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[March 8, 1970] They say that it's the institution… (April 1970 Galaxy and the incomplete Court)

March 8, 2025 Gideon Marcus 2 Comments

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by Gideon Marcus

There ain't no Justice

It was only a few months that President Dicky tried to ram a conservative Supreme Court justice pick through the Senate to replace the seat left open by the retirement of the much laureled Chief Justice Earl Warren. Clement Haynworth's candidacy went down to defeat in the Senate on November 21 of last year.

Now up is G. Harrold Carswell, until last year, the Chief Justice of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida. He was elevated to the Fifth Circuit Appellate Court last June. To all accounts, he is no less conservative than his predecessor, and he's a (former?) segregationist to boot. His jurisprudence is also lacking: 40% of his rulings were overturned on appeal! As Senator McGovern observed, "I find his record to be distinguished largely by two qualities: racism and mediocrity." Nebraska's Senator Hruska damned with faint praise in his reply, to the effect saying, "Sure he's mediocre…but don't the mediocre warrant representation, too?"

G. Harrold Carswell

But as LIFE and other outlets are noting, Nixon's soothing rhetoric thinly veils a deeply conservative agenda, cutting social programs, withdrawing from world affairs, and trying to stack the Court with allies. Carswell's nomination passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 16 of this year. We'll see if the Senate as a whole can stomach him for the Court proper.

Plus ça change

Galaxy's editor Eljer Jakobsson is like Richard Nixon (well, perhaps this is a stretch, but indulge me—I need some sort of transition here!) He is trying all of the styles at his disposal in this new decade of the 1970s and seeing what sticks. The result remains inconsistent, but not unworthy.

This month's issue trumpets Silverbob's newest serial (sure to be novelized, perhaps as we speak) The Tower of Glass. Stephen Tall has the lead "breakthrough novelette", which I presumed meant this was his first work, but checking my index cards, I see it's not, since he first wrote a story for Worlds of Tomorrow four years ago. And then there's Ray Bradbury, undeservedly getting a third of the cover's masthead, presumably because of his pop culture stature.

The editor starts out the issue with an interesting piece, noting that even if there something to genetic races, it's meaningless anyway because none of us stick exclusively to our own (something folks of my persuasion blame on how lovely those shiksas always end up…) It's short and sweet. Then it's onto the "breakthrough novelette".

Allison, Carmichael and Tattersall, by Stephen Tall

illustration by Jack Gaughan

The three names in the title belong to a trio of compatible astronauts sent on the first expedition to the Jovian moon, Callisto. A biologist, a mathematician, and a computer engineer, the three have just barely settled in for the several month trip when the first of them, Tattershall, makes an interesing hypothesis: space is a near vacuum but not a complete one—what if the interplanetary cosmos harbors life? Incredibly diffuse, extremely voluminous life, to be sure. Unrecognizable at a passing glance, certainly. But there, nonetheless.

Seek, and ye shall find. As the Albratross sails for Jupiter, the ship sails by and inside a number of planetoid-sized creatures, sensed only by their abnormal particle densities. Unfortunately for the "Callistonauts", one of them take a fancy for their krypton-powered engine, and their fuel supply soon becomes dangerously depleted.

If this story appeared in Analog, it'd be a thrilling (or maybe just turgidly technical) SF action piece. In F&SF, maybe fantastically whimsical or horrific. Here, it's… pleasant. More inches are devoted to the genial interactions of the tic-tac-toe playing Allison and Carmichael, the blissful absorption in ant farms of Tattershall, and the dietary proclivities of all three. Plus, lots of discussion of biology.

Frankly, I suspect space life as posited by Tall is impossible. Things don't scale like that (and someone tell Irwin Allen…) Still, it's a nice story.

Three stars.

Discover a Latent Moses, by Michael G. Coney

illustration by Jack Gaughan

Here are the adventures of Jacko, Paladin, Switch, Cockade, and the Old Man, a band of humans surviving the Fifth Ice Age perhaps fifty years from now. They live under a dozen feet of snow in an entombed town, surviving on canned food and bottled booze. But they dream of land in the warmer West… if only they can outmaneuver the winged, snow skiing, Flesh Eaters. It reminds me of a bit of Michael Moorcock's series involving the ice schooner.

It's never explained what causes the big freeze. The general consensus of scientists is that industrial emissions will cause a global warming, but I've read at least one article lately that suggests smog particles will block the Sun and cause cooling. Maybe that's it. Or maybe, like in Robert Silverberg's Time of the Great Freeze, the next Ice Age will trump any artificial effects.

Anyway, the story is excitingly told and the characters vivid, if cardboard. It's enjoyable reading, but it brings little new to the table.

Three stars.

The Tower of Glass (Part 1 of 3), by Robert Silverberg

illustration by Jack Gaughan

Robert Silverberg sure loves him some dark futures.

Over the next several decades, the world will undergo plague and war that mow down the Third World. Birth control and ennui take care of the rest. But the productivity of the race remains as high as ever, thanks to mechanization, computerization…and the development of androids. These perfect physical specimens range from moronic (the gammas) to brilliant (the rarefied alphas—someone's been reading Huxley), and they fill the role of technician, nanny, nurse, and (but only secretly) lover.

The much-reduced human population lives effete, rich, and pampered, interplanetary and even nearby interstellar, knit globally by a network of "transmats" that eliminate commutes and homogenize culture. This, then, is the world 250 years hence, contemporary with Star Trek, but oh so different.

For one thing, this is no utopia. The androids seem quiescent, but there is indication that they might be on the verge of insurrection, or perhaps being manipulated to do so by human interests. And then there are the women…

Silverberg seems to hate worlds in which women are anything but shallow playthings. There is no narrative reason for women to get such short shrift in this story, and they do in all of Bob's stories, so I suspect it's more tic, less deliberate intent.

Anyway, that's the background. The story involves billionaire Simeon Krug and the constellation of relatives, top staff, and associates who surround him. Krug is building a 600 meter transmission tower in the tundras of Ontario to reply to a message recently received from the stars: "2-4, 2-5, 1-3" repeated ad nauseum.

So far, the story seems to be about thwarted expectations: Krug is disappointed that the alien senders seem to hail from a bright O-class star, precluding anything akin to humanity. His son is dissatisfied with both his unexciting human wife and his vat-produced android paramour. The android foreman Thor Watchman is dissatisfied with a nameless something, probably attached to his inferior position in human society, even as one of the most powerful beings on Earth.

It's all written with Silverberg's usual, if somewhat overdramatic, brilliance and not a little emphasis on sex. There are some very nifty concepts here, from the eternal dawn or noon that teleportation affords, to the "jacking in" to vast computet networks (the ultimate evolution of ARPANET, perhaps).

So, bad taste in my mouth aside, I am interested to see where this goes. It's in the same vein as his blue fire stories, which I liked.

Four stars.

Darwin, the Curious, by Ray Bradbury, Darwin, in the Fields, by Ray Bradbury, and Darwin, Wandering Home at Dawn, by Ray Bradbury

A trio of pointless poems from the master of mawk: what if Chas sat in a field all day, and on the way home, passed a fox?

Two stars—the illustrations illuminating them are nice.

The Rub, by A. Bertram Chandler

illustration by Jack Gaughan

The adventures of John Grimes, intrepid if cantankerous officer of the Space Scout Service, have been going on for more than a decade. Like Horatio Hornblower, we've now gotten most of his career, from Ensign through Commodore. There's not a lot of room left to fill. How then can Chandler keep this cash cow going?

Why, by returning to the mystical planet of Kinsolving, where dreams become reality. In this case, Grimes ends up in a nightmare parallel universe where, instead of meeting his lovely wife, Sonya, and advancing to flag rank, he instead marries a shrew and ends up in a dead-end job as commander of a fourth-rate backwater base.

And yet, even schlub Grimes has got a touch of that seadog magic…

I quite enjoyed this story, although it ends just a touch too abruptly. Four stars.

Sunpot (Part 3 of 4), by Vaughn Bodé

illustration by Vaughn Bodé

The adventures of the Sunpot continue to take turns for the worse—this time, the pages aren't even printed in the right order.

I said one star last time, but there's (a little) less sexism this time, and the pictures are pretty, even if the typeface is still illegible.

Two stars.

Galaxy Bookshelf, by Algis Budrys

The magazine's book column is devoted solely to The Universal Baseball Association, Inc, by J. Henry Waugh. It is about a fellow who creates his own private universe, centered around a baseball team, using a self-devised chart and dice to randomly determine what happens next. It's a bit like how Philip K. Dick created The Man in the High Castle (he used bamboo sticks and the I Ching.

As Budrys puts it:

It does convey a convincing approximation of how a God might be infinitely creative and yet not in direct control of his creation, omnipotent and yet prey to events, omniscient and nevertheless blind to the future.

Though not technically SF or F, and thus perhaps not sold in the same outlets as our beloved regulars, Budrys recommends in no uncertain terms that we read it.

No Planet Like Home, by Robert Conquest

illustration by Jack Gaughan

A race of humanoid aliens, prone to frequent mutation, wrings their collective hands over what to do about a comically tragic pinhead nephew of a Senator. The aliens scour the galaxy until they find a race that constitutes a close physical match so they can deposit the hapless lad on their world.

Three guesses which world, and the first two don't count.

Two stars for being obvious.

Kindergarten, by James E. Gunn

illustration by Jack Gaughan

Speaking of, here's a (charmingly illustrated) tale about a precocious child who creates a planet for his amusement, but its inhabitants are too dangerous to be allowed to live. The world's genesis takes, of course, six days. The name of the planet is…

Well, you already know the answer.

Two stars.

Diverging courses

The Supreme Court's constitution has evolved since 1950, becoming for a time one of the most liberal Courts in the nation's history. The building remains the same, but the members change…and only time will tell if we'll be happy with the new direction.

The magazine that Gold launched in 1950 also continues its slow, insensible slide toward whatever lies ahead in the '70s. It still retains the same dimensions as when it started, the same tactile feel to its cover and pages. But its cover art, its typeface, its stable of authors, the literary style, all have evolved. Perhaps not always for the better, but generally still worthy.

Sure, I'll renew.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 4, 1970] Harry's Heroes (Nova 1, edited by Harry Harrison)

March 4, 2025 Brian Collins Leave a comment

A white man with dark short hair and a dark van dyke beard sits on a yellow couch reading a fantasy periodical. A window in the background shows an empty suburban street. — by Brian Collins

It seems that between Harlan Ellison’s massive (that is, quite bloated) Dangerous Visions and Damon Knight’s Orbit series, original anthologies are here to stay; not only that, but we’re starting to see more of them, albeit thankfully not on the same scale as Ellison’s book. Harry Harrison is nothing if not knowledgeable of the field we share, and he’s also been involved in nearly every aspect of SF publishing that I can think of. It helps, too, that he’s already released an original anthology, just last month actually, titled The Year 2000. I have to admit that calling this new anthology Nova 1 is a bit presumptuous, since it implies a guarantee of future entries in this new series; but time will tell if the number is unfortunate or not.

Nova 1, edited by Harry Harrison

The cover of Nova 1. The title is written vertically in a 3-dimensional font. The fronts of the letters are white and the sides are blue with white clouds. The title descends at a slant from top left to bottom right over a black background with many white stars. At the bottom behind the number 1 is part of a large red circle, probably representing a nearby star or planet. Next to the title is written in a blue plain font: An Anthology of
original science fiction stories by Robin Scott, Robert Silverberg, Ray Bradbury, Gordon R. Dickson, James Sallis, Donald E Westlake, Piers Anthony, Brian W. Aldiss, and others. Edited by Harry Harrison — Cover art by Johannes Regn.

Introduction, by Harry Harrison

Harrison quickly goes over what he sees as the history of SF, something I think each of us has heard a hundred times before at this point; but he just as quickly goes into justifying the existence of Nova 1. This is not a themed anthology, but simply what Harrison considers good fiction, which with a couple exceptions he had commissioned specifically for book publication. He puts aside fears held by me and others who have become jaded with New Wave excesses, saying, “Not that the stories [in this book] are overly nasty or overly sexy—or overly anything. They are just—if just is the word—excellent stories by the best science fiction writers around.” We’ll see about that.

No rating.

The Big Connection, by Robin Scott Wilson

On 42nd Street, in New York, two guys, only known as the Hairy One and the Maha, have been toying with and selling “modern” art. The Hairy One is an artist, you know. One day the Hairy One tries to make art out of some odd scrap machinery, “some experimental failure from the Naval Underwater Sound Observatory.” The results are SFnal, really “outasight,” and I guess they’re supposed to be funny. The dialogue is so filled with ridiculous hippy lingo that I have to think Wilson meant it as parody, but if so, it’s a little too much for my taste. There is also some light commentary on the relationship between the artist (the Hairy One) and the capitalist (the Maha), but it’s too slight and deliberately goofy. This whole thing will age like milk in a few years.

Did not make me laugh or even chuckle, but it didn’t offend me. Two stars.

A Happy Day in 2381, by Robert Silverberg

Overpopulation has been a popular subject as of late, and Silverberg gives us a take on it here. Charles Matterns is a “sociocomputator” who gives a visiting (from Venus) colleague a tour of Shanghai—not the city we now know, but a series of floors in a thousand-story building. The “sanctity of life” that conservatives whine so much about has apparently been taken to its logical (or maybe illogical) conclusion, with Earth’s population now estimating 75 billion. Abortion and even birth control are strictly taboo. But, of course, Mattern insists the people who live in these city-buildings are very happy—except for a few “flippos,” those who do not conform. The dialogue is mostly expositional, and the plot is almost nonexistent. There are a few, I guess you could say Silverberg trademarks present, such as his concerning interest in teenagers having sex with full-grown adults, but these are not to the story’s benefit.

I sort of hated it. One star.

Terminus Est, by Barry N. Malzberg

Call it a hunch, but I think Malzberg is unenthusiastic about NASA. “Terminus Est” takes place after a semi-aborted colonization effort, “the Moon boondoggle,” with only about a hundred so-called bohemians staying. The narrator is an astronaut who travels between Earth and the Moon, and all too happy to be retiring in a few months. A certain incident, involving murder, darkened his view of the whole affair. Malzberg actually appears twice in this book, the other being under his not-so-secret pen name K. M. O’Donnell. Reading his first story here, I got the sense that somehow I had read this sort of thing before, but also it’s such a little (only half a dozen pages) fireball of hatred that I have to say I was almost impressed with it. Almost.

Three stars.

Hexamnium, by Chan Davis

Davis has not been around for about a decade, but those who are old enough or have good memories may remember the occasional Davis story in the ‘40s and ‘50s. “Hexamnium” starts as if it’s about to give us something hard-boiled, like Malzberg’s (first) story, but it ends up being much more bittersweet, about a teen boy from Earth being introduced to a team of fellow teens who have been raised from infancy to live in zero gravity. The mode of narration here, in which Emilio, one of the zero-gravity kids, narrates directly to the reader, takes some getting used to, but I think I understand the rationale behind it. This is a reasonably effective coming-of-age story, about a bunch of kids crossing the shadow-line into maturity, with some precious things being gained and other things, no less precious, being forever lost.

Four stars, and I hope this signals Davis’s return to writing SF.

And This Did Dante Do, by Ray Bradbury

This is a poem that was originally published in some magazine a few years ago, making it a reprint. Harrison, in his introduction, makes excuses for why Bradbury has barely written any fiction in the past several years, although he neglects to mention that he couldn’t even procure an original piece from the much overpraised writer. It strikes me as painfully obvious that the Bradbury who wrote The Martian Chronicles and The October Country has long since skipped town. Anyway, this poem, taken strictly as poetry, is bad, in that when read aloud it often grates on the ear. At least the punchline is cute and almost got a chuckle from me.

Two stars.

The Higher Things, J. R. Pierce

Stanley G. Weinbaum would be celebrating his 68th birthday next month, had cancer not taken him back in 1935. A recurring character of Weinbaum’s, the mad scientist Professor Manderpootz, emerges from hibernation thanks to Pierce’s story, which functions on the one hand as an exercise in mimicry, but also as an ode to the late Weinbaum. It’s effective—honestly, it works a lot better than it should. Manderpootz relates a story of how he traveled into the far future and encountered a humanity that had given up physical reality in favor of highly advanced psi powers, and I have to admit the whole thing sparked my own imagination. Pierce’s style here is “pulpy” and a bit stilted, but that is indeed the point.

Four stars.

Swastika!, by Brian W. Aldiss

Hitler is not only alive but enjoying “retirement” in Belgium, his suicide in 1945 having been faked. The narrator is a fellow named Brian (this detail took me out of the story for a bit), who is apparently a Nazi sympathizer and someone with connections. This is less a story and more of a Socratic dialogue, in which Aldiss uses Hitler to take pot shots at politicians and regimes he deems to have at least a touch of the Nazi in them. “President Nixon also has his better side,” says Hitler. Very funny, Aldiss. We also get shots at Reagan and Wallace, and the Soviets, the Cubans under Castro, and even the Israelis. The idea is that the Nazis may have lost World War II, but fascist militarism is alive and well. I’m sure Aldiss wrote “Swastika!” in an afternoon and hardly bothered to revise it, but it gets the job done.

Three stars.

The Horars of War, by Gene Wolfe

Harrison says in his introduction that Wolfe is a Korean War veteran, which I certainly find both believable and relevant to this story. Androids, or robots that both look like and think like (although not exactly like) humans, have mostly replaced soldiers in the future. There’s even a robot tank called Pinocchio. Despite the pun of the title (it’s military jargon or something) and the fairy tale connections, this is a rather serious and philosophical story, about the blurry dividing line between “us” and “the Enemy,” along with the line between humans and robots. While the last few pages, in which Wolfe finally lays all his cards on the table, are splendid, I do wish it was overall a more engrossing reading experience. Wolfe has the right ideas, but he needs to work on narrative pacing and really building up his characters. This is one of those stories that becomes fonder in one’s memory than when one is in the midst of reading it.

I would say three stars, but the premise and ending are strong enough that I feel compelled to bump it up. So, barely four stars.

Love Story in Three Acts, by David Gerrold

You may recall that Gerrold wrote arguably the funniest episode in the dearly departed Star Trek, “The Trouble with Tribbles.” He certainly has an ear for humor, but “Love Story in Three Acts” also sees him turn more to romantic sentiment. A middle-aged man’s wife orders a newfangled piece of computer machinery that would, get this, guide them in their sex life, because apparently the wife has been sorely disappointed with her man’s performance as of late. It’s not nearly as funny as the aforementioned Trek episode, and it also becomes a little too saccharine for my taste; but it certainly has its charm, and it’s that rare “modern” SF story that posits that maybe technology really can do good for the human spirit in some way.

Three stars, you could say one for each “act.”

Jean Duprès, by Gordon R. Dickson

French-Canadian settlers have become farmers and soldiers on the planet Utword, which has its own dominant sentient race, with their own customs and concerns about the intruders. The titular character is a human boy who was born on Utword, alongside the aliens, and thus is most understanding of their ways. Ah, but tragedy and battle ensue! I can’t think of titles off the top of my head, but I feel like Dickson has written just this sort of story before elsewhere—probably more than once. Colonizers bumping heads with alien (read: indigenous) populations is clearly a topic that strikes a chord with him, and while his assumptions about colonizers (that they’re basically good people who are simply tragically misguided, rather than people working within a framework that by its nature damages both mankind and the natural world) strike me as overly generous, even romantic, I understand the appeal. Still, it doesn’t help that this is the longest story in the book, and Dickson doesn’t really venture outside his wheelhouse.

Three stars.

In the Pocket, by K. M. O’Donnell

This is Barry Malzberg’s other story, under the not-so-secret pen name of K. M. O’Donnell. Anyway, as with “Terminus Est,” this one is brief but bleak. The narrator is a “messenger” who works to excise cancer from patients he’s been assigned to, so that he functions as a kind of orderly. He tells the story of when he cared for one elderly man, named Yancey, whom the narrator came to despise. In part this strikes me as a retelling of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but it does ask a few tough questions regarding a future in which cancer really can be removed via the touch of human hands. It’s a mood piece, one so dark and on-edge with so little really to latch onto that I could not bring myself to care about what was happening in-story, even as I was considering its philosophical weight.

Barely three stars.

Mary and Joe, by Naomi Mitchison

This is the other reprint to be included, except it’s even older than the Bradbury poem. The idea is that the titular characters are a married couple working to save their daughter’s life via an unlikely solution, which somehow works; how it worked out is thus saved for the final reveal, as opposed to whether the daughter lives or not. One positive thing I can say is that the science is believable, to the point where I’m convinced we’ll see something like Mitchison’s “solution” here in, say, the next 25 years or so. The problem is that “Mary and Joe” barely functions as a short story, and by the end I got the feeling that it’s incomplete somehow, as if ripped violently from a larger narrative. It’s a shame, because Mitchison is the only woman included here.

Frankly I don’t see much of a point to it. Two stars.

Faces & Hands, by James Sallis

As with the Wolfe story, this is about a war in the future, although this time it’s an interplanetary war, between Earth and Venus. There’s even an alien race of feathered humanoids, and that, combined with the melancholy tone of the whole thing, make me wonder if Sallis had already read the Margaret St. Clair 1951 story “Brightness Falls from the Air.” Sallis’s story unfortunately lacks the conciseness and grace of St. Clair’s, despite working with similar material. “Faces & Hands” is split into sections, taking place both before and after the war, and despite not being the longest story in Nova 1, it certainly feels the longest. Sallis is a very young writer, I think only 25, and he does show ambition, the problem thus being that his reach, at least for now, far exceeds his grasp.

A strong two stars, for what that's worth.

The Winner, by Donald E. Westlake

Revell is an anti-social man being held in a futuristic prison, a place that is supposed to be inescapable. We then follow his battle of wills with his overseer, Wordman, who’s set up traps so that Revell will have to give in and become a good obedient prisoner. This sounds a bit like that show The Prisoner, right? Granted, Westlake’s story is a lot less surreal and much smaller in scope than that series, but both are allegories about the institution versus the individual. In both cases, the author (or creator, in Patrick McGoohan’s case) very much sides with the individual. Only nominally SFnal, but it’s fine for what it is.

Three stars.

The Whole Truth, by Piers Anthony

Just last year, Anthony came in with Macroscope, which I still think is one of the best and most fascinating SF novels in recent memory. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re back to business as usual, because “The Whole Truth” is quite bad. Leo MacHenry is a space ranger who picks up a woman named Nevada, who may or may not be a spy working for a hostile alien race. Harrison’s introduction mentions the lady-and-the-tiger routine, but I was also thinking of Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations.” Leo is a pervert whose dilemma with how to handle Nevada mostly comes from whether he wants to kill her, take her prisoner, or have sex with her. I really could not stand either of these characters or their situation.

I loathed it, especially the ending. One star.

Conclusion

Harrison's idea was to start a new series of original anthologies, not based on a theme but simply to publish what he feels are some of the best short SF money can buy. Of course, all anthology editors want to collect only what they think is the best, unless they happen to be lazy; or you might have Damon Knight with the Orbit books, where he seems to think experimentation matters more than literary value. Harrison seems to have sympathies for both the New Wave and the "old guard," but if this Nova series is to be successful I think he should narrow his criteria for "good" SF a fair amount. Both of the reprints here being weak doesn't help either. If original anthologies are to have their own seat at the table that is the market, I think those in charge (and Harrison and Knight are very bright, talented fellows) should try to be more discerning.

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 2, 1970] Par for the course (April 1970 IF)

March 2, 2025 David Levinson 5 Comments

by David Levinson

The Veep that couldn’t shoot straight

I’m no fan of golf (unless it involves little windmills), but a lot of people seem to like it. They show it on TV and not a week goes by without at least one golf joke in the funny pages. It also intersected with politics last month. February continues to be the month that gives me very little to talk about, so I guess this is it.

The Professional Golfers’ Association likes to start their tour early in the pleasant climes of Hawaii and California. One such event is the Bob Hope Desert Classic held on a variety of courses in the Coachella Valley near Palm Springs. The highlight of the tournament for many is the pro-am event, where the pros competing in the tournament are matched with (celebrity) amateurs for one day’s round.

Pro Doug Sanders—best known for his odd swing and dapper dress—found himself in a foursome with Bob Hope, California Senator (and former song-and-dance man) George Murphy, and Vice President Spiro Agnew. On his very first shot, the Veep managed to hook the ball so far to the left it ended up on the path for an adjacent fairway. (Probably the farthest left he’s gone since being elected governor.) Trying to get back to the right fairway, he then sliced hard to the right. (This whole thing is starting to sound like a metaphor for Agnew’s political career.)

Bob Hope and Doug Sanders were standing in the path of the ball. Hope managed to duck out of the way, but Sanders was struck on the head. The blow drew blood, which Hope mopped up with a towel. Agnew was duly apologetic, and Sanders played gamely onward. At the nine-hole break, he was examined by a doctor, and the wound was sprayed with a pain-deadener.

Wire photo of the aftermath.

Agnew went on to have a terrible day. He frequently missed putts and took penalties for giving up on a hole. As the AP put it, “Agnew chatted amiably with the fans when his ball landed in or near them, which was often.” Sanders didn’t do much better, though he was already having a poor tournament. He won $200, far less than the top prize of $25,000. Agnew rather crassly quipped that it should just about cover his medical bills.

Am I picking on Spiro Agnew? Yes. Yes, I am. After his recent attack on the press, he deserves all the opprobrium he can get. He’s already being talked about as the clear front-runner for the Republicans in 1976. Let’s nip that idea in the bud right now.

Down the fairway

When he took over as editor, Ejler Jakobsson got off to a strong start. Since then, there’s been something of a return to form, although those C+ to B- issues have felt fresher than they did in recent years under Fred Pohl. Has he sent this issue cleanly down the fairway, hit a hole in one, or—worst of all—smacked the reader in the head with an errant shot? Let’s find out.

Arrival at Ocean-Deep. Art for “Waterclap” by Gaughan

Waterclap, by Isaac Asimov

The long-standing lunar base and the new deep sea base at the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench must compete for the limited financial resources offered by the Planetary Project Council. After the first fatal accident on the Moon, safety engineer Stephen Demerest travels to Ocean-Deep, ostensibly to learn more about their safety procedures. His real purpose is to convince them to turn down any increase in funding at the expense of the Moon base, and he’s willing to take extreme measures.

Demerest makes his case. Art by Gaughan

This is a very unusual Asimov story. There’s no puzzle, the characters are a little more fleshed out than is typical, and the tone is a lot darker. He pulls it off quite well. It could be tightened up here and there, and Demerest’s real plans are foreshadowed a little too strongly, but all in all, it’s solid, with a maturity that’s often not in evidence in the Good Doctor’s work.

A high three stars.

To Touch a Star, by Robert F. Young

Angry at being rendered impotent as punishment for a crime he didn’t commit, Ben Powers steals the starship Mary and heads for the one place he can reverse his condition. Unfortunately for him, the ship’s computer is intelligent and programmed to combat theft.

The Mary being exposed to ChiMuZeta (whatever that is). Art uncredited

Science fiction editors have long rejected out of hand any story which ends with the characters becoming Adam and Eve. Can we extend that to include any Biblical figure? Just in the last couple of months, we’ve had Jesus, Jonah, and even God. It’s trite. Add in Young’s nonsensical science, and this is an awful story. Only the author’s ability to write halfway decent sentences keeps this from the bottom of the barrel.

A low two stars.

Spaceman, by Lee Harding

Facing a long layover on the planet Hydria, Captain Marnsworth takes the opportunity to find out why his best friend jumped ship there three years earlier. What he finds shocks him to the core.

Marnsworth can’t comprehend what he sees. Art uncredited, but obviously Gaughan

The back to nature movement is popular with young people, especially hippies. Star Trek even used it for a plot last year. Concern for how the technological life and separation from nature, especially life in space, will affect humanity is a worthy subject for SF to confront. This really could have been the story to do that; Harding doesn’t take sides, showing value in both approaches. But it’s too long. That or Marnsworth’s general confusion makes the narrative heavy going. Either way, it brings the story down.

Three stars.

Swap, by Ron Goulart

Ron Goulart give us another of his tales of technology gone very wrong. This time, it’s computerized spouse swapping sending the protagonist to the wrong part of town. It’s got that typical Goulart wackiness, but with a darker than usual undertone. If you’re familiar with Ron, you’ve got a pretty good idea whether you’ll like this or not; if you aren’t, this isn’t a bad place to start.

Three stars.

When blind dates go wrong. Art by Gaughan

Ride a Tin Can, by R.A. Lafferty

Two folklorists investigate a race of goblinesque creatures that most people don’t think are intelligent.

The Shelni hope to ride a tin can one of these days. Art by Gaughan

For me, the best Lafferty stories are those that actually don’t have much in the way of plot. This one has a bit, but not enough to spoil the essential Lafferty-ness of the whole thing. I could say the same thing here as I did about the Goulart story. I liked it.

Three stars.

Thou Spark of Blood, by Gene Wolfe

One hundred and thirty-five days into the first mission to Mars, the three astronauts aboard are cracking up. They’ve been out of contact with Earth for weeks, and most of the equipment for improving their quality of life has also broken down. When the man in the middle seat is found with his throat cut, tensions run high, with the two survivors accusing each other of murder.

How do you dispose of a body without a functioning airlock? Art by Gaughan

Gene Wolfe started out writing in a slightly New Wave style, but seems to have fallen into a more traditional form since—he’s not the better for it. I also saw the ending of this one coming. Despite this, I was originally prepared to give the story three stars, but the more I think about it, I can’t. There’s a massive flaw that I can’t really discuss without giving away the ending, but it renders the whole thing completely unbelievable.

Two stars.

Whipping Star (Part 4 of 4), by Frank Herbert

Saboteur Extraordinaire Jorj McKie and the Bureau of Sabotage race to prevent the death of the Caleban Fannie Mae. If she dies, almost every sentient being in the galaxy will die with her.

The final confrontation as the clock runs out. Art by Gaughan

Herbert manages to bring his novel to a fairly satisfying conclusion. There’s enough action and about as much tension as you can expect in a story like this. We also learn the true nature of the Caleban, though it may stretch credibility. If I have a complaint, it’s that Herbert never really engages with the interesting questions he raised in Part 1 about the problems of communicating without common references. It’s still an engaging read, which might read better over the course of a few hours than a few months, though I don’t find myself at all motivated to test that hypothesis.

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

Reading Room, by Lester del Rey

Lester del Rey turns his attention to two recent Buck Rogers books, one a retrospective on the long-running comic strip, the other a reprint of the original two stories by Philip Francis Nowlan. He uses the occasion to discuss Buck Rogers’ limited connection to SF as it is and its role in furthering the ideas of the Yellow Peril. He even asks if the comic might have played a role in the internment of Japanese Americans during the War by keeping those ideas alive.

A high three stars.

Summing up

That’s another issue in the books. No holes in one and maybe a couple of bogeys, but at least the reader never gets conked with an errant shot. The magazine seems to be drifting back into its old routine. The freshness I mentioned earlier that keeps it different from the Pohl era is still there, but it’s starting to get a little stale. Asking for a four or five star story every month is probably too much, but the magazine needs a real highlight every now and then to keep the reader interested. Fingers crossed for next month.

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

[February 28, 1970] Revolutionaries… (March 1970 Analog)

February 28, 2025 Gideon Marcus 5 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

Turbulent times

Unless you've been living under a rock the past two years, you know the shockwaves from The 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago are still reverberating. The open fighting on the convention floor, the fascist polemic of Mayor Daley, the protests, the baby blue and olive drab helmets, and the crippled candidacy of the man tasked to thwart Dick Nixon from taking the White House.

Aside from the shambolic shuffle toward further embroilment in southeast Asia, two other phenomena have kept the convention in the public eye. The first is last year's neck-clutch of a movie, Medium Cool. Half drama, half documentary, Haskell Wexler's film follows a jaded Chicago news cameraman in the weeks leading up to the crisis point. Indeed (and I didn't realize this at the time), the footage of Robert Forster and Verna Bloom in and around the convention hall during the clashes, hippie vs. fuzz, Dixiecrat vs. DFL, was all shot live.

Verna Bloom, playing an emigrant from West Virginia, searches Grant Park for her lost son

If you haven't caught the film, check your local listings. It may still be running in your local cinema. Be warned: it will take you back. If you're not ready for it, you will be overwhelmed.

Robert Forster is the news man. You'll recognize Marianna Hill (Forster's girlfriend) as a guest star in Star Trek's "Dagger of the Mind"

As for the other reminder, for the past two years, the papers have kept us apprised on the trials of the "Chicago Eight", charged by the United States Department of Justice with conspiracy, crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot. They included Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale.

(in the midst of his trial, Abbie Hoffman jumped on the stage at Woodstock during the performance of The Who to protest the incarceration of White Panther poet and musician, John Sinclair—it was a trippy scene)

Abbie Hoffman: "I think this is a pile of shit! While John Sinclair rots in prison…"

Pete Townsend: "Fuck off! Get off my fucking stage!"

Pete Townsend, just after recovering the stage

The verdicts came down on February 18, a mixed bag of positive and negative news for the accused. Apparently, four folks on the jury held out until the bitter end, but eventually went with guilty for some of the charges. The verdicts were:

Davis, Dellinger, Hayden, Hoffman, and Rubin were charged with and convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot. All of the defendants were charged with and acquitted of conspiracy; Froines and Weiner were charged with teaching demonstrators how to construct incendiary devices and acquitted of those charges. Bobby Seale had already skated when his case ended in mistrial.

Six of the "Seven": (l. to r.) Abbie Hoffman, John Froines, Lee Weiner, Jerry Rubin, Rennie Davis, and Tom Hayden

So, it's jail time for five of the eight while their cases go to appeal. You can bet that these results aren't going to lessen the flames of discontent in this country, at least for the vocal minority.

From page 3 of my local paper on the 24th

Steady and staid

You wouldn't be aware of any of this turmoil if you lived under a rock and did nothing but read Analog Science Fiction. It remains a relic and deliberate artifact of a halcyon past as envisioned by editor John Campbell. The latest issue is a representative example.

by Kelly Freas

The Siren Stars (Part 1 of 3), by Richard Carrigan and Nancy Carrigan

First up, we introduce a new writing duo as well as a new James Bond-style hero. John Leigh is a veteran, a fair hand with a souped up, armored Triumph sports car, and most importantly, a Physicist. Shortly after serving his hitch in Korea, he is recruited by SPI—no, not the wargame company, but "Science Processing, Inc."

Leigh's latest mission is to infiltrate a Soviet radio telescope facility. It seems that the Russkies have picked up signals from an alien civilization, and Leigh needs to take pictures of their dish to see which way it's pointing, and also to pick up the computer data tapes to see what the Reds have heard.

At the end of Part One, Leigh has infiltrated his own facility as a dry run for his attempt in the USSR, only to find that the Soviets are already trying to infiltrate the American base for some reason.

by Kelly Freas

We get a lot of inches of Leigh driving his cool car, a lot of glimpses of incidental women through the eyes of men ("The blonde at the mail desk had been hired for her ornamental qualities as well as her fast hand with the correspondence…Like most men, [Leigh] approved highly of ornamental mail girls providing they didn't mangle the correspondence too badly." "Emily Parkman was that rarity among women—the completely discreet human being.") and a lot of "thrilling" action, like a car chase in a parking garage.

I'm bored. Two stars.

One Step from Earth, by Hank Dempsey

by Vincent DiFate

I hear tell Hank Dempsey is really Harry Harrison—I suspect he's nom d'pluming since this is going to be the first tale in a collection that deals with teleportation, coming out later this year. Hey, if the apple will support multiple bites, why not chomp that baby?

Anyway, this is the story of our first manned trip to Mars. A robot ship drops off a matter transmitter just big enough for a scientist to crawl through in a space suit. The components of a base and a larger transmitter are teleported to the Red Planet. Before their assembly can be finished, one of the two-man crew succumbs to a mysterious malady. Our hero must decide between spending life in quarantine on Earth or becoming the first permanent resident of Barsoom.

It's fine for what it is, an episode involving grit, courage, and pioneering spirit. Three stars.

Rover Does Tricks in Space, by Walter B. Hendrickson, Jr.

This is one of the best articles I've read on NERVA, the nuclear rocket stage being developed for use with the Saturn V. Apparently, they've gotten the thing to work, which means that it could, if produced, perhaps triple the lifting capacity of our biggest rocket. And once in space, NERVA engines could halve the trip time to our neighboring planets.

But here's why I suspect we'll never actually build the thing: the Saturn V assembly line is being shut down in the wake of the successful Moon landing. NERVA is expensive, so its benefits only really manifest once a space program is mature, rockets are being made by the dozen, and orbital infrastructure has been established. That doesn't like it'll happen any time soon.

Sure, NASA is working on its reusable, winged "space shuttle", which will reduce cost to orbit once it's operational, but that's a fair piece down the road, and I don't see a place for nuclear engines in that program. Still, the option is there for someday.

In any event, four stars for this clear and interesting piece.

Protection, by Steven Shaw

by Vincent DiFate

This piece starts promisingly, alternating viewpoints between a native sentinel on an alien planet, squatting near the defensive line, and the security man providing protection for a scientific expedition. When members of the team start crossing the line, they are slaughtered ignominiously by some unknown technology possessed by the aborigines.

I was enthralled until the story abruptly ended, the lead-up all in service of the "twist"—the aliens were using simple poison-tipped blowdarts. What an allegory! It's like our well-equipped troops getting aced by the "primitive" Viet Cong! How the proud fall!

Except that it is repeatedly established that the security men are wearing body armor. Last I heard, flak jackets repel bamboo reeds almost as well as bullets! Moreover, were the humans really unable to recover the darts presumably still in the corpses, nor identify the poison coursing through their bloodstreams?

One star.

Ravenshaw of WBY, Inc., by W. Macfarlane

by Vincent DiFate

Here's a story that I found almost indistinguishable from the serial. The hero is even named Leigh (in this case, Arleigh Ravenshaw). He's a veteran with a knack for innovation—for instance, in Vietnam, he plied the local kids with ice cream to get them to turn in mines and weapons caches. I'm sure it's that easy.

Ravenshaw is recruited to work for FBY (Flying Blue Yonder), a San Diego-based agency that entertains every crackpot in the region in the hopes that there might be wheat amongst the chaff (an endeavor Campbell surely thinks much of, but I can tell you, having worked with the publishing arm of the American Astronautical Society, which occasionally gets unsolicited papers, cranks are just that—cranks). He is accompanied by a "palomino-haired" young woman with a "bitter-honey voice" and a penchant for dressing bright, clashing colors.

On their first mission, to the desert near Borrego Springs on the trail of the creators of a matter converter, they find a wall-less room that houses an iodine thief from a parallel universe…and what may be the younger version of Ravenshaw's female companion.

Apparently, this will be the first in a series of loosely connected (and rather tedious) tales. Two stars.

by David Pattee

Wrong Rabbit, by Jack Wodhams

by Vincent DiFate

Earth has a working matter transmitter setup, with each booth operated by a single technician linked psychically with her or his unit. One day, wires get crossed, and the passenger of a similar, alien network ends up in a human booth…swapped with a human stuck in an extraterrestrial receptacle. Chaos ensues.

Wodhams tells the tale in alternating viewpoints to illustrate that both races, despite being repulsively different from each other, have surprisingly convergent societies and thought processes. Ultimately, the two reach a rapprochement and combine their networks.

I feel this tale would have been more effective had the two perspectives differed considerably. I also felt the constant use of nonsense terms as shorthand for untranslateable concepts ("I cannot describe to you the feeling of kooig that permeated by slaktuc.") was silly given just how similar the two species turned out to be, at least in mindset.

Two stars.

Revolutionaries, by M. R. Anver

by Vincent DiFate

Achates is a new Federation colony, a joint effort by humans and the blue-furred humanoids of Azure. An important election is coming up, between Ronan, head of the bi-racial United Party, and the reactionary Manoc—who is willing to win at any price, including a coup d'etat after a potential UP victory.

In the middle of it all is John Cameron, a Federation observer, who appears to be playing both sides against the middle… but are his loyalties really in question?

Anver seems to have taken a page from Mack Reynolds' book, turning in a competent, but unexciting (and not at all SFnal), political action thriller.

Three stars.

The Reference Library, by P. Schuyler Miller

Analog's veteran book reviewer covers Orbit 5, which he notes wanders further from the truly SFnal than ever before, but he finds it a worthy effort, nonetheless. He damns with faint praise the books we also didn't sing huge praises of: The Palace of Eternity, Masque World, and Galactic Pot-Healer—which just goes to show how good Miller's taste is! Which means you should perhaps avoid J. T. McIntosh's Six Gates from Limbo and seek out Edmond Hamilton's World of the Starwolves, which we never covered, but Miller does.

Tallying the results

IBM 360 Model 65 with a woman at the IBM 1052 printer in the foreground, a man at the Direct-Access Storage Devices (DASDs) in the back

Analog these days reminds me nothing so much as Hugh Heffner's Playboy. Where the latter magazine is aimed squarely at the smug youngish libertarian with delusions of yacht-hood, Analog is for the smug youngish libertarian with aspirations in engineering. Every story reinforces the notion that, if you're a scientifically educated man, you too can save Democracy, make the girls swoon, and show up those stuffy institutionalists. Perhaps Campbell sees his mag as a kind of Fountain of Youth to recover never-gained glories. Or maybe this kind of slop is just the secret to getting 200,000 subscribers.

Regardless, I'm getting pretty tired of it. Maybe others are, too. If they rate tales as I do, this issue scored just 2.4 stars—the lowest of any mag this month. It is beaten by Amazing (2.8), IF (2.8), Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.8), The Year 2000 (3), New Worlds (3), Galaxy (3.2), and Vision of Tomorrow (3.5)

The overall average this month was 2.9, and the four and five star material in the eight mags that came out would fill two full-size mags. If you're keeping count, women produced about 9% of new short fiction published this month.

Luckily, as you can see, Analog just constituted one end of the bell-shaped distribution. Somebody's gotta be tail-end Charlie, I suppose. I'm just regretting that I drew the short straw and have to be the one to review it every month.

On the other hand, I could have gotten John Boston's gig and suffered through Amazing since Goldsmith left its helm. And anyway, since things are finally starting to look up for him over there, maybe there's hope on the horizon for this hoary, once-honorable magazine…

Does astrology really count as a science? Space Age, my Aunt Petunia!

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 24, 1970] Sex and the Single Writer: New Worlds, March 1970

February 24, 2025 Fiona Moore 2 Comments

by Fiona Moore

This month has seen a few positive developments. In news of the former British Empire, the world welcomes the new Cooperative Republic of Guyana. Guyana (formerly British Guyana) had achieved independence in 1966, but now the country has completely severed governing ties with the U.K., exchanging a Governor General for a ceremonial President. The South American nation is also officially pursuing a somewhat socialistic path, introducing cooperative elements to the economy. May she continue to be a leading member of the Commonwealth!

Former President Forbes Burnham addresses a crowd regarding his plan for a Cooperative Republic in 1969

Meanwhile, Miss Ono is back in the news, as the owner of the London Arts Gallery has been charged with corrupting morals for exhibiting John Lennon’s etchings, which include lithographs of himself and his wife in coitus. I suppose we’ll get to see just how far the Permissive Society goes.

A crowd at the Gallery examines Lennon's art

Which brings us neatly to New Worlds, who seem to be courting similar controversy, or attempting to, anyway. The front cover this month is a file-box of erotic pictures with the heading Does Sex Have A Future? This gives the impression that New Worlds are trying to restore their flagging fortunes by going back to basics: shock the Tories by talking about sex.

Artist/designer uncredited

My immediate fear is, of course, that it will be New Worlds business as usual, full of Philip Roth pastiches and wish fulfilment fantasies on the part of frustrated young white men. Fortunately the resulting issue is better than that. Most of the stories are light on the titillation (if indeed any is present), and heavy on the use of SF to explore the more complex and disturbing aspects of sex.

Lead-In

Mostly highlighting the Sex! theme of the issue, and promoting the Ballard story, so pretty much as usual.

The Sex Machine by Ian Watson

Artist uncredited

Watson is emerging as the new darling of New Worlds. However, I don’t really mind the recent overexposure, as his work has thus far been refreshing and exciting. This one is a really disturbing story about a sentient vending machine for sex, casually used and vandalised in misogynous ways. Five stars.

Agatha Blue by Hilary Bailey

Artist uncredited

Another standout story and another one exploring the misogyny of everyday life. An alien being, curious about human life, inhabits the body of a mentally ill woman; the alien is from an implied-to-be-gender-egalitarian society and finds what she discovers on Earth to be shocking and frustrating. Also five stars.

Princess Margaret’s Facelift by JG Ballard

Art by Charles Platt

Fairly standard Ballard fare, using the clinical description of a facelift to criticise the beauty industry and our attractiveness standards for famous (and non-famous) women. I found it a bit too similar to his story "Coitus 1980" a couple of issues ago, however. Two stars.

Does Sex Have A Future? By John Landau

Artist uncredited

Clearly the answer is “yes”, or we're doomed as a species, but Landau argues that it will become increasingly commodified and solipsistic, due to the combination of technological advances and increasing permissiveness. He imagines a future where a man might never physically meet his partner, but have sex with her through videophones and customised artificial genital-substitutes. It doesn’t sound to me like it’ll catch on. Three stars.

Cinnabar Balloon Tautology by Bob Franklin

A surrealist/absurdist piece, where the unnamed narrator takes a balloon trip with a man and some chickens. They eat eggs and play chess. I suppose it could be about the banality and absurdity of daily life. Two stars.

High in Sierra by Reg Moore

Art by Gabi Naseman

A short vignette. A traveller on an island visits an Indian reservation and is implored to stay, but leaves and regrets it, seeing the reservation as the future. I suppose it’s saying that we should aim for a happy multicultural society that doesn’t depend on capitalism or technology, and yet we fail to achieve it? Anyway, two stars.

Front and Centaur by James Sallis

Art by R. Glyn Jones

Surrealist humour. Two American writers come to London and have a relationship with a woman named Berenice who leaves them for a unicorn. A bit sophomoric. Two stars.

Computer 70: Dreams and Lovepoems by D.M. Thomas

Art by Gabi Naseman

As the title indicates, this is advanced and experimental poetry by Thomas, on the themes of love, sex and/or technology. Some of them are really very good but the whole thing went on a little too long for me. Three stars.

The Terminal by Michael Butterworth

Art by Allan Stephanson

Short vignette/prose poem about a car accident. I think Ballard might have started a trend. I do like Butterworth’s imagery though. Three stars.

Edward at Breakfast by Yannick Storm

Short modernist piece about a man drinking coffee and ruminating on his unsatisfactory relationship, and I suspect his wife leaves him in the end. Didn’t really stick with me. Two stars.

Nest Egg by Sandra Dorman

Art by Ivor Latto

Good heavens, a second woman in the magazine! And one who appears to be actually a woman and not a pseudonym for one of the male regulars! It’s a rather good short story, satirising domestic and consumer culture through paralleling the life of a suburban woman with that of a battery hen. I’m still not entirely enthralled with the way women writers for New Worlds tend to be pigeonholed into the domestic satire/critique genre, but this was a good enough story. Four stars.

Books

William Barclay complains that bad books sell better than good ones; Michael Dempsey gets sarcastic about a volume of art criticism; Joyce (Not Actually A Woman) Churchill reads some nonfiction; John T. Sladek thinks about voting and Peter White finds a social-breakdown novel a little unoriginal.

Music

Ralph T. Castle likes the new album by the Mothers of Invention, but is pretty scathing about everything else that comes out this month. Having recently been subjected, along with the entire campus, to the debut album of Black Sabbath courtesy of an undergraduate playing it at top volume on the fourth floor of Founders Building, I share his disapproval. We should never have let the college go co-educational.

Next month I’m off for a fieldwork trip to the Republic of China (Formosa), where I can update you all on the latest exciting developments in the lives of Chiang Kai-Shek and Madame Chiang! The next issue of New Worlds will be its 200th, and I’m interested to see what they will do to celebrate this milestone.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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[February 16, 1970] Unassailable Fortresses? A Full-Five pair of issues: (Vision of Tomorrow #6)

February 16, 2025 Kris Vyas-Myall 1 Comment

By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

We are only in the second month of the new decade, but one thing seems to be clear. Women are no longer willing to be silent.

In Leeds, hundreds of women textile workers have walked out on unofficial strike. They are opposing the pay deal struck between their union and employer, claiming it is unfair that women will be getting smaller pay increases than their male co-workers.

At the other end of the social scale, the hallowed halls of Oxford is set to host the “Women’s Weekend”. Tired of being ignored and shouted down by men at other meetings, this will be an all-women conference to discuss women’s history and their current position in the world.

In a more literal sense, a woman’s voice can now be heard on British Pop Radio. After hiring an all-male team from Pirate Radio and Radio Luxembourg to start Radio 1, the BBC have finally branched out and employed their first woman DJ. Annie Nightingale is only thirty but has already had an impressive career, including working as a journalist, presenting numerous music television programmes, having a modelling career and running her own fashion boutique.

Whether this will lead to changes in British science fiction publishing remains to be seen. The Current Issue of Vision of Tomorrow’s only female representation is in its review columnists. Maybe we need to organize our own flying pickets?

However, maybe some of this atmosphere is affecting our writers, as all these stories are, in one way or another, about people trying to break out of their social circumstances. So, let’s walk through the stench of cigar smoke in this gentleman’s club and check out the contents:

Vision of Tomorrow #6

Cover Art by David A. Hardy

Whither SF? by Rev. John Clay

I would like to thank Philip Harbottle for realizing that he has run out of things to say and inviting in guest writers to open the magazine. Take note American publishers!

I was quite taken with this first installment, with the Reverend John Clay discussing the theological underpinnings of recent SF, q.v. Sheckley & Leiber, and going on to talk about how imagination is undervalued in our modern society.

Full-Five by E.C. Tubb

Illustrated by Eddie Jones

In the 21st Century there exists an incredibly powerful illicit drug called full-five. This has the power to give a sense of perfection to all five senses, for a short period of time. It is not chemically addictive, but it makes the real world seem like a nightmare in comparison.

When a chemist secretly making the drug is murdered, we follow how this impacts four different groups of people: his criminal associates; a rich customer and his dealer; a prize fighter; and the police investigating the case.

Given how well received his other works in Vision have been (including by yours truly) it is perhaps unsurprising Tubb would be allowed to take up a large portion of this month’s magazine. And he puts it to great use. Even with 16 pages at his disposal, it is not easy to create a fully visualized world, populated with solid characters. A lot of writers cannot even manage it in a novel.

I was worried at times it was going to be a case of an old man yelling at the young kids, but it is actually quite measured. It does get a touch didactic at points but this is necessary to give the different perspectives on full-five’s effect on society.

Even though I imagine others will question if I am taking something myself. I am giving this story a Full-Five Stars.

The Impatient Dreamers: Blast-Off

Reproduction of Issue 1 of Tales of Wonder. Cover by Nick

As the title suggests we now get into the real meat of things. With the British market finally starting to get its own specialist magazine titles in the mid-30s, there were some willing to take a chance on SF. This piece primarily focuses on the publication of Gillings’ Tales of Wonder and publisher Newnes’ plans for Fantasy.

Once again full of great detail, even more enhanced by the fact that he is now directly involved behind the scenes of both magazines. Possibly the most interesting part for me was the original guidelines Newnes put out for soliciting stories for Fantasy:

– No implausible flights of fancy, no weird fiction, no spiritual or ghost stories, no gore or sex, no animals with human attributes, no interplanetary travel, no medical or biological themes, and no time travel

– Stories particularly welcome are those envisaging new developments of existing technology, such as flight and television, or on future developments in warfare.

As you can probably imagine, Gillings was unimpressed by these limitations.

Continuing to cruise high at Five Stars

Fifth Commandment by John Brunner

Illustrated by Eddie Jones

The prolific John Brunner seems to have generally moved away from short fiction to the more lucrative book market, this being only his second new short story in the last 12 months.

Grumman lives in Retirement, a self-contained community providing all the needs of the elderly. But why does that make him feel so dissatisfied? And why does no one in Retirement have any children?

Not the most original story but fulfills its purpose well.

Three Stars

The Phoenix People by Richard A. Gordon

Illustrated by Eddie Jones

An expedition comes to visit an ancient planet called by its inhabitants “Earth”. The sentient population represent the longest recorded continual chain of evolution in the known universe, yet they seem to lack technological progress and are unresponsive to any queries. Just as the expedition is close to giving up, they discover an ancient buried spaceship, more advanced than any they have seen anywhere. What is it doing here?

I found this a fairly obvious tale, padded out with a level of verbosity that puts even me to shame. It is not bad as such, just rather dull and pointless.

Two Stars

The Visitors by Frank Bryning

Illustrated by Eddie Jones

Alien visitors are watching a galley sail across an inland sea. When one of the passengers goes overboard, they pick him up to investigate the species further.

This comes with a special “Vision Vignette” logo. Unfortunately, the contents are lacking in any superlative qualities. It is the kind of tale that would have been considered old hat a decade ago. However, it is short and reasonably written, which saves it from the bottom rung of the ranking ladder.

Two Stars

The Star-Mutants by Damien Broderick

Illustrated by Eddie Jones, who I believe has excelled himself in this issue

The generation starship Man’s Dream set off from Earth a century ago. Fifteen years into the voyage, an outbreak of psychosis infected those born on Earth, whilst the children born on the ship were unaffected. With the help of the computer system, the space-born quarantine the Earth-born and try to provide them with help. However, space radiation mutates their children and a conflict between the two emerges.

Now, a hundred years later, the Space-Born are being slowly pushed back to a smaller section of the ship. The Space-Mutants live in a jungle (an outgrowth of untended hydroponics plants) where they raid into the Space-Born territory. Captain Van of the Space-Born realizes the time has come to make a decision that is contrary to their programming. Either forgo their mission and integrate into Space-Mutant society, or wipe out the mutants completely.

At first glance this may seem to be just another variation on Aldiss’ Non-Stop, but it possesses some elements that raise it up. Firstly, this is quite a dark, mature story where our narrator is faced with an unwinnable scenario, whatever he does something will be lost. Secondly, it is very fast paced and action-packed, making it a very easy read in spite of the heavy subject matter.

Whilst there may be more mention of breasts than is strictly necessary in the story, women are present throughout and have varied pivotal roles. Lady Violence in particular lives up to her name and I would willingly read a novel of her future adventures.

Four Stars

Fantasy Review

Katheryn Buckley reviews Barefoot in the Head by Brian W. Aldiss and has more praise for it than we had for the original short stories in New Worlds. Don Malcolm spends some time covering the innumerable flaws in Chariot of the Gods? by Erich von Daniken but still advises readers to try it and make up their own minds.

Finally, Robert Conquest writes another attempt to take down the new wave in his “review” of The New SF. The quote marks are mine as he barely mentions the stories inside, instead choosing to decry experimentation, get angry that the initials “SF” can mean something other than science fiction, and making rambling references to the 1920s.

The belated poll results for issue #2. Apart from the high positioning of Moonchip I don’t particularly disagree with these rankings.

A Great Escape

Marianne Faithful in Girl on a Motorcycle. Not quite as good a role as Steve McQueen got.

So, overall a pretty good selection of tales in this issue of Vision of Tomorrow, and a worthy diversion from your troubles for an hour or so. No stories are truly bad and a couple are very good indeed.

Just like the characters above, let us hope that society progresses enough that women can break out of their social confines and allow their voices to be heard just as loudly as men. Imagine if one day we could pick up a magazine to be surprised to find there are no women featured in an issue, rather than when one turns up.

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 12, 1970] Up Front (March 1970 Amazing)

February 12, 2025 John Boston 4 Comments

by John Boston

Let’s be up front. That is, the front of the March 1970 Amazing, depicting a space-suited person with outstretched arms following or yearning after or paying homage to an apparently departing spacecraft. The contents page says it’s by Willis, illustrating a story called “Breaking Point.” However, Ted White’s editorial says, first, that he’s contacted some “promising young artists” whose work will appear on future covers, but right now they’re “sifting” the European covers that they apparently buy in bulk and having stories written around them “whenever possible,” like Greg Benford’s “Sons of Man” a couple of issues ago. And this issue’s “Breaking Point” was written around the present cover, so the story illustrates the cover rather than vice versa.

by Willis

And now that we have that straight, who’s this Willis guy? Well, informed rumor has it that the cover is actually by our very familiar friend Johnny Bruck, from the German Perry Rhodan #201 from 1965. The style and subject matter certainly look like Bruck’s.

Moving on to more straightforward matters: the contents look much like the previous White issues, with a serial installment, several new short stories plus a reprint, editorial, book reviews, fanzine reviews, and letter column.

White’s editorial is mostly devoted to the tortuous history of his novel By Furies Possessed, serialized starting in this issue. This is another of his commendable efforts to educate the readership about How Publishing Works. And he says it in black and white! “It helps to Know Somebody, to Have Friends.” Well worth reading. White also notes the addition of Arnold Katz, Arnie to fandom, who as Associate Editor “will have the task of pouring [sic, I hope] through all those smouldering [ditto] old issues” looking for Classic Reprints. He also announces a new program of Reader Feedback: since he gets more letters than he can print, he will forward unprinted letters to the authors on whose work they comment, cutting up the letters concerning multiple stories. I wonder how long that laborious task can be maintained.

The book review column is its usually slightly incestuous but quite readable pool of contention, with editor White praising Ursula LeGuin’s new juvenile A Wizard of Earthsea as not at all juvenile, and Greg Benford praising White’s new juvenile No Time Like Tomorrow only a bit less fulsomely. Dennis O’Neil responds lukewarmly to The Andromeda Strain, Richard Lupoff offers qualified praise to Michael Moorcock’s The Black Corridor (“doesn’t quite make it, but it was a worthwhile effort . . . and will be equally worthwhile for serious readers of science fiction”), and—whoa! What’s this? Speaking of incestuous, or maybe recursive, Hank Stine is here to refute Richard Delap’s mild praise last issue of Harry Harrison’s Captive Universe: “This book is a crime. If it is as common a crime as the smoking of marijuana, it is no matter; the offense is the same. . . . There was simply no reason for this book to have been written and no reason to read it. . . . It could have been written twenty years ago”—and it was, “at least once a year since then.” (Sounds about right.)

And here’s Delap, pounding away at Josephine Saxton’s The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith. He praises the earlier, shorter version “The Consciousness Machine” published in F&SF, but . . . “In discarding the concept used in the shorter version—an emblematic fantasy of the subconscious recorded pictorially by a machine used in psychoanalysis—the author has left her tale stranded in a hazy, directionless waste, discarding all the original sf elements in favor of unnecessarily extended feminine symbolism.” (Actually, I liked it pretty well, though maybe that makes me hazy and directionless too.) Oh, and I see I skipped over Alexei Panshin’s very succinct praise of R.A. Lafferty’s Fourth Mansions, which concludes: “It’s a wild book full of prodigious lies, and I’ll probably read it again.”

The letter column is the usual mix of the inane and the intelligent, with some apparent self-parody (“The November Amazing is a groove! . . . The first installment of the Philip K. Dick novel was a trip! . . . Dick must be stoned out of his mind—on talent! And Ray Russell . . . came through with a mind-blower. . . .”). Or maybe it’s just part of the inane. Rocks are thrown at John J. Pierce’s anti-New Wave comments. The only news here about the magazine’s functioning is that its artists must be near at hand because its deadlines are too short, so mailing stories to the West Coast and receiving art by return mail is not feasible. The fanzine review column is full of fanzines, some analyzed with more nuance than I suspect goes into their production.

As for the fiction . . . it’s still a frustratingly mixed bag.

By Furies Possessed (Part 1 of 2), by Ted White

by Gray Morrow

White’s serial novel By Furies Possessed comes with a celebrity blurb. On the cover: “Big and powerful, gut-hard stuff!—Philip K. Dick.” Inside the magazine, there’s more, equally fulsome, from PKD. I will as usual withhold comment until the serial is complete. But looking through the first few pages, I see that White has rung a change on Tuckerization, Wilson Tucker's practice of giving his characters the names of prominent SF figures. White, the sometime jazz critic, has named his protagonist Tad Dameron. Tadd Dameron—birth name Tadley—was a respected jazz pianist, composer, and arranger who died young (1917-1965).

Breaking Point, by William C. Johnstone

Did I say straightforward above? Let me take that back. Breaking Point is blurbed as “Story Behind the Cover,” though the Cover is actually Behind the Story, as White’s editorial discloses. The author, William C. Johnstone, is there said to be “a writer new to SF and these pages, but he’s somewhat better known in Hollywood, where he has accumulated numerous TV and screen credits. He originally queried us about a novel he wanted to write, and the cover-story commission grew out of this. ‘Breaking Point’ is actually the opening story in a projected book-length series. You’ll be reading the rest of the stories here as fast as they’re written and we can publish them.” However, plausible gossip has it that Johnstone is actually a pseudonym of White, and the style is noticeably similar to White’s.

In any case, this introductory story is not actually a story. It is an introduction, or maybe a first chapter. A spaceship full of colonists-to-be, dormant in the Sleep of the Long Moment, malfunctions and breaks up into component modules. A crew member caught in a corridor outside the modules hangs onto one of them and dies when it hits atmosphere. (That must be what the cover is alleged to depict.) The module lands on an Earth-type planet (the four occupants are out breathing the air almost immediately). The viewpoint character, Aaron, awakes to discover that one of the others, Chaimon, is hysterical because his girlfriend was in a different module and now he’ll never see her again. Aaron, a psychotherapist, divines that their acquaintance was only a matter of days and Chaimon’s disturbance results from a vivid Dream of the Long Moment, and talks him down. Then they see a headlight racing across the valley below. There are people here! And that’s it, after seven pages. Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment, if any. Two stars, subject to revision.

Trial by Silk, by Christopher Anvil

Christopher Anvil’s Trial by Silk begins with a demonstration of the moral hazard of payment by the word. The good ship Starlight has been directed to an unnamed planet for shore leave, and Captain Engstrom is warning the crew of its perils—but he can’t explain them. He begins: “Men—ah—This is very difficult. I don’t quite know how—But it’s my duty to tell you, as a captain, that the—er—women—ah—on this planet—are . . . not—quite the way they seem.” And he goes on for some time in this vein, mentioning the food and drink, and concluding, “Whatever you do, don’t enjoy yourself. –I mean—You know what I mean! –Anyway—That’s it.” This spiel, and the description of the crew laughing during it and after it, and everybody talking and joking about it before they actually manage to get off the spaceship, goes on for four and a half pages.

by Ralph Reese

At that point, the story actually begins, and proves to be a discourse on other sorts of moral hazard. Upon entering the nearby city, the spacemen are met by beautiful women offering to show them the sights—the “fountains, pools, lakes, theatres, wine shops, a communal feast and barbecue center, free communal dwellings, drug shops, fume dispensaries, sizzle palaces.” The narrator, the ship’s first officer, asks what’s a sizzle palace? His guide says “It’s terrible. I can’t talk about it.” The sizzle palace has a skull and crossbones logo on it—as does, he notices, his guide’s hair clip, and the small bottle of highly captivating scent that she keeps applying. They go to a public feast site where food (mainly meat) and drink are constantly replenished, and people including crew members are compulsively stuffing their faces. He sees a cook seasoning meat from a box with the label Addicteen, also with skull and crossbones.

The narrator bails on this G-rated orgy and says to a doctor who is treating its casualties, “I’m from off-planet. What’s the purpose of this pleasure set-up?” The doctor responds with a bolus of Anvillean philosophy (i.e., Campbellian, but cruder): “Why, to let the unfit pleasure-lovers eliminate themselves! If you let them have their own way, they will wreck any civilization ever built—unless you make allowance to get rid of them. . . . Yes, you see, rot and corruption set into every civilization ever built, unless an iron discipline is imposed or some means is provided to exterminate the hedonists who spread the corruption. The best way to get rid of them, obviously, is to provide them with exactly what they want. It is the genius of our planet that we have worked out how to do it. The expense is really very modest, as long as you let them finish themselves off fast, so their numbers don’t become too great.”

So why couldn’t the captain, who has been to this planet before, explain that to the crew in just that many words? Because if he had, there wouldn’t be much of a story at all, let alone those delicious four and a half pages of remunerative surplusage at the beginning.

Speaking of philosophy, there’s an earlier exchange with the narrator’s alluring guide when he asks her why there’s hardly anybody around who looks older than 35. She explains that when people are worn out, they “take a recoup”—i.e., go into the recuperator, which renews them. Forever? No, most last until 28 or 29; 35 is “frightfully old.” She giggled. “Who would want to live that long?” So the recoup wears them out? “No, silly. Man was made for pleasure, and it’s the pleasure that wears him out, not the recoup.” The narrator protests that in this system, people lose half their lives. She says, “But shouldn’t a life be measured by the total amount of pleasure received; not by the years it lasts?” Narrator responds, “What about accomplishment?” and she says, “You belong up there with them!”—referring to the people who actually do the work of keeping the society going, who pass by above the fray on overhead walkways with disapproving looks—and she walks away.

So why didn’t this appear in Analog? Too unsubtle even for Campbell, maybe. It's a toss-up whether it is more tedious than offensive, or vice versa. Either way, one star.

I'm Too Big but I Love to Play, by James Tiptree, Jr.

by Michael Hinge

Matters are somewhat redeemed by the next item, James Tiptree, Jr.’s “I’m Too Big But I Love to Play,” which is a little reminiscent of A.E. van Vogt, or what van Vogt might be like if he had a sense of humor and his writing were less ponderous. The protagonist is an energy being who spends his life (Tiptree’s pronoun usage) sailing around the universe on energy currents, until the day he discovers Earth and the subtle energy exchanges of human communication and interaction. What fun! He tries to join in but can’t get it right, causing havoc wherever he goes. This Tiptree guy loves to play and he seems to be about the right size, though he, like his protagonist, needs to get a little more practice. Three stars.

The Tree Terror, by David H. Keller, M.D.

The “Amazing Classic” this issue is David H. Keller’s “The Tree Terror,” from the October 1933 Amazing, and it is actually a charming relic, unlike some of its decidedly un-charming predecessors. Keller is back on his usual theme—people mess with the natural order of things and disaster results. President Tompkins of Cellulose Consolidated needs more cellulose, because it’s essential to making “a thousand synthetic products.” And he needs lots of it, and cheap, and near to his factories. Horticulturist Simcox is ordered to do it or be fired.

So Simcox goes to work, consulting a paleo-botanist who tells him about club mosses, which (supported by stems) grew a hundred feet high during the Carboniferous and which we are now burning as coal. Then he talks to a biologist who is irradiating ferns, and figures out how to return club moss to its ancestral glory, and bingo! We’re in Sorceror’s Apprentice territory, starting with a test plantation in rural Nebraska and proceeding straightway to dense forests of club moss with roots so deep they can grow almost anywhere, and do. “Their falling trunks began to block the highways, arteries of commerce. Only by constant vigilance were the railroads kept open and safe.” Food crops are crowded out. Everyone flees to the cities to starve. (At least the club moss doesn’t grow in concrete.)

Now Simcox returns to confront Tompkins and demands that this captain of industry rise to the occasion. He’s brought with him an eccentric genius who has invented a machine that costs three dollars to make and will grind up club moss and turn it into food. Simcox tells Tompkins he’d better crank up his company to distribute these machines nationwide so the starving millions can go out and eat the club moss out of existence. “Broadcast it! Put food into the stomach and hope into the soul of the desperate men of the nation!” And you don’t have to pay the inventor, he’s too busy on his next invention. Harmlessly amusing, three stars.

Is Anybody Out There?, by Greg Benford and David Book

Greg Benford and David Book continue their “Science in Science Fiction” series with “Is Anybody Out There?,” which as you might suspect is about the prospects of intelligent life elsewhere than Earth. They lay out plainly and methodically the numerous questions that have to be answered en route to getting the big answer, and the current state of knowledge about each, and they don’t obscure the fact that most of their answers are essentially pulled out of the air, er, are very gross estimates. This lucid presentation is a pleasure to read compared with the run of SF mag science articles. Four stars.

Summing Up

Uneven. Promising. Disappointing. Have patience. The same things I said for years about the Goldsmith/Lalli version of the magazine, punctuated by transitory bursts of excellence. I am tempted to get a rubber stamp made. Meanwhile, how about one of those transitory bursts?

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 10, 1970] Thirty Years To Go (The Year 2000, a science fiction anthology by Harry Harrison)

February 10, 2025 Victoria Silverwolf 2 Comments

by Victoria Silverwolf

Clarke and Kubrick Minus One

A recent film has made many of us aware of the first year of the next century. But what about the last year of this century?

(You do know that 2000 will be the last year of the twentieth century and not the first year of the twenty-first century, right? I thought so.)

A new anthology of original science fiction stories attempts to offer a glimpse of that evocative year to come.

The Year 2000, edited by Harry Harrison

Cover art by Pat Steir.

Obviously, all the stories take place three decades from now. Other than that, they have a wide range of themes and styles, from old-fashioned tales of adventure to commentary on social issues to New Wave experimentation. Let's take a look.

America the Beautiful, by Fritz Leiber

The narrator is a poet and scholar who travels to the United States on an academic tour. He stays with a typical American family and has an affair with the adult daughter of his hosts. Despite the fact that pollution has been eliminated and racism is no longer a problem, there's something about the place that makes him uneasy. Part of it has to do with the fact that the USA is still involved in small scale wars, similar to the current conflict in Vietnam.

Although there is a fair amount of futuristic content (rocket transportation between North America and Europe, for example), this reads almost like a mainstream story, something that might be published in a future issue of The New Yorker. It's impressionistic and introspective. Given that it's by Leiber, it's no surprise that it's very well written. Perhaps it's a bit too subtle for me.

Three stars.

Prometheus Rebound, by Daniel F. Galouye

An aircraft that uses the Earth's magnetic field gets in trouble. The huge plane, which looks like a flying saucer, keeps gaining altitude, beyond the control of the pilots. Can an elderly veteran flyer of World War Two help the crew save the lives of all aboard?

There's a ton of technical jargon throughout the story, the vast majority of which went way over my head. The plot depends on a character doing something really foolish.

Two stars.

Far from This Earth, by Chad Oliver

In Kenya, an area formerly used for raising cattle now serves as a wildlife preserve. The main character is a warden who has to prevent elderly people from following their traditional ways by tending cattle in the region. Part of the preserve is an amusement park, something like an African Disneyland. The protagonist visits the space-themed part of the park, which offers hope for his son's future.

The story offers a thoughtful look at culture change. The warden bitterly regrets what has been lost, but also welcomes improvements. He's an ambiguous sort, not always sympathetic, which adds depth of characterization. The author obviously knows the area and its culture very well, and depicts them vividly.

Four stars.

After the Accident, by Naomi Mitchison

The title disaster contaminated the Earth with radiation. Genetic testing is used to find out which persons would be likely to produce offspring without mutations. The narrator, a biologist and historian, meets a man who plans to send colonists to another world. She becomes pregnant with their child, who will have mutations that will allow it to survive on the planet.

This is a quietly disturbing story. The narrator's calm acceptance of the situation and decision to bear a mutant baby are the most chilling aspects of it. The speculative biology is convincing, the stuff about colonizing another planet less so.

Three stars.

Utopian, By Mack Reynolds

A social activist who was in suspended animation wakes up to find that the world has become the kind of paradise he imagined. There's no money, because everybody has everything they need. The folks who revived him tell him what they need from him.

The fellow went into suspended animation only because the people in the year 2000 used a sort of mental time travel to take over his mind and make him abscond with funds from his organization and then freeze himself. I found this aspect of the story gimmicky and implausible compared to the rest. The impact of the piece depends entirely on its punchline.

Two stars.

Orgy of the Living and the Dying, by Brian W. Aldiss

A man leaves his wife in England to work for a United Nations famine relief agency in India. He has an affair with a physician. When the facility is attacked by bandits, he battles them in an unusual way.

This synopsis makes the story sound like mainstream fiction, without futuristic elements. The main speculative premise is that the man hears voices, some of them seemingly precognitive. Excerpts of what he hears alternate with the narrative portion of the text, giving the work a touch of New Wave.

The author creates an evocative setting, if one that could easily be set today rather than in the year 2000. The man's lust for the doctor causes him to force himself on her at one point. It's hard to accept him as a hero later, when he comes up with a technological way to defeat the bandits. (This technique, by the way, is the part of the story that most evokes the feeling of science fiction, even if there is nothing futuristic about it.)

Three stars.

Sea Change, by A. Bertram Chandler

(The book just calls the author Bertram Chandler, but we know better than that, don't we? It's also no surprise at all that it's a sea story.)

A sea captain (of course!) who went into suspended animation for medical reasons gets thawed out, cured, and given a job commanding a gigantic, automated cargo ship. When things go wrong, he has to make use of his experience with sailing ships to save the day.

Chandler can't be beat when it comes to describing nautical stuff, and in this case he doesn't even have to pretend that his vessel is a starship. It may be hard to believe that a guy whose experience with ships is thirty years out of date would be given command of a futuristic vessel. It may also raise a few hackles to learn that the ship's troubles are caused by a female member of the crew, who messes everything up.

Three stars.

Black is Beautiful, by Robert Silverberg

New York City is populated almost entirely by Black persons, with only a few White commuters and tourists. The main character is an angry teenager who sees the mayor of the city as an Uncle Tom. He stalks a White teenager out of a sense of injustice and seeks revenge.

A White author writing from the point of view of a Black radical is taking a big chance, I think, and could be accused of depicting Black stereotypes. In this case, the gamble pays off pretty well. The teenager is passionate but naive, the Mayor cynical but effective. The story might be read as a debate between two styles of Black activism.

Four stars.

Take It or Leave It, by David I. Masson

Two sections of text alternate, both featuring the same characters. In one, they face challenges like local crime bosses and being forced to move in a technologically advanced society. In the other, they struggle to survive in a world devastated by a plague.

This reads almost like two different stories. The first one is full of futuristic slang and nouns used as verbs. (The word visited is replaced by visitationed, for example.) The second one has more direct language, but is very grim. People hunt cats to eat them, for one thing.

The tricks with language make the story difficult to read. Given the title, I wonder if the author is saying that an imperfect future is a lot better than a horrible one. This is one for New Wave fans.

Three stars.

The Lawgiver, by Keith Laumer

As a way to fight overpopulation in the United States, a controversial law makes it mandatory to terminate pregnancies unless the mother-to-be has a birth permit. (There's also the implication that she has to be married.) The Senator who pushed this law through Congress, against much opposition, confronts a woman made pregnant by his son.

Given the fact that abortion is only legal under certain circumstances in a handful of states, it seems unlikely that it would often be mandatory a mere thirty years from now. (And the story makes it clear that the procedure has to take place even if birth is imminent.)

The author doesn't seem to be making a case for or against abortion, as far as I can tell. The plot is melodramatic, throwing in a car crash to add excitement (and maybe some dark irony.) Still, I have to admit that it held my attention throughout.

Three stars.

To Be a Man, by J. J. Coupling

A fellow is seriously injured in battle and has almost all of his body except brain, eyes, and part of his spinal cord replaced by artificial parts, indistinguishable from the original. He returns from the war to confront his lover.

Much of the story consists of exposition, as the man explains in great detail how his new body works. This makes for dry reading. In sharp contrast to this is the sexual content: it seems that the fellow can be programmed to be a tireless sex partner. This results in an outrageous scene in which all the nurses in a battleground medical facility have an orgy with the guy. Pure male fantasy.

Two stars.

Judas Fish, by Thomas N. Scortia

A man works in a deep sea facility, altering the genetics of fish so that they will lead members of their species into the facility's chambers, to be processed into food for a starving world. Squid-like beings, having intelligence at least as great as humans, steal the fish away. The man's capture of one of the creatures leads to a strange transformation.

This is probably the most speculative story in the book, with a common science fiction theme that goes far beyond just extrapolating the next few decades. Not overly plausible, but readable enough if you're willing to suspend your disbelief.

Three stars.

American Dead, by Harry Harrison

Black guerrillas wage open warfare against the United States government, making use of weapons stolen from the military. An Italian journalist observes an assault by one of the Black commanders.

This is a gruesome vision of the worst possible outcome of current racial tensions in the USA. The manner in which the rebels fight is clearly based on tactics used by the Viet Cong. A powerful and disturbing tale.

Four stars.

Worth Waiting Thirty Years?

Overall, the book is OK, if not great. Some low points, some high points, mostly decent stories if not outstanding ones. Worth reading once, but don't expect it to be in print three decades from now.

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Book, Conventions/Performances, Magazine/Anthology, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 8, 1970] Boldly going to the Region Between (March 1970 Galaxy)

February 8, 2025 Gideon Marcus 3 Comments

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

by Gideon Marcus

A pleasant Escapade

Little fan conventions are popping up all over the place, perhaps thanks to the popularity of Star Trek. The first adult science fiction show on the small screen, Trek not only thrilled existing fans (who have been putting on conclaves since the '30s), but has also galvanized millions of newfen who previously had lived outside the mainstream of fandom.

Last weekend, I went to a gathering of Los Angeles fans called "Escapade". It differs from most fan conventions in that it focuses almost exclusively on science fiction and fantasy on the screen rather than in print. Moreover, the emphasis is not on the SFnality of the works, but on the relationships and interactions of the characters. This is the in-person culmination of the phenomenon we've seen in the Trekzines, where the stories and essays are about Spock or Kirk or Scotty—the people, not so much the adventures they go on.

Another distinction is that most of the attendees were women. Most SF conventions, while not stag parties, are male-dominated. The main difference I noted was that panels were less formal, more collaborative. Instead of folks sitting behind a table and gabbing with each other, they were more like discussion groups…fannish teach-ins, if you will. I really dug it.

If Escapade represents the future of fandom, then beam me up. I'm sold!

And since the photos are back from the Fotomat, here's a sample of what I snapped:

That's David, holding up the latest issue of The Tricorder (#4) and Melody dressed as a Starfleet lieutenant

And here's Melody again in sciences blue—who says you can't make a Vulcan smile?

If you can't recruit a fan…make one! (this one isn't Lorelei's…but it's probably giving her ideas)

Lincoln Enterprises had a stall in the Huckster Hall—I got this clip from The Enemy Within!

The New Thing in America

It's been eight years since folks like Ballard and Aldiss started the New Wave in the UK. It's leaked out across the Pond for a while, but this is the first time an issue of a Yank mag has so embraced the revolutionary ethos. The latest issue of Galaxy was a surprise and delight that filled my spare moments (not many!) at the aforementioned convention. Let's take a look.

cover by Jack Gaughan

The Galaxy Bookshelf, by Algis Budrys

illustration by Jack Gaughan

Budrys' focus is on fandom this month. He notes that SF fandom differs from all others (that of James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Conan, etc.) in that we are omnivorous. We contain multitudes, digging all of the above and much, much more.

We also are directly responsible for the plaudits of our passion—whereas the Oscars, Edgars, and Silver Spurs (and Nebulas, for that matter) are given out by organizations, the Hugos are awarded by the fans themselves (well, those that have the $2-3 to shell out for a World Science Fiction Society membership). Which means that all the nominations that Galactic Journey (hasn't) got are really worth something!

After a lengthy and entertaining discussion of what fandom means to Budrys, he goes on to review the indispensable The Index of Science Fiction Magazines 1951-1965, compiled by Norman Metcalf. It's not only a useful reference, but it's fun to read what all your favorite authors have produced, and also to see the commonalities and differences of stories that end up next to each other when ordered alphabetically.

He also recommends Adventures in Discovery, an anthology of science fact articles by science fictioneers (including reliables like Asimov, Ley, and de Camp, but also unusuals like Silverberg and Poul Anderson). It's put together by my dear friend, Tom Purdom, and you can bet we'll be reviewing it soon, too.

Now on to the fiction!

The Region Between, by Harlan Ellison

illustration by Jack Gaughan

In Ellison's story, the universe is filled with warring factions: beings, societies, and races that play God with the lesser forces in an endless struggle for dominance. The other truth of Region: the soul is immortal, and death merely a transition. Your essence is also poachable, in death and in life—and a whole gaggle of Thieves has sprung up to take advantage of this. When the soul that is snatched from a still-living being is too valuable to one of the squabbling tin pot deities, that's when it calls in the Succubus. The Succubus deals in souls, too, thwarting the Thieves by replacing snitched spirits with ones from his collection.

One such is William Bailey, late of Earth, so tired of the pointlessness of it all that he picks euthanasia over enduring, but possessed of such anger at his lousy universe that he proves a true son-of-a-bitch. A real Excedrin headache. A turis. A pain in the ass. (Sound like any diminutive titans we know?)

Every body he inhabits, every pawn in every war, game, conquest, he subverts. Through logic and sheer force of will, he convinces the shell personality of his host to allow him control, enough to stick it to the Man who pulls the strings of His minions. And after each successful wrenching of the gears, the Succubus, too busy to note the peccadilloes of a single errant soul, tosses him off to his next assignment to wreak havoc.

It's the ultimate implementation of hubris and nemesis, an eye-stick against solipsism. Not only are you not God, but watch out: your dicking around with creation may be just the thing that causes your uncreation.

The New Wave has all kinds of literary and typographical tricks—if you read New Worlds, you've seen them all. This is the first time I've really seen them used fully in service of the story rather than being fripperous illumination. They are special effects for the printed page, as impressive as any Kubrick rendered in his 2001 for the cinema. I wouldn't want all of my stories to look like this, and Ghod help us if Ellison inspires a new New Wave of copycats who absorb the style and not the subtance.

But, my goodness, five stars.

The Propheteer, by Leo P. Kelley

illustration by Jack Gaughan

"We can predict crime with absolute precision. We can tell who will commit a crime and when. We can even predict the exact nature of the crime."

Sounds like Dick's story, The Minority Report, though in Kelley's piece, what keeps crime from happening isn't a trio of precogs, but one man who monitors and controls the chemical balance of every human on Earth, ensuring tranquility and crimelessness throughout the planet.

Except, that man twiddles meaningless knobs and dummy switches. Another man is in control of humanity, and he wields a stick, not an endocrine carrot…

It's a little too histrionic and pat, and less effective than the stories which preceded it (including an Analog story from 1962 by R. C. Fitzpatrick)

Two stars.

A Place of Strange, by George C. Willick

Humans teach primitive beings to hate, to fight. The moral, like something from a less than effective Star Trek episode is stated: "There must be a way for simple survival to change into civilization without war. There must be."

Indeed, there must be.

Two stars.

Downward to the Earth (Part 4 of 4), by Robert Silverberg

illustration by Jack Gaughan

Silverbob wraps up his latest serial, detailing the end of Gunderson's quest toward redemption on the colony he once administrated. Of course, it ends with the unveiling of the mystery of Rebirth, which is revealed in the dreamy, avant-garde style that typifies the rest of the story. We also learn the relationship between the two sapient races of Belzegor, the elephantine Nildoror and the apelike Sulidor. It is both fascinating and also a little disappointing. Without giving anything away, I suppose I was most interested in the concept of a world with two intelligent species sharing a planet; in Silverberg's story, it turns out they are less a pair of distinct beings and more two sides of the same coin.

There is a fascinating, hopeful note to the conclusion that elevates the story above a personal salvation story, even if the whole thing is more an exercise in building a setting than presenting an actual narrative.

I'd say four stars for this installment, three-and-a-half for the whole. It may get consideration for the Hugo, but the year is young, and I imagine there is better to come—probably from Silverberg, himself.

Sunpot (Part 2 of 4), by Vaughn Bodé

illustration by Vaughn Bodé

The adventures of the Sunpot continue, as does the illegible lettering. I was dismayed to see Belind Bump, who had appeared to be an intrepid heroine, reduced to a host for boobies. Fake boobies at that (as we are reminded multiple times throughout the strip).

A waste of space. One star.

Reflections, by Robert F. Young

Last up is this sentimental tale of two humans of the far future teleporting to Earth for a tour of the cradle of their race. Evolved far beyond our ability to ken, they are incorporeal beings of nostalgia and love.

Pleasant, but eminently forgettable. It's that style (the type is interestingly arranged in reflecting columns and meandering rivers) over substance thing I just worried about above.

Three stars.

Summing up

That's that for this experiment in printing. There were unfortunate casualties: the Silverberg was printed with compressed carriage returns between lines, which made it harder to read. Also, with all the illustrations and text tricks (not to mention the comic), we probably got about 80% of the usual content—the Silverberg compression notwithstanding.

The stuff that isn't the Ellison or the Silverberg (or the Budrys) is also pretty disposable. That said, the Ellison and the Silverberg comprise 80% of the issue, so who's complaining?

I definitely won't quit now… unlike Tony Curtis.

not quitting.' In smaller letters, there is an additional message: 'Get your I.Q. button from your local Unit of the American Cancer Society.'"/>
This campaign is everywhere—commercials, Laugh-In, the back inside cover of Galaxy…

[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]

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[February 2, 1970] Deceptive Appearances (March 1970 IF)

February 2, 2025 David Levinson Leave a comment

by David Levinson

The Super Fight

Back in 1967, a radio producer by the name of Murray Woroner came up with the idea of using a computer to work out who the best heavyweight fighter of all time is. He polled 250 boxing writers and came up with a list of 16. He then worked closely with a programmer to input everything that could be determined about each boxer into a computer.

Match-ups were set up as a single-elimination tournament to be broadcast as a series of radio plays. Each fight was run through an NCR 315 computer the night before broadcast to create a blow-by-blow account of the fight. Woroner and boxing announcer Guy LeBow would then “call” the fight as if it were really happening. In the end, Rocky Marciano beat Jack Dempsey and was awarded a championship belt worth $10,000.

The arbiter, an NCR 315.

Ali was not happy. The computer had him losing in the quarter finals to Jim Jeffries, a boxer he has little respect for. He sued for defamation of character, asking for $1 million. They settled when Ali agreed to take part in a filmed version of a computerized fight between him and Marciano in return for $10,000 and a cut of the box office.

Last year, Ali and Marciano got together and sparred for over 70 rounds, filming a few different versions of events that the computer might predict. Marciano dropped 50 pounds and wore a toupee so he’d look more like he did in his prime. Ali probably had to get back in shape too, since he’s been banned from boxing for refusing induction into the army. Instinct seems to have taken over for both men. Ali bloodied Marciano’s nose and opened cuts over his eyes (Rocky always bled easily); at one point, Ali was so exhausted he refused to go back into the ring (until he got another $2,000) and could barely raise his arms enough to eat breakfast the next day. Filming ended just three weeks before Marciano was killed in a plane crash last Labor Day.

Armed with hours of footage and the top secret computer result, Woroner and his team put together a film they dubbed The Super Fight. On January 20th, it aired in 1,500 theaters in the US, Canada, and Europe via closed-circuit television, with viewers paying a whopping $5.00 a head.

How did it turn out? Ali is not happy. The computer had him knocked out in the 13th round. He’s talking about another defamation suit. Maybe he’ll change his mind when he finds out that was only in the US and Canada. European viewers saw Ali win by TKO. The producers are also talking about destroying all the prints.

Movie poster for the event. That “LIVE!” is a little deceptive, which is something else Ali is complaining about.

It’s a rather science-fictional concept we’ve seen in other guises. Maybe Murray Woroner got his original idea from the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon.” Of course, any statistician will tell you that a single simulation doesn’t really say anything. Rolling a die once doesn’t tell you if it’s fair; it takes hundreds or thousands of repetitions to determine that. But when the computer needs 45 minutes to determine the events of one match, this is the best that can be expected. For now.

Not what it looks like

Authors like to counter readers’ expectations. It’s a good way to evoke a response, particularly in a genre that has a fair number of cliches and formulas. Sometimes, the surprise comes from the author doing something that’s not what you expect that particular writer to do or say. This month’s IF offers some of both.

Art actually for “SOS,” rather than just suggested by. Maybe because it’s by Mike Gilbert, not the overworked Jack Gaughan.

SOS, by Poul Anderson

Some 2,000 years from now, the Earth’s magnetic field is fading, prior to a reversal of the magnetic poles. The feudalistic Westrealm and the communist Autarchy of Great Asia compete for dwindling resources as they search desperately for a way to survive the pending catastrophe. The Autarchy secretly invades a Westrealm research station on the dark side of the moon, preparatory to a surprise attack on the West’s space fleet. It’s up to the scientists to find a way to prevent it.

The invasion arrives. Art uncredited

This feels like a fairly typical Anderson story of the well-done sort all the way through. But then he hits the reader with a punch to the gut right at the end. The ending and the commentary from the author are surprising in light of most of his work. It’s a good story, but weakened by two things: the title completely gives away the resolution; worse, there’s a couple of paragraphs at the beginning that undercut the emotional impact of the ending.

A high three stars, but could have been better.

Telemart 3, by Bob Shaw

Shaw gives us the tale of an unpleasant man who married for money and his wife who seems intent on spending all of it. The problem is made worse by the titular device, which allows her to buy things from the comfort of her living room with instant delivery. It’s probably meant as commentary on consumerism, but feels more like a sexist rant about women and money.

Two stars.

Matters come to a head. Art by Gaughan

The Thing in the Stone, by Clifford Simak

After a car accident that killed his wife and child and may have given him brain damage, Wallace Daniels retired to the countryside of south-western Wisconsin, where he has visions that seem to let him go walking in the geologic past. There’s also something alive buried deep in the limestone, not to mention an unpleasant and shiftless neighbor. Not everything is as it seems.

Daniels finds himself in the deep past, before life has truly left the ocean. Art by Gaughan

This story has almost everything I don’t like about Simak: the pastoralism, wandering back and forth over the line between science fiction and fantasy, the slow progression. I understand why people like him, but he just isn’t for me. If you like those aspects of his work, you may like this one a lot.

Three stars for me, might be four for Simak fans.

The Ethics of Trade, by Timothy M. Brown

This month’s (official) new author gives us a series of letters from the operators of a company that provides dangerous animals to zoos to one of their clients. There’s nothing really new here, but it’s done fairly well. Brown does a good job of calling the letter writer into question, even though we only hear his side.

Three stars.

Rigellian wombats are very, very dangerous. Art by Gaughan

In the Silent World, by Ed Bryant

Julie is a co-ed with telepathy. As far as she know, she’s the only telepath in the world. At least, until an overwhelming cry of loneliness prompts another to contact her.

Julie, I suppose. Art uncredited, but looks like Gaughan

Nothing about this story is bad, but nothing is particularly outstanding either. I saw the ending coming almost as soon as the other telepath made contact. There’s not much more to say about it.

Three stars.

Traps, by Jack Dann and George Zebrowski

Planet 3-10004-2 can’t be approved for colonization until all land animals have been properly classified; Rysling has taken the contract to capture the last unclassified species. He’s puzzled by the presence of another ship and the cryptic messages left by its pilot. Even more puzzling is the effect the creature he’s after seems to have on him.

Rysling’s not sure who or what he is. Art by Gaughan

Dann seems to be a new author, but Zebrowski had a story in a collection that came out last month, so this isn’t quite an IF first. The premise and the powers of the creature are hard to buy, but it’s told well enough. There’s enough talent here to make the story readable; we’ll see if either author has any staying power.

Three stars.

Whipping Star (Part 3 of 4), by Frank Herbert

Herbert’s tale of Saboteur Extraordinary Jorj McKie and his efforts to stop a “reformed” sadist from causing the death of an alien, thus triggering the deaths of nearly every sentient being in the galaxy, plods along. Last month, I said the story was holding my interest and praised the action. Neither of those things is true this month. This installment is nothing but conversations. There are a couple of brief bits of action, but neither is more than a flash.

I’m also getting a little bored. There may not be enough here for a novel. The idea of examining communication without a common perspective is sound, but the whole thing might have been trimmed to a longish novella.

Three fading stars.

The bad guys make an ineffectual attempt to eliminate McKie. Art by Gaughan

The Time Judge, by Dannie Plachta

A criminal is dragged through time and condemned by the title character to a fitting punishment.

Here come da judge. Art by Gaughan

Actually, we don’t know if the punishment is fitting, since we’re never told the nature of the crime, just of the judge’s disgust. For that matter, the punishment wasn’t all that uncommon in its day. As with nearly every Plachta story, the nicest thing I can say is that it’s very short.

Two stars.

Love Thy Neighbor, by E. Clayton McCarty

Jake Terrell starts seeing something out of the corner of his eye. Then it jumps into his head, and he begins behaving oddly.

It’s a stretch, but I see how this connects with the story. Art uncredited

Another story that’s like a piece of popcorn. You consume it without really noticing it, nor is there anything memorable about it, good or bad. A decently told piece of filler.

Three low, but not too low stars.

All Brothers Are Men, by Basil Wells

Three alien religious fanatics are part of a conspiracy to drive humans off their world. Two of them started out as the personality of the third implanted into mind-wiped bodies. The years apart have undermined their commonality, and two of them may no longer believe in the cause.

Not sure what the paper airplane is doing here. Art by Gaughan

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this story is that the humans aren’t really in it. They’re a distant, never seen presence affecting the characters’ society in ways they don’t like. For a guy who started out 30 years ago and probably spends more time writing mysteries and westerns than SF, Wells has managed to stay up-to-date. This is by no means a New Wave tale, but it still manages to have a modern sensibility.

A very solid three stars.

Miscellany

Elsewhere in the magazine, the letters were almost universally in praise of the savaging Ejler Jakobsson gave John Campbell in two editorials over the latter’s piece on race and IQ. I particularly liked the point made by one writer, who notes that Campbell’s premise is based tightly on statistical analysis of something poorly defined and understood, while he flatly rejects statistical evidence indicating clear connections between smoking and lung cancer and heart disease.

Summing up

Looking over what I’ve written, this seems like a weak issue, but it’s not as bad as I make it sound. The Simak is undoubtedly the best in the issue; it might even be a four-star story, but my own prejudices keep me from rating it that high. The Anderson and Wells are fine stories, if not outstanding. The rest are mostly just there. The only really bad story is the Shaw (Plachta’s not bad, just stupid). Frank Herbert might manage to salvage his novel in the final episode, but I’m not holding my breath.

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55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction