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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 4, 1966] Keep Watching the Skies (February 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

I’m sure many of the Journey’s readers will remember the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, which featured Marshal Dillon himself, James Arness, as an alien super-carrot. Based loosely on John Campbell’s novella Who Goes There?, it’s a fine piece of Red Scare paranoia, though not quite as good as Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Once the heroes have defeated the alien menace, reporter Ned “Scotty” Scott broadcasts a warning to the world to “Keep watching the skies!”

Great Balls of Fire

1965 has been a good year for watching the skies. From the return of American astronauts to space after a hiatus to the brilliant display of Comet Ikeya-Seki. The year wrapped up spectacularly in December. As my colleague Victoria Silverwolf reported, a brilliant fireball shot through the heavens over Ontario, Michigan and Ohio before crashing near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Despite rumors, no sign has been found of Russian satellites or little green men. Then on Christmas Eve, a meteor exploded over the village of Barwell, England. This time numerous pieces made their way to Earth. No one was injured, but there was some property damage. Pieces have been found, confirming the object was a stony meteorite of the sort known as a chondrite.


Meteorite hunters descend on Barwell.

Death from above and below

There’s plenty of menace from the skies in this month’s IF. Actually, the threat is mostly humans attacking other humans, but not always. Sometimes it’s humans attacking aliens.


A triphib attacks. The story isn’t as Burroughs-esque as you might think. Art by Pederson.

Prisoners of the Sky, by C. C. MacApp

Six hundred years before the story begins, a colony ship from Earth reached the planet Durrent. The planet is low in metals and has a very dense atmosphere. Humans can live comfortably atop the numerous mesas, while the heavy air and vicious wildlife make the lower elevations dangerous. Mesa Mederlink is out to conquer the world, and Mesa Lowry is under siege, unable to get the guano they need for fertilizer.

Altern Raab Garan is under a cloud. The fleet led by his father several years ago was wiped out by Mederlink and there is suspicion of treason. Raab has proposed a lightning raid by a single airship out to the guano islands in the hopes of obtaining the fertilizer the mesa needs to continue holding out. He’s been given a chance, but the ship is old and poorly armed, the crew is largely civilian volunteers, one of his officers hates him and there may be a traitor on board.


This minor incident doesn’t cover even a full page, but it seems to have caught the imagination of both artists. Art by Morrow

This is actually a rather good story. MacApp has borrowed a lot from various submarine films and has done a good job of getting the tension of those films on the page. It’s nowhere near as pulpy as the art might make you think. My biggest complaint is that the author forgot about the extremely dense atmosphere and the climax mostly takes place at sea level. The story ends on a cliffhanger, so we can probably expect more. A solid three stars.

Build We Must, by Dannie Plachta

Inspired by the theory that the moons of Mars are actually space stations, the unnamed narrator became an astronaut. On the first mission to Mars, the crew is met by Martians and the narrator is chosen to make first contact.

Plachta’s sophomore effort is a joke story. In fact, it’s basically his first story retold with the shocker reframed as a punchline. At least it’s mercifully short. Plachta does seem to have some skill, but it’s time for him to put it to better use. Two stars.

The Kettle Black, by Steve Buchanan

Xenologist Stade is on his deathbed, waiting on a visit from Witten. As he waits, he reflects on the mission they were on together only a year earlier. Along with the third member of the team, Skinner – a cyborg whose only organic parts are his brain and spinal column – they discovered a planet with a civilization just short of space travel. Initially, things go well, and Stade makes excellent progress in establishing relations with the natives and learning their language. When he is invited to attend a ceremony, Skinner overrules him and goes in his place. The natives attempt to kill Skinner and the humans wage a three-man war to return to their ship.


Human-native relations take a turn for the worse. Art by Nodel

Buchanan is one of two first time authors in this issue. I’m not terribly impressed. The story plods, even during the action, and I had a very hard time keeping the characters straight. It is apparent from the ending that the author thinks he has made an important point about modern race relations, but I certainly can’t tell what it might be. Two stars.

Nine Hundred Grandmothers, by R. A. Lafferty

Ceran Swicegood is a Special Aspects Man. Unlike his fellows, he refuses to take on a manly name like Manbreaker Crag or George Blood. The expedition he’s on is investigating the large asteroid Proavitus. Ceran is interested in the native claim that they never die and is eager to meet some of the eldest of the race to find out how they came to be.

Lafferty is Lafferty, and you either like his stuff or you don’t. There’s no middle ground. This isn’t really one of his better pieces, lacking a lot of that quality of oddness which is his trademark. Even Homer nods, and mediocre Lafferty is still worth a read. Three stars.

Not by Sea, by Howard L. Morris

In an alternate timeline, Sir Hubert Wulf-Leigh is a decadent drunkard who works a few hours a day as a Confidential Clerk to the Board of Lord High Admirals. Through a rather brilliant bit of intelligence work, he determines that Naflon the Usurper, King Elective of Fraunce, is planning to invade England using hot air balloons. Not believed at first, when he’s proven right Hubert is put in charge of the defense of Plymness, where the Freunch do indeed attempt their landing.


I’m not even going to try to come up with a better caption. Art by Gaughan

Morris is the second newcomer this month. The story is light and largely comedic. Its greatest flaw is that the author goes far too often to the well of the English tendency to pronounce names oddly. Wulf-Leigh is pronounced Wilfly, Mountcourtenay is Munkertny and so on. The joke gets old fast and there’s a tendency to repeat it several times for the same character. It’s also a little long. That said, it does read easily. A low three stars.

The Peak Lords, by Miriam Allen deFord

A young man claiming to be the son of a Peak Lord who was kidnapped and left Below among the mutants is making his statement in court. From him, we learn how a few powerful individuals fled growing pollution by retreating to ever higher altitudes, eventually warring over the limited space and taking on retainers, while the rest of humanity was slowly mutated by the foul air and water. Eventually, we learn the truth of his kidnapping.

The best thing I can say for this story, is that deFord has perfectly captured the voice of an arrogant, entitled young man. Unfortunately, that makes for a very unpleasant narrator. On top of that, most of his statement is the worst sort of “As you know, Bob” rehashing the history of his people with no point other than to inform the reader. Worst of all, the story relies on a typographical trick at the end to achieve its impact. If only it were as simple as some screaming italics and an excess of exclamation points. Two stars.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Part 3 of 5), by Robert A. Heinlein

In the previous installment, preparations for the Lunar revolution were proceeding apace. Companies created by computer intelligence Mike were financing recruitment and the construction of a secret orbital launcher for throwing rocks at Earth if necessary. As we left our heroes. Mannie dropped in to visit a friend who works as a judge. An event which would have a great effect on the course of the revolution.

A group of youngsters have dragged in a tourist who got a little too friendly with the girl at the core of their group. They want to stuff him out an airlock, but feel the need to go through proper procedures first. Since the judge is off drinking his lunch, Mannie agrees to hear the case. He succeeds in resolving the situation peacefully, teaching a lesson to both the tourist and the stilyagi who dragged him to court. Said tourist proves to be one Stuart Rene LaJoie, Poet – Traveler – Soldier of Fortune, a wealthy Earthman who will become the revolution’s chief lobbyist and advocate back home.

Stu gives Mannie a chance to expound on the role of women in Lunar society, the economics of the Moon and much more. At long last, we finally find out the meaning of TAANSTAFL, seen on the cover of the issue with the first installment: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. There is always a hidden cost to something claimed to be free.

Before the revolutionaries are really ready, the balloon goes up. A group of Peace Guards rape and kill a young woman, and the Loonies explode. Mannie, Mike and the Prof are able to direct the flood of rage, and Lunar Authority goes down easily. The hard part is yet to come when Earth responds. They attempt to keep the lid on, with Mike faking normal communications Earthside, but a group of Earth scientists manage to get a message back home. Meanwhile, Prof gets a sort of ad hoc congress to issue a declaration of independence, largely cribbed from the American Declaration, on July 4th, 2076. Finally, Mannie and Prof are preparing to be smuggled down to Earth in a grain shipment, and the night before they leave Wyoh is brought into Mannie’s family.


This won’t actually happen until next time, but the other illustrations aren’t very good. Art by Morrow

Once again, Heinlein take what should be a dry recitation of people sitting around talking about politics and sociology and grabs readers’ attention and keeps them turning the page. It’s a remarkable skill and one he’s shown too little of in recent works. The events of the revolution are exciting, too, but we see them at a bit of remove. Our protagonists are too important to be involved in the fighting, though Mannie does see some of it from the sidelines. The only real complaint for me is that Wyoh largely moves into the background. Four stars.

The Warriors, by Larry Niven

In deep space, a kzinti warship has discovered a strange vessel. Alien Technologies can detect no weapons, and Telepath reports the beings aboard are peaceful. Captain is delighted, sensing the opportunity to bring in a new slave world and earn himself a name. He orders the use of inductors to raise temperatures on the alien ship to kill everyone aboard, so that the kzinti can learn as much as possible about their prey.

Aboard the Angel’s Pencil, the human crew are puzzled by their inability to communicate with the alien ship. They assume it must be a question of technology. There hasn’t been a war among humans in over three centuries, and there hasn’t been a murder in well over a century and a half. In fact, most people never even learn about war and the less pleasant aspects of history. Hostility is the furthest thing from the crew’s minds.

Another solid outing by Niven. His kzinti are a pretty good answer to John Campbell’s challenge to write aliens who think as well as a man, but not like a man. These catlike people are predators through and through, and Niven does a good job of telling us things about their society without excess exposition or characters talking about things they all know. He’s a little less successful at that when telling us about the peaceful human society. It’s a good story that could, perhaps, have used a final bit of polish to really make it shine. A solid three stars.

Summing Up

There we have it. Another base of not very good stuff with a smattering of decent, if nothing special, stories. Only the Heinlein really stands out. That alone might be worth your 50¢. I recently heard a rumor that Fred Pohl uses IF for stories from name authors they can’t sell elsewhere in the hope they’ll also sell him their good stuff. I’m not sure that’s the way to run a successful magazine.


Hope springs eternal.




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Magazine

[December 18, 1965] Bulges and Depressions (January 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Blitzkrieg

Sometimes war is a crackling thing, a coiled spring of conflict that sees an enemy pouncing on and through a hapless foe.  Such a campaign marked the German invasion of France through the "impassable" Ardennes forest in May 1940; a similar campaign occurred in December 1944 by the same combatants at the same spot.

They say, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me," and indeed the Americans and British soldiers in France should have known better than to pooh pooh the idea of a Wehrmacht onslaught at exactly the same location they'd used four years prior.  Nevertheless, it happened, the Nazis made a big indentation in the Allied lines, and so "The Battle of the Bulge" forever got its name.

There's little surprise that Avalon Hill has made a game out of the battle.  It's a fight with a lot of appeal (odious ideologies aside): As the Germans, there's the hope that enough momentum will push the tide of your forces to the coast, splitting the Allies irrevocably.  As the Allies, there's the desperate holding action while you wait for reinforcements to gird the lines and throw back the Hun horde.

This year, a new war epic debuted on the 21st anniversary of the start of the battle simply called The Battle of the Bulge.  Of course, we drove up to Los Angeles on the new interstate to see it.  Verdict: not bad, though it's always a little disorienting to see American tanks play the role of German panzers. 

To truly mark the occasion, we also started another game of Battle of the Bulge, this time switching sides.  We're playing it out day by day, exactly matching the turns of the game to the days they represented.  This time-shifted experience is actually a lot of fun.  I wonder if I can find other opportunities to do it…

Sitzkrieg

If The Battle of the Bulge represents the essence of the blitzkrieg, this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction is a recreation of World War 1 — overlong, with little movement, ultimately pointless.  Such a sad contrast to last month's issue, which was the best in years.  Ah, such are the vicissitudes of war.  Come slog along with me, would you?


by Jack Gaughan

L'Arc De Jeanne, by Robert F. Young

We start with the story illustrated on the front cover, sort of a cross between Young's science fiction-tinged fables and actual SF.  The rapacious O'Riordan the Reorganizer, a would-be tyrant of the Terran Empire, invades the world of Ciel Bleu only to be thwarted by a young virgin with a bow and arrow named Jeanne.  Her arrows, by the way, create torrential thunderstorms.

Rather than continue a hopeless fight, O'Riordan retreats his forces, instead dispatching a handsome young fellow to seduce and capture the Maiden of New New Orleans before she can fully rally the planet's defenses.

Like most Young stories, it is a bit rambling and sentimental, but it avoids the over-saccharine nature of his worst works (while missing the sublime levels of his best).  It also takes a while to get going, but I enjoyed it well enough by the end.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Beaulieu, by Margaret St. Clair

A young man on the edge of a losing battle with a fatal disease is picked up by an enigmatic woman.  Will she be able to drive him down the wind in the road that leads to an alternate universe where things have gone right instead of tragically wrong?

A nice psychological piece.  Three stars.

Books, by Judith Merril

I don't usually review the reviews, but Merril's column is especially good this month, describing fandom and publishing in the United Kingdom, as well as devoting inches to Aldiss and Ballard.  Worth a read (Mark Yon, are you reading?)

To the Rescue, by Ron Goulart

Space private dick wrestles with his sentient car companion, which is suffering a progressive nervous breakdown.  Is the detective just unlucky?  Or is his dissatisfaction with his chosen profession unlocking his psychic abilities?

Perhaps better suited to Analog, it's the kind of frivolous story I had to keep revisiting to remember just what had happened.

Two stars.

The Most Wonderful News, by Len Guttridge

A Welshman with a hospital-bound wife is desperate for news, any news, which he can relate to her on this week's visit.  When all the usual sources dry up, he is left with one tidbit that is certifiably out of this world.

This story just goes on and on, and you won't be at all surprised by the ending.  Two stars.

Smog, by Theodore L. Thomas

After a nice summary of what smog is, Thomas suggests using additives to combat automotive emissions rather than filters or oxidizers.  I'm not sure how this makes any sense; oxidizers are additives.  Moreover, I'm not sure one could make an emission less harmful than the carbon dioxide and water a catalytic converter produces (in the short term — in the long term, of course, we could see an accelerated global greenhouse effect).

So two stars, and learn some chemistry, Ted.

Survey of the Third Planet, by Keith Roberts

Greedy aliens arrive on Earth to add it to their collection of worlds only to be repulsed by the doughty primitives.  The gimmick to the story is the revelation of who the primitives actually are.

Shrug.  We saw this trick in Garrett's Despoiler of the Golden Empire, and I didn't like it much there, either.

Two stars.

The Proton-Reckoner, by Isaac Asimov

Here's a fun article about how big Archimedes thought the universe was, how big the universe actually is, and why the proton is the smallest meaningful unit of volume.

There is also a brief plug for the Steady State model of the universe, which is unfortunate given that, between the article's writing and its publication, the Big Bang model has garnered overwhelming favor.

Four stars.

Representative From Earth, by Gregory Benford

A Jovian skydiver from Earth is scooped up by aliens and given a series of tasks to complete to prove his worthiness.  All of them have some element of physical prowess and intellectual cunning involved.  In the end, we find out just whom he's trying to impress.

It is a story at once too overwrought and too sketchy to please, all of it in service to an off color joke.

Two stars.

Apology to Inky, by Robert M. Green, Jr.

Haunted by an incident from his past he can only vaguely remember, but which tore apart his one true love, experimental musician Walton Ulster finds himself living in several times at once: 1930, 1944, and 1965.  At the intersection of these three eras is a double-murder and, perhaps, true love.

At half the length, and in more capable hands, this interminable novelette could have been something special.  As is, it wavers between interest and boredom, settling in for the latter by the end.

Two stars.

Casualties of War

I suppose after last month's all-star issue, it was a matter of course that the follow up would be dismal.  Part of the issue is the abundance of new/newish writers (Green, Benford, Guttridge).  Ah well.  I'm inclined to take the long view.

After all — one battle does not a war make!

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Magazine, Serial

[December 2, 1965] Superiority Complex (January 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

Some people are objectively better at some things than everybody else. Sandy Koufax can pitch a baseball better than almost anybody, and Muhammad Ali is arguably the best boxer we’ve seen in his weight class in a long time.


The problem arises when that excellence in a specialized area leads to an assumption of excellence in other, unrelated areas. I certainly wouldn’t turn to either of the aforementioned men for suggestions on nuclear policy or to bring peace to South-east Asia. Worse still is when whole groups assume superiority over others based solely on an accident of birth.

Heart of Darkness

Last month, I discussed the difficulties faced by the United Kingdom in handing over power to the locals in Rhodesia due to an unwillingness on the part of the white government under Ian Smith and the Rhodesian Front to share power with Black Rhodesians. Alas, the situation has now collapsed completely. On November 5th, the colonial governor declared a state of emergency, blaming Smith and two African nationalist organizations, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union and the Zimbabwe African National Union.


Ian Smith signs the Unilateral Declaration of Independence

On the 11th, the Smith government unilaterally declared independence. Within hours, the United Nations Security Council condemned the action 10-0 with France abstaining. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson has been granted the authority to rule Rhodesia by decree, though what good that might do is hard to see. Wilson steadfastly refuses a military solution and expects economic embargoes to force Smith to capitulate. But with two neighboring nations, South Africa and the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, more than willing to ignore any embargoes, it is likely to be a long time before we see a resolution to this situation.

Conflicts Great and Small

Fittingly, there’s plenty of superiority, assumed and otherwise, in this month’s IF. Let’s get to it.


This art for “Cindy-Me” bears absolutely no relation to the story. Art by Morrow

Moonrakers, by Poul Anderson

At some point in the past, a terraformed Mars broke away from Incorporated Earth. The asteroids were colonized from there, and now, while the larger asteroids like Ceres and Pallas remain loyal to Mars, the smaller bodies are seeking their independence. The asterites are pirating Martian shipping to Jupiter with the tacit support of Earth. Because Mars has privatized most government functions, the Interplanetary Shippers’ Association has hired private investigator James Church to solve the piracy problem. His solution proves to be rather unorthodox.


An asterite salvager makes a big score. Art by John Giunta

Initially, I wondered why this story didn’t appear under Anderson’s Winston Sanders by-line, but the differences soon became apparent. Most notably, he seems to pointing out several of the flaws in his noble asterite society in that series. Earth is also somewhat less awful.

Just as a fix-up novel consists of several short pieces cobbled together to make a book, one could argue this is a fix-up novelette cobbled together from several vaguely connected vignettes without the benefit of any connecting material. We jump from incident to incident with few clues as to how we got there or how it all hangs together. This might work better fleshed out to full novel length. On the whole, it’s not objectively terrible, but I expect better from Poul Anderson. Just barely three stars.

Cindy-Me, by Don F. Briggs

Cindy and her twin brother, our unnamed narrator, are on the run from Old Ralph and trying to get to Aunt Ag. They have incredible psychic powers, but even that might not be enough to evade Ralph and his Watchers.

Briggs is this month’s first-time author. I’m not terribly impressed. The pieces don’t really fit together very well, and the tone shifts a few times. Some of that is due to the author’s attempt to play with the reader’s expectations, but he doesn’t quite achieve his aim. The title and references in the story make the twins sound like a gestalt being, but they come off as two individuals. They also grow increasingly unpleasant, which is part of the point, but they’re hard to take. Two stars.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Part 2 of 5), by Robert A. Heinlein

Last time around, Heinlein introduced us to the Moon of 2075, a penal colony on the edge of a revolution. At the end of the installment, Mannie, a computer technician, is dragooned into leading said revolution by his tutor, Professor de la Paz, a subversive from Hong Kong Luna named Wyoming Knott, and an intelligent computer nicknamed Mycroft.

Begin Part Two:

Mannie, Wyoh and Prof discuss political philosophy for a while, and then Mike is brought into the conspiracy. He predicts food riots in seven years and cannibalism in less than ten. He also calculates that a rebellion has about a one in seven chance of success and is a bit puzzled when his friends find those odds acceptable. Loonies are gamblers by nature.

What follows is a summary of eleven months of revolutionary organization and planning. Mike creates the persona of Adam Selene to head the revolution. They set up a few fake companies with the purpose of funding the revolution and building a secret electromagnetic cannon, because Mike says they will need to “throw rocks” at Earth. Also of note is the recruitment of eleven-year-old red-head Hazel Meade to oversee the children being used to distribute subversive literature and follow guards. Mannie, Wyoh and Prof start wearing heavy weights, since Mike predicts that at least one of them will need to visit Earth at some point. As the installment ends, Mannie drops in to visit a friend who acts as a judge. This will apparently have a great effect on the course of the revolution.


Our four protagonists. Art by Morrow

There’s not much to say about this one, since it’s just Heinlein setting the final pieces on the board. With any luck, the action will get under way next time. As a standalone, the installment suffers, though it’s actually enjoyable. I’m sure when it’s all together between two covers you won’t even notice.

But that does give me a chance to talk about Mannie’s voice. The Loonie patois is composed of American and Australian vernacular (Mike is a “dinkum thinkum”) and a few Russian loan words along with some Russian grammar, like the lack of definite articles. It works very well and is much easier to read than the Nadsat of A Clockwork Orange. Mannie is one of Heinlein’s best narrators in a long time.

Of final note is young Hazel Meade. I’m pretty sure we’ve met her before. At least, I can think of another Hazel with a family of red-heads and a granddaughter named Meade. She also says her name is on the monument to the revolution back on Luna. Yes, I’m fairly sure this is Grandma Hazel from Heinlein’s The Rolling Stones.

As noted, not much happens, but it has that Heinlein readability. Three stars.

Mr. Jester, by Fred Saberhagen

A severely damaged Berserker has its brain placed in a new ship. This flips a switch installed by the Builders during the testing phase of their destructive creations. A switch that renders the Berserker harmless. Meanwhile on Planet A, which has been cut off from contact with the rest of the human galaxy for a while, a man is accused of making jokes. As punishment, he is sent to an observation post on the edge of the system, where he encounters the harmless Berserker. Together they return to Planet A.


Oh, that’s not creepy at all. Art by Gaughan

This story bears a lot of similarities to Harlan Ellison’s Repent, Harlequin. Indeed, had they come out a year apart, rather than a month, I’d suspect one of inspiring the other. Maybe Fred Pohl suggested the same story seed to both authors. I’ve regularly praised Saberhagen for bringing something fresh to this series every time. The story is still fresh, but for me it doesn’t quite work. It’s not something I can really pin down, but this is the least of the Berserker stories, and I prefer Harlan’s take on the concept. Just barely three stars.

A Planet Like Heaven, by Murray Leinster

On the planet Dorade, the Dorade Corporation harvests kamun logs from a deadly, mobile tree using animal workers. As usual, the Home Office sends new instructions with the regular ship and only delivers them just before departure to keep the local managers from objecting. Headquarters is demanding a doubling of production and has instructions on how to achieve this. Orders which appall local manager Chalmers and head overseer of the workers Burke. Neither man feels he can defy orders, since that would mean quitting and then they’d have to pay for their passage back home, which would bankrupt them. The next ship brings no less than the president of the corporation, who takes charge of the operation, disgusted by the local men’s failures.


Chalmers and one of his best workers. Art by Adkins

Murray Leinster has been off his game lately. Here, he returns to form at long last. This is a good story that makes its point clearly and reasonably consicely. Alas, while it’s obvious from the text, it’s never explicitly stated until the final line that the workers are elephants. The illustration gives that away and detracts somewhat from the punch of the ending. A pity, but still a solid three stars.

The Smallness Beyond Thought, by Robert Moore Williams

Two scouts are hiking a desert canyon, collecting rocks. Finding an interesting piece of quartz, they pull out an odd device to test it. After this, we are given the history of the strange hermit who has lived here for decades beyond memory and built a number of strange structures and walkways that go nowhere. He also seems to be friends with the local rattlesnakes. Finally, we meet Ed Quimby, the number two man at the nearby observatory, who befriends the hermit after a fashion, and unwittingly gets involved when an outsider seems to be after the hermit.


Someone approaches the smallness beyond thought. Art by Gaughan

Williams presents us with a number of mysteries and resolves none of them. We learn nothing about the hermit, the (possibly two groups of) people after him or why they want him. We do learn the function of the odd structures, but nothing of their purpose. On top of that, the hermit has an incredibly annoying accent. And this all goes on and on for over thirty pages, leaving us none the wiser as to what has happened. A very low two stars.

Summing Up

Well, the stories this month are certainly full of people exerting an assumed superiority over others, from government goons to corporate heavyweights. And just like in real life, they’re frequently very wrong. Unfortunately, this time out the stories produced aren’t all that great. Let’s put this one in the books and hope for better efforts (and some actual action from Heinlein) next month.


At least it doesn’t seem to be a Gree story.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 16, 1965] Crime and Punishment (January 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Breaking The Law On Stage

An incident in the United Kingdom earlier this month caught my attention and made me think about the limitations on artistic expression. The play Saved by Edward Bond had its premiere on November 3rd at the Royal Court Theatre in London. What does this have to do with violations of the law? Well, that requires a bit of explanation, particularly for those of us on this side of the Atlantic.

You see, ever since 1843, all plays produced for the public in England have to be licensed by the Lord Chamberlain. (Please don't ask me to explain what a Lord Chamberlain might be. That's far beyond my feeble American mind.)

The current Lord Chamberlain refused to grant a license to Saved unless it were severely censored. The folks at the Royal Court Theatre put it on anyway, trying to get around the letter of the law by calling it a private performance. From what I hear, they're going to get in trouble with the authorities anyway.


A scene from the play, in which a baby is stoned to death. You can see why this might be considered controversial.

Justice Between The Pages

Fittingly, many of the stories, and even a nonfiction article, in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow deal with criminals and crimefighters, in literal or in metaphorical ways.


Cover art by Mclane. Once again, the only thing I can find out about this artist is a last name.

Project Plowshare (Part Two of Two), by Philip K. Dick


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

It takes a while for the crime aspect of this novel to show up. Meanwhile, let's recap a bit.

In the future, the Cold War has evolved into a purely symbolic struggle. Each side has a psychic who uses drugs to perceive visions of designs for weapons. The trick is that these things are really used to manufacture odd consumer items. The ruling government, capitalist or communist, fools the public into thinking it's winning the arms race. When threatening alien spacecraft show up, the two powers bring the psychics together, hoping that they will be able to come up with a real weapon.


The invaders, who never directly appear in the story.

Things get pretty darn complicated in the second half of the novel. We find out quickly that the weapon designs perceived by the psychics come from a trashy comic book, which doesn't offer much hope for victory against the aliens. They're a serious menace, as we learn when entire cities disappear behind obscuring mists. Meanwhile, romance blooms between the two psychics, leading to a classic example of the Eternal Triangle.


Jealousy rears its green-eyed head.

Add in androids and time travel, and you've got a convoluted plot that leaves the reader dizzy. Oh, and the criminal subplot I hinted at above? That comes in the form of a nasty fellow who, for his own petty reasons, plots to assassinate members of the government who rejected him. He even kills folks who were foolish enough to join his conspiracy.


A man and his gun.

The author tosses everything but the kitchen sink into this yarn. At times, I thought he was making fun of science fiction, given the large number of mixed-up SF elements. There's definitely a touch of satire here and there, but it's not a comic novel. Some parts, in fact, are tragic. It definitely held my interest throughout, even if the climax seems to be thrown together hastily.

Four stars.

The Sleuth in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

The indefatigable historian of fantastic fiction traces the development of detective stories in the field. Starting with a nod to Edgar Allan Poe, he delves into the dusty pages of very early pulp magazines. Much of the stuff he digs up has to do with lie detection technology. This article takes the reader up to about 1930, and a sequel is promised.

Moskowitz certainly has an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. I can admire his scholarship, but the resulting essay makes for very dry reading.

Two stars.

Sunk Without Trace, by Fritz Leiber

The weird creatures on the cover of the magazine appear in this story. One of them has a dream about an object that landed on their world, while his more practical wife insists that he get back to processing the seaweed that serves as their food. It's clear from the start that the thing is a spacecraft from Earth — the editor's blurb gives it away, too — but the rest of the plot may be a bit more surprising.

There's not much to this work other than the premise and the setting, but those are intriguing enough to make it worth a look. Of course, Leiber is incapable of writing a bad sentence, so the style adds a lot. Overall, it's a decent effort from an author who often does much better.

Three stars.

At Journey's End, by J. T. McIntosh


Illustrations by Dan Adkins.

We jump right into a confrontation between criminals and law enforcement, in a particularly crude form, near the beginning of this story of a starship on its way to a new home for humanity.

After decades of travel, it seems that tensions among the crew have reached the boiling point. A couple of murders result, and the captain acts as judge, jury, and executioner, killing those guilty on the spot. Without giving too much away, let's just say that justice is truly blind here, playing no favorites at all.

After this grim opening, we watch the ship approach the planet. They have a big surprise waiting for them when they arrive. It all leads up to a darkly ironic ending.


Our three protagonists, awaiting their fate.

At first glance, I thought the first part didn't have much to do with the resolution. After musing over it for a while, however, I realize that the author intended the two scenes to provide a sort of thematic contrast. Some of what happens may be predictable. Taken as a whole, this is a serviceable, if undistinguished, story.

Three stars.

Stars, Won't You Hide Me?, by Ben Bova

In this case, the criminal is the human race as a whole, and the punishment comes from aliens determined to wipe out the entire species. When the story begins, in fact, there is only one human being left alive, alone in his automated spaceship, wandering through the cosmos in an attempt to escape judgment.

During his eons-long journey, which leads him across gigantic distances in space, he learns of humanity's crime and discovers what became of Earth. The climax leads to a final scene of almost unimaginable immensity.

The most notable thing about this story is the vastness of the author's vision. I don't think I've read anything that covers such enormous amounts of time, except maybe the works of Olaf Stapledon. In addition to that, there's a great deal of emotional appeal. If you think Bova is just a decent science writer, you may be surprised.

Five stars.

How To Understand Aliens, by Robert M. W. Dixon

Let's get away from criminology for a while and talk about linguistics. The author imagines the difficulty of communicating with the inhabitants of other worlds. As examples, he creates beings who spend most of their time burrowing underground, as well as aliens who fly. The point seems to be that culture has an important effect on language, and it's not just a matter of translating things word-for-word.

Dixon seems to know his stuff, as evidenced by his discussion of human languages unfamiliar to most speakers of English. The fictional aliens make the article more readable than just a dry discussion of the topic.

Three stars.

Buggaratz, by John Jakes

The military has its own system of justice, dealing with such crimes as lack of discipline. That's a problem for the commander of a small outfit on another planet. The only function of the unit is to produce inflatable uniforms as toys. Given this dull and trivial chore, it's not a shock to find out that things have gotten awfully lax around the place.

A visit from an inspecting officer threatens to expose how badly the situation has gotten out of hand. The presence of the habit-forming substance named in the title doesn't help matters.

This is a pretty silly comedy, with maybe a trace of satire directed at military thinking. It's an inoffensive bit of fluff, unlikely to make much of an impression on you.

Two stars.

Riverworld, by Philip Jose Farmer


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

As you may recall, one year ago the magazine offered Farmer's novella Day of the Great Shout, wherein everybody who ever lived on Earth was resurrected on a planet dominated by one huge river. This new tale takes place in the same setting.

The hero is cowboy movie star Tom Mix. Along with a woman who lived during the time of Moses, and a man who died nearly two thousand years ago, he sails down the river, escaping a brutal religious dictatorship. The trio join forces with some friendly folks from the Renaissance, and war breaks out with the bad guys.


A battle along the river.

There's lots of violent action, to be sure, but that's not really the most important part of the story. The author deals with religion in ways that may seem blasphemous to many readers.

The identity of the fellow traveling with Tom Mix is clear from the start, but I won't reveal it here. Suffice to say that this is likely to be the most controversial part of the story. The fact that the two men look almost exactly alike raises a lot of questions in my mind, which seem likely to remain unanswered.

Farmer has his hands on a strong premise here, with lots of possibilities. (Another story in the series is promised for the next issue.) I'll definitely keep reading to find out who else I'll run into along the river.

Four stars.

The Verdict

In the case of The People v. FP et al., the court dismisses all charges against PKD and PJF, with special commendation for BB. The other defendants are released with a warning to avoid tedium in the future, an admonition particularly directed at SM and JJ. The court further directs FP, leader of the accused, to retain the services of a good lawyer, in case of further charges in the future.


I don't think this guy ever lost a case.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 12, 1965] Doldrumming (December 1965 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Off Days

The December Amazing, boasting Cordwainer Smith, Murray Leinster, Edmond Hamilton, Robert Sheckley, and Chad Oliver, looks promising despite the hideous front cover by Hector Castellon.  Unfortunately, the unifying theme of the issue is Off Days of Big Names.


by Hector Castellon

But first, let’s survey the terrain.  The Smith and Leinster stories are new, and informed rumor has it they are the first purchases of the new editor after the exhaustion of Cele Lalli’s leavings.  They are long, so the three reprints make up a smaller proportion of the magazine than in the previous issue, less than half of the total page count.  Almost all the the issue’s contents are fiction.  The editorial is one page, as is the letter column, and that’s it: no article, no book reviews.

The editorial by Joseph Ross cocks a fairly vapid snook at outside critics of SF, most recent example being Kurt Vonnegut, who isn’t entirely outside, and the letter column—both the letters and the editor’s responses—are calculated to cheer on the magazine and celebrate the true pulp quill, with a sideswipe at the previous editor’s attempts at something a little more elevated.

Killer Ship (Part 2 of 2), by Murray Leinster

The longest item is the conclusion of Murray Leinster’s serial Killer Ship, which inhabits the subgenre of Reactionary Science Fiction.  This is not a political designation, but a description of stories that suggest—nay, insist—that the future will, conveniently for the lazy reader and writer, not be much different from the past.  This one began last issue with: “He came of a long line of ship-captains, which probably explains the whole matter.”


by Norman Nodel

There follows a genealogy of the protagonist Captain Trent’s space- and sea-faring ancestors back to the eighteenth century, followed by several paragraphs about the similarity between the dangers of space travel and those of eighteenth-century sea voyaging, complete with Trent’s ancestor sailing into port with the hanged bodies of pirates swinging from the yardarms.  There’s no indication of what Trent knows or how he has been influenced by these ancestors’ doings, so how his lineage “explains the whole matter” is a bit murky.

A couple of pages later, after it is disclosed that the ship-owners who have hired Captain Trent for a trading voyage in pirate-infested waters, er, space, would be just as happy if he gets pirated so they can collect the insurance: “It didn’t bother him.  He came of a long line of ship-captains, and others had accepted similar commands in their time.”

Six pages further on, when it appears Trent’s ship has spotted a lurking pirate: “The report of a reading on the drive-detector was equivalent to a bellowed ‘Sail ho!’ from a sailing brig’s crosstrees.  Trent’s painstaking use of signal-analysis instruments was equal to his ancestor’s going aloft to use his telescope on a minute speck at the horizon.  What might follow could continue to duplicate in utterly changed conditions what had happened in simpler times, in sailing-ship days.”

Later still: “The arrival of the Yarrow in port on Sira was not too much unlike the arrival of a much earlier Captain Trent at a seaport on Earth in the eighteenth century.” I will spare you the extensive elaboration.  And I can’t resist one more, towards the end as the Captain and his men are mustering for the final battle: “When they gathered, crowding, to get into the Yarrow’s spaceboats, the feel of things was curiously like a forgotten incident in the life of a Captain Trent of the late eighteenth century.” (Again, spare the details.) There is no suggestion that the current Captain Trent is in any way aware of this incident.  Hey, the author just said it’s forgotten!

At this point it is tempting to ask, Why bother?  Why not just swing by the library and pick up a stack of old C.S. Forester novels, and take your eighteenth century straight?

Another conspicuous feature is its pervasive verbosity.  Consider the following passage, right after the discovery that there’s another spaceship lying low very close.  Trent throws a switch that turns on the signal-analyzing instruments and goes to work.  Now:

“There was silence save for that small assortment of noises any ship makes while it is driving.  It means that the ship is going somewhere, hence that it will eventually arrive somewhere.  A ship in port with all operating devices cut off seems gruesomely dead.  Few spacemen will stay aboard-ship in a spaceport.  It is too still.  The silence is too oppressive.  They go aground and will do anything at all rather than loaf on a really silent ship.  But there were all sorts of tiny noises assuring that the Yarrow was alive.  The air apparatus hummed faintly.  The temperature-control made small, unrelated sounds.  Somewhere somebody off-watch had a tiny microtape player on, the Aldonian music too soft to be heard unless one listened especially for it.”

Next: “The signal-analyzer clicked.” Intermission over!  Story starts up again! 

And here’s another one, short but telling.  Captain Trent and the captain of a pirate-bashed ship whose crew Trent has rescued are about to travel from one ship to the other.  “The Yarrow’s bulk loomed up not forty feet away, but beneath and between the ships lay an unthinkable abyss.  Stars shown up from between their feet.  One could fall for millions of years and never cease to plummet through nothingness.” Then they snap on lines and are hauled across the 40 feet, sans plummeting or any actual risk or fear of it.

A little later (we’re up to page 29 of the October issue), there is a long description of the pirates repairing the damage to their ship that Captain Trent inflicted by ramming them.  This is actually a nice vivid word-picture.  But then:

“While this highly necessary work went on, the stars watched abstractedly.  They were not interested.  They were suns, with families of planets of their own; besides, some of them had comets and meteoric streams and asteroid belts to take up their attention.  There was nothing really novel in mere mechanical repair-work some thousands of millions of miles away from even the nearest of them.”

And it goes on, and on, appearing everywhere like water seeping up through the floorboards of a flooding house.  It’s enough to make a body wonder if paying by the word is really such a good policy.

Oh, yes, there is also a story here, fitfully visible through the padding and the constant eruptions of the eighteenth century.  Trent takes on a job carrying a cargo through pirate territory, partly to make some money and party because he hates pirates.  He has an encounter with some pirates, captures some of their crew, and rescues the boss’s daughter (boss meaning owner of the pirated spaceship, and also a planetary president).  She thinks he’s the cat’s meow for rescuing her, and he sort of likes her too, but duty calls.  Then everybody foolishly thinks it’s safe to travel again because Trent defeated this lot of pirates.  The boss’s daughter gets kidnapped by pirates again.  Trent cleverly figures out where she and the other hostages must be, goes there with his crew, confronts the pirates in their lair, rescues boss’s daughter again, wedding bells clearly to follow. 

There are some clever plot twists along the hackneyed way, as one would expect from a guy who’s been at this for well over four decades.  There are also characters, sort of.  Captain Trent is the strong laconic guy who may have inner turmoil but keeps it to himself.  Everybody else is essentially a cartoon, notably Trent’s crew, who play a big part in his success, and who are essentially a bunch of roughnecks the Captain has recruited from barroom brawls and who follow him because he’s a pretty good brawler too.  Finally, there is the definitive happy ending: “This novel will be published in the winter by Ace Books under the title ‘SPACE CAPTAIN.’ ”

One star for both parts.  That’s the average of two stars for smooth professionalism, and zero stars for polished vacuity; life’s too short to waste time on this.

On the Sand Planet, by Cordwainer Smith

All right, Henry, wheel that one out and release it to the next of kin.  Who’s on the next slab?  Oh, Cordwainer Smith.  Sounds promising.  Except . . . 

On the Sand Planet seems to be the last in the Instrumentality series featuring one Casher O’Neill that began with On the Gem Planet and On the Storm Planet, with Three to a Given Star tangentially related.  They were all published in Galaxy, to considerable praise from the Traveler.  But . . . if the others appeared in Galaxy, what is this one doing here at the bottom of the market?  Unfortunately, suspicions confirmed.


by Jack Gaughan

Casher O’Neill has been on a mission to relieve his home planet Mizzer of the tyrant Wedder, and to that end has circuitously toured the galaxy and has obtained various superpowers, apparently courtesy of T’ruth, an Underperson derived from a turtle.  That’s all before this story opens.  Now, he’s landing on Mizzer again, walks into town and into Wedder’s citadel, and using his superpowers, rearranges Wedder’s head and portions of his supporting anatomy, turning him into a pussycat.  Metaphorically, I mean.  While he’s at it, Casher restores the intelligence of an idiot child. 

Now that Casher is done with his life’s work, he drops in on his mother, who has mixed feelings about him, and his daughter, who has her own life and would just as soon he went away.  So he decides to go to the Ninth Nile (this city Kazeer is at the confluence of a whole lot of Niles, it seems), though he is warned he will need iron shoes for the volcanic glass.

At the Ninth Nile, Casher meets D’alma, an elderly dog-underperson and an old acquaintance, who accompanies him, first to the gaudy City of Hopeless Hope, where everyone seems to be engaged in the practice of one religion or another, and D’alma warns that they are “the ones who are so sure that they are right that they never will be right.” Then, to the place of the Jwinds, “the perfect ones,” who destroy intruders who don’t meet their high standards.  But Casher, who contains multitudes in his enhanced cranium, is too much for them.  On to Mortoval, where a gatekeeper lets them pass when Casher again musters his superpowers to invoke “old multitudes of crying throngs.” The gatekeeper asks, “How can I cope with you?”

“ ‘Make us us,’ said Casher firmly.
“ ‘Make you you,’ replied the machine.  ‘Make you you.  How can I make you you when I do not know who you are, when you flit like ghosts and you confuse my computers?’ ”

On to Kermesse Dorgueil, where D’alma warns “here we may lose our way because this is the place where all the happy things of this world come together, but where the man and the two pieces of wood never filter through,” and a guy named Howard explains, “We live well here, and we have a nice life, not like those two places across the river that stay away from life,” and they make no claim to perfection. 

Here Casher encounters a woman, Celalta, who is dancing and singing, having resigned as a lady of the Instrumentality, and Casher recruits her as traveling companion by grabbing her wrist and not letting go.  Also he introduces himself by telepathy-dump, including “the two pieces of wood, the image of a man in pain,” and tells her it’s “the call of the First Forbidden One and the Second Forbidden One and the Third Forbidden One.” The Trinity, like you’ve never seen them (or it) before!  I guess.

Onward, past the Deep Dry Lake of the Damned Irene, resisting the temptation to lie down with the skeletons and die, to “the final source and the mystery, the Quel of the Thirteenth Nile,” where there are trees and caves, and fruits, melons, and grain growing, and evidence that other people used to live there, and also some surviving chickens running around.  Celalta declares, “We’re Adam and Eve in a way.  It’s not up to us to be given a god or to be given a faith.  It’s up to us to find the power, and this is the quietest and last of the searching places.” Et cetera.  Celalta says she’ll start the fire if O’Neill will go catch some chickens.

Well, this is pretty ridiculous.  It’s obviously some sort of religious allegory, reminding me a little of my ill-fated glancing encounter with The Pilgrim’s Progress, told in an often sonorous style but a plain vocabulary, like a negotiation between the King James Bible and Fun with Dick and Jane (that’s not a complaint).  But the point is a little elusive.  I get that at least one of the two is thinking about Adam and Eve, since she says it straight out.  But then what?  Mr. Smith owes us one more story in the series, catching up with Casher and Celalta and their inevitable children after ten years or so in isolation, living on feral chickens roasted in a cave.  But you know it won’t happen.

Two stars for this shaggy God epic.  As exasperating follies go, it’s at least readable and amusing.

The Comet Doom, by Edmond Hamilton

The reprints are an exceedingly mixed bag.  Surprisingly, the best is also the most archaic, Edmond Hamilton’s The Comet Doom, from the January 1928 Amazing.  There’s a big green comet passing by, and it turns out it’s inhabited by atomic-powered metal beings with tentacles who used to have organic bodies but gave them up.  These folks have about used up the comet’s resources and want to replenish their stores by carrying off a handy planet, ours to be precise.  In fact they have just yanked the Earth out of its orbit.  To further their scheme, they land on a lake island and snatch our heroes, Coburn and Hanley, and offer them metal bodies and immortality if they will help out in the liquidation of their species.

Hanley goes for it, Coburn escapes.  About this time, Marlin—the story’s narrator—is passing by the island in a boat which is half-destroyed by the comet, swims to shore, and encounters Coburn, who recruits him to the human cause.  They attack the cometeers and Coburn is killed, but the already-transplanted Hanley, in a final moment of human loyalty, destroys the machine that is steering Earth towards the comet, along with the comet-people present.  Doom is foiled.

This one is reasonably readable, mostly done in a style that reflects close attention to H.G. Wells, with echoes of both The Star and The War of the Worlds, despite the pulpish plot.  Two stars by today’s standards, probably a standout by those of its time.

Restricted Area, by Robert Sheckley

The other reprints are from the brief high-budget, and relatively high-brow, flowering of the Ziff-Davis magazines during 1952 and 1953, immediately after the magazine went from pulp size to digest size.  Robert Sheckley’s Restricted Area, from the June-July 1953 Amazing, is one of the slick but empty and cartoony pieces he produced in quantity at the beginning of his career, along with the more incisive ones. 


by Greisha Dotzenko

Space explorers land on a paradisical planet–wonderful climate, no germs, no rocks, lots of colorful friendly animals ready to hang out and play, and a giant steel shaft ascending to the clouds.  But after a while, the animals start to slow down and keel over.  Connect the dots.  Glib and facile, and the author knows it—this one hasn’t been in any of Sheckley’s multiple collections to date.  Two stars, barely.

Final Exam, by Chad Oliver


by Ashman

Final Exam by the sometimes redoubtable Chad Oliver, from the November/December 1952 Fantastic, is also from what we might call the Intermission, or Respite, between the Ziff-Davis magazines’ last gasp as pulps and their monotonous and purposely formulaic low-budget era of the mid- and late 1950s.  Like much of Oliver’s work, it reflects his anthropological bent (actually, a pretty straight-line bent—he’s become an anthropology professor at the University of Texas), but strikes an unusually sour note.  Professor La Farge’s class in Advanced Martian History is on a field trip to see and condescend to some of the colorful and primitive surviving Martians, but the time for the Martians to turn the tables has arrived in this heavy-handed satire.  Two stars, barely. 

Summing Up

Well, a couple more hours we’ll never get back, and not much to show for it, except an eccentric misfire from a sometimes brilliant writer, and a tolerable relic of a bygone era.  Next?

[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…]




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 10, 1965] Strangers in Strange Lands (December 1965 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Time for the Stars

I was having a lovely conversation with fellow traveler Kris about the mixed reviews for the British anthology show, Out of the Unknown.  Some critics are saying the stories aired would have been better served in a conventional setting rather than on Mars or wherever.

Indeed, this has been a common complaint for decades, that science fiction should be uniquely SF with stories that depend on some kind of scientific difference/unique setting, even if many of the trappings are familiar.

Galaxy is a magazine that has led this charge since its inception in 1950 and it therefore comes as no surprise that this month's issue features a myriad of settings that are in no way conventional, backdrops for stories that could take place in no genre but science fiction.

Citizens of the Galaxy


by John Pederson, Jr.

The Mercurymen, by C. C. MacApp

On the face of things, Mercury would seem a most inhospitable planet for colonization.  Until this year, the general conception of things was that the innermost planet of our solar system was tidally locked, presenting just one baked hemisphere eternally toward the sun, while the other remained in perpetual frigid night.


by Gray Morrow

C. C. MacApp offers up a most imaginative tale set on this half-cooked world.  The planet, or at least the twilight zone between the hot and cold sides, is overrun with the vines of a plant, the interiors of which are large enough and contain sufficient air and water to support human inhabitants.  How they plant came about or how the settlers came to dwell in them is a mystery, but hundreds of years later, the colonists have reverted to near savagery.  The ecosystem of the vines provides most of their needs: latex for vacuum suits, luminescent mold for light, oxygen-producing fungus for air.  But for precious metals and for new soil for crops, the denizens must venture into the airless waste outside.

Similarly, population pressure periodically forces tribes to split, members of a certain age tasked to form a new settlement further along the vine. The Mercurymen is the tale of Lem, eldest son of a recently expired chief, who leads a party out over the bleak landscape of Mercury in search of a new hope.  Along the way, he must deal with a deadly environment, hostile tribes, and treachery within the group.

Because so many of the concepts are alien, even as the characters are human, The Mercurymen can occasionally be a detailed, hard read.  Nevertheless, I appreciated MacApp's world building quite a lot, and I was carried along with Lem on his engaging, difficult adventure.  The novella would merit expansion into full length novel though the following discovery may require a complete change in setting to make it work:

From Nature, Volume 208, Issue 5008, pp. 375 (October 1965):

Rotation Period of the Planet Mercury, by McGovern, W. E.

The recent radar measurements of Mercury indicate that the period of rotation of the planet is 59 +/- 5 days1. This result is in complete disagreement with the previously quoted value of 88 days based on the visual observations of the markings on Mercury2-6. In this communication we show that the same visual observations can not only be reconciled with the radar-determined rotation period of Mercury but, in addition, can be used to derive an improved value for the period of rotation of the planet, namely, 58.4 +/- 0.4 days.

Yes, Mercury isn't tidally locked at all, and the stories that made use of this presumption are now all obsolete.  Editor Pohl may even have known this even when he put this issue to bed, as the news first broke in June.

Still, it's a good story, and again, you can squint your eyes and pretend it takes place on a different one-face world entirely.

Three stars.

Galactic Consumer Reports No. 1: Inexpensive Time Machines, by John Brunner

The latest Galaxy non-fact article is written in the style of the venerable magazine Consumer Reports, offering evaluation of six cut-rate personal time machines. 

The aforementioned Kris noted that there seem to be two John Brunners: one who writes Hugo-worthy material like The Whole Man and Listen! The Stars… and another who churns out hackwork.  I'd say this piece is representative of a third Brunner, neither outstanding nor unworthy.  It's a cute piece, although I would have appreciated a little more time travel in it.

Three stars.

Laugh Along With Franz, by Norman Kagan


by John Giunta

In a disaffected future, "None of the Above" (the so-called "Kafka" vote) threatens to become the electoral candidate of choice.

More pastiche of outlandish societal explorations than tale, I found myself falling asleep every few pages.  I'm afraid Norm Kagan continues not to do it for me.

One star.

For Your Information: The Healthfull Aromatick Herbe, by Willy Ley

A rather defensive Willy Ley discusses the history of tobacco in his latest science article.  It's actually pretty interesting, though I am no closer to taking up the still-ubiquitous pasttime than I was before.

Four stars.

The Warriors of Light, by Robert Silverberg


by Jack Gaughan

In the previously published story, Blue Fire, Silverberg introduced us to an Earth of the late 21st Century, one that worships the Vorster cult.  Vorster and his disciples cloak the scientific pursuit of immortality with a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo, complete with a rosary of the wavelengths of light.

Warriors of Light is not a sequel to Blue Fire, per se.  Instead, it is a story from a completely different perspective, that of an initiate of Vorsterianism who is recruited by a heretical group to steal some of the cult's deepest serets.

Reportedly, Silverbob produces 50,000 words of salable material per week, enough to make it seem like SF is his full time career even though it's just a fraction of his overall output.  Light is not the brilliant piece that its predecessor was, but the Cobalt-90 worshipping future Earth remains an intriguing setting, and I look forward to the next story that takes place therein.

Three stars.

"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman, by Harlan Ellison

In Ellison's latest tale, The Master Timekeeper, a.k.a. the Ticktockman, is the arbiter of justice for a chronologically regulated humanity.  Everything runs to schedule; tardiness is punishable by the lost of years from one's lifespan.  There is no room for deviation, nonconformity.

Yet one clownish fellow, known as The Harlequin, cannot be restrained.  His antics distract, his capers disrupt, his personality compells.  This dangerous threat must be stopped.  But in erasing the heretic, can even the master inquisitor escape just a little of the nonconformist contagion?

This is the most symbolic of Ellison's work to date, and with a deliberate, almost juvenile storytelling aspect that veers toward the Vonnegutian.  I appreciate what Harlan is doing here, but there's a lack of subtlety, a ham-handedness that makes the piece less effective than much of his other work.

Oh, my telephone is ringing.  One moment. 

Ah.  Harlan says I'm an ignorant so-and-so and if I withdrew my head from my seat, I might be able to better comprehend his work.  (Note: this is not an exact transliteration).

Anyway, three stars.

The Age of the Pussyfoot (Part 2 of 3), by Frederik Pohl


by Wallace Wood

Last up is the continuation of last month's serial by editor Pohl, who is indulging himself in his first love, writing.  Forrester, who died in the late 1960s only to be ressurrected in the 25th Century when medical technology was up to the task, has run out of dough and has become employed by the one boss who will have him, an alien from Sirius, member of a race with whom Earth is currently in a Cold War.

In this installment, we learn about how this state of not-quite conflict came to be, as well as about the Forgotten Men, the penniless humans who make a living outside of normal society.  We also learn how difficult it is to survive when one cannot pay the bill on one's "joymaker," the ubiquitous hand-held combination telephone, personal computer, and electronic valet. 

Let us hope that we never get so reliant on this kind of technology that we find ourselves similarly helpless without them!

Pussyfoot continues to be entertaining and imaginative, far more effective in execution of its subject than similarly themed Kagan piece, though less satirical in its second installment than its first.

Four stars.

Beyond This Horizon

My Heinlein motif for the article section titles may be a little misplaced given that R.A.H. doesn't appear in the pages of Galaxy this month. Call it artistic license since his most recent novels are coming out (or have come out) in sister mags Worlds of Tomorrow and IF.

Anyway, at the very least, the stories in the December 1965 Galaxy hold to the Heinlein tradition of fundamentally incorporating unique settings. No transplanted Westerns or soap operas here!

For the most part, it works, resulting in a solid 3-star issue. Why don't you pick up a copy, Space Cadet, and see if you agree!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 2, 1965] Revolution! (December 1965 IF)

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by David Levinson

Americans have an odd relationship with revolution. They’re quite proud of their own, but extremely leery of anyone else’s. But revolution seems to be the natural order of things in the 20th century. Not all of them have been violent, nor have all of them been political. And no doubt we will see many more – political, scientific, economic, social and even sexual – before the decade, let alone the century is out.

Revolution turned upside-down

Since the end of the War, the major colonial powers of the 19th century have been gradually handing over control of their colonies to the native people. It hasn’t always been voluntary, nor has it always been smooth. But the British seem to be doing better than the others at handing over power. Most transitions have gone smoothly, though not perfectly. Until now.

Negotiations have been ongoing with Rhodesia since last year. The sticking point has been an improvement in the status of Black Rhodesians and an end to racial discrimination, insisted on by the United Kingdom. The white Rhodesian government led by Prime Minister Ian Smith is vigorously opposed the idea of equality for Blacks.

Talks broke down on October 8th over the issue of majority rule. With rumors circulating that Rhodesia will declare independence, the U. N. General Assembly voted 107-2 to call on the United Kingdom to use military force to prevent such an event. Ten days later, the Organization of African Unity passed a similar declaration. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson has gone to Rhodesia to continue negotiations, apparently without success. On the 30th, Wilson gave a press conference before returning home in which he stated that a unilateral declaration of independence would be treason, but that the United Kingdom would rely on trade sanctions and ruled out the use of military force against “kith and kin”. A peaceful resolution does not seem to be at hand.


Harold Wilson (l.) and Ian Smith (r.)

Revolutions start to finish

Americans may not like the idea of revolution in the real world, but as part of their national mythology it turns up frequently in fiction. This month’s IF is filled with revolution, both political and otherwise.


There’s no clue what this odd revolutionary slogan means. Fred Pohl promises an answer next month. Art by Morrow

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Part 1 of 5), by Robert A. Heinlein

In 2075, the Moon has been a penal colony for nearly a century. A prison without walls or guards, because there’s nowhere to run, and after just a few months, permanent physiological changes caused by the low gravity mean no one can go back to Earth. That means that many people living there are free men and women descended from former prisoners, but still subject to the Lunar Authority.

One such is Manuel Garcia O’Kelly-Davis. Mannie, who lost his left arm in a mining accident and has several interesting prosthetics, is a computer repairman. One of his jobs is maintaining the Lunar Authority’s central computer, a High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluation Supervisor, Mark IV – a HOLMES FOUR. Somewhere along the way, so many different modules were added to the computer it gained consciousness. Only Mannie has noticed and dubbed this new “person” Mycroft, Mike for short, after Sherlock Holmes’s smarter brother. Mike is quite the joker, with a fondness for practical jokes and puns, but he’s lonely, since everyone else is too stupid to have figured out that he’s alive.

At Mike’s request, Mannie attends a political meeting where he is introduced to Wyoming Knott, a rabble-rouser from Hong Kong Luna, and runs into his old teacher, Professor Bernardo de la Paz. After Wyoh (as she prefers to be called) gives a stirring speech encouraging revolution against the Authority and the Prof agrees with her goals but pokes holes in her methods, the meeting is broken up by the Warden’s goons and turns deadly.

Mannie helps Wyoh escape and, while they’re hiding out, introduces her to Mike, who eventually creates a feminine personality called Michelle to talk to Wyoh. The next day, they meet with the Prof and have a discussion about revolution. Mannie and Wyoh exchange a knowing look when the Prof points out the importance of communications; that’s one of Mike’s bailiwicks. After the Prof expounds on the idea of revolutionary cells, Mannie suggests a few improvements and suddenly finds himself nominated to head the revolution. To be continued.


Mannie wearing his Number Three arm. Art by Morrow

All but the most rabid Heinlein fans will agree that his last few novels have been uneven at best. But this is Heinlein at his best. We have the standard Heinlein characters here: Mannie, the competent man who mostly goes along to get along until pushed to do more by circumstance; Wyoh, the strong, beautiful, brilliant woman who does the pushing (though not a love interest so far); and the Prof, the older man who loves teaching and the sound of his own voice. Mike is a bit different. He obviously has a role to play, but we need to see more.

Not much really happens in these 50 pages, but Heinlein keeps you reading, even through long discussions of Lunar marriage customs and revolutionary organization. And once again, Heinlein has slipped a minority protagonist into his work. Mannie is not only Latin as his name suggests, but he probably counts as Black, with a grandfather deported from South Africa. When he first sees her, Mannie notes that pale, blonde Wyoh is clearly first generation since the genes tend to get all mixed up pretty quickly, so most of the people we meet are probably of mixed race.

Four stars and I’m eager to see more.

Security Syndrome, by Gerald Pearce

Professor James Brown has arrived at the regional headquarters of the Society to report someone as politically unreliable: himself. Despite his double-A rating, he feels that his sensitive position and his exposure to older texts full of “unescoism” have rendered him unfit. To say more would give the whole story away.

The United States has clearly undergone a revolution prior to the time of this story. The unnamed Society merely advises the government on the political reliability of citizens, and we hear of a second Bill of Rights, which includes a guarantee of “freedom from seditious, false and heretical doctrines”. It also seems that Brown’s actions are going to trigger another revolution.

This is a good story, though not without problems. I had some difficulty keeping the various Society members straight, and the story sagged in places. Still, a solid three stars.

Toys for Debbie, by David A. Kyle

Six-year-old Debbie Curtis likes to play with toys for both girls and boys, but she does have a tendency to break them. Insurance salesman Mr. Black has offered her father some excellent terms and occasionally drops by with a present for Debbie. What could be the harm?

I often complain that an author has attempted a “Twilight Zone ending”, an ironic twist that hasn’t really been set up. Long-time fan David Kyle (who most recently appeared in these pages as an artist) has written what would be an excellent episode of The Twilight Zone. It’s easy to imagine Rod Serling popping up at the end to offer a terse epilogue. Every moment is earned, and it ends not with a twist, but a shudder. Three stars.

St. George and the Dragonmotive, by Robert F. Young

Lieutenant George St. George of the International Pastpolice has gone to sixth century England to investigate an anachronism. There he meets a few knights, including one from Camelot, hunting for a dragon which has devoured a fair maiden and several peasants, who miraculously remain “on live”. The dragon proves to be a train, resembling the Stourbridge Lion, driven by a young woman he dubs Cassiana Jones. Train-lover George must work his way into her favor to track down the source of this industrial revolution.


An unusual comic style for Gray Morrow, but the best thing about this story. Art by Morrow

Typically for Young, the protagonist is an addlepated twerp. Worse, though he falls in love with the engineer, it’s clear he’s more in love with the idea of driving a train. Worse than that, she doesn’t get a name in her own right until the very end. It’s also far too long for such a thin story. Two stars.

The Girls on USSF 193, by Stephen Goldin

Astronauts are coming back from their tours of duty in space with weakened hearts, because they won’t do the cardiac exercises prescribed by the National Space Agency. Director Jess Hawkins came up with a plan that is dubious to say the least, morally questionable and probably illegal.

You sometimes hear the phrase “sexual revolution” about changing attitudes towards sex. In the past it’s sometimes meant being open about what people are doing anyway, and sometimes it’s about real changes in sexual attitudes. This story dabbles in the latter, but is highly implausible. It hinges on a career bureaucrat making a move that puts his job on the line, a job he knows others are gunning for.

Goldin is this month’s first time author. The writing here is decent, despite the implausible plot, but the attitudes towards women are deeply questionable. Two stars.

LONCON II or Through a Monocle? Darkly, by Robert Bloch

Bloch’s report on this year’s Worldcon was allegedly written on a hotel typewriter between the end of the con and his departure for home. I believe it. This rambling nonsense reads like it was written by a man short of sleep with his brain in a different time zone. You’ll learn much more about the con from our colleague Kris Vyas-Myall’s report. One star.

Mercury, by J. M. McFadden

Mercury is an alien predator with an unusual hunting style. She is captured by an expedition and brought to an Earth zoo. There will be consequences.

The story is quite obvious and depends on some rather stupid behavior, but it’s short and not a bad read despite all that. This is McFadden’s second sale, and I’m not averse to seeing more from him. Three stars.

Retief’s War (Part 3 of 3), by Keith Laumer

Retief continues his search for Fifi. Unable to find his army, he joins forces with the remaining Terries and prepares for a last stand against the Voion hordes. Rescue arrives at the last minute in the form of the Federated Quoppina army led by Fifi, who is none other than Retief’s cousin Princess Fianna Glorian Deliciosa Hermione Arianne de Retief et du Lille. A typical Retief plan is put together to save the rest of the CDT mission, knock Ikk and his Voions out of power, quash Groaci schemes and get Retief mostly out of trouble.


Tief-Tief rides to the rescue. Art by Gaughan

What a disappointing ending. A number of things happen that make little or no sense, but happen to move plot forward. Back in the first part, I noted that there was more room for things to develop, but Laumer seems to have run out of room anyway and it all rushes to a slam-bang ending. Two stars for this part and a very low three for the novel as a whole.

Summing up

There’s lots of revolution in these pages, political, industrial and sexual. But there’s nothing revolutionary. IF is by no means mired in the past like Analog and the outward forms often acknowledge the changes happening to the genre, but the bones are still those of a decade ago or more. IF is still worth reading, and Fred Pohl has never struck me as averse to change, but he really needs to pick one of his three magazines to at least experiment with bringing them into the 1960s and beyond.


Nothing here looks terribly new either.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 2, 1965] Gimmickry (November 1965 IF)

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by David Levinson

When I was a boy, a gimmick was either much the same thing as a gadget or the sort of device a crooked casino owner would use to make sure the roulette wheel comes up 22. These days, of course, it means an ingenious new angle or a trick to draw attention in advertising. It can also be the sort of thing that makes a story work or at least that the author hopes will make the story interesting.

America’s Pastime

Baseball is no stranger to gimmicks. From sending midgets up to bat to exploding scoreboards, owners and general managers will do anything to get fans to come out to the park. After starting the season by losing 21 of their first 26 games, the Kansas City Athletics have been mired in the cellar all season. Desperate to get people into the stands as the season winds down, owner Charlie Finley came up with a couple of gimmicks in the last month. September 8th, was Campy Camp Night and regular shortstop Bert “Campy” Campaneris played all nine positions in a single game. Up against the Los Angeles Angels (or I guess California by that time, speaking of gimmicks), Campy started at shortstop and moved from position to position each inning. In the eighth, he took the mound and even switch pitched, throwing right-handed to right-handed batters and left-handed to left-handed batters. Alas, while catching in the ninth, Campy was injured in collision at the plate and had to sit out a few games.

On the 25th, Finley invited several old player from the Negro Leagues to be present when Satchel Paige took the mound against the Boston Red Sox. At 59, he’s the oldest person ever to play in the big leagues (and at 34 Athletics’ manager Haywood Sullivan is the youngest manager). Satch sat in a rocking chair in the bullpen between innings, being served coffee by a “nurse”. He pitched three innings, giving up only one hit. He came out to the mound to start the fourth, but as planned he was removed. The lights were dimmed, and the crowd held up lighters and lit matches and sang “The Old Gray Mare” as Paige walked off.


Left: Bert Campaneris. Right: Satchel Paige, with “nurse”

Baseball also saw a couple of milestones. On September 9th, Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitched a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs. (For non-baseball fans, that means Koufax and the Dodgers did not allow a single opposing player to get on base through any means.) Pity Cubs pitcher Bob Hendley, who gave up only one hit in the game. Four days later, on the 13th, San Francisco Giants player Willie Mays became the fifth player and first Black player to hit 500 career home runs. Congratulations to both men, whose teams, at the time of writing, are still vying to see which will make it to the World Series. Good luck to both (though I’m rooting for the Dodgers).


Left: Sandy Koufax. Right: Willie Mays

Gimmicks good and bad

This month’s IF is not without its gimmicks. Let’s get to it.


In orbit around a collapsed star. Art by Morrow

Tiger Green, by Gordon R. Dickson

Exploration Team Five-Twenty-Nine has run into more than they can handle on the second planet of Star 83476. There are communication problems with the natives, the jungle is trying to digest their ship and eight of the twelve men in the team have gone violently insane. Navigator Jerry McWhin can feel a berserk rage building in him. As tempers flare among the remaining crew, Jerry locks the others in sick bay and heads for the native village in a bid to resolve the situation.


Jerry and the natives attempt to cure his madness. Their ideas of what either of those terms means may differ. Art by Adkins

Despite its flaws, this is a pretty solid story. There was probably room for some cuts in the first third or so to improve the pacing, and the need for several pages of expository dialog to explain what happened is a real weakness. All of which have cost the story a fourth star. Nevertheless, Dickson seems to have matured into a very good writer. He does still need to work on his female characters (of whom there are none in this story), but otherwise I look forward to a lot more from him. Three stars.

Time of War, by Mack Reynolds

Atomic war has devastated the Earth. Handfuls of civilians struggle to survive in the few areas where the radiation isn’t lethal. Alex remotely operates a “beetle” from a base on the Moon, hunting and killing civilians who may or may not be from the other side. The enemy, the Comics, do the same, flying their manned buzz-fighters from a super-sputnik in orbit.

A rather bleak tale. I rather wonder if the two sides really would attempt to utterly wipe out enemy civilians, eventually not caring if their victims were on the other side or not. I also question if it would be possible to remotely operate an aerial vehicle on Earth from the Moon, let alone engage in dogfights. The time delay of over a second each way ought to make that virtually impossible. In any case, the gimmick here lies solely on the nature of the Comics. It’s clear what Reynolds was trying to do, but that’s not enough for this piece. It either needs a lot more plot or a lot fewer words. A high two stars.

Masque of the Red Shift, by Fred Saberhagen

Seven years after the Battle of Stone Place, Felipe Nogara, the ruler of Esteel and arguably the most powerful man in the galaxy, has brought his flagship Nirvana outside the galaxy to examine a collapsed star (sometimes called a black hole). The body of his half-brother Johann Karlsen, the hero of Stone Place, who recently put down a rebellion on Flammland has arrived in cryogenic suspension. Most believe Karlsen the victim of a plague, but Nogara has had him frozen, because he feared his brother’s growing popularity.

Meanwhile, a second courier – carrying Janda, the leader of the rebellion, brain-damaged by his treatment since his arrest, and his sister Lucinda – is captured by a new form of Berserker. The Berserkers will use Janda’s body to sneak a killing machine aboard the Nirvana to make sure that Karlsen is dead.


”We willingly bring in the semblance of the terror outside!” Art by Gaughan

Saberhagen continues to impress. The Berserkers could easily have become a simple gimmick for stories about space battles. Instead, he uses them as a backdrop to write stories about people. Another author might also have paralleled the Poe story which inspired this much more closely. It’s quite good, though not quite enough for four stars; a very high three stars.

Retief’s War (Part 2 of 3), by Keith Laumer

We left Retief crashed in the jungle and threatened with becoming dinner. Naturally, he manages to talk his way out of that and instead begins uniting diverse tribes of Quoppina to fight the Voion. An emissary sent out to parlay with “Tief-Tief” proves to be Groaci General Hish, disguised, like Retief, as a native. Upon learning that the human women who also crashed in the jungle have been captured, Retief allows himself to be taken prisoner. It turns out the women have escaped, so he does as well and trails them through the wilderness, making new allies along the way. He finally catches up with them, but the mysterious Fifi has left to try and reach the army forming to fight the Voion. To be concluded.


Retief makes a friend. Art by Gaughan

There’s really not much to this installment, just Retief bantering with various natives and General Hish. There’s a hint of humor in his escape, but it could have been a lot funnier. A low three stars.

The Lonely Hours, by W. I. McLaughlin

George Rock is fleeing through space from a creature that lives in the dark between galaxies. He has a plan to set a psychic trap for it using the corpse of a creature composed of ion sheets. This somehow involves visions of Ahab and burning witches.

McLaughlin is this month’s new writer. Fred must be desperate for stories from unpublished writers, because this is awful. None of it makes any sense, and the protagonist is unpleasant. One star.

The Doomsday Men, by Kenneth Bulmer

Robin Carver is a member of ridforce. If his team can get to the body of someone who died violently within 3 minutes of death, he can explore that person’s memories to find out how they died. He was once an agent of the Americas, but was declared unstable when his wife abandoned him and their infant daughter. While investigating the death of a “gaiety girl”, he thinks he sees his now teenage daughter at a wild party in the victim’s memory.

Carol Bursham is a scientist working for Whitcliffe, the man who invented the process that allows the investigation of the minds of the recently dead. They are trying to come up with a way of recording those minds, so that there will be less pressure on the few people who can handle immersing themselves in someone else’s mind. She and Carver discover a plot which threatens the Shield which seals the Americas off from the threat of atomic attack and the rest of the world. A plot which reaches into the upper echelons of society.


Carver makes a disturbing discovery in the mind of a murder victim. Art by Morrow

Line by line, the writing is sound and there are some interesting pieces here, but they fit together poorly. The ending also involves both a rather abrupt shift in attitudes that isn’t earned and an implication that doesn’t make much sense. Points for having a couple of female characters who actually do things and aren’t there just to be rescued. On the other hand, the way Carol thinks about men is very clearly written by a man. Still, it’s a reasonably decent read. Three stars.

Summing Up

Another issue that just sort of meanders around, deviating for the most part only slightly from average. The real problem here is the story from the first-timer. The IF First program is a seemingly good idea, but it could very easily turn into just a gimmick if the editors start sacrificing quality just to run a story from a new author. There’ve been some good stories to come out of the policy, but so far I think the only real success has been Larry Niven. Well, while there’s life, there’s hope.




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Magazine, Serial

[September 14, 1965] The Face is Familiar (October 1965 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

In all the old familiar places…

All summer long, the Traveler family's television tradition has included the game show, Password.  Though it may seem odd that such a program should rival in importance to us such stand-outs as Secret Agent and Burke's Law, if you read my recent round-up of the excellent TV of the 64-65 season, you'll understand why we like the show.

Sadly, the September 9 episode marked the beginning of a hiatus and, perhaps, an outright cancellation of the show.  No more primetime Password, nor the daily afternoon editions either.  Whither host extraordinaire Allen Ludden?

Apparently, What's my Line!  Both Ludden and his wife, Betty White, were the mystery guests last week; I guess they had the free time.  They were absolutely charming together, and it's clear they are still very much in love two years into their marriage.

Speaking of anniversaries, Galaxy, one of the genre's most esteemed monthly digests, is celebrating its 15th.  To mark the occasion, editor Fred Pohl has assembled a table of contents contributed by some of the magazine's biggest names (though I note with sadness that neither Evelyn Smith nor Katherine MacLean are represented among them).  These "all-star" issues (as Fantasy and Science Fiction calls them) often fail to impress as much as ones larded with newer writers, but one never knows until one reads, does one?

So, without further ado, let's get stuck in and see how Galaxy is doing, fifteen years on:

The issue at hand


by John Pederson, Jr.

The Age of the Pussyfoot (Part 1 of 3), by Frederik Pohl

The editor of Galaxy has a penchant for providing a great deal of his own material to his magazines.  Normally, I'd be worried about this.  It could be a sign of an editor taking advantage of position to guarantee sale of work that might not cut the mustard.  And even if the work is worthy, there is the real danger of overcommitment when one takes on the double role of boss and employee.

That said, some editors just find creation too fun to give up (yours truly included) and in the case of Pohl, he usually turns in a good tale, as he has for decades, so I won't begrudge him the practice.

Indeed, Pussyfoot is a welcome addition to the mag.  A variation on the classic The Sleeper Awakes theme, in this case, the time traveling is done via the rather new technology of cryogenics.  Indeed, protagonist Charles Forester, 37-year old erstwhile fireman, is one of the very first corpses to be frozen circa 1969, and wakes up in the overcrowded but utopian world of 2527 A.D.


by Wallace Wood

Feeling immortal (with some justification – no one really dies anymore; they just get put on ice until they can be brought back, often within minutes) and also wealthy (but $250,000 doesn't stretch as far as it used to) Forester takes a while to really come to grips with his new situation, always just a touch too clueless for his own good, and perhaps plausibility.

Very quickly, he learns that things are not perfect in the future: being immortal means one can be murdered on a lark and the culprits go unpunished.  Inflation has rendered Forester's fortune valueless.  He must get a job, any job.  But the one he finds that will employ an unskilled applicant turns out to be the one no one wants: personal assistant to a disgusting alien!

There's some really good worldbuilding stuff in this story, particularly the little rod-shaped "joymakers" everyone carries that are telephone, computer terminal, personal assistant, drug dispenser, and more.  I also liked the inclusion of inflation, which is usually neglected in stories of the future.  It all reads a bit like a Sheckley story writ long, something Sheckley's always had trouble with.  It's not perfect, but it is fun and just serious enough to avoid being farce.

Four stars for now,

Inside Man, by H. L. Gold

The first editor of Galaxy started out as a writer, but even though he turned over the helm of his magazine four years ago (officially – it was probably earlier), he hasn't published in a long time, so it's exciting to see his byline again.  Inside Man is a nice, if nor particularly momentous, story about a fellow with a telepathy for machines.  And since machines are usually in some state of disrepair, it's not a very pleasant gift.

Three stars.

The Machines, Beyond Shylock, by Ray Bradbury

Judith Merril sums up Bradbury beautifully in this month's F&SF, describing him as the avatar of science fiction to the lay population, but deemed a mixed bag by the genre community.  His short poem, about how the human spirit will always have something robots do not, is typically oversentimental and not a little opaque.  And it's not just the font Pohl used.

Two stars.

Fifteen Years of Galaxy — Thirteen Years of F.Y.I., by Willy Ley

The science columns of Willy Ley comprised one of main draws for Galaxy back when I first got my subscription.  In this article, Ley goes over the various topics of moment he's covered over the last decade and a half, providing updates where appropriate.  It's a neat little tour of his tenure with the magazine.

Four stars.

A Better Mousehole, by Edgar Pangborn

Pangborn, like Bradbury, is another of the genre's sentimentalists.  When he does it well, he does it better than anyone.  This weird story, told in hard-to-read first person, said protagonist being a bartender who finds alien, thought-controlling blue bugs in his shop, is a slog.

Two stars.

Three to a Given Star, by Cordwainer Smith

Oh frabjous day!  A new Instrumentality story!  This one tells the tale of three unique humans sent off to pacify the gabbling, cackling cannibals of Linschoten XV: "Folly", once a beautiful woman and now a 11-meter spaceship; "SAMM" a quarter-mile long bronze statue possessing a frightening armory; and "Finsternis", a giant cube as dark as night, and with the ability to extinguish suns.


by Gray Morrow

Guest appearances are made by Casher O' Neill and Lady Ceralta, two of humanity's most powerful telepaths whom we met in previous stories.

I've made no secret of my admiration for the Instrumentality stories, which together create a sweeping and beautiful epic of humanity's far future.  Three has a bit of a perfunctory character, somehow, and thus misses being a classic.

Still, even feeble Smith earns three stars.

Small Deer, by Clifford D. Simak

In Deer, a fellow makes a time machine, goes back to see the death of the dinosaurs, and discovers that aliens were rounding them up for meat… and that they might come back again now that humanity has teemed over the Earth.

A throwback of a story and definitely not up to Simak's standard.  A high two (or a low three if you're feeling generous and/or missed the last thirty years of science fiction).

The Good New Days, by Fritz Leiber

On an overcrowded Earth, steady work is a thing of the past.  Folks get multiple part time gigs to fill the time, including frivolous occupations like smiling at people on the way to work.  Satirical but overindulgent, I had trouble getting through it.  Two stars.

Founding Father, by Isaac Asimov

Dr. A was lured back into the world of fiction after an eight-year almost complete hiatus; apparently he can be cajoled into almost anything.  In Father, based on this month's cover, five marooned space travelers try to cleanse a planet of its poisonous ammonia content before their dwindling oxygen supplies run out.

It's a fair story, but I had real issues with the blitheness with which the astronauts plan to destroy an entire ecosystem that requires ammonia to survive.  In the end, when terrestrial plants manage to take root on the planet, spelling doom for the native life, it's heralded as a victory.

Two stars.

Shall We Have a Little Talk?, by Robert Sheckley


by Jack Gaughan

Bob Sheckley was a Galaxy staple (under his own name and several pseudonyms) for most of the 1950s.  His short stories are posssibly the best of anyone's, but he eschewed them for novels that just didn't have the same brilliance.

Well, he's back, and his first short story in Galaxy in ages is simply marvelous.  It involves a representative of a rapacious Terra who travels to a distant world to establish relations, said contact a prelude to its ultimate subjugation.  But first, he has to establish meaningful communications.

Fiercely satirical and hysterical to boot, Talk is Sheckley in full form.

Mun, er, five stars.

Summing up

In the end, this all-star issue was, as usual, something of a mixed bag.  Still, there's enough gold here to show that the river Gold established is still well worth panning.  Here's to another fifteen years!

[Journey Press now has three excellent titles for your reading pleasure! Why not pick up a copy or three? Not only will you enjoy them all — you'll be helping out the Journey!]




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Book, Magazine, Serial

[September 6, 1965] War and Peace (October 1965 IF)

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by David Levinson

War is something of a constant in human history, with nearly every generation facing at least one. Fifty years ago, the great powers of Europe – with a late assist from the United States – fought the “war to end war” (a phrase probably coined by H. G. Wells). Twenty years later, we got to do it all again. And ever since, brushfire wars have flared up around the globe almost continually. War permeates our language and culture even in times of peace. In his State of the Union address last year, President Johnson referred to his Great Society program as a “war on poverty”. It even shows up in our entertainment: war movies are popular; there must be half a dozen TV shows in the new fall line-up set during the War or with military themes (more if you count spy shows); and one of the current best selling novels is a barely fictional account of the U. S. Army’s special forces, The Green Berets. Sometimes it’s enough to make you believe we really are on the Eve of Destruction.


The rawness of the recording makes it that much more powerful

The War in Viet Nam

On August 5th, America got a rather shocking look at the war in Viet Nam. CBS reporter Morley Safer accompanied a Marine unit to the village of Cam Ne, where they came under sporadic fire from the Viet Cong. Communist forces soon withdrew as the Marines advanced. As they entered the village, the Americans found a number of entrenchments and a few booby traps. Their orders were to destroy any village from which they received fire, so the villagers were herded into the nearby fields, and the Marines set fire to the homes with flamethrowers and cigarette lighters. Despite the villagers’ pleas to be allowed to remove their personal belongings, everything, including all the rice stores, was destroyed. Four old men who couldn’t understand the soldiers’ English were arrested. The public is understandably outraged. Alas, most of the ire seems to be directed at CBS and Mr. Safer. President Johnson is also said to be livid.


A Marine uses his lighter to set fire to a peasant hut

War at the foot of the Roof of the World

On August 5th, several thousand Pakistani soldiers crossed into Indian-controlled Kashmir disguised as civilian locals. The belief was that the local Muslim population would rise up and welcome their coreligionists. Instead they reported the intruders to the Indian authorities. Ten days later, the Indian army crossed the ceasefire line. Thus far, both sides have made progress. As this is written, India has captured the Haji Pir pass, roughly 5 miles inside Pakistani territory, though there are also reports of a massive push by Pakistani forces. Hopefully, another ceasefire can be brought into effect and a long-term peaceful solution can be found.


Indian forces in the Haji Pir pass

War across time and space

War is also a prominent feature of this month’s IF. As one war ends, another begins, along with a couple more and a very uneasy peace negotiation.


There are three living being depicted here. Art by Gaughan

Retief’s War (Part 1 of 3), by Keith Laumer

The natives of the planet Quopp are part insect, part machine and come in a variety of forms, each making up their own tribe. There has also been a sizable human presence for a century or so, to the point that there are human farmers and traders who have lived their whole lives on the planet. Now the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne has decided it is time for a native government to be established and, in the person of Ambassador Longspoon, has chosen the Voions to form the government and the Federal police force. Unfortunately, all the other tribes on the planet see the Voions as bandits and thugs.

As usual, Second Secretary and Consul Jame Retief has learned several of the local dialects and made friends with many of the common folk. There follow a number of adventures. He discovers crates of weapons labeled as educational material, which he manages to divert. Despite severe restrictions on tourism, a shipload of young women is requesting emergency permission to land. Their captain, by the name of Fifi, seems to know Retief, but he has no idea who she is. Defying orders, Retief grants them permission to land, but the ship crashes out in the jungle. Then there’s an attack on the embassy using smoke bombs which appear to be of Groaci manufacture.

Prime Minister Ikk has Retief arrested, hoping to find out where his guns are. He declares he is executing a coup, after which Retief makes his escape. Retief manages to disguise himself as a native with some help, and steals a barely flight worthy spaceship. He crashes in the jungle and is captured by some Ween, who call him Meat-fall-from-sky. As the situation goes from bad to worse, some more Ween drag in a Voion, loudly pointing out that he is a member of the Planetary Police. To be continued.


Meet the bad guys. While other Quoppians like colors, the Voions prefer basic black. Art by Gaughan

I’ve noted over the last few months that Retief is getting stale, as if Laumer is just going through the motions. This time around, he’s writing with more verve. It feels like Laumer is enjoying himself again. Maybe it’s because there’s more room. Retief pulls off at least three escapades here that would normally have had to resolve the whole situation in a shorter piece. So even though we’re getting all the usual story beats, there’s more flavor to it all.

That said, I’m hoping for a bit more depth as the story progresses. Laumer has set things up for some solid satire on colonialism as well as the sort of Cold War proxy conflicts that are really just colonialism in different clothing. The colonial powers frequently set one tribe over all the others, and it was often the least liked tribe, even before they wound up in charge, just as the CDT has done here with the Voions. We’ll have to wait and see if Laumer makes use of the situation he’s created. Three stars for now.

A Leader for Yesteryear, by Mack Reynolds

When his time capsule materializes above deep water, Lucius Rostock is barely able to escape it before it sinks. He is rescued by some very surprised fishermen and brought to shore. The local people take him in, and Lucius discovers that he is neither where nor when he expected to be. Rather than the future, he is in the distant past. Gradually, he learns the language and finds out where fate has brought him, though he is rather taken aback at how unwarlike the people are.

To say more would give the whole story away. I figured out where and when Lucius found himself quite a while before he did, though I suspect Reynolds expected the reader to do that. I also figured out who the text implies Lucius will become, although that is never spelled out. What I didn’t see coming was who Lucius is. The end really caught me by surprise. I do have a couple of quibbles with this otherwise very good story. There’s an odd gap in the languages that Lucius knows, which would have allowed him to communicate much sooner (but not without some difficulty, nevertheless). Also, the final paragraphs – even though the reveal did catch me by surprise – are a bit stilted and clumsy. Still, a solid three stars.

The Smiling Future, by Miriam Allen deFord

In an overpopulated world where nearly everyone works at producing enough food to keep the human race alive, an intelligent dolphin appears on the California coast and summons the world government to a summit meeting. Five hundred years of dumping radioactive waste into the oceans has resulted in highly intelligent, technologically advanced dolphins. In need of more room, they are planning to flood the world, but one faction has an offer to help preserve the human race.

What bleak, bleak story. It’s made worse by the plodding narrative style, too. Mrs. deFord has been in the writing business for well over 40 years, and up until recently her work has been generally very good. She does spend most of her time writing mysteries, even winning an Edgar a few years ago, and I admit I don’t read all that much in the genre, so perhaps her level of quality there has held steady. But her work in science fiction and fantasy has really fallen off in quality. Two stars.

Origin of Species, by Robert F. Young

Alan Farrell has traveled to the Upper Paleolithic in search of an anthropology professor and his secretary, who have gone missing. Exiting his own mammothmobile (regular readers may remember a similar concept with dinosaurs in Young’s “When Time Was New”), he finds first the professor’s “paleethnologivehicle” and then the professor’s body, apparently killed by Neanderthals. Farrell presses on, searching for the secretary, Miss Larkin, on whom he is developing a crush based solely on her picture and very wholesome résumé.

Eventually, he discovers a cave guarded by a force field, some Neanderthals who shoot blue sparks out of their mouths, and Miss Larkin. As the two make their escape, Farrell is shocked to learn first that the Neanderthals are bringing in what appear to be Cro-Magnon people as prisoners through some sort of portal, and second that Miss Larkin is not the wholesome girl she seemed to be, but rather an ecdysiast attempting to better her lot in life. Will the pair be able to stop aliens from using Earth as a prison? Will Farrell learn that exotic dancers can be nice girls, too? It’s Young. What do you think?


Honestly, this picture tells you everything you need to know about this story. Those gorillas are supposed to be Neanderthals. Art by Morrow

The good news is that Young hasn’t written another modern take on a myth or fairy tale, nor has he written one of his overly sentimental romances. The bad news is that he attempted to write a sex farce (I think). Without the sex. Farrell is a dope, who took forever to figure out the mystery of the spark-shooting Neanderthals, and a hypocrite. He developed his low opinion of strippers by… visiting strip clubs. Two stars.

Purpose, by Edward V. Dong

All life on Earth has been destroyed by an interstellar nucleonic storm. All that is left is the Machine. It was created to save the human race, but failed. In the last moments, technician John Michelson reprogrammed the Machine to be a monument to Man and to wait for new life to appear in the solar system. Eventually, the Machine is freed of its programming and seeks fulfillment.

Dong is this month’s first time author, and I suspect this story was written for F&SF’s Univac/unicorn contest. I’m not terribly impressed. It really felt like I’d read this before. Indeed for most of its three pages I was expecting something along the lines of Asimov’s “The Last Question”. That’s not quite where the author went with his story, but he didn’t get where he was trying to go either. Two stars.

An Ounce of Emotion, by Gordon R. Dickson

Tyrone Ross and Arthur Mial are the Earth delegation on their way to attempt to broker a peace between the Laburti and Chedal using a computer known as a statistical analysis instrument, or Annie. Earth is in Laburti space and, if war breaks out, could be devastated. Unfortunately, the two men hate each other with an inexplicable passion and have from the moment they met. Ross, the viewpoint character, is the technician who can run Annie, while Mial is a diplomat and ostensibly in charge.

Tempers flare between the two as Mial grows ever more high-handed and seems to be making a corrupt deal with the Chedal. Ross goes so far as to attempt to kill Mial, though he fails. Can Ross keep Mial from wrecking the negotiations? And why would Earth send two people who are so incapable of getting along?


I’m not sure why Annie is blowing up here. That didn’t happen. Art by Giunta

The situation Dickson has created feels rather implausible, even given the explanation at the end. Nevertheless, it’s a decent story, if you can get past the tense atmosphere between the two human characters. Gordy has really settled in as a solid writer who rarely wastes his readers’ time. Three stars.

Short Trip to Nowhere, by Robert Moore Williams

Jim Eiler comes home late. His wife Marta is already asleep, as is his three-year-old daughter Nelda. As he slides into his anti-gravity bed and plugs in the cords of the sleep machine, a voice in his head cheerily greets him. There’s a nasty fight with his wife, and eventually he agrees to call in their friend Harold, a psychiatrist. Eventually, it turns out the voice is coming from Nelda’s imaginary friend, who isn’t so imaginary after all. Then Nelda disappears.

This is another one I felt I had already read in better form. Williams is clearly using Peter Pan as his basis, but there were other resonances. Though different, I was strongly reminded of both Henry Kuttner’s “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” and Mark Clifton’s “Star, Bright”. The bitter relationship between the Eilers makes for an unpleasant read and serves no real purpose, when it could have prompted Nelda’s search for something happier. Instead it’s just bickering. Two stars.

Skylark DuQuesne (Part 5 of 5), by E. E. Smith

Sigh. This story does not deserve a detailed summary. In a nutshell, using Ray-See-Nee magic the Skylarkers and friends come up with a new way to combine mind power. They devise a whole bunch of new science and use it to solve the Chloran problem for good. A final solution, you might say. They take the stars from one galaxy and smash them into the stars of planets the Chlorans live on, while taking all the planets with humans living on them and moving them to a third galaxy. And they called Edmond Hamilton the planet killer.

Midway through this attack, the Chlorans counterattack, leaving Seaton and Crane unconscious. DuQuesne leaps into the breach and finishes the job. Afterwards, he proposes to Hunkie de Marigny and the two go off to conquer a galaxy on the rim of the universe. The end. At last.


Dick Seaton gets what’s coming to him. Art by Morrow

Let’s start with the slightly less egregious denouement. From the title of this novel, one would expect that we would witness the redemption of Blackie DuQuesne. He does decide that there is room enough in the universe for both him and Dick Seaton and he does open up his shell just a little bit to let someone else in. But that’s as far as it goes. He still plans to make himself the emperor of a galaxy. Worse, he openly states that he’s planning a program of eugenics, one based not just on sterilization, but extermination. Marc C. “Blackie” DuQuesne remains an evil man to the end.

And then there’s Dick Seaton. In my review of Part 1, I declared Seaton to be a war criminal, based on his destruction of the Fenachrone homeworld in an earlier novel. Here, after general discussion of what to do about the Chlorans – including a proposal to convert them – he compares the Chlorans to a cancer that must be rooted out (a disgustingly familiar argument) and comes up with a plan to kill every single Chloran before they spread to other galaxies. There are nearly 150 million Chloran planets. We’re talking about the deaths of trillions at the very least. War criminal doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Zero stars for genocide and an ending that completely poisons an otherwise mediocre novel whose only redeeming feature is excessive nostalgia.

Summing up

Well, a bleak issue for a bleak month. It got off to a decent start, though the Reynolds story does have a dark tone to it. The Dickson was unpleasant, but in a good way. It was intended to be so and to make readers think. Other than that, poor efforts topped off by a steaming pile of genocide and eugenics. But at long last, it’s over. Do we have anything to look forward to? Let’s hope so.


A wraparound cover this month, so here it is in all its glory. Art, as before, by Gaughan




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