March 7th was the first Sunday of Lent. It's a particularly special event this year as Catholics can now hear mass in their local language, rather than Latin. Pope Paul VI marked the occasion by conducting services in Italian at a small church near the Vatican. Mass in the vernacular is not required, but it is encouraged. This is one of the reforms instituted last year as a way to get parishioners more involved in the Catholic faith.
In Living Color
Color television appears to be moving beyond the fad phase. And for that to happen the broadcasters and receivers need to “speak the same language.” The signal the antenna on your roof receives carries a lot of different information. Most of it tells the TV set how bright to make each phosphor dot, some of it tells the speaker what sound to make. The color information is a subset of the brightness information.
In the United States, a standard was developed about a decade ago by the National Television System Committee, commonly known by the committee’s initials, NTSC. It works pretty well, but under poor transmission conditions the colors can shift. (The joke among signal engineers is that NTSC stands for “Never the same color.”) Europe is subject to geographic and weather conditions which are bad for NTSC and so the governments of Western Europe have been looking for a new system better suited to Europe. Two have been developed: the French SECAM (Séquentiel couleur à mémoire or sequential color with memory) and the German PAL (Phased Alternating Line).
Rectangular screens. That’s a big improvement.
On March 22nd, the France announced that they had signed an agreement with the Soviet Union under which the Russians will use a slightly modified form of SECAM. Two days later, a conference opened in Vienna to discuss a common system for Western Europe. Ultimately, the conference chose PAL. The French however are sticking to their guns, so while most of Europe will be using PAL, France and the East Bloc will be going with SECAM. So much for commonality.
Speaking of Common
This month’s IF certainly delivers a heap of the familiar, from old, familiar faces to old, familiar themes.
The big news, previously rumored, is that Amazing and its stablemate Fantastic are to change hands. The April Science Fiction Times just arrived, with the big headline “ ‘AMAZING STORIES’ AND ‘FANTASTIC’ SOLD TO SOL COHEN.” Cohen is the publisher of Galaxy, If, and Worlds of Tomorrow, but will resign at the end of next month to take up his new occupation.
Why is this happening? Probably because circulation, which had been increasing, started to decline again in 1962 (when I started reviewing it!). The SF Times article adds, tendentiously and questionably, that “the magazine showed what appeared to be a lack of interest by its editors.” Read their further comment and draw your own conclusions on that point.
Whatever the reason, it’s done. The last Ziff-Davis issues of both magazines will be the June issues. Whether they will continue monthly is not known, nor is who will edit the magazine—presumably meaning Cele Lalli is not continuing.
The Issue at Hand
by Paula McLane
The previous two issues were much improved over their predecessors. Of course the improvement could not be sustained (viz. the current issue), but it has at least reverted to the slightly less mean than on some occasions.
Who was it who first said “If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like”? Dorothy Parker? Mark Twain? Pliny the Elder? Anyway, Edmond Hamilton’s latest in his backwards-looking saga of the far future featuring the Star Kings may not even rise to the level of that truism. The generically titled The Shores of Infinity spends about 10 of its 33 or so pages on background and build-up, and then the generically named John Gordon of ancient (i.e., contemporary) Earth takes off to the capital of the Galaxy to hobnob with the Emperor in the imperial city of Throon.
There, he learns of more rumors of the previously encountered mind-controlling menace, is sent off on a dangerous secret mission to investigate, is captured, victimized by treachery and benefited by its reversal, and the author seems as bored by the whole perfunctory and hackneyed business as I was. It’s ostentatiously inconclusive, so we are guaranteed more. To paraphrase W.C. Fields, second prize would be two more sequels.
A recurring theme here is Gordon’s alienation from the beautiful Princess Lianna. This seems to be the special Woman Trouble issue of Amazing; see below. (Note to Betty Friedan: if the viewpoint characters were female, it would of course be the Man Trouble issue. Tell women more of them should be writing SF.) Also worth mentioning is the cover, by Paula McLane, which portrays a giant space-helmeted visage peering into a room where two small diaphanous figures are trying to close the door against him. Obviously metaphorical, right? Actually, it’s a quite literal rendering of a passing scene in the story.
Anyway, this one has little going for it except the usual space-operatic rhetoric (“The vast mass of faintly glowing drift that was known as the Deneb Shoals, they skirted. They plunged on and now they were passing through the space where, that other time, the space-fleets of the Empire and its allies had fought out their final Armageddon with the League of the Dark Worlds.”) The problem with this decoration is there’s not much here to decorate. Two stars, probably too generous.
No Vinism Like Chau-Vinism, by John Jakes
by George Schelling
John Jakes’s long novelet No Vinism Like Chau-Vinism [sic], the title obviously a play on the all too familiar song There’s No Business Like Show Business, inhabits the territory demarcated by Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants, Ron Goulart on a good day, and the Three Stooges. In the future, everything is showbiz. The populace is entertained and distracted by constant scripted and broadcast warfare between commercial forces, in this case the American Margarine Manufacturers Association versus the United Dairy Expedition Force, fighting of course in Wisconsin.
The script is disrupted by the appearance of a real gun in the hands of the rogue margarineer (Jakes calls them margies) Burton Tanzy of the Golden-Glo Margarine Company, who executes a cow on live TV, initiating a slapstick plot in which among other things besides real guns, the fake commercial war turns into a real union dispute. The protagonist Gregory Rooke of the Dairy forces must try to calm things down and restore order, lest the public get wind of the fraudulence of their world. His chief antagonist proves to be his ex-wife, who has dumped him to pursue her overweening ambitions, consistently with the Woman Trouble motif, though things work out better for Rooke than for poor forlorn John Gordon.
This story is actually quite amusing; Jakes has a knack for the farcical tall tale. Unfortunately it goes on too long and palls a bit by the end, keeping the final reckoning down to three stars.
De Ruyter: Dreamer, by Arthur Porges
Arthur Porges contributes Ensign De Ruyter: Dreamer, another in his tiresome series about the space navy guy who triumphs over cartoonishly stupid extraterrestrials through the clever use of basic science—in this case, it’s Fun with Electromagnetism. These stories barely rise to the level of filler. One star.
Greendark in the Cairn, by Robert Rohrer
Robert Rohrer continues in his “almost there” vein with Greendark in the Cairn, featuring a space captain who is either going nuts, or is being driven nuts by transmissions from the extraterrestrial enemy, but figures out how to defeat them and prevent himself from giving the game away. It’s gimmicky and facile but well rendered. Two stars, but do try again.
Speech Is Silver, by John Brunner
The earnest John Brunner undertakes a satire of American commercialism in Speech Is Silver, in which the protagonist Hankin is selected in the Soundsleep company’s “Great Search” for the man with the perfect voice for a program of sleep counseling—that is, counseling while one sleeps on how to handle the difficulties of the day. Except of course that’s not really how things work, and his new-found fame destroys his life. (Also—Woman Trouble again—his wife, who prodded him to enter the Soundsleep competition, leaves him, apparently because he was never ambitious enough, like Rooke’s wife in No Vinism [etc.].) At the point where Soundsleep decides to replace him with a younger near-double, Hankin detonates.
Like the Jakes story, this one is an acid satire on contemporary image-mongering American capitalism. Its problem, aside from being too long (also like Jakes), is that it isn’t crazy enough. Brunner’s calm and methodical style and storytelling muffle the plot’s antic qualities. Maybe he should get Jakes to introduce him to the Three Stooges.
Two stars.
Religion in Science Fiction: God, Space, and Faith, by Sam Moskowitz
Sam Moskowitz forges on with Religion in Science Fiction: God, Space, and Faith, rendered on the cover as Science-Fiction Views of God With a Profile of C.S. Lewis. It’s a rambling description of various SF stories on religious themes, starting reasonably interestingly with several older books that most readers will not have heard of, continuing with the promised account of C.S. Lewis, followed by Stapledon, Heinlein, Wyndham, Simak, Leiber, Keller, Bradbury, Blish, Miller, del Rey, Boucher, and Farmer.
In this recitation Moskowitz manages to miss Arthur C. Clarke’s Hugo-winning The Star and his equally well-known The Nine Billion Names of God; Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question; Leigh Brackett’s tale of a different sort of theocracy, The Long Tomorrow; Harry Harrison’s anti-theological polemic The Streets of Ashkelon; Katherine MacLean’s acerbic Unhuman Sacrifice; and, astonishingly, Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Remarkably, he says, “Heinlein, who introduced [religion] into the science fiction magazines, has long since tired of it as a focal plot device.”
But this (mis-)observation does not deter him from his conclusion: “Neverthess, the decision is made. The science fiction writer has come to the conclusion that scientific advance will not mean the end of belief. He feels certain that a truly convincing portrayal of a hypothetical future cannot be made without considering the mystical aspects of man.”
Can we say fallacy of composition? Two stars: another “almost,” some interesting material, some of it unfamiliar, the whole brought down by Moskowitz’s fatuous generalizations.
Summing Up
So, mostly not too bad (except for the egregious Ensign Ruyter), but mostly not as good as it should and could have been either. There have been issues that would make one regret that this regime is ending, but this isn’t one of them.
Civilization is about building a society out of disparate units. It has to go beyond the family and clan. The key to organizing a civilization is empathy, recognizing that we are all different yet we share common values and rights. Once we understand each other, even if we don't agree on everything, then we can truly create "from many, one."
Science fiction allows the exploration of cutting edge sociological subjects, one of them being the understanding of the "other". That's because the genre has a ready-made stand-in for the concept: the alien. Indeed, many science fiction stories are allegorical; they address colonialism, the Cold War, societal taboos, in ways that might currently be too touchy or on-the-nose for conventional fiction. We can hope that, with the bottle uncorked, less allegorical stories will be required in the future.
Of all the science fiction magazines that come out every month, I think Fred Pohl's trio of Galaxy, IF, and Worlds of Tomorrow has the strongest tradition of incorporating aliens (Analog also has aliens, but thanks to its editor's sensibilities, they are almost invariably both more evil and inferior to human beings; Campbell likes a certain kind of allegory…)
Meeting the Minds
by George Schelling (it says it illustates War Against the Yukks, but it doesn't)
This month's Galaxy is a case in point, with six of its nine tales involving aliens of one kind or another. There's some good stuff in here, as well as a number of slog stories. Let's look, shall we?
Watch your step — there's a rough patch right at the start.
Whole is a meandering preach piece about an inventor who appears before a Congressional committee with news of a new, revolutionary invention. I'll just tell you about it because the first two thirds of the story are less suspenseful than obtusely annoying: it's a ray gun. Its applications are infinite, but the one most of the Congressmen are worried about is that every owner has a weapon more powerful than the atom bomb at their disposal. And, because of the way the invention has been disseminated, everyone in the world has access to them.
The result, the inventor opines, is going to be a world of true libertarian equality. "An armed society is a polite society" is how the expression goes. It's the kind of naive sentiment that would go over well at Analog, but for adults, it's just ridiculous. In equalizing humanity through armed neutrality, the inventor has made aliens of us all. I'll wager that Earth's population of humans will be dead inside a week…and probably most of the animals.
One star, and yet more disdain for the Herbert byline.
Ah, but then our fortunes truly turn around. Wrong Way Street gives us the unplanned adventure of Mike Capoferri, a scientist stationed on the Moon late this century to investigate an alien base and space ship. They have lain on the lunar plain for countless millions of years, and their provenance and function are completely unknown. That is, until Mike unwittingly not only discerns the motive force for the space ship, but also activates it. Here, understanding the alien way of thinking proved hazardous to Mike's health. Can he get home? Will the human race survive his journey?
This is author Niven's third story, and he continues with the same deftness he displayed with his recent short novel, World of Ptavvs. I guarantee that the ending of Street will stay with you.
Four stars.
Death and Birth of the Angakok, by Hayden Howard
by Jack Gaughan
Peterluk is a young Eskimo out hunting when a horrifying bunch of one-eyed Seal People arrive. He panics and entreats his powerful Grandfather, holed up in Peterluk's igloo, to aid him with his mystical powers. But Grandfather is too weak to assist and, in the end, Peterluk is left to defeat one of the aliens with a conventional rifle.
When the Seal People ship surfaces from beneath the ice, much to Peterluk's surprise, it disgorges not aliens but white people in uniform. And Peterluk begins to doubt the power, and even the human nature, of his strangely humped, ever demanding Grandfather.
Confusing at first, Angakok is actually a pretty neat tale of two types of aliens (human and truly extraterrestrial) as seen from the point of view of one completely naive to other cultures. While the bones of the plot are fairly conventional, I appreciated the novel viewpoint.
Three stars.
Symbolically Speaking, by Willy Ley
Any meeting of the minds between human and alien will require a common symbology to convey ideas. A science fiction writer looking for inspiration for such a symbol set could do worse than to read Willy Ley's latest science article for Galaxy, in which he discusses the evolution of symbols for the planets, alchemical substances, numbers, etc.
Fairly dry, but there's interesting information here. Three stars.
A Wobble in Wockii Futures, by Gordon R. Dickson
by Gray Morrow, channeling Bill Gaines
Tom and Lucy Reasoner are a recurring pair in a series of stories, this being the fourth. Sort of a "Nick and Nora" meets Retief, the stories of the Reasoners began charmingly enough, with Tom an interstellar diplomat with a mystery to solve, and Lucy his sometimes discerning assistant.
Last time around, Tom had not only gotten inducted into the interstellar assassin's guild, but he'd also catapulted Earth onto the galactic scene, dramatically increasing his home planet's clout. Now the humans have gotten themselves hip-deep in a planetary investment that made turn out to be completely worthless. Tom must find out who hoodwinked the Terrans and why before humanity is bankrupted.
This installation has the same problem as the last one — Lucy is sidelined and played for stupid, and the humor of the tale just isn't funny. Dickson can, and usually does, do better.
The concept of the "teenager" is a fairly recent one. It used to be that kids enjoyed a relatively short childhood before transitioning to the labor force and/or marriage. Now there is an intermediate phase before adulthood during which a youngster can learn the ropes of grown-up society.
Brunner's latest story posits an even longer period of immaturity, one in which kids are given free credit until age thirty to do whatever they want. The catch: once they reach their fourth decade, they have to pay back what they've spent by being productive members of society. Thus, the wastrels find themselves indebted indefinitely, while those who lived a spartan life get to be free agents.
Hal Page, age 32, believes he knows a way to cheat the system…but in the end, society has use for people who have spent it all, even their life.
There's a great idea here, but I feel it was somewhat wasted on the gimmick (and not particularly logical) ending. Still, three stars.
The Decision Makers, by Joseph Green
by Jack Gaughan
Allan Odegaard is a Practical Philosopher, a kind of emissary for humanity to other worlds. His job is to judge whether a planet is inhabited by intelligent life or not; if so, Terran policy is to keep hands off. As one would expect, such a determination is often strongly opposed by financial interests.
Capella G Eight is an ocean planet, though during times of Ice Age, three continents emerge from the sea as the water level drops. Its dominant life form is a seal-like creature. Though it possesses a relatively tiny brain pan, somehow it lives in a communal society and can use tools. Is it intelligent? Does the fact that these creatures live near a rich uranium deposit factor into Odegaard's decision?
We've seen this kind of story before — H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy series is probably the purest example, though J.F. Bone's The Lani People should also be noted. It's a worthy subject, and Green does a pretty good job, though the ending is abrupt and not quite as momentous as I would have liked.
All in all, it's the best story I've seen from Green in an American publication (he tends to stick to the English side of the Atlantic.) Three stars.
We're back to Earth for this one. We all know that the pace of life has only quickened over the generations. Lafferty, whose middle name would be "whimsy" if the initial were a W. and not an A., writes of a future society in which society is speeded up a hundred-fold compared to now. Fortunes are made and lost in minutes. Marriages last an hour on a good night. And a lifetime can be lived in a week.
It's cute, but the satire wears thin about halfway through. Also, there are only two female characters, and their sole goal appears to be competing for the earliest wedding of the evening.
A low three, I guess.
Sculptor, by C. C. MacApp
Eight years ago, a disgraced spaceman abandoned his crewmates on an alien world, rushing home with a set of invaluable statues — and a hole in his memory about the affair. Now he has been shanghaied by a criminal bent on returning to this world and plundering it for more of the exquisite figurines.
What race made these wrought-diamond minatures? And why does the amnesiac spaceman feel such dread on the planet's surface?
This is another "they looked like us" yarn that has been around since Campbell kick-started the genre with Who Goes There (and Heinlein made it popular with The Puppet Masters). It's so prevalent, in fact, that there's another example of it in this very issue! (Angakok) Despite not really treading on new ground, it may well be the best work I've seen from C. C. MacApp, a fairly recent author who never fails to never quite succeed.
Six years ago, the Journey had the (dubious) pleasure of reviewing Missile to the Moon. It was one of a long line of movies involving a man-less society, run by a bunch of sex-starved female beauties just waiting for a hunk to tip the order on its ear.
Laumer's latest is the same old story: this time, the men are an anthropologist and his stereotypically British assistant, who are whisked to Callisto where they encounter the last remnants of an ante-diluvian war between the sexes. High Jinks ensue(s?)
Only the author's puissance at writing elevates this story above the level of dreck. Even then, it's a disappointment. I understand that satirizing a hoary cliche can be fun, but the whole point of Galaxy is that the magazine doesn't even acknowledge the existence of said cliches, much less indulge in them.
It really deserves two stars. I'll probably give it three anyway.
Summit's End
This month's Galaxy was as alien-heavy as usual, and there was a broad variety of stories. On the other hand, with the exception of the Niven, there were no stand-outs. Indeed, the issue read more like an overlong issue of IF (which has also dipped in quality) than Galaxy of old.
Nevertheless, Ad Astra per Aspera. What goes down must come up again, and when humanity finally does meet the alien denizens of the stars, should they exist, our starship crews will doubtless have been inculcated with the lessons learned in SF, particularly in magazines like Galaxy.
“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt
When Gideon contacted me about taking on the reviews for IF, I took President Roosevelt’s words to heart and said, “Yes.” It’s tougher than it looks. I’m stretching some mental muscles I haven’t used in some time.
New Beginnings
March is a good time for new beginnings. Spring isn’t quite here yet, but its promise is apparent. Depending on where you live, the crocuses may have started to bloom, or at least the snowdrops. And until Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar almost exactly 2,000 years ago, it was the first month of the year (which is why our ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months are named Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten). It even stuck around as the first month for some into the Eighteenth century under the Old Style.
So what’s new? Well, we have another new country: The Gambia. This tiny nation on the west coast of Africa was granted independence by Great Britain on February 18th. It closely follows the lower course of the Gambia River to its mouth on the Atlantic and is surrounded on three sides by Senegal. I wouldn’t rush out to buy a new map or globe any time soon. There are still plenty of colonies in Africa and elsewhere around the world seeking their independence.
The Duke of Kent at the official opening of Gambia High School during the independence celebrations
There’s also a new measles vaccine. Unlike the current vaccine, which requires a series of shots, this requires only a single injection. Fewer injections are bound to be a relief to children and their parents.
A little closer to the interests of the Journey, MGM has announced that Stanley Kubrick (Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove) is working on a science fiction film, tentatively to be called Journey Beyond the Stars. There isn’t much information at this time. It will be shot in Cinerama, and Arthur C. Clarke is apparently involved in some fashion. Maybe we can dare hope for more than ray guns and schlocky monsters.
[This is your chance to nominate Galactic Journey for Best Fanzine Hugo! We feel that 1964…er…2019 was our best year yet, and appearing on the ballot is the greatest reward we could ask for. Please help make it happen again!]
by Gideon Marcus
Facing the Future, Honoring the Past
January (likely) takes its name from Janus, the Roman god of new beginnings, and there have been few Januaries so worthy of this legacy than the latest one.
On January 20, Lyndon Baines Johnson took the oath of office of the President of the United States. He had done so once before, on that tragic afternoon in November 1963. This time, LBJ was sworn in on his own merit, having won the last general election in one of the biggest trouncings in history. He has already outlined a bold agenda, expanding his Great Society with proposals to expand medicare and social security, combat poverty and joblessness, and further equalize the rights of all Americans. Along with the Democratic supermajority in Congress, we are going to see legislative movement the likes of which have not been seen in more than twenty years.
Just four days later, Sir Winston Churchill, the United Kingdom's leader through most of World War 2, was felled by a brain hemorrhage at the age of 90. His state funeral on the 29th was appropriately tremendous, and flags were lowered to half-mast throughout the world. The Left seem to be on the move in Britain, too, with the Liberals winning their first victory in over a decade. Have we arrived at an unfettered age of progress?
In the eddies of time
Not within the pages of John W. Campbell's Analog, which plugs along this month with the same combination of hard science fiction and workmanlike writing. Moreover, Frank Herbert's Prophet of Dune neither begins nor concludes; it merely plods on. Well, to be fair, the cover date is February 1965…
by Walter Hortens
Program for Lunar Landings by Joe Poyer
We are now four years on since President Kennedy's momentous declaration, to send Americans to the Moon and back before decade's end. Joe Poyer's article outlines the phases of lunar exploration that will succeed Project Apollo's first missions.
Fascinating topic. Rather dull execution. Three stars.
The Mailman Cometh, by Rick Raphael
by Walter Hortens
The fellow who gave us depictions of government employed sewer rats and tales of high speed highway patrol is back with a story of far future mail delivery. Centuries from now, automated mail drones will transport packages across the stars. But it's up to the sweaty, stinky folk in orbiting stations to sort the stuff onto its final destination.
I don't know that I buy the setup, and this is more of "a day in the life" than something with an actual plot. That said, Raphael always writes pleasantly, and he's not shy about writing good women characters.
Three stars.
Photojournalist, by Mack Reynolds
by Robert Swanson
It's a terrible thing to be a cameraman and miss the big scoop. But how much worse must it be to be at all the right places at all the right times and never have your pictures published?
No one in modern day has ever seen Jerry Scott's shots, and he's been spotted everywhere, from Mussolini's hanging to the latest riots. Is he unlucky? Or does he have an entirely different audience?
Pretty good story, though with a page more in the middle than is necessary. Plus, it gives Reynolds a chance to use some of his lingo from his Joe Mauser stories (which will instantly tip you off as to what's going on).
What ill could possibly be spoken of the trees of Maccadon? All parts of them are edible. They obligingly create hollows in themselves as shelters for animals and people alike. Not one offensive characteristic has been cataloged.
Is there such a concept as too much of a good thing?
This story has a lot in common with Norman Spinrad's recent Child of Mind, though without the offensive bits. And also the particularly interesting ones.
Three stars.
Coincidence Day, by John Brunner
by Leo Summers
In the NASEEZ (North American South Eastern Extraterrestrial Zoo), the most exciting time to visit is Coincidence Day, when all of the biorhythms of the assembled creatures line up, and they can all be viewed active at once. The most sought-out resident is a tripodal alien dubbed Chuckaluck, a charming, easy-going soul.
But is he the attraction, or the observer?
A whimsical, multilayered piece. It almost feels like a story Sheckley would write were he British.
Finally, a short installment of Part 2 of Book 2 of the Dune franchise. Young Paul Atreides and his mother, Lady Jessica, have made it across the deadly desert of Arrakis to what counts for local civilization. But do the still-suited, spice-addicted Fremen offer succor or peril?
This was actually one of the better spans of the story, though Frank Herbert still employs third person omniscient italic as his perspective. Three stars.
What a happy surprise to find Analog near the top of the magazine pack this month, clocking in at 3.2 stars. In fact, it was a rather stellar month in general, Galaxy getting an impressive 3.5 stars, BOTH Fantastic and Amazing earning 3.3 stars, Fantasy and Science Fiction returning to form with 3.2 stars, and the British New Worlds achieving 3.1 while Science Fantasy scored 3.
Only IF and Worlds of Tomorrow came over par, at 2.7 and 2.5 stars, respectively (though the latter did have the excellent Niven novella, Planet/World of Ptavvs).
On the other hand, out of a whopping 55 pieces of fiction, women only wrote four of them. The ratio is getting worse, folks.
Meanwhile, speaking of endings, it appears Analog will be a slick for just one more month before returning to the rack with all the other digest sizes. Apparently, there just wasn't enough advertising to sustain the bedsheet format. I guess the Venn diagram of science fiction readers and cognac drinkers didn't intersect much…
I honestly won't miss the big magazine. It fit awkwardly on my shelf. What do y'all think?
The guy on the right doesn't seem too happy about all this.
The long-anticipated movie version of the smash hit stage musical The Sound of Music had sneak previews in Minneapolis and Tulsa this month, and is scheduled to show up in theaters across the nation in March. This sugary-sweet confection, very loosely based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers, isn't really my cup of tea, but I thought I would pay tribute to the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II by stealing the titles of some of the ditties that appear in it.
Just a couple of days ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States for his first full term.
Chief Justice Earl Warren administers the oath of office.
The inaugural address was a short one. In the space of twenty minutes or so, he raised the issues of poverty, health care, literacy, and much more. A phrase about American lives lost in countries we barely know is surely a reference to the conflict in Vietnam. He even threw in a nod to the space program, mentioning the rocket that is heading toward Mars.
Those are a lot of steep, difficult mountains to conquer for any politician, so let's wish the President well.
I've complained before about some of the syrupy ballads that reach the top, so I was pleased to see two tunes more to my liking jump to Number One this month. Both are courtesy of the UK, so pip pip and cheerio to our friends across the pond!
Earlier this month, the Beatles made a big comeback on the American charts with their upbeat rock 'n' roll number I Feel Fine.
The big advantage of buying a record instead of going to a Beatles concert is that you can actually hear the song instead of screaming.
Even as I type this, the news reaches me that British songbird Petula Clark is now Number One in the USA, belting out a nifty tribute to the pleasures of big city living called Downtown.
Like the rest of you, I'm a big fan of science fiction and fantasy stories, at least when they're done reasonably well. Let's take a look at the latest issue of Fantastic and hope for the best.
A magician, who is also handy with a quarterstaff, travels around with his familiar, a goblin. (In this world, that means an earth elemental.) They run into — literally! — a most unusual knight. Although he can talk and fight and do all kinds of knightly things, he's just an empty suit of armor. After a brief period of misunderstanding, the sorcerer and the goblin agree to help him find the wizard who put a curse on him.
Fortunately, all users of magic have to travel to a convention once per century or lose their powers, and it's going on right now. The knight also has to triumph at a jousting tournament, which is hard to do when you're just a suit of armor that doesn't weigh very much. Add in a lovesick wood nymph, the King of Faerie, and some Bad Guys, and you got a lighthearted fantasy adventure. It provides some amusement, although it's hardly profound.
If you studied Homer in school, you're familiar with the term in medias res. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, this brief tale begins in the middle of things.
Our hero, Dilvish the Damned, is riding his talking metal horse, for which he sold part of his soul, from the site of a lost battle, in order to carry the news to a city threatened by the advancing enemy. Along the way lots of foes try to stop him, but he escapes them all. A final encounter with a a knight wearing invulnerable armor tests the skills of Dilvish and his steed.
This lightning-paced tale is very well written, but it reads like a few pages torn out of a much longer story. I hope the author eventually tells us more about the Damned fellow.
As you may recall from the previous installment, the Corps Galactica finds evidence that the ruling class of the planet Cyclops is somehow restoring body parts for those lost by the wealthy; a thing which should be beyond their level of medical technology. As strongly hinted at last time, that's because they're buying them from some sinister folks who exploit the population of a planet unknown to the Corps.
The Bad Guys convince their victims that they're suffering from a terminal illness, take them away, and pay their families, pretending to be a sort of hospice. Of course, they really murder them in cold blood, and sell them to the physician on Cyclops who takes care of the elite.
In the concluding half of this short novel, the Corps figures out what's going on and tries to stop it. Complicating matters is the fact that the woman who is the de facto ruler of Cyclops orders the Corps to abandon their base on the planet, even though this will cause great economic hardship for her world. She has her own motive, which involves the physician and one of the innocent inhabitants of the secret planet. It all leads up to a daring raid on the evil doctor's lair by the heroine, a highly skilled and experienced agent of the Corps.
That makes the plot sound melodramatic, and, indeed, the climax resembles something from a James Bond novel. However, the characters are believable, the background is complex, and the combination of violent action and political intrigue always held my interest.
Four stars.
Winterness, by Ron Goulart
Also by George Schelling. I like the white-on-black effect.
Set in the early part of the Twentieth Century, this tongue-in-cheek yarn involves a spiritualist and a married couple, both of whom are novelists. The woman believes in the medium's powers, the man does not. At a seance for a newspaper editor and his mistress, the skeptic falls into danger, and dark secrets are revealed.
I've made the story sound a lot more serious than it is. Although the plot isn't a funny one, the characters, the dialogue, and the narrative style are all good for some laughs. I particularly liked a bit of satire on the writing game of years gone by, with the woman producing sentimental novels with titles like Venetia; or Led Where Love Compels and the man turning out muckraking works like Soil and Steam.
Three stars.
The Vamp, by Thomas M. Disch
The narrator is an old-time movie actor, going back to the silent days, who is now the host of a TV kiddie show. He sees his ex-wife on the street, acting like a flirtatious 1920's flapper to the men who pass by, who don't seem interested. That's not a big surprise, since she's more than sixty years old, with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, dead white skin, ruby lips, sharp teeth . . .
OK, you know where this is going, from the title if nothing else. The narrator never figures it out, so he invites her home for a very rare — in fact, bloody — steak. That leads to the story's joke ending.
The whole thing is just a trifle, but I liked it well enough. Maybe that's because the idea of turning a silent-screen star into a you-know-what tickled me. Or maybe because the story reminded me of the great old movie Sunset Boulevard. (I can definitely see a similarity between the Vamp and Norma Desmond.)
Before I say goodbye, let me sum up my thoughts on this issue. Overall, it was pretty decent. No bad stories, although many of them were definitely minor works. That's a lot better than a magazine full of lousy fiction, so I won't complain when I read something good.
[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine! We work for egoboo…]
It's the season for clearing out all that stuff you've got piling up in the closet, ready to greet the new year with a fresh start. With that in mind, and given the fact that no one news item dominated the headlines this month, allow me to throw out a few observations about what's been going on lately.
Italy joined the Space Age this month, with the launching of that nation's first satellite, as recently discussed in great detail by our own Kaye Dee. Named the San Marco, the spacecraft rode on top of an American Scout rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Although this is primarily just a test flight, the satellite does carry a couple of instruments designed to study the ionosphere.
The San Marco is the striped, spherical object, shown here being loaded into the Scout rocket. It seems fitting that an object intended to soar into the heavens is named after a saint.
After months of surprisingly passionate debate over its design, a new flag will now symbolize the nation of Canada. Some English-speaking Canadians wanted to retain the Union Jack found in the old, unofficial flag, while many French-speaking Canadians objected. The current flag looks like a good compromise.
The old design, known as the Red Ensign. Besides everything else, it just looks messy.
The new design, which seems much more aesthetically pleasing to me.
The late Ian Fleming's master spy continues to draw moviegoers to the box office like flies to honey, as his latest cinematic adventure arrived in the USA this month.
I think that woman in the middle has been sunbathing too long.
A Miscellany of Music
Unlike some months earlier this year, December offered no overwhelmingly popular song at the top of the American charts. There were no less than four hits that reached Number One this month, and maybe we'll even hear from a fifth contender before 1965 arrives.
Spilling over from late November was Leader of the Pack by the girl group the Shangri-Las. I can't decide if this tragic tale of a romance ended by a fatal motorcycle accident is an example of a Teenage Death Song, or a tongue-in-cheek spoof of that macabre little genre.
These smiling ladies aren't saying one way or the other.
It would be hard to find a starker contrast with that bit of feminine adolescent angst than Lorne Greene's rendition of the cowboy saga Ringo. Obviously, the record is cashing in on the popularity of his hit television series Bonanza. Greene doesn't really sing so much as narrate this tale of the final confrontation between an outlaw and a lawman.
I wonder how many young people think this song is about the drummer for the Beatles.
It wasn't much later that Greene was outgunned by crooner Bobby Vinton, returning to the top of the charts with the tearjerking ballad Mr. Lonely.
The singer kindly provides the address of his official fan club right on the record sleeve.
Not to be outdone, the Supremes gave us their third smash Motown hit with the catchy little number Come See About Me.
And they're classy dressers, too.
A Smorgasbord of Stories
In a similarly generous fashion, the latest issue of Fantastic supplies a wide variety of short stories, as well as the first half of a novel.
Cover art by Emsh
The Girl in the Gem, by John Jakes
Interior illustrations also by Emsh
Here's another swashbuckling adventure of the mighty barbarian Brak, whom we'vemetmanytimesbefore.
In unheroic fashion, our protagonist is passed out drunk in a seaside inn. A bunch of dwarfs rush in, armed with knives, but deliberately avoid hurting him. It's all part of a plot to frame him for robbery. You see, an earthquake tumbled the old palace into the ocean. Another one raised it up again. Meanwhile, the local king is dying. His daughter blackmails Brak with the threat of death for thievery if he doesn't undertake the dangerous task of rescuing her sister, who was imprisoned in a gigantic jewel, from the recently revealed palace. Of course, this means he has to defeat a hideous creature.
The mandatory monster
The author writes vividly and definitely keeps the action moving. This is the shortest tale of Brak yet, and it's got plenty of plot for its length. The characters are standard for the sword-and-sorcery genre, and a few incidents seem arbitrary. (Why are the royal servants who invade the inn all dwarfs?) Despite a lack of originality in some aspects, it's worth reading.
Three stars.
Journal of a Leisured Man, by Bryce Walton
Illustration by George Schelling
In a technologically advanced future, an accountant loses his job to a computer. Like many other people, he is forced to remain unemployed for the rest of his life. To add to his troubles, his faithless wife leaves him for another man.
The company that formerly employed the fellow makes automatons, in the form of animals, children, and adults. We witness some gruesome ways customers use these simulacra. In what seems to be at first an act of kindness, an employee of the company offers the man a synthetic duplicate of his wife, to do with as he pleases. You may predict the twist ending.
Although there are few surprises, the story has a certain grim power. It's not always pleasant to read, but is likely to remain in the memory.
Three stars.
On the River, by Robert F. Young
A man finds himself on a raft, floating down a river by day, staying at deserted inns on shore by night. He meets a woman in the same situation, and romance blooms. It soon becomes obvious that both of them attempted suicide, and that the river leads to death.
(The idea of an afterlife on a world dominated by a river also appears in the most recent issue of Worlds of Tomorrow. Given the delays in the publishing industry between writing a story and seeing it in print, this must be nothing more than a coincidence.)
I'm a sucker for this author's bittersweet love stories, so I enjoyed this one quite a bit. The conclusion may be obvious, but any other ending would have been inappropriate for a writer who wears his heart on his sleeve.
A little research reveals that this novel is set in the same universe as two previous works, each published as one-half of an Ace Double. The series as a whole deals with what are known as Zarathustra Refugee Planets. Many centuries ago, the star which the colony planet Zarathustra orbited went nova. The inhabitants, fleeing the disaster, wound up populating a large number of planets. The Galactic Corps watches over these worlds, making sure that outsiders don't interfere with their development, while refraining from becoming overly involved themselves.
Cover art by Emsh
Also by Emsh
In the style of Philip K. Dick, the author uses many different viewpoint characters, so it takes a while before the main thrust of the plot becomes clear. The story mostly takes place on Cyclops, a relatively poor planet, although there is a wealthy upper class. An agent of the Galactic Corps, who was, I believe, the protagonist of Secret Agent of Terra, reviewed by our own Rosemary Benton some time ago, arrives after twenty years of service. Her reward for two decades of unpleasant, thankless work is considerable. She will have her youth restored, and her life extended for two centuries.
The extremely advanced medical technology of the Galactic Corps is one reason why the ruler of the planet resents them. (Although the government of Cyclops is, in theory, representative, she wields the real power.) There is also the fact that many natives of Cyclops were killed by the inhabitants of another world when they tried to make slaves of them. (I think these events also appeared in Secret Agent of Terra. Castaways' World does not seem to be as closely related to this new novel.)
The ruler's lover is an ex-spaceman who lost a leg in an accident. Although it was replaced, he is no longer allowed to serve on spaceships. While hunting the gigantic shark-like creatures who live in the oceans of Cyclops, he loses the same leg. After a brief stay in the local Galactic Corps hospital, he is whisked back to the care of his lover and her doctor. This creates a mystery for the Galactic Corps; how was the man's leg replaced, given the limited medical technology of Cyclops, and how do they expect to do it again? The author soon reveals the answer in scenes that take place on another world, where a sinister conspiracy takes advantage of unsuspecting victims.
Although a bit melodramatic in parts, this is an intriguing novel, full of richly defined characters, many of whom I have not even mentioned.
I haven't talked about these people.
I also haven't brought up these folks.
The author balances scenes of violent action with necessary exposition. It's interesting to note that the characters who are, I assume, the main protagonist and the primary antagonist are both powerful women. The complex background is fully developed, without becoming overwhelming.
Four stars.
Make Mine Trees, by David R. Bunch
The magazine's most controversial writer returns with another dark and strange story. This one is more comprehensible than most, and the title definitely helps you understand what's going on. The narrator, who is clearly as mad as a hatter, used some kind of formula to change his wife and her lover into trees. Now his young son is undergoing the same transformation. Typical for the author, the plot is much less important than the eerie mood and the eccentric style.
Three stars.
Multiple Choice, by John Douglas
A trio of young men, who have undergone a series of tests to become part of the elite, wait in a room for their final examination. They hear gunshots and screams from outside. Each one has a different theory about what's happening. Is it a hoax, designed to test their nerves? Are those who fail the last exam shot to death? Is it even possible that everyone is killed? The story's ending is inconclusive, which may be the point. Many readers will find the lack of a full resolution frustrating.
Two stars.
Something For Everyone?
Although the overall mood of the issue is on the dark side, there are all kinds of imaginative fiction to be found between its covers. From a heroic fantasy set in a distant past that never existed, to an adventure in deep space in the far future, and from a romantic parable of love and death, to a cynical portrait of tomorrow's dystopian society, there is enough variety to please just about every reader of speculative literature. You won't enjoy every story, but I don't think you'll dislike all of them. (If you do, turn to Robert Silverberg's book review column for more recommendations.)
He mostly reviews anthologies and collections in this particular column, so you've got lots to choose from.
The season of giving is upon us. For women, perfumes like the classic scent Tosca are the most popular gifts, while men tend to find ties, socks and underwear under the tree.
Personally, I think that books are the best gifts. And so I gave myself Margaret St. Clair's latest, when I spotted it in the spinner rack at my local import bookstore, since I enjoyed last year's Sign of the Labrys a lot. Even better, this book is an Ace Double, which means I get two new tales for the price of one. Or rather, I get six, because one half is a collection of five short stories.
The first half is a brand-new science fiction novel called Message from the Eocene. The protagonist, a being named Tharg, is tasked with transporting a cosmic guidebook across hostile territory. The reader learns in the first paragraph that Tharg is not human, because he has a triple heartbeat. Tharg lives on Earth, but the Earth of billions of years ago (long before the Eocene, so the title is a misnomer), a world of volcanos and methane snow, devoid of oxygen. Tharg "breathes" via microorganisms inside his body that break down metallic oxides to oxygenate his blood and has extrasensory perception.
Tharg is in trouble, for a mysterious enemy is trying to thwart his mission. This enemy turns out to be the Vaeaa, a legendary alien race, who are believed to have deposited Tharg's people on Earth in the first place.
Tharg is taken is taken prisoner, but not before he manages to hide the book inside a volcano (it has a protective casing). Under interrogation, Tharg has an out-of-body experience. As a result, his consciousness remains, when his body dies during an escape attempt, to witness the extinction of both his people and the Vaeaa, though the Vaeaa manage to set up a projector on Pluto to keep out further cosmic guidebooks first.
Over billions of years, Tharg's spirit observes life arise and evolve on Earth. Tharg realises that the book might help with his condition, but he has no way to retrieve it. So Tharg decides to ask the Earth's new inhabitants for help. But how to make himself known, considering that Tharg is a bodyless spirit being and never was human in the first place?
Misadventures and miscommunications Margaret St. Clair
The rest of the novel chronicles Tharg's attempts to communicate. Tharg's first attempt targets the Proctors, a Quaker family in 19th century England. This goes disastrously wrong, because not only do the Proctors come to believe that their house is haunted – no, Tharg also gets trapped in the house. Taken on its own, the Proctor segment feels like a Victorian ghost story, except that the ghost is a desperate disembodied alien. The insights into the lives of 19th century Quakers are fascinating, but then Margaret St. Clair is a member of the Society of Friends.
Tharg's next attempt targets Denise, who lives with her husband Pierre in a French colony in the South Pacific. Denise has extrasensory perception, making her the ideal subject. But once again Tharg only succeeds in giving Denise nightmares and causing hauntings in the mine Pierre oversees. Worse, the superstitious miners blame Denise for the hauntings. They kidnap the couple and give Denise hallucinogenic herbs to increase her abilities. Now Denise is able to communicate with Tharg long enough to realise that he wants them to recover the book.
So Pierre uses his mining job to blast a hole into a mountain at the very spot where Denise insists the book is hidden. After some trouble with Vietnamese workers – an incident St. Clair uses to explain that oppression during colonial times has left the Vietnamese angry and frustrated, which leads to violence, a lesson that is highly relevant to the situation in Vietnam today – Denise and Pierre manage to retrieve the book. Alas, once they open the protective casing, the book bursts into flame and is destroyed.
Tharg now sets his sights on the projector the Vaeaa installed on Pluto to keep future cosmic guidebooks away from Earth. For if another book were to arrive, Tharg might finally be able to escape his condition.
Sacrifices and success
There is another time jump to 1974, when strange things happen. An experiment detects a purely theoretical particle, a sea captain sees a mermaid, Canadians dance under the Northern lights and a Tibetan monk has a vision. Tharg views these events as signs that another guidebook is on the way. But due to the projector on Pluto, it will never reach Earth.
In order to shut down the projector long enough to let the book through, Tharg has to dissolve himself in the collective consciousness of humanity, which will also mean his annihilation. So Tharg sacrifices himself and the book is picked up by an expedition to Venus. The novel ends with Tharg waking on the astral plane in a replica of his original body, just as the US-Soviet crew of the spaceship to Venus is about to open the book.
This is a strange and disjointed, but fascinating novel. Though Tharg is one of the rare truly alien aliens of science fiction, he is nonetheless a likeable protagonist and the reader sympathises with his plight. Tharg is also an unlikely messiah, sacrificing himself to assure the future of humanity.
Humanity being uplifted and our minds and bodies evolving is a common theme in our genre. However, Message from the Eocene offers a very different variation on this theme compared to what you'd find in the pages of Analog, even if psychic abilities are involved. The enlightenment offered by the book is reminiscent of both Buddhism and various occult traditions, while its arrival alludes to the so-called Age of Aquarius that astrologers believe will arrive soon.
In a genre that is still all too often peopled solely by white American men, the humans Tharg encounters are of all genders, races, nationalities and religions and all are portrayed sympathetically. For if the alien Tharg does not discriminate based on superficial criteria, then maybe neither should we. It is also notable that even before they receive the book, St. Clair's near future Earth is a more peaceful place than our world, where China has withdrawn from Tibet and the US and USSR cooperate in space.
Message from the Eocene is a story of failed communication, but also a story of evolution and enlightenment and overcoming one's limitations. Given the state of the world today, this may be just the message humanity needs.
Three Worlds of Futurity, the other half of this Ace Double, is a collection of five short stories originally published between 1949 and 1962. The three worlds in question are Mars, Venus and Earth.
In "The Everlasting Food", Earthman Richard Dekker finds that his Venusian wife Issa has changed after lifesaving surgery. One night, Issa announces that she is immortal now, that she no longer needs to eat and that energy sustains her. Soon thereafter, she leaves, taking their young son with her. Richard takes off after her to get his son back, Issa's human foster sister Megan in tow. After many trials and tribulations, they finally find Issa – only for Richard to lose his wife and son for good. But while Richard is heartbroken, he has also fallen in love with Megan.
"The Everlasting Food" is a curious mix of domestic science fiction in the vein of Zenna Henderson and Mildred Clingerman and planetary adventure in the vein of Leigh Brackett, and never quite gels. I did like Megan, who is described as dark-skinned, by the way, but Issa is hard to connect to and Richard, though well meaning, falls for Megan a little too quickly. Furthermore, the villain feels like an afterthought who comes out of nowhere.
"Idris' Pig" opens on a spaceship to Mars. George Baker is the ship's resident psychologist. His cousin Bill is a courier and passenger aboard the same ship. When Bill falls ill, it's up to George to deliver the object Bill was supposed to deliver, a blue-skinned sacred pig. However, Bill can only give George very vague instructions about where to deliver the pig and so the pig is promptly stolen. And so George has to retrieve it with the help of Blixa, a young Martian woman. As a result, George gets mixed up with drug dealers and Martian cults, involved in an interplanetary incident and lands in jail. He also completely forgets about the woman he has been trying very hard not to think about and falls in love with Blixa.
This is an utterly charming story, a science fiction screwball comedy reminiscent of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby. A hidden gem and true delight.
"The Rages" is set in an overmedicated Earth of the future. Harvey has a perfect life and a perfect, though sexless marriage. However, he has a problem because his monthly ration of euphoria pills has run out. And without euphoria pills, Harvey fears the oncoming of the rages, attacks of uncontrollable anger, which eventually lead to a final rage from which one never emerges. The story follows Harvey through his day as he meets several people and tries to get more pills. Gradually, it dawns upon both Harvey and the reader that the pills may be causing the very rages they are supposed to suppress. The story ends with Harvey throwing all of his and his wife's pills away.
This is a dystopian tale in the vein of Brave New World and Fahrenheit 541. The future world St. Clair has built is fascinating, if horrifying, and I would have liked to see more of it. However, Harvey is a thoroughly unlikeable character, who almost rapes two women in the course of a single novelette. Maybe Harvey could have rediscovered his messy humanity without resorting to sexual violence.
"Roberta" is the shortest and most recent story, first published in Galaxy in October 1962, reviewed by our editor Gideon Marcus here. Roberta is a confused young woman with the unfortunate tendency to kill men. Robert is the phantom who won't leave her alone. Eventually, it is revealed that Roberta had a sex change operation and that "Robert" represents her former self, as do the men she kills.
Transsexualism is a subject that science fiction almost never addresses, even though our genre is ideal for it. After all, there are transsexuals living in our world right now and science offers possibilities to make it much easier for them to live the lives they want to. So I applaud Margaret St. Clair for tackling what is sadly still a taboo topic (and for having her heroine utter another taboo word, "abortion"), though I am troubled that science fiction's only transsexual heroine (so far) is also a multiple murderer.
In "The Island of the Hands", Dirk dreams about his wife Joan who died in a plane crash at sea. He hires a plane to check out the coordinates from his dream and crashes on an invisible island. Dirk finds Joan's plane and a dead body and also meets Miranda, a young woman who suspiciously resembles Joan. He is on the Island of the Hands, Miranda informs them, where everybody can shape their heart's desire from mythical mist. Dirk tries to shape Joan, but fails. He spends the night with Miranda, who confesses that Joan is still alive, but trapped in the mist. Dirk goes after her and rescues Joan, only to learn that there is a very good reason why Miranda looks so much like an idealised version of Joan.
It's no surprise that this story was first published in Weird Tales, since it has the otherworldly quality typical for that magazine. "The Island of the Hands" reminded me of the 1948 Leigh Brackett story "The Moon That Vanished", where another heartbroken widower finds himself faced with a magical mist that shapes one's heart's desire.
All in all, this is an excellent collection. Not every story is perfect (though "Idris' Pig" pretty much is), but they are all fascinating and make me want to read more of Margaret St. Clair's work.
Four stars for the collection.
[But wait! There's more!]
by Gideon Marcus
False Finishes
After such a remarkable pair of books, I hate to sully this edition with less than stellar reviews. But the year is almost up, and there are a lot of books to get through. So, here is a trio of novels that start promisingly and then fizzle out.
If you can get past the punny title, Gifts grabs your interest from the first. In the near future, the humanoid Greks land in a miles-long spaceship. They were just sailing by, training a class of Aladarian engineers, and thought they'd pop in to give humanity a myriad of technological gifts. The aliens are welcomed with riotous joy — after all, soon no one will have to work more than one day a week, and all the comforts of the world will be evenly distributed.
But one fellow, Jim Hackett, is suspicious. Despite being a brilliant young physicist, he was rejected as a candidate to learn Grek science after failing to comprehend it. Was he just not bright enough? Or were the Greks feeding us gobbledegook to keep us ignorant? And then, why did the Greks abruptly leave after six months, just as desire for the fruits of their wondrous technology was peaking, but the ability to sate said desire was lacking? Finally, after the Grek ship had left, why did an archaeologist party find the bones of Aldorians in the ship's waste ejecta? And worse yet, those of humans?
So Hackett and his fiancee, the capable Dr. Lucy Thale, work together to reverse engineer the Grek technology so that, when they return to a world whose populace is fairly begging for them to come back, Earth can stand against them and provide for its own.
What begins as a fascinating mystery quickly proves overlong. Leinster is much better with short stories, before his Hemmingway-esque style can wear thin. The endless repetition of certain phrases and epithets brings to mind the devices Homer used to make The Illiad easier to recite from memory, but they don't do a reader any favors. As for characterization, Leinster might as well have named the characters A, B, and C for all the color they possess. A shorter story would have made that issue stand out less.
Anyway, it's an interesting storyline; it would make a good movie, but as is, it's a mediocre novel. Three stars.
From the notable pen of comics writer and, now, SF author Gardner Fox, we have a brand new ACE novel. And this one isn't a short 120-pager. No, this time we've got 157 pages devoted to the adventures of Bran Magannon, formerly an Admiral of a Terran space fleet, vanquisher of the invading Lyanir, and now a discredited exile, wandering across the known and unknown galaxy. Arsenal starts off beautifully, like a space age Fritz Leiber fantasy. A nearly penniless Bran arrives on the desolate world of Makkador to make traveling funds through gambling. There, he throws dice against, and loses to, the lovely Peganna, queen of the Lyanir. And then we learn Bran's tragic past: how he divined how to defeat the seemingly invincible Lyanir ships; how he negotiated for the Lyanir to be given a sanctuary world within the Terran Cluster of stars. How Bran was betrayed by an ambitious subordinate, who sabotaged the talks, discredited Bran, and condemned the Lyanir to inhabit a radioactive wasteland of a planet.
But now Bran has an ace up his sleeve — he has discovered the ancient portal network of the Crenn Lir, a precursor race that once inhabited countless worlds. If Bran and Peganna can find the Crenn Lir arsenal before they are caught by Terran and Lyranir agents, they might be able to negotiate with the Terrans as equals and secure a sanctuary for the weary aliens.
I tore through the first third of this book, but things slowed halfway through. I grew irritated that there was exactly one female character in the book, though I did appreciate the natural and loving relationship Peganna and Bran shared. What promises to be a galaxy-trotting adventure with big scope and ideas ends up a rather conventional story on a very few settings. Things pick up a bit in the final third, but I found myself comparing the endeavor unfavorably to Terry Carr's Warlord of Kor, a somewhat similarly themed Ace novel from last year.
With the Fox taking up so much space in the Ace Double, the second title must needs be short. Luckily, John Brunner's Bridge to Azazel, which came out in February's issue of Amazing, fit nicely. Both lengthwise and thematically: Endless Shadow also features teleportation across the stars, in this case involving a Terra reestablishing contact with farflung space colonies.
The general consensus among the Journey's various readers is that this was a premise with a lot of potential, but that Brunner failed to deliver satisfactorily. Ratings ranged from two to three and a half stars. Call it an even three.
Books to Come
These days, there are almost more books coming out than a fellow (or even a band of fellows) can read! So, to make sure we cover all of the important books of 1964, there will be a second Galactoscope in a couple of days. May they be more akin to the stellar St. Clairs than the disappointing Leinster/Fox/Brunner.
[Holiday season is upon us, and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), containing some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age, makes a great gift! Think of it as a gift to friends…and the Journey!
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.
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.
[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…]
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.
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.
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.
[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…]
![[April 2, 1965] SPEAKING A COMMON LANGUAGE (May 1965 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/IF-April-cover-647x372.jpg)
![[March 12, 1965] Sic Transit (April 1965 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/amz-0465-cover-672x372.png)
![[March 8, 1965] An Alien Perspective (April 1965 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/650308cover-435x372.jpg)
![[March 4, 1965] OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES (April 1965 <i>IF</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/IF-march-cover-655x372.jpg)
![[January 31, 1965] Janus, Facing Both Ways (February 1965 <i>Analog</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/650131cover-672x372.jpg)
![[January 22, 1965] With Apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein (February 1965 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/FANTFEB1965-2-458x372.jpg)
![[December 23, 1964] Odds and Ends (January 1965 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Fantastic_v14n01_1965-01_0000-2-672x372.jpg)
![[December 11, 1964] December Galactoscope](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/message_from_the_eocene-296x372.jpg)
In "The Everlasting Food", Earthman Richard Dekker finds that his Venusian wife Issa has changed after lifesaving surgery. One night, Issa announces that she is immortal now, that she no longer needs to eat and that energy sustains her. Soon thereafter, she leaves, taking their young son with her. Richard takes off after her to get his son back, Issa's human foster sister Megan in tow. After many trials and tribulations, they finally find Issa – only for Richard to lose his wife and son for good. But while Richard is heartbroken, he has also fallen in love with Megan.
"Idris' Pig" opens on a spaceship to Mars. George Baker is the ship's resident psychologist. His cousin Bill is a courier and passenger aboard the same ship. When Bill falls ill, it's up to George to deliver the object Bill was supposed to deliver, a blue-skinned sacred pig. However, Bill can only give George very vague instructions about where to deliver the pig and so the pig is promptly stolen. And so George has to retrieve it with the help of Blixa, a young Martian woman. As a result, George gets mixed up with drug dealers and Martian cults, involved in an interplanetary incident and lands in jail. He also completely forgets about the woman he has been trying very hard not to think about and falls in love with Blixa.
"The Rages" is set in an overmedicated Earth of the future. Harvey has a perfect life and a perfect, though sexless marriage. However, he has a problem because his monthly ration of euphoria pills has run out. And without euphoria pills, Harvey fears the oncoming of the rages, attacks of uncontrollable anger, which eventually lead to a final rage from which one never emerges. The story follows Harvey through his day as he meets several people and tries to get more pills. Gradually, it dawns upon both Harvey and the reader that the pills may be causing the very rages they are supposed to suppress. The story ends with Harvey throwing all of his and his wife's pills away.
"Roberta" is the shortest and most recent story, first published in Galaxy in October 1962, 
In "The Island of the Hands", Dirk dreams about his wife Joan who died in a plane crash at sea. He hires a plane to check out the coordinates from his dream and crashes on an invisible island. Dirk finds Joan's plane and a dead body and also meets Miranda, a young woman who suspiciously resembles Joan. He is on the Island of the Hands, Miranda informs them, where everybody can shape their heart's desire from mythical mist. Dirk tries to shape Joan, but fails. He spends the night with Miranda, who confesses that Joan is still alive, but trapped in the mist. Dirk goes after her and rescues Joan, only to learn that there is a very good reason why Miranda looks so much like an idealised version of Joan.
![[October 24, 1964] Nothing Lasts Forever (November 1964 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Fantastic_v13n11_1964-11_0000-4-672x205.jpg)
![[October 12, 1964] Slow Cruising (November 1964 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/641010cover-672x372.jpg)
