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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 20, 1967] An Analog of Analog (August 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

July 20, 2022 Gideon Marcus 5 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Imitation is…

I think it's safe to say that, for almost twenty years there have been three Big Science Fiction Magazines. Each aims at a specific branch of the scientification fandom. For instance, John Campbell's Analog (formerly Astounding) is at once the hardest of the Big Mags, focusing on near-future gizmo tech or sweeping galactic epics with a scientific core, and also one of the softest, given John's weakness for psi stories.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction covers the literary end of the STF spectrum, and it also veers into the outright fantastical (q.v. the masthead). Galaxy navigates a sort of middle path between the two.

But the most recent issue of FS&F had me wondering exactly which magazine I was reading again, for this month, Ed Ferman's publication feels a lot like Campbell's. Perhaps writers have finally answered FS&F's plea for harder works, or maybe Ferman finally had a sufficient number of such pieces to fill (most of) an issue. Either way, it's an interesting departure, especially with the increased art throughout. Does it work? Let's find out!

by Ronald Walotsky

Nuts, Bolts, and Dragons

Reduction in Arms, by Tom Purdom

My good friend Tom Purdom offers up this fascinating piece set in the early '80s. The superpowers have bound themselves by the Treaty of Peking to curtail the development and implementation of terrible weapons. But there is always the suspicion that one side or another is working on some version of a "ninety-five plus virus"–one that will wipe out most of a non-incoluated population.

Sure enough, American agents are tipped off when a Soviet biologist, supposed to be a patient in a specialized "role-play" treatment center, is found cavorting with ladies at a bar 30 miles away. A raid is authorized. Between hostile Soviets and rogue team members, the investigation quickly becomes fraught with peril.

Tom himself has this to say about the tale:

After I got out of the army in 1961 I became very interested in arms control and disarmament. I did a lot of reading on the subject and ended up writing two articles for the Kiwanis magazine (a good middle market for a new writer). An opportunity to write an article for Playboy didn't work out but I got to interview some of the people I'd been reading.

Fred Pohl suggested I write a story on the subject for Galaxy. I didn't think I could handle the technical stuff needed for a story about detecting nuclear weapons so I decided to write about biological weapons which seemed like they might be the next big threat. Microbiology labs, in addition, can be hidden in all sorts of small spaces. I decided to focus on a treaty banning secret research because I had come to the conclusion we tended to run the arms race against ourselves. Our people thought up a possibility and we had to work on it because the Russians might be working on it. If we could determine they weren't, both sides could avoid another cycle in the arms race.

I picked a mental health facility as the hiding place because it raised interesting human and moral issues. The story revolves around ethical and political issues instead of a duel between inspection technologies and evasion technologies. The programmed environment therapy seemed like a natural extension of Pavlovian conditioning.

Fred Pohl rejected the story. My agent, Scott Meredith, tried it on Redbook and Esquire with near misses at both places. The fiction editor at Esquire said he wanted to buy it but he was overruled by higher ups.

The story was a novelette, about ten thousand words. Playboy said they'd buy it if I could cut it in half. I did but they rejected it. Ed Ferman at F&SF liked the short version but felt it needed to be longer. So I expanded it to its original length. He bought it and now it's the August cover story. One of the peak moments in my writing career, so far.

The story grew out of intense, solid research and some deep thinking on the whole problem of arms control. When I finished it, I felt I had summarized and dramatized the key issues and dilemmas. Perhaps the sweeping treaty in the story isn't very plausible. We live in a time when the advance of technology makes serious arms control seem a necessity–so necessary even the politicians will have to see it. Science fiction explores What might happen if? The If may seem unlikely, but is still worth exploring.

I originally called the story "1980". Ed Ferman asked for a change and I thought Reduction in Arms had a nice military clatter. I also suggested War and Peace and A Farewell to Arms but he preferred Reduction in Arms.

There's no question that Tom has gotten a feather in his cap for the placement of this tale. I will say that, although I found the concept interesting, it suffers for being an action piece told in third-person by a largely uninvolved party. Visceral immediacy would have given the story more punch.

Still, it was interesting to see a Reynolds-esque thriller outside of Analog— and without the nardy slang Reynolds employs.

Three stars.

by Gahan Wilson

The Conflict, by Ilya Varshavsky

Here is an import from the Soviet Union, about the large and small scale strife between humans and their increasingly sapient "servants".

I think it loses something in translation. Two stars.

The Baron's Dog, by L. J. T. Biese

When an unemployed governess in Italy is offered 25,000 lira a month to walk a Transylvanian wolfhound, what's a girl to think? Especially when the employer is tall, dark, handsome…and strictly enjoins against photography of his pet?

I found this tale delightful, such a nice contrast from all the creeping horror that such a setup normally would have entailed. It's not quite Analogian, but it is good. And if L.J.T. Biese isn't a woman, I'll eat my hat.

Four stars.

Soft Come the Dragons, by Dean R. Koontz

Koontz is a brand new author, and he offers up the tale of a far-off world, the miners who live in fear upon it, and the gossamer dragons that turn beholders to stone. It's all rather metaphorical and lyrical and not quite sensical, rather as if Koontz spent the night reading Zelazny's works and then tried his hand at it.

I'd say it works more than it doesn't, but Koontz' rawness definitely shows through. Three stars.

Earthwoman, by Reginald Bretnor

Will Adamson, born on a distant world, is human in all qualities save one: he and his race are possessed of telepathy, knit into a consciousness collective. He is sent to Earth to discern how it is that we can love without the possibility of true connection. And if we truly be human, is there an innate telepathic skill just waiting to be awakened?

Bretnor usually write silly stories or bad puns, so this more serious piece is a welcome change. I found it a touch too affected, but otherwise enjoyable. And definitely something that could have appeared in Analog.

Three stars.

by Ed Emshwiller

Mosquito, by Theodore L. Thomas

F&SF's story seeder suggests mosquitos might be laden with vitamins and inoculants such that their bite becomes a beneficial distribution method. As usual, he misses some important aspects of his invention. To wit, mosquito bites are not controllable in distribution or quantity. And even if they provide needed drugs and nutrients, they still aren't pleasant to receive.

Two stars.

Bugs, by Charles L. Harness

Speaking of bugs, Charles L. Harness (who used to team up with Thomas under the pen name Leonard Lockhard) has authored this story of living bugs employed as espionage bugs.

There's a lot of "as you know" explanations, and the smugness with which the Americans subvert their KGB counterparts is pure Analog.

Mildly interesting, but just a bit too glib as well as prolix. Two stars.

The Bubble, by J. W. Schutz

The destruction of humanity's first and only space station has spooked the government, and now they've decided to pull the plug on space investment. Deane Aircraft, the largest space contractor, is faced with a pivotal decision: retool back to making conventional vehicles, or become the first private space presence. The linchpin to the success of the operation isn't Theodor Deane, President of the company, nor the thousands of engineers he employs. It's certainly not Theodor's greedy wife, Lillian, nor her paramour, Briggs, who is also Theodor's financial wiz.

It's Georgia Lighton, Theodor's secretary, who comes up with all the brilliant, cost-saving ideas.

The whole thing reads like a cross between Silverberg's Regan's Planet and a soap opera. Again, very Analog.

Not great, but Analog. Three stars.

Moondust, the Smell of Hay, and Dialectical Materialism, by Thomas M. Disch

The first man on the Moon, Mikhail Andreivich Karkhov, is dying. Does he die for science? For love? For the state? Or something else entirely?

A beautiful, moving piece, made all the more poignant by the recent twin tragedies that claimed the lives of three astronauts and one cosmonaut.

Five stars.

by Ed Emshwiller

Argent Blood, by Joe L. Hensley

A man is being treated in a ward for the incurably insane. Between fits of "disturbance" he begins to mistrust the charitable nature of his doctor and nurse. But he has a plan…

A good, atmospheric piece. Three stars.

Kaleidoscope in the Sky, by Isaac Asimov

In a rare return to topics astronomical, Dr. A. submits a nonfiction piece on the moons of Mars, and how these extremely low flying rocks would appear to a surface observer. If, indeed, they are even suitably placed to see them, for unlike our Moon, Phobos and Deimos orbit so close to their planet that Martian pole-dweller could not see them.

Good stuff. Four stars.

Quick with His Hands, by Avram Davidson

Capping things off, this vignette of sibling rivalry on Mars, ably told and with a tearjerking finale.

Four stars.

Doing the math

So, did F&SF's experiment in apery succeed? Well, there were high points and low points, but the overall impression I was left with was favorable. We'll just have to compare it to the real thing in just over a week to see if Brand X beat the competition!

(Speaking of kooky stunts, it looks like F&SF is joining forces with several other organizations to hold a writing contest. I wish them the best of luck, although the last time a magazine (Galaxy in that case) did this, in the early '50s, they got bupkis, and Fred Pohl had to write as a novice under a pseudonym to give them anything worth publishing.)

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Magazine/Anthology

[June 20, 1967] Yours sincerely, wasting away (July 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

June 20, 2022 Gideon Marcus 3 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

When I get older, losing my hair

Age afflicts us all. I remember once having a beautiful mop of curly hair with a line that was two inches from my brows. Now, the front is racing toward the back, and my only compsensation is the flourishing stuff coming out my ears.

Of course, people age in different ways. Robert Preston sang in last year's musical hit, I do! I do!–"Men of forty go to town. Women go to pot," but in my experience, it's quite the opposite. I'd like to think that I'm "entering my prime," but who knows?

Science fiction magazines are going through a midlife crisis, too. The oldest of them, Amazing, turned 41 this year. But is it "delightfully witty" and "wise"? Has it "stood the test of time"? In fact, the magazine that Gernsback built is consistently the lowest rated of the SF digests, packed mostly with cheap reprints. How about Analog, neé Astounding, rapidly approaching its Jack Benny birthday (he's eternally 39, you see)? Well, I suppose it depends on whom you ask, but I think it's safe to say that Campbell's mag is definitely in a rut, fossilized into the features it had some fifteen years ago.

Even the newer crop has had a stormy adolescence. Galaxy is 17. Once a brilliant child, it is now an often insipid teenager. If it stays this staid, it may not make it to voting age. And how about Fantasy and Science Fiction, which just left its minority this year? The venerable mag, the most literary of its kind, has had an unstable family life, with revolving editors through its teen years. As a result, the wrinkles are already showing in this 18 year old.

Ed Ferman seems to be aware of his institution's aging. Indeed, this month's issue, which begins and ends with (and devotes half its words to) the subject of growing old, seems a deliberate acknowledgement of the predicament.

by Jack Gaughan

The Day Before Forever, by Keith Laumer

Steve Dravek, late a denizen of the 20th Century, finds himself on a street near the end of the 21st. Only shreds of memory remain, enough to give him a sense of identity, but no idea how he arrived in the future (young again, when he had been middle aged) nor why the black uniformed mooks of Eternity Incorporated (ETORP) are after him.

After being beset by "the lowest of the low" in a park, he is apprehended by "Jess", self-proclaimed "highest of the low", for purposes unknown. Dravek uses force and wit to turn the situation around, making Jess take him to the heart of ETORP's facility on Long Island in pursuit of the truth…and himself.

Forever uses the latest gimmick everyone seems to have latched onto lately: cryonics. That's the idea that one can be flash frozen before death in the hopes that any malady one is suffering from can be cured in the future. Fred Pohl, editor of Galaxy and IF has gone into it in a big way, but now it's showing up here, too.

Anyway, there are more twists and turns than a new Los Angeles freeway interchange, and a lot of it gets explained in the end rather than shown as the story goes, but it's a readable potboiler, the kind Laumer can crank out in his sleep.

Three stars.

Balgrummo's Hell, by Russell Kirk

60+ years ago, Laird Balgrummo was sealed in his decaying manor house after committing an unspeakable crime against humanity and nature. Now the world is waiting for him to shuffle off this mortal coil…save for Horgan, a greedy thief who would rob Balgrummo of his fortune of paintings while he sleeps.

Except Balgrummo sleeps not. He lurks.

There are no surprises in this story, which reads like something out of Weird Tales' early days. But the telling is delicious.

My favorite story of the issue: four stars.

Alter Ego, by Hugo Correa

If you could make an identical new you, one unhindered by all of your life's wrong choices, who would be the better person? You, or the android duplicate?

More a philosophical piece than science fiction, I found it stayed with me. Three stars.

Encounter in the Past, by Robert Nathan

On the other hand, Nathan's story of the rediscovery of a Mesozoic human civilization doesn't make a lot of sense. I reread the short piece a few times, and I still can't make heads or tails of it.

Two stars.

The Master's Thesis, by David Madden

Worse still is this pointless piece about a Professor Swinnard and the young man who insists on afflicting him with his master's thesis. The story goes 'round in circles as Swinnard is increasingly disarmed and discomfited by the student's rudeness and the haste with which he finishes his project…yet I am at a loss to understand whence stems the horror, nor what the final thesis is actually about.

Am I stupid? Is the point obvious to anyone else?

One star.

Flight Between Realities, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Buck's poem from the standpoint of an omniscient being sipping her sherry is a bit hard to parse, but seems to be of great moment.

Three stars.

The Sea Monster and the Mayor of New York City, by Gahan Wilson

On the perils to a monster's digestion due to the consumption of a fraught metropolis.

Frivolous. Two stars.

Twelve Point Three Six Nine, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor explains the foolishness of associating significance to chance juxtapositions of numbers by creating his own, tying together the relation of the lunar and solar calendars to the Bible.

It's cute, and I found some of the historical bits interesting. Three stars.

The Vitanuls, by John Brunner

In the early 21st Century, the birthrate has slackened. But new births are not unknown, and as a kind of medical immortality is introduced, more and more babies are born healthy but vacant. Void of intellect or animus. Could there be a connection?

This story has a lot of problems. Not only is the piece structurally flawed, telegraphing its ending from the beginning but taking forever to get there, but it also doesn't seem to understand how souls work. Set in India, there is much reference to Hindu reincarnation and such. But the story suggests that there is a limited number of human souls, and by cheating death, we're robbing the young of life.

I'd always understood that, per Hinduism, animals and plants and…everything…had souls, all of which could serve in a human form. Even if that were not the case, I think Brunner's math is off. Yes, it's true that half of the people who've ever lived are alive today, but if the living outnumber the dead, it won't be because of immortality, but simple birthrate. And does the store of human souls grow over time, or was it fixed, like the memory store of a mainframe, at a specific number deemed sufficient a million years ago, but now inadequate?

Two stars for this poorly thought out shock tale.

Will you still need me? Will you still read me?

I understand summer is when magazines put out all their inferior stuff since readership is at its lowest ebbs during the dog days. Still, if this latest issue (which scores just 2.7 on the Starometer) be any indication of where the magazine is headed, quality-wise, I have distinct concerns that it may never make it to the ripe old age of 64…

by Gahan Wilson

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 20, 1967] Field trips (June 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

May 20, 2022 Gideon Marcus 4 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

A peach of a visit

Here we are again in Atlanta, Gateway to the South. Our last visit to the Dogwood City was at the invitation of Georgia Tech, who asked me, as a science fiction writer, to discuss predictions of the future. Particularly, they wanted my opinion on the dangers of overpopulation, pollution, and nuclear annihilation–and what might be done to avoid catastrophe.

The talk went off rather well, and so now I'm at a conference addressing a bevy of biologists on the nascent science of exobiology, or more accurately, how aliens have figured in science fiction, both in our solar system and without.

I must confess, there is a great feeling of accomplishment in being paid good money to talk about the things I love. And the pastries are free, too!

A peach of an issue

Accompanying me on this trip is the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It has made a most pleasant companion (for the most part). Let's take a tour, shall we?

by Bert Tanner

Death and the Executioner, by Roger Zelazny

First up, we have the sequel to Dawn in what is clearly a serial by another name (like Poul Anderson's The Star Fox). As such, I will try to judge each piece as part of a great whole.

And what an excellent part! Zelazny returns us to an unnamed world that is nevertheless explicitly not Earth (betrayed by its two moons). Millennia ago, its colonists split into two castes: The Firsts, blessed with psychic powers, have effective immortality by swapping consciousnesses into other bodies. Everyone else lives in enforced medieval squalor patterned after Hindu tradition. The Firsts are, of course, associated with the Indian pantheon.

One rebel First, name of Sam, has styled himself the Buddha and is reintroducing Gautama's creed. In this installment, the First who has made himself Yama, God of Death, arrives at Sam's purple grove to deliver a fatal message from Kali, head of the Firsts.

Just last article, Jessica Dickinson Goodman lamented that there were precious few f&sf stories that didn't derive their settings from a strongly European tradition. Zelazny has shown that the subcontinent is as fertile a source for inspiration as any other. And where Herbert's Persia-as-SF (Dune) fell flat for me, mostly due to Herbert's inexpertise as an author, in the hands of Zelazny, ancient India-turned-scientifiction sparkles. Plus, there's lots of mighty thews-type combat for those who are into that sort of thing (paging Ms. Buhlert.)

Five stars for this segment.

The Royal Road to There, by Robert M. Green, Jr.

The Jackson family is on a seemingly endless freeway, headed for the unveiling of their uncle's will. Said uncle was an eccentric who kept a horse-and-buggy factory going long after the automobile had become ascendant.

In a Twilight Zone-ish bit, the freeway ensnares the family, depositing them in the town his uncle built, where they are presented with a most unique offer, which may just require them to give up their gas-guzzling beast.

Is the story anti-progress? Or does it simply advocate smarter progress? My brother, Lou, still laments the removal of the little red trains that used to knit Los Angeles together. Now, the San Gabriel Valley is a basin of smog and a snarl of endless traffic. If there had been more sensible city planning and incorporation of public transit and rail, perhaps it wouldn't be this way.

Three stars.

Gentlemen, Be Seated, by Charles Beaumont

In the future, comedy is dead. It seems the progressive types who were offended by racial humor and violent slapstick inadvertently caused the extinction of laughter. It's up to a secret society, armed with bad puns and blackface, to restore hope to mankind.

I hate to speak ill of the dead (Beaumont died on my 48th birthday this year), but this story is as bad as it sounds.

One star.

"…But for the Grace of God", by Gilbert Thomas

A predator of the masculine variety comes across a much more capable predator of the feminine variety. A bit too long-winded and predictable to be truly effective, but I appreciate what the author is doing, nevertheless.

Three stars.

Non-Time Travel, by Isaac Asimov

Every so often, the Good Doctor finds himself so at a loss for ideas, that he picks a pointless subject to expound upon. His piece on the International Date Line is pleasant enough, but it could just as easily have been a paragraph long.

Three stars.

The First Postulate, by Gerald Jonas

On a remote Mexican island, where the Mayan tradition still runs strong, the first two deaths due to natural causes in over forty years of worldwide immortality have been reported. The scientific team dispatched there encounters increasing resistance from the locals, who ultimately fire their base to retrieve the corpses. Is it a kind of insanity that drives the indios? Or is it a natural reaction to an unnatural situation?

Readable, vivid, if not particularly memorable. Three stars.

A Discovery in the Woods, by Graham Greene

Lastly, another after-the-bomb tale, told from the perspective of a band of bandy youths who encounter a house of the giants. This one is all in the telling, a lovely tale that reminds me of Edgar Pangborn's Davy.

Four stars.

Miles to go before I sleep

So ends a perfectly suitable (with one small exception) issue. My only real complaint is that I finished it on the flight out! Luckily, I've got another book reserved for the flight back, which you'll hear about next month.

In the meantime, please wish me luck for tonight's speech!

by Gahan Wilson

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 18, 1967] Bright Lights (May 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction

April 18, 2022 Gideon Marcus 7 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Tinsel Town

Last weekend, the world's greatest stars and movie-makers assembled in Santa Monica for the annual celebration of the best the silver screen has to offer. It was a cavalcade of prominent names, from Sidney Poitier to Lee Remick to Julie Christie to Omar Sharif. Some of the contestants were unfamiliar (Herb Alpert has a short animated film?) Some were surprising but welcome in their inclusion (like The Wargame for best documentary). Some were inevitable (If Grand Prix hadn't won Best Sound and Best Editing, I'd have written letters…) Two titans towered all the rest (Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf and A Man for All Seasons–both of which I still haven't seen yet).

And throughout it all, Bob Hope was host, narrator, and satirist. Lorelei observed that this time, the jokes about recognition still eluding the aging comedian seemed more pointed and bitter than usual. Maybe it's time he got some kind of lifetime achievement award, as did Isaac Asimov at a recent Worldcon…

Print City

The latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction features a similar assemblage of luminaries–and it's not even an "All-Star Issue"! Presented in a format that has been standard and familiar since 1949, this month's read was as comforting and entertaining as two primetime hours at the Oscars.

With the added benefit that one can reread favorite stories!

by Ronald Walotsky

Planetoid Idiot, by Phyllis Gotlieb

Our first star is Phyllis Gotlieb, a woman writer who joined the SF ranks one year after Mses. Rosel George Brown, Kit Reed, and Pauline Ashwell. Her latest is a fine novella in the Analog tradition–indeed, it reads like something Katherine MacLean might have penned.

A mutli-species spaceship has landed on the ocean planed of Xirifor. Their goal is to save the indigenous race from a pandemic of gill rot such that they can better represent themselves when representatives of the Galactic Federation come to negotiate for the pearls the aliens harvest.

The crew of the contact ship are a beautifully heterogenous group: Hrufa, an eight foot telepathic amphibian is their leader, keeping the rest of the team in order, if not harmony. Thlyrrh is a protoplasmic being with a shape-shifting carapace; it can do almost anything…except compose an original thought. And then there are the two humans, or "solthrees" (I really like that phrase): Olivia the exobiologists, and Berringer, the generalist.

Despite their vast collective knowledge, they are hindered in their task by politics, internal and external. But in the end, working together, they deduce a solution that is completely scientific and plausible.

It's all very satisfactory, and if I have any complaint, it is only the title, which I found misleading (I thought "planetoid idiot" would be a play on "village idiot"). Definitely a candidate for the next volume of Rediscovery.

Four stars.

Sleeping Beauty, by Terry Carr

It's nice to see Ace Books publisher, Terry Carr, slinging the pen again. His latest story is a beautifully written if rather inconsequential tale of a landless prince, galloping across Europe looking for that most endangered of modern creatures: the single (and wealthy) princess. There is, of course, a sting in the story's tale.

You'll forget it soon after you read it, but you'll enjoy the journey. Three stars.

Safe at Any Speed, by Larry Niven

If Ralph Nader has his way, all cars of the future will be like the one presented in this, the latest tale to take place in Niven's "Known Space". It's his most humorous piece, almost Sheckleyesque, and it accomplishes a lot in a brief space.

Four stars.

Fifteen Miles, by Ben Bova

Two years ago, Air Force astronaut Chet Kinsman was tested in orbit when he had to go mano-a-mano with a Communist spacewoman. Now Kinsman is on the moon, haunted by the memory of the lady he had to slay. Will his guilt get in the way of his rescuing a fellow astronaut trapped in a lunar crevice?

This is another grounded SF tale I'm surprised (but pleased) to find in F&SF. I've not yet found Bova brilliant (though Victoria Silverwolf has), but I always enjoy him.

Three stars.

The Red Shift, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas explains in his nonfiction vignette how quasars, which must be extragalactic yet near objects, give lie to the Doppler shift, and thus rewrite physics. Specifically, he says that the redshift of quasars indicates that they are far away, but that radio astronomy locates them much closer to Earth.

I do not know how he makes this assertion, as it is radio astronomy that detects these quasars at all–including their red shift. According to the article I read in Britannica's 1966 year book of knowledge, quasars are very interesting in that they point up an asymmetry between the young universe (quasar-rich) and the curent universe (quaser-poor). But there's nothing that suggests quasars exist close by, or that there's anything wrong with Doppler.

There does seem to be something wrong, however, with Thomas.

One star.

Cyprian's Room, by Frances Oliver

Onward to the second woman-penned story, by an author about whom our editor knows virtually nothing. A pity, because her first story is a good one. Romantic Hilda Wendel takes a room in the big city hoping to meet someone interesting in her boarding house. She finds a tubercular artist whose views on art are maddeningly contradictory, yet irresistably compelling.

Is he just an avante-garde…or something otherworldly?

A high three.

Interview with a Lemming, by James Thurber

This putative dialogue between man and lemming, to indulge in adjectives solely beginning with "i" is inconsequential, irritating, and inspid–particularly the thinks-itself-clever ending.

Two stars.

Where is Thy Sting, by Emil Petaja

One of the last fertile men in a post-atomized Earth, racked with suicidal desires, must be kept alive at all costs, even if it means subverting his reality.

I'd have liked this story more had I not read one so similar to it (The Best is Yet to Be) in the pages of this same magazine not many months before.

Two stars.

Times of Our Lives, by Isaac Asimov

All about time zones. I actually found this atlas-derived article educational and interesting.

Four stars.

Fill in the Blank, by Ron Goulart

Finally, the return of a perennial star with a series with more installments than James Bond. Max Kearney is dragooned into investigating what appears to be an infestation of poltergeists. The culprits are all-too-temporal…but it doesn't mean magic's not involved!

It's funnier in the latter half. Three stars.

House Lights Return

By strict mathematical computation, the latest F&SF only scores an average three star rating. Nevertheless, the brilliance of the first piece, the general competence of most of the rest, and the edification provided by the Good Doctor leaves a most pleasant impression.

Let's keep our stars around for a while. They make good illumination.

by Gahan Wilson

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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 20, 1967] Vistas near and far (April 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

March 20, 2022 Gideon Marcus 7 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

I see you!

We have now entered a phase of the Space Race where there's enough stuff in orbit that other stuff in orbit can take pictures of it. Not just deliberate rendeszvous' like dual missions of Gemini 6 and 7, but snapshots of opportunity, like Gemini 11's photo of the Soviet Proton 3.

Last week, NASA released perhaps the most extraordinary example of this nature: the first snapshot of a spacecraft sent to the Moon…by a spacecraft sent to the Moon! Lunar Orbiter 3, launched early last month, has been busily mapping our celestial neighbor, searching for the choicest landing spots for Apollo (whose first manned mission, I've just learned, has been delayed until next year due to the Apollo 1 fire.) In the course of its surveying, Lunar Orbiter 3 caught a glimpse of Surveyor 1, the first American soft-lander. It all makes the Moon feel that much closer.

While the newspaper brings us tales of science fiction-made-fact, the stf mags continue to provide the visions of science-to-be. The latest edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction offers several visions of the future: some poetic, some bleak, and some not really worth reading. Good thing I'm here to tell you which is which, huh?

A pail of tomorrows

by Gray Morrow

Dawn, by Roger Zelazny

Lord Siddhartha, the Buddha, arrives as the capital for a bit of revelry. There, he is greeted with honors, for he is a prince of this land, redolent with the smells of spice, the bustle of medieval commerce, the prayers of the devoted. At first glance, Dawn seems as if it will be a pure fantasy in a richly drawn world. But there are signs that underneath the veneer of ancient India lies a strictly scientific core.

Indeed, we learn quite soon that Siddhartha is actually Sam, one of the original colonists on this world, a planet whose technology has been deliberately restrained by the cabal of the Firsts and their lackeys, the Masters. Their firm grip lies in their stranglehold on immortality, facilitated by their ability to transmigrate souls from body to body at will.

Sam wants to bring progress to the world. Can he and his band of rebels undo the work of centuries?

Zelazny's latest novella is reportedly the first part of a longer work, to be titled "Lord of Light". If it is as expertly rendered as this fine start, then it'll be a good read, indeed!

Four stars.

The Two Lives of Ben Coulter, by Larry Eisenberg

"The greatest disappointment of Ben Coulter's life was his inability to play the violin well."

So begins the tale of a fellow who turned instead to engineering for the purpose, failing to find it there until he co-developed a technique for the remote control of a living being. Perhaps, at last, he could program mastery into himself.

Most science fiction authors take inspiration from the science news of the day. Some, like Doc Smith, are actually scientists. Larry Eisenberg is perhaps unique in the SF community for extrapolating a scientifiction application of his own invention, the remote controlled pacemaker.

His story, if not quite as personally affecting as his crowning scientific achievement, is a pleasant little piece, nonetheless.

Three stars.

Cloud Seeding, by Theodore L. Thomas

In this fictionless vignette, Thomas suggests combining cloud seeding with chemical distribution. After all, if you're putting stuff in the sky to make rain, why not use fertilizer or poison of what have you.

Thomas forgets that the seeds for the raindrops are necessarily uselessly tiny. I almost feel as though these little exercises are not to present interesting ideas, but are puzzles for the reader: spot the fallacy and win a hundred dollars!

Two stars.

by Gahan Wilson

Problems of Creativeness, by Thomas M. Disch

The 21st Century is an overcrowded, socialist paradise. Everyone is on the childless dole, unless they can prove themselves exceptional, finish college, or join the guerrila forces. Birdie Ludd, the least exceptional of young men, doesn't want to do any of these things. But for the love of Milly, pretty enough almost to be a movie star, he was willing to endure almost anything.

Less a story and more a slice-of-life from the perspective of an indolent youth, Problems relies mostly on a vivid stream-of-consciousness style and copious use of the first profanity I've read within F&SF's pages.

Three stars, I guess.

The Sword of Pell the Idiot, by Julian F. Grow

Farquhar Orpington-Pell, late a subaltern in Her Majesty's Own Midlothian Dragoons, falls in with a Western doctor on the late 19th Century range. Their crooked path takes them to a subterranean complex inhabited by aliens. Things Happen. Supposed-to-be-funny-but-just-tedious things, capped off by the rather insulting punchline that the transpirings inspired a much better, well known set of books.

Feh. One star.

"Virtue. 'Tis A Fugue!", by Patrick Meadows

An advanced world refuses the entreaties of humanity to join a terran federation. Professor Thomas Gunn, a musicologist, provides the key to reaching the hearts of the aliens. Their language is the culmination of tonality, you see, each sentence its own song. Our hyper-efficient, sound-codified speak was too declassé to appeal.

It's all a lot of "mun, mun" to me, and in any event, the revelation came out of nowhere. Indeed, Gunn's story and that of the contact team are completely unrelated until he suddenly appears on the planet in the story's last scenes.

Two stars.

A Matter of Scale, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor goes way out with his latest article. You know those "the sun is a beachball, and the planets are various small fruit several hundred feet away" models you read in all the science books for kids? He's decided to go one better, substituting atomic analogs so the distances can be more relatable.

I'm sure it was a fun exercise for him.

Three stars.

Randy's Syndrome, by Brian W. Aldiss

Lastly, another tale of the next, shoulder-to-shoulder, anti-utopian 21st Century. The foetuses of the world go on strike, refusing to be born into such an awful place. But is it really a mass strike of the unborn, happy in their womb world of racial memory and distorted, second-hand sensory inputs? Or is it some kind of planetary neurosis of the mothers?

Whatever it is, it's not science fiction, more a modern myth. Some might find it clever.

Two stars.

Under the Moon

After such a bright beginning, the April 1967 F&SF stumbles to a finish. I recognize that science fiction is cautionary as well as aspirational, but I feel one needs to say more than "this future we're heading toward is gonna stink..and by the way, the future is now."

The Zelazny is worth your time, however.

And, hey, at least the newspaper brings us pretty pictures!

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 12, 1967] Computerized Futures & Humanity (Out of the Unknown: Season Two)

March 12, 2022 Kris Vyas-Myall Leave a comment

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Computers seem to be appearing in everywhere these days, and now are coming into our schools.

For the last few months, the Brentwood School in Palo Alto, California have been spending 30 minutes a day being taught by specially rigged up IBM 1800s.

One screen is setup to display images, whilst information is relayed over the headphones. The children will then answer simple questions using their “light pen” to write answers on another screen. If they answer correctly, it will move on to the next problem. If they do not, it will attempt to reexplain the problem in a new way, to see if it can help the child understand.

This kind of teaching appears to be effective, although it is likely to be a while before it is commonplace. The computers are still very expensive and there were issues with them breaking down (even, if the kids brought in a “get well soon card” to one of them). However, this kind of future is exactly the type that is being talked about in the latest series of Out of the Unknown.

Returning to the Unknown

It feels to me that Irene Shubik was paying close attention to the response to last season. The most beloved stories of 1965’s series were probably Andover and the Android and The Midas Plague. As such the plays we have this season concentrate heavily on robotics, changes to the nature of humanity and scientific control of people’s lives.

Return of the Robots

Starting with our mechanical friends we get 4 tales of robots (although one I will address in a different section as not to spoil the twist occurring later in the episode). Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Shubik’s friendship and his fame in this arena, two of these tales are from Asimov which round off the season.

I have seen them both classified as comedies, however I would not place them within that genre. They are certainly not as laugh out loud funny as The Midas Plague was. Rather they are satires of human nature.

The first is Satisfaction Guaranteed (originally a Susan Calvin story but she has been removed, apparently so she could be used in the second tale’s frame without confusing the viewer) and concerns the creation of a humanoid servant to a housewife. At first, she is reticent about his presence but, as time goes on, she finds herself developing feelings. I had not been a fan of the original short story, but I found this one engaged me, particularly as I feel the ending is made more ambiguous and downbeat.

The second is even more impressive, The Prophet, adapted from Reason in Asimov’s famed I, Robot collection. In this episode, Susan Calvin tells an interviewer the story of robots on a space station developing a belief that the power source of the station is their Master and humans are merely inferior earlier models. The design work and performances on this are excellent, and the additions of the Calvin frame and religious touches to the robots’ ceremonies make for an interesting and thought provoking spin on an already much lauded tale.

Less successful is the adaptation of Larry Eisenberg’s Fastest Draw. It wasn’t a particularly noteworthy story to begin with (our John Boston gave it just two stars) and it doesn’t amount to much on screen either. Having a millionaire want to relive a western using automata doesn’t end up being much more than a stretched-out version of a plot you might see on Gunsmoke or The Virginian. There is so much talking and padding the appearance of The Marshall is not so much a great reveal as just relief that events are finally unfolding. I think Robots and Westerns are just not meant to mix, on screen at least.

Whilst robots are a major part of the series, we also have Frankenstein-esque tales of scientists changing what it means to be human.

Frankenstein Marks 2, 3, 4 and 5

The most obvious example being Frankenstein Mark II, and not just in name. It follows Anna, whose ex-husband has seemingly vanished. After investigating she discovers he has been part of an experiment to change his body to be perfectly adapted to spaceflight. The unfolding mystery and horrific elements of this episode are well done but there just isn’t quite enough meat on this story as I would have hoped.

Watching Too Many Cooks, part of me wondered if Larry Eisenberg came up with the pun first and built a story around it. Humanity is in competition with a race called “The Sentients” from Alpha Centauri, to improve the position of the Solar System a plan is put in place to secretly duplicate their most successful scientist, Dr. Andrew Cook. As with some of these other pieces it starts out strong but by the end, I am left wondering what the point of it all was. It raises a number of interesting moral questions but then just lets them sit there without any real exploration. I still enjoyed it overall, just feels a little like a missed opportunity.

From duplication of an individual to a rebirth. Second Childhood starts out in a very memorable fashion with a game show, where the rich can risk a million pounds to win a prize money cannot buy. When Charles wins the jackpot, he is able to undergo an experimental operation to regain his youth. It then becomes an interesting morality tale following Charles, in some ways reminding me of Wells’ Invisible Man. Unfortunately, the ending is the kind of obvious twist that reminds me of the forgettable joke stories we used to get during Avram Davidson’s tenure editing Fantasy & Science Fiction.

The final of this class of tales, Walk’s End, starts promisingly enough, with the unusual setting of an old people’s home, where something strange is happening to the residents. With the exception of some apocalyptic novels like Aldiss’ Greybeard, we don’t get many stories of old age in science fiction, here we get two. Whilst Second Childhood approaches it from the perspective of trying to recapture youth, this is about continuing old age, a very interesting topic given the current trend of people living longer. However, I felt it didn’t really develop anywhere and the ending was also less impactful than I believe was intended.

One interesting feature to note about these plays is they are all new for Out of the Unknown, even Too Many Cooks by Larry Eisenberg is an unpublished piece he submitted for adaptation. As in the first season, these seemed to also be the weakest of the stories, perhaps due to the writers not having as much material to work from?

However, the largest selection of tales this season are those where people find themselves in computerized futures, where their lives are no longer their own.

Tomorrow’s World

The Machine Stops opened the season and has rightly been acclaimed as among the best productions the show has yet done. Following closely E. M. Forster’s tale, humans live inside an environment completely controlled by The Machine, no one has to leave their rooms at all, they can make calls, learn, be entertained, give lectures and more all without standing up from their chairs. Whilst Vashti is content in this world, her son Kuno wants to explore life outside The Machine. It is a strongly constructed play, with beautiful design work, and a stand-out performance of Yvonne Mitchell as Vashti.

Curiously, in the Radio Times preview for this episode, it is stated that the set design was inspired by the Edwardian era as they felt the concerns were of the period. I personally think the idea of human disconnection due to over-reliance on machines has become more prescient, not less, as we enter the computer age, and this makes it even more a powerful piece for that.

Level Seven has an interesting history. This script was written by the much-acclaimed J. B. Priestley (famed for such works as The Good Companions, I Have Been Here Before and An Inspector Calls) for an unmade 1960 film adaptation of Mordecai Roshwald’s novel. This was purchased for the series, but it was too long and had a number of elements which would not work on TV. However, Priestley refused to make the edits, so it was up to Shubik to make the necessary changes in-between her producing work for the series.

In spite of this troubled genesis, it is an incredible and powerful play. It is a story of nuclear war, yet for much of the episode it is all kept at a safe tidy distance, as this is meant to be an impenetrable base for launching nuclear attacks from. The people live in this bubble as the realities of war are merely seen through screens and computer displays and they try to go on with their lives as the world above collapses.

One issue is that I could not help but compare it to The Machine Stops at times. Take these two sections of dialogue. First from The Machine Stops:

You talk as if God made The Machine. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men but men.

And then from Level 7:

We built the machine. We were very clever people, and the machines told us what to do and we did it.

I still think they are both strong and worthwhile plays, but it does highlight the limitations of choosing to concentrate on such similar themes in a single run of episodes

Talking of stories that feel familiar, I imagine anyone watching the series would be unsurprised to learn Tunnel Under The World comes from the pen of Frederik Pohl, responsible for last year’s Midas Plague. Rather than an unhappy man struggling to cope in a world where he is forced to consume, here he is forced to endure endless advertising. What makes the play interesting, from our perspective, is that we see the day repeats in almost exactly the same manner, only the nature of adverts he experiences changes, even if it is for the same few products. Mr. Pohl clearly doesn’t like the advertising industry much, but he knows how to spin a fascinating yarn about it and this goes in an unexpected direction for those not familiar with the original story.

On the other hand, I don’t have much to say about The World in Silence. Set at a Further Education College, students are now being taught by teaching machines. But following a realignment the students seem to develop a kind of hive mind and take over the college as part of a computer system in themselves. Much like the story it is adapted from, Six Cubed Plus One by John Rankine, I felt there wasn’t enough there to build a tale around and I had trouble maintaining interest in it (in spite of the wonderful Deborah Watling in the lead).

I did wonder if the same problems would plague The Eye (adapted from Private Eye by Henry Kuttner) with a story that is just discussing a possible murder case by watching it on a TV screen. The premise is that with someone’s life completely observed, the investigators can determine the guilt of anyone by simply watching through the events as they see them. But what they cannot know is what is truly in someone’s mind.

It did manage to use its format to its advantage and kept me more engaged than I expected, even if I felt the ending was a bit weak. It was not the strongest play Out of the Unknown has produced, but still very tightly constructed and well worth your time.

Lambda 1 I have saved reviewing until last as it is easily the strangest. Transport in the future is being performed by Tau, international journeys barely take any time by travelling directly through the Earth via atomic space. On its way between New York and London, the Tau ship Elektron, slips into the theoretical Omega phase and becomes stuck in atomic space The controllers in London attempt to find away to retrieve them, whilst the passengers find themselves in a realm of nightmares.

Lambda 1 was not a short story I had personally rated highly (although Mark Yon gave it 4 stars) but the uniqueness of this play from the others in 1966 makes it memorable and shocking. It is probably destined to be one of the most controversial of the series entries, where viewers will either love or hate it. Personally, I came down on the positive side, appreciating the attempt to do something different, even if I didn’t quite understand all of it.

Into the Known

So, a strong season overall; however, I do believe it could have benefited from more variety as we had in the first run. Robots and Orwellian fiction are a key part of SF, but we have seen this show can do space voyages, time travel or alien encounters just as well.

Another season has been already confirmed and it is planned to be broadcast in colour later this year. Whilst news has emerged that Shubik is moving on to running the BBC’s top anthology slot, The Wednesday Play, she has said she will not leave her current post until all the scripts are in place for a third series. This should hopefully avoid any delays and the future looks bright for Britain’s premiere science fiction television show.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 20, 1967] To Ashes (March Fantasy and Science Fiction)

February 20, 2022 Gideon Marcus 7 Comments

by Kaye Dee

Tasmania’s Black Tuesday

The poet Miss Dorothea Mackellar refers to Australia as a “sunburnt” country, but the recent devastation in Tasmania reminds us that Australia is also very much a “sun-burned” country.
Bushfire disasters are nothing new in Australia, but the horrific catastrophe of 7 February, which has already been dubbed “Black Tuesday”, ranks as one of the worst this country has experienced. In less than a day, 62 people were killed (the second largest number in the nation’s bushfire history) and more than 900 injured. Almost 1300 homes are believed lost and over 1700 other buildings destroyed. It has been estimated that at least 62,000 farm animals have also perished.

After a long dry spell, it seems that an unfortunately “ideal” combination of weather factors on the 7th led to the disaster. Across southern Tasmania, the island state that lies to the south of the Australian mainland, there were already extremely high temperatures (the maximum was 102 °F!) and very low humidity when intense winds from the northwest fanned a number of bushfires burning in remote areas into raging infernos.

110 separate fire fronts burned through around 652,000 acres in the space of just five hours! Within a forty mile radius around Hobart, the state capital, many towns and rural properties have experienced significant damage: twelve towns have been completely destroyed. Even Hobart itself has not escaped unscathed, with hundreds of homes and businesses razed, including the famous Cascade Brewery. With most communications and services cut, thousands were evacuated to Hobart at the height of the emergency, and it is believed that up to 7000 people are now homeless. The total damage bill is already being estimated at a staggering $40,000,000 Australian dollar values! But recovery efforts are underway and help is pouring into the “Apple Isle” from all over Australia. Southern Tasmania will rise from the ashes, but recovery will be a long process that will take many years.

by Gideon Marcus

Literal tragedy

Kaye's tragedy is heartbreaking, the sort of thing one for which one flees into fiction. Sadly, the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction offers little in the way of solace.

Sooty pages

by Jack Gaughan (these folks don't actually appear this issue…)

The Sea Change, by Jean Cox

The editors Ferman have saved perhaps their best for first. A young failure, son of a brilliant marine biologist who committed suicide at the height of his career, attempts one final emulation of his father. In a poignant scene, he doffs his clothes, dives into the water, and drowns.

But rather than die, he finds himself kept alive via a biological symbiote on his back. He is welcomed into an underwater commune of sorts, a living socialism of sea creatures for which his hands and intellect are desired additional traits. Recruited to dispose of their failed attempts to create humans underwater, he is faced with a choice: a blissful existence as part of a hive mind underwater, or a sorrowful existence as an independent failure on dry land.

In a way, this tale is the opposite of Bob Sheckley's Pusher, one of my very favorite stories. Sea Change is beautifully written, but I found the end unconvincing, and the decision disappointing.

It teeters on the edge of four stars, but just misses, I think.

The Investor, Bruce Jay Friedman

Odd piece about a stock broker whose pulse becomes directly tied to the share price of one of his investments. I think it's supposed to be satire?

Two stars.

Zoomen, Fred Hoyle

On a trip in the Scottish Highlands, a fellow is scooped up by aliens and imprisoned on a ship with eight other humans of many backgrounds, four men and four women. Our hero believes that they are destined to be seeding stock for an interstellar menagerie. Clues include the even gender make-up, their indifferent treatment, and their rough conditioning (made to be nauseated as a goad).

This tale is nicely written, a bit reminiscent of the beginning of Hoyle's October the First is Too Late, which also started with a Scottish trek. Like that novel, but even more so, the ending is a let down, and without any of the attendant philosophical interest.

Three stars.

The Long Night, Larry Niven

A momentary uptick with this bagatelle, a variation on the deal with the devil theme. A student of magic decides to cap his doctoral thesis by summoning a demon. Of course, now his soul is forfeit, unless he asks for the right gift–and uses it to its fullest.

It's fun, and apparently utilizes the author's B.S. in Mathematics.

Four stars.

Relic, Mack Reynolds

Like all mountains, once one reaches the summit, it's all downhill from there. In this tale, we meet an octogenarian Lord Greystoke, now mostly insane and very violent. The slightest affront sends him into a murderous rage, and he soon builds up a trail of bodies, punctuating each kill with an ululating bull gorilla roar.

Another "funny" piece. I din't like it.

Two stars.

Crowded!, by Isaac Asimov

It's been nearly a decade since Dr. A started this column, and of late, he's been running out of ideas. He's back to geographic lists, taking a hodgepodge of mildly interesting facts from almanacs and atlases. This time, it's a list of "great cities" (over a million residents) and their world distribution.

I've got an atlas, too, Isaac. A couple of 'em.

Three stars.

The Little People, by John Christopher

Which leaves us with the much-anticipated conclusion of the serial. In the first installment, we were introduced to Bridget, heir to a dilapidated Irish hostel…and a secret. After her first group of neurotic guests have been assembled, they find hints that the place is inhabited by Little People.

In Part 2, we find that they are not of magical provenance at all, but are actually tiny Jews, forced into diminution and then tortured by an exiled Nazi scientist. Much brouhaha is made regarding their disposition. I assumed Part 3 would resolve the outstanding threads.

It does not. Instead, each of the lodgers has some sort of vision, mostly unpleasant. A good forty pages is taken up with these nightmares in which the eponymous tiny ones make no appearance whatsoever. In the end, the episodes are explained as some kind of ESP-as-torment, and the manor is abandoned.

It's the worst of cop-outs, redolent with sex. I'm afraid no amount of attempts to titilate can cover the fact that there's no there there.

Two stars for this segment, and two and a half for the serial as a whole. I prefer consistent mediocrity to an undelivered promise.

Scorched Earth

And that's that! A disappointing 2.7 star issue with only one unalloyed success, and that one very short. In the latest Yandro, Don & Maggie Thompson maintained that F&SF is the best of the SF mags. That may have been true a decade ago. It hasn't been true in a while.

Just as Tasmania may rebuild, so F&SF could return to greatness. I just hope I live long enough to see it…

by Gahan Wilson (by way of Mack Reynolds, it seems…)

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 4, 1967] The Sweet (?) New Style (March 1967 IF)

February 4, 2022 David Levinson 5 Comments

by David Levinson

In the 13th century, a new style of poetry emerged in Tuscany. Developing from the troubadour tradition, it turned the idea of courtly love into one of divine love, in which an idealized woman guided a man’s soul to God. More importantly, it was written not in Latin, but in the Tuscan vernacular, which formed the basis of modern Italian. Its most famous practitioner, Dante Alighieri, referred to it as dolce stil novo (sweet new style) in his most famous work, and the phrase was eventually applied to the poetic school in the 19th century.

Science fiction also has a new style, though many readers disdain it and I doubt even its proponents would be inclined to call it “sweet”. Whether you call it the New Wave or the New Thing, the move is away from adventure and scientists solving problems and toward a more literary style, difficult topics like sex, drugs and politics, and generally kicking against the traces of modern constraints. Whether it’s just a passing fad or will change the language of science fiction forever remains to be seen.

Inferno

I’ve written before about the so-called Cultural Revolution in communist China, including the growing power of the young people calling themselves the Red Guards. Egged on by Chairman Mao, the Red Guards have run amok. High-ranking public officials have been publicly humiliated, beaten (sometimes to death), or have committed suicide. The number four man in the party, T’ao Chu was publicly purged, which led to violent riots in Nanking between his supporters and the Red Guards; at least 50 are dead and hundreds are injured. In Shanghai, the local government has been toppled and replaced by a revolutionary committee. Both President Liu Shao-ch’i and Party Secretary-General Teng Hsiao-p’ing have been condemned as “capitalist roaders”. Mao has also signaled a coming purge of the army.

A Red Guard hands out papers proclaiming the end of the Shanghai government.

Meanwhile, in spite of the internal chaos, China is also flexing her muscles on the border, particularly in Portuguese Macao. Late last year, a dispute over building permits led to a riot in which 8 Chinese were killed and 212 were injured. On January 22nd, six Chinese gunboats pulled into the inner harbor of Macao, but left again after an hour. One week later, the Governor General of Macao, under a portrait of Mao, signed an admission of guilt for the deaths, promising never again to use force against the Chinese community, to pay a large sum of reparations to the Macao Chinese, and to give a greater voice to the Chinese community in the person of Ho Yin, a man with close ties to Mao.

Near miss

Last year at Tricon, IF won the Hugo for Best Professional Magazine. Editor Fred Pohl came up with the idea of putting out an issue with all of last year’s winners: Isaac Asimov (Best All-Time Series), Harlan Ellison (Best Short Fiction), Frank Herbert and Roger Zelazny (tied for Best Novel) with a cover by Frank Frazetta (Best Professional Artist). He’s been touting it for a few months, but the best laid plans and all that. Herbert was unable to finish his story due to a hospital stay, and Frazetta was swamped with priority work. So, how did this month’s IF turn out?

Putting the most interesting element of the picture on the back is an odd choice. Art by McKenna

Continue reading [February 4, 1967] The Sweet (?) New Style (March 1967 IF) →

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 20, 1967] Sag in the middle (February Fantasy and Science Fiction)

January 20, 2022 Gideon Marcus 5 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Tossing and turning

When I was a kid, I had (like everyone else) a cotton-filled mattress. In a lot of ways, I was lucky. I was a skinny kid so I didn't weigh much, and I was just as lief to sleep on the rug as in a bed, so I wasn't picky about where I lay down. Plus, bedbugs weren't a problem in sunny El Centro. They hated the lack of air conditioning as much as we did. So that ol' mattress did me fine.

But I got spoiled by my first innerspring in the 50s. That's sleeping comfort.

The only problem with coil mattresses, of course, is that after a while (unless you managed to stay teen skinny into your middle years) the middle sags. Eventually, you're in this little self-made pit. Oh your aching back!

The latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a bit like a saggy mattress. It's great at the ends, but the middle is the absolute pits.

It started so well

by Chesley Bonestell

The Hall of the Dead, by L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard is having the best decade in a long time. It's a pity he's not around to enjoy it, having passed away more than 30 years ago. But his mighty thewed creation "Conan", warrior of Hyboria, has found new life in the hands of famed Fantasist L. Sprague de Camp. In addition to compiling (and lightly editing) Howard's old stories for a pair of collections, which Cora will be reviewing in two days, Sprague has also taken unfinished pieces and raw outlines and given the bones flesh.

The Hall of the Dead was only a 650 word outline when Sprague found it. It is now an intriguing new novelette in the Conan canon, one that I found every bit as exciting as the various pieces I've found in old pulps.

It's a tale set very early in Conan's life. He is on the run from the wicked city of Shadazar, a company of police soldiers on his tail led by the Aquilonian mercenary, Nestor. Conan seeks refuge in the cursed dead city of Larsha. There, he and Nestor must team up to face a variety of horrors, living and dead. The reward if they succeed? Treasure beyond imagining!

It's great, riproaring stuff. More please.

Four stars.

by Gahan Wilson

A Walk in the Wet, by Dennis Etchison

The lone survivor of a spacewreck is haunted by more than the deaths of dozens. For, as a telepath, he experienced the fatalites as well as witnessed them. Now faced with the truth of how he became the mutant he is, the spacer has taken on a grisly mission…if only he can remain sober long enough to carry it out.

That summary makes this sound like a pretty good story. It's not. It's impenetrable and rather disgusting. I suppose its lone virtue is that it's memorable.

One star.

The Next Step, by E. A. Moore

On an overcrowded world, the only hope for humanity is colonizing the stars. It turns out that the inevitable leukemia that the settlers acquire on their relativistic jaunts is the key to their transcending their physical form and becoming one with the universe.

In addition to being rather amateurishly written, this story requires a lot of leaps of faith. I have trouble buying the premise that cancer is actually a beneficial development.

Two stars.

The Song of the Morrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Ferman is really scraping the barrel if he has to go back 70 years for a piece. In this vignette, wide-eyed princess meets a crone on a beach, is told many things that come true, and the maid ultimately becomes the next crone.

I like poetic stuff as much as the next person, but this one didn't do it for me.

Two stars.

The Intelligent Computer, Ted Thomas

As usual, Ted starts with an interesting premise (how do you copyright/patent something developed by a computer?) and utterly flubs it. Mr. Thomas needs to write a real article or stop writing these half-efforts.

Two stars.

The Little People (Part 2 of 3), by John Christopher

The serial continues. Last month took us to a run-down hostel in rural Ireland where a collection of eight neurotics discovered what they thought was one of The Little People.

In this chapter, we learn that the foot-tall girl and her friends are not faerie folk at all, but something much more sinister–the result of a Nazi experiment in longevity.

I honestly have no idea where this story is going to end up. I am still enjoying it, though perhaps not quite so much as last time.

Four stars.

Impossible, That's All, by Isaac Asimov

In this month's article (the Good Doctor's 100th… and we've covered all save the first!), Dr. A talks about why it's impossible to go faster than light, and why we should all just stop bugging him about it.

It's a good piece, particularly in talking about how our advancements in science serve to refine models rather than completely overthrow them (q.v. Newton to Einstein). On the other hand, sometimes model changes are revolutionary. Discovering subatomic particles didn't change the life of the average citizen…until we used the knowledge to make atomic bombs and reactors. We now seem to be on the edge of a revolution in sub-sub-atomic physics as we speak, giving rhyme and reason to the veritable zoo of particles, just as subatomic theory made sense of Medeleev's periodic table. Who knows if that will result in discoveries in previously impossible fields such as antigravity and faster than light travel?

Asimov is facile, but I suspect he's missing something. Three stars.

Blackmail, by Fred Hoyle

The champion of out-of-date theories (e.g. "Steady State") offers up this bizarre little fantasy in which a fellow learns to communicate with animals. Turns out all they want to do is watch people beat each other up on television. Think of the effect on the Nielsen's!

Forgettable fluff. Two stars.

Falling out

This sunken mess of a mattress garners a lousy 2.6 stars. That's still better than most of the other mags out this month, which tells you how bad our job here at the Journey can be.

That said, between the Conan and the Christopher (not to mention Merril's column and Asimov's article), more than half of this month's issue is worth a read.

I'll just have to learn to sleep on the edges, that's all!

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 14, 1967] First batch (January Galactoscope)

January 14, 2022 John Boston 19 Comments

Big, But . . .

by John Boston

No matter if you don’t believe in Santa Claus. Judith Merril is back with another volume of her annual anthology, 11th Annual Edition the Year’s Best S-F (sic), from Delacorte Press just in time for the Christmas trade. If you missed the boat on Christmas, surely you can make it work for Valentine’s Day.

by Ziel

The overall package is familiar: 384 pages thick, a crowded contents page, a short introduction, but lots of running commentary between items, sometimes about the stories or authors and sometimes, it seems, about whatever crosses Merril’s mind as she assembles the book. There is the usual Summation at the end, but the extensive Honorable Mentions listing is gone, though she mentions some items that didn’t make the cut in the Summation and commentary.

The contents are eclectic as usual, but let Merril tell it: “The stories and poems and essays here have been selected from as wide a range as I could cover of books and periodicals published here and in England last year. About half the entries are from the genre magazines. The rest are from books and from such diverse sources as Mademoiselle and Escapade, The Colorado Quarterly and the Washington Post, Playboy and the Saturday Review (and Ambit and King in England).” “Of the year” in the title is notional at best. This volume includes a story by Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins, which dates from 1940, and an . . . item . . . by Alfred Jarry, who died in 1907.

The usual disclaimer is here, too. From the Introduction:

“This is not a collection of science-fiction stories.

“It does have some science fiction in it—I think. (It gets a little more difficult each year to decide which ones are really science fiction—and frankly I don’t much try any more.)”

Unfortunately this year’s book falls short of most of its predecessors to my taste. Unusually, some of the selections by the biggest-name authors are strikingly lackluster. Isaac Asimov’s Eyes Do More than See, from F&SF, is a short piece of annoying pseudo-profundity about the down side of becoming a disembodied energy being. Gordon R. Dickson’s Warrior (from Analog), part of his militaristic Dorsai series, gives us a protagonist who is such a comprehensive superman that his enemies are rendered helpless by his mere presence, and the story turns quickly into self-parody. J.G. Ballard is represented by one very fine story, The Drowned Giant, from Playboy, and another, The Volcano Dances, which reads like a parody of his recurrent theme of humans happily pursuing self-destructive obsessions: his protagonist takes up residence near a volcano that’s about to blow, refuses all entreaties to leave, and at the end is apparently heading towards it as the volcano’s rumbling becomes more ominous.

There is a decided swerve this year towards the British magazines New Worlds and Science Fantasy, with four stories from each here. The best of this lot is David I. Masson’s Traveler’s Rest (New Worlds), which depicts a world where the passage of time varies with latitude, much faster at the North Pole where a furious high-tech war is ongoing, and more slowly towards the equator where people live more or less normal lives. In some of the others, it is quite unclear what is going on, and purposefully: two of them are (or seem to be) narrated by mental patients (David Rome’s There’s a Starman in Ward 7 and Peter Redgrove’s long poem The Case (both from New Worlds)). Josephine Saxton’s The Wall (Science Fantasy) is a strange, haunting, allegorical-seeming story of lovers who never meet except through a small hole in a wall dividing a world that seems like some sort of artificial construct that they don’t understand and is unexplained to the reader.

As always, Merril has harvested some stories from non-genre sources, most sublimely Jorge Luis Borges’s The Circular Ruins, from 1940. It’s a metaphysical fantasy about a man who travels in a canoe to a ruined temple to carry out a mission: “He wanted to dream a man: he wanted to dream him with minute integrity and insert him into reality.” This story, resonantly translated from the Spanish, is the find of the book. Also noteworth is Game, by Donald Barthelme, from the New Yorker, about two guys locked in an underground bunker charged with dispatching nuclear missiles as ordered. They have gone months without relief and are pretty much nuts; it is strongly hinted that the war has happened and they’re never getting relieved. Gerald Kersh’s Somewhere Not Far from Here, from Playboy, is about some ragged revolutionaries against an unidentified tyranny; its portrayal of men struggling in extremity in mud and blood, in a seemingly hopeless cause, may be hokey but it contrasts sharply and favorably with Dickson’s absurd power fantasy of an effortlessly irresistible conqueror, discussed above. But there are also a number of less meritorious, and sometimes outright distasteful items from the non-SF press, including a remarkably sexist story by Harvey Jacobs, The Girl Who Drew the Gods, from Mademoiselle, of all places.

Summing Up

There’s a lot in this big book that’s perfectly adequate, but not so much that made me seriously glad to have read it, and a fair amount that seems silly, trivial, or distasteful. The best of the lot to my taste are mostly mentioned above; others include Arthur C. Clarke’s Maelstrom II, R.A. Lafferty’s Slow Tuesday Night, Johnny Byrne’s Yesterday’s Gardens, and Walter F. Moudy’s The Survivor. The other two-thirds of the book’s contents are things I don’t imagine I will ever think of again.

Interestingly, Merril herself expresses dissatisfaction with the current state of American SF, which she attributes to the lack of a “combining force” or “focal center”: “We have the writers; we have the markets; we have the readers. But nothing is happening to bring them together.” She compares this situation unfavorably to that in the UK. I don’t find this explanation very convincing. I am convinced that Merril would have a better book if she included a few longer stories and accepted a shorter contents page, and dropped a few of the less substantial items from prestigious sources.

As the Los Angeles Dodgers might say—wait ‘til next year.

by Gideon Marcus

The Quy Effect, by Arthur Sellings

This latest book by short story veteran, Arthur Sellings, starts with a literal bang. A factory has blown up, and Adolphe Quy, an eccentric inventor is the culprit. Seems he was doing experiments with an organic room-temperature superconductor, which got overloaded. But in the process, something even bigger was discovered: practical antigravity.

With a setup like that, you'd think this short novel would be about the effect such an invention would have on humanity. Indeed, for the first forty pages or so, Sellings seems to be taking forever to start the plot. Then you realize you've been anticipating the wrong book. The Quy Effect is about the trials and tribulations of a discredited inventor doing his best to bring to light a technology only he believes in.

Which means, of course, that there were two ways the book could have gone that would have been deeply dissatisfying. One is the John Campbell route, in which it is made obvious that everyone but Quy (pronounced 'kwe') is a moron, and the whole book is a satire of our stupid society that quells the inspirations of unsung geniuses. The other is the British route, which would have Quy end up in an insane asylum, the work being sold as "darkly humourous."

Thankfully, despite Sellings actually being British, he avoids both of these potentialities. Instead, The Quy Effect is a quite interesting set of character studies, one that kept me glued to the pages. It really is not certain throughout the entire book whether or not Quy will succeed. Nor does it seem that the odds are artificially stacked against him. Quy, in many ways, made the bed he's stuck in. Now he has to find his way out.

And while science, for the most part, takes a backseat in this book, I did appreciate the bit where Quy dismisses rocket-powered spaceflight as an economic dead end:

Rockets have got as much future as the dirigible airship had. A certain beauty, a kind of glamour, but too damn dangerous and cumbersome and expensive. Riding space in a pint-sized canister on top of a thousand tons of high explosive—that's not the way. We've got all the energy we want, if we can only use it. We shouldn't have to rely, in this day and age, on crude chemical reaction. Subject a man to ruinous accelerations because we have to carry a giant-size gas tank a minimum distance. What we need is more like a nuclear-powered submarine. Point its noise in the air and float up.

Only time will tell if he is right, but I've made similar assertions since Sputnik. I'm delighted to see the latest results from Explorer satellites, to watch the Olympics live from Tokyo (at 3 A.M., Pacific), and I thrill at grainy videos of spacewalking astronauts. But for the kind of mass space exodus so much of our science fiction is based on, I suspect Sellings' mouthpiece is right—rockets won't do the trick.

Anyway, going by the Budrys yardstick of quality (if one enjoys reading the book, it's good), The Quy Effect is very good, once one accepts it for what it is.

And what it garners is a full four stars.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Entropy

by Victoria Silverwolf

Agent of Chaos, by Norman Spinrad

It wasn't very long ago that I reviewed this young author's first novel. It's obvious that he keeps banging away at the typewriter steadily, because here comes another one.

Anonymous cover art, and a misleading blurb. Ending the human race isn't the goal of anybody in the story. And I don't think that calling a novel agonizing is a way to help sales.

I don't know about you, but when I pick up a book I like to look at the stuff that surrounds the text first. Front and back cover, dedication, preface or introduction, afterword, whatever. Let's flip this paperback over and see if we can learn anything.

Is it really possible for a new book to be a classic?

This blurb isn't much more accurate. The Brotherhood of Assassins isn't the dictatorship; that's the Hegemony. Allow me to explain.

Several centuries in the future, long after the two sides of the Cold War got together to avoid total destruction, the combined government known as the Hegemony rules the solar system. The oligarchy in charge controls every detail in the lives of their subjects, known as Wards. Any violation of the rules is punishable by death. The sheep-like Wards mostly accept this, because the Hegemony offers them peace and prosperity.

The Democratic League is an underground organization, literally and metaphorically. It opposes the Hegemony, and is willing to use violence to overthrow it. The novel begins on Mars, where Boris Johnson, a member of the Democratic League, is part of an elaborate plot to assassinate one of the oligarchs. The motive is to convince the Wards that the Democratic League is a serious threat to the Hegemony.

The third player in this deadly game is the Brotherhood of Assassins. Despite the name, the first thing this bunch does is prevent the killing of the oligarch. Like other things they've done in the past, this action seems completely random. Both the Hegemony and the Democratic League think of the Brotherhood of Assassins as deranged fanatics, dedicated to the philosophical writings of the fictional author Gregor Markowitz. Quotations from this fellow's books, which have titles like The Theory of Social Entropy and Chaos and Culture, introduce each chapter in the novel.

The story jumps around the solar system, with plenty of plots and counterplots, ranging from political intrigue within the oligarchy to mass violence. At times, the book reads like a cross between Ian Fleming and Keith Laumer. But Spinrad is trying to say something more profound, I think.

The Hegemony represents any established Order. The Democratic League represents the opposition to that Order. Ironically, that very opposition becomes part of a new Order. The Brotherhood of Assassins represents Chaos, working against both of the other groups. (In another touch of irony, this often means working with one or the other. Such paradoxes, we're told, are part of Chaos.)

There's a major plot twist about halfway through the novel that I won't reveal here. Suffice to say that something found in a lot of science fiction stories changes the situation drastically, leading to a dramatic ending involving the Ultimate Chaotic Act.

The book certainly held my interest. I'm not sure what to think about all the discussion of Order and Chaos, but it was intriguing. At times the novel is melodramatic. Overly familiar science fiction elements appear frequently, from moving sidewalks to laser guns.

One peculiar thing is that there are no female characters in the book, not even a minor one playing the typical role of the Girl. The closest we get to acknowledging that two sexes exist is a line describing a crowd of Wards as placid, indifferent-looking men and women. The Wards are just cannon fodder, casually slaughtered by the three competing forces, so they remain pretty much faceless.

That reminds me of the fact that there are no Good Guys in this novel. All sides are willing to kill to achieve their goals, including wiping out innocent bystanders. The author's sympathies seem to be with the forces of Chaos, but they definitely have as much blood on their hands as the forces of Order. (Why else would they call themselves the Brotherhood of Assassins?)

Overall, a provocative but frustrating book.

Three stars.

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[July 20, 1967] An Analog of Analog (August 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[June 20, 1967] Yours sincerely, wasting away (July 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[May 20, 1967] Field trips (June 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[April 18, 1967] Bright Lights (May 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction

[March 20, 1967] Vistas near and far (April 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[March 12, 1967] Computerized Futures & Humanity (Out of the Unknown: Season Two)

[February 20, 1967] To Ashes (March Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[February 4, 1967] The Sweet (?) New Style (March 1967 IF)

[January 20, 1967] Sag in the middle (February Fantasy and Science Fiction)

[January 14, 1967] First batch (January Galactoscope)

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