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Book, Magazine

[November 7, 1964] Landslides and Damp Squibs (December 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

In Your Heart, You Knew He Was Wrong

It's been a month for dramatic political change.  In the Soviet Union, Khruschev was deposed after eight years in power, and the British Labor party came to the fore after thirteen years in the wilderness.  And in the United States, the reactionary politics of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater have been loudly repudiated: Lyndon Johnson has been elected President in the biggest landslide in recent memory.

On his coattails, Democrats have ascended to high offices around the country.  In the Senate, Robert Kennedy beat incumbent Ken Keating for the open New York seat, Joseph D. Tydings trounced incumbent James Glenn Beall in Maryland, and Joseph M. Montoya smashed appointed incumbent Edwin L. Mechem in New Mexico.  Only in California did former hoofer George Murphy win against the Democrat, Pierre Salinger, in something of an upset.  What's next for the Golden State?  Ronald Reagan as Governor?!

And in the House, Democrats picked up a whopping 37 seats.  This means that the party of Jackson and Roosevelt (#2) has not only the White House, but veto-proof control of both houses of Congress.  It's likely that The Great Society will continue unabated through the next two years.

Even in the science fiction world, revolutions are happening.  Avram Davidson is leaving his post at F&SF (thank goodness), and Cele Goldsmith, at the helm of Fantastic and Amazing, has gotten married. 

But with this month's IF, editor Fred Pohl's neglected third daughter, things are not only business as usual, they're a little worse…

The Enemy is Us


by Gray Morrow

When Time Was New, by Robert F. Young

We begin with a tale of time travel.  Howard Carpenter, a native of 2156 A.D. Earth, has gone back to the late Cretaceous in his "Triceratank", designed to fit in with the Mesozoic fauna.  His mission is to find out why there is a modern human skeleton lying in 80 million year old strata.

But once there, he finds two children, Marcy and Skip, who are on the run from kidnappers.  But these kids aren't time travelers — they're actually space travelers from a contemporary (to the far past) Martian civilization!


by Gray Morrow

Thus ensues an adventure whose style and subject matter would make for a fine kiddy comic or Danny Dunn adventure, but which is somewhat jarring for a grown-up mag.  Also, I find it highly improbable that a race of humans identical to those on Earth (specifically, the blonde, blue-eyed kind) would arise on Mars, and 80 million years ago, no less.  A slightly lesser quibble is the appearance of Brontosaurs; they were long extinct by the Cretaceous period. 

And then there's the relationship between the 32 year old Carpenter and the 11 year old, however precocious, Marcy.  It's all very innocent and largely on Marcy's part. I can't say more without spoiling the story, but in the end, we get a situation not unlike the reveal in The Twilight Zone episode, The Fugitive.  I didn't mind it all that much, but some may find it off-putting.

Anyway, I'm sure John Boston would give the story one star, two at best.  But Robert Young, even at his worst, is still a pretty good author, and despite the story's flaws, I did want to know what was coming next.

So, a low three. 

The Coldest Place, by Larry Niven

Niven, a brand new author, takes us to the coldest place in the universe, home to a most unique kind of lifeform.  The kicker, revealing the setting, is interesting, as are the various concepts Niven introduces in the piece.  On the other hand, there's really a bit too many ideas here for the short space allotted, so the story doesn't really go anywhere.

I have a suspicion that, given proper time to develop, this author may be one to watch. 

Three stars.

At the Top of the World, by J. T. McIntosh


by Nodel

Two hundred years after the last war, Gallery 71, deep underground, prepares for Ascension Day.  What awaits them on the surface?  Is there even a sky?  Or all the legends just mythical doubletalk?

It's a good setting for a story, not dissimilar to the author's previous 200 Years to Christmas, but the ending is both a fizzle and a letdown.  Also, I could done with less of the author's unconscious sexism.  No father admirers his daughter's "exquisite curves" and I would have expected a greater role for women in the piece than two teenagers of little consequence.

Another low three.

Pig in a Pokey, by R. A. Lafferty

Lafferty, whose middle name would be whimsy if it didn't start with an A., offers up a duel of wits between a porcine head-collector and the human who would claim the former's asteroid.

Neither foul nor fine (which makes it "fair", I guess), it's over before you know it.

Three stars.

The Hounds of Hell (Part 2 of 2), by Keith Laumer


by Ed Emshwiller

The bulk of the issue is taken up with the conclusion to Keith Laumer's latest novel.  Last time, John Brandeis was on the run from a horde of demonic dog things who assumed human guise and filched human brains.  Brandeis went so far as to have his body highly cyberneticized so that he could fight the hell hounds on an even footing.  With the help of the feeble-minded sailor, Joel, he managed to give them the slip.

But not for long.  Upon arriving in America, Brandeis' worst fears are realized: the aliens have taken over key positions of authority, probably throughout the world.  Worse, when he lures one of them to a remote spot in Colorado, in the hopes of ambushing and interrogating one of the invaders, Brandeis is, in turn, ambushed and killed.

And when he wakes up, it's in the body of a 70 foot tank, waging a war against other brain-run tanks on the Moon!


by Ed Emshwiller

Hounds of Hell has a lot of promising threads.  It could have been an exploration of what it is to be human in an increasingly inhuman body.  The robot tank angle, brilliantly explored in prior stories, could have been developed as a sort of prequel to those pieces.

The problem is, we never learn a damned thing about Brandeis, nor do we really care about the world that the Hell Hounds have taken over.  The only character with any substance is Joel, and he plays a minor role.  In the end, Hounds is a series of action scenes that aren't even up to the author's normally decent standard.

Two stars; two and a half for the book.

The Results

IF used to be Galaxy's experimental twin.  It was a magazine with rawer authors and more outré stories.  Now that Pohl has to spread his material three ways, IF seems to be the dumping ground for the least worthy stuff.

This month, at least, it wasn't worth the 50 cent cover price.  A poor issue to accompany the Christmas subscription renewal drive!

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Book, Conventions/Performances

[October 8, 1964] Through Time and Space (November 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

In the presence of greatness

This weekend, I attended a small gathering of SF fans in San Diego.  I'd been invited to give a talk on the first season of Doctor Who, a new science fiction show currently playing across the Atlantic in the UK.  While I've never actually seen any episodes (it doesn't air here, of course), thanks to the wonderful summaries of Jessica Holmes, and various promotional pictures and script transcripts I obtained, I was able to do a reasonable job of summarizing the Doctor's first year of adventures.

It appeared I wasn't the only one at this gathering who was familiar with Doctor Who — some enterprising fan had mocked up a full-size Dalek, one of the aliens featured on the show.  It even had a little engine in it!  Either that or the rope used to pull it along the floor was well-camouflaged…

What I absolutely did not expect was a surprise appearance from none other than Verity Lambert, herself — she is the youngest and only woman producer for the BBC, and she runs the production of Doctor Who. 

Does her presence in the States mean that her show will debut soon on American airwaves?  Stranger things have happened — after all, Danger Man (Secret Agent) made the jump in 1961, not to mention Supercar and Fireball XL5.

Fingers crossed!

The Issue at Hand

In the quiet spaces of the day, I pulled out my copy of the latest issue of IF, which clearly was supposed to have an October cover date, but thanks to problems with the printer, went out with one for November.  While this latest edition didn't have moments quite as stunning as those that transpired at the fan gathering, it was still worthy entertainment.


by Ed Emshwiller

The Hounds of Hell (Part 1 of 2), by Keith Laumer

We start on the baked desert city of Tamboula in the Free Republic of Algeria.  It is the early 21st Century, and this Mahgreb city is a latter-day Casablanca where intrigue abounds by night, and by day, warring Moroccans and Algerians drink together in an intoxicated armistice.  Enter Brigadier John Bravais, a secret agent posing as a journalist, sent to get the inside story on the North African conflict.  At first, the story reads like an Earth-bound Retief tale, with a smart-allecky agent quipping his way out of the hearts of the local authorities.

But in the middle of a battle-torn wasteland, John encounters something most horrifying — a wolf-headed, human-handed alien, fearsome and supremely powerful, appears and kills an Algerian officer with his mind, proceeding to surgically remove and store his brain. 


by Ed Emshwiller

The Brigadier is able to kill the alien, but when he returns to Tamboula to alert the authorities, he finds that the aliens are everywhere, in human guise, and with (apparently) android servants.  Now Bravais must make it back to the United States before he is captured…but who will he find when he gets there?

Keith Laumer is a facile action writer, and once he settles in, this piece is engaging.  The problem is, Bravais is a virtual cipher — his background, his personality, his motivations.  The setting is a mere thumbnail (unlike, say, the future Africa of Mack Reynolds).  And Laumer struggles with the bugaboo all writers (including me!) face when writing the first person viewpoint: excessive use of sentences starting with "I".

It may well be that this is a chopped down version, and when this two part serial be novelized, we'll get some expansion.  As is, Hounds is a decent adventure but will not be one of Laumer's enduring classics.

Three stars.

The Perfect People, by Simon Tully

Thirty years to finish a doctoral thesis?  It's possible, especially when the alien race you're studying remains stubbornly enigmatic.  The "symetroids" spend their day strolling and eating, making perfect circuits of their sea-side area over the course of several months.  They don't converse or use tools, yet their investigator is certain their is a pattern to their movements, a code to their sentience that he just needs a little more time to crack.  Sometimes perfection is perfectly impenetrable. 

Sadly, while this tale by neophyte Tully shows promise, its end does not pay off the beginning.

A high two stars.

The Ultimate Racer, by Gary Wright


by Ed Emshwiller

Newcomer Gary Wright's first work appeared in IF nearly two years ago.  Captain of the Kali was an interesting tale of naval combat on an alien world.  Wright's second work is more down to Earth, literally. 

In Racer, it is the 1990s, and auto racing has become truly "auto" — due to the lethality of the sport, humans have been banned from the driver seat, and cars are remote controlled or self-driving.  Among the sleek IBM-GMs and Volgas and Lotuses, one aging duo insists on racing their vintage 1980 Ferrarri.  But on the eve of the big race, one of the car's solenoids goes kaput, making telemetered driving impossible.

If you've read the classic Matheson story, Steel, then you'll recognize where this is going.  It gets there vividly and with great affection for the sport, but it also takes too a bit too long to reach the finish line.

Three stars.

The Diogenes Planet, by L. J. Stecher, Jr

How can a space merchant captain make a living if he's compelled to be 100% honest?  It all hinges on what truths he decides to tell…

If this shaggy dog tale is not one for the ages, there is certainly nothing unpleasant about it.  A good three stars.

Assassin & Son, by Thomas M. Disch

There's been much discussion here about how newcomer Tom Disch ranges from superb to, well, disappointingly less superb than he can be.  Rest easy — this is one of the good ones.

Around the far sun of Sepharad lies a hot world inhabited by the blob-like and telepathic Sephradim.  These seven-gendered aliens possess a particular racial quirk: when one is murdered, the killer augments their own powers with that of the victim.  For this reason, murder is specifically and rigorously outlawed.

By other Sephradim.

And so, a busy import business of human assassins has built up.  Highly esteemed and ritualized, the assassin tradition is a proud one, passed on from father to son.  But what role can a second-born have in such a system?  It's all a matter of opportunity.

Disch spins a beautiful tapestry here, creating truly alien extraterrestrials, and defining a unique culture that is as compelling as that of Frank Herbert's Dune World, developed with far fewer words.  My only complaint is that the novelette reads like the first few chapters of a book.  While being left wanting is usually a good sign, there is far too much left to be said!

Four stars…and fervent hopes for expansion.

Father of the Stars, by Frederik Pohl


by Ed Emshwiller

So far as I know, Fred Pohl is the only editor who contributes significant amounts of his own material to his magazines.  Far from being a self-aggrandizing enterprise, the issues in which his stuff appears are generally the better for it.

This concluding novelette features the last days of the man who gave humanity the stars, spending his fortune and life to fund 26 slower-than-light generation ships, only to see the development of FTL drives before any of the slowboats make planetfall.  What place can this superseded man have in history?

While Pohl never turns in a bad piece, there's not a great deal to this story.  This is a shame because the premise is fantastic, and I'd love to see a novel that expands on this theme.  Imagine generations of humans living and dying in their tiny mobile world, and once they reach their destination, it's already fully inhabited.  I know there have been stories that touch on the subject, but I don't think any have made it the central premise.

Add to that the superfluous bits about spacers grafting their consciousnesses to chimpanzees while their bodies remain in suspended animation, and the piece feels both undeveloped and misfocused.

But not bad.  Three stars.

Things to Come

Between meeting Ms. Lambert and exploring the wealth of worlds offered in this month's IF, October has started with a bang.  I can't wait to see what wonders the coming weeks have to offer!

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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 18, 1964] Split Personality (October 1964 IF)

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


by Gideon Marcus

Which one is it?

It's election season, and the commercials are already out in force.  Maybe it's just my neighborhood, but it seems that LBJ is crowding the airwaves a lot more than Barry Goldwater at this point.  One effective ad notes several times the GOP candidate has made mutually contradictory statements and asks "How is a Republican supposed to note on his ballot which Barry he's voting for?"

This piece is a pretty low blow.  Make no mistake — there's no way I'm voting for a reactionary this November, but if there's one thing one can say for Barry, he's consistent.  I'd rather see some positive messaging.  Lord knows LBJ has plenty of successes to run on.

But while Goldwater's split personality may all be a Madison Avenue construct, the schizophrenic nature of IF, Worlds of Science Fiction magazine is very real.  IF has always been Galaxy's experimental little sister, the place where the more offbeat stories, the lesser known writers are featured.  As a result, it is the more variable mag, with higher highs and lower lows, often within the same issue. 

This dual nature is perfectly represented in microcosm with the latest October 1964 issue:


by Paul E. Wenzel (note the obscured "September 1964")

The first thing you might notice is that the issue was clearly intended to have a September date.  IF went to a monthly schedule in August (after years as a bi-monthly), but there was trouble at the printers, and things got delayed.

When the issue finally came, it was very much a mixed bag, with trouble appearing right from the start:

The Castle of Light, by Keith Laumer


by Jack Gaughan

Within the pages of IF, Keith Laumer's name is inextricably linked with that of his creation, Retief, that sardonic super-spy in diplomat's clothing.  What began as a more tongue-in-cheek version of Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" is becoming a tired series of retreads.  This particular story involves an invasion by the squamous Groaci, who take legal possession of a planet by landing 50,000 troops in cities abandoned by the native populace during a global religious ceremony.  The piece rambles, and the jokes — like the characters — are flatter than usual.

Two stars.

Mad Man, by R. A. Lafferty

The ever-whimsical Lafferty offers up a piece about androids who only attain genius capability when given their daily dose of anger enzyme.  Said extraction is provided by a group of human individuals kept thoroughly miserable through poor working conditions and constant aggravation by paid actors.  But when one android develops a kinship for her donor, the formerly angry man's heart melts, and his biochemistry becomes useless.  Can a replacement be found?

I imagine some will like this story.  I found it contrived, cruel, and rather pointless.

Two stars.

Gremmie's Reef, by Hayden Howard


by Virgil Finlay

In which a teenage surfer is delighted to find a perfect wave break on a formerly unpromising beach, thanks to a new reef.  Turns out the reef is an alien biological probe, and as might be expected, it's not a friendly one.

The surfing scenes are nicely rendered, but the third-person omniscient viewpoint, the shrieky characters, and the Twilight Zone ending all suggested a young novice of a writer.  Imagine my surprise when I checked my notes and found that Hayden Howard has been writing for more than a decade, and I've even covered one of his stories before!

Nice try, but it's another two.

Rescue Mission, by Kit Reed

Science teacher goes on sabbatical to the mountains and finds his cottage besieged with bugs.  Turns out they are the servants of Mavna, the alien beauty who resides one cottage over, and she is using the crawlies to send the prof a message: (paraphrased) "Help me fend off these three oafs I'm staying with so I can sacrifice myself for the operation of our interstellar matter transmitter!"

Reed, an author I'm quite fond of, has written exclusively for F&SF since she started half a decade ago.  This rather silly piece would fit better in that magazine.  That it wasn't published there is not surprising — it's probably the weakest story Reed has produced.

Two stars.

Monster Tracks, by Robert E. Margroff

The last piece of short fiction in the issue is by a genuinely new author, about a boy raised in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by aliens.  They came in "peace", disguised as tourists, bringing gifts and cute pets, but it was all a ploy.  Their gifts were bombs, their luggage was guns, and their pets are poison.  Our young protagonist is almost taken in by a cute rabbit-like creature before being saved by his savvy uncle.

Not much to this one.  Two stars.

Farnham's Freehold (Part 3 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

"Where's the split?" I hear you ask.  So far, this issue has been a solid disappointment — how could it be a mixed bag?

Well, editor Fred Pohl got a ringer.

Robert Heinlein is one of the masters of the field with dozens of classic titles to his name.  To be sure, his record has been tarnished a bit lately by such substandard works as Stranger in a Strange Land and Podkayne of Mars.  Moreover, the first installment of his latest serial, Farnham's Freehold, got off to a stultifying start.

But then it got better.  In Part 1, Hubert Farnham and his family (including his house-servant and his side-girlfriend) are whisked thousands of years into the future thanks to a new Russkie bomb.  That first bit reads like a cross between a libertarian screed and the Boy Scout Handbook.  But in Part 2, we meet the inheritors of the atomically ravaged Earth, the dark-skinned peoples of Africa and India.  Hugh and co. are made privileged slaves — except for Joseph, Hugh's servant.  His Black skin makes him a de facto member of the ruling caste, and he is afforded the privileges thereof.  We learn a lot about the new society, and this section is genuinely interesting.

Part 3 more-or-less sticks the landing.  It is all about Hugh's attempt to escape his gilded cage along with mistress Barbara and their newly born twin sons.  While his first attempts end in failure (and this part is not unlike the middle section of Have Spacesuit Will Travel — thrilling but ultimately pointless), Hugh's kindly master ends up sending him and his family back in time to just before the Bomb goes off, and they have a second chance at life.

It's a thrilling page-turner, and I liked the central message: decadence and depravity have nothing to do with color or national origin.  It all boils down to Lord Acton's dictum, "Power corrupts".  I especially appreciated that the story recognized the unequal status of Joseph, and does not condemn him for throwing his lot in with America's new rulers.  Whatever loyalty Joe had to Hugh, he has found his Earthly paradise — unfair to others, perhaps, but wasn't that just after a lifetime of discrimination?  Hugh is dismayed, but not surprised.  After all, whatever his libertarian aspirations, he was part of the problem.

I'd give this last part five stars except that the ending is awfully abrupt.  All told, I think the novel earns an aggregate of 3.75 stars and, if you can get through the beginning, suggests a return to form of the author.

Making Whole

This latest issue of IF reminds me of Analog a few years back, when the serials were generally good and the other material sub-par (I note with bemusement that while Heinlein's Farnham would fit stylistically in Analog, the editor of said mag would never allow a storyline where the Whites are slaves…) When all is computed, the magazine actually scores above the 3-star middle, which tells you how good the second half is compared to the first.

In any event, the vice of a split-personality magazine is also its virtue: if one can always count on one or more stories not being very good, one can also expect at least one nugget of gold. 

And wasn't my entire state founded on the search for such nuggets?

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Book, Magazine

[July 6, 1964] Busy Schedule (August 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

SFlying Eastward

Today saw the Journey in the wilds of Utah, attending a small science fiction conclave out in the lovely summer desert of Deseret.  What could have impelled us to make another plane trek less than a week after having returned from a long sojourn in Japan?

Well, we were invited.  The things one does for egoboo…

Nevertheless, duty continues, and so I find myself pounding the typewriter keys early in the morning (to the chagrin of the folks in the neighboring rooms, no doubt) so you can read all about the first SF digest of the month, the August 1964 IF.

The Issue at Hand


by Fetterly

The big news is that IF is a monthly now after years and years as a bimonthly.  Lord knows where editor Fred Pohl is getting the material for this increased frequency, especially given that he also helms the sister books, Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow. Let's see how the new mag holds up under the compressed schedule:

The Slaves of Gree, by C. C. MacApp


by Gray Morrow

Young Jen wakes up spluttering in a pounding sea, his memories forgotten, with the trace of a foreign name in the back of his mind.  Who is "Steve Duke" and what is his relation to Jen?  The hapless jetsam of a man is rescued by his own kind, fellow slaves to the great Gree.  Jen soon gets back his memories, remembering that he belongs to the happy, harmonious Hive, a burgeoning galactic power. 

Or does he?

Turns out Jen is a double-agent, quite literally.  He has two personalities, which swap as needed.  One is one of the Hive's most promising subalterns, a puissant veteran of the space corps.  The other is Major Steve Duke, a rather unsavory Terran sent to topple the Hive from within.

There are the makings of a great story here, but it needs a lot of polish.  So much of the tale is told mechanically.  At one point, I counted ten sentences in a row beginning with "He [verbed]…"  Plus, I kept expecting a twist at the end, but instead, it's just a straight adventure story with (I felt) the wrong personality winning. 

Two stars, just shy of three.

A as in Android, by Frances T. Hall

A middle aged rebel against the system encounters an android with his face and imprinted with his memories – memories he'd sold for some quick cash a decade and a half before.  Has the robot, who was exiled to the hell planet called Cauldron, come for revenge or something else?

Frances Hall's first SF story (to my knowledge) is a solid triple.  Four stars.

The Prince and the Pirate, by Keith Laumer


by Nodel

The latest Retief story sees our favorite interstellar diplomat/super spy thwarting the topple of a monarchy.  Neither the best nor the worst of the stories in the series, it entertains reasonably.  Three stars.

The Life Hater, by Fred Saberhagen

How do you convince a machine that biological life is superior?  And in the parley between human and sentient, life-hating battleship, who is playing who?

Fred Saberhagen continues to impress with his excellent tales of the Berserkers — sentient dreadnoughts who scour the galaxy, ridding it of biological infestations.

Four stars.

Farnham's Freehold (Part 2 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

Last up is the latest installment of Heinlein's most recent novel.  Last time, Hugh Farnham, a libertarian, nudist cat-lover (no resemblance whatsoever to his creator!) ducked into a bomb shelter with his family when the Russkies started to nuke America.  Instead of dying in the holocaust, however, Farnham et. al. found themselves transported to a virgin version of their world, one in which people had never existed.  Or so they thought.

At the beginning of this month's narrative, other people show up — technologically advanced black men who enslave the Farnhams (except for their house servant, Joe, who is black) and bring them to the Summer Palace of Ponse, Lord Protector of the region.  It turns out that this isn't an alternate universe, but rather some two thousand years in the future.  Descendants of the Africans now rule the world in a static society in which the whites are slaves.  Hugh must use his wits to carve a place for himself in this society before he is eliminated (or worse!) for trespassing.

This second part holds up a lot better than the first.  Near the end, we learn that there are still free savages hiding in the Rocky Mountains, an Part 3 will likely feature some kind of Farnhem-led insurrection.  All very patriotic and appropriate for Independence Day.

Four stars.

Summing Up

Truth to tell, I'd been dreading the Heinlein and leery of the rest of the issue.  In the end, though, Pohl managed to put together a readable (if not stellar) 132 pages of SF.  I will definitely be keeping my subscription!

Let's just hope that he…and I… can keep up this busy schedule.

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Magazine

[June 12, 1964] RISING THROUGH THE MURK (the July 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Wishing Waiting Hoping

Can it be . . . drifting up through the murk, like a forgotten suitcase floating up from an old shipwreck . . . a worthwhile issue of Amazing?

You certainly can’t tell by the cover, which is one of the ugliest jobs ever perpetrated by the usually talented Ed Emshwiller—misconceived, crudely executed, and it doesn’t help that the reproduction is just a bit off register.


by Ed Emshwiller

Mindmate, by Daniel F. Galouye

This hideous piece illustrates Mindmate, an amusingly hokey long novelet by Daniel F. Galouye, an improvement over his last two pieces in Amazing if not up to the standard of his Hugo-nominated novel Dark Universe.  In the near future, the Foundation for Electronic Cortical Stimulation, a/k/a the Funhouse chain, is raking it in selling ersatz experience, but is being chivvied by the Hon. Ronald Winston, chairman of the House Investigative Subcommittee on Cultural Influences, who thinks the Funhouses are addictive and should be stopped. 


by Ed Emshwiller

So the Funhousers do the only sensible thing—they kidnap Winston and, before killing him corporeally, use their technology to install him as a secondary personality in the brain of protagonist Sharp, who has been surgically altered to be a dead ringer for Winston.  It’s Sharp’s job to subvert the Subcommittee’s investigation, though he’s actually thinking of playing a double game. 

Sharp’s access to Winston’s memories and habits permits him to impersonate Winston quite successfully, to the point where he sometimes wonders whether he or Winston is really in charge.  And that, along with his mixed motives, sets the theme for the story: he’s not the only one playing a double game, or the only one with a double personality and questions about who is dominant. The attendant rug-pulling is executed reasonably well, though the author cheats a little: which personality emerges as dominant seems determined by plot needs and not by any identifiable aspect of the invented technology.  And it’s all acted out in the slightly incongruous context of a gangland melodrama.  But it’s sufficiently well turned and entertaining to warrant some generosity.  Four stars.

Placement Test, by Keith Laumer


by Virgil Finlay

There are two other novelets.  Keith Laumer’s Placement Test is one of his aggressively dystopian pieces, similar in degree of oppression but much different in mood from The Walls in the March 1963 Amazing, and less effective.  In a hyper-stratified future society, protagonist Maldon, who has done everything by the book, is excluded from his chosen career path through no fault of his own, relegated to Placement Testing for a menial future, and, if he doesn’t like it, Adjustment (of his brain). 

Instead of accepting his fate, he rebels, and through a combination of chutzpah and chicanery manipulates the rigid and stupid system to get what he wants . . . only to be told (here’s a revelation as massive as the cliche involved) that it was all a set-up, his rebellion was the real placement test, and he’s going to be a Top Executive (sic).  The hackneyed gimmick is offset by Laumer’s usual propulsive execution, so three stars for competence.  But if this is Laumer’s placement test . . . he’s not quite as promising as we might have thought from The Walls, It Could Be Anything, and others. 

A Game of Unchance, by Philip K. Dick


by George Schelling

The third novelet is Philip K. Dick’s A Game of Unchance, set among colonists on a Mars every bit as unrealistic as Ray Bradbury’s, but much more depressing.  A spaceship lands at a settlement, promising a carnival: “FREAKS, MAGIC, TERRIFYING STUNTS, AND WOMEN!”—the last word painted largest of all.  But the colony has just been fleeced by another carnival ship!  This time, though, the colonists have a plan: their half-witted psi-talented Fred can go to the carnival and win the games with the most valuable prizes.

The prizes turn out to be dolls with intricate internal wiring (microrobs, they’re called), which attack and escape, and later prove bent on harm to the colonists, wiring up the local fauna and the livestock.  The UN says the colonists will have to evacuate while they flood the area with poisonous gas; then a higher-powered UN guy shows up and says that they will probably have to evacuate Mars entirely in the face of this extraterrestrial invasion, for that is what it is.  At story’s end, yet another carnival ship has shown up—this one with prizes consisting of little mechanical devices claimed to be “homeostatic traps” that will catch the little things the colonists can’t catch themselves—and at the end, they are falling for it. 

In outline, this sounds like a tight little piece of irony, but on the page it’s quite atmospheric.  Dick has become hands down SF’s master of dreariness.  (“The night smelled of spiders and dry weeds; he sensed the desolation of the landscape around him.”) But more than that, he is a master of a particular kind of horror, the horror of being trapped, not necessarily physically, but in events and situations that can only have a bad end and that his characters cannot turn away from.  The fact that some of the situations (like this one) make very little sense does not detract from their power; this is a sort of dream logic at work.  It doesn’t work for everybody, but for my taste, four stars.

The Mouths of All Men, by Ed M. Clinton, Jr.


by McLane

Ed M. Clinton is a very occasional SF writer, with eight stories scattered over the past decade, almost all in second-tier magazines.  In his short story The Mouths of All Men, Soviet and American astronauts are launched simultaneously, intending to meet in space and return together in a show of brotherhood, but while they’re en route someone triggers World War III, destroying humanity.  So they match velocities, dock, and immediately try to kill each other; then they calm down, show each other their pictures of their now incinerated families, inscribe a proclamation on their viewport, and purposefully botch re-entry so they’ll be killed on the way down.  This is more of a harangue than a story—not a badly done harangue, but the sentiments are quite familiar to SF readers, and starting to get that way for everyone else.  Two stars.

The Scarlet Throne, by Edward W. Ludwig


by Blair

The Scarlet Throne by Edward W. Ludwig, a little more prolific but about as obscure as Clinton, is another Message story, this one less well done than Clinton’s.  Esteban, the patriarch of a poor Mexican family who lives near a desert rocket launching facility in the US, is troubled by the fact that space is being conquered while his family and his neighbors still lack indoor plumbing, and decides to take his message to the launch site where the President will be in attendance.  He doesn’t get far.  The story ends with a crude but appropriate joke.  The worthiness of the message is overtaken by the story’s heavy-handedness and the rather patronizing portrayal of the Mexican family.  Two stars.

Operation Shirtsleeve, by Ben Bova

Ben Bova soldiers on with Operation Shirtsleeve, discussing how to transform Venus and Mars so we can walk around in our shirtsleeves on them—i.e., terraform them, though Bova avoids this term for some reason.  Instead, he uses “shirtsleeve” as a verb at least once.  I don’t think that usage will stick.  Anyway, the answers, respectively, are bombard Venus with algae and bombard Mars ith energy and hydrogen.  (I am simplifying a little bit.) It’s the usual fare of interesting information presented dully. 

Bova does venture outside his specialties with one observation: “While the moon has some political and perhaps even military advantages, Mars is too far away for any nation to attempt to reach single-handedly.  Manned expeditions to Mars will probably be international efforts supervised by the United Nations.” I wonder if he’s giving any odds.  Bova then concludes: “The real question is: Why bother?  That is a question that can only be answered by the men who actually land on Mars.” I would think that the people who will pony up the trillions of dollars or other currency needed to pay for this project, and their representatives, might have something to say about it too.  But the fact that Bova is even asking this question gets him a grudging three stars.

In Conclusion

So: nothing terrible, everything readable, and a couple of items distinctly above average.  Celebrate! . . . while you can. 

Next month . . . Robert F. Young.

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




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[February 9, 1964] Bargain Basement (March 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

Value Shopping

The price of science fiction digests has steadily gone up over the years.  In the early 50s, the standard cost was 35 cents.  I think the last hold-out at that price point was Fantastic.  Now Galaxy and Analog cost four bits, and the cheapest mags go for 40 cents.  Still, that latter price is a steal when the fiction is all good. 

IF is one of the lower rent mags, but whether or not the March 1964 IF gives you value for your money…well, you'll have to read on to find out:

The Issue at Hand


Cover by Norman Nodel

In Saturn's Rings, by Robert F. Young

Every author has their own quality curve.  Some, like Daniel Keyes, explode onto the scene with a masterpiece and then spend the rest of their career trying to live up to it.  Others start off-key but only improve over time (perhaps Rosel George Brown fits this category, though I've not read her very earliest stories.  Randy Garrett and Bob Silverberg might fit, too.) Still others oscillate between greatness and crap (viz. Poul Anderson). 

Robert F. Young is yet another kind of author.  He started decent, rose to stunning heights with pieces like To Fell a Tree, and then descended into mediocrity, mostly recycling fairy tales and myths. 

Take Rings, for example.  A old man named Matthew North comes back from a far planet, his hold full of the waters of the fountain of youth.  His employer, Zeus Christopolous IX, has built an Attic Greek themed Elysium on the Saturnian moon, Hyperion, populated by robots who look like Alexander the Great, Pindar, Helen of Troy, etc.  Zeus is absent when North returns, but his wife, Hera, demands receipt of the cargo.  She undertakes to threaten, cajole, and seduce the elixir out of Matthew.  She almost succeeds, but then Matthew finds that Hera has done away with her husband, Clytemnestra-style, and he calls the cops instead.


Nice illo by Lawrence, though

It's all very moody and metaphorical, but I never got much out of it — and there are few folks who dig the classics like I do.  Two stars, and a chorus of "Woe!  Woe!  Woe!"

Guardian, by Jerome Bixby

This short story is depicted by this month's striking cover.  In brief, an archaeologist and his assistant land on Mars and discover the robotic guardian that defeated the armies of two invading worlds.  If I didn't know better, I'd say this was a deliberate send-up of pulp style and themes, up to and including a Mars with a breathable atmosphere and degenerate post-civilized natives, a "Planet X" that exploded into the Asteroid Belt, and even the use of the word "cyclopean" (although Bixby uses it to mean "one-eyed" rather than "really big"). 

Send-up or not, it doesn't really belong in the pages of a modern magazine.  Two stars.

Almost Eden, by Jo Friday

This month's new author wrote about a planet whose dominant life form has been pressured by evolution to live as four different creatures simultaneously.  Each is specialized for a particular purpose — hunting, digestion, food storage, and…well, you'll figure it out soon enough. 

It's good, though a little rough around the edges, and I can't shake the feeling I've seen this gimmick before.  Help me out?

Three stars.

The City That Grew in the Sea, by Keith Laumer


Some typically Gaughan work — looks like something out of Clarke's The Sea People

I find myself no longer looking forward to Laumer's stories of Retief, the super-spy who works for the ineffectual Terran Confederation.  This one's not bad, really, about a couple of acquisitive agents and their plan to commit genocide on a water-dwelling race to get access to their gold.  And I appreciated that the adversary race, the Groaci, are not universally bad guys.  But I'm just getting tired of the schtick.  I feel like Retief now hamstrings Laumer as opposed to enabling him.

Three stars.

What Crooch Did, by Jesse Friedlander

Crooch was a promoter who revived the increasingly staged art of "professional" wrestling and evolved (devolved?) it into gladiatorial combat.  This is his story.  All four pages' worth.

Two stars.

Miracle on Michigan and How to Have a Hiroshima, by Theodore Sturgeon

There's nary a peep from editor Fred Pohl this bi-month.  He's probably passed out from having to edit Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow as well as this mag.  Instead, we've got a pair of short observations from Ted Sturgeon.  The first is a paean to the twin Marina Towers in Chicago, perhaps a preview of the arcologies of the future. 

The second is a prediction that the next big scientific breakthrough that will revolutionize the world will come in the field of psychology, maybe something to do with hypnotism.

Your guess is as good as his.  Three stars.

Three Worlds to Conquer (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


McKenna's stuff is serviceable, if not exciting

Finally, we get the second half of Anderson's latest book.  There are two parallel threads that run through it.  Firstly, we have a renegade Naval fleet that has seized control of the Jovian system of moons.  At the same time, down on the surface of Jupiter, the evil Ulunt-Khuzul people have besieged the territory of the peaceful Nyarrans.  Each beleaguered group has its champion: the Ganymedans have a middle-aged man named Fraser; the Nyarrans have a plucky resister called Theor.  And, thanks to the neutrino radio link between them, they are the key to each other's success.

Part 2 was better than Part 1, which was turgid and unreadable.  I still found the depiction of Jovian life both unrealistic as well as overly conventional.  Fraser's story is interesting, but the interactions between him and his partner, the turncoat (but not really!) Lorraine, are hackneyed in the extreme.  This was really brought home to me when my daughter, the Young Traveler, showed me a story she'd just written.  Her characters were better drawn than Fraser and Lorraine — and she's only 14!

Anderson can do better, has done much better.  That's what makes churned out stuff like this so disappointing.

Two stars for this installment, one and a half for the whole thing.

Summing up

Was this month's IF worth 40 cents?  I mean, you get what you pay for, right?  I suppose I'm happy for the introduction to Jo Friday, and I'm glad the Anderson didn't end terribly.  But Fred Pohl really needs to start saving the good stuff for the neglected sister of his trio…

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[January 8, 1964] A Taste of Homely (February 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Lost that Zing

It's tough to get out of a rut.  After all, you went through all the trouble of digging the trench in the first place — why expend extra effort getting out of it?

But the fact is, the house that H.L. Gold built in 1950, the superlative Galaxy Science Fiction digest, has gotten pretty stale lately.  Sure, the authors are still household names, but the works aren't their best.  Maybe Editor Pohl, who succeeded Gold a couple of years ago, is starved for material given that he maintains an industry record of three simultanteous mags.  Or perhaps Galaxy just doesn't have the cachet (or the budget to pay authors) of F&SF or Fantastic.

Maybe it's just a slow patch.  Anyway, take a gander at the February 1964 Galaxy and see what I mean:

The Issue at Hand

Grandmother Earth, by J. T. McIntosh

It was just a couple of months ago, in Poul Anderson's Conversation in Arcady, that we last saw the a decadent, paradisical Earth visited by more vigorous colonists.  McIntosh's variation on the theme features a less happy homeworld, one on which humans have given up for lack of challenge, and the sum population of Earth is reduced to a few tens of thousands stretched along France's idyllic Mediterranean coast.  When the last efforts at changing the status quo from within founder, it us up to a pair of extraterrestrial Terrans to come up with a solution.


(I have to wonder if this picture is the main reason the story was accepted…

McIntosh is a pretty good writer, though his best days seem far behind him.  The pacing and execution are engaging even if the plot is hackneyed.  What really tips the balance from four to three stars is the utterly unnecessary exposition at the end.

Hence: Three stars.

A Bad Day for Vermin, by Keith Laumer

A wormlike alien lands in a small Arkansan town, but before it can open discussions with the citizens, a ramshackle exterminator shoots it dead.  A trial ensues to determine whether or not the extraterrestrial counts as a person such that the killer can be tried with murder.  Ultimately, the alien is classified as a person and the exterminator, excluded from the definition, is labeled vermin — and exterminated.

Summarized like that, it sounds like a pretty good story.  It's not.  Unpleasant and preposterous, Laumer must have dashed this one off for a quick buck.  Two stars (if that).

Shamar's War, by Kris Neville

When the completely humanoid inhabitants of a another planet refuse Earth's entreaties to formally ally, humanity sends a spy to foment rebellion and install a more friendly government.  The aliens are under a dictatorship, you see, and Earth deems them ripe for a bit of Democracy.  When efforts to install a formal voting system fail, the aliens come up with a more brute force option: selective boycotting of goods nonessential to life but essential to the economy.

It's hard to believe this piece was written by a veteran author, one who has produced several excellent stories over a career lasting more than a decade.  This piece is filled with short, unncompelling sentences; the characterization is nonexistent; and the exposition is endless.  The aliens aren't at all, and the solution to the story's puzzle is laughably simplistic.  I have to wonder if this wasn't an early piece of work that Neville had stuffed in a desk somewhere and which Pohl accepted out of desperation.

In any event, two stars.

The Early Days of the Metric System, by Willy Ley

Our favorite German rocket scientist had been going through a lackluster period, but this non-fiction article on the origin of standard weights and measures, though in some ways overlapping an old F&SF article by Dr. Asimov, is entertaining and informative.  This is the Willy that compelled me to start my subscription to Galaxy umpteen years ago.  5 stars.

Oh, to Be a Blobel!, by Philip K. Dick

Here's another human-sent-to-spy-on-aliens story, except this one takes place after the espionage.  It features a young man whose physical form was altered to match that of the invading amorphous Blobels.  Though promised to be reconditioned back to human physiognomy, the fellow finds himself reverting to Blobel form half the day, making his life thoroughly miserable.

Luckily for him, the other side had spies, too, and some of them are having similar readjustment trouble.  Our hero marries a young female Blobel spy, and all is well…for a while.  But feelings of inadequacy (she is smarter and more successful than he) and the hybrid nature of their children cause rifts.  Ultimately, the couple must choose between love and individual fortune.

This is a story that shouldn't work, ludicrous as it is in its premise.  But it's Dick, and it does. 

Four stars.

The Awakening, by Jack Sharkey

Imagine being one of hundreds preserved in suspended animation against a global catastrophe, only to wake up countless ages after the planned date.  Your machines are rusted, your elders rotted, and the world you knew has drastically changed.  How would you feel?  What would you do?

This story belongs in the "Color Me Surprised" department.  While the plot of the story is not particularly innovative, the execution is perfect — a sharp increase in quality from Jack Sharkey's usual output.

Four stars.

The Star King, by Jack Vance

In the last installment of The Star King, a fellow named Gersen was tracking down the "Demon Prince," Grendel, one of the Galaxy's most notorious crime bosses.  The trail had led Gersen to a university on the civilized world of Alphanor in search of the patron who had commissioned a survey of an Eden-like world far Beyond the edge of civilization.  For Gersen had every reason to believe that this patron was Grendel, especially after he killed his surveyor for refusing to reveal the location of the planet.

Part 2 opens Gersen facing several obstacles.  Foremost is that Grendel could be any of three professors at the school, all of whom profess ignorance of the murdered surveyor.  Then there are Grendel's three lieutenants, all of whom are deadly assassins who want Gersen out of the way.  Finally, there is the issue of Pallis Atwrode, an employee of the university who is the first to touch Gersen's heart after a life of nothing but revenge-seeking.

The conclusion to this novel ties all the threads together, throwing all of the characters onto one ship where Gersen can declaim the solution to the mystery, Poirot-style.

The Star King's problem isn't the plot, it's the execution.  After a rather gripping first half of the first half, the novel becomes a plodding bore, particularly with the unnecessary encyclopedic inserts every few pages.  Vance did such a good job of building a fresh new world in The Dragon Masters (also a Galaxy novel), but he rather flubs it here.  Moreover, Vance completely missed his opportunity to give us a real surprise ending, instead deciding on Grendel's identity almost at random, it seems.

Two stars, two and a half for the whole thing.

Summing Up

When I transfer the story data to punch card and run it through my Star-o-Vac, I get a roll of tape with the computation: 3 stars.  That doesn't sound so bad, right?  Thoroughly adequate compared to some of the other mags we've suffered through lately.  But it's the cavalcade of blandness that saps the will over time.  It's like a steady diet of matzah.  Sure, it gets you out of Egypt, but where's the milk and honey, man? 

Cordwainer Smith's in the next issue.  Maybe we'll make it to the Holy Land in March…

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[November 25, 1963] State of Shock (December 1963 Fantastic)

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[At time of publication, the state funeral for our late President, John F. Kennedy is underway.  Given the tumult of the last few days, we can only hope this article marks the resumption of some kind of normalcy, such as may yet be possible…]


by Victoria Silverwolf

My colleagues have already written eloquently about the horror and sorrow felt by people everywhere on Earth after the murder of President Kennedy.  There is very little I can add.  The killing of alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, witnessed on live television by millions of viewers, only added to my feeling of shock, leaving me emotionally numb.

Even listening to Top Forty radio reminds me of the recent tragedy.  Holding the Number One position is I'm Leaving It Up to You by Dale & Grace.  The popular singing duo were among other entertainers who waved at the presidential motorcade shortly before the shooting began.

I hope that loyal readers of this column will forgive me, therefore, if I approach the task of reviewing the latest issue of Fantastic with little enthusiasm.  As much as I would like to escape from the nightmare of the last few days, I'm afraid that even the limitless imagination of writers of science fiction and fantasy cannot completely erase bad memories.

After a Judgement Day, by Edmond Hamilton

A devastating plague caused by mutated bacteria threatens to wipe out humanity.  Two men remain on the Moon, facing the possibility that they are the only survivors.  They are part of a project to send mechanical replicas of human beings to the planets of other solar systems, in order to see if people can survive there.  Because the original purpose of the project is now meaningless, they decide to make use of the devices to make one last gesture on behalf of the human race.  This is a simple story with no surprises in the plot, but the conclusion has strong emotional appeal.  Three stars.

Lilliput Revisited, by Adam Bradford, M.D.

The name of the main character in this story is the same as that of the author, so I suspect it's a pseudonym.  An American physician discovers the journal of Lemuel Gulliver and sets out for the island of tiny people described in Jonathan Swift's famous book.  There he discovers that the Lilliputians are no longer ruled by an Emperor, but instead live under communism.  He also learns about their system of medical care, which places more emphasis on treatment than diagnosis.  Most of this story consists of the narrator's actions before he reaches the fictional island, and is not very interesting.  The author's intention is satiric, but his target is unclear.  The narrator seems to deplore the Lilliputian form of government, but admire the health care system.  In any case, this is a weak sequel to a classic work.  One star.

The Soul Buyer, by Keith Laumer

A professional gambler and his manager are the main characters in this fast-paced tale.  A disreputable fellow forces the gambler to accept a lottery ticket.  From then on, he has nothing but good luck, winning every poker game and every horse race.  Unsatisfied with his fortunate condition, he investigates the man who gave him the ticket.  This leads to strange and deadly encounters with alien beings.  This story is written in the style of hard-boiled crime fiction, with elements of science fiction and horror.  The constant action and weird elements in the plot keep the reader's interest, but one can't help wondering if the author is just making things up as he goes along.  It's an enjoyable rollercoaster ride, but somehow hollow.  Three stars.

Witch of the Four Winds (Part 2 of 2), by John Jakes

The arcane adventures of Brak the Barbarian continue in the conclusion of this short novel.  Trapped in the lair of a gigantic worm, he survives only to fall into the clutches of an evil sorceress.  Bloody battles with men and monsters follow.  There is very little here that could not be found in the yellowing pages of a 1930's issue of Weird Tales.  The author creates a convincing pastiche of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan, but adds nothing new.  Two stars.

I cannot be certain if my negative review of this issue reflects its contents accurately, or if my mood distorts my taste in literature.  I can only wait for time to dull the pain of recent events, and hope that next year begins in a less depressing way than this year is ending.

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

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by Gideon Marcus

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

Big deal.

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

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

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

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

The Governor of Glave, by Keith Laumer

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

The Second-Class Citizen, by Damon Knight

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

Muck Man, by Fremont Dodge

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

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

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

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

Long Day in Court, by Jonathan Brand

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

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

Glop, Goosh and Gilgamesh, by Theodore Sturgeon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Better Mousetrap, by John Brunner

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

***

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

You're welcome.

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[August 16, 1963] Time and Time Again (October 1963 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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[Did you meet the Traveler at WorldCon?  Please drop him a line!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

I believe that time, even more than space, is the great theme of science fiction.  Not only time travel, but also the ways in which the passage of time changes people and the way they live.  Most SF stories take place in the future, and offer visions of the years, centuries, and millennia to come. Some feature precognition.  Others deal with distortions in time, such as the slowing of time associated with velocities approaching the speed of light.

It's not surprising, then, that many of the stories in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow feature characters struggling with the mysteries and challenges of time.

The Night of the Trolls, by Keith Laumer

The narrator of this novella is thrust out of his own time and into another.  He is placed in suspended animation for a routine test, which is only supposed to last a few days.  He awakens to discover that nearly a century has passed.  The secret government installation where he works is in ruins.  The compound is still guarded by a gigantic, heavily armed, automated tank called a Bolo.  (Such a device first appeared in Combat Unit, from the November 1960 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  That story takes place many centuries after this one, so no knowledge of it is needed to appreciate the new tale.)

Getting past the mechanical guardian is the narrator's first task.  Later he discovers that an apocalyptic event left most survivors barely able to stay alive.  Feudal lords leading lives of luxury rule over them.  The narrator infiltrates the fortress of one such dictator.  He encounters a figure from his past, and becomes involved in a scheme to activate another Bolo. 

This is a fast-paced, vividly written adventure story.  The narrator is one of the author's super-competent heroes.  His ability to fight and bluff his way into the lord's stronghold strains credibility.  The antagonist is a two-dimensional character of pure villainy.  However, these are minor quibbles.  The action-filled plot always holds the reader's attention, and there are moments of powerful emotional impact.  Four stars.

The Hermit of Mars, by Stephen Bartholomew

The protagonist of this story also journeys alone through the years, but by his own choice.  An archeologist, he was part of an exploration team sent to the red planet.  A minor heart problem made it risky for him to return to Earth when the mission ended.  He gladly volunteered to remain behind, because unhappy relationships with women made him a misanthropic loner.  Unmanned spaceships send him supplies.  For thirty-five years he lives alone, studying the incredibly ancient artifacts left behind by the extinct Martians.  Two men arrive after all this time.  It soon becomes clear that they are up to no good.  They tolerate the hermit as a harmless old fool, but he proves to have a trick up his sleeve.

There is nothing particularly noteworthy, for good or bad, about this story.  The author's style is serviceable, but undistinguished.  There are no surprises in the plot.  The resolution is something of a deus ex machina.  There's an enjoyable bit of irony at the very end.  Three stars.

The Good Friends, by Cordwainer Smith

An astronaut returns to Earth after an emergency.  While recovering in a hospital, he inquires about the other members of the crew.  The doctor caring for him tells him the frightening truth.  Like other stories in this issue, a long period of time is involved.

This is a brief story with the flavor of an episode of The Twilight Zone.  It will disappoint fans of the author's beautiful and mysterious myths of the far future.  The style is simple and direct, without the intricate wordplay and imaginative images found in tales of the Instrumentality of Mankind.  It's not a bad story, but it pales into insignificance compared to masterpieces like Alpha Ralpha Boulevard and The Ballad of Lost C'Mell.  Three stars.

Orphans of Science, by Stephen Barr

This is an informal article about small mysteries.  Why does light reflecting off metal create small white highlights?  What, exactly, is white light?  Why does a mirror reverse things from left to right, but not top to bottom?  (The magazine's editorial explains the author's confusion on this point.) The rest of the article discusses a few more minor puzzles.  These trivial ponderings are mildly interesting.  Two stars.

All We Marsmen (Part 2 of 3) , by Philip K. Dick

This section of the novel concentrates on three characters.  At the heart of the story is a boy who is severely autistic, one who has never spoken.  The wealthy and powerful head of the Martian water workers union believes the child is able to foresee the future.  He plans to have a skilled handyman, who suffers from episodes of schizophrenia, build a device that will allow the boy to communicate.  The theory behind this is that the child perceives time moving at a very fast rate.  This allows him to look beyond the present, but also prevents him from talking.  An important subplot involves the handyman's father, who has a scheme to make a large profit by buying seemingly worthless Martian land.  The boy draws a picture that provides hints about the future of this project.

So far, the narrative style is realistic.  This changes drastically when bizarre images of death and decay fill the page.  These are associated with the nonsense word gubbish.  If I understand the author's intent correctly, this neologism appears in the boy's mind to describe the inevitable disintegration of all material things with time.  As if this were not disconcerting enough, a meeting between the handyman and the union leader is described multiple times before it actually occurs.  These descriptions repeat certain words and events, but have important differences.  Surreal images of a disturbing nature fill the repetitions.  Whether these are hallucinations, symbolic visions of the future, or indications that the child is somehow able to manipulate time, the effect is frightening.

I suspect that some readers will give up on the novel at this point.  Before this section, the multiple plotlines were complex, but comprehensible.  The sudden change to inexplicable images and strange distortions of reality make the plot difficult to follow.  It's impossible to predict where the author will take me next, but so far the journey has been fascinating, and I'm eager to find out what our destination will be.  Four stars.

The Lonely, by Judith Merril

This story takes the form of a transcription of a message intercepted from space.  An eel-like alien lectures other aliens about human beings.  It seems that very few sentient species reproduce sexually.  Of those that do, humanity is almost unique in having only two sexes.  A statue of a woman holding a rocket, created by unicellular aliens after humans visited their world, is involved.  Eventually humans return to that world and find the statue.

This is a very strange story.  I credit the author for coming up with aliens that do not resemble people at all.  Other than that, the story's intent is unclear.  It seems to be saying something about art and symbolism, as well as the way in which men and women view each other.  Two stars.

To Save Earth, by Edward W. Ludwig

Earth's sun is going to explode in a little over twelve years.  Six astronauts spend six years journeying to a distant planet, looking for a place where humanity can survive.  The length of the trip causes mental disturbances.  One becomes an alcoholic, one a kleptomaniac, one an amnesiac, one a paranoiac, one a schizophrenic, and one feels compelled to break things.  The latter destroys their communication equipment.  Unable to contact Earth, they face the horrifying challenge of making the long journey back, just in time to begin the exodus of its population.  The new planet is inhabited by friendly aliens, who invite them to stay.  The aliens offer them delicious food and drink, beautiful alien women as lovers, and a life free from all care.  They must decide whether to turn their backs on Earth or endure the voyage home.

In sharp contrast to the previous story, these aliens are just slightly different from people.  The familiar plot device of telepathy allows them to speak to their human visitors.  As you can see from the synopsis above, the story has many other implausible events.  Two stars.

The Masked World, by Jack Williamson

Six survey ships are lost without a trace after visiting a distant planet.  The captain of the seventh ship discovers the skeleton of his wife, the pilot of the sixth ship.  Near her remains is a strange plant, unlike anything else on the planet.  Its DNA structure turns out to be the key to solving the mystery.

This is a very short story with a unique concept.  I had to wonder why anyone would keep sending survey ships to a place where they always disappear.  Three stars.

I see by the old clock on the wall that our time is up for today.  See you next time!

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