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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 24, 1967] Absenteeism and Making Do SF Impulse, February 1967

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

So generally, post-Christmas and in the cold of winter, 1967 is settling into a routine, I guess. Except in the British magazines, where things are rather more turbulent. My suspicions were raised when the postman only delivered a copy of SF Impulse this month.

Now it is possible that New Worlds has been delayed in delivery–y’know, Winter!–but after the recent rumours and rumblings that things were not well at the magazines, I did a little rummaging and asked around to see if I could find out what was going on.

Whisper it quietly, but it seems that things are really bad financially–even for New Worlds, which has the higher circulation of the two–to the point that the publishers are seriously considering closing not one, but both magazines.

More as I get it, but frankly, it’s not looking good.


Cover illustration by Agosta Morol

To the SF Impulse issue. There are also signs here that things are not good.

The Managing Editor (interesting phrase!) Keith Roberts points out at the start that the Editor-in-Chief Harry Harrison is “absent, having made tracks for Philadelphia”. Is this rather ambiguous statement just a case of Harry being busy? As a writer, critic and editor Harrison does have a lot of fingers in pies, to be honest, which is presumably why Roberts does most of the leg-work here at SF Impulse.

But all I can think of is that the last time this happened, with editor Kyril Bonfiglioli taking time off to go stargazing(!), the magazine changed from Science Fantasy to Impulse not long after. The phrase “Rats deserting a sinking ship” also springs to mind, though that would be most uncharitable–Harrison is most certainly not a rat! But it is worrying that things may be changing behind the scenes.

But at least this Editorial space gives Roberts the opportunity to step up, as he has been doing for a while, admittedly, and give his opinions in the Editorial on the material in the issue, which he does. All good, even if (like much of the magazine this month) it feels a little like space-filler.

Might be something to read after you’ve read the stories, though.


Illustration by Keith Roberts

The Bad Bush of Uzoro by Chris Hebron

After last month’s story Coincidences, from Chris, we begin with a story I liked more. This one has a Weird Tales vibe, in the form of a story of a haunted mission in Africa as told by a Catholic priest–it even mentions Lovecraft. Not bad, though, and endearingly different with its mentions of African culture, even if there is an element of imperialistic “fear the foreigner” to this one. 4 out of 5.

Just Passing Through by Brian W. Aldiss


Illustration by Keith Roberts

Harry Harrison may not be about much this month, but his friend Brian Aldiss is (Again: when do we ever see the two together?)

This is unusual for Brian: a style that is almost Ballardian, filled with ennui and decay. Colin Charteris is in France on his way to England. His general musings on his stop-over through a mouldering French town also reveals to us that this is a future after the superpowers have released psychedelic drugs in what is being called the Acid Head War. The result is that many of the population are insane, locked away in their own heads as much as they are in institutions. The remainder, such as those seen here in France, seem to live a transitory existence. Whilst this intriguing situation is slowly revealed, the point of the story is less clear, and just as the reader is reeled in, the story ends. More of a mood piece than an actual story, I think.

Brian deserves credit for deliberately pushing the experimental side of science fiction in this story. It is a lot more serious than much of his work, but it feels very much like it is the beginning of a longer story. Nevertheless, it is unusual enough and odd enough for me to give it 4 out of 5.

Inconsistency by Brian M. Stableford

Don’t be fooled by the “new writer” comment given at the top of this story. We have met Brian before, both as Brian Stableford in the October 1966 issue and as co-writer Brian Craig back in the November 1965 issue–not to mention his letters to Kyril back in the same issue. Here he’s writing a fantasy story with a deliberately allegorical touch. Characters live around a village slowly disappearing in the sea. They have no idea of why they are there or how they got there. At the end the sea covers all. BUT WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN? Another symbolic puzzle which will either be appreciated or cause befuddlement. 3 out of 5.

The Number You Have Just Reached by Thomas M. Disch


Illustration by Keith Roberts

More from Mr. Disch this month, on the creepier side. It is about Justin Holt, the last man in the world who, staring out from his fourteen-storey apartment, receives a telephone call from someone who may be the last woman in the world. But is she real or is she a figment of his imagination? A story of fear and claustrophobia that doesn’t end well. This one’s fine, but I didn’t like it as much as some of his more recent stories. 3 out of 5.

The Pursuit of Happiness by Paul Jents

Another story from the often-underwhelming Mr. Jents, who last appeared in the June 1966 issue. Krane lives on Aligua, a distant planet which has spurned technology due to once being enslaved by computers, but have integrated circuits implanted in their heads to cope with their lives. Another story that deals with what is real and what is imaginary. One of Paul’s better stories, but really nothing special. 3 out of 5.

It’s Smart to Have an English Address by D.G. Compton

D.G. is a writer who tends to make me think of Fred Hoyle, strangely. Not sure why, other than he has this very British tone. And so it is here. Paul Cassevetes goes to meet his old friend Joseph Brown, a concert pianist (see also Hoyle’s October the First is Too Late where the main character is a composer). Doctor McKay and Paul try to get Joseph to record brain patterns whilst playing one of his finest pieces to give listeners a better experience. Joseph is resistant, feeling that such techniques do not get to the essence of a performance. At the end Joseph suffers a stroke, which makes the process rather redundant. A story of friendship and rather elegiac, if a little bit convenient at the end. I liked it but could see some thinking the story is mawkish. 3 out of 5.

Impasse by Chris Priest

Chris is one of our new young writers beginning to make an appearance in the magazines: last time it was with his Ballardian pastiche Conjugation in the December 1966 issue of New Worlds. This one seems to be an attempt to write short satirical Space Opera and shows the futility of conflict. Insults and threats are made between a Denebian and the Earth Field-Marshal which escalate until one of them shoots the other. Not sure I really get the point. 2 out of 5.

See Me Not by Richard Wilson

Another returning writer. He is popular, I understand, though his stories rarely register with myself for some reason. So the fact that Keith Roberts mentions in his Editorial that this is a “long, complete story” made my heart sink. But I was surprised, even if we are reusing old ideas here. This time it is about invisibility–thank you, Mr H. G. Wells! (Actually, I’ve only just realised that this may have been written as a result of that recent centennial celebration of Mr Wells’s birth.)

Avery wakes up to find himself invisible. Much of the rest of the story is about how he deals with this situation with his wife, Liz, his children, Bobby and Margie, and his doctor, Mike Custer. Lots of social issues ensue. The scientists try to work out what has happened and why. At the end of the story, Avery and Liz, who also becomes invisible, walk off together to live happily ever after it seems.

This is an attempt to write a lighter version of Wells’s tale, but ends up something more akin to an episode of your TV series Bewitched than the original Wells story. Although nowhere near as good as Wells’s version, for me this is a better story from Richard. 3 out of 5.

Keith Roberts rereads ‘The True History’ of Lucian of Samosatos


Illustration by Keith Roberts

And talking of Keith Roberts… This is space-filler of the highest order, as the writer gives us his interpretation of an ancient Greek classic. Not quite sure of its purpose, although Roberts writes well enough and brings to light an old classic that may be worth a second glance. Made me yearn to read a Thomas Burnett Swann story, which may not really be the point of this piece. 2 out of 5.

Book Fare (Reviews)

Book reviews from Alistair Bevan, also known as Keith Roberts. There are reviews of Planets for Man by Stephen H. Dole and Isaac Asimov, Other Worlds Than Ours by C. Maxwell Cade, Colossus by D. F. Jones, Window on the Future edited by Douglas Hill, Ten From Tomorrow by E. C. Tubb and The Machineries of Joy by Ray Bradbury.

Letters to the Editor

Last month I said that the ongoing discussion about Sex in SF that E. C. Tubb started a couple of issues ago felt like it was an attempt to generate mock outrage. With hindsight I now realise that the magazine probably has enough drama going on. Anyway, this month the Letters pages have a spirited defense of “WSB”, better known as William S. Burroughs to you and me, and a discussion of the meaning of Science Fiction, a competition that Harry opened when he first took over from Kyril. There is a winner, step up Peter Redgrove!

Summing up SF Impulse

Keith Roberts is clearly working above and beyond the usual here and should be credited with pulling together an issue even if some material was not up to the usual standard. Let’s hope that the magazine continues, although the signs are doubtful.

An advertisement on the last page of the issue. Is this an omen or a cryptic clue? Is there life after death for New Worlds or SF Impulse?

Until the next (hopefully!)



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 20, 1967] Sag in the middle (February Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Tossing and turning

When I was a kid, I had (like everyone else) a cotton-filled mattress. In a lot of ways, I was lucky. I was a skinny kid so I didn't weigh much, and I was just as lief to sleep on the rug as in a bed, so I wasn't picky about where I lay down. Plus, bedbugs weren't a problem in sunny El Centro. They hated the lack of air conditioning as much as we did. So that ol' mattress did me fine.

But I got spoiled by my first innerspring in the 50s. That's sleeping comfort.

The only problem with coil mattresses, of course, is that after a while (unless you managed to stay teen skinny into your middle years) the middle sags. Eventually, you're in this little self-made pit. Oh your aching back!

The latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a bit like a saggy mattress.  It's great at the ends, but the middle is the absolute pits.

It started so well


by Chesley Bonestell

The Hall of the Dead, by L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard is having the best decade in a long time.  It's a pity he's not around to enjoy it, having passed away more than 30 years ago.  But his mighty thewed creation "Conan", warrior of Hyboria, has found new life in the hands of famed Fantasist L. Sprague de Camp.  In addition to compiling (and lightly editing) Howard's old stories for a pair of collections, which Cora will be reviewing in two days, Sprague has also taken unfinished pieces and raw outlines and given the bones flesh.

The Hall of the Dead was only a 650 word outline when Sprague found it.  It is now an intriguing new novelette in the Conan canon, one that I found every bit as exciting as the various pieces I've found in old pulps. 

It's a tale set very early in Conan's life.  He is on the run from the wicked city of Shadazar, a company of police soldiers on his tail led by the Aquilonian mercenary, Nestor.  Conan seeks refuge in the cursed dead city of Larsha.  There, he and Nestor must team up to face a variety of horrors, living and dead.  The reward if they succeed?  Treasure beyond imagining!

It's great, riproaring stuff.  More please.

Four stars.


by Gahan Wilson

A Walk in the Wet, by Dennis Etchison

The lone survivor of a spacewreck is haunted by more than the deaths of dozens.  For, as a telepath, he experienced the fatalites as well as witnessed them.  Now faced with the truth of how he became the mutant he is, the spacer has taken on a grisly mission…if only he can remain sober long enough to carry it out.

That summary makes this sound like a pretty good story.  It's not.  It's impenetrable and rather disgusting.  I suppose its lone virtue is that it's memorable.

One star.

The Next Step, by E. A. Moore

On an overcrowded world, the only hope for humanity is colonizing the stars.  It turns out that the inevitable leukemia that the settlers acquire on their relativistic jaunts is the key to their transcending their physical form and becoming one with the universe.

In addition to being rather amateurishly written, this story requires a lot of leaps of faith.  I have trouble buying the premise that cancer is actually a beneficial development.

Two stars.

The Song of the Morrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Ferman is really scraping the barrel if he has to go back 70 years for a piece.  In this vignette, wide-eyed princess meets a crone on a beach, is told many things that come true, and the maid ultimately becomes the next crone.

I like poetic stuff as much as the next person, but this one didn't do it for me.

Two stars.

The Intelligent Computer, Ted Thomas

As usual, Ted starts with an interesting premise (how do you copyright/patent something developed by a computer?) and utterly flubs it.  Mr. Thomas needs to write a real article or stop writing these half-efforts.

Two stars.

The Little People (Part 2 of 3), by John Christopher

The serial continues.  Last month took us to a run-down hostel in rural Ireland where a collection of eight neurotics discovered what they thought was one of The Little People.

In this chapter, we learn that the foot-tall girl and her friends are not faerie folk at all, but something much more sinister–the result of a Nazi experiment in longevity. 

I honestly have no idea where this story is going to end up.  I am still enjoying it, though perhaps not quite so much as last time.

Four stars.

Impossible, That's All, by Isaac Asimov

In this month's article (the Good Doctor's 100th… and we've covered all save the first!), Dr. A talks about why it's impossible to go faster than light, and why we should all just stop bugging him about it.

It's a good piece, particularly in talking about how our advancements in science serve to refine models rather than completely overthrow them (q.v. Newton to Einstein).  On the other hand, sometimes model changes are revolutionary.  Discovering subatomic particles didn't change the life of the average citizen…until we used the knowledge to make atomic bombs and reactors.  We now seem to be on the edge of a revolution in sub-sub-atomic physics as we speak, giving rhyme and reason to the veritable zoo of particles, just as subatomic theory made sense of Medeleev's periodic table.  Who knows if that will result in discoveries in previously impossible fields such as antigravity and faster than light travel?

Asimov is facile, but I suspect he's missing something.  Three stars.

Blackmail, by Fred Hoyle

The champion of out-of-date theories (e.g. "Steady State") offers up this bizarre little fantasy in which a fellow learns to communicate with animals.  Turns out all they want to do is watch people beat each other up on television.  Think of the effect on the Nielsen's!

Forgettable fluff.  Two stars.

Falling out

This sunken mess of a mattress garners a lousy 2.6 stars.  That's still better than most of the other mags out this month, which tells you how bad our job here at the Journey can be.

That said, between the Conan and the Christopher (not to mention Merril's column and Asimov's article), more than half of this month's issue is worth a read.

I'll just have to learn to sleep on the edges, that's all!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 16, 1967] Off to a Good Start (February 1967 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Happy New Year!


We have to be told twice that it's the Fabulous Flamingo.

Here we go with my first magazine review of 1967. I'm glad to say that the year begins with a bang, as the lead novella in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is a knockout. Will the rest of the stories and articles be anywhere near as good? Let's find out.


Cover art by Gray Morrow.

The Star-Pit, by Samuel R. Delany

Delany has already published several novels, but I believe this is his first appearance in a science fiction magazine. It's certainly an auspicious debut. That's not such a big surprise, as his book Babel-17 won high praise from my esteemed colleague Cora Buhlert, and was the overwhelming choice for the most recent Galactic Stars award for Best Novel.


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

The narrator begins with an account of an incident in his past that puts him in a bad light. While living on a planet with two suns, as part of a group marriage, he destroyed a miniature ecological system built by the family's children, as shown above. (I pictured the thing, which is something like a super-sophisticated ant farm, as quite a bit larger.)


Two of the alien organisms released during the narrator's destruction of the object. I pictured them as much smaller.

Several years later, the narrator is at the edge of the galaxy, working as a mechanic for starships. For a while, it seems as if the opening section of the story has little to do with the rest, but it all ties up at the end.

This is a future time when travel throughout the Milky Way is possible, but not beyond its borders. Attempting to do so results in insanity and death for the unfortunate extragalactic voyager. That is, unless you happen to be one of the rare people known as golden. (The word is used as a noun here, and serves as both the singular and plural form. Delany displays his interest in language in this story just as he did in the novel mentioned above.)

Golden have both hormonal and psychological abnormalities that allow them to travel to other galaxies, bringing back rare and valuable items. They are also mean or stupid, as one character says, prone to foolish actions and sudden violence. As you'd expect, ordinary people resent them, not only for their unpleasant personalities, but out of jealousy for their ability to escape the Milky Way.

The narrator and a young man encounter an unconscious golden. (It seems that a disease brought back from another galaxy causes intermittent blackouts.)


Carrying a golden.

They bring the golden to a woman who is a projective telepath. Let me explain. That means that she causes other people to experience her sensations. She was also born addicted to a hallucinatory drug taken by her mother. Combined with her telepathic ability, the drug allowed her to serve as a psychiatric therapist, helping golden overcome psychic shock caused by their journeys.


The projective telepath. She may be the most fascinating character in the story.

Another incident involving two golden leaves the narrator with a starship designed to travel to other galaxies. The question of what should be done with it leads to multiple complications, both tragic and hopeful. (I haven't even mentioned the narrator's assistant, who plays a major part.)


There's also a dramatic scene involving waldoes.

I have only given you a small taste of a very intricate story. Despite having the depth and complexity of a full-length novel, it is never confusing. The richly imagined future reminds me a bit of Cordwainer Smith, although Delany's narrative style is much more intimate than Smith's mythologizing.

The writing is beautiful, and the author creates living, breathing characters. The plot deals with love, hate, marriage, parenthood, and much more. It will break your heart and bring you much joy.

Five stars.

The Psychiatric Syndrome in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

The indefatigable historian of fantastic fiction offers a look at the use of psychology in the genre. He traces this theme back to Robert Louis Stevenson's famous novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, then talks about a lot of other stories.

A big chunk of the article deals with the works of David H. Keller, a practicing psychiatrist. I'm not convinced that all the Kelleryarns discussed here are really relevant to the topic.

There's also discussion of The Jet Propelled Couch, a chapter from the book The Fifty-Minute Hour by psychologist Robert M. Lindner. (He also wrote the book Rebel Without a Cause, which gave its title, if nothing else, to the famous movie of the same name.) This is the true account of one of Linder's patients, who became obsessed with a fantasy world in which he was the hero of outer space adventures. Although quite interesting, the case has little to do with the subject of psychiatry in science fiction.

The article wanders all over the place, and it is not very well organized. It's not as dull as some of the author's endless listings of old stories, but it's not his best work, either.

Two stars.

The Planet Wreckers, by Keith Laumer


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Our hapless hero is in a crummy hotel room, trying to get some sleep, when he hears noises coming from above. Since he's in a Laumer story, he doesn't just call the front desk. He climbs up the fire escape to see what's going on. What seems at first to be a lovely young woman turns out to be a weird alien being.

She's some kind of outer space law enforcement agent. It seems that other weird aliens plan to cause a series of disasters on Earth, in order to record them as a form of entertainment. (Think of Hollywood spectaculars.) She doesn't care about the fact that huge numbers of human beings will be killed; she just wants to protect the environment.

The alien policewoman and our pajama-clad protagonist go zooming all over the place in her flying machine, trying to stop the catastrophes. It all winds up with the hero inside the alien studio, so to speak, and with another revelation about his female companion.


Can you tell this isn't the most serious story in the world?

Laumer writes a lot of comic adventures, along with serious ones, but I think this may be the silliest yet. There doesn't seem to be any real satire here, although I guess you can interpret it as a dig at the movie industry. It's full of goofy-looking aliens with wacky names, and plenty of slapstick mishaps. If you're looking for a brainless farce, go no further.

Two stars.

Sun Grazers, by Robert S. Richardson

Inspired by the appearance of the comet Ikeya-Seki, which was visible from late 1965 to early 1966, the author discusses comets that pass close to the sun. He also talks about how comet groups form (larger comets breaking up into smaller ones) and whether the paths of comets suggest a tenth planet beyond Pluto (inconclusive.) The article ends with the author's own struggle to view Ikeya-Seki, and how he made a rough guess as to the size of its tail.

The author describes Ikeya-Seki as a disappointment. (The name comes from two Japanese comet hunters who discovered it independently, by the way.) Other accounts of which I am aware state that it was very bright, visible in the daytime. The article is moderately informative, but a little on the dry side. Like the author's experience with the comet, it isn't as spectacular as one might wish.

Two stars.

Station HR972, by Kenneth Bulmer

The superhighways of the future, where vehicles travel two hundred miles per hour and more, require teams of specialists to deal with accidents. This includes transplanting limbs and internal organs. All in a day's work.

There's not really much plot here. It's kind of a slice-of-life story, detailing the activities of the folks who have to deal with the gruesome effects of high speed collisions. I'm reminded of Rick Raphael's story Code Three, which had a very similar theme. Frankly, that one was a lot better.

Two stars.

About 2001, by David A. Kyle

No, this isn't an article about the first year of the next millennium. It's a very brief piece concerning the upcoming movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.


Director Stanley Kubrick (with beard) and writer Arthur C. Clarke (without hair.)

There's not a lot of information here, as the creators are keeping things hush-hush. What we do find out is intriguing. Will the finished product live up to Clarke's prediction that It'll be the greatest science fiction picture ever made? Only time will tell.

I can't really blame the author of this article for frustrating my desire to learn more about the film, as he was obviously prevented from finding out too much. That doesn't keep me from wishing it were a lot longer.

Two stars.

The Shape of Shapes to Come, by Robert Bartlett Riley

An architect imagines what buildings and cities might be like in the future. This involves three areas of prediction. From easiest to most difficult, these are technological changes; what people will choose to do with these techniques; and how this will change society.

Topics discussed include advanced building materials, new forms of lighting, and greater control of interior environments. The author laments the lack of mass-produced housing, similar to the way automobiles are manufactured, which would greatly reduce the price of a home. In the most imaginative section, he dreams of shelters made from force fields rather than physical materials, and of personal Life Packs that would supply one with all the functions of a house.

I found this slightly interesting, but rather vague in its predictions and not very exciting. Despite the discussion of a couple of wild possibilities, the author seems to think that architecture is going to remain conservative for quite some time, avoiding the futuristic visions of science fiction writers.

Two stars.

The Fifth Columbiad, by Richard C. Meredith


Illustrations by Hector Castellon.

Many centuries before the story begins, aliens destroyed all humans on Earth. In what must have been the most embarrassing mistake of all time, they thought the humans were other beings who were their deadly enemies.

The only people to survive were those who happened to be on starships at the time. Now, their descendants make war on the aliens, capturing their starships to add to the human fleets.

The plot involves the captain and crew of one starship. The vessel is badly damaged in battle, just barely managing to escape. The commander and a team of volunteers remain on the derelict vessel, hoping to lure an alien starship into docking with it so they can sneak aboard the enemy vessel and seize it for themselves.


Carnage on the starship.

This yarn reminds me of war stories in which a small team of commandos attacks an enemy installation against overwhelming odds. The Guns of Navarone in space, if you will. You know that some of the volunteers will be killed in action, but that the mission will succeed. I thought there might be some kind of ironic ending, given the mistake that started the war in the first place, but nothing like that happens.

There's some odd, smirking sexual content in this story. At the risk of sounding like a prude, I didn't think it was necessary to point out that the pseudo-reptilian aliens, who have a matriarchal society, have breasts like human women.


Not shown here, for reasons of good taste, I assume.

There's one volunteer who's only there so he can be a hero, thus earning the sexual favors of admiring women. The author tells us the female crew members wear nothing but skirts — no shirts or blouses, apparently — and gives us a fair amount of detail about the heroine's panties. (The excuse is that the interior of the alien ship is hot and humid, so the humans have to strip down to the basics.)

Two stars.

Coming To A Bad End

This issue really went into a nosedive after soaring to the heights of imaginative literature with Delany's novella. Scuttlebutt has it that Worlds of Tomorrow is on its last legs. That's too bad, as the magazine gave readers some very good stuff, along with a lot of not-so-good stuff. Very much a curate's egg, I'm afraid.


Cartoon by Wilkerson, from the May 22, 1895 issue of Judy.


A better known cartoon by George du Maurier, from the November 9, 1895 issue of the better known magazine Punch. Too similar to be a coincidence, I'd say.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 10, 1967] Return to sender (February 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

President Johnson commissioned noted (and favorite of our editor, Janice) artist Peter Hurd to draw his official Presidential portrait.  This was the result:

Reportedly, upon seeing the painting, Johnson described it as the ugliest thing he had ever seen.  Aghast, the artist asked what the President had wanted in a portrait.  Lyndon whipped out this piece painted by Normal Rockwell:

I understand that Hurd returned his commission and that a new picture will be made.  Maybe by someone with the initials L.B.J.

Law of Analogy


by Jack Gaughan

It was certainly a blow to the shocked Hurd, but I kind of know how Lyndon felt.  I had a similar reaction upon finising the latest issue of Galaxy.  This was, for the most part, not the magazine I was hoping for.

Our Man in Peking, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Yes, as Winter follows Fall, so we have yet another tale in the saga of Dr. West and the half-alien Esks.  Briefly: an alien came to Earth and bred with a local woman.  Her progeny, and their kids, too, all breed humanoids who look like Eskimos, but who mature in three years and give birth in a month.  Twenty years after the first was born, there are now more than a billion of them.  And instead of being stopped or even investigated to any real degree, the governments of the world refuse to see them as anything other than mutant Eskimos, deserving of love, affection, and free food.  The Chinese have welcomed them with open arms to till hitherto unprofitable fields, but Canada, Scandinavia, and other places have also taken them in.

Only one man, the notorious Dr. West, who tried but failed to sterilize the Esks with a tailored plague, will admit the true menace of the Esks.

Last installment, West was in a comfy Canadian prison for his attempted genocide.  In this one, he has been sent on a mission to Red China, brainwashed to learn the details on an as-needed basis, mind-controlled to have no say in his actions.  He is shot down over the mainland along with an Air Force Major so caricatured in his manner that I wondered if Gaughan's art would depict him with straw coming out of his joints.

After much rigamarole, West finds himself in the presence of the current Communist leader, Mao III (do the Chinese give descendants appellations like that?) And then the true nature of West's mission is revealed…

Hayden Howard really isn't a very good writer, and there aren't actually any characters in this story–only marionettes who dance to the author's strings without any will of their own.  I also could have done without the word "Chink" used a couple dozen times.

What keeps the tale from getting just one star is this morbid fascination with how this wholly unrealistic scenario will turn out.  We're supposed to get the conclusion next month.  God willing, that'll be the end of the Esks, one way or another.

Two stars.

Return Match, by Philip K. Dick

The outspacers have gambling casinos across the galaxy.  The only problem?  They tend to be lethal for their patrons.  Joseph Tinbane, a cop for Superior Los Angeles, takes on the aliens' latest contraption: a pinball machine that evolves not only to be unbeatable, but ultimately to attack the player!

Dick's vivid writing is on display here, so there's nothing wrong with the reading.  But the concept is pure fantasy, up to and including the conclusion where Tinbane is menaced by giant pinballs.  I can only imagine that PKD turned on, dropped out, and dashed off this tale before the hallucinations disappeared from his memory.

Three stars.

For Your Information: Who Invented the Crossbow? by Willy Ley

Ley's latest piece is an interesting, but somehow perfunctory piece on the evolution of the crossbow.  A few more pages of Asimov treatment would have helped.

Three stars.

The Last Filibuster, by Wallace West

War between North and South America is averted when the governments of both nations are captured and impressed to do the fighting.

I like the sentiment: politicians would be a lot less willing to send their sons (and daughters) to war if their lives were on the line.  But the story is just sort of silly and obvious.

Besides, who could believe that an armed mob could invade the Capitol to kidnap Congress?  It beggars the imagination.

Two stars.

They Hilariated When I Hyperspaced For Earth, by Richard Wilson


by Vaughn Bodé

The leader of a boring world that has stalled in its progressive mediocrity comes to Earth to steal our Secretary General, an efficient Ugandan who knows how to get things done.  A lot of "comedy" ensues.

Not only is the story a bore, but I can't forgive it for getting "They all Laughed" stuck in my head.

Two stars.

The Trojan Bombardment, by Christopher Anvil

How we defeat an enemy without firing a shot?  Why by shooting shells filled with booze, cigarettes, and sexy ladies at them!  After all, that's what they're really fighting for, isn't it?

Fellow traveler Cora Buhlert recently noted that she can smell a Campbell reject a mile away, and Bombardment is almost assuredly an Anvil story too stupid even for Analog.

One star.

The Discovery of the Nullitron, by Thomas M. Disch and John Sladek

Speaking of stupid, here's another "funny" piece, in the style of a Scientific American article, on the new decidedly supra-atomic particle called the Nullitron, putatively discovered by the authors after a jag in Ibiza.

One star.

Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne, by R. A. Lafferty

A dozen of the Earth's greatest scientists team up with a computer to improve history.  Their first time traveling target: to salvage relations between Charlemagne and the Caliph, allowing Arabic knowledge to flow freely.  They will know that they have succeeded because all of their records will change before their eyes!

Of course, if they had read William Tenn's The Brooklyn Project, they'd know that, as part of the time stream themselves, they'd never know what had changed.

Still, it's kind of a fun piece.  The journey's the thing, not the destination.

Three stars.

The Palace of Love (Part 3 of 3), by Jack Vance


by Gray Morrow

The saving grace of this magazine is this final installment of Vance's latest serial.  Keith Gersen has tracked down Viole Falushe, one of the five "Demon Kings" crime lords who killed his parents, to the mobster's private domain.  The Palace of Love is a mystical retreat, designed to provide pleasure to discerning patrons.  But its staff and denizens are all slaves of Falushe, though they aren't completely aware of the fact.

Half of this last act involves the long, meandering road to Falushe's Palace of Love.  It is only in the final sixth that we learn the truth about the place, who Drusilla is and her relation to Falushe's object of childhood infatuation, Jheral Tinzy, and whether or not Gersen can succeed in his revenge.

I found it all gripping stuff.  Vance has a knack for sensual writing; you always know what things smell like, what color they are, how they sound.  Yet the prose is never overlabored.  If the first book in the series starts auspiciously and ends with a dull thud, this second one only has one slow patch, in its second sixth.

For that reason, I give this installment and the book as a whole four stars, and it'll be in the running for the Galactic Star at the end of the year.

Summing up

Even with Palace shoring things up, this month's Galaxy clocks in at a dismal 2.4 stars.  And given that the Vance is likely to end up published in paperback, it's probably not even worth buying this mag for the one story (unless, of course, you want the serial complete in original form).

I'll be surprised if Galaxy doesn't come in last this month.  I'll also be really disappointed in that event; I don't think I could easily face another, worse slog!

That would truly be the ugliest month I've ever seen…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 6, 1967] Happy Anniversary (February 1967 Amazing)

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by John Boston

January 6!  A portentous anniversary!  On this day in 1838, Samuel Morse publicly demonstrated the telegraph, sending a message two miles; and in 1912, German geophysicist Alfred Wegener announced his theory of the continental drift, to much skepticism until very recently.


by Arnold Kahn

The February 1967 Amazing is here too, in a burst of bright yellow surrounding a glum-looking guy who seems to have a head problem.  The table of contents captions Arnold Kahn’s cover as Slaves of the Crystal Brain; research reveals it first appeared as the cover of the May 1950 Amazing, where the head was bordered in black rather than yellow.  It is hard to imagine why anyone thought the change to be an improvement.  However, the subject’s disgruntled expression so acutely characterizes the issue that I fear my comments may be superfluous.

Born Under Mars (Part 2 of 2), by John Brunner

The prolific and versatile John Brunner has provided us with such thoughtful works as The Whole Man and such well-turned entertainments as Echo in the Skull.  Born Under Mars, unfortunately, is neither, though it might be viewed as a caricature of both, with an overstuffed action plot against a background of Big Thinks that seem to have been drawn with a crayon.


by Gray Morrow

In the future, Earth has established interstellar colonies, their nations and residents known as Centaurs and Bears respectively.  Mars, earlier colonized, has become unfashionable and neglected in this new and larger configuration, and its inhabitants are a bit resentful about it.  These include Ray Mallin, a space engineer who has just returned to Mars on a Centaur ship, only to find himself kidnapped and tortured with a nerve whip to obtain information he does not have about the ship he arrived on. 

There ensues much to-ing and fro-ing as Mallin tries to find out what is going on, including reliance on outrageous coincidence: Mallin, at the Old Temple containing ancient Martian artifacts, pushes on a random spot on the wall, which opens to reveal the room where he was nerve-whipped, along with one of the perpetrators.  He returns the favor of torture and interrogation but his former tormentor knows nothing. 

Eventually Mallin corners his old mentor Thoder and the Big Thinks begin to emerge.  Humanity is stagnating, with no major scientific breakthroughs for a couple of centuries, and needs to get a lot smarter.  How?  They don’t really know, but “a pair of strongly opposed societies was devised: the Bears, happy-go-lucky, casual, living life as it came, and the Centaurs, thinking hard about everything and especially about their descendants.” In effect they are trying eugenics by bank shot: creating societies to order to see if either one of them breeds—literally—the intellectual superpeople who are needed (i.e., those who have “a talent—extra psychological muscle if you like”). 

And who contrived all this, and how did they manage to keep it secret, and what rational basis is there to believe that anyone can create societies to order and have them stick to the program for the generations necessary for this project?  How is manipulating social arrangements and behavior going to jump-start human heredity?  Is Lamarck consulting on this project?  There’s no pretense of an explanation; these large concepts are merely brandished like slogans on placards.

But—the author asserts—it’s worked!  Six generations early, in fact, unto the Centaurs is born an infant who will have “an IQ at the limits of the measurable, empathy topping 2000, Weigand scale, and virtually every heritable talent from music to mathematics, all transmissible to his descendants!” And he’s here!  He’s, as Hitchock would put it, the macguffin everyone has been chasing after, torturing Mallin en passant because this miracle child, kidnapped, was brought to Mars on the ship Mallin rode on. 

So what’s the plan?  Educate him on Mars.  “Then, when he’s grown, to use the random mixing of genetic lines available in Bear society to spread a kind of ferment through half the human race.” In other words, this kid is intended to grow up to be a playboy in interstellar Bohemia, and that’s how humanity will be transformed.

But wait—now somebody has snatched the kid away from the people who snatched the kid!  More hurly-burly ensues, along with more elevated yakety-yak, and in the last 20 pages a Girl emerges for the hero to get.  And there’s a redeeming note: she wants to know what the hell all these people are doing treating an infant like nothing but an object to be manipulated, which doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone previously.

Born Under Mars is another of many examples of pseudo-profundity in SF: the semblance of large ideas waved around without the author’s doing the work of thinking them through and making them plausible, or abandoning them when their implausibility becomes obvious.  Brunner is certainly not the only offender of this sort, but he seems sufficiently capable that I expected better of him.

Bah, humbug.  Oh, wait, that was last month.  Two stars, mainly for effort.

Tumithak of the Corridors, by Charles R. Tanner

“Special,” says the cover, about Charles R. Tanner’s Tumithak of the Corridors—a “complete novel” at 56 pages per the table of contents.  The interior blurb calls it “as good as early Wells, as fresh as the latest Zelazny.” And indeed this story, from the January 1932 Amazing, does have a certain reputation among older fans.


by Leo Morey

It seems that humans made it to Venus, whose inhabitants, called shelks for no reason I can discern, had no idea there was anything outside their eternal clouds.  But once they found out, they proceeded straightway to build their own space fleet (“All over the planet, the great machine-shops hummed and clattered”) to invade Earth.  Earth responded by creating great underground fastnesses, full of corridors of sorts, and after losing the war, humans fled into their deepest recesses and regressed to ignorance and barbarism.  But—of course—one brave young man will not accept humanity’s fate.  He has found an old book that recounts the history of the shelks’ invasion, and he is going to find his way the surface to kill a shelk!

This mass of cliches actually turns into a pretty good old-fashioned story.  Tanner’s style is clear and uncluttered.  Tumithak is presented as heroic but not superhuman.  His odyssey through the corridors, including the territories of other human tribes (one of them not too friendly), manages not to become any more ridiculous than the starting premises, except for a portion towards the end in the territory of the Esthetts (sic!) which is all right because it’s purposefully satirical.  Altogether, the story is a fairly charming relic.  Three stars, and by the standards of its times it would merit more.

Methuselah, Ltd., by Wallace West and Richard Barr

Methuselah, Ltd. (from Fantastic, November-December 1953), is as you might guess about immortality, or its absence.  In the future, disease, disability, and aging have been conquered by the Life Ray, but people still die around age 90.  Dr. Weinkopf, age 88, would like to do something about this, and he thinks it has something to do with the pineal gland, and with “brain sand”—calcareous salts with a “concentric laminated structure” found in the brain after death, it says here.  Surgery has been made illegal, but there is an underground Society for the Preservation of Surgical Techniques that performs operations in speakeasy fashion before an audience of sadists.  Dr. Weinkopf hopes to piggyback on a brain tumor operation to remove the pineal and dig out the brain sand.  But the patient, hearing talk of this plan, chickens out and leaves.  By the rules of the Society, the jilted surgeon must be subjected to surgery himself, so the doctor chooses to have his nurse do the surgery on him, with predictable bad end looming as the story ends.  This is apparently intended as a sort of farcical black comedy, but it’s not especially funny and is just as big a mess as my description suggests.  The authors should improve their farce technique by studying the works of Ron Goulart—not the kind of sentence I ever expected to write.  One star.

The Man with Common Sense, by Edwin James


by Leo Morey

The other reprinted short story, from the July 1950 Amazing, is The Man with Common Sense, by Edwin James, an early pseudonym of James E. Gunn.  It’s another dreary farce, though better-wrought than Methuselah, Ltd.  Malachi Jones is a “dapper, wizened little man” equipped with cane and derby hat who is an interstellar insurance agent for Lairds of Luna.  Lairds has issued a policy guaranteeing peace on Mizar II, and Jones is there to make sure Lairds doesn’t have to pay off.  He tames the planet’s rebels and makes peace in the accidental company of one Rand Ridgeway, who is distinguished mainly by his stupidity (en route, he takes his shoes off and forgets to put them back on).  Two stars, barely.  Here’s another case for Ron Goulart.

Two Days Running and Then Skip a Day, by Ron Goulart


by Gray Morrow

Speaking of Ron Goulart, here is the man himself, with the issue’s only new short story, Two Days Running and Then Skip a Day.  Goulart has been on a tear about the medical profession for a while; see his Calling Dr. Clockwork in the March 1965 Amazing, about a man who winds up in the hospital and then can’t get out, and Terminal, in the May 1965 Fantastic, about a nursing home system designed mainly to get rid of the troublesome elderly and the even more troublesome investigators.  Here, Goulart tees off, or I should say flails in all directions, against celebrity doctors who can’t be bothered with their patients, robot assistants of dubious competence, modern apartments and appliances that are badly built, sleazy landlords, and I probably missed something.  It’s insubstantial but amusing, which seens to sum this writer up, and to compare favorably with Gunn and West/Barr, whose entries are merely insubstantial.  Three stars, barely.

Summing Up

As I said at the beginning, the expression on the cover acutely captures the contents of the issue, and requires no elaboration.


by Arnold Kahn (detail)

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




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 2, 1967] Different perspectives (February 1967 IF)

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by David Levinson

We all know the adage about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Trying to see the world through others’ eyes is a good way to understand them, and that can help ease tensions and make it easier to find compromises. Of course, it’s also possible to come up with some pretty ridiculous ideas about the way other people think.

Failures of diplomacy

At the end of 1965, I wrote about the troubles in the British colony of Rhodesia. The white minority government refuses to consider the idea of granting equal rights or a role in government to Black Rhodesians. Early in December, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Rhodesian Prime minister Ian Smith, and ousted Rhodesian Governor General Humphrey Gibbs met aboard the HMS Tiger to try to hash out a solution. Smith left with a proposal he seemed willing to accept, but rejected it out of hand as soon as he returned to Salisbury. In response on December 16th, the United Nations Security Council approved an oil embargo and economic sanctions against Rhodesia 11-0, with France, the Soviet Union, Mali and Bulgaria abstaining. Four days later, Wilson withdrew all offers and announced that the United Kingdom would only accept a Black majority government. On the 22nd, as the trade ban was about to go into effect, Smith declared that the U. N. had forced Rhodesia out of British control and out of the British Commonwealth, making the country an independent republic by default.

Bechuanaland to Rhodesia's south may have peacefully become Botswana last year, but it seems that most of southern Africa is ready to go up in flames. While dealing with the condemnation of the rest of the world, the Smith government is also fighting two Black nationalist movements. Meanwhile, armed resistance is developing against South Africa’s illegal control of South West Africa, and armed independence movements are appearing in the Portuguese overseas provinces of Angola and Mozambique (formerly Portuguese West and East Africa respectively). If any of these embers becomes a conflagration, it’s hard to see how this won’t also spill over into South Africa as well.


Wilson returns with what looked like an acceptable deal, but Smith swiftly vetoed it.

Through alien eyes

John Campbell supposedly said he wanted someone to write an alien that “thinks as well as a man, but not like a man.” At least one author in this month’s IF makes a pretty good attempt at doing so. Others at least offer characters trying to understand how aliens (and in one case a door) think.


At least they aren’t even pretending this illustrates something in the magazine. Art by Wenzel

The Soft Weapon, by Larry Niven

A dozen years after the discovery that the galactic core is exploding, the mad (not because of his manic-depression, but because he’s courageous) puppeteer Nessus has hired Jason and Anne-Marie Papandreou, who operate the passenger ship Court Jester, to take him to see the Outsiders in deep space. While concluding his unspecified business, Nessus has also purchased a stasis box, an item potentially containing a piece of technology from the long-gone Slaver empire. On the way back, Jay decides to make a detour to Beta Lyrae, hoping the sight will snap Nessus out of his funk.

There, they fall into the clutches of the kzinti Chuft-Captain and the crew of the Traitor’s Claw. Among other things, the box proves to contain a strange device which can change its shape. Some of the settings include a rocket booster and a talking computer, but the device also seems capable of converting matter to usable energy with perfect efficiency. It’s up to Jay to use what he thinks the device is in order to escape with his wife and client and keep a dangerous technology from winding up in the hands of kzinti.


Jay discovers a hidden setting. Art by Gaughan

Niven has given us insight into the kzinti mind before and goes into greater detail here. We also get his speculation on what might be valued in a society of sentients descended from herbivores. The action is done fairly well, we have a female character who isn’t just motivation for the protagonist, and the story flows quite well. This might be the best thing Niven has written yet.

A high four stars.

Gods of Dark and Light, by Bruce McAllister

Gregory Shawn is a member of a religious movement which has come to V-Planet-14 to live according to their own rules. Things aren’t going well. Most of the story consists of Gregory’s prayers as the harsh conditions test and shape the group’s faith. These are interspersed with the prayers of one of the native life forms.

There isn’t much to say about this one. I think McAllister has something he’s trying to say, but it’s not entirely clear. The whole thing is very dark.

Two stars.

Forest in the Sky, by Keith Laumer

The Terran Mission to the planet Zoon is having trouble finding the natives. It turns out the Groaci have beaten the CDT to the punch, though they aren’t doing any better. Once again, it’s Retief to the rescue.


The Terran Mission sets off to look for the local government. Art by Castellon

I noted back in October that Laumer seemed to be having fun with Retief again. That still seems to be the case, but while this is more than just going through the motions, it’s still the same old formula. If you’re new to Retief, this is probably a lot of fun. Otherwise it’s palatable, but more of the same.

A low three stars.

The Fan Awards, by Lin Carter

This month, Our Man in Fandom takes a look at the Hugos. Carter traces the development of the award and tells us a bit about who Hugo was. Next month, he promises to talk about some of the Hugo winners and to look at the new Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Three stars.

The Iron Thorn (Part 2 of 4), by Algis Budrys

Hunting his first Amsir, Honor White Jackson learns that his prey is an intelligent being with better technology than his own people have. Eventually, he decides to defect to the Amsir and is taken to their home, a deep bowl filled with dense air and greenery. A vision of his people’s paradise. But paradise it is not. The food of the Amsir is poisonous to humans, and Jackson faces death by starvation. His only hope is to find a way into the Thorn Thing, a short metal tower with a locked door at the top of a ladder. The door instantly destroys any Amsir attempting to go through it after issuing a warning in an unknown language. The only one who can get close is Ahmuls, who is deformed in such a way that he resembles humans more than he does Amsir. If the door likes humans, then presumably there’s something Jackson can eat on the other side. As this installment ends, Jackson convinces the door to open and dives through, followed by Ahmuls and the spears of the Amsir.

To be continued.


Jackson enters the Thorn Thing. Art by Gray Morrow

This story certainly moves fast. Nothing feels as rushed as it did in the first part, but Budrys isn’t wasting any time. I have some suspicions about what’s going on. Much of that will probably be resolved next month, though I have no idea how it will all be wound up.

Three stars.

Confession, by Robert Ray

Father Hume sits on his veranda, waiting for the oppressive heat of an Australian afternoon in the back of beyond to dissipate. He closes his eyes for a moment, but must have nodded off, since there is suddenly a stranger in his back garden. A stranger who would like the Father to hear his confession, but can’t wait until church tomorrow. What Father Hume hears will change his life and, hopefully, the world.

On first reading, this seemed like the sort of story you read, don’t mind and then forget. As I’ve thought about it, though, some other aspects have occurred to me. I can’t really say anything without giving the whole story away and ruining its impact, but it’s a little better than I first credited it.

A solid three stars.

The Evil Ones, by Richard Wilson

Wally Hengsen beat a murder charge with an insanity plea. Now, he’s biding his time until his organization can bust him out. When an alien spaceship lands on the grounds of the rest home, he starts looking for an angle to play, but a reminder of events in New Guinea during the War sets him on a different path.


Hengsen wonders if he really does belong in an asylum. Art by Vaughn Bodé

This is a decent story. It sags in a couple of places, and Hengsen’s change of heart relies so much on a flashback that it feels a little out of place. On the other hand, it does finish strongly, which is probably enough.

Three stars.

The Dangers of Deepspace, by Mather H. Walker

A colonel of the Deepspace service is interviewing a volunteer and seems to be doing his best to discourage the young man from signing up.

Here we have this month’s first-time author. The whole thing is very obvious, doesn’t entirely make sense and isn’t worth your time. The nicest thing I can say is that the prose is serviceable.

Barely two stars.

A Beachhead for Gree, by C. C. MacApp

Steve Duke and friends go behind enemy lines. They make contact with the locals, use a ruse to infiltrate an enemy base and thwart Gree’s plans.


This time the locals are humanoids who can build wings for themselves. Art by Burns.

I’m going to make several carbons of that summary and whenever a Gree story appears, I’ll just cut one out and paste it into my manuscript. Will this interminable series never end?

Two stars.

Summing up

No matter how you look at it, this month’s IF is par for the course. One really good story, some decent stuff and some junk. And as good as it’s been so far, the serial needs to start paying off next month. At least we have the special Hugo edition to look forward to next month. The authors are good, but will they offer up their best stuff?


No mention of Frank Herbert this time. Hmmmm.




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[December 31, 1966] Barriers to quality (January 1967 Analog)

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[Today is the last day you can sign up for next year's Worldcon if you want to be able to nominate Hugo candidates!  Sign up now!]


by Gideon Marcus

An argument for free trade?

Yesterday, Europe got a bit freer.  The nations of Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom–along with associate member, Finland, the constituents of the Europen Free Trade Association–removed all tarrifs on industrial goods sold between them.  These countries comprise Europe's "Outer Seven", in contrast to the "Inner Six" of the European Economic Community.  With this move, EFTA's economies may get a competitive boost against the traditional European powerhouses (France, West Germany, Benelux, and Italy).

The SF mag Analog is better suited to the EEC than EFTA.  With editor John Campbell at the helm, who personally reads and approves every item chosen from the slush pile, and who has a distinctive style (to the say the least), the magazine has really gotten itself into a rut.  Sometimes it manages to be good, but more often, as with this month, it's deadly dully.  Read on, and you'll see what I mean.

The issue at hand


by Chesley Bonestell

Supernova, by Poul Anderson


by Kelly Freas

David Falkayn, protegé of Nicholas van Rijn, returns in yet another astronomically interesting but utterly dull adventure.  This time, callow human Falkayn, and his trader team comprising the pacifist buddhist saurian, Adzel, the foul-mouthed racoon, Chee Lan, and the computer, Muddlehead, have visited a world about to be blasted by a nearby supernova.  The planet, at about a Year 2000 level of technology, is riven into several regional powers, and a system-wide crime syndicate has nation-like power.

Falkayn is struggling with determining who their team should work with to build a planetary shield when the decision is taken out of his hands: Chee Lan is abducted by the system's equivalent of the mob.  Falkayn's solution to his dilemma is supposed to be clever, but it feels obvious and uninspired.

Two stars.

A Criminal Act, by Harry Harrison


by Kelly Freas

Here's a piece inspired by the same Malthusian nightmare as the author's hit, Make Room, Make room.  A fellow and his wife have had three kids, one more than the law allows.  As a result, a kill-happy citizen is legally allowed to try to bump the dad off.  It's a duel to the death, either result of which will keep the population stable.

Bob Sheckley could have made this work.  Maybe.  In another magazine.

Two stars.

Bring 'Em Back Alive!, by Lyle R. Hamilton

The nonfiction article this month is about wind tunnels, heat shields, and retrorockets.  Not a bad topic, but Hamilton's overly breezy style doesn't quite work.

Three stars.

Amazon Planet (Part 2 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

Last time around, author Reynolds took us back to the world of the United Planets, a loose galactic confederation of humans in which each planet is allowed whatever government, culture, demographics it likes.  This time, the planet is Amazonia, ruled by women and with the cultural iconography of the famed Greek warrior women.

Guy Thomas was a mild-mannered trade entrepreneur hoping to stoke an iridium/columbum trade between Amazonia and Avalon.  But at the end of the last installment, we discovered he was actually a secret agent.  In Part 2, we find out he's a UP spy, sent when a man from Amazonia made an unprecedented escape from the planet and pleaded for refugee status.  It seems there's a widespread masculine revolutionary movement.

Unfortunately for Thomas, he is quickly captured by the technologically superior Amazons and made to reveal his true identity: he is none other than Ronny Bronston, part of the mysterious Section G, whose explicit purpose is to topple regressive governments–in flagrant violation of the Federation's constitution.  Under truth drugs, Bronston spills the beans.  But before he can give further info, he is rescued by a member of his original escort party, a female soldier who has taken a shine to him.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire!

My nephew continues to rave about this series, whereas I find it mostly an excuse to discuss political theory interspersed with some boilerplate action sequences (which, to be fair, Reynolds has made a good career of).

Barely three stars and sinking.

The Old Shill Game, by H. B. Fyfe


by Kelly Freas

A robovendor is programmed to have an edge on his daily rounds at the concourse.  With the aid of a team of robotic shills, it attracts the attentions of human commuters and makes a killing.  Thus ensues a war between the robovendor's programming team and that of their competitors, each iteration making the android vending machine a bit smarter.

The road to Mike from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is paved with capitalism.

There's a good idea here, but the execution is a bit muddled and the whole thing just not very satisfying.  Two stars.

The Last Command, by Keith Laumer


by Kelly Freas

From one sapient robot to another: Keith Laumer returns with his answer to Saberhagen's Berserker series, only Laumer's Bolos are tanks rather than ships, and they apparently used to work for people rather than against them.

In this installment, a long-dead machine comes to life deep underground, nearly a century after its last conflict.  Certain that it has been imprisoned by the enemy, it roars to life, slowly making its way toward a city that has sprouted since its deactivation.  An old veteran of the old battle thinks he has the key to stopping this indestructible weapon of war.

It's a bit less polished than previous entries in the series, but I found the end touching.

Three stars.

Doing the math

Running the Star-o-vac, I find Analog scored just 2.5 stars–the worst of the month!  But this has been kind of a lousy month in general, so it's not certain that open trade is the answer.  After all, the British mags, New Worlds (3.3), and Science Fantasy (2.9), are rumored to be on the edge of extinction.  Fantastic (2.6) wasn't good this month, even with decades of reprints available.  IF (2.8) was thoroughly mediocre.  And while I liked Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.2), no one else seems to be enjoying the new serial.

On the other hand, there was exactly one story by a woman this month, and it was one of the best ones.  Maybe, instead of free trade between the current magazine contributors, we need a campaign to tap the as yet fallow resource: women writers.

Crazy, I know, but it's a thought.

[Today is the last day you can sign up for next year's Worldcon if you want to be able to nominate Hugo candidates!  Sign up now!]



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[December 28, 1966] Ice Worlds, Telepathic Martian Mice and Echoes (New Worlds and SF Impulse, January 1967)

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again!

As we’re in that strange time between post-Christmas and pre-New Year I’m pleased to type that my copies of both New Worlds and SF Impulse have manged to arrive amidst all of the Christmas mail.

Thank you, postie!

And I am pleased that I actually got two magazines. The rumours of the magazines' decline are still about, although I have no further news. I am still hopeful that 1967 will see them continue. More news when I get it.

With that over, let’s start with New Worlds.

A Guest Editorial this month, from Mr. Brian W. Aldiss, no less. Clearly Mike’s taken time off, and Brian has stepped up – which means that the two issues this month have the Editorial-ship of Aldiss and Harrison. (Where have I seen those two names together before?)

Here Aldiss extols the virtues of the sf pioneer H. G. Wells. Shouldn’t be too surprising, though, as amongst his other many talents Brian is the Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society, founded nearly 7 years ago. Moorcock last month said that they had hoped to run a piece on Wells’ centenary. I am assuming that this was the (delayed) piece.

It’s an expectedly congratulatory piece – Mr. Aldiss has come here to praise him, not bury him! – but as ever Brian’s writing is always lively and entertaining. There’s a good case made here to celebrate Wells.

To the stories!

Illustration by James Cawthorn

The Day of Forever, by J.G. Ballard

Another melancholic tale from Mr. Ballard. This one has Dying Earth vibes, described as “a world of Nordic gloom” as it posits a future where the Earth has stopped rotating. As a result, in the town of Columbine Sept-Heures, it is a never-ending twilight. This creates for the few survivors a dream-like setting and consequently there’s a lot of stuff here about dreams, or rather not-dreaming, in a surreal setting, as well as Ballard’s usual musings on entropy and time. Here Halliday meets odd characters and dreams of a woman he has seen. More of a mood piece than anything else, I feel. Not a lot happens but the prose is appropriately dream-like in this surreal situation. 4 out of 5.

Saint 505 , by John Clark

A new author to me, with an oddly-styled story of a glowing computer and its creation and management by a mad scientist. Almost poetry but not quite. 3 out of 5.

Sun Push, by Graham M. Hall

Trench warfare that wouldn’t be out of place in the First or Second World Wars – except that this one’s in Britain. Unremittingly grim, Private Time St. John Smith with his Battalion companions Eamus and Sergeant Trelawney fight their way across Southern England. Nasty things happen – “War’s a filthy business”, one of the characters says and that seems to be the main point of this story. To prove it there are a number of atrocities that occur here – for example, captured prisoners are put into brothels, sedated and forced to 'perform', amongst other indignities, something our shell-shocked characters accept and take advantage of. War is hell, etc etc. 3 out of 5.

Illustration by James Cawthorn

Coranda, by Keith Roberts

Onto better stuff. Roberts continues to sell his fiction to the companion magazine of the one he is currently editing. As if this wasn’t enough interaction between the two magazines, the banner tells us that this story was inspired by New Worlds editor Mike Moorcock’s serial novel, The Ice Schooner, currently being serialised over at SF Impulse. So this is another ice-rimmed Fantasy, part Konrad Arflame, part Conan – or is it Elric? The aloof Coranda demands a dowry for her hand in marriage – a unicorn’s head. Rich suitors experience many hardships and not all survive, to win Coranda’s prize, at a cost.

Roberts' tale is grim and yet floridly written, and quite enjoyable, but borrowing Moorcock’s setting and being rather Edgar Rice Burroughs or Conan in style means that it is somewhat derivative. Nevertheless, an interesting alternative take on Moorcock’s idea that I actually enjoyed more than Moorcock’s this month. 4 out of 5.

Illustration by James Cawthorn

Sisohpromatem, by Kit Reed

I had to read that title more than once in order to type it! A story about life from the perspective of a cockroach that wakes up human. No explanation is given for this, but I quite liked it. It shows us that life can be just as weird if you are an insect instead of a human.

Memorable – not just for the title! 4 out of 5.

The Silver Needle, by George Macbeth

Another drug culture related tale but this time in the form of a poem, filled with sex and drug references, and perhaps designed to shock, provoke and amuse. Not as exciting as that summary suggests. 3 out of 5.

Echo Round His Bones (Part 2 of 2), by Thomas M Disch

Captain Hansard continues his life between matter transmitters. Having been rescued at the end of the last part by Bridgetta, the wife of Panofsky, the inventor of the transmitter, we begin this part surrounded by multiple Panlofsky’s and Bridgettas. It seems that every time someone passes through the “manmitter” (ugh) a copy, or echo, is made.

Hansard finds himself unable to go back to his previous world, but is instead offered marriage by Panofsky to one of the copies of his wife. This is not a Heinlein story, right? Or Doctor Strangelove? There are times when it seems very much so. There’s a lot of talk by Panofsky of religion, suicide and souls at this point. And, of course, all of the copies of Bridgetta are wonderful at what they do.

There’s also the pressing issue that the world is about to destroy itself in days… or rather worlds, for it is from Mars that the missiles are about to be launched. Remember – that was Hansard’s original mission, to take a message to Mars.

Confused yet? This is a story that seems to throw everything in at this stage, and as a result it didn’t quite work for me. Clever, yes. And complicated. But I did feel it was trying to spin too many plates at once at the end. 3 out of 5.

Book Reviews

This month Judith Merril takes a step away from her reviewing in the Magazine of Fantasy & SF to review for us Brits. Here she mentions in some detail C. Maxwell Cade’s Other Worlds Than Ours, although as she puts it, “with a touch of my own professional bigotry” to be more impressed than she thought she would be.

James Cawthorn, more briefly, reviews Thomas Burnett Swann’s Day of the Minotaur, Cordwainer Smith’s Quest of the Three Worlds, Roger Zelazny’s The Dream Master, Poul Anderson’s The Corridors of Time and a non-fiction book on archaeology, Approach to Archaeology by Professor Stuart Piggott.

No Letters pages again this month. They all seem to be writing for SF Impulse instead (see below.)


Ballard of a Whaler , by J. Cawthorn

We’ve met James as an artist already this month as a reviewer, but here he is widening his repertoire for the magazine by writing a short tale which also makes use of Moorcock’s Ice Schooner setting. Its purpose isn’t really clear, other than to try and be funny. Who said SF readers don't have a sense of humour?  Sigh.   2 out of 5.

Summing up New Worlds

In some ways we seem to have been put into a routine at New Worlds. It is little different from the last issue – more Disch, more Ballard, more Keith Roberts, the appearance of Aldiss…nothing wrong with that and the stories are generally good. Kit Reed’s is perhaps my favourite in this month’s issue. With all this homage to The Ice Schooner, it's almost as if echoes have been created from the original story! But it does feel a little like this issue could be the November issue just as easily. And so, as last month, a very good issue but not an outstanding one.

The Second Issue At Hand


And now to SF Impulse. Oooh look: nakedness from Keith Roberts. Are we trying to be controversial? (See Letters pages, later.)

The Editorial is a return to that subject we’ve discussed many times before: What is Science Fiction? – before reviewing Gordon Dickson’s Mission to Universe. Harrison likes it.

Illustration by Keith Roberts

Mantis by Chris Boyce

The return of Chris after his fair-but-not-terrific The Rig in the September issue. One again, fair-but-not-terrific, and certainly not as good as the magazine would have me believe. Far too much magazine space (32 pages!) is taken up with the story of sculptor Eric Summerscale, who finds himself being investigated by Condominium Security because his wife Ursula is suspected of being a spy for the Conclavists. Despite its attempt at breeziness, almost becoming a Robert Heinlein story, Mantis feels long, too long, to the point of dullness. Not a promising start; this one tries so hard and yet feels like filler. 3 out of 5.

Green Eyes by Richard Wilson

And then it gets worse, as the laboured Battle of the Sexes idea is continued by Richard. His first story in this series was Deserter in the first issue of Impulse in March and I felt that it was the weakest element of an otherwise strong issue. This is just as awful. The key character in this war is Phoebe, a man in women’s clothing. If it is meant to be funny, it is not. Otherwise, it is another laboured space filler, covering similar ground to Mantis. 2 out of 5.

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor this month continue the discussion of Sex in SF that E. C. Tubb started a couple of issues ago. Chris Hebron, who seems to be all over this issue, responds, as does New Worlds’ Assistant Editor Langdon Jones. The Editor (presumably Harrison, but could be just as easily Keith Roberts) points out at the end how pleased he is for the magazine to have its first real controversy. To me it feels like an attempt to generate mock outrage. Never have these magazines seemed more interchangeable.

Brian Aldiss reviews Thomas M Disch’s The Genocides

A long and thorough review of Disch’s novel. According to Aldiss, the book’s not perfect but there’s enough positives to make me want to read it.


Illustration by Keith Roberts – look, more boobs!

The Shrine of Temptation by Judith Merril

An anthropological story, telling of the strange culture seen by a scientific study through the native Lallayall (aka Lucky). It draws you in, this one. Reminds me a little of Chad Oliver’s writing, but with the usual high standard of Judith. Revelations abound! The first decent story of the issue. 4 out of 5.

Coincidence by Chris Hebron

Another returning author, and not just from his appearance in the Letters Pages this month. Chris was last seen in SF Impulse in October. It’s an epistolary tale, told through communication between two academic researchers. Like the Merril story, there are anthropological elements, although here we also have weird happenings that seem more like witchcraft, with strange images, sex fantasies and things only the narrator can see and hear. Fritz Leiber would like this one, I think. There’s mention of breasts in a vain attempt to grab my attention – this seems to be a theme this month! –  and even shock me in a story that had trouble maintaining my interest. Can’t see the American magazines wanting this one, though. 3 out of 5.

Grutch by Pete Hammerton

Another story that is meant to be amusing (the banner says that it is “a delightfully funny episode from a new and zany talent”), but did not stir me. Some sort of sub-Dickensian style story in a science-fictional, future setting. Luke Varm claims to talk telepathically to mice from Mars who need his help to return home. As silly as it sounds, and once again, this one feels oversold. I am always wary of stories where I am told “this is funny”, because they rarely are. 2 out of 5.

Scary Illustration by Keith Roberts

The Ice Schooner (Part 3 of 3) by Michael Moorcock

Our journey across a frozen world with Konrad Arflame concludes this month. When we left it last month, Konrad and his group of Ulrica Ulsenn (who Konrad has secretly slept with), her arrogant husband Janek, Ulrica’s cousin Manfred and the harpoonist Long Lance Urquart were on the Ice Maiden, heading North to find the legendary New York and possibly the mystical Ice Mother. They were approaching an icebreak.

The boat survives, although there is increased tension as the boat nears volcanoes. Konrad is told by Ulrica that First Officer Petchnyoff and Janek Ulsenn plan to kill him. Before this can happen, though, the boat is attacked by barbarians. Petchnyoff is killed and Konrad is wounded. The weather turns foggier and colder, and the morale on the boat worsens but this changes when eventually the boat approaches New York.

However, the boat is damaged when it hits a wreck and there is another raid on the ship by the barbarians. In an attempt to escape the raiders, the boat is destroyed. The survivors are captured by barbarians riding polar bears and are taken to New York. They are told that the ice is melting. Urquart persuades the barbarians that Arflame should be taken to the Ice Mother’s court. For this, Urquart has made a deal to make a blood sacrifice to the Ice Mother. Manfred is castrated and eventually dies. Urquart is killed in combat by Arflane.

In New York they meet Peter Ballantine, who explains to them the origins of the city and how the people there have invented machinery to keep the ice at bay. Ulrica decides to stay, thinking that this is the future, whilst Konrad leaves alone to find the Ice Mother.

I still enjoyed the setting, though this part feels uneven and even a bit of a downer. Its melancholic nature signals that things must change and yet some cling to the traditions. Will Konrad find the Ice Mother? It looks like we’ll never know. 3 out of 5.

Summing up SF Impulse

A very middling kind of issue this month that seems to be filling space without any real impact, dominated by the dull and predictable Chris Boyce story. The Moorcock was fine but seemed to fizzle out a little, and the Merril was good, but overall this issue feels like it is trying too hard, filled with material that was at the bottom of the pile, or at least full of New Worlds cast-offs.

Summing up overall

After a run of SF Impulses that have been better, from my comments above it may be unsurprising, yet pleasing, for me to say that there’s no contest this month – New Worlds is by far the better issue, even when both magazines seem to be in some sort of slight slump.

Worrying signs aside, we do at least have something to look forward to: this is at the end of the New Worlds issue:

Until the next (forward, 1967!)…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 20, 1966] Above and beyond (January 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction and a space roundup)

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[Today is the last day you can sign up at the reduced rate for next year's Worldcon.  Don't miss your chance to vote in next year's Hugos!]


by Gideon Marcus

Science Fact

In '57, Asimov stopped being a full-time science fiction writer to become a full-time science columnist, a change in vocation that has largely been a positive one.  Why did the creator of Nightfall, Foundation, and Susan Calvin make the leap?  Because, with the launch of Sputnik, science fiction had suddenly become reality, and the front page of the newspaper contained some of the most thrilling SF headlines going.

That trend has only accelerated.  This month, we entered the next stage of space travel, not with a flashy Gemini launch (though those are nifty!) or our first manned trip to the Moon, but with something called ATS.

NASA's "Advanced Technology Satellite" went up on December 7, 1966.  Some satellites, like TIROS, are weather satellites.  Some, like SYNCOM, relay communications.  ATS is the first to do both, and from geostationary orbit.  At its altitude of 36,000 km, it takes exactly 24 hours to circle the Earth.  Thus, from the ground, it appears to be standing still.  Equipped with a "spin-scan" camera, every 20 minutes, ATS sends back a full-globe image of the Earth with a resolution of just 3km.  For the first time, we have essentially real-time weather coverage of an entire hemisphere.

No less ambitious, but sadly less successful, was last week's three-day "Biosatellite" mission.  Biosat is the first in a series of spacecraft that will observe the long term effects of orbital life on a variety of organisms.  On board are a menagerie of bugs (including the ever popular fruit flies) as well as seeds and plants.  The plan was to launch the mission on the 14th and then bring it back on the 17th, observing the effects of weightlessness and radiation on the living cargo.  A retrorocket malfunction stranded the satellite in orbit, however.  I suspect the SPCA is filing a lawsuit as we speak…

NASA isn't the only American agency conducting science.  Last week, the Air Force launched two satellites at once in its low-cost "Orbiting Vehicle" series, OV1-9 and OV1-10.  Normally, these go into polar orbits, but the latest duo follow more conventional paths.  For the most part, these little guys investigate radiation, radio propagation, and other near-Earth conditions.  This is all of great interest to an organization that wants to put flyboys in a Manned Orbiting Laboratory next year, but there's also a valuable scientific yield for the rest of us.

Science Fiction (and Fantasy)

After all that exciting real-world news, could an SF magazine hope to provide the same thrills?  Turns out the first 1967 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction does!


by Gray Morrow

The Little People (Part 1 of 3), John Christopher

Bridget Chauncey is the heir to a most unusual estate in rural Ireland: a run-down country home built on the site of a ruined castle.  Enchanted with the place and its commercial opportunities, she essays a trial season running the place as a vacation lodge.  An odd assemblage of characters are introduced: a bickering middle-aged couple and their daughter on the edge of womanhood, a ruddy Wehrmacht veteran and his half-Jewish wife, Bridget's practical fianceé, Daniel, the estate handler's son, Mat, and the cook and maid. 

The Little People is slow to start, author Christopher allowing us to settle into the heads of each member of this queer group.  But when a two-inch sandaled footprint is discovered, and linked to the recent rash of minor thefts, the identity of the culprit(s) quickly is determined.

Fairies are real.

This is where we leave off this compelling chapter.  I look forward to the ramifications of "first contact" between giant and wee folk.  Four stars.

The Star Driver, J. W. Schutz

Less impressive is this tale of a man stranded on an asteroid with rapidly diminishing air reserves.  Rescue depends on propelling a beacon to orbital velocity.  This Analog-ish tale would have been better served had the ending not been spoiled from the start by editor Ferman (and to some degree, the title). 

On the other hand, I don't want to discourage F&SF from publishing, well, SF.  So, a low three stars.

Interplanetary Dust, Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas suggests that the flux of micrometeoroids around the Earth might be netted up and squashed into a planetoid to live on.  I don't think he's researched how thin that flux actually is.

Two stars.

The Disenchanted Symphony, James G. Huneker

Here's a reprint from the turn of the century!  A Russian composer, infatuated with the link between music and mathematics, creates a symphony that punches a hole through the fourth dimension, whisking his wife and his orchestra away from our plane of existence.  Can he get them back?

I was impressed with how modern this story felt.  Judith Merril expressed in her Books column this month that SF owes much of its present sparkle to works created more than fifty years ago.  She was talking about H.G. Wells.  This sentiment could easily be said of Mssr. Huneker as well.

Four stars.

Bait, Bob Leman

Sometimes what a door-to-door salesman is peddling isn't the product he has on display.  This is a deliciously subtle tale that gets better after a night's thought on it.

Four stars.

The Knight-Errant, the Dragon, and the Maiden, Gahan Wilson

Sometimes the dragon is a chaperone, not a jailer.

Cute.  Three stars.

Right Beneath Your Feet, by Isaac Asimov

We're back to lists and geographical tidbits from The Good Doctor this month, this time describing what places lie directly opposite others on the globe.  Well, at least I learned the etymology of the word "antipodes" (still don't know how to pronounce it, though…)

Three stars.

Kingdom Come, Inc., Robert F. Young

Last up, a Christmas story.  Robert F. Young has never found a myth he hasn't wanted to shoehorn into a science fictional story.  This time, he adapts a reliable well: Christianity.  On the Seventh Heaven pleasure satellite, an angelic fellow named Mike shows up looking for a job.  He and his six brothers (Gabe the trumpter, Raf, etc.) are out of work of late since no one has gotten into their particular establishment for many years. 

It's an obvious tale and a tedious one, opting for the easiest, least challenging conclusion.  Two stars.

Back to Earth

With the exception of the final tale (accepted more for its fortuitous length and timely theme, perhaps), this is a quite good issue.  And with the unusual inclusion of a serial, there's all the more reason to look forward to the February issue when it arrives early next month.

Happy New Year, indeed!


by Gahan Wilson

[Today is the last day you can sign up at the reduced rate for next year's Worldcon.  Don't miss your chance to vote in next year's Hugos!]



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 8, 1966] Flesh and Blood (January 1967 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Burning Curiosity

It's probably just my morbid imagination, but it seems to me that the most intriguing, if horrifying, event in recent days was the demise of Doctor John Irving Bentley earlier this month. The elderly physician was reduced to a pile of ashes (except for part of one leg) in what some people are calling a case of spontaneous human combustion.


The scene of the fire. Notice the large hole in the floor caused by the flames. I have deliberately avoided sharing more gruesome photographs.

Church Music

After that piece of news, it's a relief to turn to a piece of light entertainment. The unique novelty song Winchester Cathedral by some British folks calling themselves the New Vaudeville Band, currently at the top of the American music charts, is a deliberately old-fashioned number. It sounds like something Rudy Vallee might have offered in the 1920's, complete with singing through a megaphone and a finishing chorus of oh-bo-de-o-do.


Rumor has it that the song was recorded by session musicians hired for the occasion, and that the band was hastily put together when it became a hit.

Well, that got me to thinking about all the folks buried in Winchester Cathedral. (There's that morbid imagination at work again.) The most familiar one — to me, at least — is the great author Jane Austen.


It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a dead woman in possession of a good reputation must be in want of a lengthy epitaph.

Gore on the Pages

Given my grim mood, it's appropriate that the
latest issue of Fantastic is full of violence, horror, and bizarre manipulations of the human body.


Cover art by Frank R. Paul, stolen from the back cover of the March 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.


The original, with brighter colors. The Reptile Men (no women?) are cute.

The Ultimate Gift, by Bryce Walton

We begin our journey into the macabre with the magazine's only original work.


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Aliens arrive at the Moon. They seem ready to conquer the world, but are hesitant about humanity's ability to put up a fight. They allow envoys to pay a visit, but kill them for some unknown violation of protocol. The dying words (thoughts, really, but let's not get into that subplot) of the most recent victim lead to an unusual choice for the next diplomat.

The so-called Basket Man was born without arms or legs. After years of misery, he winds up as a sideshow freak, making use of advanced technology to move around and manipulate things. In his bitterness, he refuses to have artificial limbs attached to his torso. A representative from the United Nations, based on the hint noted in the paragraph above, convinces him to acquire robotic arms and legs, and to head to the Moon to meet the aliens.


The fact that they're reptilian, sort of like the creatures on the cover, is relevant.

A little knowledge of zoology may lead you to predict the reason for the aliens' violent reaction to their visitors. As you may have guessed from my description, this is a ghastly little story, with a particularly disquieting scene near the end. It has a certain raw power, I suppose. Given the infamous thalidomide tragedy of not so many years ago, the premise may strike many readers as being in poor taste.

Two stars.

The People of the Black Circle, By Robert E. Howard

Dominating the issue is a bloody sword-and-sorcery adventure, featuring a hero who seems to be making a comeback of sorts. This novella was originally serialized in three parts, in the September, October, and November 1934 issues of Weird Tales.


All cover art by Margaret Brundage.


Brundage often painted scantily clad young ladies for the magazine.


Two scantily clad young ladies.

Before I get into the story itself, let me talk about the revival of interest in Robert E. Howard and his most famous creation. The tales of Conan were left in the yellowing pages of old pulp magazines until specialty publisher Gnome Press starting collecting them in several volumes.


Cover art by David A. Kyle. The novella under discussion appears in this book, number two in the Gnome Press series, from 1952.

Earlier this year, the story appeared in a paperback collection. (It should be noted here that L. Sprague de Camp completed some of Howard's unfinished works about Conan.)


Cover art by Frank Frazetta.

The setting is an imaginary ancient past. There are clues that this takes place in a fantasy version of the Afghanistan/Pakistan/India region. (Some of the hints are a bit too obvious, such as a chain of mountains called the Himelians.) We begin with a king whose soul is about to be stolen by evil sorcerers. Rather than allow this to happen, he orders his sister to kill him.


Illustrations by Hugh Rankin.

This opening scene is just a hint of the carnage to follow. The plot is a complex one, with various factions scheming against each other, betrayals, allies becoming enemies, and foes forced to work together. Frankly, I had some trouble following it. In brief, the sister wants to force Conan, now the leader of a group of hill people, to wreak revenge on the sinister forces that attacked her brother. This involves several of his men who have been taken prisoner by another realm. (It's complicated.)

Instead, Conan kidnaps the sister, hoping to exchange her for the freedom of his men. This plan is ruined when a sorcerer, betraying the dark forces for whom he was working, works with the sister's disloyal servant on their own scheme to rule the land, which results in the death of Conan's men. (I said it was complicated.)


Conan, his captive, and a horse.

After a whole bunch of wild adventures, with plenty of killings, the pair wind up at the mountain where four powerful sorcerers dwell, along with their less powerful minions and one ultra-powerful sorcerer. By this time, the sister's hatred for Conan has turned to love, just in time for her to be kidnapped from her kidnapper, if you see what I mean.


One of the many torments to which the sister is subjected.

I hope this gives you some idea of the breakneck pace, non-stop action, and frequent plot twists in this story. I lost count of how many people are slaughtered by sword or magic. (At one point, Conan acquires a magic item that protects him from deadly sorcery. This seems awfully convenient.) There are even battle scenes, with hundreds or thousands of warriors massacring each other.

There's plenty of weird magic as well, which may be the most interesting part of the story. I was particularly impressed by the floating cloud on which the four sorcerers travel.

Howard had an undeniably important influence on sword-and-sorcery fiction, and his imitators continue the tradition. (Brak the Barbarian, created by John Jakes, comes to mind.) The raw intensity of Howard's style and the bloodthirstiness of his plots aren't for all tastes. Personally, I prefer the wit and elegance of Fritz Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Three stars.

The Young One, by Jerome Bixby

From the April 1954 issue of the magazine comes this supernatural yarn.


Cover art by Augusto Marin.

Jerome Bixby is probably best known to SF fans for his chilling tale It's a Good Life and the memorable episode of Twilight Zone adapted from it. He has also dabbled in screenwriting, coming up with the kind of B movies I enjoy, such as It! The Terror From Beyond Space.


Illustration by Sanford Kossin.

A young boy meets a fellow his own age, newly arrived in the United States from Hungary. He seems nice enough, but all animals hate him. What's even stranger is that his parents eat raw meat and have very sharp teeth. (You can already see where this is going, can't you?)

The immigrant boy says he absolutely has to be back home before seven at night. The American kid tricks him by taking him into a cave, then pretending to be lost, so the Hungarian lad can't return until after his strict curfew. You can probably guess what happens.

It's an decent story, if predictable. (The exact way the plot is resolved may be a little bit unexpected.) The description of the cavern is intriguing, if nothing else.

Three stars.

The Ambidexter, by David H. Keller, M.D.

This Kelleryarn comes from the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Leo Morey

The world's two greatest surgeons, one American and one Chinese, have a meeting. The American has a brain tumor, so he wants the Chinese physician to remove part of his brain and replace it with part of a brain from another person. Can you guess that this is going to go very badly wrong?


Illustration by Leo Morey also.

This tale of Mad Science reminds me of old horror movies, the kind that show up on Shock Theater. In particular, the transplant theme brings to mind things like Mad Love, although that was about hands and not brains.

The partial brain transplant concept is unique, as far as I know, and Keller's background as a physician makes the crazy idea seem somewhat plausible. The character of the Chinese surgeon reeks of the old Yellow Peril stereotype, unfortunately. Replace him with, say, Boris Karloff and you might have the basis for a decent black-and-white chiller. I don't think the censor would care for the ghastly ending, however.

Two stars.

Mad House, by Richard Matheson

The January-February 1953 issue supplies this reprint.


Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.

Like Bixby, Matheson is associated with Twilight Zone and has written screenplays for feature films. His movies are too many to list, but a couple worth mentioning are the Jules Verne adaptation Master of the World and The Last Man on Earth. (Apparently Matheson wasn't happy with this version of his novel I am Legend, so he used the pseudonym Logan Swanson for his share of the screenwriting credit. I actually thought it was pretty good.)

As with Howard's novella, Matheson's story has already been reprinted in a couple of collections. The first one is named after his first published story, already considered a classic.


Cover art by Mel Hunter.

The second one is sort of a reduced version of the first one, omitting some stories.


Cover art by Charles Binger.

This psychological horror story features a frustrated writer who ekes out a living as a poorly paid instructor of literature. He's nearly always boiling over with anger about his inability to be published, lashing out at his students and just about everyone else. Fed up with his rage, his wife leaves him.


Illustrations by Bill Ashman.

He also fights a daily battle with inanimate objects around the house. They seem to be conspiring to harm him. An acquaintance — he can't be called a friend, given the fact that the main character is as nasty to him as he is to everybody else — suggests that the house is sort of absorbing his anger.


Chaos ensues.

Like other stories in this issue, it leads to a blood-soaked conclusion. It's also similar in that it's pretty predictable. The best part of it is the author's style, full of short, rage-filled sentences that really get you into the main character's head. That's not a very nice place to be, of course.

Three stars.

Worth All That Suffering?

The magazine ends with this appropriately macabre anecdote, which I offer without comment.


I don't believe it. Oh, wait a minute, that was a comment, wasn't it? Sorry about that.

Not a great issue, although a bare majority of the stories were at least worth reading. The Conan story is of historical importance, anyway. I suppose the magazine would be enjoyable enough if you happen to be in a situation where you need to be waiting around.


Cartoon by somebody called Salame, from the same issue as the Matheson story.

[Join us tonight for the next episode of Star Trek — airing at 8:30 PM Pacific and Eastern!]




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