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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 24, 1964] Nothing Lasts Forever (November 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

This Too Shall Pass

There is an ancient fable of Persian origin, retold many times over the centuries, about a monarch who asked the wisest sages in the realm for a statement that could apply to all possible situations. The answer, of course, is the title of this piece.

It is impossible to deny the ephemeral nature of all Earthly things, even if we speculate that the universe may be eternal. (The truth of that is still a matter of scientific debate, as to whether the cosmos will expand forever, or eventually collapse into itself.)

Evidence for the temporary nature of politics, for example, came with the unexpected fall of Nikita Khrushchev from power in the Soviet Union, as discussed by our host in detail.


Americans were caught by surprise, it seems.

Obviously, the most common evidence for the fragility of humanity is the universality of death. To mention just one recent example, Herbert Hoover passed away this month, at a more advanced age than any other former President of the United States.


Let him be remembered for his extraordinary work providing supplies of food to millions of starving Europeans during and after World War One, rather than his failure to deal with the Great Depression.

In a less sober way, the 1964 Summer Olympics, the first to be held in Asia, came to an end as well, with a memorable closing ceremony in the Tokyo setting.


Why summer games in October? To avoid the heat and typhoon season.

Few things are as short-lived as popular music, as shown by the fact that two songs reached the Number One position on the American charts this month. First came Oh, Pretty Woman, a tribute to feminine beauty by singer and guitarist Roy Orbison.


I'm used to seeing him with dark glasses.

This was quickly replaced by the nonsensically titled Do Wah Diddy Diddy by the British group Manfred Mann.


Confusingly, the name of the band is the same as the name of the keyboard player.

In Search of Eternal Life

Fittingly, the two lead stories in the latest issue of Fantastic deal with futile attempts to escape the ravages of time.


Cover art by George Schelling

The Knocking in the Castle, by Henry Slesar


Interior illustrations also by Schelling

We begin with a chilling tale set in modern Italy. A widow attends a party, during which the host suggests an excursion to a nearby castle, said to be haunted. The woman reluctantly goes along, only to scream in fear when a knocking emerges from within the dungeon. A flashback reveals the reason for her horror at the sound.

In the United States, she married a man whose ancestors built the castle. Once a year he goes back to the family estate, where his sister lives year-round, rarely emerging from seclusion. We soon discover that the man is well over two hundred years old, despite his youthful appearance. He returns to the castle for an annual dose of the liquid which keeps the siblings from aging.


The magical elixir, a few drops of which drives back the Grim Reaper.

A violent quarrel breaks out between brother and sister when the man wishes to share the potion with his bride. Driven to extreme measures, the sister hides the key to the chamber holding the supply of liquid in a particularly macabre way.


Extreme measures, indeed.

What follows is a grim account of the man's desperate attempt to find the key before time runs out. It all leads up to the frightening conclusion, explaining the woman's terrified scream.

I found myself imagining this story as one of those Italian Gothic horror movies that make their way to the USA in badly dubbed and edited form. That's one reason I enjoyed it, to be honest. I pictured Barbara Steele, veteran of such films, in the role of the mysterious sister. I could see the gloomy interior of the castle in glorious black-and-white, and hear the spooky violin music on the soundtrack.

From a fan of Shock Theater and Famous Monsters of Filmland, a very subjective four stars.

Elixir for the Emperor, by John Brunner


Illustrated by Virgil Finlay

Our second account of a quest for eternal life also takes place in Italy, but goes back thousands of years to the days of the Roman Empire. A general and a senator plot against the life of a popular emperor. Their subtle plan involves offering a large reward for an effective elixir of immortality, convincing the emperor that it really works, thanks to the deceptive aid of the ruler's trusted slave, and substituting poison.

Complicating matters is an old man, saved from death in the arena by the emperor's mercy. In gratitude, he manages to create a genuine potion granting endless life, but is too late to prevent the emperor from being murdered. He hatches his own plot against those who slew his savior.

This is mostly a story of palace intrigue and vengeance, with just a touch of fantasy. The ancient setting is convincing, and there's a bit of philosophical musing at the end. It's very readable, if not particularly memorable, and not quite up to the author's usual high standard.

A middle-of-the-road three stars.

The Man Who Found Proteus, by Robert Rohrer

The gods of mythology, with some exceptions, enjoy the freedom from death sought by the protagonists of the first two stories. This comic romp features the god Proteus, famous for being able to change into any shape.

A grizzled prospector encounters the deity, first as a moving rock, then in the form of a talking mule, and later as a series of letters appearing on the ground, allowing the god to announce his desires in writing. His wants are simple enough; he's eternally hungry, ready to devour anything the prospector can provide. As you might imagine, things don't work out well for the old sourdough.

For the most part, this is a silly comedy, more notable for a certain amount of imagination than for belly laughs.

A slightly amused two stars.

Seed of Eloraspon (Part 2 of 2), by Manly Banister


Illustrations by Schelling again

The hero of this thud-and-blunder yarn may not be immortal, but it sure seems that way some times. As you may recall from last month, he set out to find the ancient city of the long-vanished, technologically advanced inhabitants of an alien world, accompanied by a warrior princess, an enemy turned friend, and a fellow Earthling. After many battles with the wicked Tharn, and a strange encounter with their mysterious rulers, the Bronze Men, they were about to be killed by huge flying monsters.

The author cheats as badly as any old movie serial, by setting up a cliffhanger from which there seems no escape, and then offering a disappointing way out. It seems that the hero, because he's got the advanced mental powers of what the story calls a magnanthropus, is able to communicate with the creatures. It seems that they're on his side, and want him to fulfill his quest. (There's a weird explanation that the flying beasts, along with other beings on this world, are the incarnation of emotions. That seemed really goofy to me.)


A typical battle. I like the use of the circle.

After getting out of that scrape without any effort, our quartet of adventurers fight the Tharn, get captured, escape, and so on. Eventually the hero discovers the secret of the Bronze Men, which will come as no surprise to anybody who has ever read any science fiction, and triumphs over all challenges. This pretty much just involves pulling a lever, which is pretty anticlimactic.


A defeated Bronze Man, although it sure looks more like a stone statue to me.

I got the feeling that the author really rushed through this half of the story. Things move at a breakneck pace, but without much purpose or meaning. The whole thing just sort of fizzles out at the end, leaving the reader exhausted and unsatisfied.

A disappointed one star.

Hell, by Robert Rohrer

(The Table of Contents credits the story to somebody named Howard Lyon. As best as I can figure out, this is a pseudonym meant to disguise the fact that the author has two pieces in the same issue. Rohrer and Lyon, get it? The Table of Contents also lists the author of The Man Who Found Proteus as Robert H. Rohrer instead of plain Robert Rohrer, so I guess there was some confusion around the editorial offices.)

A man finds himself, as the simple title implies, in the infernal regions. He passes some damned souls lying immobile on a beach under a cloudy sky, then takes a ride across the water with a demonic boatman assumed to be Charon. The fellow has no fear of eternal punishment, because he feels ready to face any psychological torment Hell might provide. As you expect, his attitude turns out to be badly mistaken. In a way, he faces the worst kind of immortality, if only in a spiritual sense.

The ending of this brief tale is not surprising. I never did figure out what the point of the motionless bodies on the beach was supposed to be. The story is decently written, but there's not much to it.

A confused two stars.

The Mermaid and the Archer, by Barry P. Miller


Illustration by Robert Adragna

The title characters in this romantic fantasy are two department store manikins, unable to move but conscious and able to communicate through a kind of telepathy. They were crafted by a master puppet-maker, whose affection for his creations gave them life. A violent storm threatens their physical existence, but a painter is able to preserve their love in his art.

This gentle, bittersweet fable suggests a kind of immortality in the works of gifted artists. Written in a introspective, poetic style, it is sure to touch the reader's emotions.

A sentimental four stars.

Daughter of the Clan, by Wilton G. Beggs

A teenage girl, who was adopted as an infant, experiences a gnawing, unsatisfied hunger. An attempted rape leads to the discovery of her true nature, and she meets others of her kind. A particular kind of immortality is implied.

Despite a certain moody intensity in the author's style, this is a simple, predictable tale, which ends just when it starts to get more interesting. Like the lead story, it attempts to produce old-fashioned chills, but not as effectively.

An unsatisfied two stars.

From Here to Eternity

Although none of the stories in this issue are likely to win undying fame, a couple of them should remain in the reader's memory for quite some time, if not forever. It makes me wonder how long copies of the magazine are likely to exist; if not in paper form, maybe on microfilm or some other medium. Whether anybody will be reading this issue in the distant future is an unanswerable question. Let's just be grateful we can enjoy the best of it here and now.

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Book, Magazine

[October 12, 1964] Slow Cruising (November 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

It’s a cliche that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  What can one say about those who don’t learn even from what they see around them?  At the University of California at Berkeley, a city within a city in which many thousands of people study, work, and in many cases live, the administration recently decided it will strictly enforce rules prohibiting political advocacy and speech, appearances by political candidates, and recruitment and fundraising by student organizations at a heavily-travelled area (an intersection of the city’s main street!) where such activities were routinely conducted.

Let’s pause for station identification.  This is 1964.  All over the United States, people are standing up for the rights and freedom of individuals, including political rights, most notably the right to vote.  Most of them are Negroes, but you’d think people in responsible positions would realize that a few white people (as apparently are most of Berkeley’s students) might get some funny ideas too—like the ideas of direct action and civil disobedience that they have been seeing on TV, and in some cases in person, for several years. 

You’d also think they would be aware that a significant number of their own students and some faculty members just got back from the Freedom Summer activities in the segregated South, where they lived daily with the risk of physical assault and even death, and are unlikely to be too fearful of university administrators.

So on October 1, the campus police arrested a guy named Jack Weinberg—one of those who went south this past summer—who was sitting at an information table for the Congress of Racial Equality and refused to show his identification.  A crowd formed around the police car, preventing it from moving, and the car became a speaker’s podium for a crowd said to have swelled to three thousand people.  This went on for 32 hours until the university agreed not to press charges against Weinberg, and also agreed to . . . what else? . . . form a committee!  This is to be a student/faculty/administration committee to discuss “all aspects of political behavior on campus and its control, and to make recommendations to the administration.”

What next? Nobody knows.  But one thing seems to be clear: increasingly, infringement on the rights that politically active Americans have come to expect to exercise will be challenged using the tools we all see on TV every week from the civil rights movement.  Authority is no longer its own justification, and those in positions of power, some of whom seem to look to Louis XVI as their role model, will need to change their approach to survive.  As that folksinger put it—I forget his name, the one with the frizzy hair and nasal voice—“you’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.”

The Issue at Hand


by Alex Schomburg

More prosaically—back to science fiction.  The November 1964 Amazing is distinguished by being the second consecutive issue with a cover depicting a guy in a flying chair, calling to mind the observation of the Hon. Jimmy Walker, erstwhile Mayor of New York City, before fleeing the country to avoid a corruption prosecution: “Never follow a banjo act with another banjo act.” Alex Schomburg’s rather static and solemn depiction of the device contrasts amusingly with Virgil Finlay’s interior illustration, which attempts to imbue the same gadget with all the energy and drama that the cover picture lacks.  Can we say Apollonian versus Dionysian?  I thought not.  Forget I mentioned it.

Rider in the Sky, by Raymond F. Jones


by Virgil Finlay

The story itself, Raymond F. Jones’s long novelet Rider in the Sky, is unfortunately pretty inane, a hardware opera that reads as if it had been dumbed down for prime-time TV.  In the near future, private enterprise is starting to get into the act in space, and Space Products, Inc., has developed the Moon Hopper, essentially a rocket-propelled chair in which a space-suited person can sit and fly over the lunar surface, untroubled by the quantities of fine dust covering it.  But how to market this device?

The Space Products boys (usage highly intentional) decide on a publicity stunt—they’ll get somebody to fly the Moon Hopper from Earth orbit to the moon.  Who?  They’ll ask for volunteers from within the company!  They get one—Sam Burnham, a company accountant and secret space buff, who knows he doesn’t have the right stuff but has indulged his fantasies to the point of installing a centrifuge and an imitation space capsule in his basement. 

Sam’s wife Edna, who spends her copious spare time supporting the cause of the orphans of Afghanistan, is appalled, and leverages her Afghan-symp connections to start a national movement to keep Sam Earthbound.  This, and Edna, are presented in a spirit of condescending sexual oppression of the sort one finds in, say, True: The Man’s Magazine.  I forget if the author refers to “the little woman,” and I’m not going back to look, but that’s the attitude.

After much machination, with the President getting into the act, Sam goes, and his trip takes an unexpected turn, plot mechanics unwind reasonably cleverly, and he and the story are brought to a soft landing.  But the treatment of women, and the smarmy faux-folksy style in which a lot of the story is told, make it difficult to appreciate the admittedly limited virtues of the story.  Two stars, barely.

Enigma From Tantalus (Part 2 of 2), by John Brunner


by Ed Emshwiller

John Brunner’s two-part serial Enigma from Tantalus concludes in this issue.  While it’s not the pretentious mess that his previous effort The Bridge to Azrael was, Brunner has not regained the form of (as I keep saying) his sequence of smart and well turned novellas in the UK magazines. 

Here, humans have discovered Tantalus, a planet inhabited by a singular intelligent life-form with separate units linked telepathically and capable of being molded into a variety of forms and functions.  The crisis that drives the plot is that the Tantalan is believed to have made a fake human (presumably disposing of the real one) and dispatched it on a spaceship to Earth; we can’t let it loose on our planet!  (There is an acknowledgement along the way that the Tantalan appears to be studying humanity just as humanity is studying it.)

So, there’s a bunch of people confined in a small space, and we must learn which is the alien!  This is not exactly an original plot, but Brunner plays it more in the style of a country-house mystery than that of its distinguished and horrific predecessor, Campbell’s Who Goes There?, spiced up by the fact that the passengers are as eccentric a bunch of freaks and neurotics as one could wish for.

Brunner manages the latter parts of the plot capably and trickily enough, but overall the story has two sore-thumb-level problems.  One is that by far the most interesting part is the discovery and opening of communication with the Tantalan, all of which happens off-stage—in fact, before the story opens—and we learn about it only in fragments.  In that sense the story is much too short. 

In another sense, it’s too long.  The other big problem is that here as in The Bridge to Azrael, Brunner wants to wrestle with Big Thinks, in this case chiefly that technological development and affluence have left the run of humanity with a sense of helplessness and lack of purpose.  But his attempts to integrate this notion into the story are perfunctory, or worse; for example, he invokes it to explain the manipulative and nymphomaniacal female journalist who is confined in the spaceship and chewing the furniture.  (This is a conspicuous sour note from a writer whose prior work is notable for strong and relatively cliche-free female characters.) So this exercise in speculative social psychology in the end contributes nothing to the story but verbiage.

Another problem, at least to my mind, is that when something comes up that the machines can’t handle in the ordinary course, Earth is essentially governed by a tiny elite called the “Powers of Earth” (a particularly arrogant and irascible specimen of which conducts the inquiry of the spaceship passengers).  These “Powers” apparently exercise unchecked authority based on their extraordinary powers of deducing correct conclusions from limited information. 

This seems to me a sort of magical thinking, no better than (not much different from, in fact) the recurring notion in another magazine that the future will be dominated by a psionic elite, and about as plausible and useful for thinking about the future as the depiction by Edmond Hamilton and others of galactic empires ruled by hereditary nobles with pompous titles.

One might ask if this criticism is too big a demand to make of popular fiction in newsstand magazines, but Brunner invites it by posing the questions himself.  I don’t want to be hard on the guy for essaying too much, but his ambition is outrunning the format he is writing in, and he will have to find better ways to integrate them, or move on to a different kind of writing.  Anyway, three stars for a nice but flawed try.

Your Name Shall Be … Darkness, by Norman Spinrad


by George Schelling

Norman Spinrad displays his own brand of ambition with Your Name Shall Be . . . Darkness, about an Army psychiatrist captured and subjected to sophisticated brainwashing in the Korean War. He is repatriated, seemingly intact, but . . . .  This is essentially The Manchurian Candidate as applied social psychology, and pretty clever, though done in an overly bombastic style for my taste.  Still, it’s effective: three stars verging on four.

The Seminarian, by Jack Sharkey


by Virgil Finlay

And, last of the fiction, Jack Sharkey . . . is Jack Sharkey, with The Seminarian, about a guy, the son of missionaries, reared on a South Sea island without significant technology who comes to the States to conduct his own missionary work.  It’s a tribute to Sharkey’s superficial skills that his facility distracts one from the story’s complete implausibility.  Two stars.  Sure you don’t want to go into advertising, Jack?

The Lying Stones of Dr. Beringer, by Robert Silverberg


by Virgil Finlay

There’s a new byline on this month’s non-fiction: Robert Silverberg (also now the regular book reviewer) contributes The Lying Stones of Dr. Beringer, apparently the first of a series—it’s labelled “Scientific Hoaxes #1.” It’s about a 16th-Century German scholar who was taken in by a large aggregation of fake fossils, an interesting story in itself (especially in the hands of Silverberg, a much more capable writer than the usual suspect Ben Bova) and one which contributed to a shift in understanding of what fossils actually are.  Three stars.

Summing Up

So, business as usual at Amazing: a couple of nice tries, one dreary failure, one lighter-than-air piece of trivia, plus a better article than usual.  Steady as she goes.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 12, 1964] A Mysterious Affair of Style (October 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Georgia on My Mind

We’ve just seen that standing up for civil rights in the South is a hazardous business from the murder of the civil rights workers Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner.  It looks like merely being a Negro passing through the South can be just as hazardous, even in the service of one’s country. 

Lemuel Penn was an assistant superintendent in the Washington, D.C., school system, a decorated veteran of World War II, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.  There’s an annual summer training camp for reservists, and Colonel Penn went to Fort Benning, Georgia, for the occasion.  Driving back to Washington on July 11, Colonel Penn and two fellow reservists were noticed by members of the Ku Klux Klan, who followed them and killed Penn with two shotgun blasts.

The Klansmen were easily identified and brought to trial remarkably quickly—and acquitted last week by an all-white Georgia jury, according to the local custom. 

But the last word may remain to be spoken.  Days before the murder, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which authorizes prosecution of such civil rights violations in federal court by federal authorities, was enacted.  Will it make a difference, before another Southern jury?  And will the federal government reconsider a practice that requires Negroes to travel to the South where their mere presence may provoke local racist whites to homicide?

The Issue at Hand

The October 1964 Amazing is fronted by an Ed Emshwiller cover that is, if anything, more hideous than the one on the July issue, though more capably rendered.  It looks like something a non-SF artist might do satirically for a mainstream magazine article trashing SF as silly and juvenile; more charitably, like a failed attempt at an Ace Double cover that Emshwiller found in the back of his closet.  I wonder if it was meant for one of A.E. van Vogt’s Null-A books.  The guy in the shiny white flying chair (notice how much it looks like he’s sitting on a toilet?) has a forehead high enough to accommodate an extra brain, or two or three.  The contrast between this and Emshwiller's much more sophisticated work for Fantasy and Science Fiction (for example, the April 1964 issue) is nothing short of . . . amazing.

Enigma From Tantalus (Part 1 of 2), by John Brunner

by Ed Emshwiller

The cover story is John Brunner’s Enigma from Tantalus, a two-part serial beginning in this issue, which per my practice I will read and review when it is complete.  Of course its mere presence is a source of trepidation.  Which Brunner are we getting?  The Brunner of the capable and intelligent novelets and novellas he has been publishing for years in the British SF magazines, some of which have been fixed up into fine books such as The Whole Man and Times Without Number?  Or the pretentiously befuddled Brunner of his last appearance here, February’s The Bridge to Azrael?  Stay tuned.  Stars, hold back your radiance.

In the Shadow of the Worm, by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Once past the serial, the major fiction item is In the Shadow of the Worm, a long novelet by the unevenly talented Neal Barrett, Jr.  The blurb telegraphs this one: “The Beautiful Lady . . . the Android who does but may not love her . . . the Mad Villain . . . the Unutterable Menace . . .  These are stock (almost laughing-stock) figures of science fiction.  Now Neal Barrett . . . takes them and makes them vibrant with suspense, with poetry, with meaning.”

Uh-oh.

Well, the bad news is that the story is in large part an exercise in bombastic oratory and striking of poses.  The mitigating news is that Barrett sort of brings it off, at least in its own terms.  The Lady Larrehne (am I the only one tired of a human future festooned with titles of nobility?), with her non-man Steifen, an artificial person programmed to serve and obey her, have crossed space in the good ship Gryphon (“Oh, fearsome and great she is!  A league and a half of terror and love from silver beak to spiked bronze tail—a’shimmer with golden scales from steel-ruffle neck to dragon wings; and each bright horny shield as wide as fifty humans high.”).

They are now on Balimann’s Moon, presided over by the Balimann (sic), which orbits around a planet called Slaughterhouse, which apparently produces meat for the rest of the galaxy, in the form of parodic engineered animals without much to them except the edible (“terrible blind herds stumbling toward death before birth could register on feeble brains”).  Slaughterhouse in turn is ruled by one Garahnell, who ostentatiously stages phony space battles for the visitors.

But why are Larrehne and Steifen here anyway?  To see the Worm, a/k/a the Eater of Worlds, an entity, force, effigy, or something between our galaxy and Andromeda and heading our way, and Balimann’s Moon is the best vantage point (“the last sprinkled mote of sand before the great sea begins”). 

They are also here to visit Slaughterhouse, though somehow that goal gets lost in the proceedings.  Everything is symbolic, of course, as the characters point out in case you missed it.  Says the Lady: “Is there a more cutting parody of the Good and Evil we have known back there, than Garahnell’s mock war—or the birth-death of Slaughterhouse?  When I think of the life we left—Oh, Steifen, it’s hard to say which nightmare mirrors the other!”

There’s more, much more, including but not limited to the fate of humanity, all saved from terminal tiresomeness by Barrett’s sure touch with his contrived and gaudy style.  This is not at all my cup of tea, but I must concede it’s well brewed.  Three stars.

Urned Reprieve, by Arthur Porges


by Robert Adragna

Next is the trivial and annoying Urned Reprieve by Arthur Porges, another contrived little story of Ensign Ruyter triumphing over adversity with very basic science.  Ruyter is about to be sacrificed by primitive aliens to their jealous god but saves himself with a demonstration of air pressure that wows the savages.  This is dreary enough to start, but Porges notes in passing that these aliens “were quite primitive, roughly on the level, it would seem, of the Red Indian tribes of Earth’s infancy.” Doesn’t this guy know anything besides junior high school science?  Maybe he should start with Edmund Wilson’s Apologies to the Iroquois (1960), about some “Red Indians” who were arguably more civilized than the people who subjugated them.  Two stars, grudgingly.

The Intruders, by Robert Rohrer


by Blair

The suddenly prolific Robert Rohrer is here, for the third consecutive issue, with The Intruders, an improvement over its predecessors.  It’s a jolly romp about a maniac with a meat cleaver trying to avoid and defeat his pursuers, from the maniac’s point of view, set in a spaceship rather than a haunted house (and being in the spaceship is what drove him mad—that’s what makes it science fiction and not just an updated rehash of Poe).  (That’s mostly a joke.  Sort of.) The hackneyed extremity of the plot is made tolerable and quite readable by an economical style that focuses on mundane physical detail and agreeably contrasts with its loony content.  This Rohrer is getting pretty good; if he sticks with it he may produce something memorable.  Three stars, towards the high end.

Demigod, by R. Bretnor


by Virgil Finlay

The last piece of fiction here is Demigod, by R(eginald) Bretnor, who has not previously appeared in Amazing, being most frequently found in Fantasy & Science Fiction, with the occasional foray into Harper’s, Esquire, Today’s Woman, and the like.  The Demigod is a giant golden-green humanoid who emerges from his spaceship at “the isle and port of Porquegnan, where Lucullus Sackbutt’s yacht, the Grand Eunuch, swam at anchor in an emerald sea and an atmosphere delicate with hints of duck and truffle and whispered music.”

We are quickly introduced, inter alia, to Mr. Sackbutt, the Mayor Hippolyte Ronchi, “a large, middleaged woman named, of all things, Mme. Bovary, who had come to deliver Lucullus Sackbutt’s more intimate and finer laundry,” Sackbutt’s “little friend,” Prince Alexei Alexandrovitch Tsetsedzedze, “known familiarly as Poupou . . . but who had nonetheless found his way to Lucullus Sackbutt via dress-designing and interior decorating.” Sackbutt has only just come from his bath, with “a pair of lithe, young, naked Nubian girls, whose duty it was to wash him, and who had long since learned that nothing at all exciting was going to happen to them while at work,” while Prince Poupou read to Sackbutt from his projected biography of Sackbutt, patron of the fine arts and arbiter of taste.

So Sackbutt appears to be a stereotyped homosexual, and the story continues in its arch and mannered fashion to parody what was undoubtedly a parody to begin with.  The Demigod approaches Sackbutt and stares at him, from which Sackbutt infers that he has been selected to parade for this first alien visitor all the achievements of Earthly high culture, while the rest of the world looks on, until the Demigod decides he has had enough and carries Sackbutt off to a summary end.  Bretnor is adept enough at this artificial style (reminiscent of an overstimulated P.G. Wodehouse) to keep it amusingly readable enough, as long as one can ignore the fact that the whole thing is an exercise in exploiting the last prejudice that seems to be acceptable everywhere.  Two stars for execution discounted for silliness, a burnt-out cinder for moral stature.

Jack Williamson: Four-Way Pioneer, by Sam Moskowitz

An almost welcome note of the prosaic is sounded by Sam Moskowitz, with his SF Profile, Jack Williamson: Four-Way Pioneer.  This one begins by quoting a New York Times review stating that Williamson’s writing is “only slightly above that of comic strip adventure”—a review which netted Williamson a job writing a comic strip, Beyond Mars in the New York Daily News Sunday edition.  This may not be the credential Mr. Williamson would most like to see heralded.

Aside from this promotion by pratfall, Moskowitz recounts Williamson’s childhood in the wilds, or at least the farmlands, of Mexico and the Arizona Territory, his discovery of this very magazine in 1927, his success at selling A. Merritt pastiches to it starting in 1928, and his development as a more versatile writer in the 1930s.  Moskowitz describes Williamson’s 1939 novella The Crucible of Power as “a giant step towards believability in science fiction” (read it and draw your own conclusions).  As usual, Moskowitz focuses on Williamson’s material of the ‘20s and ‘30s, with less emphasis on the ‘40s and none at all on his post-1950 work (two novels on his own not worked up from earlier writings, plus one in collaboration with James Gunn and four in collaboration with Frederik Pohl, and a dozen-plus short stories); his sole comment is “But science fiction stories continue to trickle out.”

Oh, the four ways?  “He is an author who pioneered superior characterization in a field almost barren of it; new realism in the presentation of human motivation; scientific rationalization of supernatural concepts; and exploitation of the untapped story potentials of anti-matter.” You might think becoming an academic with a specialty in science fiction was one, too.  Anyway, three stars; this one is a little meatier than Moskowitz’s usual.

Summing Up

Who would have thought it?  An issue of Amazing in which the merit, such as it is, of most of the fiction contents turns on the authors’ mastery of style: in Barrett’s and Bretnor’s cases, their ability to maintain a grossly artificial style consistently enough to keep the reader going, as opposed to laughing at their lapses, and in Rohrer’s, his ability to recount bizarre and grotesque events in the plainest and most matter-of-fact language so the story will not seem as far around the bend as its protagonist.  Well, you take what you can get with this hit-or-miss magazine.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 15, 1964] What are you thinking? (The Whole Man aka Telepathist by John Brunner; The Universe Against Her, by James H. Schmitz)

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[This month's Galactoscope features a pair of books with a common subject — but you already know what it is, if you possess the powers associated with that subject…]


by Victoria Silverwolf

Out of Many, One


Baby USA and the National Bird fighting over a ribbon.

It may seem highly eccentric to write a piece about a novel by a British writer with a title borrowed from a traditional motto of the United States. However, there is some method to my madness, as I have a few reasons for selecting the familiar phrase.

For one thing, the author prefaces his creation with a Latin quotation, and I thought I would return the favor. For another, the book is an example of the phenomenon, common in the science fiction world, known as the fix-up novel. That is to say, it incorporates previously published stories into a single work. Last but not least, the phrase fits not only the theme of telepathy, with multiple minds merging, but also the main character's transformation from a shattered personality into a complete human being.

I'll discuss each of these things at the proper time, but first let's take a look at mind-reading in science fiction, and at the career of the fellow who offers us the latest example.

Penny For Your Thoughts

Telepathy is a very common concept in SF; some might say, given John W. Campbell's promotion of ESP in his magazine, too common. There are far too many examples to discuss, so I'll just mention a couple of my favorites.


The first appearance of Bester's novel; cover art by Don Sibley.

Alfred Bester's novel The Demolished Man, the first book to win a Hugo, featured a man trying to get away with murder in a future full of telepathic police. This pyrotechnic work made use of typographic tricks to convey the sensation of reading another's thoughts.


The first appearance of Anderson's story; cover art by Emsh.

Poul Anderson's short story "Journeys End" dealt with the theme on a more intimate level, as two lonely telepaths find each other, only to have their meeting end in a bitterly ironic way.

These two works are, to my way of thinking, the finest examples of telepathy in fiction. Can anyone hope to match them? Meet a man who's willing to give it a try.

Precocious, Prolific, and Professional


From left to right, John Brunner and editor Ted Carnell at the 1957 Worldcon in London.

Born in the delightfully named English village of Preston Crowmarsh, John Kilian Houston Brunner began publishing science fiction at the tender age of seventeen. He hasn't stopped since, with nearly twenty books and well over fifty stories appearing under his name during the last dozen years. Many of his longer works appear in the famous Ace Double series. In general, he has a reputation as a producer of skillfully written, unambitious space operas.

Once in a while, he aims for something higher. The Traveler gave a glowing review to his novella Listen! The Stars! (Analog, July 1962) and I greatly enjoyed his novelette The Totally Rich (Worlds of Tomorrow, June 1963.) Will his latest novel reach the same level as these fine stories?

Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover


The American paperback.

Looking at the anonymous cover art, and the equally anonymous blurb that accompanies it, you might think this has something to do with a telepath and his beautiful companion, as they do something or other with some people in spacesuits. Nothing could be further from the truth.


The British hardcover.

My sources in the publishing industry gave me a peek at the version that will appear in the United Kingdom next year. The cover, which seems to combine photography with a simple drawing, is still anonymous, but less misleading. It's purely symbolic, of course, but at least it doesn't promise things it can't deliver.

When in Rome . . .

The novel begins with these lines from Virgil's Aeneid.

Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.

My knowledge of Latin is limited to the Pig variety, so I did some research and found this translation.

The spirit within nourishes, and the mind that is diffused throughout the living parts of nature activates the whole mass and mingles with the vast body of the universe.

Apparently, the most important phrase in the quote is mens agitat molem (mind moves matter), because Brunner uses each of those three words as the title of a section of the novel. (By the way, mens agitat molem is also the motto of several institutes of higher learning, including the University of Oregon. Go Ducks!)

Born to Lose

First up is molem, or matter.

The plot begins with the birth of the protagonist, Gerald Howson, to an unmarried woman. The setting, judging by the names of the characters, is an English-speaking nation torn apart by a failed revolution. Armed United Nations peacekeepers restore order, with the help of telepaths. (In this future, the UN is much more powerful than it is today, and acts as a sort of world government.)

Gerald comes into the world with every disadvantage you can imagine. Not only is his mother without a husband, his father is a dead terrorist. He is also born severely disabled, with mismatched limbs and other deformities. Even as an adult, he is barely over four feet tall.

Gerald manages to survive a painful and impoverished childhood in a nation that is slowly returning to normalcy. By chance, he overhears a conversation between two criminals, and informs a rival crime boss. This earns him some money, but soon the police are after him. With nowhere else to go, he collapses in an empty lot.

A young woman, deaf and dumb since birth, cares for him. To his amazement, he can communicate with her telepathically. (It's implied that he actually read the minds of the criminals but thought he heard them speak.) His telepathy is so powerful, in fact, than even a telepath in a spaceship bound for Mars is able to detect his ability. UN forces soon arrive to take him to a place where he can make the best use of his powers.

Finding a Calling

The second section of the book carries the title agitat, or moves.

Gerald and the woman arrive in Ulan Bator. This city, the capital of Mongolia, is now an ultra-modern metropolis, and contains the headquarters of the World Health Organization. The woman's speech and hearing are restored, and she returns to her native land to lead a normal life. Unfortunately, the part of Gerald's brain that controls his body image prevents surgeons from correcting his deformities. He remains in Ulan Bator, under observation by UN officials.

Meanwhile, a crisis threatens the organization. It seems that some UN telepaths, under the strain of their responsibilities, suffer from a form of mental breakdown during which they escape into fantasy worlds. To make things much worse, they are able to take the minds of others into these imaginary realms as well. If not rescued, the people trapped in the illusion remain in a comatose state, to the point of death.

Gerald witnesses a formerly powerful mindreader, now weakened by a brain tumor, attempt to bring an important telepath out of a fantastic version of ancient Greece. When she fails, and cannot exit the dream world, he uses his own strength to save them both. This success inspires him to become a professional healer of damaged minds.

Physician, Heal Thyself

The third and last part of the novel, taking up half the book, is titled mens, or mind.

Unlike the first two sections, which are, as far as I can tell, completely new, this one makes use of two previously published novellas.

The first, City of the Tiger, appeared in the British magazine Science Fantasy in 1958. It was reprinted in the American publication Fantastic Universe the next year.


Cover art by Brian Lewis, illustrating Brunner's story.


Anonymous cover art, not illustrating Brunner's story

The original version takes place almost entirely within an imaginary, magical version of the Orient. The reader doesn't find out that the whole thing is only a telepath's fantasy until the end. In the book, we know right away that Gerald enters the false reality in order to draw out a telepath who has deliberately entered it, and taken several people into it with him.

The second novella was published under the title The Whole Man in Science Fantasy in 1959. The same year, it appeared in Fantastic Universe as Curative Telepath.


Cover art by Brian Lewis, but not for Brunner's story.


More anonymous cover art, still not for Brunner's story.

As its original title suggests, this novella forms the heart of the novel. Gerald returns to his native land, in search of his roots. He meets the woman who used to be deaf and dumb, now married with children. The reunion is an awkward one. She envies his fame and glamorous life as an celebrated UN telepath. He envies her normal life and healthy body.

Gerald meets a group of university students at a tavern and goes to a party with them. They accept him as a peer, despite his deformity. While at the party, he meets an artist who is trying to combine music with visual media. He realizes that his abilities would be an enormous help to this project. He also saves a man's life in a particularly dramatic way, further convincing himself that he is a worthy member of society. At the end, Gerald is, at last, psychologically healthy. As the novel says, he is a whole man.

The Sum of its Parts

I believe this novel marks a turning point in Brunner's career. Although it contains melodramatic incidents, it is primarily concerned with the way in which the protagonist grows and changes. Some elements seem implausible, such as the notion that a certain part of the brain controls body image, and that this prevents surgical intervention. Overall, however, it is a realistic account of what telepathy might be like, a cautiously optimistic vision of a future world recovering from many challenges, and an acute psychological portrait of its main character. Expect it to be on the Hugo list next year.

Four stars.


A recent book on theology and psychology which nicely symbolizes Gerald's state of mind at the end of the novel. And the author's name is strikingly similar to the writer we've been discussing! Coincidence, or ESP?

[Continuing the skein of telepathy, we come to another "new" novel — unique in perspective, if lacking in execution…]

The virtues and vices of recycling


by Erica Frank

The Universe Against Her, by James H. Schmitz

James H. Schmitz writes, in two parts, the story of Telzey Amberdon, a 15-year-old genius in her second year of law school, with a Federation Councilwoman for a mother and a father who's an executive officer at an interplanetary bank. She also happens to be a powerful xenotelepath, able to communicate mentally with alien species as well as humans.

I was disappointed to discover this "novel" is very obviously two separate stories now just called "Part One" and "Part Two." In fact, you've seen them before: This "novel" has two parts that were previously published in Analog; "Novice" was from the June 1962 issue, and "Undercurrents" was in two parts, May and June 1964. No hint of the events from Part One spill into Part Two. Even the way Telzey thinks about her psionic powers changes between the two stories – in the first, she is trying to puzzle out "symbols" and how to interpret them; by the second, she's more familiar with her abilities.

In the first story, she discovers that her pet sabertooth tiger (not what it's called, but obviously what's intended) is part of a sentient species that's been hunted to near-extinction. In the second, the guardians of a friend from school are planning to murder the friend before she can inherit. The stories have several similarities: In both, her ability to read and persuade animals is a key part of the plot. In both, Telzey's parent gets involved and provides administrative and legal support. In both, Telzey shapes the emotions and mental focus of the people around her.

That last point is more interesting than most of the plot, especially of the second story, which rambled. It involved complex legal and government hassles that required several minor characters whose sole purpose was to expound on aspects of galactic law. (Does that sound needlessly elaborate and dull? It was!) That was boring; Telzey's discomfort with her mind- and personality-warping abilities was interesting. Unfortunately, after having brought up the topic, Telzey quickly rationalized that this was "the only way" to make her friend safe. Then she returned to trying to manipulate both the court and government agencies, because apparently in her galaxy, clear evidence that "This person is trying to kill someone" is not enough to lock them up.

I loved some of the ideas, but the execution was weak; the second story was especially convoluted. I agree with the Traveler's assessments of the stories, which you should see as I've no need to restate them here. As a whole for the book: Three stars if you love teen-focused stories; two stars otherwise.

[Thus ends our presentation of telepathic twins.  Next time… well, you already know what's coming, don't you?]

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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 2, 1964] The Big Time (May 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Making it

Many people harbor a desire for fame — their face on the screen, their star on a boulevard, their name in print.  That's why it's been so gratifying to have been given plaudits by no less a personage than Rod Serling, as well as the folks who vote for the Hugos. 

But it wasn't until this month that one of us finally made the big time.  Check out this month's issue of Analog, for in the very back is a letter whose sardonic commentary makes the author evident even before one gets to the byline.  Yes, it's our very own John Boston, Traveler extraordinaire.

Bravo, Mr. Boston.  You've got a bright future.

As for Analog… there the outlook isn't so clear.

The Issue at Hand


Cover by John Schoenherr

The Problem of the Gyroscopic Earth, by Capt. J. P. Kirton

Captain Kirton's treatise on the link between the galactic magnetic field and Earth's precessions is both unreadable and ludicrous.  Basically (he argues), as the axis wobbles, pointing the poles at different sections of the sky in a many thousand-year cycle, the Milky Way works its voodoo and causes mass extinctions.

Pretty pictures are included, but I believe Kirton was indulging in some of Dr. Leary's happy juice when he wrote this.

One star (and only because the scale doesn't go any lower).

Undercurrents (Part 1 of 2), by James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

Two years ago, James Schmitz introduced us to Telzey Amberdon, a 15 year old girl whose telepathic abilities allow her to establish the sentience of an alien species.  It was sort of like Piper's Little Fuzzy, and while it wasn't the most adeptly written piece, the premise and the protagonist were so intriguing that I wanted to see more stories about them.

The good news is that I got another story.  The bad news is that it isn't very good.

In this installment, Telzey goes off to the planet of Orado for advanced schooling at Penhanron College, along with Gonwil Lodis, an older girl on the threshold of adulthood and heir to a vast fortune.  When Telzey makes telepathic contact with Gonwil's fierce canine bodyguard, Chomir, she learns of a plot to murder Gonwil, but the details remain frustratingly out of reach.  Telzey must use her wits and her ever increasing talent to find the would-be assassins before they complete their mission.

It sounds pretty fantastic when written like this and, condensed down to its bare essentials, Undercurrents could be a great story.  But the thing is padded to oblivion with pointless exposition, with whole pages of content that get explained again in a few paragraphs later on anyway.  Moreover, I'm pretty sure that the dog is the lynchpin to the crime — I'll wager that in the conclusion, Chomir will turn out to have some sort of conditioning to turn on his owner.

I'll keep reading because I love the character, and I appreciate that there are a plethora of interesting women in Schmitz's world, but this could have been so much better in the hands of a more skilled (or interested?) writer.

Two stars.

Fair Warning, by John Brunner


by Michael Arndt

On a Pacific atoll, moments before the atom bomb's big brother is about to be set off, a supernatural being manifests to adjust the device's detonator and ensure that it can go off properly.  There's a Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin air about the event, but delivered with a sly smile.  Horrified, the scientists get drunk and smash their equipment. 

It wasn't badly written, but I found it kind of pointless.  Two stars.

Once a Cop, by Rick Raphael


by John Schoenherr

This is the second installment in Raphael's "Code Three" universe, featuring a future where the North American continent is crisscrossed by mile-wide freeways.  Cars hurtle from town to town at speeds over 200 mph, and the job of the Highway Patrolman is more necessary — and dangerous — than ever.

Once again, we follow the exploits of the seasoned Sergeant Ben Martin, rookie Clay Ferguson, and surgeon Kelly Lightfood, crew of "Beulah", a 60-foot patrol behemoth.  The piece depicts a number of crises, from a drunk speedster who soars off a highway curve, to a trucker who gets lost in a sandstorm, but the main arc involves a spoiled rich kid who is taken into custody after zooming through a closed lane and almost plowing into an accident scene.  Said kid's father is a big wheel in corporate America, and he tries everything from bribery to blackmail to get his son out of trouble. 

I hadn't expected to like this series so much, but Rafael does an excellent job of presenting the technical aspects of the story smoothly, and all of the vignettes are exciting.  It reads less like a cop show (viz. the TV show Highway Patrol) and more like a series on firefighters.  Plus, I dig that there is a prominent and tough woman in the crew.

Four stars, and keep 'em coming.

A Niche in Time, by William F. Temple


by Laszlo Kubinyi

Artists are a moody bunch, and apparently, most of the greats had profound moments of doubt that almost stymied their careers.  It turns out that, for many of them, the difference between throwing in the towel and going on to make masterpieces is an organization of time travelers.  They appear on the doorstep of the depressed creators and take them to the future to see the laurels of success.  Then the artists' memories are wiped, but the impetus remains.

No, it doesn't make a lot of sense, and this story would veer strongly into two-star territory if not for the final twist.  And, while the premise is hard to swallow, it is consistent unto itself.

Three stars.

Hunger, by Christopher Anvil


by Laszlo Kubinyi

Last up, we get a look at a failing settlement on a colony planet, whose inhabitants have been laid low by disease and mechanical failures such that just two men and a baby remain.  Their only hope is the sack of potatoes one of the fellows has managed to obtain from another straggling settlement.

The fortunes of the three are made all the worse when a pleasure yacht arrives from Earth and proceeds to set the forest afire with negligent aplomb.  The two colonists are left with but one option: use their resourcefulness to capture the yacht and make the jerks stop their wanton destruction.

This story was almost quite good.  The setup was interesting and I like a story that starts with one problem and then brings in another out of left field.  What keeps the piece solidly in the three-star range is the page of moralization at the end, in which a character opines that it's struggle that makes happiness possible, but then takes things too far by saying, "Back home, they're always talking about abolishing hunger.  They might think about it some more."  Plus, there's just some awkwardness and nastiness about the ending, and the suggestion of women as prizes that rubbed me the wrong way.

So, three stars.  Maybe it was better before Editor Campbell got his paws on it.

Summing up

April is done, so let's close the books and do the numbers!  Starting from the bottom, we have Amazing, managing to earn just two stars.  Some folks liked the Smith and Brown better than John Boston, but in general, it was a stinker.  That's a shame since it may be the only magazine to date with more words penned by women than by men.  The Analog we just got through, Boston letter notwithstanding, gets 2.6 stars.  Meanwhile F&SF earns an uninspiring 2.7 stars, but it did feature good stories by Clingerman and Carr (and if you like Ballard, by him, too).  Finally, Fantastic gets 2.9 stars, but if you're a Leiber and/or Moorcock fan, it might earn more from you.

This leaves three mags at three stars or higher, which is pretty good, actually.  IF gets exactly three, with the Cordwainer Smith story making it a worthy acquisition.  Worlds of Tomorrow has got some great stuff in it, even a good Jack Sharkey tale fer Chrissakes, and scores 3.3.  And the new New Worlds gets a respectable 3.4.

Women wrote 4 of the 43 new fiction pieces this month.  And despite the somewhat low showings of a lot of the mags, there were more standout tales this month than most.

Onward to June!

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge!  Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Magazine

[January 12, 1964] SINKING OUT OF SIGHT (the February 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Uh-oh.

The blurb for the lead story in the February 1964 Amazing says: “Once every few years a science fiction story comes along which poses—and probes—philosophical questions: for instance: What is life that Man must live it?  In a novel rich in incident, fascinating of character, John Brunner questions the essential meaning of life and death and purpose.”

That’s the pitch for Brunner’s 74-page “complete novel” The Bridge to Azrael.  The last time we saw such an editorial panegyric, the mountain labored and brought forth—well, not a mouse.  A capybara, maybe.  Anyway, a modestly capable pulp-inflected novella, Daniel F. Galouye’s Recovery Area, not exactly the promised philosophical masterpiece for the ages.  Sort of the same here, but worse: the mountain has labored and brought forth a mess.

But let’s back up.  John Brunner has for years been a mainstay of the British SF magazines, with occasional appearances in the US magazines, growing more frequent in the past couple of years.  His most notable contribution has been a series of solid and unpretentious novellas in the UK’s Science Fantasy, some of which have made their way across the Atlantic to become better-than-usual Ace Doubles, like The 100th Millennium and (my favorite) Echo in the Skull—the top of the line at the bottom of the market.  So news that Brunner had a novella appearing in Amazing was cause for optimism. 

The Bridge to Azrael, by John Brunner

Unfortunately it trips over its pretenses and falls flat.  It is proposed that Earthfolk have gone out to the stars in ships and colonized dozens of planets, with which Earth has since lost touch and which have developed over centuries in wildly varying ways.  Now, however, Earth has FTL travel via a technology called the Bridge, upon which, if the equipment is properly aligned, one can walk across the light-years.  Earth is reopening contact with the the scattered fragments of humanity and trying to bring everyone together by connecting them to the Bridge system.  They’re up to 40 worlds.

This process is presided over by Director Jorgen Thorkild, and we are given to understand that he works very hard at his big and (it says here) “fantastically responsible” job.  However, when he meets with representatives of one of the next two candidates for Bridging, he realizes that one of them isn’t buying it at all, and he starts to go to pieces.  Doesn’t stop, either, and checks into the hospital, overwhelmed with the futility of it all.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to the “programmers.” These are the people charged with scouting and assessing the cultures of the planets to be Bridged, and they are impossibly superior intellectual supermen (if there are women in this clubhouse, they aren’t mentioned).  So completely absorbed in their work are they that they can’t stay interested in anything else, like comely members of the opposite sex who adore them, as we learn from the viewpoint of one of the latter.  But these hyper-competent intellectual powerhouses are ridden with a paralyzing fear of being wrong.  Exactly what will happen if they are wrong is not explained—do they lose their minds?  Commit suicide?  But the very prospect can impair their judgment and lead them into danger (for one of them, a knife in the chest).  Some supermen!

There are plots and subplots here, some of which might be interesting in another context, though the resolution of the reluctant planet problem is irredeemably facile all on its own.  But the two whopping implausibilities just recounted make it difficult to take anything here seriously, and undermine any attempt at grand philosophical argument, if there were one of any coherence.  So Brunner, whose more modest work sometimes transcends its lack of pretense, has tried something pretentious and fallen on his face.  One hopes he takes the lesson.  Two stars, generously.

Beside the Golden Door, by Henry Slesar

There is little succor to be found in the short stories.  The best of them is Henry Slesar’s Beside the Golden Door, a slightly rambling but reasonably agreeable story about extraterrestrials finding a far-future Earth on which humans have gone extinct, leaving artifacts like the one depicted on the cover (one suspects the story was written around the cover) and records that the aliens are able to decipher quickly.  These reveal another story about an earlier wave of aliens who had arrived on Earth seeking refuge after a disaster and were ultimately treated the way humans frequently treat those different from themselves, and there’s an unsurprising revelation at the end that pulls the stories together.  Fine conventional sentiments, adequate if slightly hackneyed execution, three stars.

I Bring Fresh Flowers, by Robert F. Young

From here, it’s downhill.  Next is I Bring Fresh Flowers, marking the return of Robert F. Young, like a recurring influenza epidemic, though this outbreak is at least milder than some.  It’s short, and less of Young is always more.  Rosemary Brooks, a beautiful young woman firmly dedicated to God and the United States, becomes an astronaut (or, as Young of course has it, Astronette), and she accomplishes her mission to orientate (sic!) the satellite that will bring genuine weather control to Earth. 

But something happens during re-entry.  “All that is known is that Rosemary became a falling star.” But not in vain—the weather becomes really fine, all because of her work.  “She is the sun coming up in the morning and the sun going down at night.  She is the gentle rain against your face in spring.” Et cetera, at some length.  In other words, Rosemary has been reincarnated as the pathetic fallacy.  Could be worse.  Has been, in fact.  Two stars.

Heavy, Heavy, by F.A. Javor

Bringing up the rear, or letting it down, is F.A. Javor’s Heavy, Heavy, the tale of a tough guy down on his luck, not as badly written as you might expect, but ending with the revelation of a supposed scientific gimmick so ridiculous as to erase any prior glimmer of merit.  One star.

SF Profile: L. Sprague de Camp: Sword and Sorcery, by Sam Moskowitz

Sam Moskowitz coasts through another SF Profile, L. Sprague de Camp: Sword and Sorcery, as usual with better coverage of his pre-World War II material than his later work, omitting to mention his last several SF novels: The Tower of Zanid (1958), its predecessor The Hand of Zei (1950), and The Glory That Was (1960, magazine 1952), plus two out of three of his major 1950s short stories, A Gun for Dinosaur and Aristotle and the Gun.  (He does mention the other one, Judgment Day.) The commentary is generally superficial and obvious.  Two stars.

Coroner's Report

The cover of this issue, which portrays a deteriorated and morose-looking Statue of Liberty buried up to its armpits, cogently sums up the issue, and, it appears, the state of the magazine generally: sinking out of sight.

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Book, Magazine

[January 2, 1964] All's well that ends well (January 1964 Analog science fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Auld Lang Syne

Greetings from 1964!  Given the challenges we faced in the latter part of last year, it was proper and cathartic to wrap up 1963 with a bang.  Here are some snapshots from our gala (and weren't we lucky to find a film developer willing to work on New Year's Day?)

Speaking of wrapping up, the last magazine of the old year, though dated January 1964, was the January 1964 Analog.  This is usually among the lesser science fiction magazines I read, but this time around, I was pleasantly surprised.  Come take a look!

Ending Well

Secondary Meteorites (Part 1 of 2), by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Could that black chunk of meteorite actually be from Mars?  There is an increasing body of evidence that the meteorites that hit the Earth were, themselves, bits of other planets blasted away by their own meteor strikes.  The subject matter is fascinating, but Dr. Hall manages to make it nigh incomprehensible.  It's too technical and presented all out of order (even Dr. Asimov learned early in his career that you have to define your terms first).  And this is only PART ONE!

Two stars.

The Eyes Have It, by Randall Garrett

My disdain for Mr. Garrett has been a constant of the Journey, ever since the offensive and just plain bad Queen Bee.  Over time, he has occasionally written decent stuff, and when he teams up with others, his rough edges get smoothed a bit.  Still, his name in the Table of Contents has always made me less eager to read a magazine.

Well, never let it be said that I can't keep an open mind.  Garrett's latest work is a tour de force.  If Asimov perfected the science fiction mystery with The Caves of Steel, Garrett has created the genre of magical mystery with The Eyes Have It.

The year is 1963, the place, France.  But this is no France we know.  Instead, it appears to be in a timeline that diverged nine centuries prior, one in which the Angevin Empire remained ascendant…and in which the use of magic developed. 

Lord D'Arcy is Chief Criminal Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, summoned to investigate the murder of the fantastically lecherous Count D'Evraux.  With the aid of his assistants, Sorcerer Sean O Lachlainn and chirurgeon Dr. Pately, he must find out how and at whose hand the Count met his untimely demise, and he has just twenty four hours to do it.

The attention to detail, the world-building, the characterization, the writing — all are top notch.  This is the sort of work I'd expect from Poul Anderson (and only when at the top of his game).  For Garrett to pull this off is nothing short of miraculous.

Dammit, Randy.  It's going to be hard to keep hating you.

Five stars.

Poppa Needs Shorts, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

The last piece by the Richmonds was an utterly unreadable book-length serial.  This one, on the other hand, is a cute vignette convincingly told from the view of a 4-year old child who just wants to know about "shorts."  Leigh and Walt have a pretty good idea how kids learn, I think.

Three stars.

Subjectivity, by Norman Spinrad

The pages of our scientific journals offer a wealth of ideas that can be turned into SF stories.  New author Norman Spinrad seizes on Dr. Timothy Leary's paean to LSD in technical clothing, Psychedelic Review as inspiration for his second story:

Though humanity has invented an engine that will propel spaceships at half the speed of light, the heavens remain out of reach.  It's not the endurance of the ships that's the problem — it is that of the crew.  No matter how well-adjusted they are, all of them go crazy in less than half the time it takes to get to Alpha Centauri.  After twelve failed attempts, the powers that be assemble a crew of misfits with a twenty-year supply of hallucinogenics to keep them sane (if potted) and open up the stars.

Mission #13 succeeds…but not in a way anyone could have predicted.  A fun, slightly acid (no pun intended) little piece.  Four stars.

See What I Mean!, by John Brunner

In this disappointing outing from Brunner, a deadlock in negotiations between East and West is resolved when the four foreign ministers involved are psychoanalyzed, and it turns out the British and Russian officials have more in common with each other than with their ideological partners (from the U.S. and China, respectively).

Not much here.  Two stars.

Dune World (Part 2 of 3), by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert's epic in the desert, a kind of Lawrence of Arabia in space, continues.  After the assassination attempt on his son, and with warnings that he has a traitor in his midst, Duke Leto of the House of Atreides attempts to shore up his position on Arrakis, sole source of life-extending "spice".  The planetology and culture bits are pretty interesting, particularly the depiction of the forbidding dune world of Arrakis and the spice-mining operations thereon.  I continue to get the impression, though, that Herbert is still too raw for this project.  The viewpoint jumps from line to line, much is conveyed through exposition, and the incessant use of italics is really trying to read.

Three stars again.

Crunching the numbers

So how did the first batch of magazines dated with the new year fare?  There are definitely some surprises.

  • Analog, came in first with a respectable 3.4 star rating.  Moreover, Randall Garrett of all people had the best story.  These must be the end times.
  • Fantastic came in a close second at 3.3.  New World tread water at 3.  IF got 2.8.  F&SF scored a disappointing 2.5.  Amazing dragged through the muck at a miserable 1.9.
  • All in all, there were nearly 200 pages of good-to-excellent stories.  Not a bad haul.
  • Women only wrote one and a half of the 31 fiction pieces this month, and theirs were short ones.  No surprises there.

Next up: the first book of the new year!

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Book

[November 17, 1963] Galactoscope (Three Ace Doubles!)

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by Gideon Marcus

Here at the Journey, we read virtually every piece of science fiction and fantasy published.  Our goal is not only to provide you with a complete encyclopedia of available works, but also to ensure we can make informed decisions come award-giving time.

Now, that's a lot of printed words.  It used to be that I would publish a separate article for each book, but with such a big backlog of books waiting to be reviewed, I decided it'd be best to do the queue all at once, like they do in the review columns of the various magazines (for instance, Amazing's "Spectroscope").

As it turns out, the volumes you'll hear about today are all Ace Doubles (published with two complete books back-to-back and reversed), so if you're a fan of these odd blue-and-whites, this will help you manage your 1963 shopping list.

Alpha Centauri or Die!, by Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett is a legend.  One of the relatively few women in the SFF arena, she is also a renowned scriptwriter, having penned the screenplay for The Big Sleep and Rio Bravo.  Brackett has managed to keep plugging along in Hollywood in spite of the prevailing opinion of the last decade that women just don't get "male" genres like crime dramas and westerns.

Her SFF works have been recommended to me with increasing volume and frequency so I was delighted to have a chance to enjoy her latest novel, luridly titled (as all Ace Doubles are) Alpha Centauri or Die!.  This book is really two stories in one: Part 1 involves a rebel movement on Mars led by the human, Kirby, and his love, the Martian humanoid named Shari.  They dare to steal a manually controlled space ark, filled to the brim with colonists eager to emigrate, and evade the robotic sentinel spaceships that patrol the solar system.  Their destination: an inhabitable planet in the triple Alpha Centauri system.

There's a lot of action and chases, both planetbound and in the black gulf between the stars, culminating in a an exciting scene in which a squad from the fleeing Lucy Davenport boards and deactivates a pursuing robot fighter ship.

Part 2 takes place on the newly colonized world, which shortly after settlement, is besieged by unseen, psionically equipped aliens that kidnap terrans via teleportation.  Will this diabolical race end the colony, or is it all a misunderstanding?

That the two sections are so different in subject matter and tone is no coincidence.  Alpha Centauri or Die! is a fix-up of two stories from the early 1950s, both published in Planet Stories.  I'd only previously read The Ark of Space (on which Part 1 is based) so I can't tell you if the two tales were ever meant to be linked.  In any event, the resultant novel is not a great introduction to Brackett's works.  Particularly frustrating is the short shrift the women characters get, even at the hands of a woman author.  With the exception of Shari, they are a herd of complaining housewives.  The Martian heroine fares a bit better, joining the raiding party against the robot starship and using her esper powers to help deduce the nature of the beasts of Alpha Centauri, but her exploits point out just how alone she stands in representation of an entire gender.

Aside from that, Alpha Centauri or Die! is a competent but not groundbreaking action piece, slightly less than the sum of its parts, not progressing far from the pulp era in which Brackett made her first appearances.

Three stars.

Legend of Lost Earth, by G. McDonald Wallis

It's common practice in SFF for women to initialize their first names (or flat-out take on male pseudonyms).  I have been told vociferously by one of my readers that this practice has nothing to do with any bias against women in the genre; nevertheless, it is puzzling that men don't seem to do it.  In any event, the "G." stands for Geraldine, and this is her second Ace Double, the first being The Light of Lilith, which I have not read.

Lost Earth takes place on the dusty, red world of Niflhel, its atmosphere foul with the soot of a million mines.  Even the memory of Earth, destroyed by a human-caused catastrophe, is taboo.  But Giles Chulainn is seduced by the teachings of a secret society that keeps the half-remembered dream of their home planet alive.  A cat and mouse game ensues, with Giles taking on the role, by turns, of a subversive, a double, and then a triple agent. 

The true nature of the barren colony world and its connection with the lost verdant fields of Earth is ultimately revealed, though by the time you get there, you might not care, having been increasingly bombarded with a bamboozle of pseudo-scientific mysticism, Celtic legend, and plot incoherence. Nevertheless, Lost Earth does have a strong first half and a nice flavor throughout.  Three stars.

Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany

Delany is another author I'm catching on his second Ace book, the first being The Jewels of Aptor, which came out last year.  He is noteworthy for being the first black SF novelist (I believe; correct me if I'm wrong).

Captives of the Flame takes place on a blasted Earth, the remnants of humanity confined to just one city and its adjacent shoreline and islands.  Around it lies a radioactive barrier that has constricted over the years: just two generations before, it engulfed the city's neighboring polis, forcing its inhabitants to flee.  It is implied early on that the barrier is not of human origin.

The novel details the efforts of a mismatched band of heroes, including an exiled member of the royal family rendered invisible by the radiations, a young woman acrobat/thief, and an ambitious Duchess, to determine the true nature of the alien incursion and to use the extraterrestrials' powers to right the bellicose, corrupt human government. 

On the plus side, the novel features an interesting world and a refreshingly varied set of characters, male, female, and alien.  On the red ink side of the ledger, the plot is sketchy, and viewpoints shift with little warning or context.  I have to wonder if this is the author's fault or simply a result of Ace's hatchety editing style. 

Three stars.

The Psionic Menace, by Keith Woodcott

Those in the know are aware that "Keith Woodcott" is a pseudonym for English writer, John Brunner.  And those who have followed this column since the arrival of author Mark Yon will soon find that The Psionic Menace is an Ace-style retitling of Crack of Doom, which appeared under the Woodcott name in two issues of New Worlds last year.  It's about a universe-spanning psychic distress call, and the efforts humanity takes to decipher it.

It is word for word the same book, which means you will enjoy it as much (or little) as the serialized version.  Mark gave it three stars.

The Rebellers, by Jane Roberts

What a beginning on this one!  Gary Fitch is an artist on a crushingly overpopulated Earth.  His job is to take old classics and make copies as vehicles for conveying government propaganda.  He and his colleagues live under lock and key in a barracks, barely receiving enough sustenance for survival.  Yet their situation is the enviable one for outside their prison walls lies the teeming masses of humanity, hungrier and denied access to the books and artworks the painters have.

One day, rioting plebeians storm the prison walls, providing Fitch an opportunity to escape — from the frying pan into the fire.  The artist hooks up with an insurgent organization, "The Rebellers" (why not simply "The Rebels?") but their motives aren't as simon-pure as advertised.  Worse yet, a virulent plague is spreading, threatening to wipe out the human race once and for all.  Can Fitch take over the remnants of local government to avoid complete catastrophe?

Roberts' book starts out strong but resolves abruptly and rather implausibly.  For instance, it is discovered that the plague largely affects pregnant women and mandatory birth control becomes the linchpin on which combating the virus turns.  If birth control is so ubiquitous and effective, why wasn't it in common use before our planet was choked with people? 

This is the first novel by Roberts, whose short fiction I've greatly enjoyed.  While this book is a mixed success, she may get the hang of the form in time for her next effort.  In any event, it's nice to see her back after a four-year hiatus.

Three stars.

Listen!  The Stars!, by John Brunner

Last up is the novelization of John Brunner's Listen! The Stars!, a novella that appeared in Analog last year.  The tale of the "Stardroppers," who use extra-dimensional telescopes to plumb the unknown depths of the universe was one of my favorites from Brunner.  In fact, I gave it a Galactic Star.

Unlike The Psionic Menace, this Ace version is significantly revised.  The story's no different, and all the same scenes are there, but Brunner (or the editor) has padded every paragraph with enough extra words to fill 96 pages.  Or maybe Analog's editor, John W. Campbell, had cut the original to fit the pages of his magazine.

In any event, both versions are good, worthy of five stars.  If you want a shorter read, find the magazine, and if you want something lengthier, well, you get this and the Roberts novel, too.

So there you have it, a typical grab bag of Ace production.  A good half of it was scoured from the pages of the magazines, and only the Brunner (under his own name) really hits it out of the park.  Still, at 20 cents a novel (40 cents for a double), all of it at least readable, you could do a lot worse.

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Magazine

[October 8, 1963] The Big Lemon (November 1963 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

New York.  Gateway to America.  Home of Broadway, the Empire State Building, Times Square, etc. etc.

Big deal.

This week, my wife and I took a United 707 from LAX to Newark for a mini-vacation.  A good friend of ours, whom we met in fandom, lives in Morristown, New Jersey.  We stayed in bucolic west New Jersey for a couple of lovely days before hopping the train into Town.  You see, I'd never really been to the Big Apple, and my wife had enjoyed the last couple of times.  Plus, there was a little convention going on at the time to serve as an anchor.  What the hell.

Hell and anchor are right.  Lemme tell you, bub — two nights in mid-town, with the bums, the horns, and the smoke, will sour anyone on the place.  Maybe the folks here are inured to this constant assault on all of the senses, but for a country boy like me, it warn't no fun.  The con was a crummy, disorganized mess, too.

All right.  I can see you natives getting your fur up.  To your credit, there were some interesting-looking shows on the Great White Way, and my last meal on the island involved some of the tastiest pizza I've ever had, and we managed to meet a clutch of truly excellent people in Manhattan.  But we're happy to be back in quiet ol' Morristown for our last day, and ever-so-glad to be heading home tonight.

The experience is not unlike the one I had reading this month's IF Science Fiction.  It had a few bright spots, but otherwise was a tough slog.  I understand that IF was the low rent sister to Galaxy, offering a bare cent and a half per word and getting what it paid for.  When Fred Pohl took over the mag in 1961, he raised the rates for new stories and closed the deal on a bunch of previously rejected bargain stuff to fill the cracks.  This issue appears to be made up entirely of the chaff.

The Governor of Glave, by Keith Laumer

Laumer's Retief series is getting long in the tooth.  There are only so many stories of a diplomat/super-spy (spy/super-diplomat?) we need.  This one was especially tired: the rabble coup the eggheads running a planet dependent on skilled engineers to keep the terraforming plants running.  Decent plot but horrible execution.  Hint to Laumer — if Retief doesn't feel any need to worry, neither does the reader.  Two stars.

The Second-Class Citizen, by Damon Knight

A hand-less dolphin trying to make it in a human world is truly a fish out of water.  But what happens when the roles reverse?  Damon Knight has returned to fiction writing after a long stint translating European works and doing book reviews.  That he's chosen the friendly bottlenose as his subject shouldn't surprise given the success of the recent movie, Flipper (not to mention Clarke's novel, People of the Sea.  This particular tale had promise, but it ends too quickly and ham-fistedly.  I look forward to better tales from Knight and about dolphins.  Three stars.

Muck Man, by Fremont Dodge

Here's a neat concept.  After a century of interstellar exploration, humanity has found a dozen inhabitable planets, but none of them are carbon-copies of the Earth.  Survival on any of them requires physical modification to deal with the immense gravities or impurities in the atmosphere or dangerous predators.  Thus, people who settle these alien worlds become, themselves, aliens.  It's very refreshing to find a depiction of a universe that isn't filled with perfectly suitable worlds.

This particular tale involves a fellow who is framed for the theft of a Slider egg, a coruscant treasure found only on Jordan's Planet.  Not only is one difficult to obtain, as they are vigorously defended by the fearsome Slider beasts, but they also have a limited lifespan.  Asa Graybar was working on a way to keep them alive indefinitely; thus, a put-up job by the Director of Operations of the primary distributor of Slider eggs, who wants to preserve their scarcity and value. 

Rather than cool his heels for five years in a conventional prison, Graybar elects to serve a one-year hitch on Jordan's Planet as a Muck Man — a human modified to be a powerful frog-like being.  Muck Men are well suited for digging Slider eggs and thriving in the swampy environs.  Graybar hopes to use his tenure on the mud planet to continue his research and, perhaps, clear his name.  Unfortunately for him, the guy who framed him also comes to Jordan's Planet to ensure Graybar doesn't finish his sentence.

It's a good, vivid story, and it even has a competent female character (heiress to the Slider egg distributor company).  However, it's about a third too short, perhaps cut for length like Panshin's Down to the Worlds of Men a few issues back.  Moreover, I'm getting tired of there being room for just one woman in any tale, and she only in a position of importance due to breeding.  Can't women make it to the top on their own merit?  Three stars and hoping for more next time.

Long Day in Court, by Jonathan Brand

This is the first story from "Brand," a university employee operating under a pseudonym.  It's an interstellar court of law story, consciously aping the not-at-all futuristic Perry Mason series.  The puzzler case of the day: when is beating your spouse both the crime and the punishment?

It's about as amusing as it sounds, though at least it's in English.  Two stars.

Glop, Goosh and Gilgamesh, by Theodore Sturgeon

Mr. "90% of everything is crap" proves that the rule applies to its inventor as well as the rest of us mortals.  This piece on asphalt is readable, but the guy is phoning in his non-fiction.  Get back to fiction, Ted!  Two stars.

The Reefs of Space (Part 3 of 3), by Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl

The first part of this three-part serial introduced us to Steve Ryland, a physicist condemned to life imprisonment for subversive acts against the oppressively harmonious world-state run by a giant computer, The Machine.  Ryeland is asked to recreate the reactionless space drive and find the legendary Reefs of Space, free-floating inhabitable structures far beyond the orbit of Pluto.  The hope is that this will allow Earth's authorities to find Ron Donderevo, the one terran ever to escape the Machine's regime.

Part Two was almost a standalone tale, chronicling Ryeland's exile to and attempt to escape Heaven, where convicts are doped up and allowed to live a pleasant life — as their organs are harvested one by one until the host can't sustain life anymore.  Ryeland fails in the end, but is rescued by Donna Creery, daughter of The Planner, the one person on the planet with authority to change the Machine's programming. 

She and Steve escape to the Reefs of Space on the back of the seal-like "starchild," a beast that can travel across light years of vacuum without adverse effects.  In their new home, with the aid of the exiled Donderevo, they must prepare to face down dangers both indigenous and Earth-born

Reefs of Space is an odd duck.  It's a pair of pulpish book-ends around a virtually unassociated novella.  I suspect Parts 1 and 3 were written by Jack Williamson, whose bibliography goes back to the 20s, and Part 2 was done by Fred Pohl.  Certainly, the fascinatingly horrific aspects of it feel very Pohlian.  In any event, whereas Part 1 barely merited three stars and Part 2 was a surprisingly decent four-star episode, Part 3 is a muddled mess that ends on an abrupt and unsatisfactory note.  Plus, of course, it has the mandatory sole female whose high position is earned solely from having had a well-placed father.

Two stars for this section, three stars for the whole story.

A Better Mousetrap, by John Brunner

Last up, a piece from the often (but sadly, not always) excellent Britisher, John Brunner.  Hostile aliens have seeded the solar system with asteroid-sized clusters of precious metals that turn out to be ship-destroyers.  A very talky piece, as dull as it is nonsensical.  Two stars.

***

I won't denigrate this issue too much; IF has always been of widely variable quality, and the good issues make up for the lousy ones.  Still, if ever there was an issue to miss, this is it.

You're welcome.

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[September 27, 1963] Beatles, Birds and Brunner (New Worlds, October 1963)

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by Mark Yon

Hello again. September means that we get to Autumn, which is perhaps my favourite time of the year. The nights are getting colder and darker and the lure of a warm home with a good book or magazine grows ever more favorable.

Outside the house (when I do venture outside!) those mop-top-lets, The Beatles, are still taking the pop music world by storm. They are on tour in Britain and filling their venues as they go. Their latest recording is an EP of their hits so far –  From Me to You, Please Please Me and Love Me Do, with a B-side track, Thank You Girl.

Even though this is really a re-release, “by popular demand,” as they say, like all their other releases I suspect that this one will go to the top of the British pop charts. Their upbeat energy and enthusiasm is quite infectious.

Movie-wise, I have been to see Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, which finally got to Britain this month. I thought it was good. There are some chilling scenes in the movie, although on the whole I felt that it’s more of a slow burn of a movie than Psycho ever was. The creepiest thing, that I realised after seeing the film, was that there is no reason given for the bird’s unusual behaviour. It just happens, which means that it could happen to you or me: anytime, anywhere.

Perhaps the most exciting news to me is the announcement made by Mr. Kennedy a couple of days ago that there should be a joint Soviet-US mission to the Moon. Being a positively minded sort of chap, I’m thinking, “Wouldn’t that be a wonderful development?” I find it hard to imagine that such a positive comment for exploration could be made less than a year after the Cuban Crisis. I guess the opposite view is that the US government may be worried about how much progress the Russians seem to be making?

On science-fictional matters, last month I did say that I would pass comment on the Hugo Awards. It sounds like it was a good time with the Good Doctor Asimov in charge of proceedings. I’ll mention him again later.

My Hugo predictions were, as I rather expected, a little off.  I was disappointed, though not surprised, that the novel The Man in the High Castle won, though I have yet to actually read it myself. Well done also to Galaxy and Mr. Jack Vance for The Dragon Masters which I was pleased with. It was one of my favourite novellas last year. I was very surprised on there being “No Award” for Dramatic Presentation. Was The Twilight Zone, my prediction for winning, really that bad?

I’ll try again next year.

Right – to this month’s New Worlds.

After a couple of variable, though stronger issues, this month we seem to be back to our usual standard.

s.x, s-f and c_________p, by Mr. G.H. Doherty

No, that title’s not a misprint- that’s how it’s written. This month’s Guest Editor is someone unknown to me. However, the matter he discusses is a topical one – how does and should science fiction tackle sex in its fiction? There is a long history of the topic in s-f  being avoided or ignored, partly because the fiction has grown up from the pulps and partly because its typical matters of science and technology do not lend themselves easily to the issue.

Mr. Doherty’s Editorial is part Convention Report and part-thought-experiment, in that the issue was raised by a presentation from Mr. Harry Harrison at this year’s BSFA Convention. What was meant to be a slightly humorous talk ended up as something more serious. There’s some very interesting comments made by the participants and this leads Mr. Doherty to conclude that if the genre is to make progress then it needs a more grown-up attitude. It’s not quite a return to the ranty tirades of old Editorials, but it is more anecdotal than analytical.   

To the lower-cased-titled stories! (Yes, it’s still annoying.)

man-hunt , by Mr. John Rackham

This month’s Rackham story is more traditional than his recent “X-person” stories, a Galactic Police detective tale that wouldn’t be that amiss from the 1940’s pulps. Combining a man-hunt adventure with a healthy dose of Galactic Empire order, it is a story of a competent cop who meets and is tested by senior management. It is good fun. There’s a bit of ruminating about the characteristics you need to be a person with great powers and responsibility, and how sometimes meeting your heroes is not always a good thing, but nothing really new here. 3 out of 5.

breakdown , by Ms. Hilary Bailey

This story is written by – gasp – a woman! It is good to see a change in this male-dominated magazine. A sign of the times, perhaps. It’s not really a coincidence, though. Ms. Bailey is a friend of Mr. Michael Moorcock, which might explain the connection. As a social-science story, it is OK. The characters visit Neurodram Park, a place where visitors can watch others placed there for cathartic therapy by the Welfare State. This story is really about the voyeuristic attractiveness of watching other’s lives (I’m sure television scratches the same itch) and the need for people to let off steam. Shows us that perhaps we’ve not come that far from Bedlam Asylum of the 1800’s, where members of the public could watch patients. As stories based around an idea go, its OK. It made me think of the dystopian tales that Mr. J. G. Ballard does well, but without the cutting bite of his prose.  3 out of 5.

forty years on , by E. R. James

A time travel story of sorts, although really it is the sort of time travel tale typified by stories like Mr. H. G. Wells’ The Sleeper Wakes. Space miner Greg Dormer finds himself waking from cryogenic sleep forty years on than he expected to be. Seen by some as a hero, with his own Fan Club, in hospital he discovers that he is actually a suspect being investigated for the destruction of his original spaceship and the loss of the rest of the crew. This is a solid enough tale of wish-fulfilment and space piracy. It reads well enough, though the motive for the crime at the end I found a little unconvincing. 3 out of 5.

project 13013 , by Mr. Bill Spencer

Last seen in the July 1963 edition of New Worlds, with The Nothing, Mr. Spencer’s story this month is a run-of-the-mill laboratory tale. This time the drug being trialled is an attempt to achieve life longevity, with (surprise surprise!) its testing having unfortunate side effects. Ho-hum. 3 out of 5.

yutsy brown , by Mr. Pino Puggioni

Here’s something we haven’t seen for a while in New Worlds: a reprint, from a story first published in the author’s native Italian in August of this year. It is clearly part of Mr. Carnell’s commitment to publishing s-f beyond the traditional British and US markets. Others might say, uncharitably, that it is a money-saving effort. Nevertheless, the story is a jaunty tale of the eponymous author of the future meeting one of his harshest literary critics – a publishing machine!  yutsy brown is entertaining and not-too-serious, which brought a certain degree of lighter relief to the issue. At the same time it also raises the sobering point that literary criticism is entirely subjective, something I must always bear in mind! In the end it was one of the issue’s stronger stories for me, which, considering my usual low opinion of ‘funny stories’, was a surprise. I must be mellowing. 4 out of 5.

To Conquer Chaos (Part 3 of 3), by Mr. John Brunner.

In the final third part of this serial we find things pretty much tied up. Much of this portion is about the joining-up of the two halves of the plot, when Idle Conrad and Jervis Yanderman meet Nestermay and her grandfather inside the dome of the barrenland. The purpose of the dome is revealed, as is the cause of Conrad’s visions.  The general feel is that the story’s a little unbalanced, with a lot being revealed through information-dump in the last few pages. Much of the dialogue goes along the lines of “I don’t know why, you’ll just have to trust me,” which is rather depressingly convenient. Nevertheless, the novel’s been worth a read and it is still one of the most memorable serials of late. It shows what you can get when you get work from an experienced writer.  4 out of 5.

book reviews , by Mr Leslie Flood.

Most highly recommended this month is Mr. Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, which I guess should not be a surprise judging by the comments from your side of the Atlantic. Plaudits also for Mr. Brian Aldiss’s “qualitatively erratic and erotic” The Airs of Earth but Mr. Frederik Pohl’s “failed experiment” The Expert Dreamers is less successful. Worst of all, Mr. Derek Ingrey’s Pig on a Lead is reviewed as “the strangest and most sickeningly desolate (novel), both physically and spiritually” read recently by Mr. Flood. A reason to rush out to your nearest bookshop if ever you needed one.

Personally, I really want a copy of Mr. Isaac Asimov’s anthology of The Hugo Winners, all the novelette and short story winners from Mr. Walter M. Miller’s The Darfsteller in 1955 to Mr. Poul Anderson’s The Longest Voyage in 1961. I have read most of them already, but it is great value.

***

In summary, I’m pleased that this was a fairly solid issue of New Worlds this month. The serial was good, and the reprint of a non-English story has given life to an issue that otherwise would be a little mundane, even with an editorial that discusses the ever-controversial issue of sex in s-f.

Until next month.




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