The French economy has been rocky ever since the wave of strikes and protests in May. As a result, France has been getting more and more goods from its industrial neighbor, West Germany. The problem is France has to buy German goods in francs, which means that, more and more, francs are ending up in West German hands. Franc reserves, at $6.9 billion in April 1968, are now down to $4 billion and plummeting.
To forestall a devaluation of the franc (reducing its value, thus making imports more expensive and exports more affordable to other nations, but playing hell with international economic relations in the process), DeGaulle's government is evaluating all sorts of Hail Mary options to stabilize the economy. One that was rejected was the West German offer to invest directly in the French economy, which would leave them too in control of French assets (including the dwindling franc supply!) A proposal that was adopted was an increase in vehicle fuel costs; I gather fuel production is nationalized, and the government can't afford to sell it so cheaply.
But a sadder development involves the French post office-letters written to Santa Claus will no longer be answered. Previously, kids who wrote to St. Nick got a colorful postcard with a message of Christmas cheer. A West German offer to donate Elven postal braceros has been rejected.
Merry Christmas, indeed. Maybe DeGaulle should convert to Judaism. Then he can pray a great miracle will happen in Paris for Hannukah, and the franc reserve will last eight years instead of one…
Flickering candles
Here in the good old U.S. of A., we don't have such economic woes (though inflation is kicking in). All I have to worry about is whether the first Galaxy of the year is any good. In other words, has the value of the magazine been devalued? Let's find out!
On Titan, the alien machines (first seen six years ago in "The Towers of Titan") rumble on, their purpose unknown, as they have for millennia. Humanity, terrified of their implications, begins searching the stars for their creator. And so, one ship, the Carl Sagan, makes the 15 year trip to Sirius A-2, a barren but Earthlike world orbiting the blazing blue sun.
Sid Lee, an anthropologist onboard, is convinced that Earth once warred with the aliens who build the machines of Titan, and that humans lost, reverting to savagery. The crew of the Sagan are surprised not only to find a group of intelligent beings on the alien world, but that they are indistinguishable from Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Lee volunteers to live among them, hiding his extraterrestrial origin, to learn the truth of the Sirians, and how they fit into the ancient, hypothetical war.
by Reese
There's a lot to like about this piece, especially the methodical, painfully slow, expedition protocols. The crew wear suits when they go outside. Extreme caution is taken in scouting. It takes months before Lee is even allowed to infilitrate the aliens.
Bova reminds me a bit of Niven in his weaving together hard science fiction and a compelling story. However, the author does not have Niven's mastery of the craft, and the story feels a bit clunky. Moreover, the "revelations" of the tale are telegraphed, and the red herrings Bova throws in to keep the mystery going are not convincing.
I enjoyed the story, but it's difficult to decide if it's a high 3 or a low 4. I think I will go with the latter because it's clear this novella is only part of a bigger story, one that looks like it will be fascinating to read.
The Thing-of-the-Month Clubs, by John Brunner
In what looks like the final entry in the Galactic Consumer Report series, the editor of the fictional magazine reviews various [THING]-of-the-Month Clubs. Specifically, the editor is looking for high cost and ephemeral items for worlds with >100% income tax.
A fellow named Christmas runs the premier racing planet in the galaxy: Raceworld! He deals with a number of headaches including various attempts to fix the games by a number of different species. The thing reads breezily, shallowly, in a style I was sure I'd read before…and sure enough, looking through back reviews, I found the story I was thinking of ("Birth of a Salesman") was, indeed, written by one James Tiptree Jr.
I found this story even less compelling. One star.
Dunderbird, by Harlan Ellison and Keith Laumer
by Jack Gaughan
I'm not sure how Harlan Ellison ends up bylining with so many different authors these days: Sheckley, Delany, and now Laumer.
The premise: a giant pteranodon falls out of the sky onto the streets of New York, crushing 83 people under its unnaturally heavy corpse. The rest of the story is a detailing of the many odd characters who come across the flying lizard and their reactions to it.
Pointless and unfunny, I have to wonder if Ellison attaches his name to things just to get them published for friends. It's not doing the brand any favors.
One star.
For Your Information: The Written Word, by Willy Ley
This is a nice piece on the history of writing materials (which is, by definition, the history of history) from Greek times to modern day.
Ley wraps up with a primer on how to send and decode interstellar messages, which I quite enjoyed.
Interestingly, though he talks about microfiche and microfilm, he does not mention the possibility of more-or-less permanent documents within the memory banks of computers. I know it may seem frivolous to store the written word on such expensive media as the Direct Access Storage Devices (DASD) used by IBM 360 computers, but in fact, such is being done as we speak. I have used time share systems to send frivolous messages to others on home-grown "mail" systems, and also created data sets that were text files, both as memos and as "documents" for other users to read. And, of course, there are data sets that are programs that, once loaded into permanent memory via punch card or teletype, are there to stay. At least until an electrical pulse fries the whole thing.
Of course, that's a pretty rarefied use, but it's still interesting and relevant for those in the biz.
Gil Hamilton, an agent of the the United Nations police force —Amalgamated Regional Militias (ARM)—is called regarding a death. Not because he's a cop, but because he's next of kin of the deceased, a Belter named Owen Jennison. The spaceman's demise looks like a particularly elaborate suicide: he is in a chair hooked up to a device that uses electric current to stimulate the pleasure center of one's brain, and he apparently starved, quite happily, to death.
But as Gil puts the pieces together, he comes to the conclusion that Jennison must have been murdered. Which means there's a murderer. Which means there are clues. And since it's Niven's Earth in the 22nd Century, organleggers are probably involved.
Did I mention that Gil also has psychic powers? He has a third, telekinetic arm, which comes in very handy. It's also the first time that I've seen this particular idea. It breathes new life into a hoary subject.
As does all of the story, honestly. Niven is simply a master of organically conveying information, letting you live in his universe, absorbing details as they become pertinent. There's nothing of the New Wave to his work save that his writing is qualitatively different from what we saw in prior eras.
He's also written a gripping fusion of the science fiction and detective genres, perhaps the best yet.
Five stars.
Welcome Centaurians, by Ted Thomas
Aliens arrive from Proxima Centauri. Though they make contact with many of Earth's nations while cautiously assaying us from orbit, their captain forms a bond with Colonel Lee Nessing of NORAD. After a long conversation, the aliens agree to land in New York, whereupon friendly relations are established.
This is a cute, nothing story whose charm comes mostly from the chummy relationship between Lee and "Mat", the Proximan that looks like a floor rug. My biggest issue is the gimmick ending, in which it is revealed that ancient Proximans caused the death of the dinosaurs by seeding the Earth with food animals—which turned out to be early mammals.
The problem: mammals evolved from reptiles 200 million years ago. That event is well documented in the fossil record and is referenced in my copy of The Meaning of Evolution (1949) by George Gaylord Simpson. This sort of basic evolutionary mistake seems pretty common in science fiction, where writers try to ascribe extraterrestrial origin to obviously terrestrial creatures (humans are the most frequent example).
Three stars.
Value for money
If there's anything the January 1969 issue of Galaxy proves, it's that even good money can't guarantee a return. Editor Fred Pohl paid 4 cents a word for all of the pieces in this issue, and to his credit, more than half the words are in four/five star pieces. On the other hand, two of the stories are mediocre, and two are absolutely awful. It's like Pohl got his tales from a mystery bag and had to take what he got, good or bad.
Well, the superior stuff would fill an ordinary sized magazine, so I shan't complain. Read the Bova, the Ley, and the Niven. Then put the issue under your tree for others to discover Christmas morning…
A school for young wizards: What could possibly go wrong!
I wanted to like last year's City of Illusions, but the book fell flat. However, I saw the potential in Ursula K. Le Guin as a writer. Her ideas in the book were good, it was the execution that was lacking, so with her latest book out, A Wizard of Earthsea,I figured I’d give her another try.
Ged is an ambitious young wizard with a hunger for knowledge and power. The book follows his journey from childhood into adulthood, first starting when he attends a school for wizards. There he learns the basics of magic, makes friends and a rival. He also unleashes a dark being that wants him dead, but thanks to magic protection around the school, he is safe for the time being.
It isn’t until Ged graduates and becomes a practicing wizard for various villages that he really learns the hard lessons of magic. Now outside the protection of school, he is pursued by the dark being, eventually forced to turn and fight it, putting his skills to the ultimate test.
Fantasy as a genre doesn’t excite me as an adult, as it is often too whimsical and too escapist, too detached from our own world. A Wizard of Earthsea managed a careful balance, with an attention to the laws of magic and how it is able to be used. Wizards can only use so much magic at a time, and overexerting oneself or attempting a spell higher than one’s skill has physical consequences, causing wounds to appear on the body. Throughout the book, we see Ged test these limits, only to end up in lengthy recovery each time. Eventually, he does go too far and ends up permanently scarring himself.
I liked the concept of true names: learning the true name of a creature, plant, object or place is the key to all spells in this world. Even people have true names that they keep secret, instead using an alias in day to day life. While Ged is the main character’s true name, and the narrative refers to him as such, in dialogue he is called “Sparrowhawk” by other characters. I loved the intimate moments of friendship when true names were exchanged, showing a great amount of trust between characters.
Ged makes a compelling main character, with his distinctive flaw being his own hubris. Time and again, he tries magic that is way above his level only to be hurt. He attempts to raise the dead, despite knowing that it can’t be done, and suffers the consequences. It's because of his hubris that a dark creature is brought into the world who specifically hunts him, creating the main conflict of the book. But we’re shown that he has other values. He isn’t greedy. When he fights the dragon, his only motivation is duty to the town he serves. When the dragon offers him some of his treasure as a reward, he declines. Most of the time when Ged overexerts his magic, it isn’t in pursuit of fame. Ged truly wants to help people, even when it’s past his capabilities.
You know it's a good book when there's a map
With this book, I finally saw what I knew Le Guin was capable of as a writer. She's always created compelling unique worlds readers want to immerse themselves in, but now her writing can back up her ideas. Maybe because this is her first foray into juvenile fiction or perhaps she is simply growing as a writer.
I look forward to what she writes next.
Four stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
Tomorrow and Yesterday
The latest Ace Double (H-95, two quarters and a dime at your local drug store paperback rack) contains one novel looking forward in time, and one collection glancing backwards at the author's recent career.
We begin with a brilliant mathematician from California sneaking around through a remote area of Wisconsin, ready to kill a man. We cut away from this scene to find a government agent from Washington, D.C., in Los Angeles, preparing to assassinate the richest man in the world.
Why all this homicidal intent?
Flashbacks tell us what's going on. John Androki is a fellow who shows up out of nowhere. He convinces a rich guy that he can predict exactly how stocks will move up or down in the future. The millionaire sets him up with some cash in exchange for the information. Androki goes on to not only be the wealthiest person on Earth (yep, he's the intended target of the government assassin) but to wield immense political power all over the world.
Our protagonist is Bertram Kane, a brilliant mathematician (yep, he's the guy stalking a man in Wisconsin) who is working on a theory of multiple dimensions. He's a widower who's having an on-again off-again affair with Anita Weber, an art professor. His buddy is Gordon Maxon, a professor of psychology.
Maxon is convinced that Androki can perceive the future (hence the novel's title.) He calls him a downthrough, a word that's new to me. Kane isn't convinced, but when Weber dumps him for the incredibly rich and powerful Androki, he becomes suspicious.
Things get scarier when other mathematicians working on multiple dimensions are murdered. Coincidence, or is Androki arranging for their deaths? And is Kane next on the list?
You may figure out the main plot gimmick, which explains why Kane is out to kill a completely innocent man. (The government assassin's motive is less mysterious. Androki is changing America's relations with other nations in ways the United States government doesn't like.)
Basically a suspense novel with a science fiction gimmick, the plot creates a fair amount of tension, although parts of it are talky. There are quite a few murders along the way, and a pretty grim ending.
Three stars.
So Bright the Vision, by Clifford Simak
Cover art by Gray Morrow.
Four stories, dating from 1956 to 1960, by a noted author appear in this volume.
First printed in the June 1960 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, this lighthearted yarn starts with a huge agate appearing in a guy's yard, along with the tiny critters mentioned in the title. Chaos ensues.
The Noble Editor gave it a lukewarm review when it first appeared, and that's fair. It's a pleasant enough bit of gentle comedy, but hardly profound.
The April 1958 issue of Infinity Science Fiction is the source of this oddly titled (and odd) story.
An elderly fellow collects stamps from alien worlds, piling them up in his rat's nest of a home. Some of the stamps are actually made up of living microorganisms. When mixed with broth made by an overly friendly neighbor, they jump into action and start organizing the guy's messy collection.
There's a strong resemblance to the previous story, which also had tiny creatures helping folks at first, but going a little too far. This one is a lot stranger than the other one, and a little more complex. (I haven't mentioned the role played by stuff that the old man receives from an alien pen pal, or what the weird title means.) Interesting for its eccentricity, if nothing else.
The August 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe supplies the story that gives the collection its title.
At a future time when Earth is in contact with several alien worlds, the only thing of value humans can supply is fiction. Other beings don't make up things that aren't true, and they're fascinated by the concept.
The fiction is created via programmed machines, with a little human input. Writing by hand (or pencil, pen, or typewriter) is considered old-fashioned, and even vulgar.
The plot follows the misadventures of a so-called writer who has fallen on hard times. His machine is on its last legs, and he can't afford a new one. A fellow writer's secret leads to a sudden decision.
Much of the story consists of discussions of the importance of fiction. The automated fiction machines seem intended as a dark satire of uninspired hackwork. It's clearly a heartfelt work, and the author manages to convey his passion.
This yarn comes from the pages of the September 1956 issue of Science Fiction Stories.
A newspaper reporter investigates some odd events. There's the sudden, seemingly merciful death of someone suffering from a terminal illness. A scientist's papers are rearranged, giving him the clue he needs to complete his work. The reporter suggests, in a joking article, that these and other happenings might be the work of brownies. He's not too far off the mark.
Once again we have small beings helping humans. This time their efforts are entirely benign, unlike the golden bugs (who ignored people completely, and only worked for their own goals) and the microorganisms from the alien stamp (who went a little too far in their effort to organize things.) This is a sweet, simple little story, benefiting from the author's own experience as a newspaperman.
Three stars.
The title story is definitely the highlight of the collection. As a whole, that bumps the book up to three and one-half stars.
There's no question that Star Trek is a bona fide phenomenon. Now in its third season (and so far, quite a good season it is), it is a universe that has launched several dozen fan clubs, most with their own 'zines, many with Trek-fiction included. Professional tie-in merchandise is booming, too, from the AMT model kits of the ships in the show, to Stephen Whitfield's indispensable The Making of Star Trek, to Gold Key's dispensable comic book.
The latest release is the very first (that I'm aware of) professional original Trek story, Mission to Horatius by none other than SF veteran Mack Reynolds. That a familiar name should be tapped to write Trek tales is not a surprise. Episodes of the show have been written by SFnal talents Norman Spinrad, Ted Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Jerome Bixby; and James Blish has written two collections of episode novelizations (well, noveletizations).
So how does Reynolds' effort rate? First, let's look at the story:
The Enterprise has been out on patrol so long that ship's stores are low and the crew is beginning to suffer from "cafard". This malady is a kind of isolation sickness that can lead to mass insanity. Before the ship can return to starbase, however, it receives a distress call from the Horatius system just beyond the Federation.
There are three Class M planets in the system, all inhabited by pioneers who don't want to be Federated. They are the primitive society of Neolithia, which operates in bands and clans; the theological autocracy of Mythria, controlled by a happy drug called "Anodyne" (a la "Return of the Archons"); and the Prussian military state of Bavarya. This world is the most dangerous, as they have designs on conquering the Federation, and they are building an army of clones ("Dopplegangers") toward that end.
Uncertain as to from which planet the distress signal originated, Kirk leads a landing party composed of his senior officers to each planet in turn. Meanwhile, the strings on Uhura's guitar break one by one, and Sulu's pet rat gets loose. Cafard causes 40 crew members to be put in stasis. It's not a happy trip. But in the end, it's a successful one when Kirk finds the that Anna, the daughter of "Nummer Ein" on Bavarya, summoned the Enterprise to thwart her father's nefarious scheme,
Well. There's quite a lot wrong with this book. Reynolds makes serving on the Enterprise feel like the worst duty in the galaxy. Maybe this is realistic, but from what we've seen, the crew isn't this unhappy. As for "cafard", if our nuclear submarine crews don't suffer from such issues, I can't imagine a crack Starfleet crew would.
Reynolds' characterizations are only cursorily accurate. Indeed, Mission feels more like a lesser story in his Analog-published United Planets series of stories, featuring a decentralized set of worlds with every kind of government imaginable. There's an undertone of smugness as Kirk destroys one society after another—first by beaming down an anodyne-antidote into the Mythran water supply (if Scotty can manufacture ten pounds of the stuff in ten minutes, why can't he synthesize new strings for Uhura?), and then by destroying all five million dopplegangers on Bavarya…who may well have been sentient beings.
And finally, McCoy staves off cafard by making the crew believe that Sulu's rat has Bubonic Plague, and that it must be killed to save the ship. The rat does not have a happy ending.
Most eyeroll inducing passage: "Anna, womanlike, had been inspecting Janice Rand's neat uniform. Now she responded to the bows of the men from the Enterprise. She was perhaps in her mid-twenties, blond, and, save for a slight plumpness, attractive."
(emphasis added)
Even accepting that the target audience is on the younger side (given that the publisher is Whitman), this does not really excuse all the problems with Mission to Horatius. Moreover, the stirring introduction seems to have been written for an entirely different story!
There are pictures by Sparky Moore. They are adequate, but the characters don't look too much like our heroes.
Two stars.
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
In the run up to Christmas, I received a special treat through my letterbox: a second Orbit anthology for 1968. Will it do better than #3?
Orbit 4
Cover by Paul Lehr
Windsong by Kate Wilhelm
Starting with the series’ most regular contributor, Wilhelm’s story concerns Dan Thornton, an overworked executive. He is trying to solve the problem of an armored computer that should be able to act as a policeman. However, it cannot cope with the stress of unexpected situations. To get solutions he has been working with the psychologist Dr. Feldman to see if his dreams yield any ideas but, instead, he keeps dreaming about Paula. She was a free-spirited “windsong” from his teenage years, a person who could instantly analyse patterns to understand the world in ways others could not.
I have been noticing a pattern emerging with Wilhelm’s writing. She wants to experiment with form and content but rarely manages to deliver a strong balance between the two. In this case it is the style that works well, using the dream sessions in a way that would please the New Wave, but the actual plot leaves something to be desired, not really travelling anywhere fast and engaging in some obvious cliches.
Evens out at Three Stars
Probable Cause by Charles L. Harness
Harness recently returned from his parental leave and is back to writing, getting an even warmer reception this time around. Using his legal background, he brings us the discussion of a supreme court case, one where the constitutionality of a conviction depends on an interesting question. If a search warrant is granted based on a psychic reading, does this violate the fourth and\or fifth amendments?
Whilst some of the arguments here do not make much sense to me, I am neither a lawyer nor an American. As such, I am happy to bow to Harness’ knowledge of constitutional jurisprudence. What I question is the length of it all. At over 60 pages, this is the second longest story to yet grace the pages of Orbit. But it is just some justices sitting in a room discussing a piece of legal theory. This might be worth a vignette, but I needed more to justify a novella.
Two Stars
Shattered Like a Glass Goblin by Harlan Ellison
Rudy has finally gotten out of the army on medical, only to find his fiancée Kris in a marijuana-drenched squat in downtown LA. Is he just not “with it” anymore? Or is something more sinister going on?
If this was from an older writer, I would assume it was a crass attempt to be relevant. With Ellison I am willing to assume he is in earnest in writing a hippy horror story. It is not entirely clear if what we see really happened or if it just a massive drug trip, but that actually makes it work better for me.
Four Stars
This Corruptible by Jacob Transue
This is an author of which no information is given, nor one I've heard of before. Is it perhaps a pseudonym?
Thirty-five years ago, scientists Paul and Andrew departed on bad terms. Whilst the former went into seclusion, the latter became vastly wealthy. Andrew now seeks out Paul after learning of his new discovery, the ability to renew a person’s life.
This reads like a middling story from 15 years ago. Whilst some horrifying imagery raises it up, it is pulled back down by lechery.
Two Stars
Animalby Carol Emshwiller
A strange animal is kept in the city by its keepers. What could it be?
This is a stylistic piece that will depend on your tolerance for this kind of prose:
It was said, on the second day, that he did not look too unhappy. A keeper of particular sensitivity brought him both a grilled cheese sandwich and a hamburger so it might be seen what his preferences were, but still he ate nothing.
This reader was unhappy, feeling nothing.
One Star
One at a Time by R. A. Lafferty
In Barnaby’s Barn, McSkee tells tall tales. But what if they are true?
I feel about Lafferty’s writing the way Superman does about Kryptonite. As such, I struggle with him at the best of times. This one I found it impossible to read. I don’t like bar-room frames or tall tales, I was confused by the style and was generally perplexed throughout.
A subjective One Star
Passengers by Robert Silverberg
In an interesting take on the Puppet Masters concept, Earth has encountered strange creatures called passengers. They can “ride” anyone, at any time, with no way to detect or stop them. Once a Passenger leaves a person, the memory goes. Our narrator wakes up to find he slept with a woman whilst he was ridden. However, upon exercising in Central Park he believes he has found her, even though she doesn’t remember him.
Anyone who has read Silverberg of late knows of his strange recurring writings about young women, so I will not belabour the point here. Your rating will probably result from how you balance the concept against this tendency. I come down in the middle.
Three Stars
Grimm's Story by Vernor Vinge
The planet Tu is a world that contains almost no metals. Whilst some technologies, such as pharmaceuticals, hydrofoils and optics, have been able to develop, others, such as heavier than air flight, have not.
It is on this world that Astronomy student Svir Hedrigs is approached by Tatja Grimm, the science editor of Fantasie magazine. She has a dangerous mission for Hedrigs, to stop the destruction of the last complete collection of Fantasie.
In less skilled hands this could easily have been contrived and fannish. Instead, Vinge spins a fascinating intricate plot and fully imagined world, touching on a number of interesting themes with complicated characters. It stumbles a little at the very end, stopping it from gaining a full five stars, but still very good.
A high four stars
A Few Last Words by James Sallis
Hoover is beset by bad dreams. He decides to head to Doug’s coffee shop where we learn from them why the cities are now so empty.
Well written and atmospheric, appealing to this sufferer of parasomnia.
Four Stars
Continuing a steady Orbit
Once again, Orbit contains some of the best and worst of SF for me. This issue more than most, though, is going to be a subjective one. So much is based on style that it cannot help but appeal to personal taste. I know others have considered Animal among the best and Grimm’s Story among the weakest. Whatever your tastes, I think there will be something in here for you to chew on.
This completely passed me by on first release but an ad for it from the Science Fiction Book Club in last month’s New Worlds was enough to convince me to get it. But was it worth me trialing a membership from them?
The so-called “end of the universe” is an area where physical laws as we know them break down. Sometimes this abstract nothingness recedes, sometimes it expands and swallows galaxies, leaving impossible creations in its wake. The Warden Corps have been set up at its current edge to monitor and explore the strange phenomena.
Among those who come to the current planetoid of the Warden Corps is Helena Kraag. Whilst the daughter of one of the richest men in the galaxy, she has become withdrawn from people since the loss of her mother. At first, she attempts to look straight into the nothingness and loses her sense of identity. In spite of this she still travels with the rest of the crew into this impossibility.
Unfortunately, their Heisenberg shields fail as they enter. As you can probably guess, things start to get strange.
Now, you might expect this to just then be a kind of surreal trip, a la Alice in Wonderland or Phantom Tollbooth. However, what Joseph produces is a kind of fractured character exploration. As we move through these different bizarre situations we learn more about each of the members of the crew and gain understanding of what motivates them.
There are so many delicious details. Initially this looks like it is going to be some kind of 19th Century comedy of manners, but we soon learn this has been carefully set up. Rather it is a kind of conditioning, one to allow the fliers to maintain a solid form of identity. Even when it feels like I am reading the lyrics to I Am The Walrus, there is clear intent and structure behind it.
Joseph is also a master of language and you feel yourself getting knowledge and beauty within the surreality. For example:
Everything and nothing had both happened and not happened; time was as broad as it was long; space was neither here nor there; the loop of eternity threaded itself through the eye of zero.
This kind of sentence could have been gibberish. But the way he phrases it and following the scenarios we have gone through, I absolutely understand what he is getting at.
I could go through all the characters and scenarios to explore the meaning behind it, but I think it is better to take the journey yourself. As Helena says, it is “like falling through the hole in the zero.” It may not be something that is at once fathomable but it is a new experience worth having.
Although primarily known as a poet, he clearly understands science fiction well and has an affinity for it (see, for example, the poem "Mars Ascending"). Here is hoping for more such forays.
Moondust by Thomas Burnett Swann takes place in and around the ancient city of Jericho. Swann’s Jericho is a poverty-ridden city ruled by the Egyptians, its denizens apprehensive about the steady approach of the Wanderers, a flood of former slaves absconding from Egypt.
Bard ekes out a meager existence in this city with his mother and beautiful younger brother Ram. Ram is stolen one night and replaced by an unbecoming changeling. Bard accepts the fat, ugly Rahab and comes to think of her as a sister until years later when an elusive, feline creature known as a fennec arrives. Rahab then magically transforms into a beautiful woman with wings and disappears one night.
Determined to rescue Rahab, Bard enlists the aid of his friend, Zeb. Together they track Rahab down to the underground city, Honey Heart, where the fennecs rule as gods and Rahab’s kind, the People of the Sea along with beautiful human males–including the long lost Ram– are docile slaves to the fennecs. Bard and Zub must now find a way to wrest Rahab from the insidious control of the fennecs and make it out of Honey Heart alive.
Moondust is a highly imaginative and reasonably interesting story but I did not—could not bring myself to enjoy it. At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what bothered me about this novel. Then it finally occurred to me. This book has no soul, no humanity. Moondust feels like a book written from the clinical lens of a white Westerner who thinks he’s better than the people he’s writing about.
Apparently, people living in poverty must always be dirty and have very little regard for personal hygiene. If humans own slaves, those slaves must be black. What else could they possibly be? Beautiful women are nothing but whores. Fat people are ugly, and the Israelites had very big, very ugly feet.
I believe these small details were meant to add color to the story’s world, but obviously originate from a place of thinly veiled disdain.
The main character, Bard, is not one with whom I could sympathize. His little brother is stolen—kidnapped in the dead of night. Even though Bard bemoans the loss, not once does it occur to the self-absorbed nincompoop to go looking for his five-year-old sibling. Instead, he magnanimously accepts the supposedly fat, ugly changeling named Rahab left in his brother’s place as a sister and simply carries on with his life as if that makes any sense.
Years later, when Rahab literally sheds her “ugly” skin and becomes a beautiful creature of a woman, she then becomes a harlot. What else could she possibly become?
When Rahab disappears, summoned back to the underground city of Honey Heart by the fennec, Chackal, Bard immediately enlists the aid of his friend, Zeb and races off in search of his beloved sister. This raises the question of why he was so desperate to save the sibling unrelated by blood–who left voluntarily–but had possessed no inclination to go off in search of his biological brother, Ram.
Once Bard and Zeb descend into Honey Heart, the story loses all coherence for me. The contrived mish-mash of magic, ancient Eastern culture, and biblical myth falls short of a finely woven tale. Moondust merely rankled.
If I’ve learned anything from Swann it’s that you can learn the history and possess infinite academic knowledge of a culture but your words aren’t going to touch anyone if you can’t actually feel the soul—the humanity of the people.
Three Stars
by Jason Sacks
One Before Bedtime by Richard Linkroum
What an odd novel. One Before Bedtime is part mad scientist novel, part social satire, part speculative fiction, and part self-centered character rationalization.
I'm not sure this is a good book, per se, but is certainly odd.
See, in a way, this book is all about the social satire. It's about Jeff Baxter, a kid just home from Vietnam, where he's seen some stuff, man, and who has gone back to work at his a pharmacy in his small midwestern town. Jeff just has one minor problem: his skin is in rough shape and he needs for it to clear up so his girlfriend can be happy. Thankfully (perhaps), the pharmacist turns out to be a tinkerer. Cortland Pedigrew has his own set of chemicals and other tools in the basement of the pharmacy. Pedigrew invents a pill which can clear Jeff's skin.
There's just one problem. The pill somehow turns Jeff's skin from White to Black.
And there the troubles begin.
Because Jeff's girlfriend, Peggy, is a bit of a militant and freedom fighter. She walks around everywhere barefoot and speaks at rallies for Black rights and sings folk songs and reminds one of someone like Joan Baez in her steadfast commitment to the hottest social issues of the day. (She probably wouldn't have cared about Jeff's skin, either, but the poor guy was too self-deluded to notice.)
As the story goes on, Jeff, Peggy and several other characters find themselves mixed up in campus protests, urban riots, and unreasonable hatred. Along the way they're forced to see their own prejudices – often reflexive and instinctive – and, well, pretty much stay the same people they were before the events in this book start.
On top of all the oddball problems I've just described, this 168-page quickie is written from different perspectives. We get no fewer than four different approaches to this character's story, each exceeding the previous one in its banality and strange affect. I kept wondering, over and over, how dumb these characters are, how stuck in their idiotic ways they are so they can't actually see the world differently than they did before their loved one was turned black?
Of course, that's also all part of author Linkroum's goal here, I'm sure. It's clear from his approach that he's interested in exploring the idea that racism is arbitrary and simple-minded, that mere skin color is not a diffentiator of the worth of a person, and that our present great national troubles are as absurd as his chracters all act here.
If only Mr. Linkroum had been more satirical, more biting in his humor. Instead the plot of One Before Bedtime all feels a bit undercooked, a bit bland and a bit too on-the-nose for it to really work for me.
I tried looking up Richard Linkroum in my collection of science fiction mags and found no other examples of his work. This is despite the fact that the book was published in hardcover by J.P. Lippincott, a reputable publisher. Finally I was tipped that there's a TV producer who goes by Dick Linkroum who might be our author here. That makes sense because One Before Bedtime reads like a bad episode of the old Twilight Zone: a bit undercooked and way too preachy.
As I sat down to write this article, I heard the news of the death of Lise Meitner. If that name isn’t familiar to you, it should be. Einstein once called her “the German Marie Curie,” which might be understating things. She is arguably the most important woman physicist of the 20th century and possibly one of the most important theoretical physicists, period.
Born in Vienna in 1878, she became only the second woman to earn a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna in 1905. She later moved to Germany and worked at the University of Berlin. There, she and Otto Hahn discovered the most stable isotope of the element protactinium, which she dubbed protoactinium before dropping the second “o.” In 1939, she and Hahn, along with Otto Robert Frisch and Fritz Strassmann, discovered and explained nuclear fission. There are also at least two nuclear phenomena which bear her name.
Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner circa 1912.
Meitner was able to escape Nazi Germany in 1938 with the help of Niels Bohr. She settled in Sweden, where she spent the rest of her professional life. Her role in the discovery of nuclear fission garnered her a lot of celebrity after the end of the War; she was even interviewed by Eleanor Roosevelt on her radio show. She was a popular speaker and instructor and traveled extensively to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
She received numerous accolades throughout her career, and the institute that oversees Germany’s first research nuclear reactor bears her and Hahn’s names. But the Nobel eluded her. Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission (ignoring not only Meitner, but also Frisch and Strassmann). The Nobel committee plays things pretty close to the vest, but word is that Lise Meitner was nominated many times in the fields of physicist and chemistry. In 1966, President Johnson honored her with the Enrico Fermi Award.
After retiring in 1960, she moved to the United Kingdom to be closer to family and continued giving lectures. She was in poor health in recent years, unable to attend the Fermi Award ceremony. She died in her sleep at the age of 89.
Lise Meitner in 1963.
Stereotypes
As Lise Meitner’s life shows, women play an active and important role in science, and ought to do so in science fiction as well. Unfortunately, there seem to be fewer women writing SF than there were a decade ago, and there don’t seem to be all that many as key characters in stories either. Two of the stories in this month’s IF don’t have any, two offer mothers, two more femmes fatale, and as far as the first story goes, the less said the better.
A previously unknown piece by the late Hannes Bok, probably the last new Bok cover ever.
The Holmes-Ginsbook Device, by Isaac Asimov
This absurd story is ostensibly about coming up with a better way than microfiche to present printed information (no one has ever heard of putting words on a page and stacking those pages into a book). The "message" is that staring into a microfiche reader keeps you from staring at women. It's patently offensive. And not in a way that challenges our acceptance of societal norms like something in Dangerous Visions. Women are here only the be ogled and groped.
He looks familiar. Art by Gaughan
One star and a guaranteed winner of the Queen Bee Award.
The Starman of Pritchard’s Creek, by Julian F. Grow
Young Widder Poplowski has set her cap for Dr. Hiram Pertwee. He might be inclined to encourage her, but her nine-year-old son is a hellion, and her motherly love is excessively fierce. While picnicking along Pritchard’s Creek, the three of them encounter a talking, self-propelled steam engine and a living trash heap. Getting kicked in the head by his horse may be the least of Pertwee’s problems.
Whatever it is, it ain’t natural. Art by Wood
This is our third encounter with Dr. Pertwee, and it’s a good bit better than the last. This one is well-suited to the western theme, and the doctor’s voice is very well done. I’d say the tone aims to imitate Twain, but doesn’t come close. Of course, not coming close in an attempted imitation of Twain leaves a lot of room to still be good.
Three stars.
If… and When, by Lester del Rey
This month, del Rey looks at couple of areas where science and science fiction keep overtaking each other: there’s too much free oxygen on Venus, the steady-state theory might not be dead yet, and quantum particles that move faster than light.
Three stars.
The Canals of Santa Claus, by Bram Hall
Three wildcat miners are forced to put down on an uncharted planet. They dub the planet Santa Claus for its black growths that resemble Christmas trees (Yule was taken), but can’t explain the regularity of their spacing or the canals of salty water that flow without any change in elevation.
Hall is this month’s new author, and it’s not bad for a freshman effort. There’s nothing really new or groundbreaking, but it’s well handled, and there’s a bit of a sting in the tail.
Since 1948, the world has become aware of a boy genius roughly every other year. Invariably, they fade from public view after a year or two, never seeming to live up to the potential they showed. A television production team begins digging into the story, but are soon broken up and reassigned. What shadowy organization is pulling the strings?
I’ve never been a fan of Ballard’s work, which I generally find too avant-garde and over laden with allusion and symbolism. This story, however, has a beginning, a middle, and an end (in that order) and lacks the ennui and decadence of the Vermilion Sands stories. I enjoyed it, with two complaints. First, the boy genius discovered in 1965 is Robert Silverberg of Tampa, Florida. He would be a good deal younger than science fiction’s own Silverbob (who isn’t from Florida), and the name pulled me out of the story every time he’s mentioned. None of the others seem to have been given the name of someone else from the genre or elsewhere, so it struck me as odd. Secondly, the connection to comsats seems very strained. But otherwise an enjoyable story.
A high three stars from me; others might like it better.
Continuing his tour of the planets he once opened and charted, Commodore John Grimes has arrived on the water world of Melisse. Giant, unkillable starfish are attacking the huge oysters the natives use to grow pearls, the planet’s only export. Since both of the major Rim officials are incompetents he had posted to a place he thought they could do no harm, he figures it’s his duty to investigate.
Chief Wunnaara may be the only reliable person on the planet. Art by Virgil Finlay
This is a fairly standard Grimes story, with a bit of mystery and spy thriller thrown in. Entertaining enough if you like this sort of thing. I was a bit put off by the ease with which Grimes went to bed with the prime suspect, considering he’s spent the last several stories missing his wife very much. I guess mores and morals are different out on the Rim.
I’m not even going to try to describe this story by Harlan Ellison. It’s full of silly, made-up words like phlenged and thrillip’d to describe the use of alien senses and whatnot. I suspect that if it had been sent in by an unknown, it would have been sent back, maybe with an encouraging letter to keep trying.
Professor Paul Kosloff heads into Common Europe and Common Eur-Asia to try and find out who’s behind the plot to tamper with the computer records of the United States of the Americas. Somehow, the bad guys seem to know his every move.
More action exactly like the action in Part 1. Art by Gaughan
Part 1 of this serial was so heavy on (poorly delivered) exposition, I predicted this installment would have lots of story. I was wrong; there’s just as much exposition in this half. The action is also just as over detailed; I don’t know what an “Okinawa fist” is, nor does knowing what the protagonist shouts as he delivers a karate blow tell me anything. All in all, it winds up being a typical, if slightly subpar, Mack Reynolds adventure. But it might be worth revisiting in 50 years or so to see how well Mack did at prognosticating the effects of an increasingly interconnected world.
Three stars for this installment and the novel as a whole.
Summing up
Maybe the awful first story influenced my impression of the rest of the issue, and some of these stories deserve better ratings. On the other hand, this is the second issue in a row with a one-star story, and that’s a rating I very rarely give. With the two worst stories coming from the two biggest names in the issue, I’m starting to wonder at some of the editorial decisions being made. But Galaxy doesn’t seem to be doing quite this poorly. At least Fred has promised another Hugo winners issue next year, so we have something to look forward to.
There’s the Zelazny we were promised. This issue really needed it.
Suspicions confirmed—this November Amazing names as Editor Barry N. Malzberg, who was listed last issue as Associate Editor. Sol Cohen is now merely the Publisher. Oddly, though, the editorial is by Harry Harrison, now listed as Associate Editor (though most likely gone). Go figure, or just say it’s more Sol Cohen chaos.
Johnny Bruck is back as the cover artist; this one (from Perry Rhodan #109, published in 1963) looks even more cliched and perfunctory than his earlier covers, making me wonder if they are really getting worse, or if I am just getting more tired of them.
by Johnny Bruck
“New” is sprinkled across the cover wherever possible to distract from the fact that once again, reprints dominate. Four new short stories take up 36 pages, just under 25% of the magazine. And the prize: “plus stories by: RAY BRADBURY (Winner of the Aviation Space Writers Association’s Top Award). . . .” Does Bradbury need that kind of boosting?
One of the new stories, interestingly, is a collaboration between Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany. When Delany appeared with a novel excerpt in the issue before last, his name was misspelled about half the time; this issue, it’s misspelled “Delaney” everywhere—on the cover, on the contents page (twice), on the first page of the story, in the book review column. Well, small mercy, it’s spelled right in the blurb for the story.
There are worse production botches, discussed when I get to them.
Harrison’s editorial, Science Fiction and the Establishment, is superficial and banal: the Establishment doesn’t like SF, it’s a problem all over, but it’s starting to get better, someday it will be gone. The book review column continues interestingly but incestuously, with James Blish as William Atheling reviewing Larry Niven, and Samuel R. Delany reviewing Blish. Leon E. Stover contributes another in his “Science of Man” series, discussed below.
Despite all the above kvetching about the magazine’s presentation, the good news is that the new short stories are as interesting a batch as we’ve seen in Amazing for a while, and the reprints are all readable or better, unlike many of their predecessors.
Power of the Nail, by Harlan Ellison and Samuel R. Delany
Ellison and Delany’s Power of the Nail reads like what Ellison was publishing in the SF magazines around 1957, polished up by a smoother writer. Robert Zagaramendo and his wife Margret are Ecological Observers on the planet Saquetta, and boy howdy is Margret pissed: “You promised me better than this, somewhere.” Robert’s not too thrilled either, especially with Margret. Bickering is constant.
Saquetta features the Saquettes, mole-like aliens who are not at all cute, but have the interesting trait of being reincarnated when they die naturally, which is most of the time. But the vibrations of the “phase-antenna of the automatic ecology equipment” that the humans are burying in various locations draw the Saquettes away from their usual hideouts to places where they are vulnerable to attack by giant predatory birds, called molloks because that’s what the Saquettes scream when they’re being hunted.
by Dan Adkins
After further conflict with his wife, including a near-rape, Robert sets up “ecology equipment” near an especially large Saquette colony, complete with lurking molloks, and goes back later to find, as expected, hundreds of dead Saquettes. He builds little round coffins for them and nails them together, then goes back and tells Margret that they’re going home—and shortly, suffers a terrible and fatal punishment that is not clearly explained, though one may surmise it is related to the operation of the "automatic ecology equipment." (Compare David H. Keller's The Doorbell if you've ever read it.) In the moral universe of the story, it’s obviously because he decided to sacrifice hundreds of Saquettes in order to escape an emotionally intolerable situation.
It's a very vivid and readable story, which goes some way towards compensating for its ultimate obscurity. Three stars.
The Monsters, by David R. Bunch
The formerly prolific David R. Bunch, who has not appeared in Amazing since Sol Cohen took over, is back with The Monsters. It’s short as usual for Bunch, and on a familiar theme: the need to harden one’s small children against the brutalities of life by brutalizing them pre-emptively. (See Bunch’s earlier story A Small Miracle of Fishhooks and Straight Pins, Fantastic June 1961, and thence to Judith Merril’s annual “year’s best” volume.) Here, the threat the children are to be prepared for is a bit trite, but the writing is brisk and economical. Three stars.
Try Again, by Jack Wodhams
Jack Wodhams is new to me, though the Journeyer-in-Chief has not thought highly of his work in Analog. His Try Again is surprisingly good. Pyler, a psychiatrist, is having a session with the precocious five-year-old Tommy, who says he has lived before and remembers it. But this isn’t quite the same life as before, since with adult memories he acts differently the second time around. Tommy is much burdened by his knowledge of future events and the question whether he could do anything about them (it’s 1935, Mussolini has just invaded Ethiopia; and Tommy knows what comes later). Shortly he is kidnapped to Germany. An alternative history, even worse than the real one, is telegraphically unfolded. Tommy, who has disappeared from the plot after his interrogation, reappears at the terrible end. Four stars—maybe a bit crude, but powerful.
by Jeff Jones
The reading experience is undermined at the end by Amazing’s production values, or lack of them. The story stops on page 29 in the midst of a sentence with no “continued on” notice, and the reader is left to rummage through the magazine to find the rest of the text on page 138.
This Grand Carcass, by R.A. Lafferty
R.A. Lafferty’s This Grand Carcass is, typically, told in high Tall Tale mode, and it is also clearly a moral tale, though the precise moral may be a bit obscure. Mord comes to Juniper Tell offering to sell a device cheap that will allow Tell to “own the worlds.” So why is he selling it? He’s dying. Tell bites and is the new owner of Gahn, for Generalized Agenda Harmonizer Nucleus, which soon enough is outdoing and dominating all the other “general purpose machines.” Shortly, it is a full partner with Tell (in Tell and Gahn—get it?).
Before long, Tell, like Mord, is almost, er, gone, and Gahn (whose power inputs have been revealed as dummies) candidly admits: “I use you. I use human fuel. I establish symbiosis with you. I suck you out. I eat you up.” So Tell sells Gahn on to the next high-rolling sucker. Moral, did I say? Machines are the Devil? Anything that makes humans’ work too easy is damnation? Something along those lines, I’m sure. This is not one of Lafferty’s best; it is simultaneously obvious and vague and less deliciously absurd than Lafferty at his best. But it’s amusing enough, good for three stars.
In Ray Bradbury’s The Dwarf (Fantastic, January/February 1954), Mr. Bigelow, a dwarf, visits the carnival daily, forks over his dime at the Mirror Maze, and heads straight for the mirror that makes him look large. Aimee, a carnival worker, hangs out in the booth with ticket-seller Ralph when her business is slow. She is sympathetic to Mr. Bigelow’s plight. Ralph isn’t, and makes fun of him, and of her. Aimee discovers that Mr. Bigelow makes a living writing detective stories, which reveal his inner torments. Ralph plays a nasty trick on him, proving that Ralph is nasty, which we already knew.
by Sanford Kossln
Rather abruptly, end of story. Or is it? There’s no “Continued on . . .” at the end. As with Try Again, I rummaged through the magazine, but found no loose piece of the story. So I checked the original 1954 Fantastic . . . and there’s an entire page of text at the end that is omitted from this reprinted version.
No rating, since the full text doesn’t actually appear in the magazine. It’s not one of Bradbury’s better stories to my taste, but it’s a whole lot better complete than truncated. Sheesh.
The Traveling Crag, from the July 1951 Fantastic Adventures, is a silly confection by Theodore Sturgeon—a non-trivial category of his ouevre. On the other hand, silliness by Sturgeon is more palatable than that from less accomplished hands.
Cris is a literary agent with an assistant, Naome, who is obviously in love with him, though he is oblivious. Cris has received a story, The Traveling Crag, from an unknown, Sig Weiss, which “grabs you by the throat, shakes your bones, puts a heartbeat into your lymph ducts and finally slams you down, gasping, weak, and oh so happy,” and incidentally makes a lot of money fast. But Weiss sends no more stories. Cris visits to find out why, and the local storekeeper warns him, “Meanest bastard ever lived,” a judgment Weiss lives up to in the flesh.
by Lawrence (L. Sterne Stevens)
When Weiss finally submits another story at Cris’s urging, it begins: “Jets blasting, Bat Durston came screeching down through the atmosphere of Bbllzznaj, a tiny planet seven billion light-years from Sol.” This is the beginning of a notorious subscription ad that ran in Galaxy, headlined YOU’LL NEVER SEE IT IN GALAXY!, designed to distinguish Galaxy’s policy from that of lowbrow pulp magazines like . . . Fantastic Adventures and Amazing Stories. So to perpetrate this in-joke, Sturgeon must have convinced not only Galaxy editor H.L. Gold, but also Fantastic Adventures editor Howard Browne, to allow it.
But I digress. The point is that Weiss has turned in a bunch of crap, continuing his mean-bastard performance. Meanwhile, Cris meets Miss Tillie Moroney, who is offering a reward for an “authentic case of devil into saint,” and eventually tells him a story—“a science fiction plot”—about a humanoid race that has developed the ultimate weapon, one of which has apparently been lost on Earth for thousands of years. And she wants Cris to get Weiss to write another blockbuster story and then find out how and where he wrote it.
So Weiss produces another story that makes everyone cry, and Cris and Tillie head out to see him, but Naome the assistant contrives to get there first, and the ultimate weapon, a small object found after a rockslide, proves to have been the key to Weiss’s transformation, but it gets triggered, and one of Tillie’s blouse buttons emits communications from the humanoids, who explain to them all telepathically that the ultimate weapon was one that stops useless conflict, and now a reaction is propagating through the atmosphere to bring the weapon’s benefits to all the world (it’s science!), and by the way Naome has paired off with Weiss, and Nick with Tillie. “Outside, it was a greener world, and all over it the birds sang.”
It's all just Too Much, but rendered so smoothly as to disarm even the house misanthrope’s ire. Three stars for this feat of making fatuity charming.
He Who Shrank, by Henry Hasse
“Years, centuries, aeons, have fled past me in endless parade, leaving me unscathed, for I am deathless, and in all the universe alone of my kind. Universe? Strange how that convenient word leaps instantly to my mind from force of old habit. Universe? The merest expression of a puny idea in the minds of whose who cannot possibly conceive whereof they speak. The word is a mockery. Yet how glibly men utter it! How little do they realize the artificiality of the word!”
Yes! Rave on! Here is a fine specimen of the peak of cosmos-spanning rhetoric occasionally reached by early (pre-Campbell) SF, and what follows lives up to it in naïve grandeur. It is the first paragraph of He Who Shrank, by Henry Hasse, a novella from the August 1936 Amazing.
The plot is essentially that of The Man from the Atom run backwards. Atoms are solar systems and galaxies are molecules, and the Professor has devised a substance (called Shrinx!) that will reduce humans to subatomic dimensions so they can explore the sub-universes. When his unnamed assistant is unenthusiastic about making this one-way trip, the Prof stabs hin with the needle. As he shrinks, the Prof drops him onto a block of Rehyllium-X (sic!), where he descends into a microscopic scratch on its surface and is chased around by a germ, fearsomely portrayed by illustrator Morey.
by Leo Morey
Soon enough, our hero finds himself surrounded by luminous masses—nebulae!—and then, as he shrinks further, stars and planets. He alights on one occupied by gaseous intelligences, shrinks further to a planet of cave-dwellers, and then (in a powerful passage) to a planet of machines gone out of control. Their birdlike creators have fled to the world’s moon, as their mechanical heirs maniacally tear down the remains of their civilization and remake the world closer to their circuits’ desire.
Our hero continues downward, or smallward, through universes he cannot bring himself to recount except in the most summary form (“Suns dying . . . planets cold and dark and airless . . . last vestiges of once proud races struggling for a few more years of sustenance . . . [etc.]”) But then . . . he is mysteriously attracted to a tiny, distant spark of yellow, which on approach proves to be circled by planets including a tiny blue one that twinkles invitingly, so he approaches, descends, and finds himself in . . . Cleveland!
Well, actually, he lands in Lake Erie, flooding much of Cleveland as well as nearby Toledo. Upon attaining dry land, he is accosted by aircraft shooting at him, which he finds annoying. He is bundled into a vehicle and taken to Cleveland, to a building where scientists assemble to interrogate him, but are unable to understand his thoughts, though he can read theirs. He is not impressed by them, or humanity. He escapes and flees into the countryside, where he is drawn to an isolated house occupied by a writer, of science fiction of course, who is sufficiently enlightened to be capable of receiving his thought, and to whom the shrinking man tells his tale before continuing his apparently endless and by now wearisome voyage.
In one sense this is an odd story for Amazing to reprint, since it appeared in the 1946 anthology Adventures and Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas—one of the oldest stories in the book, and the only one from Amazing. That book is so well known that stories included in it are much more likely to be familiar to current Amazing readers than most of Sol Cohen’s other reprints. I read that anthology when I was a kid and wondered what this old-fashioned story based on scientific nonsense was doing in the company of Heinlein, Asimov, et al. But I’m younger than that now and can better appreciate its hokey majesty. Four stars, allowing for its age.
Henry Hasse (b. 1913) began publishing SF in 1933; this is his third published story. Aside from it, he is best known for collaborating with Ray Bradbury on a few minor early stories. None of his other work, which has appeared sporadically over the decades, has garnered the recognition that this story has.
One side note: This story presents a very early occurrence of what later was named Tuckerization, after its heavy use by Wilson Tucker: giving fictional characters the names of real members of the SF community. The Cleveland writer to whom the shrinking man tells his story is named Stanton Cobb Lentz, obviously a reference to Stanton A. Coblentz, a prolific SF writer mainly of the late ‘20s and ‘30s, whose work is nowadays most charitably described as quaint.
In Richard Matheson’s The Last Day (Amazing, April/May 1953), the Sun is about to destroy Earth (it’s swollen and red and much too hot). Protagonist wakes up after the last night, which he and friends have spent in drunken, lustful, and/or senselessly destructive pursuits. He decides this approach to the end is unsatisfactory, and after wrestling with his conscience reluctantly heads to his parents’ house (shooting an attacker en route). He has avoided this visit for years because of his mother’s excessive piety. But on this final hot day, she’s cool, and they hang out waiting for the end. The editor blurbs: “Waxing philosophical is like waxing a floor; it is powerful easy to fall on your face while trying it.” Matheson does not. Four stars, mainly for keeping just on the right side of bathos as he renders the conventional sentiments.
Science of Man: War Is Peace, by Leon E. Stover
Leon E. Stover is back with another of his “Science of Man” articles, War Is Peace, written in his usual dogmatic style. He takes on the likes of Konrad Lorenz (of On Aggression), arguing that aggression is not a mode of behavior that we must sublimate or otherwise redirect, but a goal-directed extension of human social organization. He says: “The ethologists have nothing to offer that can improve on what Karl von Clauswitz said of war in the 19th century: that it is an extension of politics carried on by different means.” And he concludes: “There is no magic solution to be found in animal behavior studies, psychology, or biology. Do not be misled. The only solution is better politics. But we have to know that to want it.” Well, maybe—he has no suggestions for how we get there in practice. But Stover recounts much entertaining anthropological lore along the way.
Three stars.
Summing Up
Well, that wasn’t bad at all. The new material is lively and interesting, and even the reprints are all readable or better, with nothing grossly stupid or incompetent. Admittedly, that shouldn’t be the standard, but in Sol Cohen-world it does make a difference. This issue is a magazine that one might actually purchase for enjoyment and not as a duty, a change not to be sneezed at. Can it continue?
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
Being something of a geography buff, one of my favorite games is to go to a thrift shop and inspect their globe collection. I can generally tell what year a globe was manufactured from the configuration of countries. And while we haven't had anything like the banner year of 1960, when more than a dozen African states sprang into existence, nevertheless, there are still enough changes every year to keep the game going.
For instance, this month, the Kingdom of Swaziland with its 400,000 denizens, achieved independence from the United Kingdom. The second-smallest African country, is not entirely free, of couse. It is completely surrounded by South Africa, with all transportation lines running through Pretoria. The money is South African. All telegraph lines go through South Africa. As for their economy, it's mostly propped up by British hand-outs.
But they do have sovereignty, something South Africa tried to snatch from them time and again, but which was thwarted by the British. Plus, the new country has vast mineral reserves of asbestos and iron, plus forests and fertile soil. So King Sobhuza I just might make a go of things.
Going the other way, the people of West Irian (formerly Netherlands New Guinea) have has been annexed as Indonesia's 26th province. Six years ago, the United Nations stepped in to stop a budding conflict between the Dutch and the Indonesians, who both laid claim to the region. Now the 800,000 poverty-stricken inhabitants are officially under the auspices of General Suharto. Sometime soon, they will be given the choice between independence and a union with their neighboring would-be superpower. It is anyone's guess how free and honest the local elections can be under the Suharto dictatorship (i.e. don't expect a free West Papua any time soon…)
The Morning Star Flag—which you won't see flown until and unless the Irians get independence…
Bruce Cheeseborough, Jr. is a private dick operating some time in the near future. While in the course of waging a one man crusade against the new crime boss, Lester Dunhaven Sinclair, a certain meddler crosses his path. Said meddler first appears as a nebbishy, softish man, but he quickly betrays himself as a protean blob, possessed of all manner of wondrous powers. The "Martian" offers to help the detective, granting him invulnerability, the gift of flight, time dilation…but Cheeseborough finds the tilting of the scales unsporting.
Still, when the detective makes his final assault on Chez Sinc, it's going to take every resource he has, from human wit to alien marvel, to come out the other end alive…
The Meddler is a brilliant piece of genre hybridization, combining hard-boiled noir with cunning science fiction. Every piece of the story's myriad puzzles is meticulously laid out, so that an astute reader can figure out the revelations just before they materialized. Beyond that, the piece is funny as well as perfectly paced.
Five stars, and a nice broadening of the author's talents.
Time Was, by Phyllis Murphy
Picture a man so obsessed with saving time, that he applies the art of speed reading to life. You know: skipping over most of it, trying to absorb only the salient points. Except, how do you know which bits are the important ones? And what if you lose the ability to focus on any given thing in the pursuit of apprehending everything?
This story reminded me of a friend who insisted a person must do several things at once to be truly efficient. If she read the paper, she listened to the radio. When we watched television together, she'd inevitably crochet. Remarkably efficient…except half the time, she lost track of the show's plot and had to ask us what was going on.
Three stars.
The Wide World of Sports , by Harvey Jacobs
They say that football is a bloody sport, but it's nowhere near as bloody as whatever Jacobs is describing in this story, featuring machine guns, the slaughter of all audience members of a certain name, and general mayhem.
This story would be more effective if it made a lick of sense and/or had a plot. Two stars.
by Gahan Wilson
Coffee Break, by D. F. Jones
There's a Laugh-In bit where the projected news break underneath the action runs, "The United Nations today voted unanimously on everything; UN police are still looking for who put grass in the vents."
This story covers the exact same ground, but it takes much longer to do it, and not in nearly as funny a manner.
Two stars.
Dance Music for a Gone Planet, by Sonya Dorman
Fiddling after Rome is burnt? A tinge of hope for a post-apocalyptic ode?
I'm not sure—I found this one a bit too obtuse to understand. Maybe I'm the obtuse one.
Two stars.
Possible, That's All!, by Arthur C. Clarke
The Other Good Doctor takes umbrage at Asimov's assertion that nothing can go faster than light. He offers up some counterexamples, but they're honestly rather feeble, and the article is not particularly coherent.
Eddie Burma is an empath, life of the party, and he has so much to give. Folks are drawn to his magnetic personality like moths to flame, but, unknowingly, each takes a little bit from Burma in each encounter. This is the price of popularity: eventually, there can be nothing left of you, the you behind the glamor and charm, because no one wants you. They just want what rubs off.
If you've heard this refrain before, it's because Ellison delivered a soliloquy on the subject in his last collection, From the Land of Fear. Harlan is afeared that no one really loves him; they just love The Talent that resides within his physical husk. Readers of that collection also have encountered Knife in its embryonic form, a snippet of it among the story fragments at the beginning of the book.
Anyway, I've said it before and I'll say it again: if your soul overlaps with Harlan's, then his writing resonates with you as The Truth. If you are much unlike the man (as, for instance, I am), then you can admire the way he strings words together, but they don't move much.
Organ transplants are the topic du jour in both science and science fiction. I find it particularly interesting that much is made of the muddled identity of a person when they incorporate the parts of other humans (viz. Van Scyoc's A Trip to Cleveland General in this month's Galaxy). This time around, Asimov takes things a step further: are humans less human if they have metal hearts? And are robots more human if they incorporate biological components?
I liked this story, one of the better pieces Dr. A has done since largely going on fiction hiatus after the launch of Sputnik.
Four stars.
The Ghost Patrol, by Ron Goulart
Speaking of crossed genres, Ghost Patrol is the latest in the Max Kearny series about an art director who solves occult crimes in his spare time. These yarns range from hilariously clever to limp.
This one, about a free doctor beset both by celebrity ghosts and Bircher anti-freeloaders, belongs, sadly, in the latter category.
Two stars.
Little Found Satellite, by Isaac Asimov
This month's piece is worth it for the funny anecdote that forms its preface. The rest is a pleasant, if not particularly deep, history of Saturn's telescopic observation. The piece culminates in the discovery of Saturn's tenth moon, Janus, just outside the ring system.
At a recent convention, my daughter led a panel entitled "Plants vs. People", in which the panelists and audience discussed green menaces of various kinds. Triffids, killer ragweed, stuff like that. I wish I'd had Fangs as an example, as it's a good one.
Zen Holbrook is runs a plantation on a world countless light years from Earth. His trees produce a valuable, hallucinogenic-juiced fruit. They're also quasi-sentient, something like ultra-advanced Venus Fly Traps. Though he tries to keep his relationship with his trees strictly business, he can't help ascribing them personalities, giving them names, and treating them like pampered pets.
Which makes it all the more difficult when he gets news that all of the trees in Sector C have been afflicted with "rust", a disease that not only spells their impending death, but has the risk of spreading throughout the whole planet. Holbrook must kill his friends lest an entire world's economy die. Further complicating the matter is his 15-year old niece, Naomi, who would rather die than see the grove decimated.
It is implied, though never specifically stated, that there is no less destructive way to solve the problem: not only must the trees die, but so must an entire species of benign hopper-bear—a link in the infection cycle. Lord knows what that will do the local ecosystem, but "the needs of the many…"
It's an interesting, thought-provoking piece, composed with Silverberg's usual excellence, though I'm not quite sure which side we're supposed to take, if any. Like, do we all need to grow up and realize that ecological destruction is a valid and important necessity? Or is Zen actually the villain? I could have done without so much of the Uncle's attraction for his niece, too, even if it was supposed to say…something…about Zen's character. I know that the word for people who ascribe the emotions of an author's creation to the author himself is "moron" (at least, per Larry Niven), but Silverbob sure includes a lot of just-pubescent minors in his stories…
Four stars.
Whaddaya make of that?
If you read judiciously, this month's mag is terrific, kind of like how, if you parse the news in just the right way, it's all positive developments. Look deeper, and the seams show. Still, whether the news or the magazine are half full or empty all depends on your temperament, I suppose.
I guess I'll leave with the wishy washy conclusion that's always true: things could be worse!
You may recall one of the more spectacular draft protests last October when Father Philip Berrigan and three other men forced their way in a Selective Service office in Baltimore, Maryland and poured blood into filing cabinets containing draft records. Father Berrigan has acted again, this time along with eight others. The group included Tom Lewis, who was also part of the earlier protest, Berrigan’s brother Daniel, also a priest, and two women.
The Baltimore Nine shortly after their arrest. Fr. Philip Berrigan is 2nd from the left in the back row.
On Friday May 17th, the group entered the Selective Service office in Catonsville, Maryland and began stuffing several hundred A-1 draft records into wire incinerator baskets. Clerk Mary Murphy tried to stop them, but was restrained by one of the protestors. They then made their way back outside and set fire to the records using home-made napalm while quietly reciting the Lord’s Prayer. A short time later, they were arrested, and firefighters extinguished the fire. The following Monday, they sent flowers and a letter of apology signed “The Baltimore Nine” to Mrs. Murphy and the other clerks.
On one hand, the escalation to fire is concerning. Imitators may be less inclined to ensure that no one is harmed. On the other hand, the sight of a group including two priests and a monk defying what they call an unjust war and an unjust law may make people think, especially Catholics. These aren’t a bunch of hippies and long-haired college students who just don’t want to fight in a war.
Of war and women
Two themes run through this month’s IF: war as a necessary evil and female characters who are present solely as motivation for male characters. To be fair, there are as many female protagonists as there are plot pawns, but the latter outweigh the former.
Abbott and his men are the first to reach the Sleeper’s chamber. Art by Gray Morrow
For 600 years the Sleeper has rested in a chamber beneath the Sargasso Sea, reading everyone’s thoughts and smoothing out ideas of aggression and war. Now, two men, Leaf and Laurrayne, believing that the enforced peace has held humanity back and stopped progress, have learned to shield their thoughts from the Sleeper and taught the skill to others. Each has sent a group to be the first to find the Sleeper and turn off his prying mind so that “Man’s Destiny could be fulfilled.”
Is this the true path of progress? Art by Gaughan
This is far from Harlan’s best work, but it’s still decent (if you like Ellison). He’s trying to say something profound at the end, but he’s being too obscure in the execution.
Twins Rebecca and John Ellents were captured by the Bewegal and converted into organic micro-computers. Together they tell their journey from targeting computer to child’s toy and how they hope to rescue humanity from the alien threat.
Bodé’s style works surprisingly well in this horrific picture. Art by Vaughn Bodé
Chapdelaine’s sophomore effort improves on his first. It’s still a bit long, and we could have done with less of the gruesome conversion process. Maybe the most interesting part is watching the steady downgrading of military technology to increasingly less important civilian tasks.
Three stars.
If—and When, by Lester del Rey
Most science fiction, according to Lester del Rey, asks either “what happens if” or “what happens when.” In this new feature, he’ll be looking at various items in the news that fit those categories and how they might apply to science fiction. This time he offers an interesting study on keeping the immune system from rejecting transplanted organs, quasars, and the idea that there is matter that decreases in mass as it approaches the speed of light. It’s not unlike Ted Thomas’Science Springboard over in F&SF, though del Rey seems to have a better grasp on some of what he’s talking about. Maybe because he doesn’t really go beyond the “That’s interesting” point. We’ll see how this feature shakes out over the next few months.
Three stars.
Gone to the Graveyards, Everyone, by Paul M. Moffett
Thanks to the Life Maintainer, war has become a competition. Death is almost never Permanent, and the Limited War is an important part in the world’s economy. What happens when there’s a shift in economic needs?
A killed soldier on his way back for repair. Art by Wehrle
This month’s new author is clearly inspired by Mack Reynolds, both the latter’s Joe Mauser stories and economic themes. Not bad, though it could have used a bit of tightening here and there and fewer capital letters. I wouldn’t object to more from this author.
Three stars.
The Muschine, by Burt K. Filer
Metal is extremely rare on the planet Isolde, so the human colonists have made do with organic machines, from the muscles that turn the screw on protagonist Luke Owens’s ship to intelligent biobots like Rudder, who steers it. Something has started wrecking boats along the coast, and it’s going to take expensive help from Earth to solve the problem. Even that may not be enough.
Luke and the man from Earth try to negotiate. Art by Brand.
After some rocky early stories, Filer may be improving. This is a fair, if flawed, tale whose greatest sin is that it’s too long.
A low three stars.
The Soft Shells, by Basil Wells
Vahni is a Turman, moving on from finlin childhood to adolescence as her people move from the sea to the land. To her distress, she is assigned to the household of the Soft Shell Jackson, the only one of his kind on the planet. At first, anyway. Her new father’s greatest concern is what will happen when more of his kind arrive.
The Turmans return to their land city. Art by Wehrle
Wells started out in the 1940s and took a break for the first half of the 1960s. Since his return, he’s tried to write stories that fit more modern tastes with limited success. This is probably his best effort so far, though the open ending is a bit unsatisfying.
Three stars.
The Hides of Marrech, by C.C. MacApp
Judson Kruger is undercover on the planet Marrech, trying to track down the ring selling the hides of the otter-like natives.
Kruger has a run-in with some of the locals. Art by Vaughn Bodé
Presumably, this is the same protagonist as Inspector Kruger from a couple of earlier stories. The good news is that, while the tone is light, MacApp isn’t trying to be outrageously funny in a Ron Goulart style. It’s a serviceable story.
A man’s obsessive love drives him to invent time travel after the object of his affection is killed.
Oligocene fauna are mostly harmless. Art by Brock
Thomas’s second outing is so different from the first, you might think they were written by different authors. It’s hard to say much about this story without giving the whole thing away. My biggest problem is that Paula is more plot device than person. Events happen to her, and nothing she says or does has any effect. On the other hand, that might be intentional; it would be appropriate.
Three stars.
The Cure-All, by Win Marks
Nick has a summer job at NASA as an orderly who collects samples from returning astronauts. Then an astronaut who went out an albino and returned black-haired and brown-eyed sneezes on him.
Mildly amusing, but it’s too long, and the quarantine procedures are absurdly lax.
A low three stars.
Rogue Star (Part 2 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson
Andy Quamodian has rushed back to Earth at the behest of Molly Zalvidar. Cliff Hawk, the man she chose over Andy, has created a rogue star, a sentient star which is not part of the galactic community. The rogue has absorbed Cliff’s consciousness and decides it’s in love with Molly. A bunch of pointless stuff happens, and it kidnaps her and takes her to a highly radioactive cave. To be concluded.
The rogue inhabits a mining machine to interact with Molly. Art by Gaughan
Ugh. Molly is completely passive except when she does something stupid to put herself in greater danger. Protagonist Andy Quam is little better, running around with his hair on fire and achieving nothing. This collaboration between two good authors is so much less than the sum of its parts.
Two stars.
Summing up
There it is: a lukewarm heap of mediocrity with a bad finish. For a while there, it felt like IF was turning into a magazine that deserved those back-to-back Hugos, but there’s been a marked decline in the last couple of months. Maybe it’s just the serial. Meanwhile, the new feature has potential, though the first offering is a bit scattered. I’ll give it time to find its feet. Our Man in Fandom seems to be gone, which is all right. It felt like Carter had run out of things to say. Still, Pohl could have acknowledged his contribution over the last couple of years.
Chandler will probably be serviceable. Maybe Zelazny can lift us out of the doldrums.
I imagine Vegas bookies are tearing their hair out trying to predict the Presidential race this year. On January 1, the hard money would have been on President Johnson beating Governor George Romney in a fairly easy race. Then McCarthy and Nixon won in New Hampshire. The former sent LBJ announcing his resignation and the latter gave the former Vice-President the first victory of his own since 1950.
Then Bobby Kennedy jumped in, trying to steal McCarthy's lunch. Inevitably, Vice President Humphrey threw his hat in the ring, instantly commanding the loyalty of most democratic party bosses. Meanwhile, Romney's dropped out, but Nelson Rockefeller, who said he wasn't going to play this year, has jumped in.
So, who will face each other come Labor Day? It's anyone's guess, especially since both McCarthy and Kennedy just won recent primaries. I guess we'll have to see if the New York Governor's campaign has legs, and if Humphrey's position translates to delegates at the convention.
Stay tuned…
Nine to Rule Them All
It's similarly a horse race with the latest issue of Galaxy, which presents a solid batch of stories. Which one is the best? That's a hard choice, too!
by Paul E. Wenzel
But first, the editorial. Remember a few months ago F&SF ran competing ads from SF authors for and against the war in Vietnam?
Well, now Pohl's mags are doing it.
Pohl (Galaxy's editor) says it's not just enough to bitch about it. Someone needs to come up with a solution. He figures SF fans are about the smartest people around, so why don't we try our hand at it?
So now there's a contest, first prize $1,000, details at the bottom of this article. Of course, given that you can't devote more than 100 words to the issue, and given that the war has been going on since 1945, in one way or another, and given that a lot of smart people have been trying to fix this thing…I somehow feel 100 words is not enough.
Or as my friend the divorce lawyer likes to say: "Imagine trying to fix a car. Now try to imagine fixing that car while another party is actively trying to dismantle it."
Ever wonder why all people seem to go psycho all of sudden? Why a race with countless religious texts devoted to peace, harmony, and brotherhood just goes buggy every so often?
What if some other planet, in order to preserve their peace, harmony, and brotherhood, is beaming all their psycho energy to us? Sort of a bad emotions disposal process.
This is one of Ellison's lesser pieces. It probably means a lot to him, but it's rather disjointed and vague and not as profound as he wants it to be.
Three stars.
How We Banned the Bombs, by Mack Reynolds
by Vaughn Bodé
Right now, the world population is 3.5 billion and rising. Naturally, this has been the cause of concern and the topic of more than a few science fiction stories. Bombs is one of the lesser efforts.
Reynolds posits a Reunited Nations government so powerful that, in response to the Population Explosion, it can enforce a ten-year ban on childbirth through mandatory provision of contraceptives to women. At the end of the ban, it turns out that the contraceptive drug's effect was permanent, and all human women are completely sterile.
This, by the way, is the end of the story. The rest of it involves characters talking to each other, telling tales they all know about how the world ended up in this predicament (which doesn't make for much of a story).
The whole premise is silly. The population in this projected, not-too-distant future is 3.5 billion, same as it is now, yet resources are so scarce, they're banning the production of alcohol so as to husband their grain crops. Somehow, the ReUN can sterilize EVERY woman on Earth, none slipping through the cracks. And then, no one foresees or predetermines that the universal contraception has adverse effects.
In the words of Laugh-In's Joanne Worley: "Dummmmmb!"
One star.
Detour to Space, by Robin Scott Wilson
(uncredited artist)
Object 3574 is circling the Earth in a polar orbit. Unannounced, the General is convinced it's a secret Russkie bomb. NASA's long-hair thinks otherwise. The majority decides to send up an Apollo to check it out. The object is covered in green slime and pebbled with tektites, suggesting extraterrestrial origin…
There's a lot to like about this tale, especially the sting at the end of it. Scott convincingly describes the apprehension with which we Americans greet the arrival of a new star in the heavens. I know I scour the papers and call my Vandenberg buddies whenever anything goes up to get some insight into otherwise classified launches.
Where the story beggars credibility is the use of Apollo spacecraft, launched from Vandenberg, to intercept 3574. You just can't do it–there's no way to get a Saturn there. Much more likely would be to send up an Air Force Gemini (they're making them for the planned Manned Orbiting Laboratory). But that would have killed the story.
This is what happens when you know too much about a subject, reviewing a story by someone who doesn't quite know enough… three stars.
Daisies Yet Ungrown, by Ross Rocklynne
Joe Wehrle, Jr.
After the big bombs created the time-space Rift, God told Rickert to jump through with Sears catalog robots and claim a new world 350,000 trillion light years from Earth. But this is so far away that God's grace cannot reach, and Lucifer's tool, the newcomer Dorothy, has arrived to take his planet away from him.
This is an odd, poetic story that you, at first, think is going to be satirical, sort of a cross between Sheckley and Bunch. Instead, it's kind of pretty and sweet, way different than I was expecting.
Three stars.
For Your Information: Jules Verne, Busy Lizzy and Hitler, by Willy Ley
This is a pretty interesting piece on attempts using a gun rather than a rocket to fire a projectile, if not into space, at least a terrific distance. Essentially, it's like a rocket, but with the propellant on the outside.
A man taking the matter transmitter home finds himself in the future version of Devil's Island, a colony for hardened criminals. Surely, there has been some kind of malfunction, for he can remember no crime. But the wheels of justice never make a mistake, or do they?
This would be a fairly slight tale if not for the execution. Luckily, Harrison (who I understand has just retired from the editor helm of Fantastic and Amazing) is a master of execution.
As expected, the first adventure of Thorinn, a human raised by trolls in a Nordic nightmare, has a sequel. Last time, the resourceful Thorinn had been tossed into a deep well as an offering to the gods to end a ceaseless winter. Making his way through the caves he found, Thorinn discovered a hatch that opened not onto but above a new world. This story details what he finds below.
In an almost Oz-like setting, the people of the Vale enjoy a life of complete ease. The grasshopper men and the doughwomen and the fancymen and the children, they eat the food that grows on trees and bushes, they frolic, they discuss, and when they want adventure, they seal themselves up in the pleasure pods for the night…or sometimes an eternity.
Thorinn is the snake in the garden, slowly poisoning the place with his foreignness and his willingness to kill. Ultimately, he hatches an escape plan, but not before leaving his mark.
This is an interesting episode, but not as compelling or as clever as the first one. Three stars.
Booth 13, by John Lutz
Here's a new author, or at least, new to me. John paints a grim future in which populational ennui has settled in. All that's left is war, the tranquilizer lysogene, and the death booths. If life gets just a bit too monotonous, there's always a quick and easy exit–and now, people are taking it in ever-increasing numbers.
It's not badly done, but my biggest issue is not enough explanation is given as to why everyone is so melancholy. Perhaps that's the point–if you give everyone an easy out, even the mildest inconveniences can trigger a snap decision. Or maybe the author is simply extrapolating from the current, profound American despondency.
Last time, if you recall, Pete Maxwell has gone off to do research at the crystal planet, a world with the accumulated knowledge of two universes (it had lived through the last Big Crunch). The fading intelligences of the planet offered all of its wisdom in exchange for The Artifact, a featureless black object dating back to the Jurassic period. When Maxwell got back to Earth, he found that he'd already come back, duplicated by some quirk of matter transfer, and died.
This datum takes a back seat to bigger concerns–the Wheelers, bags of insect colonies bent on acquiring the lore of the crystal planet, have already purchased The Artifact, and once it is in their possession, plan to take over the universe. It is up to Maxwell, his tentative ally Carol, her sabre-tooth tiger Sylvester, their Neanderthal pal Alley Oop, the Ghost, William Shakespeare, the librarian who sold The Artifact, the goblin O' Toole, and several bridge-dwelling trolls to somehow stop the transaction before it's too late.
I must say, Simak pulls off a large set of emotional tones very well. You feel the sense of impending dread when it seems the Wheelers have clinched the deal. The comedic scenes are genuinely amusing. Yet, there is a grounding to the story that keeps it from being Laumerian or Anvilian lampoon. The revelations of the true nature of the fairies, little people, banshees, and whatnot are pretty good, too, though a bit abrupt. Perhaps they'll have more time to breathe in the novel version.
The only bit I had trouble with was The Wheelers, for whom I felt sympathy once I learned their motivation. There's an undertone of unconscious racism where they're concerned–they're bad because they're icky, different. When you learn what their status had been vis-à-vis the crystal planet, it all becomes a bit more unsettling.
Nevertheless, pleasant reading by a master. Four stars.
Picking a Winner
Well. It's obvious which story was the loser here (let's just call the Reynolds tale 'Harold Stassen'). But as to a winner, well that's a little harder. Several of the three-stars are quite nice; my four-star to the Harrison may be arbitrary. We can exclude the Simak because it's a serial, but it anchors this and the last issue well.
I suppose in an issue where (all but one of) the stories are good, the real winner is…us.
That might be true for most ordinary Hollywood productions playing at your local theater, anyway. However, if you sneak downtown to one of the seedier movie houses, you might wonder if the Hays Code has any real meaning these days.
We've already dived into this cinematic underworld some time ago, with a discussion of the extremely silly movie Nude on the Moon. Like other so-called nudie cuties, there's a certain innocence to it, despite the display of unclothed female flesh.
There's a category of nudies known as roughies, adding violence to the naked women in order to provide even sleazier thrills. That wouldn't normally be my cup of tea, but I have to admit that a recent ad for one of these things caught my eye as I was walking past a disreputable theater.
I snuck my way into the darkened theater and got ready for a truly unusual viewing experience.
A Krazy Kat And Three Blind Mice
Let's get the dirty stuff out of the way first. The sequences featuring naked women were obviously added to the original film later. They don't look anything at all like the main part of the movie, so we can disregard them.
What we really have here is a variation on Richard Connell's famous story The Most Dangerous Game, which reached the silver screen way back in 1932. (Try to catch the original on your local Shock Theater TV program. It's quite good.)
Confessions of a Psycho Cat retains the basic concept of hunting human beings for sport, but otherwise bears little resemblance to its inspiration. For one thing, the hunter is a woman.
We begin with our villainess, Virginia, saying goodbye to her brother at the airport. He's off to Africa to do some big game hunting. (Do you sense a theme developing?) Virginia usually goes with him, but her psychiatrist recommended that she stay home and recover from a nervous breakdown.
We then jump right into a scene of a guy running for his life. He manages to reach the apartment of some of his friends (insert unrelated nude party scene here) and tells them he's been shot. A flashback tells us what's going on.
It seems that Virginia brought three men together in order to offer them a very strange deal. If they'll allow her to hunt them down for twenty-four hours, she'll pay each one who escapes one hundred thousand dollars.
Each of the three men killed someone and escaped punishment. I guess this is Virginia's way of having fun while administering a kind of rough justice. She also thinks of each one as a specific type of animal. From left to right in the above scene of Virginia and the trio of intended victims, we have:
Buddy, a drug addict. He accidentally gave his girlfriend a fatal overdose of heroin. He's a jackal.
Charles, a stage actor. He murdered his wife's lover. He's a lion.
Rocco, a boxer. He killed an opponent in the ring. He's a bull.
I should mention here that all the characters are portrayed by totally unknown performers, with the exception of Rocco. He's played by well-known boxer Jake "Raging Bull" LaMotta, appropriately enough. (I wonder if the concept of symbolizing the men with animals came about when he was cast in the role.)
The three guys figure it'll be easy enough to hide out for a day and then collect the loot. Virginia cleverly uses their individual weaknesses to lure them into her traps. She makes Charles think he's got a chance for a big role. She accuses hot-tempered Rocco of being a coward. Of course, Buddy needs a dose of heroin.
While all this is going on, we learn about the traumatic incident during her childhood that made Virginia a Psycho Cat. Suffice to say that it puts her supposedly sane brother in a very bad light. By the end of the movie, Virginia is completely insane.
Obviously made on a very small budget, this modest little thriller has a certain gritty appeal. Filmed on location in New York City, with frequent use of a handheld camera, it sometimes feels like a very weird documentary. The highlight of the movie is the battle between Virginia and Rocco. I don't want to give too much away, but the fact that he's supposed to be a bull may give you a hint.
The irrelevant nude scenes are an annoying distraction, although there's one that made me laugh. When Rocco is on the phone with Virginia, there's supposedly a woman in the room with him. It's really, really obvious that the two characters aren't on the same set. In a bizarre scene, the woman kisses her reflection passionately.
If you can work up the nerve to walk into a place showing this thing, you may find it more enjoyable than you'd expect. If nothing else, the actress playing Virginia gives a really wild performance, whether she's hunter, matador, or little girl.
Give this kooky kitty a chance, and you may wind up purring.
Or, if you're ashamed to show your face in a nudie theater, you can stay home and watch the news.
by Gideon Marcus
Harlan is back with another money-grab collection, this time from Belmont. Actually, I don't know how complicit Ellison actually is given that he was furious that Belmont reprinted Doomsman without his consent. Still, he did contribute forewords to all the stories.
And that's really the reason to get this collection, since almost everything in it has appeared somewhere else before.
Cover by Leo and Diane Dillon
Where the Stray Dreams Go
One of the niftier pieces in the book, and the one fresh publication, this is not a story but a collection of aborted story fragments. We may see them grow into complete stories someday. Or perhaps, now that they have been born, after a fashion, this is their final form. Four stars.
This one was in Ellison Wonderland and I still feel the same way. The idea that the universe is already inhabited by superior beings should not be as damaging to the racial ego as Ellison believes. Three stars.
The ninth (and first successful) trip around the moon, manned by a solo pilot, is threatened by a stowaway. It's got a gimmick you'll see a mile away. Three stars.
The Time of the Eye
from The Saint Mystery Magazine, May 19591
A Korean war vet meets a beautiful blind woman during rehabilitation. He falls for her, hard, but it turns out the tragic cause of the woman's injury is communicable…
A wounded spaceman is trapped in his life hutch by a deranged robot. Can he defeat the mechanical monster before it smashes him to bits?
This one appeared in Ellison's first collection, A Touch of Infinity (1960). Four stars.
Battle Without Banners
from Taboo, (1964)
Society's refuse (e.g. the Jews and the non-lily-white) are packed into prisons. This is the story of one brave squad's attempt to break out. But the jail they live in is really called "society".
This one was written for Taboo, a sort of precursor to Dangerous Visions, including such luminaries as Charles Beaumont and Fritz Leiber. It's a good piece, if a bit maudlin. Three or four stars, I can't really decide.
The creator of the first sentient robot gets his revenge on a cruel world. When said android makes a 300 year round-trip to Alpha Centauri, his back wages amount to more than the value of the world, and since the robot was granted person-hood, there's no way out of the deal.
Even Ellison concedes that the plot doesn't work, but he likes it anyway.
This one also appeared in Ellison's first collection, A Touch of Infinity (1960). Three stars.
After the last war, a loyal servant robot welcomes his new masters, though not without a touch of regret.
This one suffers for having the exact same ending as the prior robot story (Ellison writes so much, he's never above lifting from himself). But it is nicely written. Four stars.
A two-page "after-the-bomb" story to end all "after-the-bomb" stories, published in the latest issue of Terry Carr's semi-prozine Lighthouse (I read it there, too).
I laughed. Five stars for this skewering of cliché TV writers.
The longest single piece of the book is also the best. A private soldier named Qarlo is warped by a freak accident into the past. After being subdued and interrogated, he is put to his most effective use–telling his story as a cautionary tale against the ills of war.
Can't argue with this one, either the morality or the storytelling. Five stars.
This is the Ellison episode I missed (I did catch Demon with a Glass Hand, which was good). But Natalie enjoyed it, and I hope I see it in rerun.
I feel that the story is far less impactful than its source material, but then, judging a show from a script is like judging a sculpture from its shadow. I will say that, having read it, I now feel like I have an idea how to turn my Kitra books into a TV show…
Anyway, I won't rate this–it's invaluable if you're interested, and somewhat superfluous if you're not.
From the Land of Hype
My problem with Ellison is a personal one. There's no doubt but that he's a brilliant writer. You're never bored reading his stuff. The thing is Harlan offers no viewpoint but his own; he just communicates it so well as to make you feel it's "the truth" rather than just "his opinion."
But Harlan and I are so diametrically opposed, constitutionally, that it always rings a bit false. Harlan's never had long-term luck with ladies (though he bemoans the incessant interest he gets from women thanks to his "talent"). I've been happily married for 25 years. Harlan has no sense of time; I am punctual to a fault. Harlan famously has no tact and carries life-long grudges. I have some sense of diplomacy, and I tend to forgive and forget.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Ellison–he is who he is–but it means that the belchings of his id, no matter how exquisitely crafted, never quite resonate with me. This makes most of his stories fall into a sort of 3.75 star slush in my mind.
They're still worth reading, though. He is a genius.
Last month, I wrote about the first human-to-human heart transplant by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in South Africa. It paired rather nicely with the start of the new Larry Niven serial. Niven’s serial continues, and heart transplants are still in the news.
On January 2nd, Dr. Barnard performed a second heart transplant. The patient this time was 58-year-old dentist Philip Blaiberg, receiving his new heart from 24-year-old Clive Haupt, who died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Mr. Blaiberg is still in the hospital as I write this, but is in good condition. Doctors aren’t sure when he’ll be able to return home, however they are hopeful.
Dr. Barnard (I.) and Philip Blaiberg (r.), probably before the surgery.
Just four days later, on the 6th, Dr. Norman Shumway performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States. Here, the recipient was 54-year-old steelworker Mike Kasparek (or Casparak, I’ve seen both in print), and the donor was 43-year-old Virginia May White, who was also the victim of a cerebral hemorrhage (sadly, while celebrating her 22nd wedding anniversary). Unfortunately, Mr. Kasperak only survived for 15 days, dying of liver failure on the 21st. Dr. Shumway has suggested that the new heart was the only functioning organ Mr. Kasparek had and said that greater care will need to be taken in the selection of prospective transplant patients.
Dr. Shumway at a press conference last fall (l.), Mike Kasperak and his wife, Ferne (r.)
Same old song
It’s business as usual in this month’s IF. We’ve got familiar faces giving us what we expect (good and bad), a newish name starting to show up in the American magazines, and our first time author.
This unpleasing collage is for Harlan’s new story. Art by Wenzel
Long ago, in an effort to control the weather, humanity caused the sun to become overactive. This wiped out civilization, killed off many species, and mutated others. Now, the ants rule the Earth, having merged to become the Racemind. They have bred many species back from extinction and telepathically control many to serve them. When strange crystal beings and others made purely of light begin to raid their farms and take over their slaves, the ants realize they have ignored the rest of the world for too long.
Part of the scouting party investigating the crystal entities. Art by Virgil Finlay
Imagine if J. G. Ballard wrote a 1920s-type, far-future fate of the Earth story. I have a fairly low tolerance for Ballard’s style, but Redd makes it work. This is a good story, with caveats. It’s a bit too long, and more importantly it’s hampered by not having any actual characters. If that Ballard-pulp combination sounds interesting, or if you like Ballard’s strange ecology stories, you’ll probably like this.
Jared is the preeminent mercenary leader in the galaxy, the man planetary governments seek out when they want to conquer the worlds of other star systems. He’s incredibly expensive, and worth it. But he’ll only take certain jobs. That’s because he’s actually working toward a personal goal, aided by the Machine, a computer he designed and built himself early in his career.
Jared consults the Machine. Art by Gaughan
This story has a more traditional structure than a lot of what Harlan’s written of late, but don’t let that fool you. It’s all Ellison: dark, sad, maybe a little more hopeful than usual.
Four stars.
Deadlier Specie, by David A. Kyle
Gregory MacKenzie is an exobiologist on Mars. He’s been kidnapped by aliens so that they can learn how humans think before a meeting with the chief diplomat from the U. N.
There’s almost a good story here. Unfortunately, it’s full of questionable puns and, worse still, ends with an implied sexist joke.
Two stars.
Caterpillar Express, by Robert A. Margroff
In a North America fractured by war, Bondman Y is investigating the disappearance of several trains (which are pulled by giant Venusian caterpillars). He’ll have to join forces with his counterparts from unfriendly nations to survive.
Y discovers the culprits behind the hijackings. Art by Vaughn Bodé
For some reason, Fred Pohl seems to like Margroff’s work, but I’ve never been impressed. This story hasn’t changed my mind. Dumb jokes, dumb plot. ‘Nuff said.
Two stars.
At Nycon #3, by Lin Carter
After a month’s absence, Our Man in Fandom delivers his report on the Worldcon in New York last year. Or at least the first half of it. This is mostly name-dropping. If you’re interested in the Worldcon, you’re better off reading the Journey’s con report. It’s more informative and has pictures.
Barely three stars, entirely for somewhat engaging writing.
Squatter’s Rights, by Hank Davis
An alien intelligence has an important message for humanity.
Just some vague atmosphere. Art by Gaughan
There’s not much to say about the story from this month’s new author. It shows some talent, it’s a little different, and it’s short.
On the planet Plateau, Matt Keller has become involved with the Sons of Earth, who hope to overthrow the rule of the crew and become more than a labor force and source of organs. When the group was arrested, Matt managed to escape thanks to his strange ability to make people forget he exists. Meanwhile, a mysterious new technology has arrived from Earth via unmanned ramjet. As the last installment ended, Matt had entered the Hospital in the hope of setting the others free.
Matt stages a massive jailbreak, but only a handful—those close enough to him to benefit from his special ability—escape. This group includes Harry Kane, the group’s leader. He leads them to a house he expects to be empty so they can plan further. Intermingled with the escape, we follow chief policeman Jesus Pietro Castro as he leads the capture of the others.
The scene then shifts to planetary leader Millard Parlette, as he prepares to give a speech to the crew about the latest gift from Earth. This is just three and a half pages of exposition. But after the speech Parlette coincidentally goes to the house where Matt and the others are hiding. This allows him to make contact with Kane and begin working out an accord. Meanwhile, Matt and another of the rebels have infiltrated the Hospital again, but with different goals. This leads to them splitting up. To be concluded.
Matt leaves a message. Art by Adkins
There’s a lot of action this month, interspersed with nearly Heinlein-ian levels of political philosophy. Niven isn’t nearly as gifted at the latter as Heinlein, but it’s still an interesting exploration of the effects of a new technology on a society. The large chunk of exposition from Parlette’s notes is less successful. Watching him cut chunks of the speech because his listeners should know the information is a slight improvement over the cliched “As you know, Bob…” of old, but it’s still clunky. It also left me wondering how much of the speech notes are actually Niven’s notes for the novel.
A solid, slightly above average three stars.
Summing up
Fred Pohl opens this issue with another editorial rant against the New Wave. He seems to have decided that the movement is one of style over substance, while he’s more concerned with story, only liking stylistic experimentation if the story calls for it. I don’t know how he then justifies that Bob Sheckley acid trip last month, and his protests that the Redd in this issue isn’t New Wave ring a bit hollow to me. In any case, it looks as though we shouldn’t expect any real innovations in IF in the months to come.
A new Silverberg novel. That could be interesting. It might even be innovative.
Welcome to the last of our three discussions about an anthology of original fantasy and science fiction that's drawing a lot of attention. Love it or hate it, or maybe a little of both, it's impossible to ignore. I showed you the full wraparound cover the the first time, and offered a closer look at the front the second time, so here's the back cover. It gives you a convenient list of the authors.
As before, I'll give each story the usual star rating as well as using the colors of a traffic light to indicate how dangerous it might be.
A woman desperately tries to escape her pursuers. Flashbacks tell us more about this dystopian world.
Saying anything more would lessen the impact of this intense little story. Ellison's introduction compares it to the work of Shirley Jackson, and that's a fair analogy. It's deceptively quiet and matter-of-fact at times, but full of icy horror at its heart.
Four stars. YELLOW for unrelieved grimness.
The Happy Breed, by John T. Sladek
In the near future, machines take care of all our problems, leaving us to enjoy a life of leisure. Of course, what the machines think is best for us may not agree with our own ideas.
This dark satire on automation isn't exactly subtle. It makes its point clearly enough, and follows it to its logical conclusion. The details of the characters' degeneration make it worth reading.
Three stars. YELLOW for cynicism.
Encounter with a Hick, by Jonathan Brand
Our smart aleck narrator tells us how he met a fellow from a less sophisticated background and what happened when he told the man something about the origin of his planet.
You'll probably figure out the punchline of this extended joke. Despite its predictability, I enjoyed the story's wise guy style. Others may find the narrator annoyingly smug.
Three stars. YELLOW for a wry look at deeply held beliefs.
From the Government Printing Office, by Kris Neville
Set at a near future time when childrearing has changed in an eye-opening way, this yarn is told through the eyes of a kid who is only three and one-half years old. Adults are bewildering creatures indeed!
The quirky choice of viewpoint, with its combination of precocity and naiveté, is what makes this story worth a look. I'm not quite sure what the author is saying about parents and children, but it's provocative.
Three stars. YELLOW for an unflattering portrait of Mom and Dad.
All over the world, people with Romany ancestors feel compelled to return to a place that vanished long ago. But what will disappear next?
This synopsis fails to capture the author's eccentric style and unusual combination of whimsy and oddball speculation. If you like Lafferty, you'll enjoy it. If not, you won't. Like many of his works, it's something of a tall tale and a shaggy dog story. I dug it.
The narrator witnesses a woman and a dwarf set up a strange menagerie at night, not far from where a carnival is in progress. The mystery of the cages deepens as visitors show up.
I find this story difficult to describe. It's quite a bit different from the author's jagged, chopped up pieces for New Worlds, and from his decadent tales of Vermillion Sands. It's very subtle, and there seems to be more than meets the eye. The premise evokes thoughts of Ray Bradbury, but only in an extremely subdued way. Maybe haunting is the word I'm looking for.
Four stars. GREEN for intriguing writing.
Judas, by John Brunner
A robot sets itself up as God. One of the people who created it sets out to destroy the false deity.
The plot is simple enough, and the analogy between the worship of the robot and Christianity is made crystal clear. You may predict the twist ending, given the story's title.
Three stars. YELLOW for religious themes.
Test to Destruction, by Keith Laumer
The leader of a group of rebels is captured by the forces of a dictator. They use a gizmo to retrieve information from his brain. Meanwhile, in what has to be the wildest coincidence of all time, aliens approaching Earth also probe his brain, in order to learn how to conquer humanity. The combination is explosive.
Looking at my synopsis, I get the feeling that this isn't the most plausible story in the world. Since it's by Laumer, you know it's a fast-moving adventure yarn. As a matter of fact, it's so lightning-paced that it makes his other stories look slow. The reader is left breathless. There's a serious point made at the end, but mostly it's just a thrill ride.
The delightfully named Harrison Wintergreen is a guy who has always gotten what he wanted out of life. As a kid, baseball cards. As a young man, women. As an adult, tons of money. Now he's got terminal cancer. Can he triumph over the ultimate challenge?
As Ellison says in his introduction, this is a funny story about cancer. Sick humor, to be sure. Bad taste? Well, maybe, but I think you'll get a kick out of it.
Replace a bullfight with a battle between man and car, and you've got this tongue-in-cheek tale. All the details of a traditional corrida del toros are here, transformed to fit the automotive theme.
Space explorers are raised from childhood to be absolutely free of sexual characteristics. It's impossible to tell if they started off as female or male; they are completely neuter in every way. People known as frelks are attracted to them.
Amazingly, this is the first short story Delany ever sold, although others have already appeared in magazines. It's superbly written, as you'd expect, and explores sex and gender in completely new, profound ways.
Five stars. RED for unimagined forms of human sexuality.
20 20 Hindsight
Looking back at the book as a whole, it's clear that the level of stories is generally high, with a few clunkers. Not all the stories are dangerous, and they could have been published elsewhere. A few are truly groundbreaking. The Silverberg, Leiber, and Delany are the best. The Sturgeon is the biggest disappointment. The Farmer is going to start the most arguments. Put on your reading glasses, fasten your seat belt, and give it a try.
![[December 10, 1968] Back and forth (January 1969 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/681210cover-671x372.jpg)
![[November 2, 1968] Role Models (December 1968 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/IF-1968-12-Cover-672x372.jpg)
Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner circa 1912.
Lise Meitner in 1963.
A previously unknown piece by the late Hannes Bok, probably the last new Bok cover ever.
He looks familiar. Art by Gaughan
Whatever it is, it ain’t natural. Art by Wood
Chief Wunnaara may be the only reliable person on the planet. Art by Virgil Finlay
More action exactly like the action in Part 1. Art by Gaughan
There’s the Zelazny we were promised. This issue really needed it.
![[October 6, 1968] Snail on the Slope? (November 1968 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/amz-1168-cover.png)
![[September 20, 1968] It comes and goes (October 1968 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/680920cover-651x372.jpg)
![[June 2, 1968] Necessary Evils (July 1968 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IF-1968-07-Cover-543x372.jpg)
The Baltimore Nine shortly after their arrest. Fr. Philip Berrigan is 2nd from the left in the back row.
Abbott and his men are the first to reach the Sleeper’s chamber. Art by Gray Morrow
Is this the true path of progress? Art by Gaughan
Bodé’s style works surprisingly well in this horrific picture. Art by Vaughn Bodé
A killed soldier on his way back for repair. Art by Wehrle
Luke and the man from Earth try to negotiate. Art by Brand.
The Turmans return to their land city. Art by Wehrle
Kruger has a run-in with some of the locals. Art by Vaughn Bodé
Oligocene fauna are mostly harmless. Art by Brock
Mildly amusing, but it’s too long, and the quarantine procedures are absurdly lax.
The rogue inhabits a mining machine to interact with Molly. Art by Gaughan
Chandler will probably be serviceable. Maybe Zelazny can lift us out of the doldrums.![[May 10, 1968] Horse race (June 1968 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/680510cover-393x372.jpg)
![[February 6, 1968] The Most Dangerous Dame (<i>Confessions of a Psycho Cat</i>) and From the Land of Hype (Ellison's <i>From the Land of fear</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/680206covers-672x372.jpg)
![[February 4, 1968] More of the Same (March 1968 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/IF-1968-03-Cover-434x372.jpg)
Dr. Barnard (I.) and Philip Blaiberg (r.), probably before the surgery.
Dr. Shumway at a press conference last fall (l.), Mike Kasperak and his wife, Ferne (r.)
This unpleasing collage is for Harlan’s new story. Art by Wenzel
Part of the scouting party investigating the crystal entities. Art by Virgil Finlay
Jared consults the Machine. Art by Gaughan
Y discovers the culprits behind the hijackings. Art by Vaughn Bodé
Just some vague atmosphere. Art by Gaughan
Matt leaves a message. Art by Adkins
A new Silverberg novel. That could be interesting. It might even be innovative.![[January 10, 1968] Saving the Best For Last (<i>Dangerous Visions</i>, Part Three)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/1967_Dangerous-Visions-hc-672x372.jpg)
