the book seemed like a science fiction version of the WWII prisoner-of-war escape tales that have proliferated in both the German and English speaking world in recent years. The best known English language example is The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill from 1950, which was turned into a Hollywood movie two years ago. Meanwhile, in West Germany there is a flood of POW novels such as So weit die Füße tragen (As far as the feet will go, 1955) by J.M. Bauer or Der Arzt von Stalingrad (The Doctor of Stalingrad, 1956) by Heinz G. Konsalik, who specialises in such tales and also penned Strafbataillon 999 (Penal battalion 999, 1959), where the twist is that prisoners and guards are nominally on the same side. All of these novels were huge bestsellers and turned into successful movies and TV series.

Not actually Sector Marshall Warren and Major Ruth Fielding, but O.E. Hasse and Eva Bartok in the 1959 film adaption of Heinz G. Konsalik's bestselling novel "The Doctor of Stalingrad"

In The Great Escape and the various West German novels, escaping from the terrible conditions of a POW camp is a matter of survival. However, the conditions on the prison planet in The Escape Orbit are far from terrible. And so I quickly sided with the Civilians and wondered why Warren and the Committee were so eager to escape, when they were better off on the planet than wasting their lives in what was clearly a pointless war. For a time, I even had the sinking feeling that I had accidentally purchased a military science fiction novel akin to Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 Starship Troopers, which I disliked immensely, once I realised I was not in fact reading about a dystopia, but about a society the author considered admirable.

But White tricked me, for Warren was on the side of the Civilians all along and the escape plan was a way to occupy the Committee fanatics and keep them from interfering with the establishment of a peaceful society. Of course, military (science) fiction can be both pro- and anti-war. The Escape Orbit comes down firmly on the anti-war side. I was surprised to see a high ranking officer like Warren portrayed sympathetically, because in West German postwar literature and film, any officer with a rank higher than captain is usually portrayed as a blustering idiot or bloodthirsty warmonger, probably inspired by real world experiences with both types during WWII.

I knew nothing about James White before picking up this novel. Turns out White is a long-time science fiction fan and author best known for his Sector General stories about a hospital space station. White hails from Belfast (Andersontown, the city in the novel, is named after the suburb where he lives) in Northern Ireland, where religious tensions run high. Thus, White knows how easily hostilities between opposing groups can escalate into violence.

The Escape Orbit is not quite as brand-new as I assumed, since the novel was serialised, almost identically, as Open Prison (a more appropriate title in my opinion) in New Worlds last year, reviewed by our own Mark Yon.

The Escape Orbit is very much an anti-Analog novel, where humans are not superior to the aliens, where war is pointless and cooperation, both between humans and aliens and opposing groups of humans, is preferable to fighting. This is certainly a message for our times, as the spectre of war raises its ugly face again in South East Asia.

Four stars

Space Opera by Jack Vance

By Rosemary Benton

Jack Vance is a gifted writer who has received a lot of attention in the last year. He has rightfully been awarded praise for his world building in Ace Double F-265 and "The Star King", but thus far has proven to be somewhat inconsistent in the pacing of his stories. This is not to say that he hasn't been rapidly improving his writing. At times his storytelling has been spot on, such as in "The Kragen".

Thankfully, with "Space Opera" he does not fall short in either department. The pacing and world building are both excellent, but with Vance's latest release there still remain issues that prevent his works from rising beyond "entertaining", or even "ambitious". He has yet to become "timeless", but by God does he come close sometimes.

"Space Opera" is Vance's newest novel. In it he tells the story of humanity's pride, and how fragile it is. In the far future, Earth's high society is still very much preoccupied with its perceived perfection of music as an art form and humanity's generally superior understanding of music as a universal concept. Dame Isabel, a patron of the operatic arts, takes it upon herself to honor a promise made to a troupe of visiting musicians from the elusive planet Rlaru. As they sent a troupe to visit Earth, so will she bring some of Earth's finest music to their planet. In preparation for this she gathers an exclusive selection of singers and musicians, she brings the world's foremost musicologist aboard the good ship Phoebus, and sets off to Rlaru with missionary zeal. On the way they will of course stop to educate other alien races on the magnificence of Earth's musical accomplishments. The success of the undertaking is… complicated.

What Makes Something High Art?

Our cast of protagonists begin their journey with a very well defined and well researched mindset. The first few chapters of "Space Opera" are lousy with musical terms, phrases and theories that are absolutely esoteric for general audiences. Intentionally, Vance is setting up a practically aristocratic 19th century approach to how culture should be defined: if a culture's art is too accessible, then it's not sophisticated. If it's not sophisticated, then it's inferior.

Exclusivity is a prime ingredient to make a culture great in their eyes. Exclusivity of musical theory, exclusivity of musical venues, exclusivity of the language of music (in this case favoritism of German and French language operas on Dame Isabel's expedition), everything about an advanced musical sensibility in a culture should speak to exclusivity. Which of course also translates to the most desirable audience being comprised solely of wealthy patrons. The favored company of Dame Isabel is academic specialists, and the audiences she most voraciously seeks at each stop along her tour are the alien societies' elite.

The best parts of Vance's story are when these very human expectations are subverted. On Sirius the company is unable to make sufficient adjustments for the cultural norms of the native population and the performance fails spectacularly. On Zade they are vetted by a native music critic who mirror's Earth's own narrow minded music specialists. He judges the performance of Dame Isabel's troupe by applying his own culture's standards against Earth's operas, and finding them deficient dismisses them and then asks for monetary compensation for his time. On Skylark the troupe finds that just because the people planet-side express appreciation for operatic craft does not mean that such appreciation is meant truthfully – it turns out that their attempts to keep Dame Isabel's people on for more performances is just so that the convict population can begin switching out the crew's musicians for physically altered convicts with comparable musical proficiency.

Music's Greatest Power

The emotional resonances of music are the pinnacle of Vance's exploration of music's power. On Yan, Earth's operas are interpreted to represent that which has been lost by the planet's people. The response is one of violence from the spectral remnants of the native population. On fabled Rlaru, Earth's operas are too dry for the natives to become interested in. Their culture already achieved the highest levels of artistic perfection, so seeing another people's comparatively primitive attempt at high art is boring and uninspired. However, a passionate performance held in back of the ship by a ragtag, informal group of the performers draws a massive, appreciative crowd.

"Space Opera" is a novel of massive potential, but Vance tries to compress the issue of human beings' cultural superiority complex in too short a time. The setup is exceptional. We know exactly where Dame Isabel, Roger Wool, and Bernard Bickel are coming from in terms of background, personality, and motivation. They go through a harrowing ordeal in the process of reaching Rlaru, and their time on Rlaru is extremely memorable. The fall of the plot is that there is not sufficient time given for the characters to reflect on their experiences. Because of this "Space Opera" ultimately falls short on its final satirical delivery.

Dame Isabel, the character whom I would argue is the central protagonist of the story, concludes her expedition to spread Earth's "highest" cultural medium by returning to Earth and holding a brief press conference reflecting on her and the crew's experiences. She starts the story as an elitist and remains one by the end of the novella. Roger Wool, her bumbling nephew, returns to Earth with his on-again, off-again fiance Madoc Roswyn, and some vague promise of a forthcoming book about the Phoebus' adventure. He begins as the naive, clueless, kept relative of Dame Isabel, and concludes the story as such.

The one character who has the largest arc was Bernard Bickel, Earth's premier musicologist. Despite being relegated to the role of a world building tool and Dame Isabel's consultant, his dialogue in the last few pages at least hints at growth. At the press conference mentioned earlier he comments in a round about way that the expedition gave him an appreciation for the varied reactions Earth's music got on the different planets they visited. But the story's detachment to his experiences relegates any development of his character, and more importantly what he represents, to the background.

At the best he seems like an anthropologist accompanying an invading fleet. Along the way he watches the Earth musical missionaries meet disaster after disaster on their blind quest to prove humanity's superior grasp of music. At worst he could be seen as a character who should have been the primary protagonist, but was swept under the ornate, oriental rug of Dame Isabel's sponsorship and her nephew's charming fumbling.

The Curtain Call

"Space Opera"'s concept would make a great full length novel. But as nearly a novella, it's just doesn't go deep enough. I thoroughly believe that Vance has something really special here, but unless he expands the story in the future it's a piece that will fade into the background of science fiction in time. Perhaps Vance will come to see "Space Opera" as a practice piece for writing satire, but as it stands right now it's merely a three star story.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 4, 1965] Madness: 2, Sanity: 1 (January Galactoscope)

January 4, 2020 Victoria Silverwolf 3 Comments

[January's edition of the Galactoscope offers three novels in two books. Be warned — there's madness afoot!]

by Victoria Silverwolf

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

Now that you've got the Doublemint Gum jingle running through your head, allow me to explain my reason for annoying you. The Ace Double Series has been going for more than a decade, offering two novels in one. Two short novels, to be sure; some are really novellas. Others are short story collections, as we'll see in today's review. The pair of mini-books are bound in what the printing industry calls dos-a-dos. (Sounds like a square dancing term to me.) That is, each half of the volume is upside down, compared to the other half. Sometimes both parts are by the same writer, sometimes not.

Let's take a look at Ace Double M-109, featuring G. C. Edmondson's first novel, as well as several briefer pieces from the same pen.

Mister Edmondson or Señor Edmondson y Cotton?

I can come up with no better way to introduce the author than by allowing him to speak for himself, in the blurb that comes with the book in question.

I don't know how seriously to take all of that, but it certainly makes for interesting reading. I hope the novel (yes, I'll get around to it eventually) proves to be at least as fascinating.

Appetizers Before the Main Course

Cover art by Jack Gaughan

Stranger Than You Think is a collection of all the Mad Friend stories that have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to date. Because our Noble Host has already reviewed these tales, I won't go into detail.

Suffice to say that they all feature the narrator and his Mad Friend in rural Mexico, and deal with time travel, alien probes, reincarnation, and such things. The tone is very light, and the stories are about ten percent plot and ninety percent local color. They remind me, a bit, of R. A. Lafferty and Avram Davidson. In general, the series is inoffensive but forgettable.

The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream

Also by Gaughan

I told you I'd get around to it.

Our hero is Ensign Joseph Rate, commander of the good ship Alice, a unique vessel in the United States Navy of the modern era. You see, Alice is a wooden sailing ship, although she also has a diesel engine for emergency use. The idea is that she can engage in countermeasures against enemy submarines without making sounds that would reveal her position.

At the moment, Alice is engaged in testing new equipment, requiring the presence of an elderly meteorologist and his young assistant. Unknown to his motley crew, Rate is also supposed to investigate criminal activities aboard her.

All of this fades into insignificance, when lighting strikes Alice at the same time the ship's cook is messing around with a new way to distill illicit booze. (Believe it or not, this plays an important part in the plot.)

Full Speed Backwards

If you've read the title of the novel, it won't come as a big surprise to discover that Alice gets zapped back in time a millennium or so, as well as leaving the warm ocean area near San Diego for colder waters, somewhere between Ireland and Iceland. A battle with a Viking raider ensues, followed by a slightly less violent meeting with a merchant ship. Among the cargo she's carrying is a Spanish Gypsy, enslaved by the Norsemen. She winds up aboard Alice, and serves as the novel's main source of sex appeal. Besides that, she's also clever and a tough cookie, so I'll give the author some credit for that.

Here We Go Again

Skipping over most of the first half of the novel, we reach a point where Rate tries to duplicate the circumstances that led to this situation. This doesn't work out very well, because Alice doesn't return to her home, but instead jumps back another thousand years, and winds up somewhere in the Mediterranean.

After encountering Arab slave traders who temporarily take control of Alice, the time travelers eventually wind up on a rocky island, populated by goats and several naked young women, who are more than willing to supply the crew with plenty of wine and other carnal pleasures. There's an explanation for what seems like a sailor's fantasy, which involves another inadvertent visitor from the future, this time the madame of a brothel/speakeasy in 1920's Chicago.

A lot more happens before we reach the end of the novel, including battles with Roman warships and the misadventures of the only religious fanatic aboard Alice, a male virgin who finds himself in intimate situations with more than one alluring lady.

Worth the Voyage?

Although it's impossible to take the novel's version of time travel seriously, the plot doesn't stop for a second, always keeping the reader's interest. As you may have guessed, there's quite a bit of sexual content, which tends to be more teasing than explicit. There's also a lot of violence, given the constant attacks on Alice by just about every vessel that meets her.

The tone of the book ranges from darkly comic to intensely dramatic, with a bit of satire in the form of the religious fanatic. This character may raise some eyebrows among readers of faith, although his version of Christianity is clearly of the extremist variety. The ending raises the possibility of a sequel, but whether such a book will ever appear is up to the tides of time.

Three stars.

A Little Mental Illness for the New Year (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich by Philip K. Dick)

by Jason Sacks

This is the fourth Philip K. Dick novel released in the last several months, and I’ve read them all. Clearly science fiction’s most surrealistic writer is in the midst of an unusually fecund period, one in which his astounding fiction seems channeled directly from the writer’s brain onto the printed page. And while that unfiltered creativity makes for fascinating reading, Dick’s latest fiction shows him to be wrestling with some intense personal issues, including dislocation and mental health concerns.

Those recent works (The Penultimate Truth, The Clans of the Alphane Moon, Martian Time-Slip and his most recently published novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich) share a lot in common with each other. All three books demonstrate a mind in constant motion, continually distracted and probing, with ideas seeming to spark from every page in a cascade which starts out as thrilling, becomes tiring, and ultimately proves to be overwhelming. Ideas, interesting and odd, bonkers and basic, philosophical and dully grounded, seem to flow from Mr. Dick as freely as the sweat which constantly seems to be on the foreheads of each and every one of his neurotic protagonists.

Eldrich starts from a template similar to his Dick’s other novels. Most Dick novels feature a neurotic protagonist, and this book is no exception. This time he is named Barney Mayerson and he is a wealthy man in a low-numbered conapt building (a major sign of status) with a great job as the New York Pre-Fash consultant at influential company P.P. Layouts. But Mayerson has problems – oh nellie does he have problems. As the book begins, the businessman wakes up with a hangover, a strange woman in his bed and, most frightening of all, a draft notice which will cause the UN to send him to Mars. That sounds like the beginning of a film noir, but as we follow Mayerson, he slips into a different sort of darkness than the doomed protagonists of our darkest films.

To help him escape the draft, Barney has purchased a robot named Dr. Smile, intended to help Mayerson avoid the draft by making him even more neurotic than he seems. But even the robot isn’t perfect; it calls him by the wrong name and doesn’t seem to pay close attention to Barney, adding to the seemingly endless list of degrading events Barney experiences in the first few pages — and far from the final humiliation he experiences in the book.

Like so many lead characters in recent Dick novels – poor doomed Norbert Steiner in Time-Slip and lovelorn, oblivious Chuck Rittersdorf in Alphane pop immediately to mind – Barney Mayerson is a confused man. He is neurotic, uncertain, perhaps mentally ill. He has tremendous problems relating to the women most important to him, especially his wife. He even gives up all hope of avoiding the draft and instead volunteers to go to Mars, simply to get away from a source of tangled neurotic pain. It is tough to spend time with Steiner, Rittersdorf or Mayerson, because they are so uncertain of themselves despite their apparent success. These are so conscious of their own flaws, their own massive insecurities, that we can understand why these feel rejected by the worlds which surround them. As readers, we want to reject them as well, want to follow characters with some measure of self-assurance, like Trade Minister Tagomi in Dick’s 1963 masterpiece The Man in the High Castle.

Taken one at a time, each of the recent Dick books provide an intriguing portrait of men whose own demons sabotage their own best aspirations. Seen together as a collection of books, it’s hard not to see some authorial autobiography flowing through these characters. After all, if Mr. Dick is writing his books so quickly, how can he avoid writing himself into his stories?

If we take that assertion as fact as part of my essay (and I would be delighted to hear counterarguments in the letters page), then Palmer Eldrich is the most frightening of all Dick’s novels so far. Because at its heart, and in the great thrust of its cataclysmic conclusion, is a break with peaceful reality that actually makes me worry about the author.

Without going too deep into the reasons why – part of the joy of this fascinating book lies in the ways Dick explores his shambolic but complex plot – Barney ends up on Mars and discovers that nearly all the Martian colonists are miserable and drug-addled. Their experience on Mars is so wretched and soul-crushing that only psychedelic drugs, shared among groups of colonists, provide a brief break from their mind-numbing lives.

Barney is responsible for helping a new drug to come to Mars, cleverly called Chew-Z, which promises better highs and more transcendent experiences. But as readers soon discover, the new drug also creates a schizophrenic experience, one in which the terrifying Palmer Eldrich comes to dominate Martian society – and much more – in a way that terrifies everyone who considers it. Eldrich is a terrifying creature, with steel teeth, a damaged arm, and an approach to the world which builds misery.

In truth, Barney Mayerson has unleashed a demon, and it’s not spoiling much in this book to say that by the end you will feel the same fear Barney and the rest of society begin to feel.

Eldrich, thus, is a deeply unsettling book, and fits Dick’s recent output in a way which makes me feel concerned for the author. It is the third out of the four recent novels to deal explicitly with mental illness (in fact, mental illness provides the central storyline of Alphane and a key secondary storyline in Martian Time-Slip). It’s intriguing that Dick sees in science fiction the opportunity to put the readers in the mindset of a man experiencing a schizophrenic break, a psychotic episode, or battling debilitating depression, but the continual presence of such ideas suggests a man whose life is also battling similar breaks.

If Mr. Dick is obsessed with mental illness, does he see that illness in himself when he looks in the mirror? And if we readers purchase Mr. Dick’s books in which mental illness takes a central role, are we aiding his therapy or abetting his continual wallowing?

Palmer Eldrich is not an easy book to read, not once it gets going and we start to realize the depths of Meyerson’s, and Dick’s problems. The plot ambles and wanders and is dense with philosophy and allusion. For a 200-page book, this is no quick Tarzan or Conan yarn. Instead, it is a deeply upsetting, deeply complex look into the disturbed psychology of both its lead character and its author. After consuming so many Dick novels all in succession, I’m craving something much lighter. Neuroses are exhausting.

4 stars

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 11, 1964] December Galactoscope

December 11, 2019 Cora Buhlert 4 Comments

by Cora Buhlert

The season of giving is upon us. For women, perfumes like the classic scent Tosca are the most popular gifts, while men tend to find ties, socks and underwear under the tree.

Personally, I think that books are the best gifts. And so I gave myself Margaret St. Clair's latest, when I spotted it in the spinner rack at my local import bookstore, since I enjoyed last year's Sign of the Labrys a lot. Even better, this book is an Ace Double, which means I get two new tales for the price of one. Or rather, I get six, because one half is a collection of five short stories.

Message from the Eocene by Margaret St. Clair (Ace Double M-105)

An alien in trouble

The first half is a brand-new science fiction novel called Message from the Eocene. The protagonist, a being named Tharg, is tasked with transporting a cosmic guidebook across hostile territory. The reader learns in the first paragraph that Tharg is not human, because he has a triple heartbeat. Tharg lives on Earth, but the Earth of billions of years ago (long before the Eocene, so the title is a misnomer), a world of volcanos and methane snow, devoid of oxygen. Tharg "breathes" via microorganisms inside his body that break down metallic oxides to oxygenate his blood and has extrasensory perception.

Tharg is in trouble, for a mysterious enemy is trying to thwart his mission. This enemy turns out to be the Vaeaa, a legendary alien race, who are believed to have deposited Tharg's people on Earth in the first place.

Tharg is taken is taken prisoner, but not before he manages to hide the book inside a volcano (it has a protective casing). Under interrogation, Tharg has an out-of-body experience. As a result, his consciousness remains, when his body dies during an escape attempt, to witness the extinction of both his people and the Vaeaa, though the Vaeaa manage to set up a projector on Pluto to keep out further cosmic guidebooks first.

Over billions of years, Tharg's spirit observes life arise and evolve on Earth. Tharg realises that the book might help with his condition, but he has no way to retrieve it. So Tharg decides to ask the Earth's new inhabitants for help. But how to make himself known, considering that Tharg is a bodyless spirit being and never was human in the first place?

Misadventures and miscommunications

The rest of the novel chronicles Tharg's attempts to communicate. Tharg's first attempt targets the Proctors, a Quaker family in 19th century England. This goes disastrously wrong, because not only do the Proctors come to believe that their house is haunted – no, Tharg also gets trapped in the house. Taken on its own, the Proctor segment feels like a Victorian ghost story, except that the ghost is a desperate disembodied alien. The insights into the lives of 19th century Quakers are fascinating, but then Margaret St. Clair is a member of the Society of Friends.

Tharg's next attempt targets Denise, who lives with her husband Pierre in a French colony in the South Pacific. Denise has extrasensory perception, making her the ideal subject. But once again Tharg only succeeds in giving Denise nightmares and causing hauntings in the mine Pierre oversees. Worse, the superstitious miners blame Denise for the hauntings. They kidnap the couple and give Denise hallucinogenic herbs to increase her abilities. Now Denise is able to communicate with Tharg long enough to realise that he wants them to recover the book.

So Pierre uses his mining job to blast a hole into a mountain at the very spot where Denise insists the book is hidden. After some trouble with Vietnamese workers – an incident St. Clair uses to explain that oppression during colonial times has left the Vietnamese angry and frustrated, which leads to violence, a lesson that is highly relevant to the situation in Vietnam today – Denise and Pierre manage to retrieve the book. Alas, once they open the protective casing, the book bursts into flame and is destroyed.

Tharg now sets his sights on the projector the Vaeaa installed on Pluto to keep future cosmic guidebooks away from Earth. For if another book were to arrive, Tharg might finally be able to escape his condition.

Sacrifices and success

There is another time jump to 1974, when strange things happen. An experiment detects a purely theoretical particle, a sea captain sees a mermaid, Canadians dance under the Northern lights and a Tibetan monk has a vision. Tharg views these events as signs that another guidebook is on the way. But due to the projector on Pluto, it will never reach Earth.

In order to shut down the projector long enough to let the book through, Tharg has to dissolve himself in the collective consciousness of humanity, which will also mean his annihilation. So Tharg sacrifices himself and the book is picked up by an expedition to Venus. The novel ends with Tharg waking on the astral plane in a replica of his original body, just as the US-Soviet crew of the spaceship to Venus is about to open the book.

This is a strange and disjointed, but fascinating novel. Though Tharg is one of the rare truly alien aliens of science fiction, he is nonetheless a likeable protagonist and the reader sympathises with his plight. Tharg is also an unlikely messiah, sacrificing himself to assure the future of humanity.

Humanity being uplifted and our minds and bodies evolving is a common theme in our genre. However, Message from the Eocene offers a very different variation on this theme compared to what you'd find in the pages of Analog, even if psychic abilities are involved. The enlightenment offered by the book is reminiscent of both Buddhism and various occult traditions, while its arrival alludes to the so-called Age of Aquarius that astrologers believe will arrive soon.

In a genre that is still all too often peopled solely by white American men, the humans Tharg encounters are of all genders, races, nationalities and religions and all are portrayed sympathetically. For if the alien Tharg does not discriminate based on superficial criteria, then maybe neither should we. It is also notable that even before they receive the book, St. Clair's near future Earth is a more peaceful place than our world, where China has withdrawn from Tibet and the US and USSR cooperate in space.

Message from the Eocene is a story of failed communication, but also a story of evolution and enlightenment and overcoming one's limitations. Given the state of the world today, this may be just the message humanity needs.

Four and a half stars.

Three World of Futurity by Margaret St. Clair

Three Worlds and five stories

Three Worlds of Futurity, the other half of this Ace Double, is a collection of five short stories originally published between 1949 and 1962. The three worlds in question are Mars, Venus and Earth.

In "The Everlasting Food", Earthman Richard Dekker finds that his Venusian wife Issa has changed after lifesaving surgery. One night, Issa announces that she is immortal now, that she no longer needs to eat and that energy sustains her. Soon thereafter, she leaves, taking their young son with her. Richard takes off after her to get his son back, Issa's human foster sister Megan in tow. After many trials and tribulations, they finally find Issa – only for Richard to lose his wife and son for good. But while Richard is heartbroken, he has also fallen in love with Megan.

"The Everlasting Food" is a curious mix of domestic science fiction in the vein of Zenna Henderson and Mildred Clingerman and planetary adventure in the vein of Leigh Brackett, and never quite gels. I did like Megan, who is described as dark-skinned, by the way, but Issa is hard to connect to and Richard, though well meaning, falls for Megan a little too quickly. Furthermore, the villain feels like an afterthought who comes out of nowhere.

"Idris' Pig" opens on a spaceship to Mars. George Baker is the ship's resident psychologist. His cousin Bill is a courier and passenger aboard the same ship. When Bill falls ill, it's up to George to deliver the object Bill was supposed to deliver, a blue-skinned sacred pig. However, Bill can only give George very vague instructions about where to deliver the pig and so the pig is promptly stolen. And so George has to retrieve it with the help of Blixa, a young Martian woman. As a result, George gets mixed up with drug dealers and Martian cults, involved in an interplanetary incident and lands in jail. He also completely forgets about the woman he has been trying very hard not to think about and falls in love with Blixa.

This is an utterly charming story, a science fiction screwball comedy reminiscent of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby. A hidden gem and true delight.

"The Rages" is set in an overmedicated Earth of the future. Harvey has a perfect life and a perfect, though sexless marriage. However, he has a problem because his monthly ration of euphoria pills has run out. And without euphoria pills, Harvey fears the oncoming of the rages, attacks of uncontrollable anger, which eventually lead to a final rage from which one never emerges. The story follows Harvey through his day as he meets several people and tries to get more pills. Gradually, it dawns upon both Harvey and the reader that the pills may be causing the very rages they are supposed to suppress. The story ends with Harvey throwing all of his and his wife's pills away.

This is a dystopian tale in the vein of Brave New World and Fahrenheit 541. The future world St. Clair has built is fascinating, if horrifying, and I would have liked to see more of it. However, Harvey is a thoroughly unlikeable character, who almost rapes two women in the course of a single novelette. Maybe Harvey could have rediscovered his messy humanity without resorting to sexual violence.

"Roberta" is the shortest and most recent story, first published in Galaxy in October 1962, reviewed by our editor Gideon Marcus here. Roberta is a confused young woman with the unfortunate tendency to kill men. Robert is the phantom who won't leave her alone. Eventually, it is revealed that Roberta had a sex change operation and that "Robert" represents her former self, as do the men she kills.

Transsexualism is a subject that science fiction almost never addresses, even though our genre is ideal for it. After all, there are transsexuals living in our world right now and science offers possibilities to make it much easier for them to live the lives they want to. So I applaud Margaret St. Clair for tackling what is sadly still a taboo topic (and for having her heroine utter another taboo word, "abortion"), though I am troubled that science fiction's only transsexual heroine (so far) is also a multiple murderer.

In "The Island of the Hands", Dirk dreams about his wife Joan who died in a plane crash at sea. He hires a plane to check out the coordinates from his dream and crashes on an invisible island. Dirk finds Joan's plane and a dead body and also meets Miranda, a young woman who suspiciously resembles Joan. He is on the Island of the Hands, Miranda informs them, where everybody can shape their heart's desire from mythical mist. Dirk tries to shape Joan, but fails. He spends the night with Miranda, who confesses that Joan is still alive, but trapped in the mist. Dirk goes after her and rescues Joan, only to learn that there is a very good reason why Miranda looks so much like an idealised version of Joan.

It's no surprise that this story was first published in Weird Tales, since it has the otherworldly quality typical for that magazine. "The Island of the Hands" reminded me of the 1948 Leigh Brackett story "The Moon That Vanished", where another heartbroken widower finds himself faced with a magical mist that shapes one's heart's desire.

All in all, this is an excellent collection. Not every story is perfect (though "Idris' Pig" pretty much is), but they are all fascinating and make me want to read more of Margaret St. Clair's work.

Four stars for the collection.

[But wait! There's more!]

by Gideon Marcus

False Finishes

After such a remarkable pair of books, I hate to sully this edition with less than stellar reviews. But the year is almost up, and there are a lot of books to get through. So, here is a trio of novels that start promisingly and then fizzle out.

The Greks Bring Gifts, by Murray Leinster

If you can get past the punny title, Gifts grabs your interest from the first. In the near future, the humanoid Greks land in a miles-long spaceship. They were just sailing by, training a class of Aladarian engineers, and thought they'd pop in to give humanity a myriad of technological gifts. The aliens are welcomed with riotous joy — after all, soon no one will have to work more than one day a week, and all the comforts of the world will be evenly distributed.

But one fellow, Jim Hackett, is suspicious. Despite being a brilliant young physicist, he was rejected as a candidate to learn Grek science after failing to comprehend it. Was he just not bright enough? Or were the Greks feeding us gobbledegook to keep us ignorant? And then, why did the Greks abruptly leave after six months, just as desire for the fruits of their wondrous technology was peaking, but the ability to sate said desire was lacking? Finally, after the Grek ship had left, why did an archaeologist party find the bones of Aldorians in the ship's waste ejecta? And worse yet, those of humans?

So Hackett and his fiancee, the capable Dr. Lucy Thale, work together to reverse engineer the Grek technology so that, when they return to a world whose populace is fairly begging for them to come back, Earth can stand against them and provide for its own.

What begins as a fascinating mystery quickly proves overlong. Leinster is much better with short stories, before his Hemmingway-esque style can wear thin. The endless repetition of certain phrases and epithets brings to mind the devices Homer used to make The Illiad easier to recite from memory, but they don't do a reader any favors. As for characterization, Leinster might as well have named the characters A, B, and C for all the color they possess. A shorter story would have made that issue stand out less.

Anyway, it's an interesting storyline; it would make a good movie, but as is, it's a mediocre novel. Three stars.

Arsenal of Miracles (ACE Double F-299), by Gardner F. Fox

From the notable pen of comics writer and, now, SF author Gardner Fox, we have a brand new ACE novel. And this one isn't a short 120-pager. No, this time we've got 157 pages devoted to the adventures of Bran Magannon, formerly an Admiral of a Terran space fleet, vanquisher of the invading Lyanir, and now a discredited exile, wandering across the known and unknown galaxy. Arsenal starts off beautifully, like a space age Fritz Leiber fantasy. A nearly penniless Bran arrives on the desolate world of Makkador to make traveling funds through gambling. There, he throws dice against, and loses to, the lovely Peganna, queen of the Lyanir. And then we learn Bran's tragic past: how he divined how to defeat the seemingly invincible Lyanir ships; how he negotiated for the Lyanir to be given a sanctuary world within the Terran Cluster of stars. How Bran was betrayed by an ambitious subordinate, who sabotaged the talks, discredited Bran, and condemned the Lyanir to inhabit a radioactive wasteland of a planet.

But now Bran has an ace up his sleeve — he has discovered the ancient portal network of the Crenn Lir, a precursor race that once inhabited countless worlds. If Bran and Peganna can find the Crenn Lir arsenal before they are caught by Terran and Lyranir agents, they might be able to negotiate with the Terrans as equals and secure a sanctuary for the weary aliens.

I tore through the first third of this book, but things slowed halfway through. I grew irritated that there was exactly one female character in the book, though I did appreciate the natural and loving relationship Peganna and Bran shared. What promises to be a galaxy-trotting adventure with big scope and ideas ends up a rather conventional story on a very few settings. Things pick up a bit in the final third, but I found myself comparing the endeavor unfavorably to Terry Carr's Warlord of Kor, a somewhat similarly themed Ace novel from last year.

Three and a half stars.

Endless Shadow (ACE Double F-299), by John Brunner

With the Fox taking up so much space in the Ace Double, the second title must needs be short. Luckily, John Brunner's Bridge to Azazel, which came out in February's issue of Amazing, fit nicely. Both lengthwise and thematically: Endless Shadow also features teleportation across the stars, in this case involving a Terra reestablishing contact with farflung space colonies.

The general consensus among the Journey's various readers is that this was a premise with a lot of potential, but that Brunner failed to deliver satisfactorily. Ratings ranged from two to three and a half stars. Call it an even three.

Books to Come

These days, there are almost more books coming out than a fellow (or even a band of fellows) can read! So, to make sure we cover all of the important books of 1964, there will be a second Galactoscope in a couple of days. May they be more akin to the stellar St. Clairs than the disappointing Leinster/Fox/Brunner.

[Holiday season is upon us, and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), containing some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age, makes a great gift! Think of it as a gift to friends…and the Journey!

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 26, 1964] A revolting set of circumstances (October 1964 Galactoscope #2)

October 26, 2019 Gideon Marcus 4 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

If there is one constant to the universe, it is change. Appropriately, if there is one constant to government, it is that no system lasts forever. Revolutions have occurred since the dawn of history, motivated by class resentment, public outrage, and plain avarice. Some are cloaked in nobility, like the American Revolution; others started nobly but ended in darker places, like the French Revolution (whose darker points were recently spotlit on Doctor Who.) Even now, revolts roil the world — from The Congo to Vietnam, Iraq to Zanzibar, people are taking up arms to topple governments.

It's not surprising, then, that the three books I read for this month's Galactoscope all deal with some kind of revolution. Does the subject make for good science fiction? Let's find out!

Star Watchman

Ben Bova is a fairly new phenomenon, his only previous book being The Star Conquerors, which I understand is in the same universe as Star Watchman. He is probably better known to you as the fellow who writes non-fiction articles for Amazing. So how's his fiction?

Turns out it's not bad at all. Watchman is set on an agrarian planet of the Terran Empire known to the humans as Oran VI. But to the natives (entirely human, curiously), it is the cherished world of Shinar. Their revolt against the Terran authority has already happened by story's start, and the Shinarians have invited the rapacious, cat-like Komani to help throw off Earth's yoke. But the Shinarians are about to find out that they have a tiger by the tail. The Komani plan to subjugate Shinar, and to then rally the disparate cat-people dominions into an alliance that can attack the Terrans head on.

Enter Emile Vorgens, himself a non-Terran humaniform from another Imperial protectorate world. A freshly minted Star Watchman (the Star Watch is essentially the galactic navy), he has the seemingly impossible task of defusing or defeating the revolution. At his disposal is a powerful but small flotilla of hovercraft, ranging from "scouts" to "dreadnoughts". It also turns out that there are Shinarians who are not happy with the current course and might be enlisted as allies. But it will take all of Vorgens' diplomatic and tactical skills to effect a positive resolution to the crisis.

Per the author's own afterword, "We live today in a world peppered by revolutions, and in this tale I have tried to show some of the complex forces involved in revolution and how rebellion might lead, in the long run, to a growth of freedom and a better world." Indeed, it is difficult not to look at the Shinarian case through the lens of current crises. Given the Terran name for the planet, and the French name of the protagonist, my thoughts went to the Algerian movement for independence. That one obviously did not work out as desired for the empire in question. Ditto Indochina, whose destiny is still in doubt.

In fact, I struggle to find an example of a revolution that was peaceably ended, but which resulted in a more satisfactory internal situation for the province. At least, not one that lasted any real length of time. On the other hand, while the ending of Watchman is sort of a happy one, it is also left ambiguous as to Shinar's fate after the revolt. Bova's politics, while hopeful, are not entirely naive.

But how's the book? One thing Bova does very well is portray battle and tactics. His writing is clear, never lurid, and as a wargamer, I was always able to picture the tactics described. And they seemed reasonable, too! As for characterization, Emile is a bit like C. S. Forester's Hornblower, wet behind the ears, self-doubting, but game and quite talented. I liked him, though I couldn't say he's very deep.

There is, sadly, exactly one female character. But Altai is a good one, essential to the Shinarian plans, and while there are some implied romantic chemistry between her and Emile, nothing is ever consumated. I hate it when a woman is included in a story just to be a love interest (and a prize) for the hero.

In fact, throughout the story, Altai makes it clear she knows that her contributions are less valued among the Shinarians for her being female. I'd like to think that she will lead a revolt of her own on Shinar: for more respect and recognition of women's rights. On the other hand, it's not like there are any female soldiers in either the Star Watch or the Terran Marines (which strained my credulity — hell, there was a woman Captain in the U.S. Marines just last week on Gomer Pyle). So if there is to be a women's revolt on Shinar, it probably won't get much help from the humans. Oh well.

Anyway, I enjoyed Watchman. It's not literature for the ages, but it did keep me reading. Call it three and a half stars.

Ace Double F-289

Demon World

I'm pretty sure I know the genesis for this book: someone approached prolific sf scribbler, Ken Bulmer, at a pub and said (gently weaving), "Hey! What if there were a story where we were the rats, and aliens were the people?!"

Because that's the premise to Demon's World. Humans live in warrens, surviving my making daring raids into the larders of the "Demons", beings some hundreds of feet high (square-cube law be damned!) Said Demons are uncannily conventional, with familiar-looking houses, furniture, and technology. Of course, it takes us a while as readers to get the full view of the alien landscape since it's always viewed through the eyes of diminutive people.

That's the background. The setting is somewhat interesting. Humanity has no idea how it got to this world generations before — it only knows that, aside from cats and dogs, it seems to have no kinship to any of the strange creatures on the planet. Civilization has stratified into hard castes, with the Controllers on top, the Soldiers (who wage wars against other warrens of people) next up, and the Foragers (who get food) along with the Laborers occupying the bottom rungs of society. Only the Foragers ever encounter the Demons, who are widely believed to be a myth among the denizens of the warrens.

Our protagonist is an amnesiac named Stead, discovered by a squad of Foragers from the polity of Archon. He is given a Controller's education and then dispatched into the same squad that found him. This puts him in the unique position of understanding the ruling and under classes. He also knows for certain that the Demons are real. It is only a matter of time before Stead decides to lead a double rebellion: Foragers/Laborers against Controllers, and humans against Demons.

Demons World is an odd book, executed in a workmanlike fashion that suggests it was a quick draft (though without the egregious typographical errors that sometime mar Ace productions). Descriptions of people and items are particularly bland, often repetitive. We never even understand what it is the humans eat, their food invariably referred to as "food". You'd think that in a story where half the scenes involve getting sustenance, there would be a bit more emphasis on the sensuous.

Women fare better in the Bulmer than the Bova. The capable doctor, Della, is Stead's ward in Archon, and two members of the squad are women. However, despite Bulmer's preference for unadorned writing, you can bet we always known how attractive the women are and in what ways. Moreover, women in Demon World are still somewhat second-class citizens, treated like "girls" despite participating somewhat equally in society.

Unlike with Watchman, I found reading Demon's World something of a chore. Two and a half stars for this one.

I Want the Stars

Ah, but flip F-289 over, and we're in an entirely different world.

Tom Purdom is quite new to the writing scene. Over the past few years, he has been published in several of the sf mags, with stories ranging in quality from two to four stars.

Now, his first novel is out, and it's something of a revolution in and of itself.

Hundreds of years from now, after several near brushes with atomic extinction, humanity has reached the stars. Not just the nearby stars but the entire galaxy is open to our hyperspace drives. But we do not expand to conquer; Purdom subscribes to Arthur C. Clarke's notion that our species will never expand to space until we make peace with ourselves. Consistent with that, all of the other starfaring races are also peaceful beings. War is a concept confined to the planet-bound races.

With the exception of the telepathic, xenophobic Horta. On a planet 60,000 light years from Earth, they are in the last stages of subjugating the amphibian Sordini. And there to witness, perhaps even stop the event, are five humans: three women and two men. Raised in Terran tradition, they have never known want or strife. Yet they are restless, impelled by some inner desire they cannot name.

Combat with the Horta causes the death of the woman who planned the expedition. The rest, scarred by her passing, and the rigors of combat with psionic aliens, numbly continue their tour of the galaxy. They are looking for some key that will allow them to confront, perhaps defeat, the Horta before they pose a threat to the peace of the galaxy.

One possibility lies with a mysterious race called the Borg. Aliens from another galaxy, they have made it their mission to enlighten the warlike races still lacking space travel. They welcome representatives from any world to a sort of university planetoid, where they are given a decades-long course in history and philosophy whose end result is yet unknown to any of the students.

Our viewpoint humans enroll in the school, but long before their courses are complete, conflict breaks out on the planetoid. This, of course, is inevitable — most of the student races are pre-starfaring, and many are jealous of the technologies the starfarers possess. The arrival of the humans creates the catalyst for a bloody fight, a civil conflict that the Borg do nothing to stop. The Terrans demand to know the Borg's true intentions: are they really cosmic benefactors, or are they sowing the seeds of galactic strife? The answer, one way or another, promises to overturn the order of civilization.

What a fascinating book this is, by turns riproaring adventure, interesting philosophical rumination, and portrayal of an unique and plausible future for humanity. Per the author's foreword,

"I like adventure stories when it's well done…but I think…that means above all it has to be believable. For one thing, if the characters are future people, then they should be different from present day people. And their social customs and politics should be different, too. I can't believe in–which means I can't enjoy–space adventures in which the characters all seem to be people just like Twentieth Century Americans from a society just like Twentieth Century America…"

You will not find contemporary people in this story — the headstrong protagonist Jenorden, gentle Veneleo, haunted Theleo, resourceful Elinee, they are at once relatable yet different. There is no distinction or inequality between men and women, and there is a strong suggestion of polyamory amongst the crew (or at least flexible relationships without jealousy). Purdom lays out the motivations of his characters, and then lets the story flow from those precepts rather than conventional, modern-day ones.

It's not a perfect story. Purdom is not as good at depicting battle as Bova. The novel's parts don't tie together in a perfect through-line (although, to be fair, neither does life!) And the ending is a little abrupt — I understand it had to be cut from 50,000 to 40,000 words in the 11th hour.

Still, I Want the Stars is a true science fiction novel, one of my favorites of the year. What an accomplishment for the first time out!

Four stars.

Tallying the Score

Though the Bulmer is too minor and conventional a piece for recommendation, both Star Watchman and I Want the Stars show that science fiction affords a fresh look at old topics. Indeed, per Purdom, "just by telling an exciting story, I think I've ended up saying more about nuclear weapons, love, death, the meaning of life, and what it is to be human, than if I had sat down and tried to write about all those things."

Sounds like the crashing of the British "new wave" on American shores. Leave it to the youngsters to lead a revolution in our genre!

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

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Book

[October 18, 1964] Out in Space and Down to Earth (October's Galactoscope #1)

October 18, 2019 Victoria Silverwolf 3 Comments

There were quite a lot of books to catch up on this month, but two of them stood out for their quality. As a result, they're going to get full-length treatments, and the other books we read will be dealt with later. So please enjoy these exciting offerings, reviewed by two of the Journey's finest writers…

by Victoria Silverwolf

No Man on Earth, by Walter Moudy

Cover art by Richard Powers

Mister Moudy, Mysterious Missourian

Here's a writer who is completely new to me. In fact, after doing a little research, I believe that he is new to all readers. As far as I can tell, this is his first published work of fiction.

Beyond that interesting fact, I have been able to discover very little about the author. He comes from the Show Me state; he's an attorney; and his middle name is Frank. The book is dedicated to his wife, Marguerite.

In a way, it's a good thing to approach a novel without any preconceptions about the person who wrote it. We predict that certain elements will appear in a work by Heinlein or Bradbury. I have no idea what to expect from Walter Frank Moudy, so I hope I can provide an objective look at this fledgling effort.

Child of Violence

If you were to tear off the covers of this book — not that I suggest actually doing such a horrible thing — and hand it to me without the blurbs that appear on front and back, it would take me quite a while to figure out that it's a science fiction novel. The first few chapters make it seem like a backwoods fantasy, something like a darker version of the stories of the wandering balladeer John, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for some time now. (They can also be found in the collection Who Fears the Devil?, published last year by Arkham House, if you can find a copy of this limited edition, and are willing to shell out four bucks.)

Cover art by Lee Brown Coye

The novel begins with a young woman about to give birth. Her painful memories tell us that she was raped by a man she thinks is a witch. Everything about the setting, and the woman's dialect, suggests that this takes place in a primitive settlement in the mountains. (At first I thought it was Appalachia, but later details make it clear that we're in the Ozarks.)

The villagers wait for the child to be born, intending to kill it as a unnatural monster. The woman's brother, and the local midwife, who has secrets of her own, manage to save the baby's life. The newborn boy seems to be perfectly normal, but he learns to speak by the age of six months, and grows into a super-intelligent preteen with strange powers. Both loved and hated by his mother, he runs away from home after she makes a feeble, tearful attempt to end his life.

Escape From the Reservation

We get our first hint that the novel is set in the future when we find out that the First World War took place a century and a half ago. What makes this even stranger is the fact that the mother believes it was the last war that ever took place. At this point, I wondered if the villagers were so isolated they knew nothing about recent history. That didn't make sense, because there's a school nearby with plenty of books. Was this some kind of alternate time line? The truth turned out to be quite different.

In fact, the villagers live in a reservation, separate from the rest of the USA in the late 21st Century, and are deliberately kept ignorant about the modern world around them. The midwife is actually an observer, studying their culture. The boy is the only resident ever to make his way out of the reservation, thanks to his superhuman intelligence. He manages to survive, and even thrive, in this strange new world, eventually becoming enormously wealthy, due to his ability to create highly advanced inventions.

Searching the Galaxy for a Father

The young man uses all his acquired money and power to build the world's first faster-than-light spaceship. This technology threatens to upset the balance of power, which could lead to Armageddon. (In this future world, there was a limited atomic war. After this disaster, both sides of the Cold War worked together to make sure that neither gained any advantage over the other. The FTL drive could destroy this uneasy peace.)

The protagonist wants to explore the cosmos, determined to find the humanoid alien who impregnated his mother. In order to ensure that he does not return the spaceship to Earth and reveal its secrets to either power, he is accompanied by a female Russian cosmonaut and a male American astronaut, each keeping watch over the other. Acting on the orders of the President of the United States, a Federal law official is also along for the ride. His mission is to ensure that the spaceship does not return at all, even if it means killing the young man, of whom he has grown very fond.

What follows is a series of encounters with several different alien species, mostly very similar to human beings. After many adventures, the main character eventually tracks down his father, leading to the dramatic conclusion.

A Very Mixed Bag

This is an unusual science fiction novel, not quite like anything else I've ever read. In addition to reminding me of Wellman, as I've mentioned, it also brought to mind traces of Philip K. Dick, A. E. van Vogt, and Theodore Sturgeon. That's a quartet of very different writers, and I'm probably greatly misleading you by mentioning their names.

The book consists of many highly varied sections, told from several points of view. One particularly interesting chapter consists of multiple first person narratives, relating how different alien societies, from primitive to advanced, react to the human visitors.

Despite its frequent changes of mood, the author manages to make the novel into a coherent whole. (One chapter, late in the book, can only be described as a bedroom farce. Even this lighthearted interlude turns out to be relevant to later events.)

The complex plot always kept my interest. The characters, for the most part, are fully developed and win the reader's empathy. (The fate of one character, whom I have not even mentioned, comes as a real shock, about halfway through the book.)

The story has a fair amount of sexual content, particularly for a paperback science fiction novel. This, by itself, shouldn't bother mature readers, but one scene repelled me. Without giving anything away, let's just say that it reminded me of the late Ian Fleming's James Bond novel The Spy Who Loved Me, which contains this statement from the female narrator.

All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful.

Cover art by Richard Chopping, for what is generally considered to be the worst Bond novel

Like this quote, the scene in question made my skin crawl, particularly after the author effectively conveyed the young woman's horror of being raped at the very start of the story. Readers are also likely to find the end of the novel disturbing, in a similar way.

Despite my serious concerns about the book's treatment of sexual violence, overall I thought it was a good novel, particularly for a first effort.

Four stars.

by Cora Buhlert

Davy by Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn has been writing science fiction under his own name for thirteen years at this point and was apparently writing under other names before that. However, none of his stories have been translated into German and the availability of English language science fiction magazines is spotty at best. Therefore, I had never encountered Pangborn's work before, when I came across his latest novel Davy in my local import bookstore.

Davy does not look like a typical science fiction novel. It's a hardback, for starters, with a plain cover enlivened only by a drawing of a man's hand holding a French horn. However, the cover is completely appropriate, because Davy is not your typical science fiction novel. Besides, a French horn plays an important part in the story.

Davy is set approximately three hundred years after a nuclear war, followed by various natural disasters, wiped out most of North America and threw what remained back into the dark ages. The North Eastern US has been reduced to small fiefdoms and walled towns besieged by mutated beasts that roam the wilderness. The Holy Murcan Church rules over all, hoarding forbidden knowledge from the "Old Time" and keeping the population in ignorance. Though the reader will have to infer this for themselves, because Davy takes the form of a memoir written by the titular character, with occasional footnotes and asides from Davy's wife Nickie and good friend Dion.

Coming of Age in the Post-Apocalypse

In a rambling and roundabout way, Davy tells us that he was born in brothel, which is why he has no last name, raised in an orphanage and eventually sold as a bond servant to an innkeeper. Though he has little formal education, Davy is intelligent. By his early teens, he begins to question church doctrine, though he wisely keeps his doubts to himself, as heretics are mercilessly executed. Davy dreams of running away and eventually does, after the stealing the French horn seen on the cover from a "mue" – a mutant Davy had befriended in defiance of church doctrine – accidentally killing a city guard and losing his virginity to Emmia, the innkeeper's daughter.

We get a blow by blow account of the latter event. As a matter of fact, Davy talks quite a lot about his sexual adventures, which frequently involve wrestling his partners into submission. Davy certainly gives a lot more room to sexual matters than is common even in the fairly liberal science fiction genre. Readers who are uncomfortable with such scenes may want to skip this novel.

After his escape, Davy falls in with a group of deserters from one of the many skirmishes between the various fiefdoms, finds his father and eventually joins a troupe of travelling entertainers named Rumley's Ramblers, where his self-taught horn playing skills come in handy. After his father's death, Davy sets out on his own and meets Nickie, the love of his life, who is not just an aristocratic lady posing as a man, but also puts him touch with a secret underground society of heretics who try to preserve "Old Time" knowledge. Via Nickie, Davy meets her cousin Dion, monarch of the nation of Nuin (which roughly corresponds to modern day Massachusetts). Both Nickie and Dion and much of the Nuin aristocracy are casually described as black, while Davy himself is white and redhaired, racial prejudice having thankfully died out along with the pre-apocalyptic world.

Together, Dion, Nickie and Davy try to introduce reforms and break the stranglehold of the church. They lose and are driven out of the country. A ship takes them and a few followers to the Azores, where they settle down and build a utopian colony. The memoir is written during Davy's time aboard the ship. The novel ends with Davy planning to sail to Europe, after Nicky has died in childbirth, giving birth to a mutated baby that did not survive either.

A Unique Narrator

Davy's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, for it is Davy's first person narration with all its charming idiosyncrasies that makes what could have been a standard post-apocalyptic yarn come to life. However, Davy is also given to digressions and if he decides to interrupt the ongoing story to talk about a storm at sea, the difficulties of making reading glasses without "Old Time" tools or to give us an overview of the various fiefdoms of his home region and their major cities, all of which bear the corrupted names of cities in the North Eastern US (which is probably more interesting to someone actually from the region, whereas I found myself constantly referring to a Rand McNally road atlas, trying to figure out what the names might stand for), the reader has no choice but to follow along. Many of Davy's digressions are fascinating, others are just dull. Furthermore, Davy also tends to skip over parts of his life – for example, he mentions taking part in a war to expel pirates from Cape Cod, but we never see this undoubtedly exciting episode.

Not Your Typical Science Fiction Novel

In the past fifteen years, nuclear war and its aftermath have become both a timely and popular subject for science fiction, resulting in such varied works as A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett, "That Only a Mother" by Judith Merril, On the Beach by Nevil Shute, Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank or The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. Davy shares some DNA with these works and borrows the post-apocalyptic theocracy trying to suppress knowledge from The Long Tomorrow and The Chrysalids and the state-sanctioned murder of mutants from "That Only a Mother" and again, The Chrysalids, while the tale of a young man from humble origins making his way in the world is reminiscent of the various juveniles of Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton. But in spite of superficial similarities with other works, Davy is its own thing, a science fiction novel that doesn't feel very science fictional.

At heart, Davy is a Bildungsroman, reminiscent of such 18th century novels as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding as well as last year's successful film adaptation thereof. If we are looking for a modern day literary comparison, Davy is far closer to John Barth's 1960 novel The Sot-Feed Factor (and indeed Pangborn tuckerises Barth as an author of forbidden texts from the "Old Time") than to anything found in the pages of Analog, even if parts of Davy appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in February and March 1962.

A highly enjoyable picaresque adventure in a post-apocalyptic New England.

Four and a half stars.

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

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Message from the Eocene by Margaret St. Clair (Ace Double M-105)

Three World of Futurity by Margaret St. Clair

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction