Tag Archives: gray morrow

Magazine/Anthology, Serial

[August 2, 1966] Mirages (September 1966 IF)

2 Comments


by David Levinson

The popular image of a mirage is a shining oasis in a desert replete with shady palm trees and sometimes dancing girls. That’s not how mirages work. We’re all familiar with heat shimmer, say on a hot, empty asphalt road, casting the image of the sky onto the ground and resembling water. Less common is the Fata Morgana, which makes it look as though cities or islands are floating in the sky. But the popular idea of the mirage remains: something beautiful and desirable, yet insubstantial.

Heat Wave

July was a real scorcher in the United States as a heat wave settled in over much of the Midwest. A heat wave might make a fun metaphor for passion if you’re Irving Berlin or Martha and the Vandellas, but as the latest hit from the Lovin’ Spoonful suggests, it can be a pretty unpleasant experience. As the mercury rises, people get pretty hot under the collar.

On July 12th, the Black neighborhoods on Chicago’s West Side exploded. The sight of children playing in the spray of a fire hydrant is a familiar one, but the city’s fire commissioner ordered the hydrants closed. The spark was lit when, while shutting off the hydrants, the police attempted to arrest a man, either because there was a warrant for his arrest (according to them) or because he reopened a hydrant right in front of them (according to the locals). As things escalated, stores were looted and burned, rocks were thrown at police and firemen and shots were fired. There were also peaceful protests led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Mayor Daley called in the National Guard with orders to shoot. Ultimately, the mayor relented. Police protection was granted to Blacks visiting public pools (all in white neighborhoods), portable pools were brought in and permission was given to open the hydrants.


Children in Chicago playing in water from a reopened hydrant

As things wound down in Chicago, they flared up in Cleveland. On the 18th in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Hough, the owners of the white-owned bar the Seventy-Niner’s Café refused ice water to Black patrons, possibly posting a sign using a word I won’t repeat here. Once again, there was looting and burning and the National Guard was called in. Things calmed after a couple of days, but heated up again when police fired on a car being driven by a Black woman with four children as passengers. It appears to be over now and the Guard has been gradually withdrawn over the last week. City officials are blaming “outside agitators” for the whole thing.

These riots are a stark reminder that the passage of the Civil Rights Act two years ago didn’t magically make everything better, and that problems also exist outside of the South. We have a long way to go before racial equality is more than just wishful thinking.


National Guardsmen outside the Seventy-Niner’s Café

Pretty, but insubstantial

Some of the stories in this month’s IF are gorgeously written, but lacking in plot. Sometimes that’s enough, sometimes it isn’t.


This fellow’s having a very bad day, but he’s not in The Edge of Night. Art by Morrow

Continue reading [August 2, 1966] Mirages (September 1966 IF) →

2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 22, 1966] Ridiculous! (August 1966 Amazing)

3 Comments


by John Boston

The Sublime Don’t Work Here No More

. . . Not that it showed up very often when it did.  But the previous issue, which at last attained the status of “not bad,” raised hopes, now dashed again.

The theme of this August 1966 Amazing is plainly announced on the cover, a crude and silly-looking image by James B. Settles, from the back cover of the July 1942 Amazing, titled Radium Airship of Saturn.  You might also think that it doesn’t make much sense, but you’d be wrong!  What you see is actually the top two-thirds of the 1942 version; what you’re missing is the surface of Saturn, and a caption: “The motor in this air-ship is a disintegrating rocket-blast caused by the breaking down of a copper core by a stream of powerful radium rays concentrated on it.  It acts like a giant fireworks rocket.” It’s science!


by James B. Settles

Inside, the theme is carried forward with the conclusion of the Murray Leinster serial begun in June, a new novelet by Philip K. Dick, and five reprinted stories, particulars below.  The brightest spot in the issue is the absence of an editorial, though the usual brief and praiseful letter column is present.

While the editor misses no chance to bad-mouth the magazine’s prior regime, directly and through his selection of letters to publish, one thing has remained constant, and has seemingly intensified: the abominable proofreading.  (“Strickly speaking,” indeed.)

There's also a different sort of difficulty facing Amazing and Fantastic now.  It's been rumored for a while that they are not paying the authors for the reprinted material, which is now confirmed for those not plugged into the more authoritative gossip channels.  Kris Vyas-Myall has helpfully flagged the new issue of the fanzine Riverside Quarterly, in which the editor mentions that he confirmed with Kris Neville that he did not get paid for his recently reprinted story, and confirmed with Damon Knight, president of the newly constituted Science Fiction Writers of America, that this is the general practice. 

I suppose this may reflect the publishing practice prevalent in earlier years of buying "all rights" (sometimes simply by so noting on the author's check, with no more formal contract than that).  So maybe it's legal, but it stinks.  Knight has called on the members of SFWA to boycott the publisher until it changes its ways, and editor Leland Sapiro suggests that readers do the same with the magazines.  I'd take that advice, but duty dictates otherwise.

Stopover in Space (Part 2 of 2), by Murray Leinster

Murray Leinster’s latest Western treads a familiar path.  There’s a new sheriff, but he’s not really quite in town yet, because somebody doesn’t want him there, and it probably has to do with the stagecoach full of gold that is expected to arrive any day now.  It seems like business as usual from the author of Kid Deputy, Outlaw Guns, and Son of the Flying ‘Y’.

Oh, wait.  Sorry.  Wrong rut.  Trying again:

In Murray Leinster’s latest space opera, Lieutenant Scott of the Space Patrol is on his way to take over his first command, Checkpoint Lambda, a station orbiting the star Canis Lambda, whose system is of no special interest except that no fewer than six space lanes cross there.  (Didn’t know space has lanes?  People established them, I suppose so no one will get lost.) En route, Scott learns that several passengers had been supposed to leave Lambda on a ship recently, but didn’t, under peculiar circumstances—and one of them was “a girl.” This bears repetition, to the author and to Scott; a few pages later, Scott is reviewing the available facts, and notes that “passengers—including a girl—hadn’t left the checkpoint when they should.”


by Gray Morrow

Now, what could be happening?  Scott doesn’t know, but he does know the Golconda Ship is expected to show up at Lambda in the near future.  That ship is owned by a bunch of guys who went somewhere nobody knows and came back with a load of “treasure” which made them rich, and they go back for more every four years or so.  What kind of treasure?  Gold, platinum, radioactives, miracle cures from an unknown planet, the secret wisdom of an ancient civilization?  Doesn’t say, now or at any other point until the end of the story.  For the author’s purposes, you don’t need to know.  It’s just a game piece.

So what seems to be going on here?  Owlhoots!  Er, sorry.  Gangsters!  Scott is strongly discouraged from debarking onto Checkpoint Lambda, but insists, and finds himself going through the motions of normality with some slovenly types pretending to be the station crew.  He meets their nominal mastermind, one Chenery, who pretends to know Scott—and, before too long, he encounters the real power, whom Chenery recruited, and who is known as—Bugsy!  He is there to provide and direct the muscle, er, blastermen.*

* No, Bugsy and the Blastermen did not play at last Saturday’s sock hop.  That was somebody else.

So, here are the pieces in play: a good guy, some bad guys, treasure to be fought over, “a girl” to be protected.  What else do we need?  Oh yes, an external menace.  How about the Five Comets?  The Canis Lambda system has no planets—they all blew up eons ago, and the Checkpoint is attached to one of the bigger pieces—but it has some really fine comets, and they are all going to arrive at about the same time, right athwart the Checkpoint’s orbit—and there’s no astrogator, except for Scott!  (One might ask why the powers that be wouldn’t put the Checkpoint in some other location than the entirely predictable convergence point of multiple comets, but one would be wasting time to do so.)

The “girl”—an adult woman, of course—does have a name, Janet, though no others are disclosed.  Her full name would have to be (apologies to Alfred Hitchcock) Janet S. MacGuffin (“S” for Secondary), since she drives a part of the plot.  One of Scott’s challenges is to keep her safe from . . . well, let her tell it.  She says that Chenery “did keep the others from—harming me.” Such an eloquent dash! 

But clearly, as in last year’s Killer Ship, women have no role in tough situations other than to create the need for men to protect them.  At one point, Scott parks Janet for safekeeping in one of the Checkpoint’s lifeboats, gives her a snap course in operating it if necessary, and reassures her: “It’s not a very good chance.  But there aren’t many women who could make it a chance at all.  I think you can.” She doesn't have to try.  Later, though, Scott gives her something to do—maneuver the station to avoid comet debris while he’s busy elsewhere—and she blows it.  But he promises himself not even to hint at criticizing her, and at the end, after all is safely resolved, she is performing women’s other function in Leinster’s fiction as she and Scott get better acquainted.

This one is a little less vapid than Killer Ship, and considerably less irritating, since it lacks the constant reminders that interstellar travel will be just like the eighteenth century.  It’s just as verbose as Killer Ship, but the padding is a little better connected to what is actually going on in the story, and there is a bit more cleverness to the plot.  So, two stars for this played-out and left-behind author. 

Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday, by Philip K. Dick

The other new story is Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday, by the more-prominent-every-day Philip K. Dick, which once more vindicates my warning: when big names show up at the bottom of the market, there’s a reason for it.  This is a story about time running backwards.  It starts with a guy getting up in the morning (wait a minute—morning?), getting some dirty clothes to put on, and picking up a packet of whiskers to glue evenly onto his face, presumably to be absorbed over the course of the day.  So where do these whiskers come from, and who puts them into packets, and how are they distributed?  What happens if you run out?  And why does anyone bother with them?


by Gray Morrow

It goes on.  People begin conversations with “good-bye” and end with “hello,” but they don’t talk backwards in between.  Et cetera.  Sorry, it doesn’t work.  PKD’s specialty is making preposterous ideas at least momentarily plausible, but this one is too long a stretch.  It’s not enough for the reader to suspend disbelief; for this story you’d have to shoot it out of a cannon.

There’s more, of course, but not better.  Dick does have enough knack as a storyteller to keep things readable as the reader fumes over the contradictions, so, two stars.

The Voice of the Void, by John W. Campbell, Jr.

The Voice of the Void was John W. Campbell, Jr.’s fourth published story, from the Summer 1930 Amazing Stories Quarterly, and at first it’s sort of refreshing: the story of humanity’s quest for survival as the sun is burning out, first disassembling large parts of the solar system and moving pieces closer to the sun, then looking for a new home around a younger or longer-lived star. 


by Hans Wessolowski

The story is about 98% character- and dialogue-free, though the astronomer Hal Jus has several cameos along the way.  Instead, it chronicles a long course of human discovery and problem-solving, grandiose and grave in equal measure.  It is a little reminiscent of Edmond Hamilton’s Intelligence Undying of a few issues back, if that story had been administered a mild sedative.

But things turn dark soon enough.  Humanity wants Betelgeuse for its new home.  But it turns out there’s no vacancy there—that system is inhabited by energy beings who don’t take kindly to human invasion.  Allegedly they are not intelligent, but their facility at fatally repelling unwanted visitors suggests otherwise.  Now, Betelgeuse is not necessary to human survival.  There’s another star handy; it doesn’t have planets, but the human fleet is so large that humanity could hang out for a few years in orbit and build some suitable planets.  But we want Betelgeuse!  So the indigenes have to go, and are exterminated in a siege of human-devised energy rays.

Well, that puts a damper on things.  Gratuitous genocide can ruin one’s whole reading experience.  Two stars with clothespin on nose.

The Gone Dogs, by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert’s The Gone Dogs (November 1954 issue) is a slightly more interesting bad story than many, rather crudely written—surprisingly so, since it appeared only a year before Herbert’s much more capable and ambitious Under Pressure a/k/a The Dragon in the Sea.  On the other hand, it’s free of the turgidity of his current work, especially the characters’ internal monologues about the motives and intentions of one another.  Pick your poison. 

In the story, an artificially mutated virus is killing off all the world’s dogs, abetted by the fact that humans carry the virus; how to save the species?  One solution, highly unauthorized, is to give the last few to the Vegans, who are trying to breed dogs, or something like them.  Matters are enlivened along the way by a psychotic dog lover who’s determined to grab one of the last living dogs for herself (and will kill it with the virus she’s carrying).  At the end there's a slightly silly and anticlimactic twist.

One thing that’s annoying here is the hyper-facile and acontextual (thoughtless, for short) deployment of standard components from the SF warehouse.  At one point the main character needs to dodge a congressional subpoena.  What better way than to flee to Vega?  All by himself, with a forged pass to a faster-than-light spaceship which any idiot, or at least a biologist, can apparently navigate solo across interstellar distances, without notice and whenever the need arises.  There’s no reason in the rest of the story to believe in this capability.  This sort of thing was common in ‘50s SF but that doesn’t make it more palatable.  Two stars.

The Pent House, by David H. Keller, M.D.

David H. Keller, M.D., is in the position, unusual for him, of providing the least ridiculous story in the issue, chiefly because he essays so little.  The Pent House, from the February 1932 Amazing, is a minor exercise in benign crankiness.  A rich guy who is also a doctor discovers that humanity is about to be wiped out by the spread of a cancer germ, so he sets up a nice sealed-off apartment on top of a tall building, makes arrangements for a generous supply of life’s necessities and amenities, and advertises for a couple who really like each other to take on a lucrative job for five years.  The lucky winners persuade him to stay with them in the (large) apartment. 


by Leo Morey

Blissful years pass.  The woman of the couple is not feeling well, so the old rich doctor goes in to look at her and some hours later tells the husband, “It’s a girl.” He hadn’t noticed his wife’s pregnancy.  Maybe this is not the least ridiculous story here after all.

More time passes, the five years are up, and the old guy goes downstairs to check things out.  Turns out the cancer epidemic was thwarted by medical science.  So things are the same?  No—noisier, dirtier, generally less civilized (to summarize an extensive rant).  “It seemed to me that the world has escaped the cancer death so it could die from neurasthenia,” pronounces the doctor.  He’s ready to pay the couple the fortune they have earned and bid them adieu, but the wife says forget it, just order up some more supplies and let’s lock the door for another five years of "Heaven in a penthouse."  Two stars for competent rendering discounted for triviality.

The Man Who Knew All the Answers, by Donald Bern

The Man Who Knew All the Answers, from the August 1940 Amazing, is bylined Donald Bern, who was actually Al Bernstein, who has half a dozen or so credits in Amazing and Fantastic Adventures in 1940-42, and nothing else in the SF magazines.  Frankly, just as well.  This is a silly story about a nasty guy named Scuttlebottom, who stumbles (literally) into Ye Village Book Stall, and encounters the proprietor (“He wore a pince-nez.  He looked exactly like a person who wears a pince-nez.”), who sells him a book called The Dormant Brain.  The book teaches him to become telepathic, so now he knows what everybody thinks of him, which is unpleasant, and he then comes to a contrived bad end as a result of his new talent.  One star per the ground rules, despite this story’s utter lack of any reason for existing. 

The Metal Martyr, by Robert Moore Williams

Robert Moore Williams’s The Metal Martyr, from the July 1950 Amazing, is a mildly clever but overall pretty silly story about a robot, named Two, who develops the delusion that he is a man—this in the far future, long after a rumored rebellion by robots against humans, and the fall of human civilization.  Two flees the robot enclave to avoid having its brain dissolved and replaced, and comes across a couple of humans, named Bill and Ed, never mind the intervening millennia.  Two visits them at their home cave, but some of the humans get scared and threaten it, so Two flees deeper into the cave.  There it discovers the remains of an ancient mining site full of machinery, skeletons, and books explaining the past and how things got to their present metal-poor state—and showing no robots, revealing that humans once did just fine without them.  Two recovers from its delusion of humanity.  After giving the humans their past back (although they, unlike robots, can’t read), Two heads back to robotdom and its rendezvous with the acid vat.


by Edmond B. Swiatek

Williams was once a titanically prolific contributor to pulps of all genres, but most frequently SF and fantasy, and within them, most frequently to Ray Palmer’s Amazing and Fantastic Adventures, where he was part of the regular crew that filled those magazines with juvenilia.  Palmer was gone before this one appeared, but it is true to the tradition.  Two stars, charitably.

Summing Up

There’s not much to say.  The last issue finally achieved consistent readability, a first for the Sol Cohen regime.  Now, back into the murk and muck.




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Serial

[July 20, 1966] An Endless Summer (August 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

8 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Surf's up!

My daughter and I are dyed-in-the-wool beach lovers.  We live just 10 miles from the shore, and now that Highway 78 is a real two-lane throughway, it's a snap to head down to Carlsbad for a jump in the waves.  I'm not a real surfer, mind you.  Water terrifies me.  But every year, I muster enough courage to try body surfing and belly boarding, and after the first wipe-out or two, it's "Cowabunga!" and fun for the rest of the afternoon.

We came back from our latest coastal excursion to pick up a viewing of The Endless Summer, a documentary of two Malibutians as they traveled around the world in pursuit of the perfect wave (which they find in the most improbable of places!) It's a great film, and highly recommended.

Hang Ten

I was in for a pleasant surprise when I got home.  According to Mike Moorcock, summer is when sf mags publish their worst stuff since readership is at its lowest.  I wasn't looking forward to this month's issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but aside from one dud, it actually turned out to be quite a decent book.


by Gray Morrow

The Productions of Time (Part 1 of 2), by John Brunner

Murray, a sauced-up actor on the wagon, is hired for a most unorthodox production by a most unorthodox producer, name of Delgado.  Murray is sequestered in a country inn with a number of other talented but problematic performers.  One has a heroin addiction.  Two are homosexuals.  One has a pornography habit.  Moreover, all of them have their weaknesses tempted: our hero keeps finding booze in his room (he angrily calls for its removal), the addict discovers a two ounce flask of horse in his, the obscenity-junky is well-supplied in copies of Fanny Hill and the like, etc. 

Things get even weirder when Murray discovers that all of the beds in the inn are wired with tape recorders.  When confronted, a testy Delgado says they're for hypno-learning, but the recorders don't have speakers!  The televisions are also strangely equipped with extra electronics, and they are wired to a central control system in a locked room.

The producer's eccentricities and the cast's friction notwithstanding, the troupe manage to put together a pretty good impromptu show.  Whereupon Delgado denigrates Murray's perfect performance and demands the whole thing be scrapped.  Is it part of his technique?  Or is the play never meant to be completed, part of a larger experiment.

This story feels very Leiberian, perhaps because of the subject matter.  It was slow to engage, but by the end, I was sorely disappointed that I'd have to wait a month to read the resolution.

Four stars thus far.


by Gahan Wilson

Matog, by Joan Patricia Basch

A contemporary of Paracelsus is retained by a local Baron to summon a demon.  He succeeds but is unaware of the deed as the fiend appears behind him.  For the duration of the creature's captivity on our plane, he is kept company by the summoner's charming young daughter, who has fallen for the Baron's son.

What ensues is an all's-well-that-ends-well tale involving a much-put-upon demon, whose reputation for evil and mischief is largely human ascribed (though not entirely), a thwarted romance, and a surprisingly effective set of veterinary medicines.

Fun fluff in a pleasantly archaic style.  Three stars.


by Ed Emshwiller

The Seven Wonders of the Universe, by Mose Mallette

Humans pierce the boundary between universes and find themselves in need of a travel brochure to encourage tourism.  This is that brochure.

One of the dumbest non-fact articles I've yet read and too obsessed with sex.  One star.

For the Love of Barbara Allen, by Robert E. Howard

This hitherto unpublished story is perhaps the last composed by the Conan creator before he killed himself.  It involves time travel, the Civil War, and enduring love.  Pleasant enough, though more interesting for the circumstances around its creation than its content.

Three stars.

Meteroid Collision, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas suggests in this science fact vignette that micrometeoroids be used to power spacecraft.  They'd hit a piezoelectric hull that would harness their intense energies.

Cute, but 1) I suspect the efficiency would be very low, and 2) there just aren't that many micrometeoroids.  Solar cells are cheaper, lighter, and work all the time.

Think harder, Ted.  Two stars.

Letter to a Tyrant King, by Bill Butler

Cute doggerel composed at the end of the Cretaceous, one dinosaur to another.  Three stars.

A Matter of Organization, by Frank Bequaert

A cog in the corporate machine ends up in a Hell that is all too familiar.  Can his cunning and bureaucratic prowess keep him from eternal torment?

A nice twist on the classic formula.  Three stars.

Near Thing, by Robin Scott

Expansionist aliens call off an impending invasion of Earth after encountering smog.

Silly, overdone, and eminently forgettable.  Two stars.

BB or Not BB, That Is the Question, by Isaac Asimov

I've been waiting for a good piece comparing the Steady State and Big Bang theories of cosmology, and The Good Doctor has delivered.  One of the best articles of the year from any source.

Five stars.

Come Lady Death, by Peter S. Beagle

Bookending this issue with quality is the first story I've read by Mr. Beagle (apparently a reprint from 1963).  A wizened socialite decides her swansong party shall include an invitation to Death.  The encounter is unusual in many ways.

I shan't spoil the plot as this lovely piece is worth reading.  Suffice it to say that the author has a light, compelling style, and I look forward to more fantastic works by him.

Four stars.

Back to Shore

That was pleasant.  Sure, there was a lot of mediocrity 'round the middle, but the take-off and landing were quite nice.  And there's every indication that next month's reading will be excellent: it will feature the second half of the Brunner novel and a new The People story by Zenna Henderson!

Here's to a nice long summer.




8 Comments Leave A Comment
Serial

[July 8, 1966] South Pohl (August 1966 Galaxy)

4 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

The Big Bang

The Americans and Soviets have signed onto a Partial Test Ban Treaty, restricting nuclear tests to deep underground. The Chinese and French are under no such obligation, however.  Not only have the Chinese detonated two (or was it three?) atomic devices in the open air, but now the French have begun their own series of above-grown tests.

These big bombs are being burst on the French Polynesian atoll of Moruroa.  I don't know what the indigenous South Seas population thinks of the blasts, but I imagine their opinions will sour as quickly as their strontium-90 laced milk.

The Big Fizzle


by Gray Morrow

The French may be making a big noise in the Southern Hemisphere, but Fred Pohl, editor of IF, Worlds of Tomorrow, and the formerly august Galaxy, has barely been squeaking by.  Indeed, the August 1966 issue of Galaxy is the most feeble outing I've read in a long time.

The Body Builders, by Keith Laumer


by Nodel

Opening things up, Keith Laumer extrapolates a future that is a straight-line evolution of our current boob tube culture.  Since so many of us are content to live vicariously, eyes plastered to the small screen, why not take things a few steps further?  And so a large portion of humanity lives flat on their backs, plugged into life support machines.  Their senses are hooked into humanoid surrogates of plastic and metal, optimized for task, emphasized for beauty. 

Our protagonist is a prize fighter, or at least, he remote controls a synthetic boxer.  Another artificial being provokes our hero into a duel while he's inhabiting his sport model body rather than his brawler suit.  So he goes on the lam.  Troubles, high jinks, and happy endings ensue.

Elements remind me of Robert F. Young's Romance in a Twenty-First Century Used-Car Lot (shuttling around in personally molded chassis) and Steel (human boxer steps into the ring against a robotic opponent), but this is a nice new spin.

Three stars.

Heresies of the Huge God by Brian W. Aldiss

A giant creature, thousands of miles long, crashes into the Earth.  Its bulk causes tremendous damage, alters our seasons, and thoroughly discombobulates our society.  This after-the-fact chronicle of the millennium following the alien's arrival is both unsettling and rather funny.

Four stars.

For Your Information: Scheherazade's Island by Willy Ley

This month's science column details the unusual creatures that inhabited Madagascar until quite recently: Big birds, giant lemurs, and other exotics.  They may, indeed, yet live there in remote areas of the enormous island.

Interesting topic but bland presentation.  Three stars.

The Piper of Dis by James Blish and Norman L. Knight


by Gray Morrow

Authors Blish and Knight return us to the overcrowded world of 2794 on which ten trillion humans live.  In this installment, the asteroid Flavia is headed toward Earth, where it will cause tremendous damage.  Millions of North Americans must be evacuated to the spare town of Gitler.  There are two wrinkles: 1) a convention of the Jones family is currently occupying the city, and they must be evacuated out before refugees can be evacuated in; 2) an insane criminal member of the Jones family, Fongavaro, doesn't want anyone in the city lest he be extradited back to his home in Madagascar.

Actually, there's another wrinkle: it's a dreary potboiler of a story in an implausible world.  I hope this is the last piece in the series.

Two stars.

Among the Hairy Earthmen by R. A. Lafferty

What if the Renaissance was really the work of bored aliens?  In this typically whimsical piece, a band of seven humanoid cousins arrive at medieval Europe and make history their plaything. 

This one of those tales that's all in the telling, and the telling is pretty charming.  Three stars.

The Look, by George Henry Smith

Women, hare-brained slaves to fashion that they all are, succumb to trends so horrendous that no man can bear to look at them.  It's the plot of a pair of homosexual fashion designers to ensure they have all of mankind to themselves.  Or so we're meant to think.  The "twist" is that it's actually a ploy of Alpha Centaurians to depopulate the Earth.

If we had a negative counterpart to the Galactic Stars, this would win the prize. One star.

Heisenberg's Eyes (Part 2 of 2) by Frank Herbert


by Dan Atkins

Last issue, we were treated to the first half of Frank Hebert's latest short novel.  It takes place in a far (like tens of thousands of years from now far) future in which the human race has completely stagnated in technology, society, and biology.  The "Optimen", sterile ubermenschen who are essentially immortal, rule over the mostly sterile humans whose offspring are all produced out of womb and with scrupulous surgical control.

Last installment, the Durant couple had stolen their embryo from under the noses of the Optimen with the help of the Cyborgs, a competing sub-race of humanity that has traded their emotions for computerized sturdiness.  The Durant embryo, due to some unexplained quirk, is the first bog-standard human to be spawned in millennia.  Able to reproduce, it may hold the key to toppling the static society of humanity.

This installment begins with the Durants stealthily escaping the megalopolis of Seatac. This takes up most of the part, and is ultimately pointless as the triumvirate of rulers is aware of their attempt the entire way.  The Durants, their assisting Cyborgs, as well as Svengaard, the surgeon they had taken hostage, are summoned before a full council of the Optimen for punishment.  Violence breaks out.  Two of the triumvirate are killed.  Calapine, the impulsive, simpering woman of the ruling trio, is both outraged and excited by the new feeling of mortality.  Nevertheless, she is committed to destroying her captives before they destroy the current order.

Until it is pointed out that the order is just its own kind of death, a sentence of eternal boredom.  In any event, it's doomed to failure since even the immortals need increasing doses of enzymes to stay alive, a situation that is quickly becoming untenable.

There is a solution!  It turns out that being implanted with an embryo produces all the enzymes one needs to stay alive indefinitely.  So women (and men) can be installed with pre-tykes that are made to gestate for thousands of years, and that will keep them alive forever.  Thus, humanity can return to some sort of natural (if prolonged) rhythm.

Never minding the utter implausibility of, well, everything about this book, all of the above could probably have been written in about 20 pages.  But when you're paid by the word, and you're one of the hottest authors in the genre (I can imagine a half century from now that Dune will replace The Bible as the most-read book in the world; there ain't no justice), I suppose sentences must flow.

Two stars for this part, two and half for the whole book.

Who Is Human? by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Starting in medias res, we have the latest story of the Esks: people who look like Eskimos, but are actually born in a month and raised to adulthood in five years.  In this installment, which really does not stand alone as a separate story, we learn that the Esks have been artificially created by alien visitors.  We are meant to believe that 1) the Esks pose an intolerable risk to the human race as we will soon be outbred and replaced by them, and 2) no one will actually believe our protagonist, Dr. West, when he explains the true nature of the Esks.  Everyone maintains they're just plain ol' Eskimos.

This is the silliest, most contrived set of premises.  The Esks are already starving due to overpopulation, and thus applying for relief.  Once free food starts being doled out, the unnatural increase in population will be known.  This may spell adversity for the real Inuit (and the Canadian budget) but it hardly threatens world domination.  And it's not like we have a Puppet Masters situation here; the Esks don't possess other humans.  They just live alongside them. 

Maybe there will be a better explanation down the road.  Two stars.

Summer Slump

It's a pretty sad affair when Galaxy clocks in at a bare 2.5 stars.  On the other hand, as Michael Moorcock informed us last month, it is not uncommon for magazines to save their weakest material for the summer, when readership is at its lowest.  Let us hope that's what is going on here!

Ah well.  At least the summer music is good:

Tune in to KGJ, our radio station!




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Serial

[July 2, 1966] The Big Thud (August 1966 IF)

1 Comment


by David Levinson

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
– T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

Starting with a Bang

This month, we note with regret the passing of Monsignor Georges Lemaître on June 20th, at the age of 71. You are likely wondering who that was and what a Catholic priest has to do with the sort of things we usually discuss here at the Journey. Though not well known in America, Msgr. Lemaître was one of the most important theoretical astronomers of this century. After earning his PhD. in mathematics in his native Belgium, he spent a year at Cambridge under Arthur Eddington, who introduced him to modern cosmology, followed by a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Harlow Shapley. In 1927, he published a paper in a minor Belgian journal in which he proposed that the red shift of other galaxies could be explained by an expanding universe. That was two years before Edwin Hubble published his theory of a relationship between velocity and distance for extragalactic bodies. Lemaître also made a first estimation of the constant now called the Hubble constant.

Then in 1931, he suggested that the vectors of all the objects could be tracked backwards to a single point. He dubbed this the “primeval atom”. This is the beginning of the theory which Fred Hoyle called the “big bang” in contrast to his favored steady-state theory. The evidence in favor of Lemaître’s theory has mounted over the years, and it now looks to be the best explanation for the beginning of the universe. The Monsignor was also a mathematician and one of the first people to use computers for cosmological calculations. He was elected to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1946 and served as its president since 1960. Although a devout Catholic, he firmly believed that science and religion were not in conflict, but nevertheless should not be mixed.


Lemaître with Robert Millikan and Albert Einstein following a lecture at the California Institute of Technology in 1933.

Ending with a Whimper

They say an author should try to come up with a good opening line, or hook, to grab the reader’s attention. Things like “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” “It was a pleasure to burn,” or (one of my favorites) “If I had cared to live, I would have died.” It’s important to start with a bang, but all too often writers forget about a satisfying ending. Stories taper off into nothing, plot threads are never tied up, or ridiculous bits of action are introduced out of nowhere to get the author out of a corner they painted themselves into. Quite a few of the stories in this month’s IF start off promisingly, if not with a bang, and end not with a whimper, but a resounding thud.


No matter what the Table of Contents says, this outer space construction site has nothing to do with The Foundling Stars. Art by McKenna

Continue reading [July 2, 1966] The Big Thud (August 1966 IF) →

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

[June 10, 1966] Summer Reruns (July 1966 Fantastic)

2 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

Old Series Never Die, They Just Fade Away

Summertime is right around the corner, here in the Northern Hemisphere, and all patriotic Americans know what that means; reruns on television. Not only does this save the production companies money, it allows defunct programs to continue to appear on TV screens long after they're gone, like ghosts haunting a house. (Of course, they're easier to exorcise than traditional specters; just pull the plug.)

Two popular, critically acclaimed, and long-running series recently cast off this mortal coil, ready to enter the monochromatic afterlife of reruns.

Late last month, the courtroom drama Perry Mason slammed down the gavel for the last time with The Case of the Final Fade-Out. The story involved a television studio, so a large number of crew members made cameo appearances, pretty much as themselves. There was also a very special guest star.


That's executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson on the left and Hollywood columnist Norma Lee Browning on the right. The fellow in the middle? That's bestselling author Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, dressed up for his role as a judge in the final episode.

At the start of this month, The Dick Van Dyke Show came to a conclusion with the appropriately titled episode The Last Chapter. Van Dyke's character, television writer Rob Petrie, finishes the book he's been working on for five years, and looks back on his life.


Because The Last Chapter was really just an excuse to reuse sequences from previous episodes, I'm offering you this scene from the penultimate episode, The Gunslinger. Surrounding Van Dyke in this Western parody are cast regulars Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Deacon.

I'm sure that both of these hit series will be reincarnated in American living rooms for quite a while.

Not all summer television programming consists of reruns, to be sure. There are so-called summer replacement series as well. In a week or so, we'll enjoy (or avoid) the first episode of The Dean Martin Summer Show (not to be confused with The Dean Martin Show, which has been going on since last year. Are you still with me?) It will be hosted by the comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin.


Rowan on the left and Martin on the right, in a scene from their 1958 Western spoof Once Upon a Horse. I wonder if they'll have any success as TV hosts.

A Home Run The First Time At Bat

Although it's not unknown for popular songs of yesteryear to return to the charts — auditory reruns, if you will — listeners are usually searching for something original. Newcomer Percy Sledge offers an notable example with his smash hit When a Man Loves a Woman. This passionate, soulful ballad, currently Number One in the USA, is not only the first song recorded by Sledge, it is the first song recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a city famous for its music studios, to reach that position.


Your fans mean it, Mister Sledge.

I've Seen This All Before

The reason I've been talking about reruns, before I get to the contents of the latest issue of Fantastic, isn't just the fact that they've been filling up the magazine with reprints for some time now. As we'll see, many of the old stories in this issue have reappeared several times before. Reruns of reruns, so to speak. Whether fans of imaginative literature will be willing to spend four bits for fiction they may have already read in collections or anthologies remains to be seen.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

Predictably, the front cover is also a rerun.


The back cover of the June 1943 issue of Amazing Stories. It looks better in the original version.

Before I get to the reruns, however, let's start with something new.

Just Like a Man, by Chad Oliver


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Three men are in an aircraft, flying over the surface of an Earth-like planet. A sudden storm forces them to abandon the vehicle, stranding the trio in an area resembling an African savannah. Because the place is full of leonine predators, they hightail it to the relative safety of a nearby rainforest.


Climbing one of the planet's gigantic trees in order to get away from the hungry cats.

They wind up far above the ground, among an unsuspected community of highly intelligent primates. These mysterious creatures help them survive, and even offer the possibility of reaching their home base, located five hundred miles away across uncharted wilderness.


Among the primates, who are not as hostile as shown here.

This is a decent tale of adventure, and the enigmatic primates are interesting. The planet is so similar to Earth — the feline predators are pretty much just lions — that you might forget you're reading a science fiction story. Overall, it's worth reading, if not outstanding in any way.

Three stars.

The Trouble With Ants, by Clifford D. Simak


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

From the January 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures comes this final story in the author's famous City series. (By the way, the title of this work was changed to The Simple Way when it appeared in book form.)


Illustration by Rod Ruth. From this point on, all the illustrations are reruns from the original appearances of the stories.

In the far future, people are gone from Earth, with the exception of one fellow in suspended animation. Long ago, humans increased the intelligence of dogs, gave them the power of speech, and built robots to serve their needs. The canines, in turn, taught other animals to speak.

Complicating matters is the fact that a man caused ants to develop technology of their own, including robots the size of fleas. Now the ants are constructing a building, for an unknown purpose, which threatens to take over the planet.

An ancient robot returns from humanity's new home in a mysterious fashion. It seeks out the man in suspended animation as part of its quest to understand the ants.

Brought together as a fix-up novel in 1952, the City series won the International Fantasy Award the next year. It is usually considered a classic of science fiction, and has been reprinted many times.


One of the many editions of this work. Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

Highly imaginative, and with a sweeping vision of the immensity of time, Simak's tales also have a gentleness and intimacy that touches the reader's heart. The mood is one of quiet melancholy, and the acceptance of the fact that all things will pass away.

Although SF fans are likely to have read this story before, its quality makes it a welcome repeat. (One can rarely say the same thing about television reruns, or else viewers would stay glued to their screens.)

Five stars.

Where Is Roger Davis?, by David V. Reed


Cover art by Robert Fuqua.

Let's take a break from stuff that has already been reprinted multiple times, and take a look at the first reappearance of this yarn, taken from the yellowing pages of the May 1939 issue of Amazing Stories. (The author is unknown to me, but I have discovered that he also writes for comics, particularly Batman. Apparently a couple of episodes of the new television series are based on his scripts for the comic book.)


Illustrations by Julian S. Krupa.

Two young men working for a New York City tour bus encounter an invisible, telepathic Martian. One of them is seduced by the alien's plot to take over the world, and soon becomes a megalomaniac.


The fact that the Martian makes robbing a bank as easy as pie is another factor in his decision.

The other fellow has to figure out a way to keep the Martians from conquering Earth.

The mood of the story changes drastically from light comedy at the start to grim tragedy by the conclusion. Given the year it was written, I wonder if the dictatorial intentions of the first man were influenced by the rise of Fascism.

The author claims that this story is a true account, sent to him by the second man. There are also bits of imaginary news articles scattered throughout, in an attempt at verisimilitude. These don't work very well, particularly the long one at the end. The only thing I found mildly intriguing, if implausible, was the way the hero manages to plot against beings who can read his mind.

Two stars.

Almost Human, by Tarleton Fiske


Cover art by Harold W. McCauley.

The introductory blurb makes it clear that the author of this story, reprinted from the June 1943 issue of Fantastic Adventures, is really Robert Bloch, using a rather absurd pseudonym. (As is common practice, this was done because he had another story in the same issue under his own name.)


Illustration by Rod Ruth.

A hoodlum makes his way into the secret laboratory of a brilliant scientist. His moll has been working for the guy, so the crook knows the genius has created a robot. The machine is being educated like a child. The gangster teaches it to be an invincible criminal, and to kill without mercy. As you'd expect, things don't work out very well.

This piece reads like hardboiled fiction from a crime pulp. The final scene is particularly gruesome, in typical Bloch style. The author shows a certain knack for the Hammett/Chandler mode, but that's about all I can say for it. Not that great a story, but somebody thought it was worth reviving for an anthology.


Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

Two stars.

Satisfaction Guaranteed, by Isaac Asimov


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

Speaking of robots, here's one of several stories about the robopsychologist Susan Calvin by the Good Doctor, from the April 1951 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustration by Enoch Sharp.

Calvin only plays a minor part in this story, which focuses on a rather mousy, insecure housewife. Her husband works for the same robotics firm as Calvin, so he brings home a test model of a new machine. It looks like a handsome young man, and is designed to be helpful around the house in many different ways. The husband goes off on a business trip, leaving his wife alone with the robot.

The housewife is frightened of it at first, but soon learns to accept it. It even helps her with home decorating, clothing, and makeup, so she learns self-confidence. A final, unexpected gesture on the part of the machine, seemingly out of character for a robot, wins her the envy of her snobbish acquaintances. Susan Calvin explains why the machine's action was a perfectly logical way of obeying the famous First Law of Robotics.


Anonymous cover art for a British edition.

The author must be fond of this tale, because he has already included it in two different collections of his work. The one shown above, as the title indicates, includes stories that take place on Earth rather than in space, despite the misleading illustration and blurb. The story also appears in an omnibus that brings together his two robot novels as well as several shorter works.


Cover art by Thomas Chibbaro.

Besides that, it is also included in the same Roger Elwood anthology as Bloch's story. My sources in the television industry tell me that it is being adapted for the British series Out of the Unknown, and should appear late this year. (Will there be American reruns? One can only hope.)

Is it worth all this attention? Well, it's not a bad yarn, if not the greatest robot story Asimov ever wrote. The housewife is something of a stereotype of an overly emotional female, dependent on a man for her happiness. (This is in sharp contrast to the highly intelligent and independent Doctor Susan Calvin.) At some point you may think that the author is violating his own rules about robot behavior, but it's all explained at the end.

Three stars.

A Portfolio – Virgil Finlay

I'm not sure if I should even discuss this tiny collection of illustrations by the great artist, but at least I can share them with you.


For The New Adam (1939) by Stanley G. Weinbaum. The magazine calls it The New Atom, which is an egregious error.


For Mirrors of the Queen (1948) by Richard S. Shaver.


For The Silver Medusa (1948) by Alexander Blade (pseudonym for H. Hickey.)

What can I say? His work is stunning.

Five stars.

Satan Sends Flowers, by Henry Kuttner


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.

The January/February 1953 issue of Fantastic is the source of this variation on an old theme.


Illustrations by Tom Beecham.

A man sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for immortality. (The premise is similar to that of the Twilight Zone episode Escape Clause, but the twist ending is different.) He ensures that he will remain young, healthy, and all that, so Satan can't play any tricks on him. Obviously, he figures he'll never have to pay up.

The Devil demands surety in the form of certain subconscious memories the fellow possesses. After assuring him that he won't even know he's lost anything, the man agrees. Unafraid of either earthly punishment or damnation, he lives a life of total depravity.


His first crime is the murder of his mother.

Eventually, he persuades the Devil to give him back what he lost, even though Satan warns him that he won't like it. This turns out to be a bad idea.

Like most other stories in this issue, this one has already appeared in a book. (It acquired the new title By These Presents.)


Back and front cover art by Richard Powers.

I should mention that the husband-and-wife team of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore almost always collaborated, even if the resulting story appeared under only one name. Whoever might have been responsible for whatever parts of this work, it's a reasonably engaging tale. I'm not sure I really accept the explanation for what the man's unconscious memories represent, but I was willing to go along with it.

Three stars.

The Way Home, by Theodore Sturgeon


Cover art by Barye Phillips.

This quiet story comes from the April/May 1953 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustrations by David Stone.

A boy runs away from home. Along the way he meets a wealthy man and his glamourous female companion, in their fancy car; a man with an injured hand who has been all over the world; and a pilot in a beautiful airplane. Without giving too much away, it's clear from the start that these men represent possible future versions of himself.


Is this the road to the future, or to home?

Like Asimov's story, this piece has already appeared in two of the author's collections, but with a slight change in the title.


Cover art by Mel Hunter.

(I'm not sure if I should really count these as two different collections, because all the stories in Thunder and Roses already appeared, along with others, in A Way Home. Such are the vagaries of the publishing industry.)


Cover art by Peter Curl.

In any case, this is a beautifully written little story, subtle and evocative. To say much more would be to ruin the delicate mood it creates.

Five stars.

Worth Tuning In Again?


Cartoon by somebody called Frosty, from the same magazine as Satan Sends Flowers.

I wouldn't call this issue bad at all, although there were a couple of disappointing stories.  It's no big surprise that the Simak and the Sturgeon were excellent, and Finlay's art is always a delight.  It's enough to make you want to tear yourself away from all those reruns on television and turn to some literary reruns instead.


In the world of cuisine, reruns are known as leftovers.

Tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest and best hits!  Even the reruns are great!




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Serial

[May 31, 1966] Worth Remembering (June 1966 Analog)

5 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Decoration Day

First the war, then the licking of wounds.  Not all wounds are physical.  After the Civil War rent this nation in two, spring became a time for remembering the dead, their blood shed in almost incomprehensible numbers.  In 1868, the ritual honoring of fallen veterans became an official holiday known as Decoration Day (for the decoration of graves).  Over time, the name changed to Memorial Day, and last month, President Johnson proclaimed the custom's birthplace to be Waterloo, New York, the event first occurring a century ago.

The last Civil War veteran passed away in 1956, but this year's Memorial Day still found us licking our wounds.  Indeed, last week marked the bloodiest seven days for American soldiers since Korea: 966 casualties in Vietnam alone, 146 of them fatal.  Will next year's day of remembrance be worse?

The Issue at Hand

A cute segue would be in poor taste at this juncture, so I'll simply proceed to the review.  The latest issue of Analog drew my attention with its striking astronomical cover.  Let's turn the page and see what delights and disappointments Herr Campbell has for us this month.


by Chesley Bonestell

The Ancient Gods (Part 1 of 2), by Poul Anderson

In the letter column, Poul Anderson talks about discovering a beautiful painting by Chesley Bonestell.  It depicts a the night sky as seen from a planet perhaps 200,000 light years north of the Milky Way.  I would guess that this painting, as well as perhaps a viewing of last year's film, Flight of the Phoenix, provided the inspiration for the author's latest tale. 


by John Schoenherr

I shall give nothing else away save that those who know me know I'm a sucker for astronomically correct tales of exploration, and that Flight of the Phoenix got my nomination for the Best Dramatic Hugo.

Four stars so far.

Early Warning, by Robin S. Scott


by Stan Robinson

Lee is a big man, a skilled man, a man whose job is to throw monkey wrenches into supposedly foolproof systems like the D.C./Kremlin Hotline and Pentagon intelligence computers.  Is he a double-agent?  A mole?  Or something more?

There's really not enough to this story to engage; it feels more like a fragment of a Joe Poyer thriller than a complete piece.  Just some workmanlike action writing and a smug, Campbell-pleasing sting. 

Two stars.

CWACC Strikes Again, by Hank Dempsey


by Gray Morrow

"Hank Dempsey" (I have it on reliable information that this is a pseudonym for Harry Harrison, apparently trying to make the big lucre by pushing all of Campbell's buttons) is back with CWACC: the Committee for Welfare, Administration, and Consumer Control, last seen last year.  Pronounced "Quack," the goal of this two-person operation is the support and representation of eccentric inventors.  You see, to the scientific community, they're just kooks, but we all know that those industrious garage inventors produce way more of the world's innovation than the anonymous folks in white coats.  Right?

Anyway, in this episode, CWACC's administrator teams up with an enemy, the local kook-catching flatfoot, to rescue a CWACCer, whose invention is being used by con artists to sucker in, of all people, the police commissioner.  Along the way, "Dempsey" gets some pseudo-scientific shots in, like the assertion that the common cold can be defeated by sufficient vitamins in one's diet. 

Vaguely readable garbage.  One star.  I hope it was worth selling your soul for four cents a word, Harry!

Live Sensors, by Carl A. Larson

This nonfiction article started auspiciously, promising to compare the biological sensors with which animals are naturally equipped to the most refined artificial detectors.  The overall package is lacking, however.  There are lots of interesting tidbits on the capabilities of creatures, but they are interspersed with larder passages that don't do too much.  Never do we find out how we might utilize or at least learn from natural sensing devices. 

It would also help if Analog employed subheadings.  Three stars.

Stranglehold, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

My nephew David rang me the other day (on Sunday, when the rates are lowest) to tell me how much he enjoyed the new Chris Anvil story.  This may be a ringing endorsement (ha ha!) but I always take David's recommendations with a grain of salt, especially where Anvil is concerned.

A scout team following up on a lost comrade lands on a planet despite receiving a warning that such would be dangerous.  Once planetside, they find themselves subjected to illusion after terrifying illusion, only their unshakeable monitors telling the truth about reality (why wouldn't their perception of the monitors also be changed?)

Turns out the inhabitants have some kind of telepathy and can change their perception of reality and those of others.  After the team escapes with their rescued friend, they determine that a race with psychic phenomena cannot develop science since they fudge the results to their liking.  Contrarily, a race that chooses a scientific path atrophies psychic phenomena because…well, just because.

Therefore, all races, including humanity, have psychic potential, and it's only because we chose the path of science that spoonbending isn't more prevalent.  Q.E.D.

Gee, I wonder how this story got published.

What I really don't understand is what possible advantage the alien trait of mass hallucination affords.  If it were real transmutation being employed in this story, there might be something to it, but there isn't.  A being that thinks it is having its physical needs met when it is not quickly becomes a sick and/or dead being.  Maybe it's more of a reality enhancer, as in the first Cugel the Clever story, which I guess would make more sense.

Anyway, Stranglehold feels like what would happen if Bob Sheckley ever wrote for Campbell.

Two stars.

Escape Felicity, by Frank Herbert


by Kelly Freas

In Frank Herbert's latest, a lone interstellar scout plunges his ship deep into a nebulous cloud.  He is determined to fight off the "push" that causes all of his corps to return to Earth after a certain point.  But is the compulsion programmed in by BuPurs to keep scouts from going native?  Or is there an external agency involved?

I found this one of Herbert's more compelling pieces, though it falls apart a bit at the end.  And it feels like the title is a pun in search of a story; I can't figure out its applicability to this one.

Three stars.

Doing the Math

Thus, Analog ends up near the bottom of the pack with a 2.6 star rating, only beating out the mostly-reprint (and consistently lackluster) Amazing 2.5.  Ahead of Campbell's mag are New Worlds (3.1), Galaxy (3.1), Impulse (3.0), IF (3.0), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.8).

Worthy material comprised about an issue-and-a-half out of six this month.  Women produced 11.25% of the new fiction, at the high end of the usual range.

All told, June 1966 may not be remembered in times to come, particularly as impressive as last month was.  But, as noted at the beginning of the article, sometimes having to remember is painful.

Until next month…

If you need a mood-lifter now, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest and best hits!




5 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology

[May 10, 1966] Rocky Jaunts (June 1966 Galaxy)

14 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Real-life Adventures

Out in the southeast corner of California is a hidden treasure, a beautiful national park known as Joshua Tree, named for the surreal plants that characterize the region.  And in the heart of a tiny, unincorporated community there, resides the place called Space Cowboy Books.

Jean-Paul Garnier, the Space Cowboy, invited us out to see the spring bloom in the wilderness.  We were able to take him up on his offer too late to see the flowers, but we did see some amazing petroglyphs and water/wind eroded facades.  Even better was the absolute quiet of the place, the aural equivalent of a dark sky (which they also have there).

Of course, it was a several hour trip up Highway 395, over Highway 60 to Interstate 10, and then up Highway 62, which terminates at Joshua Tree. 

But we had beautiful scenery, each other for conversation, and a brand new 8-track player in the car for music.

I also had the newest issue of Galaxy, which I was able to read while the Young Traveler drove.  Ah, the luxury of having children!

And so, a tour of the trips I went on while on a trip:

Fictional Adventures


by Gray Morrow

Heisenberg's Eyes (Part 1 of 2), by Frank Herbert


by Dan Adkins

Frank Herbert is back.  Hooray.

Actually, the setup's not too bad: It's the far future, and humanity has complete control of its genetic destiny.  Society is divided between the dronish "Sterries" (sterile humans), the occasional persons who can have potentially viable offspring, and the immortal (but also sterile) Optimen, who run everything, a triumverate's administration lasting a century.

Children cannot be borne the natural way; for an embryo to make it to maturity, a doctor's intervention is required.  So begins Eyes, on the eve of a "cutting" that will turn the artificially united progeny of a Mr. and Mrs. Durant into a human being — perhaps even an Optiman.

But before the horrified gaze of the assigned surgeon, some external force modifies the fertilized ovum, making the modification to immortal perfection impossible.  An expert is called in, who salvages the embryo, but in the process causes it to become that rarest of beasts: a nascent human that can reproduce on its own.  Such a thing is strictly forbidden, yet the expert and his accomplice nurse take pains to ensure that the contraband embryo's nature is hidden from the world.  Or so they think.

This takes up about half of this installment, and so a quarter of the book.  I have to give credit to Herbert's ability to spew a half dozen pages of medical jargon and keep it interesting. 

Things slow down in the second half, when we meet the ruling trio and discover that the plot has wheels within wheels.  It also involves an underground race of Cyborgs, who have been biding their time for tens of thousands of years to regain ascendancy over the planet, though they are as clueless about how the modification of the Durant's child occurred as everyone else.  Part 1 ends with the first shots being fired in a renewed war between the Optimen culture and the Cyborgs.

A couple of issues: Eyes is written in typical Herbertian style, which is to say in this weird third person omniscient viewpoint that switches characters every sentence and overuses italicized depiction of internal monologues.  Perhaps, as one of the oligarchs states in Eyes, "Efficiency is the opposite of Craftsmanship," but I still think the story could have been a lot better at half the length in the hands of someone else.  Like Dune.  Also, no society remains static for tens of thousands of years — not Egypt and not the weird world of Eyes.  And then, of course, there's the pseudo-telepathy the Durants enjoy that involves a code of finger presses.  It reminds me of shows where a paragraph of Morse code can be deduced from four dots and a dash.

Anyway, three stars for now.  Herbert's done worse, and I've yet to see him do much better.

Priceless Possession, by Arthur Porges

In the depths of space, the 23rd Century equivalent of the ambergris-bearing whale is the anenome-like "Star Sailor" or "S-2."  Its micron thin sail, produced over thousands of years, is the most valuable commodity in the universe.  On board a particular merchant ship, an Ensign and a Lieutenant find their cupiditous designs hindered by a captain who believes he is in telepathic communication with the current prey.

It's not a happy story, but it's pretty good.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Brownian Motion, Loschmidt's Number and the Laws of Utter Chaos, by Willy Ley

Beginning with an explanation of the word 'gas' (which is as deliberately coined as 'radar' or 'Kleenex'), Ley goes on a whirlwind trip through the history of fluid dynamics.  It's one of Ley's better pieces, though a little rushed and occasionally following the pattern of the Brownian Motion he ultimately explains.

But then, that's history for you.  Four stars.

The Eskimo Invasion, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Out in the wilds of Canada, an anthropologist has made a terrible discovery: a tribe of "Eskimos" are really something else, the female of their species infinitely appealing…and able to have children every month.  And they worship the Great Bear, a Cthulhu-esque entity that will devour/conquer/lead the world.  Can Dr. West make it back in civilization to warn humanity?

This is a well-written tale, but the premise is so dumb that I found myself irritated with it after a night's contemplation.  Two stars.

Galactic Consumer Report No. 2: Automatic Twin-Tube Wishing Machines, by John Brunner

The second in Brunner's Consumer Report series (the last dealing with budget time machines), this piece offers recommendations for and cautions against various models of "Wishing Machines," which are supposed to be able manufacture anything.  Not as amusing as the last one, but diverting enough.

Three stars.

This piece is followed by Algis Budrys' books column, which I am increasingly enjoying.  I read this latest one, describing Sheckley's Tenth Victim, Wilhelm and Thomas' The Clone, and Brunner's The Squares of the City for its humorous commentary and the illustration of the signs of good and bad editing and publishing.

When I Was Miss Dow, by Sonya Dorman

On a planet of amorphous proteans, a young, sexless being destined to become Warden of its people, takes on a human female form in order to more easily interact with the Terran mission to the planet.  As Miss Martha Dow, said creature falls fake head over custom-built heels with an elderly biologist — and ultimately, the feelings are reciprocated.

I found myself really enjoying this unrestrainedly emotional piece, intertwining human and alien feelings in a vivid manner.  This is the first published piece by Dorman using her full first name (previously, she had simply been "S"), and I'm delighted that she finally feels comfortable enough to use it.  I know I always look forward to her byline!

Four stars.

Open the Sky, by Robert Silverberg


by Gray Morrow

At long last, we come to (what I believe to be) the conclusion of Silverberg's Blue Fire series.  It's been a long trip, with five entries spanning more than a half-century of history.  We've seen the Vorster religion arise, a spiritualist cult of the atom worshiping the blue flame of a cobalt reactor.  We've watched as the cult schismed and the green-robed Harmonists made their sect more overtly religious and converted the colonists of toxic Venus.  Last installment, the Harmonist martyr, Lazarus, was ressurected by Vorst for purposes unknown.

Now we know why: on Venus, the genetically modified human espers have developed faster than light teleportation.  Vorst wants to use them to power the first interstellar starship.  To do this, he needs to reunite the religions — and Lazarus owes him a favor.  Luckily, Vorster knows this will all work out: he is a precog, after all…

The writing of this final installment is as good as ever, and it's nice to see all of the pieces fall into place.  However, the story as a whole suffers from the common failing of all stories involving precognition.  When you know how a story will, nay, must end, the tension is gone.  All that's left is the exposition.

By itself, Open the Sky will be confusing and unengaging to the new reader.  As the capstone to an epic, it serves its purpose adequately but not stunningly. Thus, I award three stars for the section, and four stars for the work as a whole, treating it as the serialization of a novel whose publication is as inevitable as Vorster's trip to the stars.

Journeys' End

All in all, it's been a good weekend, both in the real world and within the world of fiction.  While Pohl's magazine could not quite consistently offer the spectacle that Jean-Paul of Joshua Tree treated us to, nevertheless, it did end up on the positive end of the ledger.

In any event, two trips for the price of one is a good deal!  Why don't you take the June Galaxy along with you on your next jaunt and enjoy the same experience?

And while you're on your journey, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




14 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 8, 1966] A Respite (June 1966 Amazing)

2 Comments


by John Boston

Hope Springs Eternal

. . . but, as Groucho Marx might put it, hope springs can get rusty, too.

The June Amazing on its face presents bad news and good news.  In the first category is the beginning of a new two-part serial by Murray Leinster, generically titled Stopover in Space.  One can only hope (that word again!) that there is more to it than the empty blather of Killer Ship from last year. 


by James B. Settles

All the shorter stories are reprints.  But two of them are by very reputable authors, Arthur C. Clarke and Henry Kuttner, taken from the magazine’s ambitious false spring of 1953-54 (the Renascence), and two others are from the immediately post-Ray Palmer times (the Liminal Period), by writers who later made pretty good names for themselves, Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Kris Neville.  The fifth is the last published story by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, who commendably learned to write after the fiascoes of The Man from the Atom and its sequel.

Of course the Clarke and Kuttner stories are not exactly rediscoveries.  Clarke’s Encounter in the Dawn, retitled Expedition to Earth, was the title story of the first collection of his stories, published by Ballantine in 1953 and pretty widely known.  Kuttner’s Or Else was the lead story in his collection Ahead of Time, also from Ballantine in 1953.  It was anthologized in the UK in Edmund Crispin’s first Best SF volume, and reprinted again in last year’s The Best of Kuttner from the UK’s Mayflower Books.  These stories will probably be familiar to those well read in SF.

The rest of the package is as usual: another inanely self-serving editorial by editor Ross and a few letters mostly praising the reprint policy, though one of the correspondents also says don’t overdo it with the reprints, it’s time for more Robert F. Young and Ensign De Ruyter.  He appears to be serious.  The cover, simultaneously dull and busy, is reprinted from the back cover of the July 1942 Amazing.  It’s called Satellite Space Ship Station, and artist James B. Settles provides a rather pedestrian view of space travel. 

Stopover in Space (Part 1 of 2), by Murray Leinster


by Gray Morrow

As is my habit, I will hold off reading or commenting on the serial until I have both installments.  I am struggling to reserve judgment, but can’t fail to notice that the same egregious padding that so distinguished, or extinguished, last year’s Killer Ship shows up in the first paragraph here: “Scott ran into the situation on a supposedly almost-routine tour of duty on Checkpoint Lambda.  It was to be his first actual independent command as a Space Patrol commissioned officer.  Otherwise the affairs of the galaxy seemed to be proceeding in a completely ordinary fashion.  On a large scale, suns burned in emptiness, novas flamed, and comets went bumbling around their highly elliptical orbits just as usual.”

If This Be Utopia, by Kris Neville

First after the serial is Kris Neville’s If This Be Utopia, from the May 1950 issue, a slightly heavy-handed satire about a regimented future in which everyone is assigned to a job and pressured mercilessly to perform, and those who don’t measure up—or are made examples of by their superiors—get demoted to worse fates.  Our hero is a middle manager who is cracking under the stress and taking it out on his underlings until his superiors take it out on him.  It’s a bit too obvious, but still decently done.  Three stars.

Encounter in the Dawn, by Arthur C. Clarke

Encounter in the Dawn, from the June-July 1953 issue, is fairly typical for Clarke, a sort of lecture-demonstration of the stuff of SF and his understanding of the cosmos, without too much in the way of plot.  But that’s OK.  Clarke’s writing skill and his restrained sentimentality about the vastness of the universe and the depths of time carry the reader along.  He’s the antithesis of Ray Palmer’s policy of “Gimme bang-bang.”

This one begins: “It was in the last days of the Empire,” which is threatened by an unspecified “shadow that lay across civilization.” Three regular guys of the Galactic Survey, continuing their quest for knowledge despite the doom overhanging their homes, arrive at a new solar system and land on what is obviously Earth.  They take a look around and befriend Yaan, a primitive human or proto-human, with gifts of game killed by their robot.  They get the call to come home for the Empire’s last stand, leave Yaan a few high-tech gifts like a flashlight, and take off.  Tragedy looms over them, but life and intelligence will go on.  Three stars.

Or Else, by Henry Kuttner

Kuttner’s Or Else (August-September 1953 issue) is well done also, as one would expect, but there’s not much to it.  A couple of Mexican subsistence farmers are shooting at each other, contesting the ownership of the only source of water in their valley.  An alien drops in by flying saucer, demonstrates various superpowers, says his race has appointed themselves peacekeepers of the solar system, and Miguel and Fernandez have to stop trying to kill each other because violence is wrong.  They agree and shake hands, the alien buzzes off, and they start shooting again because there’s still only one water hole in the valley.


by Dick Francis

Profound, huh?  While SF may occasionally contribute to the global dialogue on war and peace, this one is best described as chewing less than it purports to bite off.  It also relies on cartoony ethnic stereotyping—but then everything in the story is pretty cartoony, and Kuttner at least lends the viewpoint character, Miguel, some shrewdness.  Thinking the alien is really a norteamericano, he says, “First you will bring peace, and then you will take our oil and precious minerals.” Two stars for execution, not much for substance.

Secret of the Death Dome, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s first published SF story, Secret of the Death Dome (January 1951 issue), is another kettle of sweat altogether, the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a magazine whose cover depicts a hairy-chested guy wrestling with a crocodile. 

The Martians have landed, and how: they have plunked down a large and impervious dome in the desert (actually, a couple of feet above it), where they engage in cryptic communication, and snatch anyone who comes too near and vivisect them.  One guy came back without his legs.  The newly wed Barney came back without his genitals, falling off his horse and dying on arrival.  (The Martians are surveilled by the military on horseback.)


by B. Edmund Swiatek

This makes Jerry mad.  Barney was his best friend and Barney’s new wife was Jerry’s old flame.  So Jerry, who can’t sleep, saddles up and heads out, to do . . . what?  He has no idea.  The Martians scare his horse away, and he hears from base that when it came back riderless, Betty—the widowed Mrs. Barney—took it and is on her way.  So he heads toward the dome and crawls under it looking for a way in. 

You can guess the rest.  He’s captured, gets control of the situation through brains and guts, rescues the by then-captured Betty, sowing death and destruction among the Martians all the way, learns why they are here (the secret of the title, including what the Martians wanted with Barney's genitalia), and drives them away forever.  Whew!  The details don’t matter.  At the end, the just-bereaved Betty tells Jerry not to contact her—“. . . for a couple of months, anyway,” the back of her neck flushing as she turns away.

The style is consistent with the content, cynical tough-guy-isms all the way down.  For example, when the colonel gets the call that Barney has returned, he sends Jerry to check things out.  “Jerry was just a sergeant, but there wasn’t any need for brass.  Death is for privates.” And so on.  Two stars for this testosterone-soaked epic.

Elaine’s Tomb, by G. Peyton Wertenbaker

G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s Elaine’s Tomb, from the Winter 1931 Amazing Stories Quarterly, is, in its quaint way, the best of this issue’s short fiction, and a vast improvement over his earlier work.  Alan, the narrator, teaches at a small college and falls in love with Elaine, one of his students.  Of course he doesn’t do anything about it, and hares off to Egypt with his colleague Weber who has a line on some ancient temples hardly anybody else knows about.  He confesses his romantic situation to Weber en route.  In a temple, there’s a preserved ancient Egyptian king, and a carved curse against anybody who molests him.  Alan touches the recumbent body, and shortly comes down with a fever that shows no sign of abating.  But Weber has found the secret of suspended animation, and promises to put Alan under at the moment of death, and revive him when he finds the secret of life, which must be around the temple somewhere, and unite him with Elaine.


by Leo Morey

Alan awakens, and it’s the far future, Wellsian variant, populated by people who have forgotten most of the know-how of civilization; the machines take care of them, and when one breaks down, they just put another one in its place.  They live pleasant lives and some of them even write books.  In one of these, Alan learns of Elaine’s Tomb, up north near what used to be called Chicago, in the frozen barbarian-populated wastes.  Turns out Weber couldn’t revive him, but he could suspend Elaine to wait for him.  Further adventures and reunion (or union, in this case) follow.

The story is archaic in attitude but modern in its plain style, well imagined and visualized without wasted verbiage, with enough plot to sustain its 40-page length, and altogether a pleasure to read.  Am I really going to give this antique four stars, as I did with another of Wertenbaker’s late stories, The Chamber of Life?  Guess so. 

Summing Up

So, hope fulfilled—admittedly, to expectations lowered by experience.  That's because editor Ross this time selected modern stories, plus an older one that is written in a modern style and not centered around the cranky crotchets of bygone decades, unlike some earlier selections I would prefer not to name.  The result is mostly pretty readable, with a couple of stories better than that, and nothing bloody awful.  But the specter of the Leinster serial still looms over the next issue.  We shall proceed with trepidation.

If you want to hear some great modern tunes, then tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest hits!




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 8, 1966] Search Parties (May 1966 Fantastic)

1 Comment


by Victoria Silverwolf

Keep Watching the Skies!

The good citizens of Michigan were recently reminded of the warning I've quoted above, from 1951's The Thing from Another World (a loose cinematic adaptation of John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There?).


Father and son describe what they saw.

Folks in Washtenaw County (just look for the city of Ann Arbor on the map, and you're smack dab in the middle of it) reported seeing strange lights in the sky last month. Supposedly, a UFO even landed in a swampy area near the tiny community of Dexter Township.


Looks like a classic flying saucer to me.

About one hundred people witnessed these phenomena. Naturally, the federal government got involved. They sent astronomer J. Allen Hynek to the area to check things out. Reportedly, he thinks at least some of the sightings can be explained as swamp gas. One politician isn't so sure.


Note that the article uses the phrase marsh gas. One person's swamp is another person's marsh, I suppose.

Gerald R. Ford is a United States Congressman from the Grand Rapids district of Michigan, so this situation strikes close to home for him. (He's a Republican, and the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. Maybe this event will make him famous.)

Here's a picture of Representative Ford and wife Betty on a recent fishing trip, so you'll recognize him if his face shows up in the news in times to come.

It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier

While some Americans are tracking down UFO's, others are searching for ways to justify their nation's involvement in the conflict in Vietnam. As a counterpoint to the many demonstrations against the war, a patriotic song celebrating the heroism of the Army Special Forces has been at the top of the charts for several weeks. The Ballad of the Green Berets, sung by Sergeant Barry Sadler, seems to have struck just the right note with many conservative music lovers.


Personally, I prefer the Tom Lehrer song I have alluded to above.

Hunting Through the Pages

Meanwhile, I've been searching for good reading. Take, for example, the latest issue of Fantastic. Fittingly, many of the stories feature characters who are on quests of one kind or another.


Art by Frank R. Paul.

(I might add that I had to search through piles of old pulp magazines to find the original source of the magazine's cover art. It turned out to be the back cover of the September 1944 issue of Amazing Stories.)


Confused? We'll get to an explanation of this weird scene later in the issue.

The Phoenix and the Mirror, by Avram Davidson

Let's begin our journey with a new novella from the former editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

The author's introductory note explains that the ancient Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid, was depicted as a sorcerer in legends of the Middle Ages. (Davidson prefers the spelling Vergil, which I will use for the name of the fictional character in this story. He also prefers nigromancer to necromancer and Renascence to Renaissance, but that's typical erudite eccentricity on his part.) He also notes that this tale is the first part of a series to be called Vergil Magus.

Anyway, we begin in medias res, with Vergil trying to escape from an underground labyrinth full of malevolent manticores. (These are not the lion-scorpions of myth, but something more like large, clever weasels.) He manages to get out, winding up at the palace of an aristocrat with magical powers. She forces him to undertake the extremely difficult quest of creating a very special enchanted mirror, so she can see where in the world her daughter might be. He can't say no, because she steals one of his souls.

You read that right. People in this world have more than one soul, it seems. Losing one isn't fatal, but it seems to be so traumatic an event that Vergil feels compelled to undertake the nearly impossible task. He has to obtain unrefined tin and copper ore from the far ends of the known world, and then form the mirror through a long and laborious process. After many struggles, with the help of his alchemist sidekick, he manages to complete this onerous undertaking.


The mirror in use.

That isn't the end of his troubles, however. After instantly falling in love with the daughter after one glimpse in the mirror, he treks through desert wastelands, with an enigmatic Phoenician at his side, to rescue her from a Cyclops.


The lady and the cyclops.

This isn't the typical brutal, dimwitted Cyclops from mythology, but an intelligent, even sensitive creature. Multiple plot twists follow, and we find out why a phoenix is mentioned in the title.

Davidson keeps his baroque writing style under control here, and the plot is cleverly crafted. The background, which is kind of a mixture of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, with a strong dose of pure fantasy, is unique and interesting. Some readers may be impatient with several pages describing in great detail the exact method of creating the mirror, but I found it fascinating.

My one major complaint is that Vergil's lengthy and dangerous voyage to obtain copper ore is skipped over almost entirely, related in just a few sentences of flashback. I would like to learn more about his adventures there. Maybe Davidson plans to expand this novella into a novel, as authors of science fiction and fantasy often do. Otherwise, I greatly enjoyed this witty and imaginative excursion into a past that never existed.

Four stars.

Seven Came Back, by Clifford D. Simak


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

As usual, the rest of the magazine is filled up with reprints. Let's start with a tale from the pages of the October 1950 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustrations by Arthur Hutah.

The setting is Mars, the favorite world of SF writers. Like many fictional versions of the red planet, this is a place where humans can survive without spacesuits. It's still a very dangerous environment, however, with all sorts of deadly creatures living in the endless desert.

The protagonist is on a quest to find the fabled lost city of the nearly extinct Martians. He hires a couple of tough guys to guide him through the wasteland. As we'll see, this turns out to be a big mistake.

Six Martians show up at their camp. It seems that they're the last of their kind, and they think that the men can lead them to a seventh. The Martians have seven sexes, you see, and this is their last chance to reproduce. (That must certainly make things complicated.)

If the humans help them out, they'll take them to the city, which is supposed to be full of fabulous treasures. The two roughnecks take off on their own, leaving the protagonist alone in the deadly desert.

Things get a lot stranger after this, and I don't want to give too much away. Suffice to say that the main character manages to survive, wins an unexpected ally, and has a mystical experience at the city.


The lost Martian city.

At first, I thought this was more or less a science fiction Western, with the hero heading for a showdown with the no-good polecats who left him to die. I have to admit that the plot went in completely unexpected directions. I'm still pondering the meaning of the ending. The author mixes space adventure with his usual warmth and concern for all living things and a touch of Bradbury's magical Mars.

Four stars.

The Third Guest, by B. Traven

The mysterious author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre offers a fable of life and death that appeared in the March-April 1953 issue of Fantastic.


Cover art by Richard Powers.

Like everything else about the author, the provenance of this story is puzzling. As far as I have been able to determine, it was written under the title The Healer, was first published in German in 1950 as Macario, and somehow wound up with its current title when it showed up in Fantastic.


Illustrations by Tom O'Sullivan.

One of the few facts known about the author is that he — or she? — lives in Mexico, the setting for most of his — or her? — fiction. This tale is no exception. It takes place when the region was still known as New Spain, during the colonial period.

Macario, a dirt-poor woodcutter, barely manages to feed himself, his wife, and their many children. For most of his life, his greatest dream has been to eat an entire roast turkey by himself. Over several years, his wife saves the tiny payments she receives for doing chores for slightly less poverty-stricken folks. She buys a turkey, prepares it exquisitely, and presents it to her husband, telling him to go into the woods and devour it alone.

Before he can enjoy the delicious feast, however, three strange visitors show up. The first is a sinister fellow, richly dressed. He offers Macario enormous wealth for a share of the turkey. Macario refuses.


The first guest.

The second one is poorly dressed, gentle, and saintly. Despite his kindly manner, Macario again refuses to share his meal. The visitor blesses him anyway.


The second guest.

The third guest, as the title suggests, is the one most vital to the plot. Macario knows he cannot refuse this cadaverous figure, so he at least manages to keep half of the turkey for himself. In exchange, the guest gives him an elixir that will cure all ills, but only if the visitor chooses who will live and who will die. The rest of the story follows Macario as he wins a reputation as a great healer. A summons from the Viceroy of New Spain, whose child is dying, leads to a final confrontation with the third guest.

This is a remarkable fantasy, with the simplicity of a folktale but the sophistication of great literature. It appeared in The Best American Short Stories 1954 (edited by Martha Foley), so I'm not alone in my opinion. It was even made into a Mexican movie in 1960, which you might be able to catch at your local arthouse cinema, if you don't mind subtitles.

Five stars.

The Tanner of Kiev, by Wallace West

The last time we met this author, it was with a reprint of the antifeminist dystopia The Last Man, to which my esteemed colleague John Boston awarded one star. Even if we ignore that story's political stance, it's poorly written. Will this tale, from the October 1944 issue of Fantastic Adventures, be any better? It could hardly be worse.


Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

The first thing to keep in mind is that this is a story about World War Two, written and published during the height of the conflict. You have to expect Our Side to be heroic Good Guys, and Their Side to be sadistic Bad Guys. In particular, the Soviets are definitely on the side of the angels here.


Illustrations by Malcolm Smith.

The hero parachutes behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. His mission is to deliver a radio transmitter to the underground resistance. Things get weird pretty quickly, as he runs into an immortal magician from Russian folklore.


The wizard and his pets.

Next thing you know, he's at the chicken-legged hut of the legendary old witch Baba Yaga. None of this supernatural stuff seems to bother him, and soon he's on his way into Kiev. He contacts the Russian guerillas, including the pretty female one with whom he falls in love. With the help of the warlock and witch, as well as a talking squirrel and a were-rat, the brave Soviets overcome the craven Germans.

Given the fact that, inevitably, a wartime story is going to paint things in black and white, this isn't a bad yarn at all. It's pretty well written, and the wild and wooly plot held my interest. The changes in mood from whimsical to romantic to horrific are disconcerting, and the love story is a little sappy, but's it worth a read.

Three stars.

Wolf Pack, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.


Cover art by Leo Summers.

The Second World War is also the background for this story, from the September-October 1953 issue of Fantastic, but this time the battle rages in Italy instead of the Soviet Union.


Illustrations by Bernard Krigstein.

The main character is the pilot of an American bomber who has already flown nearly fifty missions, raining destruction from the skies. He has recurring dreams about a alluring woman he thinks of as La Femme, or just La. It would be easy to dismiss this as a predictable fantasy for a young man deprived of female company for an extended period of time, or as an idealized image of his girlfriend back home. Yet she seems very real, and he appears to be in some kind of telepathic communication with her, even while awake.


The woman known as La.

During his latest bombing run, he nearly aborts the mission, terrified that he might destroy her. The other members of the crew have to physically restrain him to complete their gruesome task.


A bomber's world.

The author was a radio operator and tail gunner during World War Two, participating in as many bombing missions over Italy as the story's protagonist. It's no surprise, then, that the details of life as a bomber pilot are extremely realistic and convincing.   Miller took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino in 1944, which certainly had an influence on the writing of his award-winning novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), already considered a modern classic.

Unlike the previous story, which, understandably, was full of gung-ho patriotic glory (much like Sergeant Sadler's hit song, come to think of it) this is a somber, emotionally powerful account of the way that war turns men into machines, and how the innocent suffer as much as the guilty.

Five stars.

Betelgeuse, in Orion: The Walking Cities of Frank R. Paul, by Anonymous

I wasn't sure if I should even bother discussing this little article, but what the heck. It originally appeared under the slightly different title Stories of the Stars: Betelgeuse in Orion, supposedly by a Sergeant Morris J. Steele in the September 1944 issue of Amazing Stories. This is probably a pseudonym for the magazine's editor, Raymond A. Palmer, but I can't prove that.


Cover art by Julian S. Krupa.

Anyway, after some facts about the giant star, we get wild speculation about the beings who might live there. It's pretty much just a way to fill up some space.

Two stars.

The End of the Search

Well, my search for enjoyable fiction certainly paid off! This was an outstanding issue. Even the worst story was pretty good, and the best were excellent. It makes me ponder my skepticism about reprinting old stuff. After all, I don't complain when an movie from yesteryear shows up on television, as long as it's a good one.


Check your local listings to see if this decade-old classic will be showing in your area any time soon.




1 Comment Leave A Comment