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[March 20, 1965] Clash of The Old & The New (February 1965 Gamma & City of a Thousand Suns)

March 20, 2020 Kris Vyas-Myall 2 Comments

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Loud Tensions

The news recently has been dominated by battles between the old-guard conservative and the new liberal voices in the matter of race relations.

In the USA President Johnson has urged passage of a Voting Rights Act at the same time as another Johnson (a judge this time) has agreed to let a civil rights march in Alabama continue, in spite of fierce opposition.

In the UK, Rhodesian ministers have been touring trying to drum up support for their declaration of independence under white minority rule to resolve the stalemate between Ian Smith and Harold Wilson. Given the Rhodesian argument seems to primarily be that they have real experience of governing and the black people of Rhodesia are uncivilized, I don’t think they are going to win too many friends.

At the same time we have continued debates over Commonwealth immigration into the UK. Firstly whether the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act is being circumvented illegally and how widely, secondly if those citizens should be deported and, thirdly, if further controls need to be placed on immigration. I am personally in agreement with the late leader of the opposition, Hugh Gaitskell, who stated that it was cruel and brutal, and as such I am not surprised there are some people trying to get around it.

Then there are the inflammatory statements made by Sir David Renton MP that certain communities do not wish to integrate and that we have too much of our farmland been taken up by urban sprawl. On my personal experience, Indian and Pakistani communities in the UK are doing a much better job of integration into British life than most British people living in India seemed to have done. Whilst most of the increasing land-use over the last ten years seems not to have come from immigration but from those formally in the cities moving out to areas with more space. If they are really worried about this I would contend wider availability of birth control, legalization of abortion and a proper investment into inner city renewal.

A Quiet Town

Closer to home in Bedford, however, we have long had a thriving immigrant population and I have yet to hear any complaint about it. In fact the biggest grumbling locally is the that TV signal continues to be poor and plans for a nearby relay station continue to be delayed.

Thankfully we have many other entertainments around here. We have a number of local picture houses, with The Empire continuing to show a range of excellent films for the SFF enthusiast. On Sunday they are having both Vincent Price and Boris Karloff films I hope to sync my teeth into.

As well as the national charts, we get local charts. I approve of the top 3 going into this weekend (which I definitely contributed to myself).

And, of course, plenty of reading material, including two long awaited pieces. The Fourth issue of Gamma, which is looking backwards, and City of A Thousand Suns, which has an eye on the future.

Gamma: A Long-Expected Magazine

by John Healey

First thing, we have to start with is the cover. Gone now are beautiful space pictures and instead is a lurid cover right out of the pulp era. I have to wonder if this is the influence of the new co-editor, Jack Matcha, who has made a career writing Pulp Sleaze novels for Kozy Books and has the forthcoming novel A Rogue’s Guide to Europe whose content, I have heard, is just what you would expect from the title.

Jack Matcha Novel Father of the Amazons — An example of Matcha's work for Kozy

The editorial confirms we are now going straight back to the pulp era. I personally was not yearning for the days:

…when Jayne Mansfield who invariably wore a space suit apparently constructed by a bikini manufacturer and every Bug-Eyed Monster attacked her for reasons known (if at all) only to himself (itself)?

We are definitely a far cry from the literary attempts to include imaginative fiction of all types, and the issue feels much the lesser for it.

The Clutches of Ruin by H. B. Fyfe

H. B. Fyfe was first published in Astounding back in 1940 and was prolific during the 50s although he has been appearing in print less often of late.

Neil Bryson and a dietician named Carole Leland (who acts as his secretary), are sent on a mission by the Galactic Federation to assess a recently admitted planet that has seen a marked population boom that is alarming the other members of the federation. They are to investigate what is being done to get this down. On this planet we meet different groups with different responses to this directive.

One reason why I like to return on occasion to pulpy space adventures is they are fun and easy to read. This, on the other hand, is like reading through treacle with over-description, pointless diversions and regular stating of Bryson’s own thought process.

And yet the actual story within is quite fascinating. At first it seems like it is going to be a colonialist parable about “stupid natives” overpopulating themselves and not accepting the tenants of “superior people”. However it quickly gets messy as the Galactic directive has completely changed the various societies on this planet in unprecedent ways and we are led to wonder if the federation itself was at fault to start with.

So a very interesting piece brought down by poor execution. Three stars.

The Towers of Kagasi, by William P. Miller

William P. Miller is apparently a well-known and respected mystery writer, but I believe this is his first foray into science fiction. In this story, a team of astronauts investigate the titular planet from where a ray was sent to Earth, killing the entire population of four major cities.

At times it felt like what you used to get in Thrilling Wonder Stories, but it lacks any of the enjoyment and is a story that comes across to me as meanspirited, misogynistic and gross.

One star

Food, by Ray Nelson

Our first story by Ray Nelson since he got Four- and Five-star reviews for his pieces at F&SF in 1963 and is apparently now working on a novel with Philip K. Dick. He continues to show here why he is one to watch.

Ben is the last crewman alive on a planet where numerous creatures seem to be trying to kill him. This does not feel like a pulp era story at all, rather like the kinds of atmospheric vignettes we get in New Worlds.

Four stars

Hans Off in Free Pfall to The Moon, by E. A. Poe

This is a significant abridgement of Edgar Allen Poe’s Hans Pfall (about one fifth of the original length) done by cutting out his verbosity and digressions and instead sticking to the core of the tale, one of a man attempting to travel to the moon in a balloon.

Though I am not a fan of the original full-length work and do think Poe will use ten words where one can suffice, it feels like a lot is lost by making such a change. For example a section observing the Earth from above and pondering its appearance becomes a note about checking altitude on a barometer.

One star for a rather pointless exercise.

The Gamma Interview: Forrest J. Ackerman

I am a bit disappointed overall not just by the brevity of this interview but also the shallowness of it. It starts off interestingly, talking about the early history of monster movies but quickly descends into Ackerman bemoaning how terrible they all are. Also I am surprised that no real attention is given to how Hammer and Toho have really revived the monster film in recent years. He claims he watches every monster film that comes out but you would think from his description everything today was like The Creature From The Haunted Sea. You are much better off checking out Fritz Lieber’s editorial in the recent Fantastic instead.

Two stars

Open Season, by John Tanner

John Tanner is not a medical student as claimed but another alias for new co-editor Jack Matcha (and his second story for Gamma). In this tale, Ditmar is travelling to Venus to try to find out what happened to his wife, who disappeared previously on the same route. While there, the ship gets boarded and crew taken to the asteroid Zara, this being the exclusive property of Cyrus Blake, one of the wealthiest men on Earth

The story seems to be trying to be a tense mystery but I was just getting impatient. The twist itself is pretty expected for anyone who has encountered The Most Dangerous Game (and given how widely reprinted, taught, filmed and copied it is, that is probably 90% of the readership) and the whole thing feels like a very tired exercise.

One star

The Woman Astronaut, by Robert Katz

Katz is another new writer to science fiction from outside the field; if this vignette is anything to go by I hope he never comes back!

A comedic (and I use the term very loosely), dramatic telling of the first American Woman in space, this anonymous Mrs. Smith spends her time worrying about her appearance, is confused that communist China isn’t actually red from space and is generally befuddled by the whole experience.

It has been over a year since the first woman went into space on Vostok 6 and these kind of prejudiced attitudes are insulting, disgusting and probably do continued damage to any hope for progress on this front from NASA.

Unfunny, uninteresting and insulting. One star, only because I cannot give anything lower.

Happily Ever After, by William F. Nolan

The former managing editor of Gamma returns to try to raise the magazine out of the doldrums with this little tale. Donald Spencer buys an asteroid to live on with his wife, on the basis that land value increases will mean it is a sound investment in the long term. It turns out not enough was known about the asteroid and they might be destined for a different kind of happily ever after.

Not that strong, but it hums along and is at least a slight improvement on the last few pieces. Two and a half stars

Don’t Touch Me I’m Sensitive, by James Stamers

Huckelberry Waterstone Smith arrives on a heavily populated Earth controlled by various corporations (the zone he is in being the City G.L.C. Services inc.) wanting to be a space warden, but he lacks the mathematical skill and is illiterate. However, he has the unusual ability to leave behind him images of himself wherever he goes.

I have forced myself to read through this story three times now and I have no idea what is meant to be about. It seems to be written as a joke or satire but I am not convinced it really works as being about anything. Add to that the terrible prose style and it only gets one star from me.

The Hand of Dr. Insidious, by Ron Goulart

With Dr. Fu Manchu set to be brought back to life in the cinema later this year, it seems appropriate that Goulart, a skilled writer of silly satires, would do his take on the famous villain. In this version Dr. Insidious is attempting to create a talent agency and take control of Hollywood. When the 00 agents have been killed in their attempts to stop him it is up to crack spy Ian Naismith and Hollywood’s top plastic surgeon Dr. Maxwell Phoebus Jr. to take him down.

A fun and silly piece as you would expect from Goulart but it doesn’t really get at or examine the myriad problems with the Fu Manchu stories. In fact reads more as another silly version of the Spy-Fi genre.

Two Stars and a recommendation to instead check out the Goon Show stories of Fred Fu-Manchu.

A Messy Melee

Overall, a really disappointing turn for the once great magazine. My subscription is paid up until issue 7 and with the new bi-monthly schedule (assuming this one actually sticks) I should be reading up until September. However, if this is the new direction I certainly will not be renewing.

Thankfully, the other work is a significant improvement:

City of a Thousand Suns by Samuel R. Delany

And so we now come to the conclusion of Delany’s Toron trilogy, which (at least for myself) has been the most anticipated book for a decade. The first two books showed that Delany was a writer of immense skill and did an amazing job of setting up this fantastical future and the stakes of the conflict. Now he has a full length novel, rather than half of an Ace Double, to conclude this tale.

This book jumps between two main focuses. Firstly, we have agents from numerous different species in the city of the Triple Entity. Here we learn of the war with The Lord of The Flames and the previous efforts to combat him. The Lord of Flames cannot experience concepts like war or compassion as those in our universe can so he has been trying to understand them first hand. The final result of the war will depend on which side has ownership of three manuscripts of the most sensitive minds of Earth and it is up to the Triple Entity’s agents, without outside aid, to bring them.

Back on Earth, the focus is on Jon and Alter. Now back in Toron (the centre of the Toromon empire), they have discovered mysterious words scrawled on walls everywhere. Following this trail leads them to the final resolution to the many conflicts we have seen throughout the series.

This is one that I think is going to get sharp reactions from the science fiction community, this is probably the toughest novel in an incredibly experimental series. It is a philosophical work touching on religion, communication, the morality of war, class conflict, racism and free will. Through it all we have a wide range of characters and concepts across a massive scope.

To start with the positive, there is absolutely no faulting Delany’s imagination and ambition. What would take entire novellas for another writer constitute a passing reference for him. To take one example:

…one of the attendants was an attractive woman with wide hazel eyes. But a minute examination would have shown her slim almond-nailed fingers, her cream and honey skin to be a bizarre cosmic coincidence. Internal examination and genetic analysis would prove her a bisexual species of moss.

This character never becomes important to the narrative and this description could be entirely exorcised without any confusion. Yet what it does do is display the multiplicity of life in this universe and the vast difference in beings we will be encountering.

Also, in spite of how complex the story he is trying to tell is he handles the action beats and flow incredibly well. It is easy to get lost in the world Delany has created, the tribulation of the characters and feel the tension grow as the remaining pages count down.

Yet, as with the previous books, keeping all the characters and situations in my head can be a real struggle. I don’t think this is a personal thing; I like Tolkien and Tolstoy and find their enormous casts just fine to understand. What I think is the major issue with these books is that Delany is attempting to paint on such an enormous scale with an incredibly finite canvas. There is no reason these books could not be expanded to the length of The Lord of The Rings without the need for significant plot alterations.

That is not to say it is not a great work that shows a talent that seems destined to become one of the most important in the field. But I do wonder if this kind of writing might not be better off trying a mainstream publisher or a long magazine serialization than the slim paperbacks Ace produces.

Rating: Four and a half stars

By the way, Galactic Journey will be doing a special presentation of our "Come Time Travel with Me" panel, the one we normally do at conventions, on March 27 at 6PM PDT. Come register to join us! It's free and fun…and you might win a prize!

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[November 13, 1963] Good Cop (the December 1963 Amazing)

November 13, 2018 John Boston 2 Comments

by John Boston

Amazing is starting to resemble a good cop/bad cop routine, and this December 1963 issue is brought to us by the good cop.

The cover story is To Plant a Seed, a longish novelet by Neal Barrett, Jr., in which this still fairly new writer earnestly wrestles with one of the more familiar plots in SF’s cupboard: Earthfolks go starfaring, encounter colorful primitive aliens, usually highly religious; observe them under a strict rule of noninterference; then the aliens start doing really strange stuff. After the mystery is milked for a while, the revelation: typically, the aliens aren’t so primitive after all, or at least they are the remnants of something greater.

Here the aliens are the barely humanoid Kahrii, who cultivate the Shari, plants which are the only other life form here on the extremely hot and otherwise barren Sahara III (and how likely is that ecology?). The Shari provide their food, clothing, and everything else they have. So why have they suddenly cut down their entire crop and begun using the pieces to build something in this desert that looks like a boat, which they could never have seen? And should the human observers break the command against interfering to stop this racial suicide? Barrett wrings a decent amount of suspense out of these questions; one knows generally what is going to happen, but why and how remain interesting enough.

As for the human observers: these are Gito, the assigned observer (male of course), and Arilee, whose job title is Mistress, the latest of several in Gito’s career. But she’s pretty smart for a Mistress—a Nine, in fact, on some completely unexplained social ranking scale—and Gito has allowed her to wander around the tunnels of the Kahrii and make her own observations. Despite her formal designation as a male plaything, she is a significant actor in the story, and she ultimately saves Gito’s bacon. And in fact that’s part of Barrett’s point, that she transcends the condescending role she occupies. But it’s still frustrating and annoying to see a reasonably capable SF writer displaying more imagination in devising a completely alien society than in thinking about the likely future of his own. Aside from that, this is a pretty solid performance on a well-established theme. Three stars, towards the top of the range.

The other novelet is The Days of Perky Pat by Philip K. Dick, who has now had stories in three consecutive issues. This one is far better than the others, which I described as resembling rambling stand-up routines. Here he reverts to his long-standing preoccupation with life after catastrophe, in this case, as in many others, a nuclear war. The characters, called “flukers” because it’s only by a fluke that they survived, live underground in the old fallout shelters, kept alive by the grace of the “careboys,” mollusk-like Martians who drop food and other goods to sustain the flukers’ lives.

The adult humans are completely preoccupied with Perky Pat, a blonde plastic doll that comes with various accessories including boyfriend, which the flukers have supplemented with various improvised objects in their “layouts,” which seem to be sort of like a Monopoly board and sort of like a particularly elaborate model train setup. On these layouts, they obsessively play a competitive game, running Perky Pat and her boyfriend through the routines of life before the war, while their kids run around unsupervised on the dust- and rock-covered surface chasing down mutant animals with knives.

Obviously the author has had an encounter with a Barbie doll complete with accessories, and didn’t much care for it. This is as grotesque a black comedy as you’ll find, with plot developments reminiscent of Robert Sheckley, but not at all played for yocks. Some years ago Anthony Boucher reviewed one of Dick’s books and used the phrase “the chilling symbolism of absolute nightmare.” Here it’s mixed with over-the-top satire and is still pretty chilling. Four stars.

F.A. Javor’s Killjoy is a rather short story on another familiar theme: Earthfolk starfaring to find exotic alien fauna and hunt and kill it, with a twist that will probably be morally satisfying to many. But the whole thing is hyper-contrived. Two stars.

The oddest item in the issue is The God on the 36th Floor by Herbert D. Kastle, who has had a scattered handful of stories in the SF magazines (many more in other genres), but also edited the last two issues of Startling Stories, for what that may be worth. His main credentials, though, are contemporary novels, mostly original paperbacks, with titles like One Thing On My Mind and Bachelor Summer. So it’s not surprising that this story doesn’t read much like what you’d find in an SF magazine; it’s more like something adapted from a script for The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits.

Protagonist Der (a nickname) works in Public Relations in a big company, but he’s had some sort of breakdown and can’t actually function any more. Through happenstance he’s managed to stay on, collecting his salary and pretending to do a nonexistent job. But a new man, Tzadi, shows up and seems to know a lot about him, and everybody else too.

Further interaction with the mysterious Tzadi suggests that Der is at even more risk than he feared; and things keep moving until we are in the territory of such paranoia epics as Heinlein’s They and Dick’s Time Out of Joint. So it’s another familiar idea, but nicely developed through dialogue and visualization, not to mention unobtrusively slick writing. Three stars, again near the top of the range.

The issue’s biggest surprise is H.B. Fyfe’s The Klygha, which features more spacefaring Earth explorers (I refuse to say Terrans like the author; nobody but SF writers will ever use that word), lobster-like inhabitants of the planet they are exploring, another spacefaring explorer from somewhere else entirely (the Klygha), a cat, lots of telepathy, and some hidden motives.

I am not saying more because the author has juggled these absolutely stock elements from the back pages of the last decade’s SF magazines into an extremely clever construction, and much of the pleasure of it initially is just figuring out what’s going on, in a way a little reminiscent of Bester’s Fondly Fahrenheit. It’s not quite on that level, but it’s certainly a little tour de force, much better than the other Fyfe stories I’ve read, mostly in Astounding and Analog, which are clever enough but entirely too gimmicky and superficial. Four stars.

Sam Moskowitz is back with another “SF Profile,” Fritz Leiber: Destiny x 3, one of his better efforts: he doesn’t say anything overtly wrong or ridiculous, there are no gross offenses against the English language that cannot be attributed to Amazing’s proofreading, and (unlike his usual practice) he gives as much attention to Leiber’s recent work as to that of the ‘30s and ‘40s. Indeed he goes so far as to describe Leiber’s latest novel, called The Wanderer, which has not even been published yet. The title refers to the fact that Leiber has had two significant hiatuses in SF writing and thus has started his career three times, and also to an early novella titled Destiny Times Three, which deserves neither its present obscurity nor Moskowitz’s over-praise. While Moskowitz skips over some of Leiber’s more significant work, that probably has as much to do with space limitations as his preference. Three stars.

And just to put a cap on it, I read The Spectroscope, the book review column by S.E. Cotts, who generally gets little respect . . . and it’s not bad! These are fairly perceptive reviews despite Cotts’ slightly stuffy manner. No stars, since we don’t ordinarily comment on these things at all, but another pleasant surprise.

So: this is certainly the best issue of Amazing this year; in fact, you have to go back to March and April 1962 to find anything comparable. But the bad cop, as always, lurks outside the interrogation room, slapping his blackjack into his palm. Next month, we are promised more Edgar Rice Burroughs.

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[February 12, 1963] HOPE SPRINGS (the March 1963 Amazing)

February 12, 2018 John Boston 2 Comments

[If you live in Southern California, you can see the Journey LIVE at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego, 2 p.m. on February 17!]

by John Boston

Well, hope springs eternal, and a good thing for certain SF magazines that it does. The March Amazing has a rather distinguished table of contents: a novelet by John Wyndham and short stories by veterans Edmond Hamilton, H.B. Fyfe, and Robert F. Young and up-and-comers like J.G. Ballard, rising star Roger Zelazny, and variable star Keith Laumer.

But we must temper optimism with realism: since Amazing is about the lowest-paying of the SF magazines, top-market names are probably here with things they couldn’t sell elsewhere. So, prepared for all eventualities . . .

Edmond Hamilton’s Babylon in the Sky is a simple morality tale for SF fans. Young Hobie lives in the sticks, where there are no jobs and people survive on doles and make-work, seldom make it past the eighth grade, and resent eggheads and know-it-alls—especially the decadent ones in the orbiting cities that Hobie’s preacher father rails against. So Hobie runs away to the spaceport and stows away to one of these satellites, planning to sabotage the power plant and blow it up. He doesn’t get far, and the sane and reasonable people there explain to him that they are not living sybaritic lives but working hard at research to benefit everyone. We didn’t rob you, Hobie, the home folks did. So they’re just sending him back, but Hobie, you’re a smart kid, if you go to the Educational Foundation near the spaceport, they’ll take care of you, and then maybe you can join up and come back here. Hobie buys it. Well, yeah, that’s more or less my life plan too if I can swing it, but I don’t read SF for homilies even if I agree with them. It’s slickly enough done, but two stars for unearned propagandizing.

Speaking of slick, here’s Robert F. Young again. When last he appeared, I said he “knows so many ways of being entirely too cute,” and boy howdy was I right. In Jupiter Found, the protagonist’s brain, after an auto accident did for the rest of him, is installed in a giant mining and construction machine on Jupiter—a M.A.N. (Mining, Adapting Neo-Processor), model 8M. He is shortly joined by model EV, who is of course a W.O.M.A.N. (Weld Operating, Mining, Adapting Neo-Processor). They work for Gorman and Oder Developments, which has strictly forbidden them to process an ore called edenite, and they’ve also been warned to beware of a guy who has been cast out of a high place in the company and is now in business for himself, who will be sending down a mining unit called a Boa 9. By this point in Young’s arch and labored rendition of the Old Testament I was thinking longingly of some of the more bloodthirsty passages in Leviticus. One star. What kind of rubes does this guy think he’s writing for? Even Hobie wouldn’t go for this.

John Wyndham is best known for his chilly novels of the 1950s, from The Day of the Triffids to The Midwich Cuckoos, less so for Trouble with Lichen (1960), intelligent and readable but much less incisive than its predecessors. His novelet Chocky is unfortunately in the latter vein. The protagonist’s kid seems to be having conversations with an imaginary friend, except anybody who’s read a lick of SF will know immediately that he’s communicating with an extraterrestrial intelligence. So we get the worried parent routine, and the marital tension, and the visit from the child psychologist friend, the rather subdued climax, and then . . . some explanation and it all goes away. The whole 38 pages worth is so low-key as to be near-comatose. One wonders if Wyndham is taking some of the new tranquilizers that psychiatrists hand out these days. It’s benignly readable but there’s not much to it. Two stars.

Roger Zelazny’s short The Borgia Hand is livelier but insubstantial, about a young man with a withered hand in generic fairy-tale country who chases down a pedlar (sic) reputed to traffic in body parts. Yeah, he’s got a hand in stock, and here’s a quick gimmick and it’s over. Two stars. Snappy writing is nice, but as one noted critic put it, where’s the bloody horse?

But relief is in sight. There’s nothing especially original about Keith Laumer’s The Walls: future overpopulated Earth with people living regimented lives stuffed into tiny spaces in big apartment complexes; protagonist’s husband is on the make and brings home a Wall, i.e. a TV screen that covers one wall. You can turn it off but then you’ve got a wall-sized mirror. Next, another Wall; then another; then . . . . The story is the wife’s psychological disintegration stuck all day with a choice of all-directions TV-land or a hall of mirrors, but—as with It Could Be Anything from a couple of issues ago—Laumer’s knack for concrete visual detail brings it off and keeps it from being a print version of one of those lame Twilight Zone episodes which end with somebody going crazy. Four stars.

J.G. Ballard is back with The Sherrington Theory, his most minor effort yet in the US magazines. Protagonist and wife are at a beach cafeteria terrace, watching the remarkably dense beach crowd (no sand visible), and intermittently discussing the theory of Dr. Sherrington that the imminent launch of a new communications satellite will trigger certain “innate releasing mechanisms” in humans, which of course it does. This one frankly reads a bit like a self-parody; in fact, the idea is a sort of domesticated knock-off of the one he developed much more effectively in The Drowned World. Of course it’s written with Ballard’s usual flair (or mannerisms, as you prefer), e.g.: “. . . this mass of articulated albino flesh sprawled on the beach resembled the diseased anatomical fantasy of a surrealist painter.” The situation is more skillfully developed and built up than in Zelazny’s story, bringing it up, barely, to three stars.

The stars hide their faces as we come to H.B. Fyfe’s Star Chamber, a shameless Bat Durston in which a parody of a despicable criminal has crash-landed on an uninhabited planet and a lone lawman has come after him. It reads like something Fyfe couldn’t sell to Planet Stories until the mildly clever end, which reads like something he couldn’t sell to Analog because they were overstocked on Christopher Anvil. Two stars, barely.

And here is earnest Ben Bova with Intelligent Life in Space. Haven’t we seen this already? Not quite—this time he’s going on about the definition of intelligence, touching base at ants, dolphins, and chimpanzees, and suggesting that we’re not likely to find it in the Solar System but likely will do so farther away. This one is a more pedestrian rehash of familiar material than most of his earlier articles. Two stars.

So: one very good story, one amusing one, and downhill—pretty far downhill—from there. Hope may spring eternal, but one takes what one can get.

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo. Your ballot should have arrived by now…]

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[Dec. 5, 1961] IF I didn't care… (January 1962 IF Science Fiction)

December 5, 2016 Gideon Marcus 10 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

There is an interesting rhythm to my science fiction reading schedule. Every other month, I get to look forward to a bumper crop of magazines: Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog, and the King-Sized Galaxy. Every other month, I get F&SF, Analog, and IF (owned by the same fellow who owns Galaxy).

IF is definitely the lesser mag. Not only is it shorter, but it clearly gets second choice of submissions to it and its sister, Galaxy. The stories tend to be by newer authors, or the lesser works of established ones. This makes sense — Galaxy offers the standard rate of three cents an article while IF's pay is a bare one cent per word.

That isn't to say IF isn't worth reading. Pohl's a good editor, and he manages to make decent (if not extraordinary) issues every month. The latest one, the January 1962 IF, is a good example.

For instance, the lead novelette is another cute installment in Keith Laumer's "Retief" series, The Yillian Way. I've tended not to enjoy the stories of Retief, a member of the Terran Interstellar Diplomatic Corps. Laumer writes him a bit too omnipotent, and omnipotent heroes are boring, as they have no obstacles to overcome. The challenges presented in Way, however, both by the baffling alien Yills and Retief's own consular mission, are all too plausible…and charmingly met. I am also pleased to find that Retief is Black (or, perhaps, Indian). Four stars.

There's not much to James Schmitz's An Incident on Route Twelve. In fact, if not for the engaging manner in which it's written, this rather archaic story of alien abduction would be completely skippable. As presented, it reads like a fair episode of The Twilight Zone. Three stars.

If there is a signature author for IF, it's Jim Harmon. This prolific author seems to be in every other issue of the mag (and quite a few Galaxy issues, too). Harmon is to Pohl what Randy Garrett is to John Campbell at Analog: a reliable workhorse. Thankfully for Pohl, Harmon is better than Garrett (not a high bar). The Last Place on Earth is not the best thing Harmon has ever written. In fact, the ending seems rushed, and the plot doesn't quite make sense. That said, this tale of a fellow being hounded by a malevolent alien presence, is powerfully told. Another three-star piece.

Usually, alien possession a la Heinlein's The Puppet Masters is portrayed in a negative light. But what if the society taken over is an intolerant dictatorship, and the foreign entity promotes love and brotherhood? The Talkative Tree by H.B. Fyfe won't knock your socks off, but it is a pleasant little read. Three stars.

Last of the short stories is 2BR02B (the zero pronounced "naught") by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Like his latest in F&SF, Harrison Bergeron, it is a cautionary tale written at a grade-school level. This time, the subject is the ever-popular crisis of overpopulation. With Vonnegut, I vacillate between admiring his simplistic prose and rolling my eyes at it. Three stars.

That's the last of the short stories. Not too bad, right? A solid couple of hours of reading pleasure there. But then you run headlong into the second half of the serial, Masters of Space, and that's where the wheels come off of this issue. E.E. Evans was a prolific writer for the lesser mags between the late '40s and his death in 1958. I know of him, but I haven't read a single thing by him. There is another, more famous "E.E." That's E.E. Smith, the leading light of pulpish space opera from the 20s and 30s. He had largely stayed hidden under the radar for the past couple of decades, but he resurfaced not to long ago.

Some time between his passing and this year, "Doc" Smith got a hold of a half-finished Evans work and decided to complete it. The result is a almost skeletal, decidedly old-fashioned novel, something about humans who once straddled the stars but were coddled to senescence by the android servants they created. Millennia later, the descendants of the old Masters pushed out into the galaxy again, only to face the indescribably sinister Stretts. Masters isn't bad, exactly. It's just not very good. Smith's writing holds no appeal for me. I recognize Smith's importance to the field of science fiction, but time has not been kind to his work, nor have Doc's skills improved much over the years. I made it about 60% through this short novel, but ultimately, I simply have better things to do with my time. Two stars (and I revised my opinion of the previous installment, too).

In many ways, IF is the anti-Analog. That magazine usually has great serials and mediocre short stories. Oh well. At least they both have something to offer.

Coming soon: the next installment in an ongoing series. Don't miss this Galactic Journey exclusive!

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[August 5, 1961] In the good old Summertime! (September 1961 IF science fiction)

August 5, 2016 Gideon Marcus 6 Comments

Gideon Marcus

by Ron Church

Summer is here! It's that lazy, hot stretch of time when the wisest thing to do is lie in the shade with a glass of lemonade and a good book. Perhaps if Khruschev did the same thing, he wouldn't be making things so miserable for the folks of West Berlin. Well, there's still time for Nikita to take a restful trip to the Black Sea shore.

As for me, I may not have a dacha, but I do have a beach. Moreover, this month's IF science fiction proved a reasonably pleasant companion during my relax time. If you haven't picked up your copy yet, I recommend it. Here's what's inside:

Keith Laumer has made a big splash in just the last few years. He wrote a fine three-part alternate Earth novel that came out in Fantastic earlier this year. I look forward to covering it when it's novelized in a few months. Meanwhile, this month he offers us a prequel to Diplomat-at-Arms, starring his interstellar man of mystery, Retief. It's called The Frozen Planet, and while the setting is interesting (a quartet of frozen human worlds on the edge of the evil Soetti empire), I found it a bit too smug. When the secret agent is too powerful, where's the drama? Two stars.

Mirror Image is a Daniel Galouye's story, about a raving (but not necessarily mad) man who claims to have built a bridge to the parallel universe behind every looking glass. It's a B-grade plot, something you might find in the lesser annals of The Twilight Zone, but I found it engaging, nonetheless. Three stars.

It looks like Lester del Rey has returned from vacation. His story in August's Galaxy, was his first in a few years. Now, hot on its heels, is Spawning Ground, about a startling discovery made by a colonial group upon planetfall. The set-up is good, and I greatly appreciated the inclusion of a mixed-gender crew, but the ending was too mawkish and abrupt. Three stars.

H.B. Fyfe, whose byline can be found all over the magazines of the pulp era, has been a consistent Analog and IF contributor for the past couple of years. None of his stories have been strong stand-outs, and this month's Tolliver's Orbit is no exception. It's a thriller set on the wastes of Ganymede featuring a pair of an interesting characters: an honest space pilot who wants no part of the graft rife in the local commercial concern, and a woman vice president of said business, sent to investigate wrong-doing. In the hands of an expert, it could have easily garnered four or five stars. Sadly, Fyfe phoned this one in, telling rather than showing at too many critical junctures. Two stars.

by Ritter

On the other hand, the succeeding novella, by newcomer Charles Minor Blackford, is solid entertainment. The Valley of the Masters depicts a space colony generations after establishment. Its people have forgotten their technological past, and the automatic machines are beginning to fail. Without them, the community will be swallowed by a hostile environment. Is an enterprising young couple the only hope? If Valley has any faults, it is that it is too short. Four stars.

Robert Young's The Girls from Fieu Dayol presents us with a cautionary tale: be careful when eavesdropping on a note-passing conversation — You just might end up embroiled in an interstellar husband hunt! Cute. Three stars.

Full disclosure: Any story with my daughter's namesake is subject to extraordinary scrutiny. Thankfully, Charles de Vet's Lorelei, featuring a seductive shape-changer who haunts the stranded crew of the first Jovian expedition, is good stuff. Three stars.

Wrapping up the issue is Donald Westlake's novella, Call him Nemesis. If you're a fan of child superheroes, you'll like it; it's a simple story, but the execution is charming. Three stars.

All told, the September 1961 IF clocks in at 2.9 stars out of 5. That's pretty respectable for this magazine, and certainly good enough for a couple of hours of summer lolling.

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[July 15, 1961] Saving Grace (The August 1961 Analog)

July 15, 2016 Gideon Marcus 12 Comments

Recently, I told you about Campbell's lousy editorial in the August 1961 Analog that masqueraded as a "science-fact" column. That should have been the low point of the issue. Sadly, with one stunning exception, the magazine didn't get much better.

For instance, almost half the issue is taken up by Mack Reynold's novella, Status Quo. It's another of his future cold-war pieces, most of which have been pretty good. This one, about a revolutionary group of "weirds," who plan to topple an increasingly conformist American government by destroying all of our computerized records, isn't. It's too preachy to entertain; its protagonist, an FBI agent, is too unintelligent to enjoy (even if his dullness is intentional); the tale is too long for its pay-off. Two stars.

That said, there are some interesting ideas in there. The speculation that we will soon become over-reliant on social titles rather than individual merit, while Campbellian in its libertarian sentiment, is plausible. There is already an "old boy's club" and it matters what degrees you have and from which school you got them. It doesn't take much to imagine a future where the meritocracy is dead and nepotism rules.

And, while it's hard to imagine a paperless society, should we ever get to the point where the majority of our records only exist within the core memories of a few computers, a few revolutionaries hacking away at our central repositories of knowledge could have quite an impact, indeed!

Flamedown, by H.B. Fyfe is a forgettable short piece about a spaceman who crashes onto the surface of a Barsoomian Mars and is trailed by a lynch mob of angry Martians. There is a twist at the end, but it's a limp one. Two stars.

I don't know who Walter B. Gibson is, but his impassioned defense of psionics in our legal system, The Unwanted Evidence, is wretched. It reads like a series of newspaper clippings from the back page of the newspaper, or maybe one of those sensational books on UFOs and mystic events that are in vogue. One star.

Analog perennial Randall Garrett, an author I tend to dislike (yet one of Campbell's favored sons) gives us Hanging by a Thread, about an interplanetary ship holed by a meteor. It could have been engaging, but the smug, detached tone, and the overly technical and uninteresting solution make this a dreary read. Perhaps even Garrett knew he could do better; maybe that's why he penned this one under the name "David Gordon." Two stars.

by Douglas

Laurence Janifer also appears a lot in Analog, often paired with Garrett (either as a true duet, or just side by side). He's usually the better of the two, but Lost in Translation is a typical lousy "clever Terrans beat aliens" story, not worth your time. Again, it's pseudonymous (Larry M. Harris), perhaps on purpose. Two stars.

This is a pretty damning litany, isn't it? A series of 2-star stories and a pair of 1-star "science fact" articles. Is there any reason I don't just toss this issue into the kindling box?

There is.

Cyril Kornbluth shuffled off this mortal coil far too soon, some three years ago. He wrote a lot, both by himself and with partners. Perhaps his most famous partnership was with Fred Pohl, who now runs Galaxy and IF magazines. The Pohl/Kornbluth pair is best known for their novels, including the acclaimed The Space Merchants, but they also produced a plethora of short stories. Interestingly, many have only reached print after Kornbluth's death. I can only imagine these were skeletal affairs that Pohl has recently completed.

The Quaker Cannon, their latest piece, is very good. It's the story of First Lieutenant Kramer, a veteran of a war fought in the 1970s, between East and West. In this war, he had been captured by the Communists and subjected to complete sensory deprivation as a torture and interrogation technique. Unlike most of his captured compatriots, he neither went incurably mad nor held out until death. He simply resisted as long as he could, then he cracked and gave up what he knew. He was later repatriated.

Now 38 and still a First Lieutenant despite years of service, blacklisted from any significant role, he is suddenly recruited into Project Ripsaw: a new attempt to invade Asia. As the commanding general's aide-de-camp, he oversees Ripsaw's growth from a cadre of three to an organization of hundreds of thousands, privy to all of the unit's secrets and plans.

As the vast force prepares to invade, Kramer learns of "The Quaker Cannon," a parallel invasion unit that exists only on paper. Its purpose is to serve as a blind to confuse the enemy as to the real plan. The Soviets call this kind of deception maskirova, and it's worked time and time again.

Just prior to D-Day, Kramer is betrayed to the enemy. In short order, the Lieutenant is back in the "Blank Tank," all of his senses completely deadened. Hours pass by in seconds, each a drag on his sanity. Though Kramer's defiance is admirable, his ultimate submission, as before, is only a matter of time. He, of course, divulges the Ripsaw plan in its entirety. When Kramer returns to coherence, he is back home. Rather than being punished for his lapse, he is given a high honor.

Ripsaw was the ghost. "The Quaker Cannon" was the real invasion. Kramer's confession was all part of the plan. The story ends with that reveal.

In the hands of Randall Garrett, or even Mack Reynolds, the focus would have been on the gimmick, to the detriment of the story. Pohl and Kornbluth let Kramer be the narrator, albeit in a third person fashion. They paint a vivid portrait of a battle-fatigued soldier, almost numb to life (as though he never left the Blank Tank) until Ripsaw gives him purpose again. We are made to feel his anxiety at the thought and ultimately the reality of returning to the Blank Tank. We feel disgust at his being used as a tool, yet we also fundamentally understand why. Cannon is not a triumphant story. It is a beautifully told, weary story of a weary man, not only capturing the psyche of a battered soldier, but also the perversity of the military structure and mentality.

Hard stuff, but it deserves five stars.

So, as a whole, the issue gets just 2.2 stars. Nevertheless, thanks to that half-posthumous pair, the August 1961 Analog will be reserved a place on my shelf, not in the garbage.

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[Jan. 25, 1961] Oscillating circuit (the February 1961 Analog)

January 25, 2016 Gideon Marcus 9 Comments

John Campbell's science fiction magazine continues to defy my efforts to chart a trend. Following on the heels of last month's rather dismal issue, the February 1961 Analog is an enjoyable read. Let's take a look, shall we?

It took me a little while to get into Everett Cole's lead novella, The Weakling, but once I understood what he was doing, I was enthralled. Cole paints a world in which people with psi powers dominate those without. It is a planet of slave-owning aristocrats who can force people to do their bidding through mental will alone. The viewpoint character is Barra, scion of a noble family. His ascension to lordhood was accidental, caused by the premature deaths of his father and brother. Without the aid of an array of potent psychic enhancers, he would be barely more powerful than the "pseudo-men" he controls.

Weakling is the account of this bitter, cruel man, contemptuous of the slaves he resembles, jealous of his psychically more powerful peers, who entices rich merchants to his estate, murdering them for plunder. The story can be hard to read at times, but it is an excellent insight into the mindset of the 19th Century slave-owner (and thus an indictment of the sentiment that still prevails over much of the modern South). Four stars.

Teddy Keller's short, The Plague, is more typical Analog fare. When a sickness sweeps the nation, with no apparent rhyme or reason to its epidemiology, one doctor must race against time to find a cure. The solution is contrived and rather silly. Two stars.

Freedom, the latest in Mack Reynolds' slew of stories set in the Soviet Union of the 1980s, is a horse of a different color. Once again, Reynolds expertly conveys the character of life behind an Iron Curtain where Communism has achieved its economic goals, but not its social ones. In this tale, we see how difficult it is to extirpate a desire for intellectual freedom once it has taken root. I appreciate the evenhandedness with which Reynolds evaluates both the East and West. I also liked the romantic element, portrayed as between two equals unencumbered with conservative moral values. Four stars.

Campbell trumpeted his expanded coverage of science fact in his magazine, and it seemed a worthy experiment at the start. I'm always happy to see more Asimov articles, after all. But recently, the "non-fiction" portion of the magazine has been devoted to self-penned articles on the editor's hobbies or favorite crackpot inventions. We get a blessed break from these with a short photo-feature showing rockets of the past and present. Too short to garner a rating.

I don't think I quite got H.B. Fyfe's The Outbreak of Peace, a short short that takes place at an interstellar peace conference. I even read it twice. Would someone explain it to me, please? Two stars (for now).

At last, we have Chris Anvil's latest, The Ghost Fleet. A space fleet commander is forced to ignominious flight when the enemy strikes with an unbeatable weapon. Can he recover his honor (and save the day) with an audacious gambit? It's good, if something of a one-trick pony. Three stars.

The issue finishes off with the conclusion to Occasion for Disaster, which I previously covered. All told, the book clocks in at a slice over three stars, which is perfectly acceptable for 50 cents of entertainment.

Now let's see if this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction can top that.

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[November 13, 1960] Evening out (December 1960 Galaxy, second half)

November 13, 2015 Gideon Marcus 10 Comments

It's hard to keep the quality up in a long-format magazine like Galaxy, especially when your lower tier stuff gets absorbed by a sister magazine (IF). Thus, it is rare to find a full issue of Galaxy without some duds that bring the average down. Editor Gold has saved this month's weak entries for the second half.

Not that you could tell at first, given the fascinating Subject to Change, by Ron Goulart. A creepy story about a woman, her gift for transformation, her struggle with kleptomania, and her increasing estrangement from her fiancee. Four stars.

H.B. Fyfe's Round-and-Round Trip is a hoot. If you're an inveterate traveler like me, you'll especially appreciate this tale of a fellow who seems to be trapped on the interstellar version of the M.T.A., endlessly shuttling from planet to planet, never reaching his destination. But does he actually have one? Or is the journey the thing? I'm torn between three and four stars.

But then we have Blueblood, by Jim Harmon. Human explorers find a planet of blue humanoids racially divided based on the depth of the skin's hue. The darker ones are seemingly dumber than the lighter ones. I held my breath for some kind of satire or allegory regarding our present prejudicial woes in this country, but the story took a left turn somewhere and just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. If it's allegory, the message to be gleaned is disturbing, and if it is not, then it's just a weak tale. It's too bad–Harmon is fairly consistently good. Two stars this time.

Patrick Fahy is another complete novice, and Bad Memory, illustrated by Mad Magazine's Don Martin, is unimpressive. A space horticulturalist sacrifices all to turn his planet into a Jovian swamp. On the upside, he falls in love. On the downside…well, I didn't like the downside. Two stars (you might like it more than me).

The issue is wrapped up by Daniel Galouye's Fighting Spirit, about a space force clerk who shennanigans his way into real combat only to find that war isn't quite the rifle and stiff upper lip type. More the garlic, cross, and mirror type… Three stars.

All told, we end up with an issue that just barely crests the three-star line on the Journey-meter. Still, that's pretty good for an issue in "decline," and there are some definite gems, albeit more amethyst than emerald.

By the way, speaking of Don Martin, the newest Mad Magazine has hit the stands. As you can see, they successfully predicted the outcome of the race:

But they also hedged their bet–this was the outside cover:

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[September 10, 1960] Analog, Part 2 (The October 1960 Analog)

September 10, 2015 Gideon Marcus 11 Comments

The October 1960 Analog is a surprisingly decent read. While none of it is literature for the ages (some might argue that the Ashwell-written lead novella is an exception), neither is any of it rough hoeing. Interestingly, it is an issue devoted almost entirely to sequels. It works, I think.

The first story after the Ashwell is H.B.Fyfe's Satellite System, and it's the best of the three I've seen from him thus far. An interstellar trader is ejected from his ship by hijackers. But will orbital mechanics allow him to have the last laugh? I liked the idea that trade between the stars is so expensive that only the exchange of ideas is profitable.

Mack Reynolds offers up the thoughtful and enjoyable Combat. It's another of his Cold War stories set in the mid 1970s, a la Revolution and (maybe) Pieces of the Game, where the Soviet Union is ascendant despite all of our current predictions. It's not a utopia, mind you, but it's definitely something of a success story. In Combat, advanced extraterrestrials appear, and to the West's consternation, pick Moscow as their first stop.

What makes this story compelling is the rather even-handed way with which Reynolds portrays Communism and the world behind the Iron Curtain. There's a lot of good political discussion, but it never gets too preachy or bogged down, as in some of Heinlein's work. Of course, I don't buy Reynolds' predictions, even with Jack Kennedy's recent statement that Sputnik and Lunik were "twin alarm bells in the night." Some of Reynolds' statements don't even make sense. For instance, in his story, both superpowers spend half of their GNP on the military. Fundamentally impossible.

But it's worth seeing the tale through to the end, even if that end is a slight let-down.

Randall Garrett, under the name of "Darrel T. Langart," wrote the next tale: Psichopath. It's a direct sequel to What the Left Hand was Doing and features the same psionic secret agency. This time around, they are investigating what appear to be acts of sabotage at an antigravity research facility. Given the two-page screed about scientists' reluctance to acknowledge attacks on cherished scientific axioms (a thinly disguised paean to the much-abused Mr. Dean and his "drive"), I suspect Campbell had a strong hand in its editing.

Wrapping up the fiction is Isaac Asimov's latest non-fact article on Thiotimoline, the a fictional substance that dissolves in water before its insertion! Thiotimoline and the Space Age discusses some of the technological advances the substance allows. For instance one can use it to send messages back in time to determine the success of a space mission or missile launch before it happens. It's a cute piece.

Finally, Campbell has yet another report on one of his home science projects. In this case, it's an overlong treatise on his attempts to grow crystals called The Self-Repairing Robot. It would have been nice had he discussed at further length the concept behind the article's title, that self-repairing crystals could be a pretty neat technological advancement. Rather, we get to ooh and ahh at the descriptions of brightly colored inorganic growths–accompanied by drab black-and-white photos.

All in all, its a solid three-star issue. That's pretty good for Analog. Plus, it looks like "Mark Randall" will be back next month with another Malone and Boyd story. Their last one was pretty good, so there's something to look forward to.

In other news, Hurricane Donna has made landfall in Florida. This massive storm is a serious menace, and the folks at Cape Canaveral are taking no chances. Both stages of the Atlas Able, which was deployed for a Pioneer Moon lshot ater this month, have been towed to protective hangars. Antennas and cables have been disconnected from buildings and vehicles. All of the large transport aircraft based at Patrick Air Force Base departed like a flock of frightened birds. Their destination was San Salvador and other downrange islands. The base personnel evacuated the base by noon after securing the hangars. I understand that they had a harrowing ride back to their Cocoa Beach hotels as blinding rain lashed against their windshields and gusts of wind threatened to knock their cars off the road.

I suspect there will be another rough couple of days, not just for the engineers, but for all the residents of the Eastern seaboard. Stay safe, my friends.

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[August 22, 1960] If every day were a convention (September 1960 IF)

August 22, 2015 Gideon Marcus 14 Comments

It's been a topsy turvy month! Not only have I been to Japan, but I've just gone to yet another new science fiction convention taking place virtually next door (pictures appended below). Yet, despite all the bustle, I've managed to find time for my #1 pasttime: my monthly pile of science fiction/fantasy digests. And here, at long last, is my review of the September 1960 IF Science Fiction.

As Galaxy's lesser sister, its overall quality tends to be a little lower. There are a couple of stand-outs in this issue that made it a worthy purchase, however. Moreover, I'm noticing a trend toward the experimental. H. Gold (and his right-hand, Fred Pohl) seem more willing to take chances with this mag. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.

I don't want to spoil the stories for you, so I'll keep the synopses brief:

Daniel Galouye has the opening number, a longish novelette called Kangaroo Court. It's an interesting murder mystery in a world where telepathy has made crime obsolete. An extra twist is the development of memory copying–a technology that lets one create a full simulacrum of a person's personality up to the date of storage. I'm given to understand that a writer should only present one revolutionary technology per story, but I think Galouye pulls it off. Three stars.

Margaret St. Clair is also back with her short story, Parallel Beans, a cute little piece about the dangers of bartering across alternate time streams. Three stars.

Wedge, by H.B. Fyfe, is about a human prisoner who is the subject of an alien intelligence test. Is he the testee or the tester? The first weak piece of the issue: Two stars.

But it is followed up by To Choke an Ocean by the reliable J.F.Bone. I like stories without antagonists, and they get bonus points if they involve interesting alien civilizations. Four stars.

That brings us to Arthur Porges, who turned 45 yesterday (Happy Birthday!) His Words and Music, about a man who can tell a person's future in a decidedly off-beat (or perhaps "on-beat" is more appropriate) fashion, would make a fantastic episode of The Twilight Zone. Another four star tale.

There is a brief interlude during which Fred Pohl contributes a longish book-review column. It includes praise for the rather awful The Tomorrow People, by Judy Merril. It is followed by Robert Shea's unusually written, but rather pointless, Star Performer, involving a Martian aborigine and his effect on the decadent, overripe population of Earth. Two stars.

Finally, R.A. Lafferty offers up Six Fingers of Time, about a fellow who discovers a talent for living life at an accelerated rate. The writing is odd, and the subject matter uninspired, and yet…it has a certain charm. Three stars.

That puts us at exactly three stars for the issue no matter how you slice it, which ranks it above Astounding and below F&SF this month. No surprises there. F&SF also wins the prize for best story: George Elliott's The NRACP, though to be fair, it's a reprint. I might give the nod for best original story to Bone. Your mileage will almost assuredly vary.

Finally, of the 22 stories, serial portions, and non-fiction articles appearing in the three magazines, exactly two of them were written by women. I'll leave this datum here without further observation or opinion.

This weekend, I'm off to the movies to watch Dinosaurus, the new flick from the team that brought us The Blob and 4D-Man. Sadly, neither of the members of my immediate family will go with me. Perhaps I'll run into one of you, my beloved fans.

And for those who came here to see the pretty pictures, here are the costumes from our local science fiction convention: