Tag Archives: magazine

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial, Uncategorized

[October 2, 1969] Darkness, Darkness (November 1969 IF)

1 Comment


by David Levinson

An unexpected, expected coup

To the surprise of almost no one, September 1st saw a military coup in Libya. King Idris has grown increasingly unpopular ever since the United Kingdom of Libya was proclaimed in 1951. His government was initially seen as weak, due to the federal structure of the kingdom, sharing power between the three main regions of the country: Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitania in the northwest, and Fezzan in the southwest. After Idris dissolved the federal system in 1963, he was seen more as an autocrat. Always more a religious leader than secular, he was viewed by more progressive elements in the country as a hindrance to making Libya a modern nation. His government has also been widely seen as corrupt. Once one of the poorest countries in the world, Libya has grown rich in the last decade since the discovery of oil, but little of that wealth has gone beyond the king and his advisers.

So when Idris traveled to Turkey for medical treatment, everyone was expecting a coup. The king himself had offered to abdicate a few weeks earlier while he was on vacation in Greece. The blow was expected to come from Abdul Aziz Shahli, Chief of Staff of the Libyan Army, and his brother Omar, the royal councilor. The two are the sons of Idris’ longtime chief advisor, who had been murdered by a nephew of the queen.

King Idris from a couple of years ago.

But they were beaten to the punch by a group calling themselves the Free Officers Movement, no doubt inspired by Nasser’s Egyptian Free Officers who toppled King Farouk. The coup was swift, seemingly bloodless, and has been accepted in the country with no resistance and a fair amount of enthusiasm. The Revolutionary Command Council which heads the FOM quickly informed foreign diplomats that treaties and agreements would be respected and that foreign lives and property would be protected. Recognition of the new government followed almost immediately, including from the United States on the 6th.

Since then, a cabinet of eight ministers has been appointed to implement the policies of the Revolutionary Command Council. Six of ministers, including Prime Minister Soliman Al Maghreby, are civilians, and the two military men are not members of the RCC. The new government has announced that Libya will not be renewing the leases on British and American air bases as they come due over the next two years. That means Wheelus Air Base will be closing down next year, but the base’s importance has declined over the last few years, and there had already been discussions with the previous government about the U.S. withdrawing from Libya.

Libya’s new Prime Minister, Soliman Al Maghreby.

A deep but dazzling darkness

We’re all still wondering what direction Ejler Jakobsson is going to take the magazines he helms. Based on this month’s IF along with the story Survival in last month’s issue, I’d say he likes stories with a darker tone, because, boy, is this issue full of dark stories.

This month’s cover depicts nothing in particular. Art by Gaughan

Happiness Is a Warm Spaceship, by James Tiptree, Jr.

Fresh out of command school, Lieutenant Quent expects a plum assignment. After all, he finished high in his class and his father is an admiral. Instead, he’s assigned to a mere patrol boat, one of the first with an integrated crew of humans and aliens. The lieutenant doesn’t—quite—share his father’s extreme prejudices, but he’s going to have to make a lot of adjustments.

Deathly ill, the captain has some advice for his first officer. Art uncredited

This was really good, right up until the last two or three pages. The ending felt a bit confused, and the story seems to be saying integration isn’t a good thing. It’s not really clear on the point, because the very end seems to contradict that. Nevertheless, Tiptree continues to improve. I may not necessarily like what I read, but it always seems to hold my interest.

A high three stars.

To Kill a World, by Irwin Ross

When his wife died, Colonel Ward crawled into a bottle. Now he’s desk-bound and in command of an air force base, while the arrival of his commanding general signals that his career is over. But the landing of an alien spaceship changes the trajectory of his life.

An alien invader, or is it? Art uncredited

Here’s our first dark story. Once the action gets going, it seems fairly obvious how things will turn out. But Ross takes his tale in a different, more poignant direction, and it is much the better for it.

Four stars.

Genemaster, by Barry Alan Weissman

Far, far in the future, Earth is forgotten, and humanity has been messing with its genes so long that nobody looks what we would call human. When proof is found that humans came from a single world, an aristocrat with a zoo hires the protagonist to provide him with an Original human.

If the previous story went somewhere unexpected, this one goes exactly where you think it will. It also gets to the punchline far too easily. The only thing this story has going for it is the narration, which is brisk and engaging. I’d call it Zelaznyesque if the first-person narrator were more sarcastic. That’s just enough to pull it over the three-star line for me; you might think otherwise.

Barely three stars.

For Sacred San Francisco, by Alfred Coppel

A century or so after World War III, men are a scarce resource that the women of the city-states of the shattered United States go to war for. Jere is a fighter pilot for San Francisco. She survives being shot down and encounters a wild man.

A San Franciscan gunner, not our protagonist. Art uncredited

Back to darkness, though I can’t say much about it without giving away the ending. The story stands on its own, but would probably work better as part of a novel. Many aspects of the world Coppel has created go unexamined, and the consequences of the conclusion could be far-reaching.

Three stars.

The Story of Our Earth: The Conquest of the Land, by Willy Ley

Having taken us through the formation of the Earth and the emergence of life, Ley shows us the Devonian period, when life first crawled onto land. Unfortunately, the fossil record for this period is scarce (most creatures were soft-bodied and didn’t fossilize well), so he spends most of the article talking about trilobites. I think a few lines may be missing at the end, because it is very abrupt, but what we have is interesting and engaging.

Three stars.

By Civilized Standards, by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Barrett offers us a first contact story in which humans and aliens struggle to find a point of commonality. Eventually, they think they found one, but how well do the humans really understand? And once again a very dark story that’s also well-written.

A high three stars.

The Seeds of Gonyl (Part 2 of 3), by Keith Laumer

In Part 1, Jeff Mallory woke to find that three months had passed, his town in the thrall of alien invaders, and his daughter Lori missing and forgotten. He escaped, joined up with Lori’s best friend Sally, and wound up drafted by Colonel Strang, who believes it is the Chinese who have conquered his town.

As the story picks up, he discovers Lori in Strang’s camp, but she is a true believer in the colonel’s vision. He and Sally attempt to kidnap her and things go wrong. Sally is shot and Jeff must flee on his own. Guided by memories that don’t seem to be his own, he comes to a large house, where he meets a very old man named Gonyl. The old man claims to be an alien and explains what’s going on. As the story ends, Jeff expresses disbelief and demands the truth. To be concluded.

Gonyl is not in good shape. Art uncredited

This is all fairly typical for Laumer in adventure mode. There are a lot of elements he’s used before: two aliens who have lived on Earth for centuries, an imminent threat they were originally sent to stop, a hero plagued by strange memories who may be connected to the aliens. Much of this feels like he’s just going through the motions, and a lot of the action has been episodic, not really advancing the plot (though he may wind up bringing it all together in the end). Right now, it’s average at best.

A low three stars.

Appropriate Punishment, by Theresa M. Treadway

This month’s new author tells the story of an old man facing judgment on the last night of his misspent life. It’s extremely well-written, but rather trite. Worse, the ending could be read as supporting a racist stereotype; that’s probably not intended, but it’s there.

Three stars.

Judgment night. Art uncredited but clearly signed by Gaughan

I’ve been wondering if Jakobsson would carry on with the IF first program. The issues under his leadership have all had a new author, but there was no acknowledgment of the fact. This time, there’s a note at the top of the first page of the story announcing “an IF first,” and the author bio makes its return (though somewhat insultingly never referring to Miss Treadway by name; I’ll put that down to poor editing for now).

Summing up

With this issue, IF begins to at least feel different from the Pohl years. Not significantly better or worse, but different in tone. It’s a gloomy issue, though looking at each story individually it’s not quite as dark as the overall impression I initially came away with. I don’t mind too much; the best story in the issue is also the darkest. But let’s not overdo it either.

Right now, my biggest complaint is that the art is all uncredited. It all appears to be by Jack Gaughan, who was on the masthead last month (there isn’t one this month) as Associate Art Director. Maybe that’s a fancy way of saying he’s doing all the interior art now. I hope not. I like Gaughan’s work, but I also like a bit of variety.

Looks like another of Dickson’s military stories. Those are often quite good.




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[Sep. 30, 1969] Decisions, decision (October 1969 Analog)

2 Comments

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

Options in Space

Just two months ago, men set foot on the Moon.  It was the culmination of 12 years of American progress in space, nine years of manned flights.

And yet, it is also just the beginning.  This nation has built the infrastructure to begin a new era of space exploration and exploitation.  As of this moment, the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) has no formal plans for human spaceflight beyond the flight of Apollo 20 sometime in 1973, and a somewhat inchoate, 3-man space station project—this latter to utilize a converted Saturn rocket upper stage. 

In order to turn further dreams into reality, President Nixon has created a "Space Task Group", headed by Vice President Agnew and comprising luminaries like NASA chief Thomas Paine and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, to map what the next decade in outer space will look like.  They submitted their report, "The post-Apollo space program: directions for the future", on September 15.

The 29-page report outlines an ambitious set of proposals, even the most modest of which still sets lofty goals.  In short, the options are:

  1. Land a man on Mars by 1980; orbit a multi-person lunar station; orbit a 50-person space station in Earth orbit; develop a reusable spacecraft to shuttle personnel and supplies to and from these stations;
  2. The same, but with a deferred Mars landing; and,
  3. The same, but with no Mars landing.

With regard to the station, it appears that it won't be a all-of-a-piece spinning wheel as seen in 2001 or the old Collier's articles from the early '50s.  Instead, NASA will mass-produce station modules, which can be put together like Tinkertoys.

There are three options presented for military spaceflight, as well, but these are not fleshed out proposals, merely budget amount suggestions based on how hot or cool international tensions are over the next decade.

Only time will tell which of these options, or which portions of these plans will be implemented and when.  It is one thing for the Vice President to boost space (a consistent tradition since 1961!) It remains to be seen if Dick Nixon will commit this nation to a grand, interplanetary goal, in the vein of his erstwhile opponent, Jack Kennedy.

Options in Print

As the STG offers up a number of options for the future of human spaceflight, so Analog editor Campbell offers up a number of possible futures set further beyond in the latest issue of Analog.


by Kelly Freas

The Yngling (Part 1 of 2), by John Dalmas

It is the 29th Century, and the world is recovering from a disaster that killed off the overwhelming majority of its population.  Earth has reverted to the Dark Ages, at least in Europe.  In fact, the setting of the book strongly resembles the 9th Century, with food pressure impelling the Scandinavians to raid and settle the warmer climes to the south.  Meanwhile, an Oriental despot is plotting the takeover of Europe from his advance base in the Balkans.

The main difference between the future and our past is the existence of psi powers, specifically telepathy and precognition.  Though not widespread, it is common enough that possessors of these powers are recognized and valued.


by Kelly Freas

One such possessor is Nils Järnhand, a Svear from the frigid land of Svea.  Banished from his lands for an accidental manslaughter, he travels to many places, becoming perhaps Europe's greatest warrior.  He also develops his psi powers, using his telepathy to aid his interactions and his premonitory power to stay one step ahead of assailants.  His ultimate goal seems to be a date with destiny with the evil Kazi, the would-be dictator of all lands west of the Urals.

John Dalmas seems to be a new author, and his Nils is a character in the Conan mold—a superman who can be placed in a number of adventure scenarios.  His defining traits, asside from his martial puissance, is his adaptibility and his complete lack of an internal monologue.  He simply senses, processes, and acts, with no consideration or doubts.  This should make for a dull character, but somehow, Dalmas keeps things going, lively and interesting.  There are a couple of rough transitions where it seems thousands of words got pared for length considerations; perhaps they will be restored in the book version.

Anyway, I give it three stars for now, but it's possible the second part will raise my estimation.  I'm certainly enjoying it, at least.

A Relic of War, by Keith Laumer


by Vincent Difate

Three generations after the cataclysmic human/alien war, a battered sentient tank has become adopted by the citizens of a small town.  When a government man comes along intending to euthanize the old machine, the mayor is the first to defend their mascot.  But when Bobby the tank suddenly charges off, weapons armed, there is cause for all to reconsider their positions.

This is the Simakiest of Laumer's Bolo stories, pastoral and sensitive.  What I find so interesting about these tales is that so many take place long after the conflict for which the mammoth tanks were built.  Others would prefer to tell war stories, but not Laumer.

Four stories.

The Big Rock, by Robert Chilson


by Kelly Freas

A future-day Australia is set up on an airless world, importing criminals from six worlds whose citizens would rather offload the malcontents than pay the taxes for things like prisons and rehabilitation.  It's all part of a grand experiment: can a den of thieves become a self-sustaining population?

Chilson tells the story from the point of view of the intellectual (and much bullied) prisoner, Hargraves.  His tale is punctuated by scenes of a conversation in which one government official explains the experiment to another politician.

The setup is interesting—sort of a precursor to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress—and Chilson tells an interesting story…but the piece just ends.  Even the dialogue between the two bureaucrats doesn't tie things up.  We never find out how the experiment ends, or even if it can end successfully.

Three stars.

Proton to Proton, by R. Dean Wilson

Wilson proposes a mechanism for the abstruse but universal conversion of sunlight into the molecule ATP, which is fundamental to most biological processes.

I must confess, it's all beyond me, but then I've never taken a chemistry course in my life.

Three stars.

Test Ultimate, by Christopher Anvil


by Vincent Difate

Here is another tale of Anvil's "Space Patrol".  This time, a recruit is facing the final challenge before induction, one of courage.  He has to wade through a pool of giant piranha and then climb a 25-foot sheer facing.  Accompanying him on is a chipper guide, who exhorts him cheerfully to plunge on through, heedless of the danger.

Naturally, this is all simulated, so if said recruit gets eaten on the way, he'll only feel his death, not experience it.  Nevertheless, our hero smells something fishy (beyond what's in the pond), and responds accordingly.

It's cute, perhaps a trifle long.  Three stars.

Jump, by William Earls


by Vincent Difate

99 out of 100 Spacers have no trouble with Jump, that moment of transition between normal and hyper-space.  But Lacey is in that unlucky 1%, and despite a luminary career in the scout services, he finds he just can't take the experience anymore.  So he musters out at Titan base and tries to make a go of it as a civilian.  In the end, he determines space is in his blood, fear of the void between voids be damned.

There's not a lot to this tale, which could just as easily have been written about the Navy, with seasickness or fear of typhoons standing in for Jump aversion.  Plus, I was a bit turned off when the author had Titan be a Moon of Jupiter.  Titan orbits around Saturn!

Two stars.

Compassion, by J. R. Pierce

by Leo Summers

In the near future, New York becomes a protected enclave for Black Americans, not unlike the reservations for Native Americans (as Indians are beginning to be called).  The parallel is not specious—it is made in the story!

The heroine of the tale is Sari, a 20-year old tourguide from the Big Apple, whisked away by a handsome, middle-aged man as dark as she is, but representative of the mainstream world, progressing right along.  He introduces her to the modern era, gauges her considerable talents, and then sends her back to New York to be a leader of her society, someone who can bring promising souls into the wider world.

I'm not sure I like or buy the premise, but it is a nicely written piece, with enough consideration given both to the world (like something Mack Reynolds might spin) and to Sari's emotions and inner thoughts, to feel fleshed out.  Not much happens, but I enjoyed the story.

Three stars.

Doing the math

All in all, not a bad issue, really.  Unlike a lot of the rest of the slog this month, I never found myself dreading the next page of Analog.  Of course, a three-star average is hardly anything to brag about, but it does beat all the other collections of short SF this month, with the exception of Galaxy (3.2).

Lesser entries for October include:

You could take all the four and five star stuff and squeeze it into one overlarge magazine, and though women contributed 6.5% of the newly published material this month, you have to regard Orbit as a magazine, even though it's printed in paperback format.

We're definitely at a nadir for short SF these days.  Let's hope this is the bottom rather than a height compared to what's coming!




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 22, 1969] Unsmoothed curves (October 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

6 Comments

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

Government by the Many

Every four years, Americans head to the polls to vote for who they want to lead the Free World.  At least, that's what they think they're doing.  What really happens is your vote determines if your choice for President wins your state.  And then, representatives of the states, the so-called "Electoral College", announce who they've been empowered to choose.  Technically, these representatives are not bound to uphold the will of the voter; in practice, bucking the election results has been for protest rather than consequence.

This means that the swingier the state and the bigger the state, the more attention it will get.  For instance, California, somewhat evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, and currently the most populous state in the Union, is more important to a candidate than, say, a reliable and sparsely settled state like Arizona.

No more?  This week, the House passed a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would make Presidents directly electable.  This would mark the first major change to the system since 1803.

It looks like half the Senate is in favor, but it will take two thirds of that chamber plus three quarters of the states for the measure to go through.  Opposing such reform are representatives of small states and rural areas, as they wish to retain their outsized impact on the process.  With the rapid rate of urbanization, particularly on the coasts, this proposed amendment threatens to wipe out the electoral relevance of most of the central region of our country, from the Rockies to the Mississippi. 

But that's precisely why the time for such an amendment has come, its advocates propose.  People vote—not acres.

The bill faces an uphill battle, but it's an idea whose time has probably come.

Magazine by the Few


by Ronald Walotsky

Even with an Electoral College, with 50 states, you still get something approximating the will of the people.  With a science fiction magazine, you've only got six to fourteen pieces.  That means any individual story can dramatically affect your enjoyment of an issue, and the variations in quality can make for a wild ride.  Such was my experience reading the latest Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Feminine Intuition, by Isaac Asimov

Susan Calvin, renowned roboscientist, has gone into semi-retirement, passing the torch to the new generation.  Said successors develop a robot with flexible programming, one that can make free associations rather than rely on its own hard-coding.  Its designers, all male, decide that such fuzzy thinking could only be ascribed to a female, and so they built the robot with feminine curves and a sexy contralto voice.  JN-5, or "Jane", is a big hit with all the (male, of course) scientists and politicians.

Jane is employed to determine which of the 5500 stars with 80 light years of Earth would be most likely to be inhabitable so that humanity's limited interstellar capacity can be used most efficiently.  Jane fingers three candidates, but she and her maker are killed in a freak accident.  Only Susan Calvin can save the day.

The story drips with male chauvinism, but ultimately, that's the point.  It's an uncomfortable ride, but wait for the end, which redeems the story.

Three stars.

Come to Me Not in Winter's White, by Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny

A brilliant physicist discovers his wife has but one year to live.  He builds a room in which time goes much more slowly so that he will have more time to discover a cure.  When the wife gets lonely (since she's by herself for all of…what…a week?) the husband picks out a brilliant but plain woman to be his wife's companion.

Decades later, when the physicist discovers the cure, he returns to the room to find the two women making love.  Jealously, he locks the room and accelerates time, leaving his wife to die, his wife's lover to live out the rest of her life with the corpse, and for both of them to be out of the physicist's ken in the blink of an eye.

I didn't like the story much when I read it, and now, having to revisit it for this summary, I realize that I hate it.  Not just for the misogyny, but for the absurdity of the premise (there are no spinoff societal effects from inventing time control?!) and the laughability of the final insult—oh no! Wife is not only unfaithful but (whisper it) a homosexual!

One star.

The Movie People, by Robert Bloch

A perennial extra, veteran of 450+ films, spends most of his life at the Silent Movies.  He's not just reliving his glory days; it's how he can catch glimpses of his lost love, a fellow extra, who died in 1930, just as her career was beginning to take off.

The fellow knows every movie, every scene in which he and his girlfriend appeared.  So why does she start showing up in films she never appeared in before, some that even date to before her start in show biz?  And why does it seem she is mouthing messages for him alone?  Is she enjoying a kind of celluloid life after death?

A pleasant, sentimental story.  Three stars.

A Final Sceptre, a Lasting Crown, by Ray Bradbury

Once transportation via personal helicopter becomes a cheap and ubiquitous reality, everyone moves away from points north of 40 degrees latitude to reside in California, Florida, the Mediterranean, and other like climates.  This is the tale of the last man in England, and the friend who tries to convince him to join the other emigrés.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one—was the Earth growing cold?  Had their been a calamity in the Northern Hemisphere?  No.  People were just leaving wholesale out of personal preference.

Never mind that some people like seasons.  Never mind that the tropics can't fit all those people.  Never mind that Aleuts and Laplanders haven't left their ancestral homes despite the capability of moving to town if they want to.

Lots of folks like Bradbury.  Maybe I started on him too late.

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Worlds in Confusion, by Isaac Asimov

Wherein the Good Doctor takes on Velikovsky and his ridiculous, religion-cloaked-in-pseudoscience tome, Worlds in Collision.  Did Jupiter really eject Venus as a comet?  Did that rogue planet stop the Earth in its tracks, causing no ill effects beyond the Ten Plagues and the pausing of the day at the Battle of Jericho?  Do people really believe this claptrap?

Four stars.


by Chesley Bonestell

"Russian astronauts have arrived on the rim of Copernicus only to discover that the Americans have already been there …"

The Soft Predicament, by Brian W. Aldiss

A mission to Jupiter finds the gas giant teeming with life.  On the Moon, a giant black edifice (made by people, not aliens) sifts human dreams, becoming the repository for archetypes—the goal to find a solution to strife and hatred in the world.  On Earth, the globe is split between Communist, Free, and Black domains.  The "Free" world is highly regimented, with children taken from their parents after a decade, and marital partners divorced on the same schedule.

Our protagonists, such as they are, are neurotic Westciv citizens, adapted, but not adjusted, to the new way of life.  Their collected dreams represent the only way out of the mess technology has gotten us into.

What a lousy story this is.  Turgid, mock-momentous claptrap.  Budget Ballard.  Thoroughly unentertaining, its message buried, and not a lick of science to be found in this so-called science fiction.  I recognize that the definition of the genre now goes beyond nuts-and-bolts engineering stories to include softer sciences like psychology and sociology, and that the New Wave is an experiment in bringing a degree of literary-ness to SF, but this is too much of a thing.

One star.

The Man Who Learned Loving, by Theodore Sturgeon

A brilliant engineer-turned-hippie stumbles upon the principle of perpetual motion.  In order to keep the discovery from being used for evil, he leaves his life of Bohemian idyll, cuts off his hair, and Makes it Big.  Thus armored in respectability, he carefully manages the revolution's global introduction, ensuring peace and propserity for all humanity.

Upon returning to the backwoods town where he left his lady love and a life of languor, his erstwhile paramour chides him for selling his soul for progress when he could have had love.

This is the sort of story Lafferty or Davidson might have played more for laughs, Sheckley more for bitterness.  Sturgeon presents it completely straight, and as always, he writes pretty well.  His statement seems to be: rather than just be nice and preach love, actually do something to make the world better.

On the surface, he has a point.  Free love is all very nice, but aren't those dirty hippies really just parasites on real working society?  On the other hand, Sturgeon rigs the deck.  His hero discovers the patently impossible after a few days' work.  Moreover, there are plenty of believers in the hippie ethic who are working, giving, and improving the world.  It's a mentality, not a nationality.

Sturgeon, who predates the Swinging Sixties, obviously bears some resentment toward the new crowd.  Kicking straw men is not the answer.

Three stars.

The Electric Ant, by Philip K. Dick

Mr. Poole, executive of a powerful corporation, is in a flying-car accident.  When he regains consciousness, he finds he is not a human at all but an "electric ant"—an android.  Designed to be a figurehead, all of his memories are programmed, his life a lie.

He becomes determined to find the nature of his ongoing programming and discovers that there are no further limits on his thoughts and activities.  He does, however, discover a punched tape spool that controls his sensory input.  Poole begins fiddling with it, altering his subjective reality.  His ultimate goal is to experience everything in the universe at once, something he thinks, as a robot, he can handle better than a human might.

Dick once again turns in a story about a middle-aged man going through an existential crisis.  There is also the drug-use metaphor (Dick is into uppers, I understand).  It doesn't make the most sense—the ant's reality is subjective, but the external universe also exists, so what, exactly does the tape spool control? Poole is determined to find out, taking himself on a psychedelic, 2001-esque journey whose mission is to prove or disprove Solipsism. I feel Dick takes the easy, the obvious way out, at the very end.

Three stars.

Get a Horse!, by Larry Niven

Niven returns to the realm of fantasy, but this time, with a completely new character and setup.  Hanville Svetz is a hapless time traveler from more than a thousand years from now.  Hailing from a polluted, dictatorial future, he has been sent back to 1200 AD to find an extinct beast for the Secretary General's zoo—a simple horse.

What Svetz actually finds, and the troubles that befall him on his quest are interesting and delightful.  There is a deft, sardonic touch to this story, and room has been left for many follow-ups.  I look forward to them.

Four stars.

Science Fiction for the woodpile

As with last month, the latest F&SF finished on the wrong end of the 3-stars mark.  Though F&SF is the shortest of the SF digests, it took me the longest to finish.  I just wasn't looking forward to it.  I can see why my nephew, David, canceled his subscription a few years back. It's a pity that this twentieth anniversary issue is so dismal compared to the ones that came out when the magazine was young. That said, hope springs eternal, and I would hate to miss stories like Get a Horse!.

I just wish my job would let me skip the stories I don't like…




6 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 12, 1969] Earthshaking (October 1969 Galaxy)

2 Comments

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

Time for a change

My local rag, The Escondido Times-Advocate, isn't much compared to, say, The Los Angeles Times.  But every so often, they are worth the subscription fee (beyond the TV listings and the funnies).  Take this article, for instance, which might well be at home in a Willy Ley column:

Basically, CalTech has a new timepiece with more precision, accurate to the hundredth of a second, so that when it is used in conjunction with a seismometer, earthquakes can be better mapped.  More excitingly, the new clock weighs just eight pounds—less than a tenth that of the hundred-pound monster it replaces.

Transistors have made it to geology.

We hear all about small computers and more efficient satellites, but this story really drives home just how quickly the miniaturization revolution is diffusing to all walks of life.  Is a computerized pocket slide rule or a Dick Tracy phone that far off?

Making waves


by Gray Morrow

A lot has happened this year at the old gray lady of science fiction, Galaxy.  They changed editors.  They lost their science columnist.  And as we shall see from the latest issue, things are starting to change, ever so slightly.

Tomorrow Cum Laude, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

The revolution does not begin with this piece, a direct sequel to "Kendy's World", which came out at the end of last year.  If you'll recall, Kendy was a boy during the National Emergency, a time of civil and racial strife that rocked the nation into a semi-permanent police state.  Kendy was recruited by a Mr. Smith, who gave him a scholarship at National University—which turned out to be a training camp for spies.  "Tomorrow Cum Laude" details Kendy's first mission.

He is sent to the University of Southern California to take pictures of a biological centrifuge.  Why he is sent on a domestic espionage mission when he has been trained in Russian is never explicitly stated.  Moreover, the overarching mystery remains: why did the first cosmonaut to Mars chicken out after finding…something…on Phobos, and why are the Soviets building a secret base on the Moon?  Did they find a monolith?  Two?

All of this is background to Kendy's personal story, his slow, jerky maturation into adulthood.  His growing feelings for his accidental roommate, the beautiful woman, Amani, from the southern Californian all Black city-state of Nairobi.  His conflicted loyalties to the government of the United States.

Aside from an overuse of the word "amble" (hint: try sprinkling in a "saunter" or two), it's not a bad story, actually.  It reads a bit like a juvenile except the subject matter is rather deep, and at one point, Kendy describes himself as, frankly, horny.

I'm enjoying this series more than his first one, about the Esks.

Three stars.

Truly Human, by Damon Knight

Here is where the change becomes noticeable.  Knight, who predates but has embraced the New Wave, offers up this interesting piece about triune aliens, who can only think as trios.  They abduct three humans to see if they can be adapted to their way of thought.  The test is, unfortunately, not altogether scientific.

The beginning and end are the most interesting bits, creatively rendered.  The middle part is wanly droll, though effectively conveyed.

Three stars.

The God of Cool, by J. W. Schutz

A smuggler is shot by fellow gang members on the steps of the hospital.  As he had willed his body to the organ banks, he finds life after death in a myriad of don-ee bodies.  There are three wrinkles:

  1. The recipients of his organs end up being members of his gang;
  2. The smuggler retains a degree of consciousness in his frozen state; and,
  3. The smuggler retains a degree of control over his scattered parts…

The setup sounds a little silly, but I actually found it quite an effective story.  It's not played for silly, as it might have been in F&SF, and it doesn't try to explain the psi in scientific terms, as might have happened if it had shown up in Analog.  It sure wouldn't work in Niven's universe as detailed in "The Organleggers" and "Slowboat Cargo", though!

Five stars.

Element of Chance, by Bob Shaw

Cytheron is a young being on the cusp of adulthood.  He fears maturity, afraid to lose his identity in the adult shared mind, so he flees to the edge of a quasar.  There, he believes he is free from pursuit as no information can leave the gravitational warping of the dead star/collection of stars.  But he is also trapped—and for him to be freed will require a minor supernova, one which might have an effect on a neighboring star system with a familiar number of planets.

It's a mildly cute story, but I am generally averse to Catastrophism in my science fiction.  The universe seems to work by general rules; our Sun is not unique.  In any event, the piece feels like a veneer of fiction on a science article Shaw happened to read recently, sort of how Niven's "Neutron Star" is based on an Asimov science fact article (I can't remember when it came out—probably '64 or '65).

Two stars.

The Soul Machine, by A. Bertram Chandler

Yet another tale of John Grimes, this one from early in his career when he was a Lieutenant in command of a tiny courier ship.  It is, in fact, the direct sequel to "The Minus Effect", which came out just two months ago.  Is a fix-up novel in the works?

In this tale, the exalted passenger isn't a chef-cum-assassin, but rather an amiable robot on a mission—to lead a mechanical movement that places humans on the bottom of the command chain for a change.  Luckily for Grimes, not all computers think alike.

As always, pleasant but not particularly memorable.  Three stars.

Ersalz's Rule, by George C. Willick


by Jack Gaughan

Two aliens have been playing a competitive sport for the last forty years.  Their playing pieces are one human being each, born at the same time.  The winner of the game is the one whose human survives longer.

At first, it seems one alien has all the advantages: his human can do no wrong, suffer no lasting malaise.  He is, however, bored and reckless.  The other alien's piece is a slob whom the breaks never favor.  These circumstances lead to the rare invocation of Ersalz's Rule, which affords the possibility of the two pieces switching places.  It's a Hail Mary gambit, but it's all the player's got at this point.

The problem with this tale, aside from its heavy handed clunkiness, is that everything is arbitrary.  The rules of the game are introduced such that there are no real stakes, and the ending is just kind of stupid.

Two stars.

Take the B Train, by Ernest Taves


by Jack Gaughan

On a train trip through France with his distant wife, a fellow discovers that his garage opener doesn't just trigger his door—it also swaps out his spouse with parallel universe versions of herself.  Investigating further, the man determines that the gizmo does a lot more than just that, and he ends up hip-deep in a temporal, spatial, and emotional trip from which he may never return.

This would have been a fantastic setup for a stellar novel, perhaps by Ted White.  As it is, I still enjoyed the romantic and fulsome writing of the the piece.  I also appreciated the protagonist's mixed feelings toward the various might-have-been marital partners.  Taves never does explain how how our hero acquired the device, though there are hints.

Four stars, but a bit of a missed opportunity.

For Your Information (Galaxy Magazine, October 1969), by Willy Ley

At the beginning of the century, there were just 92 "natural" elements.  Humanity has added 12 to the roster by dint of atom-smashing effort.  Ley talks about them and provides tables describing their stability (or lack thereof).

Asimov would have done it better (though we might not have gotten tables in F&SF).  Three stars.

Stella, by Dannie Plachta

A lonely man, perhaps one of the last, is sitting on the frozen surface of his world, watching as The Last Star rises.  He is alone, as his estranged wife has sought shelter and warmth underground.  Only a surgically implanted broadcast power receiver protects him from the elements.

Then Stella arrives on a dot of blue flame.  She is invisible, but she describes herself as desirable, and her voice and touch certainly indicate that she is.  When she begs the man for his receiver, he finds he cannot resist her entreaty, though it means his death.

It's all very unclear and metaphorical, and I suspect if I knew what Plachtas was trying to say, I might like it less than I did.  Nevertheless, I found it moving.  Maybe it's a Rorschach Test of a story and it hit me at the right time.

Three stars.

Dune Messiah (Part 4 of 5), by Frank Herbert

This was supposed to be the final installment of Dune Messiah, but the editor said he had just too much good stuff to fill the magazine.  Hence Part 4 rather than Part Ultimate.  Of course, having trudged through the prior three bits, I was not looking forward to yet another slog.

I was pleasantly surprised.  Oh, it's still a series of conversations.  Sure, not a whole lot happens.  But we do have an interesting situation set up and then resolved: Hayt, the resurrected ghola of Duncan Idaho, is mesmerized by Bijaz the Tleilaxi dwarf and given a frightful compulsion.  The tension of Part 4 is how this episode will play out, and Herbert manages it reasonably well.

Sure, there is way too much time spent on the now eyeless Paul and his frightening visions.  Yes, I could give two figs about Chani, Paul's true love, destined to die for the last two installments.  True, everything in the last 150 pages could probably be compressed to 50, and I'm still not sure if the payoff will be worth it.

That said, I was not disposed to skim, as had happened in each of the prior sections.  For that, Frank Herbert, you get…

Three stars.

Aftershocks

Thus, nothing Earth-shattering.  Nevertheless, there's a certain gestalt to this issue that feels a bit fresher than prior ones—even though almost half of the issue is devoted to continued serials!  Maybe it's because those authors are finally turning in better work than they have in a while.

Perhaps we are finally witnessing a moment of change for this fading pillar of SFnal fiction.  It would be pretty neat to see Galaxy transform itself into a leading magazine again.

Stay tuned!


Hopefully, the magazine will fare better than this Ocotillo Wells home that got damaged in last April's quake…




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 8, 1969] Another Orbit around the sun (Orbit 5)

Leave a comment


By Mx Kris Vyas-Myall

Having a teacher first as a mother, and now one for a wife, I think of the year as mirroring the school terms, with the new year beginning in September. But, looking at the newspapers, it doesn’t appear the world has changed much in the last twelve months.

On the home front, the troubles in Northern Ireland keep getting worse, with the presence of British troops now seeming to be resented by both sides. Meanwhile, The Conservative party base is pushing the party to take a harder anti-immigration line, and union chiefs clash with the Wilson government.

British Troops in Ulster in front of a burnt out shop
British Troops in Ulster, caught in the middle of escalating violence.

Peace talks over Vietnam are once again being held in Paris and apparently going nowhere, there are continued conflicts in the middle East and the Junta in Greece seems as unstable as ever. A harsh crackdown has just finished in Czechoslovakia and the Soviets are still making threatening noises at the rest of Eastern Europe.

Protesters running from tear gas on the streets of Prague
Scenes from the streets of Prague, one year on from the Soviet Invasion.

But, whilst the depressing politics of our time continues, so does the regularity of publishing. As such another anthology arrived in the post for me to review.

Orbit 5
Hardback cover of Orbit 5 from 1969

Somerset Dreams by Kate Wilhelm

We open with another tale from the ever-reliable Mrs. Damon Knight.  Here Janet Matthews returns to her hometown of Somerset after working in medicine in New York, where she wishes to look after her disabled father. At the same time, a Dr. Staunton is in town to study dreams. Annoyed by his pomposity Janet decides to join in with the project.

This is beautifully described, albeit with some unusual turns of phrase, but it goes on far too long for my tastes, only really becoming more SFnal towards the end. There are also a lot of interesting concepts, but I am not convinced they are explored well enough here to justify their inclusion.

Three Stars

The Roads, the Roads, the Beautiful Road by Avram Davidson

Highway Chief Craig Burns loves his vast new road constructions and does not accept any argument to the contrary. However, one day he misses his turn-off and finds himself in a labyrinth of tunnels and cloverleaf interchanges.

This is the kind of joke story Davidson used to regularly publish when editing F&SF, a feature I have not missed. Add on to this my general dislike of vehicular tales and I was not well disposed to this at all.

A very low two stars

Look, You Think You've Got Troubles by Carol Carr

Hector, A Jewish father is estranged from his daughter, Lorinda, because of her marrying a form of Martian plant-life named Mor. Months later, the parents receive a letter from her, saying she is pregnant and asking them to come visit her on Mars.

I believe this is the first story from a well-known fan (and wife of Terry Carr) and it marks a strong start. It follows the familiar routes you have likely seen on television programmes but they are not as common in the SF realm. In addition, this is told using a great tone of voice that makes it feel believable.

Four Stars

Winter's King by Ursula K. Le Guin

King Argaven XVII of Karhide is having a recurring visions of executing a crowd of protesters. This madness is attempted to be treated by physician Hoge, but what could be the real cause?

I was originally unsure if this planet is indeed meant to be Gethen from The Left Hand of Darkness, as it is only referred to as “Winter” and the gender changes in the book are not referenced here. However, its connections to the Ekumen seem to confirm that it does indeed take place on the same world.

I found this a confusing read. I started again four times and afterwards I was constantly jumping back and forth to try to get to grips with what was happening. It does not have the usual easy style of Le Guin, instead told through a series of “pictures”. Honestly, I am scratching my head over what to make of it.

Three Stars, I guess?

The Time Machine by Langdon Jones

Jones seems to be emerging as one of the great polymaths of English SF. He has been involved in editing New Worlds for a number of years now, writes prose and poetry, has produced photographic cover art, is helping the Peake estate put together new editions of the Gormenghast trilogy and has an original anthology coming out in a couple of months. Amazingly he still had time to sell this tale to Orbit.

In an unnamed prisoner’s cell sits a photo of Caroline Howard. We hear the story of his past relationship with her and the construction of a time machine to see her again.

This tale is told in a passive distanced voice with the connection of the four different situations not immediately obvious. As such, I imagine it will be alienating to some, but I found it quite beautiful and cleverly constructed.

The titular Time Machine is not a HG Wells type of mechanical construct but a strange device containing a Dali painting and creating a “concrete déjà vu”. This may actually mean that it does not really “work” as such but these are merely the memories and delusions of the prisoner. I believe the ambiguity is intentional on the part of the author and makes the tale all the stronger.

Some may find the conclusion and meaning of the tale a bit mawkish, but I liked it a lot.

A high four stars

Configuration of the North Shore by R. A. Lafferty

John Miller goes to analyst Robert Rousse to resolve an obsession he has had for the last 25 years, to reach the mythical Northern Shore. In order to cure this desire, they sail there in dreams.

Whilst I am a fan of what Mr. Jones does, the same cannot be said of Mr. Lafferty. As such this may work better for other people, but I found it all a little silly.

Two Stars

Paul's Treehouse by Gene Wolfe

Sheila and Morris’ son has been in a treehouse since Thursday and is refusing to come down. As they work with their neighbour to try to get him out, disorder is spreading throughout the town.

This is probably the Gene Wolfe story that has impressed me most so far. Not that it is brilliant, but it is well told and has a solid theme. Hopefully the start of an upswing in his writing.

A high three stars

The Price by C. Davis Belcher

The millionaire John Phillpott Tanker is in a traffic accident that caves in his skull. Whilst his body is still alive, he is braindead. After several tests the doctors conclude he is medically dead and use his organs to save a number of people. Whilst this is controversial, journalist Sturbridge writes a number of articles to win the public around. However, in a surprising turn of events, the recipients of the organ donations sue the Tanker’s estate claiming they are still the living John Phillpott Tanker.

These organ transplant stories are becoming a subgenre in their own right, and, unfortunately, this is among the poorer examples. Lem told a better version of this story in three pages last month than Belcher told in 27.

A low two stars

The Rose Bowl-Pluto Hypothesis by Philip Latham

At a track-meet at the Rose Bowl, three athletes all ran 100 yards in less than 9 seconds. If this wasn’t surprising enough, a whole set of other new running records were set that afternoon. What could be happening?

This spends a lot of time doing pseudo-scientific explanations for something incredibly silly. I was annoyed at having read it.

One star

Winston by Kit Reed

The Wazikis buy the four-year-old child of geniuses as a status symbol. Whilst he has an IQ of 160 they soon grow frustrated he is not yet able to win crossword competitions or answer any trivia question they pose.

This story irritated me for a number of reasons. First off, there is more than a whiff of eugenics about the concept here, with the child of a college professor being inherently smarter than this family with a name we seem to be encouraged to read as Eastern European or North African. At the very least, the way the Wazikis are portrayed feels classist.

Secondly, the fact that smart people are selling children to less intelligent people seems to imply that earning potential and IQ are inversely related. But the Wazikis see Winston as an investment, so are they just meant to be stupid and bad with money?

And then the story is just unpleasant with the amount of child abuse taking place in it. Maybe I am overly sensitive, as I am from the gentler school of parenting, but I found it to be gratuitous instead of aiding the storytelling.

One Star

The History Makers by James Sallis

John writes to his brother Jim about his arrival on Ephemera, a planet where the inhabitants live on a separate time-plane to humanity.

Sallis gives us another epistolary tale which, as usual, is written in a literary style and full of artistic allusions (including, strangely, the second mention of the same Dali painting in this anthology. I blame Ballard). I am not sure this has the same depth as his other works but it is still a wonderfully atmospheric read.

Four stars

The Big Flash by Norman Spinrad

The US military has a problem. Their war against a guerrilla insurgency in Asia is not going well and they want to use tactical nuclear weapons to sort it out. However, the public are squeamish about this sort of thing. The solution? Using a violence obsessed rock group The Four Horseman, to spread their message.

A biting critique of both the American military-industrial complex and the hippy groups selling out. Incredibly timely, clever and disturbing.

A high four stars, bordering on five.
(I recently discussed this with some friends over at Young People Read SF if you want to see more of our thoughts.)

The Cycle Continues

8 albums: Johnny Cash: At Folsom Prison and At St. Quentin Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline Tom Jones: Delilah and This Is Moody Blues: In Search of a Lost Chord and On the Threshold of a Dream
Some of the same artists, still in UK charts a year on

And so we complete another Orbit anthology, with it feeling pretty similar to the last one.

The main difference is that there is more New Wave influence creeping in (having stories by two of the editors of New Worlds will do that) but many prior authors reappear, doing similar things. Some of it brilliant, some mediocre, the rest best forgotten.

Will either Orbit or our politics break out of this cycle by autumn 1970? Only time will tell.




No comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 4, 1969] Plus ça change (October 1969 IF)

Leave a comment


by David Levinson

Silly season

It’s considered a truism in journalism that nothing happens in August, so the papers run filler stories about silly things to make up their page count. Sure, Hurricane Camille killed hundreds as it raged from Mississippi to Virginia, and China and the Soviet Union are on the brink of war, but that doesn’t sell papers. Madison Avenue also has a truism: sex sells. Now, the two have come together.

Newsday columnist Mike McGrady was disgusted by the schlocky, sex-obsessed books that regularly make the best-seller lists, so he recruited a bunch of fellow journalists (19 men and five women, by one count) to write a deliberately bad, oversexed book. The result is Naked Came the Stranger, in which the editors worked hard to remove any literary value from the tale of a New York woman’s sexual escapades.

When the book sold 20,000 copies, McGrady and his co-conspirators decided they’d better come clean. Nineteen of them appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, being introduced as Penelope Ashe (the book’s purported author) and walking out to the strains of A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody. As a result of their confession and discussion of their motives, the book has become even more popular. And as of last Sunday, it’s on the New York Times list of best-sellers. You have to laugh to keep from crying.

Penelope Ashe, in part, with the cover model superimposed.

This puts me in mind of a similar literary hoax with a more sfnal connection. Back in 1956, radio host Jean Shepherd was unhappy with the way best-seller lists were being compiled and urged his listeners to ask their local bookstores to order I, Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing. He offered some vague hints about the plot, and many listeners who were in on the joke created references to the book elsewhere. Demand was so high, publisher Ian Ballantine convinced Theodore Sturgeon to knock out a quick novel based on an outline from Shepherd. Betty Ballantine wrote the last chapter as Sturgeon lay in exhausted sleep on the Ballantines’ couch after trying to write the whole thing in one sitting. The cover by Frank Kelly Freas is full of visual jokes and puns. The book is rumored to have gone to number one, but it doesn’t seem to have been on any lists, probably out of pique on the part of the list makers.


The pub sign features a shepherd’s crook and a sturgeon. Art by Frank Kelly Freas

New and old

I think we’re starting to see some of the influence of new editor Ejler Jakobsson. Editor Emeritus Fred Pohl doesn’t seem have ever had anything nice to say about the New Wave, while there is at least one story in this month’s IF with a nod in that direction. There’s a new printer, with a crisper typeface (though it seems better suited to a news magazine than fiction). No one’s mixed up their e’s and o’s, but instead of lines being printed out of order, some lines are just missing. Hopefully, that will be corrected in future issues.

Supposedly for Seeds of Gonyl. If so, it’s from later in the novel. Art by Gaughan

The Mind Bomb, by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert appears to have tried to write a Philip K. Dick story. There’s a computer that keeps changing the world in an attempt to carry out its function, an unhappy marriage, and an old man who gets a glimpse of why the world he lives in is the way it is.

Art uncredited, maybe by Gaughan

Unfortunately, none of it works. The lines of reality aren’t blurred; people know the computer is changing things, just not why. And the marriage isn’t as unrelievedly grim as in a Dick story (thank goodness). We’re left with none of the good things that either author brings, and the flaws of both.

Two stars.

By Right of Succession, by Barry Malzberg

A man named Carson shoots the occupant of a motorcade. As he leaves the building he fired from, he’s met by a policeman who escorts him to his next destination on a strict timetable. Eventually, all is explained. Sort of.

Is that Nixon? Art uncredited

Here’s our New Wave—or New Wave-ish—story. It’s fine for what it is, but I don’t quite see the connection between the events and the explanation.

Three stars.

None But I, by Piers Anthony

When last we saw him, interstellar dentist Dr. Dillingham had been accepted as an instructor at the galaxy’s top dental school. Now he’s off to cure the oral ills of a long-buried robot that has vowed to kill the person that frees it from 10,000 years of imprisonment.

Dr. Dillingham meets his patient. Art by Gaughan

Anthony is developing a reputation at the Journey, and not a good one. That’s largely down to the way he writes women. Fortunately, none of that is on display here, possibly because the only female character is a highly efficient secretary who looks like a giant spider. We’re left with an inoffensive and mildly entertaining story, whose only flaw is that it specifically makes note of the old tale it is clearly modeled on of a genie with a similar vow.

Three stars.

Survival, by Steven Guy Oliver

A day in the life of an old man living in the irradiated ruins of a city.

Ignore the blurb. These aren’t the last people on Earth. Art by Gaughan

This month’s new author offers us a grim tale of life after World War Three. It’s very well written, but also very depressing, what I believe kids these days call “a real downer.” I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing more from Oliver. But did I mention that the story is grim?

Three grim stars.

Down on the Farm, by W. Macfarlane

Three agricultural salespeople were brought from Earth to a distant planet. Now their contract is up, and the local autocrat who hired them struggles to find a way to pay what they’re due. Unbeknownst to him, they have ulterior motives.

Erasmus Ballod is having a bad day. Art by Gaughan

A bit old-fashioned, but otherwise an enjoyable enough story. Ask me what it was about a month from now, and I won’t be able to tell you, but it didn’t waste my time. For some reason, Macfarlane’s name was left off the first page; fortunately he was credited in the table of contents.

Three stars.

The Story of Our Earth: 2. The First Traces of Life, by Will Ley

The second part of Willy Ley’s sadly incomplete final book looks at the latest theories as to how life began. He discusses the idea of the “primordial ooze” and how and why it has fallen out of favor. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of continental drift.

While still very good, this chapter didn’t engage me quite as much as the previous did. I can’t say if that’s down to my interest in the subject matter or the quality of Ley’s treatment of it.

A very high three stars.

The Seeds of Gonyl (Part 1 of 3), by Keith Laumer

Jeff Mallory wakes up to discover that three months are missing, the house shows little sign of cleaning and maintenance, and his wife and two younger children are frightened and worn down. Worst of all, no one remembers his oldest daughter, and her room doesn’t even exist. He soon learns that the town has been taken over by things that are barely human, which force everyone to work on a mysterious project.

Remembering that his daughter was planning to stay with a friend who lives well outside of town, Jeff makes his escape. At the friend’s house, he finds only the friend and several unpleasant occupiers, who tell him that the United States has fallen to Russian forces and that his town is a bombed-out, plague-ridden ruin.

He and Sally, his daughter’s friend, move on and are arrested by Russian military. But the Russians are working together with Americans led by a Colonel Strang, who tells him that the Russians were called in to fight the real occupiers, the Chinese. As the installment ends, Jeff finds himself drafted into Strang’s army. To be continued.

Tonight, the role of Colonel Strang will be played by Ronald Reagan. Art by Gaughan

So far, so Laumer. He may be influenced by some of his work on those books he wrote based on The Invaders, what with people not believing in the invading aliens. Honestly, the main thing that stands out to me in this part is the way young Sally abruptly and quickly throws herself at our hero. Jeff put up at least a token resistance so far, though there is a vague paragraph that suggests things could be otherwise. It plays uncomfortably.

Three stars so far, if you like this sort of Laumer story.

To the Last Rite!, by Perry Chapdelaine

One-Girk-Two is undergoing a field test to see if he will be promoted to One-Girk-One. If he passes, he will become the thinking portion of a composite creature called a Unit.

Our hero. Art by Gaughan

This is probably the Chapdelaine story I’ve enjoyed the most. Unfortunately, like all of Chapdelaine’s work, it’s too long. On the other hand, it didn’t go where I thought it was going. Best of all, it has nothing to do with Spork.

Three stars.

Machines That Teach, by Frederik Pohl

Fred took a trip to Tennessee A. & I. In Nashville, where Perry Chapdelaine is a professor of mathematics and is running a lab researching computer aided instruction. There, through a computer in the lab, a computer at Stanford in California administered a test to measure competence in mathematics. Neat stuff, even if the headline is misleading. Maybe even more interesting is the simple fact that he was able to use a computer in Tennessee to interact with another computer a couple thousand miles away

Three stars.

Summing up

We’re starting to see some of the new editor’s influence, though things aren’t really that different. I’m wondering if Jakobsson is going to continue the IF first program, running a story from a new author every month. The issues he’s been in charge of have had such a story, but he hasn’t called attention to it the way Fred did.

The other thing that stands out to me is that the interior art is all uncredited. Where I’ve indicated it’s by Gaughan, it’s because his signature is visible either on the piece reproduced here or a different piece for the same story. I’m not too keen on all the art coming from just one artist (although if the alternative is “art” by Dan Adkins…). More importantly, they give out Hugos for art. If we don’t know who did it, how do we know who to nominate and vote for?

Tiptree is the only name that means anything to me. A bit of a coin flip as an author, but definitely improving with every story.




No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 31, 1969] Over (and under) the Moon (September 1969 Analog)

7 Comments

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

Being #2, they try…harder?

Last October, just after Apollo 7 went up, it looked as if the Soviets still had a chance at beating us to the Moon.  Their Zond 5, really a noseless Soyuz, had been sent around the Moon two months ahead of our Apollo 8 circumlunar flight.  Just a month later, the similar Zond 6 took off on November 16 and zoomed around the Moon before not just landing, but making a pinpoint landing in the Kazakh S.S.R. (near its launch site) with the aid of little wings.  Apparently, the prior Zond 5's splashing down in the Indian Ocean was not according to plan.

Shortly after the flight, the Soviets dropped the bombshell that Zond 6 could have been manned—and the next one might well be.

Well, as we all know, the Communists didn't beat us around the Moon.  Moreover, they didn't beat us to the Moon, either.  Remember all that talk about Luna 15 during the flight of Apollo 11?  That was the probe launched just before Columbia and Eagle, rumored to be a sample-return mission.  Well, it crashed into the aptly named Sea of Crises about 500 miles northeast of Eagle's landing site on July 21.  Had its mission been successful, the Soviets might have had bragging rights about getting the first batch of Moon rocks.

But, as the Ruskies found out after who knows how many unsuccessful Luna flights, only succeeding in 1966 with Luna 9, complicated maneuvers rarely work on the first time out.

That said, even with the clear American victory in the Moon race, the Soviets appear to still be going strong.  Earlier this month, Zond 7 sailed around the Earth's companion, landing on August 14.  Still no people onboard, but perhaps they worked out the communications troubles that reportedly plagued the last two Zond missions.

Whether these Zond flights presage an upcoming attempt with people onboard remains to be seen.  According to former NASA chief Jim Webb, the Soviets are also building a super rocket, which they will use to put cosmonauts on the Moon.  Put two and two together, and perhaps the early 70s will see the USSR catch up to and surpass the US.

Unless we get to Mars first…

Being #1, they've stopped trying

Analog has, for decades now, kept the title of the most-read science fiction magazine on the market.  On the other hand, editor John Campbell has been sitting on his laurels for a long time, producing an unexciting periodical for the past several years.  The latest issue of Analog only adds more fuel to the argument that perhaps it is time for the old don to step down and let someone vigorous take his place—at least to bring the magazine into the 1960s!


by Kelly Freas

Your Haploid Heart, by James Tiptree, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

A two-man team is sent from Earth to the planet of Esthaa.  Their mission: to determine of the humanoid inhabitants are, well, human.  The results may put to bed the two competing theories that explain the ubiquity of the human form in the galaxy: common evolution and random scattering, or independent, convergent evolution.

The Esthaans are a robust, beautiful people, but there is something somehow phony about them.  Meanwhile, they seem to be on the verge of completing a genocide against the primitive Flenns…who also appear to be a type of human.

What is the connection between the two races?  And why have the civilized Esthaans developed such an antipathy for the pathetic Flenns?  And is an earlier Terran expedition somehow the cause of all this?

There's some interesting biology wrapped up in this story (as suggested by the title), and since biology is not my specialty, I can't even begin to speculate how plausible it is.  But it's an interesting story, well-written, and easily the best I've read from newcomer Tiptree.

Four stars.

Starman, by W. Macfarlane


by Leo Summers

The assistant fifth mate on an interstellar tramp freighter decides to jump ship on a backwater world.  The natives have reverted to savagery after once having broadcast power and space travel.

Said starman soon learns that Stone Age living isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Luckily, there are a few relics of the old days left at his disposal.

This is a fun, if inconsequential, story.  The writing is breezy, fun, and tongue-in-cheek, though the casual slurs are somewhat offputting.  I'm also getting very tired of humans, humans everywhere instead of true E-Ts.

Three stars.

The Big Boosters of the U.S.S.R., by G. Harry Stine

Speaking of the Soviet super-booster—amateur rocketeer Stine conjectures as to the configuration and capability of the USSR's rocket stable.  Of course, given how secretive the Russians are, there's a lot of guesswork involved.

I appreciated it, but I have to wonder how accurate he is.  In particular, I'm not sure why he believes that Soyuz 1 was launched on a different rocket from the later Soyuz missions.  I've seen nothing to that effect.  Maybe he's talking about whatever is shooting up Zonds around the Moon.  Those are, after all, just stripped down Soyuzes.

Anyway, four stars.  We'll see how right he is in a decade or so…

Damper, by E. G. Von Wald


by Peter Skirka

A tyro hotshot joins the Weather Control Bureau and is dispatched to a small, Arabian country.  When a Soviet incursion threatens the peace, he shifts the focus of his rain-making efforts from irrigation to interdiction.

Aside from the casual and constant male chauvinism, I have a hard time buying weather control as an SFnal theme, particularly so thinly sketched out as it is in this story.  Orbital lasers (don't those count as space-based weapons?) pumped a lot of heat into the atmosphere to evaporate ocean water and create onshore winds—that heat doesn't go away.  What happens when the Earth warms up by several degrees thanks to all that extra heat?  Beyond that, the technique wouldn't work anyway: it takes more than wet air to make rain; you need some kind of condensate material.  That's why planes seed clouds with silver iodide so the water has something to coalesce around to make droplets.

Two stars.

Stimulus-Response, by Herbert Jacob Bernstein


by Kelly Freas

A trio of scientists are using electrodes and encephalograms to record brain patterns.  The goal is to train a dog to use specific thoughts to trigger its food dish.  In the process, the researchers accidentally teach the beagle how to telekinese.

Not only is this story a turgid bit of pseudo-engineering, but then it abandons science entirely to enter the region of Campbell's beloved psi.  Look, I can sort of enjoy psionics if I treat them like a kind of magic, but when they're mixed in with engineering to get a patina of respectability—and the story is deadly dull to boot—well, there's only one score for it.

One star.

In His Image, by Robert Chilson


by Leo Summers

A biologist synthesizes the first androids—they are human in all respects, save for their satyr-form lower halves.  Bred to be performers, they have been conscious just six months, but have the minds of college professors and the bodies of nubile goddesses.  When the Actors' Guild sues for an injunction against their use in the entertainment business citing unfair competition, a friendly reporter purchases one of them despite the fact that they are sentient and, for all intents and purposes, human. The goal is to force the courts to declare the androids fully human and thus exempt from measures against discrimination.

The question of whether or not androids are people has frequently been explored in science fiction, from the sublime Synth to the less than perfectly successful Trek episode Requiem for Methuselah.  Chilson's tale is… well, it's dull and kind of stupid.  The androids have no personality save for interchangeable sex kitten, the writing is uninspired, and the universe implausible.  It's not even clear what point Chilson is trying to make, so muddied are all the story's elements.  In the end, the plot of the story, such as it is, seems only to exist so we can have a trio of jiggly goat girls mincing around.

One star.

The Visitors, by Jack Wodhams


by Kelly Freas

Terrans land on the first inhabitable world ever found and make first contact with the natives.  Turns out "primitive" doesn't mean "defenseless."

This would be a two-star story, inoffensive but not noteworthy, except for the sheer number of words Wodhams wastes getting to his point.  Twenty pages that could easily have been condensed to, I dunno, five.

One star.

Crashlanding

Well, like the Soviets, Analog is churning issues out that look like winners, but really are just unimpressive retreads.  This one clocks in at 2.4, which is higher than Galaxy (2.2), but lower than Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.7), Visions of Tomorrow (2.8), Amazing (2.9). If (3.0), New Worlds (3.3).

Only one new piece of fiction was written by a woman, and if you took all the decent stuff published this month, you'd only be able to fill two digests—and that's with the extra paperback anthology this month.  Whither short SF?  Whither the Soviet space program?

I guess we'll see what happens next month…




7 Comments Leave A Comment
Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 24, 1969] Flying and dragging (September 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

5 Comments

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

Flying

By the time this makes press, we'll already (hopefully) be on the flight back to San Diego.  As with most publications, though we try to hit the press as fresh as possible, there is a delay between writing and printing.  This is exceptionally unavoidable this time 'round because…

…we're off to Woodstock!

Specifically, the Woodstock Art & Music Fair, an "Aquarian Exposition" in White Lake, New York.  There's an art show and a craft bazaar and hundreds of acres of sprawl, but the main draw is the music: 27 bands, from Jimi Hendrix to Janis Joplin to Glen Beck to Sweetwater to Ritchie Havens, playing in 12-hour swathes, 1pm to 1am, every day (except the first—then, it's 4pm to 4am, apparently).

Well, we couldn't miss a chance to see something like this, so we booked tickets to Idlewild…er… JFK, chartered a bus, and we're headed for Max Yasgur's farm.  This isn't our first rodeo, so we've taken a few precautions:

1) We left early to avoid the rush.  With more than 100,000 expected to show up for this thing, there's going to be traffic jams;

2) We bought supplies in case we can't get what we want to eat;

3) We brought our own toilets!  A handy trick we developed camping up in Sequoia country: take a bucket, fill it a quarter way with Kitty Litter, and stick a toilet seat on top.  It works as well for people as it does for cats, and you don't have to dig latrines!

So, we're hopeful to get good seats and enjoy, as much as anyone can, three days of fun in the open air.  We'll have a full report when we get back!

Dragging


by Chesley Bonestell

Sweet Helen, by Charles W. Runyon

On a distant world, rich with export goods, yet another trader succumbs before his tour is up.  Two deserted.  One went native.  One shot himself.  The company sends a professional troubleshooter to find out what happened.

Somehow, the natives are the culprit.  The amphibian humanoids run twenty males to the female, and the female is in charge.  The men all compete for the honor of breeding with her; the rest die.  The females are humanoid and lovely… for a while.  They swell into enormous toads when it is time to become gravid. 

The troubleshooter is unable to determine the exact problem, until too late.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if they had sent a woman trader (probably).  And apparently women traders do exist in Runyon's universe, though they are rare enough to not be sent except by deliberate assignment.

Also, none of this would be an issue if the aliens weren't so uniquely humanoid and compelling to humans—a cliché I find tiresome these days.  Really, this is just a "women are dangerous" story in SF trappings, something done much better, and more creepily, in Matheson's "Lover When You're Near Me" almost two decades ago.

Two stars.

Bonita Egg, by Julian F. Grow

A riproarer of an adventure involving a middle-aged doctor, a young, East-Coast-educated Apache woman, and a dark-skinned alien named Mwando.  The last wants to abduct the former pair, but he is continually thwarted by his would-be captives' pluck, as well as the woman's outlaw uncle and tribal chief father.  Not to mention a platoon of Union artillerymen led by the bullheaded Winfield Scott Dimwiddie.

It's all rather silly and a bit long-winded, but it's not unreadable.  A low three stars.

Muse, by Dean R. Koontz

Leonard is a famed musician, or rather, he is when he's got Icky the symbiont alien on his back.  But anti-slug/human prejudice runs strong on old Earth, and his father wants Leonard to lose the connection for his own good.  Tragedy ensues.

Koontz is a pretty good writer, generally, but this story smacks of being an early, hitherto unsold work.  It's less artfully written, with repetitive phrasing in places.  The story is threadbare—if it's a metaphor for drugs, it's clumsy; if not, it needs a lot more development to be effective.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Patient, by Hoke Norris

This is the story of the first brain transplant, as told from the point of view of the doctors who performed it and the patient.  Much discussion of the ethics involved and the problems ensuing, particularly with regard to the families of the donor and donee.  The patient is unable to reconcile his past with his present and ultimately commits suicide.

Sorry to give things away, but this is really a tedious, stupid piece.  It is pedestrian and repetitive, a stark contrast to, say, Fiztpatrick and Richmond's Half a Loaf series, which covers the same ground.

Also, that the doctors performed their operation on a day's notice, and none of the legal or moral t's were crossed or i's dotted reminds me of how space travel used to be depicted: a guy would build a spaceship in his backyard and fly to the Moon.  You'd think a lot more infrastructure would be needed before such a thing could even be contemplated.

One star.

The Screwiest Job in the World, by Bill Pronzini

Phineas T. Fensterblau has an odd hobby: collecting unusual animals, particularly ones with the power of speech.  To this end, he has employed the resourceful Elroy, who travels the world, proving the veracity of the claims of those who would sell exotic beasts to the millionare eccentric.  In the course of his work, Elroy has uncovered ventriloquists, dwarfs in costumes, hidden transmitters, etc.  But when he is sent to the Alaskan wilderness on the trail of a talking Kodiak bear, Elroy finds something completely new.

This isn't a bad story, but since it is set up as a mystery, it would have been better if the reader had been filled in on the clues before their lumpy exposition near the end.  That could have raised the piece from three stars to higher.

The Man Who Massed the Earth, by Isaac Asimov

Dr. A continues his layman presentation of first semester physics, explaining what weight is and how Cavendish determined the gravitational constant "G".  It's actually pretty interesting, and there is an intuitive explanation as to why the weight of the Earth…is zero.

Four stars.

J-Line to Nowhere, by Zenna Henderson

In this non-The People story, Henderson tells the tale of a teen girl who gets an urge to see the world outside the crammed city-scraper she's lived her whole life in.  She succeeds, but can't figure out how to get back.

There's a lot of gushing thoughts, but not a lot of story to this one.  Three stars.

Finishing the trip

Well, that was dreary!  Remember the days when fiction took you to better places than reality?  Of course, I haven't gotten to Woodstock yet, so maybe it will be equally disappointing…but somehow I doubt it.

Stay tuned!

(and dig on what F&SF has got coming next month…I'm excited for the Niven, of course.)




5 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 22, 1969] Peake District: New Worlds September 1969

7 Comments


by Fiona Moore

Hello! I’m taking over the New Worlds reviews from Mark Yon, which is a little intimidating, but I hope I’ll be able to live up to his excellent legacy.

On the UK Star Trek broadcast front, I missed “Mudd’s Women” due to having to take a work trip to Glasgow, but “A Taste of Armageddon” was decent anti-war satire if a bit heavy-handed. Having seen a few episodes in colour on trips to North America, I have to say it works less well in black and white, but at least we do get the idea.

Cover for New Worlds, September 1969Cover for New Worlds, September 1969

Lead-In (New Worlds 194) by The Publishers

This is brief, without the edge of hysteria from last month, which leads me to hope that they’ve got the financial issues under control. It’s also good to know that JG Ballard has a collection coming out, The Atrocity Exhibition. The lineup this month features regular contributors and well-known people on the New Wave scene, but perhaps it’s a little too conservative as a result. Three stars.

A Place and a Time to Die by JG Ballard

Picture from A Place and Time to Die by JG BallardArt by Mal dean

This story is about an implied Chinese Communist takeover of an implied USA, though with a degree of vagueness as to time and place. It follows two men attempting to hold the line as the invaders, or maybe exponents of an internal coup, come into town. This is a bleak description of warfare; no one is heroic and everyone is ugly. It also highlights how ideological takeovers can be more powerful than armed ones. Four stars.

Pictures from an Exhibition 9 and 10 by Giles Gordon

Illustration from Pictures from an Exhibition by Giles GordonArtist unknown

Two vignettes, inspired by pictures in a Sunday colour supplement, and part of a longer work. The two pictures have little in common apart from featuring in the same publication, and the point seems to be both to draw narratives out of the images and to highlight how newspapers juxtapose unrelated imagery, causing the reader to look for meaning. Three stars.

Transplant by Langdon Jones

Transplant by Langdon JonesThe text of Transplant, with concrete effects

A concrete poem about a heart transplant. It’s dramatic and evocative, making one think about how horrific even a life-saving surgical procedure really is. Cutting open humans and sticking new hearts in them is a horrifiying idea, and yet lives are saved. Four stars.

The Incomplete Science by B.J. Bayley

This is a non-fiction piece on economics, a concept SFF writers ignore far too often. The author presents two sets of economic dynamics, one relating to production and the other to land values, and concludes without reconciling them. The subject is very interesting but unfortunately it’s also very dry. Two stars.

The Capitol by George MacBeth

This is a series of sonnets that appear to be found poetry, a set of lines from newspaper stories all thrown together out of context. Like “Pictures at an Exhibition”, the only real meaning I could discern was to point out the absurdity of capitalism and journalism. I’m afraid it left me cold. Two stars.

The Party at Lady Cusp-Canine’s by Mervyn Peake

Illustration by Mervyn PeakeArt by, of course, Mervyn Peake

This is one of the issue’s highlights, including an essay by Langdon Jones. It seems that the original edition of Peake’s posthumous novel Titus Alone excluded a lot of good material and was poorly edited, and Jones has done a lot of work trying to develop a new edition which is closer to what Peake intended. As a Peake fan I’m thrilled by the news, and hoping that the revived Titus Alone will be something more in the style of the first two Gormenghast novels. The excerpt is certainly in line with Peake’s ascerbic wit, capturing the brittle nastiness of cocktail parties with a plethora of evocative animal names and similies. There is also brief news about another posthumous novel by Peake coming out, Mr Pye, which should be worth comparing to his earlier fiction.  Five stars.

Lines of White on a Sullen Sea by Maxim Jakubowski

Illustration for Lines of White on a Sullen SeaArt by Mal Dean

This is the latest in the ongoing shared-author story featuring Jerry Cornelius. It doesn’t make any more sense than the other ones, but making sense is less of a priority than evoking a mood. Jerry is preoccupied with a Chinese rival; a female Cornelius turns up; there are lovely descriptions of clothes, and characters with absurd names like Treblinka Durand. If you liked the previous entries you'll probably like this. Three stars.

Books (New Worlds 194)

This issue contains no less than five full pages of book reviews, making the reviews section longer than any of the stories. This is a bit much, particularly given the magazine’s current reduced page count.

Slum Clearance by John Clute

John Clute's book reviewsJohn Clute's book reviews

Clute reviews Omnivore by Piers Anthony, Let the Fire Fall by Kate Wilhelm, Retief: Ambassador to Space by Keith Laumer, Brother Assassin by Fred Saberhagen, The Mezentian Gate, an unfinished novel by by E.R. Eddison, and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. He quite likes the Le Guin, is scathing about the Anthony, Laumer and Saberhagen, and mixed on everything else. Three stars.

Come Alive—You’re in the William Sanson Generation by Joyce Churchill

Churchill reviews Death Goes Better with Coca Cola by Dave Godfrey, Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada by Ray Smith, Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick, The Island Under The Earth by Avram Davidson, and Penguin Modern Stories. She doesn’t seem too happy with any of them, and her comments didn’t leave me wanting to read any of them other than out of morbid curiosity. Two and a half stars.

Getting it Out by Norman Spinrad

Spinrad’s book review article, unlike the other two actually has a theme: he focuses on the output of Essex House, a paperback line whose agenda is to be for pornography what the New Wave has been to SF, leading to a subgenre of “speculative erotic fiction”. He reviews Season of the Witch by Hank Stine, Biker by Jane Gallion, the Agency trilogy by David Melzer, Evil Companions by Michael Perkins and A Feast Unknown by Philip Jose Farmer. Spinrad makes some of them, at least, sound intriguing. I’m going to keep an eye out for the Stine, a gender-bending body horror that sounds up my street. Four stars.

While at first glance it looks like the magazine is back on an even keel after last month’s financial woes, I’m still a bit worried. The writers are all White men with one exception (who I suspect is also White). Meanwhile, a recent trip to see Yoko Ono’s latest show has reminded me that London’s art and film and literature scene is simply exploding with talented people from all over the world. If NW wants to survive, simply writing about sex isn’t original enough any more; it needs to bring in some of the new voices on the scene.




7 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 14, 1969] Twin tragedies (September 1969 Galaxy)

4 Comments

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

Murder in Hollywoodland

Senseless mass death is no stranger to the headlines these days.  We've had the Boston Strangler.  The Texas sniper.  The Chicago nurse murderer.  But this last week, southern California got a shocking introduction into this club.

At least seven were killed on the nights of the 8th/9th and then the 9th/10th, including Valley of the Dolls actress, Sharon Tate (pregnant with her first child), in two Los Angeles neighborhoods: ritzy Beverly Crest and SilverLake.  At first, the scenes were so grisly and bizarre that police suspected some kind or ritual.  Jay Sebring, the famous hairstylist who gave Dr. McCoy his "brainy" JFK-style hair-do, and Tate were found stabbed, tied up and hanging on alternate sides of the same rafter, both wearing black hoods.  Market owners Leon and Rosemary La Bianca, the SilverLake victims murdered on the second night, were similarly hooded, the latter with red X marks carved into her body.


Wheeling Sharon Tate from her home

Homicide squads are currently swarming the San Gabriel Valley, and while Inspector Harold Yarnell and medical examiner Thomas Noguchi had no insights to offer when they appeared before NBC's cameras on the 10th, police do see connections.  "Pig" was scrawled on the door of the Tate home, while "Death to Pigs" was found on the home of the La Biancas, formerly the residence of Walt Disney.  Police have not indicated whether they believe the homicides were done by the same person or persons, or if a copycat was inspired by the first murders.

It's shocking, senseless, and tragic.  While the murders took place in upper class homes (one of the deceased was heir to the Folger coffee fortune), the motive appears not to have been robbery.  Just angry, hateful death.  It's not a happy time in the Southland right now.

Death in New York

While not of the same magnitude, at least in terms of human misery, nevertheless the latest issue of Galaxy science fiction is so bad, that one wonders if someone is trying to put the institution down.


by Donald H. Menzel

Humans, Go Home!, by A. E. van Vogt


by Jack Gaughan

A married human couple, immortal but catching the death-wish that has killed most of humanity, has lived on the world of Jana for 400 years.  They have used that time to accelerate the development of the humanoid species there, urging 4000 years of technological advance in that time—in part through the use of Symbols, abstract concepts made real by the power of belief.  The Janans have their own problems: the women don't like procreation or children, and the men must rape them to propagate the species.

Eventually, the humans are put on trial for their efforts, and (I'm told) we learn there is a lot more to the setup than meets the eye, and that everything the characters believe is actually some kind of falsehood.

I found this first piece impenetrable, giving up about halfway through.  Thankfully, a friend of mine, who is fonder of Van Vogt, gave the piece a write up in his 'zine.  That's good, as I was dreading having to slog through this one and analyze it, as if it were a book report for a hated school-assigned novel.  At 50 years old, I'm allowed to pick my poison.

One star.

Martians and Venusians, by Donald H. Menzel


by Donald H. Menzel

Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at Harvard offers up his clairvoyant images of Martian wildlife, complete with pictures (q.v. the cover).  I wonder if Dr. Menzel has an eight-year old child who really wanted to get published, as well as some blackmail leverage on Galaxy editor Jakobssen, because I can't see any other way this peurile, pointless piece ever saw print.

One star.

Out of Phase, by Joe Haldeman

Braaxn the G'drellian is the adolescent member of an alien anthropological team.  He was selected to infiltrate the humans for his shape-changing abilities; unfortunately, the youth also has a racial fetish for the infliction and appreciation of pain—common to all of his kind at that age.

Can he be stopped before he unleashes a terror that will exterminate the entire human race?

An unpleasant, but competently written story.  Haldeman is new, so of course, there's a "clever" twist to finish things off.

Three stars

The Martian Surface, by Wade Wellman

Wellman's wishful thinking in poetry is that, despite the obvious hostility of the Martian surface, life could still somehow cling to it.  Written to coincide with the arrival of the new Mariners, it is no more or less accurate for their flyby.

Three stars.

Passerby, by Larry Niven


by Jack Gaughan

A ramscoop pilot stumbles upon a professional people-watcher in a park.  The "rammer" has a story to tell, a tale of being lost among the stars, and of the titanic alien he encounters in the blackness of space.

This is one of Niven's few stories not set in "Known Space", and it's a simple one.  That said, it reads well, particularly out loud, and there is the usual, deft detail that Niven imparts with just a few, well-chosen words.

Janice liked it, but thought it rather shallow.  Lorelei, on the other hand, loved that it had a philosophical message beyond the good storytelling.

So, four stars, and easily the best piece of the issue (not much competition…)

Citadel, by John Fortey


by Jack Gaughan

Aliens descend on Earth, erecting mysterious edifices and offering the secrets of the universe.  Twenty years later, most of humanity is under their thrall; those who enroll for alien "classes" invariably leave society and end up part of the worldwide hive mind.  One organization has a plan to infiltrate the extraterrestrials, to at least find out what's going on, if not stop them.

But can they handle the truth?

Answer: probably, especially if they've seen The Twilight Zone.

Nice setup, but a really novice tale.

Two stars.

Revival Meeting, by Dannie Plachta


by M. Gilbert

A "corpsicle" wakes up after a century, but instead of finding a cure for his disease, he finds he's been roused for a more sinister purpose.

This story doesn't make much sense, and it's also about the bare minimum one can do with the concept of frozen people (again, Niven's covered these bases pretty thoroughly with The Jigsaw Man and A Gift from Earth.

Two stars.

For Your Information (Galaxy, September 1969), by Willy Ley

For reasons that will shortly become apparent, it's a real pity that this non-fiction column is not one of Ley's best.  It's a scattershot on rocket fuel (well, the oxidizer one combines with the rocket fuel to make it burn), modern pictographic writing, and the latest crop of satellites.

It's just sort of limp and dry, a far cry from the scintillating stuff that helped make early '50s Galaxy such a draw.

Three stars.

Dune Messiah (Part 3 of 5), by Frank Herbert


by Jack Gaughan

It is astonishing how little Frank Herbert can pack into 50 pages. In this installment, Paul Atreides, Emperor, is trying to make sense of a recurring vision, that of a moon falling (his precognition having been hampered by the presence of a clairvoyant "steersman"—the spice-addicted navigators of the space lanes).

He visits the Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit, whom he has locked up in prison, to let her know that his consort, the Fremen Chani, is finally pregnant (despite Paul's wife, Irulan, furtively feeding her contraceptives for years).  But Paul also knows that the birth of the heir will mean Chani's death.

Then Paul heads out to the house of a desert Fremen, father of the girl who had been found dead by Alia last installment.  The Emperor heads out there at the girl's invitation—she's not actually alive, but rather, her form has been taken by a shapeshifting assassin.

At the home, Paul meets a dwarf who warns him of impending danger.  Whereupon, an atomic bomb explodes overhead.

Along with the endless viewpoint changes and the nonstop italicized thought fragments, we also have more of the innovation Herbert came up with for this book: repetition of dialogue through slightly different permutation.  Seriously, the whole story so far could have been a novelette, and we're almost done!

Anyway, I didn't hate Dune, but I felt it was overrated.  This sequel, however, is just wretched.

One star.

Credo: Willy Ley: The First Citizen of the Moon (obituary), by Lester del Rey


by Jack Gaughan

And now the real tragedy—Willy Ley is dead.  He was only 62.

I knew that he was a science writer who fled Nazi Germany.  I did not know how integral he was to the field of rocket science.  A key member of the German rocketry club, he was a mentor to Wehrner von Braun.  The key difference between the two is Ley immigrated to the U.S.A. rather than serve Der Fuhrer.  Von Braun did not.

Ley went on, of course, to be one of the most esteemed science writers—up there with Asimov, at least in his main fields, zoology and rocketry.  He died less than a month before Armstrong and Aldrin stepped on the Moon.  Denied the Holy Land, indeed.

I have no idea whether there are more Ley articles in the pipeline.  There was supposed to be a new, twelve-part series, but who knows if it was ever completed or submitted.

Sad news indeed.  Four stars.

Autopsy report

Galaxy hasn't topped three stars since the June hiatus accompanying editor Pohl's departure/sacking, but this is, by far, the worst issue of the magazine in a long time.  Was Pohl fired for his declining discernment?  Or did he accept a bunch of substandard stuff as a flip of the bird to the new ownership?

Whatever the answer, I certainly hope things improve soon.  Without Ley, without quality stories, Galaxy is heading for the skids, but quick.




4 Comments Leave A Comment