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[January 4, 1969] Not following through (February 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

The misrule of law

You may recall that Brazil underwent a military coup back in the spring of 1964. The reasons were the usual ones, and the U.S. response can be characterized, at best, as “turning a blind eye,” because then-president João Goulart (popularly known as Jango) was leaning a little too far to the left. The military junta which has ruled Brazil since prefers to call it a revolution, not a coup, but whatever you call it, the result is the same.

Seeking to give themselves more legitimacy, the military instituted a two-party system in 1966. The National Renewal Alliance (ARENA) officially represents the military dictatorship, while the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) gets to make speeches against and vote no on things that are going to happen anyway. That way, the legislature doesn’t look like the rubber stamp it is.

Or was. Unrest has been growing, particularly among the young. Arbitrary arrests and the torture of politcal prisoners has been ongoing. In March, a teenager who was leading a protest against rising food prices was shot point-blank by military police. This murder sparked further unrest, to the point that officials felt they had no choice but to allow a large protest march, hoping it would let the students blow off steam. The March of the One Hundred Thousand in June saw little violence, as the protestors demanded an end to the military government.

The March of the One Hundred Thousand. The banner reads “Down with dictatorship. People in power.”

Enter Márcio Moreira Alves. He started out as a journalist and opposed the Goulart government. After initially supporting the coup, he soon began to oppose it as well, with his primary cause being an end to the torture of political prisoners. He was elected as a Federal Deputy in 1966 and has continued his fight. In September, he called for a boycott of Brazil’s Independence Day celebrations on September 7th, and urged young women not to dance with military officers (or perhaps not date them, I have seen both mentioned in reports).

That was too much. The Justice Department asked the legislature to lift Alves’s immunity so that he could be tried for treason.  On December 12th, a joint session of the Federal Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate resoundingly refused to do so with a vote of 216-141.

Márcio Moreira Alves delivering the speech that got him into trouble.

The very next day, President Arturo da Costa e Silva issued Institutional Act Number 5. This act, which is not subject to judicial review or legislative oversight, allows the president to rule by decree, eliminates habeas corpus for political crimes, establishes censorship, and lets the government suspend any public servant who is found to be subversive or uncooperative, along with a number of other heavy-handed measures. Costa e Silva ordered hundreds of arrests of government critics the very next day.

There is strong opposition even within ARENA, the party founded to support the junta. Whether this is merely a crackdown or the beginning of cracks in the foundation of the dictatorship remains to be seen.

Passing judgment

If last month’s issue was about forgetting, this month’s IF is about the law and judgment. There’s something else that ties almost all the fiction here together, but we’ll get to that at the end.

Time travelers on their way to meet their ancestor. Art by Vaughn Bodé

The “Hoax” Story, by H.L. Gold

Former editor H.L. Gold offers a guest editorial on the two threads in science fiction that have dominated since the days of Verne and Wells. Today we might call them hard science fiction and speculative fiction, though Gold doesn’t use those terms. It’s interesting, but rather muddled. Gold’s definition of what constitutes a hoax seems ridiculously broad and not connected to his theme.

Three stars.

Beside the Walking Mountain, by Burt Filer

After being cashiered out of the GS (never explained, but probably something like Galactic Service), Hatch bought the planet where he ruined the careers of his superior and himself, hoping to right some of the wrongs they committed. Now that superior has returned to finish what he started and get revenge on Hatch. And he has the law on his side.

In desperation, Hatch tries to get his barge over the moving mountain. Art by Brock

Filer has been an inconsistent author, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Here, he demonstrates the full range of his quality in one story. He’s created an interesting, if implausible, planet, with a mountain that follows the terminator during the 14-month day. The conflict is solid, though the antagonist may be a little overdone. But the resolution falls flat on its face. Largely because eminent domain doesn’t work the way the author thinks it does. In fact, the precedent cited in the story invalidates the ending.

Good and bad average out to three stars.

Praiseworthy Saur, by Harry Harrison

A boy is taking home an interesting lizard he’s caught. His walk is interrupted by a group of time-traveling lizardoids descended from his new pet. They want him to let their ancestor go, so she can lay her eggs safely.

A tight little story with a sting in its tail. Harrison packs a lot into a very small space and does so with skill. The boy is also a believable and skeptical modern boy, which is a nice touch. Is that enough to get it to four stars? For me, it falls just short.

A very high three stars.

At Bay with Baycon, by Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch reports on last year’s Worldcon in Oakland. After a rocky start and the requisite namedropping, he settles in to a fair report, though a lot of the humor is forced. Of course, the Journey covered Baycon several months ago, and we had pictures.

Three stars.

How many of these folks can you identify? Art by Gaughan

The Defendant Earth, by Andrew J. Offutt

It turns out that Mars, Venus, and a few other places in the solar system actually are habitable and are joined in an interplanetary union of sorts. Now, they’d like to give Earth the chance to join, but there’s one problem. The Martians are unhappy with the way they have been depicted in science fiction, going all the way back to Wells. It falls to Ohio lawyer Joe Blair to negotiate a solution.

Offutt is another author who’s been very uneven, but he does a good job here. The story is enough fun that I can overlook the lack of explanation for why the job fell to the protagonist and the reliance on a somewhat tired cliché for the resolution. It’s not a deep tale, but it is enjoyable.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, Lester del Rey has been reading The Biological Time Bomb by Gordon Rattray Taylor, which looks at all the recent advances in the biological sciences, what scientists are working on and advances they expect to see in the not too distant future. Organ transplants, cloning, sex selection of children, tinkering with DNA (both intentionally and unintentionally), artificial life. There’s a lot coming down the road that society, politics, and the law are going to have to deal with. Hopefully, science fiction will have plotted a safe path forward by the time these changes hit us.

Three stars.

Trial by Fire, by James E. Gunn

John Wilson is in something resembling a fugue state, unsure of anything, even his own name. His consciousness drifts between two worlds. In one, he’s on trial for arson and murder, though he has apparently been framed by an anti-science political party which is using him to further their agenda. In the other, he works as a witch doctor in a fractured United States, secretly using science to help the superstitious peasants. There he has been arrested by the secret police for witchcraft.

This isn’t happening in the world you might expect. Art by Gaughan

This rumination on anti-science and anti-intellectual attitudes is a sequel to a much older story (“Witches Must Burn,” Astounding, August 1956), but having read that isn’t necessary. Most of it is summarized by the prosecution in Wilson’s trial. Either way, it’s not very good. The drift between the worlds is interesting at first, but having the viewpoint character addled and unsure of what’s going on around him wears out its welcome quickly. Gunn still managed to keep my interest most of the way, but then we get several pages of philosophical rambling about science and the duty of scientists, followed by a climax that’s difficult to believe. Even less believable is the suggested connection between the two worlds Wilson inhabits. And all that in about twice the length the story needed.

A high two stars.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Harry Harrison

In what appears to be a new feature, we have another interview transcribed directly from tape and again without the questions. This month, as you can tell from the title: Harry Harrison. This was a little more interesting than last month’s interview with Roger Zelazny, but then Harrison is a dozen years older and has spent time living in Europe. The highlight for me was him talking about his transition from comic book writer and inker to SF author.

Three stars.

A caricature, but recognizably Harry. Art by Rudy Cristiano

The Fire Egg, by Roger F. Burlingame

This month’s new author is a 38-year-old minister and former Fulbright scholar who wrote his story—which begins with a peasant finding the titular fire egg—as an assignment in the Famous Writer’s School. It’s well-written, as you might expect from the author’s background. Unfortunately, it’s also obvious and superficial. The sting at the end feels more sarcastic and nasty than ironic and deep.

A high two stars.

Six Gates to Limbo (Part 2 of 2), by J.T. McIntosh

In part 1 of this story, a man and two women found themselves in a pleasant but sealed off region with six portals leading away.  The man knows nothing, one woman a little, and the other more than she’s saying. As the first installment ended, Rex and Regina had run into trouble while exploring one of the worlds beyond the gateways. In this part, the explorations continue, and many questions are answered, with some surprising revelations. Finally, the trio must make a momentous decision.

Rex and Venus discover an empty world. Art by Gaughan

Last month, I feared that McIntosh didn’t have enough room to explore all six worlds. The final three are given very short shrift, with each character exploring one alone and merely reporting on what they found. Everything is rushed, the reason behind the sense of ennui and doom afflicting all of humanity made little sense to me, and the solution was far too extreme. A weak finish to a promising start.

A low three stars for this installment, but still three stars for the novel as a whole.

Summing up

In baseball, they tell batters to swing through the ball, not at it. The same goes for golf and probably every other sport that involves hitting one thing with another. It’s the follow-through that makes the difference, and that’s what is missing from all the stories in this issue except for Harrison and Offutt. The rest feel like the author simply rushed to get the story over and offers no sense of what, if anything, might come after. Gunn hints at it, but I don’t see how he gets from the end to what he tells us is coming. (Admittedly, I was bored and rushing to get it over with myself by that point.) The result is another C- issue with no standout stories. IF deserves better.

Another Hugo winners issue. Dare we hope?




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[December 2, 1968] Forget It (January 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

Forget the future

It’s official. As if it weren’t already clear from the events in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia over the summer, the Soviet Union has now openly declared that no communist nation in the Soviet sphere of influence will be allowed to go its own way or engage in any sort of reforms not approved by Moscow. Addressing the Congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party on November 13th, Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev stated, “When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.” That’s the justification for military intervention wherever the U.S.S.R. feels like, especially within the Warsaw Pact. We all know who will get to decide if something is a move towards capitalism.

Leonid Brezhnev after addressing the Soviet Central Committee earlier this year.

The backlash has already begun. After years of strained relations, Albania formally withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in protest over the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Of course, they have Yugoslavia as a buffer state, and the close proximity of Greece and Italy probably also offer a deterrent. As we go to press, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu has publicly condemned this new doctrine as a violation of the Warsaw Treaty. Only time will tell how this shakes out.

Forget the past

Forgetfulness seems to be the theme of this month’s IF. The issue is book-ended with stories featuring protagonists with amnesia, while two of the remaining three stories offer a man who doesn’t know his name and an entire year blotted from everybody’s memory.

Just some random art not associated with any of the stories. Art by Chaffee

Six Gates to Limbo (Part 1 of 2), by J.T. McIntosh

A man awakens naked in a field with no idea who he is or how he got there. It proves to be a pleasant place about 50 miles in circumference, surrounded by a dome of gray mist. He dubs the place Limbo. Set in the dome, about 20 feet above ground are six ovals that he believes to be portals. Eventually, he also finds a house with a well-stocked kitchen, a library full of books (printed on Earth, all before 3646), and three bedrooms, two of which have women’s clothes in them.

In the basement, he finds three coffins with windows set in the lids. One is empty and is labeled Rex, giving him a name. The second, labeled Regina, contains a very pretty woman, while the third holds a beautiful woman apparently named Venus. Regina comes to, already knowing her name and also with the ability to know where anything (and anyone) is.

After a time, Rex passes through one of the gateways. He discovers a huge city called Mercury, which is laden with a sense of doom that depresses all its inhabitants. On his return, Rex discovers a freezing sub-basement with clues that the gateways are portals to other planets. Regina deliberately triggers Venus’s awakening, and the three get along fairly well, without Venus interfering in the relationship between the other two.

As this installment ends, Rex and Regina pass through another portal and find themselves on a hot, desert planet. While investigating an immigration office, Rex blunders and the police – or worse – are summoned. To be concluded.

Rex investigates the first portal. Art by Jack Gaughan

McIntosh has given us an interesting set-up and an intriguing mystery, but I don’t see how he’s going to extract Rex and Regina from their current predicament and explore four more worlds in just one installment. I’m eager to see the rest of this. But one thing really stood out to me. Take note Robert Silverberg and many other authors, in and out of science fiction: McIntosh makes very clear to the reader that Regina is quite petite without once referring to her breasts or hips, nor is there anything describing her as childlike. He does describe her once as a girl in comparison to Venus, but Rex clearly views her as an adult. Similarly, we know that Venus is voluptuous without any reference to her secondary sexual characteristics.

A high three stars.

The Year Dot, by William F. Temple

Bart Cabot grew up an orphan in a small town. His fascination with the X-men in the next valley repeatedly gets him into trouble with the Sheriff. He’s also curious why the year 1978 is missing from all the records in the library, but nobody else seems to see a discrepancy. Finally, he pushes the Sheriff too far, and only intervention by one of the X-men saves his life. Bart learns a lot about what’s going on and has a choice to make.

Doesn’t look like any of the X-Men I know. Beast maybe? Art by Brock

The story’s well told, if nothing special. There’s a strong implication that what’s going on is global, but the focus of the story makes it feel entirely local. The missing year thing doesn’t make a lot of sense, either. And calling the aliens in the next valley X-men is just confusing to anyone with a passing knowledge of comic books.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, Lester del Rey looks at changes in agriculture. Sure, we have things like corn that produces large, uniform ears, strains of plants that grow in soil that was once unsuitable, and fertilizers to replenish exhausted fields. But do those fertilizers replenish minerals that occur in vanishingly small amounts; do the new strains take up those sorts of minerals, if the soils they now grow in even have them? Maybe that will affect taste (ask a vintner about how the tiniest variation can affect their product) or maybe the lack of those “unimportant” minerals will have unsuspected health effects. Lots to think about.

Three stars.

The Steel General, by Roger Zelazny

Zelazny picks up where Creatures of Light left off. Wakim, the servant of Anubis, desperate to find out who he once was, and the Prince Who Was A Thousand do battle in time. Eventually they are transported to another planet, where Horus, son of Osiris, comes also seeking to kill the Prince, as does the Steel General, who supports the Prince merely because he is the underdog.

Anubis doesn’t want Wakim to learn who he really is. Art by P. Reiber

Now Zelazny has me hooked. The intermediate material following Wakim leaving the House of the Dead that weakened the previous story might have fit better at the beginning here, but this works without that, too. Although the ending is something of a cliff-hanger, there’s enough here to make a complete tale, and it’s a doozy. Poetic, mythic, Zelazny at his best.

A high four stars.

Operation High Time, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Simes are an offshoot of humanity who must take life energy from normal humans, or Gens (short for Generators; Sime from symbiote maybe?). The process was once fatal, but the two groups have found ways to live together, with many restrictions on the Simes. Protagonist Farris is a Sime who has found a way to ease some of those restrictions. His lobbying in Washington leads to his strongest opponent in the Senate being kidnapped. Following a hunch, Farris is kidnapped as well.

Farris is imprisoned with his political nemesis. Art by Brand

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been complaining about badly-done exposition by authors who should know better. This month’s new author shows how to do it right. The exposition in this story comes in small, natural chunks, giving just enough for the story to make sense while hinting at much more. The rest of the story is also done quite well. This is probably the best IF First debut since Larry Niven.

A very high three stars.

In the Shield, by Dean R. Koontz

The latest from Dean Koontz starts off with an amnesiac man in a spaceship filled with weapons that have no maker’s marks on them. In short order he winds up with two unexpected companions and then follows post-hypnotic orders to go to one of the main worlds in the galaxy.

That was the look on my face at about this point in the story. Art by Reese

The story starts off fine, but quickly brings in two astronomically unlikely coincidences, and then goes completely off the rails, descending into a sophomoric attack on religion. Koontz keeps missing the mark, but he does aim high. Maybe he should aim a little lower until he has the chops to match his ambition.

Right on the line between two and three stars. I’ll be generous and give it the lowest three stars possible.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Roger Zelazny

Zelazny on himself, science fiction, writing and so on. According to the editor’s blurb this was transcribed directly from a recording of him answering questions (which we don’t get). Interesting and informative, if a bit shallow.

Three stars.

I wonder if he’s always this dapper. Art by Gaughan

Summing up

Yet another middle-of-the-road issue. I’m starting to come around on McIntosh, but he’s on probation until next month. Zelazny managed to pull me in, where I had been less interested, and we got a very impressive debut from an author I hope to see more of. But there are times when I feel like Galaxy gets all the choice stories, and IF is left with the dregs.

Can’t say anything here really excites me.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 2, 1968] Role Models (December 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

The passing of a great

As I sat down to write this article, I heard the news of the death of Lise Meitner. If that name isn’t familiar to you, it should be. Einstein once called her “the German Marie Curie,” which might be understating things. She is arguably the most important woman physicist of the 20th century and possibly one of the most important theoretical physicists, period.

Born in Vienna in 1878, she became only the second woman to earn a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna in 1905. She later moved to Germany and worked at the University of Berlin. There, she and Otto Hahn discovered the most stable isotope of the element protactinium, which she dubbed protoactinium before dropping the second “o.” In 1939, she and Hahn, along with Otto Robert Frisch and Fritz Strassmann, discovered and explained nuclear fission. There are also at least two nuclear phenomena which bear her name.

Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner circa 1912.

Meitner was able to escape Nazi Germany in 1938 with the help of Niels Bohr. She settled in Sweden, where she spent the rest of her professional life. Her role in the discovery of nuclear fission garnered her a lot of celebrity after the end of the War; she was even interviewed by Eleanor Roosevelt on her radio show. She was a popular speaker and instructor and traveled extensively to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

She received numerous accolades throughout her career, and the institute that oversees Germany’s first research nuclear reactor bears her and Hahn’s names. But the Nobel eluded her. Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission (ignoring not only Meitner, but also Frisch and Strassmann). The Nobel committee plays things pretty close to the vest, but word is that Lise Meitner was nominated many times in the fields of physicist and chemistry. In 1966, President Johnson honored her with the Enrico Fermi Award.

After retiring in 1960, she moved to the United Kingdom to be closer to family and continued giving lectures. She was in poor health in recent years, unable to attend the Fermi Award ceremony. She died in her sleep at the age of 89.

Lise Meitner in 1963.

Stereotypes

As Lise Meitner’s life shows, women play an active and important role in science, and ought to do so in science fiction as well. Unfortunately, there seem to be fewer women writing SF than there were a decade ago, and there don’t seem to be all that many as key characters in stories either. Two of the stories in this month’s IF don’t have any, two offer mothers, two more femmes fatale, and as far as the first story goes, the less said the better.

A previously unknown piece by the late Hannes Bok, probably the last new Bok cover ever.

The Holmes-Ginsbook Device, by Isaac Asimov

This absurd story is ostensibly about coming up with a better way than microfiche to present printed information (no one has ever heard of putting words on a page and stacking those pages into a book). The "message" is that staring into a microfiche reader keeps you from staring at women. It's patently offensive. And not in a way that challenges our acceptance of societal norms like something in Dangerous Visions. Women are here only the be ogled and groped.

He looks familiar. Art by Gaughan

One star and a guaranteed winner of the Queen Bee Award.

The Starman of Pritchard’s Creek, by Julian F. Grow

Young Widder Poplowski has set her cap for Dr. Hiram Pertwee. He might be inclined to encourage her, but her nine-year-old son is a hellion, and her motherly love is excessively fierce. While picnicking along Pritchard’s Creek, the three of them encounter a talking, self-propelled steam engine and a living trash heap. Getting kicked in the head by his horse may be the least of Pertwee’s problems.

Whatever it is, it ain’t natural. Art by Wood

This is our third encounter with Dr. Pertwee, and it’s a good bit better than the last. This one is well-suited to the western theme, and the doctor’s voice is very well done. I’d say the tone aims to imitate Twain, but doesn’t come close. Of course, not coming close in an attempted imitation of Twain leaves a lot of room to still be good.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at couple of areas where science and science fiction keep overtaking each other: there’s too much free oxygen on Venus, the steady-state theory might not be dead yet, and quantum particles that move faster than light.

Three stars.

The Canals of Santa Claus, by Bram Hall

Three wildcat miners are forced to put down on an uncharted planet. They dub the planet Santa Claus for its black growths that resemble Christmas trees (Yule was taken), but can’t explain the regularity of their spacing or the canals of salty water that flow without any change in elevation.

Hall is this month’s new author, and it’s not bad for a freshman effort. There’s nothing really new or groundbreaking, but it’s well handled, and there’s a bit of a sting in the tail.

Three stars.

The Comsat Angels, by J.G. Ballard

Since 1948, the world has become aware of a boy genius roughly every other year. Invariably, they fade from public view after a year or two, never seeming to live up to the potential they showed. A television production team begins digging into the story, but are soon broken up and reassigned. What shadowy organization is pulling the strings?

I’ve never been a fan of Ballard’s work, which I generally find too avant-garde and over laden with allusion and symbolism. This story, however, has a beginning, a middle, and an end (in that order) and lacks the ennui and decadence of the Vermilion Sands stories. I enjoyed it, with two complaints. First, the boy genius discovered in 1965 is Robert Silverberg of Tampa, Florida. He would be a good deal younger than science fiction’s own Silverbob (who isn’t from Florida), and the name pulled me out of the story every time he’s mentioned. None of the others seem to have been given the name of someone else from the genre or elsewhere, so it struck me as odd. Secondly, the connection to comsats seems very strained. But otherwise an enjoyable story.

A high three stars from me; others might like it better.

The Tin Fishes, by A. Bertram Chandler

Continuing his tour of the planets he once opened and charted, Commodore John Grimes has arrived on the water world of Melisse. Giant, unkillable starfish are attacking the huge oysters the natives use to grow pearls, the planet’s only export. Since both of the major Rim officials are incompetents he had posted to a place he thought they could do no harm, he figures it’s his duty to investigate.

Chief Wunnaara may be the only reliable person on the planet. Art by Virgil Finlay

This is a fairly standard Grimes story, with a bit of mystery and spy thriller thrown in. Entertaining enough if you like this sort of thing. I was a bit put off by the ease with which Grimes went to bed with the prime suspect, considering he’s spent the last several stories missing his wife very much. I guess mores and morals are different out on the Rim.

Three stars.

The Pawob Division, by Harlan Ellison

I’m not even going to try to describe this story by Harlan Ellison. It’s full of silly, made-up words like phlenged and thrillip’d to describe the use of alien senses and whatnot. I suspect that if it had been sent in by an unknown, it would have been sent back, maybe with an encouraging letter to keep trying.

A low two stars.

The Computer Conspiracy (Part 2 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Professor Paul Kosloff heads into Common Europe and Common Eur-Asia to try and find out who’s behind the plot to tamper with the computer records of the United States of the Americas. Somehow, the bad guys seem to know his every move.

More action exactly like the action in Part 1. Art by Gaughan

Part 1 of this serial was so heavy on (poorly delivered) exposition, I predicted this installment would have lots of story. I was wrong; there’s just as much exposition in this half. The action is also just as over detailed; I don’t know what an “Okinawa fist” is, nor does knowing what the protagonist shouts as he delivers a karate blow tell me anything. All in all, it winds up being a typical, if slightly subpar, Mack Reynolds adventure. But it might be worth revisiting in 50 years or so to see how well Mack did at prognosticating the effects of an increasingly interconnected world.

Three stars for this installment and the novel as a whole.

Summing up

Maybe the awful first story influenced my impression of the rest of the issue, and some of these stories deserve better ratings. On the other hand, this is the second issue in a row with a one-star story, and that’s a rating I very rarely give. With the two worst stories coming from the two biggest names in the issue, I’m starting to wonder at some of the editorial decisions being made. But Galaxy doesn’t seem to be doing quite this poorly. At least Fred has promised another Hugo winners issue next year, so we have something to look forward to.

There’s the Zelazny we were promised. This issue really needed it.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 2, 1968] Future History Lessons (November 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

Saving the past

Around the turn of the century, the British in Egypt set out to regulate the flooding of the Nile by building a dam at Aswan, near the First Cataract, a little under 150 miles north of what is today the border between Egypt and Sudan. They limited the height of the dam in order to prevent the submergence of the island of Philae and the many monuments there, but still raised the height twice by the mid-1930s. The reservoir nearly overflowed the top in 1946, and it became increasingly clear that the dam’s storage capabilities were insufficient for modern Egypt.

King Farouk favored the construction of dams in Sudan and Ethiopia, where cooler temperatures would mean less loss of water due to evaporation, but when he was overthrown, the new government under Nasser preferred a larger dam at Aswan under Egyptian control. One of the reasons for the nationalization of the Suez Canal was that shipping fees would pay for the new dam. The change in plans alarmed archaeologists, who pointed out that the entirety of the ancient province of Nubia would be flooded, inundating numerous ancient monuments and sites. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan appealed to UNESCO for help, and thus was born the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia.

The most impressive of the monuments to be rescued are the temples of Abu Simbel, built by Ramses II in the mid-13th century B.C. to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Best known is the Great Temple, dedicated to Amun, Ra-Horakty, Ptah and the deified Ramses himself. The entrance is flanked by four statues of the pharaoh, each over 65 feet tall. Nearby is a temple dedicated to Hathor and Ramses’ favorite wife Nefertari.

Ramses gets a face lift.

But how do you rescue something like that? A freestanding temple can be taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt elsewhere. This was done with the temple of Kalabsha, in work funded and supervised by West Germany. The Ramesseum was carved into sandstone cliffs. One suggestion was to build a clear freshwater dam around the temples and create underwater viewing chambers. Instead, an international team of archaeologists, engineers, and heavy construction experts have spent the last four years carefully carving the entire site into enormous blocks with an average weight of 20 tons and moving the whole thing to a new site some 650 feet back from the Nile and over 200 feet higher. The work is finished, and on September 22nd the reconstructed Ramesseum was opened to the public. Let’s hope that the many other rescue projects are just as successful.

Optimists and pessimists

This has been a rough year all around the world, and so it’s natural to turn to our entertainment to make us feel better. Unfortunately, the trend in science fiction seems to be toward unhappy endings, and this month’s IF seems to lean more to the pessimistic side. It also takes us to Ancient Egypt in the far future.

The Waw is bored. Art by Vaughn Bodé

The Computer Conspiracy (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Regular readers of the big American SF magazines will be familiar with Mack Reynolds’ People’s Capitalism, in which every citizen is granted Inalienable Basic shares that pay dividends that are enough to live off, while the more ambitious can earn Variable Basic shares and move up in the world. Meanwhile, the Universal Credit Card serves all economic and identification functions. All of that is made possible by a massive computerized data bank. What if a hostile power could tap into that data bank, or worse yet change or erase the data?

Action in the subway of abandoned Manhattan. Art by Gaughan

This first half of Reynolds’ new novel is delivered mostly in the form of lectures telling the protagonist things he already knows. Reynolds can usually make this sort of thing interesting, but normally he doesn’t rely on pages of dialogue for his exposition. Much of it seems to be based on Vance Packard’s The Naked Society from a few years ago, which he explicitly mentions. This is interspersed with a couple of action scenes, one of which is overly detailed to the point of being interesting only to practitioners of karate, and the other is largely taken from the recent Among the Bad Baboons. All in all, not Reynolds’ best work, but I don’t see how the second half can be anything but story, so the whole thing should be better.

A low three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey delves into the science of ecology, which studies the interrelationships of living things and their environment. It’s the sort of thing that will be crucial in establishing a colony on another planet, but it’s rarely dealt with in science fiction, except as an occasional aside. It’s also sadly neglected in the real world, though that’s beginning to change. There’s a lot here for SF writers to explore.

Four stars.

Creatures of Light, by Roger Zelazny

Sometime in the distant future, all of humanity lies between the poles of the House of Life, ruled over by Osiris, and the House of Death, ruled over by Anubis. Now, an old threat is returning from outside, and various factions must take steps to stop it.

Anubis and Osiris determine the fates of humanity. Art by P. Reiber

The obvious comparison here is to Zelazny’s Lord of Light, though the “gods” here make the spacemen pretending to be the Hindu gods look like apemen banging rocks together. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote in a letter to Science earlier this year, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It’s all very Zelazny in terms of style and construction. However, there’s no actual story here; it’s just the author introducing various characters and establishing the conflict.

It says on the cover that this is an excerpt from an upcoming novel. That’s enough to save its rating, but the Lord of Light excerpts that ran in F&SF were much more successful as stand-alone pieces. I’m probably interested in seeing the whole thing, but something with a bit more of a traditional structure (if possible) would have been better.

A tentative three stars.

Where the Time Went, by James H. Schmitz

Everyone is familiar with those times when you set out to get a lot done, and suddenly it’s the end of the day and you’ve accomplished next to nothing. That happens to writer George Belk every day until his agent puts him in touch with someone who can help.

I suspect Schmitz was inspired by a couple of days like those George describes. It’s a cute story, but it doesn’t play to any of the author’s strengths, especially his ability to create characters.

Three stars.

Now That Man Is Gone, by James Blish

The Waw has been nine years old for over 2,000 years. Humanity has been extinct for 1,994 years. The aliens who care for him call him the Waw, because he is the Next-to-Last, but there is no sign of the Ya. Until now.

Art uncredited

This is the most optimistic story in the issue, which seems odd coming from Blish, though it is tinged with melancholy as well. It’s also the inverse of a concept that forms the core of many Ray Bradbury stories. Nice enough, but nothing special.

Three stars.

Wizard Ship, by F. Haines Price

Primitive tribesman Hin bravely boards a ship of the gods which has descended from the sky. He soon figures out that the gods are mere mortals who plan to sell him into slavery. The three unscrupulous spacers aboard also don’t realize that primitive isn’t the same as stupid.

Price is this month’s new author, and it shows in his writing. The story is too long, and the darkly ironic ending isn’t worth the trip.

A low two stars.

Bookmobile, by Charles L. Harness

A report from an alien librarian describes how humanity lost the ability to read thanks to everything moving to audio.

What an incredibly stupid story; nothing about it makes any sense. It ignores the fate of the deaf when everything is spoken and nothing is written, which is odd considering a key point is that the librarian can’t hear. I’m also not sure how you look things up when it’s all audio. Harness is an attorney, you’d think he would find that important.

One star, because it makes me angry every time I think about it.

The Perfect Secretary, by Mike Kirsch

On the day Albert Willis opens his new business, a strange man offers him a free trial of an automatic secretary. It can write articles and letters, retrieve reference materials from a host of locations, and pretty much do his job for him. It’s rather more than he or its makers suspect.

Willis is presented with his new secretary. Art by Wallace Wood

An awful story about awful people being awful. And it comes with another dark ending. Kirsch seems to be another new author, though maybe he’s sold things in other genres. The writing is decent enough, but all the characters are horrible.

Two stars.

Summing up

That’s another month of IF in the bag. There sure are a lot of familiar authors here not putting their best foot forward. And Zelazny’s piece really deserves a grade of Incomplete. There’s not even enough there to tell us what the rest is going to be like. Add in all the attempts at being dark and gritty, and the whole thing’s rather unsatisfying. At least the serials are back.

Science fiction from A(simov) to Z(elazny). That Zelazny piece might be another part of the new novel.




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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 2, 1968] What might have been (October 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

From spring straight into the fall

Back in April, I reported on the early days of the “Prague Spring,” First Secretary Alexander Dubček’s effort to reform Czechoslovakian communism and create “socialism with a human face.” Dubček managed to keep his plans afloat through the spring and much of the summer, but—as anyone who has been following the news is aware—the Soviet bear has flexed its claws and put an end to ideas of openness and freedom of speech. But not without creating a few cracks in the Warsaw Pact.


A Soviet armored vehicle comes to a fiery end.

The first sign of trouble came in June. Military maneuvers by Warsaw Pact forces took place in Czechoslovakia as scheduled, but Soviet troops were slow to leave the country after the conclusion. A number of communist leaders visited Prague over the course of a week in early August; some, like East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht and Hungary’s János Kádár, probably trying to bring Dubček to heel, while Yugoslavia’s Tito and Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu were no doubt more encouraging. Ceaușescu certainly was, since he signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with Czechoslovakia and has loudly condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the last few days.

It’s not clear what straw broke the camel’s back, though the announcement that Czechoslovakia was considering loans from the World Bank might have accelerated things. In any case, at 11:00 PM on August 20th Warsaw Pact forces rolled across the border in numbers not seen in Europe since the end of World War II. Dubček and other reformist leaders were arrested, and the Soviets tried to install a puppet government, but the people of Czechoslovakia weren’t having it. On the 22nd, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia met hastily and elected a new central committee and presidium, which then unanimously re-elected Dubček as First Secretary.


Somewhat more peaceful resistance.

The invasion triggered protests around the world, even by some Communist parties in western and neutral countries. In Czechoslovakia, although the military was never ordered to oppose Warsaw Pact forces, the invaders have been met with protests and violence. Alas, it was not enough. The arrested leaders signed an agreement to roll back their reforms on the 26th, and after returning to Prague on the 27th, Dubček gave a tearful radio address, asking Czechoslovakians to end their resistance as well as for their forgiveness for his surrender. As I write, that is where things stand, and like Hungary a dozen years ago, Czechoslovakia has been brought back into the fold.

Lost in the fog

A couple of the protagonists in this month’s IF spend their stories wandering in a daze. Unfortunately, the far less successful of the tales takes up nearly a third of the magazine and feels like a lot more, overwhelming an otherwise decent issue.

Scientists on Mars make an unexpected find. Art by Chaffee

High Weir, by Samuel R. Delany

A group of scientists investigate an ancient Martian temple and discover that the jeweled eyes of the sculptures contain moving holographic images. Meanwhile one of their number, linguist Rimkin, suffers a severe mental breakdown.

Art by Gaughan

Normally, I’d complain about the idea of an ancient Martian temple, but Delany’s writing is just so gorgeous I don’t care. He also has the skill to keep the viewpoint entirely with a man slowly losing his mind, keep the story coherent and include a discussion of information storage that ties the whole thing together. Not his best work, but still excellent.

Four stars.

Report on Japanese Science Fiction, by Takumi Shibano

Top Japanese fan Takumi Shibano (for more on him see last month’s article by my colleague Alison Scott) tells us about the state of science fiction in Japan. The first half of the article offers a brief history of the genre in Japan, from the inter-war years to today; the second half is a run-down of the authors in the field today and the sort of things they write. The history is very good, while the second half is a bit dry. But maybe something in there will catch a publisher’s eye and prompt a translation or two.

A high three stars.

Deathchild, by Sterling Lanier

A baby named Joseph is the ultimate weapon; anyone who comes into unprotected contact with him dies horribly. Is he enough to keep a surging communist China from conquering all of Asia and bring them to the negotiation table?

Feeding time. Art by Virgil Finlay

After a slow start under John Campbell’s tutelage, Lanier seems to have come into his own as an author. There’s certainly some good writing here, however it’s too long. Worse, the concept behind Project Inside Straight is utterly absurd. The quality of the line-by-line writing is just enough to keep the story’s head above water.

Three propped-up stars.

Paddlewheel on the Styx, by Lohr Miller

From the title, I was expecting something in the mode of John Kendrick Bangs or Riverworld. Instead, we have the tale of an attempt to rescue a crashed spaceship on the shore of a river of molten metal on Mercury. It’s beautifully poetic, but it falters a bit right at the end. I will forgive the lapse, though, because this month’s new author is very new indeed: he won’t be 14 until sometime in November. This is very well done for someone so young, and I hope we see more from master Miller in the future.

A solid three stars.

The Proxy Intelligence, by A.E. van Vogt

Space vampires and some nonsense about intelligence. ‘Nuff said.

The head vampire meets the scientist and his beautiful daughter. Art by Gaughan

This unasked-for sequel to Asylum (Astounding, May 1942) is a confused mess. The protagonist wanders through the story in a daze due to his exposure a vastly superior intelligence, but unlike with Delany’s story the reader comes away knowing even less than the “hero.” In desperation, I tracked down the original story. While it did clarify who all the characters are, I can’t say it helped otherwise.

Barely two stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at what is coming to be known as materials science, the study of improving the materials we use to make things and developing entirely new ones. He covers a wide variety of topics, such as building materials that can be eaten in a pinch, metals that dampen impacts, materials that can be induced to return to a given shape, and many more ideas. This was all inspired by The New Materials by David Fishlock, which he makes sound very interesting indeed. But then, this is a field I’ve long had something of an interest in.

Four stars for me, maybe slightly less if your interests are different.

Or Battle’s Sound, by Harry Harrison

Dom Priego is a university student doing a hitch in the military. His unit is tasked with boarding an enemy spaceship carrying a matter transmitter and keeping them from sending through a huge mass of men and equipment.

Dom fights his way through the enemy ship. Art by Adkins

On the surface, Harrison has given us an entertaining space opera, but underneath it is the philosophical question of why we fight. Overall, this is very well done, but I think it’s the wrong length. Either the combat scenes need to be tightened up, reducing the story by a couple of pages, or it needs to be a lot longer, so we can get to know Dom better, say some stuff from before he signed up and why he did so.

A high three stars.

Pupa Knows Best, by James Tiptree, Jr.

In this sequel to The Mother Ship, more aliens come to Earth. First some blue lizards who leave behind some mysterious missile-like objects, followed by the Siggies, who everybody likes. Earth people start picking up aspects of the alien culture, and then things start to go wrong.

Siggie religion features quaint rituals. Art by Brand

I liked this one a bit more than the first story. Maybe that’s because I have an easier time accepting the underlying premise. In any case, it’s a pithy tale dealing with both religion and the effects of colonization.

Three stars.

Summing up

This could have been a pretty good issue. All but one story are average to very good. Even the low score for “Deathchild” is mostly due to the highly unbelievable premise; up until that is revealed, it’s a good read. But then there’s van Vogt. A “complete novel condensation in a special section” it says on the cover. As I said, if it’s condensed, they took out too much. As for the special section, the magazine is the same length it always is; the story just squats right in the middle like some sort of unpleasant toad. Can we please go back to serials?

Three out of the four have potential, but I’d rather have the whole Zelazny.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 2, 1968] Dreams and Nightmares (September 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

Is the nightmare ending?

I’ve written a few times about the turmoil in communist China brought on by Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s efforts to reassert his power after being sidelined. The most dangerous of Mao’s tools has been the explosive, violent fanaticism of the country’s young people. Calling themselves Red Guards, they came boiling out of the universities and high schools, enforcing a strict adherence to “Mao Tse-tung thought” with humiliation, beatings, and even death.

That was the situation when I last covered the “Cultural Revolution” in February of last year. Since then, the Red Guards have split into factions almost everywhere, generally with one side being more fanatical and the other more willing to work within the system. There are rumors of massacres in Canton Province last year and Kwangshi Province this spring. Clashes in Peking over the last three months have involved not only batons and stones, but landmines, improvised armored vehicles and Molotov cocktails.

Red Guard rebels march in Shanghai last year.

Enough is enough. On July 3rd, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a public notice aimed at the violence in Kwangshi. China watchers say this is a sign Mao and the other leaders have decided it’s time to rein in the Red Guards. Results so far have been minimal, so on the 27th Mao dispatched thousands of “worker-peasant thought propaganda teams” to Tsinghua University, the birthplace of the Red Guard movement. The next day, he summoned five of the most influential Red Guard leaders to a meeting. Word is that he strongly reprimanded them, but any news out of China is uncertain. Time will tell if the violence will finally ebb.

Dream a little dream

This month’s IF features several stories that involve dreams and hallucinations. It’s also missing something, but we’ll talk about that later.

Those are supposed to be radiators, not rocket thrusters. Art by McKenna

More Bubbles for Your Bier, by Frederik Pohl

Fred Pohl gives us an editorial that makes a frightening companion piece to the guest editorial by Poul Anderson in the May issue. Poul warned us that power generation creates waste heat, and increased power demands mean increased heat. He warned that we’re at risk of warming the planet to a life-threatening degree.

Fred, meanwhile, warns that we’re ignoring a key pollutant: carbon dioxide. Burning coal and oil produces CO2, but that’s what makes our drinks fizzy, so what’s the worry? For one, high levels of CO2 make it harder to breathe; big cities already have measurably lower oxygen levels than the natural atmosphere. Worse, CO2 is a major contributor to the greenhouse effect, trapping heat that would normally radiate into space. The best way to slow the increase in carbon dioxide would be to stop burning fossil fuels. And that’s not very likely to happen.

Bulge, by Hal Clement

Four men hijack an orbiting platform that uses fusion power to transmute elements. The only thing standing between them and large amounts of the most dangerous nuclear fuels is the sole, elderly caretaker.

Moving in zero gravity is difficult for the uninitiated. Art by Gaughan

This is a Hal Clement story, so you know the resolution is going to come from some scientific principle (with an assist from Shakespeare this time). What’s unusual is that the human antagonists are truly bad people. The only bad guys in Clement that I can think of who are really bad are the alien drug smugglers in Iceworld and the Hunter from Needle. Humans usually just have a difference of opinion that can be worked out. In any case, this is otherwise typical for Clement; if you like his stuff, you’ll like this.

Three stars.

Dream Street, by C.C. MacApp

Henry Traum is desperate for a repeat of the experience he had with a dream-sloth the previous day. Unfortunately for him, the creature has different plans.

The first four pages of this story were readable, but forgettable. The final page, though, turns things on their head in ways that MacApp hasn’t tried in several years. The twist elevates the story beyond what it was shaping up to be, though not quite to four-star levels.

A high three stars.

The Elf in the Starship Enterprise, by Dorothy Jones

A (thankfully) brief poem about Mr. Spock discovering emotions. Has Miss Jones actually seen Star Trek? Spock deals with his emotions all the time. The rhyme scheme is insipid and filled with slant rhymes that would make Emily Dickinson scowl.

Two stars at best.

I’m sure Fred could have come up with a better excuse to run this portrait. Art by Virgil Finlay

Flesh and the Iron, by Larry S. Todd

Humans hunt robots and call them Iron; robots hunt humans and call them Flesh. By a quirk of fate, robot Marigold and human Bannock manage to capture each other. They must travel together while they figure out a way to let each other go without giving the other an advantage.

Marigold has a problem with ledges. Art by Todd (presumably the author)

While the situation is rather contrived, the story is not as silly or light as my summary or the author’s art might suggest. Todd has improved a great deal in the two years since his last story, but let’s be honest: this is basically The Defiant Ones. That’s a decent template to work from, and Todd doesn’t stick too closely to it, but Marigold and Bannock are no Poitier and Curtis.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey discusses the uses of fluorocarbons in the human body. It is possible that they can be used as a temporary replacement for blood. This has implications in the treatment of strokes, blood clots, and removing fatty deposits from arterial walls. Another possibility is that they can be used to flood the lungs, replacing air as a means of getting oxygen into the bloodstream. That would allow divers to resist the pressure of the deep ocean. Not a new idea; we’ve seen it in a couple of Hal Clement stories (Raindrop and Ocean on Top). But Lester suggests it might also help resist low pressure; a torn spacesuit might not be a death sentence.

Three stars.

Star Itch, by Thomas J. Bassler, M.D.

This month’s first-time author is a doctor who recently completed a stint as an army pathologist. He brings us a tale of an attempt to plant an interstellar colony, but first the computer intelligence running the effort and a shipboard doctor must figure out why the first colony and the scouts sent down by the ship are dying despite the abundance around them. We also follow one of the “expendables.”

Things aren’t going well for Ralph. Art by Adkins

This is a very good story, but there are a lot of caveats. First and foremost, this is not for the squeamish. Even if you aren’t squeamish, I strongly recommend not reading while you’re eating. We get an exhaustive description of what happens to someone starving to death in medical detail. The author shows off his specialist vocabulary, too. I’m not unfamiliar with biological and medical terminology, but I had to grab my dictionary more than once. It’s also a bit longer than it really needed to be. All this is enough to knock off a star, but if Dr. Bassler can overcome some of the tendencies he shows here, he could be very good.

A high, but queasy, three stars.

Love Conquers All, by Mack Reynolds

A crackpot scientist has come up with a foolproof way to end a global depression. A presidential aide ain’t buying it.

Watch out for the cop at 34th and Vine. Art by Wehrle

This is another of those Mack Reynolds stories where you wonder why it isn’t in Analog. This time, it’s probably because the protagonist is a bureaucrat. Or maybe because it’s too much like Chris Anvil’s "Is Everybody Happy?" which ran back in the April issue, just with the effects ratcheted up several notches. Too bad Mack doesn’t really have a hand for humor.

A low three stars.

Dreambird, by Dean R. Koontz

A vicious, wealthy old man wants to steal the Pheasant of Dreams, the last of its kind, to make his final years tolerably pleasant. Only a puritanical undercover policeman with a troubled past can stop him.

Sloane has a bad encounter with a nightmare rat. Art by Brand

Newish writer Koontz continues to show a lot of potential, but sooner or later he’s going to have to live up to it. His biggest problem is creating contrived situations. Here it’s that the training of the secret agents has so clearly created people who can barely function in society. And that’s key to the ending. Still, it’s very well written, and the ending is very, very good, even if the motivations behind it are hard to swallow.

A very high three stars.

Like Banquo’s Ghost, by Larry Niven

After a 30 year wait, the signals from the first interstellar probe are due to arrive. For some reason, nobody seems to care.

It’s hard to say much about this without giving the whole thing away. Some of it’s obvious, but you need to let Niven peel the onion one layer at a time for the full effect. I want to like this story more than I do. I love what he’s trying to do, but I’m not sure he fully achieved it. More of a ground rule double than a home run. (Also, he kept writing "perihelion", when he clearly meant "perigee".)

On the plus side, he gets the setting perfectly. He’s obviously traveled up to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on more than one occasion to attend a "first data" presentation like the one depicted in the story. This is some of the best scene setting he’s ever done.

A very high three stars, but it might rate four for others.

Summing up

Back at the beginning of the year, editor Fred Pohl promised us some new features. The first to appear was the SF Calendar, which lists upcoming conventions and other science fiction events. Apparently, attendance at Boskone doubled this year, and other cons have shown similar growth. We also got the new column from Lester del Rey, “If… and When.” So far, that’s been quite good.

But we’ve also lost a lot. Lin Carter’s “Our Man in Fandom” has vanished without a trace. Admittedly, it felt like Lin had run out of things to say, but some acknowledgment would have been nice. Much bigger, IF has been a source of serials, good and bad, for many years. Ever since the October 1965 issue, when Skylark DuQuesne came to a close and Retief’s War began, the end of a serial has shared the issue with the start of a new one. That came to an end in May, when The Man in the Maze ended without a successor. And now, Rogue Star ended last month without a new serial beginning in this issue.

Look at this month’s cover. “All stories complete in this issue.” The plug for next month promises “A brand-new novel condensation in a special bound-in supplement!” In the letter col, Fred just says it’s a complete short novel. It sounds to me like the serials are gone, and I count that as a loss.

Well, at least a new Delany story is bound to be good.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 14, 1968] Long Time No See (August 1968 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Welcome Back, Comrade

It's been more than a quarter of a century since the Communist Party of the United States ran candidates for President and Vice-President. That was back in 1940, when Earl Browder and James W. Ford were nominated.


They didn't win.

This month, the Party chose Charlene Mitchell and Mike Zagarell for the honor.


Zagarell is technically too young to serve as Vice-President, but I don't think he'll have to face that problem.

Overdue Notice

One month isn't anywhere near as long as twenty-eight years, but the failure of a July issue of Fantastic to hit the shelves of drugstores and newsstands (in June, of course, given the proclivities of the publishing industry) may have caused as much anxiety among readers of imaginative fiction as the lack of a Commie candidate caused in Red voters.

Not to worry. My esteemed colleague John Boston has explained the situation in typically erudite fashion in his latest review of Amazing. I'll wait here while you go take a look.

Ready? Good. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's take a look at the August, not July, issue of Fantastic to see if our patience has been rewarded.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

Our first hint that the delay hasn't changed things very much, if at all, is the fact that the cover is once again a reprint from an issue of the popular German space opera serial Perry Rhodan.


The original always looks better.

The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar, by Fritz Leiber

We begin in promising fashion with our old pals Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, in another witty and imaginative adventure from the living master of sword-and-sorcery.


Illustration by Jeff Jones.

The two lovable rogues have gotten their hands on some incredibly valuable magic jewels. Each one of them tries to cash in on the stolen goods, making use of different fences.

The Mouser goes to a blind fellow, who has a nubile female assistant. Fafhrd seeks out a woman of mature years, who insists on an intimate encounter before the deal is completed. Suffice to say that things don't work out as they expect.

As you'd expect, this is a beautifully written and highly enjoyable tale. It's a bit lighter in tone that some other stories in the series; an anecdote rather than an epic, perhaps.

As a bonus, the likable character Alyx, created by Joanna Russ, makes a guest appearance. Obviously Leiber approves of the way Russ is influenced by his work, and he has acknowledged this in a gracious manner.

Four stars.

Fault, by James Tiptree, Jr.

A new writer makes his third appearance in print with this science fiction story. Narrated by a spaceman to an unknown listener over drinks, it tells how an inexperienced crew member got in trouble. It seems he clumsily injured an alien. Put on trial, he is found guilty and punished in a way the aliens can't convey to the humans. He seems perfectly fine, until strange things start happening.

What the aliens did to the fellow is the whole point of the narrative. It's pretty much a puzzle story. For that kind of thing, it's reasonably interesting. It could have appeared in Analog, except for the fact that the aliens aren't shown to be inferior to humans. It's not bad, but not outstanding in any way.

My advice to Mister Tiptree is to keep writing; the man shows promise.

Three stars.

Horror Out of Carthage, by Edmond Hamilton

Here come the reprints. This old-fashioned yarn comes from the September 1939 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Harold W. McCauley.

Our cast of characters includes the manly hero, an older archeologist, and the latter's beautiful daughter. They're on a dig to locate the Temple of Moloch at the site of Carthage.


Illustrations by Jay Jackson.

Right away we're told that the daughter feels as if someone is trying to force her out of her body. It's no surprise, then, when the mind of a woman of the ancient vanished city takes possession of her physical form. Pretty soon our hero's mind goes far back in time to inhabit the body of a Carthaginian man.

The big problem is that Carthage is about to be wiped off the map by invading Romans. (The two folks from the doomed city came forward in time to escape that fate.) Can the hero find a way to save his beloved from being sacrificed to Moloch, and return to his own time with her? Come on, you know the answer to that already.


War, with elephants.

This is a typical old-time pulp adventure story, with characters who are walking archetypes. It's got some vivid scenes, so it's not boring. Carthage is constantly described as a wicked, barbaric place. That sounds more like Roman propaganda than accurate ancient history, but I'm no expert.

Worth a look for nostalgia buffs.

Three stars.

The Supernal Note, by Rog Phillips

The July 1948 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this unusual work.


Cover art by Arnold Kohn.

A mysterious entity sends a musical note from an ethereal realm to the material world. In mundane reality, a man strikes up a conversation with an airline stewardess. They are obviously attracted to each other, but eventually go their separate ways.


Illustration by William A. Gray.

This is a very strange story, and I have described it badly. The author creates a highly detailed mythological background, much of it difficult to comprehend. I'm not really sure what he's getting at. Did the musical note cause the pair to fall in love?

I found this peculiar tale rather haunting, if confusing. It's definitely not the same old thing, anyway.

Three stars.

When Better Budgies Are Built, by Bryce Walton

The November 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures is the source of this futuristic farce.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

The narrator is a vacuum cleaner salesman. He gets pulled into the future by a guy using a forbidden time machine. It seems that two rival merchandisers, the only ones left in this new version of the USA, are about to start selling gizmos that will supply everything that anyone could want, for a price. The problem is that one of the corporations has an army of robots who are able to sell anything to anybody.


Illustration by William Slade.

What makes this even more alarming is the fact that the head of the company is a would-be dictator planning to use the robots to sell people on the idea that he should be their leader. In exchange for a piece of future technology that will make him rich when he goes back to his own time, the narrator figures out a way to defeat the irresistible robot salesman.

Pretty silly stuff, really. The plot depends on the robots being absolutely perfect at selling merchandise and ideas, without any clue as to how they do this. We don't get to find out what the narrator earns for his service, either.

The ending makes use of a stereotype about women that is more goofy than offensive.

Two stars.

The Frightened Planet, by Sidney Austen

This two-fisted, he-man yarn comes from the October 1948 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by James B. Settles.

A Cro-Magnon runs away from his tribe after a fight with the bullying leader. He witnesses a sphere arrive and discharge two men and a woman. After saving the trio from a wolf, he jumps into the vessel to escape a sabretooth tiger. The four go off to another planet.


Illustration by J. Allen St. John.

The folks on this world are under attack by green monsters. The Cro-Magnon defeats the creatures easily, while the effete males around him cower in fear. Naturally, the woman is instantly attracted to his manliness.

The author is obviously trying to promote the idea that men should be fearless warriors. The Cro-Magnon's contempt for the decadent males surrounding him is evident, and the author appears to share it.

Even if I ignore all that, as an adventure story it failed to hold my interest. There are parts of it where there seems to be something missing; one scene jumps to another without any kind of transition.

One star.

You Could Be Wrong, by Robert Bloch

Here's a tale of paranoia from the March 1955 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

A guy gets fed up with everything being fake. He goes on and on about this, until his exasperated wife calls in a buddy to talk some sense into him.


Illustration by Virgil Finlay.

The two fellows argue about stuff being phony for a while. The guy reveals what he thinks is behind all these ersatz things. There's a twist ending you'll see coming a mile away.

Definitely a one idea story. It's like one of Philip K. Dick's what-is-reality tales, with all the subtlety and complexity surgically removed. Or maybe it's more like a clumsy version of Robert A. Heinlein's famous solipsistic nightmare They.

Anyway, not very good.

Two stars.

No Head for My Bier, by Lester del Rey

This screwball comedy comes from the September 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

A nutty scientist uses a gizmo to remove an actor's head, as far as anybody can tell. Apparently he can still talk and breathe and such. He tells the actor to get a job without his handsome face within a month, or stay that way forever.


Illustration by Robert Gibson Jones also.

The actor's head is stored, in some way or other, like a photographic negative. Only pure alcohol can make it go back to normal. Let's just say that beer and a cat are involved in the ridiculous climax.

This thing is even more of a lunatic romp than I have indicated. The nutty scientist does all kinds of impossible things, from teleportation to literally flying.

Of possible interest to fans of pure wackiness.

Two stars.

The Wrong People, by Ralph Robin.

Yet another comedy, from the November/December 1953 issue of the magazine.


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

A married couple who pretty much dislike everything, including each other, inadvertently conjure up a being from somewhere else in space and time. The creature is friendly enough, it seems, even if it scares the daylights out of the humans at first.


Illustration by Ed Emshwiller.

After they calm down, they think it's some kind of genie or something, ready to offer them whatever they want. This misunderstanding doesn't end well, leading to a shockingly gruesome conclusion.

There seems to be a touch of satire here, although you have to dig deep to find it. The sudden change in mood at the end really threw me for a loop.

Two stars.

Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Princess of Mars, by Charles R. Tanner

The author retells the story of ERB's famous novel in the form of a humorous poem.


Illustration by Jim.

I found it too sophomoric for my taste in literary spoofing. I may be prejudiced, as I am not a fan of Burroughs.

One star.

Worth Waiting For?

This issue started off well, but quickly sank into mediocrity and lousiness. Amazing and Fantastic seem to have reached the bottom of the barrel when it comes to reprints. Too much thud-and-blunder adventure, too much stupid comedy. It's enough to make you sick.


Cartoon by Frosty, from the same issue as Ralph Robin's story.




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial, Uncategorized

[July 2, 1968] What’s the Point? (August 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

The appearance of doing something

One of the German Empire’s colonies before the First World War was German South West Africa, nestled between what are today South Africa, Angola, and Botswana. After the war, South Africa was granted a mandate over the colony by the League of Nations, similar to Britain’s control over Palestine or France’s over Lebanon and Syria. The League was dissolved in 1946 and replaced by the United Nations. In general, mandates were intended to be replaced by United Nations Trusteeship, and the General Assembly recommended that South West Africa be one of those, however South Africa refused. In 1949, South Africa declared that it was no longer subject to U.N. oversight where South West Africa was concerned, as they began to extend their apartheid system into the former colony. The following year, the International Court ruled that the U.N. should exercise supervision in the administration of the territory in place of the League, but South Africa rejected the Court’s opinion and has refused any involvement by the U.N.

A political cartoon from after the First World War.

Independence movements have swept through Africa over the last decade, and as I noted in January of last year, South West Africa is not immune. The predominant organization is the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), and they have been lobbying the U.N. for several years. In 1966, the General Assembly terminated the mandate, giving the U.N. direct supervision of the territory. Last year, they established the United Nations Council for South West Africa to administer the territory until independence. South Africa remains recalcitrant. And so, on June 12th, the Assembly approved Resolution 2372, which, in accordance with the wishes of the people as represented by SWAPO, changed the name to Namibia. Well, that, some finger-wagging at South Africa and the nations supporting the illegal occupation of Namibia, and a request that the Security Council do something to get South Africa out. Don’t hold your breath.

Sam Nujoma (r.), President of SWAPO, shakes hands with Mostafa Rateb Abdel-Wahab, President of the Council for Namibia

Noir, nonsense, and the blatantly obvious

The stories in this month’s IF range from the patently obvious to those that leave the reader wondering why the author bothered. There are a couple of mildly entertaining stops along the way, and the high point may surprise you (even if it is more molehill than mountain).

Supposedly for Rogue Star, which doesn’t have a starship crash. Or this many characters. Art by Chaffee

Whaddya Read?, by H.L. Gold

The founding editor of both IF and Galaxy offers a defense of modern science fiction. Maybe the new stuff isn’t as different as most people seem to think. It’s just better written.

Three stars.

Getting Through University, by Piers Anthony

A few stories ago, dentist Dr. Dillingham was kidnapped by aliens and has since bumbled around the galaxy, from one emergency patient to the next. Now, he’s been given the opportunity to attend dental school and gain proper accreditation. All he needs to do is pass the entrance exam.

The doctor deals with a difficult case instead of prepping for his exam. Art by Vaughn Bodé

Surprisingly, given the previous stories and the author’s general output, I rather liked this one. A lot of what happens is ridiculously obvious, but it doesn’t lead to quite where you might suspect. This is almost the quality that Cele Lalli used to get out of Anthony. Maybe there’s hope for him after all.

A somewhat above average three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at Project Orion, the idea of using nuclear bombs to propel a starship. It’s not as crazy as it sounds, but he’s not shy about discussing some of the problems connected with a successful launch of the project (including the hundred billion dollar price tag). This is a clear-headed look at an interesting idea full of possibilities for science fiction authors.

Three stars.

In Another Land, by Mary Urhausen

Seeking to escape a regimented society and a failed love affair, the narrator attempts suicide only to find himself in a utopia. That utopia feels like the sort often imagined 50 or 60 years ago, but this month’s first time author does what she can with it. The shift from first person perspective to third person is slightly jarring, but gives the story what little bite it has. New author Urhausen shows definite skill. Here’s hoping she can hone it into something a little meatier.

Three stars.

Last Dreamer, by A. Bertram Chandler

Commodore John Grimes just wants to go home, but the strangeness at the Rim of the galaxy keeps throwing adventures in his way. This time, it’s a habitable planet with no sun, where everything is out of a bad fairy tale, and everyone speaks in rhymed couplets.

It comes as no surprise that Dan Adkins can’t draw a fire-breathing dragon. Art by Adkins

I generally enjoy the Grimes stories, but this is just silly – and that in a series that has had intelligent rats and an appearance by the Olympian gods. Of course, Chandler knows it’s silly and does get some humor out of the Commodore’s grumpiness about the situation. (He really should have ended a sentence with the word “orange,” though. Let’s see them rhyme that.) Overall, a disappointment; the more so because Chandler teased us with a story from the very beginning of Grimes’s career, but has since stuck with the older man near the end of his service. Let’s see some more of the younger man, whether wet behind the ears or just coming into his prime.

A low three stars.

Merlin Planet, by E.G. Von Wald

Sticking with fantasy pretending it’s science fiction, we have the story of the new man on a Terran trading team on a world where the locals can do magic (thanks to some psychic handwaving; what hath Campbell wrought?). Fortunately, the wizards can be stopped for a time by doing complicated math in your head. Unfortunately, instead of the requested mathematician, headquarters has sent a business law expert.

That’s not how you use a magic staff. Art by Wehrle

If you can get past the magic, the story isn’t terrible. However, it is twice as long as it needs to be. I saw the solution as soon as the new guy revealed he couldn’t do high order math. The rest was just an interminable wait until he figured it out. Right on the line between two and three stars, but the length drags it down for me.

A high two stars.

Song of the Blue Baboon, by Roger Zelazny

Zelazny takes us into the mind of a man who either betrayed Earth to alien invaders or carried out a clever stratagem to defeat them. The problem is that he never engages with his theme. The ambiguity of the ending could be read a couple of ways. Pretty, but shallow.

A low three stars.

What the Old Aliens Left, by D.M. Melton

Here’s our first tale with strong noir elements: an honest cop, a corrupt system, a dangerous dame. The lure of great wealth? The technology left behind by a dead alien civilization.

Most of the action takes place in a bar, too. Art by Brand

Melton continues to improve. He’s never going to get to the point where I’m excited to see his name on the cover, but at least it’s a sign of a probably-entertaining read. He might be getting a handle on writing women, but he’s working from a strong template here, one that’s not necessarily great, but at least gives them their own motives. On the whole, the story probably could have been tightened up here and there. Less going back and forth from the bar, for instance. Still an entertaining read.

Three stars.

West Is West, by Larry Tritten

The inhabitants of the planet West wallow in the cliches of old-school westerns and have names like Randolph Scott Cartwheel, even if many of them are duck-billed saurians. Sheriff Matt Cooper has to bring in Cartwheel for the unprovoked killing of another saurian. Then things go a bit noir, with a femme fatale and the Maltese Longhorn Steer.

A shootout is about the only thing missing from this story. Art by Wehrle

Tritten appears to be another newcomer, though he’s not acknowledged as an IF First. The parody here is laid on with a dumptruck and feels dated. The cliches are familiar, but the western genre has largely moved on from them. There’s no room for Clint Eastwood’s man with no name (though Rowdy Yates would likely feel at home). Ron Goulart could have pulled this off.

A low three stars.

Rogue Star (Part 3 of 3), by Fredrik Pohl and Jack Williamson

This thing doesn’t deserve a recap. I’ll merely note that the climax features actual stars battling each other. The flaws are many, but I’ll limit myself to just two. For starters, “protagonist” Andy Quam should have just stayed home. Everything would have turned out exactly the same, and he wouldn’t have had to deal with all the stress. There are also a number of unresolved subplots, most notably the strange behavior of Earth’s sun. We’re told why it’s happening, but nothing is done about it.

Two stars for this installment and barely two stars for the novel as a whole.

Edmond Hamilton just smashed planets together. What a piker. Art by Gaughan

Summing up

If you told me that, in an issue with stories by the likes of Roger Zelazny and Jack Williamson, the one I would like best was by Piers Anthony, I’d have laughed at you. Look, it’s not a great story; it’s just the one that annoyed me the least. Maybe the summer heat is making me cranky.

That’s a promising lineup.




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[June 10, 1968] Froth and Frippery (July 1968 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

A little goes a long way

Science fiction has a reputation for being a serious genre.  In tone, that is–it's still mostly dismissed by "serious" literary aficionados. Whether it's gloomy doomsday predictions or thrilling stellar adventure, laughs are usually scarce.

There is, however, a distinct thread of whimsy within the field.  Satire and farce can be found galore.  For instance, Robert Sheckley was a master of light, comedic sf short stories in the '50s (he's less good at it these days).  In moderation, fun/funny stories break up a turgid clutch of dour tales.

On the other hand, when you put a bunch together, particularly when only one of them is above average…

You get this month's issue of Galaxy.

You're too much, man


by Jack Gaughan

Before we get to the stories, in his editorial column Fred Pohl reminds Galaxy readers to submit proposals for the ending of the Vietnam War…in 100 words or fewer.

It makes me want to send something like this (with apologies to Laugh-In:

How I would end the War in Vietnam, by Henry Gibson.

"I would end the War in Vietnam by bombing the Vietnamese.  I would bomb them a lot.  When there are no more Vietnamese, we would win."

Thank you.

A Specter is Haunting Texas (Part 1 of 3), by Fritz Leiber


by Jack Gaughan

The lead piece is the beginning of a new serial by one of the old titans of science fiction.  It tells of one Christopher Crockett de la Cruz, an actor from a space colony orbiting the moon.  He has come down to Earth to ply his trade, a very risky endeavor as even lunar gravity is uncomfortable for him.  De la Cruz requires an integrated exoskeleton to get around.  That plus his emaciated, 8-foot frame makes him look like nothing so much as Death himself.  A handsome, well-featured Death, but Death just the same.  (Hmmm… a handsome, gaunt actor–I wonder on whom this character could be based!)

As strange as De la Cruz is, the situation on Earth is even stranger.  He makes touchdown in Texas, now an independent nation again in the aftermath of an atomic catastrophe in the late '60s.  Its inhabitants have all been modified to top eight feet as well (everything is bigger in Texas, by God's or human design), and they claim sovereignty of all North America, from the Guatemalan canal to the Northwest Territory.  And over the Mexicans in particular, who not only are excluded from the height-enhancing hormone, but many of whom are forced to live as thralls, harnessed with electric cloaks that make them mindless slaves.

Quickly, De la Cruz is embroiled in local politics, unwittingly used to spearhead a coup against the current President of Texas.  Along the way, the descriptions, the events, the setting are absurd to the extreme–from the reverence paid to "Lyndon the First", father of the nation, to the ridiculous courtships between De la Cruz and the two female characters.

It shouldn't work, and it almost doesn't, but underneath all the silliness, there is the skeleton of a plot and a fascinating world.  It doesn't hurt that Leiber is such a veteran; I've read froth for froth's sake, and this isn't it.  I'm willing to see where he goes with it.

Three stars.

McGruder's Marvels, by R. A. Lafferty


by Joe Wehrle, Jr.

The military needs a miniaturized component for its uber-weapon in two weeks, but the regular contractors can't guarantee delivery for two years.  The colonels in charge of procuring reject out of hand a bid that will provide parts for virtually nothing and almost instantly.  It is only when they start losing a global war that they grasp at the seemingly ludicrous straw.

Turns out the fellow who made the bid used to run a flea circus.  Naturally, now he's into miniaturization.  His parts really do work, and they really are cheap, but as can be expected, there's a catch.

If I hadn't known this story was written by Lafferty, I'd still have guessed it was written by Lafferty.  After all, he and whimsy are old companions.  It's more of an F&SF fantasy than SF, but it at least has the virtue of being memorable.  Three stars.

There Is a Tide, by Larry Niven


by Jeff Jones

The best piece of the issue is this one, featuring a new Niven character (the 180-year-old space prospector Louis Wu) in a familiar setting (Known Space).  This is set later than the rest of the stories, past the Bey Schaeffer tales, contemporaneous with Safe at Any Speed somewhere close to the year 3000.

Wu has gotten tired of people, and so he has gone off in his one-man ship to explore the stars.  His motive is fame–he wants to find himself a relic of the Slavers, the telepathic race of beings who ruled the galaxy and died in an interstellar war more than a billion years ago.  In a far off system, his deep radar pings off an infinitely reflective object in orbit around an Earthlike world.  Assuming it's a Slaver treasure box, kept in stasis these countless eons, he moves in for the salvage.  But a new kind of alien has gotten there first…

Once again, Niven does a fine job of establishing a great deal with thumbnail, throwaway lines.  In the end, Tide is a scientific gimmick story, the kind of which I'd expect to find in Analog (why doesn't Niven show up in Analog?), but the personal details elevate the story beyond its foundation.

It's funny; I read in a 'zine (fan or pro, I can't remember) that Niven writes hard SF that eschews characterization.  I think Niven writes quite unique and memorable characters and hard SF.  It's a welcome combination.

Four stars.

Bailey's Ark , by Burt K. Filer

by Brock

Now back to silliness.  Atomic tests have caused the oceans to flood the land.  After a few decades, only a few mountaintop communities are left, and soon they will be inundated.  Fourteen humans have been chosen to be put into cold storage for 1500 years, to emerge when the waters have receded.

All the animals have died, except for a few caged specimens, and no effort has been made to preserve them through the impending apocalypse.  It's up to one wily vet to save at least one species by sneaking it into the stasis Ark without anyone noticing.

Everything about this story is dumb, from the set up to the execution.  Its only virtues are that it's vaguely readable and that it's short.

Two stars.

For Your Information: Interplanetary Communications, by Willy Ley

This is a strange article which never quite makes a point.  The subject is sending messages from points around the solar system, but ultimately, Ley presents just two notable things:

1) A table of interplanetary distances (available in any decent astronomy book, and without even a convenient translation of kilometers to light-seconds/minutes/hours).

2) The assertion that satellites, artificial or natural, will be necessary as communications relays as direct sending of messages from planetary surface to planetary surface is prohibitively power-intensive.  It is left to the reader's imagination as to why that would be.

Sloppy, rushed stuff.  Two stars.

Dreamer, Schemer, by Brian W. Aldiss

Two captains of industry vie for control of a city.  One offers a collaboration; the other takes advantage of the offer, double crosses the offerer, and leaves him penniless.  When the double-crosser gets second thoughts, he subjects himself to a "play-out", a sort of mind trip where he gets to recreate and re-examine his decision in a fantasy world scenario.  The double-crossed, coincidentally, engages in a "play-out" at the same time, for the same reason.

This concept was done much more effectively more than a decade ago in Ellison's The Silver Corridor.  Two stars.

Factsheet Six, by John Brunner


by Jack Gaughan

A callous capitalist comes across "Factsheet Five", a rudely typed circular that details all the horrible injuries caused by the defects in various companies' products.  This and the prior Factsheets have had harmful impacts on the companies listed, from financial loss to outright bankruptcy.  The capitalist, who has his own industrial empire (and attendant quality-control issues), wants to find the author of the Factsheets so he can get inside knowledge to make a killing in the investor market.

Of course, we know who will be featured in Factsheet Six…

This is the kind of corny, Twilight Zone-y piece that shows up in the odd issue of F&SF.  I was sad to find it here.

Two stars.

Seconds' Chance, by Robin Scott Wilson


by Brand

Ever wonder who cleans up after the James Bonds and Kelly Robinsons of the world, settling insurance claims, smoothing diplomatic feathers, etc.?  This is their story.

Their rather pointless, one-joke-spread-over-too-many-pages, story.

Two stars.

When I Was in the Zoo, by A. Bertram Chandler


by Vaughn Bodé

Here's a shaggy dog story, told White Hart style, about an Aussie fisherman who gets abducted by jellyfish aliens, exhibited in a zoo with a collection of terrestrial animals, and then seduced for professional reasons by one of the lady jellyfish.

Frankly, I'm not quite sure what else to say about it other than it's the sort of tale you'd expect from A. Bertram Chandler writing a White Hart story–competent, maritime, Australian, and forgettable.

Three stars.

2001: A Space Odyssey, by Lester del Rey

The issue ends with a review panning 2001 as New Wave nihilism, meaningless save for the vague suggestion that intelligence is always evil.  This is a facile take.  It's possible 2001 is what I call a "Rorschach film", like, say, Blow Up, where the director throws a bunch of crap on the screen and leaves it to the viewer to invent a coherent story.  However, there are enough clues throughout the film to make the film reasonably comprehensible.  Moreover, there is a book that explains everything in greater detail.

I'm not saying 2001 is perfect, and I imagine those who had to sit through the longer, uncut version enjoyed it less (save for Chip Delany, who apparently preferred it.  I'll never know which I would have liked best, since the director not only trimmed down the film after release, but burned the cut footage!) But it is a brilliant film, extremely innovative, and it's worth a watch.

Starving for a bite

After eating all that cotton candy, with only the smallest morsel of meat to go with it, I am absolutely famished for something substantial.  Thankfully, I'm about to hop a Boeing 707 for a trip to Japan, where not only the food will be exquisite, but I can catch up on all the 4 and 5 star stories recommended by my fellow Travelers in earlier months.

Stay tuned for reports from the Orient!




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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 2, 1968] Necessary Evils (July 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

The Baltimore Nine

You may recall one of the more spectacular draft protests last October when Father Philip Berrigan and three other men forced their way in a Selective Service office in Baltimore, Maryland and poured blood into filing cabinets containing draft records. Father Berrigan has acted again, this time along with eight others. The group included Tom Lewis, who was also part of the earlier protest, Berrigan’s brother Daniel, also a priest, and two women.

The Baltimore Nine shortly after their arrest. Fr. Philip Berrigan is 2nd from the left in the back row.

On Friday May 17th, the group entered the Selective Service office in Catonsville, Maryland and began stuffing several hundred A-1 draft records into wire incinerator baskets. Clerk Mary Murphy tried to stop them, but was restrained by one of the protestors. They then made their way back outside and set fire to the records using home-made napalm while quietly reciting the Lord’s Prayer. A short time later, they were arrested, and firefighters extinguished the fire. The following Monday, they sent flowers and a letter of apology signed “The Baltimore Nine” to Mrs. Murphy and the other clerks.

On one hand, the escalation to fire is concerning. Imitators may be less inclined to ensure that no one is harmed. On the other hand, the sight of a group including two priests and a monk defying what they call an unjust war and an unjust law may make people think, especially Catholics. These aren’t a bunch of hippies and long-haired college students who just don’t want to fight in a war.

Of war and women

Two themes run through this month’s IF: war as a necessary evil and female characters who are present solely as motivation for male characters. To be fair, there are as many female protagonists as there are plot pawns, but the latter outweigh the former.

Abbott and his men are the first to reach the Sleeper’s chamber. Art by Gray Morrow

The Sleeper with Still Hands, by Harlan Ellison

For 600 years the Sleeper has rested in a chamber beneath the Sargasso Sea, reading everyone’s thoughts and smoothing out ideas of aggression and war. Now, two men, Leaf and Laurrayne, believing that the enforced peace has held humanity back and stopped progress, have learned to shield their thoughts from the Sleeper and taught the skill to others. Each has sent a group to be the first to find the Sleeper and turn off his prying mind so that “Man’s Destiny could be fulfilled.”

Is this the true path of progress? Art by Gaughan

This is far from Harlan’s best work, but it’s still decent (if you like Ellison). He’s trying to say something profound at the end, but he’s being too obscure in the execution.

Three stars.

We Fused Ones, by Perry A. Chapdelaine, Sr.

Twins Rebecca and John Ellents were captured by the Bewegal and converted into organic micro-computers. Together they tell their journey from targeting computer to child’s toy and how they hope to rescue humanity from the alien threat.

Bodé’s style works surprisingly well in this horrific picture. Art by Vaughn Bodé

Chapdelaine’s sophomore effort improves on his first. It’s still a bit long, and we could have done with less of the gruesome conversion process. Maybe the most interesting part is watching the steady downgrading of military technology to increasingly less important civilian tasks.

Three stars.

If—and When, by Lester del Rey

Most science fiction, according to Lester del Rey, asks either “what happens if” or “what happens when.” In this new feature, he’ll be looking at various items in the news that fit those categories and how they might apply to science fiction. This time he offers an interesting study on keeping the immune system from rejecting transplanted organs, quasars, and the idea that there is matter that decreases in mass as it approaches the speed of light. It’s not unlike Ted Thomas’ Science Springboard over in F&SF, though del Rey seems to have a better grasp on some of what he’s talking about. Maybe because he doesn’t really go beyond the “That’s interesting” point. We’ll see how this feature shakes out over the next few months.

Three stars.

Gone to the Graveyards, Everyone, by Paul M. Moffett

Thanks to the Life Maintainer, war has become a competition. Death is almost never Permanent, and the Limited War is an important part in the world’s economy. What happens when there’s a shift in economic needs?

A killed soldier on his way back for repair. Art by Wehrle

This month’s new author is clearly inspired by Mack Reynolds, both the latter’s Joe Mauser stories and economic themes. Not bad, though it could have used a bit of tightening here and there and fewer capital letters. I wouldn’t object to more from this author.

Three stars.

The Muschine, by Burt K. Filer

Metal is extremely rare on the planet Isolde, so the human colonists have made do with organic machines, from the muscles that turn the screw on protagonist Luke Owens’s ship to intelligent biobots like Rudder, who steers it. Something has started wrecking boats along the coast, and it’s going to take expensive help from Earth to solve the problem. Even that may not be enough.

Luke and the man from Earth try to negotiate. Art by Brand.

After some rocky early stories, Filer may be improving. This is a fair, if flawed, tale whose greatest sin is that it’s too long.

A low three stars.

The Soft Shells, by Basil Wells

Vahni is a Turman, moving on from finlin childhood to adolescence as her people move from the sea to the land. To her distress, she is assigned to the household of the Soft Shell Jackson, the only one of his kind on the planet. At first, anyway. Her new father’s greatest concern is what will happen when more of his kind arrive.

The Turmans return to their land city. Art by Wehrle

Wells started out in the 1940s and took a break for the first half of the 1960s. Since his return, he’s tried to write stories that fit more modern tastes with limited success. This is probably his best effort so far, though the open ending is a bit unsatisfying.

Three stars.

The Hides of Marrech, by C.C. MacApp

Judson Kruger is undercover on the planet Marrech, trying to track down the ring selling the hides of the otter-like natives.

Kruger has a run-in with some of the locals. Art by Vaughn Bodé

Presumably, this is the same protagonist as Inspector Kruger from a couple of earlier stories. The good news is that, while the tone is light, MacApp isn’t trying to be outrageously funny in a Ron Goulart style. It’s a serviceable story.

Three stars.

In the Oligocene, by John Thomas

A man’s obsessive love drives him to invent time travel after the object of his affection is killed.

Oligocene fauna are mostly harmless. Art by Brock

Thomas’s second outing is so different from the first, you might think they were written by different authors. It’s hard to say much about this story without giving the whole thing away. My biggest problem is that Paula is more plot device than person. Events happen to her, and nothing she says or does has any effect. On the other hand, that might be intentional; it would be appropriate.

Three stars.

The Cure-All, by Win Marks

Nick has a summer job at NASA as an orderly who collects samples from returning astronauts. Then an astronaut who went out an albino and returned black-haired and brown-eyed sneezes on him.

Mildly amusing, but it’s too long, and the quarantine procedures are absurdly lax.

A low three stars.

Rogue Star (Part 2 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson

Andy Quamodian has rushed back to Earth at the behest of Molly Zalvidar. Cliff Hawk, the man she chose over Andy, has created a rogue star, a sentient star which is not part of the galactic community. The rogue has absorbed Cliff’s consciousness and decides it’s in love with Molly. A bunch of pointless stuff happens, and it kidnaps her and takes her to a highly radioactive cave. To be concluded.

The rogue inhabits a mining machine to interact with Molly. Art by Gaughan

Ugh. Molly is completely passive except when she does something stupid to put herself in greater danger. Protagonist Andy Quam is little better, running around with his hair on fire and achieving nothing. This collaboration between two good authors is so much less than the sum of its parts.

Two stars.

Summing up

There it is: a lukewarm heap of mediocrity with a bad finish. For a while there, it felt like IF was turning into a magazine that deserved those back-to-back Hugos, but there’s been a marked decline in the last couple of months. Maybe it’s just the serial. Meanwhile, the new feature has potential, though the first offering is a bit scattered. I’ll give it time to find its feet. Our Man in Fandom seems to be gone, which is all right. It felt like Carter had run out of things to say. Still, Pohl could have acknowledged his contribution over the last couple of years.

Chandler will probably be serviceable. Maybe Zelazny can lift us out of the doldrums.




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