Tag Archives: John Schoenherr

Magazine

[March 31, 1966] Shapes of Things (April 1966 Analog)

7 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Change

Out in the world of music, there's a change brewing. One can hear it in the experimentation of the Beatles' Rubber Soul album or the otherworldly tinge of The Yardbirds' latest hit, Shapes of Things. I've been long planning to write an article on the musical scene, and I'd best get it done quickly before the landscape changes entirely!

My friend and associate, Cora Buhlert, has noted that although the Stones and Beatles are popular in Germany, the number one hit right now is the syrupy Schlager tune by Roy Black, "Ganz in Weiß" (All in white). In other words, even in times of great flux, conservative forces remain steadfast, like stubborn boulders in a stream.

Oh look — it's time to review the latest issue of Analog.

Stagnation


by Kelly Freas

Moon Prospector, by William B. Ellern

It would be hard to find a more emblematic story of the reactionary SF outlet that is Analog than this, the lead story in the April issue. Set early in E.E. Smith's Lensman series, it apparently got the full blessing of "Doc" Smith just a few days before he died! That's pretty remarkable.

The story, however, isn't. A lunar prospector in is semi-sentient "creeper" gets a distress call. Turns out an old buddy has been buried in the aftereffects of a meteor shower, and ol' Pete has to dig him out. But what was the fellow doing out in that quadrant of the Moon to begin with, and does it have anything to do with a centuries-old missile base abandoned around there?


by Kelly Freas

There's no water on the Moon, so I suppose it's appropriate that the story, itself, is dry as a bone. Perhaps it would have been more exciting if I'd had some stake in the universe. Maybe I'd have thrilled at the mention of the Solar Patrol being evolved into a Galactic Patrol. The fact is, I didn't care for Doc Smith's stories much when I was a kid, so they evoke no nostalgia for me now.

Two stars.

Rat Race, by Raymond F. Jones


by Kelly Freas

A century and a half in the future, when a completely computer-planned economy has resulted in plenty for all of humanity, a fellow decides to recreate the hobby of model train running (though not in the destructive manner of the Addams family, more's the pity).

This hobby runs the fellow afoul of the Computer, for when he tries to make his own trains, he is accused of attempting his own production, which will upset the finely balanced economy and lead to scarcity. Our protagonist must find a way to satisfy the human urge to create while not upsetting the economic apple cart. The story ends with the suggestion that do-it-yourselfism will spread and eventually topple the current order.

It's a pleasant-enough story, and I suppose the "stick-it-to-communism" sentiment appealed to editor Campbell. On the other hand, while I appreciate that some folks really like to build things even when they could just be bought (and I have to think that hobbyist building would not break a planned economy), the notion that we've become too centralized and folks should all be able to be self-sufficient, making a living from the land, is unworkable.

The fact is, we've long since populated the Earth beyond its ability to sustain a society of independent farmers. The great island cities, the vast modern nations, they only support their teeming millions through coordinated and interconnected systems. The writer in the air-conditioned apartment, who bangs out a paean to independent living before catching a television show and then popping off to the deli for dinner, is a dreamer, not a visionary.

Three stars.

The Easy Way Out, by Lee Correy


by John Schoenherr

Aliens conduct a survey of planet Earth, evaluating its species for aggressive tendencies. After coming across a grizzly bear and a wolverine, and then the human family that has adopted the latter, they decide Earth is more trouble than it's worth.

Typical Campbellian Earth-firsterism. Two stars.

Drifting Continents, by Robert S. Dietz


by John Holden

If it's a crackpot theory that flies in the face of the scientific establishment, chances are you'll read about it in Analog. But sometimes a theory is crackpot, flies in the face of the scientific establishment, and is probably right. As someone born in earthquake country, I've probably heard more about "continental drift" than many. It's the idea that the continents very slowly move around the globe. It's why the coasts of South America and Africa seem like edges of the same torn newspaper. It explains why there are similar fossils at similar depths across continents that are nowhere near each other…today.

It's a theory I found little reference to in my science books of the 50s, including Rachel Carson's seminal The Sea Around Us. But damned if Dietz doesn't make some very compelling arguments. I would not be surprised if continental drift, as has happened recently with the Big Bang Theory and global warming, did not become thoroughly accepted this decade.

Five stars.

Who Needs Insurance?, by Robin S. Scott


by Kelly Freas

Pete "Lucky Pierre" Albers has always been blessed with good fortune. Twenty years a pilot, he has always managed to avoid even the slightest injury, despite 8500 hours of flying time. He first suspected that his lucky streak was not completely due to chance after a harrowing mission over Ploesti left his B-24 with just one working engine. That tortured device not only held together all the way back to Libya, but it spun with the 800 horsepower needed to keep the plane in the air. After the crash landing, Albers found a little gray box attached to the driveshaft.

Twenty years later, over Vietnam, Colonel Albers was in a bullet-riddled Huey whose engine somehow held together long enough to get him and his charges back to base. Sure enough, a little box was installed on the engine.

Clearly someone, or something, has taken an interest in Albers' survival. It's up to Albers and his closest friends to discover the secret.

I really enjoyed this story, told in narrative fashion. It's a fun mystery, the details are evocative, and I like when a piece includes a competent woman scientist (in this case, Marty the programmer, with her pet 2706).

Four stars.

A Sun Invisible, by Poul Anderson


by Domenic Iaia

With this latest installation in the adventures of David Falkayn, the momentum gained by the magazine comes to a shuddering halt. Anderson's writing is of widely varying quality, and the adventures of this troubleshooting young protogé of Nicholas van Rijn are among the worst.

The plot takes forever to develop, but it's something about a planet of Germanics looking to take on the Polesotechnic League by working with the belligerent Kroaka. The trick is that Falkayn has to figure out where the would-be enemies make their home. By getting the female leader of Neuheim drunk and talkative, Falkayn learns enough astronomical clues to deduce the star around which the insurgents' planet revolves. Falkayn stops the threat and gets the girl.

I do like the astronomy Anderson weaves into these stories and I also appreciated the seamless way he introduced a new pronoun for an alien race with three sexes. Other than that, it's a deadly dull story, and smug to boot. Falkayn is like a boring, Sexist Retief.

Two stars.

Computation

After all that, the conservative reef that is Analog finishes near the bottom of the pack, though that is as much due to the relative excellence of the other mags that came out this month. Campbell's mag clocks in at a reasonable 3 stars, beating out the truly bad, all-reprint Amazing (2.3).

Above Analog, starting at the top, are Impulse (3.5), Galaxy (3.4), IF (3.3), New Worlds (3.1), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1).

It was something of a banner month for SF mags, actually. Enough worthy stuff was printed to fill two full-size mags (and if you take out Amazing, that means a full third of everything printed was four stars and up). Also, women produced 11.5% of the new fiction published this month, the highest proportion I've seen in a long time. We'll see if this trend holds out.

That's it for March! April is a whole new ballgame, starting with the next issue of IF. I'm very keen to see how that magazine does now that the excellent Heinlein serial has ended (I've high hopes for the Laumer/Brown novel.)

Until then, all we can to is keep trying to discern the pattern of Shapes of Things to Come…

Don't miss the next exciting Adventure-themed episode of The Journey Show, taking you to the highest peaks, the deepest wildernesses, the coldest extremes, the vacuum of space, and the depths of the sea. April 3 at 1PM — book your (free) ticket for adventure now!)




7 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 12, 1966] In Aid of Earth and Other Worlds (Jack Vance's Ace Double and Tom Purdom's latest)

Leave a comment

The Brains of Earth/The Many Worlds of Magnus Randolph

[Every so often, the Journey features a guest reviewer.  In this case, it is Keith Henson, a friend of our own Vicki Lucas.  Keith works at Heinrich GeoeXploration, studies for his degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Arizona, and owns two buildings with two apartments each, in one of which he lives. His interests include pyrotechnics and amateur rockets.


(Keith's in the cowboy hat)

He also digs scientificition, and he happened to pick up the new Ace Double hot off the shelves.  And so, without further ado, may I present Keith!]


by Keith Henson

Heading home from work I stopped off at my favorite bookstore. There near the bottom of the SF section is a new Ace Double, both by Jack Vance, 45 cents. Vance is one of the authors I read with pleasure since running into a copy of The Dying Earth.

Eliminating Mind Parasites

The Brains of Earth is a somewhat conventional SF story, with unlikeable aliens, and competent (for the most part) humans. The story starts with a description of events at the end of a war to rid the alien population of mind parasites (nopals) on the planet Ixix. This motivates the local aliens (Tauptu) to travel to Earth, which is saturated with nopals, and kidnap a scientist, one Paul Burke. The aliens remove his nopal (a painful task). They then assign Burke an impossible task (clear Earth of nopals) and return him to Earth. The rest of the story plays out as Burke discovers an even more serious mind parasite, the ghre, which are kept at bay by the nopals. Burke convinces the aliens that their problems are even worse than they think, and they set out on an expedition seeking the physical location of the mental projections.

I found it to be a decent story, consistent with good dialog, if not quite up to the standards of The Dying Earth.  Usually you can open a Vance story to any place and identify it as Vance by reading a few paragraphs.  I tried this with The Brains of Earth and it didn't work.  Still it's hard to award Vance less than three stars.

Short Stories of a Problem Solver

The other side of the double is The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph, a series of short stories set in exotic places (mostly planets). The stories feature an elderly goateed gentleman problem solver in detective mode. (Vance also writes mysteries.) The stories usually start with Ridolph in a financial bind of some kind and he outsmarts the people who took advantage of him, all in supercilious tones and Jack Vance's unique literary style. Applying the reading test to identify the story as Vance's, here is a sample that does work:

Magnus Ridolph sighed, glanced at his liqueur (Blue Ruin). This would be the last of these; hereafter he must drink vin ordinaire, a fluid rather like tarragon vinegar, prepared from the fermented rind of a local cactus.

Magnus Ridolph is more fun than the other side of the double, four stars. Altogether well worth the 45 cents.

The Tree Lord of Imeten, by Tom Purdom


by John Boston

Tom Purdom has had a dozen stories scattered among the SF magazines over the past near-decade, and one prior novel (and Ace Double half), I Want The Stars.  His second novel is also Doubled, back to back with Samuel Delany’s Empire Star, reviewed last month.  It’s called The Tree Lord Of Imeten, and is decorated with a John Schoenherr cover as dispirited and unattractive as that of its other half.


by John Schoenherr

The novel, however, could not be more different in style and spirit from Delany’s.  Purdom is solid, Delany mercurial; Purdom plays the game, Delany plays with the game.

The story opens in a human colony on an extrasolar planet, with protagonist Harold hiding behind a tractor with his bow and arrows, so the people who killed his father and best friend won’t shoot him too.  His childhood friend Joanne appears and conveys the bad guys’ offer: they can leave, with food and equipment, and go down from the human-inhabited plateau to the jungly lowlands, where there are sentient—or at least structure-building—inhabitants that nobody knows much about.

But what are these people on the plateau fighting about, and how did it get this bitter?  It’s not explained, which seems incongruous at first, but as the book progresses, it becomes clear that that’s part of the point. 

Harold and Joanne, pulling a wheeled cart full of supplies, first encounter the Itiji, sentient catlike animals who attack and are driven away, but clearly have language if not hands.  They then are found and captured by the other species, the Imetens, tree-dwelling primates with hands as well as language, the beginnings of ironworking, and of course conflict among tribes.  They also enslave the Itiji to pull their carts and bear their burdens. 

Harold first persuades the Imetens that he can be useful to them, and attains a reasonably safe and privileged position for Joanne and himself.  But he hates slavery, and soon enough contrives an escape for himself and Joanne and a number of Itiji slaves.  The Imetens do not take emancipation lightly, and war ensues.  Harold must help the Itiji by creating warmaking technology that they can use without hands, under his leadership of course, and ultimately brings peace after heroic feats at arms. 

The story is most basically about people cast out of their society who have to find a place in another one, since, as Purdom hints earlier (and notwithstanding Harold’s lone heroics), humans on their own are nothing in the long run.  That’s why Purdom was right not to explain what the colonists were fighting over; it can never matter again for his characters, who are now committed to a new life in a new tribe.

This is a well worked out book, dense with detail and invention, but the latter parts drag a bit, and also revert towards the standard fare of exotic-planet opera, with long descriptions of battle strategy and hand to hand combat and Harold’s exploits with sword and shield.  The ending also feels a bit rushed.  Three and a half stars, and high expectations for this promising writer’s future work.

No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[February 26, 1966] Such promise (March 1966 Analog)

5 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Tuckered out

Imagine training your whole life to run in the Olympics.  Imagine making it and competing in the quadrennial event, representing your nation before the entire world.  Imagine making perfect strides, outdistancing your competitors, sailing far out in front…and then stumbling.

Defeat at the moment of victory.


Ron Clarke of Australia, favored to win 1964's 10,000 meter race, is blown past at the last minute by American Billy Mills (and aced by Tunisia's Mohammed Gammoudi )

Every month, as a science fiction magazine reviewer, I am treated to a similar drama.  Usually, the law of averages dictates that no month will be particularly better or worse than any other.  But occasionally, there is a mirabilis month, or perhaps things are really getting better across the entire genre.  Either way, as magazine after magazine got their review, it became clear that March 1966 was going to be a very good month.  Not a single magazine was without at least one 4 or 5 star story — even the normally staid Science Fantasy turned in a stellar performance under the new name, Impulse.

It all came down to this month's Analog.  If it were superb, as it was last month, then we'd have a clean sweep across eight periodicals.  If it flopped, as it often does, the streak would be broken.

As it turns out, neither eventuality quite came to pass.  Indeed, the March 1966 Analog is sort of a microcosm of the month itself — starting out with a bang and faltering before the finish.

Frontloaded


by John Schoenherr

Bookworm, Run!, by Vernor Vinge


by John Schoenherr

Norman Simmonds is on the lam.  Brilliant, resourceful, and inspired by his pulp and SF heroes, he breaks out of a top security research facility in Michigan, his mind full of inadvertently espied government secrets.  His goal is to make the Canadian border before he can be punished for his accidental indiscretion. Thus ensues an exciting cat and mouse chase toward the border.

Did I mention that Norman is a chimpanzee?

With the aid of surgery and a link to the nation's most sophisticated computer, Norman is not only smarter than the average human, he has all of the world's facts at his beck and call.  His only limitation (aside from standing out in a crowd) is that he can only get so far from his master mainframe before the link is strained to breaking.  The pivotal question, then, is whether Canada lies inside or beyond that range.

Bookworm is a compelling story whose main fault comes (in keeping with this month's trend) near the end, when we leave Norman's viewpoint and instead are treated to a few pages' moralizing about why such technology must never be allowed to be used by humanity lest one person gain virtual godhood.  I have to wonder if that coda was always in the tale or if it was added by Campbell at the last minute to make less subtle the themes of the story.

Anyway, four stars for Vinge's first American sale (and second overall).  I look forward to what he has to offer next.

The Ship Who Mourned, by Anne McCaffrey


by Kelly Freas

Speaking of intelligence in unusual forms, The Ship Who Mourned is the sequel to the quite good The Ship Who Sang, starring a woman raised nearly from birth as a brain with a shapeship body.  In that first story, her companion/passenger/driver, Jennan, died, leaving Helva-the-ship distraught.

But with no time to grieve.  Her next assignment comes almost immediately: take Theoda, a doctor, to a faraway world so that she might treat the aftereffects of a plague that has left thousands completely immobile, trapped in their nonresponsive bodies.  Though Helva is initially frosty toward Theoda, they bond over their own griefs, and together, they manage to bring hope to the plague-blasted planet.

This is a good story.  I'm surprised to see it in Analog in part because the series got its start in F&SF, and also because the mag has been something of a stag party for a long long time (even more than its woman-scarce colleagues).  Despite enjoying it a lot, there is a touch of the amateur about it, a certain clunkiness of execution.  McCaffrey may simply be out of practice; it has been five years since her last story, after all.

Nevertheless, I suspect that the cobwebs will come right off if she can get back to writing consistently again.  A high three stars.

Giant Meteor Impact, by J.  E.  Enever

Asteroid impact seems all the rage this month.  Asimov was talking about it in his F&SF column, and Heinlein may soon be talking about it in If.  Enever describes in lurid detail the damage the Earth would suffer from an astroid a "meer" kilometer in width — and why an ocean impact is far, far scarier than one on land.

The author presents the topic with gusto, but a little too much length.  It wavers between fascinating and meandering.  Had we gotten some of the juicy bits included in Asimov's article, that would have made for a stellar (pun intended) piece.

As is, three stars.

Operation Malacca, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

And it is here, at the two thirds mark, that we stumble.

Last we heard from Joe Poyer, he was offering up the turgid technical thriller, Mission "Red Clash".  This time, the premise is a little better: Indonesia has planted a 5 megaton bomb borrowed from the Red Chinese in the Straits of Malacca.  If detonated, it will wipe out the British fleet and pave the way for a takeover of Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines.  Only a washed out cetecean handler and his dolphin companion can save the day. 

Sounds like a high stakes episode of Flipper, doesn't it?

Well, unfortunately, the first ten pages are all a lot of talking, the dolphin-centric middle is utterly characterless, merely a series of events, and then the dolphin is out of the picture the last dull third of the story.

Unlike McCaffrey, my predictions for Joe's writing career are rather pessimistic.  But we'll see…

Two stars.

10:01 A.M., by Alexander Malec


by John Schoenherr

At 10:01 A.M., a couple of joyriding punks cause the hit and run murder of a little girl.  Within the space of an hour, they are swallowed by a floating "fetcher" car, hauled before a detective, thence to a judge, and capital sentence is rendered.

Malec writes as if he was taking a break from technical writing and could not shift gears into fiction writing. Compound that with a lurid presentation that betrays an almost pornographic obsession with the subject matter (both the technological details and the grinding of the gears of justice), and it makes for an unpleasant experience.

Two stars.

Prototaph, by Keith Laumer

And lastly, a vignette which is essentially one-page joke story told in three.  Who is the one man who is uninsurable?  The one whose death is guaranteed.

Except they never explain why his death is guaranteed.

Dumb.  One star.

Tallying the scores

And so Analog limps across the finish line with a rather dismal 2.6 rating.  Indeed, it is the second worst magazine of the month (although that's partly because most everything else was excellent). To wit:

Ah well.  At the very least, Campbell took some chances with this issue, which I appreciate.  And the first two thirds are good.  There was just a lot riding on the mag this month.  The perils of getting one's hopes up!

As for the statistics, I count 8.5% of this month's new stories as written by women, which is high for recent days.  If you took all of the four and five star stories from this month, you could easily fill three magazines, which is excellent.

Always focus on the positive, right?

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well!  If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article!  Thank you for your continued support.

5 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 12, 1966] Past?  Imperfect.  Future?  Tense. (March 1966 Fantastic)

2 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

Straight From the Horse's Mouth

The Noble Editor and my Esteemed Colleagues always do a fine job of informing our fellow Journeyers about what's happening on Earth and in outer space. There is one small piece of news, however, which seems to have escaped notice.

The last episode of Mister Ed appeared on American television screens last week. For those of you fortunate enough not to be familiar with this program, it's about a talking horse.


The star of the program. I believe there are some human actors as well.

I find it remarkable that a show with a premise that does not lend itself to a large number of variations has lasted for more than five years. For those of you who are counting, that's five times as long as the excellent, groundbreaking series East Side/West Side.


George C. Scott as New York City social worker Neil Brock. He doesn't seem happy about being outdone by a loquacious equine.

To add insult to injury, Mister Ed wasn't even original, but an obvious imitation of a series of low budget movies about Francis the Talking Mule, who appeared in no less than seven films from 1950 to 1956.


In Hollywood, changing a talking mule to a talking horse is known as creativity.

How Green Was My Valley

If the success of Mister Ed proves that entertainment was less than perfect in the recent past, a new novel suggests that the future of popular literature may lead to some tension among sensitive readers.


Every Night, Josephine! is a nonfiction book about the author's dog. I can't seem to get away from animals, can I?

Jacqueline Susann's first novel, Valley of the Dolls, appeared in bookstores a couple of days ago. The word on the street is that it is quite racy. I expect the author will earn a fair amount of greenbacks from this fledgling work of fiction.

A Songbird Flies Back

In the world of popular music, even a song a few weeks old can seem dated. A little more than a year ago, multilingual British singer Petula Clark had a Number One hit in the USA with her upbeat number Downtown, which I quite like. I might even say her past success is far from imperfect.

Now she's back with another smash hit. It makes me a little tense to realize that My Love isn't as good a song as Downtown, but I have to admit that the lady can sing, and I wish her more success in the future.


You're going to the top of the charts, dear.

Half a Century for Half a Buck

Given the fact that Fantastic and its sister publication Amazing are now filling their pages with lots of reprints, not all of them classics, we have plenty of evidence that speculative fiction's past hasn't always been perfect. The latest issue goes back in time nearly fifty years, but also features a couple of new works. Appropriately, many of the stories deal with threats from the distant past, while the only futuristic tale describes a tense situation that may confront the people of tomorrow.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul, reprinted from the back cover of the November 1940 issue of Amazing Stories, as shown below.


I don't think this is a very accurate picture of what the surface of the moon Titan might be like.

The Bells of Shoredan, by Roger Zelazny


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

We've already met Dilvish, a warrior who escaped from Hell, a couple of times before. He returns to the material world to defend his homeland, with the aid of a being that takes the form of a steel talking horse. (There's that again! Francis and Ed, what hath thou wrought?)

In this adventure, he journeys to the ruins of an incredibly ancient, seemingly deserted citadel. His quest is to ring enchanted bells that will summon soldiers from the limbo where they have been trapped for an immense amount of time. Along the way, he acquires a temporary companion in the form of a priest.


The unlikely pair witness a ghostly battle.

Dilvish is an intriguing character, and the author gives readers just enough information about his past to make them want to know more. This sword-and-sorcery yarn is full of imaginative supernatural happenings and plenty of action. I could quibble about the author's attempt to sound archaic — he has a habit of inserting the word did before verbs in order to sound old-fashioned — but that's a minor point. Overall, it's a solid example of the form. I'd place it somewhere between Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, and a little bit higher than John Jakes.

Four stars.

Hardly Worth Mentioning, By Chad Oliver


Cover art by W. T. Mars.

From the pages of the May/June 1953 issue of the magazine comes this tale of unexpected rivals of humanity from the mists of prehistory.


Illustrations by Ernie Barth.

A team of archeologists digging in rural Mexico discovers a plastic disk in a layer of soil from pre-Columbian times. The apparent paradox leads the protagonist to discover that another humanoid species, distinct from Homo sapiens, has been directing human history since the beginning. They even have the ability to travel in time, in order to correct little mistakes, like leaving the plastic disk where it could be found centuries later.


An army of the time travelers arrives in an ancient Indian village.

When the archeologist discovers the truth, the humanoids hurt him in the worst way possible. Knowing that he cannot fight them directly, he resolves to protect the future of humanity in a different way.

The author is an anthropologist by profession, so his portrait of the related field of archeology is completely convincing. The price the protagonist must pay for learning too much carries a powerful emotional impact. I was pleased and surprised to find out that the story avoids a melodramatic battle between the two species, but instead ends in a quiet, hopeful, bittersweet fashion.

Four stars.

Axe and Dragon (Part Three of Three), by Keith Laumer


Illustration by Gray Morrow.

In the first two parts of this novel, we journeyed with our hero, one Lafayette O'Leary, into another reality, that he seemed to create through self-hypnosis. After many wild adventures, he wound up getting blamed for the disappearance of a beautiful princess. Now he sets out to rescue her from a legendary ogre and his dragon.

This segment starts off with an even more comedic tone than the others, bordering on the just plain silly. Lafayette meets with some folks who are obviously intended to be cartoon versions of Arabs. They remind me of a famous novelty song from a few years ago, Ahab the Arab, by comic singer Ray Stevens. As an example of the goofiness, at a feast they not only consume Chinese and Hawaiian dishes, but bottles of Pepsi.

Anyway, Lafayette goes on to acquire a loyal steed in the form of a friendly dinosaur, and finally meets the ogre. The ogre has a very strange brother indeed. After an unexpected scene of bloody violence in such a lighthearted story, Lafayette returns to the palace. He meets an old rival, learns the truth about the king's mysterious wizard, saves the princess, discovers who was behind her kidnapping, finds out about his own special background, and gets the girl (although maybe not in the way you'd expect.)

The whole thing moves at a furious, breakneck pace, so that you don't realize it doesn't always make a whole lot of sense. Lafayette's ability to change reality, for example, seems to come and go, depending on how the author needs to propel the plot. There's a scientific explanation, of sorts, from the so-called wizard about what's really going on, but it might as well just be pure magic. It's entertaining enough to keep you reading, but hardly substantial.

Three stars.

Keep Out, by Fredric Brown


Cover art by Clarence Doore.

The March 1954 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this brief tale, from a master of the short-short story.


Illustration by John Schoenherr.

From birth, a group of people are bred to survive on the surface of Mars. The narrator is one of these folks, and reveals their plans.

Some of Brown's tiny tales are masterpieces of a very difficult form. This one is not. I saw the twist ending coming. Maybe you will, too.

Two stars.

The People of the Pit, by A. Merritt


I have been unable to find out who drew this cover.

We jump back to the January 5, 1918 issue of All-Story Weekly for yet another yarn about danger from the remote past. It was reprinted in the March 1927 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

Some folks head for a remote part of the Arctic in search of gold. A man who is nearly dead crawls to their campsite and relates his strange story.

It seems that there is an immense pit, bigger than the Grand Canyon, beyond a chain of mountains. Not only that, but a gigantic set of stairs, carved in the remote past, leads down into it.

The fellow descends into the pit, and encounters bizarre beings who enslave him. He tells how he finally escaped, and managed to crawl his way back up to the surface.


Illustration by Martin Gambee.

This story reminds me of H. P. Lovecraft, with its unimaginably old structures and creatures who are almost beyond the ability of the human mind to conceive. Given the original date of publication, I presume Lovecraft was influenced by it. The author creates a genuine sense of weirdness and menace. The old-fashioned use of a narrative-within-a-narrative slows things down a bit, and it's mostly description rather than plot, but it's not bad at all.

Three stars.

Your Soul Comes C.O.D., by Mack Reynolds


Cover art by Leo Summers and Ed Valigursky.

Once you get beyond the face of Joseph Stalin on the front of the March 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures, you'll find the original appearance of this variation on a very old theme.


Illustration by Leo Summers.

A guy intends to summon a demon in order to exchange his soul for a good life. Before he can even perform the necessary ritual, however, a being appears, ready to make a deal. The man gains forty years of true love, prosperity, and a happy family. When it comes time to pay the price, he finds out what he bargained for.

A story like this depends entirely on the twist in the tail. I have to admit that the author took me by surprise and came up with a new version of the sell-your-soul premise.

Three stars.

How Did You Enjoy Today's Grammar Lesson?

Example of the past imperfect: I was reading Fantastic magazine yesterday.

Example of the future tense: I will finish this article today.

Well, that may not be the best way to study the structure of English, but it gives me something to think about while I sum up my feelings about this issue. For the most part, it was pretty good. Only the Fredric Brown reprint was disappointing, because I expected more from him. There was a good old story, and a good new story. The rest of the stuff was decent filler.

If you don't care for the way I'm acting like a language instructor, maybe you'd prefer something a little more technologically advanced.


Don't blame me if you don't like math.

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well! If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article! Thank you for your continued support.




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[January 31, 1966] Milk of Magnesia (February 1966 Analog)

7 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Hornet's Nest

Last month, I wrote a rather savage review of the January 1966 issue of Analog, one of the more egregious examples of Campbellian excess married with an aggrieving nadir of quality.  In short order, my mailbox was deluged with denouncing letters asserting that:

  • Campbell, as the genius who founded modern Science Fiction, could do no wrong
  • I clearly could never understand why people appreciated Analog

It is instructive that when I give an issue of Analog a favorable review, which happens reasonably often, my mailbox stays empty.  But disparage the mighty Campbell at your peril!  Such are the occupational hazards of the Reviewer.

Anyway, what goes down must come up, and this month's issue of Analog is actually pretty good.  Let's take a look at the final mag of the month, shall we?

The issue at hand


by Kelly Freas

The Searcher, by James H. Schmitz

Two guards at an interstellar space port watch with momentary horror as a purple cloud of radiation erupts from a star yacht and devours them in an instant.  The alien marauder has traveled light years, from the dense nebula known as The Pit, in search of a purloined navigational beacon.  Meanwhile, a local professor with an eye to make a buck, is preparing to fence said beacon, hoping to do so before two private agents hired by the University League thwart his plans.

Thus ensues first a cloak and dagger story followed by a crime thriller and topped off with a mad chase from alien horror.


by Kelly Freas

I was excited to see James H. Schmitz' name on the cover as he's written some of my favorite works.  He also has a preference for writing women protagonists, which is refreshing. I'm afraid my review of this piece must be somewhat alloyed.  The concept is great, the characters are interesting, and I enjoyed the piece.  But.

I think the biggest problem with The Searcher is its length.  Had this been a novel length story, Schmitz could have unfolded the mystery of the alien's existence and motivations more organically, rather than relying on straightforward exposition.  We get a lot of solid chunks of explanation interspersing the action.  And it's certainly not the case that Schmitz can't write action; he does so quite admirably, beginning with the very first scene. 

Had I received this manuscript, I'd have asked for an expanded rewrite — and been happy to publish it!

As is, it's a promising but uneven three star work.

The Switcheroo Revisited, by Mack Reynolds


by John Schoenherr

A rather bumbling young Lieutenant in the KGB is dispatched to the United States to find a marvelous invention first depicted in the pages of a science fiction magazine (name unknown, but I think it starts with an A).  He's intercepted by the CIA, but rather than simply arrest him, instead they do their best to convince the agent that the fictional invention is real.  There's a cautionary sting at the end of the story.

Cute, but rather trivial for Reynolds.  I do enjoy how the author has woven a future history of the Superpowers, though, based on his extensive world travels.  The geopolitics and slang lend a tang of verisimilitude. Three stars.

Twin-Planet Probe, by Lee Correy

This is a fun piece that purports to report the results of the first Martian probe to the twin worlds of Earth and Luna, written so as to mirror the sparse and potentially misleading data obtained from Mariner 4.  The moral of the story is that we don't have enough data to make sweeping conclusions yet.

Four stars (and let's get some more data!)

An Ornament to His Profession, by Charles L. Harness

Patrick Conrad, once a chemist, later an attorney, and now a patent lawyer, is a haunted man.  Three years ago, he lost his chemist wife and their young daughter in a car accident.  This trauma has left him in something of a working daze, redoubling his vocational efforts in an effort to put the pain out of his mind.

His current problem: the patenting of a company chemical is threatened from several corners, most trivially by the impending poaching of Conrad's highly efficient secretary by another department, more seriously by a key team member's certainty that he has made a deal with the Devil to ensure success of the chemical's synthesis, and most critically by the revelation that the patent is based on a previously published college thesis.

Conrad must untangle all of these intertwined issues, all while wrestling with the pain of loss that seems also to be directly involved with the patent somehow.


by Kelly Freas

While Charles Harness is a name that may be unfamiliar to you, as it is a byline that has not appeared in more than a decade, Analog readers will certainly remember "Leonard Lockhard", a pseudonym for the combined talents of Harness and Theodore L. Thomas, who currently writes for F&SF.  I'm pretty sure Harness is a patent attorney in real life as his knowledge of the law seems prodigious.

In any event, Ornament is a beautiful story, lyrical and thoughtful — almost misplaced in this magazine, honestly.  I'm not quite sure I understood the ending, though I reread the piece to see if I had missed something; I may have simply missed a subtle reference.  In any event, it's my favorite story of the issue.

Four stars.

Minds Meet, by Paul Ash


by Kelly Freas

Lastly, we have the welcome return of Pauline Ashwell (a Campbell discovery from England who goes by both feminine and masculine bylines for some reason).  In this tale, a human and alien finally achieve true communication after seven years of frustratingly dissatisfying, if technically successful, discourse.  All it took was a little filthy intoxication.

A pleasant three stars.

Summing up

I'm sorry to disappoint those hoping to yell at me for "not understanding why people like Analog", but I liked this month's Analog.  Indeed, this issue virtually ties the (similarly returned to form) latest issue of Galaxy with a 3.4 rating, the best of the month.  Close behind are New Worlds (3.2), Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1), and Science Fantasy (3).

Only IF (2.9) and Amazing (2.1) finished below the mediocrity line, and IF has the new Heinlein serial to commend it.

We are back to late 50s levels of female engagement in the genre: 10.2% of the new fiction was by women.  There was also a full two magazines' worth of superior content this month, more than twice as much as in December.  It really was a pleasure to be a fan this first month of January 1966!

Let's see how February fares…

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well!  If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article!  Thank you for your continued support.




7 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 31, 1965] Finished and Unfinished Business (November 1965 Analog)

2 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Spooks and SF

All Hallow's Eve is upon us, that annual moment when the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead is at its weakest. The departed spirits of those with unfinished business return to fulfil their goals. And puckish souls, alive and passed, spread mischief.

And amidst all this, there is candy.

In this light, the November 1965 issue of Analog is the perfect companion for Halloween. There are familiar faces, a significant departed face, delicious trifles, and sad tricks.

Tricks and Treats


John Schoenherr

Down Styphon!, by H. Beam Piper

If you read H. Beam Piper's Gunpowder God this time last year, you're familiar with Calvin Morrison, a Pennsylvania cop who got whisked to an alternate world where Aryan tribes settled the Americas and the precursors to our Amerinds stayed in Asia.  Calvin encountered a feudal patchwork where the United States had been, and he quickly took advantage of his military prowess and knowledge to help break the gunpowder monopoly of the House of Styphon, becoming Lord Kalvan of the principality of Hostigo in the process.

If you haven't read Gunpowder God, you'll be rather lost reading Down Styphon!, which is a direct sequel.  After winning its first battle against its neighbors, Hostigo now finds itself about to be attacked by neighboring Nostor and a host of Styphon-funded mercenaries.  Only by developing a mobile force and the science of military cartography can Kalvan and Hostigo hope to repel the vastly superior forces of the invaders.

Down Styphon! is little more than a campaign log, chronicling the ebb and flow of the fight from the initial preparations, to the attempted Nostorian breakthrough, to their ultimate rout. It's clearly a middle third to a novel of Kalvan's story, started in Gunpowder God.  Indeed, the tale ends on a cliffhanger: it is clear that Styphon has one more trick up their sleeve and will not go down without a fight.

The problem, of course, is that readers of Analog may never get a conclusion to this tale.  Sadly, Mr. Piper took his own life last November, and Down Styphon! is touted as the author's last published story.

On the other hand, a novel of Lord Kalvan (Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen) came out recently, and it may well have the resolution to the story.  It's also possible that editor John Campbell will license the last part of the book to finish the saga in Analog.

One hopes so.  While Down Styphon! is clearly incomplete and focused primarily on a single battle, it is yet one of the best and most riveting recountings of a military campaign I've read.  There is such rich detail that I could easily see Avalon Hill making a wargame out of it.

So I give this tale four stars for what it accomplishes and in appreciation for what it could have been (and perhaps might be — fingers crossed).

Even Chance, by John Brunner


John Schoenherr

A young Kalang tribesman in the remote mountains of Java rushes to meet a party of foreign anthropologists.  He bears a shard of a crashed vehicle, one he's certain will convince the expedition to regale him with gifts, as had happened during the War when a pilot had set down his crate and had to be nursed back to health.

But the fragment is highly radioactive, and the craft it comes from is not of Earthly construction.

That's a great setup for a story, but in (the oddly titled) Even Chance, the setup is the whole story.  You know its outcome from the beginning, and the thing reads like something from the 1940s.

A high two — it's not offensive, but it could use finishing.

A Long Way to Go, by Robert Conquest


Kelly Freas

A Mr. Randall from modern day is transported 500 years into the future.  Unlike other contemporaries who had made the trip, Randall is allowed to keep his memories of the 20th Century even if it means he'll have trouble adjusting to the 26th, the better for anthropologists to study him.

At the end, however, it is decided that it is better for Randall to be acclimatized after all.  The time traveler takes the news philosophically, noting that the future seems to have solved all of today's problems. But, his future host sadly informs him, they have unique problems of their own.

Once more, we have a fine setup to a story that fails to go anywhere. Indeed, I'm not quite sure what the point of the tale was.

Another high two.

Some Preliminary Notes on FASEG, by Laurence M. Janifer and Frederick W. Kantor

Here's a cute quasi-scientific piece on the generation of fairy godmothers, done in the style of a short journal article.

Three stars.

Onward and Upward with Space Power, by J. Frank Coneybear

On the other hand, Coneybear's longwinded piece on steam power in space keenly suffers for want of an introduction, a conclusion, and subheadings.  I suppose it's better than pseudoscience, but Analog really needs a dedicated science writer like F&SF's Asimov and Galaxy's Ley.

Space Pioneer (Part 3 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


Kelly Freas

At last we come to something that does finish: Reynolds' latest serial.  When last we left Ender Castriota (who had assumed the identity of Rog Bock to join the roster of the colony ship Titov on its way to complete a blood feud against the last of the Peshkopi clan, rumored to be on the vessel), the colony of New Arizona had been attacked by natives.  As the first intelligent aliens encountered by humanity, their presence on the planet not only poses an existential threat to the new settlement, it also invalidates the colonial charter.

A war ensues, egged on by the Captain of the Titov, who, not wanting to see his lucrative opportunity fade away, insists the aliens are simple animals.  That these "animals" wield crossbows and religious totems makes no difference to him.

Curiously, the "kogs" (as the indigenes are derogatorily called) are extremely humanoid in appearance.  Stranger still, they appear to be confined to the island on which the Titov landed.  I'm sure you can guess, as I did, the true origin of the "aliens."

Space Pioneer's third part is, like Down Styphon!, primarily a chronicle of battle and, like the Piper story, a deftly executed one.  Reynolds is good at that kind of thing.  The Peshkopi feud issue is resolved, and not as I expected it to be, and there is some good development of the relationship between Castriota and Zorilla, the one member of the colonial board who seems to be a decent man.  I was disappointed that Cathy Bergman, advocate for the non-charter member colonists had a minimal role in the third segment, however.

All told, I'd give Part Three four stars, and the book as a whole three and a half.  Good stuff, but it likely won't make the nomination for this year's Galactic Stars.

Assorted Sweets

With all of its ups and downs, Analog clocks in at exactly three stars.  However, as with any Halloween grab bag, you can always skip the candy you don't like and concentrate on what you like.  There's certainly much to enjoy in this month's first and last thirds.

Analog is surpassed this month by Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.7), Science Fantasy (3.2), and New Worlds (3.1).

Campbell's magazine is better than this month's largely reprint Fantastic (2.8) and the perennially lackluster IF (2.6).

Only one story out of the 30 new pieces was written by a woman, which makes Science Fantasy the winner of this month's SF equal opportunity award without trying very hard. 

Sad as that statistic may be, there was far more worthy reading this month than usual.  One could easily fill two big magazines with nothing but 4-star stuff.

So grab yourself this month's digests, stuff them in your trick or treat bag, and have a swell spooky holiday of haunting.  I know I will!




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Serial

[September 30, 1965] Big and Little Bangs (October 1965 Analog)

3 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

The Big One

Billions of years ago, the entire universe was smaller than the head of a pin.  For an endless eternity, or perhaps just an instant, it remained in this state – and then it exploded outward with the force of creation, ultimately becoming all that we see today.

Until this year, this "Big Bang" theory was as yet unconfirmed.  It had stiff competition in the "Steady State" hypothesis, which postulated that the universe is indeed expanding, but because of matter being constantly created.  This was fundamental to the plot of Pohl and Williamson's recent novels set in the reefs of space at the edges of our solar system.

But last year, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey noticed an excess of radio noise in the receiver they were building, an excess that closely resembled the Cosmic Microwave Background predicted by physicists Ralph Alpherin, Robert Herman, and George Gamow.  This extremely low level but pervasive energy is what's left of the heat of the primeval explosion, reduced to microwaves by the expansion of the universe.


The Murray Hill facility where the echoes of the Big Bang were discovered

Smaller Ones

Here on Earth, it seems our planet is anxious to imitate the violence of the universe at large.  On September 28, the Taan Volcano off the coast of the Philippine island of Luzon exploded, killing hundreds of Filipinos.

And less of a bang and more of a blaaat, we've just finished ringing in the Jewish new year with the traditional blowing of a ram's horn.

The Littlest One

Meanwhile, editor John W. Campbell, Jr. seems content to not rock the boat, providing a mixed bag of diverting fare and stale garbage in the latest issue of Analog, a combination that is unlikely to knock anyone off their feet.


by John Schoenherr

Overproof, by Johnathan Blake MacKenzie

On a planet two hundred light years from home, a husband and wife pair of anthropologists come across a horrifying discovery.  The native Darotha, an amphibian race resembling across between a cat and an octopus, are eating humans.  At least, it seems that way – the Yahoos, apelike herd animals on their planet, bear a striking resemblance to homo sapiens.  Are the Darothans really mass murderers?  Or are looks deceiving?


by John Schoenherr

This is an interesting piece that Randall Garrett (under a pseudonym) has offered up.  Unusually for an Analog story, the Darothans are a well-drawn alien race and not played for inferiority – indeed, they are treated with sensitivity not only by the author but by the Terran colonists on the planet, who see them as exciting as potential partners and as an example of non-human society.  In the end, the story is essentially an inverse of Piper's Fuzzy stories, where the question is not whether the humanoid Yahoos possess the spark of humanity, but whether they don't.

It's not a perfect story.  The conclusion is pretty obvious from the beginning, it meanders and repeats a bit, but it's more subtle than what I usually see in Analog, and it kept me interested.

Three stars.

The Veteran, by Robert Conquest

Humans from the future, who have forgotten the art of war, summon someone from the past to lead them in a war against alien nasties.  Unfortunately for them, the person they've found is a devout pacifist.  But luckily, the fellow discovers the battle lust within that he needs to fulfill his role.

Rather offensive, simplistic, and for some reason, the aliens conquer our solar system in reverse order of distance from the Sun even though it's unlikely that they'd all be lined up so obligingly.

Two stars.

Snakebite!, by Alexander W. Hulett, M.D. and William Hulett

For some reason, Campbell saw fit to include this high school science project discussing the use of snake venom to produce antivenom blood serum in rodents.  As an actual article, it might have been mildly interesting, but in its current form, it's pretty pointless.

Two stars.

The Mischief Maker, by Richard Olin


by John Schoenherr

A story told in epistolary, Maker describes how a crackpot professor with a grudge stumbles across the great power of the Law of Analogy, which he uses to destroy the leaders of America through various bits of voodoo and witchcraft.  Truth be told, my eyes glazed over when the author mentioned the Hieronymous Machine, that psychic amplifier requiring no power source that editor Campbell is so enamored of.

Two stars.

Space Pioneer (Part 2 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


by John Schoenherr

Last but not least, we have the continuation of Reynolds' serial that began last month.  When last we'd seen the assassin impersonating Rog Bock, shareholder in the colonial venture on New Arizona, his masquerade had been discovered by at least one other shareholder.

Part 2 begins with the colony ship Titov landing on its virgin planet destination, so closely resembling Earth as to be a near twin.  The rapaciousness of the shareholders' goal becomes clear as the 2000 colonists find they have virtually no rights, that the shareholders plan to sell the valuable resource rights to outside entities almost immediately, and that the crew of the ship largely comprise ex-military personnel to make them a ready police force to keep the settlers in line.

Unrest threatens to boil over as the colony teeters on the brink of collapse, reeling from colonist indolence and sabotage by unknown persons – but by the end of this installment, they all have bigger concerns to worry about…

Again, Pioneer has only the barest trappings of science fiction.  Nevertheless, this is one of Reynolds' more deft tales, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

Four stars for this bit.

Seismographic Data

Where does this leave us for the month?  Well, Analog clocks in at just 2.7 stars, below Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4), Science Fantasy (3.3), New Worlds (2.8), and Worlds of Tomorrow (2.8); it is just tied with the lackluster Galaxy.

It did manage to beat out the disappointing Amazing (2.6), IF (2.3), and the truly awful Gamma (1.5), however.

There were just two and a half pieces written by women (one was co-written) out of 58: 4.3%.  Surprisingly, the women-penned tales were all in the UK mags, which are usually all stag.  No women authors were included in either of the "All Star" Galaxy and F&SF issues this month, which is a real shame.  Where are Evelyn Smith and Margaret St. Clair?

Perhaps they are planning to return with a bang.  I certainly expect to herald their next stories with fireworks!

Looking for good science fiction by women?  Look no further than Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), the bestseller containing 14 of our favorite stories of the Journey era!




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 26, 1965] Stag Party (September 1965 Analog)

14 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Boys Only Club?

A very curious phenomenon has taken place over the last several years.  When I started writing the Journey, women were a rising force in professional science fiction. In 1959, three of the six "Best New Authors" were women (Rosel George Brown, Kit Reed, and Pauline Ashwell – all Journey favorites). About 10% of the stories (and 25% of what was worth reading) was produced by women. Both Amazing and Fantastic, two of the main science fiction monthly digests, were helmed by Cele Goldsmith.

Then…something happened. Over the last few years, the appearances of women in magazines has dwindled to a trickle. There are fewer appearing in novels, too (and since women tended to produce short fiction more often than long form, this change was particularly noticeable). As of this month, no single title across all of the published magazines was done under a sole female byline. Five of the last 45 novels this year were written by four women – two were by Andre Norton, who writes under a masculine byline.

Cele Goldsmith became Cele Lalli and left her editor position. This was probably not a result of her getting married but rather due to a change in her two magazines to a reprints-mostly format.

Though the loss of women in SF has not always hurt the quality of fiction produced, (indeed, this was one of the better months in a long time), I've no doubt that this development is bad for the genre in the long run. The fewer perspectives, the less diversity of viewpoints, the more our stories are going to fall into ruts. A wider pool of authors also creates better work as more talented folks get a chance to rise to the top. I don't know why the genre has become bereft of one half of the population, but I hope the situation changes soon.

Still Plugging Along

As I said, this month was, despite the alarming paucity of women SF contributors, surprisingly and refreshingly good. This month's Analog, so often a turgid relic, was a pleasant read from back to front. Let's take a look inside:


by Kelly Freas

Space Pioneer (Part 1 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

A nameless fellow wangles passage on the s/s Titov, a future-day Mayflower carrying 2000 colonists to New Arizona.  His goal is not exploring a new world, however – it's the assassination of the last of the Peshkopi clan. the would-be killer having gotten a tip that Peshkopi was slated to make the interstellar jaunt on the old freighter.

Inadvertently taking on the role of Roger Bock, holder of one of the mission's ten financial shares, the assassin quickly finds himself embroiled in a growing conflict between the mistreated passengers, little more than chattel in the holds, and the comparatively pampered crew and shareholders.  By the end of Part One, the identity of the Peshkopi is yet unknown to "Bock", but it is strongly implicated that it is actually Cathy Bergman, the elected representative of the colonists.  Of course, by the end of the serial's installment, Bock has much bigger things to worry about than his initial mission…

Pioneer is typically competent Reynolds stuff, even though the milieu is more Leinsterian.  If I have any complaint, it's that the science fiction trappings are virtually nonexistent.  This could be a story set in the 18th Century.

That said, I do enjoy the rather unflattering portrayal of colonist (and presumably planetary) exploitation, and the inclusion of developed female characters is nice.  Reynolds is usually good about that.

Four stars thus far.

The Life of Your Time, by Michael Karageorge


by Kelly Freas

On sublight but relativistic trip to Tau Ceti, the starship Emissary makes a shocking discovery: while time dilation affects the crew, slowing down the passage of time for their physical bodies and for the ship's systems, their minds remain at the speed of their original reference point – Earth.  Thus, to them, their bodies increasingly become prisons as their minds experience minutes, ultimately hours, for every second their bodies sense.  It's a story of tragedy, discovery, and triumph.

And a very unusual one for Analog.  It reminds me a bit of Niven's Wrong Way Street, featuring a gender-balanced and ethnically mixed crew (though they are all explicitly and deliberately Americans).  I don't know who Michael Karageorge is, but he definitely hit a triple on his first outing (and I dug the brand new concept of the hydrogen ramscoop ship).

Four stars.

LUT the Giant Mover, by Lyle R. Hamilton

The nonfiction article is both interesting and disappointing.  You can't fault the subject matter, which is the new launch facilities at Cape Kennedy.  But like most articles in Analog, it suffers for lack of subheadings and a coherent narrative.

So, three stars.  At least it's not about dowsing!

Computers Don't Argue, by Gordon R. Dickson


by John Schoenherr

Here is a dark cautionary tale about relying too heavily on computers, in which a fellow is sent a reader's club book by mistake, and is ultimately arrested and executed when he refuses to pay for it.

I get what they're trying to say, but the story takes place next year and while there is merit to avoiding overreliance on automated systems, there are just too many places where human involvement in the system would have broken the digital positive feedback loop. I hope. On the other hand, who knows?

A low three stars.

Test in Orbit, by Ben Bova


by Kelly Freas

Better is this story of a near-future conflict in space: Chet Kinsman, a USAF Captain with a week left to his hitch, is tasked to fly into space on an X-20 derivative and inspect an unknown satellite suspected of being an orbital bomb.  A mortal combat ensues.

I enjoyed all of this piece except the ending, which was both a little maudlin and should have had some falling action after the reveal.  Still, I think Ben Bova is a promising author, and I look forward to more of his stuff.

Three stars.

Psi for Sale, by Walter Bupp


by Kelly Freas

We've seen a lot of installments in the story of "Lefty" Walter Bupp, a telekinetic doctor with the grammar of a mook.  This time, John Berryman (the author's real name) offers us a look at Bupp's prehistory as well as the early history of the organization created for the benefit of American psychics.

I like the series, and this one was probably my favorite installment.  Perhaps a little superfluous, but still welcome (and it was neat to see a piece from the perspective of Maragon, the "Grand Master" of the "Lodge").

4 stars.

Say It with Flowers, by Winston P. Sanders


by Kelly Freas

Last up, we get another piece set in a future history in which the asteroid belt has won independence from the Earth.  Written under Poul Anderson's throwaway pen name, these are usually dry, technical stories of lesser appeal. 

This time, we get a fairly compelling tale about a Lieutenant in the "asterix" space service who is apprehended by North American forces on a courier mission.  It turns out that the message he is transmitting is carried on his person in an unique (but utterly telegraphed and unsurprising) way.

I liked the piece fine enough, though this line irked:

"The revolutionaries were so short of manpower that quite a few women held high rank."

An omission of that line would have gone a long way.  I don't need the suggestion that women are only able to succeed when there ain't enough men to do the work – especially when it's obvious that women can do the work.

Anyway, three stars.

Y marks the spot


Note, for the first time, the lack of women in the Journey round-up image – this one is of an IBM demonstration in Ethiopia.

Distressing lack of women authors aside, this was a good month for science fiction in magazines.  Analog clocked in at a respectable 3.5 stars, ahead of Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.2, largely thanks to its opening novella) and IF (2.9, dragged down by the Doc Smith serial).

Finishing roughly equivalent were Fantastic (3.5), New Worlds (3.5), and Science Fantasy (3.4).  If we include New Writings in SF #5 (3.5), which is a quarterly in book form but feels like a magazine, that makes the numbers even better.

So a mixed pleasure this month.  Let's hope this trend of female non-production reverses itself soon and results in even better times to come!




14 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Serial

[July 31, 1965] A spoonful of sugar (August 1965 Analog)

2 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Good and bad medicine

Yesterday saw a major milestone in the journey toward President Johnson's "Great Society": Medicare is now a reality, though it won't take effect until July 1 of next year.  This offshoot of Social Security puts the U.S. government in the insurance business, ensuring health care for our nation's elderly.  It's a first step toward the universal health care endorsed so fervently by Harry Truman nearly twenty years ago.

Of course, the legislation has its detractors, most vocally the American Medical Association, which has been against medical insurance in general for decades and against government involvement therein specifically.  They certainly don't like the idea of their fee being in any way mandated from above.  Medicare currently has a provision that the fee a doctor charges the program must be “customary, prevailing and reasonable.” On the other hand, there is a loophole in that provision, put in to appease the AMA, that says doctors don't have to accept what Medicare pays them as payment in full.

I wonder if that provision will be abused…

It is perhaps only coincidence that this month's issue of Analog is fronted by pieces inspired by the health industry.  One can but admire editor John W. Campbell Jr. for his perspicacity in timing.  However, since Campbell is the editor, the conclusions his pieces arrive at aren't necessarily in concordance with my views.  You can let me know what you think:

Say Awwwww


by Kelly Freas

Half a Loaf, by R. C. FitzPatrick


by Kelly Freas

Children with severe mental disability beyond the possibility of treatment are being sent to Sunnyvale, a terminal home.  Comfort is the priority for the kids as their maladies appear incurable; they are to simply live out the rest of their lives being cared for.

This bleak outlook isn't good enough for Sylvia, a social worker who has become attached to Tommy Magee, an eight year old child with a fine mind but no control of his body.  When Tommy is sent to Sunnyvale, she heads there, too, to investigate.  It turns out that there is some kind of treatment going on after all, and children are being sent home, apparently in full command of their faculties.

Loaf is thus something of a detective story, with the reader following Sylvia along until she, with the help of her doctor friend, Morecai, learns Sunnyvale's secret.

FitzPatrick is a relatively new author with few titles to his credit.  There is no question but that he can write compellingly, and Loaf sucks you in immediately.  But the author waits too long to reveal the twist, reducing the piece to something of a gimmick story.  Moreover, the treatment process has, shall we say, profound moral implications that are left virtually unaddressed.  FitzPatrick could have cut to the chase much sooner and explored the ramifications of his tale more thoroughly, to the greater satisfaction to this reader, at least.  As is, the author ends with a conspiratorial wink as the curtain drops.  It's got Campbell's editorial fingerprints all over it.  By now, we all know his stance on eugenics, after all.

Anyway, three stars — an average of a four-star start and a two-star finish.

Positive Feedback, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Chris Anvil can write, honest.  I've seen it.  But never when he publishes in Analog.  Feedback is a tale in epistolary about the dangers of universal auto insurance.  It's really an indictment of medical insurance, arguing that 1) insurance just leads to folks getting unnecessary procedures and 2) people should eschew the experts and just learn a little more self care.

Never mind that insurance allows for preventative maintenance that can head off expensive procedures.  And never mind that, despite what Campbell may think, trained medical doctors…er…certified auto mechanics know a bit more about what they service than individuals.

I'm not saying that we might not benefit from learning to change our own oil (or moderate our diet) but the straw insurance man Anvil presents is a ludicrous way to try to make that point.

Two stars.

Microminiature Industry, by Carl A. Larson

Apparently, yeasts and other microorganisms have been and can be used to synthesize all sorts of useful chemicals.  I say "apparently" because this meandering, subheadingless article was pretty much unreadable.

Two stars for actually being science, at least.

Sleep No More, by James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

The prospect of a Telzey Amberdon story always fills me with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, tales of a 15-year old brilliant telepathic girl should be right up my alley.  On the other hand, Schmitz (who has written great stuff but often doesn't) has increasingly managed to leach any character or color from these stories. 

Last time we saw Telzey, she had psychically enfeebled the mind of the murderous Robane, a powerful telepath in a crippled body who lured people to his estate to be mauled by his pet beast.  When Telzey goes back to make sure Robane is truly harmless, she is set upon by a teleporting monster.

Telzey, in this story, has absolutely no personality.  She simply goes through the motions of evasion and planning to come out alive, and the reader will not know anything more about her by the end than they did at the beginning.  Schmitz also manages to never say in one word what he can say in two.

It's really a shame that I cannot give this tale more than two stars.

Fighting Division, by Randall Garrett


by Leo Summers

We have a slight uptick in this short Garrett piece, about a President who hoaxes an alien invasion to unite the normally hostile superpowers.  It's an old plot, but Garrett gives it a fresh twist. 

Three stars.  Probably the best story in the magazine; certainly the one sweet spot in a bitter brew.

Trader Team (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


by John Schoenherr

And finally, we conclude the adventures of Falkayn, the Terran assigned to the one-face world of Ikrananka (last issue) to try to establish trade relations.  While on the planet, the local human population, warrior descendants of a crashed starship, revolt and try to seize control.

Though this second half of the story is as long as the first half, virtually nothing of consequence happens in it.  There are attempts at a rollicking story with vignettes involving the foul-mouthed, monkey-like Chee, the centaur saurian Buddhist, Adzel, and the rather hapless but ultimately triumphant human, Falkayn.  But the whole thing falls flat, much more akin to the author's A Bicycle Built for Brew than his Three Hearts and Three Lions or his The High Crusade.

Sorry I don't have more to say about it; it's utterly forgettable.  Two stars for this installment, two and a half for the total.

Diagnosing the Patient

The medicine is good deal more castor oil than grape cough syrup this month, that's for certain.  Only Worlds of Tomorrow (3.3 stars) and Science Fantasy (3 stars) finished above the mediocre line.

New Worlds clocked in at 2.8 and Fantasy and Science Fiction scored 2.6.  IF was a dismal 2.3.

But the bottom of the month is reserved for Analog and Amazing (a tie at 2.1) and the putrescent Galaxy (1.8).

Out of 50 stories, just one (1) was written by a woman.  Not only does science fiction appear to be dying, but we are retrogressing in terms of demographic equality.

Do we pull the plug, or is there hope for resuscitation?

(come join us in Portal 55, Galactic Journey's virtual lounge!)




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[June 30, 1965] Every Day has its Dog (July 1965 Analog)

5 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Hail the Sun God

Summer has officially begun.

On June 21, 1965, the northern hemisphere of Earth enjoyed its longest period of daylight (while in Australia, poor fellow traveler, Kaye Dee suffered through the longest night). The Summer Solstice is an event that once had great religious significance, but as the Mosaic religions spread across the globe, celebration of the day waned.

Today, with the rise of neo-druidism (the North American version of it having been related in articles by Erica Frank), the Solstice has once again become a holy day. And 1965's was particularly special: as the Fraternal Order of Druids gathered around Stonehenge, they were treated to the first uncloudy sunrise in 13 years.

With such an auspicious sign, one might expect that June (July cover date) would be a good one for science fiction magazines. Instead, what we got was a dreary muchness that was more akin to the overcast skies of prior Solstices. And no magazine more exemplifies this drabness than this month's Analog:

Noonday Overcast


by John Schoenherr

Trader Team (Part 1 of 2), by Poul Anderson


by John Schoenherr

Poul Anderson is the Cepheid variable of the science fiction genre: he pulses from brilliance to dullness with regularity. In the midpoints, he produces competent but longwinded stuff like the Van Rijn tales, which detail the exploits of a canny Terran trader trying to enhance his fortune in the Galactic "Polesotechnic League."

Trader Team features David Falkayn, a young cadet we last saw in the mediocre Three-Cornerned Wheel. Thanks to the ingenuity he displayed in that story, Falkayn has been tapped to be Van Rijn's apprentice, his first mission to open up trade on the backward planet of Ikrananka.

The story starts crackingly, introducing the four members of the crew of the Muddlin' Through: Falkayn, the young Captain; Chee, a furry, imprecation-throwing female from planet Cynthia; Adzel, the gentle saurian neo-Buddhist from Woden; and "Muddlehead", the ship's computer. The ship has been in virtual quarantine for several weeks as no representative of the planet's local feudal state will approach them.

Then, in the midst of an intense poker game, Falkayn espies a beautiful woman soldier fleeing from a troop of Ikranankan cavalry. He saves her and brings her aboard ship only to discover that he has given aid to a fugitive of the very polity he is trying to establish relations with!

So far so good, but the next thirty pages are a drag. There's some nice scientific worldbuilding, in which we learn Ikrananka is a one-face planet, that Stepha (the saved soldier) is one of the third generation of spacewrecked humans who now, as a race, hire themselves out as mercenaries, and that Ikrananka would make a nice planet for trade if only its disparate fiefdoms could be unified.

But the story itself meanders in that wordy, shaggy dog style that Poul defaults to when he's on autopilot. The scene in which Adzel gets roaringly drunk and then implicated in a human insurrection is played for laughs, but it's just tedious. When Chee is captured, too, the reaction it elicits is a yawn rather than concern.

And if I have to read another line about what Falkayn thinks of Stepha's physical form, I'll throw the book against the wall. It'd also be nice to see more non-romantic female characters in general (though I will concede that Chee being female is a step in the right direction).

A low three stars.

In the Light of Further Data, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Data is an Anvil story in a Campbell-edited mag, so caveat emptor.

And your caution is justified. Data is a story in newspaper article excerpts of two intersecting threads. The first is the development of a miracle tissue regrowth process that quickly recruits millions of patients seeking replacements for lost teeth. The second is the battle between a professor who asserts that science is the foundation of truth, and the religious community who pushes back on the assertion.

In the end, said professor cheerfully gets a new mouth of choppers, just as it's determined that there is a fatal flaw in the regrowth technique. The punchline is he quits science and becomes a missionary.

The moral, I assume, is that those eggheads don't know everything. It's certainly a philosophy Campbell has flogged to death.

Anyway, it's a dumb story. Two stars.

Hands Full of Space, by Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

We get a respite of sorts in the nonfiction article. It's about the difficulties of engineering for the intense harshness of space. Kallis tells us what happens to electronic components when exposed to zero pressure — they weld to each other, their surfaces vaporize and then coat other surfaces — and then there's the wear of hellish radiation and the danger from whizzing micrometeoroids.

It's all very informative and accessible, if a bit long and occasionally disjointed. When Analog's science piece is better than Ley's in Galaxy and Asimov's in F&SF, you know the world is truly inconstant!

Four stars.

Soupstone, by Gordon R. Dickson


by John Schoenherr

Here's another ingenue spaceman saves the day story. Soupstone is the sequel to Sleight of Wit, in which a clever human defeats an alien adversary largely by virtue of said alien being implausibly dim.

This time, Major Hank Shallo is sent to Crown World as a special trouble-shooter. The problem he must solve involves a crop of alien oversized grapes that would produce a most exquisite brandy in tremendous quantities if only they could keep them from rotting in the warehouses. It's all a matter of timing in the picking process, you see.

Shallo, an inept buffoon, is unable to solve the problem himself, but he is able to gather all the folks together who can solve the problem, and in doing so, sets them on their way to effecting the solution. And if you know the fable about making soup from a stone (I did) then you get the reference. And if you don't, don't worry — Dickson explains it for you.

Dickson is capable of much better than these "funny" stories, and once again, the ladies are included just for leering.

Two stars.

The Adventure of the Extraterrestrial, by Mack Reynolds


by John Schoenherr

It is rare that the science fiction and mystery genres overlap. Asimov's R. Daneel Olivaw tales and Garrett's Lord Darcy series pretty much round out the list. In Adventure, Reynolds crosses SF with The Detective, the one and only supersleuth of Baker Street (though neither Holmes nor Watson are ever mentioned by name).

An octogenarian Holmes is engaged by the spendthrift son of a rich gentleman. The son is putatively concerned for his father's mental health as he has engaged in a Fortean obsession with aliens, which have taken up residence in London, he maintains.

Reynolds is a good writer, and he executes a fair homage to the Doyle style. But while I enjoyed the story, I found Watson's constant and repetitive harping on Holmes to be offputting. And there are only so many times I need to be reminded of Holmes' age through note of his "senility," "chortling," "blathering," "dribbling," "inanity," etc. etc. Virtually every line includes a reference, and it's overmuch.

Also, and this is a small thing, Holmes' client talks of his father's obsession with "flying saucers." The story is indisputably set in the mid-to-late 1930s. Flying saucers did not become idiomatic vogue until after the war, in astonishing concert with the arrival of jet planes and rocketships. The anachronism vexed.

Still, it's the best story of the issue. A high three stars.

Though a Sparrow Fall, by Scott Nichols

One of those conversation pieces in which the story progresses in party dialogue. Turns out that the human genetic code has been written, or at least tampered with, such that a message has been buried within. By whom, and for whom, it is not known.

There's an interesting germ of a story here, almost something Theodore L. Thomas might address in his little column in F&SF. It doesn't really go anywhere, though.

Three stars.

Delivered with Feeling, by Lawrence A. Perkins


by Kelly Freas

At last, Mr. Perkins offers up another "lone man solves the problems of an alien world" story. This one deals with a planet whose disunion into dozens of profession-castes has made it easy prey for alien raiders. Because the invading planet and Earth are party to a mutual non-aggression pact, our protagonist can provide no material aid. Instead, he simply gives them a rallying slogan, which because of the unique qualities of the subjugated race, proves sufficient to throw off the alien onslaught.

The kicker, of course, is how the protagonist hatched his scheme. It's one of those technical puzzle stories that has been the stale bread and butter of the genre for decades. It's readable and forgettable.

Three stars.

A Dim Augury

Just one magazine cracked the three-star barrier this month: Fantasy and Science Fiction with 3.2 stars. IF and Science Fantasy were inoffensive three-star issues whilst (as Mark and Kris might say) New Worlds stumbled in at just 2.7. As this month's Analog scored a 2.8, it barely misses out on being the worst of the bunch.

And what a meager bunch it is! Without Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow (they're bimonthlies) and since the former Goldsmith mags, Amazing and Fantastic were on hiatus this month, there really wasn't much to read. Worse yet, there was just one woman-penned piece out of the 27 fiction stories published this month.

That the magazines were all fairly unremarkable, save perhaps for the unusually decent F&SF, just goes to show that even when the Sun God makes an appearance, it doesn't always herald good fortune.

Ah well. The Sun sets, but it also rises, and each day brings promise anew…


Sunrise, Roy Lichtenstein's latest masterpiece — see, this month wasn't all bad…




5 Comments Leave A Comment