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


by Gideon Marcus

Real-life Adventures

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fictional Adventures


by Gray Morrow

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


by Dan Adkins

Frank Herbert is back.  Hooray.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priceless Possession, by Arthur Porges

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

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

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

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

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

The Eskimo Invasion, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

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

When I Was Miss Dow, by Sonya Dorman

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

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

Four stars.

Open the Sky, by Robert Silverberg


by Gray Morrow

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

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

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

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

Journeys' End

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

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



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




[March 8, 1965] An Alien Perspective (April 1965 Galaxy)


by Gideon Marcus

Understanding the Other

Civilization is about building a society out of disparate units.  It has to go beyond the family and clan.  The key to organizing a civilization is empathy, recognizing that we are all different yet we share common values and rights.  Once we understand each other, even if we don't agree on everything, then we can truly create "from many, one."

Science fiction allows the exploration of cutting edge sociological subjects, one of them being the understanding of the "other".  That's because the genre has a ready-made stand-in for the concept: the alien.  Indeed, many science fiction stories are allegorical; they address colonialism, the Cold War, societal taboos, in ways that might currently be too touchy or on-the-nose for conventional fiction.  We can hope that, with the bottle uncorked, less allegorical stories will be required in the future. 

Of all the science fiction magazines that come out every month, I think Fred Pohl's trio of Galaxy, IF, and Worlds of Tomorrow has the strongest tradition of incorporating aliens (Analog also has aliens, but thanks to its editor's sensibilities, they are almost invariably both more evil and inferior to human beings; Campbell likes a certain kind of allegory…)

Meeting the Minds


by George Schelling (it says it illustates War Against the Yukks, but it doesn't)

This month's Galaxy is a case in point, with six of its nine tales involving aliens of one kind or another.  There's some good stuff in here, as well as a number of slog stories.  Let's look, shall we?

Committee of the Whole, by Frank Herbert


by Nodel

Watch your step — there's a rough patch right at the start. 

Whole is a meandering preach piece about an inventor who appears before a Congressional committee with news of a new, revolutionary invention.  I'll just tell you about it because the first two thirds of the story are less suspenseful than obtusely annoying: it's a ray gun.  Its applications are infinite, but the one most of the Congressmen are worried about is that every owner has a weapon more powerful than the atom bomb at their disposal.  And, because of the way the invention has been disseminated, everyone in the world has access to them.

The result, the inventor opines, is going to be a world of true libertarian equality.  "An armed society is a polite society" is how the expression goes.  It's the kind of naive sentiment that would go over well at Analog, but for adults, it's just ridiculous.  In equalizing humanity through armed neutrality, the inventor has made aliens of us all.  I'll wager that Earth's population of humans will be dead inside a week…and probably most of the animals. 

One star, and yet more disdain for the Herbert byline.

Wrong-Way Street, by Larry Niven

Ah, but then our fortunes truly turn around.  Wrong Way Street gives us the unplanned adventure of Mike Capoferri, a scientist stationed on the Moon late this century to investigate an alien base and space ship.  They have lain on the lunar plain for countless millions of years, and their provenance and function are completely unknown.  That is, until Mike unwittingly not only discerns the motive force for the space ship, but also activates it.  Here, understanding the alien way of thinking proved hazardous to Mike's health.  Can he get home?  Will the human race survive his journey?

This is author Niven's third story, and he continues with the same deftness he displayed with his recent short novel, World of Ptavvs.  I guarantee that the ending of Street will stay with you.

Four stars.

Death and Birth of the Angakok, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Peterluk is a young Eskimo out hunting when a horrifying bunch of one-eyed Seal People arrive.  He panics and entreats his powerful Grandfather, holed up in Peterluk's igloo, to aid him with his mystical powers.  But Grandfather is too weak to assist and, in the end, Peterluk is left to defeat one of the aliens with a conventional rifle.

When the Seal People ship surfaces from beneath the ice, much to Peterluk's surprise, it disgorges not aliens but white people in uniform.  And Peterluk begins to doubt the power, and even the human nature, of his strangely humped, ever demanding Grandfather.

Confusing at first, Angakok is actually a pretty neat tale of two types of aliens (human and truly extraterrestrial) as seen from the point of view of one completely naive to other cultures.  While the bones of the plot are fairly conventional, I appreciated the novel viewpoint.

Three stars.

Symbolically Speaking, by Willy Ley

Any meeting of the minds between human and alien will require a common symbology to convey ideas.  A science fiction writer looking for inspiration for such a symbol set could do worse than to read Willy Ley's latest science article for Galaxy, in which he discusses the evolution of symbols for the planets, alchemical substances, numbers, etc.

Fairly dry, but there's interesting information here.  Three stars.

A Wobble in Wockii Futures, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Gray Morrow, channeling Bill Gaines

Tom and Lucy Reasoner are a recurring pair in a series of stories, this being the fourth.  Sort of a "Nick and Nora" meets Retief, the stories of the Reasoners began charmingly enough, with Tom an interstellar diplomat with a mystery to solve, and Lucy his sometimes discerning assistant.

Last time around, Tom had not only gotten inducted into the interstellar assassin's guild, but he'd also catapulted Earth onto the galactic scene, dramatically increasing his home planet's clout.  Now the humans have gotten themselves hip-deep in a planetary investment that made turn out to be completely worthless.  Tom must find out who hoodwinked the Terrans and why before humanity is bankrupted.

This installation has the same problem as the last one — Lucy is sidelined and played for stupid, and the humor of the tale just isn't funny.  Dickson can, and usually does, do better.

Two stars.

Wasted on the Young, by John Brunner

The concept of the "teenager" is a fairly recent one.  It used to be that kids enjoyed a relatively short childhood before transitioning to the labor force and/or marriage.  Now there is an intermediate phase before adulthood during which a youngster can learn the ropes of grown-up society.

Brunner's latest story posits an even longer period of immaturity, one in which kids are given free credit until age thirty to do whatever they want.  The catch: once they reach their fourth decade, they have to pay back what they've spent by being productive members of society.  Thus, the wastrels find themselves indebted indefinitely, while those who lived a spartan life get to be free agents.

Hal Page, age 32, believes he knows a way to cheat the system…but in the end, society has use for people who have spent it all, even their life.

There's a great idea here, but I feel it was somewhat wasted on the gimmick (and not particularly logical) ending.  Still, three stars.

The Decision Makers, by Joseph Green


by Jack Gaughan

Allan Odegaard is a Practical Philosopher, a kind of emissary for humanity to other worlds.  His job is to judge whether a planet is inhabited by intelligent life or not; if so, Terran policy is to keep hands off.  As one would expect, such a determination is often strongly opposed by financial interests.

Capella G Eight is an ocean planet, though during times of Ice Age, three continents emerge from the sea as the water level drops.  Its dominant life form is a seal-like creature.  Though it possesses a relatively tiny brain pan, somehow it lives in a communal society and can use tools.  Is it intelligent?  Does the fact that these creatures live near a rich uranium deposit factor into Odegaard's decision?

We've seen this kind of story before — H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy series is probably the purest example, though J.F. Bone's The Lani People should also be noted.  It's a worthy subject, and Green does a pretty good job, though the ending is abrupt and not quite as momentous as I would have liked.

All in all, it's the best story I've seen from Green in an American publication (he tends to stick to the English side of the Atlantic.) Three stars.

Slow Tuesday Night, by R. A. Lafferty

We're back to Earth for this one.  We all know that the pace of life has only quickened over the generations.  Lafferty, whose middle name would be "whimsy" if the initial were a W. and not an A., writes of a future society in which society is speeded up a hundred-fold compared to now.  Fortunes are made and lost in minutes.  Marriages last an hour on a good night.  And a lifetime can be lived in a week.

It's cute, but the satire wears thin about halfway through.  Also, there are only two female characters, and their sole goal appears to be competing for the earliest wedding of the evening.

A low three, I guess.

Sculptor, by C. C. MacApp

Eight years ago, a disgraced spaceman abandoned his crewmates on an alien world, rushing home with a set of invaluable statues — and a hole in his memory about the affair.  Now he has been shanghaied by a criminal bent on returning to this world and plundering it for more of the exquisite figurines.

What race made these wrought-diamond minatures?  And why does the amnesiac spaceman feel such dread on the planet's surface?

This is another "they looked like us" yarn that has been around since Campbell kick-started the genre with Who Goes There (and Heinlein made it popular with The Puppet Masters).  It's so prevalent, in fact, that there's another example of it in this very issue! (Angakok) Despite not really treading on new ground, it may well be the best work I've seen from C. C. MacApp, a fairly recent author who never fails to never quite succeed.

Three stars.

War Against the Yukks, by Keith Laumer


by Gray Morrow

Six years ago, the Journey had the (dubious) pleasure of reviewing Missile to the Moon.  It was one of a long line of movies involving a man-less society, run by a bunch of sex-starved female beauties just waiting for a hunk to tip the order on its ear.

Laumer's latest is the same old story: this time, the men are an anthropologist and his stereotypically British assistant, who are whisked to Callisto where they encounter the last remnants of an ante-diluvian war between the sexes.  High Jinks ensue(s?)

Only the author's puissance at writing elevates this story above the level of dreck.  Even then, it's a disappointment.  I understand that satirizing a hoary cliche can be fun, but the whole point of Galaxy is that the magazine doesn't even acknowledge the existence of said cliches, much less indulge in them.

It really deserves two stars.  I'll probably give it three anyway.

Summit's End

This month's Galaxy was as alien-heavy as usual, and there was a broad variety of stories.  On the other hand, with the exception of the Niven, there were no stand-outs.  Indeed, the issue read more like an overlong issue of IF (which has also dipped in quality) than Galaxy of old.

Nevertheless, Ad Astra per Aspera.  What goes down must come up again, and when humanity finally does meet the alien denizens of the stars, should they exist, our starship crews will doubtless have been inculcated with the lessons learned in SF, particularly in magazines like Galaxy.






[September 18, 1964] Split Personality (October 1964 IF)

[Don't miss your chance to get your copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age.  If you like the Journey, you'll love this book (and you'll be helping us out, too!)


by Gideon Marcus

Which one is it?

It's election season, and the commercials are already out in force.  Maybe it's just my neighborhood, but it seems that LBJ is crowding the airwaves a lot more than Barry Goldwater at this point.  One effective ad notes several times the GOP candidate has made mutually contradictory statements and asks "How is a Republican supposed to note on his ballot which Barry he's voting for?"

This piece is a pretty low blow.  Make no mistake — there's no way I'm voting for a reactionary this November, but if there's one thing one can say for Barry, he's consistent.  I'd rather see some positive messaging.  Lord knows LBJ has plenty of successes to run on.

But while Goldwater's split personality may all be a Madison Avenue construct, the schizophrenic nature of IF, Worlds of Science Fiction magazine is very real.  IF has always been Galaxy's experimental little sister, the place where the more offbeat stories, the lesser known writers are featured.  As a result, it is the more variable mag, with higher highs and lower lows, often within the same issue. 

This dual nature is perfectly represented in microcosm with the latest October 1964 issue:


by Paul E. Wenzel (note the obscured "September 1964")

The first thing you might notice is that the issue was clearly intended to have a September date.  IF went to a monthly schedule in August (after years as a bi-monthly), but there was trouble at the printers, and things got delayed.

When the issue finally came, it was very much a mixed bag, with trouble appearing right from the start:

The Castle of Light, by Keith Laumer


by Jack Gaughan

Within the pages of IF, Keith Laumer's name is inextricably linked with that of his creation, Retief, that sardonic super-spy in diplomat's clothing.  What began as a more tongue-in-cheek version of Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" is becoming a tired series of retreads.  This particular story involves an invasion by the squamous Groaci, who take legal possession of a planet by landing 50,000 troops in cities abandoned by the native populace during a global religious ceremony.  The piece rambles, and the jokes — like the characters — are flatter than usual.

Two stars.

Mad Man, by R. A. Lafferty

The ever-whimsical Lafferty offers up a piece about androids who only attain genius capability when given their daily dose of anger enzyme.  Said extraction is provided by a group of human individuals kept thoroughly miserable through poor working conditions and constant aggravation by paid actors.  But when one android develops a kinship for her donor, the formerly angry man's heart melts, and his biochemistry becomes useless.  Can a replacement be found?

I imagine some will like this story.  I found it contrived, cruel, and rather pointless.

Two stars.

Gremmie's Reef, by Hayden Howard


by Virgil Finlay

In which a teenage surfer is delighted to find a perfect wave break on a formerly unpromising beach, thanks to a new reef.  Turns out the reef is an alien biological probe, and as might be expected, it's not a friendly one.

The surfing scenes are nicely rendered, but the third-person omniscient viewpoint, the shrieky characters, and the Twilight Zone ending all suggested a young novice of a writer.  Imagine my surprise when I checked my notes and found that Hayden Howard has been writing for more than a decade, and I've even covered one of his stories before!

Nice try, but it's another two.

Rescue Mission, by Kit Reed

Science teacher goes on sabbatical to the mountains and finds his cottage besieged with bugs.  Turns out they are the servants of Mavna, the alien beauty who resides one cottage over, and she is using the crawlies to send the prof a message: (paraphrased) "Help me fend off these three oafs I'm staying with so I can sacrifice myself for the operation of our interstellar matter transmitter!"

Reed, an author I'm quite fond of, has written exclusively for F&SF since she started half a decade ago.  This rather silly piece would fit better in that magazine.  That it wasn't published there is not surprising — it's probably the weakest story Reed has produced.

Two stars.

Monster Tracks, by Robert E. Margroff

The last piece of short fiction in the issue is by a genuinely new author, about a boy raised in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by aliens.  They came in "peace", disguised as tourists, bringing gifts and cute pets, but it was all a ploy.  Their gifts were bombs, their luggage was guns, and their pets are poison.  Our young protagonist is almost taken in by a cute rabbit-like creature before being saved by his savvy uncle.

Not much to this one.  Two stars.

Farnham's Freehold (Part 3 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

"Where's the split?" I hear you ask.  So far, this issue has been a solid disappointment — how could it be a mixed bag?

Well, editor Fred Pohl got a ringer.

Robert Heinlein is one of the masters of the field with dozens of classic titles to his name.  To be sure, his record has been tarnished a bit lately by such substandard works as Stranger in a Strange Land and Podkayne of Mars.  Moreover, the first installment of his latest serial, Farnham's Freehold, got off to a stultifying start.

But then it got better.  In Part 1, Hubert Farnham and his family (including his house-servant and his side-girlfriend) are whisked thousands of years into the future thanks to a new Russkie bomb.  That first bit reads like a cross between a libertarian screed and the Boy Scout Handbook.  But in Part 2, we meet the inheritors of the atomically ravaged Earth, the dark-skinned peoples of Africa and India.  Hugh and co. are made privileged slaves — except for Joseph, Hugh's servant.  His Black skin makes him a de facto member of the ruling caste, and he is afforded the privileges thereof.  We learn a lot about the new society, and this section is genuinely interesting.

Part 3 more-or-less ends satisfactorily.  It is all about Hugh's attempt to escape his gilded cage along with mistress Barbara and their newly born twin sons.  While his first attempts end in failure (and this part is not unlike the middle section of Have Spacesuit Will Travel — thrilling but ultimately pointless), Hugh's kindly master ends up sending him and his family back in time to just before the Bomb goes off, and they have a second chance at life.

It's a thrilling page-turner, and I liked the central message: decadence and depravity have nothing to do with color or national origin.  It all boils down to Lord Acton's dictum, "Power corrupts".  I especially appreciated that the story recognized the unequal status of Joseph, and does not condemn him for throwing his lot in with America's new rulers.  Whatever loyalty Joe had to Hugh, he has found his Earthly paradise — unfair to others, perhaps, but wasn't that just after a lifetime of discrimination?  Hugh is dismayed, but not surprised.  After all, whatever his libertarian aspirations, he was part of the problem.

I'd give this last part five stars except that the ending is awfully abrupt.  All told, I think the novel earns an aggregate of 3.75 stars and, if you can get through the beginning, suggests a return to form of the author.

Making Whole

This latest issue of IF reminds me of Analog a few years back, when the serials were generally good and the other material sub-par (I note with bemusement that while Heinlein's Farnham would fit stylistically in Analog, the editor of said mag would never allow a storyline where the Whites are slaves…) When all is computed, the magazine actually scores above the 3-star middle, which tells you how good the second half is compared to the first.

In any event, the vice of a split-personality magazine is also its virtue: if one can always count on one or more stories not being very good, one can also expect at least one nugget of gold. 

And wasn't my entire state founded on the search for such nuggets?


[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…]




[June 19, 1960] Half Measures (July 1960 IF Science Fiction)

I'm glad science fiction digests haven't gone the way of the dodo.  There's something pleasant about getting a myriad of possible futures in a little package every month.  You can read as much or as little as you like at a time.  The short story format allows the presentation of an idea without too much belaboring.

Every month, I get several magazines in the mail: Astounding and Fantasy and Science Fiction are monthlies; Galaxy and IF are bi-monthlies, but since they're owned and edited by the same folks, they essentially comprise a single monthly.  I don't have subscriptions to the other two digests of note, Amazing and Fantastic (again, both run by the same people); they just aren't worth it, even if they occasionally publish worthy stuff.

This month, IF showed up last; hence, it is the last to be reviewed.  As usual, it consists mostly of moderately entertaining stories that weren't quite good enough to make it into Galaxy.  Let's take a look:

In a Body is the lead novella by J.T. McIntosh, and it's frustrating as all get out.  I often like McIntosh, though others find him competently forgettable.  This particular story has all the makings of a great one: shape-changing alien is shipwrecked on Earth and must find a soulmate to survive.  She adopts human form and chooses a man afflicted with leukemia to be her husband–but he's already betrothed to another.  In the hands of Theodore Sturgeon, this could have been a classic.  Even had McIntosh just given it a good rewrite, showing more and telling less, it would have easily garnered four of five stars.  As is, it is readable, even compelling, but it could have been much more.

Psycho writer Robert Bloch's Talent, on the other hand, is perfect as is.  Featuring a boy with an extraordinary talent for mimicry, Talent is one of those stories that starts intriguingly and descends slowly into greater horror.  The style is nicely innovative, too.  This piece is easily the highlight of the issue.

It is followed by one of the lesser lights: Time Payment by Sylvia Jacobs, a rather incoherent tale about a device that allows one to time travel to the future.. sort of.  Really, one just lives one's life normally, but with no lasting memory of living, until the destination time is reached.  Then, the recollections all flood in.  It doesn't make a lot of sense.

The prolific and not-untalented Jim Harmon offers us The Last Trespasser, a 3-star tale about the humanity's encounter with a race of beneficial symbiotes and the one fellow who finds himself unable to take on an alien "Rider."  It's a little uneven, and the reveal doesn't quite make sense, but I liked his creative prediction of future slang.

Usually reliable Fred Pohl has an uninspired entry called The Martian in the Attic, about a rather nebbishy would-be blackmailer who discovers that the inventor behind many of the wonders of the Modern Age actually had help from a pet alien.  It feels archaic. 

The Non-Electronic Bug, by newcomer E. Mittleman, is a bog-standard psi-endowed card sharking tale better suited to the pages of mid-1950's Astounding than a modern magazine.  It is in English, however, and perhaps Mr. Mittleman will improve with time.

Capping off this issue is Hayden Howard's Murder beneath the Polar Ice, a talky, technical thriller involving an American Navy frogman and the Soviet listening post he investigates in the Bering Strait.  Howard has been in hibernation as a writer for seven years after a short stint penning tales for the defunct Planet Stories, and Murder doesn't herald an auspicious re-awakening. 

And that brings us to the end of our journey through July 1960's magazines.  F&SF is the clear winner, at 3.5 stars to IF's and Astounding's 2.5s.  It's hard to award a "best story"–it may well be Bloch's Talent, but it might also be It is not My Fault from F&SF.  I think I'll give the nod to the former.

Finally, out of the 20 stories that appeared in the Big Three, just three were penned by women.  Unless it turns out "Mr." Mittleman is a woman.  That's actually a number we haven't seen since February.  Here's hoping we break 15% in the months to come!