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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 4, 1967] Transitions (May 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

A fumbled hand-off

Americans are taught that the true importance of the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1801 is that this was the first peaceful transfer of power between rival politcal parties in history. Whether or not that’s the case, such a transfer is seen in the modern era as an indicator of a successful democracy. Apart from in the white colonial governments in Rhodesia and South Africa, this has yet to occur in sub-Saharan Africa, but for a brief moment it looked as though it was going to happen.

On March 17th in Sierra Leone, the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party lost a close election to the All People’s Congress under Siaka Stevens. Four days later, Governor-General Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston swore Stevens in as the country’s new Prime Minister. Later the same day, Brigadier David Lansana staged a coup, ordering the arrest of Stevens and Boston and declaring martial law. In the wee hours of the 23rd, a counter-coup arrested Lansana and announced that the country would now be ruled by an eight-man National Reformation Council. Initially, they said that the new head of state would be Lt. Colonel Ambrose Genda, who was part of the Sierra Leonean mission to the U. N. He was quite surprised by the news, but as he boarded a plane in London on the 27th, it was announced that the head of the council would be Lt. Colonel Andrew Juxon-Smith, who was on the same flight. Had Stevens taken power and ruled within the constitution, Sierra Leone could have been an example to the rest of post-colonial Africa. Alas, it was not to be.


Siaka Stevens (top left), Governor-General Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston (top right), Brigadier David Lansana (bottom left), Lt. Colonel Andrew Juxon-Smith (bottom right)

Steady state

There's not much variation in the quality of the stories in this month’s IF. It's more of a smooth plane with one small ding in it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but neither is it really good.

What are these robots up to? Art by Gaughan

Spaceman!, by Keith Laumer

Down on his luck and freezing to death, Billy Danger seeks shelter in what he thinks is a grain silo. To his surprise, he has inadvertently stowed away on a spaceship. The obnoxious Lord Desroy would like to shove him out an airlock, but Hunter Sir Orfeo thinks Billy can be trained as a replacement gunbearer. Also aboard is the exotically beautiful Lady Raire. When Desroy gets both himself and Orfeo killed on the planet Gar, Billy and Raire are locked out of the ship. Struggling to survive, they settle in with a tribe of collie-sized house cats. Eventually, they find a way to send a distress signal. The first group to respond kidnaps Raire and leaves Billy for dead. Billy convinces the second group to take him and his favorite cat by showing them Desroy’s ship. To be continued.


Billy wakes to find himself in strange company. Art by Castellon

Last month, I predicted this would be Laumer in semi-comic mode (based on that exclamation point). Instead, it’s more straight adventure, just not as grim as something like The Hounds of Hell.  So far, Billy is not one of Laumer’s usual extremely competent heroes, though he’s not completely hopeless either. My only complaint is that I’m going to be stuck with The Byrds in my head for the next couple of months.

A solid three stars.

The Robots Are Here, by Terry Carr

After wrapping up a major defense project, Charles Barrow discovers a phone number in his handwriting in his wallet. In an attempt to figure out what it’s for, he calls and is rudely informed he has an appointment that evening. Curious, he goes and finds himself in the offices of R.O.B.O.T., where there are no human staff. He eventually reaches the office of the head robot and learns what the robots are up to. If only he can remember.


The head robot interviews Charles Barrow. Art by Gaughan

Carr is a well-known fan who turned out several very promising stories (the Traveler is a big fan), but hasn’t put out much lately. His focus in the last couple of years seems to be more on editing, putting out one or two “Best of” anthologies. This is another strong story, though not his best. The verbal tics of the robots really shone for me, but I wonder if a high-ranking executive in the defense industry could experience what Barrow does without attracting some attention from the FBI.

A high three stars.

SF Superclubs, by Lin Carter

Carter looks at efforts to create fan clubs on the national and international scale. One of the very first was the Scienceers in 1930, whose first president was Black. Alas, Carter doesn’t dig into this interesting fact. Instead, he runs through a large number of failed attempts, the most successful of which was Gernsback’s Science Fiction League. Next month, another failure and a successful attempt.

Three stars

The Youth Addicts, by Charles W. Runyon

Just returned from his third deep-space tour, Bork Craighen learns that he has Silver Syncope. He’s going to lose all sensation and will be dead within two months. Clay, the one friend he’s made over the last seven years, finds him drowning his sorrows and desperately needs his help. Clay’s wife became addicted to memorigraf and has lapsed into a coma. He wants Bork to enter her memories and bring her out. Bork might even find a way to solve his own problem, too.


Bork has received some bad news from his doctor. Art by Bodé

I honestly can’t tell if I liked this better than it deserves or less. It limps badly in places and parts don’t make much sense, and yet I found it a compelling read. Runyon is better known for mysteries and under-the-counter books, but he also has a science fiction background. More from him would not be amiss.

Three stars.

The Long, Slow Orbits, by H. H. Hollis

Gallegher relates how he came by some interesting scars. Cyborgs are illegal on Earth and Mars, but in the asteroids they become chattel slaves. Galleg (as the narrator refers to himself) falls in with Harriet, a young woman dedicated to freeing the cyborgs and leading them in a revolution against “The Sheik”. Before they succeed, they’re trapped, and Gallegher sacrifices himself to help her get away. He’s thrown into a Klein bottle prison with no hope of escape.


Klein bottles are weird. Art by Virgil Finlay

When I saw a Gallegher story, I groaned, but this surpassed all expectations. Apart from the framing story and a weak pun at the end, this is nothing like its predecessors. Gallegher is, dare I say it, noble. He gets involved because of a pretty face, but soon believes in the cause. His escape from the Klein bottle doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but the rest is actually good.

Three very surprised stars.

The Hole, by B. K. Filer

A meteor strike has made it possible to dig over 20 miles into the Earth’s crust, exposing eons of evolutionary history. But someone keeps destroying the brain cases of the many well-preserved fossils going down to the earliest forms of life. Russ figures out who is doing it, but the why isn’t clear.

Here’s our first time author. The geology seems very suspect to me, the paleontology is dead wrong in a few places, and I’m not convinced by the motivation for the destruction. But somehow the whole is a little better than the sum of its parts. The writing itself shows some skill, so there may be hope for Filer if he tries again.

Two stars.

The Road to the Rim (Part 2 of 2), by A. Bertram Chandler

Fresh out of the Academy and on his way to his first posting, Ensign John Grimes has convinced himself to throw in with a merchant captain who’s decided to hunt pirates. A lucky find allows them to learn how the pirates are finding their prey and to set a trap. Grimes’ skills as a gunner destroy one ship, and they set out on a desperate chase to kill a second. We know Grimes will live. The real question is what will happen to his career.


An accident near a running Mannschen drive can be a terrible thing. Art by Gray Morrow

This installment shows off most of Chandler’s strengths. The action is well done, and the character moments are strong. It could have been a few pages longer to do more with the mad engineer’s prophecies and especially for Grimes to better deal with having caused the death of someone for the first time. (Also, I have no desire to spit on the mat or insult the cat’s parentage, no matter how many times I’m told this is Liberty Hall–as the character, Grimes, habitually encourages his guests.) We’ve seen Grimes as both an experienced officer reluctantly retiring and a callow youth. I look forward to seeing him as a mature adult at the peak of his strengths.

A solid three parts for this part and the novel as a whole.

Summing up

Well, that was a pretty middle-of-the-road issue. Only one story below average, and that was more weak than bad, but there’s also no stand-out story. The two novels will ultimately stand or fall on their own, and the rest will probably fade into obscurity. Is it worth your 50 cents? If you’ve got four bits burning a hole in your pocket, it’s a fair way to spend a couple of hours. Otherwise, you’re probably better off saving up for one of the novels if they appeal to you. (I still can’t believe I actually liked a Gallegher story, though.)


A new Delany. That’s more like it.




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Magazine, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 20, 1967] Vistas near and far (April 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

I see you!

We have now entered a phase of the Space Race where there's enough stuff in orbit that other stuff in orbit can take pictures of it.  Not just deliberate rendeszvous' like dual missions of Gemini 6 and 7, but snapshots of opportunity, like Gemini 11's photo of the Soviet Proton 3.

Last week, NASA released perhaps the most extraordinary example of this nature: the first snapshot of a spacecraft sent to the Moon…by a spacecraft sent to the Moon!  Lunar Orbiter 3, launched early last month, has been busily mapping our celestial neighbor, searching for the choicest landing spots for Apollo (whose first manned mission, I've just learned, has been delayed until next year due to the Apollo 1 fire.) In the course of its surveying, Lunar Orbiter 3 caught a glimpse of Surveyor 1, the first American soft-lander.  It all makes the Moon feel that much closer.

While the newspaper brings us tales of science fiction-made-fact, the stf mags continue to provide the visions of science-to-be.  The latest edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction offers several visions of the future: some poetic, some bleak, and some not really worth reading.  Good thing I'm here to tell you which is which, huh?

A pail of tomorrows


by Gray Morrow

Dawn, by Roger Zelazny

Lord Siddhartha, the Buddha, arrives as the capital for a bit of revelry.  There, he is greeted with honors, for he is a prince of this land, redolent with the smells of spice, the bustle of medieval commerce, the prayers of the devoted.  At first glance, Dawn seems as if it will be a pure fantasy in a richly drawn world.  But there are signs that underneath the veneer of ancient India lies a strictly scientific core.

Indeed, we learn quite soon that Siddhartha is actually Sam, one of the original colonists on this world, a planet whose technology has been deliberately restrained by the cabal of the Firsts and their lackeys, the Masters.  Their firm grip lies in their stranglehold on immortality, facilitated by their ability to transmigrate souls from body to body at will.

Sam wants to bring progress to the world.  Can he and his band of rebels undo the work of centuries?

Zelazny's latest novella is reportedly the first part of a longer work, to be titled "Lord of Light".  If it is as expertly rendered as this fine start, then it'll be a good read, indeed!

Four stars.

The Two Lives of Ben Coulter, by Larry Eisenberg

"The greatest disappointment of Ben Coulter's life was his inability to play the violin well."

So begins the tale of a fellow who turned instead to engineering for the purpose, failing to find it there until he co-developed a technique for the remote control of a living being.  Perhaps, at last, he could program mastery into himself.

Most science fiction authors take inspiration from the science news of the day.  Some, like Doc Smith, are actually scientists.  Larry Eisenberg is perhaps unique in the SF community for extrapolating a scientifiction application of his own invention, the remote controlled pacemaker.

His story, if not quite as personally affecting as his crowning scientific achievement, is a pleasant little piece, nonetheless.

Three stars.

Cloud Seeding, by Theodore L. Thomas

In this fictionless vignette, Thomas suggests combining cloud seeding with chemical distribution.  After all, if you're putting stuff in the sky to make rain, why not use fertilizer or poison of what have you.

Thomas forgets that the seeds for the raindrops are necessarily uselessly tiny.  I almost feel as though these little exercises are not to present interesting ideas, but are puzzles for the reader: spot the fallacy and win a hundred dollars!

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Problems of Creativeness, by Thomas M. Disch

The 21st Century is an overcrowded, socialist paradise.  Everyone is on the childless dole, unless they can prove themselves exceptional, finish college, or join the guerrila forces.  Birdie Ludd, the least exceptional of young men, doesn't want to do any of these things.  But for the love of Milly, pretty enough almost to be a movie star, he was willing to endure almost anything.

Less a story and more a slice-of-life from the perspective of an indolent youth, Problems relies mostly on a vivid stream-of-consciousness style and copious use of the first profanity I've read within F&SF's pages.

Three stars, I guess.

The Sword of Pell the Idiot, by Julian F. Grow

Farquhar Orpington-Pell, late a subaltern in Her Majesty's Own Midlothian Dragoons, falls in with a Western doctor on the late 19th Century range.  Their crooked path takes them to a subterranean complex inhabited by aliens.  Things Happen.  Supposed-to-be-funny-but-just-tedious things, capped off by the rather insulting punchline that the transpirings inspired a much better, well known set of books.

Feh.  One star.

"Virtue. 'Tis A Fugue!", by Patrick Meadows

An advanced world refuses the entreaties of humanity to join a terran federation.  Professor Thomas Gunn, a musicologist, provides the key to reaching the hearts of the aliens.  Their language is the culmination of tonality, you see, each sentence its own song.  Our hyper-efficient, sound-codified speak was too declassé to appeal.

It's all a lot of "mun, mun" to me, and in any event, the revelation came out of nowhere.  Indeed, Gunn's story and that of the contact team are completely unrelated until he suddenly appears on the planet in the story's last scenes.

Two stars.

A Matter of Scale, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor goes way out with his latest article.  You know those "the sun is a beachball, and the planets are various small fruit several hundred feet away" models you read in all the science books for kids?  He's decided to go one better, substituting atomic analogs so the distances can be more relatable.

I'm sure it was a fun exercise for him.

Three stars.

Randy's Syndrome, by Brian W. Aldiss

Lastly, another tale of the next, shoulder-to-shoulder, anti-utopian 21st Century.  The foetuses of the world go on strike, refusing to be born into such an awful place.  But is it really a mass strike of the unborn, happy in their womb world of racial memory and distorted, second-hand sensory inputs?  Or is it some kind of planetary neurosis of the mothers?

Whatever it is, it's not science fiction, more a modern myth.  Some might find it clever.

Two stars.

Under the Moon

After such a bright beginning, the April 1967 F&SF stumbles to a finish.  I recognize that science fiction is cautionary as well as aspirational, but I feel one needs to say more than "this future we're heading toward is gonna stink..and by the way, the future is now." 

The Zelazny is worth your time, however.

And, hey, at least the newspaper brings us pretty pictures!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 14, 1967] Family Matters (April 1967 Amazing)

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Today is the LAST day you can nominate for the Hugos.  Please consider voting for Galactic Journey for Best Fanzine.  And here are all the other categories we and our associates are eligible for this year!


by John Boston

The April Amazing splashes an impressive array of marquee names on the cover: Hugo winners Frank Herbert and Philip K. Dick, the well-remembered sardonic satirist William Tenn, and Richard Matheson and Jerome Bixby, famous not only from the printed page but from celebrated Twilight Zone episodes made from their stories.  The once prominent David H. Keller, M.D., is relegated to the inside of the magazine.


by Frank R. Paul

This blaze of celebrity serves to distract from the cover itself, which looks like it emerged from one of Frank R. Paul’s off days, though that is partly the fault of the present editorial regime; the picture is drastically cropped from its first appearance on the back cover of the July 1946 Fantastic Adventures, where it was considerably more impressive, though still far from the artist’s best.

This is one of the magazine’s accidental theme issues; I can’t speak for the serial yet, but the majority of the short fiction is at least partly preoccupied with domesticity, its meaning and its travails.

The Heaven Makers (Part 1 of 2), by Frank Herbert


by Gray Morrow

Frank Herbert’s The Heaven Makers is a two-part serial, and as usual I will wait for the end before commenting.  The blurb says it “offers the chilling hypothesis that all the world really is a stage with each of us . . . its players.” How many times have we read that one?  To be fair, new ideas are scarce these days, and treatment is all; it’s not the meat, it’s the motion, as a salacious old blues song has it.  A quick glance at the first page reveals the dense and turgid writing for which Herbert has become known.  To be fair (again), his virtues sometimes take longer to announce themselves than his faults.

The Last Bounce, by William Tenn


by Henry Sharp

William Tenn’s The Last Bounce, from the September 1950 Fantastic Adventures, is a remarkably bad story for the writer who at the time was several years past the classic Child’s Play and whose almost as well-known Null-P was a few months away.  It’s a tale of stellar exploration, complete with mystery planet, deadly monsters, scientific mumbo-jumbo, and clichéd characters and dialogue.  There’s even an embarrassing spacemen’s anthem, which shows up more than once.  And domesticity (or its absence) rears its head!  There is considerable musing about Why Men Risk All to Brave the Unknown and Why Their Women Put Up With It and Wait for Them.  It would be nice to be able to read this as satire, but I can’t convince myself.  More likely, Tenn made a barroom bet that he could write the most hackneyed piece of tripe he was capable of and some editor would buy it.  You win!  One star.

A Biological Experiment, by David H. Keller, M.D.

David H. Keller, M.D., is here with A Biological Experiment, from Amazing, June 1928—his third published story.  The blurb says, correctly, that it anticipates 1932’s Brave New World.  (You know the one about tragedy and farce?  Here it’s the other way around.) Here is a veritable epic of domestic relations.  Like Keller’s first story, Revolt of the Pedestrians, this one posits an extreme departure from our natural (well, familiar) social arrangements followed by a drastic reaction and restoration of the traditional.  Unfortunately there’s entirely too much talk here, and the action that follows it is cartoonish.


by Frank R. Paul

In the far future everyone is sterilized at an appropriate age; marriage is “companionate,” easily terminable, and babies are made in factories and provided to couples who apply for and obtain the necessary permit.  But Leuson and Elizabeth, a couple of young rebels, want to go back to the old ways.  Why?  Because no one is happy!  Love has disappeared from the world! 

So says Leuson, towards the end of a seven-page monologue.  (Elizabeth says, midway through: “Tell me again why they are not happy.  I have heard you tell it before but tell me again.  I want to hear it out here in the wilderness where we are alone—together.”) Leuson has stolen some books from the Library of Congress, where he works, to learn the history and how to survive the old-fashioned way.  The happy couple elopes (a word Leuson discovered in his research) to live happily in a mountain cave, along the way capturing a goat to milk.  Unfortunately, far from modern medicine, Elizabeth dies in childbirth (good idea, that goat).  Along the way it has been revealed that this was a covertly sponsored rebellion; the couple’s parents have subtly nudged them along towards this destiny.

And now, the plan’s consummation, at the annual meeting in Washington of the National Society of Federated Women!  “Five thousand leaders of their sex had gathered for the meeting and every woman in the nation was listening to the proceedings over the radio.” Leuson appears, carrying a basket, and reprises his seven-page lecture.  “On and on he talked and as he talked there arose in the hearts of the women who listened a strange unrest and hunger for something that had once been their heritage.”

And at the end of this spiel . . . “He reached down into the basket and, picking up his daughter, held the baby high above the heads of the five thousand women and showed them a baby, born of the love of a man and a woman in a home.” The finale: “And as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, the women of the nation cried in unison: ‘Give us back our homes, our husbands, and our babies!’” Fade to black.

Whew!  Two overripe stars, barely.

Little Girl Lost, by Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson’s Little Girl Lost (Amazing, October/November 1953) is a capable potboiler, efficiently recycling with stock characters a stock plot of the 1940s and ‘50s—domesticity upended by the weird and threatening.  Young Tina disappears in her living room; her parents Chris and Ruth can hear her but not see her or figure out where she is.  What to do in the wee hours with an invisible child but call Chris’s friend Bill, “an engineering man, CalTech, top man with Lockheed over in the valley.” Bill quickly susses it out: “I think she’s in another dimension.” (Later, he adds, “probably the fourth.”) Meanwhile, in the spirit of the times, Ruth is more or less continuously hysterical.


by Ray Houlihan

And so is the dog, but to better effect.  He’s whining and scratching to be let in, and when he is admitted—to keep from waking the neighbors—he runs straight to the dimensional hole the people can’t see, and now little Tina has company.  Soon enough, Chris blunders partly into the hole, grabs kid and dog, and Bill pulls him out by his legs, which are protruding into our dimension.  Domestic tranquility is restored, and they switch the couch and the TV so if anything goes through again it will be Arthur Godfrey.  It’s facile and economical, and perfectly fashioned for TV; it made one of the better Twilight Zone episodes five years or so ago.  Three stars.

Small Town, by Philip K. Dick


by Bernard Krigstein

Philip K. Dick’s Small Town (Amazing, May 1954) is equally domestic, but not quite as domesticated, as the Matheson story.  Here, the strains of a bad marriage exacerbated by an oppressive job burst out into the larger world.  Verne Haskel doesn’t get along with his wife, hates his job, and finds comfort only in his basement, where, starting with an electric train layout, he has built a scale model of the entire town and tinkers with it constantly.  As his frustrations build, he begins tearing things out of his faithful representation and remaking the model town, culminating in ripping out Larson’s Pump & Valve, the site of his torment, stomping it to pieces, and replacing it with a mortuary.  And, of course, it turns out reality (or “reality”—this is after all PKD) now conforms to the fruits of Haskel’s tantrum—and things end with a suggestion (this is after all PKD) that there’s a higher power than Haskel keeping an eye on things.

Three stars, more lustrous than Matheson’s to my taste.

Angels in the Jets, by Jerome Bixby


by Paul Lundy

The issue winds up with Jerome Bixby’s Angels in the Jets (Fantastic, Fall 1952).  At least one person likes this story; Frederik Pohl anthologized it in his 1954 anthology Assignment in Tomorrow.  I disliked it when I read that book, and it hasn’t improved much since.  Intrepid space explorers land on an inviting planet; one crew member is inadvertently directly exposed to its atmosphere, which renders her psychotic; she contrives to expose everyone else; and the protagonist, who has been out exploring while all this was going on, returns to the prospect of living in isolation as long as his bottled air holds out, or giving up, joining the crowd, and becoming psychotic right away.  (Not much domesticity here, except for the hints of the deranged social order, or disorder, emerging among the psychotics.) A story that starts out at a dead end and consists of reaffirmations that it’s a dead end is not much of a story to my taste.  But at least it’s well written.  Two stars.

Summing Up

Hey, it's been worse in this bottom-of-the-market magazine.  We have pretty readable and competent stories by Dick and Matheson and an amusing bad period piece by Keller, balanced against lackluster pieces by Tenn and Bixby; and the brooding prospect of Frank Herbert at length looms over it all as final judgment is postponed.  Redemption?  Maybe. To paraphrase generations of disgruntled baseball fans: Wait till next issue.

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




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 10, 1967] Mediocrités, Slayer of Magazines (April 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Not with a Bang

A rising tide floats all boats, but a tidal wave swamps them.  16 years ago, Galaxy magazine was the vanguard of the Silver Age of Science Fiction, along with Fantasy and Science Fiction and Astounding leading a pack of nearly forty monthly/bimonthly/quarterlies.  By the end of the decade, we were down to just six mags, but the quality, by and large, was still there.

Now we're entering a new era.  The number of mags is the same, but the stories are mediocre most of the time.  Even the competently rendered ones feel like rehashes.  In a letter I received last week, the writer said that there are yet too many outlets for the current crop of talent to supply with quality stuff. 

I don't know that I agree, given that the British mags have folded and Amazing and Fantastic are mostly reprints these days.  Plus, Galaxy's sister mag, Worlds of Tomorrow, has gone irregular (and Milk of Magnesia is no cure for this illness).  No, I think there's some kind of general malaise in the genre.  Maybe it's competition from the real world.  Maybe it's higher pay-outs from the slicks.

No matter what the cause, we've got to find some way to get an influx of talent into this field.  The alternative is, well, more magazines like the April 1967 issue of Galaxy.


by Douglas Chaffee

A Vast Wasteland

Thunderhead, Keith Laumer

Editor Fred Pohl saved his best for first.  Laumer is a competent science fiction/adventure writer when he's not writing his increasingly tired satire, and Thunderhead is nothing if not a competent science fiction/adventure.

Lieutenant Carnaby has been more than twenty years in grade, stuck on the most frontierward of planetary outposts.  Indeed, it seems the Navy has forgotten all about him, since it was supposed to pick him up fifteen years ago.  The world he's on has slowly decayed to one dying settlement.  Yet, he remains attached to his duty, to maintain and, in an emergency, activate the beacon that will turn this rim of the galaxy into an effective defense grid.


by Gray Morrow

Said emergency occurs, with the formerly contained enemy Djann breaking out of their containment, the Terran ship Malthusa in hot pursuit.  Carnaby and a young friend begin their ascent of the snowbound peak on which the beacon rests, and the story alternates between the Lieutenant, the Djann crew, and the driving Commodore of the terran cruiser.

The writing is deft, the setup interesting, and the Djann particularly interesting and innovative.  On the other hand, the other characters are caricatures, and the resolution by-the-numbers. 

Thus, a pleasant three stars, but no more.

Fair Test, by Robin Scott

Two aliens land on Earth to resupply with fuel and food.  They are successful despite the efforts of American local law enforcement.  The end of the story is a bit of social commentary as the extraterrestrials note that light meat and dark meat taste the same.

I'd have expected this story in a lesser mag, circa 1954.  Not Galaxy.

Two stars.

For Your Information: The Orbits of the Comets, Willy Ley

It's no exaggeration that, for a long time, Ley's science articles were my favorite part of the magazine.  They have since gotten desultory.  This one, in particular, meanders all over the place and, in one particular table, is nonsensical.  I suspect a misprint.

Anyway, I think this is my first two-star review for Mr Ley.  It is a sad day.

The New Member, Christopher Anvil

It's also a sad day whenever Anvil's name appears in the table of contents.  It has been said that one can smell an Analog reject a mile away, and the stench of this one is profound.  It's about a fictional Third World island country called "Bongolia".  Said nation joins the United Nations and sets about trying to make a living by extorting the richer countries as payment for centuries-old crimes against their state.

There could be a satire here, albeit not in great taste given how recent (and not very well handled) decolonization has been.  Instead, it's just a bunch of unfunny cheap shots.

One star.

The Young Priests of Adytum 199, James McKimmey

Forty young men and women, the last survivors of a nuclear war, live in a coddled paradise in one of the many American shelters.  They do little more than eat and mate, save for the one oddball, Peter the Funny, who prefers the clarinet.  He comes to a sticky end for his noncomformity.

I guess the moral is "Never Trust Anyone Under 30".  Two stars.

The Purpose of Life, Hayden Howard

Could it be?  Have we finally reached the last chapter in the sage of the Esks?

For the past year (or has it been two, already?) we have been following the viewpoint of Dr.  Joe West, an ethnologist sent out in the 1960s to do a survey on Eskimos in the Canadian North.  There he discovered a new race of beings, an unholy hybrid of human and alien.  They look like Eskimos, but their pregnancies last but a month, and their children mature in just a few years.  These "Esks" quickly supplant their human cousins and threaten to outrun their food supply.  Luckily, the bleeding hearts of the world recognize the Esks as fully human and open their doors and purses to succor them. 

West, unable to convince governments of the Esk threat, unsuccessfully tries to sterilize the half-aliens with a disease of his own devise, but only succeeds in killing a few innocent humans.  He is then locked up in a padded cell, then put to sleep for fifteen years.  When he is awoken, he is dispatched to mainland China by the CIA.  Aided by telepathic control devices implanted in his legs, he is emplaced close to the Communist leader, Mao III, whose brain he takes hold over–for purposes unknown to Dr. West.  So begins the latest and longest installement.

This bit takes place on an Earth whose societies are already being rocked by Esk overpopulation.  In China, the few hundred relocated to the barren hillsides two decades ago now number more than a billion.  The vast Communist land is suffering the least ill effects thus far, as the import labor has produced a terrific farm surplus and as yet is not integrated with Chinese society.  In America, however, every household has an Esk slave…er…servant, a situation which cannot last much longer as the subordinate race will soon vastly outnumber the master.  In Canada, civilization has collapsed, and the cities are populated by starving bands of Esks.

None of this seems to bother the Esks, who endure everything with endless patience and joy.  They know that someday, "the Great Bear" will return to take them all back to the sky.  Such is imprinted on their racial memories. 


by Jack Gaughan

In China, Mao III's generals revolt, sealing the invalid leader in a mountain redoubt-cum-tomb along with his controller, Dr. West.  All efforts to curtail the Esk population so as not to outstrip the food supply meet with failure.  Only one option is left — to impress the hybrids into an operation to dig the thousands of feet through solid rock to the surface.

But there is a spark of anticipation in the air.  Will the Great Bear arrive before the Esks liberate themselves from their underground prison?  And if so, what will happen if they arrive at the surface with their brethren all departed?

It's really hard to properly rate this segment, and the series as a whole.  The premise is dumb, the conclusion rather vague and dissatisfying, and for the most part, Dr. West is either ignored or ineffectual, or both.

Yet, damned if I didn't find myself vaguely looking forward to this chapter.  Damned if I didn't read the current installment in one sitting despite having resolved to take a nap instead (I do like my naps). 

And damned if I didn't spend way longer on this review than I'd intended.

Call it 3 stars for this chapter and 2.5 for the whole thing.  I'm not sorry I read it, but I'm glad it's over.

Within the Cloud, Piers Anthony

I think this is the first solo piece by Mr. Anthony.  The premise of this vignette is that the faces we see in the clouds are actually faces, and they have something to say.

Trivial stuff.  Two stars.

Ballenger's People, Kris Neville

An insane fellow, whose fragmented mind is under the delusion that it is a polity of many parts rather than a single entity, becomes homicidal when threatened by "other nations" (i.e. other human individuals).

It started promisingly, but didn't really go anywhere.  Two stars.

You Men of Violence, Harry Harrison

Finally, a tidbit from a fellow whose work I often confuse with Keith Laumer's.  A pacifist on the run from military types figures out how to kill without being the killer.

Rather obvious and somewhat pointless.  Two stars.

Gasping for breath

Wow.  That wasn't very good, was it?  And with one of Pohl's major talents, Mr. Cordwainer Smith, gone to the ages, we really don't have much to look forward to.  At least until Messrs. Niven and/or Vance return. 

Or Pohl finds some new talent.  Maybe there's a large, mostly untapped demographic he could plumb…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 4, 1967] Mediocrities (April 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

Method or madness?

The assassination of President Kennedy a little more than three years ago is a moment engraved on everyone’s hearts and minds. The arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald brought some relief, but his subsequent murder by Jack Ruby denied Americans the catharsis a trial would have provided, with the clear presentation of all the evidence. Ruby’s recent death just before his retrial has denied whatever release that might have offered. As such, Americans have had to make do with the report issued by the Warren Commission on the assassination, and a lot of people aren’t satisfied with its conclusions. Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane calls into question many of the Commission’s findings and has found an audience. The book has spent 25 weeks on the New York Times list of best-selling non-fiction.

On February 17th, the New Orleans States-Item published a story revealing that District Attorney Jim Garrison was investigating the assassination. In a news conference the next day, Garrison announced his office was working on seeking an indictment of “some individuals in New Orleans” for their role in President Kennedy’s death and promised that arrests would be made. On February 22nd, pilot David Ferrie was found dead in his New Orleans home. Garrison has accused Ferrie of being the get-away pilot for the conspirators and had been preparing to take Ferrie into protective custody. In a news conference on the 24th, Garrison dropped a bombshell. Speaking about his office’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination, he declared, “We solved it weeks ago. There remains only the details of evidence, and there is no question about it. We have the names of everyone. We have all the details.”


New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison

Is there anything to this? Garrison seems pretty confident. On the other hand, he has a reputation as a grandstander. He’s overseen numerous vice raids in the French Quarter, resulting in lots of arrests and very few trials. The raids brought him into conflict with local judges and the police, and he’s accused both groups of corruption, but there have been no indictments. He’s even been unanimously censured by both houses of the state legislature for maligning their members. Time will tell if there’s something to this or if it’s just another dog-and-pony show.

Reversion to the mean

Knowing that last month’s spectacular issue was going to be a hard act to follow, I lowered my expectations for this month’s IF. I may not have recalibrated properly. Even some of the decent stuff is pretty forgettable.


This old-fashioned cover bears little relationship to the Chandler story it supposedly illustrates. Art by Gray Morrow

The Road to the Rim (Part 1 of 2), by A. Bertram Chandler

Fresh out of the Academy, Ensign John Grimes has come aboard the Delta Orionis for transport to his first posting. After getting off on the wrong foot with the captain, Grimes spends most of his time with attractive Purser Jane Pentecost, who is suspected of being a recruiter for the Rim Worlds independence movement. When word reaches the ship of a failed pirate attack on a ship bearing the captain’s fiancee, Grimes, with all the rigidity of a newly minted officer, refuses to release the naval stores in the ship’s cargo for hunting the pirates. After spending some time in the brig and a romantic farewell from Jane, he decides to throw away his career and join the captain’s hunt as a gunnery officer. To be continued.


The Mannschen drive in operation; forward in space and backward in time. Art by Gray Morrow

We’ve met John Grimes before, most recently as a Commodore about to retire. That’s not so strange; both C. S. Forester and Poul Anderson have gone back to look at the early career of established characters. However, knowing where Grimes’ career will take him removes a lot of the tension from the story. In terms of story and action, this is fairly typical Chandler (apart from a lack of hopping between universes). But Chandler excels at drawing the character of a raw young officer who doesn’t understand what rules can bend and when, and who sometimes thinks with parts farther south than his brain.

A solid, but not quite high three stars.

The Fantasque, by James McKimmey

Having come into a small inheritance, Homer Bemoth purchases a Fantasque over the objections of his conservative, prudish wife.

This isn’t so different from “The Dream Machine”, which we saw last June. It’s on a more personal level and has something resembling a story, but it also gives us a couple of fairly unpleasant characters.

A high two stars.

Retief, War Criminal, by Keith Laumer

The planet Sulinore is in decline, largely because the dwindling populace has declared most of the planet to be cemeteries and monuments to the dead heroes of the past. The Terran Mission has come for a peace conference sponsored by the Groaci, no doubt to aid their proteges the Blug. Fortunately, Retief is on hand.


Retief to the rescue. Art by Gaughan

It’s fairly typical of the species, but there’s more story here than you usually find in a Retief tale. Only the part where he’s held captive by the Groaci feels like Laumer is just going through the motions. Again, this is probably better if you’re new to Retief, but the inclusion of stronger story elements is a good sign. There may be hope for this series yet.

Three stars.

It’s New York in ‘67!, by Lin Carter

Carter gives us a preview of this year’s Worldcon, to be held in New York City over the Labor Day weekend. There will be both professional and fan Guests of Honor (Lester del Rey and Bob Tucker respectively), and Harlan Ellison will be the toastmaster. Jack Gaughan’s doing a comic book that will be sent out to registered members over the year, and there are a couple of new ideas on the program. One is in-depth interviews with various authors, but the big draw is likely to be the “Dialogues” in which two big names will debate various questions occupying the world of science fiction. The schedule isn’t set, but we are promised two well-known writers debating the “avant garde” and “traditional” styles of science fiction.

Three stars.

The Ethics of Madness, by Larry Niven

Douglas Hooker was born a potential paranoiac, but as long as he takes his medication regularly he will be fine. A freak maintenance problem with his autodoc results in him not getting his medicine, and he descends into paranoia. He steals a starship and ultimately causes the death of his former best friend’s wife. After completing his rehabilitation, he steals another ship and flees the anger of that former friend.


Doug Hooker flees Plateau. Art by Castellon

Another big story from Niven, but with more depth than he usually shows. The story is told largely through flashbacks, and we are able to watch Hooker’s slowly changing mental state. I found it reminiscent of a recent episode of Star Trek, but much the better for not being compressed into a few lines of dialogue. My one quibble is that there ought to have been more safety mechanisms on the autodoc than a single warning light. Otherwise, a very good story. (And if this had run last month, we could have had two forty-mile-high mountains in one issue.)

Four stars.

It Takes All Kinds, by Bruce W. Ronald

Only ten percent of the 59 million twenty-year-olds who have tested for college and the ability to get a job will be accepted. As the numbers come in, Terry Gordon watches his chances steadily decline. What does it mean to rank 5,900,001 when there are 5,900,000 places?

Ronald is clearly trying to say something about education and its value. Terry does a lot of math in his head over the story, but the classes he and the girl he meets talk about are trivialities. It’s not a terrible story, and I want to like it better than I do, but just a day after reading it, I couldn’t remember a single thing about it.

Just barely three stars.

The Accomplice, by Vernor Vinge

Over the last year, someone has stolen more than 70 hours of time on Royce Technology’s 4D5, the most powerful computer in the world. That time is worth close to $4,000,000. Royce and his chief of security, Arnold Su, go looking for the culprit.

Frankly, the story itself isn’t very good, but Vinge’s speculations on how fast computers will improve (the 4D5 is expected to be on the consumer market in just 8 years) and the way they will impact industries you might not expect are well worth the read. Those speculations probably wouldn’t have had the same impact and believability in a fact article.

Three stars, purely for the vision

The Purpose of It All, by W. I. Johnstone

The Snick has come to Earth seeking a new masterhost. It thinks it has found what it’s looking for, but has misunderstood the situation.

Johnstone is this month’s new author, and Fred must be getting desperate for first-timers. The story isn’t very good, and unlike the two stories before it, it has no redeeming features.

Two stars.

The Iron Thorn (Part 4 of 4), by Algis Budrys

Honor Jackson has arrived on Earth. The naked people who greet him are a group of Naturalists, the largest faction of humans, or so the master computer or Comp informs him. After spending some time with them, he stages an Amsir hunt with the help of Comp. This quickly makes him one of the most famous people on Earth, but at a party in his honor he soon becomes disgusted at the decadence of those around him.


Comp creates an Amsir for Jackson to hunt. Art by Gray Morrow

I’ve commented before on the rapid pacing of this story, and based on the author’s recap I’ve come to the conclusion that there must be a lot that was removed for serialization. That said, I don’t think I’ll be looking for the novel if and when it’s released. Budrys has written an engaging story, but it doesn’t appear to be about anything. It’s a hollow shell.

A low three stars for this installment and three for the novel as whole.

Summing up

All in all, a fairly typical issue of IF. I actually revised a couple of my assessments (Ronald and Vinge) upwards as I wrote my review, because I realized they did make me think, even if the stories weren’t much. On the other hand, I’ve grown less and less satisfied with the Budrys serial as it has progressed. It’s all quite a let-down after last month.

Still in all, things could be worse, knock on wood. We'll find out next month if this was an aberration or a return to the mean.


Which Laumer will we get? I’m guessing semi-comedic adventure.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 12, 1967] All's Fair in Love and War (March 1967 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Peace on Earth? No. Peace Above Earth? Maybe.

With the conflict in Vietnam growing ever more bloody, and tensions building between the Soviet Union and China, it seems that war is here to stay on this sad little planet. Dare we look to the skies for a way to escape this endless chaos?

Although humanity is just starting to take its first baby steps into the cosmos, some folks are trying to make sure that it will be filled with plowshares instead of swords. Late last month, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union signed the so-called Outer Space Treaty.


President Lyndon Baines Johnson shakes hands with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin at the signing ceremony. Barely visible between them are British ambassador Sir Patrick Dean and American ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg. I think that's American Secretary of State Dean Rusk at the podium. Don't ask me who the other folks are.

The agreement is formally known as The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. That's quite a mouthful, but what does it mean?

In brief, it bans nuclear weapons in space; limits use of the Moon and other extraterrestrial bodies to peaceful purposes; and prevents any nation from claiming sovereignty over any region of space or any celestial body. Of course, only three countries have signed it so far, and any treaty is only a piece of paper, so we'll have to wait to see what really happens outside the atmosphere. Hope for the best.

Monkeying Around With My Heart

Let's turn our backs on war and look for romance. Love songs are always popular, and the current Number One hit in the USA is no exception. The upbeat number I'm a Believer by the Monkees has been at the top of the charts since early January, and shows no signs of fading away.


And all this time I thought they were just a fictional band created for a television situation comedy.

Tales of Mars and Venus

The latest issue of Fantastic is full of stories involving wars, both large and small, as well as amorous relationships between women and men. Sometimes both themes show up in the same yarn.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

This issue, unsurprisingly, features one new story and a bunch of reprints. The cover illustration is also from an old magazine.


The May 1939 issue of Fantastic Adventures, to be exact.

Happiness Squad, by Charles W. Runyon


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

A personal war meets love gone very bad in the opening of the only original story in the magazine. A man places a timebomb in his wife's flying car, so it will explode during her flight to visit her mother. After this stark beginning, we learn something about this future world, and the man's place in it.

In the tradition of Aldous Huxley's famous novel Brave New World, this is a society bent on eliminating unhappiness through the use of drugs. It has also nearly wiped out the ability of human beings to perform acts of violence on each other, in a way reminiscent of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange.

In addition to that, it also manipulates memories, in such a way that it can give people completely new identities. The uxoricidal protagonist accidentally discovers that he was once a brilliant plastic surgeon, who transformed an unattractive woman into a raving beauty. The woman, with the help of the man's rival, then altered his memory so that he imagines himself to be her loving husband.

Because of his programmed aversion to violence, the man sabotages all his attempts to kill the woman he blames for ruining his life. (Besides everything else, he also lost the woman he really loves, who had her memory altered in such a way that she now works in a brothel.) Unable to perform the murder himself, he hires one of the very few people who avoided the programming to do the dirty work. (This fellow was one of the rare folks born on Mars who survived a failed colony and escaped to Earth.)


The killer, the victim, and the man who hired him.

There's a twist ending that changes everything we thought we knew. Without giving too much away, I interpret the conclusion as implying yet another reversal, which the author leaves unwritten. I may be reading too much into this, but what remains unsaid is just as powerful as what is made explicit, I believe.

I have a hard time giving a fair rating to this very disturbing story. It's not exactly pleasant to read, but it held my attention from the beginning to the (incomplete?) end. It's nearly impossible to sympathize with any of the characters, even if they're not really responsible for the kind of people they've been manipulated into becoming. The subtle implications of the conclusion may just be in my imagination. In short, I think I like this story more than I should, if that makes any sense at all.

Four stars.

Shifting Seas, by Stanley G. Weinbaum

The April 1937 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this apocalyptic work from the pen of a pioneering author who died much too young.


Cover art by Leo Morey.

Gigantic volcanic explosions and earthquakes rip apart the isthmus of Central America, driving most of the land under the sea. Besides the immediate deaths of millions, this changes the flow of the Gulf Stream, so that much of Europe becomes much colder. The crisis alters political alliances. In particular, war between the United States and a desperate Europe, led by the sea power of the United Kingdom, seems imminent.


Illustration also by Leo Morey.

Besides war, we also have love. The protagonist is an American man engaged to a British woman. The impending conflict threatens to destroy their relationship, until the man comes up with a way to solve the problem without a clash of arms.

The premise is an interesting one, and I liked the way the author considered the political implications of a major change in world climate. The resolution may be a little too simple, and the narrative style a bit old-fashioned, but the story creates a decent sense of wonder.

Three stars.

Judson's Annihilator, by John Beynon

An author now better known as John Wyndham supplies this war story, which first appeared in a British publication under the title Beyond the Screen.


Cover art by Serge Drigin. This issue, number one of only three ever published, is dated 1938, without specifying the month.

It was quickly reprinted in the October 1939 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

In true Astounding/Analog style, a lone genius invents gizmos producing fields that make anything inside them disappear. When combined German and Italian forces send a huge number of planes to attack England, the devices cause the aircraft to vanish.


Illustration also by Robert Fuqua.

The inventor's sister falls into the field produced by one of the machines and disappears. The hero, in love with her, follows her into it. As the reader suspects by this point, the invention doesn't really destroy what passes through the field, but sends it somewhere else. The place turns out to be an England inhabited by a small number of people living in a primitive way. With the help of a local woman, the hero and his beloved escape from the clutches of the Germans who went through the field.

There's a nice little twist about where they've wound up that is mentioned in passing, but nothing much comes of it. The plot is pretty straightforward once the hero enters the field. I found the imaginary version of World War Two the most interesting part of the story. Other than that, it's a pretty typical science fiction adventure.

Three stars.

Battle in the Dawn, by Manly Wade Wellman

From the January 1939 issue of Amazing Stories comes this vision of the remote past.


Cover art by Robert Fuqua again.

Apparently, this is the first of a series of stories about a caveman named Hok. In this tale, his tribe is moving to better hunting grounds when they run into Neanderthals. Contrary to what modern anthropologists think, these are bestial creatures, who attack the group of Homo sapiens and even kill a baby and eat it. Obviously, a war between the two species begins.


Illustrations also by the ubiquitous Robert Fuqua.

After an initial triumph over the subhumans, Hok steals a woman from a rival tribe of Homo Sapiens, in order to make her his mate. She objects, going so far as to threaten to kill herself if he doesn't let her go. Eventually, the first kiss in history makes the woman fall in love with her captor, and the two tribes unite against the Neanderthals.


Not to mention other challenges.

With nearly three decades of hindsight, it's easy to dismiss this story as a very inaccurate portrait of prehistory. It might better be thought of as a sword-and-sorcery yarn, without swords and without sorcery. The Neanderthals are monsters, the hero is a brave warrior with a beautiful woman to win, and so forth. As such, it's a fair example of the form.

Three stars.

The Draw, by Jerome Bixby

The March 1954 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this tale of the Old West, where war often consisted of one man against another.


Cover art by Clarence Doore.

You may have already seen it in a paperback collection of the author's stories that came out a few years ago.


Cover art by Ralph Brillhart.

An onery teenager — we'd call him a juvenile delinquent these days — is an excellent marksman, but not good at all when it comes to pulling his pistol from his holster. This is the only factor that keeps him from becoming an infamous killer.


Illustrations by William Ashman.

Through sheer force of will, he develops the telekinetic ability to instantaneously transport his gun to his hand, making him the deadliest gunman around. After terrorizing the local townsfolk, he challenges the sheriff to a gunfight. As you'd expect, things don't go well for him.


A scene from Gunsmoke?

I don't have a lot to say about this story. The ending is somewhat anticlimactic, but there's nothing particularly wrong with it. The usual Western clichés are present, which may be inevitable.

Three stars.

Masters of Fantasy: A. Merritt Illustrated, by Anonymous

The magazine ends with a few drawings by Frank R. Paul that accompanied a reprint of Abraham Merritt's 1919 fantasy novel The Moon Pool, which was serialized in Amazing Stories in the May, June, and July 1927 issues.


I guess this is the Moon Pool.


All cover art by Frank R. Paul as well.


I didn't notice the frog people at first.


I'm guessing this is a scene from The Moon Pool.


Is she doing the Twist?


Caution! Mad Scientist at Work!

What can I say? Three stars.

Fighting for Something to Love

In this magazine full of love and war, the stories were fair. Not that great, not that bad. I predict that Runyon's new novelette is going to produce strong reactions, both positive and negative. The reprints are likely to be less controversial.

As for the choice between the two great themes I've noted, it seems like an easy one.


Somebody came up with this catchy slogan a couple of years ago, and now you can get it on a poster.

 



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 4, 1967] The Sweet (?) New Style (March 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

In the 13th century, a new style of poetry emerged in Tuscany. Developing from the troubadour tradition, it turned the idea of courtly love into one of divine love, in which an idealized woman guided a man’s soul to God. More importantly, it was written not in Latin, but in the Tuscan vernacular, which formed the basis of modern Italian. Its most famous practitioner, Dante Alighieri, referred to it as dolce stil novo (sweet new style) in his most famous work, and the phrase was eventually applied to the poetic school in the 19th century.

Science fiction also has a new style, though many readers disdain it and I doubt even its proponents would be inclined to call it “sweet”. Whether you call it the New Wave or the New Thing, the move is away from adventure and scientists solving problems and toward a more literary style, difficult topics like sex, drugs and politics, and generally kicking against the traces of modern constraints. Whether it’s just a passing fad or will change the language of science fiction forever remains to be seen.

Inferno

I’ve written before about the so-called Cultural Revolution in communist China, including the growing power of the young people calling themselves the Red Guards. Egged on by Chairman Mao, the Red Guards have run amok. High-ranking public officials have been publicly humiliated, beaten (sometimes to death), or have committed suicide. The number four man in the party, T’ao Chu was publicly purged, which led to violent riots in Nanking between his supporters and the Red Guards; at least 50 are dead and hundreds are injured. In Shanghai, the local government has been toppled and replaced by a revolutionary committee. Both President Liu Shao-ch’i and Party Secretary-General Teng Hsiao-p’ing have been condemned as “capitalist roaders”. Mao has also signaled a coming purge of the army.


A Red Guard hands out papers proclaiming the end of the Shanghai government.

Meanwhile, in spite of the internal chaos, China is also flexing her muscles on the border, particularly in Portuguese Macao. Late last year, a dispute over building permits led to a riot in which 8 Chinese were killed and 212 were injured. On January 22nd, six Chinese gunboats pulled into the inner harbor of Macao, but left again after an hour. One week later, the Governor General of Macao, under a portrait of Mao, signed an admission of guilt for the deaths, promising never again to use force against the Chinese community, to pay a large sum of reparations to the Macao Chinese, and to give a greater voice to the Chinese community in the person of Ho Yin, a man with close ties to Mao.

Near miss

Last year at Tricon, IF won the Hugo for Best Professional Magazine. Editor Fred Pohl came up with the idea of putting out an issue with all of last year’s winners: Isaac Asimov (Best All-Time Series), Harlan Ellison (Best Short Fiction), Frank Herbert and Roger Zelazny (tied for Best Novel) with a cover by Frank Frazetta (Best Professional Artist). He’s been touting it for a few months, but the best laid plans and all that. Herbert was unable to finish his story due to a hospital stay, and Frazetta was swamped with priority work. So, how did this month’s IF turn out?


Putting the most interesting element of the picture on the back is an odd choice. Art by McKenna

The Billiard Ball, by Isaac Asimov

James Priss and Edward Bloom have known each other since university. Priss went on to earn two Nobels and become the most famous scientist of his day. Bloom dropped out to go into business and became fabulously wealthy – mostly by turning Priss’s theories into practical devices. The two men don’t like each other much, but they get together to play billiards once or twice a week, and they play at a very high level. Is Bloom’s death the accident it appears to be?


Bloom’s had a rough day in the lab. Art by Vaughn Bodé

This is a solid Asimov story, with more character than is usual for him (not really a high hurdle). A good story in the old style; the Good Doctor doesn’t seem to be at all rusty at fiction.

Three stars.

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison

There were three Allied Mastercomputers – Chinese, Russian and American – which gained sentience and merged. Dubbing himself AM, he then killed every human being on the planet, except for four men and one woman. For 109 years, AM has tortured them physically and psychologically. The youngest of them, Ted, has found a way to free the others, but the price is high.


AM’s revenge. Art by Smith

Harlan Ellison has never shied away from dark or difficult themes. Here he sends five people to Hell, but does so without wallowing in the ugliness he shows us. This is a powerful piece, but not an easy read. I’ve penalized authors in the past for their handling of themes like this, but Ellison transcends it all.

A high four stars, but not for the faint of heart.

This Mortal Mountain, by Roger Zelazny

Jack Summers is the best mountaineer in the galaxy. He is famous for climbing Kasla, the highest known mountain in the universe. Now an even bigger mountain has been found on the planet Diesel, the Gray Sister, which stands 40 miles high, rising out of the planet’s atmosphere. Summers assembles a team and makes an attempt on the mountain. Along with the usual problems, they encounter hallucinations that may be real, and the mountain seems to be actively fighting them. This mountain holds a secret.


An angel bars the way. Art by Castellon

Zelazny is clearly taking inspiration from Dante’s Purgatory. Indeed, I could probably write several thousand words on the subject. In any case, he’s written an absolutely wonderful piece. Two things keep it from five stars: he explicitly draws attention to the Dantean parallel, and he stumbles at the finish line, turning a thing of mystic, mythic beauty into something more prosaic.

A high four stars.

Moonshine, by Joseph Wesley

The Cold War has moved to the Moon and turned warm. Admiral Jones has come to the moon to negotiate with the Russians. His orderly, Sven Christensen, is very good at his job and a man on the make. He set up a still shortly after arrival, but when moonwort (the only life found on the Moon) overruns his still, he smashes it up and throws it into the mash in a fit of pique. Before he can cut the final product with water, the Russians come to the table, and when they offer a toast with vodka (expecting the Americans to be unable to respond in kind), the Admiral signals Christensen to find something. What’s a guy to do?

This isn’t a bad story, though it pales in comparison to those before it. Implausible, but fun.

Three stars.

Flatlander, by Larry Niven

Flush with cash and depressed at his role in the departure of the puppeteers from the galaxy, Beowulf Schaeffer decides to visit Earth. On the way, he meets Elephant, an Earthman who’s sick of being called a Flatlander, no matter how much time he spends in space. After getting his pocket picked, Bay (as his friends call him) quickly realizes he’s in over his head and takes Elephant up on his offer to show him around. Elephant turns out to be Gregory Pelton, one of the richest human beings alive. They come up with the idea to ask the Outsiders for the location of a truly unique planet, regardless of the risk, so that Elephant can make a name for himself as a spacer. He will learn why he is and always will be a Flatlander.


The complete failure of a General Products hull is supposed to be impossible. Art by Gaughan

Niven is on a roll. He’s cranking out long pieces and they’ve all been good. This one is full of little details that make his universe feel like a real place. It took me a while to realize it, but the whirlwind tour of Earth isn’t just flavor; it helps show the differences between Elephant’s and Bay’s outlooks. I’ll even forgive the absolute groaner of a joke.

Four stars.

The Hugo and the Nebula, by Lin Carter

This time, Our Man in Fandom takes a look at some of the winners of the Hugo and the new Nebula, as well as some who, surprisingly, haven’t.

Three stars.

The Sepia Springs Affair, by Rosco Wright

A series of letters from the unusual members of the Sepia Springs Science Fiction Club to Fred Pohl, describing the club’s turbulent summer of 1970.


A couple of Fred’s correspondents. Art by Wright

It’s cute. Something of a satire on the sort of petty politics that often afflict small clubs. This is as close as we come to a new author this month, though Wright is probably the same as the Roscoe E. Wright who wrote a Probability Zero short-short for Astounding many years ago.

Three stars.

Where Are the Worlds of Yesteryear?, by L. Sprague de Camp

A short poem by the Tricon Guest of Honor on the effect the growth of scientific knowledge has on our stories.

Three stars.

The Iron Thorn (Part 3 of 4), by Algis Budrys

Having made his way inside the Thorn Thing just ahead of the spears of the Amsirs, Jackson finds himself talking to the Self-Sustaining Interplanetary Expeditionary Module or Susiem. In quick succession, he is given command, healing, food and the education a spaceship captain should have. Unable to get the deformed Amsir Ahmuls off the ship, Jackson subdues him and then orders Susiem to take them to Earth. Arriving in Columbus, Ohio, they are met by a group of naked people as the ship is taken apart by a swarm of bugs. To be concluded.


Jackson subdues Ahmuls. Art by Gray Morrow

This story continues to move at a breakneck pace. I find myself wondering how much has been cut for magazine publication, but I can’t see any seams. I have no idea how Budrys is going to wrap this all up, but it remains interesting despite the frenetic storytelling.

Three stars.

Latter-Day Daniel, by Betsy Curtis

Bob Beale works for the Brooklyn Zoo, getting his arm torn off by the lion Nero every other day. After a show, he is approached by Delia Whipple, who works for the Animal Protective League. She warns him of a plot by another zoo to kidnap Nero, the last African lion in the United States. Time is short, and it’s going to be up to Beale (and Nero) to prevent the kidnapping.

Betsy Curtis put out a handful of stories in the early 50s…and this feels like it could have been written then. The nicest thing I can say is that it’s better than Answering Service, which it reminded me of a little.

Two stars.

Summing up

What an issue! Two of our Hugo winners have already put themselves in contention for next year, and both are representative of the new style. Add in another excellent story and more ranging from good to very good. There’s really only one clunker in the bunch. This is going to be a hard act to follow.


Can Niven keep his streak going? He easily tops the rest of this list.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 16, 1967] Off to a Good Start (February 1967 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Happy New Year!


We have to be told twice that it's the Fabulous Flamingo.

Here we go with my first magazine review of 1967. I'm glad to say that the year begins with a bang, as the lead novella in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is a knockout. Will the rest of the stories and articles be anywhere near as good? Let's find out.


Cover art by Gray Morrow.

The Star-Pit, by Samuel R. Delany

Delany has already published several novels, but I believe this is his first appearance in a science fiction magazine. It's certainly an auspicious debut. That's not such a big surprise, as his book Babel-17 won high praise from my esteemed colleague Cora Buhlert, and was the overwhelming choice for the most recent Galactic Stars award for Best Novel.


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

The narrator begins with an account of an incident in his past that puts him in a bad light. While living on a planet with two suns, as part of a group marriage, he destroyed a miniature ecological system built by the family's children, as shown above. (I pictured the thing, which is something like a super-sophisticated ant farm, as quite a bit larger.)


Two of the alien organisms released during the narrator's destruction of the object. I pictured them as much smaller.

Several years later, the narrator is at the edge of the galaxy, working as a mechanic for starships. For a while, it seems as if the opening section of the story has little to do with the rest, but it all ties up at the end.

This is a future time when travel throughout the Milky Way is possible, but not beyond its borders. Attempting to do so results in insanity and death for the unfortunate extragalactic voyager. That is, unless you happen to be one of the rare people known as golden. (The word is used as a noun here, and serves as both the singular and plural form. Delany displays his interest in language in this story just as he did in the novel mentioned above.)

Golden have both hormonal and psychological abnormalities that allow them to travel to other galaxies, bringing back rare and valuable items. They are also mean or stupid, as one character says, prone to foolish actions and sudden violence. As you'd expect, ordinary people resent them, not only for their unpleasant personalities, but out of jealousy for their ability to escape the Milky Way.

The narrator and a young man encounter an unconscious golden. (It seems that a disease brought back from another galaxy causes intermittent blackouts.)


Carrying a golden.

They bring the golden to a woman who is a projective telepath. Let me explain. That means that she causes other people to experience her sensations. She was also born addicted to a hallucinatory drug taken by her mother. Combined with her telepathic ability, the drug allowed her to serve as a psychiatric therapist, helping golden overcome psychic shock caused by their journeys.


The projective telepath. She may be the most fascinating character in the story.

Another incident involving two golden leaves the narrator with a starship designed to travel to other galaxies. The question of what should be done with it leads to multiple complications, both tragic and hopeful. (I haven't even mentioned the narrator's assistant, who plays a major part.)


There's also a dramatic scene involving waldoes.

I have only given you a small taste of a very intricate story. Despite having the depth and complexity of a full-length novel, it is never confusing. The richly imagined future reminds me a bit of Cordwainer Smith, although Delany's narrative style is much more intimate than Smith's mythologizing.

The writing is beautiful, and the author creates living, breathing characters. The plot deals with love, hate, marriage, parenthood, and much more. It will break your heart and bring you much joy.

Five stars.

The Psychiatric Syndrome in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

The indefatigable historian of fantastic fiction offers a look at the use of psychology in the genre. He traces this theme back to Robert Louis Stevenson's famous novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, then talks about a lot of other stories.

A big chunk of the article deals with the works of David H. Keller, a practicing psychiatrist. I'm not convinced that all the Kelleryarns discussed here are really relevant to the topic.

There's also discussion of The Jet Propelled Couch, a chapter from the book The Fifty-Minute Hour by psychologist Robert M. Lindner. (He also wrote the book Rebel Without a Cause, which gave its title, if nothing else, to the famous movie of the same name.) This is the true account of one of Linder's patients, who became obsessed with a fantasy world in which he was the hero of outer space adventures. Although quite interesting, the case has little to do with the subject of psychiatry in science fiction.

The article wanders all over the place, and it is not very well organized. It's not as dull as some of the author's endless listings of old stories, but it's not his best work, either.

Two stars.

The Planet Wreckers, by Keith Laumer


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Our hapless hero is in a crummy hotel room, trying to get some sleep, when he hears noises coming from above. Since he's in a Laumer story, he doesn't just call the front desk. He climbs up the fire escape to see what's going on. What seems at first to be a lovely young woman turns out to be a weird alien being.

She's some kind of outer space law enforcement agent. It seems that other weird aliens plan to cause a series of disasters on Earth, in order to record them as a form of entertainment. (Think of Hollywood spectaculars.) She doesn't care about the fact that huge numbers of human beings will be killed; she just wants to protect the environment.

The alien policewoman and our pajama-clad protagonist go zooming all over the place in her flying machine, trying to stop the catastrophes. It all winds up with the hero inside the alien studio, so to speak, and with another revelation about his female companion.


Can you tell this isn't the most serious story in the world?

Laumer writes a lot of comic adventures, along with serious ones, but I think this may be the silliest yet. There doesn't seem to be any real satire here, although I guess you can interpret it as a dig at the movie industry. It's full of goofy-looking aliens with wacky names, and plenty of slapstick mishaps. If you're looking for a brainless farce, go no further.

Two stars.

Sun Grazers, by Robert S. Richardson

Inspired by the appearance of the comet Ikeya-Seki, which was visible from late 1965 to early 1966, the author discusses comets that pass close to the sun. He also talks about how comet groups form (larger comets breaking up into smaller ones) and whether the paths of comets suggest a tenth planet beyond Pluto (inconclusive.) The article ends with the author's own struggle to view Ikeya-Seki, and how he made a rough guess as to the size of its tail.

The author describes Ikeya-Seki as a disappointment. (The name comes from two Japanese comet hunters who discovered it independently, by the way.) Other accounts of which I am aware state that it was very bright, visible in the daytime. The article is moderately informative, but a little on the dry side. Like the author's experience with the comet, it isn't as spectacular as one might wish.

Two stars.

Station HR972, by Kenneth Bulmer

The superhighways of the future, where vehicles travel two hundred miles per hour and more, require teams of specialists to deal with accidents. This includes transplanting limbs and internal organs. All in a day's work.

There's not really much plot here. It's kind of a slice-of-life story, detailing the activities of the folks who have to deal with the gruesome effects of high speed collisions. I'm reminded of Rick Raphael's story Code Three, which had a very similar theme. Frankly, that one was a lot better.

Two stars.

About 2001, by David A. Kyle

No, this isn't an article about the first year of the next millennium. It's a very brief piece concerning the upcoming movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.


Director Stanley Kubrick (with beard) and writer Arthur C. Clarke (without hair.)

There's not a lot of information here, as the creators are keeping things hush-hush. What we do find out is intriguing. Will the finished product live up to Clarke's prediction that It'll be the greatest science fiction picture ever made? Only time will tell.

I can't really blame the author of this article for frustrating my desire to learn more about the film, as he was obviously prevented from finding out too much. That doesn't keep me from wishing it were a lot longer.

Two stars.

The Shape of Shapes to Come, by Robert Bartlett Riley

An architect imagines what buildings and cities might be like in the future. This involves three areas of prediction. From easiest to most difficult, these are technological changes; what people will choose to do with these techniques; and how this will change society.

Topics discussed include advanced building materials, new forms of lighting, and greater control of interior environments. The author laments the lack of mass-produced housing, similar to the way automobiles are manufactured, which would greatly reduce the price of a home. In the most imaginative section, he dreams of shelters made from force fields rather than physical materials, and of personal Life Packs that would supply one with all the functions of a house.

I found this slightly interesting, but rather vague in its predictions and not very exciting. Despite the discussion of a couple of wild possibilities, the author seems to think that architecture is going to remain conservative for quite some time, avoiding the futuristic visions of science fiction writers.

Two stars.

The Fifth Columbiad, by Richard C. Meredith


Illustrations by Hector Castellon.

Many centuries before the story begins, aliens destroyed all humans on Earth. In what must have been the most embarrassing mistake of all time, they thought the humans were other beings who were their deadly enemies.

The only people to survive were those who happened to be on starships at the time. Now, their descendants make war on the aliens, capturing their starships to add to the human fleets.

The plot involves the captain and crew of one starship. The vessel is badly damaged in battle, just barely managing to escape. The commander and a team of volunteers remain on the derelict vessel, hoping to lure an alien starship into docking with it so they can sneak aboard the enemy vessel and seize it for themselves.


Carnage on the starship.

This yarn reminds me of war stories in which a small team of commandos attacks an enemy installation against overwhelming odds. The Guns of Navarone in space, if you will. You know that some of the volunteers will be killed in action, but that the mission will succeed. I thought there might be some kind of ironic ending, given the mistake that started the war in the first place, but nothing like that happens.

There's some odd, smirking sexual content in this story. At the risk of sounding like a prude, I didn't think it was necessary to point out that the pseudo-reptilian aliens, who have a matriarchal society, have breasts like human women.


Not shown here, for reasons of good taste, I assume.

There's one volunteer who's only there so he can be a hero, thus earning the sexual favors of admiring women. The author tells us the female crew members wear nothing but skirts — no shirts or blouses, apparently — and gives us a fair amount of detail about the heroine's panties. (The excuse is that the interior of the alien ship is hot and humid, so the humans have to strip down to the basics.)

Two stars.

Coming To A Bad End

This issue really went into a nosedive after soaring to the heights of imaginative literature with Delany's novella. Scuttlebutt has it that Worlds of Tomorrow is on its last legs. That's too bad, as the magazine gave readers some very good stuff, along with a lot of not-so-good stuff. Very much a curate's egg, I'm afraid.


Cartoon by Wilkerson, from the May 22, 1895 issue of Judy.


A better known cartoon by George du Maurier, from the November 9, 1895 issue of the better known magazine Punch. Too similar to be a coincidence, I'd say.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 10, 1967] Return to sender (February 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

President Johnson commissioned noted (and favorite of our editor, Janice) artist Peter Hurd to draw his official Presidential portrait.  This was the result:

Reportedly, upon seeing the painting, Johnson described it as the ugliest thing he had ever seen.  Aghast, the artist asked what the President had wanted in a portrait.  Lyndon whipped out this piece painted by Normal Rockwell:

I understand that Hurd returned his commission and that a new picture will be made.  Maybe by someone with the initials L.B.J.

Law of Analogy


by Jack Gaughan

It was certainly a blow to the shocked Hurd, but I kind of know how Lyndon felt.  I had a similar reaction upon finising the latest issue of Galaxy.  This was, for the most part, not the magazine I was hoping for.

Our Man in Peking, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Yes, as Winter follows Fall, so we have yet another tale in the saga of Dr. West and the half-alien Esks.  Briefly: an alien came to Earth and bred with a local woman.  Her progeny, and their kids, too, all breed humanoids who look like Eskimos, but who mature in three years and give birth in a month.  Twenty years after the first was born, there are now more than a billion of them.  And instead of being stopped or even investigated to any real degree, the governments of the world refuse to see them as anything other than mutant Eskimos, deserving of love, affection, and free food.  The Chinese have welcomed them with open arms to till hitherto unprofitable fields, but Canada, Scandinavia, and other places have also taken them in.

Only one man, the notorious Dr. West, who tried but failed to sterilize the Esks with a tailored plague, will admit the true menace of the Esks.

Last installment, West was in a comfy Canadian prison for his attempted genocide.  In this one, he has been sent on a mission to Red China, brainwashed to learn the details on an as-needed basis, mind-controlled to have no say in his actions.  He is shot down over the mainland along with an Air Force Major so caricatured in his manner that I wondered if Gaughan's art would depict him with straw coming out of his joints.

After much rigamarole, West finds himself in the presence of the current Communist leader, Mao III (do the Chinese give descendants appellations like that?) And then the true nature of West's mission is revealed…

Hayden Howard really isn't a very good writer, and there aren't actually any characters in this story–only marionettes who dance to the author's strings without any will of their own.  I also could have done without the word "Chink" used a couple dozen times.

What keeps the tale from getting just one star is this morbid fascination with how this wholly unrealistic scenario will turn out.  We're supposed to get the conclusion next month.  God willing, that'll be the end of the Esks, one way or another.

Two stars.

Return Match, by Philip K. Dick

The outspacers have gambling casinos across the galaxy.  The only problem?  They tend to be lethal for their patrons.  Joseph Tinbane, a cop for Superior Los Angeles, takes on the aliens' latest contraption: a pinball machine that evolves not only to be unbeatable, but ultimately to attack the player!

Dick's vivid writing is on display here, so there's nothing wrong with the reading.  But the concept is pure fantasy, up to and including the conclusion where Tinbane is menaced by giant pinballs.  I can only imagine that PKD turned on, dropped out, and dashed off this tale before the hallucinations disappeared from his memory.

Three stars.

For Your Information: Who Invented the Crossbow? by Willy Ley

Ley's latest piece is an interesting, but somehow perfunctory piece on the evolution of the crossbow.  A few more pages of Asimov treatment would have helped.

Three stars.

The Last Filibuster, by Wallace West

War between North and South America is averted when the governments of both nations are captured and impressed to do the fighting.

I like the sentiment: politicians would be a lot less willing to send their sons (and daughters) to war if their lives were on the line.  But the story is just sort of silly and obvious.

Besides, who could believe that an armed mob could invade the Capitol to kidnap Congress?  It beggars the imagination.

Two stars.

They Hilariated When I Hyperspaced For Earth, by Richard Wilson


by Vaughn Bodé

The leader of a boring world that has stalled in its progressive mediocrity comes to Earth to steal our Secretary General, an efficient Ugandan who knows how to get things done.  A lot of "comedy" ensues.

Not only is the story a bore, but I can't forgive it for getting "They all Laughed" stuck in my head.

Two stars.

The Trojan Bombardment, by Christopher Anvil

How we defeat an enemy without firing a shot?  Why by shooting shells filled with booze, cigarettes, and sexy ladies at them!  After all, that's what they're really fighting for, isn't it?

Fellow traveler Cora Buhlert recently noted that she can smell a Campbell reject a mile away, and Bombardment is almost assuredly an Anvil story too stupid even for Analog.

One star.

The Discovery of the Nullitron, by Thomas M. Disch and John Sladek

Speaking of stupid, here's another "funny" piece, in the style of a Scientific American article, on the new decidedly supra-atomic particle called the Nullitron, putatively discovered by the authors after a jag in Ibiza.

One star.

Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne, by R. A. Lafferty

A dozen of the Earth's greatest scientists team up with a computer to improve history.  Their first time traveling target: to salvage relations between Charlemagne and the Caliph, allowing Arabic knowledge to flow freely.  They will know that they have succeeded because all of their records will change before their eyes!

Of course, if they had read William Tenn's The Brooklyn Project, they'd know that, as part of the time stream themselves, they'd never know what had changed.

Still, it's kind of a fun piece.  The journey's the thing, not the destination.

Three stars.

The Palace of Love (Part 3 of 3), by Jack Vance


by Gray Morrow

The saving grace of this magazine is this final installment of Vance's latest serial.  Keith Gersen has tracked down Viole Falushe, one of the five "Demon Kings" crime lords who killed his parents, to the mobster's private domain.  The Palace of Love is a mystical retreat, designed to provide pleasure to discerning patrons.  But its staff and denizens are all slaves of Falushe, though they aren't completely aware of the fact.

Half of this last act involves the long, meandering road to Falushe's Palace of Love.  It is only in the final sixth that we learn the truth about the place, who Drusilla is and her relation to Falushe's object of childhood infatuation, Jheral Tinzy, and whether or not Gersen can succeed in his revenge.

I found it all gripping stuff.  Vance has a knack for sensual writing; you always know what things smell like, what color they are, how they sound.  Yet the prose is never overlabored.  If the first book in the series starts auspiciously and ends with a dull thud, this second one only has one slow patch, in its second sixth.

For that reason, I give this installment and the book as a whole four stars, and it'll be in the running for the Galactic Star at the end of the year.

Summing up

Even with Palace shoring things up, this month's Galaxy clocks in at a dismal 2.4 stars.  And given that the Vance is likely to end up published in paperback, it's probably not even worth buying this mag for the one story (unless, of course, you want the serial complete in original form).

I'll be surprised if Galaxy doesn't come in last this month.  I'll also be really disappointed in that event; I don't think I could easily face another, worse slog!

That would truly be the ugliest month I've ever seen…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 6, 1967] Happy Anniversary (February 1967 Amazing)

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by John Boston

January 6!  A portentous anniversary!  On this day in 1838, Samuel Morse publicly demonstrated the telegraph, sending a message two miles; and in 1912, German geophysicist Alfred Wegener announced his theory of the continental drift, to much skepticism until very recently.


by Arnold Kahn

The February 1967 Amazing is here too, in a burst of bright yellow surrounding a glum-looking guy who seems to have a head problem.  The table of contents captions Arnold Kahn’s cover as Slaves of the Crystal Brain; research reveals it first appeared as the cover of the May 1950 Amazing, where the head was bordered in black rather than yellow.  It is hard to imagine why anyone thought the change to be an improvement.  However, the subject’s disgruntled expression so acutely characterizes the issue that I fear my comments may be superfluous.

Born Under Mars (Part 2 of 2), by John Brunner

The prolific and versatile John Brunner has provided us with such thoughtful works as The Whole Man and such well-turned entertainments as Echo in the Skull.  Born Under Mars, unfortunately, is neither, though it might be viewed as a caricature of both, with an overstuffed action plot against a background of Big Thinks that seem to have been drawn with a crayon.


by Gray Morrow

In the future, Earth has established interstellar colonies, their nations and residents known as Centaurs and Bears respectively.  Mars, earlier colonized, has become unfashionable and neglected in this new and larger configuration, and its inhabitants are a bit resentful about it.  These include Ray Mallin, a space engineer who has just returned to Mars on a Centaur ship, only to find himself kidnapped and tortured with a nerve whip to obtain information he does not have about the ship he arrived on. 

There ensues much to-ing and fro-ing as Mallin tries to find out what is going on, including reliance on outrageous coincidence: Mallin, at the Old Temple containing ancient Martian artifacts, pushes on a random spot on the wall, which opens to reveal the room where he was nerve-whipped, along with one of the perpetrators.  He returns the favor of torture and interrogation but his former tormentor knows nothing. 

Eventually Mallin corners his old mentor Thoder and the Big Thinks begin to emerge.  Humanity is stagnating, with no major scientific breakthroughs for a couple of centuries, and needs to get a lot smarter.  How?  They don’t really know, but “a pair of strongly opposed societies was devised: the Bears, happy-go-lucky, casual, living life as it came, and the Centaurs, thinking hard about everything and especially about their descendants.” In effect they are trying eugenics by bank shot: creating societies to order to see if either one of them breeds—literally—the intellectual superpeople who are needed (i.e., those who have “a talent—extra psychological muscle if you like”). 

And who contrived all this, and how did they manage to keep it secret, and what rational basis is there to believe that anyone can create societies to order and have them stick to the program for the generations necessary for this project?  How is manipulating social arrangements and behavior going to jump-start human heredity?  Is Lamarck consulting on this project?  There’s no pretense of an explanation; these large concepts are merely brandished like slogans on placards.

But—the author asserts—it’s worked!  Six generations early, in fact, unto the Centaurs is born an infant who will have “an IQ at the limits of the measurable, empathy topping 2000, Weigand scale, and virtually every heritable talent from music to mathematics, all transmissible to his descendants!” And he’s here!  He’s, as Hitchock would put it, the macguffin everyone has been chasing after, torturing Mallin en passant because this miracle child, kidnapped, was brought to Mars on the ship Mallin rode on. 

So what’s the plan?  Educate him on Mars.  “Then, when he’s grown, to use the random mixing of genetic lines available in Bear society to spread a kind of ferment through half the human race.” In other words, this kid is intended to grow up to be a playboy in interstellar Bohemia, and that’s how humanity will be transformed.

But wait—now somebody has snatched the kid away from the people who snatched the kid!  More hurly-burly ensues, along with more elevated yakety-yak, and in the last 20 pages a Girl emerges for the hero to get.  And there’s a redeeming note: she wants to know what the hell all these people are doing treating an infant like nothing but an object to be manipulated, which doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone previously.

Born Under Mars is another of many examples of pseudo-profundity in SF: the semblance of large ideas waved around without the author’s doing the work of thinking them through and making them plausible, or abandoning them when their implausibility becomes obvious.  Brunner is certainly not the only offender of this sort, but he seems sufficiently capable that I expected better of him.

Bah, humbug.  Oh, wait, that was last month.  Two stars, mainly for effort.

Tumithak of the Corridors, by Charles R. Tanner

“Special,” says the cover, about Charles R. Tanner’s Tumithak of the Corridors—a “complete novel” at 56 pages per the table of contents.  The interior blurb calls it “as good as early Wells, as fresh as the latest Zelazny.” And indeed this story, from the January 1932 Amazing, does have a certain reputation among older fans.


by Leo Morey

It seems that humans made it to Venus, whose inhabitants, called shelks for no reason I can discern, had no idea there was anything outside their eternal clouds.  But once they found out, they proceeded straightway to build their own space fleet (“All over the planet, the great machine-shops hummed and clattered”) to invade Earth.  Earth responded by creating great underground fastnesses, full of corridors of sorts, and after losing the war, humans fled into their deepest recesses and regressed to ignorance and barbarism.  But—of course—one brave young man will not accept humanity’s fate.  He has found an old book that recounts the history of the shelks’ invasion, and he is going to find his way the surface to kill a shelk!

This mass of cliches actually turns into a pretty good old-fashioned story.  Tanner’s style is clear and uncluttered.  Tumithak is presented as heroic but not superhuman.  His odyssey through the corridors, including the territories of other human tribes (one of them not too friendly), manages not to become any more ridiculous than the starting premises, except for a portion towards the end in the territory of the Esthetts (sic!) which is all right because it’s purposefully satirical.  Altogether, the story is a fairly charming relic.  Three stars, and by the standards of its times it would merit more.

Methuselah, Ltd., by Wallace West and Richard Barr

Methuselah, Ltd. (from Fantastic, November-December 1953), is as you might guess about immortality, or its absence.  In the future, disease, disability, and aging have been conquered by the Life Ray, but people still die around age 90.  Dr. Weinkopf, age 88, would like to do something about this, and he thinks it has something to do with the pineal gland, and with “brain sand”—calcareous salts with a “concentric laminated structure” found in the brain after death, it says here.  Surgery has been made illegal, but there is an underground Society for the Preservation of Surgical Techniques that performs operations in speakeasy fashion before an audience of sadists.  Dr. Weinkopf hopes to piggyback on a brain tumor operation to remove the pineal and dig out the brain sand.  But the patient, hearing talk of this plan, chickens out and leaves.  By the rules of the Society, the jilted surgeon must be subjected to surgery himself, so the doctor chooses to have his nurse do the surgery on him, with predictable bad end looming as the story ends.  This is apparently intended as a sort of farcical black comedy, but it’s not especially funny and is just as big a mess as my description suggests.  The authors should improve their farce technique by studying the works of Ron Goulart—not the kind of sentence I ever expected to write.  One star.

The Man with Common Sense, by Edwin James


by Leo Morey

The other reprinted short story, from the July 1950 Amazing, is The Man with Common Sense, by Edwin James, an early pseudonym of James E. Gunn.  It’s another dreary farce, though better-wrought than Methuselah, Ltd.  Malachi Jones is a “dapper, wizened little man” equipped with cane and derby hat who is an interstellar insurance agent for Lairds of Luna.  Lairds has issued a policy guaranteeing peace on Mizar II, and Jones is there to make sure Lairds doesn’t have to pay off.  He tames the planet’s rebels and makes peace in the accidental company of one Rand Ridgeway, who is distinguished mainly by his stupidity (en route, he takes his shoes off and forgets to put them back on).  Two stars, barely.  Here’s another case for Ron Goulart.

Two Days Running and Then Skip a Day, by Ron Goulart


by Gray Morrow

Speaking of Ron Goulart, here is the man himself, with the issue’s only new short story, Two Days Running and Then Skip a Day.  Goulart has been on a tear about the medical profession for a while; see his Calling Dr. Clockwork in the March 1965 Amazing, about a man who winds up in the hospital and then can’t get out, and Terminal, in the May 1965 Fantastic, about a nursing home system designed mainly to get rid of the troublesome elderly and the even more troublesome investigators.  Here, Goulart tees off, or I should say flails in all directions, against celebrity doctors who can’t be bothered with their patients, robot assistants of dubious competence, modern apartments and appliances that are badly built, sleazy landlords, and I probably missed something.  It’s insubstantial but amusing, which seens to sum this writer up, and to compare favorably with Gunn and West/Barr, whose entries are merely insubstantial.  Three stars, barely.

Summing Up

As I said at the beginning, the expression on the cover acutely captures the contents of the issue, and requires no elaboration.


by Arnold Kahn (detail)

[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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