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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 2, 1969] Merging streams (August 1969 Venture)

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by David Levinson

Joining the mainstream

Every Sunday, the New York Times publishes a list of the best selling books of the last week. It tends to be a mix of high-brow, literary novels and potboilers—especially spy thrillers—along with the occasional gothic romance and a mystery once in a blue moon. But to the best of my knowledge, it’s never had a science fiction novel prior to this year. As of the latest list, it has not one but two, both of which have been reviewed here at the Journey. There’s even a third that could be said to have sfnal elements if you stand on your head and squint a bit.

In its tenth week on the list and slipping one spot to number six is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Of course, Vonnegut is none too happy about his work being labelled science fiction. Meanwhile, Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain hit the list for the first time in eighth place. The potential third novel is Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor, which seems to be set on an Earth exactly like ours with a slightly different history or on a counter-Earth on the other side of the sun. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much science fiction in the plot, so I’m not really inclined to include it.

Does this mean our beloved genre has finally hit the big time? Probably not. As I said, Vonnegut doesn’t want to associate with us, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Crichton thinks of his book as a thriller. (I could be wrong, but that’s how it’s being marketed.) 2001 did all right at the box office, but was panned by critics (including some SF critics). Star Trek has been canceled, leaving Land of the Giants—a show so bad it makes Lost in Space look smart—the closest thing to SF on television. But just maybe the boundaries are weakening, even if we wind up having to sneak in the back door with those who won’t acknowledge us.

Sophomore or sophomoric?

The second issue of Mercury Publishing’s second attempt at Venture SF is on the stands. How is it? Well, before we crack it open, let’s look at the outside.

More geometric shapes and color washes. Art by Bert Tanner

If the last issue could be mistaken for a horror magazine, this one could easily be taken for a mystery. That’s probably the eye. Dell used to use an eye looking through a keyhole as the logo for their mysteries (and maybe still do; it’s been a while since I bought one), and this is very reminiscent of that. The best thing about the outside of the magazine continues to be the title logo.

The League of Grey-eyed Women, by Julius Fast

Diagnosed with terminal cancer, a desperate Jack Freeman will grasp at any straw. A Canadian doctor has had some small success injecting rats with artificial DNA, but his studies are nowhere close to being ready for human experimentation, no matter how much Jack begs. His beautiful, pale-eyed assistant, however, is willing to bend the rules, since she and the many women with gray eyes she knows have their own agenda. The treatment may cure Jack’s cancer, but it may kill him in other ways. It will certainly change his life.

This confused mess makes sense if you’ve read the book. Art by Bert Tanner

If the name Julius Fast sounds familiar, you may have read one of his well-received mysteries or one of his non-fiction books such as the one on Human Sexual Response by Masters and Johnson or last year’s book about the Beatles. (That or you’re thinking of Howard Fast, who wrote Spartacus, among many other things.) He’s not a complete stranger to SF, so he doesn’t make a lot of the mistakes that many mainstream authors do when trying to write our stuff.

That said, there are parts that don’t hold up if you think about them too hard. Some of those may be better propped up by things that were cut from this condensed version; others make no sense at all. Still, the narrative pulls the reader along, even despite Jack being a fairly unpleasant person early on. There’s enough here to make it worth reading, but you might want to see if your local library has a copy rather than spending your own money.

A solid three stars. The complete novel may come in a little higher, but probably not enough for another star.

With Ah! Bright Wings, by Edward Wellan

Pollution seems to be in the news more every day. In the last two weeks alone, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire (and not for the first time) and a pesticide spill in the Rhine caused a state of emergency in West Germany and the Netherlands. What if there’s more behind it than just industrialization and a lack of concern by the government and the companies producing most of the pollution? It’s an old theme in SF, but Wellan has come up with a moderately new twist. Unfortunately, the telling is as dry and dusty as the two UN bureaucrats who are the story’s protagonists.

A high two stars.

Bradbury on Screen: A Saga Perseverance, by F.E. Edwards

It’s no secret that Ray Bradbury loves the movies. He’s written a few, and several of his stories have been adapted for the big screen, but many more have never made it into or out of production. Those that do have not served the source material well. This article follows the career of Bradbury and his work in Hollywood. Interesting but inconsequential.

Three stars.

Dragon in the Land, by Dean R, Koontz

Over the years, the focus of the military has shifted to biological warfare. A virus escaped from a Chinese lab and is so devastating it brought down the Communist government. The American doctor heading the Analysis and Immunization team that is part of the military intervention in the country must struggle with his own sense of inadequacy, which stems from growing up in the shadow of his Nobel laureate father.

Plumbing the depths of the bombed-out lab. Art uncredited

Imagine if The Andromeda Strain had ended badly and someone had to enter the ruins of the lab to find the original team’s notes; that’s the action of this story in a nutshell. I don’t think Koontz has cribbed from Crichton. The timing of the two stories makes that nearly impossible, but it implies that both men have done their homework.

I keep saying that Koontz is getting close to breaking through. This might be it. It’s certainly the best thing he’s written so far. If he can maintain this level of depth and quality, he’s going to be a big name.

Four stars.

Project Amnion, by Larry Eisenberg

A story in the style of a magazine article on efforts to teach children in the womb, it ignores countless aspects of human physiological development, not just in the brain, but the whole body. Eisenberg has apparently never met a baby. The nicest thing I can say bout this one is that at least it’s not an Emmett Duckworth story.

A low two stars.

Pithecanthropus Astralis, by Robert F. Young

A caveman questions the wisdom of the elders and breaks the rules. While this piece lacks the saccharine romantic elements that have often led me to complain about Young (who has been largely silent in the last few years), it also lacks the positive elements that his past stories have had.

Two stars.

Summing up

Elsewhere in the issue, there’s a weak Feghoot and a word scramble to see how well you know your -ologies. The condensed novel is decent, and there’s one other good story, but the rest is trivial to terrible. The cover is bad and not designed to sell the magazine, and there still isn’t much in the way of promotion over in F&SF. If things don’t turn around soon, this incarnation of Venture isn’t even going to last as long as the 10 issues of the first go-round. Let’s hope things improve in the fall.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 30, 1969] Anywhere but here (July 1969 Analog)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Scenes from abroad

And so, our longest Japan trip to date has wrapped up.  We're still developing the many rolls of film we took, but here are some highlights from our vacation that included the cities Fukuoka, Amagi, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, and Tokyo:


Nanami and The Young Traveler zoom down a slide in an eastern suburb of Nagoya


Nanami and her husband perform at a Nagoya jazz club


This is Nanami's baby, Wataru, and her mother-in-law, Haruko!


Lorelei poses in front of Ultraman, one of Japan's newest superheros


Lorelei has become smitten with kimono and yukata.  We had to buy a new suitcase to fit them all (and the model trains Elijah bought)

The trouble back home

On the doorstep to my house was a big pile of mail that my neighbor has kept for me.  In addition to sundry bills, the latest FAPA packet, and a handful of independent 'zines (including the latest from the James Doohan International Fan Club), there was the latest issue of Analog.  Interest piqued by the lovely (as always) Freas cover, I tore into the mag before unpacking.  Sadly, it was all downhill from there…


by Kelly Freas

… And Comfort to the Enemy, by Stanley Schmidt

When an exploration ship lands on a seemingly uninhabited planet, its rapacious, by-the-book commander rubs his hands with glee at the prospect of colonizing plunder.  But it turns out there are intelligent natives—it's just that their "technology" is actually the fine control of all of their fellow creatures creating a sort of artificial Deathworld.  When the invaders refuse to leave, they take a hostage, who they use as a communications go-between.  And then they unleash a deadly plague which ravages first the explorer ship and then their entire race.  How the colonizers get out of the predicament is somewhat clever.


by Kelly Freas

This one starts a bit slowly, and the explorers are all too human, even though they're supposed to be aliens.  However, once it gets moving, it's pretty good, and you can sympathize with both the planet dwellers and the decimated invaders.

Three stars.

The Great Intellect Boom, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

A pharmaceutical company stumbles upon a brain-booster pill.  Unfortunately, it promotes eggheaded learning, but not application of this learning.  As a result, the nation's economy stumbles as more and more citizens would rather discuss than do.

This is a pretty thinly veiled attack on academia and the intelligentsia, which surely must have tickled editor Campbell's reactionary heart.

One star.

The Mind-Changer, by Verge Foray


by Kelly Freas

Boy this one was a disappointment.  We last saw Verge Foray in a nice little piece called Ingenuity, which featured a post-atomic world where humanity was divided into psionically adept but primitive and regressing "Novos" and scientific, but conservative, "Olsaperns."  Starn was the hero of that story—a Novo with a rare gift of insight and intuition who managed to get in good with the technical Olsaperns.

This sequel story involves Starn's attempts to develop technology that will augment psionic powers such that they can rival or exceed the technology of the Olsaperns.  Fine and well, but really, this is just one of Campbell's "scientific" articles on psionics with a fictional coating.  I already find psi to be a pseudoscientific bore, but to try to add a veneer of respectability to it by invoking scientific trappings is distasteful in the extreme.

It's also a really boring tale.  One star.

The Choice, by Keith Laumer


by Kelly Freas

A three-astronaut explorer team from Earth is abducted by mysterious aliens who offer each of them a choice of fates—all of them some form of execution.  The two military members of the crew meet their fate boldly; the third is a far out civilian cat who doesn't cotton to his own extinction.  As a result, the story has a happy ending.

There is serious Laumer and there is funny Laumer.  Funny Laumer is usually the more trivial, and this is trivial funny Laumer.

Two stars.

The Man from R.O.B.O.T., by Harry Harrison


by Peter Skirka

A couple of years back, Harrison brought out the droll The Man from P.I.G., about a secret agent who goes undercover as a pig farmer.  The twist was that the pigs weren't his livestock but his accomplices.  In a similar vein, here we have the story of an agent who goes undercover as a robot salesman, but the robots are his accomplices.  Of course, given that the robots are intelligent, and one of them is even designed to look like the agent, one wonders why there needs to be human involvement at all in this case.

Anyway, the agent is dispatched to a rancher planet whose women folk all seem to be locked up, and whose men folk are all paranoid violence freaks.  Is it genetic?  Or is it in the cattle?

I always get "funny" Harrison (frex "The Stainless Steel Rat") and "funny" Laumer (e.g. "Retief") mixed up.  And here they're back to back!  Now I'll never disentangle them.

Two stars.

The Empty Balloon, by Jack Wodhams


by Peter Skirka

Last up, a throwaway story about a diplomat who thwarts a telepathic interrogation machine.  There's no real explanation as to how he does it, really, and most of the story exists to set up the lame ending.

Two stars.

Wow.  What a wretched month for magazine fiction!  With the exception of the atypically superlative New Worlds (3.6 stars), everything else was mediocre at best.  IF managed to break the three star barrier, but just barely (3.1), same as Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Amazing scored 2.6—which is a good month for that mag, while Galaxy got the same score, which constituted a bad month. 

Indeed, all of the better-than-average fiction would fill just one decently sized digest.  Incidentally, we had exactly one (1) short story produced by a woman, and the one woman-penned nonfiction this month was a biography…of a man.

It just goes to show that all the good stuff seems to be happening overseas these days.  I hope the next month of mags reinforces my decision to come home!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 26, 1969] Five Years… New Worlds, July 1969

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

As we are now into Summer here, the warmer weather leads to reflection, if not introspection, although I am quite excited about the next few months. Not only do we have the impending Apollo mission to land men on the Moon – and how exciting does that sound! – but as I mentioned last month we also have Star Trek starting on the BBC in July. Such news even reached the national newspapers here.

IMAGE From a newspaper with black and white photos of the Star Trek cast, saying that the series will be on national television in July.
The only annoying part of that last event is that I understand that the Beeb will not show all of them but a selection, chosen from all three seasons. I hope I’m wrong, but as the series is filling in time between July and new Doctor Who in the Autumn, it sounds likely.

More positively, though, and partly based on the comments from my colleagues here at Galactic Journey, I feel that seeing any Star Trek at all has to be good. I’m just pleased that we will have chance to see them here, albeit in black and white – no colour telly luxury for me, I’m afraid. Most British viewers do not have colour televisions.

Anyway, back to New Worlds, issue 192.
COVER IMAGE A black and white and red drawing of a large aeroplane being rode towards by a man on horseback with his back to the reader. Cover by Mal Dean

Another great cover by Mal Dean – that’s two in a row. This one is illustrating Norman Spinrad’s story, The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde.

Lead-In by The Publishers

It's not just me that's in a reflective mood this month – this Lead In points out that the magazine has been five years in its current format and brings us up to date with what’s been happening to the magazine over that time: financial worries, subscription issues, publisher issues and the refusal of certain shops to sell the magazine in public.

It’s a sobering read and yet in the end a positive one, celebrating  that the magazine has lasted five years in its current format and with its new agenda.

Coincidentally, this introduction also tells us that Norman Spinrad is now a resident here in Britain, which may or may not be in part due to the publication of Bug Jack Barron in this magazine.

The Garden of Delights by Langdon Jones

IMAGE: An oval-shaped photo of a women surrounded by foliage.Photo by Gabi Nasemann

This may be one of the best Langdon Jones stories I’ve read. It’s not for the easily shocked – as is de rigueur for New Worlds. It’s sexually graphic and basically deals with the story of an incestuous relationship between a boy and his mother. I liked the time travel aspect of the story, although it’s not a new science-fiction thing. 4 out of 5.

The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde by Norman Spinrad

IMAGE: A black-and-white drawing of three men. From left to right, the first man is jacketless and smoking a cigar, the second is a man in a suit looking at you and the third is sitting with a lit joint in his hand.Drawing by Mal Dean

Wherein Spinrad is the latest author to write about Mike Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius. (The last was Brian W. Aldiss in last month’s issue.) The Beatles, Russians, Mongolians, a facsimile of Las Vegas in China. Chaotic and satirical (what would you expect from the author of Bug Jack Barron? Not a bad effort, frankly. 4 out of 5.

Erogenous Zone by Graham Charnock

IMAGE: A black-and-white set of drawings showing a car tumbling and rolling over as it crashes. Drawing by Mal Dean

The fourth story based in Graham’s world, CRIM – the first was in New Worlds in November 1965, the third last month. It’s a strange world, where advertising is an essential part of society. It’s a two-act story, one where Craven Image (great name! – but also not-coincidentally ‘CR…IM’) is in a car accident and taken to the hospital afterwards, and another where a dying man is being watched by his daughter and her spouse. Not a story to make sense, but lots of vivid imagery and sex. The world is both odd and depressing, with talk of the Dresden bombings, amongst other things. I’m reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 a little, although not quite as ‘out there’ as that. 3 out of 5.

Article: The Shape of Further Things by Brian W. Aldiss

IMAGE: A black and white line drawing of a calliope, or pipe organ. Looks like a picture from an old magazine. Unknown source.

A non-fiction article from Mr. Aldiss, with the promise of more to follow at a later date. It is written more as a monologue, combining Aldiss’s own life with ruminations of life, technology and H. G. Wells. Odd, but engaging. 4 out of 5.

Surface If You Can by T. Champagne

IMAGE: A black-and-white drawing showing a young male and female looking towards you. Drawing by Mal Dean

According to the Lead In, Terry Champagne is a sculptor and an author. Her first story here in Britain is about a young couple who rent a fallout shelter as a home, only to find themselves sealed in when what appears to be nuclear bombs fall outside. A surprisingly straightforward story, with a twist at the end, given the New Worlds treatment by including lots of sex and even necrophilia. There’s also cockroaches. 4 out of 5.

Circularisation by Michael Butterworth

IMAGE: A picture of the page, showing pretty patterns of text in circles.
And here’s this issue’s attempt to break down traditional prose format by creating a number of ‘radial-planographic condensed word image structures’, rotated around a point. As these things go, I quite liked the concept of these, although I disliked the fact that the author felt he had to explain them for pages at the end. The actual content is symbolic nonsense, of course. 3 out of 5.

An Experiment in Genocide by Leo Zorin

IMAGE: Six black and white drawings in a storyboard sequence, showing key aspects of the story.Artist drawings are unlabelled, but possibly by Mal Dean

Leo Zorin’s odd snippets of prose seem to be well-liked by New Worlds readers (or is that editors?) I’m less impressed by most, although this one was more accessible. This one’s about a pervert (actually described as such in the text!) wandering a world of Ballardian car accidents and grotesque characters that feel like they’ve mutated from Moorcock’s world of Elric. More visual, mixed-up imagery as a result. 3 out of 5.

Perjoriative by Robert E. Toomey Jr.

A story that begins with a one-armed man and a dwarf on a bus and ends with a mushroom cloud. A typical New Worlds story of oddness, reminiscent of the rant-y elements of Bug Jack Barron. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews: Terrible Biological Haste by Kenneth Coutts-Smith
PHOTO: Image of The Repentance of Mrs… by Aubrey Beardsley (1894) Where Kenneth Coutts-Smith looks at the work of artist Aubrey Beardsley.

Book Reviews: Fourteen Shillings Worth of Grass by R. G. Meadley

R. G. Meadley reviews Gunter Grass’s Dog Years as well as a book of his poetry.

Book Reviews: Paperbag by Joyce Churchill

Joyce Churchill (also known as M. John Harrison) reviews some science fiction books, including Edmund Cooper’s “dated” Deadly Image, Anne McCaffrey’s Decision at Doona (from “the Enid Blyton of science fiction”), Michael Frayn’s satire The Tin Men, John Jakes’s The Planet Wizard, M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud and (unsurprisingly) saves the plaudits for Norman Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron, lastly taking a pop at the editor of Ace Books, Donald A. Wollheim, with a quote from his review of Bug Jack Barron;

Quote from the text.

Book Reviews: The Sexual Gothic Private Eye Caper by Charles Platt

Charles Platt reviews The Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer very positively.

Book Reviews: The Quality of Justice by David Conway

Back to the non-genre stuff. David Conway reviews a philosophical book on the quality and justice of our social practices.

Summing up New Worlds

I was surprised and pleased to find that on balance I enjoyed this more than the last issue. Spinrad makes a decent stab of a Jerry Cornelius story, the Langdon Jones is acceptable (a fairly standard science fiction idea given the New Worlds treatment of sex and incest) and some good work from new writers as well. I even found the poetry less annoying than usual, although I readily accept that I was more interested in the process of creating rather than the content of the poetry.

What was most memorable however was the fighting talk given by the editors at end of the Lead In at the beginning of the issue. As shown here, New Worlds has not been without its difficulties over the past five years, but based on this it looks like it is determined to fight for its place in a literary market.
IMAGE: from the issue’s Lead In, showing text that explains New World’s current position.

Anyway, that’s it, until next time.

IMAGE: Advert from the issue, showing when the next issue will be published.



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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 20, 1969] Where to? (July 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Nihon, banzai!

In just the last ten years of covering our trips to Japan as part of Galactic Journey, we have watched with amazement as Japan executed nothing short of a miracle.  As of this year, the country is now the third largest economy in the world, and "Made in Japan" is no longer a stamp of poor quality.  Datsuns are rolling off the assembly line by the thousands and ending up in American showrooms.  The sky is dark with industrial smog.  It's almost enough to eclipse the left-wing student protests that keep popping up around the nation.

Of course, Japan still has a ways to go, at least domestically.  Fully a fifth of its population still is minimally housed, squatting in one-room shacks and waiting for the government to make good on its five year plan to give everyone a decent home.

One family that has no such difficult is the Fujiis, our adoptive parents, who we last visited five years ago!  This trip was particularly exciting for reasons I shall detail shortly.

First, a picture of the flower shop on the way to their house.  The town is Amagi, an agricultural town that specializes in grapes and persimmons.

And now the estate.  It's laid out as a square with an internal garden.  What's significant is that it dates back to the 1840s—a time when Japan was still ruled by a Shogun.  The estate is essentially a relic, representative of a style that had not changed since Elizabethan times.  At a time when so many of these historic residences are being torn down or falling apart, this one stands as a living treasure.

Yuko, our adoptive mom, gave Lorelei a set of Japanese watercolors, which she employed to draw the garden as she saw it.

The architecture of the place, alone, is remarkable.  This is construction without nails, all of the timbers custom built and joined together.

What's inside is even more remarkable.  The back house used to house a pawn shop.  Even the boxes are more than a century old.

This dress was made by a princess.

And this kimono was hocked by a penniless samurai for a little cash.  Apparently, this happened a lot.

This is century-old paper, also sold by a samurai.  Among the sheets was a paper mock-up of a hakama, the armor the samurai wore.

This is in the house.  Yukio, Yuko's husband, was a Kyoto cop before he retired.  This relic, however, long pre-dates him—it's the kind of lantern used by police in the 19th Century!

I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the past.  Now for a trip into the future…and regions fantastic!

Leiber of the party

Every summer, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction dedicates an issue to science fiction luminary.  For the July 1969 edition, that fellow is Fritz Leiber.  His name is rarely mentioned in the same breath as, say, Heinlein or Asimov, though he is their contemporary (more or less), but when he's good he's very good.  Does he make this issue stand out?  Let's see!


by Ed Emshwiller

Ship of Shadows, by Fritz Leiber

First up, a brand new piece by the man, himself.  It stars Spar and his talking cat, Kim.  No, this isn't a fantasy, but a highly personal adventure of an old man living in weightlessness aboard some sort of spaceship.  Most of the folks onboard have forgotten about Earth, and there now appear to be eldritch beings aboard—werewolves and vampires—making prey out of those who remain.

Things I liked: the setup is revealed slowly, and it's the first story I've read from the point of view of someone who desperately needs glasses…but doesn't know it.  And there is that characteristic Leiber poesy to the writing.

Things I didn't like: the story moves glacially, and I didn't feel like it told anything new.  I kept finding myself distracted every two or three pages.

So…three stars, I guess.

Fritz Leiber (profile), by Judith Merril

Famed writer and anthologist (and book reviewer) Judy Merril gushes over her hero, Fritz Leiber.  Half biography, half hagiography, half history of SF, it's a worthy piece, especially if you want to be introduced to his early work (and happen, like me, to own a complete set of Unknown).

Four stars.

Demons of the Upper Air, IIX, by Fritz Leiber

A pretty good poem about our first interstellar astronauts, told from the point of view of someone stuck on the ground.

Three stars.

Fritz Leiber: A Bibliography, by Al Lewis

As it says on the tin—no more, and no less.

(no rating)


by Gahan Wilson

To Aid and Dissent, by Con Pederson

It's easy to get in trouble out Mars or asteroids way.  To that end, a fleet of sherpas has been bred—literally.  These rescue ships, which sacrifice themselves upon landing to deposit air and victuals, comprise a row of linked simian brains inside a spacecraft shell.  Think the ape version of The Ship Who… series.  Sherpa Bravo one day decides he's sick of being aynyone's monkey and launches a one-primate civil rights revolution.

Clunkily written and nothing special.  Two stars.

The Place with No Name, by Harlan Ellison

Norman Mogart was an Entertainment Liaison Agent.  Pfui.  He was a pimp.  When he gets into trouble with the law there's no way out of, he makes a deal with…well…not quite the Devil…and finds himself hip-deep in two of the biggest martyr legends of history.

The first half is excellent and pure Ellison.  The second changes the tone so sharply, beware of whiplash.  It ends poignantly enough, but the two halves don't quite mesh.

As is usually the case—Ellison consistently produces what are, for me, three-and-a-quarter star stories…round to four stars?

Transgressor's Way, by Doris Pitkin Buck

A knight errant proves to be anything but a knight bachelor—his modus operandi is to shamelessly seduce young maids and then bunk them all in separate towers for him to enjoy at his leisure.  But what if they should discover each other?

This story is told in too confusing a shorthand, and it is too frivolous in substance, to earn more than two stars from me.

A Triptych, by Barry N. Malzberg

An interesting, behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in the minds of the three astronauts who get sent in the Apollo.  It's not bad, but Barry isn't very well in touch with the actual space program.  One telltale: he assumes that the spacemen have little to do between TV shots.  In fact, they are kept too busy—indeed, both the Apollo 7 and 10 commanders cut pages out of their assignments because the astronauts were overworked and making mistakes (as anyone who regularly watched coverage of either of these flights should know – Ed).

Three stars.

Two at a Time, by Isaac Asimov

In which the Good Doctor explains how we measure the mass of planets by observing their effect on each other (specifically, the common elliptical focus around which they both orbit).  Several pages that could be reduced to one or two lines of formulae, but he looks to be setting something up.

Three stars.

Litterbug, by Tony Morphett

Finally, a fun piece about a fellow named Rafferty who invents a teleporter.  Problem is, he can't control where things go, and he can't bring them back.  Solution: market the thing as a garbage can.

Problem 2: What happens when aliens at the destination get annoyed at all the litter on their planet?

Three stars.

Lifeless

At least for me, my real life excursion was more interesting than the flights of fancy I took while riding the trains.  With the exception of Merril's piece, the rest is pretty forgettable.  Well, I suppose you won't forget the Emshwiller cover anytime soon.  Anyway, next time I'll be reading F&SF, it'll be in the endotic locale of my home town.  May the contents of the August issue be just as different from July's as the Orient is to Southern California.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 10, 1969] Points West and Above (July 1969 Galaxy)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

The Orient

Thanks to centuries of tradition, we tend to think of the Far East as…well…east!  But for us, going to Japan means a 12-hour flight west—literally into tomorrow, as we cross the International Date Line to do it. 

This week marked the beginning of our fourteenth trip to Japan.  How things have changed since we first went back in 1948, when flying via Northwest Orient meant an entire day of travel with multiple stops.  Travel these days is practically instantaneous by comparison.

We were even able to hop on a same-day domestic flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka, which is where I'm writing this.  I've been able to develop my first roll of color film, the results of which I am happy to share:

The Alient

The latest issue of Galaxy is, like this month's IF, the first under the helm of Ejler Jakobsson, and it's also a month late.  Will it be more interesting than the rather dull IF?  Well, it's certainly different.  After all, the lead piece is one I would have expected to appear in Analog.  Why wouldn't Campbell want the sequel to the incredibly popular and presumably lucrative Dune.  Dunno… but here it is:


by Dan Adkins

Dune Messiah (Part 1 of 5), by Frank Herbert


by Jack Gaughan

And so we return to Arrakis, the Dune planet, the only source of the spice melange, which gives the power of prophecy, allows the navigators of the Guild to ply the hyperspace lanes, and is the only currency of note in the Empire.

Last time, Paul Atreides, son of the murdered Duke of Arrakis, had seized his destiny as the kwizatz haderach, leading his army of desert Fremen against the Padisha Emperor in a coup that placed the young general in charge of a galactic domain.

It is now twelve years later, and disparate factions are plotting to overthrow Paul, who has become a figurehead in an interstellar Jihad.  The plotters include the Bene Geneserit, the sisterhood that manipulated Paul and his sister, Aria's, genetic destiny; the navigators' Guild, and Irulan, wife of Paul, and daughter of the cruel Baron Harkonnen, who wrested Arrakis from Paul's father. 

We know there's a plot because it is the subject of an endless scene at the beginning of the serial installment.  And because Paul then discusses the plot at length with his companins at an endless meeting of state in the latter part of the serial.  The plot involves predestination, an heir for Paul (his true love, the Fremen Chani, is being kept secretly sterile by Irulan, who wants to beat the child), and the reincarnated form of Duncan Idaho, one of Paul's comrades in the last book.

There.  Now you don't actually have to read this chapter, which is all for the best, as it's as deadly dull and motionless as the worst parts of Dune.  At least the viewpoints don't change every five sentences.

Two stars so far.

Full Commitment, by Robert S. Martin

Senator Clint is on an investigative junket to Burma, where America is in an endless war against… the Capitalists?  What happened to the Communists?  And why do all the soldiers parrot the exact same line when explaining why they're there to fight?

Brainwashing, obviously…which is how Clint is ultimately disposed of.

A pointless story, poorly done.  One star.

The City That Was the World, by James Blish


by Dan Adkins

James Blish tells the story of a man who makes Howard Hughes look like a piker.  John Hillary Dane is a man with vision…or perhaps visions is more appropriate.  First, he builds an enormous pair of telescopes four miles high in the Andes.  Then he erects a mile-high skyscraper in Denver, the mile-high city.  While the reason for the former is never really explained (other than the obvious reasons—the seeing is much better above the majority of the atmosphere), the purpose of the immense building is the point of the story.

I don't really want to spoil things, so I'll just say that the tale deals with time travel, Malthusian overpopulation, and the value (or lack thereof) of friendship.  It's a good story, although few of the elements are really plausible.

Four stars (and the best piece in the issue).

For Your Information: Eugen Sanger and the Rocket-Propelled Airplane, by Willy Ley

Willy Ley's article is on Eugen Saenger, the Austrian cum German rocket scientists perhaps best known for his design of the America Bomber—a rocket-plane that would fly high enough to skip on the upper atmosphere until it reached New York.  There's a lot of good information that probably can't easily be found elsewhere, since Ley relies on at least one personal source.  That said, it's kind of a dull piece.

Three stars.

A Brief History of the Revolution, by David Lunde and James Sallis

In a piece that might well have come out in Fantasy and Science Fiction (or maybe the old Galaxy sister mag, Beyond), we have a young couple hounded by their animate furniture until they are effectively evicted.  The cause of all this appears to be the wife's desire to have a child.

Not very good.  Two stars.

The Kinsolving's Planet Irregulars, by A. Bertram Chandler


by Reese

Last up is the latest journey of Commodore John Grimes, the famed skipper of the Galactic Rim.  In a direct sequel to The Rim Gods, Grimes and his First Mate (though likely not his first mate) Sonya head back to Kinsolving’s Planet.  You may recall from the last story (or the review thereof) that the team Grimes escorted tried to exploit some time-space weakness to psionically summon Jehovah.  Instead, they incarnated the Olympian pantheon.

This time, their efforts throw Grimes into a fantasy land populated exclusively by fictional characters, from a certain Baker Street detective to larger-than-life but real people like Oedipus and Achilles.  Things get really weird when Grimes starts to question his own reality…

I always enjoy Chandler's Rim stories, but this one is just a bit too cute.  It also looks like the author is tired of the Grimes series and would love to end it…if only the money weren't good.

Three stars.

Things that came and things to come

And that's that.  Quality-wise, a thoroughly unremarkable issue.  Indeed, the only real bit of note is how many of the stories seem to be in the wrong magazine.  I confess I am kind of looking forward to the post-Pohl era.  I want to see how things change for this venerable magazine.

Of course, I also know to be careful what I wish for…

(and stay tuned for more updates from Japan!)




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 6, 1969] Blue Skies (July 1969 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Samuel Johnson described second marriages as the triumph of hope over experience.  It is tempting to say something similar about changes of editor at Amazing.  But that impulse is at least postponed by the upbeat mien of this July issue.


by Johnny Bruck

That sky is about as blue as any I've seen on a magazine cover, and more importantly, the cover goes some way to answer the cry for a good cover by Johnny Bruck, whose hackneyed spaceships and guys with guns have become so tiresome on recent issues.  This one is a bit cartoonish, but at least it’s clever and amusing—a spaceport scene with some impressive-looking spacecraft, but the people on the ground have eyes only for the bright yellow futuristic automobile, with huge tailfins, a transparent dome over the passenger compartment, and whitewall tires.  Oh, it has side fins too.  Maybe it flies.

The magazine’s contents also lean in a promising direction.  Almost half of the magazine (70 of 144 pages, excluding the front and back covers) is devoted to the first part of Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line.  It’s rare for magazines to give that big a chunk of available space to a serial installment, but it makes sense in a bimonthly magazine. As a side benefit, it leaves less room for the reprints, which take up only 27 pages.  The book review column is back, with substantial reviews by William Atheling, Jr. (James Blish) and editor White.  The letter column is here again, and the promised fanzine review column has now appeared, nine pages worth, by John D. Berry.  White’s editorial says that the fan feature in Fantastic will be reprints of selected fanzine articles.  The guest editorials in Amazing will be gone—the editorial spot’s going to be his. It all gives a sense of an energetic editor getting a quick start at implementing his desires.

A more dubious innovation is the new typeface.  Multiple typefaces are nothing new at Amazing, but Silverberg’s serial, Leon Stover’s article, and the book and fanzine reviews and letter column are set in a tiny typeface that challenges my ill-made eyes (see the glasses in my photo?).  Microscopic type for things like letter columns is an old tradition—just check your copies of the Hugo Gernsback Amazing if the silverfish haven’t gotten to them—but for this much of the magazine it spells headache for me and I suspect many others.

Up the Line (Part 1 of 2), by Robert Silverberg

The biggest deal in this issue is of course Robert Silverberg’s serialized novel Up the Line.  Silverberg, formerly a capable journeyman magazine-filler, has in recent years become a much more powerful and original writer. In just the past two years he has produced four novels that put him in a different league entirely than did his earlier work: Thorns, To Open the Sky, Hawksbill Station, and The Masks of Time, with several more out or on the way this year. 


by Dan Adkins

Per my practice, I will hold off reviewing and rating Up the Line until it is finished.  But a quick peek reveals that it is a time travel story, told in the first person by a young man at loose ends who joins the Time Couriers—not the Time Police, the Couriers’ nemesis—and that it is a considerable departure from the relatively serious recent works mentioned above.  Parts of it suggest that the author wrote with the stage in mind.  The vaudeville stage, that is.  E.g., as the protagonist explains to his new friend the Time Courier why he abandoned his budding career as law clerk to a Judge Mattachine:

“My uncle is Justice Elliott of the U.S. Higher Supreme Court.  He thought I ought to get into a decent line of work.”

“You don’t have to go to law school to be a law clerk?”

“Not any more,” I explained.  “The machines do all the data retrieval, anyway.  The clerks are just courtiers.  They congratulate the judge on his brilliance, procure for him, submit to him, and so forth.  I stuck it out for eight days and podded out.”

“You have troubles,” Sam said sagely.

“Yes.  I’ve got a simultaneous attack of restlessness, weltschmerz, tax liens, and unfocused ambition.”

“Want to try for tertiary syphilis?” Helen asked.

“Not just now.”

So Mr. Silverberg appears to be having a good time.  Reading a little further confirms that he also seems to be trying to offend everyone in sight, which may explain why this new novel by a fast-rising author is appearing in the field’s lowest-paying magazine, rather than in the more stately mansions of Pohl, Ferman, or JWC, Jr.  In any case, I look forward to completing these scabrous revels.

Only Yesterday, by Ted White

Editor White’s Only Yesterday is a more somber time travel story, in which the ill-at-ease protagonist Bob approaches a young woman as she gets off a train, asks if he can walk with her, says he’s a friend of a friend (she suggestibly supplies the friend’s name, and he agrees), and she invites him in for refreshments and to meet the family.  He hits it off with her and her brothers and her parents, and offers to tell her fortune—a futuristic vision which turns into nightmarish war.  She’s shocked and disturbed, and he quickly says he was making it up, offers a more palatable vision, and beats a hasty retreat.  Revelation of who he is and why he’s there follows.  It’s smoothly written and well visualized, but the ease with which Bob inserts himself into the family setting is too implausible to overlook.  Still, nice try, very readable, three stars. 

Hue and Cry, by Bob Shaw

Bob Shaw’s Hue and Cry is about as far as one can get from his very well received Light of Other Days.  It's a cartoonish story in which a spaceship full of humans lands among sentient carnivorous reptilians who think of them only as food, scheme to eat them all, and are thwarted with a silly gimmick.  Two stars, generously.

Poison Pen, by Milton Lesser

The reprints in this issue are a mostly malodorous batch from the doldrums of the mid-1950s.  The best that can be said for them is that they don’t take up much space.

Milton Lesser’s Poison Pen (from Amazing, December 1955) is a silly botch of a story.  For thirty years, humanity has been under the thumb of the extraterrestrial Masters.  Now they’ve left, and people are dancing in the streets.  The main thing we know about the Masters is that they made people keep diaries and read from them in neighborhood gatherings, and that practice continues.  Why?  Dr. Trillis says it’s because the Masters taught everyone “from the cradle” to be compulsive exhibitionists (how?) so they could control people, “and the older generation either had to go along with it or feel left out.” So people ought to stop with the diaries and the readings, he says.  But they don’t.  Worse, they start stealing other people’s diaries and making fake entries in them—false confessions of having been “co-operationists.” Executions begin.  Our hero helps Dr. Trillis escape and they wind up in a settlement of people “who somehow haven’t been contaminated,” in New Jersey.


by Paul Orban

If the description sounds sketchy and incoherent, that’s because the story is.  It’s an insult to the readers, pretty clearly dashed off without a thought of anything but a quick check.  One star.

No Place to Go, by Henry Slesar


by Erwin Schroeder

Henry Slesar’s No Place to Go (Amazing, July 1958), by contrast, is at least a competent piece of yard goods.  A crack team of astronauts goes to the Moon, takes a look outside, and sees Earth blow up, leaving them alive but stranded. Shortly, some of the astronauts are blowing up too.  But wait—April fool!  It was all a test!  They were drugged with a hypnotic chemical, visions planted in their heads while they slept!  The captain then tells the guy who didn’t blow up that he’s now second in command, and he’ll be going to Mars.  It's cliches wrapped around a gimmick, but unlike Lesser’s story, it doesn’t reek of contempt for the readership.  Three stars, generously.

Note that in our crude rating system, what I’ve just described as “cliches wrapped around a gimmick” gets the same grade as White’s much more capable effort.  Just remember that there’s a lot of space between 3.0 and 3.9.

Puzzle in Yellow, by Randall Garrett


by Leo R. Summers

Randall Garrett’s Puzzle in Yellow (Amazing, November 1956) is a trivial gimmick story on that ever-popular theme, the Stupid Alien.  Extra-terrestrial Ghevil is scoping out Earth for invasion and pillage by the “hordes of Archeron.” He wants to check out an isolated military installation, so he finds a remote building with big walls and turrets, and figures he’s found what he’s looking for.  He kills the first person he sees emerge from the building, and disguises himself in the man’s uniform.  He tries to enter and is shot dead.  Take a wild guess what the installation he tried to enter actually is. The yellow of the title, by the way, refers to Ghevil’s blood.  Two stars, barely.

The Pendant Spectator, by Leon E. Stover

Leon Stover’s “Science of Man” article this month is The Pendant Spectator, a phrase he got from Samuel Johnson’s novel Rasselas, which means, more or less, someone with a view from a height.  “Spaceship Earth” is also invoked.  Stover seems to have abandoned his project of educating us all about anthropology.  Here we have a protracted editorial on the necessity for humanity to get its act together and get right with the biosphere, limiting population, developing energy sources (i.e., the sun) that will neither pollute the atmosphere like fuel combustion nor overheat the place like nuclear power, engaging in international cooperation, accepting a degree of coercive regulation in these and other causes, etc.  It’s hard to argue with any of it, but it’s also hard to imagine that the SF readership is who needs to hear it, so it seems a bit pointless.  This series seems about ready to die a natural death.  Two stars.

Summing Up

So the harbingers seem to be blowing in the right direction, even if the actual fiction contents, possibly excepting Silverberg, are not much changed from the recent norm.  “Looking good” would be premature, but “looking like it might look good” would fit.  Or—as I’ve said more times than I can count about this magazine—promising.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 2, 1969] The ever-whirling wheel (July 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

A change is gonna come

Regular readers of Galactic Journey or of SF magazines in general may have noticed that neither Galaxy nor IF published last month. With a bit of detective work, I’ve put together what happened.

The clues are on the masthead. Editor Fred Pohl is now listed as Editor Emeritus, while the editor is Ejler Jakobsson. The publisher is no longer Robert M. Guinn, but Arnold E. Abramson, and Galaxy Publishing has been replaced by Universal Publishing. (That last worried me for a moment, but I quickly remembered that Amazing and Fantastic are put out by Ultimate Publishing under Sol Cohen.)

There’s also an editorial from Fred, talking about the changes. Most importantly, he’s stepping back to focus more on writing. That and the fact that he’s sticking around to look over the new editor’s shoulder (Fred’s words) for a while suggests his departure is voluntary and doesn’t suggest any misgivings about the new ownership on his part. Plus, we should be getting new stuff from him more often.

Who is Ejler Jakobsson? He had a few horror stories back in the late 30s, cowritten with his wife Edith, but if his name sounds familiar, it’s most likely because he was the editor for the revival of Super Science Stories from 1949-1951. Coincidentally, that magazine had been edited by Fred Pohl before it was shut down by wartime paper shortages.

What changes can we expect? Fred prefers to let us see them as they happen, but the promo for next month hints at some. IF is getting a book review column by Lester del Rey. That may or may not mean the end of his “If… and When” column. We’re also getting a twelve part series by Willy Ley, “The Story of Our Earth.” That might suggest some changes over at Galaxy.

Of course, the biggest question is what sort of stories Jakobsson will buy. It will be a while before we get a good feel for that, since there’s bound to be a backlog of stories selected by Pohl. It took several months for the Fermans over at Fantasy and Science Fiction to change the course set by Avram Davidson, but Ted White has wrestled Amazing and Fantastic into a new direction almost immediately. We’ll see, but we should have a good idea by the time we start the new decade.

A bang or a whimper?

Since this is the last issue under Fred Pohl’s leadership, it’s fair to ask what sort of note he goes out on. Will he put out a strong issue, go out on a high note and remind us why this magazine has won three straight Hugos? Or will it be utterly awful and make us glad he’s gone? Not to ruin the suspense, but the July issue is really just another typical, middle-of-the-road example. There’s some good stuff and some not so good. Let’s start with the cover.

Art credited only as couresy of Three Lions, Inc. but actually by German artist Johnny Bruck.

You may recall that the last issue had a similar uncredited cover that Robert Bloch apparently used for his story Groovyland. Once again we have a Johnny Bruck cover, originally for Perry Rhodan #102, which an American author has used for inspiration. This time Keith Laumer has come up with a story much more clearly based on the art than Bloch’s was. I’m not keen on this trend, though it’s slightly better than what they do over at Amazing and Fantastic.

Here’s the original art by Johnny Bruck.

The Towns Must Roll (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Long-time readers of Mack Reynolds’s work will be familiar with his stories of People’s Capitalism. That appears to be giving way to what he calls the Meritocracy. The biggest difference so far is the replacement of every citizen’s ten shares of Inalienable Basic with a Negative Income Tax.

In Mack’s latest novel, the NIT enables people to pick up and move to places anywhere in the world where the cost of living is lower. They often gather in rolling towns that consist of mobile homes that make the fanciest Airstream trailer look like a pup tent. Our protagonist is Bat Hardin, a man of mixed race who provides police services to a town on its way to South America. After crossing into Mexico, the town encounters unexpected hostility from the locals, including credible threats of extreme violence. Meanwhile, Bat’s authority in the town is being threatened by an extremely racist, newer resident. To be concluded.

Bat has been kidnapped to deliver a message: Gringos go home. Art by Gaughan

This is typical Reynolds of the better sort. He’s not just rehashing the same tired plot points, and while there’s the usual lectures on history and economics, they’re reasonably concise and to the point. Mack is quicker to point out the flaws in the system, but also subtler than usual. As a man who thinks he has no future in the Meritocracy because an Army test rated his IQ as 93, Bat is an interesting character, though he seems much brighter than that; we’ll see if whether that will be relevant to the plot or just Reynolds not being able to write someone of low average intelligence. Plus, we’ve got a tense situation. I look forward to seeing how this all plays out.

A solid three stars.

On the Dead Star, by Jack L. Austin

An explorer aboard a one-man scout, with only the ship’s computer intelligence for company, discovers an impossible structure on the surface of a Black Dwarf.

This month’s new author gets off to a good start. The writing was sound and the situation intriguing. Unfortunately, Austin loses his way. The story just goes on too long; it could easily have been half the length. As is often the case in such tales, the conclusion winds up being rushed. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, but the whole thing wraps up in a couple of paragraphs, with the action taking place off-screen. It could be better, but Austin is only 20 and has room to grow. I’ll give him a chance.

A low three stars.

Autohuman 14, by Bruce McAllister

This story of policeman Grabe Massel is hard to summarize without giving away the big mid-point revelation (though you’ll probably see it coming). Let’s just say he has a very close relationship with his car.

There’s probably a really good story to be told with this set-up, but I’m not sure this is it. There’s some excellent writing here, particularly the use of engine noise, but it also feels like there’s a barrier that dulls the impact of the narrative on the reader. Still, it may be the best thing McAllister has written. He may finally be getting close to a breakthrough.

Three stars.

Spork Conquers Civilization, by Perry Chapdelaine

Tarzan… er, Spork is back. This time he and the Ayor travel to a human-occupied planet and deal with an evil dictator. Along with the mix of A.E. van Vogt and Edgar Rice Burroughs that the previous stories have offered, this one has a large dollop of Doc Smith. There’s probably more to come, since Spork appears to be Lord Greystoke… er, a lost prince, but I’m not looking forward to seeing any of it.

Barely three stars.

Spork and an Ayor. Art by Reese

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Robert Bloch

In this month’s interview, Robert Bloch talks about discovering science fiction, learning his trade with the Milwaukee Fictioneers, particularly Stanley Weinbaum, and making ends meet during the Depression. I would have liked a few words about his relationship with H.P. Lovecraft, but it’s a good interview overall.

Three stars.

Portrait by Gaughan

The Half Man, by Keith Laumer

Long cut off from the rest of humanity, the planet Meries is being considered for reintegration into the human community. At some point in the past, the people and domestic animals of the planet became acquatic through genetic manipulation. Part of the team assessing the planet is Gon, the son of an itinerant trader and a local woman. Gon was raised on Earth and is having trouble making contact with the locals. He finally does so on the last day of the mission.

Gon has an encounter with a descendant of Earth dogs gone wild. Art by Barr

Keith Laumer tends to write stories that are either meant as humorous satire or two-fisted Competent Man adventures. Once in a while, though, he writes something deep and thoughtful. This is one of those rare occasions, despite the fact that it was written based on art created for another story in another language. Actually, it’s probably weaker for using that Johnny Bruck cover as the climax of the story. Still, it’s one of Laumer’s better pieces.

A high three stars.

A Day for Dying, by Charles Nuetzel

Charles Travers is arrested on false charges of treason and condemned to participate in the Tele-Games. His odds of survival are practically nil.

Nuetzel is unknown to me, but he’s apparently sold a few stories to a minor publisher and the semi-pro zine Spaceway. This story is fine, but nothing special. There’s a sting in the tail, but it doesn’t bite as hard as I think Nuetzel wanted it to.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

How common is life in the universe? That’s a question that has had many answers over the years. Del Rey looks at those answers and how they’ve changed, along with the experiments and scientific findings that have caused those changes.

Four stars.

Where the Beast Runs, by Dean R. Koontz

Three hunters go after a creature that has killed several other groups just as experienced as they are. One of them will also have to confront a traumatic experience from his childhood.

The beast reflects Andy’s trauma back at him. Art by Adkins

With a few changes, this could have been a straight adventure set in Africa or South America. Like Bruce McAllister, Koontz shows a lot of promise, but never quite crosses the threshhold to being really good. He keeps getting close and does so here, but doesn’t quite get there.

Three stars.

Summing up

There it is. The last IF that is fully Fred Pohl’s. There’s nothing spectacularly good, but nothing spectacularly bad. As for the future under Ejler Jakobsson, we’ll have to wait and see. I’ll miss If… and When if it gets dropped for another book column. There’s also no letter column this month, but that might be to make space for some longer pieces as well as be an artifact of Pohl’s departure from the big chair. We are getting a new issue of Worlds of Fantasy in a few months. Let’s just hope that for IF and Galaxy all this, to paraphrase President Kennedy, symbolizes a beginning as well as an end, “signifying renewal as well as change.”

A sign of the changes to come. At least the Chapdelaine doesn’t look like more Spork.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 26, 1969] Cornelius Overload! New Worlds, June 1969

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

The continuing voyage of the new-new-new New Worlds continues apace. (Apologies – I’m still recovering from being told that it looks like the BBC are finally – finally! – going to show Star Trek over here starting in the Summer!)

Anyway, on to this month’s issue. 
A black and white drawing of Jerry Cornelius, staring at the reader. Black skin, white hair, black clothing, red background, , with a blue background. The head is facing towards the reader in the middle of the page.
Cover by Mal Dean

Well, that’s better!! After the succession of frankly dull covers with faces on, this is a breath of fresh air – scarily dark, vivid, startling – never has Jerry Cornelius looked more frightening. Should get casual readers interested!

Lead-In by The Publishers

The fact that we have two stories of Jerry Cornelius this month is heralded by the Lead-In, as it should.

A Cure for Cancer (Part 4 of 4) by Michael Moorcock
IMAGE: We have a black person facing a group of inviduals in the story- a bishop, a woman holding a gun, a naked woman, a woman in a catsuit, an officious looking male and a question mark.Drawing by Mal Dean

As we reach the end of the story things begin to make some sense, although to some extent the point of the story is to be confusing, I think!

It is still non-linear, almost dadaist in its narrative structure. This is a story less about plot and more about the little vignettes, scattered across different times and different universes. At times the contradictory nature of these elements add to the confusion.

Keeping it simple, Jerry manages to retrieve the gizmo he has been chasing over the last three parts and we now know that it is important because it allows the user to control multiple universes and see all the alternatives at once. As a result, characters we thought had gone now reappear – Bishop Beesley, Jerry’s brother Frank, Mitzi, and most important to Jerry, his sister Catherine.

The Cure for Cancer is perhaps most important for being an indicator of the times. It is the sort of story I think you need to read with Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?, or the Beatles’ White Album playing in the background – both artists have been mentioned in the narrative. Its thoughts on race, war (deliberately satirising Vietnam) and sexual freedom are indicative of being made for an angry, disillusioned and, perhaps most of all, young readership. 4 out of 5.

Three Events of the Same View by John G. Chapman

Another one of those anti-religious stories New Worlds likes. In the first part, Pope Honorius is imprisoned in a castle by the cardinals after declaring there is no God. In the second, a domestic scene involving a garden shed and a request to store cadavers there before an Undertakers Convention. In the third, the view is from a Commandant in a concentration camp. Nice prose, but if there’s a connection, I couldn’t see it. 3 out of 5.

Playback by Granville Hawkins

An un-named narrator uses illegal equipment to play back a recording of sex. It unfolds that the recording is of his wife, who with their children has been killed in a destroyed London by the moralistic "Calvs". As a final act of defiance, our narrator shows the unlawful recording to the public by projecting it onto a chapel wall. It doesn’t end well. An odd yet memorable story, well written, graphically depicting a dystopian future – rather like Orwell’s 1984 meets the Night of the Long Knives, with racist hangings, castrations and sex. 3 out of 5.

Babel by Alan Burns

PHOTO: Two images, split horizontally. The top half shows owls. The bottom half has two people running from left to right across the picture. One is a man dressed as a cowboy, the other a woman dressed in a black catsuit. Drawing by Mal Dean

An author on his debut here. This is a story that has paragraphs, each a different story. In other words, this is Ballard-type pastiche, which could be good, but this is filled with such stream of consciousness nonsense that it feels like a bad hallucinogenic drug trip. For example: “Men are opening the Moon. Streams of wheels have springs of space.” 2 out of 5.

Between the Tracks by Ron Pagett and Tom Veich

A story with the same events repeated over and over, but slightly different each time. Most begin with a ‘boy’ travelling along ‘the tracks’ but things are not what they seem. Allegorical tale, with nods to Bradbury’s Martian stories, I noticed. Nicely done, but I’m not sure I ‘got it’. 3 out of 5.

Spoor by Alan Passes

PHOTO: An black and white photo of ripples in water, possibly a lake. Photograph by Gabi Nasemann

A story about a man searching for Jayne in a Royal Park. Along the way a number of people around him are suddenly eaten by dangerous animals – a lion, an alligator. At the end he finds Jayne fornicating with a gorilla. I get the impression that all this is meant to be funny (“Me Tarzan, you Jane”, perhaps?), but I just found it unpleasant and meaningless. Another dream-state tale. 2 out of 5.

Flower Gathering by Langdon Jones

IMAGE: A picture of the page, showing pretty patterns of text that say THE GARLANDS OF LOVE WEAVE FOR US.
Langdon Jones’s latest piece, text written out in pretty patterns (which is rapidly becoming a prose-thing that I hate) to say THE GARLANDS OF LOVE WEAVE FOR US – or is that WEAVE FOR US THE GARLANDS OF LOVE? I guess this is an attempt to give prose a new form, but for me pretty meaningless. 1 out of 5.

Sub-Entropic Evening by Graham Charnock

IMAGE: A photograph of a man with curly hair playing a guitar whose face is obscured by a gas mask. Photograph by Gabi Nasemann

We’re back in Graham’s CRIM-world for this one. (The first was in New Worlds in November 1968, the last in the March issue three months ago.) This is a story where nothing is what it seems, another set of descriptions written as if the people are in a drug-induced, dream-like state. Jones, Dragon, Velma, and Cat live near an Arena where people seen as enemies of the state are routinely incinerated, and there’s a music concert played by musicians which can cause blindness and death in some sort of suicide pact. It’s all vivid but odd and rather unpleasant. Not a place I’d want to live in, but I guess that is the point. 3 out of 5.

The Fermament Theorem by Brian W Aldiss

A black and white drawing of four figures walking to the foreground, emerging from a desert island. The person in front is carrying a head on a pole.Drawing by Mal Dean

In which Brian Aldiss takes up the mantle to write a Jerry Cornelius story. Earlier in the year Mike Moorcock did say that the sharing of the Jerry Cornelius character was about to happen. Is it any good? It is such a confused mess of satire, social commentary and sex that readers will either think of it as a work of genius or be horrified by the unstructured elements claiming to be a story.

IMAGE: A black and white image drawn in a circle of an old man waving a white flag that has been shot in the head.Drawing by Mal Dean

I enjoyed it, even if I’m not sure I understood it all. There’s a story in there about the origin of the solar system being allied to the Moon and sex, comments on popularism and culture, not to mention lots of obscure references to people such as astronomer and science fiction writer Fred Hoyle, the Archbishop of Canterbury and author Robert Graves. In summary, Aldiss manages to take the key characteristics of a JC story – fluid sexuality, references to culture, fashion and society – and turn them into a satirical commentary – I think. What I found most interesting was that although Cornelius barely appears in the story, Aldiss has managed to write a Jerry Cornelius story in Moorcock’s style. It doesn’t feel out of place in the Jerry Cornelius series, although lighter in tone than A Cure for Cancer. I’ll give it 4 out of 5, although I accept that it could score anywhere between 2 (unstructured mess) – and 5 (work of genius!) depending on the person reading it.

Book Reviews: Use Your Vagina by J. G. Ballard

Image of the advertisement for the book as shown on the back page of New Worlds.Advertisement from the back cover for the reviewed book.

In which J. G. Ballard reviews in detail a “sexual handbook.” Wouldn’t happen in Analog!

Book Reviews: The Boy from Vietnam by M. John Harrison

More relevant, perhaps, Harrison reviews a collection of two stories, one by Aldiss and one by Ballard in a book entitled The Inner Landscape, with varying degrees of success. Harrison then claims that Aldiss is “on better form” with his collection of five novellas in Intangibles, Inc. Eric Burdick’s Old Rag Bone is a non-genre book seemingly dealing with Catholic guilt.

Lastly and in keeping with contemporary themes, Harrison reviews Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam? reminding me that the magazine is sold in the US as well as England. The book was reviewed in more detail by Douglas Hill in the March 1968 issue of New Worlds.

Book Reviews: The Comrade from Ploor by James Cawthorn

James Cawthorn generously reviews E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Subspace Explorers as a book that “offers the kind of entertainment that made the good old days of sf what they were” (ie: not the sort of story found in New Worlds today!), Brother Assassin by Fred Saberhagen which “stretches credibility just a little” and John Brunner’s Double! Double! which has “no credibility whatsoever”. There’s also an Ace Double with Code Duello by Mack Reynolds and The Age of Ruin by John M. Faucett, a review of a new biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs by Richard A. Lupoff, World of the Starwolves—a space opera by Edmond Hamilton, and positive reviews of James H. Schmitz’s This Demon Breed and Hal Clement’s story collection, Small Changes. I was pleased to see some more traditional sf get some positive comments.

Book Reviews: The Machiavellian Method by R. Glynn Jones

R. Glynn Jones reviews a book on tyranny, which is most disconcerting for having photographs of Hitler’s teeth.

Book Reviews: Woman’s Realm by D. R. Boardman

Lastly, D. R. Boardman reviews The Tunnel by Maureen Lawrence, a “competent first novel”. Was mildly pleased to see that it has been written by an ex-academic who is local to me, but not really my sort of thing, being the story of “a bored lonely woman living a boring life”.

Summing up New Worlds

Good news: although the scores may not reflect it, this is a better issue than the last. Although not perfect, the magazine scores with the conclusion of the Moorcock serial and Brian Aldiss’s take on the character. They are recognisably similar yet different, both confusing and subversive. New readers will not have a clue, regular readers will appreciate the word play and anti-establishment satire.

On the other side of the coin, there is also lots of material by relative unknowns, the new lifeblood of the magazine. Most of it is acceptable, though rarely outstanding. For example, the Hawkins was OK, but like Obtuowicz’s story last month really was another unpleasant story without anything really new to offer, Alan Passes’ Spoor was just dreadful.

Anyway, that’s it, until next time.




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

[May 20, 1969] Ad Astra et Infernum (June 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

To the Stars

Venus has gotten a lot of attention from Earth's superpowers.  Part of it is its tremendous similarity to our home in some ways: similar mass, similar composition, similar distance from the Sun (as such things go).  But the biggest reason why so many probes have been dispatched to the Solar System's second world (to wit: Mariner 2, Mariner 5, Venera 1, Veneras 2 and 3, and Venera 4) is because it's the closest planet to Earth.  Every 19 months, Earth and Venus are aligned such that a minimum of rocket is required to send a maximum of scientific payload toward the Planet of Love.  Since 1961, every opportunity has seen missions launched from at least one side of the Pole.

This year's was no exception: on January 5 and 10, the USSR launched Venera (Venus) 5 and 6 toward the second planet, and this month (the 16th and the 18th), they arrived.

Our conception of Venus has changed radically since spaceships started probing the world.  Just read our article on the planet, written back in 1959, before the world had been analyzed with radar and close-up instruments.  Now we know that the planet's surface is the hottest place in the Solar System outside the Sun: perhaps 980 degrees Fahrenheit!  The largely carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmosphere crushes the ground at up to 100 atmospheres of pressure.  The planet rotates very slowly backward, but there is virtually no difference between temperatures on the day and night sides due to the thick atmosphere.  There is no appreciable magnetic field (probably because the planet spins so slowly) so no equivalent to our Van Allen Belts or aurorae.

This is all information returned from outside the Venusian atmosphere.  Inference.  To get the full dope, one has to plunge through the air.  Venera 4 did that, returning lower temperatures and air pressures.  This was curious, but it makes sense if you don't believe the Soviet claim that the probe's instruments worked all the way to the ground—a dubious assertion given the incredibly hostile environment.  No, Venera 4 probably stopped working long before it touched down.

The same may be true of Veneras 5 and 6.  TASS has not released data yet, but while the two probes were successfully delivered onto Venus' surface, we have no way of knowing that they returned telemetry all the way down.  Indeed, the Soviet reports are rather terse and highlight the delivery of medals and a portrait of Lenin to Venus, eschewing any mention of soft landing.  The news does spend a lot of time talking about solar wind measurements on the way to Venus—useful information, to be sure, but beside the point.


The Venera spacecraft and lander capsule

Anyway, at the very least, we can probably hope to get some clarity on what goes on in the Venusian air.  It may have to wait until next time before we learn just what's happening on the ground, however.

To Hell

I bitched last month about the lousy issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Well, I am happy to say that the May issue is more than redeemed by this June 1969 issue, which, if not stellar throughout, has sufficient high points to impress and delight.


by Gray Morrow

Sundance, Robert Silverberg

Silverbob has a knack for poetic, evocative writing as well as rich settings.  He has successfully made the transition from '50s hack SF author to New Wave vanguard.  Which is why this rather forgettable tale is all the more disappointing.

It's about a Sioux spaceman named Tom Two Ribbons who is part of a terraforming contingent on a virgin planet.  Except what his compatriots call terraforming, he calls genocide, for the millions of indigenous Eaters that they are clearing out to make room for farms are, he claims, intelligent.  To prove his point, he goes out among the aliens, dancing their way and his way, hoping to avert catastrophe. 

But is any of it real?  Or is it all a figment of his traumatized mind?

I just found it all a bit hollow and affected, and also confusing.  Not bad, but nowhere near Silverbob's best.

Three stars.

Pull Devil, Pull Baker!, Michael Harrison

A Jewish dentist finds himself implacably hostile to an Aryan patient, and, to his dismay, finds himself wanting to cause him pain in the examination chair.  Turns out the two have a history that goes back centuries to another life, when the drill was in the other hand, so to speak.

So unfolds an age-crossing riddle, at the end of which lies a treasure of untold riches, if only it can be deciphered.

I dug this one.  Maybe I'm biased.  Four stars.

The Landlocked Indian Ocean, L. Sprague de Camp

De Camp offers himself up as a sort of half-rate Willy Ley, explaining why, for so long, the Indian Ocean was conceived of as a big lake rather than part of the world sea.  There's a lot of good information here, but it's not quite as compellingly presented as it could be.

Three stars.

A Short and Happy Life, Joanna Russ

Here's a great little prose-poem on ingenuity involving a barometer.  Good stuff.  Four stars.

A Run of Deuces, Jack Wodhams

Aboard a superluminary cruise ship, the bored passengers come up with a betting pool to relieve their ennui: the winner of the pot is whomever guesses at what distance from their destination the ship will pop out of hyperspace.

A lot of sex.  A lot of languour.  A predictable ending.  A low three (or a high two, if you're not in a good mood).

Operation Changeling (Part 2 of 2), Poul Anderson

Last month, we were (re-)introduced to the Matuchek family: Steve the werewolf, Virginia the combat wizard, Valeria the moppet, and Svartalf the familiar.  When Valeria was kidnapped by the agents of Hell, it was only a matter of time before her parents (and their cat!) would have to penetrate the perverse underworld to retrieve her.

Enlisting the aid of a pair of dead mathematical geniuses, in this installment, the trio warps into the infernal dimension, where they must face off against hordes of demons, baffling spatial topography, and the most evil of beings humanity has ever known.

There is good Anderson, there is boring Anderson, and there is middlin' Anderson.  This story is firmly in the "good" camp, with vivid descriptions, engaging (and often funny) characters, and the sort of light, fantastic adventure we haven't seen from Anderson since Three Hearts and Three Lions.  Poul does somber, dour, very well, so I think it's more work for him to keep things light—even as our heroes are arrayed against the forces of darkness!  It's never frivolous, but there's a fey quality that keeps things on the right side of horrific.

And that episode in Hell!  I've never read the like.  My only regret is that it's not longer, with a little more time for the Matuchek squad to come up with their novel solutions so that the reader can better follow along.  Perhaps it'll get expanded into a full length book at some point.  I hope so!

Four stars for this installment and the book as a whole.

The Fateful Lightning, Isaac Asimov

A boffo piece on the discovery of electricity.  It's good, although I found the explanation of how lightning rods actually work somewhat incomplete.

Four stars.

Repeat Business, Jon Lucas

A mom-and-pop boat charter take on a quartet of "travel agents" who are obviously (to the reader, at least) a bunch of aliens.  The E-Ts are sussing out the charterers and their sailing vessel to see if they might be a hit back home on Sirius or Spica or wherever they're from.

It's not a badly written tale, but it's so obvious, and the protagonists so clueless, that it feels sub-par.  Maybe this would have passed muster a couple of decades ago.  Now it's old hat.

Two stars.

Back to Earth

And there you have it: big news in the skies and in the SFnal pages of F&SF.  There's really no unpleasant reading at all in this month's mag, even if it isn't all novel or cutting edge, and the Anderson really ends with a bang—or a flash of brimstone, perhaps.  Combined with the exciting space news, and the recent launch of Apollo 10 (article to come!) I am really feeling over the Moon.

If you read this month's issue, and watch the ongoing Apollo coverage, I'm sure you will be, too!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 10, 1969] Youth (June 1969 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

He's No Saint

Yesterday the Vatican announced that more than forty saints have been removed from the official liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.  How come?  Because there's some serious doubt that these holy folks ever existed.

The most famous of these former saints is Christopher, patron of travelers.  There are plenty of people with Saint Christopher medals hanging from the rear view mirrors of their cars, hoping for safe journeys.


A typical Saint Christopher medal.  Note the infant Jesus carried on his back.

The story goes that Christopher (whose name, appropriately, means Bearer of Christ) carried the baby Messiah across a river.  I guess we'll never know now how He made it.  Perhaps He crawled on water.

Long Hair Music

I'm sure that ex-Saint Christopher will continue to be associated with a divine youth.  In this modern age, what could be more associated with secular youth than the hippie movement?  The popularity of the musical Hair is proof of the cultural importance of these groovy young people.

Further evidence, if any be needed, is the fact that Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, a medley of two songs from Hair performed by The 5th Dimension, has been Number One in the USA since the middle of April, and shows no signs of leaving that position anytime soon.


Maybe I'm prejudiced in the song's favor because I'm an Aquarius.

Bildungsroman

Fittingly, the latest issue of Fantastic is dominated by the first half of a new novel in which we see the main character develop from a child to a young adult.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

The cover is, as usual, borrowed from an issue of the German magazine Perry Rhodan.


What happened to the green halo around the sphere in the upper right corner?

Editorial: Don't, by Laurence M. Janifer

The associate editor tells us why writing is a bad career choice.  Although the piece is intended to be humorous, I can't help feeling that there's a trace of true bitterness to it.

No rating.

Emphyrio (Part One of Two), by Jack Vance


Illustrations by Bruce Jones.

Taking up half the magazine, this initial segment begins with a bang.  We witness our protagonist, Ghyl Tarvoke, held prisoner in a tower.  His skull is cut open and his brain attached to a sinister device.  His captors manipulate his mind, bringing him from a vegetative state to one where he is able to answer questions, but lacks the imagination to lie.  The torturers want to know why he committed serious crimes before they kill him.

After this dramatic opening we go into a flashback.  Ghyl is the son of a woodworker.  They live on a planet that was colonized so long ago that Earth is just a legend.  Centuries ago, a war devastated the place where they live.  Wealthy and powerful people restored basic services and now rule as lords, collecting taxes from their underlings.


Ghyl and a friend sneak into the spaceport where the aristocrats keep their private starships.

Ghyl's father engages in the forbidden activity of duplication; that is, he builds his own device that allows him to make copies of old manuscripts.  (Other forms of duplication are also illegal; everything has to be made by hand.) He eventually pays a very heavy price for his crime.

In what starts as a joke, Ghyl runs for mayor (a purely symbolic office, but one that might offer the possibility of changing the oppressive laws of the lords) under the nom de guerre of Emphyrio.  This half of the novel ends just as the election is about to take place.

Vance is a master at describing exotic settings and strange cultures, and his latest work is a particularly shining example.  I have failed to give you any idea of the novel's complex and detailed background.  (Vance is the only SF author I know who can get away with the copious use of footnotes to explain the worlds he creates.) Ghyl and the other characters are very real, and their world seems like a place with millennia of history.

If I have to have a few minor quibbles, I might say that the novel (with the exception of the shocking opening scene) is very leisurely and episodic.  Readers expecting an action-packed plot may be a bit disappointed.  Personally, I found Ghyl's world fascinating.

Four stars (and maybe even leaning toward five.)

The Big Boy, by Bruce McAllister

The only other original work of fiction in this issue is a blend of science fiction and religious fantasy.  Space travelers, including clergy, discover a galaxy-size, vaguely humanoid being deep in the cosmos.  It manipulates stars and planets.  An attempt to communicate with it yields a garbled message that seems to indicate that it is God.  A clearer version of the message reveals something else.

I didn't really see the point of this story.  The second version of the message isn't some big, shocking twist, but rather a slight modification of the original.  (That's how I saw it, anyway, although the characters react wildly to it.)

Two stars.

On to the reprints!  They all come from old issues of Fantastic, instead of the usual yellowing copies of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures.

Time Bum, by C. M. Kornbluth

The January/February 1953 issue of the magazine supplies this comedy.


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.

A con artist rents a bungalow from a married couple.  He drops hints that he's from centuries in the future.  Revealing his identity as a time traveler would be a capital offense in his future world, or so he convinces them.  The plan is to have them bring him a fortune in diamonds that he can supposedly duplicate for them.


Illustration by David Stone.

This is an amusing little jape.  The author has a good time making fun of time travel stories and science fiction in general.  (The wife is a reader of SF magazines, tearing off the covers with their scantily clad space women.) It's a minor work, and you'll see the ending coming a mile away, but it's worth a chuckle or two.

Three stars.

The Opal Necklace, by Kris Neville

The very first issue of the magazine (Summer 1952) is the source of this horror story.


Cover art by Barye Phillips and Leo Summers.

The daughter of a witch living way back in the swamp marries a man from New York City.  The witch warns her that she will always be a part of the swamp.  She gives her daughter a string of opals, each one of which contains one of the husband's joys.


Illustration by Leo Summers.

When the marriage inevitably falls apart, the woman turning to booze and cheap affairs, she destroys the opals, one by one.  The first time, this causes the death of the man's pet dog.  It all leads up to a tragic ending.

Besides being an effective chiller, this is a very well-written story with a great deal of emotional power.  The woman is both victim and villain.  The reader is able to empathize with her, no matter how reprehensible her actions may be.

Four stars.

The Sin of Hyacinth Peuch, by Eric Frank Russell

This grimly comic tale comes from the Fall 1952 issue.


Cover art by Leo Summers.

A series of gruesome deaths occurs in a small town in France.  They all happen near a place where a meteorite fell.  Only the village idiot knows what is responsible.


Illustration by Leo Summers also.

Does that sound like a comedy to you?  Me neither.  The basic plot is a typical science fiction horror story, but the author treats it with dry humor.  Frankly, I found it in questionable taste, and not very funny.

Two stars.

Root of Evil, by Shirley Jackson

A tale from a truly great writer comes from the March/April issue.


Cover art by Richard Powers.

A man places an ad in the newspaper offering to send money to anybody who writes to him.  Sure enough, folks who send in a request get the cash.  We see several people react to this strange ad in different ways.  At last, we learn about the fellow giving away all this loot.


Illustration by Virgil Finlay.

I was expecting a lot from the author of the superb short stories The Lottery and One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts as well as the excellent novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.  I didn't get it.  The initial premise is interesting, but the story fizzles out at the end.

Two stars.

What If, by Isaac Asimov

The same premiere issue that gave us Kris Neville's dark story of an unhappy marriage offers this sentimental tale from the Good Doctor about a happy one.


Illustration by David Stone.

A lovey-dovey couple are on a train.  A strange little man sits across from them with a box that says WHAT IF in big letters.  He doesn't say a word, but he shows them a glass panel that allows them to see what would have happened if they had not met the way they did.

This isn't the most profound story ever written, but it makes for very pleasant reading.  The message seems to be that some people are truly meant for each other, and that things tend to work out for the best.  An optimistic point of view, to be sure, but it will probably appeal to the old softy inside all of us.

Three stars.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Hank Stine

Leiber has high praise for the dark fantasy novel Black Easter by James Blish (I agree; it's very good) and the story collection A Glass of Stars by Robert F. Young, particularly noting the latter's skill with love stories.  (I agree with that also.)

Although it's not a book, the column includes an appreciation of the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows by Hank Stine.

No rating.

Worth Spending Your Youth On?

This was a pretty good issue, despite a couple of disappointments.  The Jack Vance novel is clearly the highlight.  If you'd rather skip the rest of the magazine, you can always read an old literary classic.




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