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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 24, 1968] Here, There, and Nowhere (August 1968 Galactoscope)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The Cassiopeia Affair by Chloe Zerwick & Harrison Brown

In Redo Valley, Virginia, a radiotelescope complex in the late 20th century hunts for extra-terrestrial intelligence. One night Max Gaby detects a signal coming from Cassiopeia 3579. Inside there is a two-dimensional picture being sent out via binary.

Binary Code Puzzle from Cassiopeia
Can you solve the binary-code puzzle?

This provides proof of an alien intelligence.

At the same time, conflict is brewing between Russia and China, one that could plunge the world into nuclear war. Is this evidence of intelligent life among the stars the greatest hope we have for peace?

Yes, this is yet another story of Radio Astronomy. These are now becoming as regular in science fiction as space adventures and superhuman mutants, but this stands out as a wonderful example. I believe this is the first fiction from the pair, with Zerwick being primarily a visual artist and Brown being a scientist. Together they have created something masterful.

Although much of the novel is taken up by discussions of scientific theories or information on how to programme radio telescopes, it is raised up by excellent writing and a real understanding of character. Whilst Judith Merrill criticised it for being dull, I never found it so. It was a book I was dying to pick up whenever I got the opportunity. It is a testament to the authors that it never felt dry.

Regarding the characters, it is a huge cast, but one where they all feel considered and with depth, not merely props for discussion. These include Max Gaby as the wide-eyed believer, Barney Davidson the grouchy cynic, Rudolph Calder the Machiavellian hawk and Adam Lurie the disillusioned drunk who is secretly sleeping with Gaby’s wife.

Throughout there are little moments that make it feel real, such as Gaby calling Adam up at 4 am about a possible sighting and Adam grumpily insisting on having his shower and coffee first, or when someone tries to bribe Davidson and he threatens to kill him.

The characters are not perfect either, we regularly change perspective and sometimes see that they are downright unpleasant. But it is made clear we are not meant to sympathise with everyone’s point of view, rather to gain an insight into their motivations.

It also tries to consider the politics of the situation carefully. It demonstrates how different factions will react and what they will want to do with this information. A particularly interesting, if depressing, touch is that the hawks on both sides of the Iron Curtain distrust Gaby as he is a refugee from Hungary in 1956. This element gives it both a sense of excitement and verisimilitude that is often missing from these heavier works.

These kinds of harder science fiction stories are not usually the ones that appeal to me. However, I was enthralled. It may be even more enjoyed by fans of Clarke and Niven and I would not be surprised to see it on the Hugo ballot next year.

Five Stars


by Victoria Silverwolf

Assignment in Nowhere, by Keith Laumer


Cover art by Richard Powers.

This is the third in a series of novels dealing with alternate universes. The first was Worlds of the Imperium. The Noble Editor gave it a moderately positive review.

Next came The Other Side of Time. I thought it was pretty decent, if not outstanding.

Both books featured a fellow named Brion Bayard, a man from our own universe who went on to be an agent for the Imperium, a British/German empire that dominates another version of Earth.

Bayard plays a small but important role in this new novel, but the main character is a man named Johnny Curlon. He's also the narrator. Let's say hello to him.

He's a Real Nowhere Man

Johnny is a big, strong guy who lives in Florida and runs a fishing boat. The story starts off with some tough hoods trying to intimidate him, but he deals with them easily. At this point, I thought I was reading one of John D. MacDonald's Florida-based suspense novels, particularly those featuring Travis McGee, a big, strong guy who owns a houseboat.

(If you haven't read them, give 'em a try. They're really good.)

Anyway, we find out this is a science fiction novel when Johnny gets rescued from his floundering boat, which the bad guys have sabotaged, by our old pal Brion. He carries Johnny around in a vehicle that can not only travel between universes, but is able to pass through solid matter and become invisible. Mighty handy little gizmo.

Naturally, Johnny is confused by all this. It seems that he's the key to preventing lots of universes from being wiped out by something called the Blight (capital letter and all.) There are antagonists eager to use Johnny for their own purposes.

At this point, Johnny's knife, which is actually part of an ancient sword handed down to him by his ancestors, gets reunited with another part of the ancient weapon. That's our first hint that this SF novel is going to seem a lot like a fantasy adventure.

Johnny winds up working with a fellow who is very obviously the main bad guy. (Obvious to the reader, anyway, although it's quite a while until Johnny catches on.) They travel to a universe whose only human inhabitant is a stunningly beautiful woman, straight out of a sword-and-sorcery story. She even has a pet griffin, and there's a giant around.

(This middle section of the book reminds me of Robert A. Heinlein's novel Glory Road. That was science fiction disguised as fantasy. This one is fantasy disguised as science fiction, to some degree.)

After leaving that magical place with another piece of the sword, the villain takes Johnny to the universe he wants to rule. It's a place where Richard Lionheart didn't die in battle, but lived to be a weak ruler. He wound up surrendering his kingdom to the French, so France is still in control of England, which is called New Normandy.

(Brion already told Johnny that he was the last descendent of the Plantagenets, so it all ties together, sort of.)

The bad guy's plan would come at the cost of destroying a bunch of universes. (You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, I guess.) Can our hero set things right? (Go ahead, take a guess.)

In typical Laumer fashion, this is an action-packed yarn that moves at a dizzying pace. It's not as tightly plotted as some, and I'd say it's the weakest book in the Imperium series. The middle section — you know, all that fantasy stuff — seems to come from another novel entirely. There's a lot of pseudoscientific blather trying to explain what's going on, and none of it makes any sense.

Two stars.


by Gideon Marcus

The Two-Timers


Cover by Leo and Diane Dillon

Nine years ago John Breton nearly lost his wife. Now, a decade later, he and Kate are drifting apart, their knives out at every opportunity, their marriage a fast cooling ember. John has thrown himself bodily into his geological consulting business, and his wife has picked a hobby John has no interest in, befriending Miriam Palfrey, an automatic writer. At a typical crashingly dull dinner party with the Palfreys, characterized by endless sniping, John decides only profound drunkenness will get him through the night.

Whereupon he receives a call:

"You've been living with my wife for almost exactly nine years–and I'm coming to take her back."

Because nine years ago, Kate had died. Two years into their marriage, a stupid fight had compelled Kate's husband to stay home, while she trooped through the night, headed for a party she would never attend, intercepted by a brutal rapist and killer.

John, calling himself Jack at the time, was devastated, wracked with guilt. More than this: he began to be unhinged from time, taking trips weekly to the scene of the crime. Jack resolved to stop Kate's murder, even if it meant rending the very fabric of space and causality.

Two timelines were created: Timeline A, in which Jack led a lonely, monomaniacal life, and Timeline B, in which a sleek and unappreciative John enjoyed his misbegotten wife, the fruits of the labor of his alter ego.

Thus, Jack hatched a plan–move sideways to Timeline B…and fill John's shoes, whether he liked it or not.

But the law of conservation of energy is a hard fact, in the multiverse as well as the universe. Jack Breton's actions threaten not only the rocky relationship of Kate and John, but also the whole of humanity.

According to the book's blurb, this is Shaw's third book, but the first to achieve wide distribution. I don't know what his first book was, but I read his second, Night Walk last year. Between that and his short stories, it was clear Shaw was a gifted author just waiting to grow out of his adolescence.

With The Two-Timers, he has done so.

I picked the book up just before bed and had to force myself to put it down. Eight hours later, it was in my hands again, and it did not leave until I'd finished the story come lunchtime (it was a welcome companion as I waited in the courthouse for a jury duty that never materialized).

The characters are vividly, deeply realized, all of them evolving throughout the story. We initially hate John and sympathize with Jack, but neither of the Bretons is wholly irredeemanble, nor sympathetic. And Kate is no prize to be won; she is an independent entity with her own virtues, failings, and feelings. Shaw reminds me a bit of Larry Niven, drawing people with quick, deft strokes. But Shaw has a sensitive style, working more with emotions than hard science. It's the people that matter in this piece; the SFnal content is exciting, necessary, but secondary.

The pacing in the book is exquisite, from the painful depiction of a marriage gone sour at the beginning, to the arrival of Jack, through the resolution of the resulting triangle. The interspersed scenes of the slow collapse of the physical universe around them are deftly handled, as is the closing in of Lieutenant Blaize Convery, the detective who knows Breton saved his wife nine years ago; he just can't figure out how.

As Lorelei (who picked up the book on my recommendation and tore through it in short order) notes, aside from the poetic writing, the real triumph of the book is that you get so many viewpoint characters, and so many changing perspectives on these characters, and none of it is confusing. It's just masterfully done.

It's a hard book to read in parts. The emotions here are fraught ones, and there are some rather unpleasant (though never gratuitous) scenes. Nevertheless, these are emotions that must be explored, and thankfully, the mystery and the brilliant writing carry you past them, as well as the satisfying resolution of the threesome's story. My only quibble is that the end doesn't quite work, logistically, though it makes sense thematically. And as Lorelei notes, it's a touch rushed.

Nevertheless, The Two-Timers is a terrific work, definitely a strong contender for my Hugo ballot next year.

4.5 stars.

Omha Abides

We Americans love a good revolution story. After all, our nation was founded by a rebellion, and the appeal of an underdog throwing off an oppressor has been popular since David threw a rock at Goliath.

C.C. MacApp takes a stab at the theme with his latest book, Omha Abides, a tale of the 35th Century. 1500 years before, the Gaddyl had conquered the Earth. The amphibian aliens did not succeed without a fight, but their advanced technology, particularly their craft-shielding Distorters, proved decisive. Human civilization was shattered, the population reduced to a bare fraction, many of them condemned to slavery. Meanwhile, the Gaddyl build their own fiefdoms amidst the ruins of the human cities and built an interstellar teleport transit hub in Arizona.

Now Earth is a hunting preserve, humanity largely quiescent. The North American continent is home to just 25 million people…and half a million overlord Gaddyl. The humans who are not slaves roam in bands or live in primitive statelets. They have no hope of taking back the planet, until a series of events precipitously brings success in their reach.

Our hero is Murno, a freed man who lives with his family in Fief Bay, once known as San Francisco. A new, cruel lord has ascended to the fief throne, and he has decided that no longer shall free humans be off limits to hunting parties.

At the same time, Murno is contacted by the underground. He is entrusted with three items, two of them Gaddyl, and one of ancient human make, which he is tasked to take east, beyond the Sierras, beyond the mysterious Grove, even past the mighty Rockies, to where the mythical deity named "Omha" waits.

If you had a subscription to the recently defunct magazine, Worlds of Tomorrow, you may have read about half of this book. Victoria Silverwolf reviewed Under the Gaddyl Tree, which comprises about the first third of the book, and Trees Like Torches, which contains bits from the middle. Victoria gave both stories three stars and felt they were competent, but nothing special.

Often, the expansion of stories into a novel results in something less than the sum of its parts. The opposite occurs in this case. Now, instead of just being isolated, mildly interesting adventure stories, now Murno's encounters with Gaddyl, blue mutant humans, a giant grove of telepathic trees, and so on, gird a compelling plot. Humanity shouldn't have a chance against the Gaddyl. But neither should an electron, per classical physics, be able to jump energy levels. But thanks to quantum physics and the Uncertainty Principle, given a short enough period of time, an electron can possess abnormal amounts of energy.

Similarly, a confluence of circumstances makes for a successful rebellion opportunity. Because humanity had been waiting for its chance. The telepathic Blues had spies in pivotal places. There was an underground poised for action. There really is an Omha (and you can guess what its nature is early on, which will also clue you in on how to pronounce the word).

Add the trigger of the Gaddyl getting a bit too complacent and a bit too cruel, as well as the theft of some vital technologies, and a human victory becomes plausible.

The pacing of the book is a little off. Much of the human victory isn't even detailed until the last 25 pages of the book (though it turns out that's not really too short a span; MacApp pulls it off). Also, much reference is made to Murno baffling his alien pursuers with "trail puzzles", a phrase with which I'm not familiar, and whose meaning I still don't apprehend. Occasionally, the story does lapse into conventional adventure fare–more like a tale of the American West than the American future.

But, it's a book with real cinematic quality to it; the scenes in California were particularly resonant for me, a Golden State native. The Gaddyl are portrayed perhaps a touch too human, but I appreciated the range of types, from scoundrel to honorable enemy. And as an American, I suppose I've got as much a soft spot for overthrowing tyranny as anyone.

Four stars.


by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

Last year's pairing of E.C Tubb and Juanita Coulson's has gotten an encore. In fact, both novels are sequels. My esteemed colleague and editor had favorable reviews of both, so I was excited to read them:

Ace Double H-77

Derai, by E. C. Tubb

Earl Dumarest, the itinerant interstellar provocateur and do-gooder from The Winds of Gath returns in Derai, hunting news of Earth. On his way he takes a job escorting the Lady Derai of the House of Caldor back to her family on the planet Hive. He soon determines that Derai is a telepath. Her father sent her to the college of Cyclans to treat the constant fear and nightmares brought on by hearing the minds of those around her. Derai ran away from the college, where Cybers (once-humans with emotion and sensation excised who now can connect to a collective mind) wanted to use her genetics, turning her into a mindless vessel to bear telepathic children. Her home planet has its own risks – her uncle wants to take over the House, planning to assassinate her father and half-brother, and marry Derai to her cousin to gain legitimacy.

Dumarest keeps much of his thoughts to himself, both from the other characters and the reader, but cannot keep his developing feelings for Derai from her telepathic ability. He carries himself as a man who has seen too much. He inspires loyalty, and in those he has helped that is understandable, but it also comes from some who have only just met him. One man he meets through a mutual friend takes the chance of being burned to death to get a blade to Dumarest in a deadly maze arena.

Dumarest almost seems to resist the plot, needing to be pushed into each new quest. At times, his struggle as a character made him feel like a disparate individual, one side grim and withdrawn, another altruistic at great cost to himself; it's as if author Tubbs had two distinct directions for the novel in mind, and was unable to find the balance between them. Dumarest's staid demeanor only allows him to rebuff so much, and he is, if reluctantly, still prompted to aid disenfranchised travelers, save a gambler from himself, and compete in a tournament to prolong the head of Caldor House's life. Each time he intends to leave the House to its own devices, his feelings for Derai bring him back.

Tubb has a lurid, graphic style of description. It's equally evocative of beauty and violence. In a particularly unsettling set of scenes, Dumarest barely escapes being eaten alive like his companions by bird-sized bees. For how memorable the depictions of the insects were, I anticipated them playing a larger role in the overall story. The scenes stuck with me for several days due to the excessively grisly details.

Something else that ate at my brain: thanks to medical advancements and travel stasis Dumarest and Derai are chronologically far older than they seem, but Derai was described as childlike far too often for my liking. Tubb could have left it at one use of "nubile".

3 stars

The Singing Stones, by Juanita Coulson

Geoff is a member of the Federation, the galactic government introduced in Coulson's Crisis on Cheiron. He embarks on what could be a suicide mission to the protectorate of Deliayan, Pa-Lüna. Both humans and Deliyans have been exploiting the people of Pa-Lüna, tricking them into indentured servitude. When a man is murdered right in front of him over a stone, Geoff investigates, finding the stone in question has strange, enchanting properties. He and Tahn, a Pa-Lünan, set out for the protectorate, and they meet Nedra, priestess of a mysterious goddess.

From the outset, he is on a clock: a past planetary mission left his team dead, and him with the lingering impacts from a past poisoning that flares, causing him pain and debilitating him with growing frequency. The nature of his sense of duty and outlook, framed by his limited lifespan, is compelling.

Geoff is a skeptic, both of motive and means. He views the people of Pa-Lüna with a mix of respect and condescension, but Geoff witnesses the tangible effects of the stones of song. They induce a euphoria and they, or their "goddess", can heal the sick and injured and strengthen her followers over time. Does the Goddess bestow gifts freely or are her worshipers trading one form of servitude for another, framed in a softer light? Are the powers of the Stones and the goddess's telepathic messages divine or an advanced, but still mortal mechanism?

I appreciated the exploration of what is becoming a new trend in sci-fi–rejecting overt military intrusions and favoring a system that furthers a newly-contacted culture's sovereignty. It's not a bad direction to go, though authors vary in degrees of patronizing the native people of these worlds, from treating them roughly as equals to regarding them as "primitive" beings who need protecting. And it does say something that it takes someone from outside the system to truly put things in motion, no matter how long change has been brewing. Having the fight be against not just an alien threat but also a human, institutional threat asks if human expansion is truly helping, needs tempering, or if it is causing more harm in the end.

All in all, a solid book. Had I not recently read several other books with a similar premise I would have liked it even more. However, I can't fault Coulson for the trends of this year. She created a rich tapestry and I would be happy to explore her worlds and characters in future stories.

4.5 stars




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 16, 1968] Worthy programming (February 1968 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

On the small screen

A few weeks ago, President Johnson signed into effect the Public Broadcasting Act.  Its purpose, among other things, is to turn a decentralized constellation of educational stations and program producers into a government-funded network.  It's basically socialism vs. the vast wasteland.

Given the quality of programming I've seen produced by National Education Television, particularly on independent station KQED-San Francisco (e.g. "Jazz Casual" and "The Rejected"), I am all for this move.  Indeed, I've recently come across a show that has really sold me on public television.

NET Journal is a series on political matters of the day.  In December, they had a program that showed the results of a week-long workshop in which 12 affluent young men and women of a multitude of ethnicities lived together and discussed their prejudices.  What they determined was surprising to them, and maybe to us.  As we saw in the film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, even in the most bleeding heart liberal, there is prejudice; and it's not just directed from whites to minorities.

This week, we caught an interview with four journalists in Saigon.  Recently, LBJ and General Westmoreland have been cheerleading the effort in Vietnam, saying that the three-year commitment of half a million troops is bearing fruit.  The South Vietnam-based journalists dispute this rosy view.  They say progress has been slow, that the South Vietnamese army is hopelessly corrupt and must be reformed from the head down if it is to operate effectively without American support, and that we are not engaged in "nation-building" because there is currently no nation.  The elections are meaningless so long as there be no real choices to be made, so long as bribes and payoffs accomplish more than the rule of law.

Withering stuff.  Next week, the program will be on draft-dodgers.

On the small page

Galaxy Science Fiction is also an exellent, long-running source of information and entertainment.  This month's issue is a particularly good example.


by Jack Gaughan

A Tragedy of Errors, by Poul Anderson

Anderson has established a reputation for producing some of the "hardest" SF around, laden with astrophysical tidbits.  On the other hand, his quality varies from sublime to threadbare.  Luckily, his latest novella lies far closer to the former end of the scale.

Tragedy takes place in what appears to be the far future of his Polysotechnic League history.  The loose interstellar confederation of planets became an empire and subsequently went into decline a la the worlds in H. Beam Piper's Space Viking universe and Asimov's Foundation setting.  I really like these "after the fall" stories of folks trying to patch a polity back together, maybe better than it was before.


by Gray Morrow

This particular story is the tale of Roan Tom, Dagny, and Yasmin, the crew of the merchant-pirate Firedrake.  Their ship is in desperate need of repairs, and the only planet within range of the married trio is a Mars-sized world around a swollen orange sun.  Luckily, said world was once a human colony of the Empire and thus may have the resources needed to fix a starship.

Unluckily, the planet has been recently plundered by pirates, and the inhabitants do not take kindly to strangers–especially ones that call themselves "friends."

There's a lot to like about this riproaring tale of aerial maneuvers, overland evasion, and fast-talking diplomacy.  For one, two of the main characters are women, and highly competent ones at that.  Moreover, it is an ensemble cast, with each of the three coming into the spotlight for extended periods of time.

There is also a mystery of sorts, here…or several, really, all woven together: how does this undersized planet have an atmosphere?  Indications are that this is a young world, but why, then, does the dense planet have so little surface metal?  And why is the star so unstable, prone to devastating solar storms that play hell with the planet's weather?  Solving this astronomical puzzle proves key to addressing the Firedrake crew's more immediate problems.

Of course, you have to like detailed explanations of stellar and planetary parameters and phenomena.  I personally love this sort of thing, but others may find their eyes glazing.  On the other hand, there's plenty to enjoy even if you decide to let the science wash over you.  The sanguine antics of Roan Tom, the determined toughness of Dagny, the more refined and tentative brilliance of Yasmin.  These are great characters, and I'd like to see more of them.

Four stars.

The Planet Slummers, by Terry Carr and Alexei Panshin

A pair of young thrift store bargain hunters are, in turn, scooped up by a pair of alien specimen collectors.  I think the story is supposed to be ironic, or symbolic, or something.

Forgettable.  Two stars.

Crazy Annaoj, by Fritz Leiber


by Jack Gaughan

Ah, but then we have the story of a different couple: a superannuated trillionaire and a dewy (but flinty) eyed young starlet.  There's is a love fated for the ages, but not the way you might think.

Just a terrific tale told the way only Leiber (or maybe Cordwainer Smith) could tell it.

Five stars.

Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay, by Robert Sheckley


by Vaughn Bodé

Imagine moving to the city of the future: clean, architecturally pleasing, smog-free, crammed with creature comforts.  Now imagine the city is run by a computer brain…with the personality of a Jewish mother.

Bob Sheckley is Jewish, so I suspect he didn't have to strain his imagination much for this one.  Droll, but a little too painful and one-note to be great.

Three stars.

For Your Information: Epitaph for a Lonely Olm, by Willy Ley

This is a pretty dandy story about a sightless cave salamander that lives its whole life in the water, thus eschewing the amphibian portion of its nature.  Thanks to this creature, we have the concept of "neoteny"–the retention of juvenile traits for evolutionary advantage.  The blind, pale beast also ensured the fame of Marie von Chauvin, a 19th Century zoologist.

Four stars.

Sales of a Deathman, by Robert Bloch


by Jack Gaughan

How do we combat the exploding birth rate?  By making suicide sexy, thus exploding the death rate!

Bloch's modest proposal would be better suited to a three line comedy routine than a several-page vignette.  Three stars.

Total Environment, by Brian W. Aldiss


by Jack Gaughan

Crammed into a ten-story self-contained habitat, 75,000 persons of Indian descent live a life of increasing desperation and squalor.  At first, we are given to believe that the settlement is a natural response to the crushing pressure of overpopulation.  As it turns out, the Ultra-High Density Research Establishment (UHDRE) is actually a deliberate experiment in inducing psychic abilities through exposure to unique pressures.  Just 25 years ago, the site had a population of only 1500.  Now, teeming to bursting, the hoped-for psionic adepts are appearing–and an empire in a teapot is arising on UHDRE's Top Deck to take advantage of them.

Aldiss writes a compelling story.  One thinks it's just the second coming of Harrison's Make Room!  Make Room! until it isn't.  In some ways, this actually hurts the story, causing it to lose focus.  On the other hand, the setting is so well-drawn, and the situation suspenseful enough, that it still engages and entertains.

Four stars.

How They Gave It Back, by R. A. Lafferty


by Gray Morrow

The last mayor of Manhattan finds The Big Apple isn't worth the bother, now that it's degenerated into a ruined, gangland state run by a quintet of bandits.  Thankfully, the original owners will buy it back–for its original fee.

Again, this might have made a humorous short bit.  As is, you see the punchline from the first words (the title and illo help), and the slog isn't worth the ending.

Two stars.

The Big Show, by Keith Laumer


by Wallace Wood

Last up, a frothy adventure featuring a TV star recruited to infilitrate the last cannibal island in the South Pacific to thwart a nefarious Soviet scheme.  This is yet another in the recent spate of stories involving total sensory television in which hundreds of millions viscerally experience the lives of actors.

Unlike Kate Wilhelm's or George Collyn's spin on the subject, Laumer doesn't do very much with the gimmick.  Instead, it's another of his midly amusing but eminently forgettable yarns.

Two stars.

Summing up

Despite a sprinkling of clunkers, the latest Galaxy delivers the goods.  Two good novellas, a fine nonfiction piece, and an excellent Lieber short would have filled F&SF nicely.  So just pretend that the other stories don't exist and enjoy the good stuff.

And then tune in to NET Journal the next few weeks while you wait for the next issue!



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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 10, 1968] Saving the Best For Last (Dangerous Visions, Part Three)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Welcome to the last of our three discussions about an anthology of original fantasy and science fiction that's drawing a lot of attention. Love it or hate it, or maybe a little of both, it's impossible to ignore. I showed you the full wraparound cover the the first time, and offered a closer look at the front the second time, so here's the back cover. It gives you a convenient list of the authors.

As before, I'll give each story the usual star rating as well as using the colors of a traffic light to indicate how dangerous it might be.

Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison


Art by Leo and Diane Dillion.

Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird, by Sonya Dorman

A woman desperately tries to escape her pursuers. Flashbacks tell us more about this dystopian world.

Saying anything more would lessen the impact of this intense little story. Ellison's introduction compares it to the work of Shirley Jackson, and that's a fair analogy. It's deceptively quiet and matter-of-fact at times, but full of icy horror at its heart.

Four stars. YELLOW for unrelieved grimness.

The Happy Breed, by John T. Sladek

In the near future, machines take care of all our problems, leaving us to enjoy a life of leisure. Of course, what the machines think is best for us may not agree with our own ideas.

This dark satire on automation isn't exactly subtle. It makes its point clearly enough, and follows it to its logical conclusion. The details of the characters' degeneration make it worth reading.

Three stars. YELLOW for cynicism.

Encounter with a Hick, by Jonathan Brand

Our smart aleck narrator tells us how he met a fellow from a less sophisticated background and what happened when he told the man something about the origin of his planet.

You'll probably figure out the punchline of this extended joke. Despite its predictability, I enjoyed the story's wise guy style. Others may find the narrator annoyingly smug.

Three stars. YELLOW for a wry look at deeply held beliefs.

From the Government Printing Office, by Kris Neville

Set at a near future time when childrearing has changed in an eye-opening way, this yarn is told through the eyes of a kid who is only three and one-half years old. Adults are bewildering creatures indeed!

The quirky choice of viewpoint, with its combination of precocity and naiveté, is what makes this story worth a look. I'm not quite sure what the author is saying about parents and children, but it's provocative.

Three stars. YELLOW for an unflattering portrait of Mom and Dad.

Land of the Great Horses, by R. A. Lafferty

All over the world, people with Romany ancestors feel compelled to return to a place that vanished long ago. But what will disappear next?

This synopsis fails to capture the author's eccentric style and unusual combination of whimsy and oddball speculation. If you like Lafferty, you'll enjoy it. If not, you won't. Like many of his works, it's something of a tall tale and a shaggy dog story. I dug it.

Four stars. GREEN for kookiness.

The Recognition, by J. G. Ballard

The narrator witnesses a woman and a dwarf set up a strange menagerie at night, not far from where a carnival is in progress. The mystery of the cages deepens as visitors show up.

I find this story difficult to describe. It's quite a bit different from the author's jagged, chopped up pieces for New Worlds, and from his decadent tales of Vermillion Sands. It's very subtle, and there seems to be more than meets the eye. The premise evokes thoughts of Ray Bradbury, but only in an extremely subdued way. Maybe haunting is the word I'm looking for.

Four stars. GREEN for intriguing writing.

Judas, by John Brunner

A robot sets itself up as God. One of the people who created it sets out to destroy the false deity.

The plot is simple enough, and the analogy between the worship of the robot and Christianity is made crystal clear. You may predict the twist ending, given the story's title.

Three stars. YELLOW for religious themes.

Test to Destruction, by Keith Laumer

The leader of a group of rebels is captured by the forces of a dictator. They use a gizmo to retrieve information from his brain. Meanwhile, in what has to be the wildest coincidence of all time, aliens approaching Earth also probe his brain, in order to learn how to conquer humanity. The combination is explosive.

Looking at my synopsis, I get the feeling that this isn't the most plausible story in the world. Since it's by Laumer, you know it's a fast-moving adventure yarn. As a matter of fact, it's so lightning-paced that it makes his other stories look slow. The reader is left breathless. There's a serious point made at the end, but mostly it's just a thrill ride.

Three stars. GREEN for action, action, action.

Carcinoma Angels, by Norman Spinrad

The delightfully named Harrison Wintergreen is a guy who has always gotten what he wanted out of life. As a kid, baseball cards. As a young man, women. As an adult, tons of money. Now he's got terminal cancer. Can he triumph over the ultimate challenge?

As Ellison says in his introduction, this is a funny story about cancer. Sick humor, to be sure. Bad taste? Well, maybe, but I think you'll get a kick out of it.

Four stars. YELLOW for black comedy.

Auto-Da-Fé, by Roger Zelazny

Replace a bullfight with a battle between man and car, and you've got this tongue-in-cheek tale. All the details of a traditional corrida del toros are here, transformed to fit the automotive theme.

It's a one idea story, to be sure, but stylish.

Three stars. GREEN for elegant writing.

Aye, and Gomorrah . . ., by Samuel R. Delany

Space explorers are raised from childhood to be absolutely free of sexual characteristics. It's impossible to tell if they started off as female or male; they are completely neuter in every way. People known as frelks are attracted to them.

Amazingly, this is the first short story Delany ever sold, although others have already appeared in magazines. It's superbly written, as you'd expect, and explores sex and gender in completely new, profound ways.

Five stars. RED for unimagined forms of human sexuality.

20 20 Hindsight

Looking back at the book as a whole, it's clear that the level of stories is generally high, with a few clunkers. Not all the stories are dangerous, and they could have been published elsewhere. A few are truly groundbreaking. The Silverberg, Leiber, and Delany are the best. The Sturgeon is the biggest disappointment. The Farmer is going to start the most arguments. Put on your reading glasses, fasten your seat belt, and give it a try.



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[October 14, 1967] Threat level: High (October Galactoscope)

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by Gideon Marcus

We've got a triple (maybe quadruple) play for you this morning.  Dig in and enjoy the bounty!

Fail-Safe, by Eugene Burdick and Arthur Wheeler

With so many new books coming out, it's not often that we at the Journey can devote inches to older titles.  However, the original Fail-Safe has been staring me in the face for the past four years, and when I finally picked it up, I found I couldn't put it down.  Morever, the events depicted in the book are supposed to take place in 1967, so what better year to review it?

If you've seen the movie, then you know the plot of the book: mechanical malfunction causes a flight of bombers, responding to a false threat, to head irretrievably on an atomic raid of Moscow.  Indeed, the movie is in many ways a shot-for-shot rendition of the print version.  The differences pertain to the medium: we get several mini-biographies of the main characters, including the translator, the war-monger, the self-loathing SAC General, the commander of the Omaha base.  There are also occasional, Marooned-style depictions of the technology involved, in lurid detail.

But the events are the same, the dialogue is largely the same, the agony is the same.  Fail-Safe is the story of breakdown–of huge computerized networks failing for the disruption of tiny components, of people failing when confronted with clashing instructions.  Despite the fundamental tragedy of the story, it is ultimately a hopeful book.  It says that people made this death trap we live in, and only people can get us out of it.  And thankfully, there are still good people left in the positions that matter.

Indeed, the main divergence between the book and movie is that the two national leaders involved are not generic statesmen but real people: Kennedy and Khruschev.  This is a little jarring given that neither outlasted the book's publication by very long.  However, it's also fundamental to the plot.  Burdick and Wheeler ascribe a basic competence and goodness to these particular national leaders, qualities that keep the world from exploding when all factors say it should.

Were the two "K"s given too much credit?  Are LBJ and Kosygin men we can trust to steer us clear from the edge of disaster?  Those are questions that can only be answered by biographers in the first instance, and in the moment for the second.  May summits like the recent one in Glassboro ensure the latter never needs answering.

Four stars.

The Invaders, by Keith Laumer

Have you seen The Invaders?  It's a dopey riff on The Fugitive, instead of Richard Kimball running from the law for a murder he didn't commit, at the same time tracking down the real killer, it's about an architect running from alien invaders, while he also plans a counterattack.

The Fugitive was, itself, a riff on Route 66, about two hunks Kerouac-ing across the country doing odd jobs trying to find themselves.  The Fugitive works because Kimball has a reason to keep moving, but, as a doctor, a moral obligation to help people wherever he goes.  There's a reason the show lasted four years.

The Invaders doesn't work for lots of reasons — being an architect doesn't fundamendally involve protagonist David Vincent in anything.  The aliens are laughably inept, betraying themselves with crooked pinky fingers, and yet Vincent can never really get anyone to believe him.

It's a dumb show.

So, of course it has a tie-in novel.  Keith Laumer probably wrote this one in his sleep and happily pocketed the $2000 royalty to pay for his next trip to London.  It is cliché-ridden and tired, a typical potboiler with a B-movie plot and science decades out of date.

It's still better than the show.

It's better because Laumer's Vincent discovers the aliens through canny investigation rather than stumbling on them at an old diner (tracking several seemingly unrelated factory production orders; once the widgets are assembled, they make a ray gun).  It's better because Laumer is a competent action writer.  It's better because the book is highly divergent from the show, only retaining the name of the hero, the plot of invasion (even the aliens are quite different — their high temperature gives them away), and the William Conrad-esque narration that precedes and succeeds the three vignettes included in this first volume.

Three stars.  Why not?

Belmont Double B50-779

The second Belmont Double, poor imitation of the Ace Double follows a similar format to the first: one old novella combined with a newly commissioned one.

Doomsman, by Harlan Ellison

These days, Harlan's name is associated with avante garde stuff, the cutting edge of the New Wave laden with emotion and impact.

Back in the late '50s, when he was cranking out material for the profusion of SF digests, Harlan's work was of more variable quality.  Doomsman originally came out in the last issue (October 1958) of Imagination as The Assassin, and it is lesser Ellison.

A hundred years from now, the Western Hemisphere is dominated by the AmeriState, a totalitarian regime that ascended in the ashes of an atomic war.  Power is maintained by an assassin's corps, of which one Juanito Montoya, abducted from the Pampas of Argentine in his early manhood, is a typical example.  He can kill in a thousand different ways, endure most any climate, and he lacks even the rudiments of empathy or civilization.

But in one way, he is different from his peers, for he comes to learn that he is the son of Don Eskalyo, a princeling who would topple the AmeriState.  Once in possession of this knowledge, he resolves to stop at nothing to meet Eskalyo and join his forces.  Except, of course, that's just what the AmeriState wants him to do…

Doomsman is a brutal, unpleasant story, rife with torture and grossness.  In particular, I could have done without the introduction of the lone female character, the nude and violated (but still desirable, of course!) imprisoned young woman who proves the linchpin to finding Eskalyo.  Not only did I find her character a sop to the more lewd readers, but though Ellison makes it clear that she endured three months of the worst tortures without cracking, she succumbs to Montoya's techniques immediately.  And we never learn what these techniques are.  Obviously, it's an author's trick to imply how effective and monstrous these methods are, but it just comes off as implausible and a cheat.

The one thing Doomsman's favor is it is never dull.  That's not enough.  2.5 stars.

Telepower, by Lee Hoffman

Lee Hoffman is a name I've heard a lot in the fanzines, but I've never met her because she lives in Chicago.  It's always a delight to see a fan turn into a (filthy) pro, and the main reason I picked up this Double is because of her byline.

Her book takes place in and around the post-atomic ruins of Cleveland, which have settled into a sort of medieval complacency, its inhabitants placid and staid.  The defense of the city is left to the soldiers, an almost robotic breed of human, who live outside the city walls.  The main threat to Cleveland isn't other men–it's waves upon waves of rats.  The story opens up with such an attack, and we are introduced to Beldone, one of the many anonymous drones in the ranks.

Beldone, unlike his companions, develops a spark of curiosity, of individuality.  This terrifies him since such is a sign of illness, and the remedy for illness is execution.  We quickly learn that this spark is externally created: inside the city dwells the beautiful, and bored, Illyna.  In a fit of ennui, she developed the embers of a psychic power, initially telepathic in nature but ultimately controlling.  Beldone was her first contact, and through him, she seeks to learn more about the world she inhabits–and to find a way to control it.

There's a lot of disturbing stuff in this novel.  Folks who are turned off by depictions of violence, depictions of rats, and/or depictions of telepathic mind control may wish to give this piece a miss.  It's also not a happy story, even when it is triumphant.  But it is an interesting, well-written one, and I look forward to more of Hoffman's work.

3.5 stars.



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[July 4, 1967] Angels and Demons (August 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

The angels of our better nature…

It all started in January with a day of music and speeches called the Human Be-In in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Young people came from all over, and as many as 30,000 people attended. When spring break rolled around, more and more descended on the city’s Haight-Ashbury district and other places around the Bay Area. Alarmed by the growing “hippie problem”, the Mayor and Board of Supervisors tried to stem the tide, but only drew greater attention to the mass migration. The trickle has become a flood, and tens of thousands of “flower children” have come to San Francisco. In response to the city’s inaction, various groups and organizations formed the Council for the Summer of Love, creating a free clinic and helping newcomers to find food and housing.

The official poster created by Bob Schnepf

Music is important to the youth movement, and two events in the Bay Area proved very popular. On June 10th and 11th, radio station KFRC held the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival in the Cushing Memorial Amphitheater on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, with all proceeds going to the Hunter’s Point Child Care Center. Bands from the region and farther afield performed on two stages, while visitors could also wander through the arts and crafts fair in the woods around the theater. Some of the bigger names included Dionne Warwick, the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. The event appears to have gone off without incident.

The festival was delayed one week due to bad weather.

One week later, the Monterey International Pop Festival took place down the coast. Inspired by the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Big Sur Folk Festival, this brainchild of John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) and record producer Lou Adler was put together in just seven weeks. There was some overlap with the Fantasy Fair (Jefferson Airplane and the Byrds, for example), but there were some really big names as well, such as Simon and Garfunkel, the Animals, the Who, and of course the Mamas and the Papas. Sunday afternoon was given over to sitar player Ravi Shankar. The Who and Jimi Hendrix were afraid of being upstaged by the other, so they flipped a coin. Hendrix got to go second on Sunday evening, and after the Who finished their set by smashing their instruments, Hendrix topped them by setting his guitar on fire, smashing it and tossing the pieces into the audience.

This poster is a good example of the new psychedelic art style.

Summer officially begins with the solstice, when the sun reaches its northernmost point. In the pre-dawn hours on the 21st, a thousand or so hippies climbed the Twin Peaks in the heart of San Francisco to greet the sunrise with chants, drums and incense to inaugurate their hoped for Summer of Love. The sun even managed to burn through the fog around 7:00. Whether it really will be a summer of love or another long, hot summer like last year remains to be seen.

Hippie Randall DeLeon greets the sun and makes the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle.

… and the demons of our worst

This month’s IF is full of demons: personal, metaphorical and literal. But first, editor Fred Pohl makes the death of Worlds of Tomorrow official. The problem was distribution. Not enough news stands carried the magazine, and digests (unlike the slicks and their high ad rates) can’t get by on just subscription sales. So some of the features exclusive to Worlds of Tomorrow have been rolled into IF and the price is going up, both of which are reflected on the cover.

That’s not quite how black magic works in the new Blish novel, but it ought to be. Art by Morrow

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[June 20, 1967] Yours sincerely, wasting away (July 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

When I get older, losing my hair

Age afflicts us all.  I remember once having a beautiful mop of curly hair with a line that was two inches from my brows.  Now, the front is racing toward the back, and my only compsensation is the flourishing stuff coming out my ears.

Of course, people age in different ways.  Robert Preston sang in last year's musical hit, I do! I do!–"Men of forty go to town. Women go to pot," but in my experience, it's quite the opposite. I'd like to think that I'm "entering my prime," but who knows?

Science fiction magazines are going through a midlife crisis, too.  The oldest of them, Amazing, turned 41 this year.  But is it "delightfully witty" and "wise"? Has it "stood the test of time"?  In fact, the magazine that Gernsback built is consistently the lowest rated of the SF digests, packed mostly with cheap reprints.  How about Analog, neé Astounding, rapidly approaching its Jack Benny birthday (he's eternally 39, you see)?  Well, I suppose it depends on whom you ask, but I think it's safe to say that Campbell's mag is definitely in a rut, fossilized into the features it had some fifteen years ago.

Even the newer crop has had a stormy adolescence.  Galaxy is 17.  Once a brilliant child, it is now an often insipid teenager.  If it stays this staid, it may not make it to voting age.  And how about Fantasy and Science Fiction, which just left its minority this year?  The venerable mag, the most literary of its kind, has had an unstable family life, with revolving editors through its teen years.  As a result, the wrinkles are already showing in this 18 year old.

Ed Ferman seems to be aware of his institution's aging.  Indeed, this month's issue, which begins and ends with (and devotes half its words to) the subject of growing old, seems a deliberate acknowledgement of the predicament.


by Jack Gaughan

The Day Before Forever, by Keith Laumer

Steve Dravek, late a denizen of the 20th Century, finds himself on a street near the end of the 21st.  Only shreds of memory remain, enough to give him a sense of identity, but no idea how he arrived in the future (young again, when he had been middle aged) nor why the black uniformed mooks of Eternity Incorporated (ETORP) are after him.

After being beset by "the lowest of the low" in a park, he is apprehended by "Jess", self-proclaimed "highest of the low", for purposes unknown.  Dravek uses force and wit to turn the situation around, making Jess take him to the heart of ETORP's facility on Long Island in pursuit of the truth…and himself.

Forever uses the latest gimmick everyone seems to have latched onto lately: cryonics.  That's the idea that one can be flash frozen before death in the hopes that any malady one is suffering from can be cured in the future.  Fred Pohl, editor of Galaxy and IF has gone into it in a big way, but now it's showing up here, too.

Anyway, there are more twists and turns than a new Los Angeles freeway interchange, and a lot of it gets explained in the end rather than shown as the story goes, but it's a readable potboiler, the kind Laumer can crank out in his sleep.

Three stars.

Balgrummo's Hell, by Russell Kirk

60+ years ago, Laird Balgrummo was sealed in his decaying manor house after committing an unspeakable crime against humanity and nature.  Now the world is waiting for him to shuffle off this mortal coil…save for Horgan, a greedy thief who would rob Balgrummo of his fortune of paintings while he sleeps.

Except Balgrummo sleeps not.  He lurks.

There are no surprises in this story, which reads like something out of Weird Tales' early days.  But the telling is delicious. 

My favorite story of the issue: four stars.

Alter Ego, by Hugo Correa

If you could make an identical new you, one unhindered by all of your life's wrong choices, who would be the better person?  You, or the android duplicate?

More a philosophical piece than science fiction, I found it stayed with me.  Three stars.

Encounter in the Past, by Robert Nathan

On the other hand, Nathan's story of the rediscovery of a Mesozoic human civilization doesn't make a lot of sense.  I reread the short piece a few times, and I still can't make heads or tails of it.

Two stars.

The Master's Thesis, by David Madden

Worse still is this pointless piece about a Professor Swinnard and the young man who insists on afflicting him with his master's thesis.  The story goes 'round in circles as Swinnard is increasingly disarmed and discomfited by the student's rudeness and the haste with which he finishes his project…yet I am at a loss to understand whence stems the horror, nor what the final thesis is actually about.

Am I stupid?  Is the point obvious to anyone else?

One star.

Flight Between Realities, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Buck's poem from the standpoint of an omniscient being sipping her sherry is a bit hard to parse, but seems to be of great moment.

Three stars.

The Sea Monster and the Mayor of New York City, by Gahan Wilson

On the perils to a monster's digestion due to the consumption of a fraught metropolis. 

Frivolous.  Two stars.

Twelve Point Three Six Nine, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor explains the foolishness of associating significance to chance juxtapositions of numbers by creating his own, tying together the relation of the lunar and solar calendars to the Bible.

It's cute, and I found some of the historical bits interesting.  Three stars.

The Vitanuls, by John Brunner

In the early 21st Century, the birthrate has slackened.  But new births are not unknown, and as a kind of medical immortality is introduced, more and more babies are born healthy but vacant.  Void of intellect or animus.  Could there be a connection?

This story has a lot of problems.  Not only is the piece structurally flawed, telegraphing its ending from the beginning but taking forever to get there, but it also doesn't seem to understand how souls work.  Set in India, there is much reference to Hindu reincarnation and such.  But the story suggests that there is a limited number of human souls, and by cheating death, we're robbing the young of life. 

I'd always understood that, per Hinduism, animals and plants and…everything…had souls, all of which could serve in a human form.  Even if that were not the case, I think Brunner's math is off.  Yes, it's true that half of the people who've ever lived are alive today, but if the living outnumber the dead, it won't be because of immortality, but simple birthrate.  And does the store of human souls grow over time, or was it fixed, like the memory store of a mainframe, at a specific number deemed sufficient a million years ago, but now inadequate?

Two stars for this poorly thought out shock tale.

Will you still need me?  Will you still read me?

I understand summer is when magazines put out all their inferior stuff since readership is at its lowest ebbs during the dog days.  Still, if this latest issue (which scores just 2.7 on the Starometer) be any indication of where the magazine is headed, quality-wise, I have distinct concerns that it may never make it to the ripe old age of 64…


by Gahan Wilson



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[June 2, 1967] Uneasy Alliances (July 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

Persecution and division

It’s rarely discussed, but a major condition of the decolonization of Africa has been that the newly independent nations are expected to retain their old colonial boundaries. The stated reason is to prevent squabbling and even armed conflict over redrawing those boundaries, such as we’ve seen between Pakistan and India. It sounds good on paper; unfortunately, paper is where those boundaries were drawn, often with little regard for people living there and leaving major tribes and ethnic groups split by lines on a map. Add in the tendency of colonial administrations to favor one tribe over others and you have the basis for a lot of unrest.

Nigeria is proving to be a case in point. Economic problems, tensions between the Muslim north and Christian south, government corruption, and an election widely seen as fraudulent all came to a head in an attempted military coup at the beginning of last year. Although the coup failed, the military was left in charge, and military governors were placed in the four states. An attempt to create a more centralized government led to a counter-coup and the near dissolution of Nigeria. Under Western pressure, the new head of the government, Colonel Yakubu Gowon, restored the federal system.

Then pogroms in the north against the Igbo (a largely Christian tribe from Eastern Nigeria) and other eastern groups left as many as 30,000 dead and over a million refugees fled to the east. The strain on the east led to negotiations between Colonel Gowon and Eastern military governor Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu seemed promising, but have fallen apart. On May 27th, Gowon declared that Nigeria would be divided into 12 states (cutting the Igbo off from oil money). The same day Colonel Ojukwu declared the independence of Eastern Nigeria. As we go to press, it has been announced that the new country will be called the Republic of Biafra. Nigeria is unlikely to accept this assertion of independence.

l.: Colonel Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria. r.: Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu of Biafra.

Mediocrity strikes again

Similarly unstable is this month’s IF, full of shaky partnerships, from famous authors and vikings to complicated family politics. Some expect betrayal, others will find themselves surprised.

Joe Miller is the most fearsome warrior these vikings have ever seen. Art by Gaughan

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[May 2, 1967] The Call of Duty (June 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

[L]et us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.
– Abraham Lincoln, Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society

A duty to a higher power

On April 28th, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (whom many papers insist on calling by his former name, Cassius Clay) refused induction into the United States Army. In a matter of hours, the New York State Athletic Commission revoked his boxing license, and the World Boxing Association stripped him of his title. For those paying attention, Ali’s refusal came as no surprise. He had been classified as 1-Y (fit for service only in times of national emergency) due to his poor performance on the qualifying test, but when the army lowered its standards last year, he became subject to reclassification as 1-A. The draft board in Louisville Kentucky did so, and he appealed, seeking exemption as a Muslim minister (often incorrectly reported as conscientious objector status). The board denied the appeal in January, and Ali vowed to go to court. After moving to Houston, Texas, the champ again sought reclassification and was again denied.

Muhammad Ali is escorted from the induction center in Houston, Texas.

When called up, Ali appeared as ordered at the Houston induction center and participated in all the pre-induction activities. But when called to step forward for induction, he refused. He was taken aside and the consequences were explained, but he once again refused. After that, he signed a statement indicating his refusal and was escorted outside. He didn’t address the reporters and television cameras waiting for him, but handed out copies of a four-page statement indicating that he is aware of the penalties he faces, but that accepting induction is inconsistent with his “consciousness as a Muslim minister and [his] own personal convictions.” The case has been referred to the U. S. Attorney. If convicted, Mr. Ali faces a maximum of 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

A sense of duty

Like Muhammad Ali, almost everyone in this month’s IF is motivated by strong beliefs: their duty to king and country, humanity at large, or their own personal beliefs and obligations.

Uncle Martin and Tim (from My Favorite Martian) seem to have had a falling out. Actually, this is supposedly from Spaceman!
Art by Wenzel.

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[April 4, 1967] Transitions (May 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

A fumbled hand-off

Americans are taught that the true importance of the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1801 is that this was the first peaceful transfer of power between rival politcal parties in history. Whether or not that’s the case, such a transfer is seen in the modern era as an indicator of a successful democracy. Apart from in the white colonial governments in Rhodesia and South Africa, this has yet to occur in sub-Saharan Africa, but for a brief moment it looked as though it was going to happen.

On March 17th in Sierra Leone, the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party lost a close election to the All People’s Congress under Siaka Stevens. Four days later, Governor-General Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston swore Stevens in as the country’s new Prime Minister. Later the same day, Brigadier David Lansana staged a coup, ordering the arrest of Stevens and Boston and declaring martial law. In the wee hours of the 23rd, a counter-coup arrested Lansana and announced that the country would now be ruled by an eight-man National Reformation Council. Initially, they said that the new head of state would be Lt. Colonel Ambrose Genda, who was part of the Sierra Leonean mission to the U. N. He was quite surprised by the news, but as he boarded a plane in London on the 27th, it was announced that the head of the council would be Lt. Colonel Andrew Juxon-Smith, who was on the same flight. Had Stevens taken power and ruled within the constitution, Sierra Leone could have been an example to the rest of post-colonial Africa. Alas, it was not to be.


Siaka Stevens (top left), Governor-General Henry Josiah Lightfoot Boston (top right), Brigadier David Lansana (bottom left), Lt. Colonel Andrew Juxon-Smith (bottom right)

Steady state

There's not much variation in the quality of the stories in this month’s IF. It's more of a smooth plane with one small ding in it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but neither is it really good.

What are these robots up to? Art by Gaughan

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[March 10, 1967] Mediocrités, Slayer of Magazines (April 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Not with a Bang

A rising tide floats all boats, but a tidal wave swamps them.  16 years ago, Galaxy magazine was the vanguard of the Silver Age of Science Fiction, along with Fantasy and Science Fiction and Astounding leading a pack of nearly forty monthly/bimonthly/quarterlies.  By the end of the decade, we were down to just six mags, but the quality, by and large, was still there.

Now we're entering a new era.  The number of mags is the same, but the stories are mediocre most of the time.  Even the competently rendered ones feel like rehashes.  In a letter I received last week, the writer said that there are yet too many outlets for the current crop of talent to supply with quality stuff. 

I don't know that I agree, given that the British mags have folded and Amazing and Fantastic are mostly reprints these days.  Plus, Galaxy's sister mag, Worlds of Tomorrow, has gone irregular (and Milk of Magnesia is no cure for this illness).  No, I think there's some kind of general malaise in the genre.  Maybe it's competition from the real world.  Maybe it's higher pay-outs from the slicks.

No matter what the cause, we've got to find some way to get an influx of talent into this field.  The alternative is, well, more magazines like the April 1967 issue of Galaxy.


by Douglas Chaffee

A Vast Wasteland

Thunderhead, Keith Laumer

Editor Fred Pohl saved his best for first.  Laumer is a competent science fiction/adventure writer when he's not writing his increasingly tired satire, and Thunderhead is nothing if not a competent science fiction/adventure.

Lieutenant Carnaby has been more than twenty years in grade, stuck on the most frontierward of planetary outposts.  Indeed, it seems the Navy has forgotten all about him, since it was supposed to pick him up fifteen years ago.  The world he's on has slowly decayed to one dying settlement.  Yet, he remains attached to his duty, to maintain and, in an emergency, activate the beacon that will turn this rim of the galaxy into an effective defense grid.


by Gray Morrow

Said emergency occurs, with the formerly contained enemy Djann breaking out of their containment, the Terran ship Malthusa in hot pursuit.  Carnaby and a young friend begin their ascent of the snowbound peak on which the beacon rests, and the story alternates between the Lieutenant, the Djann crew, and the driving Commodore of the terran cruiser.

The writing is deft, the setup interesting, and the Djann particularly interesting and innovative.  On the other hand, the other characters are caricatures, and the resolution by-the-numbers. 

Thus, a pleasant three stars, but no more.

Fair Test, by Robin Scott

Two aliens land on Earth to resupply with fuel and food.  They are successful despite the efforts of American local law enforcement.  The end of the story is a bit of social commentary as the extraterrestrials note that light meat and dark meat taste the same.

I'd have expected this story in a lesser mag, circa 1954.  Not Galaxy.

Two stars.

For Your Information: The Orbits of the Comets, Willy Ley

It's no exaggeration that, for a long time, Ley's science articles were my favorite part of the magazine.  They have since gotten desultory.  This one, in particular, meanders all over the place and, in one particular table, is nonsensical.  I suspect a misprint.

Anyway, I think this is my first two-star review for Mr Ley.  It is a sad day.

The New Member, Christopher Anvil

It's also a sad day whenever Anvil's name appears in the table of contents.  It has been said that one can smell an Analog reject a mile away, and the stench of this one is profound.  It's about a fictional Third World island country called "Bongolia".  Said nation joins the United Nations and sets about trying to make a living by extorting the richer countries as payment for centuries-old crimes against their state.

There could be a satire here, albeit not in great taste given how recent (and not very well handled) decolonization has been.  Instead, it's just a bunch of unfunny cheap shots.

One star.

The Young Priests of Adytum 199, James McKimmey

Forty young men and women, the last survivors of a nuclear war, live in a coddled paradise in one of the many American shelters.  They do little more than eat and mate, save for the one oddball, Peter the Funny, who prefers the clarinet.  He comes to a sticky end for his noncomformity.

I guess the moral is "Never Trust Anyone Under 30".  Two stars.

The Purpose of Life, Hayden Howard

Could it be?  Have we finally reached the last chapter in the sage of the Esks?

For the past year (or has it been two, already?) we have been following the viewpoint of Dr.  Joe West, an ethnologist sent out in the 1960s to do a survey on Eskimos in the Canadian North.  There he discovered a new race of beings, an unholy hybrid of human and alien.  They look like Eskimos, but their pregnancies last but a month, and their children mature in just a few years.  These "Esks" quickly supplant their human cousins and threaten to outrun their food supply.  Luckily, the bleeding hearts of the world recognize the Esks as fully human and open their doors and purses to succor them. 

West, unable to convince governments of the Esk threat, unsuccessfully tries to sterilize the half-aliens with a disease of his own devise, but only succeeds in killing a few innocent humans.  He is then locked up in a padded cell, then put to sleep for fifteen years.  When he is awoken, he is dispatched to mainland China by the CIA.  Aided by telepathic control devices implanted in his legs, he is emplaced close to the Communist leader, Mao III, whose brain he takes hold over–for purposes unknown to Dr. West.  So begins the latest and longest installement.

This bit takes place on an Earth whose societies are already being rocked by Esk overpopulation.  In China, the few hundred relocated to the barren hillsides two decades ago now number more than a billion.  The vast Communist land is suffering the least ill effects thus far, as the import labor has produced a terrific farm surplus and as yet is not integrated with Chinese society.  In America, however, every household has an Esk slave…er…servant, a situation which cannot last much longer as the subordinate race will soon vastly outnumber the master.  In Canada, civilization has collapsed, and the cities are populated by starving bands of Esks.

None of this seems to bother the Esks, who endure everything with endless patience and joy.  They know that someday, "the Great Bear" will return to take them all back to the sky.  Such is imprinted on their racial memories. 


by Jack Gaughan

In China, Mao III's generals revolt, sealing the invalid leader in a mountain redoubt-cum-tomb along with his controller, Dr. West.  All efforts to curtail the Esk population so as not to outstrip the food supply meet with failure.  Only one option is left — to impress the hybrids into an operation to dig the thousands of feet through solid rock to the surface.

But there is a spark of anticipation in the air.  Will the Great Bear arrive before the Esks liberate themselves from their underground prison?  And if so, what will happen if they arrive at the surface with their brethren all departed?

It's really hard to properly rate this segment, and the series as a whole.  The premise is dumb, the conclusion rather vague and dissatisfying, and for the most part, Dr. West is either ignored or ineffectual, or both.

Yet, damned if I didn't find myself vaguely looking forward to this chapter.  Damned if I didn't read the current installment in one sitting despite having resolved to take a nap instead (I do like my naps). 

And damned if I didn't spend way longer on this review than I'd intended.

Call it 3 stars for this chapter and 2.5 for the whole thing.  I'm not sorry I read it, but I'm glad it's over.

Within the Cloud, Piers Anthony

I think this is the first solo piece by Mr. Anthony.  The premise of this vignette is that the faces we see in the clouds are actually faces, and they have something to say.

Trivial stuff.  Two stars.

Ballenger's People, Kris Neville

An insane fellow, whose fragmented mind is under the delusion that it is a polity of many parts rather than a single entity, becomes homicidal when threatened by "other nations" (i.e. other human individuals).

It started promisingly, but didn't really go anywhere.  Two stars.

You Men of Violence, Harry Harrison

Finally, a tidbit from a fellow whose work I often confuse with Keith Laumer's.  A pacifist on the run from military types figures out how to kill without being the killer.

Rather obvious and somewhat pointless.  Two stars.

Gasping for breath

Wow.  That wasn't very good, was it?  And with one of Pohl's major talents, Mr. Cordwainer Smith, gone to the ages, we really don't have much to look forward to.  At least until Messrs. Niven and/or Vance return. 

Or Pohl finds some new talent.  Maybe there's a large, mostly untapped demographic he could plumb…



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