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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 22, 1965] Foul! (September Galactoscope)

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This month's Galactoscope features a mixed bag of mixed bags: one Ace double and one Gamma that barely manages a solitary single…


By Jason Sacks

We, the Venusians, by John Rackham

I picked up the latest Ace Double Novel at my local Woolworth's the other day, and had to share my opinions of the two novels with my fine science fiction friends.

On one side of the double was the deliriously wacky cover shown below, which actually is a scene in John Rackham's meandering but intriguing new novel. By my reckoning, this is at least the third Ace double this prolific author has delivered over the last two years, and though I haven't read either Watch on Peter or Danger from Vega yet, this slim novel – a true Ace double at 137 pages – makes me want to try them out too.

The main character of We, the Venusians is Anthony Taylor, a man who feels himself out of place on a future version of Earth. Though the timing of that future isn't revealed in the novel, it's clear he lives in a bit of a dystopian world. Advertising is pervasive and unavoidable, commerce and greed rule the world, and the arts are trivialized and mocked.

This all matters because Taylor is an accomplished musician and the owner of a small club in which he plays Liszt, Schubert, Bach and the other classical artists to an ever-diminishing tribe of listeners. He is truly a man on the outside of his time. That's why he has a mixed reaction when a strange man wanders into Taylor's club and offers an obscene amount of money to travel to the Terran colony on Venus to play music, Taylor is both intrigued and repulsed by the opportunity.  He is intrigued by chance to get rich quick and the chance to make a new start. Taylor is also repulsed by the idea because he has a secret he fears will be revealed on his new home: though his skin appears human color, he is actually a Greenie, a green-skinned Venusian native.

Through a series of plot machinations, Taylor does end up journeying to Venus along with two other musicians, one of whom, named Martha Merrill, is a beautiful woman who possesses an unbelievable singing voice. They also discover that the human colonists have enslaved thousands of apparently mindless Greenies to do menial labor in order to keep the colony buzzing along. Taylor and Merrill escape the human domes into the native lands, and both performers literally go native – Martha is also secretly a Venusian.

Though Merrill soon dies, Taylor finds his destiny among his own people and ends up becoming a force for revolution among his adopted people against the colonists.

One of the most intriguing elements of the book is the beans which grow on Venus and provide nutrition and energy for the people living there. While the Venusians protect their precious resource carefully, the humans try to exploit the beans and export the incredibly valuable food back to Terra. This element of the plot had an intriguing post-colonial feel to it. It's easy for the reader to substitute tobacco or silk as the exploited resource in our own history. It's a smart choice by Rackham to bring in that idea, as it adds resonance and contrast to the human/greenie struggle.

We, the Venusians is full of interesting ideas, from its resonances to the Civil Rights movement of today to its treatment of Indians in the west to the ways pop music overwhelms classics. Rackham keeps his story focused on character, and that keeps the reader involved in this novel. I enjoyed reading how Anthony Taylor grows and changes as this book goes along, and that growth gives this book a lot of its energy.

That said, the book rambles and wanders a bit too much and seems to frequently lose its focus. I know it's anathema to us fans of Ace doubles, but another 20 pages of meat would have made this book's bones stronger.

3 stars.

The Water of Thought, by Fred Saberhagen

Fred Saberhagen is another science fiction writer who has settled into a journeyman status at this point. He's appeared in a number of the science fiction magazines in recent years, and his "Berserker" stories have started to gain more attention from aficionados. My colleague David Levinson has praised Saberhagen's ability to pull off modern fiction within the framework of space opera, and that skill is well on display in The Water of Thought.

Like We, the Venusians, Saberhagen's novel takes place on an alien planet on which native peoples are in conflict with Terrans. The planet Kappa is a kind of garden of Eden, a paradise and perfect place for rest and relaxation for exhausted Space Force planeteers. It's also the home to native peoples and a type of water which provides amazing changes in people. When a planeteer named Jones samples the water, he goes crazy and disappears from the colony. Planeteer Boris Brazil must follow to investigate.

Jones becomes megalomaniacal under the influence of the "water of thought", and rapidly becomes an addict. Jones is constantly seeking his next drink, like a heroin addict looking for his next fix. When Jones forces Brazil to drink the water, it has a different effect on him. Brazil is nearly paralyzed and loses his free will while in proximity to Jones, but does not become addicted. The battle between the two men, and the story of the humans and natives caught in the middle, is an important part of the book.

Like We the Venusians, this book has a natural resource as a key point of conflict between humans and Kappans as the water is seen by some as a resource to be exploited for personal gain. The human mayor of Kappa sells the water as a drug, trying to earn a neat profit off of a local resource. Meanwhile a human scientist has slightly more noble goals: he believes the water may help the local hominid species gain intelligence and gain their freedom from slavery by the natives.

The Water of Thought is a more complex book than it seems at first glance, and reveals some of the shallowness of Rackham's world. Where Rackham draws a pretty clear line between humans and greenies on Venus, Saberhagen presents Kappa as a more complex world. Kappa is a place where the lines between hero and villain are somewhat unclear, where everybody is exploiting each other in some ways, and in which the precious natural resource has ambiguous effects.

This book adroitly shows Saberhagen's skills at mixing space opera elements with a psychological and philosophical elements. The Water of Thought feels contemporary for our year of 1965, a time in which the smartest people are embracing ideas of the past but providing new approaches to those ideas.

4 stars.

Gamma #5: The Worst Sci-fi Magazine Ever Published?


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Back in the early 1950s, when the market was flooded with magazines, there used to be plenty of forgettable magazines that would crank out terrible stories. Whilst it may be possible my memory is cheating me, I cannot recall a single issue as awful as this issue of Gamma:

Gamma Cover

This terrible issue of Gamma starts as it means to go on with another lurid cover from John Healey. I had hoped the style from the last issue was just due to it being a special edition calling back to the 30s, apparently this is the direction the magazine is going, with it illustrating the lead novella.

John Healey himself is a talented artist apparently working on shows like Johnny Quest, so I more question the editorial choice than his skill.

Now, take a deep breath, and let us all work together to get through this issue:

Nesbit, by Ron Goulart

Taking up nearly half the magazine, the perpetually disappointing Ron Goulart returns as, apparently, the editors simply cannot resist his writing. Once again, I find my eyebrow raised at this assertion.

This novella follows an attempt to shoot a pilot for a “jungle series”. When the Hollywood lot turns out to be in use Tim McCarey goes to visit Vincent Belgraf’s estate, to convince him to let them use his transplanted jungle for the shoot. However, on arriving he cannot get ahold of Mr. Belgraf and the other residents tell him it is not for rent.

Tim believes something else is amiss and finds a gorilla running around the estate in a soldier’s outfit. It turns out that this is Nesbit Belgraf. After being attacked by his own private army he had his brain transplanted into that of a gorilla, so he will be strong enough to become emperor of the United States and battle the unseen forces secretly controlling everyone’s lives.

Whilst Tim does not agree with this fascist conspiracy-minded gorilla and his family, he agrees to help with his propaganda efforts in exchange for being able to use part of the jungle for filming. However, Nesbit is very emotional and has difficulty keeping his cool.

I have trouble working out what Goulart is trying to do with this piece. If it is a satire on fascism and right-wing conspiracy theories, it fails. For, apart from Nesbit being a gorilla, it feels more like a documentary piece, as I am fully aware of the existence of those who believe in Jewish-Communist conspiracies controlling the world. It never does anything to really contradict what the Brelgrafs say, nor even to particularly suggest that their plans to put all non-white people into concentration camps or exterminate them, is as horrific as it really is.

If it is trying to be just an adventure story, it also fails. Intelligent gorilla stories are two-a-penny in comic books but are usually mindlessly enjoyable. This is incredibly dull and padded, full of side details that another might make charming, yet Goulart makes unbelievably tedious.

I could imagine many interesting ways a more skilled writer could have taken this piece, but instead Goulart produces something truly dreadful.

An exceptionally low One Star.

Policy Conference, by Sylvia Dees and Ted White

Peter and The Chief meet in the latter’s office to discuss how they could improve “interregional relations” for their boss Old Nick (I offer no prizes for guessing who that actually is).

Whilst this story is more supernatural than science fictional it weirdly has the same conceit as the previous tale, of someone having to work on PR for a monster. It just helps highlight how unoriginal a concept this is. Mercifully, this one is very short.

One Star

Gamma
We get the return of the unrelated sketches. Depressingly they are better than the actual text.

Auto Suggestion, by Charles Beaumont

Returning from the earlier issues of Gamma (publishing the best story in issue 1) The Twilight Zone writer brings a story of automobiles. Unfortunately, this is definitely not his best work.

Abnar Llewellyn, a nervous driver, suddenly finds his car talking to him and it encourages him to be a more aggressive on the roads. It also starts to interfere in other areas on Abnar’s life, asking out women for him and instructing him on how to commit crimes.

I have gone on record saying I am no lover of cars, and so tales like this generally leave me cold. However, even accounting for that, I felt the story was bad. It is painfully overwritten to the point of being juvenile:

A truck’s air horn began some car lengths away. A frightening sound, a terrible sound, like the scream of a wounded elephant, and it led other smaller cars to renew their anger, shrill now beneath the dump-truck’s might below, shrill and chittering, like arboreal creatures gone mad.

Even Lovecraft would probably tell him he needed to cut out some description!

It also ends up not doing anything particularly interesting, just being a story where the protagonist does unpleasant things and may or may not be insane.

One Star

Welcome to Procyon IV, by Chester H. Carlfi

This is not a new writer to these pages but, rather, another story by longtime editor Charles E. Fritch, contributing his 4th story to the magazine.

In this vignette, Jameson and his wife are the last people left alive on the dead world of Porycon IV, with humans having wiped out the natives and disease killing the rest of the human population. On his ancient radio Jameson hears a human expedition coming but when they come to in to his cabin they discover a terrible truth about Jameson’s wife.

This feels like a pale imitation of Ray Bradbury’s Martian stories. It is more competent than the previous two pieces in the magazine, but a lot remains heavily unexplained. Also including a genocide in one line without any further thought left a bad taste in my mouth.

One and a half stars

Interest, by Richard Matheson

Cathryn is to be married to Gerald Cruickshank, yet find his parents and their house terrifying. However, she cannot work out why that is.

As stated in the introduction, this is a Poe-esque tale, although the purpose of it escapes me. Feels more like a derivative work you would find in a bad fanzine.

One Star

Gamma
Another sketch, holding my interest much more than Matheson’s story did.

Lullaby and Goodnight, by George Clayton Johnson

In the aftermath of a nuclear war, an outpost of shelters is setup outside of an unnamed city. Our narrator (also unnamed) talks about the trouble Sarah Hartman is having with trying to keep her baby Adam alive in the radiation-soaked world.

This vignette marks a short foray into the New Wave from the usually conservative Gamma. It is not the best example, but the melancholic atmosphere raises it above the rest of the stories here.

Three stars

Gamma
An ad for Jack Matcha’s “adult novel”

A Careful Man Dies, by Ray Bradbury

This is a reprint from New Detective Magazine from almost 19 years ago and, unfortunately, it shows.

It narrates the story of a haemophiliac author, named Rob, who keeps being sent sharp objects in the mail, in an attempt to stop his book from being published.

I know Bradbury is popular right now, but do we have to reprint everything he did in his early days? The truth is he has evolved as a writer and most of his work before 1950 is simply not that good!

This is not really a science fiction or fantasy piece, but I suppose it could be classified as uncanny horror. Unfortunately, it lacks anything interesting, it seems more like a sequence of unusual events, like reading someone’s disconnected nightmare.

The story is written in a pale imitation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled style along with a second person narration. Whilst I do like experimentation this one fails for me.

Two stars

The Late Mr. Adams, by Steve Allen

Another reprint, this time from the publisher’s own collection, Fourteen for Tonight. This is my first experience with Mr. Adams' writings myself, although I hear he is big television personality in the United States.

This is a very silly life-story of a man who is always late. Really, that is all there is to it.

One Star

Wet Season, by Dennis Etchison

Etchison is generally a middling new writer. Shows promise but I am still waiting for a story that astounds me. Unfortunately, this is not it.

In a town there have been an unusually high number of drownings and the women seem to be acting strangely. At the same time rainfall levels are apparently increasing. After Madden’s daughter dies his Brother Bart comes to tell him of his suspicions.

Etchison really seems to like his Puppet Masters style stories and this is another one in that mold. I am willing to concede that it has a good atmosphere but that is all I am going to give.

A low two stars

Gamma Image 5
I love this illustration. Why couldn’t this have been one of the pieces inside?

Summing Up

This issue of the magazine is truly terrible. Some stories are not as bad as the others, but it would be a stretch to say anything is actually good.

I am beginning to feel foolish that I took out a subscription from issue 2, as I have already paid for more of these. However, if the quality continues like this, I find it hard to imagine this magazine continuing much beyond that.

That's all for today, folks! Join us next month for another exciting Galactoscope!

and…

Our next Journey Show: At the Movies, is going to be a blast!

DON'T MISS IT!




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Comics

[August 12, 1965]: No Help for Help!

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By Jason Sacks

A Tale of Two Help!s

Yesterday I had the special pleasure of seeing my favorite band on the big screen once again. Of course, I'm talking about the Beatles and Help!. You gotta see it. Let me tell you, folks, the film is a laugh riot. I giggled all the way through the silly tale which has Ringo Starr chased throughout the world because he possesses a ring which is a sacred relic for a Far Eastern cult. The music is wonderful, of course, but it's also a tremendously silly flick, wackier than A Hard Day's Night. I know you've already bought the LP (which, sadly, is only about half by the Fab Four) but great as the album is, the movie is so much better. Go see Help! while you can! I certainly plan to watch it again.

Sadly, while the Beatles' Help! rides the top of the world's music charts and marks another high point in the career of the Beatles, another Help! is breathing its last and represents a low point in another man's career. Thankfully both versions of Help! have brought me a lot of laughs.

Maybe you've seen Help! magazine on the stands next to Redbook and Look and were curious about this strange-looking mag. Maybe you even picked up an issue, perhaps the May 1965 issue with the humorous cover below, and giggled at the weird and wonderful material inside it. Sadly, the latest issue of Help! will be its last. The death of this very special mag has an interesting history well worth sharing. I hope you'll read along and discover why you should seek Help! magazine in the back issue bins and join me in mourning its passing.

MADman Harvey Kurtzman

Before we talk about Help! itself, let's talk about its editor, a genius by the name of Harvey Kurtzman. Kurtzman created, edited and orchestrated the glory days of MAD magazine as published by the late, lamented E.C. Comics. Under Kurtzman, MAD was a brilliant skewering of American comics, TV series, movies and life in general. Who can forget his absurdly silly "Superduperman", which skewered the Man of Steel with delighted glee and the so-many-jokes-you-have-to-squint-to-read-them-all art by Wallace Wood and Will Elder or any of a hundred equally scathing and brilliant satires?

The first 23 issues of MAD were published in comic book form by E.C., before moving to the familiar magazine format. Reportedly, MAD is one of the bestselling mags in the country these days, but, sadly, Kurtzman was unable to share in the profits from his creation. According to interviews with Kurtzman and his peers which appeared in E.C. fanzines, the editor had a falling-out with publisher William M. Gaines which resulted in Kurtzman abandoning his creation and creating a mag closer to his own vision.

Or, to be more precise, Kurtzman created a series of mags closer to his own vision. The first of those new magazines, dubbed Trump, was a gorgeously printed magazine, featuring slick and art (often painted in oils) on glossy paper. Published by Hugh Hefner of Playboy fame, Trump was a smart, sophisticated publication. Sadly, it fell victim to a cash crunch in Hefner's business and went out of business after only two issues. A second, similar mag, named Humbug, was self-funded but failed to find an audience, perhaps because it was poorly printed on cheap newsprint.


Thankfully, help came to Kurtzman from an unexpected source. Philadelphia-based James Warren, publisher of Famous Monsters and similar mags, was a big fan of Kurtzman's work. After a brief negotiation, Kurtzman had his fourth shot at creating a humor mag, though he would have to make some compromises. Budgets were tighter and production values shoddier than Humbug. But making a virtue of necessity, the great editor was able to produce a magazine unique on American newsstands.

Help for Tired Minds

Premiering with an issue cover-dated August 1960, Help! offered a different vision from Kurtzman's  previous mags. For one thing, Warren's budgets forced compromises which clearly both pinched and intrigued the expert editor. Instead of drawn covers, for instance, Help! often featured photos of comedians on their covers doing silly things. With well-known celebs like Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar and Jerry Lewis on the first three covers, the mag made a clear and simple implied pitch: if readers enjoyed these stars on TV, they would also enjoy reading Help!.

Inside the magazine, readers were treated to a hodgepodge of different material. Help! was a freewheeling magazine in which every page turn provided an unexpected treat. Some features were immutable. Every issue had a fumetti, or photo comic strip, in which actors (as well as Kurtzman, his assistant Gloria Steinem, Chicago comedian and radio personality Jean Shepard, and actors such as young Brit John Cleese) played parts in a comedy sketch presented like a comic strip. Some of those fumetti were goofy and some were strange, but Kurtzman deserves credit for trying something very different from the norm in order to fill his pages.

That said, Help! also included work every reader would expect, including outstanding strips by some of America's funniest cartoonists. Jack Davis worked for Help! at the same time he worked for the ongoing MAD. So did Arnold Roth, and Will Elder, and John Severin, and the list went on. Many issues featured some of their finest comics work. The staff wasn't limited to Kurtzman's old pals, either. Young cartoonists included Gilbert Shelton, who brought his manic "Wonder Wart-Hog" strips from the University of Texas newspaper to this mag.

Some of the finest work in the magazine was provided by Kurtzman himself. His "Goodman Beaver" strips, the tales of a young
naïf adrift in the baffling corporate world, is a legitimate side-splitter as well as a scathing satire of American professionalism and greed. "Beaver" can also be read as a hilariously bitter spit in the eye of a world Kurtzman dreamed of inhabiting but for which his own hubris would not allow him to experience.

As if that wasn't enough, Kurtzman also included a generous collection of text humor. Works by Jean Shepard, Paul Dehn, William Price Fox, and many others, appeared every issue. One of the most important features of the mag demonstrated Kurtzman's commitment to the younger generation. The ongoing "Help!'s Public Gallery" feature included art by artists who were building their skills. I was especially impressed by the energy and verve of above page by young R. Crumb, who looks like he will be going places. I've also enjoyed work in the Public Gallery by such new artists as Jay Lynch, Skip Williamson and Terry Gilliam.

No More Help from Harvey Kurtzman

Sadly, though, a circulation of roughly 115,000 copies per issue was just not enough to keep Help! alive. With issue number 26, on stands this month, Kurtzman's latest passion project has faded away like his previous projects. Thankfully it went under with perhaps the finest issue so far, which includes a shockingly hilarious satire of southern bigotry called "Brother, Have You Stomped a Nigra" by Terry Gilliam and Dave Crossley.  This humor has a vicious bite and perfectly encapsulates the influence Kurtzman has had over the younger generation of cartoonists. It seems to speak to the times we live in, the struggles over the Civil Rights Act, and the never-ending power of Dixie. Hopefully the racism mocked here will be gone in the next few years. It's hard to imagine systematic racism surviving the next 20 years, let alone the 20th century.

Help! was a worthy failure, but a failure nonetheless. Reports have Glliam moving to England,  perhaps to work on a project with Cleese, while Kurtzman will continue his Little Annie Fanny strips for Playboy. Meanwhile, publisher James Warren is replacing Help! with a new horror mag named Creepy. Issue #4 of that mag was also recently released and features work by some of Kurtzman's follow alumni. But that's a story for another column.

Hmm… wonder if there's still time to catch a matinee today of the Beatles film…



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 4, 1965]: Hoode Hoode Hoo (Doctor Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick)

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By Jason Sacks

With a Bang

Today is Independence Day, traditionally celebrated with a dazzling pyrotechnic display. And so it is appropriate that the book I'm sharing with you today deals with the biggest bang humanity can make: the atomic bomb.

Doctor Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick is an astonishing book.

I use astonishing in all its meanings: it's surprising, it's impressive, it's full of constant surprises, and Dr. Bloodmoney left me a bit breathless when I finished it.

This is also a weird book. Even for Philip K. Dick, who has written some of the oddest science fiction books in recent years (heck, just look at my review of his Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich for one very recent example), this book is… well, very strange indeed.

But that strangeness makes it endearing, and a compulsive page turner, and, oh heck, let's just dive into my uncategorized thoughts.

How We Got Along Before the Bomb

Many of Philip Dick's short stories and novels start after the atom bomb is dropped and mankind is looking to pick up the pieces. For instance, his outstanding Penultimate Truth delivers a post-atomic world of claustrophobic underground  burrows and vast overground demesnes.

Dick takes a different approach with Dr. Bloodmoney, setting up the world before the bomb drops with three chapters depicting what seem to be rather prosaic events. We witness a strange man visit a psychologist, see a vaguely annoyed salesman, watch a phocomelus achieve his dream job of fixing TV sets. All this scene setting feels  normal and yet also weirdly off-kilter, as if the world is about to change and as if all this seeming normalcy is about to get swept away and as if the characters, deep in their beings, need that normalcy to be swept away in a way that it will never be resurrected.

As always with Dick, however, that apparent normalcy is an illusion, a lie people tell themselves to prevent themselves from madness. Dick's characters are almost always miserable and complicated. They are obsessed with existential doubt and a general frustration at their positions in the world. For one relevant instance, the man going to the psychologist is named Bruno Bluthgeld, who has good reason to need help. As his psychologist realizes in a moment of epiphany:

This is Bruno Bluthgeld, the physicist. And he is right; a lot of people both here and in the East would like to get their hands on him because of his miscalculation back in 1972. Because of the terrible fallout from the high-altitude blast, which wasn't supposed to hurt anyone; Bluthgeld's figures proved it in advance.

The salesman, Stuart McConchie by name, is also deeply unhappy for reasons around envy, ambition and stymied luck due to race (McConchie is black, a fact the book dwells on to its detriment). Dr. Bloodmoney opens with McConchie sweeping the sidewalk in front of the shop he works at. All the while he ponders the misery of Bluthgeld and feels vague jealousy for the happiness of the phocomelus.

That Thalidomide baby is named Hoppy Harrington, and we soon find out he's one of the few characters in this novel who's not filled with miserable existential doubts. Hoppy seems to have telekinetic powers like Manfred Steiner in Dick's great Martian Time-Slip, and we see him fix appliances without having to use his cumbersome metal arms.  Hoppy's powers will take on more importance after the inevitable atom bomb drops.

How We Got Along During the Bomb

Dick's depiction of the events while the bombs are dropping is typical for him: weird, astonishing and striking for its subjective way of depicting the nuclear holocaust.

As the bombs are dropping over Dick's beloved Berkeley, we witness each character's reactions to the events. I was especially struck by this interior monologue from the psychologist Doctor Stockstill:

And then, in the middle of his cursing, he had a weird, vivid notion. The war had begun and they were being bombed and would probably die, but it was Washington dropping bombs on them, not the Chinese or the Russians; something had gone wrong with an automatic defense system out in space, and it was acting out its cycle this way — and no one could halt it, either. It was war and death, yes, but it was error; it lacked intent.

Even as people flee the city in terror, have a final, quick, end-of-the world-so-why-not sexual fling in the back of a car, and consider their futures, still it is clear to these characters that this calamity is the result of a simple accident. It seems to be random chance, a bug in the military's ENIAC that triggers the bombs. Considering we all have the near-death experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis in our recent memories, this "friendly fire" experience is even more terrifying.

And yet, this is a Phil Dick novel we're talking about here, so nothing is quite as simple as it seems.

How We Got Along After the Bomb

In the world after the bomb drops, the most astonishing thing is how normal things feel for readers — at least at the beginning of that segment of the story. It is seven years after E Day, as the people call the day of the holocaust, and the world has been changed in innumerable ways.  Rats are smart, cats gather in gangs, dogs can talk, and the people are barely getting by on a subsistence basis.

This section of the book focuses on a small community in Marin County which includes most of the characters from earlier in the book. McConchie is part of the town, still working as a salesman, and is miserable (we witness a deeply humiliating failure he has trying to buy electronics early in this segment of the story). Dr. Bluthgeld is in the town, under an assumed name, living with his existential misery. The couple who had furtive sex, Bonny Keller and Andrew Gill, also live in the area. Gill has become a kind of cigarette magnate while Keller has become a kind of civic leader. Bonny became pregnant during her tryst with Andrew, and she gave birth to a very strange set of twins who become central to the story's plot.

Hoppy Harrington is also in Marin, working as the town's all-around fix-up man. In a weird way, the Bomb has made Hoppy's disabilities more normal. In a world in which few people escaped deep scarring from the bombs, Harrington is no longer an outcast as a man with no arms or legs. Instead, as a trusted oracular figure, he's able to be content and grow arrogant in his place in the world. It's striking that one of the few characters in this novel – heck, one of the few characters in Dick so far – who is genuinely happy  turns out to be the antagonist of the novel.

Central to the novel is the one character outside of the small Marin County village. Walt Dangerfield had been on his way to Mars when the bombs fell. Trapped orbiting the Earth, his folksy way of speaking ("Hoode Hoode Hoo! Now let me give you a tip on how to store gladiola bulbs all through the winter without fear of annoying pests.") and love of sharing reading to a world desperate for entertainment, Dangerfield unites the world to listen to his voice like FDR used to unite us all with his fireside chats.

It's in this section of the novel that I found myself more and more enraptured in the world Dick creates. In his beautifully flat and unadorned style, Dick is brilliant at conveying character with just a few words. Emotions, motivations, passions and fears seem to radiate off the page from these characters. It feels like Dick wrote in a frenzy, these characters living in three dimensions in his vastly creative mind. Characters grow, change, evolve. McConchie slowly becomes content; Hoppy slowly becomes resentful; the twins grow from being an oddball curiosity to the moral centers of this tale. There's a sense of plot, character and setting oozing out between words, a parallel universe Dick sees through his imagination's gateway. Though this is a short book, it carries the heft of a book twice its length, and in the West Marin township, Dick slowly and shambolically leads to a fascinating conclusion in which Hoppy's ambitions prove to be his tragic fall like a Greek hero too filled with pride.

Some readers may not love the way the main plot of the story mainly wraps up offscreen, but the events leading up to it are rendered so beautifully by Dick that I scarcely cared. There is a scene near the end of this novel, depicted through the eyes of an owl, that was so lyrical that for a moment I thought I was reading Ray Bradbury instead of Philip K. Dick.

In The End

This is the fifth Dick book to be released in the last 18 months. It appears the man's work continues to improve. I was deeply moved and impressed by this novel. The characters are vivid, the events powerful, and Dick's wonderfully subjective way of showing action is unique in my experience. Dr. Bloodmoney is an astonishing achievement.

5 stars, and for me this is the leading candidate for the Hugo Award for Best Novel so far this year.

Above I described Dick's writing as beautifully flat and unadorned, and that's true, but this book also ends on a lovely note which speaks to the curious optimism and faith in the human spirit which runs throughout this book.

The business of the day had begun. All around her the day was awakening, back once more into its normal life.

In the wake of an atom bomb, life slowly returns to its new normal. Humanity will bounce back from even the worst we can imagine. It's hard to get more optimistic than that. In these troubled times, we all need to be reminded to be optimistic.

On the subject of books, please go to this article and give it a read. It's as important now as it was when it was posted — perhaps more. It's been a tough few months.




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Book

[June 26, 1965] Disappointing Duo (June Galactoscope #2)

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by Rosemary Benton

Modern Man, Primitive Man (Robert Nathan's The Mallot Diaries)

The Mallot Diaries is a new science fiction drama from novelist Robert Nathan. The author, best known for his 1940 fantasy mystery novel Portrait of Jennie, is a highly prolific individual whose style primarily balances satirical allegories with poetic waxing on the transient nature of the world.  

Given that he has some stories which have been categorized as supernatural/horror and generally fantastical, I was eager to pick up what I thought would be a merger of high literary talent exploring themes commonly found in popular literature. A story about modern man interacting with a species lost out of time? Now that’s a fruitful area for an author such as Nathan! What The Mallot Diaries turned out to be was far more unsettling.

 

First Contact

The book takes place in the present day within the remote regions of Arizona. It is written from the titular firsthand accounts of an Associate of Anthropology at Meriden College named Professor Mallot. He, along with his fellow academic Professor Osgood, Curator of the Archaeological Wing of the Museum of Natural History in Yuma, set out to look into rumors of an elusive tribe of indigenous peoples who have resisted contact with the outside world. Their inquiries with a local Apache man quickly lead them to the very people they seek. Having made contact with the tribe, they soon deduce that the people are actually the remnants of a Neanderthal group who are part of the Bear worshipers that Mallot is studying.  

The elected leader of the tribe welcomes them after they provide reassurances that the purpose of their visit is neither to kill his people or "take away their god".  This tribal leader, or "Jefe", declares that the two men may stay with them in order to act as historians who will document the history and culture of the People of the Bear. Things quickly get messy, however, when the internal power struggles of the tribe begin to draw the outside observers in – both due to their desire to document the People of the Bear, and because of their own weaknesses of the flesh.  

The World Before Recorded History

The modern-day discovery of a lost tribe of Neanderthals is a solid enough base for a good story. Nathan does an admittedly decent job of working in the wonder and respect that his main characters feel as they begin to understand the world of their hosts. It’s refreshing to read a story in which the modern world explorers would be able to appreciate that the only real differences which separate modern humans from their primitive roots are as superficial as looks or clothing choices.  

It’s pessimistic, but Nathan writes on page 73, "I often think of Professor Osgood's remark, that man has not changed in a hundred thousand years. He is still a scoundrel". To this point he again and again drives home the facts that things such as wealth, status, lust and ambition are as alive and well in the predecessors of homo sapiens as they are in modern man himself. At times these parallels come off as a little too trite, however.  

The Youth Revolution

Perfect examples of this are the implications within the buildup to the children's revolution at the climax of the book. This plot thread is clearly a thinly veiled satire of today's youth culture. Under the current leadership of the tribe, children (meaning anyone under the age of 21) are not subjected to any forms of rules or consequences for their bad behavior.

The Jefe indulgently dismisses rude or violent acts as just youthful arrogance. Ultimately this lack of discipline for any crimes, from adultery to assault, results in the 109 children of the tribe taking up spears and killing the elders.  

Heavy handed satire aside, by far the worst flaw of Nathan's book is the sensuality with which young girls are described and the societal sexualization of the youths in the tribe, some of whom are as young as eight years old.

As the story progresses and the anthropologists learn more about the internal politics and social structure of the tribe, both of Nathan's protagonists develop very disturbing feelings for two of the young girls, one of whom is twelve and the other is between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.  

Highly Disturbing

This attraction is in part explained as being an effect of the two professors integrating into the tribe. Thirteen is the current age of consent amongst the Neanderthals and young girls and boys are not strictly forbidden from sexual exchanges, but it’s still a very disquieting turn in the story that comes into play over and over again.

The touting of pedophilia as romantic, cute and "basic human nature" frankly ruins the experience of reading The Mallot Diaries, and because of it I can’t recommend this book at all. 

If Nathan was trying to write the next Lolita he has not succeeded. I have to give this book only a half star. Even with the pointed realizations about humanity which Nathan occasionally drops during the plot, the fetishization of young girls as well as the repeated attempts to write blatant pedophilia off as star crossed love makes The Mallot Diaries a book that is best avoided at all costs.  


By Jason Sacks

On a much lighter note…

Sometimes it's exhilarating to read a book that seems to be positively overflowing with ideas, a book where the author seems thrilled to share a whole universe of concepts and drag an empathetic reader along in a journey that feels complex and rich, even if the book is short.

And sometimes it's just exhausting to read a book like that.

The Martian Sphinx, by Keith Woodcott

The Martian Sphinx, by journeyman science fiction author Keith Woodcott, is an exhausting book.  It's full of clever moments, great excitement, and some intriguing alien races. Sadly,  in this case, the whole of this brief 160-page Ace novel is not greater than the sum of its parts.

The Cork Floats to the Top

The protagonist of this novel is a graduate student named Jason Lombard, who is attending the finest college in Africa but who is ostracized due to his European birthplace. Lombard may be part of a miserable minority, but his brilliance wins the day. Despite his neurotic worries, Lombard is a genius level scientist who has thought through the deeply troubling problem of the Earth's decaying orbit around the sun.

Lombard comes across as a compelling character in the early chapters of this book, albeit in the Philip K. Dick tradition. Jason is a worrier, an outsider, a man who feels deeply ostracized from the university he's attending. It's hard not to see in Lombard echoes of the children integrating Southern elementary schools and college these days, though filtered through a different sort of personality.

I would happily have read a whole book exploring Lombard's world, with its overpopulated Europe and the advancement of the Red Chinese to the top of the world's most advanced societies. Sadly, Woodcott wanders elsewhere before exploring that theme enough to satisfy the reader's curiosity. I wish he had taken a stand to explore the problems of overpopulation, as that problem seems richly deserving of exploration in sci-fi.

The Power of Gravi

A second intriguing theme in The Martian Sphinx depicts how the world has moved beyond its dependence on fossil fuels and has learned to use a safe and endless source of power which is all around us. Gravipower sends a spaceship into space, provides all the energy the world needs, and essentially acts as a magic handwaving plot device to move the story along.

Again, the development of gravipower would alone have been enough for an entertaining book, because its effects on the book's characters is intriguing. But, again, we just don't get to spend much time considering what is essentially only a plot device.

First Contact

Instead, the heart of the book is a trip Lombard and a team of astronauts take to Mars to investigate a strange alien contraption dubbed "The Martian Sphinx." I'll get to the "Sphinx" in a paragraph or two, but first I should mention the aliens who are also questing after the object.

Two races swiftly land on Mars when the Terrans land there, and both alien races are bizarre, unique and totally fascinating in their vast differences from mankind. One race attacks the other, and the effects of the battle make up some of the most passionately written sections of the novel. Though these creatures are as different from people as insects are from us, readers are still made to feel the aliens' pain and fear. I was legitimately moved by a scene in which a number of the beings slowly die due to the battle.

In a way, their very alienness added to the pathos of those those scenes. Readers feel themselves in the boots of Lombard and his companions, struggling to make sense of the cryptic, unexplained war that lands on humanity's doorstep and the terrible toll that war takes on everyone involved. Again, this section alone might make for an intriguing novel of its own, maybe as a parable for our deepening conflict in Vietnam.

Not this Sphinx…

The Sphinx

Lastly, at the heart of the book but far from the center of its action is the "martian sphinx" of the book's title. An alien obelisk on our nearest planetary companion, the sphinx is a perplexing object which bespeaks of a long-lost alien civilization and seems to promise a fascinating future for humanity.

Woodcott makes the sphinx intriguing but it ultimately delivers mostly riddles rather than answers. Though that makes its name appropriate, the sphinx also deserves more than the space it receives here to begin to reveal its secrets. It's a rich enough idea for a whole series of novels, and I hope Woodcott can write those novels.

One of Mr. Woodcott's previous novels

Few Riddles Answered

The Martian Sphinx is Woodcott's fourth published novel and it overflows with ideas. Sadly, perhaps due to the brevity of this book, none of those ideas pay off in fulfilling ways. It's easy to ponder how a writer like Philip K. Dick or John Brunner might explore these ideas which read similar to some of their best work. Sadly Woodcott is no Brunner and this novel just doesn't fulfill its considerable potential.

3 stars.

[I am looking forward to the interesting mail we receive in regard to Jason's last statement. I suppose Woodcott is no Brunner much like Winston P. Sanders is no Poul Anderson and Cordwainer Bird is definitely no Harlan Ellison…]



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Comics

[June 10, 1965] Comics Go James Bond

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By Jason Sacks

Secret agent mania is everywhere these days. After the gilt-edge success of Goldfinger last year, the passion for dashing, daring, handsome men of action has reached a fever pitch. I’ve been picking up paperbacks of Matt Helm, Nick Carter, John LeCarre and even Doc Savage at my local Woolworths, devouring the thrilling adventures of these men of action, ready with a quick shot, a fast woman and a speedy sportscar.

I’ve also been passionately watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on NBC. I love so many of the quirks of that show – setting the entrance to UNCLE HQ inside a flower shop, for instance, as well as the dashing agents Solo and Kuryakin and the whole larger-than-life setting of it all.

Comics have had their share of secret agents over recent years, too, from “John Force, Magic Agent” appearing in the back pages of American Comics Group’s Unknown Worlds late last year to the spy adventures of Charlton’s new Sarge Steel (which includes impressive art by an up-and-comer named Dick Giordano – watch that name, folks) to a two issue DC pilot spotlight on spy King Faraday in last year’s Showcase #50 and 51 (albeit reprints from 1950, in the latter case – DC has never been a company known for their innovation).

But no comics company has fully jumped on the spy trend, not in the way it cries out for.

Until, that is, this month’s issue of Strange Tales, starring a super spy named Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The great Stan Lee and Jack Kirby deliver one of the most intriguing, exciting, whizzbang first adventures of any comic story in recent memory, full of bizarre gadgets, nasty villains and a dynamic dollop of mighty Marvel action.

As if they felt constrained by their small twelve-page allocation in this issue, Kirby and Lee deliver a story in which everyone seems to be moving at top speed, showing off cool gadgets, discussing nasty spy rings, showing flying cars and flying aircraft carriers and all the other trappings of a great adventure tale. Even in large set-pieces, like the scene above (which looks oddly like a key location in last year’s film Doctor Strangelove), it seems every character has their own bit of business to take care of, their own set of a million tasks to accomplish and no time to complete them. These are busy, important men on the mission to save the Earth, and they will work together with everything they have in order to defeat the evil organization Hydra.

At the center of it all is good ol’ Nick Fury, twenty years removed from leading the Howling Commandos, now promoted from sergeant all the way up to colonel, with an eye patch over his left eye and an everpresent stogie in his mouth. Fury acts as the reader proxy in the story, leading us to discover just what in the world he is getting himself involved with – heck, even as he’s strapped into a bed with wires taped all over his nearly naked body, Fury is wondering “what in blazes is going on?”

What is going on, Col. Fury, is that you’ve been recruited to a super spy agency, the Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division by name – ignore that extra “E” please. SHIELD seems constantly under attack – as we discover on page three of this all-out action thriller, in the space of seven seconds, robot versions of Fury are attacked by evil doers – including one who has a gun hidden in a mailbox (I would hate to be the mailman working that route!) We soon witness Fury’s car attacked by a fiery missile before the wheels of the sports car transform into jets which transport our hero to an astounding floating fortress.

And those villains! Hydra seems to be an equal match for SHIELD, with astonishing technology, a vicious hatred for humanity, and – seriously – the greatest motto I can remember at a spy agency (and evil women, too – wonder if Nick Fury can turn Agent H to the good side!

Lee and Kirby have been growing a reputation for unstoppable, hurtling action but this tale takes that energy to a whole new level.

I do want to briefly mention that this story only takes up half the issue, and if “Agent of SHIELD” is an extrovert’s delight, “Doctor Strange” is just as much an introvert’s thrill. Drawn by Kirby’s opposite, Steve Ditko, this issue finds our sorcerer supreme on the hunt for the mysterious meaning of “eternity.” Just check out that gorgeous splash page below and contrast its brooding intensity with the dynamic thrills of the Nick Fury splash. Both are amazing work by men at the top of their talent but they each offer very different visions.

Fury’s world is one of men walking, talking and shooting. The men in that story look around – often to the reader – with a sense of purpose and energy. In Strange’s world, however, men and women look around furtively, live in almost unknowable strange worlds, are communicating secretly. If Nick Fury is like James Bond, Stephen Strange is like a hero from a Philip Dick or John Brunner novel, cursed by his greater knowledge and abilities to fight a lonely war.

Together, these two series provide about as dramatic a contrast in styles as any comic I can remember. What a welcome and unique issue. Strange Tales #135 is a good example of why I'm quickly becoming more and more inclined to Make Mine Marvel! 




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Book

[May 24, 1965] Two faded stars (May Galactoscope #2)

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May's second Galactoscope reviews the latest works by two of the field's titans. Sadly, it looks like their best contributions are behind them, as the following article will demonstrate:


by Rosemary Benton

Mind Barriers and Mental Talents (Andre Norton's Three Against Witch World)

Andre Norton is a gem among authors. She is able to write everything from short stories to novels in quick succession, continues to be picked up by publishers (no small feat in the writing world), and has been able to carve out a reputation for herself as an author who can write extensive background lore into her stories.

That being said, I feel like Norton is in a bit of a writing funk lately. It hasn’t slowed her down, but her writing is starting to feel unbalanced. In particular, the trait that once was her strength – world building – is starting to weigh down her work. By the end of Three Against the Witch World, the third and newest short novel in the Witch World series, Norton successfully introduces better character development with respect to the earlier entries, but the world building is still too overpowering.

The Next Generation

Three Against the Witch World begins with a very condensed introduction to the early lives of Simon Tregarth and Lady Jaelithe's triplets. Told from the first-person narratives of the children, we learn that the first two decades of life have not been easy for anyone in the nation of Estcarp.

After the destabilization of Karsten at the conclusion of Web of the Witch World, a warlord stepped up to fill the power vacuum left by the former ruler Yvian and his extra-dimensional allies, the humanoid beings called The Kolder. Between the Alizon nation, the remains of Karsten and the formidable Falconers, Estcarp is locked in a long term guerrilla war that is slowly bleeding them dry.

Amazingly, despite marrying Earth man Simon Tregarth and thereby disavowing her role as a Witch, Lady Jaelithe still retains traces of the innate magic known (allegedly) only to be accessible in select virginal women. Unsurprisingly, given that Simon is also a Power user (albeit one from another planet), the couple's triplets Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea are also born with strong magical tendencies.

They are soon left on their own after their parents depart on vague and mysterious missions. Kyllan, Kemoc, and Kaththea must contend not only with the front-line defense of the Estcarp nation, but with the jealousy and hostile machinations of the power hungry Witch Council. The Women of Power are determined to undermine the influence of Simon and Jaelithe, and the best way to do that is to take their daughter Kaththea for their own ranks.

By 20 years old the triplets are adrift in a highly unstable time with no nearby allies in all of Estcarp. Upon the ruthless kidnapping of Kaththea by the Witches, Kyllan and Kemoc decide to journey forth into the larger world to gain information and allies crucial to reclaiming the safety of their family.

What follows is a journey across all mapped nations, even into the twisted and nebulous eastern regions of the world – a massive mountain range interspersed with magically tainted creatures. It is literally a place which people are incapable of imagining due to a powerful collective compulsion in the human population. It's a race against time to save Kaththea, save Estcarp and prevent a horrific ancient accident from being repeated in the name of protecting their homeland.

The Witch World Lives On

Sounds like an amazing story, right? It's certainly an interesting premise with a solidly entertaining, if grandiose, climax. But is it a good read?

As I've noted in my review of Norton’s Witch World(1963) and its subsequent installment, if you like fiction liberally layered with lore and societal structures you will find this series intriguing. But just like before, Three Against the Witch World leaves the audience wanting a deeper connection to the main characters.

My, Oh My, Is It Ever So Dry

Stories that sacrifice character development for world building only engage their audience for so long before boredom begins to surface. With Kyllan, Kemoc and Kaththea as the beacons through Three Against the Witch World, it is a comparatively less tedious task to read through the extensive world history of Norton's realm. Three is still massively overwritten, but at least we have the enjoyment of seeing some of the cast grow instead of remaining stagnant cardboard cutouts.

Admittedly the triplets are not completely unique. They are rather standard fantasy warrior, scholar and sorceress/witch characters, but they are given more individuality than the previous protagonists of the series. Kyllan and Kemoc's strategics get much keener via increasingly difficult obstacles they face. Limitations are realized for Kemoc as he pieces together the knowledge held in Lormt, ancient bastion of scholarship, and Kaththea has to adapt to her increasing power.

However, Norton continues to hold her characters at arm's length. Her writing in general has been suffering of late because of this tendency: she is much more prone to showing her characters in action rather than letting us into their heads. Thus, the changes we see the triplets go through still have but a superficial connection with the audience. In short, within Three Against the Witch World we see that the series is still tripping over itself to engage with its audience.

Three Strikes and You're Out

At three entries into the series, the Witch World books continue to feel like Norton is far more interested in telling us about the mechanics of her world rather than the people living within it.

For existing Witch World fans, Three Against the Witch World offers new races and mysterious god-like entities, and I did appreciate Norton's attempts at expanded characterization. Nevertheless, that's not enough to save the series. After reading three books in the same series, I should have more than the shallowest of connections with the main characters. I should have a strong desire to continue to read further installments about their lives. The fact is, after reading Witch World, I don't. I know that Andre Norton is capable of better as a word smith and a story teller. Unfortunately, Three Against the Witch World is only worthy of a two and a half star rating.

Subspace Explorers, by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

By Jason Sacks

I was never a fan of E. E. “Doc” Smith.

Okay, that’s kind of unfair. It’s not that I read the man’s work and didn’t like it. Instead, I decided at a relatively early age that I didn’t want to read his juvenile sci-fi novels.

While some of my closest sci-fi loving middle school friends loved Smith’s Galactic Patrol stories, I never read any of his work, and the one time I borrowed one of his books from a friend I just never got around to cracking the cover. Maybe I felt an odd sort of aversion because I wanted to defy my pal Danny Alvarado’s deep love for Smith – you know, the way boys create friendly rivalries over nothing.

But that may be psychoanalysis after the fact. More likely I didn’t read Smith because I always wanted to read above my age group. Why read juveniles when there was so much great material being published by the likes of Asimov, Dick and Clarke?

Since I had never read any Smith as a kid, now seemed the perfect time to try out ol’ Doc’s work. I’ve grown older and mellowed a bit in my tastes in the last few years. So when my fine editor offered to have one of us staffers review a limited edition publication of Smith’s latest novel, Subspace Explorers, I jumped at the chance. Why not try a classic author, albeit one in the twilight of his career? I could either validate my pal Danny’s passion or smugly smile at myself that I made the right choice to skip Smith.

Well, young Jason is vindicated.

Subspace Explorers by E.E. Smith
The rather bland cover of Doc Smith's latest novel

Subspace Explorers is an odd book. It’s breakneck space opera sci-fi juxtaposed against a sort of exploration of psionics which in turn is juxtaposed against a kind of screed about a battle between virtuous business leaders and corrupt trade unionists. If you’re wondering how these odd elements all fit together in the space of some 200 pages, well, the answer is that they don’t.

The sci-fi and psionic stuff works the best in this book. The first chapter sets the stage with a disaster in space and the few survivors of that battle. This section speeds along in a kind of hurtling, breathtaking tumble of events in which the action seems never to stop, no matter that readers don’t have much of an idea who these characters are.

Once all the action begins to play out, we find there are nine survivors of the accident: four mafiosos, a genius, two officers, and two women. One of the women has the amazing psionic ability to detect any metal in space. After the mobsters are defeated, the women and officers very quickly get married and each of the couples have a baby after a pregnancy which is elongated by their time in space. Their kids inherit the psionic abilities and form a union of explorers who drive the rest of the book.

Right there in that quick summary of the crazily energetic beginning, you can see the joys and flaws of this book. It’s got energy and thrills. It’s got oddball ideas and puzzling events. It’s got thin characters and arbitrary plotlines. It’s got a lot of good and a lot of bad and I’m not sure I want to get into the discussions of labor unions which might embarrass Barry Goldwater in their stridency.

Even there, I might have enjoyed this book either as a grouchy polemic or the rambling of “an old man screaming get off my lawn,” as they say. But the shambolic plot, which seems assembled from several half-finished novels with the barest plot threads to connect them all, left me more baffled and annoyed than thrilled. If Doc wanted to produce a fun throwback space opera, why add the strange political notes, and if he wanted to write a screed, why include classic cardboard characters with psionic powers to muddy the waters?

Doc himself

Publisher Canaveral Press is well known for their lovely Edgar Rice Burroughs reissues, most with lovely art by Roy Krenkel and J. Allen St. John. This book boasts of the same high production values as the Burroughs books. It’s just too bad this book isn’t nearly a match for those classics.

Maybe Smith can pull his disparate storylines together if he writes a sequel to Subspace Explorers, but for a book released in hardcover in a limited edition with a matching grand cover price, this is a tremendous disappointment. Sorry Danny. Hope we can still have lunch together and discuss more pleasant things.

2 stars.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 14, 1965] Furious Time Travel (April Galactoscope)

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This month's Galactoscope features a triplet of tales, all of which have something to recommend them…

The Fury Out of Time , by Lloyd Biggle Jr.


By Jason Sacks

The Fury Out of Time is an fun page turner, with some clever ideas and some wacky plot machinations. It's a delight to read author Lloyd Biggle, Jr. playfully juggle interesting ideas around time paradoxes, odd alien creatures and the Mesozoic era while keeping his story roaring and skidding through the clouds like a runaway UFO.

The book focuses on Bowden Karvel, a retired Air Force Major,  discharged from the astronaut corps because of his artificial leg and organically confrontational attitude. Karvel lives just outside the gates of his former Air Force Base, quietly drinking and marking time. One day Karvel wanders down to Whistler’s Country Tavern to bend his elbow. As Karvel is sitting on the tavern patio looking over the nearby valley, something very strange happens. Trees start being knocked down in a widening spiral and Karvel is mildly injured in what feels like a natural disaster but actually is far from that simple idea.

Taking on efforts to lead the recovery effort after this apparent hurricane hits, Karvel begins barking out orders, and finds himself becoming inexorably dragged into a mystery which will take him to the moon and across tens of thousands of years of history. He will literally become a new version of himself, emotionally, physically and spiritually, will encounter creatures he scarcely could have imagined existing, and will uncover the mystery which knocked him off his feet in the first place. By being knocked off his feet, Bowden Karvel eventually finds himself able to truly stand on his own two feet once again.

The cause of the disaster is a flying saucer, which Biggle cleverly calls a UO (as opposed to a UFO), which readers slowly learn was created by time travelers from the future – though those travelers may actually be from the past. It’s complicated, and we get to learn how complicated as we dig further into this wacky book.

Part of the fun of this novel comes from Biggle’s clever depictions of different societies in this book. It seems obvious that the author served in the military based on his humorous depictions of the crazily dysfunctional Air Force leadership. Biggle's strong imagination is also on display in the future world in which the bodies of mankind's descendants have evolved in clever ways. In that future world, people are taller and balder than people today, have flatter feet and they even an odd fetish about beards, of all things. I enjoyed Karvel’s inner monologues about that world, and how he wonders about standards of beauty and enslavement.

Similarly, when Karvel travels to a past era when dinosaurs walk the earth, he encounters a race of Hras,  very strange creatures with six arms, no faces and stomachs in their bellies. These creatures become Karvel’s allies, but their relationship is complicated. That relationship is surprisingly three-dimensional compared with the classic imperialist-styled science fiction of the past.  The way Biggle depicts the relationship between Karvel and the Hras, it’s not clear who the wiser hero is – the one who charges into the middle of a group of dinosaurs or the one who’s too scared to journey far into a world full of predators.

Since we see everything through Karvel’s eyes, I suppose it’s a little wrongheaded to complain the book feels a bit shallow at times. There’s a decided focus on action, and it’s fun to see a middle-aged, slightly disabled guy at the center of trying to figure out the strange worlds in which he finds himself. The thing is, Karvel is smart and clever. He’s not a headstrong James Bond type, always ready for action. He’s an older, slightly broken man who constantly finds his basic value system challenged by the strange circumstances in which he finds himself. It's in the way Karvel reacts that we readers see ourselves and which ultimately pushes this novel ahead.

I didn’t expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. I wasn’t familiar with Biggle's work and was concerned that a book with a UFO at its center would be full of clichés. Instead this book was a light, breezy, and fun ride, a delightful little book which moves along like the Road Runner.

Three stars.

A Man of Double Deed, by Leonard Daventry


by Gideon Marcus

A fringe benefit of having so many fellow writers on the Journey is the ability to read more of the science fiction that's coming out every month.  Contrary to forlorn declarations of the doom-sayers, the genre is far from dead.  Moreover, new authors are coming into SF all the time.

To wit, Leonard Daventry has just released his first book, A Man of Double Deed, and it's surprisingly mature for a first effort. 

Here is the plot, in brief:

Claus Coman is a "keyman," part of a network of powerful telepaths living on Earth in the year 2090.  In this far-future time, humanity has already had and recovered from an atomic conflagration that left the planet in ruins.  We have spread among the stars, meeting several alien races, though they do not figure in this story.  What does figure is a burgeoning plague of violence spreading among the young and disaffected populace.  Whether it is a genuine biological malaise or simply a reaction to a society that has become too staid to endure is not known.  Coman supports a proposal to emigrate these malcontents to a new world, one where they can create a society to their liking.

But there are forces that strongly oppose this proposal, and keymen in general.  Forces with murderous intent.  Coman must navigate attempts on his life as well as bigger political currents to see the proposal through.

What makes Deed so distinctive is its unique vision of the future.  It's definitely a "New Wave" book with unorthodox depictions of romance and sexuality.  In the future, "free love" is the norm, and committed relationships viewed as quaint aberrations.  Coman's polyamory, involving two women, is particularly deviant.  On the other hand, same-sex pairings are not so much as blinked at. 

Daventry does an excellent job of incorporating the third-person omniscient viewpoint, subtly sliding into many characters' minds.  This is a trick that doesn't usually work, particularly in Frank Herbert's Dune, where it simply comes off as amateurish.  But it's effective in Deed, suggestive of the telepathic contact Comay has with everyone he interacts with.  I also appreciate how Daventry describes in a sentence or two scenes of violence and/or sexual relations, conveying a subject vividly but not luridly, effectively invoking the reader's imagination.

Deed is by no means a perfect book.  It starts well but loses steam in the final third.  Worse, it doesn't really have an ending; the plot is left open only halfway through its course.  On a more personal note, as progressive as some aspects of the depicted future may be, it still seems a highly male-dominated world.  Women are definitely in a second class, both in their agency, and screen-time.  Part of that seems intentional, underscoring the conservative nature of 2090's Earth, but part of it also seems to be the result of Daventry's own instincts. 

On the other hand, if Deed be part of a series, like Delany's Toron trilogy, then I may have to revise my opinion.  For the nonce, I give it three and a half stars.

And here's a special entry submitted by a fan of the Journey.  The book dates back to 1959, but I understand it has been recently reprinted.  Since the Journey did not cover it upon first release, we are remedying this omission…

Ossian's Ride, by Fred Hoyle


by Chuck Litka

I happened on Ossian's Ride in the drug store’s spinning book rack. I will occasionally find a science fiction book there, but Neldner’s Card Shop in the Point Loomis shopping center is my go to place for the latest sf books from Ace, Pyramid, Ballantine, and Berkley. The cover of Ossian's Ride showed a hand with an open pocket watch. Inside the watch is a rather artsy illustration of a fellow about to throw a flaming molotov cocktail at a cottage with two silhouettes in the window. And oh, yes, there appears to be a body at his feet. In fact, the only science fiction thing about the cover, is “Fred Hoyle the author of A For Andromeda.” Still, having read his The Black Cloud, I picked it up to see what this one was about.

The back blurb read:

“…breathtaking in its suspense… romantic adventure in the true grand manner”
– New York Herald Tribune

The time is 1970. Thomas Sherwood, a young Cambridge scientist, is recruited by British Intelligence to go to western Ireland to learn the origin, nature, and purpose of I.C.E., the mysterious and powerful Industrial Corporation of Eire. I.C.E., hidden behind its own Iron Curtain, is an elite industrial complex that in only ten years has solved many of the major scientific problems the rest of the world is still grappling with. The great nations fear I.C.E. as a menace to the delicate balance of world power and must discover whatever they can about it. Sherwood is immediately caught up in a world of desperate violence among spies and counterspies, the pursued and the pursuing. So, should I gamble 50¢ on Ossian's Ride? Now, 50¢ is not an insignificant amount of cash when living on a three figure allowance – counting both sides of the decimal place. 1970 is only five years from now, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of science fiction in the description either. Still, it’s Fred Hoyle. Oh, why not?

Ride is interestingly framed, beginning with the British prime minister, who has Thomas Sherwood’s report on his desk. It appears that Sherwood reached the heart of the mystery, but then defected to I.C.E. And yet, he has sent this report that purports to reveal the deepest secret of I.C.E. The P.M. wonders if he should believe it. Well, we can read Sherwood’s report for ourselves, and draw our own conclusions. The story then becomes the first person narrative of the amateur secret agent, Thomas Sherwood. With a forged visa, he sets out for Ireland posing as a student on a holiday with £15 (all that a real student on a holiday would carry), a rucksack and some books. Things don’t go well right from the start. But Sherwood is a resourceful fellow, with a streak of James Bond in his makeup, so we are treated to a nonstop series of mysteries, murders, captures, and escapes across a countryside overrun with ruthless agents of all sorts. Against all odds, and with an unwavering determination to get to the heart of the mystery, Sherwood works himself into I.C.E. And once inside, into its secret heart. Only to joint them, as we knew from page one. Having read his full report, do you believe him? Do you blame him?

I wasn’t disappointed with the book — well worth my two quarters. Perhaps what I liked most about the story is its air of being an authentic true life adventure. It feels like it was written by someone who has put on a rucksack and tramped the Irish countryside himself. And because of that, it remained believable despite the rush of life and death adventures that fill its 182 pages. Like the book’s cover, there is not, however, a lot of science fiction in Ossian's Ride. Five pages worth, maybe. And I have to say that the ending left me with questions, questions that could have been more satisfactorily answered with another page or two. Still, all in all, it was an exhilarating ride. And since I read science fiction more for adventure than as explorations of a future world shaped by some marvelous scientific invention, I would rate Ossian's Ride 4 stars.

That's all for today, folks! Join us next month for another exciting Galactoscope!




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Comics, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 14, 1965] The Old Order Changeth!

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by Jason Sacks

Longtime readers of this magazine may remember the hatred I shared a year or two ago for the fledgling super-hero line published by upstart Marvel Comics. At the time I felt the stories published in such comic book series as Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Tales to Astonish were crude, unsophisticated and just plain bad. This was especially true when those shambolic comics were compared to the smart, sophisticated science-hero comics published by their chief competitor, National Comics.

It’s shocking how much that equation has changed. National Comics like Flash, Green Lantern and Batman definitely outdo their competition in terms of slickness and a firm basis in pseudo-science. But Marvel has come a long way to making themselves into a modern comic book publisher which embraces the unpredictable 1960s.

The latest proof Marvel’s surprising unpredictability can be found in the current issue of The Avengers.

The Avengers are Marvel’s version of National’s Justice League. They’re a team of the company’s finest super-heroes gathered together to fight evil. Just as the JLA stars headliners like Batman, Hawkman, the Atom and Green Lantern, the Avengers have included in their corps such august members as Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man and the Wasp.

Emphasis in my previous sentence should definitely be on the word have, because as this title of Avengers #16 tells us, “the old order changeth!”

Shockingly, writer Stan Lee has decided to shake up what seemed like a winning formula, removing all but one of those headliners from his super-team. Even more surprising, Lee doesn’t replace Thor or Iron Man with the likes of Spider-Man or Daredevil, who likewise star in their own comic books. No, Lee replaced his stars with a trio of former bad guys now reformed and ready to fight for justice. Only Captain America remains from the former team to lead the villains, so now Cap’s kooky quartet is made up of Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

I hear you readers saying, who?

Lee is making an odd, audacious decision by adding these third-rate villains-turned-heroes. That change in the status quo is almost shocking in its brazen rejection of super-hero tradition. Very few super-teams have existed, and even fewer have had their entire lineup shaken up in one fell swoop. And even more shocking is the reason the heroes leave. As the Wasp declares in one memorable panel:

National’s Justice League fight for right and never get tired. Marvel’s Avengers get tired of the fighting, need time off and even casually think about disbanding the team! Who does this stuff? And how can they get away with such a revolutionary take on super-heroes?

Even the reasons the new Avengers join is strange. Okay, so Hawkeye basically walks into the Avengers HQ and demands to become a member (who needs building security when you have super powers, I suppose).

But consider how the mutant siblings Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch come to join the team – by seeing a note in a newspaper that makes its way to their isolated Swiss chalet. Seeing a chance to change their lives, the Witch writes a letter to the Avengers requesting membership (!) – and out of a full bag of applications they are chosen! Just like out of a talent search TV program.

An adoring press meets the mutants as they arrive on the New York City docks, and they are quickly pressed to don their uniforms and announce their Avengers membership to the world. Never mind their previous membership in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and their former sworn fealty to the evil Magneto. They suddenly are members of the team Thor and Iron Man have left.

Shockingly, there is not even the slightest implication that one or more of these new Avengers may be trojan horses, infiltrating the team in order to defeat them. No, this is all played straight and seriously, and it appears Lee and his artists are committed to this startling change.

What in the world was Stan Lee thinking? Will sales plunge without the stars or will sales surge as Marvel blazes their own trail? This is just one of a number of moves from a company which seems to be pulling out all the stops to be decidedly different.

I know I’m on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what happens next. It’s as if Bonanza added a whole new cast and just kept Hoss. I may not be ready to join the Merry Marvel Marching Society just yet, but I do know I can’t wait to see what other shocking twists Stan Lee and his pals come up with.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 4, 1965] Madness: 2, Sanity: 1 (January Galactoscope)

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[January's edition of the Galactoscope offers three novels in two books.  Be warned — there's madness afoot!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

Now that you've got the Doublemint Gum jingle running through your head, allow me to explain my reason for annoying you. The Ace Double Series has been going for more than a decade, offering two novels in one. Two short novels, to be sure; some are really novellas. Others are short story collections, as we'll see in today's review. The pair of mini-books are bound in what the printing industry calls dos-a-dos. (Sounds like a square dancing term to me.) That is, each half of the volume is upside down, compared to the other half. Sometimes both parts are by the same writer, sometimes not.

Let's take a look at Ace Double M-109, featuring G. C. Edmondson's first novel, as well as several briefer pieces from the same pen.

Mister Edmondson or Señor Edmondson y Cotton?

I can come up with no better way to introduce the author than by allowing him to speak for himself, in the blurb that comes with the book in question.

I don't know how seriously to take all of that, but it certainly makes for interesting reading. I hope the novel (yes, I'll get around to it eventually) proves to be at least as fascinating.

Appetizers Before the Main Course


Cover art by Jack Gaughan

Stranger Than You Think is a collection of all the Mad Friend stories that have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to date. Because our Noble Host has already reviewed these tales, I won't go into detail.

Suffice to say that they all feature the narrator and his Mad Friend in rural Mexico, and deal with time travel, alien probes, reincarnation, and such things. The tone is very light, and the stories are about ten percent plot and ninety percent local color. They remind me, a bit, of R. A. Lafferty and Avram Davidson. In general, the series is inoffensive but forgettable.

The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream


Also by Gaughan

I told you I'd get around to it.

Our hero is Ensign Joseph Rate, commander of the good ship Alice, a unique vessel in the United States Navy of the modern era. You see, Alice is a wooden sailing ship, although she also has a diesel engine for emergency use. The idea is that she can engage in countermeasures against enemy submarines without making sounds that would reveal her position.

At the moment, Alice is engaged in testing new equipment, requiring the presence of an elderly meteorologist and his young assistant. Unknown to his motley crew, Rate is also supposed to investigate criminal activities aboard her.

All of this fades into insignificance, when lighting strikes Alice at the same time the ship's cook is messing around with a new way to distill illicit booze. (Believe it or not, this plays an important part in the plot.)

Full Speed Backwards

If you've read the title of the novel, it won't come as a big surprise to discover that Alice gets zapped back in time a millennium or so, as well as leaving the warm ocean area near San Diego for colder waters, somewhere between Ireland and Iceland. A battle with a Viking raider ensues, followed by a slightly less violent meeting with a merchant ship. Among the cargo she's carrying is a Spanish Gypsy, enslaved by the Norsemen. She winds up aboard Alice, and serves as the novel's main source of sex appeal. Besides that, she's also clever and a tough cookie, so I'll give the author some credit for that.

Here We Go Again

Skipping over most of the first half of the novel, we reach a point where Rate tries to duplicate the circumstances that led to this situation. This doesn't work out very well, because Alice doesn't return to her home, but instead jumps back another thousand years, and winds up somewhere in the Mediterranean.

After encountering Arab slave traders who temporarily take control of Alice, the time travelers eventually wind up on a rocky island, populated by goats and several naked young women, who are more than willing to supply the crew with plenty of wine and other carnal pleasures. There's an explanation for what seems like a sailor's fantasy, which involves another inadvertent visitor from the future, this time the madame of a brothel/speakeasy in 1920's Chicago.

A lot more happens before we reach the end of the novel, including battles with Roman warships and the misadventures of the only religious fanatic aboard Alice, a male virgin who finds himself in intimate situations with more than one alluring lady.

Worth the Voyage?

Although it's impossible to take the novel's version of time travel seriously, the plot doesn't stop for a second, always keeping the reader's interest. As you may have guessed, there's quite a bit of sexual content, which tends to be more teasing than explicit. There's also a lot of violence, given the constant attacks on Alice by just about every vessel that meets her.

The tone of the book ranges from darkly comic to intensely dramatic, with a bit of satire in the form of the religious fanatic. This character may raise some eyebrows among readers of faith, although his version of Christianity is clearly of the extremist variety. The ending raises the possibility of a sequel, but whether such a book will ever appear is up to the tides of time.

Three stars.

A Little Mental Illness for the New Year (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich by Philip K. Dick)


by Jason Sacks

This is the fourth Philip K. Dick novel released in the last several months, and I’ve read them all. Clearly science fiction’s most surrealistic writer is in the midst of an unusually fecund period, one in which his astounding fiction seems channeled directly from the writer’s brain onto the printed page. And while that unfiltered creativity makes for fascinating reading, Dick’s latest fiction shows him to be wrestling with some intense personal issues, including dislocation and mental health concerns.

Those recent works (The Penultimate Truth, The Clans of the Alphane Moon, Martian Time-Slip and his most recently published novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich) share a lot in common with each other. All three books demonstrate a mind in constant motion, continually distracted and probing, with ideas seeming to spark from every page in a cascade which starts out as thrilling, becomes tiring, and ultimately proves to be overwhelming. Ideas, interesting and odd, bonkers and basic, philosophical and dully grounded, seem to flow from Mr. Dick as freely as the sweat which constantly seems to be on the foreheads of each and every one of his neurotic protagonists.

Eldrich starts from a template similar to his Dick’s other novels. Most Dick novels feature a neurotic protagonist, and this book is no exception. This time he is named Barney Mayerson and he is a wealthy man in a low-numbered conapt building (a major sign of status) with a great job as the New York Pre-Fash consultant at influential company P.P. Layouts. But Mayerson has problems – oh nellie does he have problems. As the book begins, the businessman wakes up with a hangover, a strange woman in his bed and, most frightening of all, a draft notice which will cause the UN to send him to Mars. That sounds like the beginning of a film noir, but as we follow Mayerson, he slips into a different sort of darkness than the doomed protagonists of our darkest films.

To help him escape the draft, Barney has purchased a robot named Dr. Smile, intended to help Mayerson avoid the draft by making him even more neurotic than he seems. But even the robot isn’t perfect; it calls him by the wrong name and doesn’t seem to pay close attention to Barney, adding to the seemingly endless list of degrading events Barney experiences in the first few pages — and far from the final humiliation he experiences in the book.

Like so many lead characters in recent Dick novels – poor doomed Norbert Steiner in Time-Slip and lovelorn, oblivious Chuck Rittersdorf in Alphane pop immediately to mind – Barney Mayerson is a confused man. He is neurotic, uncertain, perhaps mentally ill. He has tremendous problems relating to the women most important to him, especially his wife. He even gives up all hope of avoiding the draft and instead volunteers to go to Mars, simply to get away from a source of tangled neurotic pain. It is tough to spend time with Steiner, Rittersdorf or Mayerson, because they are so uncertain of themselves despite their apparent success. These are so conscious of their own flaws, their own massive insecurities, that we can understand why these feel rejected by the worlds which surround them. As readers, we want to reject them as well, want to follow characters with some measure of self-assurance, like Trade Minister Tagomi in Dick’s 1963 masterpiece The Man in the High Castle.

Taken one at a time, each of the recent Dick books provide an intriguing portrait of men whose own demons sabotage their own best aspirations. Seen together as a collection of books, it’s hard not to see some authorial autobiography flowing through these characters. After all, if Mr. Dick is writing his books so quickly, how can he avoid writing himself into his stories?

If we take that assertion as fact as part of my essay (and I would be delighted to hear counterarguments in the letters page), then Palmer Eldrich is the most frightening of all Dick’s novels so far. Because at its heart, and in the great thrust of its cataclysmic conclusion, is a break with peaceful reality that actually makes me worry about the author.

Without going too deep into the reasons why – part of the joy of this fascinating book lies in the ways Dick explores his shambolic but complex plot – Barney ends up on Mars and discovers that nearly all the Martian colonists are miserable and drug-addled. Their experience on Mars is so wretched and soul-crushing that only psychedelic drugs, shared among groups of colonists, provide a brief break from their mind-numbing lives.

Barney is responsible for helping a new drug to come to Mars, cleverly called Chew-Z, which promises better highs and more transcendent experiences. But as readers soon discover, the new drug also creates a schizophrenic experience, one in which the terrifying Palmer Eldrich comes to dominate Martian society – and much more – in a way that terrifies everyone who considers it. Eldrich is a terrifying creature, with steel teeth, a damaged arm, and an approach to the world which builds misery.

In truth, Barney Mayerson has unleashed a demon, and it’s not spoiling much in this book to say that by the end you will feel the same fear Barney and the rest of society begin to feel.

Eldrich, thus, is a deeply unsettling book, and fits Dick’s recent output in a way which makes me feel concerned for the author. It is the third out of the four recent novels to deal explicitly with mental illness (in fact, mental illness provides the central storyline of Alphane and a key secondary storyline in Martian Time-Slip). It’s intriguing that Dick sees in science fiction the opportunity to put the readers in the mindset of a man experiencing a schizophrenic break, a psychotic episode, or battling debilitating depression, but the continual presence of such ideas suggests a man whose life is also battling similar breaks.

If Mr. Dick is obsessed with mental illness, does he see that illness in himself when he looks in the mirror? And if we readers purchase Mr. Dick’s books in which mental illness takes a central role, are we aiding his therapy or abetting his continual wallowing?

Palmer Eldrich is not an easy book to read, not once it gets going and we start to realize the depths of Meyerson’s, and Dick’s problems. The plot ambles and wanders and is dense with philosophy and allusion. For a 200-page book, this is no quick Tarzan or Conan yarn. Instead, it is a deeply upsetting, deeply complex look into the disturbed psychology of both its lead character and its author. After consuming so many Dick novels all in succession, I’m craving something much lighter. Neuroses are exhausting.

4 stars




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Comics

[October 22, 1964] Introducing a "New Look" for Batman

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


by Jason Sacks

I have some good news for those of you who haven’t been paying close attention to comic books: Batman comics are finally readable!

That’s a major change from the puerile adventures which editor Jack Schiff has been presenting in the pages of Batman and Detective Comics. For all too many years, Schiff and his team of seemingly subpar creators have delivered a never-ending stream of absurdly juvenile tales of the Caped Crusader and his steadfast sidekick. He gave us ridiculous and dumb tales in which Batman gallivanted in outer space, Robin was romantically pursued by the pre-teen Bat-Girl, and the absurdly awful Bat-Mite showed up at random times to add chaos to Batman's life. Even adventures which featured classic Batman villains (such as last fall’s Batman #159, “the Great Clayface-Joker Feud,”) fell far short of even the most basic standards of quality. Great they were not.

Though rather surreal, this page from "The Joker-Clayface feud" is ridiculously juvenile.

Those stories weren’t just bad. They were embarrassing to see on the newsstand next to better titles from National. Heck, most months even Archie’s idiotic Adventures of the Fly and The Jaguar were better than Schiff's schlock.

Apparently, National Comics agreed with my assessment. And though the ignominious run concluded with perhaps the worst Batman story of the 1960s so far (Detective Comics #326, “Captives of the Alien Zoo”), readers haunting newsstands in March 1964  discovered a brand new look for the Caped Crusader.

In fact, the cover of the very comic professed its newness.

The cover of Detective Comics #327 was a clear statement of freshness. In classy lettering focused behind beneath a slick new logo (logo and caption chosen deliberately, no doubt, to make a clear declaration that the past was prologue), the cover announced Introducing a “New Look” BATMAN and ROBIN in “Mystery of the Menacing Mask. Below those fateful words was a three-panel sequence which ends with Robin demanding, “Batman – your mask – quick! Take it off!” Below that triptych was yet another vignette professing to newness as readers are introduced to a new back-up strip starring popular Flash supporting character The Elongated Man.

Everything about this cover – from its logo to the new character introduced – screams that this is a new era in Batman comics.

In one bright, bold statement, readers were informed that Batman had left the alien zoo behind, hopefully forever.

And in fact, the connection to Flash was right on target: the new team included Flash editor Julius Schwartz, artist Carmine Infantino and (as revealed on the letters page) writer John Broome. It should be no surprise I love this new run since Flash is consistently my favorite title from National Comics. And though Broome and Infantino have only delivered three of the twelve "new look" stories thus far in both Detective and Batman, each subsequent issue has delivered a stepped-up level of thrills and excitement — as well as (as promised) a new look for Batman.

First and foremost, the artwork has improved. Infantino is perhaps the finest cartoonist working at National today, and every panel in his Batman and the new backup Elongated Man stories show why that is so. And though stories in Batman are still drawn under the "Bob Kane" pen-name, they seem to have taken a step up as the artists seem more inspired by their work.

Maybe the most obvious change illuminated by the artwork is with Batman's chest emblem. Where once the artists would lazily draw a bat on the hero's chest, now they draw it safely ensconced inside a yellow circle which seems to draw attention to the freshness of the new character.

Another major change is perhaps the most shocking. Just one month after the New Look debut, the April-released issue of Detective revealed the death of Batman and Robin's long-time butler Alfred! Yes, Alfred, the faithful friend and companion whose whole life seemed devoted to helping his Master Bruce and Master Dick, was brutally slain when saving the lives of our heroes at the hands of the Tri-State Gang. And what's more, there's no sign thus far that the faithful servant will return. He will remain an outsider to this major change.

Alfred is dead — and it seems he will stay dead.

Bruce Wayne created a charity called the Alfred Foundation to memorialize his friend; hopefully that Foundation will also act as a springboard for new storylines as this run proceeds. In place of Alfred, Bruce's Aunt Harriet has moved into stately Wayne Manor to take care of the boys. We will see if she starts to take on a Lois Lane approach to her charges and begins to suspect their second lives.

Maybe a fateful phone call will kick off that suspicion. The Gotham City Police installed a hotline at Wayne Manor, another change which will bring our hero closer to the action. If a hotline works for Presidents Johnson and Khrushchev, it should work for Commissioner Gordon and Batman.

As Batman becomes more connected to Gotham City, he also becomes more connected to his roots as a detective rather than space explorer or battler of corny villains. July's Detective featured a tale called "Mystery of the Mixed-Up Men," pairing Elongated Man with Batman and Robin for a delightful tale of changed faces, confused identity and strange jewel thieves. Similarly, September's Batman #167 is a tale seemingly inspired by James Bond involving Interpol agents, a world-spanning plot, and a core mystery which kept me guessing as to its resolution.

With all these changes, it should be no surprise my fellow fans are over the moon. I just received a fanzine by someone with the improbable name Biljo White called Batmania which enthusiastically endorses the new editorial direction Mr. Schwartz has introduced. Look below for the thrilling cover to his first issue.

Biljo White's Batmania celebrates the New Look Batman!

As well, according to the letters pages (another long-overdue change Schwartz introduced to these comics) fan response has been over the moon on these changes.

As for me, I am also ecstatic about these changes. Finally National has turned around their most moribund character and given him new life. It's as if the New York Mets somehow won the World Series by the end of the decade!

[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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