Tag Archives: Gordon R. Dickson

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[Oct. 26, 1961] Fading Fancy (November 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Have you ever ordered your favorite dessert only to find it just doesn't satisfy like it used to?  I'm a big fan of crème brûlée, and I used to get it every chance I could.  That crispy carmelized top and that warm custard bottom, paired with a steaming cup of coffee…mmm. 

These days, however, crème brûlée just hasn't done it for me.  The portions are too small, or they serve the custard cold.  The flavor doesn't seem as bold, the crust as crispy.  I've started giving dessert menus a serious peruse.  Maybe I want pie this time, or perhaps a slice of cake.

Among my subscription of monthly sf digests, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction used to be my dessert — saved for last and savored.  These days, its quality has declined some, and though tradition will keep it at the end of my review line-up, I don't look forward to reading the mag as much as once I did.  This month's, the November 1961 issue, is a typical example of the new normal for F&SF:

Keith Laumer is an exciting newish author whose work I often confuse with Harry Harrison's — probably because Retief reminds me of "Slippery Jim" diGriz.  Laumer has a knack for creating interesting sentient non-humans.  He gave us intelligent robot tanks in Combat Unit, and this month, he gives us sentient, symbiotic trees in Hybrid.  It's a story that teeters on the edge of greatness, but its brevity and rather unpleasant ending drag it from four to three stars.

The Other End of the Line is the first new story from Walter Tevis in three years.  Ever wonder what happens if you break a bootstrap paradox (i.e. one where your future self gives your present self a leg up)?  Well…it's not a good idea.  Cute stuff.  Three stars.

Rick Rubin is back with his second story, the first being his excellent F&SF-published Final Muster.  The Interplanetary Cat is a weird little fantasy involving an incorrigible feline with an insatiable appetite.  It's almost Lafferty-esque, which means some will love it, and some will hate it.  I'm in the middle.  Three stars.

Faq' is the latest by George P. Elliott, whose Among the Dangs was a minor masterpiece.  Elliott's new story is in the same vein — a Westerner who finds a fictional yet plausible tribe of people, alien from any we currently know.  It's got a nice, dreamy style to it, but it lacks the depth or the powerful conclusion of Dangs.  Three stars.

Doris Pitkin Buck is another F&SF new author.  Green Sunrise, like Buck's last work (Birth of a Gardner), Sunrise features a lovers' squabble between a scientist man and a non-scientist woman.  Once again, the language is evocative, but the plot is weak, the impression fleeting.  Two stars.

The Tunnel Ahead is an overpopulation dystopia-by-numbers tale by Alice Glaser.  Cramped living conditions?  Check.  Algae-based food products?  Check.  Drastic, random population reduction methods?  Check.  Two stars?  Check. 

Randy Garrett's been skulking around F&SF lately, but I don't know that it has been to the magazine's benefit.  Mustang is essentially Kit Reed's Piggy, but not as good.  Two stars.

Dethronement is Isaac Asimov's latest article, a sort of screed written in response to a bad review of his Intelligent Man's Guide to Science by biologist Barry Commoner.  The latter objected to the former's obliteration of the line between non-living and living matter.  This, Commoner maintained, destroyed the field of biology entirely.  The Good Doctor explains that finding bridges between disciplines does not destroy the disciplines any more than bridging Manhattan with the other four burroughs of New York makes Manhattan no longer an island.  It's a good piece.  Four stars.

Alfred Bester covers Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land in his books column.  He didn't like it either. 

John Updike has a bit of doggerel about scandalous neutrinos called Cosmic Gall.  It is followed by Algis Budrys' rather impenetrable article on science fiction, About Something Truly Wonderful.  Both rate two stars. 

Part 2 of Gordy Dickson's Naked to the Stars rounds out the otherwise lackluster issue.  It deserves its own article, but you're going to have to wait for it, since Rosemary Benton and Ashley Pollard will be covering some exciting scientific developments, first.  I'll give you a hint — they involve the biggest rocket and the biggest boom.

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[September 29, 1961] Slim Pickings (October 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Each month, I look forward to my dose of new science fiction stories delivered in the form of digest-sized magazines.  Over the decade that I've been subscribing, I've fallen into a habit.  I start with my first love, Galaxy (or its sister, IF, now that they are both bi-monthlies).  I then move on to Analog, formerly Astounding.  I save The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy for last.  This is because it has been, until recently, the best of the digests– my dessert for the month, as it were. 

These days, the stories aren't as good.  Moreover, this time around, the latter third of the magazine was taken up with half a new Gordy Dickson short novel, which I won't review until it finishes next month.  As a result, the remaining tales were short and slight, ranging from good to mediocre.

In other words, not a great month for F&SF, especially when you consider that the novels they print seem to be hacked down for space (if the longer versions that inevitably are printed in book form are any indication).  Nevertheless, it is my duty to report what I found, so here it is, the October 1961 F&SF:

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who is not exactly a science fiction author but dabbles in the arena, leads with Harrison Bergeron.  It's a deceptively juvenile satire against Conformity and Communism, and while it may not impress upon first reading, it stays with you.  Four stars.

One of my favorite new authors is Rosel George Brown, and I have to give her credit for being willing to take chances.  The Ultimate Sin, however, is a bit avante garde for me.  Something about a social misfit interstellar explorer who finds a planet where gravity depends on whim rather than mass, and where the entire ecology is a unit, its pieces constantly consuming each other and exchanging knowledge in the process.  I didn't like it at first, but as with the first story, I found it engaging in retrospect.  Three stars.

Charles G. Finney's The Captivity isn't science fiction at all; it's more an analysis of captivity on humans, particularly when they discover that they aren't really captives at all.  What is there left to push against when external forces are removed?  Only each other, and themselves.  Three stars.

Robert E. Lee at Moscow is Evelyn E. Smith's attempt at satire this issue.  She's produced some real doozies, but this one, an extreme logical extension of turning our political ambassadors into cultural ambassadors, falls flat.  There is a laugh-inducing line on the last page, however.  Two stars.

The half-posthumous team of Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth bring us The World of Myrion Flowers, which tells the tale of a driven Black philanthropist whose attempts to raise a cadre of Negro executives end unhappily.  The moral: it's best when a disdained class doesn't have too clear an idea of what the favored class thinks of them.  I can only imagine what insanity I would derive from having telepathy while living in 1930s Germany.  Three stars.

Isaac Asimov hasn't written much fiction lately, and when he does, it tends to be old fashioned.  So it is with The Machine That Won the War, a very slight computer-related piece that probably got accepted more out of respect for the author than for its quality.  Two stars.

Meanwhile, George Langelaan, the Paris-born Britisher who penned The Fly in '57 brings us The Other Hand, a macabre story of digits that move as if possessed, compelling their owners to strange activities.  Rather overwrought and archaic.  Two stars.

If Asimov's fiction fails to impress, his fact remains entertaining.  That's About the Size of It is all about the comparative sizes of Earth's animals, all done logarithmically for easy data manipulation.  It turns out that people are medium-biggish creatures, all things considered.  Four stars.

The Vat is Avram Davidson's latest, featuring a bit of alchemy and misadventure.  Short but readable.  Three stars.

Grendel Briarton's latest pun, Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: XLIV, is as always, perhaps a bit more.

And that leaves us with Dickson's Naked to the Stars (Part 1 of 2), which I'll cover next week.  All in all, a 3-star issue that will not revulse but neither will it much impress.  Faint praise, indeed.

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[September 18, 1961] Balancing Act (October 1961 Analog)

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Science fiction digests are a balancing act.  An editor has to fill a set number of pages every month relying solely on the stories s/he's got at her/his disposal.  Not to mention the restrictions imposed if one wants to publish an "all-star" or otherwise themed issue. 

Analog has got the problem worst of all of the Big Three mags.  Galaxy is a larger digest, so it has more room to play with.  F&SF tends to publish shorter stories, which are more modular.  But Analog usually includes a serialized novel and several standard columns leaving only 100 pages or so in which to fit a few bigger stories.  If the motto of The New York Times is "All the news that's fit to print," then Analog's could well be, "All the stories that fit, we print."

How else to explain the unevenness of the October 1961 Analog?  The lead novella, Lion Loose, by James Schmitz, is 60 pages of unreadability.  It's a shame since Schmitz has written some fine work before, but I simply unable to finish this tale of space piracy and teleporting animals.  Your mileage may vary.  One star.

Gordie Dickson's Love Me True fares better, though it is a bit Twilight Zone-esque.  Space explorer risks all to bring a cute fuzzy-wuzzy back from Alpha Centauri as a pet.  In the end, it turns out the bonds of domestication run the other way.  Nicely written, but the idea is two decades behind the times.  Three stars.

The Asses of Balaam is Randall Garrett's contribution, under the pseudonym "David Gordon" used by many Analog writers.  It's the best piece in the book (didn't expect that from Garrett!), a first contact story told from the point of view of some all-too human aliens.  I particularly appreciated the imaginative setting, the priority placed on ecological conservation, and the cute (if not unpredictable) twist at the end.  I must say – Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics have become axiomatic to all science fiction.  Four stars. 


by Schoenherr

Now, the science fact column of Analog is the worst of those included in the Big Three mags, usually filled with the crankiest of crank hypotheses.  I have to give credit to editor Campbell's printing of Report on the Electric Field Rocket, by model rocketeer, G. Harry Stine.  This report is, in fact, an experimental refutation of H.C. Dudley's dubious proposal to use the Earth's electric field to help launch rockets.  Actual science!  Three stars.

Harry Harrison's Sense of Obligation continues, to be completed next issue.  It's reminiscent of Harrison's excellent Deathworld in that it features a man made superhero by virtue of having grown up on a hostile planet.  Sense is not as good as Deathworld, though.  Full rating when it finishes.

That leaves The Man Who Played to Lose, another disappointing outing from a normally good author, in this case, Laurence Janifer (writing as "Larry M. Harris).  Interstellar Super Spy is sent to a planet in the throes of civil war.  His job is to stop the insurrection – by making it too successful!  A smug, implausible story, with far too much preaching at its tail.  Two stars.

This all adds up to a sub-par score of 2.6 stars out of 5.  This is not the worst Analog has gotten, but it's not all that unusual, either.  This is why it usually takes me the longest to get through an issue of Campbell's magazine.

Next up… a special article from a surprising source!

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[July 27, 1961] Breaking a Winning Streak (August 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Take a look at the back cover of this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction.  There's the usual array of highbrows with smug faces letting you know that they wouldn't settle for a lesser sci-fi mag.  And next to them is the Hugo award that the magazine won last year at Pittsburgh's WorldCon.  That's the third Hugo in a row. 

It may well be their last.

I used to love this little yellow magazine.  Sure, it's the shortest of the Big Three (including Analog and Galaxy), but in the past, it boasted the highest quality stories.  I voted it best magazine for 1959 and 1960. 

F&SF has seen a steady decline over the past year, however, and the last three issues have been particularly bad.  Take a look at what the August 1961 issue offers us:

Avaram Davidson and Morton Klass's The Kappa Nu Nexus, about a milquetoast Freshman who joins a fraternity that hosts a kooky set of time travelers.  Davidson's writing, formerly some of the most sublime, has gotten unreadably self-indulgent, and William Tenn's brother (Klass) doesn't make it any better.  One star.

Survival Planet, by Harry Harrison, features the remnant colony of the vanquished Great Slavocracy.  It's not a bad story, but it's mostly told rather than shown, the book-ends being highly expositional.  Three stars.

Vance Aandahl, as one of my readers once observed, desperately wants to be Ray Bradbury.  His Cogi Drove His Car Through Hell has the virtue of starring a non-traditional protagonist; that's the only virtue of this mess.  One star.

Juliette, translated from the French by Damon Knight (it is originally by Claude-François Cheiniss), is a bright spot.  It's a sort of cross between McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang and Young's Romance in a Twenty-First Century Used Car Lot.  I found it effective, written in that Gallic light fashion.  Four stars.

For the life of me, I couldn't tell you the point of E. William Blau's first printed story, The Dispatch Executive.  Something about a bureaucratic dystopia, or perhaps it's a special kind of hell for office clerks.  Hell is right, and here's hoping we don't see Blau in print again.  One star.

Then we have another comparatively bright spot: Kit Reed's Piggy.  Per the author, it is "the story of Pegasus, although I don't remember that his passengers spouted verse, and a mashup of first lines from Emily Dickinson, whom I admired, but never liked."  There's no question that it's beautifully written, but there is not much movement as regards to plot.  Three stars.

A Meeting on a Northern Moor, Leah Bodine Drake's poem on the decline of Norse mythology is evocative, though brief.  Murray Leinster's The Case of the Homicidal Robots is a turgid mystery-adventure involving the spacenapping of dozens io interstellar vessels.  Three and two stars, respectively.

Winona McClintic is back with Four Days in the Corner, some kind of ghost story.  It's worse than her last piece, and that's nothing to be proud of.  Two stars.

Then we have Asimov's science fact column, The Evens Have It, on the frequency of nuclear isotopes among the elements.  The Good Doctor's articles are usually the high point of F&SF for me, but this one is the first I'd ever characterize as "dull."  Three stars, but you'll probably give it a two.

Rounding things up is Gordon Dickson's The Haunted Village, about a traveler who vacations in a village whose inhabitants are hostile to outsiders.  The twist?  There is no outside world – only the delusion that such a thing exists.  Dickson is capable of a lot better.  Two stars.

I often say that I read bad fiction so you don't have to.  This was especially true this month.  While Galaxy was quite good (3.4 stars), both Analog and F&SF clocked in at 2.2. 
For those of you new to the genre and wondering why they should bother (why I should bother), I promise – it's not all like this.  Please don't let it all be like this…

Coming up next: The sci-fi epic, Mysterious Island!

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Magazine

[June 9, 1961] Common denominator (July 1961 IF)

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Science fiction digests, those monthly magazines filled with s-f short stories, are often like little anthologies.  Editors will let their "slush pile" stack up, and when they have enough of a kind of piece, they publish them in a themed issue.

I don't know whether the theme of the July 1961 IF science fiction was intentional or not, but it definitely focuses on the issues of over-population and over-mechanization.  That is, in the future, there will be too many of us, and we won't have a whole lot to do. 

I'm not particularly concerned about the former.  We live on a big planet, and although our presence on it definitely has an impact, I don't think living space is going to be an issue for a long time, if ever.  On the other hand, the latter topic holds a strong fascination for me. 

We've already seen a precipitous drop in the percentage of people employed in agriculture.  Industry looks like it will shed workers soon, too, as the use of robots increases.  That leaves the nebulous "service" sector, whose added value to our lives seems rather arbitrary.  Eventually, I foresee a world where no one has to grow or build anything…and then what will work mean to us?

It's a worthy topic for discussion.  Sadly, the writing in the July 1961 IF fails to impress and often downright disappoints.  Here's what we've got:

Jim Harmon is an often lackluster IF perennial.  His novelette The Planet with no Nightmare, involves an insomniac space explorer and the strange planetoid he and his two crewmates discover.  On said world, the animals play dead when startled, but when no one's watching, they disappear.  It has a promising opening, but the end is no great shakes.  Three stars.

Then there's William Stuart, who started with a bang and hasn't quite recreated his initial spark.  The Real Hard Sell tells of a salesman in a world where selling is the only human profession remaining.  Like many of the stories in this issue, it is frightfully conventional except for its premise.  Still, as a satire of our current commercial practices, it's not bad.  Three stars.

Now brace yourself – those were the good stories of the issue.

The Stainless Steel Knight is John Rackham's attempt at humor featuring a hapless Terran agent, a faithful alien companion, and colonies that adhere to storybook milieus.  In this case, the planet the agent visits is modeled on England of the Middle Ages.  As to following the issue's theme, the story is all about the agent's mission to slay a "dragon", a leftover automated tractor/combine that threatens to put the colonists' serfs out of work.  Well, the Arthurian hijinx was better in Edward Eager's Half Magic, the Middle English better in Anderson's The High Crusade, and the medieval satire better in Pratt and De Camp's The Incomplete Enchanter.  Two stars.

Once again, James T. McIntosh saves his dreck for IF.  He often can write so well, but Doormat World, about a returned colonist taking advantage of Earth's spate of super-pacifism, is a poor, disgusting little piece.  One star.

A Taste of Tenure is a surprisingly clumsy piece by Gordon Dickson in which a businessman, promoted to the executive level, finds himself unable to discharge his predecessor's secretary, protected as she is by the government's strict "right to work" laws.  Again – interesting premise, but utterly conventional despite taking place two centuries from now, and the ending is a confused muddle.  Two stars.

Finally, we have The Junkmakers, by IF newcomer Albert Teichner.  It has a great concept: planned obsolescence taken to an absurd extreme: enormous communal potlaches are held at five year intervals and given an almost religious significance.  If there were any characters in this story, or much of a plot, it'd be a real winner.  As it is, it's the outline of a piece for someone more skilled (Cordwainer Smith?) to develop into a masterpiece.  Two stars.

So there you have it.  A collection of stories by IF's reliable stable on an interesting theme that barely breaks the two-star barrier.  This is easily the worst issue of IF I've read.  Editor Fred Pohl better start enforcing some higher standards, or I predict this magazine will end up following the path trod smooth by Infinity, Venture, Imagination, and thirty other digests born in the 50s.

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Conventions/Performances, Magazine

[March 2, 1961] Presenting… and Concluding (ConDor and March 1961 IF)

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At ConDor, a local gathering of science fiction fans, my wife and I led a panel on the state of the genre, particularly how our s-f digests are doing.  Their boom began in 1949 and peaked in 1953, when there were nearly 40 in publication.  That number is down to less than 10, and many are (as usual) predicting the end of the fun. 

While it is true that the volume of production is down, I argued that the quality is up…or at least evolving.  I used Galaxy's sister magazine IF as an example.  IF pays its writers less than Galaxy, and it is a sort of training ground for new blood.  Fred Pohl, the magazine's shadow editor, also prints more unusual stories there.  As a result, the magazine's quality is highly variable, but the peaks tend to be interesting.

Sadly, this month's IF is chock full of valleys.  You win some, you lose some.  Still, for the sake of completeness, here's my review; as always, your mileage may vary!

IF has a tradition of leading the magazine with its best stories, but IOU, by Edward Wellen, is an exception.  The premise is promising: it's about a future in which people can buy custom experiences, to be lived out upon dying to simulate the appearance of going to Heaven.  It's dull as dirt, however, and I ended up skimming the last 10 pages or so.  That automatically makes it a one-star story.  Perhaps you can tell me what I'm missing.

Then there's Jim Harmon's February Strawberries.  When a man brings his wife (most of the way) back to life, is it a technological horror or a paranoid delusion?  Macabre and second-rate, it reads like an inferior episode of The Twilight Zone.  Two stars.

Minotaur, by Gordy Dickson, is pretty effective.  A one-man scout ship happens upon a ghost cruiser in the vastness of space.  Its crew is missing, as is its cargo of zoological specimens.  I liked the spooky atmosphere, and I'm a sucker for spaceship stories, but the end is a little pat.  Three stars.

Sylvia Jacobs is back, but her second IF effort isn't much better than her first.  Strike that.  Young Man from Elsewhen, about a crippled, bitter old man, and the deal he makes with a time traveling dandy, is very well written; it's just that there are no twists or turns from Point A to Point B.  Two stars.

The first tale from Julian F. Grow, The Fastest Gun Dead, is a good one.  Westerns are still popular on the airwaves, and this story, featuring a sawbones, an unsavory shopkeeper, and an alien supergun, shows that the milieu has legs in our genre, too.  Gun is also marred by a too-cute ending, but I think Grow has a real shot at growing into a fine author.  Three stars.

Max Williams' The Seeder, is almost too short, and certainly too hackneyed to describe.  R.A. Lafferty's pleasantly whimsical In the Garden, about a starship crew that stumbles upon the second Garden of Eden, almost garnered four stars…until the last line.  Le sigh.

The issue closes with The Well of the Deep Wish by Lloyd Biggle Jr.  It is the best of the bunch, a thoughtful piece showing us the world of television production in a post-apocalyptic, subterranean future.  Three stars.

Thus, the March 1961 IF meters in at a disappointing 2.25 stars.  This explains why it took me so long to get through it!

Crunching the numbers on the Star-o-Meter 2000, we have a surprising winner for March 1961: Analog!  F&SF was just a sliver behind, however, and both were head and shoulders over IF.  All told, there were 21 stories, two of which were written by women, one of those being my favorite of the month: Zenna Henderson's Return. 

Stay tuned for a new batch of magazines, a new Frederic Brown novel, and a whole lot more…and a hearty wave to a few new fan friends that I met over the weekend: David Gerrold, John and Bjo Trimble, and Dorothy Fontana.

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[January 12, 1961] A matter of taste (February 1961 Galaxy, Part 2)

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How should I rate a story which is objectively well done, but which I just don't like? 

We taught our daughter manners at a very early age.  When she encountered a food she didn't enjoy, she was to say, "This is not to my taste," rather than something more forceful and potentially bruising of feelings.  I recognize that my readers are turned on by different things than I am; one person's trash is another's treasure, etc.  But at the end of every review, I have to come up with a numerical score, and that score necessarily reflects my views on a piece. 

This conundrum is particularly acute with the current issue of Galaxy, dated February 1961.  None of the stories are bad.  Many are well crafted, but I found the subject matter in some of them unpleasant.  But they may be the bees knees for you.  Take my reviews with that disclaimer in mind, and you should be all right.

I covered the first half the issue time-before-last.  I'd rated all of the stories a solid three stars–reader feedback indicated that they liked the stories more than I (which is what led to the musings with which I started this column).  Part two begins with C.C.MacApp's The Drug.  Is the ability to transcend one's consciousness beyond one's skull the key to eternal health and happiness?  An exploration of a fun idea as well as a pleasant slice-of-life depiction.  Three stars.

Gordy Dickson is back with An Honorable Death, contrasting a decadent but advanced Terran society with a primitive, vibrant aboriginal culture.  It's got a wicked sting in its tail.  This is one of those stories that made me uneasy, but whose quality is undeniable.  Three stars… but you may give it more.

One of my readers once said that he "bounces" off Daniel Galouye, a writer with real talent, but whose writing is not to everyone's taste.  I happen to like his stuff quite a lot, though his latest, The Chaser, about two spacewrecked fellows on a planet whose population is engaged solely in romantic games of tag, doesn't seem to have much of a point.  Three stars.

Damon Knight offers the cutting and unpleasant Auto-da-fe, about the last man on Earth and the 59 sentient canines over whom he reigns.  As he reaches his last years of life, will he allow the dogs to breed and thus become master of the Earth?  Another off-putting story of high quality.  Three stars.

Rounding things out is a delightful novelette from the master of interstellar adventure, Murray Leinster.  Doctor shows us a galactic polity of humans imperiled by a plague that appears unstoppable, but is, for the moment, limited in scope.  Just one planet has succumbed, but its sole survivor, a precocious 10-year old girl who has lived her life in an aseptic bubble, has been shipped off-world in defiance of quarantine.  Is she infected?  If so, has she doomed the inhabited universe to destruction?  Or is she the key to the plague's eradication?  Leinster's viewpoint character, the spaceship's doctor who must deal with the enormity of the situation, is a compelling one, and I greatly liked the relationship forged between him and the girl.  Four stars.

Add it all up, and you've got an issue that barely tops three stars–enjoyable, but not superlative.  I don't think that tells the whole tale, however.  Galaxy (and its sister, IF) are taking chances, and for that, they are to be commended.  I'm very interested to know how you feel about these stories.  Drop me a line, would you?

My editor says I'll get more response if I include a picture of a pretty girl and a cat…  Is she right?

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[January 2, 1961] Closing out the month (the January 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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If you are in the accounting profession, you are familiar with the concept of "closing the books," wherein you complete all your reconciliations and regard a month as finished.  Here at the Journey, Month's End does not occur until the last science fiction digest is reviewed.  Thus, though the bells have already rung for the new year of 1961, December 1960 will not officially end until I get a chance to tell you about the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction!

It's an uneven batch of stories, but definitely worth wading through the chaff for the wheat.  Avram Davidson's The Sources of the Nile combines both in roughly equal proportions.  The story begins with an encounter between the narrator, a down-on-his-luck writer, and a haggard old fellow who once was able to predict the whims of fashion with uncanny accuracy.  Is it precognition?  Time travel?  Excellent taste?  No–as the protagonist learns, the source of his success is a modest family in a modest apartment that just seems to know.  Next year's popular books, next year's clothing fads.  Well, the narrator is denied certain fortune when, after a glimpse of this locus of prescience, he loses contact with the family.  He is thus doomed, like the guy who tipped him off, to search the world for this holy grail.

Davidson has adopted an avante garde style these days.  At first, I was much impressed.  After a dozen pages of over-cute overexertion, I was tired of it.  I applaud innovation, but not at the expense of readability.  Three stars.

Then we have Vance Aandahl's The Man on the Beach, sort of a poor man's The Man Who Lost the Sea.  Aandahl is not Ted Sturgeon, and his short tale, of an astronaut who lost his ship to murderous aborigines, somehow misses the mark.  Two stars.

But then there's the ever-reliable Cliff Simak with Shotgun Cure, in which an ostensibly benevolent alien visits a country doctor (how Cliff loves those rural settings!) and offers him a cure for every illness in the world.  There's just one catch: it also lowers the intelligence of the cured.  What price health!  A fair idea told in excellent Simak style.  Four stars.

Charles De Vet's The Return Journey is also worthy: What recourse exists when a colony of Terrans expands beyond the boundaries set by treaty with the native aliens?  Sometimes the winning move is never to have played.  Four stars.

Rehabilitated, by Gordon Dickson, is a cross between Keyes' Flowers for Algernon and Sturgeon's More than Human.  A fellow seems ill-suited for work in the modern (read: near future) era.  He is rescued from a life of crime by a do-gooder outfit that rigorously trains him for a new profession: planetary colonist.  But it turns out that he is wholly unqualified for the job, having an IQ of just 92.  What was the point, then?  The organization is actually a network of telepathic misfits, all suffering from some degree of mental illness, from instability to retardation.  Working together, they maintain a balance such that each member's strengths compensate for another's weaknesses.  The training for colonization was just a a sort of dry run.  I have "Three stars" listed in my notes, but upon reflection, I think I'll bump it up to Four. 

This trio of excellence is followed by a twosome of mediocrity.  William Eastlake's What Nice Hands Held is a story of romance, infidelity, poverty, status, and magical realism in an heterogeneous Indian lodge.  Again with the trying too hard.  The other is Robert Young's silly Hopsoil, about Martians visiting a post-apocalyptic Earth and raising a most unusual crop in our oddly fertile soils.  Two stars for both.

Asimov's article this month, Here it Comes, There it Goes, is a bit of a disappointment.  It's a summary of one of the current fads in cosmology, the idea that matter is created and disintegrated continuously, and that's how the Universe is, always has been, and always will be.  The Good Doctor's arguments (which are, to be fair, not his) are not particularly compelling.  Three stars.

F&SF is trying out poetry again.  Lewis Turco's A Great Grey Fantasy didn't strike my fancy.  Perhaps it will strike yours.  Two stars.

Rounding out the issue is a tour de force from an author who has been on fire these days, Poul Anderson.  Time Lag is a gripping novelette of the attempted conquest of one Terran colony by another.  It is told from the point of view of Elva, a married mother from the peaceful, apparently pastoral planet of Vaynamo.  Her husband is killed and her village savaged by an advance party of Chertkonians lead by the ruthless Captain Bors.  Elva is forced into the position of Bors' mistress, and while Bors is not particularly cruel about it, we are never made to forget that Elva is an unwilling partner. 

Interstellar travel is a relativistic affair in this story.  The journeys between Vaynamo and Chertkoi take fifteen years of objective time even though they take only weeks of subjective time.  Thus, Time Lag is told in a punctuated series.  Through Elva's eyes, we get a glimpse of the overcrowded and polluted Chertkoi, stiflingly authoritarian and caste-conscious.  Elva is taken along for the second assault on Vaynamo, in which the capital is atomized from orbit.  She bravely confers with a captured general under the guise of extracting intelligence and learns that the Vaynamonians, possessed of a highly advanced science themselves (as one would expect; they did come from star-travelling stock), are not quite so helpless as the Cherkonians have surmised.  Elva uses her position as consort to the increasingly prestigious Bors to obtain a degree of succor for the Vaynamonian captives, though her efforts are never entirely successful. 

The third assault from Chertkoi is the last.  Thousands of ships, the fruits of the labor of billions of oppressed souls, are unleashed against Vaynamo, a planet with a population of just ten million.  Bors, now a Fleet Admiral, is certain of his victory.  But is it really assured?

What elevates this story above a simple good-versus-evil story is the parallel drawn between the planetary and personal conflicts.  Elva has been enslaved, but she has not been defeated.  Her strengths go far beyond the blatantly visible.  Bors never breaks her; in fact, Elva quickly becomes his master, though he is never aware of the fact.  Similarly, Vaynamo does not need to win by matching the vulgar rapacity of Cherkoi; rather, the world relies on compassion, deliberateness, and immense inner strength.

Time Lag is a refreshingly feminine story from a feminine viewpoint, something which Anderson has been getting pretty good at.  I appreciated that there was no suggestion of taint upon Elva for her plight.  Like Vaynamo, she endured violations and pain, but she emerged an unbroken heroine. 

Five stars.

That comes out to an aggregate of 3.25 stars making F&SF the winning digest for the month (IF was just behind at 3.2, and Analog trailed far behind at 2.5).  I think IF wins the best story prize, however, with Vassi, and IF certainly wins the "most woman authors" award, with two (the only ones to appear in all three magazines).

And now 1961 can truly begin!

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[September 1, 1960] Looking up (October 1960 Galaxy, second half)

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I'm sure you've all been waiting like caught fish (with baited breath), so I shan't keep you in the dark any longer regarding the October 1960 Galaxy.  The second half of the magazine is better than the first, but it is not without its troubles.

Neal Barrett is back with his sophomore effort, The Stentorii Luggage.  This engaging little tale highlights the dangers involved in running a hotel for dozens of disparate (and mutually incompatible) alien races.  It also justifies the "no pets" policy common to most places of lodging. 

A Fall of Glass gets my nomination for the best story of the issue.  This is also a second effort, by Stanley R. Lee, in this case.  Breezy, light touch tales are hard to pull off, but I think Lee has managed in this one, a romance set inside a climate-controlled, post-apocalyptic dome.  Superficially similar to World in a Bottle in subject matter, but far better in execution.

That brings us to Edward Wellen's "non-fact" article, Origins of the Galactic Short-Snorter.  It's an unwieldy title, to be sure, and these droll attempts at humor generally fall flat.  But this one, about a museum of obsolete currency, isn't bad.

The one familiar name in the issue is Gordon Dickson.  He can usually be counted on to turn in a decent story; his The Hours are Good is rather masterful.  It's not the vaguely futuristic setting or the details of the plot that stand out.  What distinguishes this thriller is the measured, deliberate way Dickson reveals what's going on in, culminating in a nice kicker.  I like stories that show rather than tell, and it's all show in this one.

Sadly, the issue doesn't stop there.  It's final tale, David Duncan's The Immortals, is a loser.  In brief: the inventor of immortality wants to know the effects his efforts will have on civilization.  He enlists the aid of a computer simulations expert.  When the projection shows that everlasting life leads to cultural torpor, the pair insert themselves into the simulation to learn more.

Duncan's story is B-Movie fare.  The idea that a computer could predict the future with perfect accuracy, so long as it is fed sufficient data, is silly on its face.  Anyone with a background in mathematics knows that even single equations often have several answers; many have an infinite number.  Add to that implausibility the idea that one could wander around this virtual reality and interact with its denizens using computers of current vintage…well, let's just say I'll need a splint for my strained credulity.

It's really too bad.  The societal impacts of everlasting life are worth exploring.  So is the notion of creating "life" within the memory banks of a computer.  Either would merit a novel of development.  Both get short shrift in this clunky novelette.

In more positive news, my family enjoyed a lovely, sunset stroll down Grand Avenue in nearby Escondido a few days ago.  I picked up copies of my reading material for this month, so you can expect reviews of Sheckley and Sturgeon in short order.

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[August 9, 1960] Destructive Pages (the September 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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I've said before that I like my reading to be light and pleasant.  Not exclusively, mind you, but I find the current trend toward the depressing to be… well… depressing.  This month's F&SF is the bleakest I've yet encountered, and under normal circumstances, it would not have been to my taste.  On the other hand, being near Hiroshima on August 6 and then near Nagasaki on August 9, fifteen years after they became testing grounds for a terrible new weapon, is enough to put even the cheeriest of persons into a somber mood, and my choice of reading material proved to be quite complementary.

As usual, I lack the rights to distribute F&SF stories, so you'll just have to buy the mag if you want the full scoop, but I'll do my best to describe the stories in detail.

Poul Anderson starts things off with the The Word to Space.  In this novelette, Project OZMA, humanity's first concerted effort to scan the stars for communications broadcasts, bears almost immediate fruit, discovering a star with intelligent life just 25 light years away.  Unfortunately, the focus of these aliens is proselytizing their strange religion, and with dialogue between planets essentially impossible, a century goes by with Earth learning frustratingly little about its cosmic neighbor.  In the end, the alien theocracy is toppled when humanity requests clarification on some of the finer points of their creed; they just aren't equipped to handle religious debate.  It's too bad none of the aliens were Jewish–we love quibbling over religious details.

Then we have A Day in the Suburbs, a delightfully barbed tale by Evelyn Smith about what housewives really have to deal with when their husbands go to work.  The feuds between the "flat-roofs" and the "peaked-roofs" make the squabbles of the Jets and the Sharks seem like a square dance.  It's a wonder any of them come out alive.

Burton Raffel's Goodbye is the first of the truly dark stories, in which a young ad exec is waylaid, imprisoned, and tortured, all to prove the efficacy of a five-day identity-removal process.  The tale is disturbingly personal, and there is never any explanation as to why this is being done or why the protagonist was chosen (he is apparently not the first, and he surely won't be the last).  Awful stuff… but then, it was meant to be.

Button, Button, by Gordon Dickson, seems almost out of place in this issue.  It's a straightforward story about a crude-mouthed boss of a space freight union, and the beautiful, fiery opera singer he rescues halfway between Earth and Venus.  Enjoyable, but it won't stay with you.

Reginald Bretnor offers up The Man on Top, about a stubborn mountaineer who, through sheer determination, makes it to the summit of one of the world's tallest mountains… only to find that someone has beaten him to the punch.  Mysticism: 1; British pluck: 0.

Isaac Asimov has a sequel, of sorts, to his article on pi.  This one is on the impossibility of "squaring the circle," which is the creation of a square with the same area of a given circle using only a straight-edge and a compass.  I'm glad the good doctor wrote this piece since it's a topic about which I've always been interested. 

On to Damon Knight's acerbic review of Walden Two.  It is, apparently, the last F&SF will see from Mr. Knight–per the editor, he will no longer be reviewing books for the magazine.  I hear, through the grapevine, that it is because Editor Robert Mills disapproved of Knight's justifiably savage critique of Judy Merril's latest book, The Tomorrow People.

Returning to fiction, we have George Elliot's The NRACP (The National Relocation Authority: Colored Persons).  If you find Goodbye to be dark, NRACP is midnight coated in pitch.  It is the portrayal of the systematic extermination of a people, from the point of view of one who has an indirect role in its execution.  I was not surprised to find that this story was originally written in 1949, when the Holocaust was still a fresh wound on the human psyche, and the existence of Israel, a refuge for those who escaped the gas chambers, was still in doubt.  For anyone who wonders how such a tragedy could occur in a civilized country, I suggest giving this tale a read. 

That brings us to Kit Reed's somehow unfinished-feeling Two in Homage, about an evil, human-sacrifice demanding God , upon whom the tables are ultimately turned.  I really should try to meet Ms. Reed someday.  We do live in the same town, after all.

Wrapping up the issue is Joseph Whitehill's Doctor Royker's Experiment.  How best to dissuade an idealist who feels science and scientists can do no wrong?  Why, make him the butt of a scientist's prank, of course.  Resentment cools even the strongest ardor.

Editor Mills saves his column for last.  In it, he asks of if we readers prefer magazines to include stories all of a type or if we prefer a greater variegation of themes.  Regardless of what we think, I gather from reading between Mills' lines that he prints what he gets, and the wave of unhappy tales is largely out of his (and our) control.  I was able to take it this time.  Here's hoping it doesn't become F&SF's signature trait.

And for those following my travels, I am currently at Tokyo's busy international airport awaiting my turn to board a sleek new Japan Air Lines DC-8 bound for home.  It's been a great trip, but I'm ready to return to familiar surroundings.  I imagine I've a huge pile of mail from my fans accumulated (and by fans, I mean advertisers and bill-collectors).

Stay tuned!

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