Tag Archives: half a loaf

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 31, 1967] Surprise, surprise!  (January 1968 Analog)

6 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Evitability

There are some things you can count on in life: death, taxes, the North Vietnamese violating their own Christmas truce more than a hundred times.

But sometimes, life deals you surprises.  For instance, who knew that Hubert Humphrey was still alive?  Yet he must be kicking for he is currently in Africa on a goodwill tour of the continent.


And, as a fellow exclaimed when I gave him a preview of my thoughts on this month's issue of Analog, "A five star story in Analog?  Really?"

Well, it's true.  Read on and find out how it happened!

Expect the unexpected

The Bugs That Live at -423°, by Joseph Green and Fuller C. Jones

First off, a very long article on the teething troubles faced by the developers of the Centaur rocket.  This powerful second stage is used atop Atlas and Titan missiles to send big payloads to Earth's orbit and beyond.  To do so, it uses liquid hydrogen as a fuel, which entails a whole host of problems.

There is a lot of good information in here, but as is often the case in Analog science articles, its presentation is confusing.  There are no section breaks, so the whole thing runs together such that even I, a professional space historian, found my eyes glazing over.

I've no idea if "Joseph Green" is the same one who writes science fiction for UK magazines.  Probably not.

Anyway, three stars.

There is a Tide, by R. C. FitzPatrick and Leigh Richmond


by Kelly Freas

A couple of years ago, R. C. FitzPatrick started a series of stories about a surgeon who has perfected the technique of human brain transplants.  The first story was mildly interesting but prolonged, and the second veered heavily into the uncomfortable zone of eugenics.  After all, the transplant of a healthy brain requires a donor body…and it's hard to find ones that aren't inhabited, and don't even the feeble minded have the right to their own corpus?

Tide is the third story in the series, and by far the best.  There are two parallel, intersecting plots.  One involves a brilliant young physicist with inoperable cancer, who comes to the surgeon's sanatorium to wait for a suitable "transplant" candidate.  The second pertains to a self-styled "Duke" of organized crime.  Intelligent, ruthless, and aging, the mob boss wants a healthy body to get a new lease on life.  Surprisingly, the surgeon is willing to take the Duke's case, even before the mafioso breaks out the threats.

There are some important distinguishing characteristics between Tide and its predecessors.  For one, it is now stressed that only the truly brain-dead are eligible "donors".  It's not a matter of finding more value in a smart brain and a moronic one; only a virtually untenanted body is acceptable.  The writing is far more compelling in this piece, too, with lots of interesting asides that flesh out the characters and the world they inhabit.

But most importantly, the ethical issue is confronted head on.  It doesn't matter if the AMA or politicians or ethicists oppose the technology of brain transplants.  Once that genie is out of the bottle, someone will take advantage of it–if not the scrupulous, then the unscrupulous.  As the first (somewhat) successful human heart transplants of this month have shown, this technology is no longer a pipe dream.  We will someday have to face this issue.  I felt this story did a better job of addressing this problem than Niven's (still pretty good) The Jigsaw Man, which came out a couple of months ago.

So how did FitzPatrick manage to write such a good story when his others were middling or worse?  You'll notice the second name in the byline.  I have a strong suspicion that Leigh Richmond is responsible for most of this piece.  Certainly, she's the new variable.

Five stars.

… And Cauldron Bubble, by Bruce Daniels


by Kelly Freas

Of course, what goes up…

Bubble is a piece in epistolary form about a near future in which the United States has scientifically developed dowsing and other hocus pocus into a full cabinet department.  This would be a frivolous but diverting piece in F&SF, but knowing as I do that Analog's editor, John Campbell, actually believes in the efficacy of dowsing, well, it reads like propaganda.

Two stars.

The System, by Ben Bova

Bova offers up this two-page cautionary tale about the dangers of overdirection of scientific development.  It kind of steps on its own toes to make its message, though.

Two stars.

Such Stuff As Dreams …, by Sterling E. Lanier


by Kelly Freas

A dashing young space navy commander signs up to join a top secret spy organization that has the real power in the galaxy.  He is subjected to a number of tests, mostly to try his patience, before being given the final exam: a test of survival on an alien world.  The dangers are of monstrous, almost unbelievable proportion, and the candidate wonders why.

Of course, the title of the piece gives it away.

Competent but forgettable.  Three stars.

Dragonrider (Part 2 of 2), by Anne McCaffrey


by Kelly Freas

Lastly, the conclusion to what will likely be a three-part fixup novel.  The planet of Pern is faced with deadly peril: the Red Star approacheth, and with it, onslaughts of deadly rhysome "threads" that despoil all living things that they touch.  The only defense is fire-breathing, telepathic dragons flown by specially selected riders.  The problem is only one of the six dragonrider weyrs is still in operation, and that one is woefully understaffed.

F'lar, the head rider, thought he had a solution to this problem when he learned that Lessa, the rider of the dragon queen Ramoth, discovered the ability to ride her mount through time.  Last installment, the weyrleader sent his brother and a team back in time ten years to raise a new crop of dragons.  Unfortunately, living more than once in the same time is detrimental to one's health, and the endeavor was largely a failure.  Now, the only hope lies in the past, and an historical ballad about the wholesale departure of five weyrs some four hundred years ago–to destinations unknown…

There are the bones of an interesting novel here, although the gratuitous use of time travel as a plot point usually creates more problems than it solves.  Also, By His Bootstraps stories tend to be dull since you already know what's going to happen.

But the biggest problem here is that McCaffrey just isn't quite up to the story she's trying to tell.  A fine teller of short stories (The Woman in the Tower and The Ship Who Sang being standout examples), she struggles with the longer format.  Her characters are shallow and unpleasant.  The "romantic" relationship between Lessa and F'lar is disturbing when it isn't annoying.  Lessa's theme song might well be, "He Shook Me, and It Felt Like a Kiss", and the only ones privy to F'lar's love for Lessa are the readers since the weyrleader is determined never to show affection for his lady.  Ugh.

The doggerel that prefaces each chapter completes the mask of mediocrity on this promising tale.  Perhaps a combo of Jack Vance and Rosel George Brown (R.I.P.) could have done Dragonrider justice.  And maybe, as my colleague David suggests, a story between the first and second parts could have smoothed the transition (something to be fixed pending novelization?)

It really is a shame since it's rare to get a sweeping epic from the perspective of a woman, and the first part made me hopeful.  As is, this last segment, and the three-part story as a whole get three stars.

Doing the math

When you put it all together, the January 1968 issue of Analog ends up at 3.1 stars, just on the positive end of the ledger.  That actually puts it at the #2 spot for the month, just edging out IF (3.1), and losing to Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3).  The rest of this month's mags finished below the middling mark, with Fantastic at 2.9, New Writings at 2.8, and the abysmal new Beyond Infinity garnering just 1.5.  As a result, though six magazines were released, you could fill just two of them with four and five star stories.

The big surprise, though, is the resurgence in feminine participation.  Women contributed 13% of the new short fiction produced this month.  While still a low number, it is comparatively enormous.  And more surprisingly, the bulk of the woman-penned work (at least by pages) was published in Analog.

If even fuddy duddy Campbell can produce a progressive mag, I think we've got good times in store as the calendar turns to 1968!  Happy New Year indeed…



6 Comments Leave A Comment
Serial

[December 31, 1965] Untermag (January 1966 Analog

7 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

[Time is running out to get your Worldcon membership!  Register here to be able to vote for the Hugos next year.]

Ubermensch

There's no question that John W. Campbell's got an axe to grind.  Not too long ago, he wrote an editorial about how the bipedal humanoid form, the best, most efficient, most effective of body types, was the natural end result of evolution on an Earthlike planet.  In another screed, he opined that slavery warn't so bad, and that Black Americans did better ante-bellum than we think.

These aren't anomalies: from what Isaac Asimov and others have said (I've never met John personally), the editor of Analog has some very fixed views of the world, and they include a belief in a hierarchy of races, a natural superiority of some to others.

Because of this, the stories in his magazine tend to reflect this view, one way or another.  Either John adds these elements in post-production, or his authors know to include them as a way to guarantee a sale. Analog is a prestige publication, after all.

And lest you think that's John's quaint views are simply emblematic of the less-than-enlightened times we live in, I will simply point out that we review all science fiction mags at the Journey, and Analog definitely is the odd man out.

Anyway, this month's magazine is a particularly egregious example of the Campbellian Mystique.  Let's dig in, shall we?

Sein Kampf


by Kelly Freas

Second Seeded, by R. C. FitzPatrick


by Kelly Freas

In FitzPatrick's earlier story Half a Loaf, we were introduced to a revolutionary institute whose surgeons could transplant a healthy mind from a ruined body into the healthy body of a mental vegetable.  The story explored some of the ethical concerns involved and, while it didn't hit it out of the park, it was pretty interesting.

The sequel is dreadful.

A Marine Major, name of Adams, is killed along with his wife in action in Borneo.  Their infant son becomes brain dead from hypoxia, all hope of regaining cognitive functions lost.  Around the same time, the infant son of two concert pianists is in a car accident that kills his parents and leaves him a quadriplegic.  Thus, the stage is set for a human brain transplant; the new wrinkle is that the patient won't have memory of the event, will be raised by the extended Adams clan.

This would be fine, even interesting save for the endless screeds in favor of eugenics that come out of the mouths of the protagonist.  The basic argument is that there aren't enough "Great Men" in the world as it is (women, explicitly, don't count) so saving as many as possible through this surgical technique is of utmost importance.  Beyond that, it's vital that the transplanted infant brain be an Adams because the Adams family is amazing and has been so since the time of the Revolution.  As an "Adams," the pianist boy will not only be an exemplary person because his parents were prodigies, but his gonads will house Adams sperm, which will ensure the Adams genes continue.  The espouser of this view gets a bit vague and contradictory when asked if it's the actual genetics or simply the continuity of family that ensures the Adamses produce a Great Man every generation, but it's clear he tends toward the former (and this is borne out by events in the story). 

Two stars rather than one, because it's not badly written.  But yech.

Now, since I had to pay to read FitzPatrick and Campbell's offensive rant, you can get mine for free.  In my experience, all human beings are of roughly equal potential.  Sure, there are smart ones and stupid ones — abilities distribute in bell curves — but whether a person will be smart or stupid does not correlate to genetics.  This means that everyone, given resources and opportunity, can develop to the fullest of their physical capabilities.  They can be as smart, strong, and talented as is possible for them. 

There are almost three billion people on this planet.  Some of them are stupid.  Most of them are average.  Some of them are brilliant.  If we want more "Great Men", there are much better ways of growing them than cherry picking a few children with presidential surnames. 

One is to raise the standard of living for everyone so that all children have the ability to develop to their full potential.  LBJ has the right idea with his Great Society; I expect the next generation will see a lot more geniuses (and happiness) in Appalachia. 

Another is to broaden the pool from which "Great Men" are drawn.  Here's a crazy thought: what if women weren't excluded from the pool?  Wouldn't that, in and of itself, double the number of Great "Men"?  And indeed, that's just what's started to happen already.  I have written about the women scientists and engineers involved in space exploration.  Their work has been critical to the success of our space-related endeavors, and there is no guarantee that their contributions would have (or could have) been made by anyone else, at least at that juncture in history.

So I disagree with the the theme of Second Seeded.  Like all bad philosophies, it collapses in the face of empirical evidence to the contrary.  And on a related note, I disagree that future Presidents of the United States will all have to have socially acceptable WASP names like Adams, Lincoln, and Jackson (as one of the characters opines in the story).  Does anyone remember the fellow with the funny name of "Eisenhower"?  Or the Irish Catholic name of "Kennedy"?

I fully believe that we'll have a President in my lifetime with the "exotic" name of Takahashi, Singh, or Okoye.  Perhaps her first name will be Mildred.

Untropy, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Shaggy dog tale about a trading vessel that gets lost in hyperspace in a zone where the laws of probability leave nothing to chance.  The way they get back is obvious, and the story is rather trivial, but it's not bad reading.

Three stars.

A Bit Player, by Lyle R. Hamilton

All about the evolution of telemetry and its application to missiles and space travel.  Long, engaging, but way too high level for me (and I majored in astrophysics!) it will probably go over your head as well.

Three stars.

Kelvin Throop Rudes Again!, by E. Silverman

My outspoken nephew, David, has a habit of dashing out discourteous memos when he's peeved.  He calls them "nastygrams".  In Throop, new author Silverman offers up a collection of memos (it's not really an epistolary story as there's no story) of a middle manager kvetching at subordinates and vendors.

Not science fiction.  Not good.  One star.

Beehive (Part 2 of 2), by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

And, at last, the conclusion of Beehive, which began last issue.  Genetics takes the fore again when we learn that the enemy "Dawnworlders" have divided themselves into rigid castes, and in so doing, have thus been able to progress to tremendous technological heights.  Of course, if non-caste human beings had been given millions of years to accomplish the same feats, I'm sure we could have…

Anyway, the second half of the story is just as glib and silly as the first, with lots of speeches and exposition.  I did appreciate that there was some self awareness that Section G of the United Planets is as much a dictatorship as Phrygia, home of Baron Max, the would-be galactic Mussolini.  This was alloyed by the constant reinforcement that the protagonist's sidekick is an Indian.  He's referred to as "the Indian" and he uses the words "squaw," "scalp," and "firewater," whenever he can.

This isn't the first time Mack Reynolds has had trouble with this particular ethnicity.

Anyway, there are some interesting Laumeresque bits, but for the most part, this is a Reynolds that can be skipped.

Two stars.

Calculating the damage

Feeding the pages of the January 1966 Analog into the Star-o-meter (and setting the machine to "destroy copy after processing") I get a result of 2.3 stars.  Depressingly, I'm sure this will be one of the more popular issues of the magazine this year.

How did the other mags fare this month?  Well, Worlds of Tomorrow and New Worlds both scored 3.3 stars.  The less daring Science Fantasy got 2.8 as did IF, even though the latter was buouyed by the new Heinlein serial.  Fantasy & Science Fiction turned in a disappointing 2.5 star performance, and the mostly reprints Fantastic barely got 2.4.

They were still all better than Analog.

Speaking of shallow selection pools, women continue to be barely represented, producing two of 36 fiction pieces for a whopping 5.5% share.  Better than the 0% of last month, I suppose.  All told, the truly good stories this month would struggle to fill the pages of IF, much less a bigger mag like Galaxy. 

Well, tomorrow is a new year.  Perhaps Janus will favor us with auspicious auguries, and our fortunes will turn around.  And hey…Campbell won't live forever.

7 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Serial

[July 31, 1965] A spoonful of sugar (August 1965 Analog)

2 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Good and bad medicine

Yesterday saw a major milestone in the journey toward President Johnson's "Great Society": Medicare is now a reality, though it won't take effect until July 1 of next year.  This offshoot of Social Security puts the U.S. government in the insurance business, ensuring health care for our nation's elderly.  It's a first step toward the universal health care endorsed so fervently by Harry Truman nearly twenty years ago.

Of course, the legislation has its detractors, most vocally the American Medical Association, which has been against medical insurance in general for decades and against government involvement therein specifically.  They certainly don't like the idea of their fee being in any way mandated from above.  Medicare currently has a provision that the fee a doctor charges the program must be “customary, prevailing and reasonable.” On the other hand, there is a loophole in that provision, put in to appease the AMA, that says doctors don't have to accept what Medicare pays them as payment in full.

I wonder if that provision will be abused…

It is perhaps only coincidence that this month's issue of Analog is fronted by pieces inspired by the health industry.  One can but admire editor John W. Campbell Jr. for his perspicacity in timing.  However, since Campbell is the editor, the conclusions his pieces arrive at aren't necessarily in concordance with my views.  You can let me know what you think:

Say Awwwww


by Kelly Freas

Half a Loaf, by R. C. FitzPatrick


by Kelly Freas

Children with severe mental disability beyond the possibility of treatment are being sent to Sunnyvale, a terminal home.  Comfort is the priority for the kids as their maladies appear incurable; they are to simply live out the rest of their lives being cared for.

This bleak outlook isn't good enough for Sylvia, a social worker who has become attached to Tommy Magee, an eight year old child with a fine mind but no control of his body.  When Tommy is sent to Sunnyvale, she heads there, too, to investigate.  It turns out that there is some kind of treatment going on after all, and children are being sent home, apparently in full command of their faculties.

Loaf is thus something of a detective story, with the reader following Sylvia along until she, with the help of her doctor friend, Morecai, learns Sunnyvale's secret.

FitzPatrick is a relatively new author with few titles to his credit.  There is no question but that he can write compellingly, and Loaf sucks you in immediately.  But the author waits too long to reveal the twist, reducing the piece to something of a gimmick story.  Moreover, the treatment process has, shall we say, profound moral implications that are left virtually unaddressed.  FitzPatrick could have cut to the chase much sooner and explored the ramifications of his tale more thoroughly, to the greater satisfaction to this reader, at least.  As is, the author ends with a conspiratorial wink as the curtain drops.  It's got Campbell's editorial fingerprints all over it.  By now, we all know his stance on eugenics, after all.

Anyway, three stars — an average of a four-star start and a two-star finish.

Positive Feedback, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Chris Anvil can write, honest.  I've seen it.  But never when he publishes in Analog.  Feedback is a tale in epistolary about the dangers of universal auto insurance.  It's really an indictment of medical insurance, arguing that 1) insurance just leads to folks getting unnecessary procedures and 2) people should eschew the experts and just learn a little more self care.

Never mind that insurance allows for preventative maintenance that can head off expensive procedures.  And never mind that, despite what Campbell may think, trained medical doctors…er…certified auto mechanics know a bit more about what they service than individuals.

I'm not saying that we might not benefit from learning to change our own oil (or moderate our diet) but the straw insurance man Anvil presents is a ludicrous way to try to make that point.

Two stars.

Microminiature Industry, by Carl A. Larson

Apparently, yeasts and other microorganisms have been and can be used to synthesize all sorts of useful chemicals.  I say "apparently" because this meandering, subheadingless article was pretty much unreadable.

Two stars for actually being science, at least.

Sleep No More, by James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

The prospect of a Telzey Amberdon story always fills me with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, tales of a 15-year old brilliant telepathic girl should be right up my alley.  On the other hand, Schmitz (who has written great stuff but often doesn't) has increasingly managed to leach any character or color from these stories. 

Last time we saw Telzey, she had psychically enfeebled the mind of the murderous Robane, a powerful telepath in a crippled body who lured people to his estate to be mauled by his pet beast.  When Telzey goes back to make sure Robane is truly harmless, she is set upon by a teleporting monster.

Telzey, in this story, has absolutely no personality.  She simply goes through the motions of evasion and planning to come out alive, and the reader will not know anything more about her by the end than they did at the beginning.  Schmitz also manages to never say in one word what he can say in two.

It's really a shame that I cannot give this tale more than two stars.

Fighting Division, by Randall Garrett


by Leo Summers

We have a slight uptick in this short Garrett piece, about a President who hoaxes an alien invasion to unite the normally hostile superpowers.  It's an old plot, but Garrett gives it a fresh twist. 

Three stars.  Probably the best story in the magazine; certainly the one sweet spot in a bitter brew.

Trader Team (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


by John Schoenherr

And finally, we conclude the adventures of Falkayn, the Terran assigned to the one-face world of Ikrananka (last issue) to try to establish trade relations.  While on the planet, the local human population, warrior descendants of a crashed starship, revolt and try to seize control.

Though this second half of the story is as long as the first half, virtually nothing of consequence happens in it.  There are attempts at a rollicking story with vignettes involving the foul-mouthed, monkey-like Chee, the centaur saurian Buddhist, Adzel, and the rather hapless but ultimately triumphant human, Falkayn.  But the whole thing falls flat, much more akin to the author's A Bicycle Built for Brew than his Three Hearts and Three Lions or his The High Crusade.

Sorry I don't have more to say about it; it's utterly forgettable.  Two stars for this installment, two and a half for the total.

Diagnosing the Patient

The medicine is good deal more castor oil than grape cough syrup this month, that's for certain.  Only Worlds of Tomorrow (3.3 stars) and Science Fantasy (3 stars) finished above the mediocre line.

New Worlds clocked in at 2.8 and Fantasy and Science Fiction scored 2.6.  IF was a dismal 2.3.

But the bottom of the month is reserved for Analog and Amazing (a tie at 2.1) and the putrescent Galaxy (1.8).

Out of 50 stories, just one (1) was written by a woman.  Not only does science fiction appear to be dying, but we are retrogressing in terms of demographic equality.

Do we pull the plug, or is there hope for resuscitation?

(come join us in Portal 55, Galactic Journey's virtual lounge!)




2 Comments Leave A Comment